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tt0051411 | The Big Country | Successful sea captain James McKay (Gregory Peck) travels to the American West to join his fiancée Patricia (Carroll Baker) at the enormous ranch owned by her father, Henry Terrill (Charles Bickford), referred to by all as "The Major." Terrill has been feuding with Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives), the patriarch of a poorer, less refined ranching clan, over water rights in the arid grazing lands of the high plains.
Patricia's friend, schoolteacher Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons), owns the "Big Muddy", a large ranch itself, with a source of water that is vital to both Hannassey and Terrill in times of drought. Julie allows all to water their cattle and refuses to sell or lease the Big Muddy to either side, so as to keep the fragile peace.
McKay brings a pair of dueling pistols to the Major as a gift. But he repeatedly refuses to be provoked into proving his manhood; he tells the Major that his father died in a meaningless duel. He does nothing when Hannassey's trouble-making son Buck (Chuck Connors) and his shiftless companions harass him. He also declines an invitation by Terrill's foreman, Steve Leech (Charlton Heston), to ride an unbroken horse named "Old Thunder." Consequently, everyone, including Patricia, considers him a coward.
When the Major and his men ride to the Hannassey ranch in retribution for Buck's harassment of a Terrill guest, McKay declines to participate. Buck makes his escape from Terrill's men while others in his posse are punished and beaten senseless. Alone at Terrill's ranch except for ranch hand Ramon (Alfonso Bedoya), McKay then breaks Old Thunder, after being thrown out of the saddle numerous times. He swears Ramon, the only witness, to secrecy.
Terrill hosts a Grand Gala to formally announce Patricia's upcoming wedding. A ruffled and grizzled Hannassey, armed with a shotgun, spoils the festive mood when he confronts Terrill in front of all his guests over the brutal beating of his men. He threatens to start a range war over Terrill's steadfast practice of denying water to Hannassey's cattle.
McKay rides out to the Big Muddy and persuades Julie to sell him the land, promising to continue her policy of unrestricted access to the river. A search party, led by Leech, spends two days looking for McKay, believing he has become lost. McKay explains that he was never in danger, but Leech calls him a liar. Again refusing to be goaded into a fight, McKay sees that both Patricia and her father are disappointed; they agree to reconsider their engagement. Early the next morning, before anybody else is up, McKay seeks out Leech to settle their quarrel. They fight, without witnesses, to an exhausted draw. McKay quietly asks Leech exactly what they proved by fighting. Leech has a new understanding and respect of McKay.
Julie tells her friend Patricia that McKay bought the Big Muddy for her. Patricia is excited because her father will be so pleased with her wedding gift. Once she learns McKay plans to give Hannassey access to his water, however, Patricia leaves, understanding their engagement is over.
Acting on Terrill's orders, Leech and his men chase Hannassey's cattle away from the Big Muddy. Hannassey, in retaliation, kidnaps Julie and uses her as bait to lure Terrill into an ambush in the narrow canyon leading to Hannassey's homestead. Buck tries to force himself on Julie, but his father stops him. Buck, furious, tries to strangle his father, but is overpowered. His father states, "One day I know I'm going to have to kill you."
McKay finds out about Julie and rides to the Hannassey place, where he shows Hannassey the deed to Big Muddy and promises him equal access to the water. Hannassey says he intends to fight Terrill anyway, whereupon McKay tells him that it is plain that this is just a personal vendetta between two old men.
When it becomes obvious that McKay and Julie have feelings for each other, Buck attacks McKay. They fight, but Hannassey steps in when Buck draws his gun on the unarmed McKay and insists on a fair, formal duel. After walking apart ten paces, Buck fires before the signal, grazing McKay's forehead. Hannassey is furious. McKay slowly takes aim, but Buck drops to the ground in terror and crawls behind a wagon wheel. McKay fires into the dirt, ending the duel, and Hannassey spits on Buck in disgust. McKay and Julie are about to leave when Buck grabs a gun, forcing Hannassey to shoot his son dead.
Terrill insists on riding into Blanco Canyon for a final confrontation. Leech and the rest of his men initially refuse to accompany him, but after Terrill rides out alone, Leech joins him, followed by the rest of the outfit. They are quickly pinned down. Hannassey, acknowledgeing the truth of McKay's accusation, orders his men to stop shooting and challenges Terrill to a one-on-one showdown. Terrill promptly agrees. Armed with rifles, the two old men advance and kill one another.
McKay and Julie ride off to start a new life together. | revenge, suspenseful, violence | train | wikipedia | The Big Country was an exception.Jim McKay (Gregory Peck) introduced us to a different kind of man, far different than most stereotypical men of the Wild West.
As Ramon said, "Such a man is very rare."Outside of McKay, my #2 favorite character in the film was Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives).
The second is a four sided romantic triangle involving Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, and Carroll Baker with Chuck Connors trying to horn in.William Wyler directed the almost three hour western with a sure hand and your interest does not wane for one minute in this film.
He's got eyes on Baker himself and Chuck Connors who is Burl Ives eldest son has eyes for Simmons when he's not in the local bordello.A lot of started and broken relationships and a few of the cast members being killed occurs in The Big Country.
That was one great career move because Wyler and he hit it off so well that Wyler signed him for the lead in his next film which turned out to be Ben-Hur. Heston in his memoirs, conservative as he became, says he also got along very well with Gregory Peck who he called a "thinking man's liberal."Peck and Wyler had worked together previously on Roman Holiday and had done good work there and also hit it off.
Baker is disappointed in Peck not seeing him as her ideal western man and Simmons upbraids her with the quote I put in the review title.This is also the final film of Alfonso Bedoya who never did get a role in an American film as good as the one he had as Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
All that Burl Ives captured in Rufus and The Big Country is worth watching just for him alone.And that Jerome Moross score; simply one of the best ever done in the history of film..
Many of the characters are largely and broadly drawn with big strokes (stubborn Peck, fiery Baker, resentful Heston, righteous Simmons, imperious Bickford, cantankerous Ives and slithering Connors) yet they all are dwarfed by the huge landscape.
When Jim McKay (Gregory Peck) stepped off the stagecoach in the open range of the West, Steve Leech (Charlton Heston) was already his excellent rival and adversary...Steve - Major Terrill's strong right arm - was in love with the beautiful Pat (Carroll Baker) daughter of his boss, who intends to marry the innocent handsome Captain...Soon than expected, McKay discovered a bitter blood feud between the Terrills, owner of a huge ranch, and the Hannasseys, simple mountain men..Extreme hatred united the two families, the two cattlemen Major Terrill (Charles Bickford) and Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives).Julie Maragon (Jean Simmons) was a strategic factor in the conflict...
always for an asset!Gregory Peck is outstanding as the calm anti-traditional hero, balancing a deed of bravery, strength and endurance...Jean Simmons is a big leading lady at that time, big enough to the 'Big Country.'Carroll Baker, famous as the thumb-sucking child-wife in "Baby Doll," is Charles Bickford's willful daughter, acting according to his law and dictate...Charlton Heston confirms a favorable impression by giving an excellent account as the grinning, menacing rival in love with the land and with McKay's attractive fiancée...Burl Ives - Winner of the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in the film - is impeccably cast as the gray-haired patriarch of a shameful, indecent, discourteous clan...Charles Bickford (1891-1967) could play as easily the sincere man of virtue ("Duel in the Sun") as the dishonest villain...
Here he plays the heavy coward, the rude and vulgar, the hypocrite impolite noisy disorderly son...Directed by William Wyler, "The Big Country" is a spectacular Western featuring a brilliant cast at top shape...If you like big action, big fights, big love, don't miss it!.
Well, I remember seeing The Big Country and was properly swept off my feet by the grand scale of the Big Country, the death feud between Burl Ives and Charles Bickford, the shaky and doomed romance between Gregory Peck and the spoiled Carroll Baker and the quiet understanding between Peck and the lovely Jean Simmons, but most of all, the thing that propelled me to see The Big Country over and over was the magnificant score by Jerome Moross.
In the meantime, Peck does prove his masculinity but it is too late for Baker, who has come to believe that he is a coward.The final showdown is obvious but handled very well.Another great asset to the film is the rousing musical score.
All the actors/actresses are a perfect fit for their roles, and the male cast of Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives, and Chuck Connors (who shines as the thoroughly bad Buck Hannassey) is ensemble acting at it's best.
In fact, a kind of mild running gag in the film is how when Gregory Peck arrives everyone from his future father-in-law Charles Bickford, and his fiancé Carol Baker, and even Charlton Heston mentions that it is a big country (and that he can get lost in it).
It's a nuanced performance, with Leech at first coming off as little more than a hard-driving b****** with a thing for the woman who would become Peck's girl- but the character goes through a very dramatic change that showcases Heston's range: the "Bad" Guy morphs into a Not So Bad Guy After All. The times Heston impresses on screen are about as numerous as the films he starred in (or even co-starred in, or had what amounted to a bit part in).
We don't need no stinkin' badges." Just as telling is the way Alfonso articulated the key concept of The Big Country when he says of Jim McKay: "A man like him is very rare." There is a sense of respect in Alfonso's delivery and a need to relate to others what he has seen in McKay. There is great irony in the fact that everyone else except for Julie as played by Jean Simmons fails to see McKay's qualities.
A New Englander (Gregory Peck) arrives in the Old West to marry a beautiful young (Carroll Baker) , there he becomes embroiled in feuding families with rival patriarchs (Burl Ives , Charles Bickford) over a valuable patch of land and water rights on a river .
This film makes a very strong case for my top western (along with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Shootist, and The Searchers), and certainly top 10 movie of all time!There are so many rare and great things about this film -- let me just point to a few.
The scene at the beginning as Peck gets off the stage is good -- his (eventful) trip to the ranch with his fiancé, the Ol' Thunder showdown, Burl Ives entry (which is AMAZING and powerful!), Peck's trip to the old ranch house and Big Muddy, the fight between Heston and Peck (which some have criticized for the slow pacing, outcome, and distant camera-work, but which I think is poignant, rare, and a turning point in the film), and the list goes on and on...Fifth, as so many have said -- the music is absolutely wonderful!
Charles Bickford plays Maj. Henry Terrill a self-proclaimed gentleman who's twenty year old feud with his one time rival Rufus Hannassey (Burl Ives) and his son Buck (Chuck Connors) aim to settle their quarrel with guns.
Other major characters include ranch owner Major Terrell (Charles Bickford), bent on the destruction of his rival Rufus Hannassey, his daughter Pat (Carroll Baker), engaged to McKay but in reality in love with her father, and foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston), fiercely loyal to his boss, in love with his daughter and intensely jealous of her fancy fiancé from back east.
Jean Simmons and Carroll Baker played Julie Maragon and the fiancée-daughter,respectively, with Charlton Heston as the foreman Steve Leach, Chuck Connors' as the Southerner's rebellious son, and veteran Alfonso Bedoya as the Mexican who befriends McKay. No one else in this very clear and ruthlessly-developed film is given very much to do.
The film's violent, but emotionally powerful, climax comes after a group of Terrills drive some of the Hannassey's cattle away from the water and the Hannasseys, in retaliation, kidnap Julie in an attempt to force her to sell the land."The Big Country" is a good example of the new type of Western that was becoming popular in the 1950s, making good use of the spectacular scenery of the West and concentrating as much upon character development as upon action.
Burl Ives well deserved his Best Supporting Actor award for his performance as Rufus, and McKay is a typical example of the intelligent, thoughtful man of integrity that Gregory Peck excelled at portraying.
The film's sheer size ultimately defeats director Wyler's goal, but what emerges is still a rip-roaring drama, with terrific performances by Oscar-winner Burl Ives, Chuck Connors, Charlton Heston, and Charles Bickford.Eastern ship captain James McKay (Peck) arrives in a GIANT-like Western town to marry Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker), whose father (Bickford) is a major landowner in the area.
A 'Blood Feud' must be settled in blood, even when common sense proves it ridiculous.Epic in scope, with the Wyler 'style' clearly evident in pacing and characterization, THE BIG COUNTRY may have misfired as an 'Anti-Western', but is still an entertaining, engaging production, and certainly deserves a place in any film fan's collection..
When the question of "what's the greatest Western?" comes up, the contenders always include High Noon, Shane, The Searchers, The Wild Bunch, Red River, and Unforgiven--all of which are truly great films--but I think it's a shame the The Big Country is never mentioned, when in fact it's every bit as eligible as any of the aforementioned.
Unlike many others, this one is rich in character, not just another lesson in "it's in Cinerama/Super Panavision and historical, so it's gotta be good."The cast is smaller than some spot-the-star epics and couldn't have been better chosen; what few people remember in amongst the always commanding Gregory Peck lead, the talented female duo of Jean Simmons and Carroll Baker, and the vivid feud-masters Burl Ives, Charles Bickford and Chuck Connors, is that Charlton Heston gave one of his best performances here.Not to say that the visuals aren't striking here; the technical work stands up to and often surpasses the big Westerns of the era.
There are also great performances by Charles Bickford as "the Major", and Chuck Conners as the Burl Ives characters fatally flawed son."The Big Country" is superbly photographed, and makes one think of the later black and white film "Hud".This film seems to be under appreciated, but should be on anybody's list of the Top Ten Westerns of all time.
And Carroll Baker, Burl Ives, Jean Simmons and Charlton Heston all provide some good support, with near perfect direction by William Wyler.
William Wyler's "The Big Country" concerns a retired sea captain, James McKay (Gregory Peck), thrust into the middle of a squabble over land rights.
It should also be noted that Burl Ives won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance.The story is an interesting one since it doesn't conform to the usual style of a Western film.
It has beautiful photography in great open wide sceneries, outstanding music that goes perfectly along with the sense of spectacle the film transmits, an interesting story, good action scenes and a really competent cast.Gregory Peck is very good as the strange man that comes from the east and feels he doesn't have to proof his courage to anyone.
Jean Simmons is pretty, there is a fairly insulting Mexican American stereotype character, Peck and Heston are wooden, Connors simpers and schemes, and Burl Ives doesn't sing a note: what more could you want in a movie?
And one of those 1950s westerns that helped point the way was director William Wyler's expansive 1958 opus THE BIG COUNTRY.Reputed to have been then-president Dwight Eisenhower's favorite film, THE BIG COUNTRY, based on the novel of the same name by Donald Hamilton, stars Gregory Peck (who co-produced the film with Wyler, and who delivers another excellent low-key performance) as a ship's captain who has ventured out West to marry the girl (Carroll Baker) that he had left behind.
McKay stirs up rivalry in the stud foreman of the ranch, Leech (Charleton Heston), and finds himself in the middle of a feud over water rights.Also on hand are Charles Bickford as Patricia's father, Major Terrill, Burl Ives as the patriarch of the Hannessey clan and Chuck Conners as his brutish son.Shot in remote areas of California and running 2 hours and 46 minutes, "The Big Country" is engrossing from beginning to end.
There are sub-plots too with Heston's near adoration of his stubborn old coot of an employer the Major and his suppressed desire for Peck's original intended, the Major's daughter, played by Carroll Baker.This is contrasted with Ives own errant eldest son (played by Chuck Connors) and his infatuation with Simmons, which predictably ends in death and tragedy before the end.For me there was too much plot for the film and I found I enjoyed the movie more when I was enjoying the high quality camera work, musical score or acting.
Helped enormously by the afore mentioned Planer, music composer Jerome Moross, and an impressive and on form cast (Heston in superb tough guy mode and Burl Ives delivering a Oscar winning performance as head Hannassey patriarch Rufus), it's a big production in many ways.
With memorable acting, gorgeous scenery, big music and notable moments of action (a fist fight between Peck & Heston alone is epic and apparently took three days to get right) it's a must see for the Western enthusiast.
There's the main plot of Peck and Carrol Baker, the subplots of Burl Ives and Bickford, Simmons and Baker, Peck and Simmons...This was one of Wyler's masterpieces.The Big Country is on my short list of "Best Westerns".....
I've never liked Charlton Heston better than I do here (except for "Planet of the Apes," but that's more to make fun of him), and Burl Ives anchors the film with his rich baritone and imposing size -- he's a force of nature in this film, and his impressive performance here is only one of two he delivered in 1958 ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" being the other one).Highlights of "The Big Country" include a fistfight between Gregory Peck and Heston that each refuses to quit and a breathtakingly suspenseful final showdown in a canyon between Ives and arch rival Charles Bickford set to more of that pulsing, vibrant musical score.A treasure from an on-again-off-again decade.Grade: A+.
This movie has some of the greatest actors that were in Hollywood at that time...Look at the movie "The Magnificent Seven" and you'll see another movie with so many great actors, so "The Big Country" ranks right up with some of the greatest westerns and the musical score fits right in with the theme of the show...Gregory Peck has been and always will be one of my favorite actors in the history of Hollywood....he was above reproach in his private life, even thought certain events in his family touched him and caused him anguish...But, his characters on the screen were most certainly played by him to the extent that they were believable and bordered on being actual people that we could relate to regarding the movie and the script..His good looks, and the way he carried himself on and off the screen, could only lead one to think that he was truly a fine actor and an equally great human being..we'll miss him, but we still have his movies to enjoy and treasure..thank for letting me comment on Gregory Peck....
The Big Country is a great movie, is well directed and has a cast of Stars that compliment their characters and the story.
It has everything from scope and grandeur to an unforgettable musical score to faultless casting and superb direction.The big fight scene between Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston is not to be missed.
Gregory Peck is fine as Jim McKay, but the film belongs to Charlton Heston and Burl Ives in outstanding supporting roles.
The fight scene between Peck and Heston did a lot to promote the theme that they were indeed in a big country.I will watch this movie over and over again as I will "Shane," "High Noon," and "The Searchers."Doufus t.
Peck,Charlton Heston,Carrol Baker, Jean Simmons, Charles Bickford, Burl Ives and Chuck Connors are excellent, also William Wyler's direction, and the 2 ½ hours of the film seem to fly..
Despite its age The Big Country is still an entertaining movie.Jim McKay (Gregory Peck) arrives in the West to marry Pat Terrill (Carroll Baker).
I always enjoyed this movie when it came on TV: the magnificent score -one of the very best ever written, the great performances by Gregory Peck, Burl Ives, and Chuck Connors.
It's an epic tale, sprawling and a bit rambling over the course of two hours and forty-five minutes, but Wyler holds it all together for maximum interest, aided and abetted by a wonderful western score by Jerome Moross that has become classic.Peck never had a role that suited him so admirably and CHARLTON HESTON is excellent as Bickford's right hand man with unwanted designs on Carroll Baker.
Along the way, he builds a friendship with Jean Simmons, who appreciates his high morals, and he finds himself in the middle of a decades-old family feud, led by Charles Bickford and Burl Ives.Jerome Moross wrote one of the greatest film scores of all time to The Big Country, but of course, lost the Oscar that year to a far less deserving rival.
The ending of the movie is a disappointment as I am not a fan of simple face offs.The movie has great acting from the noted actors and actresses Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker, Charles Heston, Burl Ives and Charles Bickford. |
tt0057091 | Il gattopardo | Most of the novel is set during the time of the Risorgimento, specifically during the period when Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification, swept through Sicily with his forces, known as The Thousand. The plot focuses upon the aristocratic Salina family, which is headed by the stoic Prince Fabrizio, a consummate womanizer who foresees the upcoming downfall of his family and the nobility in Italy as a whole but finds himself unable to change the course of history. As the novel opens in May 1860, Garibaldi's Redshirts have landed on the Sicilian coast and are pressing inland to overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
=== "Introduction to the Prince," May 1860. ===
This chapter begins with a detailed description of the exquisitely decorated drawing room where the Salina family recites their daily rosary. Afterwards, the Prince wanders out into the garden, where the sickly, over-ripe smells of lush foliage threaten to overwhelm him with memories—specifically, of a dead Neapolitan soldier who, in his last moments, had clawed his way into the lemon grove and died there, guts spilled. Perturbed by these thoughts, the Prince takes refuge in watching his dog, Bendicò, joyfully dig up the garden, and in thoughts about the behavior of his wayward nephew, Prince Tancredi Falconeri.
At dinner, the Prince announces that he will drive his coach into Palermo. The adults at the table, including the Princess and the family's Jesuit chaplain, instantly know that the only reason he's leaving is to visit a brothel. As the Prince is driven in his carriage into the city, he passes Tancredi's villa, worrying again that Tancredi's fallen in with bad company —specifically, with the rebels fighting to overthrow the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Prince's thoughts vacillate between anticipation and guilt, between disgust with his wife (who crosses herself whenever they make love) and admiration of her prudery. Two hours later, his thoughts run a similar course, with the addition of a kind of disgusted satisfaction with the prostitute and a satisfied disgust with his own body. When he arrives back home, he finds the Princess in bed, thinks affectionately of her, climbs into bed with her, and finds he can't sleep. "Towards dawn, however, the Princess had occasion to make the Sign of the Cross."
The following morning, the Prince's shaving is interrupted by the arrival of Tancredi. Tancredi reveals that his position in the Italian nationalist movement has risen. He adds that he will soon be joining Garibaldi in the mountains. The Prince suddenly imagines his beloved nephew dead in the garden with his guts trailing out like the Crown soldier, and tries to dissuade him from departing. Tancredi, however, insists that he is fighting for a very good reason. Later, as the Prince gets dressed, he realizes the practicality of Tancredi's words. As he ponders the coming upheavals, he realizes that his nephew is more aristocratically like-minded than he thought.
After breakfast, the Prince, accompanied by the playful Bendicò, goes into his office, which is lined with century-old paintings of the Salina family's estates. As he sits at his cluttered desk, the Prince recalls how much he dislikes both the room and the work it represents. This dislike intensifies during visits from his accountant and one of his tenants, both of whom are allied with the Redshirts. Both of them assure the Prince that the unification of Italy will be peaceful and will benefit everyone, including the nobility. The Prince allows himself to be reassured, certain that the class system will remain unchanged no matter what. The Prince's visit to the Salina chaplain, Father Pirrone, atop a tower where the men practice their joint hobby of astronomy, reinforces this belief.
At lunch, the Prince becomes aware that his family is worried about Tancredi's safety. As a result, the Prince makes an effort to appear simultaneously concerned and reassuring. When dessert is brought out, it's his favorite - a large, castle-shaped jelly. As dessert commences, the castle is essentially demolished before Don Paolo, the Prince's son and heir, gets a chance to have any.
That evening, the Prince receives a letter urging him to flee to safety from the revolution. In response, he simply laughs. Later, as the Salinas gather to say their rosary, the Prince reads in a newspaper of the approach of Garibaldi and his men. The Prince is disturbed, but reassures himself that Garibaldi will be reined in by his Piedmontese masters.
=== "Donnafugata," August 1860 ===
After a long journey by coach, the Prince, his faithful dog Bendicò, and the squabbling Salinas arrive at their estate at Donnafugata. Both the officials of the town and the common people greet the Salinas as gladly as always. Their numbers include the new mayor, Don Calogero Sedàra.
The Prince reflects on Garibaldi's recent conquest of the island. The Expedition of the Thousand landed at Marsala, where Tancredi and other native Sicilians joined them. Garibaldi's march was finally completed with the Siege of Gaeta, where the final Bourbons were expelled and Garibaldi announced his dictatorship in the name of Victor Emmanuel II of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Upon his arrival, the citizens of Palermo rejoiced and, later, local leaders of the movement had called at the Salina palace. Although they treated the Prince with great respect, one of them insisted on flirting with his daughter Concetta.
After Mass, the Princess invites the officials to the traditional first night dinner and Don Calogero requests permission to bring his daughter Angelica.
As the Prince inspects his property and possessions, the manager lists everything that's been done to keep the estate in order, and then passes on some local news. Don Calogero, who was active in Garibaldi's invasion, has become a wealthy landowner and businessman. To the dismay of the Prince, Don Calogero is now almost as wealthy as the Salinas. The manager adds that Angelica, Don Calogero's daughter, has become quite full of herself as a result. The Prince realizes that he is somewhat resentful of Calogero's status.
The Prince's bath before dinner is interrupted by the arrival of Father Pirrone. Concetta has asked Father Pirrone to tell her father that she is in love with Tancredi and that she believes her feelings to be returned. The Prince ponders his fondness for Concetta, which is based in her apparent submissiveness and placidity. However, he thinks that Tancredi's ambitions may require more money than Concetta will bring as her dowry. Keeping his thoughts to himself, the Prince decrees that Father Pirrone is to tell Concetta that the Prince will discuss it with her later.
After a nap, the Prince goes out into the garden, where his contemplations of an erotic statue are interrupted by Tancredi's teasing about sex, comments which also apply to a small crop of beautifully ripe peaches in a nearby grove. The Prince uneasily changes the subject, and he and Tancredi gossip their way back to the house, where they join the rest of the family and the arriving dinner guests.
Soon after, Don Calogero arrives, and the Prince is relieved to see that he's dressed quite tastelessly. His relief ends abruptly when Angelica arrives - he finds her attractive enough to feel the stir of lust. At dinner, Angelica flirts openly with Tancredi—who, in his turn, finds himself attracted to both Angelica's beauty and her money. For her part, Concetta is enraged.
The following day, the Prince and his family uphold a centuries-old family tradition and visit a convent founded by a female ancestor. After returning from the convent, the Prince looks out his window at Donnafugata's town square and spies Tancredi, dressed in his, "seduction color," of Prussian blue. He is carrying a box of peaches from the palace's fruit grove and is seen to knock on the door of the Sedàras household.
=== "The Troubles of Don Fabrizio." October 1860 ===
This chapter begins with a lyrically written introduction to the silent, still, dim, early morning world at Donnafugata in which the Prince likes to walk with Bendicò. Narration then describes how Tancredi writes every week, but never to Concetta and always with comments that he would like the Prince to pass on to Angelica, who, in turn, visits every day, pretending to come to see the girls but in reality to learn news of Tancredi.
One particular day a letter arrives from Tancredi in which he asks the Prince to ask Angelica's father for her hand in marriage. He uses several arguments to convince the Prince to do so, among them being she will bring money into the family and guarantee that the family will continue to have status in the new kingdom of Italy. The Prince finds himself agreeing with many of Tancredi's points, and takes a little second-hand sensual pleasure in knowing that he'll soon be able to enjoy seeing Angelica more often. The next morning, the Prince, in the company of his usual morning companions, Don Ciccio (the organist) and Bendicò, takes his gun with him on his walk and shoots a rabbit. "The animal had died tortured by anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape when it was already caught, just like so many human beings."
Later, the Prince and Ciccio eat their picnic lunch and settle down for a nap. Instead of sleeping, however, the Prince finds himself contemplating the recent Plebiscite, a vote taken on the question of whether Sicily should politically join with the new Italian Kingdom. The Prince remembers how he couldn't decide which way to mark his ballot. Eventually he voted "yes," and then recalls the celebrations which greeted the result — a unanimous vote in favor.
Back in the present, the Prince contemplates what he believes to be the historical significance of the vote and also its deeper meaning. This leads him to ask Ciccio how he voted in the Plebiscite. At first reluctant, Don Ciccio finally admits that, as the son of a Bourbon royal game keeper, he could not bring himself to vote in favor of the revolution. Many others in Donnafugata voted the same way, but Don Calogero rigged the election and announced the results as unanimously in favor of the House of Savoy.
The Prince asks Don Ciccio what the people of Donnafugata really think of Don Calogero. Don Ciccio speaks at angry length of how many people despise Don Calogero in spite of, or perhaps because of, his embodiment of a harsh reality - that "every coin spent in the world must end in someone's pocket." Don Calogero, a peasant moneylender, eloped with Angelica's mother, who was the daughter of a penniless Salina tenant. Don Calogero's father-in-law vowed revenge, but his corpse was later found, shot twelve times in the back.
Although scandalized by Don Ciccio's stories, the Prince at last asks the question that's really on his mind—what is Angelica truly like? Ciccio speaks rapturously of her beauty, poise, and sophistication, and then speaks about how her parents' vulgarity seems to have not affected her. The Prince bristles, and informs Don Ciccio that from now on, because Angelica and Tancredi are to be married, the Serdàras must be spoken about with appropriate respect. Ciccio, who has believed that Tancredi was attempting to seduce Angelica in order to embarrass her father, is horrified. He bursts out that for Tancredi and Angelica to marry will cause the end of the good qualities of the Salina and Falconieri families. The Prince thinks to himself, however, that the marriage will not be the end, but the beginning. As the Prince and Don Ciccio return to Donnafugata, it is impossible to tell which of them is Don Quixote and which is Sancho Panza.
The Prince takes his time dressing for his meeting with Don Calogero, and when he finally goes downstairs, he has a vision of the two of them as animals. Their conversation is, for the most part, polite, with both men making occasional slips into tactlessness but both ultimately making the truths of the situation quite apparent. For the Prince, that truth involves Tancredi's excellent lineage but extreme poverty, while for Calogero the truth involves his wealth, which is much greater than the Prince ever realized, and the fact that Don Calogero is in final negotiations to purchase the title of Baroness for his daughter. An agreement is reached that the marriage is to proceed.
=== "Love at Donnafugata." November 1860. ===
As preparations for the wedding between Tancredi and Angelica progressed, the Prince and Calogero became more like each other - the Prince became more ruthless in his business dealings, while Calogero saw the value of good manners and better grooming. Calogero, narration suggests, began "that process of continual refining which in the course of three generations transforms innocent peasants into defenseless gentry."
Narration describes, in a tone that is at times enraptured and at other times pointedly cynical, Angelica's first visit to the Prince and his family following her betrothal to Tancredi. Dressed beautifully, she makes her entrance with perfect timing, and immediately endears herself to the Prince. Only Bendicò, growling in a corner, seems unhappy to see her. Finally, narration also describes how Angelica, as she's listening, coolly considers the financial and sexual prosperity that awaits them, and comments that, within a few years of the marriage, Angelica will become one of the great political kingmakers of the Italian Kingdom.
A week later, the family's quiet evening is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Tancredi, who has brought a friend with him (Count Carlo). Tancredi and the Count, in their full dress uniforms, fascinate the Prince's daughters and puzzle the Prince, who says he thought they were still fighting for Garibaldi. Tancredi and the Count react with disgust, saying there was no way they could stay with such a rough outfit when positions with the new king's army were available. Tancredi then produces the ring he has purchased for Angelica. A moment later, Angelica rushes in, having been informed by a note that Tancredi is back. The lovers embrace; sensuality fills the air.
Love and sensuality fill the subsequent days at Donnafugata. The Count dreamily, and ineffectually, pursues Concetta, while Concetta's younger sisters (Carolina and Caterina) dream romantically of Tancredi and the Count, and Tancredi and Angelica spend their time exploring the palace's many rooms, each of which contains some representation of a leopard, the family insignia. Narration describes how, on several occasions, Tancredi and Angelica are tempted to give in to their mutual sensual desire, but never do... and how this idyllic time of romantic, intimate gaming between them was a happy prelude to the miserable, unsuccessful marriage that followed.
A government representative (Chevalley di Monterzuolo) arrives and tells the Prince that because of his aristocratic background and social influence, the government wants him to sit as an appointed (as opposed to elected) member of the Senate. At first, the Prince is quite silent, leading Chevalley to attempt to flatter him into accepting the offer (see "Quotes", p. 163) - an attempt that doesn't work. The Prince explains at increasingly intense, often poetic length, why he, like other Sicilians, has no interest in being involved in government.
The following morning, the Prince accompanies Chevalley to the station. As they walk through the streets of early morning Donnafugata, both of them overwhelmed by the squalor and despair surrounding them, both men think the situation has got to change, but where Chevalley believes it will, the Prince is convinced it won't.
=== "Father Pirrone Pays a Visit." February 1861. ===
Father Pirrone visits his home village. Much has changed since the arrival of the Garibaldini. The land, which was previously owned by a Benedictine monastery, has been seized and sold to a peasant moneylender. Many of the villagers complain to Father Pirrone about their new landlord.
During a conversation with a childhood friend, Father Pirrone enters a lengthy speech explaining why the Prince and other aristocrats don't really have any reaction one way or the other to the events of the revolution. - They "live in a world of their own ... all they live by has been handled by others". He concludes by saying that the feelings and attitudes that give rise to class consciousness never truly die.
The next day, Pirrone finds his sister Sarina in tears in the kitchen, and gets her to admit that her daughter Angelina (whom Pirrone mentally compares to the beautiful Angelica and finds wanting) has been impregnated outside of wedlock. The father, she confesses furiously, is the girl's first cousin, Santino, the son of Pirrone and Sarina's paternal uncle. Father Pirrone ponders the long-standing family feud between Pirrone's father and his uncle. After saying Mass, he goes to visit his uncle and manipulates both him and Santino into accepting what he proposes as the terms of marriage. Back home, Father Pirrone persuades Angelina's grudging father into agreeing to the terms of marriage by sacrificing his own inheritance. Santino and his father arrive; the marriage is contracted, and the young people are happy. Later, while travelling back to the Salina Palace, Father Pirrone is certain that Santino and his father planned Angelina's seduction so they could get their hands on property they believed was rightfully theirs, and also realizes that the nobility and the peasants are, at least on one level, far more similar than he once thought.
=== "A Ball." November 1862 ===
The Salinas prepare to attend a ball, one of the most important of the Palermo social season. The Prince is both excited and concerned about the evening to come. It will be the first time Angelica and her beauty are to be presented to the public. However, he remains concerned that Don Calogero will make a complete fool of both himself and the Salinas. When Angelica (looking beautiful) and Don Calogero (looking acceptable) arrive shortly after, Angelica, thanks to detailed training in etiquette given to her by Tancredi, makes a huge social success. The Prince, after being satisfied that Angelica has been accepted, wanders through the rooms of the Palazzo Ponteleone where the ball is being held, becoming increasingly gloomy at the callowness of the young men, the boredom in the older men, and the silliness of the girls. The Prince notices Tancredi and Angelica dancing happily together, oblivious to the other's desperation, ambition, and greed. As he watches, the Prince comes to realize and accept, if only for a moment, that whatever happiness the lovers feel is to be celebrated, no matter what.
Angelica asks the Prince to dance with her. Flattered, he agrees to a waltz. They are a successful couple and dance well, with the Prince's memory flashing back to the days of his youth "when, in that very same ballroom he had danced with the Princess before he knew disappointment, boredom, and the rest." As the dance finishes, he realizes the other dancers have stopped and are watching them, his "leonine air" preventing the onlookers from bursting into applause. Angelica asks him to eat with her and Tancredi, and for a flattered moment almost says yes, but then again remembers his youth, recalls how embarrassing it would have been for him to have an old relative eating with him and a lover, and politely excuses himself.
The ball goes on until six in the morning. The Prince decides to walk home, alone with his thoughts.
=== "Death of a Prince." July 1883. ===
For years, the Prince has felt that he is dying, "as if the vital fluid ... life itself in fact and perhaps even the will to go on living, were ebbing out of him ... as grains of sand cluster and then line up one by one, unhurried, unceasing, before the narrow neck of an hourglass." A last minute visit to a doctor has tired him so much that it is decided that he should not go back to the villa outside Palermo, but shall stay in a hotel inside the city itself. As he settles into the hotel, the Prince contemplates the fates of several of his family members—Tancredi's political success in the new Kingdom of Italy, the deaths of Father Pirrone from old age, of Princess Maria from diabetes, and of Paolo after being thrown by a horse. He also recalls the maturation and dignity of Concetta—who, he realizes, is the true heir of what was noble and enduring of the Salina family. He dismisses Paolo's son and biological heir, Fabrizietto as dissolute, shallow, and aimless.
As the Prince receives the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, he considers the joys (sensual, spiritual, political and animal - in particular, the loving and playful Bendicò) and the sorrows (political, sexual, and familial) he's experienced, concluding that out of the seventy-three years he's been alive, he has only fully lived three of them. In his last moments, as his family gathered round, he sees a young woman appear - beautiful, exquisitely dressed, sensitive, and smiling lovingly. Narration describes her in terms identical to those in which it describes a beautiful woman glimpsed at the train station on the way back to Palermo—in other words, death was present in his life even then. As the woman helps him to his feet, he sees her face, and to him she appears "lovelier than she ever had when glimpsed in stellar space."
=== "Relics" May 1910 ===
This chapter begins with a reference to "the old Salina ladies," three elderly sisters whose right to have private masses in their home is being investigated by representatives of the Archdiocese of Palermo. That investigation is being undertaken because the ladies have certain relics in their home that, according to rumor, may not be authentic. Eventually, narration reveals the ladies are the three daughters of the Prince—the authoritarian Concetta, the blunt-spoken Carolina, and the paralyzed Caterina. As the priests enter the chapel, they are surprised to see a sensuously painted "Madonna" hanging behind the altar, and walls lined with relics.
After the priests depart, Concetta retires to her bedroom, where she keeps several locked boxes of decaying mementos of her past, including the skin of her father's dog Bendicò, which had been made into a rug and which is now completely moth-eaten. There, because she is the most pragmatic of the three sisters, she foresees what is about to happen—the confiscation of the relics and the painting, the re-consecration of the chapel, the inevitable spreading of stories of the Salinas' humiliation, and the equally inevitable destruction of what's left of the family's reputation and prestige. Her thoughts are interrupted by a footman announcing the arrival of Princess Angelica Falconeri.
The well-preserved Angelica, widowed after Tancredi's death a few years before, meets Concetta in the sitting room. She chattily tells Concetta of her plans for celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Garibaldi invasion. Angelica also promises to use her influence with the Cardinal to keep the family's embarrassment from going public.
In addition, Angelica informs Concetta that an old friend is coming to call. Senator Tassoni is a veteran of Garibaldi's Redshirts, a close friend and confidant of Tancredi, and former illicit lover of Angelica. Tassoni is shown in, and after speaking flatteringly of how well Tancredi spoke of her, confesses to Concetta that one night Tancredi tearfully confessed to him that he had once told a lie to her, namely the story about the Redshirts' raid on a convent. Tassoni adds that Tancredi had carried the guilt of offending her with him all his life.
After Tassoni and Angelica depart, the horrified Concetta sees Tancredi in a radically different light. What she had once believed was a vulgar attempt to seduce Angelica was really a momentary lapse of judgment. Tancredi loved only her and never ceased to regret marrying Angelica. She also realizes that Tancredi's attempt to enter the convent was in reality a subtle marriage proposal directed to her. After fifty years, Concetta is at last stripped of the comfort of blaming her father and cousin for her own mistakes.
The following day, the Cardinal inspects the palace chapel and orders the sisters to replace the painting behind the altar, stating that it does not depict the Blessed Virgin but a woman reading a letter from her lover. He leaves behind a priestly antiquarian to examine the relics and determine which are genuine. A few hours later the priest emerges with a basket full of forged relics and the news that only the few which remain are genuine.
Meanwhile, Concetta returns to her room, and contemplates her possessions there with new perspective. Even the few relics which she once cherished are now only reminders of a life unfulfilled. She also realizes that an unpleasant smell is coming from what remains of the Bendicò rug, and orders it thrown out. "During the flight from the window, its form recomposed itself for an instant; in the air there seemed to be dancing a quadruped with long whiskers, its right foreleg raised in imprecation. Then all found peace in a heap of livid dust." | violence, romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt4935418 | Baskin | The film opens with a boy waking from sleep in the middle of the night. He walks to a closed door across the hall from his bedroom and overhears the sound of a woman having sex, which suddenly stops. He walks to the living room, where the television is playing static. He turns off the television and notices a red light emanating from his bedroom. He becomes afraid and runs to the closed door, yelling for his mother. A robed arm reaches towards him from his bedroom. The door slams.
The film cuts to a deserted parking lot at night where a police van is parked. A hooded figure, presumably the same one from the opening sequence walks towards a building carrying a bucket full of bloody meat. The building is revealed to be a restaurant, where the only customers are five police officers, who are sitting at a table discussing bets on the Spanish Primera Division. A young man brings dirty plates to wash in the back of the restaurant, when he hears knocking at the back door. He opens the door, and is given the bloody meat bucket without exchanging words. It is handed to the chef, who begins cutting the meat.
One of the police officers, Seyfi, sits away from the table, nursing a headache. The other officers start talking about their sexual experiences, as the chef starts cooking the meat. One officer, Apo, implies that he lost his virginity to a chicken. The rookie, Arda, states that he lost his virginity at a brothel. Another officer, Yavuz, tells a story about his sexual experience with a prostitute who he claims looked like a Victoria’s Secret model, who turned out to be a transvestite. Amidst Yavuz and the other officers laughing and joking about the story, the young man brings food to the table. Suddenly, Yavuz asks the young man why he is laughing, and accuses him of calling him gay. The chef enters and defends him, saying that he is only a boy. As they argue, Seyfi runs to the restroom to vomit in the sink. The police decide to leave, but the young man says, “If only you weren’t cops” as they exit. Yavuz turns and resumes arguing. Remzi, the officer in charge, has the chef step aside and challenges Yavuz to back up his words by hitting the young man. They fight, and Yavuz easily wins. In the restroom, Seyfi notices a frog sitting where the soap should be and brushes it off. As he does, the hooded figure is revealed in the mirror, standing behind him. Suddenly, he starts screaming. The officers rush to him and prepare to shoot the restroom door lock before it opens on its own.
Arda and Yavuz have a cigarette as Ado tells them that Seyfi had said that he briefly felt like he was losing his mind, and that Remzi had helped to talk him down. Ado says that Seyfi has never had this kind of incident before. Seyfi and Remzi come out to the parking lot. Seyfi convinces the others to let him drive. As they drive, they receive a radio call asking for backup, is somewhere called Inceagac. Seyfi reveals that he has heard bad rumors about the place. As they continue driving, Seyfi sees a naked man run across the road in front of them. They stop the van and get out, calling towards the surrounding woods for the man to show himself. As they do, something unseen jolts the van behind them. Arda notices strange symbols suddenly carved into the side of the van. The officers then notice a mass of frogs that has appeared behind the van. They get back in and resume driving. The officers start asking Seyfi what he really saw, and he insists that it was a man. As they argue, they fail to notice a bloody person standing in the middle of the road, who the van hits, then swerves and crashes into a shallow stream.
The film cuts back to the restaurant, where Remzi and Arda sit at a table, while Yavuz and Apo watch television, and Seyfi sits holding his head. Arda tells a story about a dream he had as a child, where his friend appears to him in a dream, telling him not to be afraid. Earlier that same night, the two of them had made a promise that, whoever died first, he would appear to the other and tell him not to be afraid. Arda says that he woke up, but was still in a dream. He then describes the opening scene of the movie, revealing that the boy in it was him. However, he does not describe the hand reaching for him, but instead states that his fear came from knowing that his friend was in his room waiting. He states that the next day, he found out that his friend truly had died that night. He states that this is a recurring dream that he continues to have to this day, and that he had never told anyone else about it. We learn that, a year after that night, his parents died in a car accident, and his uncle placed him in Remzi’s care. Remzi then tells Arda something he wishes he had told him when they first met. He asks Arda to focus, taking in all his surroundings. Arda suddenly sees the hooded figure standing in the shadows behind Remzi, who tells him that this is the first time someone else has been able to see it. As in the dream, a hand reaches out. Black liquid starts leaking from the ceiling and seeping from the floor, and Arda falls backwards in his chair. Instead of hitting the floor, he falls into a dark body of water. As he floats underwater, a giant pair of hands reaches down towards him from the surface.
The film cuts to Arda being pulled from the water by the other officers. A strange group of people have gathered by the stream around a fire. One of them begins laughing, asking if the officers were in an accident. Yavuz demands to know why he is laughing, and angrily kicks over a bucket, which is full of frogs. The officers go to find the person they hit, but the body has disappeared. Seyfi and Apo notice blood coming from each other’s head. They note that their radios and phones are broken, presumably from the water. They ask the strangers where they are, and are told that they are in Inceagac. They get one of the strangers to lead them to a building where an empty police car is parked outside, with its lights flashing. He tells them that it was a police station back in the Ottoman days, and a stable when he was a child, but that is now deserted and avoided. Seyfi states that he had heard about the place, and echoes that it was a police station in the Ottoman days. As they prepare to enter the building, Remzi pointedly tells Arda not to worry, and that he has the key to all of this. Small ornaments crafted with twigs, some vaguely human-shaped, hang from a nearby branch. Seyfi tries to call out using the radio in the car, but it doesn’t work. The stranger takes the opportunity to run away, cursing at them as he does.
The officers enter the building. Inside, another strange ornament hangs from the ceiling in the middle of a hallway. There are more around, and they appear to be twine wrapped around some kind of flesh and/or bones. They find egg shells that seem filled with blood. Apo vomits. They go on to find a man in a police uniform standing and hitting his head against a wall. He doesn’t respond to their questions, except to point to a stairwell when they ask where his partner is. Arda, Remzi, Yavuz, and Apo go down the stairs, while Sefyi stays with the man they found. Seyfi notices a frog, which jumps away from him. He follows it to a room where he finds naked person covered in blood, with chains around their wrists apparently having intercourse with another bloody person with a black plastic bag over their head. Seyfi looks around and sees several more similarly-adorned people in the room, and as he panics, they attack him, forcing him to the ground. The man in the police uniform starts laughing in the hallway.
The other officers find a room with chains hanging from the ceiling, decorated with similar ornaments to before, with blood and grotesque drawings on the walls. There is a table in the middle with lit candles around several padlocks. Apo notices another room where bloody bodies wrapped in clear plastic are hanging from the ceiling, and others wrapped in chains around black plastic line the walls. There is also a cage with a blood-covered woman inside. Meanwhile, Arda follows a streak of blood on the floor to a different room, where he sees dozens of bodies wrapped in blood-stained sheets on the floor and hanging from the ceiling. On one side of the room, a woman with a butcher knife is cutting up a body and throwing entrails into a bucket. To their right appears to be people copulating behind a hanging plastic sheet. As he realizes what he is seeing, Arda begins trembling in fear. In the other room, Apo reaches out towards the woman in the cage, while behind him, one of the bodies by the wall begins to move, then hits him over the head with a sledgehammer. He falls to the ground unconscious. Yavuz sees this and starts screaming, and runs away. The yelling is heard by Arda, and also the people in the room with him, who are revealed to be blindfolded. We see that one of the people behind the plastic sheet is hanging from the ceiling, and has had both legs cut off, at the waist and above the knee, respectively. The people run towards Arda, who panics and shoots wildly at the walls and ceiling as he runs away. Remzi, Arda, and Yavuz run down a hallway, pursued by the blindfolded people who pursue them on all fours. Yavuz falls down and is dragged away. As Adra keeps running, Remzi disappears from behind him. The walls are suddenly made of stone bricks and the floor is dirt. Suddenly Remzi finds himself in his childhood house, just outside his bedroom. He sees his childhood self pulled into the room by the robed arm from the opening dream sequence.
The film jumps back to the restaurant, where Arda is choking on water from a glass. Remzi tells him that they have a long way to go. Arda asks what is going on. Remzi’s answer is vague. He tells Arda that not everything has a clear answer, but that tonight they are at a crossroads. He says that they were summoned there tonight, and there was no call for backup. He says that someone is looking for something, and this has been happening to Arda ever since he was a child. Arda wakes up chained to a stone pillar. Remzi, Yavuz, and Apo are chained to their own pillars. In the middle of the room, a mass of blindfolded, blood-covered people crawl and kneel, reaching up towards a spiral staircase. A man with one eye uncovered walks around them. He claps, and they fall silent and still. The hooded figure slowly descends the staircase, and the blindfolded people reach out to him reverently as he passes. Yavuz curses at him. He removes his hood and washes his hands and his disfigured head, then laughs at Yavuz. He tells the officers that he is only there to help them, on a night where doors open and realms unite. He tells them that Hell is not a destination, but something they carry inside them, and that he is there to shepherd and guide them.
The disfigured man (Baba) walks to Apo, who seems half-conscious. He opens Apo’s shirt, revealing a line of crude stitches across his belly, with several inches of intestine protruding from the end. He pulls at this, tearing open the stitches, then slowly pulls out Apo’s small intestine as the other officers scream for him to stop. Apo is unchained, collapses to the ground, and is pulled away by the bloody mob of people. Baba disrobes, revealing a large padlock hanging in the middle of his back, and a necklace of padlocks across his chest. He then walks to Yavuz and places a stool in front of him. He is short enough that, even when standing on the stool, his face is barely level with Yavuz’s. He asks for Yavuz’s name, who tearfully tells him after initially refusing. He tells Yavuz that he seems tough, and that the human soul worships power. He is handed a small knife. Remzi yells for Yavuz to close his eyes, and he does. The man asks Yavuz if he is ready to stop worshipping power and give up his worldly eyes to see what is beyond. The man repeatedly asks Yavuz to open his mind, as he begs him to stop. Finally, Baba says, “Yavuz,” and he opens his eyes for a moment, only to have the knife gouge them out. Baba licks the bloody knife and Yavuz’s eye sockets. A blindfold is wrapped around his head. Baba kisses Yavuz on the forehead and tells him not to disappoint him. The one-eyed man opens a door and leads a chained woman, crawling on all fours with a goat’s skull attached to her face, into the room. Yavuz is positioned behind her and has sex with her. He orgasms, then the woman crawls away and collapses. Baba approaches Yavuz and tells him that his heart and mind are still not open. Yavuz says “no” repeatedly as he has a seizure, then collapses. A large spider crawls out of his mouth, as Rezmi and Arda scream. The one-eyed man picks up the spider and places it into a drawer.
Baba says that maybe the honor belongs to Arda, before placing the stool in front of him. Remzi yells at him to stop, and to take him instead. Baba does not respond, and places his forehead against Arda’s while mumbling strange words. Arda squeezes his eyes shut. Baba licks his knife, and then his finger, which he uses to dab blood onto Arda’s forehead. He says he wasn’t wrong about Arda. Baba then places the stool in front of Remzi. He says that he was only expecting Remzi, then thanks him for raising Arda and bringing him along. He then cuts open Remzi’s throat as Arda screams. Baba washes himself in Remzi’s blood as it spurts from his neck. He goes back to Arda and grabs his head, placing their foreheads together again, and Arda has visions of the road and the abandoned building, cast in a red light. Meanwhile, the woman with the goat skull squats over a basin, and a rock resembling a fetus drops down from her.
Arda finds himself in the restaurant again. Instead of sitting across the table, Remzi is now laying on the floor, with this throat slashed. He tells Arda that he made a promise to protect him. Baba approaches them from the doorway. Remzi tells Arda that he has only one key in this life, and that it belongs to Arda now. Arda reaches into Remzi’s neck wound and pulls out a key. Baba is now next to him, saying “Everything ends, but everything starts anew.” Arda takes the key and plunges it into the keyhole-shaped tattoo on Baba’s forehead. He falls to the ground, in the dungeon. Arda picks up the stool and beats Baba to death with it, covering himself in blood. He walks past the mass of blindfolded people and ascends the spiral staircase. He exits the building, cast in a red light as in his vision. He walks with a strange limp, pausing to laugh maniacally. He exits the woods and starts jogging down the middle of an abandoned road. He is then hit by the police van in the exact same sequence shown earlier in the film. Notably, all of the police officers, including Arda, are shown in the van, suggesting that Arda is caught in a time loop. The film closes on the now-empty police van, sitting abandoned in the stream. | violence, storytelling | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0794374 | Yihe yuan | Spanning several cities and over a decade, Summer Palace tells the story of Yu Hong (played by Hao Lei), a young woman from the border-city of Tumen, who is accepted to the fictional Beiqing University, a name that evokes either Peking University ("Beida") or Tsinghua University ("Qinghua"). While in school, Yu Hong meets Li Ti, her best friend (played by Hu Lingling), and Zhou Wei, her college boyfriend and the love of her life (played by Guo Xiaodong). The film is divided into two parts. The first begins in the late 1980s (subtitles inform the audience of the place and year at various points in the film), as Yu Hong enters the university. Lonely and isolated despite the cramped living conditions, Yu Hong eventually befriends another student, Li Ti, who introduces her to her boyfriend Ruo Gu (played by Zhang Xianmin), and Ruo Gu's friend Zhou Wei. Yu Hong and Zhou Wei embark upon a passionate but volatile love affair just as political forces are moving towards Tiananmen Square.
Two events then bring the first half of the film to a close: First, Zhou Wei, incensed at the jealousy and emotional instability of his girlfriend, begins to have an affair with Li Ti; and second, the crackdown occurs on the students on Tiananmen Square and on the campus of Beida. During all of this, Yu Hong's old boyfriend Xiao Jun (played by Cui Jin) from Tumen arrives and the two of them leave, Yu Hong deciding that she will drop out from the university.
The film then fast forwards several years, as Lou Ye intersperses the travels of his three main characters with news footage of the end of the Cold War, and the 1997 Hong Kong handover. Yu Hong has left Tumen again, first for Shenzhen, and then for the central China city of Wuhan, while Li Ti and Ruo Gu have moved to Berlin. Yu Hong is unable to forget Zhou Wei, and has empty affairs with a married man and a kind but quiet mailroom worker. The film follows her disaffection with society and her use of sex as a substitute for contentment. Eventually discovering that she is pregnant, Yu Hong gets an abortion and moves to Chongqing where she marries.
Li Ti, Ruo Gu, and Zhou Wei, meanwhile, live a quiet life as expatriates in Berlin. While Li Ti and Zhou Wei still occasionally make love, the former quietly realizes that the latter does not love her. Though the three friends appear happy, when Zhou Wei plans to return home to China and settle in the city of Chongqing, Li Ti suddenly commits suicide. There he connects with former classmates who in turn point him to Yu Hong's email address.
After more than ten years, Zhou Wei and Yu Hong at last reunite in the resort city of Beidaihe. While they embrace, they ask each other, "Now what?" When Yu Hong leaves, ostensibly to buy drinks, Zhou Wei understands that they can never be together and leaves as well. | romantic | train | wikipedia | If we were to think of the backdrop of the movie, set in the late 80's, Tiananmen incident, the chant for democracy, all this would have let you understand that the China then was not a China that many could understand.The China up till the 80s was probably such a controlled and suppressed place to live in, and when these suppressed feelings and emotions were suddenly set free, it was like an explosion.
(The movie also takes place briefly in Germany, the other part of the world where significant social change was occurring in 1989)."Summer Palace" plays almost like the autopsy of a romantic obsession, attempting to get at the root of why we love in the way that we do.
The closest she can come to grasping this paradox is when she says to Zhou Wei: "I want to break up
because I can't leave you." Love is seen almost as a form of mental illness in this film - as a debilitating, all-consuming condition that one is powerless to control or "cure" but which, if left unchecked, can become the single dominant force in a person's life (we rarely see Yu Hong studying, let alone going to class).
One can attempt to fill the void with other loves, but the heart always comes back to the same place."Summer Palace" is long and occasionally repetitious and the political aspects aren't as effectively integrated into the story as they perhaps might have been, but the movie is beautifully acted by Lei Hao and Xiaodong Guo, among others, and features incisive and sensitive direction by Ye Lou (who, along with Feng Mei and Ma Yingli, co-authored the screenplay).
The last hour of the film - so filled with longing and regret as the characters age and attempt to come to terms with the special thing they have lost - is particularly lyrical and heartbreaking and will haunt you long after the movie is over.All told, "Summer Palace" is an intelligent and moving rumination on that mysterious force we call love..
Lou Ye's "Summer Palace" ("Yihe yuan") has plenty of frontal nudity and a fair number of (not very attractive) sex scenes, but that's not why the movie was banned by Beijing, and Ye forbidden to work in the film industry for five years.More likely, official displeasure was incurred by the film's powerful recreation of the Tiananmen events of 1989, from the students' point of view - and, coincidentally, equaling Tolstoy's representation of the chaos of war in the Borodino scenes of "War and Peace." And yet, all that is besides the point.
Lei Hao becomes the character in a naked, unselfconscious, totally believable way - she alone make "Summer Palace" a must-see film (except that you can't).Ye's way of telling the story is personal, iconoclastic, dragging here, speeding up there, taking us to Berlin (?!), unintentionally nonlinear, showing Yu Hong is similar situations time and again - and yet slowly spinning an intelligent, poetic subtext in the background.Hard as it may be to imagine, "Summer Palace" has something in common with Alain Resnais' "Last Year in Marienbad," in its wistfulness, lack of specific believability and yet presenting a feeling that makes perfect "sense." There are a hundred things "wrong" with Ye's work and yet it's one of the more memorable films in years..
It is focused on one couple, the very intense passion that they feel for each other and the paths that life shows them in relation of what they feel in each step of their lives...This movie is centered in love.
More exactly, it is centered in the romantic view of life, which is destined to collide with the fact of growing up, because the characters in the film just can't manage to keep their passionate feelings while they start living other things after leaving university.
I think it is interesting how this is managed as the film goes by, because I recognized this feeling in myself and among my friends: about how, by leaving school, you have the feeling to be adrift in the universe of life.Also, the passion that the characters feel becomes sedated by the tedium of their lives after school.
This is also related to the student's protests in China, all the feelings and expectations they generate, and the disillusion they found when they have to confront the real world.Finally, I think what the film communicates, is that every emotion, love, feeling or whatsoever, is seized by time.
But in this film, this phrase applies in a more subtle way, in something that involves people's identities.I liked the movie.
You could compare this to Dr. Zhivago or Splendor in the Grass but despite its intense period flavor at times--the cluttered dorm rooms stay with you as do the rushing demonstrators, and the progression from bikes to nice cars and email is subtle but unmistakable--it hasn't got the structure or plot of the usual generation-spanning films; it's a hymn to love-longing posing as a contemporary historical epic.
And after it was shown at Cannes without official permission from home, it got Lou banned from film-making in China for five years.Full of intense realistic sex and frontal nudity that would be daring anywhere not to mention China , Summer Palace focuses on a passionate young woman who comes from the country to study at Beijing University just before the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and massacre of 1988, and though it brilliantly evokes the excitement, freedom, and experimentation of that period for what is essentially the director's own generation (Purple Butterfly dealt with the 1930's), and it gives a sense of the chaos and horror that follows--this extended, breathtaking Tiananmen-period sequence is a tour de force--the politics are peripheral to protagonist Yu Hong (Hao Lei) and the intense love addiction she shares with Zhu Wei (Guo Xiaodong).
The turbulent give and take of man-woman relationships is as intense at times as anything in D.H. Lawrence, but with a sexual explicitness Lawrence achieved only in Lady Chatterley.As played by the striking and talented Hao Lei, Yu Hong is a hell of a young woman, beautiful, alive, articulate, philosophical--her diary provides voice-over for many of the film's scenes--willful, and never satisfied with Zhou Wei, but never able till the end (fourteen years later) to let him go either.
They go out dancing with her boyfriend and another friend, Zhou Wei. She soon knows: this is the love of her life.This is the start of a story about love, mostly from the viewpoint of Yu Hong, the girl.
I really liked how the director fit love making scenes so integral into the movie.
Also, at times the pace of events is quite high, so it may help me to capture all of it better.I rate this movie as one of the highlights of the festival: It's probably also the best movie from China that I have seen in the last two years: 9/10.Crew Trivia: Cinematographer Qing Hua was a classmate in film school of Yu Wang, the director of photography of Suzhou River (the director's breakthrough film).
According to the director, the events at the square mark a change in the lives of the main characters.Connection Trivia: Asked about being influenced or inspired by "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", director Lou Ye says that he is a big admirer of Kundera's novel, not so much the film adaptation.Screenplay Trivia: Asked about the possible difficulty of having a young woman being the center of the story, director / screenwriter Lou Ye says that it made it actually easier.
Lou ye's film summer palace is really a good exercise of great cinema, that kind of movie makes you think about it even after have watched it..Is one of those films that I call hard to watch, there are too much pain in it, but that is what in art I always call, find the beauty of the sadness, when a film can make you feel different kind of emotions means that the movie have succeed and summer palace is a great success...for me is hard to understand the girl's mind in that film,because the whole movie she seems lost, looks like she is unable to be happy and when she can be, she avoid it...same happen with some of the other characters of the film..this film can be classified like a tragedy without hope.
This is an ambitious film about the stalled maturation of an idealistic but troubled young woman flanked by the Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China.
Politics aside, and they are on the side, this is a remarkable film in its honest portrayal of failure, not of personal character necessarily, but of circumstance.This is another film that got its director and producer banned for five years from making films in China.
we see a young girl encountering her first experiences with love and sex.set at the decor of the huge changes China is undergoing in the mid-eighties.She is excepted at university and meets a handsome guy she's so overpowering in love with , it's scary...wow , the acting , directing ,editing, photography...is breathtaking..the story sometimes heartbreaking..trough sidesteps we are witnessing the student uproar at tianamen square etc.the 2 main characters loose sight of each other and we follow moments of their separate lives..
This is the worst Chinese movie ever made and I am so shameful of Lou Ye. I personal experienced the Tian'an'men Square incidence and pretty much understood what that student generation looked like.
If you like this movie, before making your own comment, try to contact your Chinese friends who had been through the transformations in late 80s and early 90s, they will tell you what the real life is.
I can already see how some people who read this cry out: "This is not supposed to be about entertainment, it's about emotions, a mirror of the time and place, it's thought-provoking, beautifully shot, if you don't like it, you should go back to watching the Fast and the Furious", etc.!
And it probably took some courage to make because it features the demonstrations at Tian An Men Square in June 1989, which is still kind of a taboo today in China (don't get your hopes up, though: you just see a crowd demonstrating and throwing bricks at a burning truck for a few minutes; the political background is never mentioned or even hinted at, nor does anything else happen, besides the main characters being scared and confused and running around inside the student dormitory looking for each other).
I think a big problem i have with this movie is the fact that it takes itself so very seriously and the characters feel sorry for themselves all the time because of how tough they have it.
They have to deliver pseudo-meaning-bearing lines like "i want to break up with you because i cannot break apart from you" followed by two people staring at each other or thinking for a veeery looong time without saying a word.
At last I think the best character in the drama is Li Ti played by Ling Hu .The flaw of the film is at the end when Yu Hong and Zhou Wei met, I think, the process is not very good..
The director,the actors,the music,the editing,everything fit smoothly in this picture.The writer- director did a phenomenal job telling the story.I felt the soul of the director in this picture.I think it is one of the best films I've seen in the last couple of years.If you have no sensibility as a person,don't try to criticize somebody who put his mind ,time and soul in telling a story,because you confuse the soft porn movies with this one.The way that the director shows sex is in the most realistic and sincere way possible.
After more web searching, I discovered from a comment by Agora on the Flixster Website (http://www.flixster.com/movie/573373022) that the grounds of the Summer Palace are the location of an "intimate bonding moment" between the two university students who are the film's main characters.
They are Yu Hong, a girl who has recently come from the country, and Zhou Wei, a more experienced member of the student intelligentsia.All the same, I like the film's French title, Une Jeunesse Chinoise (A Young Chinese Girl) better.
In Summer Palace, a Chinese girl learns to pose as, among other things, a French intellectual.The movie is indebted to the French New Wave in other ways as well, including use of real urban settings, choppy editing, and lots of sex.
These are things that director Ye Lou is not able to accomplish.These comments should not be taken as excusing the Chinese government's banning Yihe Yuan from internal distribution and prohibiting Ye Lou from making films for five years.
But if you would like to get a bit more out of a film, be prepared to endure painfully long minutes (hours) of wordless, earnest look scenes for a few brief gems of poetic insight and genuinely interesting philosophical questions.It starts off in an interesting way with a young girl living in a small town who has just learned she has is accepted to the prestigious Beijing University.
Perhaps it is because, the story begins with a girl named Yu Hong (Hao Lei) who was sharing her passionate moments with her boyfriend Xiao Jun at Tumen, a rural area at the border between China and North Korea in the 80's, before leaving the hometown to study in a university in Beijing.And perhaps it is because when her new friend, Li Ti, introduces Zhou Wei (Guo Xiao Dong) to her, that makes Yu Hong and Zhou Wei falling in love with each other instantly, that they spend their summer in dormitory, having endless sex.
And yes, that is what we get for Summer Palace, without seeing much direct relationship between the famous imperial palace and the love and sex of a young couple.As what Yu Hong said in her diary, she is excited to meet new guys, but always ends up having sex with them as she thinks of her first time meeting Zhou Wei. The message we received from her was: sex has been an outlet to release her fear and anxiety, together with the love she still holds for Zhou Wei.Lou Ye has explained the inner world of Yu Hong in the first half of the story.
(Which explains why the movie was banned in China for discussion of Tiananmen incident, tonnes of sex scenes and participating in Cannes Film Festival without approval from the authorities.) The summer could be enjoyable if more juices can be provided in the palace..
The Passion was a disappointment, and Summer Palace, somehow didn't live up to its hype, probably drawing curious audiences by the banning of its director Lou Ye from making films in the Mainland for the next 5 years, because he had failed to obtain official permission before screening Summer Palace overseas.In any case, the same old marketing gimmick was to hype that this as the most erotic movie from China, and naturally drew audiences in like bees to honey.
Both the action and the characters lack the emotional core that grabs the attention of the audience and engage some cerebral on why they are doing what they're doing.Yu Hong (Lei Hao) is a village girl staying near the border of China and North Korea, and qualified for Beijing University in the late 80s.
Perhaps the best part is the reunion, where I thought is the only time when it's realistic with the feeling of helplessness and being tongue tied when meeting up with a loved one after donkey years - things are never the same again, and could never be the same anymore, and do you wish to hold onto the past, or move on to your own future?Despite the pretentious plot and characters, the movie does feature an excellent eclectic soundtrack, and there thankfully helped keep everyone awake.
This movie doesn't felt like a summer palace.
I don't think, a highly repetitive movie with no character development about the passionate but volatile love affairs of an unstable young woman, Yu Hong (Hao Yei) was needed.
Overall: I get that this coming to age movie was going for a French New Wave feel to it, with Hong, narrating her life in somewhat a poetic way, but I had to say, it kinda failed.
While, I do understand, why the Chinese government banned this movie, due to the sex scenes and political undertones.
Summer Palace is a politically charged drama from director Lou Ye.The movie features Hao Lei and Guo Xiaodong.The screenplay by Lou Ye, Feng Mei and Ma Yingli tells the story of Chinese political upheaval through the eyes of protagonist Yu Hong, who moves from her rural community to embrace life in Beijing.
Spanning nearly 20 years, the film elucidates the mindset of the Chinese revolutionary youth during the 1980's and into the new millennium through its narration by Hong, who reads diary excerpts to set scenes.Yu Hong is a beautiful 17-year-old girl who is soon to leave the small border town where she was born and raised to attend college at Beijing University.
At Beijing University, Yu Hong makes friends with Li Ti,another girl dealing with a long-distance relationship, and meets Zhou Wei, a handsome student who soon steals her heart.
Yu Hong and Zhou Wei are separated and the heavy hand of the state is brought to bear on the rebellious students.The movie suffers from excessive length and inconsistent pacing.Also,one who does not speak the movie's language needs full concentration to follow what's happening in the plot and to get the message that it is trying to impart.But nevertheless,it manages to be a brilliant and excellent film encapsulates an important moment in Chinese history and will especially enlighten viewers to the nuances of people struggling for freedom.Aside from that,we get to see the coming-of-age and maturation of Hong as she gets exposed to the her world and the changes she undergoes in response to it.. |
tt0037022 | Little Red Riding Rabbit | Little Red Riding Hood is depicted as a typical 1940s teen-aged girl, a "bobby soxer" with an extremely loud and grating voice (inspired by screen and radio comedian Cass Daley, provided by Bea Benaderet). After she sings the first verse of "Five O'Clock Whistle" in the opening to establish this fact, Bugs pops out of her basket to ask where she's going. She replies that she's going to "bring a little bunny rabbit to [her] grandma ta HAVE."
With this part of the story set up, the wolf is now introduced. The wolf switches a "Shortcut to Grandma's" sign, so that Red has to go through a long mountain path, while the wolf uses the real shortcut – a few short steps to the house. Seeing a note on the door that Grandma isn't home (apparently, Grandma is a "Rosie the Riveter" type who's working the "swing shift" at Lockheed), the wolf sneaks inside and dresses like Grandma, only to find that three other wolves are similarly dressed and waiting in the bed for Red! The wolf (voiced by Billy Bletcher) growls for the others to "COME ON! COME ON! Take a powder – this is MY racket!" The other wolves leave, grumbling to themselves, and a small wolf hiding under the pillow sheepishly follows suit, too. Once in bed, the wolf waits for Red to arrive. But in a twist, the wolf isn't interested in eating Red, but rather the rabbit she brings to Grandma.
The wolf quickly shuffles Red out the door and tries looking for Bugs in the basket. Bugs, however, gets the better of the wolf and runs around the house, with the wolf in hot pursuit. Along the way, Bugs subjects the wolf to the famous lots-of-doors in-and-out routine (which will be repeated in Buccaneer Bunny). The wolf, however, is constantly interrupted by Red, who continues asking the questions from the actual story. The wolf then yells at her to get out.
When the wolf corners Bugs, Bugs mimics the wolf, eventually distracting him into singing "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet (With the Blue Ribbons on It)". Bugs manages to get a glowing coal from the fireplace and sends the wolf screaming in pain to the ceiling by scorching his backside. When the wolf comes down, Bugs has a large shovelful of coals waiting to scorch the wolf. However, the wolf manages to catch his feet on the ends of two benches just in time, doing the "splits". Instead of simply kicking one of the benches away, Bugs proceeds to dump heavy weights into the wolf's arms. After clearing out just about everything in the house (except the kitchen sink), Bugs is about to apply the coup de grace on the wolf – by placing an olive branch on top of the mass of junk and furniture the wolf is holding – when Red comes back in, bellowing "Hey, GRANDMA!" (By now, Red has already questioned the wolf on his big eyes, big nose, big ears and sharp teeth, and one wonders what she was planning to ask next.)
By this time, even Bugs has had enough of Red's interruptions, prompting him to say, "I'll do it, but I'll probably hate myself in the morning." He descends the ladder, out of frame, there's a shuffling of the furniture... and now RED is the one trying to avoid getting scorched, while Bugs and the wolf, arms around each other's shoulders, share a carrot and self-satisfied looks, and await the inevitable. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0286855 | Now You Know | On the eve of his bachelor party, Jeremy (Jeremy Sisto) learns that his fiancée, Kerri (Rashida Jones), wants to call off their wedding without providing a reason. He tries to determine what caused this sudden decision. The unmarried couple return to New Jersey to sort out their relationship. When Jeremy gets home, he hangs out with Gil and Biscuit, his old friends, who have made a hobby out of breaking into other people's homes and rearranging the objects to freak out the homeowners. Their activities have begun to unnerve one unfortunate homeowner in particular, Mr. Victim (Stuart Pankin). Jeremy, Gil and Biscuit go to their local bar for a few drinks and talk about women and Jeremy's aborted wedding. Meanwhile, Kerri and her best friend Marty go to a lesbian bar, when Marty tells her she is pregnant. The next morning Jeremy's friend from Vegas, Shane, comes to visit as Biscuit and Gil throw him another bachelor party. The bachelor party goes awry when the stripper Biscuit hired arrives, and is revealed to be a transvestite, who tells Jeremy that she saw Kerri at the lesbian bar the night before, and everyone thinks she is in a lesbian relationship with Marty. Gil and Biscuit take Jeremy and Shane to go mess with the house again, but Mr. Victim has become paranoid and shoots wildly at them, grazing Jeremy's ear. Faced with his own mortality, Jeremy, and the others drive to Kerri's so he can talk to her. She tells him that he took her for granted. Jeremy tells her that he would do anything to have her back, just as Gil walks in, telling them that Marty is beating up Biscuit on the front lawn. Biscuit, thinking Marty and Kerri were gay, asked Marty if he could be their manager. During the fight, the men learn that Marty is pregnant, and that Gil is the father. Kerri and Jeremy give Gil and Marty their plane tickets that were for their honeymoon in Florida so the new couple can have some alone time, while Kerri and Jeremy hold hands, hinting toward a possible reconciliation. | prank | train | wikipedia | All I have to say is that I saw this movie two years ago (at Kevin Smith's Vulgarthon) and for some reason I've found myself thinking about it and wondering if it ever made it to DVD.
I really liked it and hope that I get an opportunity to not only see this movie again, but also additional work by the multi-talented Jeff Anderson..
Jeff Anderson shows that he is not only one of the funniest unknown actors, but also a talented director and writer with this movie about a man trying to figure out why he's been left at the altar.
Fans of Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse know Jeff Anderson as "Randal," the hilariously obnoxious character featured in Clerks and a spinoff cartoon show.
With "Now You Know," screening for the first time in near completed form at the Vulgarathon 2002 (If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's not worth the typing to explain), Anderson jumps into the world of writer/directors, and it is a very impressive, successful debut.Jeremy (Jeremy Sisto) is at his wild bachelor party, but he doesn't have the strength to tell his fellow partygoers that his wedding to Kerri (Rashida Jones) has been called off.
Jeremy pals around with two lawn mowers by day, bizarre criminals by night named Gil (Anderson) and Biscuit (Trevor Fehrman); Kerri hangs out with Marty (Heather Paige Kent) who loves to sexually torture Kerri's horny younger brother.
The film follows the Jeremy and Kerri struggle to come to terms with their respective issues in very different ways.The film has some very big laughs; most from the weirdos Gil and Biscuit, who have a bit of the famous Clerks in their poor job performance and smart, witty dialogue.
Also, keep a keen eye for cameos from Kevin Smith and wife Jen, plus Liz Sheriden, aka Helen Seinfeld.Screening the film before he showed it to cast and crew, Anderson's print wasn't completely finished (And there were a few continuity glitches that several vocal audience members harped on), but it was clear that the film has some real potential.
The film featured some very funny scenes, amazing directing and camera work, and a great cast.
We all know and love Randal Graves (Jeff Anderson) from the Clerks movies.
I saw this movie a couple of years ago at Vulgarthon, which is basically a Kevin Smith film festival.
He has definitely come into his own and should be recognized for having talents all his own and beyond his quick-talking role in Kevin Smith's movies.Now You Know is about a couple who are engaged and on the eve of their wedding the bride-to-be (Rashida Jones) calls off the wedding with (seemingly) no explanation, leaving the groom (Jeremy Sisto) confused and at a loss as to what he should do next.One of the high points of the film is definitely the casting.
I also feel that certain parts of the movie are a bit too reminiscent of Clerks, which is not entirely a bad thing but it would have been nice to see Anderson break away from that and come up with something completely separate from his work with Smith.All in all Anderson really put himself out there and we can see a lot of his personal story in Now You Know.
To say it matches the quality of what it is inspired by is quite the stretch but to say it adequately works as an intriguing little comedy- drama is an efficient summation.The film concerns Jeremy (Jeremy Sisto), your typical everyman whose fiancée Kerri (Rashida Jones) has just called off the wedding for undisclosed reasons.
Returning home to their homestate of New Jersey, Jeremy and Kerri spend sometime apart, with Jeremy hanging out with his slacker-buds Gil (Jeff Anderson) and Biscuit (Trevor Fehrman) while Kerri hopes to hear rational advice from her newly- expecting friend Marty (Heather Paige Kent).
Anderson cares in the regard that he infuses his characters with smartly-written dialog that works thanks to a lack of dependence on senseless ranch and more of a clear emphasis on how the three male friends interact with one another.Sisto, in particular, is your average leading man, often funny, believable enough to take seriously in his current life- predicament and common enough as an everyman character to relate to in a simplistic sense.
And with two equally strong female leads and a great cameo by Kevin Smith and his wife Jennifer Schwalbach- Smith there's little to complain in regards of the actors.I suppose the only thing I can really fault Now You Know for is how it drifts and occasionally meanders, sometimes too far past the line of not being funny or sometimes too far past the line of being redundant.
A large element of many of these kinds of films is the raunch-factor and Anderson employs it conservatively, with great restraint allowing other filmmaking tactics such as writing and character- acting to surface.
With Anderson's roots, this is an admirable feat that is one of the many defining reasons why Now You Know succeeds.Starring: Jeremy Sisto, Jeff Anderson, Trevor Fehrman, Rashida Jones, Heather Paige Kent, Kevin Smith, and Jennifer Schwalbach-Smith..
As many did at Vulgarthon, I saw Jeff Anderson's new flick "Now You Know", a delightful romantic comedy that he wrote, directed and starred in.
The flick starts off with Jeremy Sisto arriving at his Las Vegas bachelor party to find everyone having a good time but him, for he is the only person in the room who knows that his impending wedding has been called off.
Seeing Jeff Anderson in a role again was amazing and he acted incredibly, added on with the fact that he was directing himself.
The gem of the film is Biscuit, played by Trevor Fehrman, who is a near riot every time he's on screen, the perfect foil for almost-straight-man Anderson.
Jeff Anderson had said that the film hadn't even been completed yet, it still need some editing and titles, credits, and such, and the Vulgarthon people were the first to see the film, even seeing the film first before the stars and the crew.
That and Jeff Anderson said he wanted to focus alot more on writing than acting (do yourself a favor if you read this Jeff, you should star in about 5 movies a year, you are incredible!).
FUNNY funny, especially scenes with the characters Gil (played by writer-director-actor-Clerk Jeff Anderson) and Biscuit.
I'd expect big laughs from Anderson, but the biggest surprise is how sweet and romantic the movie is.
Jeff Anderson reprises his Clerks role in this film and is great in every scene.
Jeff Anderson, Heather Paige Kent (how can anyone not love her after this movie?) are strong in support, but the real find is Trevor Fehrman as Biscuit.
Jeff Anderson had pretty much disappeared from movies since "Clerks" (1994) a film that had earned him a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance.
Marginal roles in small indies and cameos in subsequent Kevin Smith's films (Dogma, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back) had done little to quench the audience's thirst for new Jeff Anderson's material.
The wait may soon be over with "Now You Know", a new romantic comedy written, directed and acted by Anderson along with an interesting cast which includes Jeremy Sisto, Rashida Jones, Heather Paige-Kent and talented newcomer Trevor Fehrmon.
In this film Anderson confirms his known abilities as an actor while displaying a surprising writing talent as well as a very confident directorial touch which is quite an accomplishment for a first-time writer/director.
Anderson gives his best performance since 'Clerks'.When this film comes out to the public, do anything you can to see it.
I was lucky enough to be in the first screening of Jeff Anderson's Now You Know his writing/directing debut at Vulgarthon this year, and it was quite the show.
Jeff Anderson in his debut as a director really pulls off a winner, I especially liked one particular shot where he captures both characters faces in a single shot by using a mirror, it was perfect for the scene.
Having seen Mr. Anderson act in Clerks, I was interested when I heard about him sitting in the director's chair for a film.It is really a great story about friends and romance, with a great blend of comedy and heartfelt emotion.
For a first time writing effort (by Jeff "Randal Graves" Anderson), this was very good.
First of all, I saw Now You Know on day two of Vulgarthon this year and I hope that the movie is officially released on video so I can see it again.
What a great first writing, directing, and acting effort by Jeff Anderson congratulations I hope it does very well.
It was refreshingly honest and well written, leaving the viewer in awe of the fact that this is Jeff's first time writing, directing AND acting in his very own film.
The acting was fantastic, the story line funny and unique, but really caught my attention was this: The writer, Jeff Anderson (Randall from Kevin Smith's 'Clerks') has actually *been* in love before.
a must watch movie and I hope Jeff gets recognised for his writing and directing efforts.
but as I am in the UK I only really recognised Jeff, and Jake Richardson from JASBSB plus the askew regulars.When this movie gets to the cinemas go and see it you will be rewarded with a well written film with some great moments..
It is the first movie Jeff Anderson (Clerks) has ever written and directed and I must say I was blown away by it.
It was great to see Jeff Anderson back on the big screen but it was even better to see his talent goes way beyond acting.
i saw this movie last week at Kevin Smiths film festival in Red Bank, NJ and i also got to meet Jeff Anderson.
If you saw the movie "Clerks" by Director Kevin Smith then you might remember the most memorable character Randall played by Jeff Anderson.
I got to see an advance screening of this movie hosted by the writer/director Jeff Anderson, and I wasn't expecting too much to be quiet honest.
Anderson himself puts in a good performance as Fermon's (or "Biscuit") pal "Gil." Jeremy Sisto who is always good, doesn't let you down either, and proves he can work in comedy as well.
While Heather Paige Kent and Rashida Jones are easy on the eyes, they're also both genuinely good at what they do and Kent puts in a memorable performance as "Marty." The bottom line is: if you like to laugh (and don't mind those extras like a story) go see Jeff Anderson's "Now You Know.".
I have had the privilege of seeing this impressive first work from Jeff Anderson at Kevin Smith's film festival Vulgarthon III.
The character of "Biscuit" would be an instant classic if given a couple of catch phrases, as is he is a lovable if somewhat helpless character, and a great foil for Jeff Anderson's character of Gil. Also watch for Kevin Smith's cameo at the beginning of the film.
Jeff Anderson has definitely shown that his decision to start writing and directing was a good one and hopefully this is just the first in a long line of movies that we can enjoy.
The 'Gil' character is played by Jeff Anderson from the "Clerks" and "Dogma" films by Kevin Smith.
In retrospect I should have told him how great I thought the movie was, but alas I didn't want to bug him.During the Q and A session afterward an audience member put it best, this movie makes Jeff Anderson Jeff Anderson, Instead of Randal from Clerks.Also, anyone that loves to watch Kevin Smith act will love this, as It has one of the best cameos I have ever seen in it.GREAT FLICK!!!.
At first I was a bit skeptical (though I had to feel sorry for Jeff out there on stage nervous as hell), thinking it would just be some Kevin Smith knockoff film made by one of his washed-up actor friends, but this movie proved to be a stand-alone showcase of Jeff Anderson's talent.
Trevor was truly enjoyable as Biscuit, and I can definitely see him becoming the next Jay (By the way, I for one find it very amusing that Jason Mewes is now living in LA pursuing a legitimate acting career and has scored a role alongside Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper...) This film is funny and I think that it works well.
Even if he doesn't have any more luck like that in the industry, Jeff Anderson shows some definite promise, and I'm really looking forward to his next project, especially since he says it's actually kinda funny.
For any fans of Jeff Anderson or Kevin Smith flicks, this movie has it all, minus many of the "dick" and "fart" jokes many are accustomed to when viewing Clerks, or Mallrats, to name a few.
I saw one of the first screenings of this film at Kevin Smith's (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma) Vulgarthon.
And of course, some Jersey humor thrown in for good measure.Jeff Anderson (Randal, `Clerks') did an amazing job writing the script and directing it on screen.
Jeff has always been very funny and he definitely has talent -- I thought he was the BEST character in Clerks.It will definitely make it to the theater -- everyone loved it..Way to go Jeff!!!!!.
Jeff Anderson's first outing as writer/director makes him seem like he's been doing this for a long time now.
It is hilariously funny (especially this scenes with Jeff Anderson and Trevor Fehrman) with enough of a romance aspect to engage you into caring about the characters without detracting from the film for people who do not like romances.
Jeff Anderson shows that he has quality acting, directing and especially writing to bring to the screen.
Jeff Anderson brings the unique "Randall" voice that we know and love him for to this romantic comedy about an engagement that goes wrong with out either party, it seems, knowing why.
I was lucky enough to see Jeff Anderson's directorial debut at Kevin Smith's semi-annual Vulgarthon festival on January 7, 2002, in New Jersey.
As anyone reading this probably knows, Anderson made his film debut as an actor in Smith's own debut, CLERKS.
"Now You Know", the writing and directing debut from Jeff Anderson, better known perhaps as Randal from the "Clerks" films, deals with a familiar situation but through characters and settings which we don't see much in Hollywood films.
The movie is a romantic comedy, but even though everything turns out fine for the characters, it's still not easy getting there, and the movie's not nearly as predictable as most rom-coms, so it's pretty enjoyable overall.The reason "Now You Know" failed to end up being a movie I can wholeheartedly recommend is that it's not really significantly funnier or significantly more enjoyable than spending a day with a friend after a situation like the one depicted in this film occurs.
Also, Jeff Anderson appears to have a natural talent when it comes to directing, as his small-scale, low-budget first film looks as good as most bigger-budget romantic comedies.
There's some naff acting as well, I suppose, but the cast are ultimately believable and anyone who has any interest at all in Jeff Anderson should probably see this movie.
I've broken into the dorm rooms of friend's and rearranged their furniture...For the most part, romantic comedies are entirely predictable and center around the two main characters (the couple in/out/in Love) "Now you know" has interesting subplots.Watch for great things from Jeff Anderson to come..
About here a call comes from his two friends Gil and the strange Biscuit, and from there on it is a ride in some way, it is a funny comedy romance movie that will make you want to see it more then ones.Music: 8/10 Well it is your simple kind of music like in almost any other romance movie or comedy movie so not much to say about that is there really no i guess not.Actors: 9/10 Well we have a long great cast who does it greatly even some we have seen in the newest movies today, but the one standing out is the man who directed it ohh you thought i would forget him did you well then i will hehe, i dare you do find out it for yourselves by buying this awesome flick of a movie.Overall: 8/10 Well the movies has small flaws but not much so it will get from me a big 8 because i feel it really deserves that much, get ready to laugh and sit down watching this lovely movie....
Jeff Anderson did a fantastic job for his first time directing and the writing is a well thought out script.
Clerks was a masterful film, one of the landmarks of independent cinema, and Jeff Anderson's performance as Randall was a big reason for that.
The product of that equation is Jeff Anderson writing and directing in this motion picture.Now You Know is about Jeremy (Jeremy Sisto) and Kerri (Rashida Jones), two New Jersey kids who grew up together, fell in love and moved to Las Vegas where they and everyone else expected them to eventually get married.
While Kerri and Marty tell each other their woes, Jeremy gets involved with the hilarious "fun loving criminal" hijinks of his friends Gil (played by director Jeff Anderson) and Biscuit (Trevor Furhman).
Sisto gives a great performance as the good guy struggling with the confused girl and the actress who plays Marty is one to watch for.The only part of the movie I had an issue with is the ending.
As far as `first time films' go, Jeff Anderson totally blew me away.It was the perfect mix of comedy with heart.
Everyone will know him, well almost everyone, as Randal in Kevin Smith's `Clerks' and a few other Smith films. |
tt0076175 | March or Die | Soon after the Great War, Major Foster (Hackman), the commander of a detachment of the French Foreign Legion, suffers the haunting memories of leading an army of 8,000, now reduced to 200. He has become an alcoholic as a result, and his only friend is his faithful Sergeant, Triand (Rufus Narcy).
Foster arrives in Paris to assume a new command: to return to the Rif (Morocco) to re-establish French authority, as Bedouin and Berber tribes have begun to revolt against French rule. Foster is also ordered to escort archaeologists from the Louvre, who are uncovering an ancient city near Erfoud buried by a sand storm 3,000 years ago. The site is the final resting place of a Berber saint, "The Angel of the Desert". Foster was chosen for the assignment, as he is the only French officer alive who served in Morocco before the war. He had helped to develop diplomatic ties with the tribes, especially with El Krim, the de facto leader of the scattered Rif tribes. Foster had vowed to El Krim that there would be no further archeological excavations.
Foster’s force is assembled. Among those who volunteer, willingly or unwillingly, is "the Gypsy" Marco Segrain (Terence Hill), a charming jewel thief famous for a three-year crime spree on the Riviera until French authorities managed to apprehend him. Gypsy befriends three other recruits: the Russian giant Ivan (Jack O'Halloran), formerly a member of the elite bodyguard of the deposed Russian Imperial family; "Top Hat" Gilbert Francis (André Penvern), a fashionable man and musician who lacks the physical traits needed in a soldier; and Fredrick Hastings (Paul Sherman), a romantic young English aristocrat who missed the Great War.
The four friends are soon disillusioned by the harsh realities of life in the Legion. A fatal fight breaks out among the men while traveling to Morocco over a homophobic insult to Maj. Foster's honor, to which Sgt. Triand takes exception. Foster does not hesitate to harshly discipline his men, especially Marco, who frequently disobeys orders, though he does care for his men. During the voyage, Marco charms Mme. Picard (Catherine Deneuve), daughter of a murdered archaeologist.
During their land journey to the Legion fortress, the train carrying the Legionnaires and the archaeological team is stopped by El Krim (Ian Holm) and his men. El Krim greets his old friend Foster but also declares that he is determined to unite the Berber tribes to drive the French out of Morocco. El Krim gives a "gift" to Foster to take back to the Premier of France: the archeologists of an earlier dig, who have been blinded and whose tongues have been cut out. He warns Foster not continue the excavation.
Training in the desert is so harsh, it pushes Top Hat to commit suicide. Later, at the digging site, Hastings is kidnapped while on guard duty and tortured to death by one of El Krim’s men, whom El Krim excuses as being merely over-zealous. Marco retaliates. Instead of disciplining him, Foster merely defends him, using El Krim’s previous excuse for the actions of his own man.
Eventually, the tomb of the Angel of the Desert is found, and her golden sarcophagus is excavated. Foster offers it to El Krim as a token of peace, but El Krim rallies the warriors of all Bedouin tribes to fight a climactic battle. With the Legionnaires being heavily outnumbered, the digging site is eventually overrun. Ivan is killed, but Marco fights on, single-handedly fending off a flank attack. When Foster is killed, El Krim immediately calls off the fight, sending the surviving Legionnaires "to tell the world what happened" and out of respect for his dead friend.
There are two endings: the TV version ends with Marco taking up Mme Picard's offer to desert. The theatrical ending shows Marco (after having been promoted for his bravery in battle) staying behind and training more Legionnaire recruits, welcoming them by reiterating Foster's warning: "If the Legion doesn't get you, the desert will. If the desert doesn't, the Arabs will. And if the Arabs don't, then I will. I don't know which is worse." | violence, cruelty | train | wikipedia | It's just that I get this nagging feeling, that "March or Die," with a little extra input on production values, wider desert shots, more background flashbacks, etc., *could* have been a much more memorable, larger-than-life sort of picture.But what "March or Die" lacks in the sheer epic expanse of other big-name war movies, it more than makes up for with carefully measured performances by the principal characters, not the least of which is that turned in by Gene Hackman, who plays a certain Major Foster - a cynical but nonetheless highly disciplined former American officer, booted from the "vaunted" army of America, who has found his military niche in the austere, almost mysterious world of the French Foreign Legion.How exactly a Yank ends up in command of a Foreign Legion battalion leaves a little to the imagination - or at least prompts the viewer to make the necessary allowances for artistic license.
In fact one of his more memorable lines in the movie is when he reminds a group of unruly recruits, on their way to joining up with the Legion, that "the Legion is the most disciplined army in the world." The movie itself is a fairly engrossing mixture of military action and political intrigue - namely, certain powers in France saw fit to use Major Foster's Legion battalion as a sort of "protection squad" to help protect a vital archaeological dig in the Moroccan desert, on lands traditionally inhabited by various Arab tribes.
But Major Foster, ever the military man in spite of creeping cynicism, does what he is told, or, as he coldly explains to El Krim, the leader of one of the militant tribes (nicely played, oddly enough, by British actor Ian Holm): "A soldier goes where he is sent." A very interesting host of characters comes into play throughout the movie, including Max Von Sydow as the archaeologist intent on digging up the treasure in the desert - not only for the glory and coffers of France, but, we can assume, for his own personal aggrandizement.
The Legionnaires themselves are an odd and, at times, colorful lot, much as you'd expect from a disparate group of desperate lads, all seeking anonymity, adventure, escape, redemption, or whatever else it is they expect to find in the Foreign Legion: there is Marco, a slippery jewel thief who seems to con his way in and out of everyone's life, but nevertheless has a heart of gold (though, at times, you wonder if he didn't steal that gold in a heist); there is a tragically inept soldier known only as Top Hat, a former musician whose background and reasons for being in the Legion are never really explained; there is a hard-as-nails battalion officer, a certain Lt. Fontaine, who gives no mercy to the troops, and expects none in return - only discipline.
There are assorted other nationalities represented in this odd mix of Legion troops, including a young British lad who meets a particularly unpleasant fate at the hands of the Arabs; a handful of ex-German soldiers, joining up after Germany's defeat in the recently-ended Great War; and also an expatriate Russian, named Ivan, who seems to represent some of the human global spillage caused by the Russian Revolution, just then occurring in his homeland.
The Legion seems to be not only the best, but perhaps the only, place for him, and the rest of them, to call home.Last but not least is beautiful Catherine Deneuve, in a minor role, playing a war-weary French widow, thrown into this Moroccan mix due to circumstances beyond her control.
More Like March and Die. This is THE French Foreign Legion movie, mainly because there aren't very many of them.
Mostly, the story revolves around the hardship involved, accompanied by a required sadism on the part of commanders, to get by day to day in the Legion.It all points to a thrilling battle in the final act, when the Arab leader sends his hordes against the vastly outnumbered legionnaires, who seem stuck in a 'fight to the last man' scenario.
I watched this movie today for the first time after stumbling across it on the IMDb a few weeks back.I'm a big Gene Hackman fan and a war film fan so I didn't think I could go wrong purchasing this sight unseen.Without detailing the plot too much, it is fair to say that this is standard Legionnaire in North Africa fare and not a lot different from Films like Beau Geste and the Van Damme Legionnaire film (which would seem to be a vastly inferior remake of this film).
I was particularly impressed with the locations and sets used.Hackman also started slowly but got better as the movie went along and he really hit his straps later in the film.
Terence Hill was very good in a sort of role I haven't seen him in before.The film takes the time to highlight the stereotypical harsh living conditions endured by the men in the Legion and also the strict discipline imposed on them, many of whom come from ill-disciplined backgrounds.
It was one of the better large scale battle scenes I have seen in a movie (no CGI when this was made).The film was not without some faults (I may be mistaken but my understanding has always been that while men of many nationalities serve in the Foreign Legion, the officers are all French) but it is certainly underrated.Much better then some recent Hollywood fare we have been served up such as We Were Soldiers (also reviewed by me) and WindtalkersI give it 7 out of 10.
MARCH OR DIE has one impressive cast: Gene Hackman, Terence Hill (in one of his rare movie that you can take seriously), Catherine Deneuve, Max von Sydow, Ian Holm...Great script that has everything well balanced: humor, action, suspense, drama.
March Or Die, the grim slogan of the French Foreign Legion is the title of this film starring Gene Hackman as an American with the Legion in World War I.
The time is post the first World War and the Legion is now returning to colonial policing duty in the various French colonies of North Africa.Where during their absence the natives of Islamic persuasion have become quite restless and they've found themselves a leader in Ian Holm playing the real Abdel Krim.
Krim is looking for something to unite the various tribes under his banner and he's found a cause in an archaeological expedition headed by Max Von Sydow that is being accompanied by Hackman and his troops on their return to Morocco.In real life Krim was quite the charismatic leader and a warrior as opposed to a terrorist.
Hackman is of mixed feelings as he's seen too much of war recently on the western front.March Or Die is a fine film and a fitting tribute to the Legion who though made of the riffraff of the world has a combat record second to none.
And there are two other principal parts, Catherine Deneuve as a widow financing the Von Sydow expedition and Terrence Hill taking a break from spaghetti westerns playing a jewel thief who gets kind of hammerlocked into joining the Legion in Paris.The battle scenes and other scenes depicting life in the Legion weren't staged any better in the many incarnations of Beau Geste.
"March or Die" is a commendably sprawling old-fashion action adventure with plenty of spirit and a touch of romance (where Hill would do some striking carriage jumping to encounter the lovely Deneuve), which is crisply directed by Dick Richards.
At the end of World War One, a division of the French foreign legion led by Major Foster is ordered to protect an archaeological dig, as the last expedition was slaughtered by the Arabs.
Immediately after the Great War 1914-18 Major Foster an American born officer in the French Foreign Legion .
A disillusioned man who has seen more than enough of the horrors of war , Foster looks forward to more peaceful times only to hear of a spreading insurrection led by El Krim , a Beeber warlord who wants to liberate Morroco from French rule and Foster is sent to put down the insurrection This is an early production from Jerry Bruckheimer who in the 1980s went on to be the most successful commercial film producer in Hollywood .
You have to admit Bruckheimer was always excellent at whta he did MARCH OR DIE shows early signs at what the producer was trying to achieve - make a film that would appeal to the action adventure market while still appealing to critics .
and FAREWELL MY LOVELY both directed by Dick Richards are two very impressive films from The New Hollywood period and you can see in this film a mix of character exploration and big battle action sequences The problem is that it doesn't quite come off .
You can see Gene Hackman, Major Foster as a tortured man with ghosts from the past realising the only way to lay his demons to rest is via Catherine Deneuve's Mme Picard but the film concentrate too much on Terence Hill's Marco to make this possible .
Dick Richards's 'March or Die' is an interesting film set in Morocco during the French colonization.
There is one thing that sets this film apart from every other movie out there, it has one of the all time great battles.
a great movie about the French Foreign Legion in the desert.
Gene Hackman is the leader of this group of men in the French foreign legion assigned to protect men that are digging up artifacts in Morocco.
Adventures with the French Foreign Legion in Sahara desert starred by the great Gene Hackman and Terence Hill.
This is a nice story of courageous men who have every gone out to face death ; dealing with an American Major named Foster (Gene Hackman) , recently finished WWI , he joined the French foreign Legion , and is assigned (by Max Von Sidow) to guard an archaeological expedition in Morocco desert .
Catherine Deneuve at her best, at the very pinnacle of herbeauty; Max Von Sydow as an archeologist who convinces the French gov't to resume digging in ruins in morocco, in an area containing unruly and savage Berber tribes that have slaughtered all comers; Gene Hackman as the legionnaire captain who has to break his promise to those very tribes that they would never venture into the area again; the guy who played Jaws in James Bond as a Russian 'volunteer' to the legion, sporting a beard that any Taliban would be envious of; some unknown as Marco, a riviera jewel thief, also 'volunteered' into the legion and a cast of doomed conscripts.The whole film plays out like a funeral procession.
He keeps raving in fact even as the Arab tribes are massing and charging toward them.As in any classic French foreign legion film, the doomed legionnaires are holed up in the ruins of an old castle, hopelessly outnumbered with no escape.
Anyhow, those who have only seen the short version may wonder why Marco starts out in the movie in a different uniform (I believe he and his brother, which you never see, were in the Italian army, or something like that) and why you sort of see the the French Lt.
While personally I got a kick out of seeing childhood favorite Terence Hill (i.e. Italian Spaghetti Western/action-comedy film star Mario Girotti) share the screen with such acting heavyweights as Gene Hackman, Catherine Deneuve, Max Von Sydow and Ian Holm, his light touch was clearly inadequate for the role of the thief-turned-soldier who falls foul of his misanthropic Captain (Hackman) but is soon consoled by a French belle (Deneuve).Deneuve made one of her infrequent appearances in an English-speaking film and, while her character is not exactly given much to do, she is more "troubled" than she at first appears: she is fascinated by the old lady in the whorehouse (shades of BELLE DE JOUR [1967] perhaps?) and sacrifices herself to Hackman in order to save Hill from dooming himself for her love (as others had done before him); Von Sydow also antagonizes Hackman in his quest to unearth the priceless archaeological relics found in the desert which, to the latter, belong to the Arabs (who are more than welcome to them) and, being a renegade American, sees no point in increasing the glory of France through the loss of the lives of his men (most of which are also foreigners); Ian Holm plays the cultured but ruthless Arab leader and, it was also nice to see Hackman share the screen once more with Marcel Bozzuffi (whom he had famously dispatched in THE FRENCH CONNECTION [1971]) and Jack O' Halloran (who would go on to play Non, one of the villainous Kryptonian trio in the first two SUPERMAN films); the latter was also in Richards' FAREWELL, MY LOVELY and I recently had the pleasure to talk to him on this very Forum about the film under review itself!
As usual, the film-makers' heart was set in the right place given their employment of, not just the star-studded international cast, but also cinematographer John Alcott and composer Maurice Jarre but, as I said earlier, their good intentions were let down by a fairly routine plot which, despite the occasional, valiant interjections of existentialism a' la the previous year's THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS (which also featured Max Von Sydow and an unusually strong role for Italian heart-throb Giuliano Gemma!), fails to coalesce into a memorable or entire successful whole.
Gene Hackman once said about MARCH OR DIE that the audience marched in and the film died: maybe they just couldn't take it seriously after seeing the whole Foreign Legion genre being sent up (yet again) on the screen just a few months earlier in British comic Marty Feldman's directorial debut, THE LAST REMAKE OF BEAU GESTE (1977)....
MARCH OR DIE, a film Sheldon Lettich evidently watched many times while writing the script for Jean-Claude Van Damme's tighter but similarly disappointing LEGIONNAIRE, follows Gene Hackman as an American Major in charge of a French Foreign Legion company comprised mainly of raw recruits, sent to guard an archaeological site in Morocco amid a Berber uprising.Performance-wise, you could hardly do much better with Hackman, Max von Sydow, and Terence Hill all delivering career-highlight performances and constantly in direct conflict with each other.
Was Hackman's disrespectful character just completely insane up until the end, and if so, why does nobody (save lovable rogue Terence Hill) ever waiver in loyalty-to or confidence-in him?The film calls a lot of French tactical decision-making and military tradition into question, and also takes on a decidedly anti-intellectual stance, especially in terms of our Westernized view of the value of art preservation and archaeology.
This international cast also stand out Max Von Sydow as apparently forced context archaeologist but that ends up integrating the climate of war, and Ian Holm, very well chosen for the role of the Arab leader.
I found this film underrated both by critics and specially audience.I mean,its the only film where you get the chance of seeing Gene Hackman and Terence Hill sharing the screen,not to mention Catherine Deneuve as lovely as always.Hackman's role is interesting and he never once fails in bringing it to life.Its touching,specially in the end where he dies.Hill does his best part ever without a doubt.I was surprised to see him pull off such a good role.A fine supporting cast includes Max Von Sydow and Ian Holm,as well as giant Jack O'Halloran in a memorable role as the Russian soldier Ivan.Anyway,i think the audience failed to see the real value here,as it often happens.It is a story of the Legion and its soldiers,but not just that.It includes strong issues such as imperialism,religious fanatism and the harsh army discipline,with a good love story thrown in.I dont know what else can you possibly want?A solid 8..
In 1977 Grade produced March Or Die, a remarkably old-fashioned Foreign Legion adventure that models all the characteristics mentioned above.
Directed by the usually dependable Dick Richards who helmed the acclaimed Farewell My Lovely just a couple years earlier - March Or Die is an unfortunate disappointment.A company of Foreign Legionnaires led by the harsh disciplinarian General Foster (Gene Hackman) is sent to Morocco shortly after World War 1.
The conflicts continue to increase between the desert army's and the Foreign Legion soldiers and their leaders, and the finale is a tremendous battle sequence that will have you visited to the screen.Produced by Sir Lew Grade, the filmmaker behind "Voyage of the Damned" and "The Cassandra Crossing", this is an elegant and handsome adventure film that grabs the audience immediately.
Max von Sydow is present in a major role as one of the leading archaeologist who travels with the group to meet up with those whom Hackman later kills.Outstanding photography and an excellent musical score add to the quality of this a great film which has somehow slipped through the cracks over the years.
For me however, the best performance was by Terence Hill as a scoundrel of a soldier who first get Deneuve's attention by stealing a pearl necklace from a passenger aboard the ship they are traveling on, and is disciplined by Hackman by forfeit liquor which make him lose his balance and fall down a flight of stairs in order to humiliate him in front of the other new members of the Foreign Legion.
Dry. Recap: After sustaining heavy losses in the recently ended First World War, Major Foster of the French Foreign Legion, is sent with some new recruits to protect an archaeological dig.
In enemy territory, in a hostile environment on a suicide mission Foster and his men must march on, or die.Comments: A pretty average action/war movie.
There are quite a few known actors in this movie, most notably Hackman, Deneuve, von Sydow and Holm. |
tt0023893 | The Circus Queen Murder | New York Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt (Adolphe Menjou) decides to take a vacation after six years of fighting crime, accompanied by his attractive secretary, Miss Kelly (Ruthelma Stevens). On the train to their destination, they spot a rundown circus, "The Greater John T Rainey Shows", heading to the same place. The circus is home to a love triangle: Josie La Tour (Greta Nissen), her husband Flandrin (Dwight Frye) (whom she is intent on divorcing), and her lover The Great Sebastian (Donald Cook (actor)), all three trapeze performers.
Jim Dugan (Harry Holman), the circus's press agent, recognizes his old friend Colt as the circus parades through town and gives him and Kelly free passes. Josie La Tour's horse is spooked and runs away with her; fortunately, La Tour escapes unharmed.
Dugan takes a reluctant Colt to see Rainey (George Rosener) that night. Rainey tells him that someone is out to destroy his show; each of the principal performers received an anonymous note telling them not to perform tomorrow - Friday the 13th - or they will die. He also cites La Tour's near accident. Colt, however, suspects that it is all a publicity stunt concocted by Dugan. Kelly reveals that the runaway horse was engineered by Flandrin popping a balloon; she also was able to lipread what Flandrin said to his wife just before: "You double-crossing cheat. I'll kill the both of you." Rainey also informs Colt that La Tour, the star attraction, owns half the circus. When they go to see Flandrin, they find a note saying that he is the "first to go", a bullet hole in the window of his wagon and blood on his cot. However, there is no body, which arouses Colt's suspicions. Then La Tour's beloved dog is found with its throat cut. As Colt is questioning La Tour, someone throws a voodoo doll through her window.
The next day, Kelly reports that the blood is not human. Colt surmises that it is dog's blood, and he noticed an extra member of the "cannibal" troupe last night, Flandrin in disguise. Colt searches the circus for the madman. He advises Rainey to cancel the performance, but La Tour insists on going on with the show.
Outside, unnoticed, Flandrin climbs to the top of the Big Top tent. Sebastian is nearly killed when one of trapeze ropes gives way, partially cut by Flandrin, but he escapes unscathed. The audience believes it is all part of his act. Then La Tour performs, also on the trapeze. Flandrin shoots her with a poison dart using a blowgun. She falls to the ground and dies. Afterward, when Colt roams the grounds, he encounters Flandrin, armed with a pistol and holding Kelly captive. He orders Colt to see to it that Sebastian is alone in the tent with La Tour's body. When he sees people leave the tent, he ventures inside with Kelly, then shoots Sebastian in the back. Fortunately, it is actually Colt in disguise and wearing bulletproof clothing (borrowed from the circus). Flandrin races into the Big Top to put on his last performance, high in the air. At the end, he shoots himself. | murder | train | wikipedia | Circus mystery is nicely done with flavorsome atmosphere....
ADOLPHE MENJOU and RUTHELMA STEVENS do a nice job as D.A. and secretary, a sort of Perry Mason and Della Street type of relationship, both of whom are practicing the art of lip reading, which we know is bound to become a plot device in helping to put the murderer away.Menjou is desperately in need of a vacation, so like so many other criminal sleuths before him, he goes to a small town and is soon involved with a circus troupe and a slew of suspects who are trying to kill either the circus queen or her paramour.
For an exotic touch, there are traveling cannibals among the circus entertainers.There are a lot of high wire acrobatics and tension as the jealous husband (DWIGHT FRYE) climbs aboard the tent's outside perimeter to peer down at the high wire acts with a crazy gleam in his eyes.
GRETA NISSEN is the circus queen (with a thick accent) that Menjou has to keep a sharp eye on.It's a diverting little circus drama, well photographed by Joseph August and directed at a fast clip by Roy William Neill..
Highly entertaining, well made mystery drama.
This is the second film (in a mini-series of two) featuring Menjou as Thatcher Colt, Police Commissioner, the first being THE NIGHT CLUB LADY.
In each, the character (and actor Menjou) shows off his language skills.
In NIGHT CLUB LADY, each suspect is a different nationality, and Menjou plays a long scene on the phone in lightning French.
In both, the time and place of the impending murder of the title lady is known, and Colt arrives in plenty of time with a large retinue of police, but is still unable to prevent the crime (a funny sort of hero).
In both, he has a personal side-kick named Kelly who handles all the important details, nicely played by Ruthelma Stevens (probably her largest film roles).
In the first film, he is constantly surprised in apparently compromising situations with her (actually demonstrating a wrestling hold or the murderer's method) which he blithely declines to explain.
In the second, she is traveling with him on his vacation, and at the end, when she's in danger, he says that she's the only person he really cares about in the world.
Their somewhat equivocal relationship is only one of the many little pleasures in the two films.
NIGHT CLUB LADY is a whodunit with many equally guilty suspects; and whenever one begins to look more guilty, "you know who" gets killed.
In this one, one more-or-less knows who the murderer is, and the tension is in whether he will be caught in time (in a ridiculously extended big-top sequence that cuts--and cuts--back and forth from the murderer, intended victim, police, spectators, etc.).
CIRCUS QUEEN is atmospheric, with heavy drama driving the plot.
The circus ambiance is moody and dark, and the eerie growls and cries of the wild animals are used like soundtrack music for the night scenes with impressively unsettling results.
For me, this effective development of atmosphere gives this film a slight edge over the first in the series.
Needless to say, the two films had different directors.
This one was directed by Roy William Neill, who also turned in the creepy, nearly unknown BLACK MOON the following year.
Like most other Columbia films of the pre-Code era, this double has no reputation simply because they are virtually totally unavailable.
Decent Fun. Circus Queen Murder, The (1933) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Rare Columbia mystery was the second film in a two-film series.
Police Chief Thatcher Colt (Adolphe Menjou) gets tired of the gangster in NYC so he takes a vacation with his secretary (Ruthelma Stevens) on a vacation.
He runs across a friend who owns a circus and decides to stick around when an abusive husband (Dwight Frye) turns up dead.
This is a fairly entertaining mystery that works best with its pre-code nature, which at times is fairly ghoulish considering the era that this was made.
There's talk of bodies being cut up and fed to lions and there's even a theory that the African cannibals have eaten a victim.
Menjou and Nissen work well together but it's Frye and Greta Nissen that really steal the show.
Donald Cook, best known for his role in The Public Enemy is also good in his supporting role.
The actual mystery isn't too hard to solve, which is the film's biggest problem but the 63-minute running time goes by fast.
This isn't one of the best of the genre but it's a good time killer..
This is a highly entertaining B mystery movie.
While a ton of these type of movies were made in the 1930s and 40s, this one is a bit different.
First, Adolph Menjou who plays the lead is nothing like the typical leading man in such films.
And, he also happens to be a cop on vacation who walks into the middle of crimes--not the typical "dopey cop" you'd find in many Bs (especially the Boston Blackie films).
Watching Menjou was always a pleasure and this film is no exception.
An additional factor that made the film more entertaining was its begin set at a circus.
There's a part of most viewers that is excited in seeing high wire acts, clowns and the like.
And finally, it's interesting because the killer is just plain bonkers--and quite entertaining.Well written and acted, this film is well worth seeing if, like me, you love B-movies.
While not a great film, it is among the better examples of the genre..
Second Thatcher Colt mystery.
1933's "The Circus Queen Murder" was Columbia's second adaptation of an Anthony Abbot Thatcher Colt novel, in this case 1932's "About the Murder of the Circus Queen," a followup to the previous year's "The Night Club Lady." Back as the lip reading Colt is Adolphe Menjou, happily teamed again with gorgeous Ruthelma Stevens as faithful secretary Miss Kelly, as savvy and sassy as ever.
This time around, there's precious little mystery, with Colt taken out of his native New York City milieu, watching over suspicious activities in a traveling circus far from home.
It does evoke Tod Browning's "Freaks," with such pre-code details as cannibalism adding to the doom laden atmosphere, not really a mystery as defined in the title, the circus queen only meeting her fate in the final reel.
Fortunately, we have Dwight Frye's Flandrin commanding attention, and in a larger role than usual he's definitely in rare form, better in dangerous mode than his bland hero from 1935's "The Crime of Doctor Crespi." Both Thatcher Colt features have remained stubbornly elusive over the years, while one of Columbia's four picture Steve Trent series has suffered the indignity of actually disappearing without any trace.
Adolphe Menjou is a weary Police Commissioner on vacation in upstate New York.
He gets entangled in a nearly bankrupt circus, and endeavors (unsuccessfully) to prevent THE CIRCUS QUEEN MURDER.This crisply directed and well-acted little drama is perhaps the best test of the auteur theory one could devise.
Director Neill is best known as director of most of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, and the fantastic film noir Black Angel.
If you ever catch his other Columbias on TCM, one notices that his movies have a distinct visual flair, and always seem to be moving on to the next plot point.In this one, Neill has a real problem -- and it is one he probably suffered with a lot.
The "mystery" is no mystery -- the killer is well known before the murder actually happens and there are only one or two "deductions".
The murder itself happens far too late in movie (and is so telegraphed by the title of the movie, that it does not come as any surprise).
Menjou, by the operations of the plot, seems ineffectual, rather than the clever unraveler of mysteries.
And, courtesy of the story, there are long patches of film where there really is nothing going on.So what's an auteur to do?
Well, at the beginning of the film, we get a montage of gangster action, with newspaper headlines.
We get atmospheric rain when the circus wagon comes into town.
We get chilling cries of fearsome circus animals (even though those animals have very little to do with anything going on on the screen.) We also get Adolphe Menjou, acting the part of an elegant but burnt out policeman, with so much grace and elan that we do not notice that he really isn't doing much of anything.
We also get lots of Dwight Frye (who thinks Renfield is a model for any character he might play) chewing the scenery in the sort of role Peter Lorre would have got (and actually acted) had the film been made 7 or 8 years later.
And, at last, we have the final confrontation between policeman and murderer, and the witty closing line (to which Menjou gives the perfect reading).In other words, we end up with an entertaining movie but an unstisfying one.
It probably played well on the top half of a Columbia double feature, but a little time and effort by the scenario writer could have made this one great, as opposed to an interesting time-passer.
The message here is that 30s film was always a collaborative medium and failure in one aspect of the production was really difficult to salvage through brilliance in one of the other ends.Oh -- and what's the spoiler?
Dwight Frye Adds Another Deranged Characterization to His Rogue's Gallery!!!.
This is just a terrific little movie featuring Thatcher Colt, the lip reading D.A. He was a creation of Anthony Abbott, who wrote the stories for Liberty Magazine.
Everything about this movie was perfect, the pacing, the wit, the fact that Miss Kelly, his lovely secretary was not just decoration but a vital part of solving the mystery.
Ruthelma Stevens also played Miss Kelly in "The Night Club Lady" (1932), the only other Thatcher Colt story adapted for the screen - this movie makes you wish there had been more.
Adolph Menjou brought sophistication and urbanity to Thatcher Colt, a harassed New York City D.A. who badly needs a holiday and goes to Gilead, a town where he thinks he can become John Smith.When the circus comes to town all hope of a quiet vacation becomes a dream as he and Miss Kelly are thrown into some seedy circus intrigues.
The circus is in strife - it is due to close after it's stay in Gilead due to lack of money, there is also a steamy love triangle involving "King of the High Wire" Sebastian (Donald Cook), Josie La Tour (Greta Nissen) a seductive bare back rider and Flandrin, her deranged husband (Dwight Frye).
Yes, that's right, Dwight Frye can add another deranged characterization to his rogue's gallery and he is fantastic.Before he can finish his third bag of peanuts Colt's expertise is needed to help solve the case but he gets a lot of help from Miss Kelly.
Flandrin is missing, his caravan is in disarray and there is a gunshot through the window, but while Josie manages to keep a stiff upper lip about that, the death of her little dog Choo Choo sends her into hysterics.
There are also threatening letters being sent - "If the circus attempts to open, you will all die!!" - that sort of thing, plus the circus star attraction, a group of cannibals have a habit of going missing.
The climatic high wire performance is done very thrillingly and will surprise you!!Greta Nissen was a lovely Norwegian actress whose career never recovered from the "Hell's Angels" debacle.
She had already completed her role as the faithless Helen in the silent version but when sound came in Howard Hughes remade the movie featuring his protégé, the unknown Jean Harlow, because Nissen's accent was so hard to understand.
Four years later, it wasn't much better - it was still a challenge to understand Miss Nissen in her role of Josie.
Nice little Columbia "B" picture with very good production values..
New York police commissioner Adolph Menjou heads out of town for a rest, and gets involved in the goings on behind a traveling circus.
Spooky Dwight Frye (of "Dracula" fame) is the demented husband of carnival circus queen Greta Nissen, and is so insanely jealous of her and her obvious lover (Donald Cook) that he sets up a devious plan to knock all of them off (including himself!).
Menjou and his pretty assistant Ruthelma Stevens must prevent Frye from going through with his evil plot, which includes cannibals, a chirping gorilla and Nissen's beloved dog.
This is not really a mystery, since it is obvious from the start who the villain is, but simply a decent thriller of how Menjou deduces how to stop the killer from striking again.
Columbia pictures at this time was only noted for Frank Capra's "A" budget films, but occasionally, a nice surprise like this one comes along.
Fortunately, some of them are cropping up at film festivals or revival houses (like New York's Film Forum or L.A.'s Nuart), and now on TCM.
Menjou and Frye get the acting honors here, and Nissen's character is slightly reminiscent of Olga Baclanova's character in the earlier "Freaks".
Frye, of course, does menacing very well, and even as a cop, Menjou is still the elegant man about town.
Keep an eye on the gorilla that Menjou observes screeching at him.
It appears to be a plot development that somehow was deleted before the final print that made me think that one of the characters was somehow stuffed into a gorilla suit and was screaming "help me!" to get Menjou's attention..
**SPOILERS** Not your standard whodunit since the killer is known right from the start even when he's disguised as a Belgian Congo man eating cannibal after faking his death at the beginning of the film.The story has to do with NYC Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt, Adolphe Menjou, who on his first vacation in six years decides to go upstate with his faithful secretary Kelly, Ruthelma Stevens, in the out of the way town of Gilead New York.
It's in Gilead that Colt plans to get away from the hustle and bustle as well as crime of the big city.
As you would expect Colt ends up getting far more then he bargained for when the circus comes to town with one of it's entertainers determined to wipe out all the acts under the big top.
By murdering all those who preform them!Were not kept in the dark to who this person is in him being trapeze artist Flandrin, Dwight Frye, in that he's extremely jealous and mad at the second male member of the circus' flying trapeze act The Great Sabastian, Donald Cook.
It's The Great Sabastian who's fooling around with Flandrin's wife Josie La Tour, Greta Nissen, who also happens to be his high flying partner!
Flandrin not really wanting to live anymore with his wife Josie leaving him is now determined to murder both her and her lover The Great Sabastian before he ends up killing himself with his last bullet!Colt now realizing that his vacation is a thing of the past decides to trap Flandrin by convincing him that he succeeded in killing himself which is part of his plan, by no one suspecting him, in convincing both Josie and The Great Sabastian that he's no longer a threat to either one of them.
There's also this squad of cannibals who Flandrin is using as cover in his mad plan to murder Josie and the Great Sabastian by him using one of their poison dart blow guns as the murder weapon.***SPOILERS*** Colt does everything he possibly can to keep the certifiably insane and dangerous Flandrin at bay until the police arrive.
But in Flandrin being so determined to kill himself, as well as Josie & The Great Sabastian, there's very little that Colt and the police can do to stop him.
Like a wild eyed kamikaze pilot guiding his explosive laden plane into a US Navy aircraft carrier Flandrin's determination, as well as insanity, overcomes whatever fear he has of death!
Dwight Frye in one of his rare, if you can call it that, normal roles makes the best out of a mediocre film with its actual star Adolphe Menjou, as Thatcher Colt, more or less reduced to a secondary role as being Frye's advocate in the movie.
A part that Menjou seemed very happy to have in that the less he's seen in the film the easier those watching it will not remember him being in it!.
Adolphe Menjou plays the alpha male, a DA on vacation who is engulfed in the intrigue of a circus and gets to order everyone around and appear invulnerable.
With a name like Colt what else could one expect.
His assistant played by Ruthelma Stevens is sharp as a tack and every bit as resourceful.
Then there's Harry Holman and his fat man act, wiping his brow and nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, as the circus' publicity agent.
Dwight Frye is perfect as the spurned lover with another great performance two years after his Renfield in Dracula.
And last but not least we have the pretty people, handsome Donald Cook and the delectable Greta Nissen, the acrobats and pivot of the film.
Stock characters one might say but in this film they add up to a fun thriller.
And let's not forget a hint of horror with the suggestion a disappeared body may have been eaten by lions or cannibals.
My only criticism has to do with the utter disregard for the fate of the circus queen who is about to be murdered and the total lack of sensitivity toward the victim.
That part was handled very poorly and in fact the movie would have been much better had the murder been prevented as it appeared it could have been. |
tt0466856 | ATL | Rashad (T.I.) is a teen living in Atlanta, Georgia with his Uncle, George (Mykelti Williamson) and his little brother Ant (Evan Ross). He and his brother were raised by their uncle George since their parents died in a car accident, and they work with him as part of his custodial company. When not working or finishing his last year of high school, Rashad spends most of his time with his friends Brooklyn (Albert Daniels), Teddy (Jason Weaver), and Esquire (Jackie Long). Rashad is a talented artist but does not see much of a future in that field as he has become accustomed to working the family business. Esquire, Rashad's best friend, goes to a prep school on the opposite side of town from where they live, and is trying to attend an Ivy League college after senior year. However, he finds out that he will need a letter of recommendation from someone of high stature to better his chances of acceptance at the school he wants to attend.
Rashad and his friends are also a skate crew, known as "The Ones", on Sunday nights at Cascade, a skating rink where local teens hang out. While there, Rashad catches the eye of New-New (Lauren London), a round-the-way girl with a mysterious background, since he only sees her around when she is hanging out with her friends Veda (Khadijah Haqq) and Star (Malika Haqq). The two become attracted to one another and they later kiss when he gives her a ride home in his Chevrolet El Camino. However, in contrast, Esquire instantly develops a disliking for Rashad's new love interest, considering her bad company. Meanwhile, no longer under Rashad's watchful eyes, Ant becomes involved with a drug dealer named Marcus (Patton) and begins to sell for him. He also starts dating a girl named Tondie (April Clark), who takes a liking to him only after he began to make money through drug dealing.
At work one day, Esquire meets John Garnett (Keith David), a millionaire who heads a successful business venture called the United Express. The two quickly become friends, with Garnett's admiration for Esquire's ambition and Esquire's respect for Garnett's success driving the relationship. Esquire sees an opportunity to obtain the letter of recommendation that would bring about his acceptance to his primary college choice. When Esquire goes to Garnett's house to pick up the letter, he meets his daughter Erin, who, to his surprise, turns out to be New-New, whose real name is Erin. Erin says that she will reveal where Esquire is really from (something he lied to her father about) if he tells Rashad about her.
Things soon begin to fall apart for Rashad; Ant is arrested for selling weed, and later Rashad finds out the truth about Erin. He no longer speaks to his friends, realizing that Esquire knew about Erin the whole time. Esquire, feeling guilty about the way he obtained the letter, decides to return it to Garnett, and reveals the truth about himself and his background. He, Brooklyn, and Teddy attempt to make peace with Rashad and ask him to attend Skate Wars, Cascade's annual skate competition, with them; Rashad, however, refuses their offer. Just as he decides that he will go, after being persuaded by his uncle, he finds out that Marcus is looking for Ant on the streets, searching for cash that Ant owes to him. Rashad tracks the two down and throws the money that Ant owes Marcus in his face. Marcus then holds Rashad at gunpoint and makes a rude comment. Rashad knocks the gun off of Marcus's hand, it goes off, and they fight briefly until Rashad gets up to leave. Rashad tells Ant to get into the car while Marcus grabs his gun and ends up shooting Ant (later revealed) in the chest. At the hospital, Rashad and Ant are able to reconnect; likewise, Erin, Esquire, and Rashad make peace, as the scene ends with the poem "Love's Deceit" by rapper Big Rube playing.
In the film's final scene, Teddy opens his own business concerning the production of gold teeth,as Big Gipp makes a cameo appearance in his shop, Brooklyn finds a job at a Krystal restaurant, while Esquire receives a mysterious letter of recommendation (presumably from Garnett) and is able to attend his college. The twins Veda and Star remain in the old neighborhood and hang out at Cascade on Sundays, while Erin goes to Spelman College, the school she wanted to attend. Uncle George starts attending church more often and finds a good woman to date. Ant changes direction, discarding the notion of drug dealing, finds a new girlfriend and begins to focus on his studies in school. Rashad, lastly, becomes a comic artist for the Sunday edition of the Atlanta Evening Standard, the city's newspaper. The film ends with Rashad leaving his skates in Cascades, and the building's lights go off. | flashback | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0093029 | Five Corners | The film is set in The Bronx in 1964. We are introduced to Heinz (John Turturro), the neighborhood bully who has just been released from prison, who wastes no time in letting everyone know he hasn't changed by stirring up trouble again. Heinz has just been released from prison after serving a term for attempted rape, and has returned to his old neighborhood to resume his relationship with his demented mother and to "rekindle" his own demented version of a relationship with Linda (Jodie Foster), the near-rape victim.
Harry (Tim Robbins) had protected Linda in the near-rape, but since then he has adopted a policy of non-violent response to violence (caused by the murder of his policeman father and the non-violent protests against racism espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King). Harry has now become a Buddhist and a pacifist, and seeks to join Dr. King's movement, making protecting Linda again a difficult task.
We also see Mr. Glasgow, an overly strict high-school teacher murdered by being shot in the back with an arrow while he walks down the street. That night we see Sal driving his fiancé Melanie and her girlfriend Brita around the neighborhood while they take pills and sniff glue in the back seat.
Fed up with how (once again) they've gotten so loaded, Sal offers to give them to Castro and Willie, two boys from the neighborhood, who have just finished up vandalizing the storefront sign for the local deli. Sal even offering them cash to take the women off his hands. They accept and walk off with the girls, who are so high they don't even know who they're supposed to be with.
The next morning, Brita and Melanie wake up in a strange apartment, lying naked under sheets. They get dressed and find Castro and Willie in the hall. Picking up where they left off, the boys tell Melanie and Brita, "Someone murdered our teacher, so we have the day off. Want to go for a ride?". But the ride they have in mind is climbing up on top of the building's elevators with the girls, and making out with them as the elevators go up and down during the day.
Then the four of them go bowling, and Sal shows up to apologize to Melanie for what he did, and eventually tells her he just felt frustrated because he can see them getting married and having children together someday, and wishes she would stop getting loaded all the time.
Heinz calls Linda, and tells her to meet him in a park at midnight. She reluctantly agrees, knowing that he may become dangerous if she doesn't comply. When arriving at the pool, she finds a board to use for protection and hides it. Heinz shows her a present he got for her: two penguins he stole from the Bronx zoo. She tells him that he has to return them because penguins need special food.
Heinz becomes outraged, thinking that she was rejecting his gift, and kills one of the penguins. Heinz comes on strong with Linda, pushing her further and further until in desperation she fights Heinz off, and runs off with one of the penguins. She takes it to Jamie, who wishes Linda was his girl. He reluctantly helps her get the penguin set up in a tub at the bar he works in, then escorts her to the subway.
Heinz shows up and kidnaps Linda and knocks her out. He carries her to a taxi, kicks out the window to gain entry, and lays her down in the backseat. Meanwhile, Jamie has run to get the police, and Harry, having belatedly heard that Linda had wanted him to go with her when she met Heinz, has gone to the police also, after walking the neighborhood with his Saint Bernard in an attempt to find her.
The dog leads them to the taxi and while attempting to arrest Heinz, one of the detectives is disarmed by Heinz, who grabs the gun and shoots the detective, then takes off with Linda. In a murderous rage, Heinz drives around playing chicken with several drivers before ramming into the phone booth in front of his mother's house, killing the detective inside it, who was staking out the place in case Heinz showed up.
At the limit of his sanity, and sensing that he's going to die tonight, Heinz carries Linda up to his mother's apartment. He tries to get his mom to recognize the man he's become, but becomes frustrated when this appeal fails and throws his mother out the window.
The movie ends with Heinz taking the still-unconscious Linda up the fire escape and across to an adjacent rooftop, where police surround the building. But Harry and Jamie have gone up first to try to rescue Linda themselves. Harry tries to convince Heinz to let Linda be taken to safety, offering himself as a substitute, and Heinz can do whatever he wants to him.
As he talks, Jamie sneaks slowly around behind Heinz and attacks him. Both Jamie and Harry take turns struggling with Heinz. A police sharpshooter is in a position to kill Heinz but doesn't because it would endanger Linda (who Heinz has laid down on the ledge of the rooftop), as well as the others. Out of nowhere, Heinz is killed by a mysterious arrow to his back, just like the teacher at the beginning of the film.
Heinz falls to his death, and as the camera pans to the back of the roof, we see it is Castro who has shot the arrow, accompanied by his friend Willie.
As the credits roll, Jamie's boss opens the bar the next morning, and is shocked to find the penguin inside. As he backs out in disbelief, the penguin comes waddling out. | violence, psychedelic, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0024663 | The Three Musketeers | In Venice, the musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, with the help of Milady de Winter, steal airship blueprints made by Leonardo da Vinci. However, they are betrayed by Milady, who incapacitates them and sells the blueprints to the Duke of Buckingham.
A year later, d'Artagnan leaves his village in Gascony for Paris in hopes of becoming a musketeer as his father was, only to learn that they were disbanded. At a rural bar, he challenges Captain Rochefort, leader of Cardinal Richelieu's guard, to a duel after being offended by him, but Rochefort merely shoots him while he's distracted. Once in Paris, d'Artagnan separately encounters Athos, Porthos and Aramis and, accidentally offending all three, schedules duels with each. Athos brings Porthos and Aramis to the duel as his seconds and d'Artagnan realizes who they are. Richelieu's guards arrive to arrest them, but, inspired by d'Artagnan, the musketeers fight together and win. All four are summoned before the young King Louis XIII and Richelieu urges him to execute them, but Queen Anne is impressed by their bravery and the king condecorates them instead.
Richelieu instructs Milady, now his accomplice, to plant false love letters among Queen Anne's possessions, steal her diamond necklace, and take it to the Tower of London in order to frame her as having an affair with Buckingham, which would force King Louis to execute her and declare war on England. At this point, the people would demand a more experienced leader: Richelieu himself. In order to secure her own position, Milady demands that Richelieu declare in a written authorization that she is working on behalf of France.
The false letters are found and given to King Louis, who is advised by Richelieu to set up a ball at which Queen Anne would be forced to wear the necklace. If she doesn't, then her affair is real, and there will be war. Queen Anne's lady-in-waiting Constance Bonacieux discovers Richelieu's plan and pleads with the musketeers to stop him. They follow Milady and Buckingham to London, while Constance is captured by Rochefort for helping the musketeers to escape from him.
In London, Milady tells Buckingham the musketeers have arrived to take revenge on him and teaches him all their tendencies in battle. D'Artagnan is captured, but turns out to be a decoy, allowing his associates to steal Buckingham's airship and rescue him. Milady's getaway coachman reveals himself as the musketeers' manservant Planchet and delivers her to his masters, who retrieve the necklace from her. Athos prepares to execute Milady for her treachery, but she leaps off the airship, apparently dying on her own terms.
The musketeers depart back to Paris, only to be intercepted by Rochefort in another airship, as Milady had given Richelieu copies of da Vinci's blueprints. Rochefort offers to exchange Constance for the necklace, but captures d'Artagnan and orders an attack as soon as he retrieves the jewels. His superior airship has the upper hand and severely damages the opposing ship, but the musketeers manage to crash both onto Notre Dame. On the roof, d'Artagnan duels and ultimately kills Rochefort. Constance is sent ahead to quietly return the necklace to Queen Anne.
The musketeers arrive at the ball and, for the sake of King Louis and his people, lie by claiming that Rochefort tried to sabotage an airship that Richelieu built for them, and that they executed him for his treason on Richelieu's permission. To convince the king, Athos presents Milady's authorization, which the former accepts. Richelieu, satisfied, offers the musketeers a place in his army, but they refuse, and Richelieu vows they will come to regret their decision.
Meanwhile, Milady is found alive at the English Channel by Buckingham, who declares his intention to exact revenge. He is then revealed to be advancing towards France with a massive fleet of battleships and airships. | cult, mystery, murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0104254 | FernGully: The Last Rainforest | Crysta is a fairy with a curious nature living in FernGully, a pristine rainforest free from human intervention. The fairies of FernGully once lived in harmony with humans, but, believe them to have gone extinct after being driven away by a malevolent spirit named Hexxus. Crysta is the apprentice of Magi, a motherly-figure fairy who imprisoned Hexxus in a tree. One day Crysta explores a new part of the forest and meets Batty, a bat who claims to have been experimented on by humans, giving him an obstreperous and unstable personality. She refuses to believe him until she encounters lumberjacks cutting down trees. She sees Zak, a young human whom Crysta accidentally shrinks when she tries to save him from being crushed by a falling tree, though does not know how to restore him to normal size.
The tree that Hexxus is imprisoned in is cut down by Tony and Ralph, Zak's superiors. Hexxus quickly begins to regain his powers by feeding on pollution. He manipulates the humans to drive to FernGully. In FernGully, Zak meets Pips, a fairy male who is envious of Zak's relationship with Crysta. Zak begins to fall in love with Crysta, but hides the true reason that the humans had returned. When the signs of Hexxus's resurrection begin to manifest themselves in poisoned trees and rivers, he finally admits that humans are destroying the forest. The fairies mount an attempt to defend their homes, but knowing their fight is hopeless, Zak convinces Batty to aid him in stopping the machine before it destroys them. When Zak makes his presence known to Tony and Ralph, Hexxus takes over the machine and begins to wildly destroy the forest.
Magi sacrifices herself to give the fairies a chance, and she tells Crysta to remember everything she's learned. Zak manages to stop the machine, depriving Hexxus the source of his power, but he manifests himself within the oil in the machine and begins to ignite the forest ablaze. Crysta seemingly sacrifices herself by allowing herself to be devoured by Hexxus and all seems lost, until he begins to sprout limbs and leaves like a tree. Pips and the rest of the fairies rally to the powers they have been given, which causes the seed that Crysta fed him to start growing wildly. Hexxus is crushed and erased by the newly grown tree at the very border of FernGully which bursts into bloom. Crysta appears after the fight, having survived her ordeal and successfully succeeded Magi as a magical fairy. She gives Zak a seed, begging him to remember everything that has transpired and she sadly restores him to his human size. Remembering the seed in his hand, Zak promises to remember his adventure, and buries the seed in the soil before telling Tony and Ralph that things need to change as they leave the forest behind. The seed sprouts new growth for FernGully, as Crysta follows Pips with Batty behind her. | psychedelic, fantasy, romantic | train | wikipedia | I may sentimentalize movies from my youth, but not the ones that really don't deserve my affection.This one does.Crysta, a simple, innocent, and at times flippant fairy, is an imperfect but funny heroine, and as genuine as they come.
Batty gives Robin Williams another character perfectly suited to his talent -- I watched this movie at a party with highschoolers and he went down great (everyone liked the movie overall, but Batty stole my friends' hearts).
I think this is because the usual sentimentality and condescension you see in kids' movie whenever there's a "message" is totally absent -- Magi speaks her lines with total respect and love for Crysta.
Go figure, this doesn't bode well with the fairies who are trying to protect nature.Zak is a kid likely in his late teens working for this tree felling company as a summer job.
Er, sight!" Apparently the first word spoken for a spell is the one that takes, and Zak is three inches tall, just like the fairies.Zak befriends Crysta, along with her bat friend, Batty (voiced by Robin Williams).
The main focus of the movie is the relationship between Zak and Crysta, but also on the potential destruction of Fern Gully as per the wishes of Hexxus.It's a cartoon, so obviously the fairies are going to stop Hexxus.
But it's still a fun little movie filled with some very funny lines, brightly colored animation, and great voice acting.Bottom Line: 4 out of 4 (own this movie).
I hate getting a film you loved as a child and watching it as an adult only to find it's completely lost it's magic over time.
Having pushed all my videos to the back of a dark cupboard, I hadn't actually watched the film in years until I bought it last week on DVD.Ferngully has it's problems, some of the songs were written with the days music heavily in the forefront so they haven't really stood the test of time.
The overall message of taking care of the environment will seem heavy handed to an adult, although I remember feeling inspired by it as a child.That aside I cannot vault the voice acting, Tim Curry, Robin Williams, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, they all deliver great performances.
The animation is terrific and looks very much like Disney movies of the time.
The stories hero's are compelling to watch, you really do care about what happens to them as it progresses to the climax, all this is woven together with touching little moments in the animation and a clever and funny set of supporting characters.Will children today enjoy it?
Zak, one of the worker of a team that is destroying the forest to build a road is shrunk by a fairy (Chrysta) and introduced to the magical world that he was destroying.The animation is good, with rich colors and gorgeous visuals of the forest.
The best song is the one performed by the bad guy, Hexxus, a literaly slimy demon, that perfectly represents the greed of modern society.This is a little gem in the Disney-dominated world of animation.
In describing humans, "They walk around like 'Hi Helen!'" I love the message most of all, and it does a good job of representing the greed and destruction of our times through images, actions and dialogue.
At a young age I alway thought "Dude, that guy Zak has the coolest haircut." And untill this very moment, I didn't realise that Hexxus was a demon, or was voiced by Tim Curry.It's an interesting movie in a large rainforest inhabited by fairies.
Hexxus was chillingly voiced by the quintessential Tim Curry, and Robin Williams was hilarious as Batty Koda.
The film also has a good message and a nice story, that isn't at all preachy.
A band of fairies and their human allies must save a primeval rainforest from destruction by a conscienceless lumber company (not to mention a venomously evil entity voiced by Tim Curry).
Though basically a Darwinian morality play dressed up in the more palatable medium of a kids' cartoon, FERNGULLY is actually an entertaining and thought-provoking animated masterpiece.
Like it or loathe it, this film is "Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest".The ups are good humour from the one and only Robin Williams (who is a bat and sings a brilliant rap song), good thoughts about the environment (as in the way it is in this film), the setting (an Australian jungle - you would think if it was about fairies it would be set in Britain - wouldn't you?), good background animation (mainly jungle and trees), good songs (a mixture, including the beautiful and the not-so-beautiful) and a good message (to be good to the environment).The downs/flaws is the fact the main character is annoying (yet for some reason everybody likes her) and the film also drags on slightly.
Most of the fairies believe that humans do not exist, but when a bat who has been experimented in a lab tells the fairies of humans, there is one called Crysta (a girl fairy) who wants to see the humans for herself...Good for children, mainly, who do not care much about the environment, but also for people who like Robin Williams and animation in general.
It is about a human male shrunk to fairy-size; he learns about fairies, their forest habitat, and soon finds a logging crew he was working with is now threatening their home.I remember watching FernGully as a kid, I really liked Batty (voiced by Robin Williams) and his song.
The other pretty good character is the villain Hexxus (Tim Curry), who also has a catchy song.
Still, 18 years after it came out, families will likely continue to find FernGully enjoyable and its environmental message remains important..
I remember this movie when I was little I have mix feelings about it I like the animation and the characters but the story can send some mix messages but I love it the villain is really scary and the bat is funny you will enjoy it.
Robin Williams made this movie fresh and hilarious as Batty, and Samantha Mathis is wonderful as Crysta.
Ferngully is a great animated movie.
Next, the film brought a point how pollution and toxic waste ravage our planet, if we let factories and machines destroy nature.The characters especially the fairies showed how compassion and care for nature help us humans to have healthy environment.
I first watched this movie when I was a young child and thought it was great.
Robin Williams does a great job as Batty.I feel the FERNGULLY is under-ratted and over-looked.
Beautiful animation, fitting voice actors and well-thought musical numbers all weave a wonderful story about an Australian rainforest inhabited by fairies, one of which befriends lumberjack Ward who is unwittingly playing a part in destroying FernGully.
Mathis is perfectly sweet as the curious fairy who tries to guide her new human friend into understanding the damage his kind is inflicting on the natural world, and what a great importance it is to preserve nature; Williams is hilarious as Batty Koda, though his role now seems sort of like an underwhelming version of Genie from ALADDIN; and Curry is chilling even as a cartoon character!
It's colorful and fun with awesome songs...plus the voice talents of two amazing actors, Robin Williams and Tim Curry!
Williams' character Batty is hilarious and full of jokes, and Curry's songs as the villain are so good!
Most of the time,when I try and watch a movie I used to love, it sucks.
One of the best animated movies ever made with an important message of protecting the Rainforest.
I love it's important message of protecting the rainforest and our environment, without being too 'in your face' obvious; I'm all for green too.The film starts somewhere in the Australian rainforest, lays a fairy world known as Ferngully.
No - it's so FAIRIES will have a place to live.The film is dedicated to: "Our Children and Our Children's' Children."FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST follows sexy, half-naked, winged, tramp sprite Chrysta (voiced by Samantha Mathis), as she discovers humans in the forest, doing something unthinkable - wearing clothes.
We are led to believe the humans are killing trees for no reason, but - without advocating senseless destruction - logging is done for a number of reasons, none of which is specifically so that fairies go homeless.That is the first un-brained message that our children and our children's' children can get confused over in this animated film.
(Note that the industrial society that performs the logging is providing jobs and domestic product, which feed and clothe the very same children's' children this movie is preaching to.) Chrysta's magic old witch friend (voice of Grace Zabriskie) once entrapped an evil spirit called Hexus (Tim Curry) in one of the trees.
Final scenes of FERNGULLY show a denuded forest being regrown in minutes through the fairy witch's magic - which undermines the movie's entire message.
If a rainforest can be grown instantaneously through Magic, well, why the hell NOT tear it down for homes for the homeless and creating jobs for the economy and then re-grow another one like in the movie?And the headlines read: FAIRIES MAGICALLY REGROW FOREST IN MINUTES.
my personal favorite is batty koda who is just as funny as can be and robin Williams was an amazing choice for this character.when i was little i couldn't wait till Friday nights when it was my turn to pick a movie and i always picked this one.
it has amazing affects, catchy fun songs, a great plot, good lessons in doing the right thing and caring for nature and amazing character development.
the combining of the human world and its affect on nature is true and i think its something we should let our kids watch because without the environment we will destroy our lives.
I watched this film for the first time when I was a single digit in age, and now I'm 19 and can still clearly remember how much it inspired me, and still does inspire me.FernGully is a children's movie - with a very real, very serious issue not at all portrayed subtly.
His role makes you appreciate that the threat he stands for is so normal for us, and yet spells the end for the world we don't really think about - the deepest rainforest's.Of course, this film also includes many laughs that will keep kids entertained.
Humans have lost touch with nature, and Zach, our hero of the story, goes through the process of realising what his race has become.I'm aware I've rambled a lot here, but this was a movie that really touched me, and I just hope that children nowadays can overlook the dated cartoon style and really see the messages behind the story.
Long story short, the sole lesson to be taken away from this movie is - "Humans are evil and the source of any and all bad things.".
I used to love this movie as a child, and this is obviously meant for children, so I guess kids will like it.
However, re-watching it, this is a heavy handed kids movie with too many slow moments and animation too loose for it's own good.Ferngully tells the story of a rain forest full of sprite like creatures.
Now, I realize how preachy this really is, so it doesn't work on any level.In the end, this was a short, preachy movie, with some inspired moments....but mostly it was too heavy on it's environmental message.My rating: ** out of ****.
Along with its environmental message, it makes an enjoyable ride through the home of magical fairies and their fight against the force of destruction of their rainforest.
And honestly, I feel it was very well done.I remember watching this movie as a kid and really enjoying it.
This eco-friendly animated feature is a children's environmental fantasy about a tropical paradise protected by guardian fairies, one of whom (a cute Tinkerbell look-alike) develops a crush on the first human she ever sees, after helping him mend his ignorant, woodcutting ways.
And even after watching horror flicks like 'The Thing,' 'The Exorcist' and bunch of other scary movies, this kid's animation still scared me a whole heck of a lot.
By the time you get older, like me, you don't think of fairies anymore but then when you become a little older still this movie is one that you would love again.It's really good.
lets get that behind us.OK....I am not an enviormentalist, but this movie is still strong with me, when I was younger I really didn't get it, but now, 10 years from when I last saw it, I dug this out of my old VHS pile, and after watching it, It has left an even more influence with me....now onto the movie itself- Characters are wonderful, story is great for it's time, and it has a very important message that was ahead of it's time.
I wwish Zack would of stayed at the end, but he has to do something important, years from now I would love to make a live action verion of this film, to give the story the credit it deserves, because critics called it "preachy", people gave this movie a low rating.
I was really not taken in by the songs or the music and the villain comes, gets beaten and goes but even so, there are enough good things about this movie to keep one engrossed for the viewing period and it will not be easily forgotten either..
Little Chrysta (Samantha Mathis), a fairy who lives in Fern Gully, is immensely interested in the "folklore" of humans, who are thought by the fairies to be extinct, destroyed by the wicked Hexxus (Tim Curry) an evil spirit of poison and death.
I saw this movie when I was eleven, having been raised on animated films like THE BLACK CAULDRON, THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, etc.
Ferngully is a great movie for kids.
I loved this movie when I was a kid, but I just watched this yesterday while babysitting my little sister.
I just love fern gully and now I am sharing it with my 5-year old daughter.It is the kind of movie that makes a person realize that nature is very important.
Younger kids are probably not going to understand the meaning of the movie and just be scared of the loud tree cutting machine/monster things..
The enemy (of course) is the environmental pollution is personified as a villain in the movie voiced by Tim Curry.
It's the sort of movie that tries to make kids aware of their environment and point out the importance of nature and how bad and evil it is that humans are destructing the rain forest.
The animation of the movie itself is pretty good.
Both the characters and the background and environments of the movie are pretty good looking.
I guess I wasn't too surprised when I read that this movie was released on Earth-Worship Day (Nature good--humans bad.) Robin Williams is funny as Batty the Bat, better than the same routine on fast forward, which he did for the genie in Aladdin (also 1992)..
Robin Williams as Batty was hilarious and Tim Curry's voice for Hexxus was convincing.
The scene where Zak and Christa walk on water and put their palms together is a little dark in terms of shading; however the animation in this sequence is stunning and is as pleasant as the song that accompanies it.All in all, this film was worth watching after having forgotten about it for several years.
Basically a race of fairies live in the rain forest called FernGully, they have never seen humans, but they believe they exist from the stories told of time gone by.
In the process of destroying FernGully, the humans have released the evil Hexxus (Tim Curry), an oil-like and then smoke driven creature who wants to unleash chaos, and taking over the "leveler" he works to destroy the forest.
In the end, Hexxus is trapped inside a newly grown tree, Crysta uses her power to grow Zak back to normal size, and he ensures the fairies that he will stop any other humans coming to the forest to destroy it.
The voice acting is all fine, the most fun to listen to is obviously Williams who creates the laughs, the animation is alright, and the story has some okay ideas that obviously delve into the concept of saving the environment, and the Elton John song "Some Other World" at the end is good, overall it isn't something I would see again, a not terrible but also not great animated fantasy.
Good animation and character design, somewhat okay story, and a badly done message..
But, the problem is that this movie has a save the rain forest message that interferes with the story.
For children it's really great although really Batty is the only properly entertaining character the film in general is pretty good.
I really enjoyed the music to this film myself and I think it sends a fairly good message out to children although it does through all people into a fairly bad light.
This movie shows how humans are destroying the rain forest.
The movie is a great one and good for kids.
The plot follows a fairy-like creature, Crysta, and her environmentally aware friends, who try and rescue their home from the Hexxus, a polluting entity bent on destroying the rain forest forever.You might as well be showing your children a bunch of Nazi 1940's WW2 propaganda because this really isn't much different.
Only watch FernGully for the voice talents of Tim Curry (Toxic Love song is so cool) and Robin Williams, or for nostalgic value, and keep it away from your kids.
And let's face it, little kids won't give a damn about the environmental message in it, they just want to see an entertaining movie and the only entertaining and cool character in it was Hexxus. |
tt0001227 | The Fugitive | Dr. Richard Kimble, a prominent Chicago vascular surgeon, arrives home to find his wife Helen fatally wounded by a one-armed man. Kimble struggles with the killer but he escapes. The lack of evidence of a break-in, Helen's lucrative life insurance policy, and a misunderstood 9-1-1 call result in Kimble's conviction of first-degree murder. Being transported to death row by bus, his fellow prisoners attempt an escape. The pandemonium sends the bus down a ravine and into the path of an oncoming train. Kimble escapes the collision and flees. Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard and his colleagues Renfro, Biggs, Newman and Poole arrive at the crash site and begin the search for Kimble. Kimble sneaks into a hospital to treat his wounds and alter his appearance. He eludes the authorities, but Gerard corners him at the edge of a storm drain over a dam. Kimble leaps into the raging water and escapes.
Kimble returns to Chicago to hunt for the murderer and acquires money from his friend and colleague Dr. Charles Nichols. Posing as a janitor, Kimble enters the local county hospital's prosthetic department to obtain a list of people who had their prosthetic arm repaired shortly after his wife's murder. Following a police lead confirming Kimble's recent whereabouts, Gerard speculates that Kimble is searching for the one-armed man. Kimble breaks into the residence of one of the people on the list, a former police officer named Fredrick Sykes. Kimble discovers that Sykes is the murderer and is employed by a pharmaceutical company, Devlin MacGregor, which is scheduled to release a new drug called Provasic. Kimble investigated the drug in the past and revealed that it caused liver damage, which would have prevented it from being approved by the FDA. He also deduces that Nichols, who is leading the drug's development, arranged a cover-up and ordered Sykes to kill him – his wife's death was incidental. Gerard follows Kimble's lead to Sykes' home and draws the same conclusion.
As Kimble takes an elevated train to confront Nichols at the drug's presentation in a hotel, Sykes appears and attacks him. In the struggle, Sykes shoots a transit cop before being subdued and handcuffed to a pole by Kimble. Kimble arrives at the pharmacon conference and interrupts Nichols's speech, accusing him of falsifying his medical research and orchestrating his wife's murder. They fight while being chased through the hotel by the marshals and police. Gerard calls out to Kimble that he knows about Nichols' conspiracy. Nichols knocks out Renfro and takes his gun and attempts to shoot Gerard, but Kimble attacks him from behind, knocking him unconscious. Kimble surrenders to Gerard, who escorts him out of the hotel. Nichols and Sykes are arrested. Kimble is exonerated and driven from the crime scene by Gerard. | melodrama | train | wikipedia | Surprisingly Moving.
"The Fugitive" is a surprisingly moving D.W. Griffith Civil War short with a focus on the home front.
Two sons named John (one from a Union family and one from a Confederate family) go off to war leaving behind their mothers and fiancées.
Their respective foraging parties encounter each other and exchange fire, and the Union party runs into the woods near the home of the Confederate John.
During the pursuit the two Johns fire on each other and Confederate John is killed.
Union John (Edwin August) seeks shelter in a nearby house and persuades the mother (Kate Bruce) of the soldier he just killed to hide him.
She continues to conceal him even after learning that he killed her son, basically to spare his mother the grief that she is experiencing.
Griffith shorts frequently emphasized this "brother against brother" theme of the war, probably because he came from the border state of Kentucky which furnished units to both armies.
Note that the confederate home has a portrait of George Washington on display.
Also note the almost contemporary look and manner of Dorothy West (who plays the fiancée of the Confederate soldier), she looks and acts little different than a typical 2006 high school girl with acting aspirations..
Written by John MacDonagh, who fought in 1916 Rising.
The writer of this film was John MacDonagh, who fought under the command of his brother Thomas MacDonagh, signatory of the Proclamation of Independence and one of the seven leaders, in the 1916 Rising in Ireland.
MacDonagh made other films - most famous today is his film of Michael Collins selling the first bonds of the Dail Loan to a succession of national figures including Grace Plunkett (MacDonagh's sister-in-law; her sister Muriel (née Gifford) was married to Thomas MacDonagh), and his brother Joseph, who would die on hunger strike on Christmas Day 1922.
John MacDonagh went on to write several films - The Casey Millions, Wicklow Gold, Willie O'Reilly and His Colleen Bawn - and to be an entrepreneurial manager of the Queen's Theatre in Dublin, before joining 2RN, later RTE, the Irish national radio and television station, where he worked until retirement in 1947..
My Father Was A Fugitive Aramaean.
In the middle of the American Civil War, in a peaceful valley, a foraging Union soldier meets a Confederate Picket and shoots him.
What will the Confederate soldier's mother do when she discovers the refugee she has sheltered may have killed her child?
Griffith, reviled for the racism of BIRTH OF A NATION, sometimes by those familiar with the work and sometimes by those who have no idea what is in that movie, saw the Civil War as a tragedy for all Americans, full of complex problems for which there were no solutions.
THE FUGITIVE, although not one of his best works, has been made available on DVD by Kino and is well worth your viewing time..
Griffith and the Civil War. Fugitive, The (1910)*** (out of 4) Two soldiers, John the Southerner (Edwin August) and John the Northerner (Edward Dillon) leave their sweethearts and mothers behind to go fight in the war.
Of course the two end up meeting on the battle field where the Southerner is killed.
Soon afterwards the Northerner tries to take shelter at the home of his victim's mother.
This is another interesting short from Griffith dealing with the Civil War. As you may notice none of them are that traditional and instead of doing an easy story the director tries to look at different aspects of the war.
This time out the film really looks at the women who are often left behind wondering if their son or lovers will ever return.
That aspect is a unique one and makes this film worth watching even when the story itself becomes a little far fetched.
The two actors playing the soldiers do a fine job but it's Kate Bruce who steals the show as the Union soldiers mother.
Dorothy West has a small role as well..
Dueling Johns.
In the sting of the Civil War, mothers and sweethearts must wait and worry as their sons and lovers go off to the front.
Forthwith, a Southerner named John (Edwin August) goes off to fight for the Confederacy.
Meanwhile, a Northerner named John (Edward Dillon) goes off to fight for the Union.
Naturally, the two opposing soldiers named John have a mother (Kate Bruce or Clara T.
Bracey) and a sweetheart (Dorothy West or Lucy Cotton) waiting for their safe return.
As fate would have it, the Johns meet on the battlefield, and one shoots the other.
Later, Mr. August (of the Union) finds himself alone and pursued; the only refuge is the home belonging to Ms. Bruce, mother of the Confederate officer he shot.
Thinking first as a mother, she hides "The Fugitive".
Then, her wounded son is brought home!
A nice idea, but rather slightly told, from director D.W. Griffith.
*** The Fugitive (11/7/10) D.W. Griffith ~ Edwin August, Edward Dillon, Kate Bruce |
tt0415689 | Bunshinsaba | Lee Yoo-jin is a transfer student from Seoul, and along with two of her friends, she is constantly being bullied by a group of classmates. One night, Yoo-jin and her friends decide to place a curse on their enemies by creating a Ouija board on which they write the names of the female bullies. Using the Bunshinsaba curse, her friend warns the others not to open their eyes until the spell is finished. The calling takes effect, and Yoo-jin, somewhat curious, opens her eyes. To her shock and horror, she sees an image of a pale-like dead girl with long hair beside her.
The next morning when Yoo-jin enters the classroom, she discovers the corpse of one of the bullies on top of the desk, with a burned face. Meanwhile, the school hires a volunteer teacher, Lee Eun-ju, as the new art instructor. She starts to call the roll in her class and stumbles on seat number 29 as she mentions the name of a deceased girl, Kim In-sook. The students are terrified when they hear the name, and rush out of the classroom when they see her talking to thin air. The only one left is Yoo-jin, who tells Eun-ju that Kim In-sook doesn't exist. Eun-ju takes another look at the seat and realizes that there's no name at seat number 29. Suddenly, Yoo-jin sees a figure on Eun-ju's back. Investigations soon rise as the other three bullies die in the same manner. Finally, Yoo-jin realizes that the spirit of Kim In-sook is possessing her. She was the one who killed all of those bullies, even though she doesn't remember doing it.
Eun-ju also senses a terrible force and unearthly presence surrounding Yoo-jin. Mr. Han, Yoo-jin's class adviser, decides to help out by consulting his friend on what is causing her to act strangely. Through hypnotism, they are able to see a vision of the past showing how Kim In-sook and her mother Chun-hee were brutally killed by the villagers, and before dying, they placed a curse that for generations to come, whoever left the village would die. As Chun-hee finally takes possession of Eun-ju's body, she exacts punishment on the people who wronged them, slaying the school's principal but sparing Mr. Han's life.
Not long after, Eun-ju gives birth to a girl and within that girl's body is the spirit of Kim In-sook. | revenge, suspenseful, cruelty, murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | Another "ghost seeking revenge" story set in a small Korean town.This movie has low ratings but the fact is, I managed to watch the entire thing through without getting bored.I don't really think this movie is all that scary.
I've been conditioned/used to Asian horror like Ringu and Ju-on so it might be scarier for those who aren't so used to this kind of horror.However, this movie was entertaining.
Its fast paced compared to most of the Asian horror out there and the story is somewhat interesting.
Dark horror revenge story, well directed, acted and entertaining, but nothing special.
Comes in the wake of other far eastern horror movies, and generally follows similar traits to them.
Story surrounds the horrific "suicides" of girls at a school in a Korean village, whilst bringing back memories of dark chapters in the communities past.As is the norm for Korean movies, probably the best in the world at the moment, the film is set in beautiful scenery whilst the direction and acting is surprisingly great also taking in the age of a number of the actors.
The story meanders and doesn't seem coherent, whilst the film also takes too much from others in the genre, e.g. the teenage girl with long hair who is the outsider (e.g. Ringu, Phone), broken families, ghosts, revenge etc...
At points it appeared to go for frights above all else, trying to outdo it peers, but really its the storyline that is usually the most important point of the Far Eastern horror films.
When people from a small isolated village see their children die inexplicably one would expect great turmoil and a lot of interesting things happening.
Therefore everything in the movie seems shrunk, detached, to fit the budget.So, it's a nice film to watch for cultists and horror fans, but not a great movie, almost not a good one..
So if you like Asian horror, and you don't demand that every movie be Citizen Kane or whatever, then you should like this.
Being a big fan of Korean horror (Oldboy, I Saw the Devil, Hansel & Gretel etc.) I decided to look at a few lists of people's 'top 10 Korean horror movies' and found that a little obscure film, that I'd never heard of, called, "Bunshinsaba" was number 1 a lot of the time (or at least near the top).
However, I was disheartened to find that it had a low average score on IMDb, so I found it on Youtube (didn't want to risk buying it), hoping that IMDb was going to be proved wrong, but unfortunately it wasn't.Bunshinsaba was extremely disappointing.
I liked the creepy opening which immediately set the atmosphere and had me feeling for the main character, but after that it seemed to be incredibly rushed through so I found it hard to get into.
It relies on the long-haired white-face ghost were creepy in The Grudge and The Ring, but have become over-used in Japanese horror films, and now it seems the Korean's have started copying them.
There are also a range of recycled and over-used ideas in ghost films, you could count the clichés on your fingers: We've got the vengeful spirit, possession, exorcism, a secluded town etc.
There is also some exciting moments dotted around the film, I just wished it had been more original and had taken a slower and more meaningful approach.It also got a little too confusing at the end and I found myself, just leaning back and watching what unfolds without really knowing what's going on, because the film doesn't allow any time for the viewer to work it out.
As any other Asian movie you'll find the same girl with long hair coming over and over on the screen to frighten you with some acoustic bass and creepy sounds.
They should have modified the story and presented with some surprises as the basic idea of horror i.e. the woman with long hair fails here.
The theme is also the old lame revenge of ghost type which makes it just an average movie who might be able to frighten amateurs..
Pretty creepy South Korean horror film..
Yoo Jin was transferred back to a high school in her parents' hometown.Having a tough time dealing with her new surroundings,she puts a curse on four girls that tormented her.As each of them mysteriously burns to death,the school is thrown into a chaos.The mayor of the village throws fear into the entire town when he announced that Yoo Jin has called upon the spirits of a mother and daughter who were brutally killed in the village some thirty years back.He suggests that they drive Yoo Jin and her family out of the town.However mysterious deaths still occur...Admittedly the story of "Bunshinsaba" is highly unoriginal as it borrows heavily from "Ringu","Whispering Corridors" and "Into the Mirror",but there is enough creepiness to keep fans of Asian horror on the edge of their seats.The girls in high school uniforms are cute and the acting is decent.Se-eun Lee is stunningly beautiful with her big expressive eyes and soulful looks.The sequence which takes place on a barren highway at night is truly eerie."Bunshinsaba" is definitely quite derivative and uninspired,but if you like Asian spooky flicks give it a look.7 out of 10..
Who knows what's the trademark of almost all of the Asian horror movies?
Yes, you're right: a ghost or a spirit shaped as a girl(or a woman) with her long, dark hair over the face.
In small doses, at the right moment, usually associated with creepy sounds or eerie score, moving suddenly or with broken movements, those out-of-this-world presences have the power to scare to death the poor characters unfortunate enough to be in their path.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, in "Bunshinsaba" you have the longest presence on-screen of the aforementioned long-haired female ghosts in the entire Asian horror history.
"Bunshinsaba" is a horror movie, no doubt about it.
Unfortunately, if you want to be really scared, this is not the right movie..
Much like Ringu, Ju-on, Ryong, A Tale of two Sisters and about a thousand other Asian horror films, we have a female ghost with with thick-black hair pulled over her face exacting some kind of hellish retribution on hapless victims.What keeps this from simply disappearing underneath the mounds of similar films is a greater focus on story (specifically the who and why) and a couple creative death scenes.All around the filming is solid and most of the scare set-ups work pretty well.
Some of the characters are a little over-written/acted and the film looses focus moving toward the end, as if the movie is trying to cover too much ground to fast.A mostly enjoyable, if wholly forgettable, supernatural yarn.6/10.
This film basically transplants every single cliché of the genre and throws it into one big melting pot, slap on a big budget and glossy look, and expect people to fall for it.
If you're a clueless schmuck you'll be scared.If you've seen even ONE little Asian horror in the last 10 years, you'll liable to roll your eyes and think to yourself, "Geez, can't they even try to be a little more original?
Oh, look, the ghost has her long hair drooping over her head again.
And oh look, she's doing the 'slow look up to reveal her ghostly eyes' gag again."In fact, the whole movie consists of the ghost appearing with her hair over her face then slowly looking up to reveal her eyes while the director throws some "scary" music at you.
This was the 1st film I saw at Frightfest as part of the Glasgow film festival last week and it shows how un-original and uninspiring Asian horror films have become.The story is basically about 3 girls at school who are getting bullied and one of them has the bright idea to invoke the spirit of bunshinsaba from a ouija board, now there are no prizes for guessing what this bunshinsaba thing does to terrify people, you guessed it, yep - it's the old long dark hair, scary eyes routine again.It worked in Ju-on and also Ringu but I think we're all getting a bit tired of it now.I'd love to see an Asian horror film about killer dolls or something cause to be quite frank little girls with long dark hair don't scare me anymore.Avoid..
Arriving at a new boarding school, a schoolgirl becomes fed up with the bullying inflicted upon her by a group of classmates and plays with a spirit board hoping for revenge only to unleash the ravenous spirit of a long-dead student upon them and must save them before it's too late.This was an exceptionally enjoyable effort that really has a lot going for it.
From the opening boardgame where they play with the board in the brightly-lit red light where the ghost is released to the numerous scenes of the ghost appearing around the school to the tormentors resulting in not only the fantastic scene of the ghost encouraging the one victim to commit suicide in front of the rest of the school but also getting to see the various flashbacks to the past that show how the original girl was tormented and killed the bullies seeking revenge.
That is the rather fun part of this one as the various scenes showing the girl carrying out not only her revenge on the classmates as well as the several flashbacks that feature how the actions of the village affected the outcome of the future and set the curse into motion.
The idea of the boardgame causing the curse itself isn't all too original but the fact that there's plenty of stellar sequences here showing the atmosphere around the classroom which is handled rather nicely.
Not only does the events in the film's current time shown to interact with the events of the school-bound ghost legend from the past but the reaction of the students which furthers that connection quite nicely.
Among the few problems to be had here is the fact that the film really makes it quite hard to invest itself in this story based on the languid and unnecessarily slow pacing.
It's not until late in the film that the full extent of the ghosts' actions are revealed which is due to the second minor issue here with the film relying more on flashbacks to fulfill the story more than anything.
Bunshinsaba is your typical long-haired ghost-girl trope horror movie, that runs out of steam really fast.
I especially liked the opening, which wasted no time to get right to the premise of the movie.
Halfway through the film, it started to drag, and I just wanted the movie to end.
One of the movie's main problems, is that there are no stakes in the third act.
We're basically just watching the ghost kill a lot of characters that we don't like any way, with no means for the main characters of stopping her.
It's a shame, because the movie is well directed, well shot, and has great use of scene lighting.
Entry #3,946 in the "vengeful ghost girl with long black hair" genre.
A high school girl and one of her teachers become possessed by the angry spirits of a mother and daughter killed by villagers 30 years before.
The movie is handsomely produced and stylishly directed, but because this genre is getting so played out, there are few real scares and only a handful of effective scenes.
(I suppose, though, after being quite used to movies like Ringu, Ju-on, Phone, and the like, things like that really aren't scary.
So maybe some people would find it frightening.) I've seen both Phone and Nightmare, directed by Ahn as well, and I liked those better than Bunshinsaba- I wouldn't say Nightmare was very notable either, but Phone was very very good.
This Korean ghost revenge movie started off quickly and ended up with a solid, mysterious and intriguing first act.It was all down hill after that.The problem was the subject matter: ghost revenge.
Virtually nine out of ten Asian horror films have this same element as its foundation.
And why does every ghost have to have long hair that hides their face?
I know, the original foreign film is supposed to be better, but not this time - not by a long shot..
I really recommend it to people who like that feeling that something wrong is going on, and hate those "so called" horror movies with psychopaths running after teenagers.For those who like this film I also recommend Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness.
I don't understand how some people can compare this to Ju-On and Ringu, because, Ju-On makes no sense to me, and the little kid with a cats voice just makes me want to kill all Asian kids, it's simply annoying, and Ringu, although good, was only enjoyable by the fact that i was curious to know what was the tape all about...
This movie is so great,it too me a while to find it,but I did and it was so worth watching.This is the first Korean/Asian horror movie I seen and I'm starting to like it.Bunshinsaba is so amazing and slightly terrifying,because it seems realistic.The tag line is so true too.Bunshinsaba reminds me of when I was in 1st grade,but it goes really,terriblely wrong.The deaths are so creepy and just...whoa!You don't really know whats going on,but its such a build up to the end of the movie,then it ties it up,but it doesn't hit you until after its over...unless you pay attention of course.I totally recommend this movie!.
Yoo-jin(Se-eun Lee)is so enraged with female classmates, who have singled her out because of being an *outsider*, that she invokes a "Bunshinsaba" spell on a witch board, placing a curse on the four tormentors, drawing the vengeful spirits of a mother and daughter, Chun-hee & Kim in-sook, who were burned alive by a village mob after their role in the forced suicide of a bully.
When the girls all commit suicide by drowning a bag with gasoline before lighting it while on their heads, burning themselves alive due to the powerful hypnotic abilities of witch-ghost Chun-hee, the citizenry grows terrified and alarmed, believing that the 30-year old murder which bloodies the history of their town(..which occurred to Chun-hee and her blind daughter who were "psychically linked" at the hands of a mob of angry villagers who wanted them out of their area by any means necessary)has returned for payback.
In another alternating story-line, a new teacher, Miss Lee(Gyu-ri Kim)has taken a position in the turbulent school, with the powerful spirit of Chun-hee using her as a host for carrying out acts against potential threats like hypnotist/psychic Ho-kyeoung(Jeong-yun Choi)who has discovered past occurrences through the troubled Yoo-jin, after she was "put under".
Meanwhile, Chun-hee has special plans for Miss Lee once she rids herself of her enemies, those she hold responsible for the horrifying crimes against her and daughter Kim in-sook long ago.Standard story of vengeful spirit seeking supernatural revenge on those who wronged her in the past is technically well made, if rather average and predictable.
The ghost of Chun-hee, rearing her ugly face when her host is under hypnosis(..those "red-light hypnosis sessions" are particularly eerie, especially when Yoo-jin is under and her eyes blacken), is especially creepy.
He, as of now, has made films which are closely related thematically to oft-made Asian horror hits that are(..and have been)flooding the market for years now.
I do wish this film was titled something better because Bunshinsaba(..I watched it under the label "Witch Board:Bunshinsaba")really is only used to invoke the spirit, and isn't the focus of the story.
During the curse the girls are all told that whatever they do, keep their eyes closed at all times or the spirit will enter them.
It turns out that the spirit in Yu-jin is the spirit of a girl who had been killed by the villagers years ago in the same way.OK so this is another Asian ghost story so what makes this one different from the rest?
I really think that its time now that the whole girl with her hair over her face ghost was done away with now.
It has some reasonably effective scares here and there but it is just nothing new.The film does boast some lovely camera work.
Lots of great movement and nice angles make this a stunning film to watch and the acting is all pretty good.
The story line is all OK until about the hour mark where things start to get stale and a bit dull.This is a film that I would find hard to recommend.
To your casual horror fan I would say check it out, especially if you haven't seen to many Asian films.
But to anyone with a keen interest in the Asian horror film genre I would say only watch if you have to see every film that comes out of the continent as you wont find anything new here.5/10.
an extremely well done film though it gets complicating at times.
This movie is just awesome and entertaining from the start to the end credits.
This movie probably is as scary as shows such as the shutter but did not scare me as much as ringu.
However, this movie is really complicating somewhere around the middle and I have a hard time trying to figure out what was happening.
This is one of my Top 10 horror movies.
I love Asian horror movies.
Although it never gets original (so far (I'm talking about ghosts (long black hair covering the face and strange noises))).
Wonderful performances creepy soundtrack nice tense and scary girls - that's all what Asian horror has and thats all what you need to get frightened.
I thing it would have been better if they finished story tale with a "bad guy" (or should I say "bad girl") as a ghost not as a human killer.
"Bunshinsaba" is a great movie.
If you like Asian horror as much as I do then I give you 100% that you'll enjoy it. |
tt0030129 | A Feud There Was | The short begins with an establishing shot of a family stereotypical hillbillies, the Weavers, whose members are all lazy to the point of absurdity. The only thing that awakens the Weavers from their perpetual sloth is the opportunity to feud with their neighbors, the McCoys. After a musical number (then a staple of Merrie Melodies shorts) accompanied by a radio commercial (ostensibly over KFWB), the two families begin feuding, firing at each other with various semi-automatic weapons. At one point, a McCoy asks if there are any Weavers in the movie audience. One man, shown as a silhouette against the screen, answers in the affirmative and fires a shot at the McCoy.
In the midst of the fray, a yodeling, bulbous-nosed, domestic peace activist who is accompanied by church organ music each time he speaks, enters the feud zone on a motorscooter bearing the words "Elmer Fudd, Peace Maker", and goes to each side preaching peace and an end to the bloodshed, only to get shot in the back (non-fatally) by each family as he departs. When Fudd attempts once more to preach peace to both families from the boundary line, both sides get furious at him and open fire on the would-be peace maker together. When the smoke clears, only Elmer is left standing. He gives a final yodel and says "Good night, all!", and the Weaver in the movie audience yells "Good night!," taking one more shot at the star. | psychedelic, violence | train | wikipedia | Look out...here comes Roy Rogers yodeling for Eggbert/Elmer Fudd..
And count Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer and Hugh Farr among the "voices heard" in this 1938 cartoon, that has more then just the morphing of Egghead into Elmer Fudd as an attribute.Warner Bros owned a radio station in L.A. with the call letters of KFWB, so when a microphone with those call letters appears in this cartoon, it wasn't there by accident.
Among the performers appearing on KFWB in 1933-34 was a group known as The Pioneer Trio (also known as the Gold Star Rangers on the program sponsored by the Farley Clothing Company), comprised of Leonard Slye, Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer.
Fiddle player Hugh Farr joined them in late 1933-early 1934, and shortly after that staff announcer Harry Hall introduced the quartet as The Sons of the Pioneers, much to the surprise of The Pioneer Trio plus One. Halls explanation was that they all appeared too young to be pioneers but qualified as being sons of same, plus they were no longer a trio.
The first printed appearance of the Sons of the Pioneers name was in a newspaper radio log dated March 3, 1934.
The music in this cartoon begins with a trio yodel (Slye, Nolan and Spencer), followed by the instrumental "Arkansas Traveler" and then a short song that begins with..."Let's get out the shootin' irons"...with the voice and fiddle of Hugh Farr there along with the other three musicians.
And the entrances of Egghead (as Elmer Fudd-Peacemaker)are preceded by the yodeling voice of Leonard Slye.
Yes, we could write the name Roy Rogers instead of Slye, but since Slye was not using the name of Roy Rogers when the music heard in this film was first recorded, we tend to side with the remaining few who prefer historical accuracy in film credits.
But...AHA!...
says the WB cartoon lovers (count me in that group) who can read release dates, this cartoon was released on September 24,1938 and Leonard Slye had been renamed Roy Rogers by Republic Pictures Corporation back in 1937.But...AHA...replies I (without an exclamation mark, which ranks second only to the word "Awesome" as a tiresome overdone exercise),read the small print above that states..."when this music was first recorded." You can bet your last dollar than when "A Feud There Was" was in the planning stage, Tex Avery and Carl Stallings weren't over at the Schlesinger Corral putting in a call to Roy Rogers to come over to the lot and record some music and, by the way, bring the Sons of the Pioneers...uh...wait...just bring Tim Spencer, Hugh Farr and Bob Nolan and leave Pat Brady, Karl Farr and Lloyd Perryman over at Columbia to back up Donald Grayson.
We don't want to make Harry Cohn mad, and Leon ain't going to pay for Roy Rogers and six Sons of the Pioneers for an eight-minute cartoon.No, the music heard here came from the first Standard Radio transcriptions ( mid-1934 with 102 songs featuring Slye, Nolan, Spencer and Hugh Farr ), owned by Gerald King, program director at KFWB, who had his own moonlighting company on the side.
The second and third transcription series were made after Karl Farr joined the group and completed the original quintet.
And Leonard Slye left the group in 1937, signed a contract with Republic and had his billing name changed to Roy Rogers, and was replaced as a member of The Sons of the Pioneers in October, 1937 by Pat Brady.
We'd like to add Slye, Nolan, Spencer and Farr as uncredited voices to this cartoon, but we'd have to use the name Roy Rogers to do so, and would not be allowed to,since he was uncredited, add the attribute (as Leonard Slye), so we'll leave that to be done by those less picky regarding historical accuracy in cast listings.
Did the four-member Sons of the Pioneers get paid for their work in this cartoon?Of course not.
They had already sold all rights to their KFWB and Standard Transcriptions to Gerald King, for a measly $600.Did they even know, in 1938, their music and voices were used in this cartoon?Not unless one of them caught the cartoon on original release, and told the others they didn't.
For other uncredited music by the Sons of the Pioneers in cartoons, see 1935's "Bronco Buster" from Walter Lantz and Universal..
A very entertaining feud.
Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.Also have much admiration for Tex Avery, an animation genius whose best cartoons are animated masterpieces and some of the best cartoons ever made by anybody.
'A Feud There Was' is not an Avery masterpiece, compared to a lot of Avery cartoons it's fairly tame and lacks somewhat the wild wackiness and ahead-of-its-time edge that can be found in his prime years (the 1940s).
Elmer, or Egghead here, is not as appealingly designed and his personality has not fully evolved yet, love his good intentions but he is slightly on the bland side.Having said that, 'A Feud There Was' is generally a good representation of what Avery is all about and what makes his work so appealing.
It's very well made and a lot of fun while also having a seriousness that doesn't jar at all.The animation is excellent, very rich in colour, the backgrounds have meticulously good detail and the characters are very well drawn and natural in movement.
One of the best things about 'A Feud There Was' is the incredibly catchy and infectious music that gives the cartoon so much verve.Can't fault Avery, whose unmistakable and unlike-any-other style is all over, nor the dynamic voice acting (especially from the peerless Mel Blanc) and the numerous very engaging support characters.It's well done in the humour and while the story doesn't break new ground it's lively in pace and easy to engage with.To conclude, very entertaining and well made though Avery is not at his best.
8/10 Bethany Cox. The changing of Egghead.
This short is, so far as I'm aware, the first (and only) time Egghead is called Elmer.
The similarities between the two are peripheral but notable: style of dress, a lack of hair, etc.
At some point, Egghead stopped appearing and Elmer started getting paired off with Bugs and Daffy instead.
Was it a deliberate decision?
Possibly.
Egghead was a useful, but limited, character.
It makes sense that Egghead morphed into Elmer.
This cartoon is a hilarious collection of bits strung together within a framing device loose enough to permit the gags but tangible enough to have a story, something which allowed Avery full rein while giving enough to the audience that they could follow along for the ride.
Well worth watching.
Recommended..
The first episode featuring the not-yet fully "evolved" Elmer Fudd..
The only reason this episode is worth watching is its historical value and brief peace theme.
As you may have read in the summary, this is Elmer's debut.
However, in this he is not yet quite Elmer Fudd.
Elmer Fudd evolved from a character called Egghead and that is what this Elmer Fudd resembles.The other good points of this episode are the animation, which is well done and the fact that Elmer Fudd is a "beautiful" peacemaker.* There is virtually nothing else about this short that makes it worthwhile, unless you like to see cowboys constantly shooting each other for no reason.
There was one "joke" that I found very sad, when a chicken looks proudly at her eggs and then they are shot, "Three days hard work, all shot to pieces", or something like that.I recommend this episode to anyone who likes to see unnecessary violence, or an Elmer Fudd pleading for peace.
I hope you enjoy this more than I did.*When I say beautiful, I mean he does not look beautiful, but the way he pleads for peace is beautiful.
I do not blame you if you do not understand, I have a very odd way of perceiving things.
a feud good men.
It's hard to tell whether or not "A Feud There Was" is making fun of rural people.
No doubt playing off of the whole Hatfield-McCoy conflict, it portrays two yokel families spending all day shooting at each other.
However, it's partly really interesting as the first ever appearance of the name Elmer Fudd (though he doesn't resemble the famous hunter whom we now know).
In this case, he's a peacemaker trying to get the two families to lay down their weapons.As I understand it, the men performing for what is presumably a radio audience are a group that included Roy Rogers.
But as someone who takes no interest in Roy Rogers, I just like to focus on the cartoon itself.
"AFTW" is something sure to please you.
That Tex Avery was really something else.The old gray hair ain't what it used to be.
Warner Bros.
desperately tries to warn a few thousand of We Americans .
. in the (Then) Far Future residing especially in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania NOT to vote for Red Commie KGB Chief Vlad "The Mad Russian" Putin's odoriferous Rump\Scents puppet ticket JUST BECAUSE all the Deplorable Rumpsters threaten to take to the streets with guns IF they are not awarded a so-called "Victory" in Rump's rigged election.
As the ever-clairvoyant Looney Tuners knew while they produced A FEUD THERE WAS, caving in to threats of violence NEVER results in LESS violence.
Warner Bros.' prophetic Animated Shorts Seers division accurately predict a 21st Century America bristling with multiple guns in EVERY crazy's hands (which, of course, is exactly what Putin wants--FOR NOW--as every U.S. citizen done in by another American is one less that his Russian forces will have to eliminate when the time comes).
Elmer Fudd makes his Looney Tunes debut here in the guise of "Peacemaker" Egghead, with Rodney King's lament on his lips, "Can't we all just get along?" Warner is urging us to reject this bogus pacifist plea with a resounding "Heck, NO!!" |
tt3677742 | Saturday Night Live: 40th Anniversary Special | The special followed the format of a typical Saturday Night Live episode, extended to 3½ hours instead of the usual 1½, and included a cold open, a monologue, sketches, a short film, commercial parodies, and musical performances. The sketches, most of which were revivals of sketches that appeared over the show's run, made reference to the show and its four decades on air, with the original cast members who appeared in those sketches reprising their roles along with numerous guest stars. A handful of commercial parodies, including "Colon Blow" and "Mom Jeans," reran as they originally appeared on the show.
Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake appeared in the cold open, performing a "History of Rap"-esque musical number referencing famous sketches from the show's history. Rachel Dratch and Molly Shannon appeared as Debbie Downer and Mary Katherine Gallagher, respectively.
Steve Martin performed the opening monologue, with featured appearances from Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Melissa McCarthy, Chris Rock, Peyton Manning, Miley Cyrus, Billy Crystal, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon, with the latter two briefly performing a duet of "I've Just Seen a Face."
Dan Aykroyd and Laraine Newman appeared during the "Super Bass-O-Matic 2150" sketch, referencing a sketch originally done during the show's first season.
Will Ferrell (as Alex Trebek), Darrell Hammond (as Sean Connery), Kate McKinnon (as Justin Bieber), Alec Baldwin (as Tony Bennett), Norm Macdonald (as Burt Reynolds), Taran Killam (as Christoph Waltz), Jim Carrey (as Matthew McConaughey), and Kenan Thompson (as Bill Cosby) appeared during the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch.
Pete Davidson and Leslie Jones introduced a montage featuring the auditions of current and former cast members, along with a few celebrities who never made the cast, including Jim Carrey, Stephen Colbert, Zach Galifianakis, and Kevin Hart.
Fred Armisen, Vanessa Bayer, Bradley Cooper, Bill Hader, Taran Killam, Laraine Newman (reprising her Sherry the Valley Girl character), David Spade, Cecily Strong, Taylor Swift, Kenan Thompson, Kerry Washington, Betty White, and Kristen Wiig appeared during the "The Californians/Total Bastard Airlines" sketch.
Emma Stone (as Roseanne Roseannadanna), Edward Norton (as Stefon), Bill Hader (also as Stefon), Seth Meyers, Melissa McCarthy (as Matt Foley), and Bobby Moynihan (as the Land Shark) appeared during Weekend Update, which was anchored by Jane Curtin, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler.
Norm Macdonald, Seth Meyers, Kevin Nealon, and Colin Quinn introduced a tribute to Chevy Chase, which also featured an appearance from Garrett Morris.
Maya Rudolph (as Beyoncé) and Martin Short introduced a musical medley featuring appearances by Fred Armisen and Kristen Wiig (as Garth & Kat), Ana Gasteyer and Will Ferrell (as The Culps), Joe Piscopo (as Frank Sinatra), Dana Carvey (as Derek Stevens), Adam Sandler (as Opera Man), Kenan Thompson and Jason Sudeikis (as DeAndre Cole and Vance from the What Up with That sketches, alongside Cecily Strong and Sasheer Zamata), Steve Martin (as King Tut), Bill Murray (as Nick The Lounge Singer, alongside Paul Shaffer), and Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi (as The Blues Brothers).
Jerry Seinfeld led the "Questions from the Audience" segment, which included cameos from Michael Douglas, John Goodman, James Franco, Larry David, Ellen Cleghorne, Dakota Johnson, Tim Meadows, Bob Odenkirk, and Sarah Palin.
Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis appeared during the "ESPN Classics" sketch (reprising their roles as Pete Twinkle and Greg Stink).
Chris Rock introduced a tribute to Eddie Murphy.
Bill Hader, Chris Parnell, Andy Samberg, and Adam Sandler appeared during the SNL Digital Short "That's When You Break", introduced by Zach Galifianakis.
Bill Murray introduced an In Memoriam tribute to deceased SNL cast and crew members (which also jokingly showed still-living Jon Lovitz; the camera then showed Lovitz's reaction) and an obligatory mention of Francisco Franco.
Mike Myers and Dana Carvey appeared in the Wayne's World sketch reprising their roles as Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar. The sketch also featured a cameo appearance by Kanye West.
Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson, Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning, and Louis C.K. introduced clips dedicated to New York City, politics, sports, and pre-recorded sketches, respectively.
The show included musical performances by:
Paul McCartney, introduced by Keith Richards, performed "Maybe I'm Amazed."
Miley Cyrus, introduced by Candice Bergen and Win Butler, performed "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover."
Kanye West, introduced by Christopher Walken, performed a medley of "Jesus Walks", "Only One", and "Wolves" (the latter with Sia and Vic Mensa).
Paul Simon, introduced by Jack White, performed "Still Crazy After All These Years." | comedy, humor, satire | train | wikipedia | Kinda like the Grammys, I do not like the Grammys, but if you like that style....
This special was like the Grammys.
If you like awkward opening musical numbers, odd introductions, people who look like they showed up to get a check and skits that sometimes hit and sometimes don't then you will like this.
I did not really understand how Paul McCartney or Miley Cyris ( maybe if Vanessa Bayer played her it would work).
There were so many years and sat members skipped over and when it had clips, they were too fast and not focused enough.
The time could have been spent very well, as part doc and part skits...with some new stuff added it.
But hey, at least Opera Man was there and Colon Blow too.
It has a little merit hence the 4 rating.
It should have been more of that and more cast members and less athletes, Michael Douglas, etc.
There was way too much filler..
I really liked it.
I haven't really seen many episodes of SNL since its kinda complicated when you live in Spain, but I do love actors like Aykroyd, Chase, Murray, Belushi, Ferrell, Carrey, Sandler...
So I've always guessed that I'd like this show.
I've been watching seasons 37-40 (the ones who are airing in Spanish TV) and also a few of the classic episodes and well I really liked it, and although I like Vanessa Bayer, Bill Hader, Colin Jost, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis or Seth Meyers I've always wanted to see my comedy heroes doing SNL stuff, and this was just what I needed, a nice reunion where they pay homage to the legends..
Obviously the "Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special" didn't take place on the actual 40th anniversary, but close enough.
I liked seeing the old clips - how can you not laugh yourself sick watching Chris Farley's motivational speaker skit?
- but I would've liked to see every single cast member as opposed so many guests.
Speaking of the guests, shouldn't they also have included Buck Henry (who apparently hosted almost a dozen times)?
The best segment was the "Celebrity Jeopardy" spoof.
It would've been fun to see the Wild and Crazy Guys or The Delicious Dish (of Schweddy Balls fame).In the end, it was an OK reunion.
It's a safe bet that former cast member Victoria Jackson, currently known for claiming that Obama's a "secret Muslim", won't get invited to any reunions..
The Missing.
Great Show but, why was Robin Williams not mentioned as one of the people that had died?
He was the Host 3 times as well as made 4 guest appearances.
He hosted Saturday Night Live on February 11, 1984, November 22, 1986, and January 23, 1988.
Williams also made cameo appearances on April 11, 1981 during the "Friends" miscellaneous sketch, on February 25, 1984 as the hockey player during the "Buddweiser Light" filmed commercial sketch, and on December 4, 2010 during the "What Up With That?" sketch.
On Saturday Night Live, Williams has been impersonated by Martin Short on the October 13, 1984 episode during the "Password" sketch and on the April 6, 1985 episode during the "A.D. 13 Part V: A New Beginning" sketch, by Jimmy Fallon on the December 16, 2000 episode during the "Celebrity Jeopardy!" sketch, and by Jon Hamm on the October 30, 2010 episode during the "Back To The Future 25th Anniversary DVD" filmed commercial sketch..
Three hours of Drivel.
Advertised as a reunion,one would assume that meant all the classic class of comedians coming back to do their old skits from the past 40 years...
maybe a gathering of all the US presidents , Eddie Murphy doing his Mr Rogers,or at least the Land Shark.Instead the viewers are subjected to a 3 hour long ad for the current series filled with "jokes" and "skits" by the recent cast members that are barely watchable.
Three full hours with poor acting,unfunny jokes, bad timing and terrible guest stars.
The true stars of Saturday Night Live were wasted as host roles,2 second flash backs,or merely sat in the audience cringing.
If you want to appreciate the 40 years of the show,watch reruns of the show from the 70's and 80's and pass on this drivel..
Not including Pedrad was very disappointing.
As an avid SNL fan since my teenage years, it was a very pleasant experience to revisit those old skits and see familiar characters on SNL.I laughed a lot, especially at the opening skit with Celebrity Jeopardy and at the very end with Wayne's World.Dennis Miller and Victoria Jackson weren't present at the reunion and it is perhaps because of their radical political engagement in the far right.
I believe that Lorne Michaels and the majority of the former and present cast members wouldn't appreciate working with individuals with bigoted views.
So it is understandable.
However, I don't understand why former cast member Nasim Pedrad was not included?
she was a talented and memorable comedian.
And that is exactly why I give it 5 stars out of 10..
Good but not great.
Overall a good show, with some expected goofs for a live show.
Kudos to Lorne Michaels for keeping SNL alive for 40 years and for Don Roy King for directing this show - with few exceptions.
The highlights were seeing many of the former SNL greats and former hosts back for short skits.
Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Chris Rock, and many others did a good job.
I'm not crazy about Miley Cyrus but her performance of Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" was great.
I expected more from Eddie Murphy and Kanye West should have been replaced by a recorded skit or two from the past or the Blues Brothers since his performance wasn't worth seeing and seemed out of place for this special.
Other that that bummer, the show was better than average and highly viewed but I can only rate it 7/10 compared to other specials I've seen..
I remember those days.
Emma Stone doing Gilda Radner's iconic Mr. Feder letter made me cry.
I loved Gilda Radner and a clip I've never seen again was a tribute song for a Rolling Stones party where she sang Gimme Mick, Gimme Mick.
Rock Me and Roll Me til I'm Sick.The Akroyd and Curtain news routine, "...no old sayings about what's behind a miserable failure..
Jane you ignorant ...."Blues Brothers, I Need You.Big Surprise, Miley Cyrus sings 50 ways to leave your lover.
Nice voice, When that girl gets to Vegas, I'm going.Loved it, remember the 70's and 80's..
A huge missed opportunity but still fun.
Whether you're tired of Saturday Night Live, a regular viewer or a casual one...Saturday Night Live is the definition of a comedy icon.
It has given birth to some of the most talented and amazing comedians of our generation.
There is hardly at least one person you could find who wouldn't recognize at least a few characters over the past forty years.
It has been awhile since I've watched the show regularly but I still mostly enjoy it.
It hasn't been at the top of its game for a very long time.
Still, some of my personal heroes in the comedy genre came from Saturday Night Live when it WAS at the top of its game and the idea of all of them coming home for a 40th Anniversary Special had me incredibly excited.
I expected many of them to re-enact some of their most famous skits.
This was really an opportunity for them to hit ratings gold from an ageing concept.
As a fan of many, many years I was so happy to see the familiar faces and the few skits re-enacted and the celebrities that came out.
I enjoyed every minute of the enormous three hour run time.
However, I still think they really, truly missed the mark.
I think they could have spent far more time simply doing those old skits, maybe telling stories about how things used to be and interacting with the new cast.Every one who you would expect to return does.
They return in various lengths and capacities and you do get to see some of their old skits but then some you would expect to see more of you don't.
Also the "new" skits are completely unnecessary.
The Californians as many have said is one of the worst skits I have ever seen...ever...in the history of comedy...ever.
It was atrocious, and long.
There were so many guests which is a good thing and yet there were too many because we didn't get enough time with the original cast members.
I don't think it was necessary to bring back celebrity hosts when these amazing comedians could stand on their own merit.
I love Alec Baldwin, Justin Timberlake, Jerry Seinfeld...and on and on and on but they were never cast members.
They didn't make this show famous.
I know Lorne Michaels is considered a god in Television and I'm sure he had every say in this and director Don Roy King has done many, many SNL specials but something was missed here.Wayne's World sketch was fantastic...it was amazing to see the two of them back together.
Weekend Update was great, Celebrity Jeopardy was great...Eddie Murphy's much hyped appearance was practically pointless.
I was so excited to see him come back but he has clearly no interest in being there.
Despite the brief appearance (and despite me saying celebrity guests were not necessary) I was elated to see Jack Nicholson come out!!
The legend himself has been in hiding for a very long time and rumouredly suffering from dementia but looked great and had a small introduction.
Long time fans of SNL should check this out because it is a fun little reunion but they really could have done so much more.
Certainly the best skits are the old ones but they are few and far between.
If you're a long time fan of Saturday Night Live then you'll simply love to see their faces.
See you at 60 SNL.
A Horrible Waste of Time.
Over an hour of commercials?.
In 3 hours (plus commercials) not enough flashback clips.
What was shown was shortened to almost nothing.
M.I.A. or barely shown: The original land shark?
Killer Bees?
Robin Williams?
Gilda?
The original Blues Bros?
Saumuri Deli & Cleaners?
Buck Henry?
Buck Henry?
"The Greek Diner" (No fries.
Chips.
No Coke.
Pepsi.) Only pieces of classic sketches.
For a far better viewing experience, buy or watch the "Best of SNL" discs.
Props to Eddie Murphy, though.
They wanted him to do a sketch defaming Bill Cosby and he refused.
Bill Murray looked bad but Chevy Chase looked terrible and extremely fat.
It is rumored that he is going to do a sequel to the "Vacation" series.
He better get in shape!
Nice to see Miley Cyrus with some clothes on, but she mumbled the lyrics to "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover".
Not enough music from Paul Schaffer and the SNL band.
Nice to see all the great musical guests.
Overall, most disappointing, way too long, and disjointed.
New sketches of Bass-O-Matic and Wayne's World were the best, but way too short a clip of Patrick Swayze and Chis Farley as the Chippindale dancers.
The 3rd NBC "live spectacular" in 3 years to lay an egg, and this one wasn't even a Broadway musical remake! |
tt0062130 | La più grande rapina del west | A man dressed as a monk accompanied by a woman arrives to Middletown with a statue of St Absalom on a wagon. Jarret and his gang set fire to a hay wagon in the street and during the confusion they rob the bank, and place the gold coins inside the statue, which was parked by the window of the bank office. Then they ride off and disperse to avoid the pursuing posse.
The monk and his companion proceed with the statue to the insignificant town of Poorlands. Later the gang reconvenes there. When the sheriff tries to telegraph his suspicions he is shot, and Jarret takes control of the town and puts a guard with the telegraph operator to make sure that all incoming messages are acknowledged.
The man in monk clothes, who is called ”the priest” (Il Santo) objects that killings were not part of the agreement. Jarret’s plan, however, is to await an Indian guide who knows the way through the desert, and then kill everybody and burn the town to get rid of witnesses. However the guide does not arrive – because he was killed earlier in a fight with the Priest who had tried to pay him not to come. The Priest secretly continues a liaison with Jarret’s woman Mara (the woman on the wagon) and plans to take the gold. He thus supports Jarret against gang members who want it to be divided at once.
Billy Rhum, the brother of the sheriff, is locked up in jail but slips out, first to bury the body of his brother, and next to save his friend Mark, who has been caught trying to go for help. When the furious Jarret has all the citizens dragged out into the street and starts shooting people the telegraph operator attempts to send an alarm and is shot. ”The priest” (who no longer dress' as one) has become aware of Billy’s outings and offers him money to kill Jarret. When the gang check the statue they find stones instead of gold.
Now the posse approaches to investigate why the town telegraph has ceased acknowledging. All men are locked in and women, children and gang members appear as attending the funeral of the telegraph operator. Suddenly Billy Rhum appears as the sheriff, and suggests that the men of the town – that is Jarret and the gang – join the posse. When they have left, he offers the Priest to leave with Mara, but the two start a shoot-out over the money. They are joined first by Jarret and then by his men, who have turned back covered by the dust of the posse. Billy offers part of the gold to Jarret or the Priest if they kill the other. The rest of the gang perish in the fight and after Priest has saved Billy they join forces, while Mara and Billy’s girl friend Jenny fight over a gun in the saloon. Jarred barricades himself in the sheriff office and finds the gold hidden in boxes with dynamite. He starts throwing dynamite at his foes, but the whole office explodes and sends the gold raining over the citizens. | western, violence | train | wikipedia | Mediocre Italian Western with Spaghetti all star cast and full of shots , action and fun. Acceptable but middling Western with typical Spaghetti actors as Gerge Hilton and Hunt Powers . A good example of Latino western genre from Italia . It deals with a nasty band under Jarret (Walter Barnes) , being formed by Santo ( Jack Betts or Hunt Powers) , his girlfriend (Sarah Ross) and other hoodlums (Rick Boyd , Salvatore Borghese , Mario Brega). Santo poses as a fake monk , including the San Bernardo's sculpture, to carry out the bank heist . They are wanted ¨Dead or alive¨ , north of the border . The gang arrives in Porland , a little town now dominated by Jarret and his underlings . After robbing they wait for an Indio who is supposed to lead them across the desert to Mexico . The false priest who has his own schemes murders Indio so that the outlaws can't leave the little town . They kill a good Sheriff (Enzo Fiermote) who is Billy's (George Hilton of Sartana series ) brother . Then Billy who is in prison hears his brother was murdered in a gun-down . Billy goes out to avenge his brother and breaks out from jail by a secret corridor to encounter brother's assassin . As Billy , helped by Mark (Jeff Cameron), seeks vengeance against Jarret , while his hoodlums kill , mistreat and harass townspeople . Two nasties attempt to rape a young girl (Katia Christine) but she is helped by Santo . At the end takes places a spectacular gun-down between Billy , Santo , both of whom join forces , against Jarret and his hoodlums .Offbeat Spaghetti Western that follows the Sergio Leone wake , but it is also proceeded in American models . It's an exciting western with breathtaking gunfight between the protagonist George Hilton against the heartless Walter Barnes and his hoodlums . George Hilton and Jack Betts as starring couple are fine, they ravage the screen, shoot , hit and run and kill . This movie is a lot of fun to watch . It's an acceptable story with a touch of peculiarity, some likable characters, and an amazing music score . The picture is a tale of justice and revenge, as a man escapes after his prison and looks for vendetta . The basic plot is ordinary spaghetti western fare, but what makes this movie stand out is its style . atmospheric musical score by Luis Bacalov who subsequently won Academy Award for ¨The Postman and Pablo Neruda¨, but here he rips off from Ennio Morricone's Once upon a time in America¨ . Badly photographed , the picture deserves a necessary remastering , as the film-copy is worn-out . Appears as secondaries the habitual in Italian Western such as Rick Boyd , Luciano Rossi, Bento Stefanelli, Umberto Raho ; Mario Brega , Sergio Leone's customary , and the always sympathetic Salvatore Borghese ; furthermore a Eurotrash Goddess as Erika Blanc as Saloon girl. The film packs violence , shootouts , high body-count and it's fast moving and quite entertaining . There is plenty of action in the movie , guaranteeing some shoot'em up , cat-fights between Sarah Ross and Erika Blanc , brawls or stunts every few minutes. There is a very odd implementation of shots in the camera work during some particular scenes as the film approaches its climax , as in the final gunfights full of shots and explosions and of course lots of zooms . The movie gets the usual Western issues, such as avengers antiheroes , violent facing off , exaggerated baddies , soundtrack with Morricone influence , among them . The sense of pacing is such that his film can be counted on to move quickly and smoothly . Good production design creating an excellent scenario with luminous outdoors, dirty and rocky landscapes under a glimmer sun and fine sets . Interior scenes filmed in Italy , Elios Studios and outdoor sequences with barren exteriors filmed in Almeria , Spain , as usual . This motion picture is professionally directed by Maurizio Luzidi . Although Maurizo couldn't be deemed an "A"-list director, his movies had a professionalism and a verve that many of those made by his fellow B directors lacked . He was a fine editor and also filmed detective thrillers , Giallo , comedy and even a horror film or two . He directed two Western more as ¨Saddle tramps¨ with Bud Spencer and ¨Pecos¨ with Robert Woods , and even made films with international cast as ¨Sweet people¨ with Roger Moore and Stacy Keach and ¨The last chance¨ with Elli Wallach and Ursula Andress . His greatest conquest was the edition of ¨Don Quijote¨ by Orson Welles . Rating : 5,5 . Acceptable , passable but average .. Do we need a real plot?. A gang under Jarret (Walter Barnes) robs a bank and is helped by Santo, a monk. After the robbery they wait for the native Indio who is supposed to lead them through the desert to Mexico. Santo who has his own plans kills Indio so that the bandits can't leave the town. That's the end of the plot and more or less the start of the film. Now the bad guys mostly kill each other with the exception of those killed by Billy (George Hilton) who is the brother of the killed sheriff and imprisoned for drinking. Hilton and Betts aren't bad but the rest of the cast hardly deserves to be mentioned. The muddle that is going on once on a while shifts into comedic waters which are soon left again.Score is mediocre, sets are average at best. The really many bonus scenes on the DVD are symptom of heavy editing. It seems that every country got a slightly different version. The German DVD is acceptable for the low price.4 / 10 (reviewed for the sake to have a review). Not very well done at all. I normally love spaghetti westerns, but I have to admit that this one was kind of tough to sit through. It has an acceptable opening sequence, kind of comic in nature, and is followed by a weirdly comic (but infectious) opening credits song. However, just about all of what follows is done in a very serious tone. I could have lived with that change in tone had this seriousness been well done, but it really isn't. What follows is a rapid introduction of new characters and motivations that had me downright confused. It also didn't help that there is almost no action until the climatic sequence, which contributes heavily to the movie's main flaw of being extremely boring. Even if you are a fan of George Hilton, this is one pasta western that you'd be better off skipping.. Hallelujah For George Hilton!. Fake monk Hunt Powers travels around with a hollow wooden saint, filling it with stolen loot from elaborately staged bank robberies. Meanwhile, slacker George Hilton fistfights for fun and free drinks. When Powers' gang kills Hilton's sheriff brother and takes over the town, he's forced to take them on with help from Powers himself!Things start off on a comedic note, before dramatically shifting to a darker, more violent tone, once the villains begin their standoff, then back to comedy in the last minute. It's tone is pretty uneven, to say the least.On a whole though, there's plenty of action and suspense, with a few neat story touches here and there and some familiar European faces like Mario Brega and Erika Blanc.You really can't go wrong with a western starring George Hilton. He has the right spirit, charisma, timing, and physicality to make just about anything he's in worth watching. |
tt0913425 | Los abrazos rotos | "Harry Caine" is a blind writer who shares his life with his agent Judit and her adult son, Diego. Slowly, events in the present begin to bring back memories of the past. Harry hears that millionaire Ernesto Martel has died; a young filmmaker, Ray X, appears and turns out to be Martel's son, Ernesto, Jr. After Diego is hospitalized for an accidental drug overdose in a Madrid nightclub, Harry collects Diego from the hospital and looks after him to avoid worrying his traveling mother. The main storyline is told in flashback as Harry reluctantly tells Diego a tragic tale of fate, jealousy, abuse of power, betrayal, and guilt.
The first flashback is to 1992, which introduces Magdalena "Lena" Rivero, Martel's beautiful young secretary, an aspiring actress. She becomes close to Martel, a millionaire financier, in order to find the money to help meet her dying father's medical bills. By 1994, she has become Martel's mistress. At this time, Harry is still living under his real name, Mateo Blanco, a well-respected film director. Martel is excessively possessive of Lena, but she is determined to become an actress and manages to win the main role in Blanco's film Chicas y maletas (Girls and Suitcases) by bringing Martel in as financier/producer. (The fictional film is similar to Almodóvar's 1988 release, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, except that the Shiite terrorists have been replaced by a cocaine dealer; several of the cast of the previous film appear in the fictional one.) Martel spies on Lena and Mateo by sending his inhibited, effeminate gay son, Ernesto, Jr., to videotape the production of the film, ostensibly for a "making of" feature, then hiring a lip-reader to interpret the conversations. Martel, seething with jealousy, screens the videos as the lip-reader narrates the furtive whispers of Lena and Mateo's passionate affair.
Furious, Martel confronts Lena, and when she threatens to leave him he pushes her down the stairs. But when she survives the fall, he relents and nurses her back to health. The filming completed, Lena and Blanco escape Martel's hold and go on holiday to Lanzarote. Lena takes a job as a hotel receptionist to pass the time. When she and Blanco read in El País that Chicas y maletas has received a terrible critical reception, likely the end of Blanco's directing career, they determine to start over together far from Madrid. Fate intervenes when Blanco is seriously injured and Lena is killed in a car accident, which ironically is immortalized by Ernesto Jr., who has been trailing them with his camcorder. Mateo loses his sight permanently. Judit, his long-time production assistant, and an 8-year-old Diego arrive to help Blanco pick up the pieces and return to Madrid, where he eventually writes screenplays in braille under the pseudonym Harry Caine, represented by his agent, Judit.
The story picks up where it began in 2008: Harry shares his birthday in a bar with Judit and Diego. Judit becomes drunk on gin and, stricken with guilt, confesses to Harry that she sold out to Martel in 1994 because of her fury at Harry for abandoning the film to run away with Lena; she also tells him of her involvement in providing Martel the phone number of the hotel in Lanzarote where Lena and Mateo were hiding. She confirms that Martel sabotaged the release of Chicas y maletas by using the worst take from each scene in order to destroy Mateo's reputation. The next morning she reveals to Diego that Harry is actually his father, a fact both men were unaware of. Having exorcised some of his demons, Harry decides to return to his life as Mateo Blanco. Though believed lost, the original reels of Chicas y maletas and Ernesto Jr.'s camcorder footage are recovered: Judit had ignored Martel's order to destroy them and instead hid them away. Mateo and Diego re-edit the film for its long-delayed release as the director envisioned it. | revenge, neo noir, realism, romantic, melodrama | train | wikipedia | In Madrid , Harry Caine (Luis Homar) is a blind screenwriter and ex-filmmaker , long time ago was still known by his real name , Mateo Blanco , he is helped by Judit (Blanca Portillo) and her son Diego (Navas) .
The main cast is frankly extraordinary , as Luís Homar as a blind writer who reaches this moment in time , but the sad past returns ; Penélope Cruz as the gorgeous Lena ; and José Luis Gómez as the jealous and obsessive Ernesto.
The motion picture was well directed by Pedrro Almodóvar , considered to be the most internationally acclaimed Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel .He often uses symbolism and metaphorical techniques to portray circular storylines .His films often portrays strong female characters and transsexuals and he has directed one Oscar nominated performance: Penélope Cruz in Volver (2006) .
With the release of his 17th feature film, "Los Abrazos Rotos" (Broken Embraces) Almodovár tells the tale of a blind film director (Lluis Omar) and how he came to lose not only his sight, but also the love of his life (Penelope Cruz).
Almodovar keeps making the exact same films year after year.The "hero" of Broken Embraces is a Spanish screenwriter (Lluis Homar, who played the older priest in Bad Education) who calls himself Harry Caine (a mixture of fictional character Harry Palmer and the actor playing him, Michael Caine, or possibly a play on how Italians and Spaniards phonetically pronounce the English word "hurricane").
As the mystery surrounding his past unravels, flashbacks are used to depict a "happier" time, when he could still see, was known as Mateo Blanco and tried to make his last film, on the set of which he met and fell in love with actress Lena (Penélope Cruz), who unfortunately was involved with another, more powerful man...It's easy to see why people choose to dislike the film: they're right, there's nothing really original in the screenplay (the "solution" to the mystery is easy to guess), in fact Almodovar seems to be going on autopilot, hitting the melodrama button without bothering to make sure he's doing it the right way.
But that doesn't mean he never does a good job: visually, Broken Embraces is as enchanting as Volver, and if there's one thing the director hardly ever gets wrong, it's casting: Penélope Cruz is beautiful and convincingly vulnerable at the same time, Homar elicits enough sympathy as Mateo/Harry, and the "villain" of the piece (José Luis Gomez) is acceptably solid.As for the self-referential streak in Almodovar's production (there's at least one in-joke in every film), he really hits gold this time, with fake footage of Mateo's lost film coming off as a clever pastiche of earlier hit Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, which starred his other muse Carmen Maura.
With the support of a reader of lips, the jealous and obsessive Martel daily falls each step of Lena with tragic consequences for the couple of lovers."Los Abrazos Partidos" is another magnificent film of the talented Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who is among my favorite contemporary directors.
You can still find a couple movie mistakes in anachronisms or factual errors -like mixing GBH and MDMA liquid drugs one after another, which will cause to golden hit and kills you, instead of giving you a girlishly fainting- yet the plot has no serious flaw as far as I realize.Mainly together with 4 supporting actors and actresses, the film drew 6 different schemes for each character.
A now blind writer remembers his past as a director with a different name who had a great love affair with his leading lady (Penelope Cruz, beautiful and wonderful as always), much to the fury of her powerful, industrialist sugar-daddy.
Pedro Almodovar's latest, "Broken Embraces," is like a high-class telenovela for the art-house crowd.Its love triangle - involving a film director (Lluis Homar), his gorgeous lead actress (Penelope Cruz) and her elderly, abusive boyfriend (Jose Luis Gomez) who's financing the film on which they're working - spans the period from 1994 to 2008.
The intricately plotted narrative unravels like a conventional mystery story, with clues being dropped in at key moments and character connections and motivations becoming ever more clearly defined as the movie goes on.This isn't prime Almodovar, by any means, but the customary florid melodrama, color-rich palette and elegant direction make it a worthy addition to the director's oeuvre..
In warm saturated colors and touches of French film noir, Almodovar shows one tragic yet optimistic tale of a blind screenwriter/director who falls in love with his leading actress.When the end credits began to roll, I was still in the movie not wanting out.
Added to that list is now "Los abrazos rotos" ("Broken Embraces"), focusing on a man's coming to terms with the relationships that he has had with people.The main character is writer Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), who has been going by the name Harry Caine ever since he lost his sight.
when it comes to Pedro Almodovar's cinema there's always an ocean of red and black combination.and of course Penelope Cruz beauty.as she ages it's like she gets more beautiful and dominates the silver screen.I find story telling a bit in a hurry.The crossings between events could be slower not sharp.there are some Hitchcockian moments like when two cars go one after another with headlights and the moment when Ernesto pushes Lena.director makes you feel like you are there among the characters but when director gets you out of there with scenes from above it's like you are dragged out of movie.towards the end plot gets unnecessarily complicated.do we really need to know that Mateo is Diego's true father?
This film is about a movie director's healing and closure for a tragedy that happened years earlier."Broken Embraces" is visually appealing to look at, as every scene is thoughtfully composed.
Pedro Almodóvar is a brilliant director and, with the exception of La Mala Educación, I have liked his films very much, mainly because of their realism, which feels as a complaint against humanity, instead of the simple and hollow entertainment we are accustomed to see in Hollywood cinema.Now, with the magnificent Broken Embraces, I think Almodóvar has made his best film to date.Almodóvar's direction in this film is full of passion, and his precise work is mostly noticed on the extraordinary performances from the cast.Penélope Cruz is truly amazing, and the same applies to Lluís Homar.José Luis Gómez and Blanca Portillo also bring perfect works.I also enjoyed the references Almodóvar made to various classics of worldwide cinema very much.The references I am talking about are not only found on the story (which rounds on the world of cinema), but also on naughty moments which duplicate famous scenes from classic films (I recognized homages to directors Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and Luis Buñuel).However, Broken Embraces is not only a "greatest hits".Those homages are perfectly integrated to the phenomenal screenplay, which has a lot of impact and intensity.Broken Embraces is a true masterpiece, and it deserves a very enthusiastic recommendation, because this is one of those gems the seventh art brings to us on some occasions.I think this is Almodóvar's most mature and polished work to date, and I am very interested in seeing how his career will follow after this extraordinary film..
Broken Embraces felt like an altogether more restrained and toned down affair.The usual Almodovar themes of love, sex and death are revisited in this film and there are some beautifully written and acted scenes around all three of these subjects.While Penelope Cruz shone in the role of Lena, it was,unusually for a Pedro film, a male lead that stood out for me - Lluis Homer as Mateo / Harry was strong, credible and engrossing throughout.A strong cast in support with excellent performances from Blanco Portillo as Judit and Tamer Noves notable as Diego, Judit's son.There were a couple of points in the film where I felt that we were building up to the conclusion, particularly after the scenes in Lanzarote only for the film to press on for a number of additional scenes.
This, however, doesn't suit the rich old Martel, who has Lena against her better judgment as his mistress, and only agrees to let her star in the movie if he gets to be producer.That and, so it goes, having his nebbish would-be-Peeping-Tom-with-a-camera son follow Mateo and Lena around behind the scenes to tape every move - which is, of course, an intense affair blooming between star and director.
There's a lot that Cruz can do with Lena and she makes all the wise choices as she makes her one of Almodovar's most vulnerable but strong-minded and loving women in his films.Broken Embraces is about, as they say, love lost and a haunted past, and every moment is believable even as we might question what is really going on or being revealed.
But Harry Caine had a previous life, in this other life he was a successful movie director and his name was Mateo Blanco.The movie is essentially a continuous flashback showing what happen in this other life and why Mateo started to live a different life and became Harry Caine.This Spanish thriller-noir is interesting,the story is quite engaging and original and what setting, if not movie sets, would be more appropriated for a story like this to take place.Here you'll see love,lust,obsession,vengeance, all this wrapped into a nicely done thriller.And I wonder if this isn't, as well, a little homage to film-making by Almodóvar.The cinematography is great and the movie was well acted,specially the lovely Penélopez Cruz who delivered a great performance.Lluís Homar shined as well.
People die and are reborn or change identities, and it's all fun, more or less, and gorgeous and shallow and rooted in a mix of genre plots of bygone decades, with references to Douglas Sirk and Jules Dassin, among others.There's the theme of "duplication" and a "noir" triangle, and a woman thrown down a marble staircase as in 'Leave Her to Heaven' and 'Kiss of Death.' And there are references to Minelli and Billy Wilder, 'Some Come Running' and 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' and Giuietta Massina and 'La Strada.' We know all these are in there because Almodóvar says so in the press notes -- though a page seems to be missing.Martel's death starts the plot rolling, and Harry/s former production director Judit (Blanca Portillo), who will wear out her welcome later, seems very upset at this news.
And it seems Ernesto Senior was onto the fact that Lena wasn't just working for Mateo as star of his film, 'Girls and Suitcases' (it sounds funnier in Spanish, 'Chicas y maletas') but was messing around with him, as a lip reader (Lola Duenas) revealed to the old man when he watched his son's surveillance videos.Almódovar has a sense of humor.
Blind man and former director Harry Caine (Homar) recites his last days before his blindness when he was promising another film production.After being captivated by Volver and All about my mother, I was inclined to try this other dramatic drama from renowned family drama from a master of the genre Pedro Almodovar, and again the famous Oscar winner dives deep within the confines of supposed happy marriages and creates a dramatic but not too soap styling film that produces eccentric performances and epitomises the nature of the lives and issues of family members.Almodovar's regular star Penelope Cruz is once more elaborate and dramatic in her showcasing of a young woman desperate to succeed as an actress but wishing and desiring for a happy life emotionally from her husband.
There is a tendency to be drawn right to the centre of his stories and whilst the character attachment isn't as precise as say Volver there is an emotional hard hitter in the final third.Performances from Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo et all are all enough to develop the plot in a strong and meaningful way that generates sadness but also an attached captivation within a troubled love story.There are your typical twists and intrigue as typical director and whilst if you watch too many of his films there is a slight feeling of repetition but there is no questioning this 2009 picture fulfils its purposes as a drama and a class act to entertain, shock and project important life issues to its viewers..
And again, it stars Penelope Cruz, whom he starred in "Volver." Instead of channeling Sophia Loren this time, for the purposes of the film within a film, she's like Audrey Hepburn.A blind screenwriter, Harry Caine (Lluís Homar), lives in Madrid and is helped in his daily activities by Judit and her son, Diego, whom he has known for years.When he learns of that businessman Ernesto Martel has died, it brings him back to the past.In the 1990s and before he was blinded, Harry went under his real name of Mateo Blanco and worked as a director.
Harry Caine, the blind alter ego of former film director Mateo Blanco (Lluís Homar), retells the story of his one true love Lena (Penélope Cruz).
This revelation actually brought me to think, that something similar must have happened to "Broken Embraces", a movie plodding at a snail's pace with side events seemingly attached to ruthlessly extend runtime and featuring some terrible performances, especially by Blanca Portillo (who plays Mateo's / Harry's agent) and Rubén Ochandiano.
The performance by Penelope Cruz is outstanding and yet her role is not the center of attention, instead, the entire cast plays an important role within the plot and each actor delivers a perfect execution of their character.Los Abrazos Rotos follows the same theme about characters dealing with their past that we have seen in Almodovar's recent films.
In fact, It is the ability to create a trademark movie type and yet give the viewer something new and original with every new creation that make Almodovar the film genius that he is considered.Los Abrazos Rotos is a near perfect union of an intriguing plot, outstanding character development, beautiful cinematography, complex screenplay, and superb acting, just what we've come to expect from Almodovar..
Penélope Cruz is extraordinarily fine as Lena, the female crux of the conflicts, Lluís Homar is the central writer director Mateo Blanco / Harry Caine, Blanca Portillo is the important but enigmatic Judit García, José Luis Gómez plays the center of evil Ernesto Martel, and the rest of the cast is also filled with fine actors.
Mateo Blanco (Luís Homar) is a film director who is blind from an accident and since his career has been lost he too loses his name and now goes by 'Harry Caine.' He still employs a personal assistant and publicist Judit (Blanca Portillo) who takes care of him , his household and business transactions along with her adult son Diego (Tamar Novas).
The story concerns a once successful film director turned writer who was originally known as Mateo Blanco (played by Luis Homar),who, when blinded in an automobile accident,changed his name to Harry Caine.
Harry is telling his story about working with the beautiful actress, Lena (played by Penelope Cruz,who the camera is in love with, as well as the audience),who takes a real shine to Mateo (and vice versa),despite the fact that she is already married to an older,controlling man,Ernesto Martel (played by Spanish screen veteran,Jose Luis Gomez),who is also the executive producer of Mateo's most recent (and last) film, a comedy titled 'Girls & Suitcases'.
In Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces a now-blind filmmaker recounts his love affair with an old actress/muse (Penelope Cruz).
A character blinded by his love caresses an image from an old video camera projected on wall as if Almodóvar is also longing for the significance of his early years in film, wanting to regress.This is a great movie for students if not necessarily for the ages.
Almodovar one of the best storytellers out there with films under his belt like "Tell No One" and "Volver", has again touched on the essence of what makes us tick-including our dark sides.He uses his muse Penelope Cruz once again and she delivers over and over again.
Harry denies Ray's offer and Ray angrily leaves, leading us to believe a thriller is about to break out where Ray is a psycho-stalker.There are a few plot twists, flashbacks to 1992 where Harry (still with vision) is directing a film with Lena as his star, and a love triangle that turns violent but "Embraces" feels like Almodovar is going through a lot of trouble for what amounts to very little.
The constant time shifts, too many characters figuring into the plot (Mateo's manager and her son among them), the thriller elements that never materialize into anything exciting, the tragic love story, and secrets (most of which predictable) finally revealed are all supposed to figure into why Harry eventually made just a sub-par film.
The film is gorgeously shot, making Cruz, look sensational, and highlighting the power of romance in the second half.This movie will stay with you, probably making you wonder what you think is different this time, why it feels less like one of his previous efforts, and that is exactly the point: here is a master who doesn't shy away from trying new things, changing his approach, but never leaving his style behind, and he always trusts his audience they will understand where that the story is the most important part of the game..
They either fight for men or against them.Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), the main male character, is caught between a rock and a hard place, when he has to direct a film produced by Ernesto Martel, Penelope's Cruz lover, and staring Lena, whom Mateo is in love with.
Broken Embraces is a Spanish romantic thriller that features an ensemble cast consisting of many Pedro Almodóvar regulars such as Lluís Homar,who portrays as the blind screenwriter from Madrid called Harry Caine,who recalls his tragic love for Lena.She is played by Penélope Cruz, the deceased lead actress in his last directional feature Girls and Suitcases, who was also the mistress of a powerful, obsessive businessman. |
tt0442683 | Like Father Like Son | Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman who is focused so much on work that he neglects his wife, Midori, and son, Keita. Upon his return home one day, Midori tells him that the hospital where Keita was born needs to speak to them urgently, and Ryota senses trouble. After arriving at the hospital, the couple learns that their biological son Ryusei was switched with Keita after birth, and after DNA tests prove the error, they must now make a life-changing decision to either keep Keita, the boy they raised as their own son, or switch him for their biological son.
Ryota and Midori soon meet with the other couple, Yukari and Yudai Saiki, small town folks who lack the money and drive that Ryota possess, but have a better understanding of the importance of child and parent bonds. They share photos, and for the first time, Ryota and Midori see their biological son, Ryusei. After several meetings, they decide to switch children for one Saturday, which goes relatively well for both considering the tense situation. After several more meetings, they finally decide to exchange children. All four parents have difficulty accepting the loss of their previous sons, and the absence of the parents they used to know causes both boys to shut down emotionally, culminating in Ryusei running away from the Nonomiya's home and returning to the Saiki's. Ryota picks up Ryusei and brings him back home.
Ryota and Midori begin to bond with Ryusei, who is also warming up to them. However, while going through the photos on his camera, Ryota discovers a cache of photos of him, mostly sleeping, that Keita took, and he breaks down crying. The three return to the Saiki family so Ryota, who has now understood the errors of his ways, can see Keita, but Keita runs away from him. While following him, he apologizes to Keita, and the two make amends. The film ends with the two returning to the Saiki's, and both families entering the home. | murder | train | wikipedia | "Like Father Like Son" by Huw Nathan.
This is a gripping psychological thriller with plenty of twists and turns.There a number of impressive performances from Tara Fitzgerald (as the Detective Inspector),Jemma Redgrave(as the harassed mother), Robson Green (as the kindly school teacher, who finds himself fighting for both his career and reputation,due to the actions of others), Phil Davis (as the boy's imprisoned father) and the young boy who when faced by constant bullying and prejudice, feels compelled to make a stand.
The screenplay and direction has been well handled.
A young boy has been brought up in total ignorance of his origins with devastating consequences.
It transpires that several people have been carrying long harboured secrets, which begin to unravel following the unexpected sequence of events.
There are some powerful scenes such as the classroom debate by the provocative schoolgirl with her espousal of William Shakespeare's play "Othello" and when she corners her teacher following the end of the lesson by making an unexpected pass at him.
There some vivid scenes as the girl is followed into the woods..
Fascinating look at the human condition.
I thought this was quite an amazing production with many insights into the human condition.
It was a very fair and brave attempt to show the importance of the family and how in the end true love wins the day.
It is also a gripping thriller.
While it was a little edgy at times this film had many deep insights.
The son looks for an ideal father but his real father is a killer.
The teacher is falsely accused, but makes a stand.
The desire of the children is for that ideal family we all want.
The mother battles to save her son - it's the classic struggle between the forces of evil and good.
This is a brave movie because it doesn't fall prey to political correctness.
It could also be used as an educational tool to show that the desire of us all is for a stable family, the very building block of a healthy society..
Contrived but interesting.
British television programs are way more interesting than average American fare.
They tackle much more believable topics and have much better actors.
British actors have superior acting skills, and look like real people.
American actors look like actors, it is impossible to relate to plastic people.
This patticural movie doesn't belong to the top of British TV production.
The script tries very hard to outsmart itself, so in return becomes completely contrived.
The people are real, but the situation they are supposed to convey is not, hence the problem.
If you are able to get over the imperfections and occasional messiness of the script, you will be entertained, but not much more..
Nick Laughland.
I think that the one true star of Like Father Like son was the director Nick Laughland.He is an inspiring man and this drama really shows how much his talent should be recognised and awarded.
His ability to bring the best out of all the actors involved and create a magical environment where all the stories came together is truly a remarkable achievement.
This alone shows a man of true talent and although jam packed with stars he shone the brightest.With his ideas and knowledge and commendable vision he alone created a masterpiece!I am very much looking forward to another..
An overwrought British "Lifetime Movie.".
This program had everything going for it: a great cast, good production values, a good story line, but what it didn't have a good director and perhaps not a well-crafted screenplay.
It plays more like an overwrought soap opera than a tense thriller.
Emotions are overplayed and characters make unbelievable decisions in order keep the contrived tension going.
I was disappointed.
It could have been so much better with a better director and screenplay.
And I had a pretty good idea whodunnit fairly early in the story..
The secret cause of society's ills....
When an ITV murder thriller is this rife with heterosexual dysfunction, you know who the killer must be: The Homosexual.Who murdered the sexy blonde teenager (who's also a pathological liar) on her way home from school?
Let's see, could it be the mother who (against all common sense) is letting her teenaged son make unchaperoned visits to his serial-killer father behind bars?
Could it be the moody son, who's impressed by his dad's no-nonsense attitude about women?
Could it be the serial killer himself, who seems able to manipulate events from behind bars, a la Hannibal Lecter?
Could it be mom's boyfriend, a teacher at the school whose affair with an ex-student led to his wife's suicide?
Or could it be boyfriend's daughter, who goes blabbing everyone's secrets at school, causing untold misery?
No, it's none of these likely suspects.
It's...The Homosexual!The only mystery for the viewer is guessing who The Homosexual is.
Of course, it could be anybody, since the only characteristics of The Homosexual are shameful secrecy and a propensity to murder and otherwise make life complicated for the "normal" folks.
The Homosexual is the invisible root cause of society's ills; only when this person is exposed and eliminated can the fractured family come back together, and things can return to normal...whatever that is.As for the cast, both Jemma Redgrave and Robson Green are now officially past their sell-by dates.
The world could get by marvelously without ever seeing either on screen again, but as long as ITV has roles for The Aggrieved Woman and The Misunderstood Man, I suppose they'll keep coming back in movies like this one..
Secrets and Lies..
Everybody lies.That's a fact.Lies are the oil that keeps society running smoothly."How are you?
"I'm fine"Even when your life is going down the pan....that's part of the human condition.
But big lies are something else.Miss J.Redgrave and Mr R.Green,a teacher, are lovers with pasts they'd rather others didn't know about.Nothing particularly unusual in that perhaps,but these are Big Lies,life - threatening lies and when their secrets are revealed they are overtaken by events they have indirectly and unwittingly caused.
Miss Redgrave has told her son that his father was an RAF hero killed in the Gulf War.He wasn't,he was a serial killer.And is still alive.
Mr Robson has neglected to mention that his late wife hanged herself when he was discovered to have been having an affair with a former pupil.
When these deceptions are uncovered it is not surprising that their relationship is put under somewhat of a strain.
A teenage girl obsessed with Mr Green is found murdered.
Both he and Miss Redgrave's son become suspects.
Miss T.Fitzgerald is the detective with the task of untangling the web of deceit surrounding the killing.
What separates "Like father,like son" from the run - of - the - mill TV psych - thriller is the performances.
Miss J.Redgrave in particular is outstanding as the mother whose one nightmare is that her son should find out who his father is.
"Am I like him?" he asks innocently."yes",she says;and then he finds out the truth.Her ordered life spirals out of control.
Mr Green is more restrained than usual and all the better for it.
You can see him struggling with the fact that his past is about to become common knowledge and that it will hardly help him in his predicament.
Shown now in two episodes on "True Entertainment","Like father like son" is proof that there is TV gold to be found in the most unlikely places..
Where's the darn ending?.
I hate a movie that doesn't have an ending.
I don't care how good or bad the rest might be, I don't like to be left without a conclusion.
Such shows should insist upon a disclaimer ...
something like: The movie you are about to watch has either no ending or is so ambiguous as to not be conclusive.In the movie the last scene we are left with is Dee and Dominic having a bit of a row and he says, almost regretfully I thought, that it couldn't be him because the fingers were either that of a girl or a child.
THEN IT ENDS!
Well sure, the smoking gun, so to say, is in the hands of the Dee's son, but what about Dominic's daughter?
I actually thought we might discover it was her!
Anyway, unless you like inconclusive movies, then I'd avoid this one.
Otherwise, I thought the movie generally good. |
tt0070622 | Sssssss | The movie begins with Dr. Carl Stoner (Martin) selling a mysterious creature in a crate to a carnival owner. It is later discovered that the creature is actually part-man/part-snake, the result of one of Stoner's bizarre experiments. College student David Blake (Benedict) is hired as an assistant by Stoner, an ophiologist. It transpires that Stoner's previous assistant had mysteriously left town without telling anyone (Stoner explains that he had gone back home to attend to a sick relative).
Unbeknownst to David or anyone else, Stoner is a delusional man, convinced that humanity is doomed and is attempting to prepare for what he believes to be the inevitable by working out a method of transforming humans into reptiles that can survive pollution and any other ecological disaster that would wipe humanity out.
Stoner begins David on a course of injections, purportedly as a safeguard against being bitten by a snake in his lab. David's skin slowly starts to change and even peel like a snakeskin. He begins to have strange nightmares and goes into a coma when having dinner with Stoner and does not wake up until a few days later. He also begins to lose weight as well, but Stoner tells him those are side affects from the venom. David begins a romance with Stoner's daughter Kristina (Menzies), although her father objects and insists that she not have any sexual relations with him.
When David wakes up the next morning he looks in the mirror and looks in horror as he screams, so he calls Stoner. Later Dave, now fully dressed, is on the bed as he clenches his sheets with his hand as we see that his hand is grey and slightly scaly. Dr. Stoner arrives in the room and gives David a drink which he drinks but spits out. Inside the lab David, whose face is facing Stoner, begins to throb in confinement as Stoner tells David not to call the doctor as they will not know how to treat him. Then David begins to throb in pain feeling his stomach being twisted, so Stoner grabs another injection which David refuses to take, but Stoner says it will calm him, to which Stoner lifts his button shirt up and injects him. We also see scales on his chest. Meanwhile, a police officer arrives to inspect the property, and as David begins to get weaker, Stoner hides him in a corner, as he goes to take care of the officer. But David gets enough strength to walk to the window before resting his head, but when the officer arrives David lifts his head revealing his face to be green and very scaly, but before the officer can react Stoner knocks him out, and David walks from the window and collapses.
Kristina visits a carnival freak show and is horrified when she sees a bizarre "snake-man", whom she recognises as Stoner's previous assistant, Tim. Meanwhile, Stoner feeds the officer to his pet python. And as for David, David loses all strength from his legs and collapses and begins to move around like a snake before Stoner arrives.
Distraught, she races back home to save David who is currently mutating into a king cobra, brought about by the injections that Stoner has been giving him. Stoner is bitten by a real king cobra from his lab and dies, just as David's transformation is complete. Kristina arrives home and finds her father dead with the real cobra next to him. The police then arrive and shoot the king cobra before heading to the lab where a mongoose is attacking David's neck, attempting to kill him. But the police do not have a clear shot, and as Kristina screams David's name, the movie ends abruptly, leaving their fates uncertain. | revenge, cult, murder | train | wikipedia | A doctor who specializes in snakes develops a way to turn a human being into a king cobra!
Sssssss (love that campy title, that's seven S's folks) is an above-average man-becomes-creature horror film.
Also Reb Brown makes for a good bully.So, you don't have to like snakes to enjoy this intelligent old-fashioned horror tale.
The plot is a bit silly, and the ending more so, but the way the movie is played you ignore the rampant over acting and outside of reality plot.
The film deals a mad doctor(Strother Martin),his former helper has disappeared and he asks to University professor(Richard B.
A young man called David (Richard Benedict)looking for employment is hired by the scientific.The doctor works a secrets experiments on snakes.Meanwhile David falls in love with his daughter(Heather Menzies).Then the ¨mad doctor¨ injects him a serum into becoming a King Cobra snake causing a horrible transformation.The motion picture packs horror,romance,shocks and is quite entertained.
In the film appear known actors from the 70s and 80s as Dick Benedict(¨Galactica Battlestar,A Team¨),Strother Martin(Peckimpah's usual player:¨Wild bunch¨),Heather Menzies(Robert Urich wife and little girl actress in ¨Sound of music¨)and Reb Brown(a beefcake who played many hunk men vehicles).
Pretty silly horror movie about Dr. Carl Stoner (Strother Martin) who has perfected a drug that turns men into King Cobra snakes.
He wants to use it on young David Blaine (Dirk Benedict)...but his daughter (Heather Menzies) is falling in love with him.OK--the story is more than a little silly but this is fairly watchable.
They used real snakes in the film (as a statement at the beginning tells us) and just watching them is pretty interesting.
The acting helps--Martin is actually not bad as the doctor; Benedict (so young and handsome) is also pretty good as Blaine and Menzies overdoes it a little (particularly in an argument with Martin) but she's not bad.
But whether you love or hate snakes, wouldn't you agree that the snakes in this movie are/were more exciting to watch than the human actors?
Especially if you like to watch venomous snakes and specifically, King Cobras!I can't believe I sold my VHS copy of this movie at a pawn shop!
Well, Martin is the star of Sssssss(7 s's), and I must admit he is rather enjoyable to watch as a kindly, softspoken, insane, murderous herpetologist trying to save the human race by turning men into cobras.
Martin's over-the-top performance saves this film from being utterly mundane and makes it fun to watch..
After watching it recently, a little bit of that pent up fear was released -- although, I still can't stand snakes, not even to look at a picture of them in a book or anything -- except cobras, I really like cobras, now.Oh, well.
Granted, the story-line was a bit hokey, but just think what it could be like if they made a remake with really good special effects, really good horror movie actors, and a little bit of work on the script.Ssssssso long!.
SSSSSSS is not a great film by any stretch of the imagination; it is rather heavily flawed and definitely very silly, but it's also rather original, very inventive and certainly makes for an interesting watch, so the bad reputation is baffling!
Along with spiders and scorpions, snakes are another interesting animal that often finds itself a part of horror films, and SSSSSSS puts it's focus squarely on the scaly reptiles, in particular the impressive King Cobra.
The film obviously takes its influence from mad science horror films; in particular the likes of Frankenstein and puts snake twist on it.
However, unbeknown to David, the treatment is actually a plan by the not so good doctor to turn him into a King Cobra!
Much to the dismay of the doctor's young daughter...It is a silly story, but the way that it's portrayed is good in that it's always interesting.
The cast is good, with character actor Strother Martin managing to be both sinister and gentle at the same time.
Cult TV actor Dirk Benedict is at the centre of the cast as the unlucky medical student, while the cast is topped off by the beautiful cult actress Heather Menzies as the doctor's daughter.
At the start of the film we are told that all the snakes used are real snakes, and I can believe it as they do look real and they're also rather impressive - the King Cobra is the centrepiece, but a twenty foot long python also makes its impression!
Some of the special effects are decent, but not enough to carry a movie.Strother Martin plays a doctor working with grant money.
The doctor's daughter (Heather Menzies) falls in love with her father's current assistant (Dirk Benedict)and fails to stop the body change process.Familiar actors Tim O'Connor and Jack Ging also appear.
In my review of BUG (1975), I had written that I didn't have the courage to watch this title because of my fear of snakes; a mere 2 days later, I learned of its director's recent passing – so, I said to myself, slimy critters be damned
now's the time to check out this bugger!!
Besides, I never thought I'd say this but I actually came to like Strother Martin's pet snake Harry (with its fragile squeak, as opposed to the reptile's typical aggressive hiss, and penchant for alcohol – "Look sober, Harry!", advises Martin as disapproving daughter Heather Menzies arrives home) and felt sorry when it was killed.
These include: the opening scene involving a mysterious container, and the later revelation of its carrier as a carnival-show proprietor; the lecture given by the Professor about the subtle difference between two particular species of snake, and the quandary he finds himself in when a prisoner in Martin's basement; the isolation of a sick python, which eventually gets the better of the afore-mentioned Professor; Dirk Benedict drawing Heather Menzies' attention to the carnival Snake Boy's blue eyes (remarked upon again by a postal worker from town), which alerts her to the fate of Martin's former assistant; Benedict's contention over Menzies' grief at her favorite pet's demise – "Harry was just a snake!" – which, of course, takes new and ironic meaning when he starts turning into one himself; also, Martin's taking a rather unwise condescending attitude towards the cobra throughout – which, inevitably, sets up his painful come-uppance at the end.Martin is brilliantly cast: benign-looking yet utterly chilling when he's spouting the requisite mad doctor credo (by quoting the passage by Walt Whitman which also found its way in the contemporaneous THE WICKER MAN [1973] – though, in its case, available only in the "Extended Version").
Well, I have to hand it to all the actors here in showing this much commitment to their craft: it takes guts to act – and, with respect to Martin, sustain the necessary concentration to deliver quality work – around a plethora of deadly snakes (reportedly, Martin got bit for his troubles)!
Incidentally, the actor showed a surprising branching-out into horror roles during this period – THE BROTHERHOOD OF Satan (1971; which I own on DVD and is an even superior effort) came prior to SSSSSSS, while NIGHTWING (1979; with which I'm unfamiliar, but it doesn't seem to be readily available for appraisal) followed later on in the decade.Benedict is pretty bland at first, but his emotional breakdown – as the snake genes begin to take over his body – is reasonably convincing; true, it's kind of dumb of him to take so long to realize just what's really going on with his frequent inoculations
but, then, who could have truthfully conceived of Martin's demented plan?!
The film, then, concludes abruptly on a freeze-frame of her screaming as she witnesses Benedict-as-cobra fighting a mongoose.John Chambers' make-up is remarkably effective in detailing the various stages of Benedict's 'affliction' (as well as the botched Snake Boy); however, it was disappointing that the metamorphosis from man into snake is so complete (the finalization process itself was pretty silly) – to the point where one can't tell the two cobras apart!
Actors know how to act and what to do, and that's very good for the movie.
The movie was shot in the beginning of Dirk Benedict's Career, so his performance not as good as it became later, but he was a very talented and promissing actor.
No snakes were harmed during the filming of this movie.
Before "Battlestar Galatica" or "The A-Team" Dirk Benedict does this horror movie dealing with snakes.
He meets a lab assistant(Strother Martin) who works with snakes who has a beautiful young daughter Kristina(Heather Menzies, before she married Robert Urich,1946-2002).
So he finds a college student to act as his assistant, and injects him with cobra venom (the student thinks the serum is an inoculation against snake bites).SPOILER ALERT ***** SPOILER ALERT **** SPOLIER ALERT ****For those of you you have seen the film, you know that the film ends on a freeze frame of Heather Menzies screaming as the David/Snake is killed by the mongoose.
Doc Stoner(Strother Martin, who most know as the warden in COOL HAND Luke who utters the famous line, "What we got here is a failure to communicate.")who has grown quite mad over the years, injects an innocent, kind-hearted college student, David(Dirk Benedict;Face of A-TEAM fame)with an inoculation that is slowly turning him into a King Cobra.
What Stoner doesn't expect is that his daughter/assistant Kristina(Heather Menzies of PIRANHA fame)and David fall in love.
Stoner, however, has grown diabolical and will kill one male behind the death of his pet snake and another quack doctor/professor, behind the school's granting him the annual grant that keeps his career going, who understands what he's up to regarding David, becoming lunch to his pet boa.Disturbing slow burning horror film works because we sympathize with David's eventual plight.
"SSSSSSS" is an interesting but ultimately too slow creature feature.**SPOILERS**Eager to continue his research, Dr. Carl Stoner, (Strother Martin) asks old friend Dr. Daniels, (Richard B.
As he begins to secretly transform into a snake, he tries to hide it from her, and when the transformation finishes he looks less and less like his former self.The Good News: There really wasn't a whole lot here, and what's here isn't that bad.
The film's main claim to glory is the constant and continuous focus upon the snakes, and if they're a creep-factor for yourself, then this will undoubtedly feature a lot of moments that are pretty unsettling.
The main moment, though, is the sideshow display, which features a really big snake is let loose in front of a group of watchers and a display is put on with it in an attempt to milk it, and the constant use of it hissing and ducking whenever the hand comes near the head to grab it does have some unnerving quality to it.
There are some individual scenes that are pretty good, such as the fight at the carnival which ends in a really unique fashion, or the bathroom attack, which is really creepy and is quite creative, being simple examples of it being entertaining without the focus on the snakes.
The transformation isn't that bad and must've been really impressive back then, as the face itself, which doesn't have any snake-like features, to transform into a reasonable facsimile of one, is pretty impressive.
It's still a cheap B-movie, so if that appeals to you, then give it a shot, there's nothing here that won't upset them, but those fearful of snakes are advised to seek caution, there's tons of time with them in the film.Today's Rating-PG-13: Violence and Brief rear Nudity.
So this film has its good points, but a lot of bad points too.The story has a man who researches snake venom requesting a student at a local college to help him around his place.
The teacher lets him have one and you have to feel a bit for the guy as the researcher does not want to use him as an intern, but rather as the focus of an experiment to turn man into snake!
The researcher meets his end in utterly stupid fashion as he just has to talk down to his cobra face to face giving it multiple opportunities to bite him.The film features a few notable celebrities, the most notable being a young Dirk Benedict as the poor student who gets to be the researcher's assistant and Reb Brown who would go on to play in multiple B movies.
The scientist was played by Strother Martin who, while not a top guy, was in a large assortment of movies and television shows.
The make up effects are okay, but at the end they kind of go the cheap route, but then you can only use make up so much before the transformation into a snake can be made to look reasonably realistic.So it has some good points, but at the same time it has an equal number of bad, hence my score of five.
***SPOILERS*** A bit off the wall mad scientist,or herpetologist, movie about this harmless and kindly looking lunatic Dr. Carl Stoner, Strother Martin,who's come up with the bright idea of turning the human race into a half man half snake hybrid that will survive the terrors that nature and mankind has in store for it in the near future; pestilence famine and nuclear war.
As were told by Dr. Stoner in the movie snakes can survive many times as much radiation as humans can and eat once a month compared to people having to to eat three times a day.Experimenting in his lab Dr. Stoner did turn his assistant Tim McGraw, Nobel Carig, into a snake-man but it just didn't work out the way he planned it and had poor Tim taken away by this carnival owner Koger, Tim O'Connor,to become a part of his freak sideshow.
Getting a replacement for Tim Dr. Stoner gets collage student David Blake, Dick Benedict, who unfortunately for the good Doc has his mosey daughter Kristina, Hather Menzies, fall in love with him This as David is slowly being turned, through daily injections by Stoner, into a King Cobra.The movie slinks along with Kristina later getting involved with this gorilla-like, in mind as well as in body,collage football player Big Steve Randell, Reb Brown.
Harry old and not in the best of shape gets killed by the big ape who like the snake that he is slithers away from the Stoner residence and back to his collage dorm room.
While there he a good time with one of the many bimbo's who are just nuts about the big guy's psychical attributes.Grieving for sweet old Harry Dr. Stoner gets even with Big Steve by sneaking into his dorm room and, as he's taking a cold shower, slips a deadly African Black Mamba in the shower stall with him then quickly putting an end to Big Steve's future adventures forever.Back at the lab David slowly starts to turn into a snake-man that puts his affair with Kristina, who has no idea what's going on, on hold as he slowly mutates into a giant King Cobra.
The ending of the movie crosses into total insanity with Dr. Stoner, for reasons known only to himself, letting his prized King Cobra out on the lawn to have a game of tag with him only to get bitten by the killer snake and die!
Was this the directors bright idea of ending the movie?As David turns into a King Cobra a snake-killing mongoose thats in a cage in the lab breaks out and attacks Cobra/David.
The police who just shot and killed, by blowing it's head off, the King Cobra who killed Dr. Stoner break into the lab together with a hysterical Kristina who ends the movie screaming her head off as the closing credits start to roll.Worth watching only for the snakes in the movie who were both real and, in the case of the poisonous cobras mambas and pit vipers, un-fanged and not dangerous to the actors or stunt men, handling them.
The effects were impressive, although, I would like to see a snake man with arms.
"Dr. Carl Stoner" (Strother Martin) is a herpetologist who is working on a special serum and needs funding from the nearby university to continue.
When one of his lab assistants supposedly quits he finds a new one named "David Blake" (Dirk Benedict) who seems more than eager to help the kindly doctor as much as possible.
Also helping out is Dr. Stoner's daughter, "Kristina Stoner" (Heather Menzies) who seems to take a liking to David almost from the very beginning.
This is a one of those queasy low-budget downbeat horror films that proliferated in double features in the 1970s.Wacko herpetologist Strother Martin recruits college jock Dirk Benedict as a lab assistant in his work with snakes (ergo the title).
When not holding court over rodeo-style shows where he antagonizes a King Cobra to the amazement of a sparse handful of gawkers, Martin spends inordinate amounts of time in his lab - ostensibly doing work on creating antidotes for snake-bite victims.
Naturally, it does not take long for Benedict and Menzies to start making goo-goo eyes at each other, much to Martin's consternation.
Martin insists on injecting Benedict with a variety of serums, which he insists are standard for herpetology lab assistants.In fairness, the direction is fairly competent and there are some moments of suspense, which will probably be magnified for anyone with a fear of snakes.
What kills the film is that the storyline is so absurd and too much relies on characters acting stupidly – even more so than in the average horror flick.For instance early in the film, Benedict sheds a top layer of skin like a snake shedding its skin.
Shull who becomes suspicious when Martin starts limiting access to Benedict and strapping bully Reb Brown has designs on Menzies.
When Brown tries to sneak into Menzies bedroom and accidentally kills her harmless pet snake, you know his days are numbered.Character actor Martin takes the whole thing very seriously, which is not very helpful. |
tt1311071 | Kill Your Darlings | As a young man in the 1940s, poet Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) wins a place at Columbia University in New York City. He arrives as a very inexperienced freshman, but soon runs into Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), who is very anti-establishment and rowdy.
After a while, Ginsberg discovers that Carr only manages to stay at Columbia thanks to a somewhat older man, a professor, David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), who writes all of his term papers for him, and has a predatory relationship with Carr. It appears that Kammerer is still in love with Carr, and is revealed to be pressuring Carr for sexual favors, in exchange for assuring that he cannot be expelled.
Ginsberg soon meets, through Carr, William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster), already far into drug experimentation. The writer Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), who was a sailor at that time and expelled from Columbia, also meets and spends time with them. Carr eventually tells Kammerer he is done with him, and recruits Ginsberg (who has a crush on him) to write his term papers instead. After a while, Kerouac and Carr attempt to run off and join the merchant marine together, hoping to go to Paris.
There is a confrontation between Carr and Kammerer, during which Kammerer is killed by stabbing (and perhaps also by drowning). Carr is arrested, and asks Ginsberg to write his deposition for him. Ginsberg is at first reluctant to help the unstable Carr, but after digging up more crucial evidence on Kammerer and his past relationship, he writes a piece entitled "The Night in Question". The piece describes a more emotional event, in which Carr kills Kammerer who outright tells him to after being threatened with the knife, devastated by this final rejection. Carr rejects the "fictional" story, and begs a determined Ginsberg not to reveal it to anybody, afraid that it will ruin him in the ensuing trial.
We learn from Carr's mother that Kammerer was the first person to seduce Carr, when he was much younger and lived in Chicago. After the trial we find out that Carr testified that the attack took place only because Kammerer was a sexual predator, and that Carr killed him in self-defense. Carr is not convicted of murder and receives only a short sentence for manslaughter.
Ginsberg then submits "The Night in Question" as his final term paper. On the basis of that shocking piece of prose, Ginsberg is faced with possible expulsion from Columbia. Either he must be expelled or he must embrace establishment values. He chooses the former, but is forced to leave his typescript behind. A week or two later he receives the typescript in the mail with an encouraging letter from his professor telling him to pursue his writing. | murder | train | wikipedia | But John Krokidas' debut feature film, which takes as its subjects the American poets of the revolutionary Beat Generation, fits in so much more, as it explores a haunting search for life and legacy that teeters close to the edge of death.Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) arrives at Columbia University keen to start a life away from the shadow of his famous dad, poet Louis Ginsberg (David Cross), and his mentally unstable mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
It's only when Allen recites a poem - on a moonlit night, on a stolen boat - that Lucien is comprehensively struck by his genius, as are we.When the film spins into darker, more murderous territory, it moves from coming-of-age story to crime thriller - a genre shift that, oddly, works quite well within the universe established by Krokidas, as it allows Allen to contemplate the darker, less palatable side of Lucien's volatile personality.
David's tragic obsession with Lucien - one that the film suggests Allen could have shared - finally kicks off a tragic twist of events that unfold in a very particular way in Kill Your Darlings.
Arguably, Allen ends up in an emotional place in the film that doesn't quite sit right with what actually transpired in real life, as told to us by a series of title cards just before the end credits.Less controversial is the young cast, all of whom do first-rate work in disentangling the complex web of relationships that exists amongst these characters.
John Krokidas' film explores the early life of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), and how he came into contact with Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), and William Burroughs (Ben Foster).
As the action progresses, however, so the film's priorities become diluted; rather than focusing on the genesis of the Beats, the action concentrates instead on the complex love-triangle involving Lucien, Allen and David Kammerer (Michael C.
This isn't it.Kill Your Darlings (2013) is a biographical drama about the early adult years of the beat generation stalwarts Allen Ginsburg (1926-97), Jack Kerouac (1922-69), and William Burroughs (1914-97).
Burroughs was a prolific author ("Junkie", "Naked Lunch") whose themes of death, drugs, and homosexuality can be seen in their beginning phases in this film.)The whole idea of the beat generation was that if you could dismantle the structure of communication and still have some worth, then anything was up for grabs.
And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet."I knew nothing about Kill Your Darlings going into this movie (which means I basically don't know anything about modern American literature because apparently these guys were famous poets that influenced their generation during the 50's with their literary work).
This film only focuses on the early stages of their lives, but it shows how these artists came to know each other and how Lucien Carr was the most influential figure in their formation.The screenplay was co-written by director John Krokidas and Austin Bunn focusing on the early stages of Alan Ginsberg's (Daniel Radcliffe) life as he began studying at Columbia University which shaped his philosophical views on life.
The turning point in his life was when he met his classmate, Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) who taught him to question the orthodox methods of the school and introduced him to other future icons of the Beat generation: William S.
However, this film examines Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) before he began his literary revolution and the character is one I found easy to fall in love with.
Radcliffe portrays Ginsberg - with the aid of new comer writer and director John Korkidas - with a playful naive innocence as he approaches love and friendship at Columbia and his relationship between Carr (Dane DeHaan) is believable from the moment you see them in the same scene.
Jack Huston and Ben Foster give amazing performances despite their lack of character development throughout the film but they never took all of the attention either which I especially enjoyed as it was never a film about just Ginsberg or a film about Kerouac alone as it was about all of the beat writers and the event that begun their revolution as inspirational writers.
The film itself is a work that sometimes trades in the grainy for flashy; rupturing not only the pattern that the authors were trying to break, but the whole tone of the film as well.If I pitched you a story about the Beat generation led by Harry Potter, the new Harry Osborne, a guy from X-Men and the guy from Boardwalk Empire with half his face missing, I'm sure the reaction would be pretty great.
Unfortunately for audiences, the subject matter submits to a truly unauthentic, lack lustre festival formula and abandons creativeness and a unique vision for a familiar narrative that disregards great historical figures, making them caricatures within a lame murder/mystery genre film.Daniel Radcliffe plays Allen Ginsberg, one of the most famous and recognizable poets in the American culture.
With the rich historical and cultural imprint of these feisty literary pioneers, so much of the busy murder antics is clearly overshadowing the brilliant opportunity to showcase the likes of Carr, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac.Mixing the potential monologue moments of Weir's 1989 Dead Poets Society with the tone and ambiance of Salle's 2004 masterpiece The Motorcycle Diaries, Kill Your Darlings becomes a self- inflicted suicide of a film with a tantalizing and promising narrative.
However, while most of the top-billed cast is ravishing, and supporting cast is spot on, the film feels drowned in the water with average narrative clichés weighing it down.While the antics of the underbelly of the New York Greenwich Village scene have been explored, battered, bruised and forever changed by the provocative and decadent Beat Movement, Kill Your Darlings remains a tame snippet of the life of these amazing authors and thinkers.
Cast with a group of very fine actors and accompanied with musical director Nico Muhly's sensitive score that includes the references to Brahms symphonies and trios and transcriptions of themes along with terrific excerpts from Harlem's jazz scene (courtesy of Dawn Newman as a jazz singer), this film is successful on many levels, not the least of which is the reminder of the permanent impact on American literature and sociology imprinted by the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs.
The very sensitive opening sequence, appreciated only at film's end, sets the dark tone of the film and opens the window to understanding the Beats (also called "the Libertine Circle" by Ginsberg).The time is the mid 1940s and Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliff) is an English major in Columbia University, assigned to be the roommate of Lucien 'Make me cry or make me horny' Carr (Dane DeHann) who awakens Ginsberg's rebellious self and introduces him to the work of Rimbaud.
Kill Your Darlings is labelled biopic and drama but the movie fails on both aspects.First, the scenario only glances over the emergence of the Beat Generation and its three founding authors : for the literature neophytes — a fortiori non-American persons — the movie doesn't teach anything about that movement, its roots, its consequences, and the importance of the stakes is not palpable at all.The scenario tries in parallel to develop a drama/thriller that turns out to be not much convincing, there was much better to do with this storyline about homosexuality at an intolerant time.The cast, though badly directed, is extremely bland and only Daniel Radcliffe arouses any emotion (which is a desire to murder).All in all, there is nothing to draw from this movie one will make forget as soon as finished..
No, this is not a 'film'.The writing and acting are perfectly appropriate for the young kids who think they have discovered the angst of life like no one ever has before them.This is a very shallow depiction of the self-aggrandizement that the Beats built their 'revolution' on.
There is no shortage of compelling story lines involving the writers who led this revolution; Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr, or William S.
But rather than focusing the 90 minutes of screen time on developing anything meaningful about the literary movement, the murder, the murderer, or the victim, we're instead shown snapshots of those things, plus Allen's mentally disturbed mother, Lucien's overly involved mother, a prank they commit at the library on the Columbia University campus, Jack Kerouac's complicated personal life, university stuff, other stuff, and then more stuff.
I was iffy on watching this since I am not into poetry and it seem like a film deal with era I don't really connect with, But I am wrong when Allen ( Daniel Radcliffe) smile at Lac (Dane) performance of a obscure poem along gesture in library during Allen's freshman tour to his new school.Fun and poem are flattering witty and beautiful.
John Krokidas's "Kill Your Darlings" looks as Ginsberg's college years, where he met the other people who formed the Beat Generation.
But it simply follows a young freshman, Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), as he enters a poet literary movement following the few concepts of sex, drugs, alcohol and murder.By this point you are surely thinking - 'I don't like poetry and I have never heard of these poets!' - but that is okay, as the film is so much more than that.
"Kill Your Darlings" is the story of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) as he arrives at college and is ushered into a new generation of writers.
Kill Your Darlings is oddly bloodless and bland, which is something of an irony given that it ends with the stabbing and drowning of one of the characters.Part of the problem for John Krokidas is that one of the central elements of his piece, the Beat Generation and its various protagonists - including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs - are of rather less consequence in the second decade of 21st century than many, not least the Beat Generation, would like.
"She smells of imported sophistication and domestic cigarettes." Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan)In Kill Your Darlings, Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) is the central character in a drama based on an actual incident that shows less of the beat poet's greatness as an artist and more about his nascent gay passions.
So, too, does this film show the other side of literary glamour.Nevertheless director John Krokidas and writer Austin Bunn evoke the tumultuous era of the early 1940's when the world collaborated in defeating the Nazis and young artists Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and Ginsberg were preparing to overthrow the moribund traditions of Victorian literature to create a hip-lit that made Ginsberg a god of mid-twentieth century letters.While I would have liked more about Ginsberg and Kerouac as writers, Kill Your Darlings is nothing if not romantic queer lit of a high order.
Beat poetry is a subject that I am not familiar with and I am not entirely sure it exist in the parts I am from, but it's definitely an interesting subject to illustrate on film."Kill Your Darlings" discusses a murder that occurred in the 40's involving several monumental names of literature from Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kerouac, who would later go on forming what's called the Beat Generation.
As with most artists, the members of the Beat Generation certainly had a tumultuous and troublesome lifestyle that is depicted in the movie through love triangles, extravagant parties and misdemeanors.The film's screenplay started off well, describing Ginsberg's freshman experience at college, meeting with DeHaan's character, Lucien Carr, and surely enough the first steps of beat poetry were about to begin.
The Beat Generation's Iconic Trio of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs are Featured in this Film but Predominantly, for some less than Artistic, Informative and Inconceivable Idea its Focus is Lucien Carr.
Suddenly characters start to show motivations and characteristics that weren't previously established.The film focuses on Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, but somewhere in between William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac are thrown in, and the viewers are supposed to react to them based on their knowledge on the people they are based on.Daniel Radcliffe's performance is as wooden as his Harry Potter's, at least his American accent is decent.
College professor David Kammerer was the buzzkill/albatross of the Beat Generation, that small group of bohemian writers who, during the 1940's, began what would change literature while incipiently shaping the pivotal hippie era and, well, the rest is history
Kammerer's adoration for young pretty boy Lucien Carr, and the murder that resulted, is covered in several Jack Kerouac novels including VANITY OF DOLUOZ, DESOLATION ANGELS and even his first venture, TOWN AND THE CITY
But the main character is poet Allen Ginsberg, equal to Jack in the Beat template along with the strange, mythical William Burroughs
Young HARRY POTTER icon Daniel Radcliffe plays Ginsberg with the kind of sympathetic pathos begging for a transformation: in this case, drug-use leading to writing leading to homosexuality
But we're skipping ahead
When Allen first escapes his crazy mother and becomes a Columbia University freshman, he's somewhat of an empty canvas
Enter Dane DeHaan as Lucian Carr, an elfin, blond-haired/blue-eyed contemplating beatnik before there was such a thing
Despite being the poster child for cerebral pretentiousness, Carr becomes an instigative mentor to Ginsberg
The more interesting scenes have the duo clashing with the uptight status quo while discovering drugs, jazz and planning a foundational "New Vision" to put the older poets (ala Ogden Nash) to rest
And, like the sound of an orchestra tuning, there's only an eerie squeezebox of intention sans the necessary talent to progress their (at that point) lofty ideals
Legendary author Jack Kerouac, whose ON THE ROAD – along with Ginsberg's epic poem HOWL – ignited the Beat Generation, is a third-fiddle womanizer and the least important here
Meanwhile, a lanky Burroughs mumbles through experimental drug trips and the character that should have been more prominent is Kammerer himself, the bearded college professor played by DEXTER star Michael C.
treated like a special guest star throughout.What's ironic is the Kammerer/Carr case slowed down the spontaneity of the Kerouac novels, and amounts to little here
The real purpose of KILL YOUR DARLINGS is Carr's hypocrisy countered by Ginsberg's realization as a homosexual morphing into a significant generational spokesman
And in that, Radcliffe's edgy demeanor exceeds a visually pleasing but ultimately monotone story, rushing through what's really important: the collaborating genius between the three primary Beats
Instead we're left with a cinematic version of Ginsberg and Carr's grandiloquent NEW VISION
A potential spark without any real burn..
A dazzling character piece centers around a brutal murder case which implicates several future literature big shots of the beat generation, Allen Ginsberg (Radcliffe) is the freshman of Columbia University, he encounters a fellow student Lucien Carr (DeHaan), who brings him into a world of unorthodoxy and defiance against the rules and conformism, and he also meets the young Jack Kerouac (Huston) and William Burroughs (Foster).
The main character in this movie is Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe), but the movie revolved around Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan).
I would honestly argue though, the one who comes out best in the film is Dane DeHaan, for reasons listed below.Characters & StoryA college bound Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) we meet as a mousy, awkward, but slightly confidant young man thanks to his father's work being prominent.
With their bromance, though sort of love story, we see what seems to be your usual little bud blossom, and watching this film really helps me see Radcliffe as more than Harry Potter, and really makes it so that it is simply a role he did, and not the total of his existence/ talents.As for everyone else, DeHaan as Lucien embodied an almost seductive style which easily could make even a straight man curious.
They are all going to be the writers and poets of that post war lost generation that will beat their guilt out of their minds and beat us down into our own guilt.We all know Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Lucien Carr.
But the film also contains some easy symbolism like showing William Burroughs shooting himself with morphine, Allen Ginsberg being sexually penetrated by some unknown outsider he had accidentally picked in the street, and Lucien Carr repeatedly stabbing David Kammerer.
The murder of a homosexual older man in 1944 draws together the great poets of the beat generation: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs during their college campus years at Columbia.
{8.5 stars} First off, I'm sure that there are discrepancies between this film and the real story of the Columbia University love-triangle of Allen Ginsburg, Lucien Carr, and David Kammerer.
But first we are introduced to the very young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) who enrols in college where he meets the very young Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), William Burroughs (Ben Foster) and eventually Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston).
But if you decide to make a movie about Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, do you really need to focus on a gloomy murder story that we have seen so many times before with the only difference being that these characters incidentally have changed the literary landscape of the second half of the twentieth century?
Over the past few years, the Beat Generation that spawned writers and poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac has returned to cinema screens in documentaries ('William S.
First time feature filmmaker John Krokidas tackles this story and knocks it out of the park with his jazzy, drug-induced opus called 'Kill Your Darlings'.This film shows the very beginning of the Beat Generation, including the friendships and influences that shaped these iconic writers that we study today.
'Kill Your Darlings' starts out almost like a thriller in the vein of 'Se7en', with Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) in a jail cell, talking to his supposed friend who has just murdered somebody.
This story is a historical drama concerning the life of Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) and his time at Columbia University. |
tt0064217 | Death of a Gunfighter | In the town of Cottonwood Springs, Texas at the turn of the century, Marshal Frank Patch is an Old West style lawman in a community determined to be modern. When Patch kills drunken Luke Mills in self-defense, the town decides it is time for the marshal to resign. But Patch refuses, reminding the citizens that when he took he job, the agreement was he could have it as long as he wanted. Afraid of Patch because of his knowledge of their misdeeds in the town's wilder days, the city fathers then decide the only way to remove Patch from office is by violence.
Patch humiliates one of town's councilmen, a cowardly shopkeeper, by slapping him. The man plans to kill Patch, but when Patch faces him down, he turns the gun on himself. The man's son swears revenge, supported by local leaders. They plot to ambush Patch. Aware that he will probably be killed, Patch marries his long-time girlfriend, the local brothel madame. The marriage is on the same day as the shopkeeper's funeral, after which Patch's death is planned. The dead man's son attempts to kill Patch on his own, but is shot by Patch. Patch explains to the dying youth that his father had murdered a man many years ago. Patch covered it up because he had agreed to raise the dead man's child. Patch pursues one of the instigators of the plot to kill him. He wounds and captures him, but then insists on going back out, knowing he will be gunned down. He is shot by hidden gunmen on the rooftops. | revenge, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0072706 | The Black Bird | When San Francisco private detective Sam Spade dies, his son, Sam, Jr., inherits his father's agency, including the sarcastic secretary, Effie Perine (also known as "Godzilla"). He must also continue his father's tradition of "serving minorities." When Caspar Gutman is killed outside Spade's building, his dying words are, "It's black and as long as your arm."
Spade is given an offer by a member of the Order of St. John's Hospital to purchase his father's useless copy of the Maltese Falcon. A right-wing thug named Gordon Immerman has been hired to make sure Spade delivers the bird. He later gets an offer from Wilmer Cook for the Falcon, but before they can negotiate, he is killed. Shortly thereafter he meets a beautiful and mysterious Russian woman named Anna Kemidov, daughter of the general who once owned the real Maltese Falcon. She also wants Spade's copy and is willing to seduce him to get it. Spade is soon dealing with Litvak, a bald Nazi dwarf who is surrounded by an army of Hawaiian thugs. In the ensuing chaos, Immerman tries to become Spade's partner. Spade discovers that his "false" copy may be the real thing. | murder | train | wikipedia | I liked it and watch it all the time.
I liked the movie...thought it was funny, especially the bantering between George Segal and all of the co-stars.
I watched the original version of unfaithful and saw the same actress was in This movie and the french version of unfaithful.
I thought she was hilarious in this movie.I saw this movie in a movie theater in 1976 and laughed and still laugh via VHS.
Thought the ending was a little drawn out...so thats why I gave it an 8..
In Leonard Maltins book he gave it BOMB rating which I can not understand.
I can watch this movie anytime where as a movie like Porkys or Dodgeball I find unwatchable..
One of only 18 people in America.
I am proud to declare that I am one of only 18 people in America who actually like this movie.
My basis for that statement?
There are -- were -- only 17 voters at IMDb who rate this movie at "7" or higher (out of a whopping 50 total votes).
My vote of "7" now makes that 18 people who like it.How unpopular is this movie with everyone everywhere?
Very little info is available on it here at IMDb and none at all at Rotten Tomatoes.
IMDb users who hate it don't even deem it worthy of the usual brickbats.
Only one user has taken the trouble to slice it and dice it and feed it to the sharks (appropos to the movie's ending).
Leonard Maltin calls it "DA BOMB" (no stars, not even half of one).
If anyone has a complimentary word to say about this movie, I don't know whom that person is nor where he or she said it.That's where I come in.
I think this movie is funny!
Well, some of the time, anyway.
It's not a laugh riot but it does have a lot of funny stuff in it, especially in the first half.
It does start to run out of steam in the second half and by the time they get to the end, it appears that writer-director David Giler was just looking for some way -- any way -- to end it.George Segal plays Sam Spade, Jr., San Francisco detective and son of his notorious father played by Humphrey Bogart in the original "The Maltese Falcon." And just as in the original, Jr. is once again involved with that black bird, trying to find out who wants it and what's the best price he can get for it.
As far as plot goes, except for the ending, the plots of the two movies are fairly similar.
And anyone who cares to razz the plot of "The Black Bird" as being nonexistent or worse should first take a close look at the plot of "The Maltese Falcon." The latter, just like the former, has an unfathomable plot.
All of which is in no way to say that there is any quality comparison between the two movies.
The original is filled with timeless characters, great setups and fabulous dialogue which will live for eternity.
That's why it's such a great movie, even with an impossible-to-follow plot.
"The Black Bird," on the other hand, is just a fairly decent movie with a number of funny moments and scenes.George Segal does a good job as Jr. and has a lot of funny dialogue and shtick.
Stéphane Audran makes for an alluring love interest and foil for Jr., playing the equivalent to Mary Astor's role in the original.
But for me, there are two people who really stand out in this cast.
One is old Lionel Stander, a constant thorn in the side to Spade, Jr. The other is none other than Lee Patrick.
Just as she did in the original 34 years earlier, she is back once again as Effie, still playing Jr.'s secretary just as she was to his pop.
Amazingly, she is much better in this latest version than she was in the original.
That's because her later version is a powerhouse character with a ton of dialogue and shtick to go with it.
That's something she didn't have in the orignal.
But that is the ONLY improvement on the original.I've seen "The Black Bird" about three or four times.
And I still laughed at a number of things I'd forgotten since my last viewing.
But I recommend seeing it no more often than about once every 8-10 years, at the most.
Any more often than that and it can easily wear thin and lose its best humor.There is one good thing, one advantage, to being one of only 18 people in America who like a particular movie: lots of elbow room!.
Funnier than its reputation.
The one thing that becomes clear after reading comments on the IMDb (and which should come as a comfort to filmmakers out there) is that no matter how awful a film may be, it will be the "favorite' of at least one person.I saw "The Black Bird" as a teenager when it was originally released and remember going back to see it several times, howling at the "in" "Maltese Falcon" jokes, George Segal's hilarious exasperation at everything, Lionel Stander's thick-headed assistant, Stephane Audran's priceless deadpan and mangled English, Lee Patrick's cantankerous Effie...I just found it a riot.Now, the one thing I was sure of even then was that this wasn't a particularly "good" film, but what it had was a cock-eyed sense of humor for those with a certain awareness of the genre stereotypes.It updated the musty clichés and made then cynically hip and funny.
To this day I can watch my video of the film and crack up when George Segal (dressed in a priest's robe)playfully asks Audran, "Care to confess any sins?" and she, forever missing his jokes, responds seriously "Later, later..."Trust me, if you found nothing humorous in that exchange, "The Black Bird" is not the film for you..
I love this movie.
I love this movie.
It's filled with little gems that can only be appreciated with repeated viewings.
"I'll see the first person with a 10 dollar bill in his hand--and that's cash, we're not taking' food stamps anymore." "What is this?" "What do you mean 'What is this?'--this is the Maltese Falcon!" "I'll give you $14.95 for it." "Why is it always $14.95?
Why can't it be $15, at least a round figure?" "Would you like a round figure?" "Yes, I would." "Fourteen dollars." "Come on, its gotta be worth more than that." "It is.
It's worth $14.95." "It's open and shut: the girl wandered into the building by accident and he threw her down the shaft.
Now, it could have happened that way!" "Dsemboweled?" "They take a large knife and--" "I know what that is!" "There's no use spilling milk on a dead horse." "It is mine because I deserve it.
Mine because I have killed for it and will kill again for it.
Mine because I have spent thirty years in pursuit of it.
It is mine because I have the means, the determination, and most of all the power to have it.
It is mine because I want it!" "Look, if it's yours what do you need with me?" "Litvak will kill her (Effie)!" "It's bad luck to talk about these things before they happen." "Litvak, you get a lot of bad press, but I gotta tell you you're aces with me.
This is the best day I've had in a year!" "Nonsense, no one is always wrong." "I am." "Gordon Immerman, but you can still call me Andrew Jackson if you want to.".
I like this little gem!.
Certainly this flick is not a classic!
However,it is guilty fun,quirky-and even affectionate towards the original-if only in its weird way...indeed there is no resemblance to the Bogart noir.Yet it works for me independently as a 70's aberration and a hoot to boot!Flaws?-you bet...so what!Stander is terrific and the two original characters(Cook & Patrick) from the early 40's are a pure delight and a connection from a past glory(also I would bestow honorable mention to Signe Hasso as a museum curator who plays her delightful role w\aplomb and the right kind of satirical dash).Don't know much if I especially like the midget or some of the over the top stuff,but-hey,its OK within the context of a silly little yarn.
Moreover,George Segal,I think,is just right for a world weary sleuth in the shadow of a famed father detective.I like the opening credits w\ its promise of something more-but the absurd ending is less than satisfying...despite these things,I have watched the film numerous times and find it overall a "kick;"for you cannot take this one tale that seriously anyway:so go w\ the FLOW.....
uncoventional comedy, confusing and politically incorrect.
In 1975 San Francisco, Sam Spade Jr. has taken over his father's private investigation business, but he does not like the work, or his father's obnoxious secretary.
One of the father's big cases comes back to haunt the young Spade.
A man offers a lot of money for a statue which may or may not be the Maltese Falcon.
In fact, there are several large offers for the bird, and it might be worth millions if it is the genuine article.
A European woman who has some trouble with English claims to want the bird to help a children's hospital.
And Spade gets unwanted help from a crazy character (one of the movie's funniest) who he calls 'Andrew Jackson' after the man offers a $20 bill for Spade's time.
Whatever the significance of the bird, someone must want it badly because people start dying.The movie started out really funny and showed promise, but later it lost something.
The second half proved much funnier than the first.
The jokes were not always obvious, and sometimes you had to pay close attention to realize why something was funny.
Sometimes the jokes came at a rapid-fire pace, but other times I felt unsatisfied.
One running gag was a rental car with a mind of its own.
The last gag involving the car was hilarious.
Overall, the movie proved to be worthwhile, but not quite in a league with similar style comedies such as 'Airplane!'People offended by political incorrectness should probably stay away, but to me politically incorrect humor was the best part.
Such as the time Spade was in a room with black men and when his name was called, all the black men got up.
The funniest character was a midget (Spade's word) in a Nazi uniform with a group of large Hawaiian guards protecting him, and the hilarious jokes about or from him were anything but sensitive.
Spade also referred several time to the children in the hospital as 'cripples' or an even worse variation of the word..
Not too bad.
A good beginning and then downhill..
The Black Bird is not really a parody, as it does not poke fun at "The Maltese Falcon".
It is just a very subtle comedy with very little plot, about another group of people searching for the bird.
It is not a great film, or a hilarious film, but worth watching mainly to see the performances of Lee Patrick and Lionel Stander.The "8" that I gave it is for them, otherwise I would have given it a "5" or "6".
If they had given Elisha Cook Jr. a larger part it would have helped.The running gag with the car was cute but nothing to write home about.The addition of a little person playing a Nazi with Hawaiian thugs was just dumb.The ending was about the same as the ending of most of this type of movie, a letdown to the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird"..
To Spoof a Classic.
The Black Bird is not the worst movie I have ever seen - that would be Matrix Revolutions.
I must confess, I did not make it all the way through to the end.
However, I was able to get farther than my first attempt when I walked out of the movie theater around 1976.
If you are going to spoof a CLASSIC, and one of the best movies ever made, you have to do a first class job or else the film looks like a low-budget mess.
Three movies immediately come to mind as examples of great spoofs: Young Frankenstein, Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and Play It Again Sam. Each of these fine films are excellent spoofs that capture the magic of the originals.
The Black Bird violates the most important rule of any film, including comedies and spoofs.
A film must take itself seriously, no matter how ridiculous the subject matter.
I am never able to take George Segal seriously in this film, or any other character for that matter, including Effie, who was splendid in her small and effective part in the original.
Segal's hat and cigar are totally ridiculous and out of place then (1975) and now.
The rest of the movie and supporting characters are not really worth discussing, except to say the quality wavers from low-budget bad to just unwatchale.
If you're looking for a film spoof, rent anything other than this mess, such as Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid or many others..
Terrible, terrible movie!.
Possibly the worst movie I have ever seen.
Very little in this terrible remake of "The Maltese Falcon" even remotely resembles the original.
Spade Jr.'s office, supposedly the same as Sr.'s, is different.
The statue of the falcon is a decidedly different, sub-par copy of the original, and the plot left a great, great deal to be desired.
Pure garbage..
Possibly the worst film ever!.
I see on the IMDB this attempt at a film was made in 1975.
Shouldn't that be 1995?
Considering how bad the film is, it matches most of the attempts of the last ten years.
I think in future we should call it Horrorwood.
God, but I'm beginning to hate movies...at least those made after the 1970's....
My husband laughed so hard tears came out of his eyes.
Okay, he loved slapstick, and silly stuff, quick dialog, who's on first kind of stuff.
He loved parodies.
There were parts in this were he could not stop laughing.
We saw this in the theater years ago, and it was embarrassing trying to shut him up.
We later rented it on VHS and had to play it back several times ***Here be spoiler*** The empty car with the turn signal, him laughing with no sound coming out of his mouth, tears coming out of his eyes.
And if I remember right, he and the girl, he kept thinking he had sex with her but he never did.
That got him too.
May he rest in peace.
He told friends about this movie for years and no one had ever heard of it.
I wish I could see it again now that he is gone, but it isn't carried by Netflix.
I wonder why?
I wonder why? |
tt4227282 | Wrecker | A husband and wife become stranded on a stretch of road known as Devil's Pass. When their cell phone reception cuts out, they wait for help. Elsewhere, Emily joins her friend Leslie on a road trip after she becomes frustrated with her boyfriend, who she believes may have cheated on her. Emily drives their Ford Mustang as Leslie begins drinking their beer. At a fork, Leslie stops Emily and suggests they take Devil's Pass. After deliberating, Emily agrees.
Before long, they become stuck behind a foul-smelling tow truck that carries the earlier couple's car. Annoyed that the driver would not pull over to let them pass, Leslie curses the driver after they speed past it. As the women pull into a gas station, they see the truck follow them. Emily sees the driver's boots but nothing else. Wanting to avoid unnecessary confrontation, the women pull out without an oil change. The gas station attendant warns them to service the car soon.
The truck driver follows them and reacts aggressively to their presence, so Emily allows it to pass her. As it slows down in front of them, Emily attempts to pass it, only to be waved ahead into oncoming traffic. Shaken, the women speed ahead of it and nearly strike children in a residential area. Emily and Leslie pull off the road to a diner, only to become nervous when they realize the tow truck driver is also parked there. They confront a patron they believe to be the driver, but he leaves in a pickup. A waitress asks them to leave for causing a scene, and they cautiously return to the highway.
They find the couple's car, which the tow truck had previously been towing, abandoned on the road. The pickup driver stops to aid them, and they quickly explain their ordeal. As he helps them get the abandoned car off the road, the tow truck driver appears. The women warn off the pickup truck driver and fearfully speed off. The tow truck continues following them, eventually driving them off the road with a flat tire. As the women flee on foot, Emily trips and falls unconscious. When she wakes, Leslie is gone, and the car's tire has been changed.
Not knowing what else to do, Emily returns to the road, only to become spooked by other trucks. She pulls off the road and sleeps for a while, having a nightmare about Leslie. When she wakes, she continues down Devil's Pass until a police officer stops her. Excited to find help, Emily tells the skeptical officer about the trucker. Before she can convince him, the trucker runs him over. The trucker hitches the squad car to his truck and drives off, confusing Emily. She takes the dead cop's pistol and returns to her own car, which has again ran low on gas.
Emily forgets she is holding the pistol when she stops at a gas station but uses it to force the attendant to give her gas. As she uses a pay phone to contact the police, the tow truck appears again and destroys the phone booth. Emily flees in the Mustang, which alerts her to engine trouble now that she has ignored the oil for too long. Knowing she can no longer outrun the tow truck, she engages it in a game of chicken. The truck swerves hard enough to balance precariously off a cliff.
Emily approaches the truck and demands to know what happened to Leslie. The trucker does not answer and continues attempting to back up from the edge. As she approaches closer, she hears a cell phone go off and runs back to the car. The ringing leads her to the trunk, which she slowly opens, dreading what that she will find. She closes the trunk door after being horrified at the contents, then uses her car to ram the tow truck off the cliff. Later, in an unspecified junkyard full of abandoned vehicles, a similar tow truck menaces a driver who seeks assistance. | suspenseful, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0042622 | Julius Caesar | The play opens with the commoners of Rome celebrating Caesar's triumphant return from defeating Pompey's sons at the battle of Munda. Two tribunes, Flavius and Marrullus, discover the commoners celebrating, insult them for their change in loyalty from Pompey to Caesar, and break up the crowd. There are some jokes made by the commoners, who insult them back. They also plan on removing all decorations from Caesar's statues and ending any other festivities. In the next scene, during Caesar's parade on the feast of Lupercal, a soothsayer warns Caesar, "Beware the ides of March." This warning he disregards. The action then turns to the discussion between Brutus and Cassius. In this conversation, Cassius attempts to influence Brutus's opinions into believing Caesar should be killed, preparing to have Brutus join his conspiracy to kill Caesar. They then hear from Casca that Mark Antony has offered Caesar the crown of Rome three times and that each time Caesar refused it, fainting after the last refusal. Later, in act two, Brutus joins the conspiracy, although after much moral debate, eventually deciding that Caesar, although his friend and never having done anything against the people of Rome, should be killed to prevent him from doing anything against the people of Rome if he were ever to be crowned. He compares Caesar to "A serpents egg/ which hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,/ and kill him in the shell." He then decides to join Cassius in killing Caesar.
Caesar's assassination is one of the most famous scenes of the play, occurring in Act 3, scene 1. After ignoring the soothsayer, as well as his wife's own premonitions, Caesar comes to the Senate. The conspirators create a superficial motive for coming close enough to assassinate Caesar by means of a petition brought by Metellus Cimber, pleading on behalf of his banished brother. As Caesar, predictably, rejects the petition, Casca grazes Caesar in the back of his neck, and the others follow in stabbing him; Brutus is last. At this point, Shakespeare makes Caesar utter the famous line "Et tu, Brute?" ("And you, Brutus?", i.e. "You too, Brutus?") Shakespeare has him add, "Then fall, Caesar!" This suggests that such treachery destroyed Caesar's will to live.
The conspirators make clear that they committed this act for Rome, not for their own purposes, and do not attempt to flee the scene. After Caesar is killed, Brutus delivers an oration defending his actions, and for the moment, the crowd is on his side. However, Mark Antony makes a subtle and eloquent speech over Caesar's corpse, beginning with the much-quoted "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!" In this way, he deftly turns public opinion against the assassins by manipulating the emotions of the common people, in contrast to the rational tone of Brutus's speech, yet there is method in his rhetorical speech and gestures: he reminds them of the good Caesar had done for Rome, his sympathy with the poor, and his refusal of the crown at the Lupercal, thus questioning Brutus's claim of Caesar's ambition; he shows Caesar's bloody, lifeless body to the crowd to have them shed tears and gain sympathy for their fallen hero; and he reads Caesar's will, in which every Roman citizen would receive 75 drachmas. Antony, even as he states his intentions against it, rouses the mob to drive the conspirators from Rome. Amid the violence, an innocent poet, Cinna, is confused with the conspirator Lucius Cinna and is taken by the mob, which kills him by tearing him to pieces for such "offenses" as his bad verses.
The beginning of Act Four is marked by the quarrel scene, where Brutus attacks Cassius for supposedly soiling the noble act of regicide by having accepted bribes. ("Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? / What villain touch'd his body, that did stab, / And not for justice?") The two are reconciled, especially after Brutus reveals that his beloved wife Portia had committed suicide under the stress of his absence from Rome; they prepare for a war against Mark Antony and Caesar's adopted son, Octavius. That night, Caesar's ghost appears to Brutus with a warning of defeat. (He informs Brutus, "Thou shalt see me at Philippi.")
At the battle, Cassius and Brutus, knowing that they will probably both die, smile their last smiles to each other and hold hands. During the battle, Cassius has his servant Pindarus kill him after hearing of the capture of his best friend, Titinius. After Titinius, who was not really captured, sees Cassius's corpse, he commits suicide. However, Brutus wins that stage of the battle--but his victory is not conclusive. With a heavy heart, Brutus battles again the next day. He loses and commits suicide by running on his own sword, which is held by a soldier named Strato.
The play ends with a tribute to Brutus by Antony, who proclaims that Brutus has remained "the noblest Roman of them all" because he was the only conspirator who acted, in his mind, for the good of Rome. There is then a small hint at the friction between Mark Antony and Octavius which characterizes another of Shakespeare's Roman plays, Antony and Cleopatra. | tragedy | train | wikipedia | Caesar, Chicago Gangster?. Back in the 1930s, a reporter named Wallace Irwin wrote a hard-boiled mystery novel spoof called THE JULIUS CAESAR MURDER CASE, in which Caesar and his cronies behaved and talked like cut-throat gangsters...which, when you think about it, they were. I kept thinking of Irwin's novel as I watched this black-and-white low-budget oddity from 1950, which was filmed in Chicago at various sites that double quite well for ancient Rome. The look is ancient, but the actor's accents could be straight out of an old James Cagney or Edward G.Robinson gangster movie. With that in mind, this movie provides yet another interesting take on one of the best plays ever written: Shakespeare's Caesar is the first and greatest Godfather of them all.This movie marks the first of many appearances in loincloth by Charlton Heston (aged 25), who reprised the role of Antony in the 1970s all-star version, and again played Antony in his own movie adaptation of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. The role fits him like a glove.There's also a small appearance by Jeffrey Hunter, who speaks a few lines and has some close-ups as a plebeian in the crowd reacting to the speeches by Brutus and Antony.All in all, a worthwhile curiosity for anyone interested in pioneering independent film, Shakespeare movies, or the career of Charlton Heston.. Butchered Caesar. I couldn't make it through this butchered version of the play. Films of Shakespeare's plays are bound to have cuts but the cuts here have been done poorly, leading to a choppy version.The cinematography is at some times interesting (as Brutus makes his funeral oration, we get a close-up of his bloody hands) and sometimes bizarre (as he does part of the oration, the camera shoots him upwards). There are a ridiculous amount of close-ups, probably to make the most of Cassius' creepy face.David Bardley as Brutus is just bland. He's more like a Roderigo from Othello than a noble Roman. Completely ordinary and uncharismatic.Charlton Heston probably fares best, although all his dignity goes out the window at the start, where he has to walk about in a baggy thong looking like Caesar's rent boy. He makes the funeral speech a little too ironic. Antony may be cleverer than he appears but he's not a total meanie.All in all, don't bother watching this Caesar.. Jeffrey Hunter's Screen Debut. The 24 year old Jeffrey Hunter made his screen debut in this film adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar'. Despite the fact that Charlton Heston is in it, I don't think that there is much that you can bring to the story on the screen. I think focusing on Cleopatra and her relationship with both Caesar and Mark Antony is far more interesting. |
tt0082797 | Naseeb | Naseeb, a story of destiny and fate, begins with a lottery ticket. A drunken man who cannot pay his tab trades: so he decides to sell his ticket to the waiter, Namdev (Pran), instead. Namdev purchases this tickt with his three friends Damu (Amjad Khan), Raghu (Kader Khan) and Jaggi (Jagdish Raj). Using a system of drawing out the highest card to decide who keeps the ticket, Jaggi wins, and the ticket stays with him. When the ticket turns out to be a winner, Damu and Raghu turn on the other two, murdering Jaggi and framing Namdev. Namdev goes on the run but Raghu and Damu intervene and throw him over a bridge into a river and Namdev is presumed dead.
However, he is rescued by a don (Amrish Puri), and no one is aware he is alive. Fast forward to twenty years later — Damu and Raghu have used their stolen lottery money to build a fabulous hotel and make millions becoming very successful businessmen. Damu has used a share of his money to send his youngest son, Vicky (Shatrughan Sinha), to school in England. They have even employed Namdev's oldest son Johnny (Amitabh Bachchan), Vicky's best friend, as a waiter in the hotel. By coincidence (or by fate!) Johnny and Vicky fall in love with the same beautiful singer, Miss Asha (Hema Malini). Julie (Reena Roy) is a childhood friend of Vicky's who is in love with him, but he only sees her as a friend. When Johnny discovers this, he and Julie sacrifice their own love to ensure that Vicky and Asha get together. At the same time, Johny's younger brother Sunny (Rishi Kapoor) has fallen for Asha's younger sister, Kim (Kim). Kim and Asha happen to be the daughters of Jaggi, the man Namdev supposedly murdered. Namdev returns soon after and plans to take revenge against Damu and Raghu for separating him from his sons Johnny and Sunny. The lives of all these characters become interwined and Naseeb becomes a poignant story about love, friendship, sacrifice, deceit, revenge and, above all, destiny. | murder | train | wikipedia | It has to certainly be an all time classic for people of my generation who grew up in the 70's and 80's.
To those who live in England, it is of special significance as it was shown on Channel 4 a few times in the mid and late eighties.I cannot begin to describe the story as it is quite complex.
The story continues into a heroes versus villains struggle and ends, as usual, with good winning.
Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor and Shatrughan Sinha are our main three heroes.
Kimi Katkar, Reena Roy and Hema Malini are our heroines.
"Good guys" include Pran and Amjad Khan.
Villains include Kader Khan, Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra, and of course Amrish Puri in a commanding performance as "Don." As if the film were short of film stars, there is an EXCELLENT film sequence for the song "John Jani Janardan" (a classic for the age).
It involves various actors and actresses in guest appearances, including Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Simi and many many others.Other songs in the film are also extremely memorable.
In particular, the final picturization "Rang Jamake Jayenge" is an instant classic.What can I tell you about this film if you have not already seen it?
This film is unprecedented in the number of top stars that have appeared in it.
a typical Bollywood movie.
This movie has the footprint of Manmohan Desai all across the board.
Period between 1979 to 1985 was the peak period for Manmohan Desai, giving hits like 'Amar Akbar Anthony' & 'Suhaag' in 1979, 'Naseeb' in 1981, 'Coolie' in 1983 & 'Mard' in 1985, where Amitabh Bachchan is the main hero in all these movies.
Besides the 'lost & found' theme of the story, all these movies has excellent music, song & dance.
He stretches the scope of the movie to its limit in all directions, be it the number of stars, locations and sets.
It is an entertaining movie and can easily be listed in must-see movies, if time permits..
Naseeb- Age old story on a lavish scale.
Four years after the classic Amar Akbar Anthony Manmohan Desai made another classic Nasseb.
Another difference were the villains, Amjad Khan, Kader Khan, Prem Chopra, Shakti Kapoor and Amrish Puri (wow!!).It all starts when four friends(Kader Khan,Amjad Khan,Pran and Jagdish)receive a winning lottery ticket and Jagdish wins.
Out of sheer greed Kader Khan and Amjad Khan kill Jagdish and frame Pran.
Kader Khan and Amjad Khan start a hotel with their winnings.
Years later we find out that Pran is actually very much alive and returns to avenge his friend's murder, which results in a superb finale that takes place in a hotelThe songs were extremely good.
The song is memorable for the special appearances by film stars.
Zindagi imtihaan leti hai was also a favourite of mine and so was Rang Jamake Jayenge.After reading my review of classic films people might assume Iam in my 30's or 40's in fact Iam only 22.
I absolutely love classic movies, they have a appeal that is sorely lacking in todays films.
Manmohan Desai thank you for giving me a passion for Bollywood movies..
A film that you can watch anytime and can't really get bored..
Basically,I think that if the actors and actresses are good performers the whole film ends up being good and as part of this film it has the best actors and actresses that can perform great.Amitabh Bachchan,Hema Malini,Rishie Kapoor,Shatrughan Sinha,Reena Roy,Rishie kapoors wife in the film,Kader Khan,Shakti Kapoor,Amrish Puri,Amjad Khan,Jeevan,Prem Chopra and everyone else.Naseeb has the right time to be funny and the right time to be emotional.Naseeb was a perfect film and had a mixture of meanings such as Friendship,love,sacrifice and being poor but being patient.I love the part at the end when they are in the hotel and they fight like mad..
Brilliant Entertaining Movie.
Naseeb is a multi budget Movie that was a Big Blockbuster Hit. It had a Extremely large star cast to create one of the biggest Indian films ever made.
Naseeb is the typical Manmohan Desai movie that contains Action, Romance, Comedy, Family relationships and lots of fun and entertainment.
Naseeb meaning fate has many points in the movie which counts on Fate.
Amitabh Bachchan was good as usual.
Hema Malini was tremondous and was the Best actress of the early 80s.
Naseeb has almost all the Bollywood Villains ever from Amjad Khan, Kader Khan, Amrish Puri, Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra and Om Shivpuri.
Manmohan tries to add many characters in small or main roles from Pran to Jeevan.
It even has a song sequence that celebrates the Silver Jubilee of a previous movie by the same director.
The song has Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna and the famous Kapoor family members including the late Raj Kapoor who was a classic Bollywood Actor.
This movie is Big in actors and Big in Production.
A big time entertainer..
Classic Bollywood Mainstream.
This is one of Manmohan Desai's best films ever, an amalgam of many film genres.
The film boasts of some great songs, and in one of the songs, Manmohan Desai managed to include almost the entire film industry.Manmohan Desai worked with the 'lost-and-found' plot in all of his movies, but made it seem fresh every time around, and this film came as a winner all around.Amitabh Bachchan carried the film, but with ample support from Shatrughan Sinha, Rishi Kapoor, Hema Malini, Pran,and Amjad Khan.
I have seen this film a dozen times and will be watching it again many times more..
This is a movie that is best seen for people who want entertainment.
The plotline is average (standard for a Hindi action blockbuster), but the action scenes are definitely novel ones for Hindi movies.
If you are a fan of martial arts or Western action movies though, you might recognize the elements.It is the actors and the music that are the real backbone of the movie.
Amitabh is in classic form, and Rishi Kapoor shows you why he deserves the title of "The Dancing Kapoor", esp.
in the final song sequence "Rang Jamake".
This is an excellent song sequence and will remind you of the final song sequence in "Amar, Akbar, Anthony".The music is wonderful, not too much of it and not bizarre in execution on screen.
I had not heard these songs in over 10 years, and they still sound very good.An unusual aspect of this movie is there is very little in the way of romantic scenes.
Hema Malini has the role of a woman who is not helpless.Strong-willed is one thing, but ability to defend yourself physically is an added dimension, a welcome one.
There is also nothing in the way of the extended woman-abuse (rape, slapping, beating, etc.) scenes you see in Hindi movies.
So this film is probably more suitable for family viewing.Overall, I would say a 7 out of 10.
("Amar, Akbar, Anthony" by comparison would be an 8.5 out of 10, to give you an idea.).
One of the best film of Amitabh.
He is super in it and as far as cast many stars appear in song John Johny janardan.
Other cast of the film are hema, Shru,Rishi, Tina, and reena roy.
Hema is playing character of a model and on a tour to London for shooting when she meets Mr. Sinha he falls for her but hema is beloved of Amit so things goes right wrong because Amit, and Shatru r two friends on other hand the story has Reena Roy liking but its one side love.
Music is lovely and its a masala film that keeps u wake and the music is amazing.
To find what movie is u have to check out on DVD..
Manmohan Desai made several entertaining films, his films cared less for logic, story but more for entertainment.
MDk is one of the rare directors who gave 4 blockbusters in 1977, After AAA(1977) he made several blockbusters with Bachchan from Parvarish(1977), SUHAAG(1979)and then NASEEB(1981) which was touted as a sequel to AAA as it starred almost similar stars, Big B and Rishi returned back as brothers, Pran as their lost father.etc This time MDK made the film on a larger canvas and shot the film also on foreign locales and brought a bigger supporting cast, For the song John Jani janardhan he brought almost everyone from Raj Kapoor, Simi Garewal, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna to the that time favourite Vinod Mehra The story is somewhat similar, very convulted but yet treated well by MDK and it guarantees full entertainment.
The film starts 20 years before, Young Pran and his friends Kader Khan, Amjad Khan and Jagdish Raj(for once not a cop) get a lottery ticket by a drunk Satyen Kapuu and they decide to share it, Then tragedy strikes and the long lost theme starts plus the film forwards 20 yrs later Strangely in the same year in YAARANA too Amitabh and Amjad both friends were separated in childhood as the latter went abroad to study 20 years later Amitabh works as the waiter in the hotel run by villains Kader and Amjad and Kader's son Prem Chopra(though same age as him) and Shakti Kapoor.
The film has several funny scenes in the first half like the entire scene where Reena Roy comes with the cake and the chaos that ensure.
Rishi crying for 1 mark ala Dharam in Sholay threatening for suicide and then saving Kim(Dimple lookalike) We also have Jeevan(regular of MDk)as a funny principle who flirts with girl's hostel principle Shobha Khote.
Amitabh saving Hema Malini and their love story which starts off funnily but then gets serious with the predictable twist of Shatru/Amit falling for her and then Bachchan sacrificing his love(done superbly with symbolism used as a cross showing his sacrifice) Amitabh and Shatru paired in a love triangle 1 year before this film in DOSTANA which too was a superhit The film then becomes an action film and after all pairs get each other the focus begins on nailing down the criminals, Pran returns, Amrish Puri too returns and then we have the predictable MDk style get up dance song Rang Jamake ala Amar Akbar Anthony and an action filled climax.
The film does have some flaws like some scenes don't make sense like how Kim does lipreading when someone faces their back, also several other scenes which are overlooked.
The film is quite lengthy too like in those days Direction by MDk is superb Music by LP is superb, most songs were hit like John Jani Janardhan sung by MDK fav Mohammed Rafi who passed away in 1980 and this film was a tribute to him Strangely since SUHAAG MDK didn't have Kishore the usual fav for Big B sing for him and in this film too Kishore sang for Rishi(Pakdo Pakdo) and for Shatru(Rang Jamake)while Rafi sang for Amitabh.
Mere Naseeb mein sung by Lata is still a superhit and performed superbly by Hema Malini Pakdo Pakdo a fun number on Rishi and Kim dancing while playing kabaddi(boys vs girls) and then we have Zindagi Imtehaan leti hai when Big B realises that Shatru too loves Hema, the song is apt sung by Dr. Kamlesh Avastathi.
Most memorable song is also CHAL MERE BHAI wherein a drunk Amitabh sings in his own voice with Rishi Kapoor coming to try to convince him to go home, Rafi and Big B make a good team The finale dance number Rang Jamake with all in get ups is also a brilliant number, KK, Rafi and Shailendra return after Hum Premi(Parvarish) and make a good team The film is quite similar to AAA, as in both films Amitabh has a drunk scene, Shatru's role was supposed to be played by VK who had left to US that time while Rishi does his cartoonish act similarly in the climax Also we have Pran here too as Big B's lost fatherAmongst actors Amitabh Bachchan as usual stands tall and he plays the main lead He proves his versatility by performing superbly in action, romance, comedy, drama.
In all MDK films he always entertained the masses and gave his most freewheeling performance, This was his last classy film with MDK like AAA, after that he made crass films like COOLIE and MARD and then GJS.
Hema Malini looks beautiful and does well in her role and looks charming and has superb chemistry with Big B.
Her bike scenes are a treat Shatrughan Sinha looks overweight but does quite well in his role This was his last film with Big B so far, Rumours were abuzz that both were big time rivals those days and there never spoke during the shoot Rishi Kapoor again entertains after AAA, He is one actor who always entertained never mind if his role was a second lead or main lead.
His comedy timing is superb and also his drama scenes Kim resembles Dimple Kapadia and does okay Reena Roy in her biggest film perhaps does a superb job Amongst the huge supporting cast Pran is superb, Amjad Khan and Kader Khan are good as the bad guys Amrish Puri is superb in his small role Lalita Pawar does well as usual, Jeevan and Shobha Khote are funny, Viju Khote has one scene Prem Chopra and Shakti Kapoor are good as the villain cum jerks.
This is not (Amar Akbar Anthony) part 2, or a remake of it either.
But sorry, it didn't hit the mark that the previous movie did.Back then (Manmohan Desai) was on the top of his game.
Here, he made a complicated plot, as usual, with the same went-to-crime deeply-good father, the same variant but brave lost-and-found sons, again love stories for the 3 sons, bad guys (numerous this round), comedy, music, action, a final song where the sons meet, masquerade and dance before beating up the badies, and most of all a celebration of the power of faith, unity and the main 3 religions of India.
Now it's played all over again, with just different names and characters, more actors and money.
The thing is, I felt less.The movie is 197 minutes another (Desai) masala epic.
(Shatrughan Sinha) is the worst third member for (Amitabh Bachchan) and (Rishi Kapoor) heroic league.
And he was older than his role, being 6 years younger than his father in the movie (Amjad Khan) !
(God forgive Vinod Khanna, the third brother of Bachchan and Kapoor in AAA, who was nominated for the role but couldn't accept it since he took a break from films).
Watch the character of (Pran)'s sister to have a loud laugh; heck, the respectable masala never treated any character that bad before.
Shooting abroad, having tons of cameos at the party scene, the sniper sequence (one of the most marvelous ever), and the aflame tower action at the end, were some of the ways.
It exemplifies the astonishing extravaganza more than any effective suffering or well-made melodrama, despite the scene of sacrificing, beside the Christ statue, for the sake of friendship which was the sole moment where this movie had a heart.
See, that's why the less lavish (AAA) surpasses.Notice well how most of the movie's songs are being performed through parties or shows, how most of the cameos are for the stars as themselves, celebrating their stardom, and how (Amitabh Bachchan) breaks the fourth wall, talking to us, many times to understand that it's a big ostentatious party of the commercial Indian cinema and all its stars at the 1980s start.
So for me the grand party scene, where that crowd of stars gather on one screen, is the best of the movie, or rather the movie itself.
(John Jani Janardhan) and (Mere Naseeb Mein) are great classics.
They are 2 of the reasons why we'll always cherish that era and those movies.
While these 2 songs, along with the party scene, get a 10, the movie itself gets a 7.
Dear (Desai) used to bedeck his movies with fireworks.
This time he made the whole movie out of many flashy fireworks, only..
Sure it's a great movie -- if you don't have a brain!
Nothing in this movie is realistic or plausible.
Now I know you're probably thinking it's a movie and it's not supposed to be realistic...Give me a break.
Of course it's a movie but how would you like it if Superman suddenly started to shoot web out of his wrists.
There is a scene here where one of the heroines is reading the villains' lips when they're backs are turned towards her.
Also why the hell does Sinha marry Reena Roy?
He doesn't love her and I thought that's what Bollywood films are about.
Amitabh and Rishi Kapoor nail down their roles.
Amjad Khan and Amrish Puri are both really good.
Of the woman Hema Malini's easily the best while Kimi Katekar is just horrible.
The songs are really good as are the action sequences although the last one is a clear rip-off of the Towering Inferno and goes too long.
Some Multi-starrers are made because the director wants to make a great movie (such as Amar Akbar Anthony) while others like this one are made to take your money.
Coincidentally both of these movies are made by Manmohan Desai and there are many things about this one that tell you that it was supposed to be a sort of sequel to Amar Akbar Anthony (i.e. Amitabh's drunk scene in front of the mirror, two of the three heros play the same roles they did in the earlier movie, the actor who plays Dabisco also played Dabisco in the first one, Pran's character, the whole three heroes three heroines deal).
The film definitely is a good one and I liked it as such ( 6 or 7 out of 10), but it certainly isn't great and didn't deserve to become the top Bollywood film of the 80s.
But then again with the quality of Bollywood films you never know. |
tt0024325 | Men Must Fight | Nurse Laura Mattson (Diana Wynyard) and World War I military pilot Lt. Geoffrey Aiken (Robert Young) fall in love after only knowing each other for a few days. Tragically, he is brought to her hospital and, by chance, put under her care after being fatally wounded on his very first mission. After he dies, Laura realizes she is pregnant. Edward Seward (Lewis Stone) loves her and persuades her to marry him. As far as anyone knows, the child will be his.
By 1940, Laura's son Bob has grown into a young man, newly engaged to Peggy Chase. Laura has raised Bob to embrace pacifism. Meanwhile, Edward Seward, now United States Secretary of State, flies home after having negotiated the Seward Peace Treaty, which he claims will make it impossible for any country to go to war again. However, when the U.S. ambassador to the state of "Eurasia" is assassinated while en route to the Eurasian State Department to discuss an earlier diplomatic incident, the President sends the navy across the Atlantic to underscore the U.S. demand for a formal apology. Eurasia refuses to comply, and another world war becomes inevitable despite the treaty.
Laura speaks at a large peace rally, over her husband's strong objection. The rally is broken up a group of angry men. A mob then gathers at the Seward home and starts pelting the place. Edward manages to disperse the crowd by first reminding the mob of each American's right to voice his or her own opinion in peacetime, and pledging himself wholeheartedly to the struggle once war is declared. When a news reporter interviews him, he insists his son will enlist. Bob categorically denies this, causing Peggy to break off their engagement. Unable to get his son to change his mind, Edward tells him that he at least has no right to sully the Seward name, revealing that he is not Bob's father. Laura confirms it, and tells Bob of his real father and how he died.
War breaks out. Privately, Edward informs his wife that the war is going badly because America fell behind during the years of peace; the "Canal" has been captured by the enemy, and 12,000 U.S. troops killed in two days by enemy gas bombs. When Eurasia launches an air raid on New York City, destroying such landmarks as the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds are killed and Laura is injured, though not seriously. Bob changes his stance and enlists, not in the chemical division as a trained chemist as Edward had suggested, but as an aviator like his real father. Bob and Peggy marry, then he departs with his squadron. As she watches Bob's squadron fly over the city, Laura now understands that freedom is not free; that we must always be prepared to safeguard it; and we all have a responsibility to defend it. | anti war | train | wikipedia | Made in 1933 it predicts a world war in 1940, and even shows a catastrophic air-raid on a major city (in this case New York, but it certainly echoes the destruction soon to be unleashed on London, Berlin etc).
The film carefully presents the pacifist and nationalist arguments in an amazingly contemporary way, embodying the argument in the character of a young pacifist man who must decide whether to fight or not.
The irony that the actor playing this part, Phillips Holmes, was later to die in the real World War 2, adds to the power of this remarkable film.
Diana Wynyard is extraordinary as his mother - indeed the strength of the female characters is one of the film's greatest achievements - few people will not applaud the sentiments of the final scene.
While MEN MUST FIGHT wars, it is the women who wait and strive for peace.This is a fascinating film, all but forgotten now, which both pleads for peace yet urges action against violent aggressor nations.
By supplying strong characters to voice both sides, sometimes changing their minds mid-film, MEN MUST FIGHT tries to please everyone without alienating anyone.
Politics aside, it is possible to enjoy the film strictly on the basis of its good acting and compelling production values.Beginning during World War One, the movie quickly jumps to 1940, where it tries to predict not only the fashions but also the geopolitics seven years hence from its production.
Although the future enemy is called Eurasia,' careful observation during the Coliseum anti-war rally clearly shows the Nazi swastika and the Imperial Japanese Rising Sun flag among the montage of dangers, eight years before America's entry into the still-distant World War Two, proving the prescience of the film's creators.Distinguished English actress Diana Wynyard is a standout as the woman who has seen too much of war's death and tries valiantly to convince others to renounce all warfare.
These two excellent performers ably show the full force their decisions have on their most intimate relationships.Phillips Holmes gives a compelling performance as Wynyard's conflicted son--caught between pacifism & patriotism, he shows the stress going through the mind of any young man facing a really difficult decision.
Ironically, considering the film's conclusion, this fine young actor would be killed in a midair collision in Ontario in August of 1942, preparing to fight the Nazis as a member of the Canadian Air ForceElderly May Robson makes one of her typically energetic film appearances as Lewis' sharp-tongued mother.
Pretty Ruth Selwyn does well with her undemanding role as Holmes' patriotic fiancée; stately Hedda Hopper plays her strong-minded mother.
Robert Young makes the most of his very brief role as the flier who is the great love of Wynyard's life.
Rotund Robert Greig steals a few scenes as Robson's spirited butler.Movie mavens will recognize Arthur Housman as a shipboard inebriate and Mary Gordon as a spectator during the Coliseum rally, both uncredited.The film's pre-Code status is well demonstrated by its gentle mocking of patriotism and the way in which the opening scenes frankly present Wynyard & Young as unmarried lovers..
Men Must Fight is an interesting if somewhat dated look at the future of the world as seen from 1933.
In fact World War I was simply called the Great War when referred to, that we'd have another was unthinkable.Diana Wynyard plays a nurse on the front lines in the Great War who's in love with flier Robert Young.
But good and stout friend Lewis Stone will marry her and raise the kid as their own.Flash forward 20 years and the future in 1940 has folks using television and cellphones where one can talk and text.
Diana Wynyard is a pacifist activist and the two seem to work in tandem.The film is purposely vague, not telling us exactly who the US rivals are out there.
Interestingly enough a few of our ambassadors in the past centuries were assassinated and the USA did not go to war for national honor in real life.This causes a conflict in Wynyard's grown son played by Phillips Holmes.
Stone falls in line with the war declaration, Wynyard still works for peace, Holmes doesn't know what to do though he leans in Wynyard's direction.
Holmes also is in conflict with his fiancé Ruth Selwyn who says America must fight.At that time the ultimate weapon was poison gas and the fear was that the chemists on both sides would make even more lethal varieties.
We're fortunate to have TCM show it, especially since leading lady Diana Wynyard made so very few films..
Lewis Stone, Diana Wynyard, Robert Young, and Phillips Holmes star in "Men Must Fight," a 1933 film.
The movie starts with a young nurse, Laura (Wynyard) and her lover (Young) as he prepares to go off to World War I.
Laura vows that no son of hers will ever fight in a war.Flash forward to 1940, and Seward is now Secretary of State, working on a peace treaty, with Laura's help.
Having raised her son as a pacificist, Robert refuses to enlist, to the disgust of Peggy.The film was made in 1933, but obviously the signs of conflict were already in the air; if one looks carefully at an anti-war rally that takes place in the film, one will see the Japanese sun and the Nazi swastika.
Diana Wynyard, too, is very good, but both actors have very over the top dialogue to say.Very, very interesting film, and well worth seeing, with some excellent battle scenes..
In 1933, when Hitler was still considered just a buffoonish little man, this film predicts 1940 as the date of the next world conflict.
They were only off by one year, so really not bad on the timing predictions.The film begins with a real precode moment - a young flyer (Robert Young as Geoffrey Aiken) and a nurse (Diana Wynyard as Laura) are in the process of dressing in a dimly lit room, obviously after a session of love making.
Geoffrey's son is born, and WWI ends.The film picks up again in 1940, with Edward now Secretary of State, and the Seward marriage may not be a passionate one, but it does seem to be at least tender and loving.
Laura's son (Philips Holmes as Bob) has grown up into a handsome young man who has already started to make a name for himself in the field of chemistry.
Maybe the advice given by the pacifists in this film might have worked in WWI, in which decades and even centuries of pointless bickering erupted into one pointless conflict, but as we all know, just refusing to fight would not have worked against Hitler or Japan.There are several interesting pieces of futuristic technology including a video phone used by Secretary of State Seward when talking to Laura's now grown son.
Also, it is probably one of Philips Holmes' best roles and rather eery when you realize he would die nine years later in a mid-air collision while serving during the actual WWII.
It also tried to depict future fashions and people using "video phones."The eerie part is when a airplane with a bomb on board smashes in to the Empire State building on a attack on New York City.This movie was way ahead of its time for 1933!.
I enjoyed some of the anti-war sentiment in this film, despite a muddled point of view that also included strong hawkish sentiments.
Considering this was a 1933 film, it came pretty close to predicting the actual start of WWII.
Performances were excellent, with Lewis Stone a standout as Secretary of State, Diana Wynyard as his dovish wife who lost her lover (Robert Young) in WWI, and Phillips Holmes as their son, caught in the middle of his parents' beliefs.
A movie about preparedness for war, the main characters are woman who became a pacifist after her beau died in WWI; her husband, the Secretary of State, a pacifist who turns hawk when war is imminent; her son, also a pacifist, who disappoints his stepfather by refusing to use his knowledge of chemistry to create better poison gases ("the weapon of the future"); the boy's fiance, who refuses to continue the engagement because the boy won't join in the war effort; a dotty pacifist grandma; and Hedda Hopper as the girl's hawkish mom.With a bizarre cast of characters like this, you can just imagine the plot.
It takes the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, plus the revelation that his real father was a war hero, plus the abandonment by his stepfather, to make the pacifist son realize that he must fight, and likely die (as the enemy, Eurasia, has already invaded New York and seems to be equipped with deadly poison gas).This is a gem, and thank god we have oddball cable stations that show such stuff in the middle of the night.
Although ultimately the movie comes down on the side of the fighters ("Men Must Fight"), the notion that it would be better for all nations (led by the world's mothers) to refuse to go to war is a major theme of the movie.
It's also interesting that this was around the start of the US pacifist movement that some say was partially financed by Nazi Germany to keep the US out of their way.While the film is done in that creaky early thirties acting style, the script gives the characters quite a bit of nuance.
Triumphant military music plays when the troops march out and fly off.This film should be seen with the more entertaining but similar "Things To Come"Some technical notes: the sound is very bad at points during the last ten minutes on the TCM print which I assume came from the MGM vault.
An Even Handed Dual Purpose Picture that Tries and Mostly Succeeds to Have it Both Ways.The Movie Starts in the Middle of WWI and Sets Up the Illegitimate Relationship of a Nurse and a Flyer Before it Leaps to 1940 and then Sets the Stage for the Beginning of WWII (remember, the Film was made in 1933) and the Clash Between Pacifists and Patriots.Noble and Notable as a Glimpse Into a Possible Future that Really Did Happen.
The Battle Scenes that Take Place Above the Air and In New York City are Chilling.Some May Consider the Ending a Lean Toward Pro-War, but there is Enough Anti-War Sentiment Throughout to Make This a "Fair and Balanced" Contrast of Philosophies.
During the Great War (aka World War I), British-accented nurse Diana Wynyard (as Laura Mattson) suffers tragically.
Looking great for her advanced years, Ms. Wynyard is married to US Secretary of State Lewis Stone (as Edward "Ned" Seward).
They have raised a pacifist son, handsome chemical engineer Phillips Holmes (as Robert "Bob" Seward).
When a Second World War breaks out in Europe, the pacifist ideals of Wynyard and the draft-aged Mr. Holmes are tested...From a short-lived 1932 Broadway play, this film predicts what many people once considered unlikely - that another "world war" would follow the "war to end all wars." There were fewer predicting this in the 1930s than the countless speculation about World War III.
However, this is not really a film about picture phones and chemical weapons...Living up to its title, "Men Must Fight" is a pro-war story.
The arguments for why people "must fight" wars, which the film makes more subtly, are undermined by the heavy-handedness.
In an ironically sad postscript, Holmes enlisted in the real World War II and died in a 1942 plane crash.****** Men Must Fight (2/17/33) Edgar Selwyn ~ Diana Wynyard, Phillips Holmes, Lewis Stone, May Robson.
The very startling irony for me is that Philip Holmes who played the son died in 1942 at the start of WWII in a mid-air collision after having joined the Royal Canadian Air Force!!.
This 1933 drama boldly predicted a second world war (in 1940!) at a time when many Americans were actively planning to sit out such an event.
Even more bizarrely, this movie prefigures the real-life deaths of two of the leading actors in its cast.Diana Wynyard stars as Laura Mattson, a Red Cross nurse in the Great War. She has a brief fling with a handsome aviator who then conveniently dies.
Rising diplomat Edward Seward (the excellent Lewis Stone) realises that Laura is pregnant by the pilot but unmarried; he proposes to her and offers to raise the child as his own son.
Meanwhile, a foreign alliance called the Eurasian States are gearing up for war against America.Having seen the toll of war, Laura organises a women's pacifist league to prevent World War Two. In a 'Lysistrata' gambit, she persuades the mothers of America to refuse to donate their sons to the juggernaut of war.
This proves an embarrassment for Secretary of State Seward, especially when a mob of protesters show up to fling stones at his house while haranguing Laura and Bob as 'yellow-bellies'.SPOILERS COMING.
(Way back in 1920, in the silent film 'Milestones', Lewis Stone played yet another character whose house is stoned by hooligans!) Even more unnerving is the ending of 'Men Must Fight', in which Bob Seward (Phillips Holmes) renounces his pacifist ways to become an aviator.
In real life, Holmes gave up his movie career early in WW2 to join the Canadian Air Force as a fighter pilot, and he died during a flight exercise.
The spectre of Holmes's real-life death hangs over his fictional character in this film, giving it a powerful undertone of morbidity.
His role in 'Men Must Fight' forces me to recall that this actor died a hero's death in real life, and that he should be remembered accordingly.'Men Must Fight' is an astonishing and audacious near-future drama, made even more powerful by the real-world events which have overtaken it.
A nurse named Laura (Diana Wynyard) in World War I has sex with a pilot (Robert Young), who dies soon after.
Years later her son Bob (Phillips Holmes) is grown and the world is on the brink of another world war.
But Laura is vehemently anti-war and has raised her son the same.
This leads to conflict as Laura's husband is now the US Secretary of State and expects Bob to fight for his country.Fascinating movie with a lot of thought-provoking ideas and prescient look at a second world war and technological advances like television and videophones.
A sad bit of irony is that, in the end of this film, Phillips Holmes' character enlists as a pilot and flies off to war.
Holmes himself would enlist in World War II as a pilot and be killed in a mid-air collision in Canada..
The problem, however, is that while the films were absolutely right about the pointlessness of wars like the First World War, they also didn't take into account that there sometimes are wars that need fighting.
But it does try.The film begins with a nurse (Diana Wynyard) and a pilot (Robert Young) having a tryst in a rented room (after all, this is a Pre-Code film--where the moral values of the late 30s and into the 40s were NOT at all evident in many Hollywood films).
Unfortunately, though, when war threatens with the fictional country of Eurasia, he joins lockstep in the American war effort and expects this pacifist son to do the same.
Well, the son doesn't and the mother spends much of the film heading a national pacifist movement.
While it was cool watching everyone talking on videophones in the future year 1940, the film doesn't seem to make a good case for pacifism or going to war.
An historic note that I haven't seen in any post about this brilliant film: Film Secretary of State Edward Seward is analogous to real US SoS William Jennings Bryan.In the movie, the fictional Seward gives up his pacifist beliefs because a US envoy has been assassinated in "Eurasia," and American pride demands that we send the fleet to provoke war.In real life pacifist WJ Bryan refused to give in to war hysteria before WW I.
Maybe this is because heroine Diana Wynyard makes a number of decent anti-war speeches throughout this film.
In any event, I will admit Diana Wynyard is a good actress and did a good job in this film, and I appreciated the opening scene, a pre-code artifact indicating that Miss Wynward and Robert Young had engaged in pre-marital sex.
That women, children, the sick, the poor, the elderly, and the disabled suffer the most when war is foughtThat a film described by some as anti-war misses these and other major points is akin to giving the Nobel Peace Prize to a world leader who bombs weaker nations and sends drone weapons against civilians.
In case you still might think this film is anti-war (Spoiler Alert!) then consider the fact that at the film's end, Miss Wynyard's son resolves his story arc by enlisting to fight in a jingoistic crescendo of inanity.I'm busting on this film so bad because others in this time period knew the straight scoop on war.
73 minutes.SYNOPSIS: The scene is set in the USA, seven years into the future, namely 1940: A pacifist Secretary of State (Lewis Stone) comes to realize that America has no alternative but to repel an invasion with force, to trade an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
His wife (Diana Wynyard), however, does not refute her pacifist sentiments even when the enemy carries out a sudden, surprise air attack against New York, destroying several famous landmarks including the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.
Nonetheless, the film is of enormous interest not only as one of the few overtly "message" pictures produced by M-G-M, but for its prophetic view of 1940 (which can now be transferred to 11 September 2001) with America involved in a war against Germany and Japan.
True, Diana Wynyard's role is always relentlessly motivated towards "peace at all costs", but Lewis Stone's undergoes two remarkable reversals which no amount of skilful acting can disguise. |
tt1259014 | L'instinct de mort | === Part 1 ===
Part 1 depicts Mesrine's life from 1959 to 1972, beginning with his time as a member of the French Army during the Algerian War, where he was forced to shoot and kill prisoners and bomb-makers. On his return to France, he moves into his parents' home, where he reunites with his mother and his father. After an argument about getting an honest job, he meets with his old childhood friend, Paul, who is wealthy now and drives a sports car. They soon get into robbery business with Paul's boss, Guido, and from him, he obtains a Citroën DS as a loan. Later, Guido and Mesrine kill Ahmed, an Arab pimp who beat up Sarah (one of his girls and Mesrine's girlfriend), and bury him in the countryside and drive off.
Using Guido's status as a local crime boss as protection from their enemies, after committing some robberies, Paul and Mesrine briefly leave France for the Canary Islands, where Mesrine meets and falls in love with Sofia, who moves to France with him, and they marry. However, although they have a daughter, and later two sons, Mesrine continues to be in the robbery business, causing him to get arrested and sent to prison in late 1960. He is released in 1962, and although tries to keep a steady job and be honest, he is fired over financial crisis, and dreams of easy money get him back into 'the business'. One night, Guido and Paul arrive and Mesrine prepares to leave with them, but Sofia yells at him and tells him that she will call the police, on which Mesrine snaps, slaps her, drags her across the stairs, and shoves a gun into her mouth and threatens her in front of Guido and Paul before departing. Later they divorce, leaving him custody of the children.
In 1966, Mesrine, now a gangster, goes into a bar. A woman named Jeanne Schneider comes on to him and the pair quickly fall in love. Jeanne is cut from the same cloth as Mesrine and the pair begin to commit robberies together. After stealing from a mob operated casino, the pair attract the attention of local mob bosses. In 1968, while walking with his young daughter, several men pull a 'drive-by' on Mesrine, wounding him. Guido treats him for his injuries, and suggests that he should leave the country until the things cool down, to which Mesrine agrees. He packs, leaves his kids in custody of his parents, and departs from France, traveling to Canada with Jeanne.
Later, in Montreal, he works as a construction worker on the Champlain Bridge, where he meets a Quebec resident, Jean-Paul Mercier, and they become friends. Mesrine is denied residency in Canada due to his criminal past but he remains there illegally. He and Jeanne hatch a plan to kidnap and hold a French-Canadian billionaire, a decrepit man paralyzed from the waist down. They gain access to his home by taking the jobs of a maid and a chauffeur. After several months, they put their plan into practice, kidnapping the man and spiriting him away to a flat in the city. While Jeanne and Mesrine are away to try and collect the ransom money, the man manages to crawl to the balcony, break the glass, and call for help. The billionaire is taken away by paramedics just as Mesrine and Jeanne arrive back at their apartment. They flee, escaping across the border to the United States. They are subsequently captured in the Arizona desert, while at about the same time, Guido and Paul are murdered back in France by an unknown assailant.
Mesrine and Jeanne are sent back to Canada, where Jeanne is sentenced to 5 years, and Mesrine is sentenced to 10 years. He is sent to the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul prison, where he is exposed to extreme torture and pain. Nevertheless, he still plans to break out of prison. After reuniting with Jean-Paul, also held in the same prison, he meets Roger André, another prisoner, who helps him and Jean-Paul escape through the fence on a Monday, when the guards in the watch towers are hung over from the weekend. Soon after, they arrive near the border, where Jean-Paul meets Sylvie Jeanjacqout, and he falls in love with her. They hatch a plan to break Roger and friends out of prison, which does not go as intended. While Mesrine and Mercier are mounting the assault on the prison, they are both wounded. Roger is shot and killed.
Later Mesrine manages to call Jeanne, to tell her he plans to break her out of prison, but, fearful for them both and wanting to abandon her old life of crime, with the prison weakening her, she severs her ties to him. Mesrine and Jean-Paul continue on with the robberies, and while having target practice in the woods one day, they are caught by two forest rangers, and forced to kill them and leave them. Mesrine says to Jean-Paul, "If they catch us now, we'll hang."
The end credits roll. Notation concludes that Jeanne was released after serving her sentence, and went back to France to live freely, while Jean-Paul split with Mesrine and was shot dead a year later while robbing a bank. Mesrine's story is 'to be continued' (in part two).
=== Part 2 ===
The second film is about Mesrine's life from 1972 until November 2, 1979, the day of his death. The story starts back in 1972, with Mesrine returning to France after departing from Canada. He is now with Sylvie, who becomes his new girlfriend. He returns to Paris and commits more robberies. However, in March 1973, he is arrested after a successful heist, but as he is transferred to the courtroom, he requests to use the bathroom, and retrieves a pistol hidden in the toilet tank. He brandishes the gun in the court, forces the guards to uncuff him, and takes a judge hostage temporarily, while his apprentice, Michel, awaits, and the duo escapes. He returns to robberies with Michel, but his reckless behaviour (including robbing two banks at the same time) causes Michel to abandon Mesrine. After two months, French intelligence locates Mesrine's apartment, and Commissioner Broussard negotiates with Mesrine, who surrenders. He is brought to court and sentenced to 20 years in La Santé Prison.
During his time in prison, he reunites with his daughter, after 12 years of absence, and she is also present when he pleads his case in court. He then writes a book about his life, which angers his lawyer, who states that his biography places him in a difficult position, since he confesses to everything in public, but he rebuffs it. He also meets François Besse, another convict and his solitary confinement neighbour, and hatches an escape plan; Besse smuggles pepper spray through a cookie box in prison (which can pass through the detectors since it's covered in aluminum foil), while Mesrine meets with his lawyer, who smuggles dual handguns in her briefcase. Mesrine informs the guard to bring his case file from Besse's cell and Besse attacks and subdues the guards with the spray, Mesrine then attacking them as well. They take their uniforms, take another prisoner as a cover and head over the wall, where the prisoner is shot while trying to escape with them. They manage to get away.
After several other robberies, Mesrine fools the media, calling himself "a revolutionary", and professing to bring Palestinian armed forces to slay the French government. This angers Besse, and he leaves him. A year later 1979, Mesrine is living a wealthy life and buys himself a 1974 BMW, and contacts his old friend from prison, Charlie Bauer, and they also start a series of robberies. Mesrine becomes more and more dillusioned with the media, secretly meeting with reporters and giving controversial interviews. He also kidnaps a local billionaire, Henri Lelièvre, and holds him for ransom, and then sets him free after being paid. Sylvie is more and more worried about Mesrine, and convinces him to leave the country. Meanwhile, Mesrine kidnaps Jacques Tillier, who wrote an article about him that he doesn't like, and makes him strip naked, then beats him and shoots him, presuming him dead. Mesrine finds out the next day that Tillier survived the ordeal.
On November 2, 1979, Mesrine and Sylvie leave their apartment disguised, with Sylvie taking her poodle, but Broussard's men are after them. After checking the area, Mesrine and Sylvie arrive at their car and drive off. Broussard is stuck in traffic and runs after them. At an intersection, a truck blocks Mesrine's way, and the back tarp is thrown open, revealing armed police gunmen, who immediately open fire and shoot him dead. Broussard arrives, and orders a hysterical and injured Sylvie and her dog to be taken away, and grimly looks at Mesrine's dead body. | violence, murder | train | wikipedia | But, were I to be placed in a room with a genuine gangster, I'm certain I would be terrified and would want to get out of there ASAP.The film opens with Mesrine making a decision whilst in the French army and in Algiers whether to follow his superior's orders to shoot the wife of a terrorist suspect or to shoot the suspect.
This moment, as well as establishing that Mesrine has the killer instinct of the title, shows us that he is not one for conforming to authority, as he ignores his superior and takes the shot.From that point, the film is episodic as it follows Mesrine from petty crime to audacious criminal exploits.
His charisma, very ably aided by Vincent Cassel's own screen presence, shines from the screen whether talking his way out of house or defiantly standing up to his brutal treatment when he is finally caught and incarcerated.He was imprisoned and brutally treated, following a one man / one woman crime wave across the world and, as part of his escape plan he assured those helping him that he would return to break them out.
Funny, disturbing, charming, psychotic and more Cassel is the larger than life criminal achieving a completely believable character study of someone the French press dubbed 'the man of a thousand faces' due to his ability to change his looks so often to evade the police.
In fact the truth behind this most notorious of stories is so unbelievable at times that the filmmakers left parts out thinking the audience would think it was just too far fetched, in fact after watching the escapades of Mesrine I too thought 'all that couldn't have happened surely?' But after a little bit of homework I found that it did indeed all take place and after seeing the tale unfold you realise why Mesrine got his Monika.
The film, told in two parts, opens with a brilliant seventies cop style feel and begins at the end before returning us to the start where we see a young Mesrine in the army fighting in the Algerian war, on his return to his native Paris he quickly becomes entangled with Guido a mafia boss played superbly by Gerard Depardieu (why had no one cast him in this kind of role before?) and over the course of the next four thrilling hours he rises to become the career criminal that became an embarrassment to the French police and government.
That's exactly what Jean-François Richet did with Death Instinct, the remarkable first part in a two-movie story about famous French criminal Jacques Mesrine.Like most other biopics, the film opens with the protagonist's death, and what a spectacular demise that is: gunned down by unidentified shooters in the middle of a crowded Parisian street.
Even there, however, he just can's stay away from trouble.Richet is certainly no Michael Mann (an obvious reference when it comes to the robbery scenes), but he tells the story with gusto and precision, staging the tale as if it were a traditional gangster movie: taste of power, discovery of the unpleasant consequences, fight until the end to reach the top.
From start to finish, Killer Instinct moves at a reasonably quick pace, asking the viewer for commitment and endurance, and deservedly so: it's one hell of a thrilling ride.If one has to complain, it should be noted that the psychology of certain characters is a bit sketchy (Guido is really nothing more than the average gangster type), but that flaw is generally compensated by very solid acting.
Returning to the more troubled side that has been left pretty much unexplored since La Haine, he digs into Mesrine's dark psyche and re-emerges with a complex, chilling part that makes him deserving of the his widespread reputation as one of France's best young thespians.As for the deliberately open ending, the final captions are clever but a bit smug: after revealing the fate of characters who won't return in the follow-up, the title card says "As for Jacques Mesrine...
The "Goodfellas" ensemble of the first part becomes the isolated, ego-driven "Scarface" of the second as Cassel skilfully matures his character into a man resigned to the fate he knows must be coming.The over all impression left by "Mesrine" is that it manages to land successfully between crime thriller, gangster saga and character study.
Vincent Cassel is very good, and the film is full of suspense; it neither demonises nor glamorises its protagonist, and interestingly, sets his story against the backdrop of the political violence of the 1970s, which had a superficial interest to Mesrine as he built his own legend.
The movie is an absolutely brilliant genre movie, with amazing actors at their best, an incredible recreation of seventies France, very realistic and visceral action scenes (all based on facts by the way !), and Richet's directing is very controlled, precise, you feel he knows what he wants, sort of the anti-Brett Ratner if you will, and the ambiance is spot on too.
Based on the true story of gangster Jacques Mesrine - Mesrine presents the rise and fall of France's most notorious criminal through a two-part showcase; wherein a series of hold-ups, prison breaks and kidnappings, give us an insight into 'The Man with 1000 Faces'.
But to think of him as just another criminal would be an unreasonable caricature.In this first half of the notorious gangster's life, director Jean-Francois Richet evinces the louche charm of the French criminal underworld in an effort to depict Jacques in a sympathetic light.After a troubling time soldiering in the Algerian War, Jacques returns to Paris, where before long his sense of dissatisfaction takes charge of him and he accepts a friend's offer of 'off-the-book work', i.e. crime.He is introduced to Guido (Gerard Depardieu), the head of a right-wing terrorist group operating in France's underworld.
Starting in the late fifties in Algeria, where French soldier Jacques Mesrine served in the foul war of independence, we get a clear picture of his development as a master-criminal.Although I think it difficult to judge the historical precision of its plot, this very French film surely makes a good watch.
The two Mesrine movies are easily the best gangster movies of the last years and can without a doubt be described as the French Godfathers even though the two films have not exactly the same class as the legendary masterpieces.The thing that is really interesting about this movie is that it is told after true events and partially based on the autobiography of the French gangster and public enemy number one Jacques Mesrine.
This movie is not just a gangster saga filled with action and tension but has also an emotional touch of the drama genre and some dark and sarcastic humour.Mesrine is perfectly portrayed by one of the best contemporary actors coming from France which is Vincent Cassel.
The movie also slightly criticizes the corruptive justice and police in France as well as the way how the medias deal with Mesrine's fate and make an iconic modern Robin Hood out of a dangerous and ignorant gangster that begins to use the medias for his own good and enjoys the show.As you can see, the movie contains many different elements and details that make it a very diversified, intense and still entertaining gangster movie which happens to be one of the best of its kind.
If you happen to like this movie, you should absolutely try to get the German gangster and terrorist movie "Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex" which is also based on true events and happened at the same time as Mesrine became the public enemy number one in France.
The French movie has also some connections to those events as Mesrine talks from time to time about it as you should have noticed.In the end, this movie about an extreme and charismatic character is way more than an excellent gangster movie with some social criticism but a gripping two hours of history class.The only reason why I didn't give the highest possible note is that I would have liked to learn more about the youth of Mesrine.
For a start you return to your roots and you return to what you know, which is precisely what director Jean-Francois Richet has done as he presents the first installment of a two part tale detailing the life of Jacque Mesrine, France's most notorious criminal.
The man who was once known as France's "Public Enemy No1" provides an interesting and engaging story, as anyone of such notoriety would, as his life charts an almost unpredictable path across countries and continents but as with all literative adaptations, does it translate onto the big screen?Well, aside from the fact that no "big screen" has shown this film, and that all viewings have been in smaller independent picture houses reserved for the cine-literate, the tongue-in- cheek answer is no.
Jacques Mesrine, as frighteningly portrayed by the excellent Vincent Cassel, is a man whose life is a nonstop roller-coaster of carnage and violence, he is a man who is utterly incapable of escaping the life he leads and what's more is that he has no notions of leaving it, not even when the wife of his two children pleads with him to remain on the straight and narrow.
We have seen hostage taking go wrong in Dog Day Afternoon, unfortunately for Mesrine his life is nothing new to those that have already been initiated into the film world, and while retelling these specific events from his own personal standpoint is not a cardinal sin the unoriginality with which it is filmed is.Having viewed the initial five minute opening segment of "L'instinct de mort" you can be forgiven for expecting something more slick, stylish and, frankly, French than what is presented.
Well now it's done.In real life, Jacques Mesrine is certainly the most famous gangster in France along with Albert Spaggiari whose life and criminal activities are also astonishing, and whose anti-hero Robin-Hood-like status in popular opinion is as strong.
I don't think there will be another movie about Mesrine in a while, because it will be hard to top this one.All you need to know about the plot is that it's about a real-life gangster known for his heists and numerous prison escapes, which made him a sort of cult anti-hero.
Mesrine: Killer Instinct opens on one of the most admirably up-front disclaimers ever to introduce a fact-based film, stating not merely that some of the events have been dramatized, or that names have been changed, but frankly that no movie can ever account 100% for the entire life of a person.
But as the film hearkens back to the beginning and starts to accelerate, it comes to explode with violence of Scarface proportions, a perhaps too bombastic orchestral score, and a virtually streamlined focus on the events we've seen in every gangster biopic.After having seen this film, I've read a little more about Jacques Mesrine, who described all his robberies and killings as acts liberating him from the state, which may perhaps cause these films to elicit an above-average response for foreign films in the U.S., Killer Instinct finally making its way through flyover country at a peak time when Americans feel knee-jerk reactionary impulses to antagonize the state, impulses that will only dig us an increasingly deeper hole, just as Mesrine's do him.Vincent Cassel is vigorous, forceful and captivating as Mesrine, personifying the man via decades of bodily and academic transformation, from his days as a fighter in Algeria, to his days of incarceration, to his most despicable impulses, offenses and displays, to instances of emotional and raw intimacy, to his sincere tussles with self-identity.
Somehow Vincent Cassel captures the pure evil of Mesrine and presents him as the charismatic and powerful figure he evidently was.Having apparently lost his soul during the war in Algeria, Mesrine joins forces with a local crime lord played by French acting legend Gerard Depardieu.
Director Jean-Francois Richet does an excellent job of displaying the menace of Mesrine and the absolute lack of morals he flashes.The film never drags even while he is on the lam through Canada and the U.S. Since the film is broken into two parts (Public Enemy #1 will be released in a few weeks), I found it very interesting that the first films opens with what appears to be the end of part two.
This studying of Mesrine's life ultimately kicks off in Algeria, in 1959, and the serving of his military service; his ruthlessness in the executing of a prisoner, whom we assume to be a terrorist of some kind as they badger him for the whereabouts of a bomb, and the coming to realise that the general attitudes of the French Army eerily echo that of the attitudes and actions of Mesrine the gangster and the underworld bosses themselves we observe later on, during which cold blooded murder is the run of the mill.It's at this point the conflicted image of Mesrine the film wants us to have of him, in our siding and hatred of him, is nicely set up so as to be poised for the rest of the film.
Mesrine gives hip some gyp, goes to pull his gun on him but the boss already covertly took it off him as he entered the room; Mesrine is humbled, caught short so early on in his criminal career – the film signifying early on this wants to be as grounded as possible in portraying a criminal as someone whom cannot bound from interaction to interaction, wading into everyone and everywhere and dominate surroundings; antithetical when compared to a text such as 1971's Get Carter or one of Westlake's Parker novel filmic adaptations.At one point, Killer Instinct will plunge us into a prison and the immense suffering of Mesrine at the hands of prison officials whom purposefully carry nameless; faceless and apparently soulless characteristics, best highlighted in the suit-clad chief warden: robotic in his actions and says very little; taking pleasure in his observing of Mesrine and the other inmates in the exercise yard through a small squared window, watching them as if they were animals in a zoo.
'Mesrine: Killer Instinct' (2008) and 'Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1' (2008) are two great films filmed back-to-back telling the life and crimes of legendary French criminal Jacques Mesrine.
'Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1' (2008) The second film follows on from the first but as with any crime biopic (Blow, Goodfellas etc) the second half of the story is slower and not as much fun, as Mesrine suffers the consequences of his actions including estranged family members, more prison and ultimately his death.
The two-part gangster biopic of "Public Enemy number 1" and criminal legend Mesrine can start.And starting with the death isn't just some artistic license from director Jean-François Richet; it allows the viewers to understand why Police didn't take any chances.
It's the story of gangster Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) from 1959 to becoming known as Pubic Enemy #1 in 1972.
It is a true story of one of Europe's most infamous and charismatic criminals, Jacques Mesrine, played brilliantly by Vincent Cassel.
The first film was an excellent gangster flick.After the brutal Algerian War for Independence, Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is at a lost with what to do as a career.
After becoming notorious in France Mesrine and Jeanne fled to Montreal which saw their criminal activities continue and he becomes a focus for the media.Mesrine: Killer Instinct has a lot going for it, with a good script, a great visual style and excellent acting.
Cassel's acting soars in the solid gangster film "Mesrine: Killer Instinct".
Directed by Jean-François Richet (who directed the recent version of Assault on Precinct 13), this French gangster film follows the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as French Public Enemy No. 1 and The Man of a Thousand Faces.
This first part focuses on Mesrine's rise from the average joe to a big time criminal, his escape to Canada, U.S., and then back.The film starts off near the end of Mesrine's life, right before he gets gunned down by police.
Thankfully, Richet's direction is playful enough that it doesn't make the scenes feel too derivative, repetitive, or too cheesy.Vincent Cassel's performance as Mesrine truly makes this film great and worth seeking out.
By the time part 1 ends, one does hope Part 2 will focus more on the internal workings of Mesrine's mind as well as a closure to the great set up at the beginning of the film.This is a solid gangster film with good action and strong performances.
The films regularly tell the life story of the legendary Jacques Mesrine, an internationally famous criminal responsible for dozens of bank robberies and murders in the '60s and '70s.
Mesrine is possibly showing him at his greatest and it's a role he has got his teeth into.The film is based on the real-life of French gangster Jacques Mesrine (title character).
Mesrine's bank robberies and prison breaks are so spectacular and defiant that he's declared "Public Enemy No. 1" in two countries, Canada and France, officially one of the most famous and dangerous criminals in French history, a figure cops wet themselves over and women want to sleep with.
A realistic, brutal, ruthless crime tale which recalls the story of Jacques Mesrine, the famous gangster, the intended public enemy number one.
This, the first of two films, follows the career of infamous French criminal Jacques Mesrine from the time he leaves the army till shortly after he escapes from prison in Quebec.
Much of the strength of the film is down to Vincent Cassel's excellent portrayal of Mesrine; he might not look like a stereotypical movie gangster but he brought an intensity to the role that made him believable. |
tt0119987 | The Real Blonde | Joe is an aspiring actor working as a bus boy in a high-class restaurant. His longtime girlfriend Mary works as a cosmetician for the fashion industry and largely supports him with her steady income. Joe is more concerned with expressing himself than getting a paying job, and has been unwilling to accept roles that do not live up to his artistic standard. Mary supports Joe, but urges him to accept any role to get his foot in the door. Meanwhile, his co-worker Bob lands a lucrative role on a soap opera. Bob is a classically trained actor, but is willing to overlook the quality of the material for the money. He also has a fetish for natural blonde women, leading him to date Sahara, a naive model, and then dump her after discovering that her hair is dyed.
Joe swallows his artistic pride and meets with an agent, Dee Dee Taylor, who arranges for him to be an extra in a Madonna video. Mary is harassed as she walks to work each day and begins taking a self-defense and anger management class on the advice of her therapist. The instructor encourages her to express her anger, and she finds the class extremely empowering. Bob is successful in his soap opera role and begins a relationship with his costar Kelly, a "real blonde".
At the Madonna video, the director treats Joe and the other extras like cattle. Joe meets Madonna's body double, Tina, a friendly aspiring actress, and gets himself fired for protesting an anti-Semitic statement made by the assistant director. Joe's firing sparks an argument between Joe and Mary. The pressure of Joe's career is straining their relationship, and they have not had sex in a long time. Mary's instructor, Doug, gives her a ride home from her class and makes a pass at her. She rebuffs him, but lies to cover up the incident to Joe. Meanwhile, Bob suffers from erectile dysfunction and is unable to have sex with Kelly. She mocks his inadequacy and leaves him.
Dee Dee takes pity on Joe and allows him to audition for the role of a "sexy serial killer". He reads his lines with Tina and begins to improvise his dialogue. He impresses the producers and lands the role. Tina invites him out for a drink and he resists her advances with some difficulty. Mary meets with her therapist and tells him about her experience with her self-defense instructor. He tells her that she must become comfortable with men showing their attraction to her and begins sharing his own sexual fantasies about her. She storms out of the session. Meanwhile, Bob is negotiating a longtime contract on the soap opera, but Kelly continues to taunt him on set. Bob threatens to quit the show and then forces the producer to kill off Kelly's character.
Bob goes back to dating Sahara, with whom he is miserable. Joe breaks the big news about his role to Mary and they rejoice. Mary asks him if she is wrong for feeling angry when men hit on her. Joe supports her and threatens to beat up her therapist if he ever sees him again. They have sex for the first time in months and drift off to sleep, happy and satisfied. Mary wraps her hand around Joe's finger, revealing that his improvised monologue had been about his feelings for her. | satire | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0051673 | Good Day for a Hanging | Eddie Campbell (Robert Vaughn) watches a stagecoach as it rides toward a Nebraska town. Other members of his gang are waiting there to rob the bank. Ben Cutler (Fred MacMurray), owner of the stage line, is on board, and is returning home to be wed to Ruth Granger (Margaret Hayes).
During the holdup, a bank teller is killed. Ben joins the posse. His daughter, Laurie (Joan Blackman), is in love with Eddie and doesn't believe him to be truly bad. Eddie shoots the Marshal, however. He is wounded by Ben and brought back to town to stand trial.
Ben, who had once been a lawman but gave up the profession after his daughter was born is offered a temporary job as Marshal. Selby (Edmon Ryan), a publicity-seeking lawyer who defends Eddie, insinuates that Ben was just acting in vengeance because his client had been intimate with Ben's daughter. Ben punches him for this slur on Laurie's character.
Eddie is found guilty due to Ben's eyewitness testimony. He is sentenced to hang. Townspeople begin to have their doubts, even Ruth, partly due to Eddie's manipulation of their emotions. Laurie tries to smuggle a gun to Eddie's cell, but her father finds it.
Ben must ride to the state's capital after a plea for clemency from the governor is made. As soon as he is gone, Eddie's gang busts him out of jail. He physically assaults Laurie, revealing his true nature. Ben returns just in time, though, and shoots a fleeing Eddie atop the gallows. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0047200 | The Mad Magician | Don Gallico (Vincent Price) is a magician, master of disguise, and inventor of stage-magic effects in the late 1800s aspiring to become a star magician under the stage name Gallico the Great. Disguised as The Great Rinaldi, a headlining rival magician, Mr. Gallico performs a number of magic tricks successfully, building up to the reveal of his latest invention, the buzz-saw, an illusion that "severs" the head of the magician's assistant Karen Lee (Mary Murphy). Before Mr. Gallico can perform the buzz-saw illusion, the curtains come down to stop the performance. Businessman Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph) and his lawyer serve Mr. Gallico a cease and desist order against the performance of the buzz-saw trick much to the anger of Mr. Gallico. Ms. Lee's boyfriend, police detective Lt. Alan Bruce (Patrick O'Neal), is asked by her to intervene in the dispute between Mr. Gallico and Mr. Ormond. Mr. Gallico informs the detective that he signed a contract to Mr. Ormond's Illusions, Inc., a magician's trick provider, to invent new tricks, the issue is that Mr. Ormond owns all work created by Mr. Ormond, not just the ones produced for Illusions, Inc., Mr. Gallico's understanding.
The next day at Mr. Gallico's work area within the Illusions, Inc. warehouse, detective Mr. Bruce reviews Mr. Gallico's contract and explains that the contract is as Mr. Ormond states, anything the Mr. Gallico should invent is the property of Illusions, Inc. As the detective is leaving, Mr. Ormond and the real The Great Rinaldi (John Emery) arrive, before departing he asks Mr. Gallico to tell his girlfriend where and when to meet for dinner. Mr. Ormond and The Great Rinaldi are shown the buzz-saw illusion's inner workings and ruminate on the performance of the trick by The Great Rinaldi and not by Mr. Gallico, angering the trick's inventor. The Great Rinaldi departs leaving Mr. Ormond and Mr. Gallico to discuss their business arrangement; Mr. Ormond dismisses Mr. Gallico's anger by explaining that Mr. Gallico was presented the opportunity to invent under the contract and that Mr. Ormond's wooing of Mr. Gallico's wife Claire (Eva Gabor) was due to her rich needs and Mr. Ormond's ability to provision them, something that Mr. Gallico was never able to do. Incensed, Mr. Gallico attacks Mr. Ormond and forces the businessman into the buzz-saw on functional mode (non-illusion) and decapitates him.
His crime is almost revealed when Mr. Ormond's severed head is mistakenly taken for a trip with Gallico's assistant Ms. Lee and Mr. Bruce.
Gallico then impersonates Ormond to rent an apartment from Alice Prentiss (Lenita Lane), an author of mystery novels. Gallico disposes of Ormond's body, but is again forced to murder when his ex-wife Claire discovers the impersonation. Prentiss comes forth as a witness to the crime, but identifies Ormond as Claire's murderer. The Great Rinaldi again schemes to steal a trick of Gallico's, an illusion involving a crematorium, and ultimately winds up burned to death in the process. Gallico begins impersonating Rinaldi to take over that magician's show.
Meanwhile, Alan Bruce matches the fingerprints of Ormond with those of Rinaldi—since both sets of prints are actually Gallico's, and the novelist Prentiss realizes her boarder, and the murderer, was Gallico and not Ormond. The two, along with the assistant Karen, band together for an ultimate confrontation with Gallico. | entertaining, murder | train | wikipedia | Even if the revenge story is of old, the plot devices themselves are original- Gallico uses his tricks to kill in more and more inventive ways.
This is essentially a variation on House Of Wax ,in both the plot and the type of role played by the star of both movies ,Vincent Price.In both pictures he plays a talented artist who is sent toppling over the edge into insanity when his creations are usurped by other,less talented and less scrupulous people .In this movie he plays a designer of illusions for stage magicians who aspires to set out on a performing career himself only to be frustrated when another illusionist ,the Great Rinaldo (John Emery)insists that he honour his contract and give him first choice of any illusions he designs.Price is already ill disposed towards Rinaldi as his former wife is now a paramour of Rinaldi.
He deploys his talents as an illusionist and as a brilliant mimic to avenge himself upon Rinaldi and others who thwart his plans for recognition as a performer and a designer.Price is pretty much the whole show here and gives a well judged star turn as a wronged man whose predicament earns audience sympathy.The rest of the cast are competent if colourless and the weight of the whole venture falls on Price who carries the burden with ease .Good solid B Movie melodrama , this is a crime movie rather than a horror picture and is enjoyable providing you don't expect a masterpiece .Shot in black and white it is low on gore and is best seen as melodrama and enjoyed for the presence of its star giving an idiosyncratic performance.
The only ingredient missing in this VINCENT PRICE tale of horror is Technicolor which might have provided even more interest in this murderous tale of a magician who kills in order to protect his inventive magic act.First to go is a partner with whom he has a violent argument and is given the buzz saw treatment.
Emery has a grand time matching his scene stealing tricks with Price.Skillfully directed by John Brahm, a section of the film dealing with the bonfire is reminiscent of a similar moment from Brahm's HANGOVER SQUARE when Laird Cregar delivers the body of a woman to be consumed by fire.Acting is uniformly excellent and the script moves at a fast pace under Brahm's direction.
Nevertheless, I've always loved Vincent's mugging from his Roger Corman films to "The Last Man on Earth." I liked the way he said "Crematorium." Why, exactly, does it have an automatic pilot that sends the body into the flames if it is not activated within a certain period of time?
The great Vincent Price has done many fantastic Horror films, some of which range among the greatest genre gems of all-time.
Galico the Great), an underrated master magician and inventor of magic devices, whose boss, a sleazy businessman, stole his wife (Eva Gabor) from him.
When the boss takes away one of Galico's ingenious inventions and gives it to his rival, The Great Rinaldi (John Emery), Galico snaps, and a murderous spree of revenge begins...Don't we love Vincent Price when he's out for revenge?
Some of his most famous and greatest films such as "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" (1971) or "Theater of Blood" (1973) were about absurd and delightfully macabre revenge murders, and this earlier film in his Horror career is another proof that no one takes revenge as Vincent Price does.
This film provides a wonderfully eccentric leading role for Price, who, as always, delivers a brilliant performance, and guarantees 70 minutes of outrageously entertaining and macabre fun for every Horror fan.
Basically the exact same movie as "House of Wax" - Vincent Price's first genuine horror hit released the previous year - but seriously who cares, because "The Mad Magician" offers just as many sheer thrills, delightful period set-pieces, joyous 3-D effects, sublime acting performances and macabre horror gimmicks as its predecessor!
"The Mad Magician" is an amusing and thoroughly unpretentious 50's horror movie in Grand Guignol style, with a whole lot of improbably plot twists (the landlady turns out a brilliant crime novelist?) and a handful of fantastically grotesque gross-out moments (although they obviously remain suggestive for most part).
"The Mad Magician" is also interesting from a periodical setting point of view, as the events take place around the time fingerprints were starting to get used as evidence material and the character of Alice Prentiss is an obvious reference towards famous crime authors of that era.
Needless to state that Vincent Price remains the absolute most essential element of triumph in this film, as well as from nearly every other horror movie this legendary man ever starred in.
Price portrays Don Gallico, a magician/inventor who is driven to murder when his boss steals several of his magical inventions (and also his wife, portrayed in a brief role by the lovely Eva Gabor).
Even though Price is a murderer, I actually found myself rooting for him, he is a sympathetic character who is driven mad by the greedy people around him who keep taking advantage of him.Although this movie doesn't have the "horror" factor of some of his more famous roles (such as my favorite, "House of Wax") it nonetheless has enough going for it to keep the viewers interest.
Vincent Price's follow-up to HOUSE OF WAX (1953), the film which cemented his reputation as a horror icon, similarly revolves around a bitter – albeit resourceful – showman.
The young leads are played by Mary Murphy (as Price's ingénue assistant) and Patrick O'Neal (as her police detective boyfriend – curiously enough, he would himself take the lead in a similar piece, CHAMBER OF HORRORS [1966], which I have acquired just in time to serve as an encore to this one).
The rest were usually horror or action to utilize the unique ability of the actors to jump out of the screen or throw something directly at you.)Anyway, I loved House of Was and when I saw the newspaper ads for The Mad Magician, my whining began.
The Mad Magician (1954) *** (out of 4) Vincent Price followed his success in HOUSE OF WAX with this horror thriller.
THE MAD MAGICIAN was originally released in 3D and there are a lot of objects flying towards the screen and even when you view the film flat it's still easy to see that the effects are in good nature and appear to be fun.
Price later impersonates them, by using elaborate masks, keeping them "alive," and effectively leading a double life, to keep suspecting eyes away from him and his crimes.Price is his usual wonderful antihero (we want him to be avenged against the people who did him wrong, yet at the same time, his character becomes a ruthless killer, causing more harm than those who wronged him) He could play that character type better than anyone before or since.The screenplay is good, but unmemorable, save for a few scenes; The film is most let down by static monochrome photography.
Cashin' In On House Of Wax. A mad scientist named Dr Gogol is obsessivey infatuated with the lead actress of a local grotesque play in Paris.Though she is madly in love with a popular pianist, who sends her messages via code, when he knows his performances are being broadcast live on the radio.They plan to move to England together; though, not if Gogol has any say in the matter...Not only does he pubically molest her; he buys the wax statue made in her image; and formulates a sinister plot to ensure the object of his affection will never leave his sight.Meanwhile, police are moving local thug and killer, Rollo- whose proficencies involve knife throwing- to the place where he is to be executed.Unfortunately, the train that both he, and the pianist, are in crashes...leaving the pianist with such severe injuries to his hands, that it will require their amputation.Rollo is executed (after mentioning the "longest dam ever built in the world").While the young actress is left so desperate, after the accident- that she turns to Gogol, hoping he can use his surgery skills to help her beloved.But he plans to use this oppourtunity to his advantage.He asks for the dead body of Rollo; from which he will harvest the hands; and transplant them onto the pianist.After numerous forms of therapy, the operation finally takes...though, things aren't exactly the same......he can no longer play the piano, no matter how hard he practices.He can, however, throw a knife with mean accuracy all of a sudden...which leads to the untimely death of his father.Turns out that Gogol had also replaced Rollo's head using the same procedure...and he's still alive...just with fancy new metallic hands.So, either his transplant hands are starting to take over his mind; or Rollo is somehow able to control his actions through his hands.At least, that is what they are leading him to believe...though, things might not be exactly like they seem...While not as good as Eyes Without A Face or House Of Wax...it's still a classic.Even if the story is a bit implausible in retrospect.Lorre's portrayal of Gogol is genuinely creepy.6 out of 10..
In this follow up to the successful House of Wax, Price plays a deranged magician who kills off his rivals, then uses life-like masks to imitate them.
The turn-of-the-century period settings and illusions is what makes the film fun to watch, but story is typical Price.
Music is by Arthur Lange and Emil Newman and cinematography by Bert Glennon.Magician Don Gallico (Price) is incensed when his attempts at stardom is scuppered by a contract he signed, so much so he takes matters in to his own hands...One of the eras 3-D productions, The Mad Magician sees Columbia recycle Warner Brother's 1953 release of House of Wax. The familiarity of it all is impossible to shake off, with a key scene even stolen from one of director Brahm's more notable productions.
Yet it's still a fun movie, watching Price turn in a good one, as he gradually gets more dastardly with each passing quarter, all set to Victorian style backgrounds.There's some ghoulishly enjoyable macabre moments, played straight but with tongue in cheek evident, and while the scenes shot for 3-D gain obviously lose impact, they hold well enough in 2-D for story enjoyment.
"The Mad Magician" is a thoroughly enjoyable follow-up to the earlier Vincent Price classic, "House of Wax".
Rather reminiscent of that favourite, it stars Price as Don Gallico, a magician & master of illusion furious with his conniving employer, Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph).
Alan Bruce (Patrick O'Neal), a young police detective, utilizes cutting edge new techniques such as fingerprinting to work the clues.This movie is not going to be as memorable as "House of Wax", which was largely responsible for launching Price as a new star of the horror genre.
The supporting actors are good - leggy Mary Murphy as the assistant Karen Lee, Eva Gabor as Claire, the greedy, grasping woman who'd married both Gallico and Ormond, Jay Novello as landlord Frank Prentiss, and especially Lenita Lane as Prentiss' wife Alice, who has a second career as an author of murder mysteries.
How it got overlooked, especially starring Vincent Price, is beyond me.This is a great story, with good magic tricks and a phenomenally amazing performance from Price.
This fanciful horror flick has Vincent Price playing a mad magician that realizes his vocational talents have been sold to another.
This early Vincent Price horror film, borrowed quite liberally from The Phantom Of The Opera, has Price playing the role of a master magician who for some reason is tied to a contract whereby he creates various tricks and illusions for other name magicians, but can't go out on his own.
Furious over his boss' repeated attempts to curtain his career, a famous trick maker finds he can utilize his craft to kill for the sake of his career, only doing so requires him to constantly repeat the act in order to stay away from his friend and the authorities on his trail.Essentially a remake of another film by the same star from the previous year with a new profession behind it that powers the revenge motif, there's not a whole lot with this one that really works.
That said, it's still quite fun with a few good moments here and there, including a few spectacular tricks to be employed by the stage-show, the finale contains quite a bit of action with the brawl in the shop and as usual it's always fun to see Price get to do his thing every now and then where he just gets to monologue for a while spouting off the reasons for his revenge, the end result containing a rather twisted logic behind it all that sounds reasonable enough for the rampage to ensue and not come off like a hokey joke.
The film begins with Vincent Price about to begin his performance as a magician.
The problem is that while the viewer understood why Price killed and most probably thought this was a GOOD thing, because Price was a bit mad, he just couldn't stop at one (sort of like eating Lay's Potato Chips).The film was full of very creative and spectacular magic tricks (including a huge circular saw and a crematorium for the shows), great plot twists as well as exciting action.
While it's also far from subtle, it is fun throughout, though and well worth a look.Had I never seen Vincent Price's version of HOUSE OF WAX, I probably would have liked THE MAD MAGICIAN a lot more and scored it an 8 or 9.
This movie started with a solid 'wronged artist' revenge tale similar to another Price 3D film, House of Wax, as other reviewers have said, but is sunk by too many lame plot contrivances.
The plot involves Price as the mad magician(Don Gallico / Gallico the Great) who people seem to keep stealing his trick from him.
Enter ex-wife Eva Gabor who finds that blackmail doesn't quite always end in a cash settlement and magician rival John Emery who is really burnt up about the threat he has to his title as the world's greatest illusionist.With the help of a nosy murder mystery writer (a very funny Lenita Lane), New York detective Patrick O'Neal investigates the common fingerprints found at the scene of a murder in Lane's boarding house and all doesn't add up.
***** The Mad Magician (5/19/54) John Brahm ~ Vincent Price, Mary Murphy, Eva Gabor.
version of mad magician,It did not pop pout ,It turned out to be a flat version recorded from American movie channel in fake3d.It was terrible.I recently got the Blu-ray 3D restored version.It was clear and sharp and the 3D was great.It was produced by the same man who produced house of wax,Bryan Foy,of the famous ,real, 7 little Foys.Vincent Price plays as mad as just like the other character in house of wax,but, he is a magician want to be and is about to try his new magic machine in his first show aided by assistant played by Mary Murphy.His greedy boss finds out and stops him forcing him to continent to work for his bosses company by creating magic machine for magicians.The boss also took his wife away ,played by Zsa Zsa Gabor ,and turned her into a gold digger.This causes Price to go on a murder rampage.Patrick O Neal plays a young detective and Mary Murphy's boy friend ,with the aid of mystery writer and very nosy,Lenita Lane, to find the murderer.
Her character and her husband portrayed played by Jay Novello are the comedy relief in this film,which kind of slowed down the film from being serious.It was one of these 3D films directed by German John Brahm that he put more strongly the story rather than over dominating it with the 3D.Although just a few throw out at camera scenes where in it.I had discovered that the water coming out of the magic wand and the hand extension scenes was suppose to of been a sexual innuendo.I never thought about it .I know Columbia put out sexy posters of the film showing Mary Murphy in modern glamour shorts showing her Gams .It was technically a lot better than that bad DVD version.Seeing so many time flat on t.v. proved that it was a good horror film ,that it made it a excellent 3D feature.It also has 3D 3Stooges shorts ,but, I will blog that on their titles on IMDb.Once again twilight video puts out a limitation and don't offer it to retail .How many people who are 3d fan who don't use the computer but have 3D t.v. and 3d Blu ray player are not aware of this?
This excellent little follow-up to the previous year's classic HOUSE OF WAX is a film that looks and feels very similar.
The main difference is that THE MAD MAGICIAN has a lower budget, most noticeable in the lack of large set-pieces and the standard black-and-white filming, but these factors don't stop it from becoming a minor classic.Price is in his element playing much the same character as he did in HOUSE, and the truth is that nobody does it better.
The magician uses his magic show's tricks and illusions to perform the murders and then disposes of the bodies.
Vincent goes nuts and kills the man, then his ex-wife, a competing and overbearing magician, the Great Rinaldi, (who tries to steal the secrets and bind Price to his service by deducing that Price is the killer).
Truly sad is it that a film directed by the caliber of a John Brahm with the star of a Vincent Price could go so sorely unnoticed, overshadowed by the excellent HOUSE OF WAX..that is the case of THE MAD MAGICIAN, a slick Victorian era(Brahm is an absolute master at getting the most out of sets, wardrobe, and extras in regards to period atmosphere and authenticity)horror chiller about a seemingly decent creator of magic show acts which delight the audiences.
Like many Vincent Price madman, Gallico was a good person driven mad by the indecency of others. |
tt0819714 | The Edge of Love | The story is based loosely on real events and real people, drawing on David N. Thomas' book Dylan Thomas: A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow.
During the London blitz of World War II, nightclub singer Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) runs into her first love, the charismatic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys). Their feelings for each other are rekindled, despite the fact that Dylan is now married to and has a child with the spirited Caitlin Macnamara (Sienna Miller). In spite of their initial rivalry, the two women become best friends and, drinking heavily in wartime London, the three get along well.
At this time, William Killick (Cillian Murphy), a British Army officer smitten with Vera, pursues her; both Vera and Caitlin are intrigued by his steadfast, gallant personality, although it contrasts with Vera's rebelliousness. William notices her closeness with Dylan, but doesn't seem particularly concerned by it; he and Vera even lend the struggling poet some of their savings. He and Vera fall in love and marry, but soon afterwards William is called up to join the fight against the German invasion of Greece.
Vera discovers shortly after he leaves that she is pregnant; she's upset that motherhood will lose her independence, but cannot bring herself to abort William's child. She later gives birth to their son, and she and the Thomases move to the Welsh seashore to raise their children in two small neighbouring cottages, where Vera and Caitlin's friendship grows ever closer. One day, however, Dylan draws Vera into an affair. Dylan and Caitlin's marriage has long been distorted by their multiple infidelities, but Dylan- recalling a sexual encounter he and Vera had when she was 15 years old - sees her as his soulmate.
William (now a Captain), scarred by the horrors of the war, eventually returns home where Vera notices his emotional distance and instability. In his disquiet, William comes to suspect his wife's infidelity and confronts her about it; Vera also confesses the truth to Caitlin, who is furious with her for lying to her. Severely drunk one evening, and angry with Dylan's friends and their ignorant remarks on the war, William wanders out at night and fires multiple shots into the Thomases' house, though he hits no one; Vera manages to talk him down, and the next morning he seems to return to his former self. However, he is soon arrested and taken to trial.
During the trial, Dylan testifies against William by exaggerating the facts, stating he believed William was not only sober, but also that William intended to kill him, his wife, and his child. The jury finds William innocent of intent to murder, and he returns home. He accepts his new role as a father, and he and Vera forgive each other, rekindling their relationship. Soon afterwards, the Thomases move out of their cottage. During the farewell, Vera restores her friendship with Caitlin, but never speaks with Dylan again, unable to forgive him for testifying against her husband. | romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0840304 | Ice Spiders | Dan "Dash" Dashiell (Patrick Muldoon) is a retired Olympic skier who works at a ski resort in the mountains of Utah. On a restricted side of the mountain, Dr. April Sommers (Vanessa A. Williams) is working on creating a new breed of spider with several others. When a group of teen skiers arrives at the mountain, Chad (Noah Bastian) challenges Dash to a race. The two show some impressive moves as the others look on. When Dash reaches a large rocky slope, he turns back and goes down another way rather than risk a leg injury like the one that ruined his career. As Dash makes it to the bottom, he meets Dr. Sommers. While they talk for a while, Frank (Stephen J. Cannell) takes the teens inside the resort. After a brief discussion, Dr. Sommers returns to the lab, where she finds dead scientists everywhere. She finds the sole survivor cocooned in a spider web. He warns Dr. Sommers about the spiders escaping and then slowly dies. When she turns to leave, the last spider remaining at the lab, a mutated Black Widow, attacks her and forces her into a locked office. She finds an alarm and engages it, which alerts Professor Marks (David Millbern) and Army Captain Baker (Thomas Calabro), who are elsewhere on the mountain, to her location.
Meanwhile, back at the lodge, Dash meets up with Ranger Rick (a pun on the children's nature magazine) who asks Dash to assist him in finding two hunters who did not return to their homes. When they find the hunters' truck parked, they dismount their snowmobiles and take a look around. Dash finds a mutilated Elk and thinks it was killed by a bear. He shoots a flare to summon Rick. When Rick arrives, they find the body of one of the hunters. When they reach a huge spider web, they find the other hunter, cocooned in the web. As they turn to run, Rick is snagged by a web and is dragged to a spider that kills him as Dash watches in horror. Dash makes it back to the hunters' truck and hot-wires it to get away.
Back at the lab, Professor Marks, Captain Baker, and a squad of soldiers enter the compound and find Dr. Sommers, who tries to warn them of the danger. Inside the lab, the spider attacks and kills a soldier. Dr. Sommers steals records of the experiment and realizes Professor Marks deliberately accelerated the spiders' growth, which makes them larger, faster, and stronger; however, it also causes them great hunger and prevents the cold from killing them. Sommers was desperate to obtain sufficient amounts spider webbing for new armor ideas. She drives back to the lodge.
When Dr. Sommers meets up with Frank and Johnny, a man comes in and screams for help. Frank and Dr. Sommers watch as the spiders kill several guests, including the teens' ski coach. Frank sees the teens hiding in a shed, leads them to a bus and gets them safely inside. Chad gets the keys and drives off, crashing the bus into a snow bank and causing it to fly off of the road.
Dash returns to the hotel and helps secure it. When he and Dr. Sommers search the basement, a spider gets in and almost attacks them, but they stun it with a fire extinguisher and lock it in the basement. Back in the lobby, a spider crawls in through the chimney and kills two guests before Dash impales it with the antlers of a mounted deer head.
Meanwhile, on the crashed bus, after checking the area, Frank makes sure the kids are okay. However, one of them is unconscious and injured. They think of a way to get out as the black widow tries to get in. Eventually, Franks traps the spider and the kids escape. Frank is almost killed but is rescued thanks to the timely arrival of Captain Baker and his squad.
Back at the lodge, Dash devises a plan with Captain Baker over a radio to trap the spiders. He takes his skis and leads the spiders to a snowboard half-pipe, which Baker and his men are blocking off. Johnny heads toward an avalanche cannon and waits for Dash's signal.
At the half-pipe, the spiders are captured and Dash signals Johnny, who blows the spiders up. Professor Marks, who had been opposed to killing the spiders, charges at Dash and tries to kill him. Marks falls down the side of the half-pipe to the last spider, which kills him as Baker shoots the beast.
A government agent then arrives with a group of soldiers that begin destroying all traces of the spiders. The agent demands that the survivors keep quiet about recent events and says that the "official" (that is, cover-up) explanation for what happened will be that there was a spill of hallucinogenic chemicals. Then, Dr.Sommers goes out to dinner with Dash. | violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0061303 | Super President | The American President James Norcross (voiced by Paul Frees) is given superpowers as the result of a cosmic storm. The President now has increased strength and the Metamorpho-like ability to change his molecular composition at will to any form required (like granite, steel, ozone, water and even electricity). A hidden panel in the Oval Office allows him access to his secret base, a hidden cave beneath the "Presidential Mansion" (a somewhat modified White House). Super President travels either by using a futuristic automobile/aircraft/submarine called the Omnicar, or by using jets built into his belt.
Despite the fact that the character's name is "Super President," for some reason only Norcross' chubby, pipe-smoking advisor Jerry Sayles knows that the leader of the Free World is also a red and white-costumed superhero in his off-hours.
A total of thirty episodes of Super President were produced. Two episodes appeared in each show. Each episode also included an episode of Spy Shadow starring secret agent Richard Vance (voiced by Ted Cassidy) who had learned in Tibet how to command his shadow (also voiced by Ted Cassidy) to act independently of himself, an ability he put to good use as an Interspy operative battling a variety of villains, including the evil forces of S.P.I.D.E.R. ("Society for Plunder, International Disorder, Espionage and Racketeering"). Spy Shadow's only weakness is darkness for "there can be no shadow without light". | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | Coooooollllll!!!!!.
In the 60s this was the coolest cartoon on the air!
The leader of the free world, chief executive one minute, superhero the next.
Able to convert his body into any element he desires.
Okay, it made no sense, but who cares!
I learned a lot about the elements watching this (it's a start, at least!).
The other cartoon, Spy Shadow (Super Prez is too good, he doesn't take the whole half-hour to battle the bad guys) is even more fantastic.
The plot is equally preposterous ( a secret agent learns total mind control to the point that he can use his shadow to act as his bodyguard/sidekick!) but the action is amazing (certainly more exciting than Man From UNCLE).
Depatie-Freleng does it again!.
noble children's series with flaws.
This series featured two characters, Super President (James Norcross) ( voiced by Paul Frees) and Spy Shadow, the living shadow of Secret Agent Richard Vance (both magnificently voiced by Ted Cassidy).
Forget the silly title Super President.
What we have is a noble caring man who, with his aide, Jerry Sales, fights menaces to society with his element changing powers.
The stories are sometimes silly, but sometimes poignant and profound.
The writing varies, but is sometimes excellent.
The background music is sometimes very effective.
If only this could be commercially released.The Spy Shadow segment (one in each episode) is sometimes silly and sometimes charming.
This occurred during the wane of the secret agent era.
This, like other children's shows, taught values and emphasized right over wrong.
The office of the president was shown with respect.
I have fond memories of this wonderful series produced by David H.
DePatie and Friz Freleng..
Yes,there was a cartoon show called Super President.
You may not believe it unless you've actually seen it(which I have when this series was repeated in syndicated back in the early 1970's),but there was really a weekly half-hour series back in 1967 called "Super President",also known as "The Super President/Spy Shadow Show".
The second billed component character was a more serious variation of Q.T. Hush(q.v.)about a private eye Richard Vance and his independently functioning shadow.
Never mind that-you really want to get to the episodes that made up "Super President".James Norcross,chief executive of the United States,was transformed into a Superhero by fallout from a cosmic storm(consider yourself warned about that acid rain).
In between conducting press conferences and lighting the White House Christmas tree,Super President flew through the sky without the help of the Air Force One,spending most of his time rescuing his Vice President from various grisly fates.
Beyond that the fact that a series about an invulnerable president was ill-advised(at best)a scant that really came about in 1967,four years after the assassination of Kennedy.
"Super President/Spy Shadow" was jaw-dropping in its awfulness since this series was a combination of several well-known shows from the 1960's....part "The Wild,Wild West", part "The Man From UNCLE",part "Mannix",not to mention part "I Spy".
The result became one of the worst Saturday Morning cartoon shows ever produced not to mention rated as one of the worst toons of all time.
Even if it with the serious undertones,creator David DePatie quoted:"I think it was really the worst thing we've ever made.
It was a real turkey.
We tried to put our comedy people on it,but it really looked terrible."The show however was produced by David DePatie and Friz Freleng,the same team that were behind the theatrical "Pink Panther" cartoon shorts and also under their company,DFE Productions/Mirisch Television-United Artists for NBC-TV that was a one year entry from September 16, 1967 until September 14, 1968.
Only 13 episodes were produced in color.
As far as the voicework was concerned,Paul Frees was the voice of President James Norcross,and was also the narrator while legendary stockplayer Daws Butler was the voice of Richard Vance,along with the talents of June Foray,Don Messick,Ted Knight,Shep Menken,and Mark Scor.Reason why it sucked?
"Super President" made its Saturday Morning network competition against Hanna-Barbera's "The Fantastic Four"(ABC),and "The Herculoids"(CBS),which clobbered it in the ratings..
Super President,A Cartoon way Ahead of IT'S Time.
hi!,i think super president is one of the best cartoons of the 1960's the plot of the story is that when president who was hit by Dangerus cosmic rays,he'd been given great super powers to change his body structure into what ever he wished such as radio waves,gas,or whatever he chose for the cause of justice!,NO One Calls Him Super President But,Jerry Sells his Aid And Friend,They fight Such Deadly Foes as Steel Man,The Chameleon,And Delgotdoe!,as well as Fighting Over Seas Terrorist,.the plots and stories Were well done,And action packed.,the music of the show was also well done And the art and coloring was great for the 1960's!,i wished someone would have put out a comic book this 60's super hero!,I Wish IT Had Been Me!.
A President as a Super Hero?.
"SUPER PRESIDENT" was DePatie-Freleng's first action-adventure cartoon series that the studio produced in association with Mirisch-Rich Prods.
and United Artists Television for NBC in 1967.
this cartoon series,mostly regarded as a very bad joke,for depicting a US President as a Super Hero often fell under serious criticism,mostly due to the violence.
Fall 1967 was interesting,since Saturday morning cartoons that year,were mostly Super Hero themed,and heavily action adventured.
you had the premier of the first "SPIDER MAN" cartoon series,and "THE FANTASTIC FOUR" on ABC-then on CBS,there was "THE SUPERMAN-AQUAMAN HOUR OF ADVENTURE" along with "THE HERCULOIDS","SHAZZAN" and "MOBY DICK and The MIGHTY MIGHTOR"-so with all these serious cartoons,NBC's "SUPER PRESIDENT" cartoon was a nice try but lost seriously to its other competition!The cartoon series also featured the "SPY SHADOW" segment,which wasn't so bad.
Ted Cassidy,"Lurch" from "THE ADDAMS FAMILY",and a year before landing the role and voice of "Injun Joe" in "THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN" voiced Private Eye Richard Vance,who,through intense mystical training,could animate his "Spy Shadow" alter ego,in his fight against crime and evil!
then of course,there was Super President,alias James Norcross,who,with his aide Jerry Sales,fought a variety of both exotic, and inter-galactic menaces,as the main character had possessed the ability to molecularly transform himself into any element,while using his Super Powers for the good of America,,sure wish we had a President like this in real life-but politics aside,this DePatie-Freleng cartoon show didn't last very long,and faded from view by 1968.
veteran,and legendary voice over Paul Frees both voiced this character,and narrated the episodes.
it was still interesting to watch,and if you overlook the ridiculous aspect,this was a typical 1960s cartoon show, with simple characters,despite being labeled as the worst cartoon ever to run on Saturday mornings.
DePatie-Freleng,best known for their main creation,"THE PINK PANTHER",later went-on to make better cartoon shows in their TV history-most notably,"RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES" in 1975,using "JONNY QUEST" designer Doug Wildey,as a character designer, who did a great job with this Fox franchise!
but with "SUPER PRESIDENT" it was the first Patriotic Saturday morning super hero ever created,even though it was frowned upon,it was still enjoyable to watch,depending on your sense of humor,and the violence that it depicted-which later incurred the wrath of angry parents,who complained about all the cartoon violence,and changed most of the way Saturday morning cartoons were done and made-giving way,to the likes of "SCOOBY-DOO" and "The ARCHIES"-a fitting change from the Super hero cartoons,that once ruled the weekends! |
tt0272118 | Haathi Mere Saathi | Orphaned Raju, in the company of four elephants, has to perform with them at street corners, in order to keep alive. The back-story is that as an orphan, they have saved his life from a leopard. In time, he makes it big, and starts Pyar Ki Duniya (The World Of Love), a zoo in which various wild animals reside along with his elephants, among whom Ramu is closest to him. Slowly he amasses a fortune, and is able to build his own private zoo, housing tigers, lions, bears, and of course the four elephants. He treats all the animals as his friends. He meets with Tanu (Tanuja), and both fall in love. Tanu's rich dad, Ratanlal (Madan Puri), is opposed to this alliance, but subsequently relents, and permits the young couple to get married. However trouble looms soon after as Tanu feels neglected. Things worsen when their child is born, and Tanu, fearing physical harm to her child from the elephants, tells Raju to choose between the elephants and his family. When Raju chooses his lifelong friends over wife and son, Ramu decides to bring the estranged couple together, but thanks to the villainous Sarwan Kumar (K.N.Singh), he has to sacrifice his life.
The original name of "Haathi Mere Saathi" was "Pyaar Ki Duniya ". | romantic | train | wikipedia | After 30 years, I still loved this movie!.
I first saw this film in India when I was 5 years old.
I remembered that I really liked it then, and was quite pleased to find it 30 years later via the Internet.I'm glad to say that it has lost none of its magic.
The story of Raju and his elephant buddy Ramoo makes for a truly unique film.
The best way I can sum it up, without giving too much away, is that it is reminiscent of older Disney films, but with a uniquely Indian feel.
Suffice to say, there are not many countries in the world where a story of a man growing up with elephants could be told in such an effective manner.
The trained animal sequences alone are worthy of films such as "The Bear".With regards to the inevitable singing and dancing in a Bollywood production, the songs are wonderful and there are far fewer of them than in standard Bollywood fare.
Additionally, as opposed to the more modern Indian films, the dancing is refreshingly non-professional and consists mostly of the hero and heroine scampering about and waving their arms - which only adds to the overall charm of this film..
It's difficult to forget this film....
I decided to watch the film on TV because I understood that it had been extremely famous in Bulgaria in the 1970s and lots of people came out from the cinema crying.So I was curious to see "Haathi Mere Saathi" and I really enjoyed it.The protagonist is Raj Kumar-a young man whose life had been saved by four elephants when he was a kid.Since then he loves them and doesn't think of them as "animals" but as real "friends".He falls in love with the beautiful Tanu.Unfortunately,Raj Kumar loses his fortune and becomes a poor man.But Tanu follows him and they struggle with life with the help of the faithful elephants.Yes,the story looks naive.But what's more important is that this film made something that few films are capable of nowadays-it proved the great power of friendship and love in a really touching way.The songs are wonderful and the animals are trained incredibly well.Undoubtedly a highly recommendable film!.
A Super Hit. This movie is one the biggest hits of Super Star Rajesh Khanna and is a movie which made him popular with kids who grew up seeing his future movies.
This movie is about the relationship/bondage between man and animal.
Elephants play an equally important role with Rajesh Khanna in the movie and the movie revolves around them.
Tanuja playing the heroine also contributes.
The movie has excellent music by Laxmikant Pyarelal who have composed some great hits for this movie sung by Kishore Kumar.
One song of Mohammad Rafi is a class.
The movie is a must see for movie watchers of all ages and especially the kids will enjoy this classic..
Entertaining if clichéd.
As a kid, I loved Haathi Mere Saathi.
Today, I'm not particularly eager to revisit it though it's definitely a memorable picture.
The film portrays a friendship between a young orphaned and wealthy man and his group of elephants, who had once saved him when he was lost in a jungle.
The film was generally well made and several Indian movies were inspired by this story afterwards.
The script is well written and the movie has its share of enjoyable moments even if the concept itself is hard to believe.
The songs, the proceedings and the development were pretty fun to watch, despite being a bit melodramatic at points.
Rajesh Khanna stars as Raj and he is a good hero for this film.
This was the year when his performance in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand wowed audiences.
His work here does not even deserve a comparison to the latter, but he is the main reason the movie works, and frankly speaking I've never been a big fan of his films and liked very few of his performances.
Tanuja is very pretty as his wife.
The supporting cast is good but the elephants are those who leave a mark.
Their loyalty and wisdom were funny and inspiring at the same time.
Haathi Mere Saathi is a nice film.
It has many moments of comedy, drama and heartwarming fun, and despite having its flaws, it's worth watching, particularly for lovers of Hindi films..
Haathee Mere Saathee .
Jai Ganesh Jee. Today is Ganesh Chaturthi or Vinaayak Chaturthi, the day of Lord Ganesha, the god of wisdom.
He is also known as the Vighneshwara, i.e., the remover of obstacles (appearing in the way of any good work).
As per the Hindu mythology, he is the god who is worshipped before anybody else whenever something is to be done.
Even the idiom in Hindi used for the expression - 'to begin a work' is - 'Shreeganesh Karna'.
Lord Ganesha has the head of an elephant and hence elephants are symbolic of him in the religious psyche of the Indians.
Today is Wednesday also which is also known as his day only.
I am fasting today and presenting a review of an old movie whose story was based on the relationship of some elephants with the protagonist.
This movie is Haathi Mere Saathi (1971) starring Rajesh Khanna and Tanuja with four elephants (and many other animals also).Haathi Mere Saathi (elephants are my buddies) tells the story of a motherless boy - Raju (Rajesh Khanna) who, being lost in his childhood, is saved by four elephants and taken back to his father who in his dying moment, instructs him never to leave the company of those elephants and to always consider them as his Saathis (buddies).
Raju grows up in their company and they always help him in all kinds of situations.
One elephant out of these four, named as Ramu is actually the first among equals in them and he is the special buddy of Raju.
Due to him only, Raju comes across Tanu (Tanuja) who is the daughter of a rich man.
When Raju loses his wealth due to losing a lawsuit, he loses his prospects of marrying Tanu also.
However his genuine buddies, i.e., the elephants help him in not only earning money but also bringing Tanu back to his life.
He develops his own private zoo and calls it - Pyar Ki Duniya (the world of love) with the relentless support of the elephants, Tanu and a young boy - Chhote who was earlier the assistant of an unscrupulous mountebank.
He becomes rich and finally wins Tanu's hand also from her father.
They get married and beget a son.The trouble strikes with Tanu's becoming an apprehensive and sceptic mother who starts doubting the nature of the elephants, lest they should harm her child (whereas in reality, the elephants themselves are quite concerned for the welfare and safety of the child).
This issue leads to her break-up with Raju and she moves to her parental house.
A heart-broken Raju has nobody to solace him except his buddies, the elephants.
There are some other baddies also, ever ready to harm Raju, viz.
the unscrupulous erstwhile mountebank (and later a released jailbird) and the wicked owner of a circus who is the competitor of Raju in this entertainment business.
In the end, Raju's best friend, Ramu elephant sacrifices its life to set everything right in Raju's life.Written by Saleem-Jaaved and directed by M.A. Thirumugham, this movie is actually a brain-child of Chinnappa Devar who can be considered as the pioneer of making animal-based movies in Indian cinema.
A genuine animal-lover Mr. Devar always loved to make movies with the significant roles of animals in them.
And Haathi Mere Saathi is perhaps the most successful and popular such movie made by him.
The animals and especially the elephants have done marvellously and they are in fact, the soul of the movie.
All the sequences involving them are simply superb.
Some of them are entertaining and some of them are so touching that any sensitive person may find tears coming out of his eyes while watching them.
The last journey of Ramu which contains the memorable song - Nafrat Ki Duniya Ko Chhod Kar Pyar Ki Duniya Mein Khush Rehna Mere Yaar (Rafi) is one such scene only.Though the main performers are elephants and other animals only, the human performers also have done justice to their roles.
The movie had come in the heyday of Rajesh Khanna and it is one of his all time great blockbuster movies.
He is at his emotional best in the movie, keeping his patent mannerisms under control.
Tanuja has done well first as a loving sweetheart and then as a sceptic mother.
The complete supporting cast including the baddies (K.N. Singh and Sujeet Kumar) has rendered ample support to the lead cast.Laxmikant Pyarelal have composed memorable music for the movie with the admirable lyrics of Anand Bakshi.
I have already mentioned the song - Nafrat Ki Duniya Ko which can be considered the best of the album.
The other songs - Sun Ja O Thandi Hawa, Dilbar Jaani Chali Hawa Mastaani, Duniya Mein Rehna Hai To Kaam Kar Pyare, Mere Mann Mein Machi Halchal, Tak Tak Tak Chalti Hai Gaadi etc.
are also very nice to listen.The movie is not a preaching type.
In fact, this movie and all other movies made by Mr. Devar are such that they deliver the message of treating the animals with sensitivity through pure entertainment only.
They are nowhere loud in saying anything, the message reaches the viewer automatically in a subtle way.That's why the message though hackneyed does not bores, it touches and moves the viewer deep within.
I pity that now-a-days our so-called animal-right activists cannot arrange the closure of the slaughter-houses but they can restrict the artistic creativity of the filmmakers by prohibiting them to use animals in their movies.
That's why filmmakers like Mr. Devar cannot get an opportunity now to show their cinematic excellence with the use of live animals..
Elephant Is My Buddy.
Now, kill me if I can remember anything in particular about this movie.
Beside the fact that it was 3 hours long and I spilled tones of tears during that time.
No other film had made me cry so much for no reason at all.
There is some hidden sentimentality in human species that makes him cry - most often some sad event of Bereavement - but in cinema there are instances unexplained.
So it was the soundtrack of this Bollywood movie that has remained unchallenged hit for all times in Hindu cinema.My personal memories from 40 years ago reveal the phenomenon of full cinema saloons with standing people interspersed between rows.
Most were Gypsies of various age.
That doesn't mean that Bulgaria (that's me) as a full member of European Union is Gypsy state.
Most of them are of mixed origins, some of them cohabit with the Turks minority and at least half of that vagrant population is Christian.
It's a matter of cultural adaptation and educational policy.I see from the release info that "Haathi Mere Saathi" (1971) was projected only in Portugal and Bulgaria.
Hundred percent guarantee that the end scene where elephant is being shot in the eye would heal your heart.
Actors / actresses are beautiful by any standard and cars are fashionable.
Thank you!.
Heart-warming and Heart-wrenching in 'Elephantine' Proportions!.
(Rated on the basis of watching on T.V. 41 years after release)Plot: A little boy, Raju grows up with a group of elephants who become his soul-mates.
But can they live happily ever after?Review: Children's cinema was a rarity in the 70's decade which was dominated by action-dramas.
But one big exception was "Haathi Mere Saathi"(1971), directed by M.A.Thirumugham which was inspired from his own Tamil hit, "Vettaikkaaran"(1964).The screenplay was penned by the legendary script-writing duo of Salim- Javed, who here were making their debut.
It was a story about friendship, loyalty, misunderstanding and sacrifice.
But unlike other films, here this message was spread through a bond between humans and the immensely lovable, elephants!
Brilliantly written; it packed in all the essential elements- a tense beginning, romance, a tragic twist, fight-back, misunderstanding and a high-octane climax packed by several heart-warming and heart-wrenching moments!
The script laid the solid foundation on which the pachyderms & co.
stole the show.In those days, it wasn't prevalent to take the little ones to watch movies; especially Hindi films!
But they never missed out in case a film like "Haathi Mere Saathi" came around.
While the parents shied away their children from other Rajesh Khanna hits like "Aradhana", "Amar Prem", and "Daag"; there was no escaping the charm of the then-reigning-superstar of Bollywood in this flick.
But the undeniable superstars here were the tuskers who won our hearts with their frolics and actions displaying a superb mixture of innocence and intelligence.
They made the humans look like supporting actors to them.
But it would be a terrible mistake to believe it is just an elephant-based film going by the title.
The lions, tigers, bears and alligators, all deserve their place of honour.
However incredible the antiques of the tuskers appeared; the wedding-feast sequence and the climax-song where the cast members are surrounded by these four-legged friends, are jaw-dropping and drop-dead stunning!
One must rub their eyes in disbelief.
They were one surprise the viewers were least expecting but couldn't thank their stars enough for witnessing it.
The circus-stunts (especially, the jump from the tower after the hero sets himself on fire) are bonus treats for children and grown-ups alike!
The last half-an-hour strike a hammer blow in the viewers' hearts; but yet one would only take back happy memories from the film.Rajesh Khanna slipped into his role with typical élan.
He consciously portrayed himself as a friend of the animals, never as a master.
It was tough to be convincing as someone whose orders are obeyed by wild animals.
But he pulled it off with his trademark grace and ever-charming smile.
Tanuja looked gorgeous and portrayed the concerns of an insecure mother, convincingly.
She shared a sweet and lovely chemistry with 'Kaka'; it's a pity we didn't get to see this pair in too many films.
It was surprising to see Sujit Kumar play a negative role, but he did full justice to it.
The remaining cast including Madan Puri and Jr. Mehmood were good as well.
But the best performers undoubtedly were the non- humans; especially the elephant, Ramu who put in the most assured performance.
Take a bow, Ramu!The title-track, having superb antaras, is the best song of the film; all of which are scored by Laxmikant-Pyarelal.
'Nafrat Ki Duniya' is brilliantly sung by Rafi; though the attention got diverted by its spell-binding picturisation on 'Kaka' surrounded by tigers and lions on both sides.
'Dilbar Jani' and 'Duniya Mein Jeena' are also praise-worthy tracks.
The composers must also be lauded for the impressive theme-score where trumpets were used to replicate the voice of the tuskers.Although commendably written, the script lacks logic at places.
The basic premise itself of a man affording to keep four elephants is hard to believe.
The 'munshi', who bought ration for the elephants from his own pocket, didn't seem so money-minded to switch allegiances.
It was more incredible that Raju could feed himself and four elephants with a daily earning of just Rs.250 when they were driven out on the streets!
Lastly, the rise of Raju from a street-performer to the owner of a private zoo was too swift to be convincing.
His progress needed to be depicted in more detail.But the biggest deficiency in the film, which prevents it from being termed 'great', is its sub-standard editing.
Also handled by the director himself, he fails to replicate his skills behind the camera on the editing table.
The first signs were evident from the thrilling elephant-leopard tussle at the beginning; but one could excuse that considering the difficulty in executing the shot.
But it was unacceptable when shots were repeated in a couple of songs and the same close-up of an elephant's eye being used repeatedly.
The two sequences of shooting of elephants, Tanu's father lying to her about Raju and Raju lying ill in a temple are clumsily edited.
Poor editing injects apprehension into the viewers' mind regarding the style of unfolding of the film as the editor is the overseer of the final product.
The editing sticks out like a sore thumb in this otherwise gem of a film."Haathi Mere Saathi" spreads a message of harmony (exemplified by the peaceful co-existence of lions and goats together).
It will live on as an ideal film for children but it sends out important lessons for grown- ups as well.
The elephants teach us how to be true human-beings.Box-Office Verdict: The film became the highest-grossing blockbuster of 1971.
The title-track remains popular even after four decades.
It also won the National Award and became the last of Rajesh Khanna's unbroken record of 15 consecutive hits.
It was remade by the makers in Tamil as "Nalla Neram" in 1972.
It's regarded as the finest children's film made in Bollywood..
This film sure is a unique experience.
It takes its time (not specified on the main page here, nor on my DVD box, but it was about 3 hours) and packs it with many unforgettable scenes, mostly involving the elephants of course: the elephant race; the double wedding party (one for the humans, one for the animals, where lions and tigers slurp their milk); the elephant burial...The sets were mostly lavish palaces, and so robustly built that the elephants could easily walk upstairs.
I was a bit disappointed that there weren't more location shots to conserve street sights of Mumbai of the times.The plot is also quite rich with human (and animal) drama in many flavors.
You get romance, marriage, circus acts, villains, some kung-fu fight action..
and much more, including the deaths of two elephants.
But also an incredible solo dance (in the Mumbai Carnival show) - I normally find dance numbers annoying, but that one was fantastic.Unforgettable experience. |
tt0065547 | Chisum | John Chisum (John Wayne), a virtuous, patriarchal land baron, locks horns with greedy Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker), who will stop at nothing to get control of the trade and even the law in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
Chisum is an aging rancher with an eventful past and a paternalistic nature towards his companions and community. Murphy, a malevolent land developer, plans to take control of the county for his own personal gain.
The story begins with Murphy's men tipping off Mexican rustlers who plan to steal Chisum's horses. Chisum and his sidekick Pepper (Ben Johnson) stop the bandits with help from a newcomer to the area, William Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel), also known as Billy the Kid. A notorious killer, Billy has been given a chance to reform by Chisum's philanthropic neighbor, rancher Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowles). Billy also falls for Chisum's newly arrived niece, Sallie (Pamela McMyler).
Murphy is buying up all the stores in town and using his monopoly to push up the prices. He appoints his own sheriff and deputies. He also brings in a lawyer, Alexander McSween (Andrew Prine), whose principles lead him to switch sides and seek work with Chisum and Tunstall. The two ranchers set up their own bank and general store in town under McSween's control.
Chisum's land and cattle remain targets. Murphy's men attempt to steal Chisum's cattle before he can sell them to the Army. Chisum's ranch hands are warned by Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett), a passing buffalo hunter. Garrett agrees to help Chisum and soon befriends Bonney. Together they foil an attack by Murphy's men on the wagons bringing in provisions for the new store.
Fed up with Murphy's underhanded activities, Tunstall rides off to Santa Fe to seek the intervention of Gov. Sam Axtell (Alan Baxter). On the way he is intercepted by Murphy's deputies, who falsely accuse him of cattle rustling and shoot him dead. Chisum and Garrett hunt down the deputies and bring them back to town for trial. Bonney, seeking revenge for the murder of his mentor and skeptical that the men will truly face justice in town, overpowers Garrett by surprise and shoots dead both deputies. Before Sheriff Brady (Bruce Cabot) can organise a posse, Billy rides into town and kills him, too.
Murphy appoints bounty hunter Dan Nodeen (Christopher George) as the new sheriff, giving him orders to hunt down Bonney. Nodeen has a score to settle, as a previous encounter with Bonney has left him with a permanent limp.
Billy's plans for revenge are only just beginning. He breaks into McSween's store looking for dynamite to rob Murphy's bank. He is spotted by Nodeen, who surrounds the store with Murphys's men. McSween's wife is allowed to leave. McSween later comes out unarmed but Nodeen shoots him in cold blood.
Chisum is alerted by McSween's wife (Lynda Day George) and rides into town. The main street is blocked, so Chisum stampedes his cattle through the barricades. He tracks down Murphy and takes him on in a fist fight which ends with both men falling from a balcony. Murphy ends up impaled on steer horns. With his paymaster dead, Nodeen flees, with Billy in pursuit.
The film ends with Garrett taking over as sheriff and it is implied that is settling down with Sallie. It is learned that General Lew Wallace has become governor of the area. With law and order restored, Chisum can resume his iconic vigil over the Pecos valley. | revenge, humor, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | McLaglen's western showcases Wayne as John Simpson Chisum, an historical figure who was the largest owner of land, of horses and cattle in New Mexico territory around 1878
The Pecos River runs through the middle of his land
He lets the water flow to all the ranches, big and small
If another man, with more appetitelike Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker) owned that land he'd control a territory bigger than most states and some countries
The story is based on the bloody Lincoln County cattle war
Things come to 'one hell of a fight' when Murphy's men kill Chisum's friend Henry Tunstall, mentor to Billy the Kid, and have Alex McSween, manager of their general store, with Billy and some men, trapped in
Forrest Tucker plays Chisum's enemy who really thinks himself skillful enough to 'own' the law
Christopher George (Dan Nodeen) plays the half-crazy bounty hunter who gimps because of Billy the Kid
Ben Johnson has one of the most impressive records of any supporting Westerner
He came here to support Chisum all the way
Andrew V.
Compared to the amount of factual change that most movies based on a history put on film, this movie is not far from being spot on.In fact, the amount of direct action that John Wayne's character, Chisum, took in the film, is probably the element that is the most out of place.Billy the Kid really did work for an English rancher involved in the dispute.
But it certainly didn't with playing John Simpson Chisum, New Mexico cattle baron and key player in what has become known in history as the Lincoln County War. Of course the politics involved were a bit more complex than what you would see here.
Others in the cast worthy of note are Patric Knowles as Henry Tunstall, Glenn Corbett as Pat Garrett, Geoffrey Deuel as Billy the Kid, and Christopher George as Dirty Dan Nodeen.
You can fault his no-frills acting style, the pious patriotism, the oft-uneven supporting cast, the predictable fight scenes, But even a lesser Wayne film still has John Wayne, and for his fans, that's nine-tenths of the battle in determining whether it's a good film."Chisum" is not going to convert non-Duke fans.
Much of the film focuses on young William Bonney (Geoffrey Deuel), a former gunman better known as Billy the Kid now trying to live "clean and forward, all the way" with the help of a fatherly rancher named Tunstall (Patric Knowles, Will Scarlet to Errol Flynn's Robin Hood some 32 years before).Geoffrey Deuel didn't go on to much of a career after this, and it's not hard seeing why.
I don't think Marlon Brando could have acted his way out of Deuel's bind.Other actors come off better, especially Forrest Tucker as the chief heavy, Lawrence Murphy, who showcases an affable menace that makes him a good foil to Wayne's straightforward Chisum; Glenn Corbett, who plays drifting gambler Pat Garrett, hard but decent, who joins Chisum and befriends young Bonney until he turns into The Kid again; and Christopher George, whose Dan Nodeen is a nasty bounty hunter obsessed with killing the Kid. One nice thing about this film is seeing these actors, all best known for TV series work, stretching out beyond their popular identities of the period.
George makes the strongest impression as the cold-eyed Nodeen."You just had to kill him," asks a sheriff when Nodeen brings in the body of a wanted man."No, less trouble that way," Nodeen replies.Ben Johnson and Richard Jaeckel also have their moments as companions to Chisum and Murphy respectively, as does Andrew Prine as a lawyer who switches sides halfway through.
Splendid John Wayne as a tough cattle baron fighting along with Billy the Kid in the Lincoln County war.
He became involved in the Lincoln County war of 1878-79 in which he opposed the Murphy (Forrest Tucker)-Dolan (Edward Faulkner) faction and backed cattleman Tunstall (Patrick Knowles) , whose gunfighters-cowboys included the handsome Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel's film debut).
It is said that Chisum was instrumental in making Billy the Kid an outlaw killer , he used his considerable influence in getting Pat Garret (Glenn Corbett) elected Sheriff of Lincoln County in 1880 and it was Garrett who hunted down and killed the young outlaw .
It's nice to see him finally drop the love interest that was so inappropriate in most of the movies he made after the age of 55.Some good supporting cast performances, especially Ben Johnson and Forrest Tucker.Pretty good story, based pretty solidly on real events of the Lincoln County range war in New Mexico.Tunstall's mentoring of Billy the Kid was very similar to "The Left Handed Gun", the 1958 film where Paul Newman played Billy.
Towards the end, the battle between Chisum and Murphy (the war) is completely set aside and we end up seeing all the same things happen to Billy that we've already seen in all the other movies about him, i.e., his relationship with Tunstall, meeting Pat Garrett and becoming friends (at first, then their falling out, well, kinda), him getting revenge on everybody, and the ol' shootout at McSween's store.
The movie alters history in some interesting ways, though, like instead of the U.S. Army helping the sheriff (a fictitious character that replaces Brady) during the McSween's store shootout, Chisum becomes the cavalry and he and Pat Garrett help Billy out.
Chisum's neighbor, Henry Tunstall (Patric Knowels) also doesn't like Murphy's plans, and hires a young man to work on his ranch, his name is Billy the Kid (played by Geoffrey Deuel).
The all star cast also includes John Wayne regulars- Ben Johnson as Chisum's sidekick, Bruce Cabot playing the sheriff who handles Murphy's dirty work, Andrew Prine playing Chisum's lawyer, Glenn Corbett turns in a fine job as playing Pat Garrett and Christopher George and Richard Jaeckel turn in their usual cowboy villians as the bounty hunters.
Chisum and his men with honest rancher Tunstall, Pat Garrett, William Bonney aka Billy the Kid and others are forced to battle Murphy in his crocked schemes.
Cattle ranchers John Chisum (John Wayne) and Henry Tunstall (an almost unrecognizable Patric Knowles) face off against villainous Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker).
Although having his character's name in the title, the movie actually plays out as an ensemble giving equal time to Pat Garrett and William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. However, Corbett and Deuel were mediocre and unable to pull their own weight in scenes with Wayne.
Overall, Chisum feels like a movie from a bygone era, out of time in 1970.Its plot follows the landowner John Chisum and details more specifically the Lincoln County War. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid feature too in the years before the former assassinated the latter.I found Chisum for the most part a fairly tedious movie.
Only the grumpiest of gusses would complain about Chisum, a 1970 Wayner wherein Big John pretends that the real-life cattle baron was a nice man, and cleans up the town of Lincoln, New Mexico, marries off his niece, and delivers one of my favorite Wayne lines, "Let's break out some Winchesters!" The movie fits the viewer like a really cheesy but warm pair of (you name the garment) on a cold day.
The supporting cast is so good that you actually feel badly when the bad ones (and good) get killed off; Ben Johnson is the new Walter Brennan, Forrest Tucker is admirably sleazy, Bruce Cabot appears to have the IQ of one of Chisum's cows (I wonder if the cow wants it back--hah, hah), Geoff Deuel sweats a lot (but his hair is so cool!), Lynda Day George is scrumptious, but underused, and Glenn Corbett and Christopher George--two enjoyable manly men with creepy eyes and great voices--do exactly what they are asked to do, and do it well.There are a few clinkers in Chisum: Pamela Somethingoranother is ridiculous as Wayne's niece; I looked her up and she retired from acting in the 80's (whew!).
The movie is a product of the late 60's and, because of Warner Brothers desire to bring in young people to watch a 63 year old man kick western butt, they stocked the movie with a subplot of Billy the Kid (Deuel) trying to go straight and his romance with the aforementioned niece.
Old Guns : John Wayne Meets Billy The Kid. Cattle king and businessman John Chisum (John Wayne) teams up with Pat Garrett and Billy Bonney in anticipation of a range war against wannabe land baron Forrest Tucker.
Soon, Billy goes rogue and all hell breaks loose!This handsomely produced western starts well, sags just a little in the middle, then gets back on track for an exciting final act and excellent climax.Being that Wayne also executive-produced, there's a great cast of familiar faces backing him up, including personal favorites Ben Johnson, Richard Jaeckel, and Andrew Prine among others.Once again, Christopher George stands out as Tucker's slick hired-gun turned sheriff, sort of a meaner version of his role in Howard Hawks' El Dorado.The colorful title sequence featuring a moving camera capturing several vivid, action-packed western paintings is really nice too.George, Jaeckel, and Prine were all together again a few years later, battling the title animal in the 1976 creature-feature Grizzly..
This is another laid-back action Western from The Duke’s twilight period with a more ambitious scope than usual, since it features historical figures like John Simpson Chisum (the part played by Wayne), Pat Garrett (played by Glenn Corbett) and Billy The Kid (played by Geoffrey Deuel).Rather than having the typical token appearance by cronies, it provides substantial roles for Ben Johnson (as Wayne’s mumbling sidekick), Forrest Tucker (effectively cast against type as the villain), Bruce Cabot (as the corrupt sheriff), Richard Jaeckel (as Tucker’s lead henchmen), Christopher George (as a trigger-happy replacement for Cabot), Abraham Sofaer (as an Indian chief) and, most surprising of all perhaps, Patrick Knowles (as Wayne’s best friend and fellow patriarch).
It’s interesting to watch Ben Johnson participating in these old-fashioned type of Westerns, when a year earlier he had played a major role in Sam Peckinpah’s ground-breaking THE WILD BUNCH (1969) – a film which both John Wayne and Howard Hawks disliked!
Incidentally, it was while working on this film that John Wayne won his Golden Globe Award for TRUE GRIT (1969) and learned that he was up for an Academy Award for it (which he proceeded to win as well).Apart from a promotional featurette (discussed below), the Warners DVD of CHISUM includes a full-length Audio Commentary by director McLaglen which, basically, details the goings on behind-the-scenes – with special mention of the Durango locations (standing in for New Mexico) and, of course, his long-running association with Wayne (in all, they made 5 movies together).
McLaglen Western – it gives some background on the historical figure of cattle baron John Simpson Chisum and also delineates just how Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (his friends, but soon to be sworn enemies of each other) came to be involved in his struggle against unscrupulous landowners.
Fenady, and stars John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Ben Johnson, Geoffrey Deuel, Bruce Cabot, Andrew Prine & Richard Jaeckel.
Which involved such characters like Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, John Tunstall, Alexander McSween and others.Hollywoodisation of the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid mythology, Chisum is a fun and colourful movie.
This more fictional story is about the Cattle Baron John Chisum (John Wayne) and only a little bit about Billy the Kid. The movie starts with a great song and some pictures of cowboys and cattle's.
Fenady combine the western legends Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid with the legendary Hollywood actor John Wayne very effectively.
His real Christian name was John rather than Henry).Another real-life person involved in the Lincoln County War was William Bonney who under the name Billy the Kid was to become one of the most legendary figures of the Wild West.
Billy The Kid is bound to avenge the murder of his friend and boss John Tunstall, and the Duke is on the edge of the story as the commanding presence of decent authority, as opposed to the corrupt town leaders and sheriff who supported the murder.To the film's credit, it's not boring, there's always something going on, and there is a fair amount of late 60's style 'cowboy' action, but "Chisum" is not a standout western either.
The Lincoln County Range War takes second place to John Wayne being John Wayne in "Chisum." Sweeping, fictionalized account of the West's most famous range war has Wayne as a cattle rancher in conflict with another land baron, played by Forrest Tucker.
In the early days of the territory of New Mexico, the rugged land produces only what man is willing to work for, unless someone else has worked all his life and it just sits there for the taking, for anyone willing to risk it all in achieving it.Forrest Tucker is Murphy, a man who sees what John Chisum (Wayne) has and he wants it, not willing to work for it, just take it.
But with any great western the good guys need to prevail and on Chisum's side he has Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett), young gunslinger Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel) and Chisum's old friend and ride'em cowboy James Pepper played by the versatile actor Ben Johnson.
McLaglen, "Chisum" is based on the real-life Lincoln County War in New Mexico, which was a range war of feuding factions involving quite a few famous Old West people, like Billy the Kid (Geoffrey Deuel), sheriffs William Brady (Bruce Cabot) and Pat Garrett (Glenn Corbett), cattle rancher John Chisum (Wayne), lawyer and businessman Alexander McSween (Andrew Prine), and the organized crime boss Lawrence Murphy (Forrest Tucker).
As far as women go, Pamela McMyler plays Chisum's likable niece and the Lynda Day George has a small role as the wife of the lawyer.Bottom Line: This is a realistic and rollicking latter-day Wayne Western based on real Old West characters.
western motion picture starring John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Christopher George, Ben Johnson, Glenn Corbett, Geoffrey Deuel, Andrew Prine, Bruce Cabot, Patric Knowles, and Richard Jaeckel.
Fenady from his short story, Chisum and the Lincoln County Cattle War. Although this movie is historically inaccurate in many details, it was based on events and characters from the Lincoln County War of 1878 in New Mexico Territory, which involved Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid among others.Summary: John Chisum (played by Wayne), a virtuous, ranch-owning patriarch, locks horns with greedy Lawrence Murphy (played by Tucker), who will stop at nothing to get control of the trade and even the law in Lincoln County.
Also Henry Tunstall (Patrick Knowles) who took Billy "Under His Wing" with Reform in Mind (it almost worked).There is a High Body Count and Bullets Flying, Cattle Stampeding, and John Wayne opens and closes the Movie Striking a Pose as Almost a Deity Among Men.Note...The opening credits are superimposed on some fine Western style Art that is different and memorable..
Inevitably, a western cinematic legend like John Wayne had to make a movie about the relationship between Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, and "Chisum" is the Duke's version of the infamous Lincoln County War. Wayne plays the New Mexico patriarch who had a vested interest in these tumultuous events.
Geoffrey Duel, Pete Duel's younger brother, plays Billy, and he wears his six-gun in a holster on his right hip rather than his left like Paul Newman did in Arthur Penn's "The Left-Handed Gun." Several actors who appeared as regulars in Wayne's movies showed up, principally Ben Johnson as his foreman, Bruce Cabot as a slimy lawman, Glenn Corbett as Pat Garrett, along with John Agar, Christopher George, Hank Worden, Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez, and Edward Faulkner.
Wayne plays cattle baron John Chisum as a more sympathetic figure than he probably was; the always excellent Ben Johnson is his sidekick Pepper and if you don't find any homoerotic subtext to their relationship you're a better man than I.
Thus the battle lines are drawn for New Mexico's 1878 Lincoln County Land War.The supporting cast is a who's who of the western genre: Ben Johnson, Andrew Pine, Richard Jaeckel, Patrick Knowles and Bruce Cabot.
With range war now on the cards, Chisum joins forces with none other than Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid to rid the territory of Murphy and his thugs.I haven't watched a John Wayne western in years and Andrew V.
The plot is nothing new and merely an excuse to give a lot of actors a lot of screen time, show off some finely rugged scenery, and tell the kind of story familiar in western cinema.The sprawling plot features multiple protagonists and sub-plots, perhaps the most useful of which is the one featuring the real-life characters of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. With the emphasis of much of the running time on these two characters, Wayne sometimes feels like a supporting actor in his own film, although he's very good as the brash, braggardly man with a heart of gold.
Geoffrey Deuel brings some good charisma to his role as Billy the Kid. CHISUM is no masterpiece and not one of the Duke's best either, but it's a reliable western made in a fast-changing world..
This shoot-em up Wayne western features 3 iconic names of the Old West: John Chisum, Billy the Kid, and Pat Garrett, who supposedly played important roles in the Lincoln County NM war of 1878.
John Wayne as Chisum plays one of his most memorable characters in this movie.
Not knowing what this John Wayne Western was all about, I was surprised when familiar names like Henry Tunstall, William Bonney and Pat Garrett began to show up.
Though CHISUM himself isn't exactly a 99 Per Center, he's more respectful of the Little Guy (that is, We 99%) than the characters he plays in all of the other "John Wayne" movies available today to the American Public. |
tt0106601 | Conflict of Interest | Set in Los Angeles, the film opens with Mickey Flannery (McDonald), an Irish cop on the edge whose wife Patty (Hanson) is shot and killed in front of their young son Jason (Katz). Seven years later, after having worked multiple jobs, he returns to his job at the police department in homicide, working under Captain Garland (Page). He has personally investigated a car ring deal, but the captain has no interest, because it has no connection to homicide. Mickey is now in a relationship with Vera (Young) and looks forward to meeting with his son (Harris) after years. Jason has grown up with his grandparents, and is not enthusiastic to reunite with his father. While joining him on lunch, Mickey is startled when he hears gunshots after two cars drive by. Car repair shop and heavy metal club owner Gideon (Nelson) and his muscled companion Casey (Stevens) are the killers, who have shot a guy named Trasher (Chapman) in cold blood.
Jason, meanwhile, catches the eye of Eve (Milano), a tough but lustrous heavy metal girl who takes Jason to Gideon's heavy metal club, where she reveals herself to be his girlfriend, even though she is still in high school. After being introduced to Gideon and Casey, he goes home with Gloria (Brook), a co-worker of the club whom he has sex with. Back at home, he confronts his father with having abandoned him, though Mickey explains that he could not take care of him because he was mourning and became an alcoholic - without a job. Mickey is then called to the job to investigate the death of no other than Gloria. He finds a letter signed by Jason in her room, and realizes that his son is somehow involved, though hides this piece of evidence from his colleagues. He rushes to San Pedro High School to get an explanation from his son, but Gideon interrupts them, warning Mickey to leave "his friend" alone. Gideon then offers Jason a job as a sound engineer in his club, which Jason gladly accepts. As Gideon drives off, Mickey recognizes his car as the same one that drove off after the killing of Trasher.
Mickey follows Gideon to his home and, after cuffing home, confronts him with the murder as well as warning him to stay away from his son. He is interrupted by his captain, who lashes out at Mickey for breaking the police rules by having visited Gideon on his own, and informs him that Gideon has an alibi for the night that Gloria was murdered. Gideon, in fact, has provided an alibi for every worker in the club, and sends Shannon (Howe) to pleasure Jason, in order to distract him from thinking that he might look suspicious. Gideon notices that Eve does not like this, as for she has become infatuated with Jason herself. Jason, meanwhile, blacks out during sex with Shannon and later moments finds her shot to death. As Mickey arrives at the spot around this time, Gideon shows him Shannon's body and informs him that his son is responsible. When a report is made of Shannon's death, the captain becomes suspicious and infuriated when he learns from Gideon that Mickey showed up at the scene of the crime only moments after her death, prompting him to think that Jason killed both women: Mickey is fired on the spot.
Meanwhile, Jason remembers that Gideon shot Shannon and is trying to frame him. He convinces Eve that they should get out as soon as possible, but are stopped by Gideon's men. With the help from his old friend Ray Dureen (De Broux) and colleague Oakes (Powell), Mickey yet again steps outside the book to prove that Gideon is framing his son. He suspects that Detective Falcone (Acovone), who has always been harassing Mickey whenever he exclaimed suspicion of Gideon, might have something to do with the entire ring, and decides to follow him. Falcone drives off to Gideon's place at the dock, where he is currently planning on finishing off Jason and Eve. After rescuing both their lives, Mickey is captured by one of Gideon's men. He witnesses Gideon using his gun to kill Falcone and then prepares to kill him, when suddenly Jason comes to the rescue. After killing Gideon in an explosion, Mickey finds out that Ray was involved with the car deal ring as well, and as he goes over to confront him, Ray admits that he had Patty killed because she found out about his criminal activities. Mickey considers killing Ray, but, encouraged by Jason, turns him in to the police. | murder | train | wikipedia | a treat for cheese lovers!.
OK...we've got Christopher Macdonald as a hardboiled cop (Mickey Flannery - ha!)and a pirate-shirted, eyeliner wearing Judd Nelson as a murderous crime lord (Gideon - hahahaha!).
Laughing yet?
I still laugh until I cry watching this one.
Macdonald is totally hapless in such a serious role (he REALLY acts his heart out too) and Judd Nelson's wardrobe is enough to slay anyone.
The film also contains the always amusing titular line.
One of the characters actually exclaims "Conflict of Interest!" There's plenty of silly action and dialog to go around.
This movie is way out of print, but if you love cheese, you should hunt down a copy..
Conflicting views..
I always had a soft spot for anything starring Alyssa Milano and Judd Nelson was another interesting inclusion.
As for the film itself
did I mention Alyssa Milano was in it.
Yep I'm really clutching at straws.
Actually it's not that bad.
Well the smoking hot Milano might be in it, but she doesn't get much screen credit.
Rats!
Anyway 'Conflict of Interest' is a routine b-grade crime picture that stays in first gear for most part, and unsuccessfully tries to milk out its neon lighting and heavy metal scene.
Even with its admirable pacing and stylishly slick look for such a budget, the direction is too pedestrian and the script is torpidly delivered.
The action is productively executed, but not all that exciting or explosive.
The story formulates the usual dramatics of a police detective, Mickey Flannery who's police badge was stripped off him for killing his wife's murderer.
We move seven years into the present where he's accepted back into the force and he'll see his son for the first time since his wife was murdered.
However his rebellious punk son is connected to a murder in the sordidly kinky metal music underworld.
Trying to prove his son's innocence he goes on a mission to prove the club owner Gideon is behind it all, and this means that he could lose his badge again.
I would've like it more it didn't come across as forced and manipulative, and some of those occurrences are too elaborately planned that it leaves it being silly and daft.
Thrown in for good measure is a dose of nudity and sex.
Christopher McDonald gives a variable performance in the lead role and Nelson's smooth, eye-liner wearing badass villain was rather rib-tickling.
And that wasn't intentional either.
Milano is wasted, Zia Harris is fair and the beautiful Dey Young comes up solid.
There's also some good support by veterans Lee de Broux and Harrison Page.
Not a bad film, but not particularly a memorable one either..
The strangest movie I've ever seen ( while being loaded).
OK people, I'm going to honest with you.
I have seen half an hour of this movie, and not from the beginning.
Furthermore, by the time I caught this movie (at 1 am), I was drunk and half asleep, so I don't know how much I got from this film.
What I saw was Judd Nelson as a tough villain dressed like Gothic pirate and "Shooter McGavin" (from Happy Glimore) as no-nonsense cop with a grudge against Nelson.
Also, there was a young man played by someone I don't know, who happened to be the cop's son.
Anyway, to make it short,in the part of the movie which I saw, the cop's son went to a metal bar owned by the goth pirate, who introduced a red hot smoking blonde to the cop's son, who later on supposedly killed that hot smoking blonde.Then, there was scene at the metal club where Nelson tells McGavin he is going to murder his son and after that I completely fall asleep.I know this review is a bit useless, but I wanted to write it because the movie looked to me as a strange thing, o perhaps I was hammered.
A piece of advice, don't watch it while being drunk or half asleep, for it's going to confuse you a bit more.
Cheers.
a definite conflict in watching.
A movie that has taken advantage of the stardom of Alyssa Milano by making her role seem larger than it truly is..
Nothing special here..your formula plot and wooden acting..The only thing special here is Alyssa Milano who is beautiful as always.
On a scale of one to ten...
3. If u like cheesy action with loads hot babes.....
This is the movie for you!
This is the movie for you!
We're talking mega-velveeta cheesy here, but soo much fun!
Christopher McDonald stars as a tough cop with some control issues, granted he sees his wife gunned down in front of him and his young son, but kills the perp, so it goes unsolved.
Flash forward seven years or so ahead and Mickey is still a tough cop, with some triggers waiting to be pulled.
His son Jason, now sporting a mullet to make Billy Ray Cyrus swoon, is back to live with dad and his very hot girlfriend Vera, played by Dey Young of all people, but trust me total MILF!
Poor Jason soon runs afoul of Gideon, played by Judd Nelson as a insane raccoon on an acid trip who dresses like a pirate.
Seriously, not kidding, the man wears mascara and dresses in frilly lace!
WTF!
so over the top you just have to smile.
Oh Gideon run a profitable car theft ring, but young Jason just digs the metal club he runs to cover it.
Naturally Mickey tries to warn rebellious teen Jason to steer clear of Gideon, but heck what seventeen year old ever listened to their parent?
Added eye candy is Alyssa Milano is a relatively small role as Eve, but her opening scene...
WOWZA, what a hottie!
I mean I seriously wanted to leap into my screen!
Jason feels likewise, tho that doesn't stop him from bedding some seriously stacked babes Gideon throws at him.
Totally trash, but done in the most enjoyable of fashions, with surprisingly good performances and some cool plot twists towards the end.
"Conflict of Interest" is not a classic, but it's a great example of late 80's early 90's b-movie action and it delivers the goods!.
No spoilers here.
Not because I want to preserve the integrity of this masterwork, but because I stopped watching it about half-way through.First, the good: Alyssa Milano and Dey Young look beautiful in this film.
Second, there are several hot heavy-metal-looking chicks in the movie, as well.
Third, Zia Harris has the mullet for the ages -- he actually looks he could be the twin brother of Kim Richards from "Tuff Turf." I caught this movie on late-night cable just last week and my immediate thought was: Wow, "Happy Gilmore" aside, Christopher McDonald simply cannot act.
Script was filled with any number of clichés: Mom killed in opening scene; boy estranged from his father, who hit the bottle hard after his wife's death.
Cop who plays by his own rule but (I'm only guessing, not spoiling) is ultimately redeemed.
Wacky, over-the-top evil villain (the always execrable Judd Nelson, rocking some impressive mutton-chop sideburns, like a twisted Elvis impersonator) ...
Zia Harris' rebel son character is given "depth" by having him spout a haiku to Alyssa Milano, so that's a bonus.
Also, interminable opening credits showing the L.A. working waterfront.
Yawn.Quite simply, one of the worst movies I've seen in recent memory, and I've seen both "Pieces" and "The Incredible Melting Man.".
"Conflict of Interest" is an overlooked and somewhat under-appreciated part of the post-80's Judd Nelson catalogue..
"Fast Cars, Hot Women, Cold Cash.
You want it, he's got it.
But you may have to pay with your life
""Conflict of Interest" is an overlooked and somewhat under-appreciated part of the post-80's Judd Nelson catalogue.
If you've seen every so-called "Brat Pack" movie ever made and are still hungry for more, this should fit the bill.
Although while in "Conflict
" Nelson is definitely a brat, by this point in history the "pack" had dissipated.Christopher McDonald is great as Mickey Flannery, a cop on the edge who gets suspended from the force for shooting his wife's murderer in an act of revenge.
While the audience is applauding his actions, the LAPD doesn't share his zeal, and he becomes a longshoreman who gets wise to an illegal car-smuggling ring.
When he's not out on the docks, Mickey spends his time drinking and communicating with truckers and nerds with his unnecessarily elaborate ham radio setup.After this period of exile, it looks like everything is coming up roses for Mickey.
He gets his old job back, he shares a house with his girlfriend who cares about him, and his son Jason returns after seven years living with his grandparents.
But the arrival of Jason, rather than being a joyous family reunion, opens up a maelstrom of pain and problems for all concerned, especially Mickey.Jason is not the cute little kid Mickey remembers from when he last saw him.
It turns out he is a motorcycle-riding, leather jacket-wearing badass with a monstrous mullet of epic proportions.
His mullet represents the hurt, resentment and abandonment issues he feels towards his father.
But Jason's not all bad, and secretly wants to be a good son.
And Flannery sees his return as a great opportunity to be a family again.But Gideon (Nelson) enters the picture and, being the diabolical antagonist that he is, exploits these family weaknesses to the utmost, for his own evil ends.
You see, Gideon is the local criminal who has his hands in every illegal activity in town, and he covers it all up in his role as owner of the, and I quote ,"deffest metal club in town", called The Wreck.
Motorcycles hang from the ceiling.
No wonder this place is so popular.
Plus you know he's evil because he wears guy-liner, a lot of jewelry, has crazy sideburns and wears frilly pirate shirts that are so gay-looking, it makes "The Puffy Shirt" of Seinfeld fame seem positively tame by comparison.
He's meant to be the decadent-dilettante-disturbingly intelligent-bad dude we all fear in our nightmares.Noting Jason's interest in sound engineering (a trait that must be in the DNA, remember dad's ham radios), Gideon offers Jason a job running sound at The Wreck, a job Jason enthusiastically accepts.
While Jason, blissfully ignorant, is crankin' the tunes by D.I. and Gary Numan, ("Metal Club" presumably referring to the fact that people wear outrageous metallic clothing), girls around town start being found dead.
Flannery is assigned to the case and soon realizes Gideon is just using Jason as a patsy.
After several tense confrontations, it seems Gideon and Mickey are in a good-and-evil battle for Jason's soul.
Gideon continually mocks Flannery's parenting abilities and insinuates he is the better father figure for Jason.
This enrages Mickey, now literally fighting for his son's love.
Flannery wants to go all out, but remembers where that has gotten him in the past.
So he is fighting his inner demons as well.
But in the course of his investigations, he discovers a shocking conspiracy that goes all the way to the top.
(Where else did you think it would go?) As usual, there is an angry black Captain who yells at Flannery and demands Mickey to give him his badge and gun.
Alyssa Milano makes a very welcome appearance as Eve, an associate of Gideon's that soon becomes Jason's love interest.One of the aspects of "Interest" is the use of crazy slang.
Jason insults his rivals by calling them "Barney"s and when he is really mad calling them a "supper buddy"(?
) and Jason spouts haiku whenever the mood strikes him.
One of the strangest and funniest uses of slang is when Gideon's goon named "Thrasher" insults Flannery by calling him "Jerk Beef" (???) This insult is clearly the catalyst in Mickey's quest for justice.
"Conflict" has everything you want in a movie: Crazy slang, explosions, and Judd Nelson.
There's no "Conflict" in taking an "Interest" in this tonight!
Comeuppance Review by: Ty & Brett.
A great performance.
This is one movie for the ages!
Why it was never released on a more global scale still astonishes me to no avail.
The first ten minutes of the movie literally had me at the edge of my seat.
I didn't see any of the rest of the film, but I know that it still probably delivers those same dramatic punches one right after the other.This movie is truly the crowning achievement of one of America's top young child celebrities, Joel Katz.
Portraying the role of "Young Jason", he delivers his academy award dodging performance so well I literally burst into tears after hearing his cries after his mother was randomly shot in broad daylight with a .50 desert eagle, right in front of his eyes.
This spectacular actor then skyrocketed to fame with other memorable roles, such as the role of a random child in "Cheers", the Mario Paint commerical, and most recently, a spokesman for Impontency International..
Great underrated period piece.
I can't abide this movie's low rating here.
a 6, maybe a 5, but a 3?
Cmon, no way.Christopher McDonald, of memorable face, but unmemorable name, plays the boilerplate on-the-edge cop, Mickey Flannery (granted, cheesy Irish name for a cop) who is introduced as he loses his wife in a shooting related to a car-theft ring, which their child son, Jason, witnesses.McDonald, of Happy Gilmore fame as an insufferable dweeb, is likable, committed and tough here, the hero of the film.
After the opening, the film moves forward in time to Jason being a young adult (at least 15 years older, though McDonald much at all, and is back on the force.Jason gets wrapped up with a criminal ring run by Judd Nelson's Gideon, the most compelling character of the movie.
I'm not a big fan of Nelson in many other roles, but here, he's a real threat, and wears his mascara and LA-grunge post-hair-metal wear well.
The film is almost a micro fashion document of 1993, with lots of grunge wear, with an LA angle.
The pirate shirt does appear once, and it's stunning when it does, but Nelson is young and scary enough to make it work.
Allysa Milano, is of course, ludicrously attractive in her apparel, which is a sequence of riot grrrl Gothic, and grunge outfits.
She also acts well in her part.
The club they habitate is also a good example of the raves/industrial parties that existed from the mid-80s into the mid-90s.McDonald is the other anchor to the film, constantly trying to maintain his composure while his son is increasingly drawn into a very personally threatening situation (while the son and dad are just trying to re-establish contact)and he's returned to the police force after a long absence.
The audience knows McDonald/Flannery is right in his suspicions that Judd/Gideon is a lowlife murderer, but no one else believes him.
It's a common plot device, but used very effectively over a long arc in this film.
Then, at the end, we find that not only was McDonald right, but he was set up from the start, not just on one level, but multiple levels to the very start years earlier.My one biggest complaint with the plot would be why would a smart operator like Gideon attract so much police attention by killing two young women?
Framing son and father is at least sort of a plausible explanation that the film stays true to and follows through on, in some surprising and visually exciting action scenes.It's not a masterpiece by any means, and it's title assures it remain in obscurity, but it's a totally competent cop yarn with strong family and dept corruption subtexts.
Like many low budget films, it turns out to be an excellent period piece, shot from its current reality. |
tt0067749 | Shinbone Alley | A New York City poet named Archy (Eddie Bracken) attempts suicide only to come back as a cockroach. As he learns how to write poetry by hopping on typewriter keys, he grows used to his new life and becomes infatuated with Mehitabel (Carol Channing), the singing alley cat. She instead goes out with the tomcat Big Bill (Alan Reed) When Big Bill dumps Mehitabel, Archy confronts her about her wild ways in general and her affinity for bad boy tomcats in particular. She momentarily agrees; however, self-appointed theatre maestro cat Tyrone T. Tattersall (John Carradine) promises to make her a star and becomes her next lover. Archy attempts and fails suicide again. In the theatre, Mehitabel holds up her end of the deal in getting food for Tyrone, but he kicks her off the stage. Archy and Big Bill watch her, and Mehitabel gets back together with Big Bill. Back to his typewriter, Archy channels his frustration in calling the other insects and spiders to revolution. He immediately drops the scheme when he hears the news that Mehitabel has kittens, and Big Bill has left the scene again.It's a rainy evening, and Archy points out to Mehitabel, that her kittens, who are inside a cover less trashcan, are floating away from her, and the two of them rescue the kittens, however, a moody Mehetabel, chases Archy away for interfering with her private business. Archy persuades Mehitabel to give up her life as an alley cat and support the kittens with a "job" as a house cat.
Later, however, when Archy comes to visit her in the upscale house, with her visibly changed by the experience, she reminds him that social class now separates them from being friends and kicks him out—regretting it later. Archy gets drunk and meets several ladybug street walkers who find his love poems about Mehitabel. Big Bill makes fun of him. One day, Mehitabel returns to Shinbone Alley and sings and dances again like her old self. After having tried to reform her, Archy realizes he liked Mehitabel for her wild ways all along and accepts her for "being what she has to be," content to be just friends. | romantic, psychedelic, philosophical | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0382262 | Biohazard Outbreak | Underneath Raccoon City exists a genetic research facility called the Hive, owned by the Umbrella Corporation. A thief steals the genetically engineered T-virus and contaminates the Hive with it. In response, the facility's artificial intelligence, the Red Queen, seals the Hive and kills everyone inside.
Alice awakens naked in the bathroom of a deserted mansion with amnesia. She dresses, checks the mansion, and is subdued by an unknown person. A group of Sanitation Team commandos led by James Shade breaks into the mansion and arrests Matt Addison, who just transferred as a cop in Raccoon P.D. The group travels to the underground train under the mansion that leads to the Hive, where they find Spence. The commandos explain that everyone in the group except Matt is an employee of the Umbrella Corporation, and Alice and her partner Spence are security guards for a Hive entrance under the disguise of a couple living in the mansion. Five hours prior, the Red Queen had shut down the entire facility and released a gas which killed everyone inside, flooded the labs, and destroyed the elevators, also causing Spence and Alice's amnesia.
At the Queen's chamber, a laser defense system kills Shade and three more commandos. Despite the Red Queen's urgent pleas for the group to leave, Kaplan disables the Red Queen systems, and the power fails, opening all of the doors in the Hive. This releases the zombified staff and containment units containing Lickers. When everyone regroups, they are ambushed by a horde of zombies and a gunfight ensues. J.D. perishes as the group becomes overwhelmed. A bitten Rain retreats with Kaplan and Spence; Matt becomes separated from Alice, who starts regaining her memories.
Matt looks for information about his sister Lisa and finds her zombified. Alice saves him, and Matt explains he and Lisa were environmental activists, and Lisa infiltrated Umbrella to smuggle out the evidence of illegal experiments. Alice remembers she was Lisa's contact in the Hive but does not tell Matt. The survivors reunite at the Queen's chamber, and the commandos explain they have one hour before the Hive traps them inside automatically. Alice and Kaplan activate the Red Queen to find an exit. To force her cooperation, they rig a remote shutdown. As they escape through maintenance tunnels, zombies ambush them, and a reanimated J.D. bites Rain before getting killed. The group reaches safety, but Kaplan is bitten and separated.
Alice remembers that an anti-virus is in the lab, but they find it missing. Spence remembers he stole and released the virus. He hid the T-virus and anti-virus on the train. Spence is bitten by a zombie, which he kills before trapping the survivors in the lab. He retrieves the anti-virus, but is ambushed and killed by a Licker. The Red Queen offers to spare Alice and Matt if they kill Rain, whose health is fading and who has been infected too long for the anti-virus to work reliably. As the Licker attempts to reach them, a power outage occurs. The lab door opens to reveal Kaplan forced the Red Queen to open the door. The group heads to the train, where Alice retrieves the T-virus and kills a reanimated Spence before escaping with the others.
On the train, they inject Rain and Kaplan with the anti-virus. However, the Licker is hiding on the train and attacks them, clawing Matt and killing Kaplan. In the ensuing battle, Alice subdues the Licker before Matt is attacked by a now-zombified Rain. He shoots Rain dead, causing her head to hit a trapdoor button, opening it and dropping the Licker under the train which ultimately kills it for good. At the mansion, Matt's wound begins mutating. Before Alice can give him the anti-virus, the mansion doors burst open and a group of Umbrella scientists seizes them. They subdue Alice and take Matt away, revealing he is to be put into the Nemesis Program.
Some time later, Alice awakens at the Raccoon City Hospital strapped to an examination table, with no memory of what happened since her capture. After escaping, she goes outside to find Raccoon City abandoned and ruined. Alice arms herself with a shotgun from an abandoned police car as the camera pans out. | psychedelic, violence | train | wikipedia | Good enough.
I got out of the Resident Evil series for awhile.
I recently rented this game on a whim.
It turned out to be pretty good.
I got it for the offline part of it.
It offers some good challenges throughout five scenario's.
You get to pick from eight characters.
Most of the the characters are normal civilians from Raccoon city.
There is a waitress, RPD officer, A security guard, subway engineer, reporter, plumber, doctor, and a college student.
The more points you get the more stuff you can unlock.
There are over 260+ things to unlock.
The new melee weapons are nice addition.
Some of the character models aren't the best.
Not much new here, but it still manages to expand enough on an already large complex series of games..
Highly polished, graphically beautiful.
"Outbreak" is the final Resident Evil instalment to appear on the PS2, released in the Autumn of 2004, and in many ways it is the perfect swansong.
Although far from 'perfect', it carries over all of the main annoyances of the series that show its' PS1 origins namely the loading times between rooms and passages.
Whilst this was necessary in its' original incarnation; due to PS1 technical limitations, it is wholly unacceptable on the PS2.
It is SO frustrating to traverse a room that is 2 or 3 steps in size, to be confronted with another loading screen of 10 seconds.
Just to prove it IS possible, in two locations in the game, there are no loading screens, and you go out of one door and instantly go into the next room.
And don't mention the cut-scenes !
Beautiful though they are, after they have played, the PS2 has to load the game engine back into memory, and it takes an absolute age !!The main differences between this and the other episodes of the franchise is that firstly it is divided into seemingly unconnected scenarios.
There is also a time limit of sorts, in that you are infected with the T-Virus, it starts of at 0% and constantly rises, the more injured you are, the quicker it rises.
Hey, and guess what, you really have a RELOAD weapon button this time, and you can use the left analogue for directional control)You also have the opportunity to choose from 8 different characters with different abilities.
For example Alyssa can pick locks, Cindy has medical skills, Jim can play dead to escape monsters, David can create new weapons from scratch etc etc.
Then once the game begins you are accompanied by two other of the characters in order to complete the scenario.
These characters can be instructed to follow, wait, help you, give you items, give items to, basic squad control stuff.The time limit is not the problem you initially think it will be, and you can thankfully, reasonably easily complete the levels with a good percentage left to spare.The character choices are pointless, the ONLY character you could possibly complete the game with is Yoko who is the only person who can carry 8 objects the others carry only 4.
Don't EVER pick Jim, when he plays dead, his virus infection rate skyrockets like no nobodies business)The squad control system can be frustrating, and the NPC's often forget to heal themselves and die even though they have several health packs.
They also annoy because they run into a room ahead of you and steal all the best ammo in the room, and then do a runner in a fire-fight, leaving you to fight on your own (some of the zombies now move like a cat with a rocket up its bum, and attack en masse (10 at a time at the end of the 1st level!))Once a scenario is completed, you are graded and scored depending on countless factors, and then you are awarded points and unlockables.
You can trade these points in at the Resident Evil shop for the said unlockables, although 500 points for a picture of an ingame character ?
13,000 points for a costume ?
There are also new game modes to unlock too (though you have to purchase them after you have unlocked them)That aside though, the graphics are truly, amazingly beautiful, PC quality.
Just wait until you see "Leechman" (usually known as that ****ing Leechman ****), the protagonist of "The Hive" scenario.
A man whose entire upper body is covered with writhing leeches, and without a doubt, the most frustrating monster in Resident Evil history, as he stalks you remorselessly from room to room, giving you no respite whatsoever.
And the beautiful animations, fire effects, fully 3d polygonal environments and stunning monsters/zombies, are incredible too.
In almost every way this is easily the best of the entire series, the only drawbacks are loading times between rooms issue that have dogged the series from the beginning, that Capcom seem to think "adds suspense".
I say 'Almost' the best, because the scenario system doesn't really involve you in an immersive start to finish story like the old games did.
And boy is it hard too !
I would never want to play the game though on anything buy EASY level (on Easy, you still have to fight THREE Tyrant battles on the final scenario !), but to many people, that's a pro, not a con.If you like the series, then you've already bought it, but for anyone else; it's definitely worth a two night rental at your local gamestore..
A massive disappointment.
It breaks my heart to have to say this, especially given that Capcom have made the (almost) only video games I have legitimately enjoyed in the past five to ten years.
But I would only recommend Resident Evil: Outbreak if you can find it for about ten dollars or less at a clearance sale.
This goes against everything I have said about the other Resident Evil games I have played to date, and with good reason.
Unlike the other Resident Evil games, where one could eventually master the scenario if they kept calm and did not attempt to shoot everything in sight, Outbreak marks the first time that Capcom have resorted to making their games utterly unwinnable.
Which is a real shame, too, because Outbreak has shown the most potential from a Resident Evil game to date.The game starts out in a bar within the very traditional Resident Evil location of Racoon City, where numerous characters are having a good drink.
Soon, all hell breaks loose when the rapidly increasing zombie populace drops in for a visit.
From there, it is a mad scramble to escape and join in the evacuation of the city.
Unfortunately, in contrast to the single-player, plot-based Resident Evil games, Outbreak goes off the rails very soon after it starts, and never finds its way back on.
The scenarios are, put simply, unwinnable.
In the little time one gets to escape their situation, they can not possibly find the weaponry required to mow down the literally limitless zombies they encounter.
In contrast to previous Resident Evil episodes, where the proportion of ammunition to zombies was exactly right, one will run out of ammunition here faster than they can make so much as an inch of progress in this game.To be fair, the locations are extremely well-rendered, and when it is allowed, exploration is still as much fun as was the case in other Resident Evils.
The lag time, in which a player winds up roaming around already-explored areas, wondering what the hell to do, is also no longer an issue.
Unfortunately, the exact opposite problem has occurred here.
The player is often left feeling that they are playing to a routine, and playing to a routine is generally about as much fun as putting your finger into a power socket.
I almost believe, as a result, that Capcom were kidnapped and replaced by a bunch of lame imposters for this episode.The voice acting is also a problem.
From the melodramatic title voice, we are also treated to cutscenes in which the subtitles say one thing, and the voiceovers, at least in the English version, are saying quite another.
Being that I don't understand Japanese, I have never bothered about trying to import the original.
Perhaps the subtitles shown in the cut scenes are literal translations.
Perhaps they are just renderings of the original English script, which was changed at the last minute without the subtitlers being informed.
Being that there is no option to turn the subtitles off, it gets on the nerves after a while.
Is it asking so much that the graphical and voice-over departments at least talk to one another?
Anyway, if I had to give Resident Evil: Outbreak a score out of ten, it would be a six.
I know the other video game makers out there feel inadequate because they cannot produce a game that remains fun for more than five minutes, but this is no reason to try and coddle them.
Come on, Capcom, you are capable of much better than this..
Best RE game made!!!.
First off, Outbeaks take some time to find the deep meaning behind the truth.
The Outbreaks have a huge following and deserve a fair rating as they were the only RE games i found to be enjoyable.
Surviving along your friends and foes really gave a sense of true survival.
Never knowing who to trust or who was gonna be fair with you made the game a challenge.
With the game being one of the most challenging experiences of all time, knowing if you will survive or die is always unknown...The 8 survivors, Kevin, Mark, George, David, Jim, Alyssa, Yoko, and Cindy really gave the game its story.
With multiple ways to match our team and to have multiple outcomes, Your story is different every time.
Out of all the games I have played, not one was the same.
The characters made the game lively, replayable, and full of suspense.The levels were great and really showed how the characters got to know each other.
For example the level "Outbreak" Showed the faithful night.
when the 8 got together, you could see that they all had a connection not caring who each other was.
Over time they started gaining relationships, they learned everything about themselves and others they knew before.Overall, Outbreaks are a recommended game.
i give 10/10 its perfect for those who want a challenge..
Puts you right in the middle of a zombie nightmare..
Although "Resident Evil: OUTBREAK" does not feature the usual cast of characters we have grown to know and love {or hate), the latest edition to the "Resident Evil" brand of survival horror gaming for PS2 is packed full of enough thrills, chills, and scares to keep the die hard fans frightfully happy.
Even though the shock and scare factor of something popping out and paralyzing you with fear seems to not be present, "Outbreak" delivers everything you'd want from a "Resident Evil" game and Although "Resident Evil: OUTBREAK" does not feature the usual cast of characters we have grown to know and love {or hate), the latest edition to the "Resident Evil" brand of survival horror gaming for PS2 is packed full of enough thrills, chills, and scares to keep the die hard fans frightfully happy.
The new characters are all very likeable (with the exception of Alyssa Ashcroft who really got on my nerves) and boast their own unique abilities so you'll be sure to find one character you may identify with.
The new characters are all very likeable (with the exception of Alyssa Ashcroft who really got on my nerves) and boast their own unique abilities so you'll be sure to find one character you may identify with.
What makes this "Resident Evil" so extremely different from past versions is the fact it is the first ONLINE conception of the franchise thus allowing gamers the ability to meet up online and work together as a team in their endeavor to escape the rotting masses and mutated monsters of Raccoon City.
What makes this "Resident Evil" so extremely different from past versions is the fact it is the first ONLINE conception of the franchise thus allowing gamers the ability to meet up online and work together as a team in their endeavor to escape the rotting masses and mutated monsters of Raccoon City.
Even though the shock and scare factor of something popping out and paralyzing you with fear seems to not be present, "Outbreak" delivers everything you'd want from a "Resident Evil" game and puts you right in the middle of a zombie nightmare.Reviewed by Fresh Dead Flesh Studios.
Resident Evil has reached a new high.
Although a lot of people who have wrote comments complain about it being so negative i really enjoyed the resident evil game because it added a new touch to the series.
while designed for a purely online game meaning that you have to keep your wits about you because going into the equipment menu doesn't pause your surroundings meaning you can still be attacked adding an extra sense of urgency.the missions take you through varying locations from a bar and the streets of Raccoon City to an underground laboratory and then back to a University with new enemies making appearances and old ones returning.the music is great but not overly spooky but the speech and subtitles do not match HOWEVER.
in my opinion the subtitles are either giving a slightly censored telling of what they are saying or just summarising the events in the game.With new characters with unique skills and stories to their own and with plenty of unlockable items and cool looking videos i really do recommend this game. |
tt0160184 | D-Tox | FBI agent Jake Malloy is pursuing a serial killer who specializes in killing police officers. Malloy's former partner becomes one of the victims. While Malloy is at his partner's home, the murderer calls Malloy from Malloy's home while Mary, his girlfriend, is there. The killer tells Malloy that he pursued him four years before for a series of prostitute murders; he is holding a grudge and he's going to kill Mary. Malloy rushes home to find Mary dead. When the killer's hideout is found, Seattle police and the FBI blockade the area before Malloy arrives. Malloy pursues the killer only to find that he appears to have committed suicide.
Three months later, Malloy descends into alcoholism over Mary's murder. After Malloy slits his wrists in an unsuccessful suicide attempt, his best friend and supervising officer, Agent Chuck Hendricks, enrolls Malloy in a rehabilitation program designed for law enforcement officers. The clinic was formerly an abandoned military base. Dr. John "Doc" Mitchell, a former cop and recovering alcoholic, established the rehab center as a way of dealing with his problems. Hendricks stays in Wyoming to ensure Malloy will be okay.
Malloy meets several other officers who are patients in the clinic, including Peter Noah, an arrogant and paranoid ex-SWAT officer, Frank Slater, a cynical, opinionated British police officer, Willie Jones, a religious homicide detective, Jaworski, an alcoholic narcotics cop who attempted suicide, Lopez, a foul-mouthed LAPD officer, and McKenzie, an elderly member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who saw his partner get killed. He meets several staff members, including Doc's assistant and mechanic Hank and compassionate resident psychiatrist and nurse Jenny Munroe, with whom Malloy develops a bond.
A blizzard seals everyone in the rehab center with no outside communication. The next day, Jenny finds the body of Connor, one of the troubled patients who apparently killed himself. Jenny suspects otherwise, believing Connor would have come to her. The next morning Hank finds the body of Carl Brandon, another patient. Brandon also seems to have killed himself, but Malloy deduces otherwise.
Doc locks up the surviving patients while he reviews their files. Jenny informs Doc that Jack Bennett, a deranged employee who was a former patient in the clinic, is missing along with a snowmobile. Malloy convinces Jenny to lock her room. After Doc is killed by a man wielding an axe, everyone but Malloy and Jenny think Jack is the killer. Malloy opens the safe and hands the surviving cops their sidearms. Hendricks finds a body in a frozen lake, and learns from the owner of a nearby fishing shop that the victim was a cop. Hendricks and the owner of the shop return to the clinic.
Hank, the clinic's cook Manny, and helper Gilbert, volunteer to drive through the blizzard in a pickup truck to get outside help. Malloy wants Jenny to leave as well, but she refuses. While driving away, Hank sees something in front of him and veers away from it. The truck slides off the icy road, crashing into a tree at the bottom of a ravine. Malloy and Jenny hear the crash, and Malloy hands a gun to Jenny before investigating. Malloy finds Manny murdered after he survived the crash. Malloy also finds Jack's body, the object that caused Hank to crash the truck. Malloy is startled by Gilbert approaching behind him. Gilbert, alive but scared, flees while Malloy rushes back to the clinic.
McKenzie, who is patrolling the old execution chamber, finds the machine activated. The killer electrocutes McKenzie, deactivating the building's power and heating system. Malloy forces everyone except Jenny to their cells as he realizes one of the cops is a killer impersonating a patient. Suspecting the man responsible is Mary's killer, Malloy exams Connor's body in the kitchen. Remembering the killer saying, "I see you, but you don't see me", Malloy looks inside Connor's eyelids and finds "I" on one eyelid and "CU" on the other. As Malloy and Jenny return to the cells, Hank, thinking Malloy might be the killer, knocks him out. He locks Malloy in Slater's cell and releases everyone else.
Malloy finds a vent, but as he uses a matchbook from Slater to light the cell, Malloy learns it came from a Seattle restaurant frequently visited by cops and Malloy himself, which reveals Slater as the killer as he watches policemen to learn about their habits and Malloy's. Malloy escapes the cell and finds the missing badges above Slater's room, which he collects as trophies. After establishing his innocence, Malloy has Jones and Lopez conduct patrol while Jaworski stays with Jenny in the patient room. Malloy heads into the tunnels beneath the facility.
Hank, Noah, and Slater go to the tunnels to retrieve logs for heating, with the other two unaware that Slater is the killer. Slater convinces them to split up before killing each of them. As Malloy patrols the tunnels, Slater taunts him over a CB radio and lures Malloy to Noah's hanged body where he finds the other radio. Slater is about to leave the clinic, but hears Jenny calling out Malloy's name. Malloy learns that Slater is at the tunnel's trapdoor and rushes to save Jenny.
Outside the installation, Hendricks and the fishing shop owner find Gilbert alive and bring him inside the snowcat before arriving at the rehab center. Hendricks sees Jenny's footprints and follows them. Jenny runs to a nearby shed, hiding from Slater. Malloy arrives, telling Jenny to stay inside the shed. Slater catches Hendricks before Malloy catches him from behind. Slater jumps into the shed and knocks Jenny out and wounds Hendricks. Malloy and Slater confront each other, with Malloy ultimately killing Slater.
Jenny regains consciousness and helps the wounded Hendricks walk to the clinic with Malloy, whose left arm was stabbed during the fight, following them. Malloy stops for the moment and puts the ring he was planning to propose to Mary with on a tree branch before walking away from it. | mystery, murder, suicidal, horror, flashback, revenge | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0097427 | Ghost Writer | A British ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) is hired by the publishing firm Rhinehart, Inc. to complete the autobiography of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). His predecessor and Lang's aide, Mike McAra, has recently died in an apparent drowning accident. The writer travels to Old Haven on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where Lang and his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) are staying, along with Lang's personal assistant (and implied mistress), Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall). Amelia forbids the writer from taking McAra's manuscript outside, emphasizing that it is a security risk.
Shortly after the writer's arrival, former Foreign Secretary Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh) accuses Lang of authorizing the illegal seizure of suspected terrorists and handing them over for torture by the CIA, a possible war crime. Lang faces prosecution by the International Criminal Court unless he stays in the U.S. (or one of the few other countries that does not recognise the court's jurisdiction). While Lang is in Washington, the writer finds items in McAra's room suggesting he might have stumbled across a dark secret. Among them is an envelope containing photographs and a phone number the writer discovers is Rycart's.
During a bike ride, the writer encounters an old man (Eli Wallach) who tells him the current couldn't have taken McAra's body from the ferry where he disappeared to the beach where it was discovered. He also reveals a neighbour saw flashlights on the beach the night McAra died, but later fell down the stairs and went into a coma. Later, Ruth admits to the writer Lang had never been very political, and until recently always took her advice. When he tells her the old man's story, she suddenly rushes out into the rainy night to "clear her head." Upon returning, she reveals Lang and McAra had argued the night before the latter's death, and the ghost writer and Ruth have a one night stand while Adam is away.
The next morning, the writer takes the BMW X5 McAra used on his last journey. Unable to cancel the pre-programmed directions on the car's sat-nav, he decides to follow them. He arrives in Belmont at the home of Professor Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson). Emmett denies anything more than a cursory acquaintance with Lang, despite the writer showing him two pictures of the pair among photographs found in McAra's possessions, as well as another on the wall of Emmett's study. When the writer tells Emmett the sat-nav proves McAra visited him the night he died, Emmett denies meeting McAra and becomes evasive. The writer leaves, and successfully eludes a car that is pursuing him. He boards the ferry back to Martha's Vineyard, but when he sees the pursuit car drive aboard, he flees the boat at the last moment and checks into a small motel by the ferry dock.
With no one else to turn to, the writer redials Rycart's number, asking for help. While waiting, the writer does research on Emmett and links his think tank to a military contractor. He also finds leads connecting Emmett to the CIA. When Rycart arrives, he reveals McAra gave him documents linking Lang to so-called "torture flights," where terrorist suspects were placed on private jets owned by Emmett's company, to be tortured while airborne.
Rycart further claims that McAra found new evidence, which he wrote about in the "beginning" of the manuscript. The men cannot, however, find anything in the early pages. The writer discusses Emmett's relationship with Lang, while Rycart recounts how Lang's decisions as Prime Minister uniformly benefited U.S. interests. When the writer is summoned to accompany Lang on his return flight by private jet, he confronts Lang and accuses him of being a CIA agent recruited by Emmett. Lang derides his suggestions.
Upon leaving the aircraft, Lang is assassinated by a British anti-war protester, who is in turn shot by Lang's bodyguards. Nevertheless, the writer is asked to complete the book for posthumous publication, as in light of Lang's death it will be a certain bestseller. Amelia invites him to the book's launch party in London, where she unwittingly tells him the Americans tightened access to the book, as the "beginnings" contained evidence threatening national security. She also tells him Emmett, who is in attendance, was Ruth's tutor when she was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard.
The writer realizes the clues were hidden in the original manuscript in the opening words of each chapter, and discovers the message: "Lang's wife Ruth was recruited as a CIA agent by Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University." He concludes Ruth shaped Lang's every political decision to benefit the USA under direction from the CIA.
The writer passes a note to Ruth reveaing his discovery. She unfolds the note, and is devastated. When she sees the writer raising a glass, she is kept from following him by Emmett and other assistants. As the writer leaves the party he attempts to take a taxi, without success. As he crosses the street off-camera, a car accelerates in his direction to an impending collision. As witnesses react in horror, the pages containing McAra's manuscript are blowing in the wind, leaving the writer's fate unconfirmed. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0083798 | Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid | In the opening scene, John Hay Forrest (George Gaynes), noted scientist and cheesemaker, dies in a single-vehicle car accident (represented by the car wreck scene from Keeper of the Flame). In the next scene, private investigator Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) is reading a newspaper when Forrest's daughter, Juliet (Rachel Ward), enters his office and faints when the paper's headline reminds her of her father's death. Upon coming to, she hires Rigby to investigate the death, which she thinks was murder. In Dr. Forrest's lab, Rigby finds two lists, one titled "Friends of Carlotta" and the other "Enemies of Carlotta", as well as an affectionately autographed photo of singer Kitty Collins, whose name appears on one of the lists. His search is interrupted by a man posing as an exterminator (Alan Ladd, in This Gun for Hire), who shoots Rigby in the arm and frisks the lists from the seemingly dead investigator.
Rigby manages to find his way to Juliet's house, where she sucks out the bullet, snakebite-style, and points Rigby to the club at which Kitty sings. Juliet also reveals a note to her father from her alcoholic brother-in-law, Sam Hastings, which in turn reveals that Dr. Forrest gave him a dollar bill "for safekeeping". Despite warnings that the mentally disturbed Leona will not be of much use, Rigby calls Leona, who after a rambling discussion, hangs up (Barbara Stanwyck, in Sorry, Wrong Number). On the way out, Juliet asks Rigby to leave further news with her butler or cleaning woman. Mention of the latter causes Rigby to go berserk due to his own father running off with the cleaning woman and his mother dying of a broken heart.
Rigby tracks down alcoholic Sam (Ray Milland, from Lost Weekend) and gets Dr. Forrest's dollar, which has "FOC" (Friends of Carlotta) names scrawled on it — including Kitty Collins and Swede Anderson (Kitty's boyfriend). Rigby tracks down Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner, from The Killers) at the Brentwood Room. He asks if she's one of Carlotta's friends, which causes her to leave abruptly. He trails her to a restaurant, where she ditches her brooch into her soup. Rigby subsequently retrieves the brooch, which contains an "EOC" (Enemies of Carlotta) list, on which all names are crossed out, except Swede Anderson's. Rigby visits Swede (Burt Lancaster, from The Killers) but while Rigby prepares his famous "java", Swede is killed.
Rigby is also shot, in the same arm as last time, causing Juliet to suck out another bullet. Rigby calls waking Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart, from The Big Sleep), his mentor, for assistance. Juliet hands over a key from Dr. Forrest's desk, a key to a train station locker. The accompanying note, "most recent rat", tells Rigby to look for locker 1936, the last Chinese Year of the Rat. Upon exiting, she asks Rigby to call with any progress. Marlowe arrives (Bogart, from In a Lonely Place), and picks up the EOC list to check against unsolved murders.
Rigby goes to the train station to collect the contents of locker 1936, which contains more lists. A "handsome" guy (Cary Grant, from Suspicion) follows him onto a train, but Rigby puts him to sleep with the help of his harmonica. Rigby finds F.X. Huberman, whose name he found on one of the lists and who turns out to be a "classy dame with bedroom eyes," throwing a party (Ingrid Bergman, from Notorious). She flirts with Rigby (represented by Cary Grant's silhouette), then drugs his drink and steals the locker key.
Rigby wakes up after crawling back to his office, where Juliet finds him. She informs Rigby that Sam Hastings has died falling out of a window reaching for a bottle of whiskey. She also has a New York Times reference for him from her father's office. The reference is to an article about a South American cruise ship called Immer Essen (German for always eating) on whose last voyage Sam Hastings was a passenger. When Marlowe (Bogart, from The Big Sleep) calls, Rigby questions him about Walter Neff, the ship's owner, and learns that Neff cruises supermarkets looking for blondes.
Juliet offers to dye her hair to serve as bait, but Rigby is protective of her as more than a client. He first tries to recruit Monica Stillpond (Veronica Lake, from The Glass Key), but she's not as willing as she used to be. Next he tries Doris Devermont (Bette Davis, from Deception), she offers Rigby coffee and sandwiches but he ruins his chances with her by strangling her for saying "cleaning woman". Then he successfully recruits Jimmie Sue Altfeld (Lana Turner, from Johnny Eager, and the apartment scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice) and unsuccessfully attempts to make peace with her father (Edward Arnold, from Johnny Eager) by giving him a puppy. He then is beaten up by four thugs (Kirk Douglas and others from I Walk Alone).
After this, Rigby disguises himself as a blonde and meets Neff (Fred MacMurray from Double Indemnity). Rigby drugs him and finds documents about the Immer Essen, including a passenger list identical to an EOC list, and articles about the ship's imprisoned captain, Cody Jarrett, who refuses to talk to anyone about it but his mother. Rigby then dresses up as Jarrett's mother to visit Jarrett in prison without arousing the prison guards' suspicion (James Cagney from White Heat). He tries to win Jarrett's confidence by explaining the Friends of Carlotta are after him. Rigby doesn't learn anything from Jarrett though, so he cashes in a favor with the warden to act as a prisoner for a few days. Jarrett turns out to be a Friend of Carlotta after all, kidnaps Rigby on a jail break, and shoots him while he's still in the trunk of the getaway car.
After sucking out a third bullet, Juliet leaves for the drugstore for medicine. On her way out, a call comes in from an old flame (Joan Crawford, in Humoresque). Juliet overhears parts of it on an extension in the next room, and thinking Rigby is two-timing her, calls Rigby from a pay phone and closes the case. While Rigby is drinking, thinking himself betrayed by Juliet, Marlowe (Bogart from Dark Passage) calls and tips Rigby off that Carlotta is an island off Peru. At a cafe, Rigby finds Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner, from The Bribe) there. Carlos Rodriguez (Reni Santoni), a local policeman from Rigby's gun-running past, warns Rigby of the locals, including Kitty's new boyfriend, Rice. The next day, one of the characters Rodriguez warned Rigby of (Charles Laughton, from The Bribe) approaches him and tries to bribe Rigby into leaving the island.
Next, Kitty drops by Reardon's room. Carlos calls to tell him Rice is in town with a group of Germans when the telephone line is cut. Kitty then drugs Rigby's drink, causing him to pass out. He wakes up to see Rice (Vincent Price, from The Bribe) trying to suffocate him. After exchanging shots and chasing through the "Fiesta de Carlotta" fireworks celebration (much of it archived footage from The Bribe), Rigby shoots Rice and frisks the corpse for instructions leading him to a hideout where he finds Juliet, her father (actually still alive), and her butler, who introduces himself as Field Marshal Wilfried von Kluck (Carl Reiner).
Rigby and the Field Marshal compete about the right to explain what happened by interrupting each other's monologue. It turns out that Dr. Forrest had been tricked into divulging a secret cheese mold by Nazis posing as a humanitarian organization. Once he discovered their true intent, to use the mold's corrosive properties to destroy America with strategically placed cheese bombs and make a comeback, he assembled a list of Nazi agents, the "Friends of Carlotta." Before he could divulge the names to the FBI, he was abducted and his death faked to prevent a police investigation. The Immer Essen, a cruise ship passing by, witnessed the corrosive effects of the mold tests, making all passengers "Enemies of Carlotta" and targets for murder. Rigby is captured but Juliet gets the Field Marshal to say "cleaning woman," causing Rigby to go berserk, break his chains and overpower the Nazis. While Juliet gets Rodriguez, the Field Marshal manages to pull one of the switches, destroying Terre Haute, Indiana, before being shot dead by Rigby. Rodriguez rounds up the other Nazis while Rigby shares a long kiss with Juliet. | entertaining, cult, mystery, neo noir, murder | train | wikipedia | If it weren't for the bundles of humour employed, one would almost think at times that this actually is a film noir from the 1940s, so legitimate and believable is the 'feel' or the atmosphere of the film.I cannot believe that some people who commented on this film have said that the plot is merely an excuse to hang old movie clips onto, and not much use at all; and the person who claims that Steve Martin overacts in this movie mustn't realise that this is regarded as one of Steve's more restrained, deadpan comedic performances (the 'cleaning woman!' device turns out to be an important part of the plot and also seems to be a way of using the strangling scene that is taken from the Bette Davis movie - it is also a chance for Steve to get in a very tiny element of his 'wild and crazy guy' persona, which he substituted with a more suitable [for parody] 'straight' performance).A rousing and side-splittingly funny success - they don't make 'em like this anymore!.
Working with George Gipe, and Steve Martin in the screen play that serves as the basis of the movie, Mr. Reiner has done the impossible with "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid".Of course, this film is blessed with the magnificent editing by Bud Malin, who meshed the present images against those film noir masterpieces we see, blending the characters of this movie with the stars of the past, in what seems to be a seamless product.
The main character, Rigby Reardon is the P.I. from hell, but thanks to the creators of this movie, he is perfect as the man at the center of the action.Not being a Steve Martin fan, one has to recognize that when this actor is inspired, he can do excellent work.
I remember reading reviews in The New York Times and elsewhere in 1983 fawning over Woody Allen's brilliant and wholly original idea of inserting himself into old film footage in "Zelig." They'd not noted, of course, that everyone from Ernie Kovacs to John Zacherle had already done that "brilliant and wholly original idea" on television -- and, most notably, Steve Martin did it in a feature film, "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid," one year prior to "Zelig." While "Zelig" has its moments, it is ultimately tedious, running about twice as long as it's one-note gag treatment can sustain.
DMDWP is a black and white film noir comedy that uses footage from real film noirs from the 40s and 50s and inter cuts them with the plot to make it appears that Steve Martin is really talking to/acting with the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, James Cagney etc.
The effect is almost seamless but for a movie made in 1982 it's quite impressive.Martin plays the wonderfully named Rigby Reardon, a typical, gritty private eye who narrates the story with sarcastic observation and gets involved in the usual femme fatal plot and a conspiracy surround the death of a cheese maker.
But it's all played straight and for most of the film you could believe you were actually watching a classic film noir.Steve Martin should have done more of these movies.
The issue for me however is that Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is one very funny film.With the best faux authenticity (another sterling effort by Michael Chapman) blending of its day Steve Martin in on spot comic dead pan mixes with the greats of American cinema in a cleverly devised parody on film noir .
Steve Martin, Rachel Ward and a few others actors are seen talking to many classic stars of the past as director Carl Reiner used clips of those films to fake conversations with the up-to-date real actors of this film .
You get so captivated watching those old stars that you lose track of the storyline.That's a big reason I don't think this film ever caught on that much - the story is too convoluted, just too hard to follow.Ward was great to watch and Martin was annoying after awhile.
If you like older films, comedies, mystery and trying to help solve a crime in a movie then you may enjoy "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid".If you want a double feature I would watch this movie along with movies like: "Clue (1985)", "Murder by Death (1976)" or " Deathtrap (1982)".9.5/10.
Reiner & Martin's Laugh-In. This film couldn't miss for me as I love Steve Martin's irresistibly funny early films and rank film noir as probably my favourite movie genre.Right from the start, we're comfortingly deposited back into the noir era, with the classic Universal revolving black and white logo presaging Miklos Rosza's sweeping score and the equally welcome news, in the title credits, that the great (sadly soon to be late) Edith Head is costume designer.
From there, it's a short journey into beautifully shot monochromatic cinematography and Martin's deliberately clichéd voice-over, setting the scene for a roller-coaster plot, as deliberately convoluted, as anything this side of "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep".The humour is typical early-Martin which you either love or hate (I'm in the former camp) and as ever Steve's not above a little vulgarity to drive out the bigger laughs - for instance his hilarious re-organising of passed-out leading lady Rachel Ward's "out of whack" breasts or his answer to Lana Turner's "What are we going to do now" question as she enters his bedroom - "Kinsey, cover-to-cover".The vintage film-clips are cleverly inserted into the plot, so that we get a dream cast, their lines and actions woven even if tenuously into the narrative, although ironically the poorer film-quality of some of their scenes work against the glossier quality of the modern camera-work.Martin's by turns quirky and laconic delivery works well in context although Rachel Ward, pretty as she is, seems too lightweight in her part, although she does have some considerable footprints to step into (Bette or Lana she isn't).
I myself will try to look up one or two of the vintage prototypes which I hadn't even heard of, never-mind seen, - "I Walked Alone" starring Kirk Douglas and especially "The Bribe" with a stellar cast of Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton and Vincent Price, with what looks like literally a crackerjack of a finale.The combination of old film and new was later taken up by Woody Allen in "Zelig" and was further elaborated on in subsequent Hollywood films like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and the overrated "Forrest Gump", but I'll take Messrs Martin & Reiner's stylish rib-tickling homage any day of the week.
I also have to admit that I am simply not knowledgeable enough about film noir to appreciate most of the clips; although I consider myself a movie buff and regularly watch classic movies, out of the movies used by DMDWP I had only seen, well, "The Big Sleep".So: still a good Steve Martin comedy..
A one joke movie- but its a great joke.1940s gumshoe Rigby Reardon{Steve Martin} gets a visit by sultry client Rachel Ward whose father has gone missing.
While conducting the investigation, Rigby makes contact with Edward Arnold, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Burt Lancaster, Charles Laughton, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, Vincent Price, Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner, in a wonderful work of edition.
And, so, I was just re-aligning them for you." I'd easily say that this picture has got to be one of the best and most entertaining parodies of the 1940s Film Noir/Detective genre that I've ever seen.This film really delivers some great laughs.Filmed in glossy black and white, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid ingeniously weaves its plot and production design around numerous movies clips from such golden-oldie classics as This Gun For Hire, Double Indemnity, Notorious, The Big Sleep - To name but a few.Steve Martin plays Rigby Reardon, a $10-a-day gumshoe (working in Los Angeles) who is hired to solve a truly incomprehensible mystery that involves the apparent death of brilliant scientist, Dr. Forest.Reardon immediately smells a rat as he sets out to follow a complex maze of clues that eventually lead him to the "Carlotta Lists" of friends and enemies.Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was directed by Carl Reiner and stars the gorgeous screen-siren, Rachel Ward.
So I really loved how this movie was made--not what happens in it, but the main trick of inserting real film noir clips with new footage starring Steve Martin.
Yet, Carl Reiner's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is in many instances a charm, and it also succeeds to be funny and respectful in its reverence to the film noir movies of the 40s and 50s.Even the much younger Steve Martin, with black hair and sparkling eyes looks here completely fresh as private eye Rigby Reardon, hired to solve a Californian mystery which combines all the 1940s detective novels that you may have read and the films inspired by them all together.
Borrowed scenes come from famous movies like Notorious, Suspicion, or The Big Sleep, but you need not worry, there is no real scary stuff, it is all fun.I do not know if Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid received any award, but the cinematography, editing and make-up are all amazing.
Carl Reiner's collage film homage and/or parody to 1940s film noirs and thrillers is unusually funny and a clever example of placing movie scenes in a new context as a means for comedy.
I'm not sure if you actually need to be familiar with the noirs that the film borrows from, but having only seen one (the excellent Notorious) of the nineteen films from which scenes are lifted, I didn't get much enjoyment through recognition.I used to think that the film would have been successful even without the recycling of old material, but it struck me this time that that would wipe out the entire movie.
The funny teaming of Carl Reiner and Steve Martin after The Jerk(1979), brought you a funny send up of private eye films of the 1940's, but instead of it being just a simple spoof, the filmmakers went further, on having old film footage of great actors like Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Alan Ladd, and Humphrey Bogart for Steve Martin to play off of.
It begins with detective Rigby Reardon(The always funny Steve Martin), is hired by Juliet Forrest(The gorgeous and talented Rachel Ward) to solve the mysterious death of her father, Reardon starts to investigate, but will he get into deep?
A classic comedy for years to enjoy, Steve Martin and the old film footage blends in well together, it almost looks real.
Santoni actually played a character based on the young Carl Reiner in the semi-autobiographical "Enter Laughing" fifteen years earlier.There is much clever writing here and Steve Martin's deadpan style of comedy is right on the money.
I DID enjoy the premise meaning the interaction/interjection of the '40's film noir characters slipped into this.I also admit that going in I knew that the combo of Steve Martin with Carl Reiner's direction it was going to be somewhat silly but wow, it was done wonderfully..AND again I had a fun time.
This movie is very funny and well written, it is another classic comedy by the great Steve martin and excellent Carl reiner.The night i first watched this movie, my dad had told me he thought it was very funny and said id like it.Well because i have a good sense of humor, i just loved this movie for all the comedy it had in it.I think it is great how they take the old detective type movies and make it into this comedy, what a excellent idea to have Steve martin in it.I love movies and comedy is one of my favorite type of movies to watch, dead men don't wear plaid is one of the best out there.If you want to watch a good comedy or wanna watch a pretty well done movie, then i say watch dead men don't wear plaid and have a good time..
Rachel Ward plays femme fatale called Juliet Forrest who comes to private detective Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) to ask for help.And how could Rigby say no to a beautiful woman who keeps collapsing.Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid from 1982 is a brilliant crime comedy from Carl Reiner.Reiner himself plays Field Marshal Von Kluck.The movie is black and white and you can see a punch of old film noir stars from the 40's and the 50's in the movie.Humphrey Bogart is Rigby's assistant.Then there are stars such as Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant with lots of others.Your job is to recognize them.Steve Martin is an excellent comedian and he does brilliant work in this cult classic.And Rachel's not bad either.This movie offers you lots of laughs.It's impossible to get bored with Martin and the gang.I guarantee it.I recommend Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid for everyone who is a fan of good comedy..
Thus you see bit parts by famous actors of the past, like Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster and Alan Ladd and by actresses like Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake and Ava Gardner.The reason why I think this movie, although still very good, is not quite as brilliant as it might have been, is that Steve Martin is terribly overacting.
The inter-cutting is cleverly and convincingly done, the gags hit more times than they miss and the whole is a worthwhile watch for anyone with a penchant for 40s film noir and enjoys a game of name-that-star.Probably the saddest thing is that it's unlikely that Steve Martin will ever make me laugh this much again.
This movie seemlessly blends scenes from great films like Hitchcock's Notorious and Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity with a very funny story that has Steve Martin and Rachel Ward actually interacting with the likes of Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Alan Ladd, and Jimmy Cagney.
I enjoy classic film noir AND classic Steve Martin, so I was really looking forward to seeing "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid".
The premise to this is pretty simple: parody film noir movies by inserting old movie clips and have Steve Martin say things that turn serious lines from those movies into jokes.
In order to do that Rigby enlists the help from the greatest detective of all time, Philip Marlowe, and nods his hat to every great star of the era in this brilliant and largely forgotten Steve Martin film from a time when he was heading back to the top and working damn hard to do so.This is the second great collaboration he did with the writer/director Carl Reiner, and while the man with two brains may be more laugh out loud funny, there have been few films more clever inventive and downright audacious in their attempt to recreate a bygone era by basically, well, stealing it!
It actually takes the parody as far, as it's fully black and white and it even uses some old footage from the noir movies of 40's and 50's, so we have a change of seeing stars like Ava Gardner, Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart in scenes whit Steve Martin.I suppose no one is surprised with the plot, as it's constructed from every cliché in the book.
Steve Martin is a Sam Spade-type detective who takes a case for a beautiful woman (Rachel Ward) in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." Like the 1983 "Zelig," the film deftly mixes actual old clips in with the storyline very cleverly.
In this case, the clips are all from old black and white movies featuring some of our biggest and most beloved stars: Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Alan Ladd, Burt Lancaster, Humphrey Bogart, Ray Milland, and others, all of whom have roles opposite Martin with the help of intercuts and some great editing.Besides these costars, Martin has one from the '80s, Rachel Ward, who fits in beautifully with the past goddesses.
Couple all this with the lovely Rachel Ward, Reni Santoni with a "payamas" obsession, and Carl Reiner as Von Cluck, then you have a great slice of comedy for anyone who was a fan of 40's noir, and of a time when Steve Martin was still making good movies..
But, of course, being Steve Martin, the end result is a witty and entertaining spoof.Martin plays Rigby Reardon, a typical hard-boiled detective in the Phillip Marlowe/Sam Spade mold, Rachel Ward (who, by the way, has never looked lovlier,) is Julia Forest, the "slinky dame" who collapses in his office (the scene of what Martin does, and his explanation, when she passes out in his arms is hilarious.)The real hook of this film, however, is Martin's co-stars: such names as Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Burt Lancaster, to name but a few.
The comedy starring Steve Martin, Rachel Ward, and several famous faces from 1940's film noirs was a brilliant homage/parody of the detective film genre.
The only trouble with DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID is that Carl Reiner's script is so convoluted that you stop paying attention to the storyline after awhile and get hooked on waiting for the next film clip to pair STEVE MARTIN with a classic star.
DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (1982) **** Steve Martin, Rachel Ward, Reni Santoni, Carl Reiner.
After their triumph with ALL OF ME, Steve Martin and Carl Reiner decided to try something very different with this clever detective movie spoof called DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, where Martin plays a 40's private eye named Rigby Reardon who is hired by a cool brunette to solve her father's murder.
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982) ** (out of 4) Disappointing comedy from Carl Reiner has Steve Martin playing a detective spoofing older detective and gangster films.
There is a lot to admire about "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" in which Steve Martin and director Carl Reiner collaborated for the second of four films. |
tt0061735 | Guess Who's Coming to Dinner | Joanna Drayton's (Katharine Houghton) unannounced early return from a Hawaiian vacation causes a stir when she brings her new fiancé to her childhood upper-class home in San Francisco. He is John Prentice (Sidney Poitier): a widowed, black physician. Joanna's parents—newspaper publisher Matt Drayton (Spencer Tracy) and his wife art gallery owner Christina Drayton (Katharine Hepburn)—are purported liberals who have instilled in her the idea of racial equality. But although they try to hide it, Joanna's parents and in particular her father are initially upset that she is planning to marry a black man. The Draytons' black maid, Tillie (Isabel Sanford), is even more horrified, suspecting that John is trying to "get above himself" by marrying a white woman.
Joanna is oblivious to the reactions of her parents. They are unsettled by her engagement with John since they never thought that her choice would be a black man, and further unsettled by John's decision that if Joanna's parents do not accept the engagement that day, that he will end it.
Adding to the situation is that Joanna, at first intending to join John in a few weeks in Geneva for their planned marriage ceremony, has changed her mind to leave after dinner on his flight to New York City and then onward to Europe. She has also invited John's parents (Roy E. Glenn and Beah Richards) to dinner so that they can all become acquainted. Due to this invitation, what was intended to be a sit-down steak dinner for two turns into a meet-the-in-laws dinner party. Furthermore, John is forced to reveal that he had not yet told his parents of his intention to marry a white girl.
Matt's golf buddy Monsignor Mike Ryan (Cecil Kellaway), a Catholic priest, stops by after Matt earlier cancelled on playing golf. After learning of John, he shares Joanna's enthusiasm for the pending nuptials and tells her father as much. Matt says he cannot give the couple his blessing however; he fears that Joanna will be hurt by the prejudice that she and John will surely encounter. Meanwhile, one of Christina's employees at her gallery, Hilary (Virginia Christine), who'd briefly met John and Joanna earlier in the day, stops by the Draytons' home to express her disapproval over the relationship and, though Christina herself is still unsure of her own feelings about the matter, she is so offended at Hilary's racism that she fires her on the spot. Later, when dressing for dinner, Christina shares with Matt her support for Joanna, even if it should mean having to fight her husband.
Cocktails at the Drayton home is musical chairs of different sets of parental characters who share their views about the situation; it shows that the mothers have more faith in their children than the fathers. Universally, it had been expressed by the parents that more than a few hours are necessary for a proper decision, but John's mother brings up her idea of what the men are missing about the situation: passion. When the elder Prentice tells John that he is making a huge mistake, John says that his father thinks of himself as a black man, whereas John thinks of himself as a man. Mrs. Prentice tells Matt that he and her husband, in growing old, have forgotten what it's like to feel romantic passion. If they remembered, they would see that in their children as being more important than any racial problem.
After thinking about the situation, and his conversation with Mrs. Prentice in particular, Matt calls everyone together to make an announcement. He says that it does not matter what everyone else may think about John and Joanna getting married: all that matters is that they love each other. The film ends with the two families and Monsignor Ryan finally sitting down to dinner. | melodrama | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0276016 | He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas Special | While everybody else is preparing for Adam's and Adora's birthday, Adam is helping Man-At-Arms finish up the Sky Spy, a space shuttle intended to spy on Skeletor. The moment they head back to the palace, though, Orko gets inside the ship and messes around with the controls, causing the ship to blast off into the sky with him in it. Skeletor catches sight of the aircraft and, despite not knowing what it is or who is flying it, he gives chase after it in the Collector. Before he can take it down, He-Man and She-Ra, who are also unaware that Orko is in the Sky Spy, show up and punch a hole in the Collector, throwing it off course.
Orko, meanwhile, tries to get the Sky Spy to land by way of a magic spell, which causes the shuttle to disappear from Eternia's atmosphere and crash-land somewhere on Earth. Immediately following this, he meets two children named Miguel and Alisha, who had gone out to get their family's Christmas tree and become lost in doing so. Orko brings them into the crashed Sky Spy, where they explain Christmas to him.
Back on Eternia, everyone discovers that Orko is missing when they find his magic spellbook, which he supposedly is never without. Man-At-Arms manages to pull up the coordinates for the Sky Spy's location, which Queen Marlena recognizes as Earth's coordinates. Unfortunately, Man-At-Arms' Transport Beam needs a Carium Water Crystal, of which there are none on Eternia, in order to gain enough power to bring Orko back. Adora suggests that there might be one on Etheria, and, after secretly transforming into She-Ra, rides off on Swift Wind.
Once on Etheria, She-Ra enlists the help of Mermista to attain the crystal, which is guarded by a fierce creature known as the Beast Monster. They manage to secure the crystal in their possession, but just as She-Ra and Swift Wind prepare to leave, they are halted by a group of huge android menaces who trap them in a plastic bubble. She-Ra recognizes these robots as the Monstroids, having been told about them by some friends of hers known as the Manchines. The Monstroids then leave for their headquarters, leaving She-Ra and Swift Wind to escape.
Upon Adora's return with the crystal, Man-At-Arms gets the Transport Beam working, and sure enough, Orko and the Sky Spy are transported back in, but Orko has brought Miguel, Alisha and their Christmas tree with them. After explanations of where they came from, the children are told that it may take a few days for the crystal to recharge before they can return to Earth, and they are quite distressed that they might miss Christmas. Queen Marlena, sympathizing with these children from her own planet, decides to combine Adam and Adora's birthday party into a Christmas party. Meanwhile, Skeletor and Hordak are summoned by their supreme master, Horde Prime, who believes that the Christmas spirit that is now being brought to Eternia is the only thing that could stop his rise to power. He orders them to go capture the two Earth children, saying that whoever brings them to him will be well-rewarded.
Soon, just as Bow finishes writing a song he wrote about Christmas, Hordak shows up and uses a tractor beam to capture Miguel and Alisha, taking Orko with them. He and his minions do not get far, though, before their ship is brought down by the Monstroids, who take the children hostage themselves, they plan on dealing with Horde Prime themselves when he comes for the children, and force Hordak and his men to retreat. Luckily, the Manchines show up to rescue Orko and the children. The Monstroids try to stop them from escaping, but He-Man and She-Ra, having been told of the children's location by Peekablue, show up just in time to handle them, with help from the other Manchines. But while that's going on, Skeletor comes in and captures Miguel and Alisha, taking with them a Manchine puppy named Relay.
But then Hordak reappears and shoots down Skeletor's sky-scooter, crash-landing him in some snowy mountains; because of this, Skeletor is now forced to bring his prisoners to Horde Prime on foot. During the trek, he finds a sudden urge of kindness that results in him fitting the children with winter jackets to protect them from the cold, bringing Relay along so he doesn't freeze to death, and even protecting the children from a snowbeast. He also inquires the children about Christmas, all the while trying to reassure them, and himself, that he is still a bad guy. Just as Horde Prime arrives in his ship, He-Man and She-Ra finally catch up, but Hordak arrives as well; he knocks Skeletor out by deflecting a laser blast and distracts He-Man and She-Ra by sending out numerous Horde Troopers. But just in the nick of time, Relay licks Skeletor's face; he wakes up and saves his would-be captives by shooting down Horde Prime's ship. Obviously angry at this, Horde Prime attempts to shoot Skeletor, but He-Man and She-Ra lift his ship up and throw it into space before he has a chance to. The children thank Skeletor for saving them, a fact that He-Man is surprised at, which he reluctantly admits is true, and Skeletor is relieved to learn that he will only be overtaken by Christmas spirit once a year.
Back at the palace, as the good guys celebrate their Christmas party, Adam, dressed as Santa Claus, gives the children flying belts. Man-At-Arms then uses the Transporter to send Miguel and Alisha back to their home on Earth, where they are welcomed back by their parents.
At the end of the special, Prince Adam and Orko give us a very special Christmas moral. Adam states that "Though we celebrate it and get presents, Christmas is about caring, sharing and goodwill and its spirit is within all of us". And in fun fashion, Orko states that what make him happy on Christmas is...presents. | good versus evil | train | wikipedia | Perfect fun for 80's kids..
He-Man and She-Ra join forces to stop their respective galleries of rogues, as well as Transformer rip-off villain Horde Prime.
After a convoluted way of joining our world with Eternia (not as bad as the live- action movie) a pair of Earth Children are lost over the Christmas season.
If they spread the message and joy of Christmas it could ruin Horde Prime's plans.
The twins bounce between heroes and villains, before ending up with Skeletor, but surely such an evil villain as he will be immune to the warmth and happiness of Christmas.
It's a lot of daft fun that brings in weirdos such as the Manchines.
With the mixture of fantasy fairies, sci-fi soldiers, monsters, medieval knights, and giant robots, it's certainly trying to cover all of its toy potential bases.
The message really is in the right place, acknowledging that presents can be fun but are not everything, and that not everybody celebrates Christmas.
It's the importance of its message that we should focus on.
If you're an 80's child, you'll really want to see this..
He-Man and She-Ra is at it again!.
This is very good little animated movie of My favorite animated heroes!Though there isn't a ton of Skeletor and Hordak's henchmen but the two big time villains show their stuff quite well!Its really a different He-Man and She-Ra story but if you like them then is a good one to watch!.
Just because you CAN make a He Man Christmas Special doesn't mean you SHOULD!.
It is just my opinion but I believe that He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was television's first infomercial.
It was, you have to admit, a day-in day-out 22 minute commercial for crappy plastic dolls.
The animation, used over and over again, makes up about three feet of film and the scripts are best suited to lining the bottom of the birdcage.
So what other explanation could there be?The show was five colors of stupidity thanks to the unremarkable minds of the once powerful company known as The Third Rei .
I mean Filmmation.
To us students of animation, Filmmation did for cartoons what the federal government has done for education, cutting costs until there was nothing left.
The studio cut costs by recycling the same cels over and over again.
The effect is that characters repeatedly move and talk in the same patterns in every episode and rarely moved or spoke outside a designated set of eight specific body movements.
For a similar effect, check out CSPAN.The show wasn't exactly Shakespeare.
I imagine that the scripts weren't discussed in a board room so much as they were conceived in the elevator on the way to the second floor.
The stories revolved around He-Man's attempt to thwart the latest evil plan by Skeletor, a muscle-bound mench with a skull-face who none-the-less had expressions.
Skeletor's plans ranged from kidnapping to fist fights to book burning (that's not a joke) and they usually got snuffed out by some lame dialogue and a sword fight.
The last two minutes of the show were toddled out with some lesson extracted from the day's events.
Sometimes when the show presented little more than 22 minutes of fighting, the lesson was given to the old standby - Say No to Drugs?Even with all this feux ingenuity flapping about at Filmmation the show never-the-less became an enormous hit, lasting three years and selling millions of crappy plastic dolls.In 1985, in the midst of this popularity came an idea so staggeringly stupid and unbelievable it still stuns me even today - the studio turned out a Christmas special.
Not just a Christmas special, but an Hour LONG Christmas special complete with dumpy cute kids, a puppy, a phallic-shaped spy cam and He-Man dressed as Santa Claus.
But wait it gets worse.The story begins when He Man's comic relief sidekick Orko accidentally gets beamed to Earth during a test of Skeletor's new spy satellite.
Orko manages to get back Planet Eternia, but brings along two Earth children, Alisha and Manuel.
Now, Alisha and Manuel fit right in on Eternia because neither have anything interesting to say, both perspire cuteness and we the viewers just want to strangle the sugary sweetness right outta both of them.
Oh, and they brought their cute lil 'ol puppy along with them and he's godda widdiw swedder on!
Awwwww, *hack* *cough* *gag*It was probably not by accident that the two are brought to the planet Eternia just at the same time that Earth is gearing up for the commerce assault known as Christmas time.
People of Eternia have no concept of Christmas and why should they even worry about it, they don't even have a mall?Now, as goofball as this may sound, Horak and Skeletor don't like this Christmastime nonsense and so Hordak orders Skeletor to kidnap the kids so he can do away with them.
Alisha and Manuel are so nauseating that my heart welled up a wan hope that Horak would succeed (Hey!
Leave me to dream).
If he had then I would have been spared a this jaw dropping exchange:Manuel: `Christmas is lots of fun.
We get presents and we do a lot of fun things.'Skeletor: `You mean you get in FIGHTS!'Alisha: `No we do FUN things.'Skeletor: `But fights are FUN.'Pick your jaw up, you're going to ruin the carpet.Into this chaos comes a whole batch of new characters, my favorite of which are the Monstroids, knee-high little cyber-cuties that look like mech-rejects from Rainbow Bright.
They have blue faces and they fight pretty well (as well as they can with only five cels of animation) and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Filmmation was using them to parade their new toy line.Skeletor's heart (pause) melts just a bit when he begins to carry that puppy and and dog licks his face.
From this bit of germ-spreading exchange, he learns the true meaning of Christmas so much so that he wants to send the kids back home instead of sending them to Hoard Prime.
Hordak attempts to grab the kids and pull them onto his spaceship but Skeletor zaps the ship with his staff (the one in his hand) and sends the ship hurtling into the cosmos.
The kids go home with all kinds of new toys from Eternia and promply send their parents into a catatonic shock.
I know the feeling, I'm still feeling the effects myself..
One of the worst holiday specials of all time..
*Sigh* Why was this nonsensical episode made?!
It had a stupid story, annoying songs, and it this episode lacks the masculinity of the great show (The Masters of the Universe).
Also, where the hell is the action?!
The children are bland annoying and they make me vomit.
We also have the "black mage from Final Fantasy"...err...I mean Orko who keeps annoying us.
Skeletor used to be so evil, but in here, he's a wuss.
Sure, it may not be as bad as the Star Wars Holiday Special, but I still urge you to stay away from this atrocity!
Final Verdict: Another one of those wretched Holiday Specials.
If you're looking for a good He-man episode, then watch the first episodes instead!.
Nostalgia's a helluva drug.
How do you bring Christmas to Eternia?
Orko, naturally.
Plus some kids that need to get back home; the plot's as trivial as you'd expect from a MOTU holiday special, but it has its moments.
I've always been an Orko fan myself, and he fares the best of the impish '80s cartoon sidekicks.
Then again, this is also just another excuse to hear Skeletor complain a lot, especially with his beef with Hordak.I have no memory of this as a kid, but it's cheesy fun as an adult.
It received a whining appraisal by my 9 year-old too, so that's another plus..
Campy He-Man Christmas fun for everyone.
Two Children become lost when they go to find their family's Christmas tree, befriended by Orko they set about to bring the goodwill of Christmas to Eternia.In 1985, in the hight of this popularity came this hour shy Christmas special.
Filmmation's offering works just like the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and its spin-off She-Ra episodes.
Even though a commercial for the twist waist & power punch action toys it also had some great stories and morals to share, this is more of the same.
Naturally there's the recycling of the same cells but there's plenty of new footage including cute children, a puppy and Adam dressed as Santa Claus.
When Alisha and Manuel visit Eternia their goodwill attracts the unwelcome attention of Horde Prime and Skeletor.
The tale switches between planets and this special has a mix of fantasy elements synonymous with both shows - fairies, soldiers, monsters and (also thrown in are Transformer-like) robots.
Amongst the action set-ups there's some nice writing from Don Heckman and Bob Forward with plenty of sugary cuteness and animated visual treats.
Look for Orko's nod to Ghostbusters.
For fan's it bridges Earth to Queen Marlina, there's the on screen mix of Eterniain and Etheria characters and Skeletor's transition from super villain to reluctant nice guy.
After Hordak orders Skeletor to kidnap the kids there's a great scene where they explain Christmas to Skeletor:Skeletor: Tell me more about this "Christmas."Miguel: Well, it's a wonderful time of the year.
Everyone has lots of fun.Skeletor: You mean they get in fights?Miguel: No, no - they have fun!Skeletor: Fights are fun.
I like fights!Miguel: And you give each other presents.Skeletor: And when you open them, they explode, right?Miguel: No!
They're nice gifts.Skeletor: Nice?
Doesn't sound like much fun to me!Priceless.
Today, 30 years later directors Bill Reed and Ernie Schmidt offering may have trouble keeping up with the pace and style of contemporary cartoons but it's a heart warming story, fitting for the seasonal period, complete with some catchy songs and all the regular character favourites (voices from legend Alan Oppenheimer, John Erwin and Linda Gary to name a few).While possibly not the best Christmas cartoon, that prize is up for debate, it's still has great nostalgic value and is great viewing for children..
The Vidiot Reviews....
He-Man and She-Ra: A Christmas SpecialHanging with 1980s cartoon characters is really awkward since they're always trying to sell you their old action figures or one-hour holiday specials.Therefore, it's no wonder that the children in this animated movie are ill at ease spending their first Christmas with He-Man.When the wizard Orko magically transports a spy-ship from Eternia to Earth, he meets two small humans who got lost while looking for a Christmas tree.When Orko later returns to Eternia, he brings them and their Christmas spirit along, which intrigues Orko's friends: He-Man and She-Ra.However, Horde Prime fears good cheer, so he orders his underlings Hordak and Skeletor to kidnap the earthlings.With both He-Man and She-Ra's supporting cast present, as well as a lighthearted Skeletor, A Very Special Christmas is a holiday feast for fans of all ages.Unfortunately, on Eternia, the only meat served during Christmas dinner is My Little Pony.
(Green Light).
So so bad that it's GREAT!.
Okay, if you actually watch this seriously you'll think it's rubbish.BUT if you watch it for all the unintended(?) jokes and campiness, you'll probably laugh til you cry like I did!No, it doesn't really deserve 10/10 when you take an analytical look at it, but for overall fun and light-heartedness I'll give the movie its dues.
Besides, it's generally harmless...
well, maybe.
View for yourself and judge.
Like many of the B-grade cartoon movies, it's made for ridicule (and shameless promotion of the tie-in toys), and I'd say it hits the mark on both these counts very well.So if you want to watch a hilariously bad movie with friends for all-round enjoyment, don't go past this one..
A cheese-tastic but charming classic.
It is an annual tradition for me to watch this every Christmas.
Granted, I was only a year old when it came out, but since I have it on tape, I can watch it again and again.
Yes, it is a little cheesy and would probably best appeal to a 10-year-old, but it still tickles my fancy to see this.***SPOILERS*** Although it is HE-MAN'S and SHE-RA'S Christmas special (and even combines the two shows and its respective characters), it basically surrounds Orko, He-Man's annoying creature sidekick, and as per usual, Orko somehow manages to screw things up, in this case, by hopping aboard a rocket ship that was built to keep an eye on Skeletor.
After the ship is accidentally launched and crash lands on Earth, he meets two young siblings who've lost their way home, Miguel and Alicia, who in turn, give him a crash course in Christmas, something people on his planet knew nothing about.
After returning back to kingdom Greyskull with them, Lord Prime tells Skeletor and Hordack (She-Ra's enemy) to kidnap the children and bring them back to him so one of them will be handsomely rewarded.
The children get acquainted to the friends and family of the superheros, but are soon under attack again.
Both villains try to rise to task (amid some bickering and sabotages), but Skeletor, in a real out-of-character role here, actually grows fond of the children while in possession of them and saves them both from his rival and his boss.
The children gets home safely and the holiday (as well as the superhero twins' birthday days prior) is celebrated without incident.While I probably can never rank this holiday special up there with the likes of the Charlie Brown Christmas or Frosty the Snowman (which can be enjoyed at practically any age), I certainly would never count this one out, and while it is a bit maudlin and perhaps even overdone, it is still a favorite of mine and will always remain dear to my heart and a bright spot and cherished memory of my childhood..
It's worth watching the first 30 minutes of stupidity just to see Skeletor's actions at the end..
A friend, recently, gave me a tape with this flick, and while he gave it to me he also gave me a look that said "Be afraid!
Be very, very afraid!" And he has a point!
Stupidity is in fact a word that can describe the first 30 minutes of this film.
But then again, this is He-Man we're talking about, and THIS IS a Christmas special.
Two sh*ts not a gold make, but another sh*t.
But - the main thing about this cartoon that you shouldn't miss at all is somewhere at the end, when Skeletor fights the Christmass spirit and tries to remain good, and eventually he saves the day, which makes him say the immortal line " I'm glad that Christmass comes only once in a year." (or did She-Ra said that?).
Trust me, if you're a true He-Man fan, and especially Skeletor fan, you should watch this cartoon just for that one scene.
Overall, it's got a basic dose of stupidity for a Christmass cartoon but it still have that old He-Man charm that will make your Christmass great.(well, if you're in that kind of stuff) |
tt0092969 | Enemy Territory | Barry (Frank) is a formerly successful insurance executive whose career and life are being destroyed by alcoholism. As the day ends, he is sent to a notorious New York City housing project, the Lincoln Towers, to try and complete a life insurance policy sale to a nice elderly woman named Elva (Foster). Meanwhile, a man named Will (Parker Jr.), a soft-spoken but tough employee of the telephone company, also heads to the building to hook up with his girlfriend and repair the phone lines. Unfortunately for Barry, while inquiring where Elva's apartment is, he taps a boy on the shoulder and quickly becomes the hated target of a savage gang called the Vampires, who run the Towers. The gang is led by their ruthless leader the Count (Todd).
An attempt to kill him leads to the death of the building's security guard. With Barry's entrapment inside the building, he crosses paths with Will and makes his first reluctant ally willing to help him. They take safety in Elva's apartment, but escape when the Vampires trap them. Leaving Elva behind, they find Elva's determined granddaughter Toni (Dash), visiting with her neighbors. Toni suggests they go to the apartment of Mr. Parker (Vincent), a unstable yet vicious Vietnam vet the gang fears. Paid for his help, Parker lets the trio in. Then Toni leaves to check on her grandmother. When she arrives, she discovers Elva beaten. And she is forced to reveal where Barry and Will are.
The Vampires, holding Elva and Toni hostage, arrive at Parker's apartment. Barry surrenders himself to save them. As Barry and Will exit, Parker and the Vampires engage in a shootout. In the midst of the gunfire, Barry, Will, and Toni escape. When Elva and Parker retreat back inside his apartment, Parker is shot in the chest and a short time later dies. Next, the trio head to the apartment of Chet Cole (Richmond). A little boy, living with his mother, whom they heard is the only one who knows a way out of the building that no one else knows, not even the Vampires. According to Chet, the way out is in the building's basement. Chet offers to show them, but his mother sends him to bed, leading him to sneak out.
After saving them from being killed, Chet joins the trio as they descend to the basement through the elevator shaft. In the basement, Chet shows them the way out, but the opening is too small for either Barry or Will to fit through. Toni however is able to fit through and runs to get the police. But when she arrives at the station, the officers refuse to help, due to other officers being shot on a previous visit to the building.
While Barry and Will wait, Will comes up with another plan. Using the money that Elva gave Barry earlier in the film, they send Chet back upstairs. With sunrise approaching, Chet litters the money out a window to the Vampires guarding the basement door to the outside. At the same time, the Count and other Vampires realize that after checking every apartment in the building the basement is the only place left to look. When the money distraction works, Barry and Will escape just as the Count and his remaining Vampires arrive, and Barry is shot in the ankle.
Outside, Will and a wounded Barry start running as they are being chased and tormented by the last of the gang. Cornered, Will uses the one shot he has left in his gun to protect Barry and himself. He does this by having a final showdown with the Count. As the Count closes in, Will shoots him and struggles with him, until he knocks him to the ground. The Count dies and the other Vampires prepare to gun down Barry and Will. But Elva, using Parker's machine gun, fires shots at them from the apartment window to hold them at bay. Seconds later, Toni and the police finally arrive. Having survived a deadly night against a vicious gang, the film ends with Will and Toni accompanying Barry as he is taken to an ambulance. | suspenseful, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | Though made in 1987, 'Enemy Territory' most resembles a drive-in exploitation movie from the seventies.
Silly script, over-acting by all concerned, non-stop action and a dated 'urban' soundtrack all mean one thing - FUN!!!
This is a gritty thriller set in a tower block, where an unfortunate insurance salesman finds himself trapped on the top floor in a building controlled by the local gang called the Vampires.
The Vampires are out for blood after the salesman unwittingly insults one of the gangs younger members on his way to sign a deal which should earn him a nice commission.
Luckily he gets some help along the way by none other than Ray Parker Junior, and together with some friendlier residents of the block, they try to escape certain death.
But the best thing is Tony Todd (pre - Candyman) as the demented evil leader of the Vampires and his sidekick - Psycho!
This movie, i must have watched it 40 times...but not in the last 10 years, would love to watch and see if it still scares me, it invoked alot of emotion in me as a child...racism....hatred...violence...all wrapped up into one big burrito is what you have here...i loved this movie, and it was my first exposure to a VERY underrated actor, Tony Todd...although reaching mimimal success as candyman...and recently as a 2 bit part of a mortician in final destination...he is very good onstage with the creepy image, needs to be his own villain!!!
Urban decay as literal nightmare - huge ghetto apartment, graffiti everywhere, people out to kill you, gangs running rampant - this movie has it all!
Jan Michael Vincent has one of the best cameos you will ever see in a movie!
He plays 'Parker', a whacked out, bubba-Vietnam vet in a wheelchair (still handsome, but crazed!) who tries to help a remarkably decent-acting Ray Parker Jr.
Tony Todd (yes, the "Candyman" himself!) is also great as the "Vampire" gang leader in this..
This flick is a good representative of the 80's underrated B-movies, that gets you not by the quality, but specially by the lack of it.
In the story, a phone company worker (Ray Parker Jr., whose sole glory was the making of the hit song "Ghostbusters", in his acting debut) is caught up in the middle of a crisis with a violent street gang called the Vampires, that control a project building where a rundown insurance salesman played by Gary Frank stepped on the wrong toe by touching a gang member after dark; the Vampires leader, The Count (Tony Todd), wants blood to make amends and the duo must fight for their lives until the sun comes up, with the helping hand of some courageous inhabitants.
Insurance salesman Barry (Gary Frank) visits an urban ghetto to sell insurance to a client and has a run in with a young member of a vicious street gang called the Vampires.
Soon their leader, aptly named 'The Count' (Tony Todd) hears about this and wants Barry dead.
Barry teams up with Ray Parker Jnr and they also enlist the help of the only man the gang supposedly fears, the wheelchair bound Parker, a Vietnam War veteran, (played by Jan-Michael Vincent).
The vampires are after blood.The film is fast paced and entertaining but does has strong violence and racism in as well so be warned.
Also a great music soundtrack from the Boogie boys an American hip hop band group from New York, where this film was shot.
The band sadly spilt up a year after this film was made.Watch out for the clever ending; note the gang are called Vampires when you look for this.
Admitted some of the acting is a little shameful, but Jan Michael Vincent supplies us with a solid performance as the gruff ass kicking paraplegic with Knives in his wheel chair (how cool is that?).
Have searched high and low and can't find it anywhere.Had to watch in poor VHS quality with German subs which was a little annoying, but did not detract from my enjoyment of the film..
I think that when you re-watch a movie after a few years the possibility is there that you will like it even more or hate it even more.
Well, after re-watching this movie my conclusion was "Oh my god, this is great stuff".
A nice assortment of characters, are terrorized by a gang called the "Vampires", while desperately trying to escape from a "project" high rise.
The strength of this film is having very sympathetic heroes, Gary Frank, and Ray Parker Jr., interacting with likable tenants, including Jan Michael Vincent playing a whacked Vietnam Vet. The "Vampire"gang are all generic, unmemorable, minority thugs, with the notable exception of "The Count".
Considering the limited budget, "Enemy Territory" is a surprisingly good film.....
This was one of those films I constantly saw on the video previews of ex-rentals and each time I saw it pop up my hunger only grew to watch it.
Produced by Charles Band's Empire pictures, "Enemy Territory" was a nice surprise (strangely not on DVD yet) and truly a sock 'em urban action survival romp that is compulsively brutal, raw and relentless in its tightly constructed surges.Barry (Gary Frank) a struggling insurance salesman heads out to a rundown complex building the Lincoln Towers late one evening for a client (Frances Foster) to sign some very important papers for his company and especially for himself.
However he gets caught in an altercation which sees him fighting for his life against a savage gang called the vampires, who rule the building at night.
It's going to be one long night for the pair, as they try seeking help from the buildings tenants or it would be their blood for the vampires.
Gary Frank is fittingly good in his meek portrayal and Ray Parker, Jr is affably brought across.
The tremendous standout would be aggressively hammy and towering Tony Todd as the count, the leader of the gang.
When the sun goes down and the moon shines brightly, the tenants inhabiting the Lincoln Towers tremble in fear...terrified of an evil, omnipotent presence, a merciless street gang calling themselves the "Vampires." The Vampires are lead by none other than Tony Todd as the Count!
As the King of these apartments, he strikes fear into the hearts of his innocent prey...Gary Frank is an insurance salesman, an ordinary, blue collared John Doe. Ray Parker Jr.mis a telephone repairman.
Their only essence to triumph over adversity is a motley of courageous souls including a tough elderly woman, her beautiful teenage granddaughter, Toni (Stacey Dash), and a crippled, psychopathic Vietnam veteran (Jan-Michael Vincent.
This Vietnam vet may very well serve as much of a hostile threat rather than an ally to both Frank and Ray Jr. The clash between good and evil continues in a vortex of anxiety and perturbation until the last survivors of both sides meet in a final confrontation...Enemy Territory is a creepy urban thriller with satisfactory performances and a fair amount of tension and uneasiness.
The two also manage to save each other's rear ends a few times from the aggression of the innumerable Vampire gang members.
Tony Todd arrogantly proclaims himself as the emperor of his territory, and he does a great job playing a demonic guy on the edge.
Jan-Michael Vincent gives a nutty performance as an insane Vietnam veteran who's screws are not tightened on properly.This low budget formula offers a few violent action scenes and lots of blood.
I also observed how offensively mean-spirited and racist this movie was at times.Enemy Territory is not bad, but not particularly memorable.
Enemy territory is a fantastic 80s urban Thriller i love this film, this has that exciting & creepy atmosphere & tone like Assault on precinct 13 (1976) & alot of that 80s punk gangs feel that you get in the Death wish films & many others.This little survival film is about a really bad neighbourhood somewhere in new York City that has a really run down tenement building that is the dark hunting ground of a gang of black thugs called the Vampires who have a crazy leader played by the Awesome TONY TODD!!!
Anyway IT'S getting late & nearly dark & an insurance salesman played really well by GARY FRANK has to go into the building to make a quick sale-a quick signing & back out but things go very wrong & very serious & he ends up trapped in the big scary building with the Vampires gang hunting him.
A great little B-movie fun & exciting Thriller with a vety gritty look & creepy high rise building & it works perfectly with tense scenes & some other cool characters who happen to be in the building or live there such as will (RAY PARKER JR ) who is a good guy & wants to help get Barry out of the building alive!!!
Also small roles for other characters like JAN MICHAEL VINCENT'S ex Vietnam nut who loves guns & STACEY DASH (Clueless) who also wants to help.
ENEMY TERRITORY is great exciting fun with an AWESOME cast & an AWESOME location to for an urban survival Thriller to be set in.
Enemy Territory was a pretty good movie & better than I expected it to be.I watched it from start to finish on the edge of my seat, wondering if & how Ray Parker Jr.
(Yes, that Ray Parker Jr.) & the insurance salesman would make it out of the projects alive.Speaking of Ray Parker Jr., I didn't realize he was in the movie until I saw it on IMDb.Kadeem Hardison was in it as well as A-Train.A young Tony Todd was most evil as the leader of The Vampires & Jan-Michael Vincent was great as the Vietnam vet who turned his apartment into a bunker & the only tenant The Vampires were scared of because he was the only 1 who would shoot back.
(Did Jan-Michael Vincent's character remind anybody else of Rowdy Roddy Piper or was it just me?) Even though it did keep me on the edge of my seat the entire time & was better than I expected, Enemy Territory isn't a movie I'd watch that often but I would watch it again.It had my attention while it was on but after it was over, I was like......
A late 80's action thriller that has a yuppie insurance salesman visiting a housing project apartment building in New York at night.
While in the building to collect a premium he has a mishap with a gang member from a group that all themselves The Vampires.
This sets off a war between the gang and the tenants in a place the police won't go.This flick was awesome.
The Vampire gang was led by a young, skinny Tony Todd which he did just after Platoon.
I met Tony Todd a couple years ago and meant to ask him if he had this on DVD because he did tell me he collects DVDs and I've never seen an official release of this one yet.As well as Tony Todd you have Ray Parker Jr. helping the insurance guy get out of the apartment alive and playing a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair was Jan-Michael Vincent kicking ass.
The film reminded me of Tenement: Game of Survival (1985) which the writer probably watched with elements of Assault On Precinct 13.
A merciless street gang called the Vampires and led by "Candyman" himself Tony Todd is terrorizing the tenants inhabiting the Lincoln Towers.An insurance salesman Gary Frank and a telephone repairman Ray Davis Jr. are trying to survive the night of terror and destroy evil gang."Enemy Territory" by Peter Manoogian of "Demonic Toys" and "Seedpeople" fame is a cheesy action thriller which suddenly disappeared into obscurity.It's pretty fun and entertaining flick with plenty of violence and some cult one-liners.It was filmed in lower Manhattan and briefly in Los Angeles.If you are into cheesy Empire/Full Moon horror movies check out this fairly rare and forgotten urban survival film.7 black gangs out of 10..
The other strange part of this movie is that it was made by a director, Peter Manoogian, not well known but he was second unit director on a lot of horror flicks (The Slayer and Galaxy Of Terror) so he surely know his stuff.
Ray Parker Jr. was known for Ghostbusters (1984), Gary Frank for a lot of roles in series of the 80's, Jan-Michael Vincent for his lead role in the Airwolf series (1984) and Tony Todd is notable here in one of his first roles just before breaking through as a horror icon best known for The Candyman (1992) franchise.
The flick itself never bored me, you just keep watching how they will survive the attack of the Vampire gang.
You really don't see a movie like this for the performances.
Yes this movie is somewhat racist, but it also says a lot about life along the way, how we treat people according to race and environment, how we view that 'Nam-rattled vet in a wheelchair down the hall who resembles a drugged out Jan-Michael Vincent.
The Vampires are certainly an underrated gang, you don't want to mess with.
Frank, great to see in the lead is an insurance salesman, who has to make one last call, regrettably in the projects.
This is enough to bring down the hell that ensues, where shortly after, on Frank's exit, the black kid is shot, and the rest of the gang that control these tenements want blood.
It's a frightening situation and atmosphere, which has you asking many times before, "How could you live here?" Frank nicknamed The Ghost by the gang, becomes trapped in the building.
Bring on Ray Parker Jnr- The Blood Traitor as named by our Vamps, in not a half bad performance, who teams up with Frank, not the best fighting duo, one must admit.
Jan Michael Vincent really stuck out here as a crippled resentful vet (aren't they all), another suffering tenant, ready and armed, with mettle, who hasn't given up the fight.
Enemy Territory really works where in the space of it's 85 minutes, we undermine the terrifying ambiance the movie projects.
Track it down if you haven't seen it, if also watching for Ray Parker Jnr's only performance..
Wimpy, down on his luck insurance salesman Barry Rapchick (well played by Gary Frank of TV's "Family" fame) is sent by his unsympathetic jerk boss into a rundown and dangerous inner city section of the Big Apple to get elderly retired schoolteacher Elva Briggs (a fabulously feisty Frances Foster) to sign a $100,000 dollar policy so Barry can collect a hefty commission.
Barry runs afoul of the violent street gang the Vampires who are led by the ruthless and vicious the Count (deliciously essayed with eye-rolling, rip-snorting, scenery-gnashing hammy élan by a pre-"Candyman" Tony Todd).
Pretty soon Barry's being chased around the dilapidated Lincoln Towers apartment complex by the Vampires, who want him dead after Barry accidentally kills one of their number.
The only folks who come to Barry's aid are heroic telephone repairman Will Jackson (a pretty decent and likable turn by singer Ray Parker, Jr., who crooned the hit theme song for "Ghostbusters") and Briggs' comely granddaughter Toni (a splendidly sassy'n'sexy Stacey Dash).Capably directed with considerable aplomb by Peter Manoogian, with strong performances from a bang-up cast, polished cinematography by Ernest R.
My sole quibble: Jan-Michael Vincent's neat turn as Parker, a bitter, crippled Vietnam veteran who's so paranoid that he lives in a heavily armored bunker and has a motorized wheelchair which comes complete with a cool knife-throwing device is unfortunately cut short way too soon when a pistol-packing thug fatally blasts him right in the chest.
I want this movie on DVD!!!!
I thought to myself this movie couldn't possibly have scored good on IMDb i didn't think anyone else liked it!
It was one of those movies I "grew up" watching...and haven't forgotten it to this day...can practically play it scene for scene in my head :) I used to do a double bill when I was like, 13-14yo, I'd watch the Warriors (1979) and then follow up with Enemy Territory...they were the perfect B-movie popcorn combo - both set in gritty NY...the old, hardcore NY - 70's and 80's...what a time to live there!
And both take place in the space of one night - to me, this creates so much tension in a film...i love the sunrise scenes when the nightmares are over...perfect.
I recommend the Warriors if you like this movie, and vice-versa..
Barry (Frank), a New York City-based insurance salesman, has been down on his luck lately.
But it's not long until Barry discovers that the buildings are controlled by a street gang known as The Vampires, led by an intimidating psycho known as The Count (Todd).
His gang members are extremely loyal to him, and when he sends out the order to kill "The White Ghost", as well as a kind Vietnam vet helping him survive, Will Jackson (Parker Jr.), who the gang calls "The Blood Traitor", all hell breaks loose.
With the assistance of Toni Briggs (Dash) and another Vietnam vet, Parker (JMV), the frazzled Barry is going to learn, over the course of one hellish night, that there are some things in life more valuable than money.
Sadly, it was one of Ray Parker Jr.'s only major film acting roles.
But the movie as a whole isn't a knockoff of Die Hard (1988), like so many others were at this time.
And coincidentally, Tony Todd would return to the projects with Candyman (1992).
Speaking of Barry, Frank did an excellent job in the role, but we also feel Judge Reinhold could have played that part.
But then again, Hostage Train proves that the man can do literally anything.Featuring some great, un-PC dialogue and box art that features the WTC towers prominently, Enemy Territory is from another time in history.
A time when movies were actually good. |
tt0463027 | Descent | On her way back from whitewater rafting with her friends Juno (Natalie Mendoza) and Beth (Alex Reid), Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), along with her husband Paul (Oliver Milburn) and their daughter Jessica (Molly Kayll) get involved in a car accident when Paul is distracted. Paul and Jessica are killed, but Sarah survives.
One year later, Sarah and her friends Juno, Beth, Sam (MyAnna Buring), Rebecca (Saskia Mulder), and newcomer Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) are reunited at a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina for a caving adventure. The next day, they hike up to a cave entrance and descend. While in the cave, Juno apologises to Sarah for not being there for her after the accident, but Sarah is distant. As the group moves through a narrow passage, it collapses behind them, trapping them. After a heated discussion, Juno admits she has led the group into an unknown cave system instead of the fully explored cave system that they had originally planned, and that rescue is impossible because of this. She then tells Sarah that she led them into the unknown cave in the hopes of restoring their relationship, but Sarah rebuffs her.
As the group presses forward in the hopes of finding an exit, they discover climbing equipment from a previous caver, and a cave painting that suggests an exit exists. Holly, thinking she sees sunlight, runs ahead, but falls down a hole and breaks her leg. As the others help Holly, Sarah wanders off and observes a pale, humanoid creature drinking at a pool before it scampers away. Later, the group comes across a den of animal bones, and are suddenly attacked by the creature (called "crawlers" in the credits). Holly is killed, her neck ripped out before being dragged away, while Sarah runs and is knocked out by a fall down a hole. Juno, trying to prevent Holly's body from being dragged away, kills a crawler with her pickaxe before accidentally stabbing Beth through the neck when she is startled. Beth collapses with Juno's pendant, and a traumatized Juno flees while Beth begs her not to leave her.
Sarah awakens to find herself in a den of human and animal carcasses, and witnesses Holly's body being eaten by a group of crawlers. Juno discovers markings pointing to a specific path through the caves. After regrouping with Sam and Rebecca, and realizing the crawlers' use of sound to hunt, Juno tells them the markings she discovered may point to the way out, but she will not leave without Sarah. Meanwhile, Sarah encounters Beth, who tells Sarah that Juno wounded her and abandoned her. Beth also gives her Juno's pendant which Sarah recognizes as a gift from Paul, realizing that Juno had an affair with Paul before his death. In pain and not wanting to be eaten by the crawlers, Beth begs Sarah to euthanize her, Sarah reluctantly does so by bashing her head in with a rock. She then encounters a family of crawlers, but manages to kill them all, being covered in blood in the process. Afterwards, she has a psychotic breakdown. Elsewhere, Juno, Sam, and Rebecca are pursued by a large group of crawlers. When they reach a chasm, Sam tries to climb across but encounters a crawler scaling the ceiling. It rips her throat out but Sam stabs it before she bleeds to death in front of Juno and Rebecca. Rebecca is then dragged back and eaten alive as Juno escapes.
Juno encounters Sarah and lies to her about seeing Beth die. After defeating a group of crawlers, Sarah confronts Juno, revealing that she knows that Juno had wounded Beth and left her for dead, and also about the affair. She then strikes Juno in the leg with a pickaxe and leaves her to die to a swarm of approaching crawlers. Juno is last heard screaming as Sarah escapes. Sarah falls down a hole and is knocked unconscious. She awakens, manages to escape from the cave, runs to her vehicle, and speeds off. Upon seeing Juno sitting next to her, Sarah screams and reawakens to find herself still in the cavern, revealing that the events since her previous awakening were a dream. She hallucinates about a smiling Jessica close by her, just as the camera pans out revealing that Sarah has reached a dead end, and the calls of the crawlers are growing louder.
=== Alternate versions ===
For the U.S. theatrical release, the film ends with the appearance of Juno in the car, and the scene where Sarah hallucinates her daughter in the torchlight was removed entirely. The Unrated DVD released in the US includes the original ending. This ending leads to the events of the next film. | violence, revenge, sadist | train | wikipedia | It's not a bad movie exactly, but it's one of those films that desperately wants to be a deep comment on human nature while not realizing that its story is practically a genre.
From there it feels to be downhill with poorly developed characterizations giving way to the blatantly "shocking" overextended finale.Rosario Dawson is always someone I enjoy watching on-screen, having a spiritual warmth few young actresses can match.
Disappointment because the storyline was potentially powerful, the prospect of seeing Rosario Dawson in a smaller intimate movie was exciting and, being a fan (sounds pervy, I'm not!) of 'rape/revenge' flicks of the 70's, I was needless to say very curious to check this movie out.
Just like the scene where Dawson gets raped: it seriously lacks intensity!
I must admit that the screening at the festival wasn't so good so maybe I missed out something here but at the end of the movie, I couldn't help thinking 'I feel like watching Argento's 'Inferno' again.
Descent is an odd little movie.not too much happens for most of it's running time.in fact,until you get to the last 20 minutes or so,the rest of the movie has no context.people just do things for no discernible reason.plus,all the character are wretches,so that also makes it harder to have much interest.it basically felt like i had walked in during the middle of a movie,with no idea what had transpired before.it is a very slow movie,and it is disturbing at times,but if you can get through it,it sort of makes sense in the end.if you're not the patient sort,then you should skip this movie.otherwise,i'd say give it a shot.i thought it was worth it in the end.for me,Descent is a 6/10.
While you feel pity for the protagonist in the first half, her "revenge" is extreme and angry, leaving the audience to stare at the last shot, just before fading into darkness, going: "...what did I just see?" The lighting is brutal (seriously, if you watch it, leave the lights on) and the mismatched cast is somewhat pathetic--even Rosario Dawson could not save this doomed piece.
Just like a great companion "Hard Candy", this movie can easily teared down your emotion and left it as open-wounded.Rosario Dawson is Maya, a shy college student who, just like any hopeful young girls, wishes to meet a perfect man.
Spending time in dance club where drugs, boozes and stranger intimacy are her new friends.Months later, the story comes to last act when Maya and Jared meet again in the classroom.
What we have here in the last 20 minutes is the most disturbing, depraved, twisted act that anybody couldn't possibly imagine.One can think of how cheerfulness to see our heroic trio in "Death Proof" got their revenge.
But with this powerful opening and ending, It's obvious that she has a rightfulness to tell this story straight.One can also admire the lead (and first time producer), Rosario Dawson, to put herself into an interesting career path.
As she feels that she's capable to do everything from now on.In the final moment where the film just simply captures at Maya's face, it's effective.
And I'm very sure Rosario Dawson ended up in this film cause she though this would be her jarring break away indi hit, a wowing NC-17 movie.
(By the way this film is not to be confused with another fairly recent pic about the topic of "female empowerment," "THE Descent" (2005), directed by our Splat Pack friend, Neil Marshall, who also happens to be a major talent his own right.) But getting back to this "Descent," the NC-17 rated (uh-oh) effort on which the lovely Ms. Dawson takes a producer's credit (congratulations) and directed by Talia Lugacy (strong chance that's not a real name), as good as it is (in moments), it will not be appreciated by most lay people out there because the script is pretty flawed.
Of course, in the premise alone, you have the promise of rising conflict, but there still lies the task therein of accomplishing rising conflict.At times, this thing plays like an interesting piece of experimental theater and, well, I guess I'll let the others who've already commented here speak to the boringness of it, namely that which occurs in the second act -but find me a second act that isn't boring?
There's also this Catch 22 that goes along with these quasi-independent films like "Descent" in which Rosario happens to be attaching herself to and leveraging her "fame-identity" to get a script into production that would, under usual circumstances, not get made at all while at the same time she is basically a miscast in the film's leading role.
Rosario Dawson is gorgeous and, apparently, you can shoot this girl from just about any angle all day long, but, oh, wow-wee, how fast the time just slips away: Rosy ain't no undergraduate no more.
No, graduate students don't really have these type of qualms with football players, do they?" Again, if you are Rosario Dawson, Executive Producer, that's the one of many, many aspects to the professional film process you'll have to think about as you embark on this wonderful new role in your film career.
And if you don't have the answer to why you're movie isn't convincing, let me tell you: there is a boatload and a bevy of vivacious, well-qualified, undergraduate aged talents, pining to get involved in the business, who might have nailed that lead character down, all the while, looking just as darn good as you know who; but unfortunately without Ms. Dawson -no Honey, NO money.
If you're into experimental American film-making, cinematographic imagery of implausibly well formed college studs (or male model drop-outs) in their early twenties, or if you're an undergraduate, just plain angry at the hormonally aggressive young men that comprise less than half of your American university, "Rosario Dawson's Descent" might be your flavor of RockaRoll..
First of all, the leading lady, Rosario Dawson, is just about the coldest thing to see in a movie.
Descent (2007) BOMB (out of 4)Lame and painful "drama" about a bright, young college girl (Rosario Dawson) who is raped by her date (Chad Faust) and soon finds herself at sex clubs doing cocaine and taking home various men.
I normally don't watch extras on a DVD unless it's a movie I enjoy or one I'm interested in but this horrid film had me curious so I checked out a few interviews with Dawson and her friend, director Lugacy.
I say that as a joke as I'm sure both had seen the film but this is a complete disaster from start to finish and in the end I couldn't help but find myself bored out of my mind.
I won't ruin the ending but it has an interesting twist that just doesn't work because by the time it comes most viewers, myself included, will either be sleeping, have turned the film off or simply won't care.
The rape of Dawson is very tame so I'm guessing the MPAA once again struck the rating because of the male nudity that happens at the end.
There might be a good story or idea here but everything is carried out so poorly that nothing works and in the end this movie started to get on my nerves by the fifteen-minute mark.
In reality things like this do happen and that is why this movie shows a lot of it.
It all starts with Maya (Rosario Dawson in superb performance) whose recently started attending college has everything going well for her.
Love Rosario Dawson, think she's one of the finest actresses of the modern era.Descent seems to be more about self-empowerment than anything else.
The only consistency is the representation of self-empowerment in the characters and Rosario's journey from self empowerment to loss of empowerment and back again.Pitching this as a rape classic isn't appropriate, and that's probably why so many people don't enjoy the film.
The standard 'rape' audience wouldn't particularly like this film, and maybe that's the point?
There's a compelling relationship between the characters and the target audience and while the film doesn't slap the audience across the face with self-righteous audacity it does engage the viewer for what may or may not be, all the wrong reasons.Descent is a good film which IMHO is severely under-rated..
I think this film gets a bad rap because it makes people uncomfortable.
Maya, played by Rosario Dawson, is constantly the subject of transgressions until she breaks after being raped.
And then the story gets dark.After watching this film, I was in a deep despair for a few weeks.
I can see how the end may have come off extreme but I'd be lying if I didn't say I wished that every guy who's ever forced a woman into sex deserved exactly what Jared got.
When in actuality it's their lack of patience and comprehension that needs fine tuning and not the product of a creative mind such as Talia Lugacy's.Rosario Dawson displayed the numbness of self-destruction flawlessly.
Often times, much like the films "aimed at teens" mentioned in the prior comment, the effects of rape are displayed as either extremely manic and impulsive or terribly depressed, isolated and lifeless.
Dawson, in my opinion, manages to perform the balancing act so many survivors fall prey to: drone-like existence in the waking hours, working some dead end job to survive (and distract) and then overindulging in vices in order to lose themselves in the haze of substance abuse rather than face what sobriety brings.I thought this film told the truth and I appreciated it for finally showing people a different side of rape.
So many people let the end of this film devour the middle and the beginning...I believe that Maya's face during the act was the end...not the act itself...not the vengeance or the meaning behind it...just her face...thank you.
It was sold out and attended by all the major stars including fellow my-spacer Marcus Patrick.I give the movie 7.5 starts out of a possible 10 stars.The movie begins with Maya (Rosario Dawson) at college.
The rape scene is a little long and hard to take, but it is necessary for the rest of the movie that follows.Maya now starts to lose her soul to drugs and sex.
I thought they were well done and I noticed that the director of photography was applauded at the end of the showing during the credits by the audience.Maya is then back in college as a TA and who is in her class -- Jared her rapist!!
Note:: for anyone who plans on seeing this movie this scene is full frontal nudity - may not be right for the younger viewer.She then turns the situation around and she becomes the beast and proceeds to rape him.
Once again, the scene is dark, gritty, and very rough.If you are going to see the movie and don't want to know what happens next, skip this paragraph and go on to the last paragraph.This is where Adrian reenters the picture.
It only makes matters worse.This is an excellent movie, will well acted roles, and I recommend it to anyone who is thinking about going to see it.
Character's are thin, dialog is monotonous, etc.Normally I try to take films on their own terms but Descent didn't really seem to know what those were.
I felt like I was watching a porno/rape flick.
Having just recently re-viewed "Lipstick" for the first time in a few decades, I backed it with "Descent" even though I have heard more negative comments than good from other film friends with tastes as varied as mine.It's interesting to contrast how the unique niche of the Rape Revenge movie has evolved in the past 32 years, from the full-on gore of "I Spit On Your Grave," to the tawdry sensationalism of "Lipstick," to the tasteful handling of the issue in "The Accused." But "Descent," though making some important points, never really offers us anything truly new in terms of revelatory meaning.
By the time we get to the finale, our interest has already waned.One point of success that Dawson does point out in the Q&A is that by the end "revenge" scene we are pumped for retribution, then realize just how drawn-out and ugly the reality is.
If more expository scenes like this had been added and more of the middle third cut down, we might have an interesting psychological study of the impact of senseless acts of violence.As the film stands in the final cut, though, all we get is what we've seen before, only in a more graphic rendering.
.. It's pretty bad when the generic movie synopsis has more information than the film itself.
It's like they were trying to fool us into thinking that there was some kind of movie here, filming just enough so that there was the resemblance of a story and leaving the rest to our imaginations.
Rosario Dawson stars as a girl who is date raped and then begins a decent into darkness until given a chance at revenge.
Forgive me for being vague but nothing in this film, other than the end (which I would love to talk about but can't cause it would spoil it), and the image of Rosario Dawson as nothing more than an image, stayed with me.What can I say, this may click with you, it may not, for me it's time I can't get back.
This is particularly painful as the lighting was atrocious, and the sound was weak.Maya (the lovely Rosario Dawson) is date-raped and descends into a sort of depressive state that leads to alcohol and drugs.
Just as the rape was brutal, so was the ending.No, despite two sex scenes, you see nothing of Rosario..
I rented this movie simply because Rosario Dawson was in it.
Film is art.If you still house a soul within your walking meat-sack apparatus, this rape scene is every bit as powerful as "Irreversable".
The distinction here is that "Irreversable" was a violent rape scene involving two people whose paths have unfortunately crossed at the wrong time and hell ensued.
My particularly favorite scene being a synchronism of all these film aspects working together; "Maya" dancing in a sea of writhing bodies, something inside her awakening, becoming aware, all set to a beautifully sad Jeff Buckley tune.I don't think I've really spoiled anything here but I'm stopping before I do.
This are just my thoughts, why I think the movie fails (in the end - pun intended).Acting wise, Rosario Dawson is really good and almost conveys portraying someone almost a decade younger (a teenager in other words).
After the first rape takes place, Rosarios character doesn't tell anyone what happened.
But when Rosarios character meets her rapist in class again, his being in the movie seems pointless.
We get the point that Rosarios character isn't the same anymore, that she went "bad" and is able to hurt people.
As absurd as that sounds, the guy meets up with her, not without us having seen him beforehand, with another girl (very likely that he raped her too, although we never see anything of that, fortunately) and his football career.
If this really should work as a revenge movie, it would have been better if Rosarios character herself would have been doing all the "revenge".
Rosarios character is more or less, only watching what happens.
Which brings me to the biggest disappointment.Irreversible comparison: "Irreversible" had the rape scene, but the movie went on (even if it was back into time).
It is more interesting seeing were Rosarios character would go after the second rape scene and how she would cope, with what she had done.
a broken character that the movie cuts off ...Good intentions (Talia and Rosario had worked before), but failing to convey most of the things, they set out to do (even if you can see what they meant, it has to be convincing, otherwise it doesn't work) ...
Maya changes, and it isn't for the better.The revenge comes at the end, in an extended scene that takes up about the last 1/3 of the movie.
I've seen Rosario's work in other films (7 pounds, with Will Smith and Woody Harrelson comes to mind), but here, she is the perfect rendition of the character she portrays, and perhaps that's why some people are disturbed by this story and how it unfolds.No fluff here, it cuts to the bone in a range of interrelated themes which are perhaps a little too close to home for some, but I will offer this bit of insight, without providing a spoiler (which I never do in any reviews), the ending is, well .
As a victim, I feel that Dawson did a fantastic job in her role of Maya.
This looks at rape from a different, more realistic standpoint than any other movie I've ever seen on the subject.
i was so unsure if i was going to watch this and be disturbed for like a long time.
Got past the rape scene and i couldn't figure why people were so disturbed or bored by the movie.
It had about 3 of these pointless scenes, where you see the main character Maya kind of get out of control but it didn't show it right making me want to fast forward.
*3 out the 19 films starred an African-American main character (besides Descent).
While most films focused on male driven story-lines, Descent focused on a women's perspective, focusing on her unfolding after trauma.Descent focuses on Maya's day to day life, never explaining or commenting on the events, rather instead, letting the viewer feel it's passing scene for what it is.
Becoming this alter self as a means of strength, like the rape/revenge classics of the 70's, you get the same mechanics in Descent.
The scenes following the rape, you can really feel for Maya and see yourself in her position. |
tt0081334 | Phobia | Mehak Deo (Radhika Apte) is a highly talented artist. An unfortunate traumatic event - being molested by a taxi driver, causes her to develop extreme agoraphobia, a condition in which the individual is paranoid about being in public places and dislikes socializing with large groups of unknown people. Mehak’s sister Anusha (Nivedita Bhattacharya), initially supportive, becomes exhausted with her eccentric behavior, especially when it starts impacting her own 5 year old son.
Shaan (Satyadeep Mishra), a close friend, takes Mehak to an empty apartment, on the assumption that living alone for a while might benefit her. At the new apartment, Mehak befriends Nikki (Yashaswini Dayama), a college-going girl who lives in the neighbourhood. Her other neighbour Manu (Ankur Vikal) is working on anger management issues and is part of a community laughter club.
Manu is devastated because his girlfriend, Jiah Khurana (Amrit Bagchi), has left him. Jiah had earlier lived in Mehak’s new apartment and suddenly disappeared without a trace; without paying rent and without claiming her advance deposit back. A diary belonging to Jiah catches Mehek’s imagination and it is only a matter of time before she is convinced that a malevolent spirit is sharing her space. Soon Mehak begins making strong accusations against Manu, relating to Jiah's sudden departure and a series of strange events that occur around the apartment.
It is revealed that the visions Mehak experienced were actually of her own future, rather than that of Jiah. This is due to the fact that Jiah returns to the apartment suddenly, disproving the theory that she was murdered by Manu, something of which Mehak was convinced. Mehak realizes that she is capable of having glimpses of her future, as is indicated by one vision of her seeing 'smoke' coming out of a taxi - which is actually the pepper spray that she uses on the taxi driver. In the climactic scene, Mehaks vision once again coincides with reality, as a painting she created showing hands reaching out to her, mirrors the situation in which she is injured and goes out in the open for help, overcoming her condition. | mystery, murder | train | wikipedia | OK whodunit..
This certainly is not a great thriller (and it never aspired to be), but if you like low-budget B-movies, then you're likely to agree that it isn't THAT bad, either.
I happen to think that all whodunits are inherently interesting if they're executed with at least a minimum level of competence, and "Phobia" was directed by the legendary John Huston himself!
Far from his best work, yes, but he managed to keep my attention.
The "surprise" ending, though, is predictable.
John Huston directed THIS????.
A psychiatrist's (Paul Michael Glaser) patients are being killed using their own phobias.
Well...the tag line of the movie gives away the entire plot!
I caught this mess back in 1981 on cable TV LATE at night.
I watched it because I was bored and love horror movies.
Well...it WAS horrible!
For one thing Glaser (who can be good) walks through his role like he's on Valium.
The murders aren't even well-done and the identity of the killer is very obvious from the very beginning.You really got to wonder why John Huston picked this to direct.
He's good at dramas--not psychological horror films.
Whenever he tried to direct something different it was always a disaster.
Remember--he directed "Annie" which is considered one of the worst musicals put on film.
In this one he seems unsure of how to shot a suspenseful scene or pace the film.
This is dragged out and very very dull.This is basically a forgotten film--let's hope it stays that way!
Even Glaser said this was terrible.
A 1 all the way..
Terrible..
One word.
Describes everything.
So does boring, stupid, and ridiculous.
I can't believe John Huston was involved in this.
I can't believe Starsky was involved in this, I guess he was looking for work when the show ended.
Of course, he did go on to direct Kazaam, which also was boring, stupid, and ridiculous.
I want the 90+ minutes spent watching this back.
I rented this because the cover art and back synopsis looked interesting.
Trust me, its not..
Eminently forgettable.
The late, great John Huston apparently went on a bender and woke up in Canada where they plopped him in the director's chair to helm a tax-shelter "psychological" horror flick remarkably similar to "Schizoid", a slightly better Klaus Kinski vehicle released the same year.
An unorthodox psychiatrist finds that his patients are being murdered, ironically in ways that play to their greatest phobias.
So who could be the killer?
Well, I won't spoil it, but all you have to do is looking at the frickin' tag line.Besides being generic and dull, the main problem here is the male lead.
Canadians do tend to have an inferiority complex sometimes, but I find it hard to believe that they couldn't have found a greater thespian talent in that entire country than "Hutch" (or was it "Starsky"--I get confused?).
Paul Michael Glaser gives a central performance that is every bit as compelling as paint drying.
As for Huston, this fortunately wasn't his swan-song--he ended his life with an impressive troika of films, "Under the Volcano", "Prizzi's Honor", and "The Dead".
This was merely an unfortunate misstep for him.The only good thing I can say about this (and I'm really clutching for straws here), is that, also like "Schizoid", it does have a surprising and uncharacteristic nude scene by a young lovely of the Canadian tax shelter era.
With "Schizoid" it was Donna Wilkes; here it is Lisa Langlois, who was in Claude Chabrol's "Blood Relatives" and any number of Canadian films better than this (maybe THAT was the whole reason I watched this years back--who knows?).
Other than that small favor though its eminently forgettable.
Don't be afraid to watch John Huston's supposedly "worst" movie.
If some movie magazine ever comes up with the bright idea of putting together a list entitled "the top 100 most idiotic ways to spoil a movie", than the number 1 spot is undoubtedly reserved for "simply reading the tagline for John Huston's Phobia!".
Seriously, if you are considering to watch this film and you haven't yet paid any attention to reading the tagline, well then
DON'T!
I mean, guessing the denouement of the film isn't exactly quantum physics, but the stupid tagline just gives away the end twist.
Other than that "Phobia" honestly wasn't as bad as I was led to believe, in fact.
I almost exclusively read reviews and user comments stating that "Phobia" is a terribly boring thriller effort and undeniably the absolute low point in John Huston's overall magnificent career.
Well okay, in spite of all the warnings, I still desperately wanted to see it for two reasons.
First and foremost, it might be an inferior John Huston film but it's still remains a John Huston film and they should always be worth checking out!
Besides, this is the only horror movie Huston directed, even though he starred in a couple of weird Italian ones like "Tentacles" and "The Visitor".
Secondly, and this is truly a personal weakness of mine, the movie poster very much appealed to me.
The simply image of a face, half covered in darkness and half depicting people's death struggles is already a lot scarier than the entire content of most other thrillers.
In all honesty, I'm really glad that I took the effort of tracking down "Phobia" and I would definitely encourage other people not to base your judgment on the negative reviews.
This isn't a terrific thriller, obviously, mainly due to the slow pacing and continuous predictability of the script, but it nevertheless contains a few good ideas and even a handful of genuinely suspenseful and macabre moments.
I found the basic subject matter to be very interesting and full of horrific potential, maybe partly because I have a couple of bizarre and inexplicable phobias myself.
Paul Michael Glaser (yes yes, the original Starsky!) plays the acclaimed but slightly controversial psychiatrist Dr. Peter Ross.
With the support of his hospital, he started a project to help a test group of five patients get over their various phobias including heights, crowded places, drowning and snakes.
Dr Ross' methods are unorthodox and even dangerous, as he literally forces his patients to confront their fears and pushes them quite far into them.
Shortly after having received the media's attention, Ross' patients start dying under mysterious circumstances and each one according to their own phobia.
I've been watching horror practically my entire life and I really think that there aren't enough movies that deal with people's fears.
"Phobia" is not a great or highly memorable effort, but at least it's decent and attempts to thrive on slow-brooding tension instead of on cheap shocks and gore.
The film admittedly has too many shortcomings, like the clichéd selection of phobias and the truly disappointing climax, but several sequences are properly elaborated and the wholesome is definitely worth watching..
John Huston's worst movie.
I do say this with a heavy heart, because I love John Huston.
He is a terrific director, and I loved some of his acting performances too(ie.
Chinatown).
However, Phobia was just awful and didn't work on any level.
In fact, out of the John Huston-directed movies I have seen(which is a lot), Phobia is by far his worst.
Much worse than Victory(or Escape to Victory), which for me was quite enjoyable despite being silly, predictable and clichéd.
Much worse than The Unforgiven, despite one or two scenes that could have been better thought-out and a miscast it does have a talented ensemble cast, looks gorgeous and was quite interesting.
And also much worse than Annie, granted Huston's direction wasn't the best it could have been, but Annie is a childhood favourite, has marvellous songs and some great performances, plus I think it has a lot of charm and doesn't deserve to be down there among the worst musicals not like Xanadu, Can't Stop the Music, Grease 2 and Mame.About Phobia, when I watched it, I found very little about it that was good.
Huston's direction is not good here, out of his movies Phobia is his most ineptly directed movie.
It is a shame, because when Huston is good he is just terrific, but I could tell that his heart wasn't in it.
I could also say the same for Paul Michael Glaser, I agree he can be good but that is not the case here.
He doesn't seem interested at all in this movie and literally sleepwalks through his role.
I also thought the look of the film was shoddy, the camera angles are slip-shod and the lighting is very dull even in the less-dark scenes.The dialogue is poor and unfocused, while Andre Gagnon's music is forgettable and drab.
The story is also dreadfully constructed, very drawn out and uninteresting with more-laughable-than-shocking murders, countless contrivances and an ending that you could smell a mile off.
The characters lack any credibility, especially the culprit who I knew the identity of far too soon, while the sluggish pace alone kills this movie.All in all, an awful movie and the only movie of John Huston's actually that I dislike intensely.
1/10 Bethany Cox. PHOBIA (John Huston, 1980) **.
During the 1970s, it was not an uncommon sight to have maverick Hollywood director John Huston slumming it out as an actor in often desperate, generic and star-studded international productions like TENTACLES (1977; whose fairly recent viewing did no favors to my childhood memories of it) and THE VISITOR (1979; which, surprisingly, turned out to be a far more satisfying watch than I could have ever imagined); this he did, no doubt, to obtain finance for the more personal of his projects as a director but, after WISE BLOOD (1979) – one of his most acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful latter-day films – he was forced to take the 'safe' course even behind the camera as he followed this in quick succession with three totally routine and impersonal assignments that belied his creative involvement.
The first of these was the Canadian horror-thriller under review that boasted some interesting credentials: writers Jimmy Sangster (the doyen of Hammer Films' scribes), Gary (RAW MEAT) Sherman and Ronald (ALIEN) Shusett (who probably sold off their original story because they were contemporaneously shooting the superior "Video Nasty", DEAD AND BURIED) and actors – TV star Paul Michael Glaser and Canadians John Colicos and Alexandra Stewart.Glaser had just finished his four-year stint as "Starsky" in the popular cop series and this was his first (and, as it happened, only) shot at the title of a Hollywood leading man in the movies; he had previously only had supporting roles in films like FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1971) and, after this non-starter, he would concentrate his efforts on directing – mostly for TV but also one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's more notable star vehicles, the Sci-Fi actioner THE RUNNING MAN (1987).
Glaser plays a shrink with a novel and radical technique of confronting phobics head-on with their fears in his 'treatment' room but, given the experimental nature of it, his patients so far are 5 convicted criminals.
Before long, they start getting knocked off: agoraphobic Stewart, traumatized by her 'cure' of spending some time in a densely-populated train station, runs to find comfort in Glaser's apartment – only to be blown away by a booby-trapped drawer(!); a nerdy war veteran, suspected by bullying Detective Colicos of this foul play, goes nuts in the police station and dashes off to a place high up in a nearby building site to test his acrophobia by leaping to his death (despite the last-minute counsel of Glaser – who is forever being interrupted during his extra-curricular activities to tick off another patient off his list!); a frigid girl, subjected to footage of a gang rape by the friendly doctor, needs to wash off that filthy feeling presto and is, inevitably, drowned in the bathtub by a pair of gloved hands; a claustrophobic punkish youth flips out at the news of the latest murder and, eventually, gets crushed in an elevator shaft at the apartment block where Glaser's girlfriend lives; a colored ophidiophobic (a fear with which I admit to be afflicted myself) is bitten by a rattlesnake – despite having been made to finally touch a reptile only a few days before.Despite the would-be juicy roster of red herring victim-suspects, there are only two viable suspects: one being Glaser's former girlfriend, a fellow psychiatrist who might have every reason to see his new technique fail but, when during a conversation with her replacement in Glaser's empty office, it transpires that the latter was saddled with a guilt complex following his younger sister's death in childhood, the stage is set for a crazed Glaser proudly confessing his part in the murders to his girl and shooting himself in the head right in front of her!
The film is often thought of as Huston's directorial nadir but, actually PHOBIA is not as unwatchably bad as some reviewers would have us believe: quite simply, it is just too predictable for a whodunnit, too tame for a slasher movie and Glaser too detached ("magnificently" so, in fact, as per the script!) for the audience to care about his fate.
For the record, this viewing came as another belated tribute to the late Jimmy Sangster and, apparently, the premise is awfully similar to the contemporaneous Klaus Kinski shocker, SCHIZOID (which I am not familiar with)...but I did watch Richard Rush's even more maligned COLOR OF NIGHT (1994) fairly recently and, all in all, that oversexed later film was an understandably more enjoyable ride than the Huston film proved to be!.
Boring and Undeveloped.
Dr. Peter Ross is a well-known psychologist, operating in Toronto.
He is trying out a new experiment, to try and cure his patient's phobia's.
His patients have all been given to him by a jail, and are all criminals.
They all suffer from various phobias, from fear of falling to fear of snakes.
His radical new treatment involves making them face their worst fears, in order to overcome them.Unfortunately trouble comes his way, when his patients begin to start dying mysteriously, according to their various phobias...This film is bad.
Good, just wanted to get that out of the way.
So why is it bad?
It had an interesting premise, but the actors look bored to death in their roles, including Paul Michael Glaser in the lead.
The direction is sloppy, especially for an old pro like Huston.
The plot chugs along at a snails pace.
There is no horror, and barely any laughs.
Even seeing a city I know and love like Toronto in the early 80's wasn't enough to hold my attention.
They even give the ending away in the tag line.I find that when writing a positive review, I have more fun.
I had no fun writing this review, just as I had no fun watching this film.
Don't get me wrong, it has its good points.
The score is well done, especially for a horror film, and it holds make where most composers would go for a screeching violin, an admirable move.
The plot is intriguing, even if it isn't carried out well.
I did have fun recognizing some landmarks that I know from the city.Unfortunately that's it.
So I guess I'll start with the actors.
The cast is pretty no name.
Glaser, as I mentioned above seems bored, and his character is very one note.
Susan Hogan, playing his girlfriend, really isn't given anything to do, so to criticize her to harshly would be unfair.
John Colicos gives a performance as the stereotypical red blooded cop, that can only be defined as uninspiring and unoriginal.The cast that patients are all good at reacting to their horrific fears in a cheesy way that, unfortunately, brings neither laughs nor fears.
The screenplay by a trio of writers is dull and lifeless, at least that's the way it was portrayed on screen.
It is neither horrific nor cheesy.
The film would have been best made as a psychological drama, but unfortunately the way it is carried out is not as such.The score, as I mentioned above, is one of the few saving graces of the film.
It isn't great, but it's better than the rest of the film.
The cinematography is ordinary to say the least, and the copy I had was full of dull colors and popping sound bites.
It may not be the cinematographers fault that no one has taken the time to remaster the visuals, but it did hamper my viewing experience.And now to the direction.
I have no idea how Huston ever came to make this film.
Yes, It's that bad.
Huston's direction is so laconic and uninvolved, that it doesn't surprise me that this was his only horror film, he was far better adept at dramas.
There is a scene when Glaser reaches out to stop a patient from jumping, Huston just keeps the shoot wide the whole time, infuriating me by not adding any close-ups.
Maybe it's just me but I found that scene lacking for that very reason.Overall, this film has the reputation of being John Huston's worst film.
I won't deny that I felt like nodding off during the film, but I kept myself awake so I could write this review.
It is a truly terrible film, and as a Canadian, I feel sorry for anyone who watches this film.
Please, if you want to watch a good Canadian film, watch Mon Oncle Antoine, or Going' Down The Road.
Don't watch Phobia.Phobia: A Descent Into Terror, 1980, Starring: Paul Michael Glaser, Susan Hogan and John Colicos.
Directed by John Huston, 2.5/10 (F)(This is part of an ongoing project to watch and review every John Huston movie.
You can view this and other reviews at http://everyjohnhustonmovie.blogspot.ca/) |
tt0341455 | Makdee | Life in Chunni's village is all peace and quiet, and great fun. She fools the villagers including her parents with her impersonation of her twin sister, Munni.
In the village, there is a mansion that is said to be haunted and legend goes that a witch called Makdee (Shabana Azmi) resides there. The legend has it that whosoever wanders into the mansion, comes out as an animal! No one in the village dares to enter the mansion.
Things are going fine for Chunni until the day one of her pranks gets quite out of hand. Chunni, her sister and her friend Mughal-e-azam are constantly at the odds with the local butcher, Kallu (Makarand Deshpande). Once Kallu chases Munni, Chunni's docile twin to the mansion mistaking her for Chunni in a fit of rage. As a result of this, Munni, her docile sister, enters the mansion, where presumably the witch has turned the little girl into a hen. Chunni is hysterical when she discovers this. She runs from pillar to post to get help, but her credibility is at an all-time low and the entire village refuses to believe her, so Chunni finally enters the haunted mansion alone to search for her sister.
In the mansion she comes face to face with the witch, she pleads with the witch to let her poor little sister go, as it was no fault of hers. But the witch asks her to strike a deal. She will turn Munni back into a human only if Chunni can acquire for her hundred hens in exchange.
All of a sudden, Chunni is confronted with the biggest challenge of her life.
Chunni's school master visits the mansion but a small puppy is seen exiting the mansion and people presume the witch has turned him into a puppy. Mughal-e-azam after spotting the puppy realizes it is his pet dog that had entered the mansion and has disappeared ever since. Its then Chunni realises that all this was just a ruse. Makdee is not a witch and she does not really turn humans into animals; she merely locks them up and has some plans of her own. All the people locked up are finally freed and the village finds a new hero in Chunni. | prank | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0057565 | Tengoku to jigoku | A wealthy executive named Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is in a struggle to gain control of a company called National Shoes. One faction wants the company to make cheap, low quality shoes for the impulse market as opposed to the sturdy but unfashionable shoes currently being produced. Gondo believes that the long-term future of the company will be best served by well made shoes with modern styling, though this plan is unpopular because it means lower profits in the short term. He has secretly set up a leveraged buyout to gain control of the company, mortgaging all he has.
Just as he is about to put his plan into action, he receives a phone call from someone claiming to have kidnapped his son, Jun. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom, but the call is dismissed as a prank when Jun comes in from playing outside. However, Jun's playmate, Shinichi, the child of Gondo's chauffeur, is missing and the kidnappers have mistakenly abducted him instead.
In another phone call the kidnapper reveals that he has discovered his mistake but still demands the same ransom. Gondo is now forced to make a decision about whether to pay the ransom to save the child or complete the buyout. After a long night of contemplation Gondo announces that he will not pay the ransom, explaining that doing so would not only mean the loss of his position in the company, but cause him to go into debt and throw the futures of his wife and son into jeopardy. His plans are weakened when his top aide lets the "cheap shoes" faction know about the kidnapping in return for a promotion should they take over. Finally, under pressure from his wife and the chauffeur, Gondo decides to pay the ransom. Following the kidnapper's instructions, the money is put into two small briefcases and thrown from a moving train; Shinichi is found unharmed.
Gondo is forced out of the company and his creditors demand the collateral in lieu of debt. The story is widely reported however, making Gondo a hero, while the National Shoe Company is vilified and boycotted. Meanwhile, the police eventually find the hideout where Shinichi was kept prisoner. The bodies of the kidnapper's two accomplices are found there, killed by an overdose of heroin. The police surmise that the kidnapper engineered their deaths by supplying them with uncut drugs. Further clues lead to the identity of the kidnapper, a medical intern at a nearby hospital, but there is no hard evidence linking him to the accomplices' murders. The police lay a trap by first planting a story in the newspapers implying that the accomplices are still alive, and then forging a note from them demanding more drugs. The kidnapper is apprehended in the act of trying to supply another lethal dose of uncut heroin to his accomplices. Most of the ransom money is recovered, but too late to save Gondo's property from auction. With the kidnapper facing a death sentence, he and Gondo finally meet face to face. Gondo has gone to work for a rival shoe company, earning less money but enjoying a free hand in running it. The kidnapper reveals that envy from seeing Gondo's house on the hill every day led him to conceive of the crime. | bleak, neo noir, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0048588 | The Scarlet Coat | In 1780, General Benedict Arnold commands the Continental Army defences at West Point, New York. Major John Bolton (Cornel Wilde), a dragoon officer assigned to counter-intelligence, intercepts and kills a British spy leaving the Storm King Tavern, and captures a letter found on his body. He reports to Gen. Robert Howe (John McIntire), that the coded message was from the British spy calling himself "Gustavus" to "James Osborn", in care of Dr. Jonathan Odell of New York, stating that Arnold has taken command at West Point. The secret knowledge indicates that the spy is a "highly placed person". Bolton returns to the tavern, where one of his contacts, stableboy Ben Potter (Bobby Driscoll), tells him that the Tory wife of a redcoat, Mrs. Sally Cameron (Anne Francis), is travelling under a flag of truce possibly carrying information to the enemy. She catches them searching her room, where Bolton takes her safe conduct pass after verbally sparring with her. Mrs. Cameron tries to seduce Bolton to obtain its return, but he rebuffs her. A messenger arrives with a package for "Mr. Moody," but when no one by that name can be found, another traveler, Col. Winfield, offers to deliver the package. Bolton recognizes that Winfield is an imposter, and in a struggle over the package, kills him. Other American officers arrest Bolton for murder and deliver him to Howe.
A pass through the lines found hidden in Winfield's boot reveals that the impostor was actually Moody, a spy, who had another coded letter from "Gustavus" to "Osborn" in his possession. The package, a ream of blank paper, concealed a message from "Osborn" written in invisible ink requesting an urgent meeting to finalize an unknown arrangement. Howe proposes that Bolton feign desertion to the British. Bolton agrees, aware that he could be hanged if the British discover his mission. With Moody's pass, Bolton passes through the British lines, but the British lieutenant on duty recognizes that he is not the same man who previously used the pass and follows him. In New York, Bolton calls upon Dr. Odell (George Sanders), trying to deliver the letter. The lieutenant bursts in to arrest Bolton, but when he addresses him as "Mr. Moody", Odell takes Bolton and the letter to British Army Major John André (Michael Wilding) for deciphering, using a pair of spectacles to isolate key words. Bolton claims that he was Moody's source of information. He offers to continue working for the British. Odell bluntly tells Bolton that he thinks his story is too neat and believes him to be a Rebel spy. But André takes an immediate liking to Bolton. He invites him to a dinner party that evening, where Bolton suffers an anxious moment when Sally Cameron (unmarried and André's mistress) is present. Bolton's explanation corroborates information about the murder that André had checked, and Sally provides the perfect eyewitness.
Bolton is sent with two Tory agents to sabotage the chain barrier across the Hudson River before a British attack on the American position at Verplanck, so that British warships can pass. André gives one a letter to deliver afterwards at the Storm King Tavern. Bolton drowns one agent, but when he tries to arrest the other, is confronted by an armed Ben Potter, who still thinks that Bolton is a murderer and deserter. The agent disarms Ben and nearly kills Bolton. Ben finds his gun and shoots the agent. At a secret meeting with Howe, Bolton uses spectacles to decipher the letter, which points to Gustavus as someone at West Point with authority. Bolton volunteers to return to New York to identify the mysterious "James Osborn." Odell more than ever believes Bolton is a spy, but Bolton convinces André that the British agents completed their mission.
To trap him, Odell writes a false dispatch from "Mr. Osborn" for Bolton to steal. At another dinner, Bolton notices that Sally Cameron only pretends to toast the King. She has also fallen in love with him and warns Bolton about Odell's trap. The British attack on Verplanck is crushed and results in Bolton's arrest as a Rebel spy. He is saved from hanging by André, who intervenes for him after Sally confesses her feelings for Bolton and begs him to vouch on Bolton's behalf. He does so, despite her refusal of his marriage proposal. Putting duty before personal considerations, André asks Bolton to accompany him to a meeting between "Gustavus" and "Osborn" aboard the sloop Vulture. André assures Bolton that "Gustavus" and "Osborn" have conjured a quick end to the war. The wily "Gustavus" changes the meeting at the last moment to the house of a Tory sympathizer and orders André to come alone. Bolton persuades André to go in uniform, and not in civilian clothing, lest he be captured as a spy. Soon after, Odell detects Bolton warning American shore batteries of the British presence, but Bolton escapes by swimming ashore to the American garrison. The American commander, Col. Jameson (James Westerfield), is skeptical of Bolton's loyalties and stubbornly holds him until Howe can vouch for him. "Gustavus" escapes. "Osborn" is captured and Bolton realizes that Benedict Arnold is "Gustavus." To his horror, Bolton learns that "Osborn" is André, and worse, that he changed into civilian clothes trying to escape.
At André's court-martial, Bolton testifies that André entered the lines in uniform and changed into civilian clothing only at Arnold's treacherous orders. The court reluctantly sentences André to be executed as a spy. André pledges his continuing friendship with Bolton and asks him to protect Sally from any retribution. Bolton brokers a last-minute deal to exchange André for Arnold, but André considers the suggestion a taint on his honour and declines. | intrigue, murder | train | wikipedia | At the film's beginning, a card tells us this is to be about Benedict Arnold's unmasking as a traitor.
So, I expected the usual historical action film, depicting the heroic Americans and the villainous British.
And, at first, the film seemed to be going this way.But then, it became richer as it focused not so much on Benedict Arnold as on Major John Andre, the British Adjutant General, and Major John Boulton, an American secret agent.
The essential plot point is that Boulton will pretend to desert the American forces and go over to the British, his object being to learn who the mysterious Gustavus is.
Gustavus is a pseudonym for an American (Arnold, of course) who is revealing secrets of the American forces to the British.But once Boulton has "defected," he encounters two very interesting men.
The other is Major John Andre, who accepts Boulton as a true defector.
In his guise as defector, Boulton appears to be a man without ideals, someone interested in making money for the information that he can carry.As the film develops, Boulton and Andre come to respect each other, tho they are men on opposite sides.
And Andre comes across as a loyal British subject, a man of integrity.
Were it not for the war, these people might be good friends and work together.In the climatic scene, Andre is found guilty of enticing Arnold to betray his country, even to offering Arnold money for information.
As Andre makes clear, that is his job, and there are Americans who are trying to do the same thing with British officers as well.
And Washington does provide a solution: If Andre will sign the papers, he will be exchanged for Arnold, who has deserted to the British and is among their troops.
Andre rises to heroic status in this scene, a man to be respected, and a true British patriot, willing to sacrifice his life for his ideals.
The costumes rival the colors of nature, particularly the scarlet coats of the British officers.
The film makes fine use of the Cinemascope aspect ratio.My only objection to the sets is this: Everything looks new, as if the furniture had just been purchased at a local store, as if the painters had just left yesterday, the lawn crews had just finished mowing the grass and tending the flower beds.
But here his British demeanor and accent are perfectly correct for Andre, and Wilde's rougher looks are correct for the American he plays.Sanders is also satisfactory in a good part of the suspicious doctor.
And Bobby Driscoll--remember him from "Song of the South"?--has a small supporting part as a teenager anxious to join the Revolutionary forces.Anne Francis is window dressing as Sally Cameron, whom both Andre and Boulton are in love with.
At his end, Andre asks Boulton to look to Sally, for, should the Colonists win the war, she will probably be treated as a traitor because of her late husband's British sympathies.The script was written by Karl Tunberg, who'd done the script for "Beau Brummel" just before this.
One of the intriguing aspects of this historical drama is the way the "Tories" or British American Loyalists are portrayed, and the sort of gloss given to their ardent support for King George III.
If there is a strong criticism to be made of this film, it is that perhaps the people in this story are made out to be a little bit nicer than they were in real life.In some regards, the actions of the character of Major Boulton, played by Cornel Wilde, make him the least likable member of the cast and the flaw in the storyline.
This film does concentrate heavily on the notions of personal honor and personal prestige which were a major social 'norm' in that day and age.In its subtext, the fact that about twenty-five percent of the colonial population was decidedly pro-British is glossed over, too.
She was a good choice for the woman of divided loyalties, a 'gal' who was rather more modern than the social conventions of that day might have allowed -- if there had not been a life and death struggle going on.One good aspect of the film is the way the rivalries of the American revolutionary leaders degenerated into outright jealousies, and how these personal conflicts very nearly sabotaged the entire revolutionary effort.
It rates a seven largely because Cornel Wilde is so deeply immersed in his role, and does it so well, and because Anne Francis makes the most of her supporting effort.The color print used on Turner Classic Movies was very clear, as well, and so it was an enjoyable presentation in that important regard.Hope it runs again soon..
A Rarity - a good film about the American Revolution!.
Except for 1776 the other two films have stars in them (1776 had some good character actors, William Daniel as John Adams - repeating his stage performance fortunately - and Howard De Silva as Ben Franklin - even in the small role of Edward Rutledge there is John Cullum singing that fascinating economic lecture "Mollasses to Rum to Slave".).
A sad list - fortunately there is 1776 and DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK and THE SCARLET COAT.The conspiracy of Benedict Arnold - Sir Henry Clinton - and Major John Andre is a subject that has only appeared in two movies - and oddly enough both were good.
However, only the first twenty minutes of the film deal with the conspiracy at all (though the plot hinges on clearing Costello's name of treason charges).
THE SCARLET COAT is a solid dramatic treat, and wisely concentrates on the real tragic hero in the story: Major John Andre.
Yes, he was a spy, and had he succeeded American history would have been part of the British Empire for at least another century (Arnold was selling more than control of West Point and the Hudson - Washington and his staff were scheduled to be there on the day the trap would have been sprung).
But unlike Arnold (whatever blows he unfairly received after doing such marvelous service for the American cause up to 1777) Andre never betrayed his country - he was fighting for his king and homeland, and thought he was in the right.
Michael Wilding makes this point very eloquently in the film's court-martial scene.
As a result, the viewer's sympathies (as well as those of Cornell Wilde's character, and all the other characters in the film) remain with the Major even unto death.
It is interesting to note that in the 19th Century the Arnold Conspiracy did remain the subject of American drama - but the play that held the boards was not named "Arnold" but "Andre".
THE SCARLET COAT (John Sturges, 1955) **1/2.
Somehow, despite numerous screenings on TCM U.K. over the years, I never bothered with this one; then, when it seemed to drop off their schedule, I acquired THE SCARLET COAT – along with a few other genuinely rare Cornel Wilde efforts – on DVD-R (culled, ironically, from one such TV broadcast) through a friend!
Anyway, I now begrudge all the more the fact of having overlooked the film for so long since I enjoyed it a good deal; incidentally, for some odd reason, I have never been particularly enthused of pictures set during the American War of Independence – so that may well be the reason why I did not actively pursue this one.
Another obvious draw, then, were the principal actors: Wilde as the patriot ordered to defect (by his superior, John McIntire) to the British ranks in order to unearth the mole who is passing them information about the enemy's movements (which turns out to be a prominent military figure, Benedict Arnold, played by Robert Douglas – though, that, in itself was a bit of a giveaway even to viewers unfamiliar with American history!); co-star Michael Wilding is the English officer who takes Wilde under his wing (against the better judgment of doctor comrade George Sanders, amusing in characteristic cynical mode) and suffers the consequences of this blind faith – albeit yielding mutual respect (which not even the woman, Anne Francis, who comes between them can negate!) – with his life.
For the record, I almost gave this a *** rating but decided against this given the fact that the film loses some momentum in its last lap – due to the (necessarily) involved plotting, an unfortunate lapse into cliché (Wilde is thrown into prison by his own side at the proverbial eleventh-hour, thus allowing the traitor Arnold to flee and Wilding to be intercepted and face the music all alone!) and over length (even if a fade-out clinch between Wilde and Francis should not have been amiss, to counterpoint the ensuing glumness concerning Wilding's fate).
scarlet coat like most revolution flicks wasnt well received but is nears perfection in the art of movie making.
a great character study of john andre the heroic redcoat who is revered by both friend and foe for courage,,, scarlett coat also probes the duality of the undercover agent ,,, as a counterfeit traitor maj bolton befriends andre and undertakes a high level penetration of british intelligence yet he defends andre in andre's courtmartial ...
the film captures the moral ambiguity of the spyhow much of the spy's world is real ,,, which reality does he belong to the reality of his mision or the reality which the cover story createsandre's capture and courtmartial is a success for bolton in his mission beyond that whch wahington would have ever demanded ,,, the mission was merely to identify the traitor in us ranks ,,, bolton has knocked out enemy intelligence as well ,,, yet bolton mourns the death of the man he was sent to destroyann francis plays a stock american character,,, compliant with the british but willing to engage them in a war of witsa movie well worth revisiting.
Although no one should depend on this film for his honor's thesis on the American Revolution.
But this account of the foiling of the plot of Benedict Arnold to betray the American Revolution is certainly a fine drama with Cornel Wilde in the lead as an American secret agent who stops the Arnold betrayal of the fort at West Point way before the site became where the U.S. Military Academy is located.
Wilde is no James Bond type spy, he's got the charm of an 18th century Bond, but he survives on his wits not any gadgets.The focus on this story is Major John Andre who was the go between for Arnold with the British.
Andre is played with the charm and heroic dash that he has come down in history with by Michael Wilding.
He's captured but Arnold escapes and joins the British army in the last year of the Revolution.
A little too late for the Mother country to put his knowledge to good use.Although I liked this film very much I wish a film would come out with Arnold as the central character instead of Andre.
the scarlet coat is about bendict arnold betraying his country but he really isn't in the movie too much the main focus is on major Boulton (cornell wilde) and major Andre (micheal wilding)Wilding steals the movie as a officer and a gentlemen also as a freind to Boulton.
As Boulton tries to uncover who is gustavus the man leaking secerts to the british.Wilde has to deal with the british the suspisous Dr o"dell(George Sanders)who watches his every move and love intrest Anne Francis this is a very enjoyable movie.
Although Cornel Wilde gets top billing as an American double agent, the true star of this film is Major John Andre (Michael Wilding), the British officer who was captured as a spy and hanged for his plot with Benedict Arnold to betray West Point.
Unfortunately the acting is wooden by almost everyone, so a good story and some interesting moral dilemmas are hard to hit home.My one and only favorite American Revolution film is John Ford's classic "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939).
"The Revolution" (2006), and "John Adams" (2008) are probably one of the best sources about the period.
If you like Pre Revolution 18th Century American history, Michael Mann's breath-taking "Last of the Mohicans" (1992) is a great film from this period, as is King Vidor's "Northwest Passage" (1940)..
It seems rather strange that with the American Revolution being so important that very few films have been made about it...even by Hollywood.
In fact, during the 1930s, Hollywood made tons of films about the British Empire and how magnificent it was...which is rather strange as well!
While "The Scarlet Coat" is not one of the best of them, it is one of the few American Revolution films you can find.The story purports to be true and while I know nothing about Major Boulton (Cornel Wilde), the other events in the movie are based on the true story of Benedict Arnold and his becoming a traitor to the United States' cause.
Boulton is a spy who pretends to be working for the Brits and the film consists of him working hard to determine WHO the British are contacting within the Continental Army.
There is nothing wrong with this movie other than the fact that it is a bit talky AND there's a female relationship in the film that seems unnecessary.
Both those Films are Above Average but Hardly Deserve their Elevated Status as "Classics".This has One Stodgy Scene after Another, the Movie Barely Moves and the Highlights are the Technicolor Cinemascope Postcard Images and some Good, Interesting Dialog.
Anne Francis is a Stunning Beauty but doesn't do much, Cornel Wilde is a Dashing Swordsman but is Robotic if Interested most of the time, but the Standout Performance is Michael Wilding as the Central Character of the Piece Maj. John Andre.The Benedict Arnold Hook is Background and this may have the most Unexciting Action Sequences in a War Film Ever.
John Sturges is a good director & this film shows it.
Still, Sturges brings a solid story to the fore & the camera work on the film is quite stunning.
Karl Tunberg's script is well envisioned by the director.Cornel Wilde's Major John Boulton is a very solid character, a revolutionary whose mission is to spy on the British convincing them he is a Tory & report back to General Washington.
He forms a friendship that is quite compelling with Major John Andre (Michael Wilding).
Both men are in love with Sally Cameron (Anne Francis) which is the triangle the story is built around.Where it doesn't ring true is in how good & ethical these people are.
Still this drama is quite a compelling telling of the treason of Benedict Arnold (Robert Douglas).
Spy Story Focused on Major John Andre.
Most films about the American Revolution don't seem to do well at the box office, and the "The Scarlet Coat" appears to have been no exception.
Instead, "The Scarlet Coat" is really a spy story, centered around the unmasking of Benedict Arnold.
All Americans are aware that Benedict Arnold was an arch- traitor whose name is universally reviled.
That is the subject of "The Scarlet Coat".Unfortunately, however, little is revealed concerning Arnold himself, or his motivations.
The real subject of "The Scarlet Coat" is the relationship between two spies, American Major John Boulton and British Major John Andre.
Despite the fact that the outcome of the war hangs in the balance over the success of their respective enterprises, they are depicted as having been good friends.
Of the men two Andre is presented as being by the far the more interesting character of the two.Among movies about the American revolution, "The Scarlet Coat" stands apart in that it does not depict the British as overbearing tyrants.
As played by Michael Wilding, Major Andre comes off as an intelligent and gallant gentleman, highly regarded by both friends and foes alike.
It is Major Andre's tragic downfall that provides the climax of the film.
A British officer's red coat, purporting to be that worn by Major Andre, is on display in the Inn, though I cannot vouch for it's authenticity.
*Spoiler/plot- The Scarlet Coat, 1955.
In the American colonies during 1780s, a 'Major John Boulton' is recruited by Colonial intelligence as a counterspy who will fake colonial desertion to the British occupying army.
Boulton's mission is to discover the identity of an American traitor with the code name 'Gustavus'.
Boulton wins the friendship and respect of British officer and spy-master, Major John Andre.
While doing so, Boulton discovers that the traitor is none other than American hero and General George Washington's friend, General Benedict Arnold.
*Special Stars- Cornel Wilde, Michael Wilding, George Sanders, Anne Francis, Robert Douglas, John McIntire, Rhys Williams.*Theme- War is a dirty but honorable business.
Interesting bit of historic storytelling from the early 50's during the Cold War.*Based on- The story of General Benedict Arnold..
U.S. release: 19 August 1955.
U.K. release: 23 April 1955.
Australian release: 6 September 1955.
SYNOPSIS: In 1780, Washington places General Benedict Arnold in charge of the garrison at West Point.COMMENT: Although critics blamed director John Sturges for the lack of tension and suspense in this promising story idea, the blame should have been sheeted home to Karl "Fumble-Fingers" Tunberg who allows the film's central character, Benedict Arnold, to simply disappear after an elaborate (and well-written) introduction.
Instead the screenplay focuses on a subsidiary figure, Major John Andre, so pallidly played by Michael Wilding, he allows everyone in sight (except Anne Francis) to steal his scenes.
As for Mr. Wilde, he is forced to struggle with a role that both he and Sturges (and the movie-going public) knew was quite beyond his range.
Despite a lot of money up there on the screen, including its rich production values in costumes, locations and splendid autumnal CinemaScope panoramas, M-G-M was forced to sell "The Scarlet Coat" to exhibitors as a "B" attraction. |
tt4559006 | Ae Dil Hai Mushkil | In London, a chance meeting between Ayan Sanger and Alizeh Khan ends up with them kissing instinctively. Later, when they break up with their lovers, Lisa D'Souza and Dr. Faisal Khan, the two begin to spend time together at discos, restaurants, and tourist places. While Ayan falls in love with Alizeh, she considers him to be a friend. One day, Alizeh stumbles upon DJ Ali, her ex-boyfriend, who wants to reconcile. Confused, Alizeh stops hanging out with Ayan and they cease communication. A few days later, Alizeh calls and invites Ayan to her wedding with Ali in Lucknow. Ayan is petrified on hearing this but agrees to the invitation. At the wedding, he tells Alizeh he loves her but she rejects his feelings causing Ayan to leave the ceremony heartbroken.
At the airport to board a flight to Frankfurt, Ayan meets Saba, a poet, who is leaving for Vienna. She consoles Ayan and gives him a note with her poetry and number on it. Ayan calls after three months stating that he is in Vienna and wants to meet her. Saba meets him at a disco. Ayan learns that Saba is divorced and has no place for love in her heart. Ayan also meets Saba's ex-husband, Tahir Taliyar Khan in a gallery, who tells him that love is not a weakness but empowering. Ayan who had blocked Alizeh from everywhere, finally calls and reconnects with her. Ayan begins to send pictures of Saba to Alizeh to induce jealousy. One day Alizeh informs Ayan that she's coming to Vienna and wants to meet him. Ayan invites her for dinner, but Alizeh thinks Ayan has found love in Saba and is happy for him. Meanwhile, Saba begins to develop feelings for Ayan, but he loves Alizeh. Seeing his love for Alizeh, Saba leaves Ayan.
Ayan continues to harbour love for Alizeh and becomes a famous singer. He meets Ali one day and realises that they have parted ways. Ayan goes to Alizeh's favourite point and waits there until she arrives.
Alizeh tells Ayan that she is diagnosed with cancer stage IV and will not live much longer. Ayan and Alizeh try to make the best of their time together. Ayan tries to make Alizeh love him, but Alizeh is stubborn. This leads to a fight between the two, and Alizeh decides to leave Ayan. Eventually, Ayan makes peace with the fact that he and Alizeh can at best be friends and nothing more. The screen blacks out and goes back to the beginning where Ayan, still a popular singer, is giving an interview based on the love of his life. Ayan sings the song "Channa Mereya" which is inspired by Alizeh, then finishes the interview. | romantic, flashback | train | wikipedia | You can't get better-looking actors than Ranbir Kapoor-Aishwarya Rai Bachchan-Anushka Sharma-Fawad Khan..
Love is depicted here only through a few kisses and an unnecessary out-of-place kind of an intimate scene!!What you get is incessant yak-yak (you want to tell these impeccably- styled people to stop and draw breath and then speak, so that they, and we, can absorb the moment they've created); and non-stop background music (if it is real, you don't have to underline it).Meet Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor), Alizeh (Anushka Sharma), Saba (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) and Ali (Fawad Khan), the four who play ring around the roses with each other.Ayan is 'private-jet' rich but wants to be a singer, the out-going Alizeh loves Ali, and the happily divorced Saba is looking for love.The most flavorsome relationship dramas, where characters pair up, leave, and return, are a compendium of sighs and tears and moments where you want the lovers to fall into each other's arms because you can't bear to see them apart.
Sure, they play 'shayars' and singers, but their delivery makes a lot of those conversations feel forced and cheesy.Fawad Khan, over whom so much controversy broke out, is dishy but doesn't really have much to do in the movie.But the one who lifts this film, or as much as he can, is Ranbir.
As the fellow who crumbles and cries and shoves his aching heart on his sleeve even when letting a pretty thing wipe his eyes, he is terrific.The others were okay.And that 2 minutes cameo of SRK delivers more emotions than the entire movie of 2 hours.
It is unfortunate that even today, film makers like Karan Johar (who consider themselves very innovative and artistic) still dish out the same old dragged, pedestrian, senseless, shallow and tortuous movies while expecting the audience to pay a premium price for watching it!The only thing "mushkil" about this horrendous movie is sitting through it...Just like eating stale, tasteless food in a fine dining restaurant doesn't make it delicious, similarly shooting a nonsensical movie in good locales with beautiful cast doesn't make it worth a watch.
I went in expecting too much and by the time it ended was wondering if my 2 year old son had now grown up and whether he had grown any facial hair and got a job and a mortgage in the meantime...Hours of my life I will never get back!At one point my significant other took out her phone and started to look at random pics of our son.The actors tried, bless them.
Everyone have delivered some terrific performances- Anushka as the bubbly and trying to be carefree girl(but actually caring from heart) and Aishwarya as an experienced woman, one who has seen life and is keenly looking for true love etc.
If Karan johar did not knew how to fill the movie with when there was no script he took the crew to different European locations and made the actors dance to old Hindi movie songs.
Anybody who have watched Chandni, DDLJ, Kuch Kuch Hota Hain, KHNH, Yeh Jawani Hain Deewani can come up with such a rotten story.Karan is only good with his 'Koffee' and filmfare hostings.Really did not understand who loves who...Whose love is uni- directional and whole love is bi-directional....This is not a love triangle or love quadrant...This is love polygon...You never know how many sides are there..Tge only reason I could watch till the end was because of Anushka...Thast one star for me and the second star is because Karan has not taken SRK in lead role....
awful movie, no story line , absolutely bizarre acting , don't watch it .
awful movie, no story line , absolutely bizarre acting , don't watch it .
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil offers little in terms of story and fails to get the audience empathize or feel for the characters and events in the movie.
What it does offer is brilliance in the name of Ranbir and Anushka, some awe-inspiring shots of Aishwarya and Fawad and a very beautiful canvas as it is shot at exotic locales of London and Paris.So, in his latest film Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Ayan Sanger (Ranbir Kapoor) is purportedly studying for an MBA degree, but secretly harbours dreams of being a singer.
While, surprisingly KJo has handled this so maturely, credit is due more with actor's performances, particularly Ranbir.Unfortunately but NOT surprisingly, the director lets us down in last 20 mins or so – wish our Indian Directors have the courage to end the movie when it HAS TO – most of the time trimming out last 20-30 mins will be an ideal solution.
I would have rated this movie 8/10, if it has ended right after powerful title song so passionately sung by Ranbir, which evokes memories of "Sadda Haq".If you are romantic at heart, like me, please go and watch it.
It is a good movie to watch for as performances (Ranbir, Anushka, Aishwarya), Songs (Buleya, ADHM, Channa), Dialogues and glitzy production design blend well to keep you entertained.
In every movie he done his great, So emotional, So deep.Fawad Khan: 6/10 A little high attitude, i personally don't like that.Anushka Sharma: 5/10 Always Act so much, definitely overacting most of the time.
Almost everyone goes through that love pain, yes the pain for everyone is individual, but at the end it's a similar case in everyone's life - the part of one sided love.Although I won't say the movie was perfect and didn't have it flaws, but the way Karan Johar has presented the one sided love, I don't think it has been done often - be it in Bollywood or Hollywood.
The movie was about love and so it's logical that Karan did stick to it throughout the movie.Although the movie is not a 10 for me, rather a 8., I will give it a 10 just because of Ranbirs terrific character, I haven't seen such a good character in a long long time.
I failed to understand why some TV and newspaper are giving such good reviews of this movie like saying it is one of Karan Johar best movie till date.Seriously guys Did you see the movie or what.I totally disagree with the ending of the movie in which the director wants to earn sympathy of the viewers..
I read some really awful reviews here but still decided to watch the movie with my family (only for Ranbir and Aishwarya).
I request everyone to first watch the movie with an open heart, without any expectations to really understand and appreciate the thought process behind the film(which is not a usual concept).
But the terrific performances by all the three leads( Ranbir, Anushka and the stunningly gorgeous Aishwarya) and excellent music(Channa Mereya has been excellently placed in the movie) makes up for all the faults.
Also getting talented bunch of actors on board this might had been an epic movie but alas as usual in true Karan Johar style plot was weird.
Watch this movie only for that 2 minutes in which Shah Rukh Khan comes to screen and mouths the dialogue " the power of unrequited love " (main promo dialogue) " believe me he perfectly emotes the pain of one sided love and emptiness you feel when you knew that somebody will never love you and instead of that you have to love him/her because you can't do anything else.
Now coming to the movie, Karan Johar should first of all leave judging these dance, reality and other TV shows and travel our beautiful country, meet different people with different mindset,different struggle having different backgrounds.
I mean if you still have to explore topics like " love or friendship" which has already been discussed countless times in various movies then at least have something new, something believable or something interesting or substantial to offer.Mr. Karan Johar thinks every Indian goes to pub, kisses unknown stranger and then acts like a loser.
India is growing, our countrymen are growing, when will you and your immature ways of film making will grow?Coming to the movie, Story is absolutely zero and there is nothing to mention..
The only good thing movie has to offer is its songs nothing else is worth watching, its a total disgrace to film industry.Don't waste your money and your time on this movie, rest of the reviews will ensure you how true is this..
This movie is not suitable for families and married couples.The story says that if you are married you are in a hell and you or your wife is looking for an additional relationship as married life sucks.Also the initial 10-15 minutes are vulgar at times and if you are taking children along you must encounter uneasiness.Only songs are good, otherwise nothing in the movie to say wow.Half of the movie is shot in nightclubs, bars, and pubs.Second half is boring for about 1 hour.
Anyone can tell this is a Karan Johar movie while watching just by 10 minutes of love you ,hate you and still can't live without you moments .You can right yourself such a story.
Fabulous direction, music and BGM, Bollywood movie references were too good any one who had fall in love can get that...
The music of this movie is just as beautiful as Aishwarya Rai. Overall I would say the movie is good,Ash is best and ending is bad.
for music need not to go and watch in the Movies Don't know what the director thinks and we feel like its copied from many old movies.
Anushka's character was...annoying.I've never liked Karan Johar, his older movies were way better, more original but seems he has run out of ideas and content.
In general I dislike his character, he seems obnoxious to me and extremely arrogant.I really expected to get a good story out of this movie, but yeah...It doesn't even deserve 1 star, more like -2...
Looked more like the starting of Koffee with karan where Karan responds to odd ques thrown at him and he reciprocates with his witty one liners but as soon as we hear Ranbir talking about " ek tarfa pyar ki taqat" you realize this movie is going to be a bad screenplay with nothing new to offer.
He has no sense of movie making yet people watch his shyt (this is the last time I have wasted my money & time)!It's high time public reject such useless directors whose only name for fame is that they are well connected and son's of some film personality.
He has no sense of movie making yet people watch his shyt (this is the last time I have wasted my money & time)!It's high time public reject such useless directors whose only name for fame is that they are well connected and son's of some film personality.
bad things.Its not a love story it is a getting friend-zoned movie.
briefly summarizing Things to watch for: Ranbir kapoor's acting, the cinematography and editing, Aishwarya Rai's fan should definitely watch it, music is good thing to avoid for: boring script, Slow pace of the film.*May Contain Spoilers*Film starts with Ranbir Kapoor giving an interview, and if u guessed it right, the whole film is a flashback.
Acting : Again, Ranbir Kapoor is lively and lovely, Anushka is good like always but his role in this film may seem mixture of everything what she has done before.
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is the best love story of 2016 and one of the best family movie of this year.
I am not such a big fan of Karan Johar so I did not go in hall with high expectations .But to my surprise Karan Johar has done a great deal of work with this movie and it's really worth watching.The story is average but great performances and good direction are the highlights of the movie .
Ranbir Kapoor has done a great peace of work in the movie.The chemistry between Anushka and Ranbir is the highlight of first half.Aishwarya has played her role well too .
Ranbir and Anushka especially played their characters very well, being able to change their emotions abruptly with a change of scene and still being able to form a connection with the audience through the way they performed.Without a doubt, this is one of Johar's best to date.
His inclusion of things (no details so I don't spoil it) from movies considered to be Bollywood classics helped to create a huge impact on the story line and even made me and maybe many others remember the difficulties of love.All in all, this is a brilliant film and you should watch it right away..
I was saddened to see all the negative publicity this movie garnered prior to its release but all that's done and dusted now and the world gets to see another Karan Johar love story.
and now I'm nothing but disappointed.Overacting, Lack of story, mixture of dialogues from all old Karan Johar's movies like a promotion or something and such a crappy work.
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil shows why Ranbir Kapoor is one of the finest actors in the country, all he needs is a half a decent script and a good director.
Nearly two decades after his hit venture "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai", Karan Johar tries his luck once again at solving the biggest question that the world has to offer- Which is better:Friendship or Love?This movie is definitely a breath of fresh air in the sense that it tries to bring a new perspective to that question.
In all I would recommend it to anyone who likes Ranbir Kapoor as an actor to watch this movie..
Expectations were soaring for AE DIL HAIN MUSHKIL owing to a fantastic trailer, the controversy involving the Pakistani actors and the love making scenes between Aishwarya Rai and Ranbir Kapoor.
The movie should have ended a good half an hour before, but I guess Karan Johar wanted to increase the emotional quotient
..well salt is good, but too much of it can certainly ruin a good dish watch it if you have just gonethrough an awesome breakup.
I believe Karan Johar is one of the few directors who can create characters that audience could adore,inspire and love but failed to convert that into a good Movie.Love portions are refreshing in this movie and the conflict is new in which the way it is being told.
ADHM directed by the overrated and flag bearer of nepotism karan johar is a one side love story of ayan(ranbir) who deeply loves alizeh(anushka) but she doesn't give him a damn even while she is dying of cancer.
Ranbir Kapoor portrays the role of Ayan very well , Anushka is good , Aishwarya is brilliant but the person who stands out is Shahrukh Khan , even thought he hardly comes for 5 mins he steals the show !!!.
ADHM was neither good nor bad it is an OK film, it lacked the focus in the story department well let me put it plainly it lacked a story overall, this film stood only on the star power and music, Ranbir did an excellent job in his role,Fawad Khan was a scene stealer in his short role, Anushka was better in the second half,Aishwarya Rai was good,the only time it felt to me that this was something of a special work is during Channa Mereya song,the story had so much loopholes and unrealistic scenarios that it becomes unbearable for the viewer to ignore this fact.I like Karan Johar films but he needs to keep a connection with reality in some sublime way.But its much better than the regular Bollywood junk we get to see regularly, but one must keep in mind the fact that this movie was under political pressure to cut some scenes containing Pakistani actors so it might be a factor for the loop holes..
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil is overly clichéd typical movie with brilliant performances from Anushka and Ranbir and best soundtracks of the year..
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016): This movie is one if the most hyped movies of 2016.Karan Johar,the master who invented clichéd Bollywood moments(except My Name is Khan) directed this movie after 4 years.His previous venture Student of the Year is overly clichéd dud.But Ae Dil Hai Mushkil created good buzz because of its brilliant trailer and music.Even the chemistry between Ranbir Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai is largely discussed.SO how is this Ae Dil Hai Mushkil??Plot: A story about unrequited love - the shapes it takes, the ways it changes us and the exhilarating and often heartbreaking ride it takes us on.
It is the journey of three characters, Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor), Alizeh (Anushka Sharma) and Saba (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), as their lives intertwine and they navigate life, love and heartbreak.Plus Points:1)Performances: Everyone has acted so well especially Anushka Sharma.
The chemistry between Ranbir and Anushka was what I loved the most.Ranbir Kapoor is super at being charming, but has developed a specialization in cluelessness, and both sides shine through in this winning, woeful performance.Aishwarya is stunningly gorgeous and gave decent performance.Fawad Khan is good.Lisa Hayden is irritating.2)Music: Music is the major plus point of the movie.All the songs are brilliant and well placed.
'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' Synopsis: Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) falls in love with Alizeh (Anushka Sharma), but she considers him as her best friend.
To add to his misery, Alizeh gets married & Ayan is left Heartbroken, Ayan's one-sided love never ends, although a new women enters his life (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan).Karan Johar has made films celebrating love with happy endings in the past, but with 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil', he depicts love as painful, unreasonable & also, unattainable.
Movie:10/10 Music:10/10 Songs:10/10 Romance:7/10 Heartbroken:10/10 Dedicated to the broken hearts and breakup people please watch it if you come under the criteria.I love this film as well as karan johar even though i just know him after the film.I can't forget the film in my life because it is a part of my life and my own love..
Ranbir looks good in the movie and has done justice to the role. |
tt0027593 | The Ex-Mrs. Bradford | Wealthy murder mystery writer Paula Bradford (Jean Arthur) returns from her worldwide travels to see her former husband, surgeon Dr. Lawrence "Brad" Bradford (William Powell). He had divorced her because she was always involving him in real-life murder cases, but she wants him back. When a jockey riding the favorite dies while leading a race, she is convinced it was murder. She and Mike North (Frank M. Thomas), the horse's trainer, persuade the reluctant doctor to investigate. Brad is puzzled when he finds traces of gelatin on the corpse.
Then he receives an envelope addressed to North. North telephones a little later to say he will come pick it up. Curious, Brad opens the envelope to find a great deal of money. Someone claiming to be North calls shortly afterward and instructs Brad to meet him somewhere else, but without the money. Suspicious, Brad takes a taxi, but gets out a short distance away and returns to his suite. As he anticipated, a burglar is inside looking for the letter. When the two men start fighting, Paula tries to help, but ends up knocking Brad out instead, allowing the intruder to get away.
Soon after, the doorbell rings. When Brad opens the door, North's body falls in. Police Inspector Corrigan (James Gleason) names Brad as the main suspect in the second death. Now Brad has to solve both murders to clear himself.
All sorts of suspects present themselves: Nick Martel (Robert Armstrong), a bookie who owed North $100,000 for a winning bet; Leroy Hutchins (Ralph Morgan), the owner of the winning horse; John Summers (Grant Mitchell), the favorite's owner; Mrs. Summers, who is seeing Martel behind her husband's back; and Summer's lawyer, Henry Strand (an uncredited Frank Reicher). Even Brad's receptionist, Miss Prentiss (Lila Lee), had been spotted with Martel. Brad discovers that Martel was instructed to send the money to an address he was given, but decided to confront North in person instead over what he considered to be deceit; though North claimed he did not place the bet, Martel did not believe him and gave him the money. Going to the address provided, Brad finds Paula already there. They then discover the body of Lou Pender (Paul Fix), the would-be burglar, who had masqueraded as North. As Brad is examining the corpse, an unseen person shoots him from the window. Fortunately, he is not seriously wounded.
Brad eventually figures out how the murders were committed. The killer put a deadly black widow spider inside a gelatin capsule, secretly attached it to the victim's body, and waited for the gelatin to melt from body heat, releasing the spider. Since the police have the $100,000, Brad assumes the killer will try the same trick again. The same two horses are scheduled to race against each other the next day, so Brad has film cameras set up around the racetrack. The murderer does strike again, but fortunately, Brad had taken the precaution of inoculating the jockey beforehand.
Brad invites all of the suspects to his suite, hoping the culprit will stay away. When that fails, he screens the film footage he had taken. It shows Mr. Summers slipping a capsule down the jockey's back. Pulling out a gun, Summers admits his motive was revenge against his unfaithful wife and Martel. Brad subdues him before he can shoot the lovers. During the struggle, however, Paula once again knocks out her ex-husband. Despite this, Brad marries her again. | mystery, murder | train | wikipedia | RKO studios decided to borrow both William Powell from MGM and Jean Arthur from Columbia, for one of their more big budget efforts to cash in on the popularity of The Thin Man. They succeeded to some degree.A lot of folks forget that in addition to and earlier than Nick Charles, Bill Powell also played in a few Philo Vance films in the title role.
This is after he comes to Bill Powell for help.Myrna Loy was a more steadying influence on Bill Powell than Jean Arthur was.
But it works here and she and Powell have good chemistry.The ever dependable James Gleason is the police inspector in the Sam Levene/Nat Pendleton role.
All they needed here was Asta and possibly Eric Blore as Powell's butler was essaying that part.If Powell and Arthur were signed at this studio we might have seen a whole slew of Bradford films..
The comic banter between William Powell and Jean Arthur is the highlight of this murder mystery, which has one of the most bizarre and unlikely plots ever.
Eric Blore also has some comic turns as Powell's butler.Powell's contract with MGM included a clause which allowed him to reject being loaned out to another studio, but he wanted to work again with Arthur and he liked the script, so he eagerly accepted the assignment.
William Powell recreates, for RKO, his Nick Charles character, now as Dr. Bradford, M.D. and Jean Arthur substitutes as Nora.
This film works because Powell and Arthur have terrific chemistry, and a crackerjack good comic-mystery script.
William Powell is a doctor dealing with a murder and an ex-wife in "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford," also starring Jean Arthur, Eric Blore, and James Gleason.
Though he and Myrna Loy were the perfect screen couple, the actor made a couple of other "Thin Man" type movies, one with Ginger Rogers and this one with Arthur, both to very good effect.Somehow one never gets tired of seeing Powell as a witty, debonair professional and "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" is no exception.
It almost seems as though there was a "Bradford" film before this one or that this was intended to be the first of a series of films - Mr. B complains that his mystery-writer ex is constantly bringing him into cases.
This time, a jockey riding the favorite horse in a raise mysteriously falls off the horse and dies right before the finish line.The solution of the case is kind of outlandish but it's beside the point.
It still works well, and it shows how a good actress can make a part her own.Definitely worth watching, as William Powell and Jean Arthur always were..
Ignore that other review, Powell and Arthur have GREAT chemistry!.
I've seen the Thin Man series -- Powell and Loy are definitely great, but there is something awfully sweet about Powell and Arthur's chemistry in this flick.
Jean Arthur SHINES when she looks at Powell.
While I watched it, I thought for sure Powell was carrying on an off-screen affair with Arthur.
This is one film where I wish I could step back in time (to schmooze and lock lips with Powell!) There seems to be no end to his lovable playful smirks!
Powell's character, Lawrence Bradford, is probably the closest thing to the "perfect man." Okay, this is sounding way too gushy, but I can't help myself..
M-G-M had struck success in 1934 by adapting Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man" with William Powell and Myrna Loy in the central roles.
They got halfway there, at least: for the "Nick Charles" role, Powell was loaned out from M-G-M, but, for his "Nora," Jean Arthur arrived from Columbia Pictures.
Both were already big names in the screwball comedy business – that year, Powell also starred in 'After the Thin Man (1936)' and 'My Man Godfey (1936),' and Arthur had graced 'Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).' There does seem to be a slight mismatch in each star's comedic style; Arthur's impulsiveness tended to work better with an actor less sure of himself, like Jimmy Stewart.
Thus, the interplay between husband and (ex-)wife doesn't quite come off as naturally as it did with Myrna Loy, but RKO still got their money's worth.Does this 'Thin Man'-knockoff reach the heights of its inspirational source?
While certainly utilising the comic talents of its two stars, 'The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936)' lacks an interesting script, becoming so halfheartedly-distracted by its main characters that the supporting cast – the very people whose movements we should be scrutinising – are anonymous wax figures.
When, in a Nick Charles-inspired detective tactic, Dr. Bradford (Powell) decides to bring together all the potential murderers, I couldn't remember ever meeting half of them.
At least the method of murder was ghoulishly clever.Though Powell's character is supposed to be a professional surgeon, writer Anthony Veiller apparently felt obliged to furnish him with the characteristics of a detective.
Paula Bradford (Arthur) has the active imagination – and certainly the enthusiasm – of Nora Charles, but maybe not the courage under fire: upon entering the morgue, she faints in her ex-husband's arms, but not before Eric Blore has hilariously fallen down behind her.
This movie was made the same year as the first Thin Man film, and it's another stylish black-and-white murder mystery starring the same leading man (William Powell), so comparisons are inevitable.
Its script isn't nearly as strong as the best of the Thin Man flicks, but if you're a big TM fan, this film can ALMOST feel like an extra entry in the series -- except that the fabulous Myrna Loy is nowhere in sight.
Powell is just as polished here as he is in the Thin Man movies (though seeing him perform a chaste autopsy reminds you that he's playing a doctor, not Nick Charles), and he's well paired with Jean Arthur playing the titular ex-wife, who's bucking for a reconciliation with her reluctant former hubby.
(In fact, if you're paying close attention, you'll notice that she switches costumes at a couple of slightly inexplicable moments.) The couple bickers well (but not at the break-neck pace of Powell and Loy), and there is a little bit of simmering sexual tension (but again, not in the same league as P&L).
Bradford: (deadpan) That sounds reasonable.It feels like the writer couldn't quite decide if he wanted to present a relationship-driven comedy or a thrilling drama, and the undeniably talented actors seem equally confused at times.
It is obvious that RKO is trying to imitate the Thin Man series over at MGM, and they did pony up the money to borrow William Powell from MGM as the sleuth/surgeon in this one - yes I said surgeon.
The thing is, this one has almost exactly the same skeleton of a plot outline as RKO's "The Star of Midnight" from the year before where Powell is the sleuth and Ginger Rogers is the girl that from the beginning claims she is going to marry him.
This time it is Jean Arthur as the ex-wife who is awfully chummy with Powell's character, Dr. Bradford, considering they are divorced.
Just that the ex-wife involved the doctor in all of her murder mysteries to the point he was more her co-writer than doctor.
One of the problems is that the great Jean Arthur is really miscast as the ex-wife.
Whatever gold is spun from this little mystery/comedy comes from the crackling performances of WILLIAM POWELL and JEAN ARTHUR (prettily photographed through gauze for her movie star close-ups).
But by this time, none of the suspects have established any kind of identity, so the viewer can only yawn when the culprit is revealed to be one of the least visible supporting actors.As a mystery, it fails to have any real suspense nor does it have a satisfying enough conclusion.
As a comedy, it falls somewhere between THE THIN MAN stuff and any other screwball comedy of the thirties that featured Powell and Arthur in tailor-made roles.However, fans of the couple will surely find their light touch with this sort of material refreshing, if not original.
A reasonably entertaining combination of comedy and mystery, done in much the same fashion as 'The Thin Man', and even starring the same star, William Powell is as good as one would expect, however Jean Arthur does not work quite as well with him as Myrna Loy does, and she is even a tad annoying to have on screen at times.
The script is well written with some good lines and an interesting plot, and the film relatively engaging on the whole.
The presence of William Powell as Arthur's ex recalls the Thin Man series.
It's also standard for this type of movie at this time.Eric Blore serves an important purpose: He establishes the Bradfords as wealthy people who might have a butler.
Otherwise, Glenda Farrell or any number of B- plays could have been plugged into the Arthur role and it'd have been essentially the same old mildly entertaining semi-mystery.
I have always enjoyed Jean Arthur in movies and was surprised how much I didn't like her here.
I think part of it is because I watched this William Powell/Jean Arthur flick just after seeing two exceptional William Powell/Myrna Loy films.
The chemistry between Powell and Loy is simply better and the other films (not just the THIN MAN ones) were more enjoyable and the characters worked better together.
In this case, you wonder why Arthur and Powell EVER got married, as Jean is just too annoying and whiny.
This is a mistake, as the dialog is mostly one-way and the banter back and forth isn't as witty or snappy as the Loy/Powell films.
It's more like Powell makes a sarcastic comment and Arthur misunderstands it--this gets old really fast.The film itself seems a lot like a THIN MAN plot--a murder mystery that Powell (as a doctor) and Arthur (as a mystery writer) investigate separately.
For a better film watch any Powell/Loy film or for a similar but better executed plot, see Errol Flynn's FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK--another film about a writer turned murder investigator but with better results..
"The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" (1936), starring Thin Man series star William Powell (this film was released the same year as the second Thin Man film, "After The Thin Man," comes very close to duplicating the fun and style of the Thin Man films, but it nonetheless misses.
Still, it is a wonderfully fun, highly entertaining murder mystery in the same comic vein.Is Myrna Loy missed?
And the chemistry between Arthur and co-star William Powell is real and it's fun, romantic and involving.The story and screenplay by Anthonyu Vieller and John Wyne's production company partner, James Edward Grant ("The Angel & The Bad Man") is close to being up there with a Thin Man effort, but lacks a bit of the proper wit and sizzle.While it's not in the stratosphere of 'The Thin Man" movies (what else is?), "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" is one of the most entertaining of the dozens and dozens of mystery-comedy "who-done-its" of the '30s & 40s..
A jockey expires under mysterious circumstances, bringing in an urbane doctor and his ditsy ex-wife.Pretty good whodunit.
Enjoyed this 1936 film with plenty of veteran classic actors and especially, William Powell, (Dr. Lawrence Bradford), "Mister Roberts", who played the role as a doctor and detective.
Dr. Bradford was once married to Jean Arthur, (Paula Bradford), "Shane", and got a divorce and still they managed to live with each other and also fight all the time.
Jean Arthur plays a rather nutty type and there is plenty of 1936 Comedy and the method of murder is something you will never believe, especially with a jockey on a California Race Track.
Robert Armstrong, (Nick Martel) "King Kong" gave a great supporting role as a bookie along with James Gleason, a detective who need the help of Dr. Bradford in order to solve this very strange murder mystery.
Powell, Arthur oil and water in sluggish mystery..
With the solid box office pairing of established stars William Powell and Jean Arthur The Ex- Mrs. Bradford fails to meet expectation as it flaccidly plays itself out.
Arthur's energy is forced and out of sync with Powell who comes across a touch listless himself.When a jockey falls from his horse and dies his trainer suspects foul play and consults Dr. Lawrence Bradford ( Powell ) to look into it.
He's at first hesitant but goaded by his mystery writing ex (Arthur) gets involved.Even without the ghost of Loy's Nora hovering above Arthur's Paula is little more than a glamorous Gracie Allen, Bill an uncomfortable George Burns.
Jean Arthur imbues her movies with so much grace and inner-sparkle that her performances usually save the day, no matter what the picture.
Arthur (photographed in gauzy, movie-magazine fashion) either wants alimony from ex-husband Powell or another shot at marriage, but one never feels for her because the character isn't conceived as person--she's just a string of wisecracks.
Powell reportedly had a high time working with Miss Arthur, but you'd never know it from these results.
Jean Arthur plays a role usually taken by men in supposed romantic comedies: an obnoxious stalker who bulldozes her way into her prey's life and takes it over, and both prey and audience are supposed to find this charming and amusing.
Arthur plays an overbearing, meddlesome idiot who decides to remarry her ex-husband (William Powell) against his will, while browbeating him to investigate a murder so that she can write a mystery story about it--then sabotaging the investigation by tampering with (even stealing) evidence, constant eavesdropping, and showing up uninvited everywhere.
I've seen Jean Arthur be both funny and charming in other films.
The formula is similar and there is a murder mystery to be solved, and it's a pretty good one.
the big difference is that Myrna Loy is not here and her place is taken by Jean Arthur, and she proves to be a very adequate replacement.
She is the Ex-Mrs. Bradford in the title and also has the requisite comedic touch for such a part, and helps to keep the picture moving at the quick, breezy pace the genre is known for.The plot involves a murder at a race track and another one connected to the first.
Some movie buffs like to compare various films of the comedy mystery group that William Powell made.
The prototype for comparison is the role Myrna Loy played as Nora to Powell's Nick Charles in the Thin Man movies.
"The Thin Man" was made in 1934, and the next one of that series didn't come out until "After the Thin Man" in 1936 But in the meantime, Powell starred in some other comedies, a couple musicals and a couple of dramas.
So, was it possible that Powell, and/or some movie moguls were looking for the best match with Powell to continue the Thin Man series?
I wonder – especially since "Star" and "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" both were made by RKO.After these two comedy mysteries at RKO, Powell returned to MGM and picked up with the Myrna Loy match for more Thin Man movies.
But, it doesn't take anything away from these others films or the co-stars performances with Powell.
So, here we have a film with Jean Arthur, who became known for her comedy roles; but, who also was very good in dramatic roles.
– Dr. Bradford ("Brad") is part and parcel to the mystery and plot of this film.
He and Arthur have very good supporting help from a number of other actors.
I don't think anyone has ever played a better butler role than Blore in comedies.
I was so taken with the chemistry between Powell and Arthur that I barely followed the plot, which was OK but had some holes.
There was real affection afoot between those two, and the movie cameras that separated them from us could not hope to hide it.I rate their chemistry much higher than that between Powell and Loy in The Thin Man series.
And because of these two, this movie had me not wanting to miss a minute.Altogether, Powell and Arthur had 5 collaborations, two in 1929, two in 1930, and this one in 1936.
Gathering all the suspects in one room is another weak ploy by writers not nearly as clever as The Thin Man crew (after all, Powell has already seen the film of the killer, already has the evidence, and already knows whodunnit, so what's the point?).
Entertaining Powell-Arthur Caper.
William Powell and Jean Arthur star in this mystery caper/screwball comedy that is very much in the vein of star Powell's 'Thin Man' series.The interesting, if convoluted, plot involves a jockey who has died mid-race.
Bickering husband-and-wife team Powell, a doctor, and Arthur, a mystery writer, do some investigative work to find what killed the jockey, and who is the killer.
Powell and Arthur look good together and play off each other quite well, yet do not quite generate that indescribable electricity that made Powell and Myrna Loy such a great team in the 'Thin Man' series.
I am sure that if this combination had been a success, more 'Bradford' movies would have been produced by RKO or perhaps snapped up by another studio.
Arthur seems a little bit off her best form in this one.Overall, an entertaining film that is not quite the classic it could have been..
The Ex-Mrs Bradford is the sort of film that gives old movies a bad name.The only reason I can give for the enthusiasm of other critics, is that they are actually watching a vastly different print.
I've pretty much enjoyed William Powell in all his films, and I can say the same for Jean Arthur (well, except for "A Foreign Affair").
And it wasn't bad, but I kept thinking how much better it would have been with Myrna Loy as another in the Thin Man series.
But together they were not what Powell and Loy were.But that isn't even my biggest complaint about this film. |
tt5820980 | The Love Machine | Robin Stone, a handsome, ambitious newsman for a New York television station, attracts the attention of Judith Austin, wife of Gregory Austin, the head of the IBC network. Concerned about ratings, Greg is encouraged by Judith to hire Robin as IBC's new anchorman. Although he opposes Greg's decision, Danton Miller, the head of programming, is unable to overrule his boss. Soon afterward, feeling threatened by Greg's support of Robin's plan to take his newscast to prime-time, Dan decides to build a variety show around second-rate comedian Christie Lane to prove that the audience prefers crass entertainment to more cerebral programming.
Christie is a hit in the ratings, and Jerry Nelson, a homosexual friend of Robin, arranges for the show's sponsor to hire Amanda, a fashion model and Robin's occasional girlfriend, as the on-air representative of its product. After her first spot airs, Amanda skips a celebratory party and goes to Robin. Shattered when she finds Robin with a nude woman, she attends the party alone. Christie Lane, smitten with Amanda, proposes marriage when a drunken Amanda agrees to go home with him.
Judith persuades Robin to have lunch with her, but they end up in bed instead. During their rendezvous, Greg suffers a severe heart attack. Judith, who holds Greg's power of attorney, appoints Robin to act as head of the network while she takes her husband to Switzerland to recuperate.
Soon afterward, having rejected Amanda yet again, Robin is shaken by the news of Amanda's suicide. He goes out for a walk. Propositioned by a prostitute, he accompanies her to his room, but then changes his mind, and beats up the hooker. He then confesses to Jerry, who agrees to provide an alibi for Robin. In return, Jerry asks for a slave bracelet engraved with Robin's name.
Judith returns to New York with Greg, now recovered. When Robin refuses to resume their affair, Judith convinces her husband to reclaim control of the network, thereby demoting Robin. In response, Robin threatens to quit entirely, a move which would result in problems between Greg and the shareholders.
When Robin visits Los Angeles, Jerry persuades him to attend a party at the home of the actor Alfie Knight, Jerry's new boyfriend. Robin, in turn, invites Judith who is also in the city. At the party, Robin is pleased to see aspiring actress Maggie Stewart, who rebuffs him. Judith, meanwhile, becomes annoyed when Robin neglects her for Jerry and Alfie.
After most of the guests have gone, Judith, still angry, finds Jerry's slave bracelet on the floor. Reading the inscription, she threatens to expose Robin. Jerry and Alfie try to retrieve the bracelet, which leads to a brawl. Soon the police arrive, and Robin explains the fight by claiming that he had instigated it by making a drunken pass at Judith. Later, as Robin leaves the police station, his reputation in ruins, Maggie Stewart pulls up in her car and asks him if he needs a ride. He declines. | pornographic, murder | train | wikipedia | Awful. I have not watched one of these films in a long time, and after watching this I know why.This one is cliché of a 1980's porn flick. The plot is so cliché that when the one star fantasy turns out to be the "pool guy", I think I have seen that in 100 porn flicks.The cast looks good, and the porn here is softer than the really hard porn that shows everything.The machine shows the film has no special effects budget.The murder plot is lame at best.The pole dance is totally cliché.Even the music sounds years old.I am not even sure this stimulated my imagination at all. Would rather watch the old Taboo series.Don't waste your time on this one, I deleted it from my library faster than you can say delete, delete, delete.. I Love Retromedia, But.... I'm a big fan of these softcore, erotic Retromedia movies, but this is probably the worst one I've ever seen. But I don't blame Dean McKendrick (the director / editor) at all. I think that a lot of what happened with this movie was beyond his control.The movie "stars" Jennifer Korbin. Umm... why? Sure, she is in the movie, and she is the antagonist, it's just that when someone "stars" in a Retromedia flick, I expect them to get naked and have at least 2 sex scenes! Not the case here! Jennifer Korbin does go topless once while kissing on an unconscious Alice Haig, whom by the way, is absolutely gorgeous!!! I commend Retromedia for casting her! She is by far the one good thing about this movie. I hope to see more of her in the future for sure! But anyway, Jennifer Korbin is kissing on her, if you could even call it kissing, it's so bland and clinical! I've seen mothers kiss their babies with more eroticism than this! And it sucks too, because we've seen Korbin do some pretty hot and erotic work before. She starred in the Cinemax series Lingerie a few short years ago and that show was awesome and she was (in my opinion) the biggest reason for it! I know, I'm digressing here... back to the movie: Korbin goes topless, kisses Alice Haig and the scene ends. WTF? These scenes never just fade out like that! Not in Retromedia movies anyway. This is one of those things that I think was out of the hands of the director. No doubt, he would have liked to do more with Jennifer Korbin, but it's my guess, that Korbin wasn't comfortable with the sex / nudity. And what she says goes, because she is the biggest name in the movie. Again, that's just a guess.The sex scenes in general are pretty weak, compared to other Retromedia and MRG movies, but again NOT the fault of the Director. That's on HBO / Cinemax. The last couple of years or so, they have been cracking down on the explicitness of the sex and nudity of erotic films that air on their networks. They want their soft porn movies to be more family-friendly now! Yeah, I don't get it either! Another thing this movie does is that it recycles material for flashback and/or fantasy scenes from other Retromedia movies. I hate that crap! Another thing beyond the Director's control perhaps? But I get it, I understand the reasoning behind it; it saves the studio money. But still... AAARRRGGHH!!! I'll end my rant on a positive note though. I really do appreciate that Retromedia is sort of expanding their boundaries. Usually, they make these goofy, erotic comedies but now, they're going for more of a dramatic, thriller type feel and I've been wanting to see them go this direction for a long time! |
tt0093402 | Leif | Gunnar Volt (Anders Eriksson), the head of the weapons factory Kanoner & Krut ("Cannons & Gunpowder") in the small community of Rotum plans for the upcoming demonstration of a new weapon called "The Fighting Egg". However, this is interrupted by an article in the local newspaper where the signature Leif claims that the company engaged in the illegal arms trade. The name Rotum spelled backwards is mutor, which is the Swedish word for bribes. When Inspector Mård (Peter Rangmar) and his assistant Nilsson (Jan Rippe), two police officers from Stockholm, comes to the town hell breaks out. At the same time two Iranians arrives to the office to close a deal, when the police knocks at the door. Volt, the deputy directors Max Kroger (Claes Eriksson) and Rambo (Knut Agnred) flees through the window with the Iranians. After stealing some clothes they head to Volt's brother Håkan (Per Fritzell), which operates in the entertainment industry.
Later, after a series of incidents like Volt's wife Doris (Kerstin Granlund) giving birth to their son, they decide to confront Leif at the demonstration of their latest weapons. After a car chase between the main characters and the Iranians, Volt finds out that he is Leif. The film ends with Volt quitting the weapons industry to start selling Japanese dance bands. | satire | train | wikipedia | Their best film. 'Leif' is clearly Galenskaparna & After Shave's best feature film, followed by 'Macken'. Leif is one of my favourite Swedish comedies of all time. It's Claes Eriksson's debut as a feature film director, as well as it's the group's first film, so there's a bit of 'pioneer feeling' to it. I really recommend it, it's a funny film.. Great!. This is one of the best/funniest movies ever made in Sweden or anywhere for that matter. Best line is: "Leif, Leif, Leif what have you done?" See it, you'll love it! Claes Eriksson is fantastic as Max and his brother, Anders Ericsson, is brilliant as the Manager of the weapon factory, Rotums canons and gunpowder. With the slogan: You can't compete with us, smallest try is stopped by us, we are smarter than you can be, oh how smart we are! The Bofors (swedish weapon manufacturer) scandal is ridiculed! All of the music and lyrics in the movie is great, and written by Claes Ericsson and performed by Galenskaprna and Aftershave. Leif "EN KANON FILM!". Monty Python in Swedish. The Swedish comedy group Galenskaparna och Aftershave("Madnessmakers" and Aftershave) have just as Monty Python for BBC been making sketch comedy series for Swedish TV as well as live shows, and just as absurd and surreal as their British inspirators. Sadly only one full scale film has come from the swedes. Still, it's better than nothing, very much so. The film LEIF would be an anti war cult film if it wasn't Swedish. It definitely is meant a big kick in the face to the blooming Swedish weapons industry, as it in an obvious parody of arms sales, small town and international politics, together with warfare in general. The parody of this and the Swedish small town society is perhaps overdone and the identity crises of the main character is quite silly, but it doesn't matter. All in all it's a hilarious plot with some sequences so funny that only the Pythons are able to match it. The style with making sketch scenes within the big plot works here, and are surely very laughable. The funniest ever canteen fighting scene is a top moment, together with the idea of making dance bands on an assembly line. This is very mad humor but with a serious political statement as an undertone. See it !!!. Classic Swedish madness. Here in Norway, the Swedes have a reputation of being a bit crazy, and films like this don't exactly make them look any more sane.(*Small spoiler alert*) I shall admit it at once. I simply love this humorous madness. Unforgettable scenes like the one in the cafeteria where a guy drops his hat in the soup and starts a mass riot or the one where Gunnar Volt walks to a hot dog kiosk in his sleep and thinks that the hot dogs are hand grenades make me laugh out loud every time I think about them. Apart from these moments, the rest of the film is also brilliantly crafted. Everything from "special effects" to the charming musical numbers are just delightful. The main cast of only seven people are an energetic bunch, especially Anders Eriksson, who is so full of humorous energy that you find yourself smiling every time he enters the screen, not to mention when he is dancing.The story fits perfectly into the crazy comedy style. Everything in the small town of Rotum circulates around a weapon factory that is illegally selling weapons to Iran and Libya, and it's unnecessary to tell that the film is quite satirical towards the Swedish government.All in all, "Leif" has the potential to delight people in numerous countries. It is simply one of the best comedies I have ever seen. I give it 10/10. |
tt2066176 | Any Day Now | Rudy Donatello (Alan Cumming) is a struggling musician and drag performer in a gay nightclub in 1979 West Hollywood, where he meets Paul Fleiger (Garret Dillahunt), a closeted district attorney. Returning home to his apartment, Rudy finds Marco (Isaac Leyva), a 14-year-old with Down syndrome, left alone after his mother, Marianna (Jamie Ann Allman), had been arrested. Rudy takes in the abandoned boy, but Family Services intervenes and takes Marco to foster care. Rudy enlists Paul to help him gain custody of Marco; and the two visit Marianna in prison to coax her into signing the temporary guardianship papers, which she does. All is well as Rudy and Paul become Marco's guardians; but, when Rudy and Paul's relationship is called into question by the court system, the two men find themselves spiraling into a legal battle to become the legal and permanent guardians of the fascinating boy who showed them both the real joy of what it means to be a parent. After having their home (Marco's living environment) evaluated, the men are put in front of a judge (Frances Fisher) who is to decide what's best for the child. The evaluation comes back positive, and it is decided that Rudy and Paul are great parents for Marco. However, just as the court is about to rule in favor of the men, Marco's mother is released from prison. She takes back custody of Marco, leaving Rudy and Paul without their son. Marco is heard saying as he is taken back to his mother's apartment, "this is not my home, this is not my home." As expected, Marianna returns to her old ways (using drugs, sleeping around, etc.) and fails to take care of Marco. One night as she is having sex, Marianna tells Marco to step outside of the apartment. Marco begins to wander the streets in search of Paul's house (his true home). However, Marco is unable to find the house and dies outside, alone. The movie ends with a letter/monologue from Paul. The letter, which contained Marco's obituary, was sent to all who doubted the couple as Marco's parents. The hope was for them to realize the mistake they made that ended in this boy's untimely death. | queer, storytelling, home movie | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0031864 | Rio Grande | Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke (John Wayne) is posted on the Texas frontier to defend settlers against attacks by marauding Apaches. Col. Yorke is under considerable stress between the Apaches using Mexico as a sanctuary from pursuit and by a serious shortage of troops of his command. The action of the movie is set in the summer of 1879 ("fifteen years after the Shenandoah").
Tension is added when Yorke's son (whom he hasn't seen in fifteen years), Trooper Jeff Yorke (Claude Jarman Jr.), is one of 18 recruits sent to the regiment. He had flunked out of West Point but immediately enlisted as a private in the Army. Not wanting to give any impression that he is showing favoritism towards his son, Col. Yorke ends up being harsher dealing with Jeff than the others. By his willingness to undergo any test and trial, Jeff is befriended by a pair of older recruits, Travis Tyree (Ben Johnson) (who is on the run from the law) and Daniel "Sandy" Boone (Harry Carey, Jr.), who take him under their wings.
With the arrival of Yorke's estranged wife, Kathleen (Maureen O'Hara), who has come to take the under-age Yorke home with her, further tension is added. During the war, Yorke had been forced by circumstances to burn Bridesdale, his wife's plantation home in the Shenandoah valley. Sgt. Quincannon (Victor McLaglen), who put the torch to Bridesdale, is still with Yorke and provides a constant reminder to Kathleen of the episode. In a showdown with his mother, Jeff refuses her attempt by reminding her that not only the commander's signature is required to discharge him, but his own as well, and he chooses to stay in the Army. The tension brought about in the struggle over their son's future (and possibly the attentions shown to her by Yorke's junior officers) rekindles the romance the couple once felt for each other.
Yorke is visited by his former Civil War commander, Philip Sheridan (J. Carrol Naish), now commanding general of his department. Sheridan has decided to order Yorke to cross the Rio Grande into Mexico in pursuit of the Apaches, an action with serious political implications since it violates the sovereignty of another nation.
If Yorke fails in his mission to destroy the Apache threat he faces the threat of court-martial. Sheridan, in a quiet act of acknowledgment of what he is asking Yorke to risk, promises that the members of the court will be men "who rode down the Shenandoah" with them during the Civil War. Yorke accepts the mission.
Yorke leads his men toward Mexico, only to learn that a wagonload of children from his fort, who were being taken to Ft. Bliss for safety, has been captured by the Apaches. After permitting three troopers—Tyree, Boone and Jeff—to infiltrate the church in the Mexican village where the Indians have taken the children, Yorke leads his cavalry in a full-scale attack, rescuing all of the children unharmed, though he himself is wounded. He is taken back to the fort by his victorious troops, where Kathleen meets him and holds his hand as he is carried on a travois into the post. After Yorke recovers, Tyree, Boone, Jeff and two others receive medals. At the ceremony, Tyree is given furlough to continue his run from the law, stealing Sheridan's horse for the purpose. As the troops pass in review, the movie closes. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1416801 | Kill the Irishman | In 1960, Danny Greene and his childhood friends Billy McComber and Art Sneperger are longshoremen at the Cleveland docks. Meanwhile, the members are exploited by corrupt union boss, Jerry Merke and the leadership of the ILA union urges Greene to run against him. Meanwhile, Sneperger can't pay a gambling debt to Cleveland Mafia Capo John Nardi. In return for Sneperger's debt being forgiven, Greene supplies Nardi's crew with goods stolen from the docks. Merke finds out, demands a cut of Greene's profits, and then sends an enforcer to kill him. Instead, Greene beats up the enforcer, then beats up Merke, throws the union leader out of his office, and is later elected union president. He improves the working conditions at the docks while continuing his dealings with Nardi.
Greene's corruption is exposed by the Plain Dealer newspaper and Cleveland Police Detective Joe Manditski, who grew up with Greene in Collinwood, arrests him. Bankrupt and facing prison, Greene plea bargains to lesser charges in return for becoming an FBI informant and being banned for life from organized labor. Greene is released and moves his unhappy wife and daughters back to Collinwood. Nardi gets him work as an enforcer for Hungarian Jewish loan shark Shondor Birns, and later helps pitch a deal to Mafia Capo Jack Licavoli: Greene will force the city's garbage haulers to join the union Licavoli controls. Greene, McComber, Sneperger, and ex-Hells Angel Keith Ritson terrorize many into joining, but Greene's friend Mike Frato refuses. Licavoli orders Greene to kill Frato, but Greene balks because Frato has ten children. Nardi tells him privately, though, that, "You wanted to play in the big leagues. Sometimes you have to do things you don't wanna do."
As Greene prepare's to kill Frato with a car bomb, he learns from the FBI that Sneperger has returned to gambling, and has become an informant for Manditsky. That night, Greene assigns Sneperger to set the bomb under Frato’s car and presses the detonator as he does it. An enraged Frato later shoots at Greene in a park. Greene returns fire, kills Frato, and is arrested for murder, but released after Frato's driver tells Manditski that Greene acted in self-defense. Having had enough, Greene's long suffering wife leaves him and takes the children.
Greene sees his elderly Irish neighbor, Grace O’Keefe, being evicted. He intervenes, pays her rent, and she gratefully gives him her father's gold Celtic cross to wear for protection. Greene begins to use his money and connections to help other Irish-Americans in need, and earns the nickname "The Robin Hood of Collinwood".
Greene wants to open his own restaurant, and asks Shondor Birns to help him. Birns arranges a $70,000 loan from the Gambinos, but Birns' courier buys cocaine with the money and gets arrested. Birns and Greene argue over which of them should pay back the money; when Greene refuses to pay, Birns hires a hitman to kill him. Greene narrowly escapes, and later kills Birns with a car bomb.
After Mafia boss John Scalish dies, both Nardi and Licavoli are considered for succession. Licavoli is chosen due to his closer ties to the Five Families and decides to charge Greene 30% "street tax" for doing business in Cleveland. Greene refuses to pay, crudely mocks Licavoli's Italian heritage, and vows, "The Irishman's in business for himself now."
An outraged Licavoli has Greene's house blown up, but he survives. He then attempts to demote Nardi and take away his crew, only to have the latter join forces with Greene. Vowing to take over Cleveland together, Greene and Nardi start by organizing the murders of Licavoli’s associates, many of whom are blown up. Thirty-six car bombings occur during the summer of 1976, drawing national attention and humiliating Licavoli. After failing multiple times to kill Greene, Licavoli is forced to humbly ask Genovese boss Anthony Salerno to help him kill Nardi and Greene.
Having learned of this from the FBI, Greene claims that he wants to leave Cleveland and buy a ranch in Texas, but needs to raise $2 million. Wishing to size up their enemies, Greene and Nardi travel to New York and invite Salerno to invest in the ranch. After they leave, Salerno orders his associates to hire professional hitman Ray Ferritto to kill them both. Nardi is killed in a car explosion, McComber dies in a bombing at the Cleveland docks, and Ritson is shot near his house. Detective Manditski lets Greene know that a master killer is after him. He offers Greene protection, but is told, "My enemies will be taken care of."
After a dentist's appointment on October 6, 1977, Greene notices Ferritto driving by slowly, and accepts that he is about to die, giving his gold cross to an admiring boy. Ferritto detonates a bomb on the car next to Greene's, killing Greene instantly. An epilogue, by Manditski, reveals that the investigation of Danny Greene's murder led to the collapse of the Mafia, not only in Cleveland, but all over the United States. | violence, murder | train | wikipedia | As far as i know, the film also had a very limited theater release in the USA, which is a sad thing because this movie was surprisingly good and well-crafted and was one of the best films I've seen in the last months.The film tells the true story of Danny Greene, a tough irish gangster - and let me tell you, it is definitely a story worth telling.I guess many of you are informed about the story of Danny Greene, so i won't go further into the story.The movie features an impressive cast including Ray Stevenson, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken and many other familiar faces known from other mob movies.
Ray Stevenson gives an incredibly good performance as Danny Greene and manages to keep his character really violent, but also likable.
Review by Ruby: If you are reading this, you have probably read the background info about The Irishman Danny Greene and his Italian buddy John Nardi who worked and broke the law many times over in the streets of Cleveland throughout the 1970s.
But there was an actual story to follow also, so it offered more substance than much of the drivel that manages to run in the theatres today.Even though they were gangsters, Greene and Nardi were surprisingly likable characters—for killers, that is—mostly because of the charismatic acting of the two leads, Ray Stevenson and Vincent D'Onofrio.
The supporting characters were interesting also, including the talents of Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Steve Schirripa, Paul Sorvino, Tony Lo Bianco, and Mike Starr.Interspersed with the actors' scenes were actual clips of film footage from local newscasts of the day, which added authenticity and a touchstone to the amazing story that unfolded in Cleveland some 30-40 years ago.I highly recommend "Kill the Irishman" as an action-packed, escapist, period piece, featuring superior acting and excellent film editing.
Ray Stevenson and Linda Cardellini give exceptional performances as Danny and Joan Greene in this hard hitting story based on his life.
In the year 1976 in Cleveland 36 bombs went off but could they get Danny Greene?Based on the life events of Irish American gangster Danny Greene KILL THE IRISHMAN is by far one the most involved movies I have watched of its kind.
A good one for the mature audience who savor biographies and slow paced dramas.This is how I see it, nothing more nothing less!Title: Kill the Irishman Directed by: Jonathan Hensleigh Starring: Ray Stevenson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Robert Davi, Vinnie Jones & Christopher Walken Rated: R for strong violence and some sexual content/nudity Rating: 07/10 106 Minutes.
A series of bomb explosions made Cleveland one of the most violent American cities of the era.The movie is brutal but also has great wit and Stevenson is as charming as can be as Danny Greene.
It doesn't take much research into the real story of Danny Greene and the Cleveland mob war to recognize that there was potentially a great Mobster movie waiting to be made.
And we never connect with them.The acting is fine, Ray Stevenson's Greene is tough and smart and world-worn, everyone else is fine but they just stay on the periphery and play stock characters who come and go for the most part.If the script had made a choice to either be the story through the eyes of Val Kilmer's Cleveland police detective, or the story through the eyes of Irish Danny Greene, instead of just a linear montage of standard gangster film clichés, we all could have been treated to a top-notch tale.The movie just proves you need a great script to make a great movie, and it didn't have one..
Based on the life of real Irish crimelord Danny Greene this is very similar in style to Goodfellas and also shares some of the support cast of aforementioned mob classic .
Kill The Irishman has one of the best supporting casts around which includes Vincent D'Onofrio, Christopher Walken, Vinny Jones and Val Kilmer(plus half of the cast of Goodfellas ).
True story of famous '70's Cleveland based Irish mobster Danny Greene.
Danny Greene's story - narrated by Val Kilmer (who lends some heavy support throughout the film) - tells of a tough Irishman working the grain silos at the Cleveland Docks whose rise to infamy begins when he goes to work for the mafia after a jail term for larceny makes headlines due to his muscling in on his former factory boss's business.Greene is an old fashioned street fighting man who will stand up to anybody and although readily willing to commit crimes to make money, he is an honest and caring man by nature and this quickly endears us to the complex character so easily portrayed by Irish-born up and coming actor Ray Stevenson.
Naturally, what follows is the titular plot; the mafia attempting and failing over the duration of many years to hit the unflappable Irishman as he goes to great lengths to rub it in their faces and get revenge where necessary.The film, based mostly in Cleveland throughout post-war '70's America, looks and feels authentic but it is the strong, earthy Irish charm that sets it apart from all those old classic I-tallian-American gangster films and a style of film-making that sometimes takes you back even as far as the forties for its occasionally rich film-noir texture.What I find amazing because this is actually no huge Hollywood film is that 'Kill The Irishman' boasts a hugely classic cast including Val Kilmer (Heat), Christopher Walken (explanation???), Vincent D'Onofrio (Law & Order), Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) and Robert Davi (Die Hard and The Goonies) to name a few.
It is the story of Danny Greene an Irish mobster who would not sell out to the Italian mafia as they fought over turf in Cleveland.And the Director, Jonathan Hensleigh did a great job on the direction and script.
Jonathan told the story in 70's film language which has a lot of natural lighting, some hand held camera, realistic scenes, and sort of a cinema-verite feel to the movie.
The lighting, film stock, and camera work was reminiscent of The French Connection, a gritty 70's film.Ray Stevenson was almost a look alike for the real Danny Greene and added to the realism of the story.Even the fights were very realistic.
Thank goodness the fights didn't go on forever with 'artsy' camera angles.The feel of this movie was gritty, and matched the grittiness of the story and labor (garbage and longshoreman activities) and you didn't feel the supporting cast was acting but that you were watching a mafia spy cam on their activities.
Funny how bombs are the "weapon"of choice for criminal types.Thank goodness Scorsese did not direct this movie as it would have been over lit and much more hyped up and with those whack fist effects and other posed scenes.And people died in these explosions, they didn't run ahead of them like Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford to "beat" the blast.If want to learn about the historic story of mobster vs.
dug all the actors --Ray Stevenson did terrific job -- also the rest of the cast was fun and quirky --- among the standouts are Chris Walken and Robert Davi any film would be worth seeing just for them-- even in small roles these guys bring so much and are more versatile that a lot of the stock in play stereotypes ---Danny Greene story was true!!
I initially heard of Danny Green from the Mobsters series on BIO Channel, so I already knew the background story, and overall this movie keeps things pretty real in that regard(with some dramatics added here and there for the sake of entertainment).
The film focuses on the life of Danny Greene (a bulked, sturdy Ray Stevenson), who was an Irish American mobster working out of Cleveland back in the 70's, a guy who seems to have caused quite a stir of chaos amongst organized crime back then.
The cast is enormous, and includes the like of Vinnie Jones as a bruiser of an Irish street soldier, Robert Davi in an explosive third act cameo as a lethal specialist brought in to neutralize Danny, and your usual kennel of Italian American character actors like Mike Starr, Bob Gunton, Tony Lo Bianco, Steve Schirippa, Paul Sorvino and others.
In "Kill the Irishman" we are now given a new underdog, bad guy to cheer for, Danny Greene (played by Ray Stevenson).
All-American tough guy.In Jonathan Hensleigh's latest movie based on Danny Greene's life in the 1970s, we see the tough guy who works his way up from the docks in Cleveland, Ohio.
Kill The Irishman, spends an hour building up to a good last thirty minutes, but it certainly is not Goodfellas.The problems lies partially in a script that lacks imagination and chooses instead to deliver a linear plot that is frankly good at first but dulls after the first twenty minutes until it picks up again after the first hour; and secondly, and perhaps more seriously, the leads are only competent - what we get is exactly what another review had said - a made for TV film feeling on this - but nothing akin to big film.Given the cast and story perhaps more could have been done; all in all if crime is your favorite genre then you're going to enjoy this anyway - I was left bored by the first hour, and while the last half-hour is good the film never raises above a very simple and simplistic story.
we never really get inside the mind or world of Danny Green - and it all feels very much as though we're just skimming the surface all the time.Good beer and pizza movie, but certainly no classic..
This based on a true story set in Cleveland of Danny Greene takes us through the life of a career thug whose pride wont let him lay down for the mob.
Crime movies attract me like a magnet, and so I landed on this.It shows the continuous attempt to kill Danny Greene (the Irishman), and his story of pauper and king substantially.This movie catches imagination and seesaws Danny Greene as a good and bad guy.
Still at the end you end up liking Danny played effortlessly by Ray Stevenson.At times it even reminds you of Robinhood like baddies, a classic as modern fanatics go; this movie resembles.The Mafia and crime syndicates are back with this flick, enjoy the chase to kill the Irishman.......
It also bordered on ridiculous...there was no way this guy could survive everything, go on TV, mock the mob, and stay in a trailer when they could easily kill him...it was just too crazy.Then I watched the special features...the main feature is an hour long documentary featuring real news programs, the real people involved, interviews, and film of the shootings, crime scenes, and bombings...it shows that the film was about 90% accurate save for a few small details and some exaggerated parts in the beginning...this made me really appreciate the character and the story a lot more.Bottom line, this is HIGHLY recommended viewing provided that you watch the special features (yes even on the redbox it's included)...I agree with other reviewers, if this had been given a bigger budget and shot with a more seasoned director it would go down as one of the greatest stories I've ever seen..
The true story of Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson), a tough Irish thug working for mobsters in Cleveland during the 1970s.Despite my love for Cleveland, and a moderate interest in the Mafia, I had never heard of Danny Greene.
I don't like long reviews so I'll get right to the point.A movie based on the real life story of Danny Green,an Irish thug played by Ray Stevenson who did a great job to his role.You know how it goes,if you want an Irish character,pick an Irish actor to play it.Unfortunately the movie is underrated,God knows why...I like how Danny was a "good person in a bad person" and sticked to his pride no matter what happened.It was nice to see that the producers gave the actors hairstyles and whiskers just like the ones back then.I really recommend this film,mostly because it's a biography that has complied exactly what happened and it focused on Danny's emotions and ego.One more thing that I loved about this film was that the director used actual footage from 1970 between frames..
The movie deftly shows that level of incompetence.Ray Stevenson does a credible job as Irish Danny Green and Vincent D'Onforio is even better as the conflicted John Nardi.
The movie deftly shows that level of incompetence.Ray Stevenson does a credible job as Irish Danny Green and Vincent D'Onforio is even better as the conflicted John Nardi.
Kill the Irishman had potential to be something big, something memorable, something reminiscent of old time gangster movies; instead, it came up short and disappeared like a fart in the wind.
My expectations were a little too high after seeing the trailer, Ray Stevenson did a great job you can't argue against that but overall there were too many clichés the supporting cast was terrible, familiar faces such as Val Kilmer, Vinnie Jones, Christopher Walken and Steve Schirripa were more distracting than anything.
All the parts were on the table.Unfortunately, despite an amazing, nationally covered, true story as a starting point, a fantastic soundtrack, excellent work by the DP and masterful supporting cast, who turn in great performances throughout, Jonathan Hensleigh has managed to squander all that and come up with something resembling a mediocre network TV movie, trying desperately hard and failing to capture the essence of the Irish gangster...(Danny)"Clean up this yard...and then repaint these steps".
Stevenson stars in and as Danny Greene, a tough Irish thug working for mobsters in Cleveland during the 1970's.
Calls himself a descendant of the Celtic Warriors in short " one tough son-of-a-gun!" The movie follows Greene's rise to power, although his practices were corrupt he maintained a certain amount of dignity and a code to how he went about doing his work.Great performance by Stevenson, but poor supporting performances makes the viewer lose the flow of the movie, Director Jonathan Hensleigh fails to use actors like Christopher Walken and Val Kilmer effectively, definite shades of the Scorsese classic Goodfellas in the narrative perspective, in fact the knife stabbing scene behind the car boot is directly lifted from there, Alas Jonathan did not have Joe Pesci to liven up the screen!
Kill the Irishman tells the story of mobster Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson) and his rise to power in 1970s Cleveland.
Green rose to be a local Union boss became a police informer when the heat got too much and then got into conflict with the mafia.The film is told from the viewpoint of cop, Val Kilmer who is too fat to be a cop is in conflict with Greene and actually wasted in the role.This is really low rent version of Goodfellas with less charismatic characters, B list cast, dodgy wigs and bad cgi.
The story as presented here is actually somewhat dull and clearly disappointing.Danny Greene may be the hero of the film but make no mistake he's not a good guy.
The Italian bosses actually come across as somewhat pathetic, acting like big-shots as they run their little Cleveland family but needing to call in some real mafia guys from New York to try to clean up their Danny Greene mess.
Christopher Walken shows his face too - a plus perhaps, only he's not in it enough to make much of a difference.Ray Stephenson plays Danny Greene, an Irish gangster in America.
The film stars B movie tough guy (and notable character thug) Ray Stevenson as Greene.
The film co-stars the likes of Vincent D'Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Linda Cardellini, Vinnie Jones, Robert Davi, Paul Sorvino and other well known character actors.
But we need those extra 40 minutes, because it gives us time to get explore the points listed above."Kill the Irishman" feels like wasted opportunity.It could have been a "Heat" style film, exploring the relationship between Ray Stevenson and Val Kilmer's characters.
"If any of these maggots from the so-called mafia want to come after me, I'm not a hard man to find." This is the true story of Danny Greene (Stevenson), the man the mob couldn't kill.
When captured by the FBI he sells out his friends and colleagues to become an informant, and exploits this position to advance his criminal career.Set in the 1970s at the height of the infamous 'Mafia versus pretty much anyone who's not Italian' wars, this action packed film based on real life events has a star studded cast, including Ray Stevenson, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Fionnula Flanagan, and Michael Finn Seamus McDonnell O'Flahahaherty.I rate Kill the Irishman at 26.64 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as an impressive 8/10 on IMDb..
It has a definite feel for the era it represents, Cleveland in the mid Seventies, and the use of news and film clips of the time lend a degree of authenticity to the the story of mobster Danny Greene.
The cast is played by recognizable actors such as Ray Stevenson (Danny Greene), Vincent D'Onofrio (John Nardi), Val Kilmer (Joe Manditski), and Christopher Walken (Shondor Birns).
Resulting in a designated hit on Danny Green, the tough Irish gangster who lead the revolt against the Italian mob in Cleveland.The lead character played by Ray Stevenson really has got charisma, the likes of Sean Connery had: bravoure with brass balls and a wink.
Kill The Irishman goes so far overboard with making Danny Greene a folk hero that it loses any sense of perspective and any chance at being a really good mob movie.
It all feels so fake that you can't fully appreciate the unique qualities of the real Danny Greene and the ultimate significance of his story.It's too bad because the movie has a good rhythm and pace and a strong, though perhaps overly large, cast of characters. |
tt0193771 | Bingo | The film opens with a brief, live-action video sequence of the Neo-Futurists performing part of Disregard This Play before a live audience. A man in a strange hat greets a man sitting in a chair and addresses him as "Bingo". When the man in the chair denies being named Bingo, the man in the hat insists that he is, in fact, "Bingo the Clown-o". As the man in the chair tries to correct him, the man in the hat continues to address him as Bingo at greater and greater volume, ending with a loud shout and cutting off the protests.
After a fade to black, the same basic scene begins to play out again, this time with computer-animated characters. A man, "Dave," is sitting in a chair under a spotlight and surrounded by darkness. A clown enters, smoking a cigarette, and addresses Dave as "Bingo." Dave starts to protest that he's not "Bingo the Clown," but the clown ignores him and repeats the phrases "Hi, Bingo!" and "Bingo the Clown!" With each repetition, the clown's voice gets louder and he grows physically larger until he is screaming at Dave with a head larger than Dave's entire body.
A female harlequin enters, calling for "Music, please!" As she exits, the stage is illuminated and an instrumental version of the song "Daisy Bell" (Daisy, Daisy) begins to play. Strange screens rise up from under the floor and begin displaying a series of seemingly random images interspersed with pictures of clowns and the words "Hi Bingo!" At the same time, the clown begins riding a bicycle in circles around Dave while balancing a piano on one hand, and Dave is bombarded with peanuts.
The harlequin descends from the ceiling and orders the music to stop. As she exits, the music stops and the lights dim, leaving Dave alone in a spotlight once again. A little girl clown enters, holding a balloon that keeps bursting and re-inflating in new colors. She addresses Dave as "Bingo" and warns him that "he" is coming to "check on your progress." When Dave asks if Bingo is the one who is coming, the balloon girl's face transforms into a gigantic, snake-like monster and she shouts that Dave is Bingo. She then turns immediately back into a little girl to inform Dave that "he" is coming. The first clown walks through the spotlight, still carrying the piano in one hand, and drops his bicycle beside Dave's chair before leaving.
The balloon girl calls Dave "Bingo" again, and when he tries to protest, he is interrupted by the harlequin shouting "Music, please!" again. The music begins playing again, and the screens also reappear, but are soon replaced by enormous, robotic faces. The balloon girl drifts away on a giant balloon, and a human-sized flea walks past with a sign announcing "The Money Guy." The harlequin returns briefly and orders the music to stop before disappearing.
When the music stops, there is a strange creature with no legs, many arms, a man's head, and dollar bills sprouting from its neck and arms. It yells at Dave for "looking at my money," but then offers to let Dave look at his money. Confused and frightened, Dave declares that yes, he would like to look at the creature's money. The creature congratulates him for being a "good, little Bingo." Dave says that he doesn't think that he's Bingo, asking "who am I?"
The harlequin once again calls for music. This time, the lighting does not change, but the money creature is wheeled away as music plays and then fades out. Left alone, Dave says that maybe his is "Bingo" after all. The clown reappears, sitting in an easy chair, wearing glasses, with an axe embedded in his head. The clown asks Dave to confirm that he is "Bingo the Clown." Dave agrees, stating enthusiastically that he is "Bingo, Bingo the Clown-o!" He stands up and starts dancing around while shaking a baby's rattle.
The lights come on, fully illuminating the room, and a voice on a loudspeaker says "Thank you. Next." The screen cuts to black, and the credits begin. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | Surrealistic computer-generated short is an animated wonder.. "Bingo" is the latest entry in the arena of increasingly complex and lifelike computer-generated animations. Chris Landreth sought a subject for a short that would aid in the development of Maya, an animation software package by Alias/Wavefront. He found inspiration in the Chicago-based theater group "The Neo-Futurists" who for years have performed an ever-changing series of 30 plays in 60 minutes called "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind." Greg Kotis's play "Disregard This Play," in which a man is psychologically brutalized into believing he is a clown named Bingo, became the basis for Landreth's animation.Bingo expands on the original short skit (a filmed portion of which we see at the beginning) by allowing the innate surrealism of the psychological battering to take on realistic imagery. The bizarre nature of the admittedly thin plot will not appeal to everyone. Several people I know simply raised their eyebrows and looked blankly at me when I asked them how they liked it. But all were impressed by the sheer technical prowess of the animation. Facial gestures, human musculature, lighting and shadows, smoke and haze effects are all astoundingly realistic. And Bingo shows why computer animators strive to create incredibly realistic human characters; not to become replacements for human actors, but to give us believable animated characters that can transform into these strange and surrealistic visions.. Scary stuff. "Bingo" is an award-winning Canadian 5-minute short film from almost 20 years ago and this is based on Greg Kotis' play and the director is Chris Landreth. He made this film before his Oscar win for "Ryan", but was also an Academy Award nominee for another work at this point. Many people find clowns scary and I cannot say I am a great fan either and this film completely focuses on how clowns are scary and not funny. We see a seemingly normal man, who sits in a circus and all kinds of circus creatures (including an Abby Sciuto look-alike) turn him in a weird brain-washing manner into some kind of character who loses his mind and becomes the clown they want him to becomes. I thought the animation is good and the story succeeds through its strangeness and awkwardness. Landreth was in his mid-30s when he made this little animated movie and it's a success. I recommend checking it out and I actually like it more than "Ryan". |
tt0072446 | Ziemia obiecana | The film opens following two American high school acquaintances a few years after graduation now suffering from deep anger and anguish because they are not as successful as they hoped to be. Hancock (Jason Gedrick) is the high school basketball star who gets into college on an athletic scholarship only to lose the scholarship to a better player. Unable to succeed in college based on his academic merit, he returns to his hometown, becomes a police officer and is slowly moving into a middle-class mediocrity with his cheerleader girlfriend, Mary, who is in college and plans to major in the arts. Hancock is still stewing over the fact that he is no longer the sports star and that his girlfriend is not only reluctant to marry him but may end up being more successful than he.
Danny (Kiefer Sutherland) is the academic "nerd" who was supposedly destined to be so successful that he earned the nickname "Senator". It was felt by some that one day he would become a decent and just politician. He has returned home with his unrestrained, unpredictable, overbearing bride, Bev (Meg Ryan).
After a quick Christmas Eve reunion with his parents, Danny learns that his father is dying. He is unable to accept that while he left town with great expectations, he has returned a poor drifter. His desire to run from his problems again, however, prompts Bev to mock his manhood in front of some of his high school friends at a bar and the two decide to hold up a convenience store perhaps as a means for Danny to prove his manhood or because that is just what "Hollywood white trash" would do.
Just then, Hancock, unaware that Danny has returned to town, drives into the store's parking lot arguing with his girlfriend about the future of their relationship. Interrupting the robbery, he fatally shoots Danny and wounds Bev. Hancock then suffers something of an emotional breakdown. Danny and Hancock are shown to really have little in common except that Danny once had a crush on Mary and perhaps a repressed crush on Hancock.
As other police officers and paramedics arrive on scene, Hancock drives with his girlfriend to an open field where he had previously shared, with his police partner, some of his frustrations. He screams to Mary how he feels he has been lied to while growing up. Later Hancock has to personally inform Danny's father that he has killed his son. | historical | train | wikipedia | This definitely may be Andrzej Wajda's most introspective and interesting film.
The plot grabs you with its humour and depth while Wajda makes magic with the camera.
The Kurowo scene with the poppy flowers is classic...the music calls on nostalgia.
Olbrychski as the scrupleless, handsome Pole...Pszoniak as the hillarious, clever Jew...and (my favourite!) Seweryn as the baby-faced, love-struck German.
And let's remember that Wajda was one of the most liberated of all the filmmakers of the Soviet bloc.
Many regard this as Wajda's, and maybe even Poland's best ever film.
This is quite possibly the most exciting film I've ever seen.
The drama, wit and ferocity of the bulk of the film build so, so effectively to its deafening crescendo, the music, the setting, the actors and the camera-work complementing and intertwining with each other in a way quite possibly unmatched in anything else I've seen.
This is Wajda's demonstration that however much he may be portrayed as a hero of Poland's rebellion against its socialist regime, he is at the same time sympathetic to the cause which drove Marxism, and hostile to the vulgarities of the interaction of man and money, the dehumanising, reifying assault with which rampant capitalism engages with the human psyche.
If this is propaganda, then it is a heartfelt, stunningly effective damasking of the myth with which we all live today.By the way, I've only seen the re-released version, shorter than the original.
I think the freshness and crispness of the cinematography in the more recent version might have added to the film..
"The Promised Land" is a visual feast, fast-paced, and every bit as ruthless as the cutthroat characters it depicts.
The topic – the Industrial Revolution, and the characters – immoral greedy monsters – are ugly and mean, but Wajda's filmmaking is so virtuosic you watch just for the sheer craft, splendor, and runaway train of a plot.
I find it hard to sit through movies where there are no sympathetic main characters and no possibility of a happy ending, but "The Promised Land" is addictively watchable.
There's an orgy, a tiger, several mutilated bodies, fires, riots, history, and Wojciech Kilar's driving, award-winning score.Anyone interested in the Industrial Revolution should see this movie.
In the DVD's extra features, an assistant director discusses a scene of indigent paupers receiving charity food.
There is a lengthy scene where Anna (Anna Nehrebecka), a country aristocrat, travels to the city.
The camera follows Anna and lays out Lodz before her in all its gritty, noxious detail: smoking chimneys, workers' funerals, fighting men, the Jewish quarter.
The scene looks like documentary footage of a late nineteenth-century industrial city."The Promised Land" also takes the viewer into the mansions of Lodz, almost ridiculous in their sumptuousness, plunked down in so much filth, squalor, and despair.
Ornate winding staircases, gilt-encrusted columns and ceiling murals lure on industrialists willing to wring every last penny from their desperate employees."The Promised Land" depicts Lodz's emergence as a textile manufacturing hub.
Three friends, one a Polish aristocrat, one a Jew, and one a German, strive to build their own factory.
He's just an actor playing a part, he reminds us, as they all are, playing any part they want to get their highest ideal: cash.The film also depicts workers and their plight.
This is the price poor people pay for bread, the film shows us.
Just like Lodz, just like men chasing cash, just like history.There are a few characters who aren't utterly despicable.
There is a stunning scene that is quite different from anything else in the film.
The film moves quickly and purposefully, but in this scene men meet in a small room to play classical music.
The scene seems to say, "Yes, people in Lodz had souls." That reminder makes the surrounding greed-induced frenzy all the more disturbing.Some viewers protest "The Promised Land" as an anti-Semitic film, because of unpleasant Jewish characters.
Indeed, there are unpleasant Jewish characters in the film.
Virtually *every* character in the film is unpleasant – even the pretty, innocent child lured into prostitution.
Further, every character is unpleasant in an ethnically- gender-, and socioeconomic-class-coded way.
This film isn't anti-Semitic; it is brutally misanthropic.
It depicts people at their worst.Again, it is Wajda's virtuosic filmmaking that makes all this endurable.
That rock means much – the inevitable march of history that has brought industrialists high and might also bring them very, very low.
Wajda films this scene with such skill and poetry that the rock becomes a character in the film.
Subsequent action is filmed *from the rock's point of view.* Poland is a small, distant, and much contested country.
It's filmmaking like that that amply earned Wajda his honorary Academy Award..
By many (including me) seen as the best polish movie ever made.
The main characters: polish, german and jewish represent the three societies living in the industrial city of Lodz.
The time is the 1890s and the place is Lodz, Poland (which, Wikipedia indicates was a client state of the Russian Empire then).
Lodz at the time was a center of textile production, nicknamed "The Promised Land." Director Wajda wastes no time in hitting you over the head with the basic theme which is the total contrast between the industrial workers and the textile factory owners.
The main images we get of the workers is their crowding to get into work at the factories (ala scenes from "Metropolis") and working at their tedious work stations.
The main focus of the film is on the factory owners and wannabes and, in particular, on three friends who are wanting to build a factory--one of the friends is German, another is a Polish aristocrat, and the third is a Jew of a nationality that I never determined.This is a complicated story of epic sweep featuring a large cast.
As is the case whenever large amounts of money and power are at stake, there was a lot of backstage jockeying going on--companies trying to poach executives from each other, secret coalitions, factories burned to gain competitive advantage or for insurance monies, coded messages decrypted, and so forth.
Additionally there were fissures within families where the pursuit of money caused people to behave in a manner in opposition to longstanding traditions of honor and integrity.
Some of the characters speak German, others Polish.
I was often confused as to where a scene was taking place.
In order to satisfy the Soviet censors to get this made perhaps Wajda exaggerated by making all of the upper class characters truly disagreeable and arrogant, but given his later involvement with Solidarity in Poland, his sympathies were clearly with the workers.
I wish additional time had been given to examining the personal lives of some of the workers; as presented they appeared mostly as grim oppressed cyphers.Of the seven of Wajda's films I have seen I found this one to be the most accomplished cinematically, almost to the point where the filming trumps the story.
The creation of a Lodz at the turn of the century is a worthy achievement, on a par with the illusion of authenticity that you get when reading a Dickens novel.I am puzzled as to why this film has drawn such a small audience over the years..
A rich epic of the sweeping changes in values and material life brought on by the industrial revolution's rather late arrival in Poland.
Usually I tend to hold on to those movies where there are many things I can relate to, in other words modern realistic dramas.In this case, even if many situations in the film is dramatized incredible, its still a world that in some way did historical exist when Europe was early industrialized.
A storyline of a very raw world these people lived in, with a very hard over dramatized personal directions of the actors: This is a typical East-European style of a movie, when it comes to directing and acting.
Even if I was a bit put off by this over dramatization I was glued to the screen.This production is so well done in all aspects that you will be tussed around in your mind and almost put to trans like you did when you saw animated movies as a child.I disparead for many moments, and just fell into the movie, living in the story, something I seldom do nowadays.The entire concept of this movie is stunning.
The technical quality is about the best I have ever seen and heard of a movie that is that old.The scenaries are completely mind blowing, considering that digital effects didn't exist 1975.
I watched this film on DVD screened by very good equipment, and It was shocking that that quality could be produced 1975.Respect for Polish film workers !.
This epic film directed by the famous Polish director Andrzej Wajda is not nearly so widely known outside Poland as many of his other films, which have a broader appeal and are less disturbing and savagely ironical.
The film is based upon a novel by the classic Polish novelist Ladislaw Reymont (who died 1925).
Reymont is better known in English for his novel THE PEASANTS (CHLOPI), published in four volumes successively entitled Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
This story is harrowing in the extreme, and to a certain extent becomes a caricature of 'the evils of capitalists', primarily speculators.
Of course, we all know today how dangerous speculators are, and every major bank seems to contains dozens of uncontrolled and uncontrollable 'rogue speculators', or 'casino gamblers' as they are often called nowadays, who keep bringing about disastrous losses and crashes which effect the entire globe.
But this film is a historical drama limited to what took place in the Polish city of Lodz during the 1880s.
One presumes that it must have a basis in truth of some kind, but being ignorant of the history of Lodz, I must confess I do not know.
The film contains a few 'in jokes'.
For instance, there is a scene where an uneducated Jewish moneylender is told that Victor Hugo has just died (which happened in 1885).
He says, after looking blank at first, 'oh yes, he wrote that book OF FIRE AND SWORD some portions of which my daughter read out to me.' Polish viewers would laugh their heads off at this, as the book referred to is one of the most famous works of Henryk Sienkiewicz and has nothing to do with Victor Hugo.
Wajda's rage when making this film was evidently so intense that he could not resist planting such small ironies as those within the dialogue.
The film portrays the most vicious, corrupt, callous and inhuman greed and arrogance imaginable.
Mill owners are shown saying: 'Let them die' when their workers are injured by the machines in their factories, and refuse to pay their widows a penny in compensation.
They go round the factories choosing the young worker girls they want for sex and forcing them into it with the threat of firing them and their whole families so that they will starve if the girls do not agree.
Jews are portrayed very harshly as stock characters who are greedy, vengeful and lascivious.
With the exception of one very nice and honourable aristocratic girl named Anka, who tries unsuccessfully to 'have concern for human suffering' by aiding a worker whose ribs have been crushed but is ordered not to do so, just about every character in the story is revolting, rotten to the core, and despicable.
The title is clearly an extremely ironical one, as 'the promised land' dreamed of by one minor character as a Lodz where everybody gets rich and is happy, is in fact the most brutal nightmare and hell on earth.
Wajda used his brilliant film making skills to create a highly watchable and rather mesmerising film, but it turns one's stomach.
Reymont's THE PEASANTS has been filmed as a feature film three times, in 1922, 1935, and 1973, and as a television mini-series in 1972.
Even in the midst of the dialogue of this film, the name of the national poet Adam Mickiewicz bursts through in conversation.
Especially at that time, it would have been hard to find a Pole who could go an entire day without referring to Mickiewicz, who was not only the national poet but a passionate supporter of Polish independence and freedom, who spent much of his life living on the Rue de Seine (see his plaque) in Paris as a political exile.
To a large extent this can be seen to be due to the struggle which the Poles have had over the centuries in maintaining a national identity at all, what with the Swedish, German, and Russian invasions, not to mention their tiffs with the Lithuanians.
In this film, there are many sarcastic references to and portrayals of Germans resident in Lodz at the time, and they come off worse than even the Jews, as the worst villains and scoundrels.
This film pulls no punches, but lets rip in every direction like a mad dog that wants to bite everyone all at once..
Ziemia obiecana (1975) was shown in the U.S. with the translated title The Promised Land.
Andrzej Wajda.In 1898, Poland was being transformed from a rural nation into an industrialized nation.
The city of Lodz was becoming the hub of the textile manufacturing industry.Three young men--a Polish aristocrat, a Jew, and a German--join in the rush to make their fortunes by building a factory.
They connive, they scheme, and they show total disregard for their workers or anyone else.The plot of the movie follows them as they follow their dream.The film is well acted and, of course, well directed.
However, it's a grim film that probably portrays the situation very well.
The problem is that the situation was ugly, and it's hard to enjoy a movie about amoral people acting dishonorably.We saw this movie at Rochester's wonderful Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum.
The Promised Land was shown as part of the excellent Rochester Polish Film Festival..
Everything capitalist is evil in this cartoon-like view of history..
I am amazed that this film would have ever been nominated for an Oscar.
That's because the film seems very, very one-dimensional in its characterizations and seems much more like a propaganda piece than a historical film.
Now I am not saying there weren't some greedy and uncaring industrialists during the Industrial Revolution.
However, in this epic from Andrzej Wajda, ALL capitalists are evil scum...ALL.
And, oddly, all their women look like characters from a Fellini film.
Oh, and did I mention that all the Jews I saw in the film were evil money-grubbers?!
While the Oscar folks apparently liked it, I consider it a rather hateful film produced by a Soviet-backed government to promote their Marxist view of society.
An odd curio, but clearly NOT a film that is very good history or even well written from a non-historical standpoint.
Having read the previous reviews of this film, I am inclined to agree with the lone 3-star one.
What disturbed me most was the crude stereotyping of Jews.
One reviewer here has argued that all of the characters appear as crude, unsympathetic stereotypes - as if that were a defence of the film - and that it is therefore acceptable to stereotype Jews.
Even if the general tendency to crude theory-driven characterisation did not invalidate the whole thing, which in my opinion it does, there would still remain a difference in the way the crude stereotypes are constructed.The capitalists and peasants are stereotyped according to their social class: offensive enough, just as much to the grovelling, screeching workers and peasants as to the yapping, striding, quail-crunching capitalists and aristocrats.
On the other hand, the Jewish characters are clearly stereotyped along racial lines.
What could be a more crude, vicious and insulting repetition of the clichéd old stereotype of the two-faced, money-obsessed Jew?
The scene could have been used to create a contrast between traditional Jews and those who become involved in capitalism but, no, it's all of them.The central Jewish character is as subtle as a black-and-white minstrel.
The effeminate facial expressions; the inability to appreciate social situations except for their business opportunities; the way he looks on impotently as the properly manly Germans and Poles get their ends away at an orgy; there is little to the character but a collection of classic stereotypes.
Bravura Film-making of the Highest Order!.
Made after THE DAMNED, but before 1900, this operatic-style melodrama, about the industrial revolution in Lodz ca.
Like the other two films, it takes an extreme situation in history and makes it more extreme, piling on the excess.
Two examples here: a garden party that's like a Roman orgy, with naked women, tigers in cages, etc., and a scene where a worker grapples with his boss and they fall into a giant machine which instantly spews out their bodies as huge chunks of raw meat.
The characters and their single-minded mission hold the film tightly together, and the visual excesses seem like an inevitable part of the narrative, not sideshow set-pieces.
The film is incredibly visceral: the thrill of making a killing on the financial market, the inhuman noise of the factories, the excitement of undercurrents of rumors among patrons at the opera.
Most of all there's the brilliant use of relentless, machine-like music throughout that keeps up the unremitting unflagging pace.
The film has a power which stays with you long after you've left the theatre!
The subject certainly seems safe for an East European-bloc filmmaker--if ever capitalists were villains, it must have been at that time and place.
But in fact Wajda was making a politically dangerous statement.
The final scene of workers being shot at the order of the owners was an explicit comment on workers being shot in communist Poland a few years before the film was made.
This is a great film by one of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century! |
tt0765487 | The Wizard of Gore | Magician Montag the Magnificent delivers hectoring speeches about the nature of reality to his audience and then performs mutilation tricks on female "volunteers". The women appear unharmed immediately afterward but later collapse, dead, in public or at home—mutilated in the same grisly fashion suggested by Montag's stage tricks (cut in half with a chainsaw, drilled through with a punch press, etc.). Audience member Sherry Carson, a local TV talk show hostess, and her boyfriend Jack begin to suspect that Montag is somehow involved in the murders. Jack and fellow reporter Greg attempt to research the case but are unable to come up with any solid evidence.
Montag agrees to appear on Sherry's show to perform a fire trick; when the cameras roll, he hypnotizes not only everyone in the studio, but also the viewing audience at home. With a wave of his hand, Montag starts a blaze and is guiding Sherry and two plainclothes cops toward it when Jack intervenes and pushes Montag into the fire instead. Screaming, the magician dies.
Back at home, Sherry and Jack have a drink as they discuss their strange experience. Suddenly, Jack laughs and begins peeling his own skin from his face to reveal that he is actually Montag. "What makes you think you know what reality is?" he asks Sherry before disemboweling her with his bare hands. But Sherry, still alive and laughing maniacally, tells the baffled Montag that none of what has happened was real—and that even he is part of her illusion. "You are no longer even here," she informs Montag. "You'll have to start your little charade all over again."
"But I...I am Montag!" the magician stammers helplessly. Then he is back onstage, dazed, reciting the same speech that he delivered to his audience at the beginning of the film: "What is real? How do you know that at this second you aren't asleep in your beds, dreaming that you are here in this theater?" And in the audience an unimpressed Sherry turns to Jack, muttering, "You know what I think? I think he's a phony." | psychedelic, neo noir, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | What a totally crazy (yet highly admirable) ambition to remake a Herschell Gordon Lewis film and actually add story depth, detailed character drawings, mystery and an atmosphere of morbidity!
Another thing which makes "The Wizard of Gore" a must-see for horror fanatics is the presence of no less than three phenomenal genre veterans, namely Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and Jeffrey Combs..
But not only this is a remake that manages to achieve the unthinkable (surpass the original movie and actually add a whole lot of depth to it), for me it's been a truly hallucinating trip, one that stuck with me like few others in the past.
In my humble opinion, this movie takes one of the most interesting premises in horror movies and manages to develop it with taste and twists that seem to be endless; some of the plot elements may seem unsubstantiated, some may feel rushed, and many moviegoers will just lose their will to follow the movie's overly convoluted storyline, since this is one of those films that REQUIRES a second viewing to be fully appreciated (maybe even a third one).
Whilst this version still offers viewers a fairly impressive level of on-screen carnage, the real butchery occurs in the narrative: in an attempt to add some kind of meaning to Lewis's rather slight original plot, the makers of this film have turned the story into a surreal, and very confusing hodgepodge of half-baked ideas.
In fact, just like one of the film's victims, it's all over the place.Crispin Glover plays macabre magician Montag the Magnificent, whose unusual carnival show involves inviting a member of the audience on to the stage and then killing them in an extremely gory manner.
This naturally freaks out the audience, but, just as they turn to leave in disgust and fear, Montag reveals the 'victim' to be very much alive.Spectator Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue), a journalist for a small underground newspaper, is intrigued by the bloody illusion that he witnesses, and returns to see the show night after night in an attempt to discover the secret behind the trick.
However, when the girls that appear to die on stage actually begin to turn up dead in reality, Edmund is plunged into a nightmarish world of dismemberment, psychotropic drugs, and deceit from which he cannot escape.Although director Jeremy Kasten's unusual approach at first seems to be paying off, delivering some truly weird sequences and a genuinely disturbing atmosphere, as the film progresses, he eventually loses control over proceedings and the film becomes something of an unfathomable disaster.
It's all an essay on the machinations that take place inside from our position as horror viewers.What lets it down for me is first the haphazard technique, a lot of dutch angles for no reason - but which of course the filmmaker would justify as reflecting a skewed state of mind -, I can look past this, and second the desire to pursue clues right to the end in an effort to piece together for us 'what really happened'.
Sooner or later this type of fictions must probe into the nature of abstractions, the film has its work already laid out with the stageshow, it's a perfect allusion to what we are watching from our end, the trick with smoke and mirrors, yet goes on to dangle a piece of string in our faces.So, in 20 words or less: imagine Naked Lunch re-assembled as a lengthy Masters of Horror episode - the murky colors, the hard lights and DV look - by a filmmaker with aspirations to articulate in feverish weirdness a little of what he has seen from Lynch or Greenaway.It may not look that way, but it's actually one of the more interesting straight-out horror films of the last 10 years..
Horror remakes are generally lamented by lovers of the genre, and for good reason - as not only are the majority of them lame and uninspired, but there's also the fact that we simply don't need new versions of perfect films such as The Omen and Dawn of the Dead.
The plot here focuses on Edmund Bigelow; a reporter who becomes entranced by the stage shows of Montag the Magnificent; a magician who as part of his act selects girls from the audience and proceeds to butcher them on stage - only for them to appear intact at the end of the show.
However, the magician's tricks take a more sinister turn when several of the girls used in the show turn up dead in mysterious circumstances and our lead character begins to question his own sanity.This film is really just a remake in title only as while the plot is similar to the earlier version; here it's expanded on so much to the point where the two are unrecognisable.
The show is a success but later Edmund discovers that all those girls were really killed with similar injuries to those performed in the illusionary show and here it starts his investigation on all those deaths and to find out who Montag really is.Since I've never heard that this was a remake of a film of the 1970's I think that it was a original plot, very surprising and thrilling most of the times.
Some of the investigation parts was confusing in some points much because the director wanted to recreate something closer to what films noir were (notice the look of the journalist, his voice over and of course the plot twist) but it was mixed with some strange visual effects (Pardue's delusional scenes).
In terms of horror it was okay, incredible makeup effects but despite the blood and all the gore I didn't find it a scary movie (perhaps I'm too insensible or I didn't care much for the characters).
Crispin Glover was magnificent (no jokes with his character here), Pardue was okay and the movie delivers the good performances of Brad Dourif ("Child's Play"), Jeffrey Combs ("Re-Animator") and Bijou Phillips.
Horror die-hard fans might find it boring or find nothing special about it but for those who enjoy different propositions and something more original in terms of story it's a great film to see.
Here we have some fairly good names as Crispin Glover plays the strange magician Montag and we also have Jeffrey Combs and Brad Douriff.
Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif and The Suicide Girls (!) star in the 2007 remake of "The Wizard Of Gore" as directed by Jeremy Kasten.
Or is it all just a side-effect of some mind-expanding drugs?Kasten (whose previous credits are as thin as the movie's plot itself) tries to juice up a weak story with a bit of visual flare, but unfortunately wacky camera angles and color filters can't hide the lack of substance.
The bad attempt at mind-games – especially in the final act – kills any sense of enjoyment and strips the movie of at least earning the label of "enjoyable B-movie." Too pretentious for its own good and too nonsensical for what it attempts, "The Wizard Of Gore" is a messy failure, at best.At one point – somewhere in the final act – my wife turned to me and asked me if I "get this movie." The answer was "I think so," but the real question should have been "Are you enjoying it?" to which I would have answered a solid "no." "The Wizard Of Gore" doesn't have much to offer.
Eventually he finds out through a friend that the stage girls do actually end up dying at some point in ways similar to Montag's act.
As for Kip Pardue, he's more a never was than a has been and I guess is on par with the kind of lead a poor movie deserves.Ignore the high IMDb rating, unless you're in love with Crispin Glover or the kind of movie fan who has made it a mission to have the entire Brad Dourif collection..
Only watch this film if you can stomach a 'plot' with no focus, where you never know if the main character is awake or dreaming due to the fact that he keeps waking up in a cold sweat every five minutes covered in blood...
I've not a clue what the original film's plot is, but here we find Kip Pardue as some private detective, trying to make heads or tails out of Montag The Magnificent (Glover), who uses a combination of dark magic and dodgy airborne pharmaceuticals to trick his audiences into thinking he's dismembered assistants body's onstage, for real.
This film is a remake of the 1970 splatter classic, "Wizard of Gore", sometimes titled "The Mad Magician".
It wasn't a very good film, but it takes on a new luster compared to this garbage.The plot is that a magician is doing a show where he apparently dismembers volunteers from the audience, who later turn up dead from the same injuries they suffered on stage.
The idea of remaking the classic 1970 Herschell Gordon Lewis movie "The Wizard of Gore" did have potential.
This movie started out somewhat promising, but after the Main character had his first nightmare and grabbing a paper bag from his bedside table..things went completely downhill.Sadly Kip Pardue ruined the film, which is a real shame too, because Glover, Phillips, combs, suicide girls and Dourif acted perfectly.
The film has a plethora of gore, and the plentiful nude bodies of the Suicide Girls makes it totally worth watching.Thirdly, completely disjointed continuity which adds to the element of surrealism, which I do admit, is achieved in a highly clumsy fashion at times.
The entire movie was just trying to be a bit too much extraordinary for my liking.What kept this movie semi-afloat was aforementioned actors; Jeffrey Combs, Crispin Glover and Brad Dourif.
I really like Jeffrey Combs, Crispin Glover and Brad Dourif, but I HATE Bijou Phillips.
Being a fan of character actors Crispin Glover, Brad Dourif, and Jeffrey Combs, I sought out "Wizard of Gore".
Afterward I wondered if that was actually a flaw since the whole confusing paranoid vibe of the movie was actually one of its strong points, that whole drugged up not know quite what's going on thing.The movie did try to explain everything though and maybe that's where it failed, because it didn't make sense, or because it shouldn't have tried, either way it left an uneasy feeling where the journey to it had been kinda fun.I thought crispen glover was either good or bad, if that makes sense.
he had the required degree of creep about him, but he also seemed to be channeling a little of marty mcfly, luckily not so much that it threw off the movie.I kinda liked kip pardue, at first he was over stylised but then I began to like the predicament of his character being all into his retro style and then needing to watch a DVD couldn't cos his retro pad didn't have anything that could play it, a knowing poke at a thousand to arty for their own good scenesters.The punk chic of the suicide girls and the hip arts scene reeked a bit but viewed in a b movie way it almost worked, sort of,...The great points were the music, the editing and the camera work, all skillfully and creatively applied, and really up the stakes and perhaps the expectations for this movie.
I'm not a fan of Herschell Gordon Lewis cheap gore films,but they are better than this CGI-gore laden remake.Amateur journalist Edmund Bigelow becomes obsessed with the gruesome onstage magic of Montag the Magnificent(Crispin Glover),who seems to violently murder his female volunteers before the audience's very eyes.Bigelow discovers that the women are turning up dead-days later-from their supposedly illusionary wounds.Extremely boring remake with unconvincing dialogue and terrible script.The death scenes are eerie and grotesque,however I must say that I hated the use of digital blood.At least the film features some full-frontal nudity by feminist Suicide Girls.Skip this one and watch the original from 1970.You will thank me later!.
Herschell Gordon Lewis who gave us the video nastie Blood Feast, and came back years later with a follow up, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, originally did this film in 1970.Jeremy Kasten gives us this remake with The Suicide Girls and Bijou Phillips (Hostel Part 2).
Add in very good performances by Kip Pardue (Remember The Titans), Crispin Glover (Beowulf, Back to the Future), and Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, "Deadwood") and you have a film worth watching.I like the cultish Suicide Girls, and I was mesmerized by the story which sometimes had my head spinning.I plan to see the original, and I want to see more Jeremy Kasten..
"The Wizard of Gore" is a remake of a 1970 movie of the same name by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
I am a fan of HGL's films (Two Thousand Maniacs, Blood Feast, The Blast Off Girls ) but have never seen the original "Wizard of Gore", so this review is on its own merits, and not a comparison between the two films.The story is about a reporter named "Ed".
At this carnival, they are handed a card by a "circus geek" (Jeffery Combs) advertising a show performed by "The Wizard of Gore," otherwise known as 'Montag the Magnificent' (played by an over-the-top-as-usual Crispin Glover) They go into the show, and watch the geek eat live maggots, then bite the head off a rat.
The Wizard of Gore is set in present day Los Angeles where Edmund Bigelow (Kip Pardue) publishes a small underground paper, always looking for the next big thing he decides to go to see a stage magician named Montag the Magnficent (Crispin Glover) after seeing an advertisement.
Soon after Edmund hears a news report in which Cayneene's body has been found horribly mutilated & he makes the connection to Montag's show & start to investigate which results in mind bending hallucinations, drugs, mind control & a sinister plot as his life starts to fall apart as Edmund struggles to know the difference between reality & fantasy...Directed by Jeremy Kasten this is maybe a result of the recent spate of big budget Hollywood remakes of classic horror films such as Halloween (1978) & Friday the 13th (1980) & as such is a very loose remake of the low budget Herschell Gordon Lewis exploitation gore film The Wizard of Gore (1970) & I have to say I really wasn't that impressed with this confusing mess of a film.
The original 170 The Wizard of Gore was a moderately effective exploitation film with some strong if fake looking gore & had a fairly simple & daft yet entertaining plot while the 2007 remake has a few flashes of gore which look more realistic but have less impact & are less frequent while the plot has been totally revamped & changed with Montag the Magnificent almost a secondary consideration as the script feels more like Naked Lunch (1991) with it's hallucinogenic & drug fuelled plot that gets very confused & has no big pay-off at the end either & the character of Edmund striking similarities to Peter Weller's character in Naked Lunch both visual & conceptual are not unnoticed.
The cast features some familiar faces including a barely recognisable Jeffrey Combs, Brad Douriff, the pretty Bijou Phillips with Crispin Glover as Montag in a really camp performance that makes the character just look silly rather than threatening or menacing.The Wizard of Gore is a low budget remake of a low budget film that didn't need or want a remake, in trying to make it substantially different it strays too far from the original's concepts & anyone who liked the original for what it was probably won't like this anywhere near as much..
Jeffrey Combs is Montag's "opening act", a filthy alley-cat who eats maggots and bites off rat heads as a means for sickening the audience in preparation for the really nasty stuff to come afterward.I was excited when I rented this just because Crispin Glover was in it, as the magician who seems to be actually killing those he performs fake murders on stage.
As expected(..with my hopes fulfilled), Glover brings his glorious weirdness to the film, creating such a strange stage performer in the magician, Montag.
The film mostly features CGI gore(..and even this is shown from a distance probably to be on the safe side as to not expose the special effects)when Glover performs his grisly stage acts on female victims(..the film proudly proclaims that the Suicide Girls perform the demanding tasks of standing on stage naked as Montag mistreats/humiliates them).
The original sucked, too.This does preserve some aspects of the first one: a dream like atmosphere so overwhelming it becomes irritating, and, yes, gore.The plot is something about a boring stiff who takes his sexy girlfriend to a weird geek show where a magician gets people up on stage, gets them to strip, and then kills them while rambling garbage.
Remake of the 1970 Herschel Gordon Lewis Film follows an underground reporter named Edmund Bigelow (Pardue) to a master illusionist known as Montag The Magnificent (Glover).
Updating and complicating of the Herschel Gordon Lewis gore classic about Montag the Magnificent a magician who performs gory stage tricks on young women.
I liked the film somewhat but can't recommend it to anyone who's not a horror fan.(Hey any film that actually make good use of the weird Crispin Glover gets an extra point or two).
We are treated to a different plot than the original, marking this update as a reimagination rather than a direct remake.The story follows journalist Ed Bigelow (Kip Pardue), interested in the hype generated around Montag the Magnificent (Crispin Glover).
Master magician Montag the Magnificent (the divine Crispin Glover in peak lively'n'loopy form) performs ghoulish stage tricks on female audience members that go awry when said participants start turning up dead for real.
Montag the Magnificent(Crispin Glover)is a master of illusion who performs at rave-like venues. |
tt0080215 | The Flame Trees of Thika | Robin Grant (David Robb), his wife Tilly (Hayley Mills) and daughter Elspeth (Holly Aird) move to British East Africa (now called Kenya) to set up a coffee plantation. They meet Piet Roos, a Boer big game hunter and Njombo, a native who goes to work for them. The Grants face many travails in getting established, but these improve after they hire Sammy as the headman of the plantation. Hereward (Nicholas Jones) and Lettice Palmer (Sharon Maughan) move to the area. There is a fight between Roos and Sammy. Then Njombo kills Kimon, who was the Palmer’s headman. As a result, his chief strips him of his property and Sammy marries the girl Njombo wanted. Elspeth has a very interesting New Year’s Eve party with Mrs. Nimmo and a newcomer to the area, Alec Wilson while her parents and the Palmers go to Nairobi. A big game hunter, Ian Crawford (Ben Cross) arrives in the area and becomes infatuated with Lettice Palmer, who gives a pony to Elspeth. We learn Lettice left her first husband to elope with Hereward, and Elspeth develops an intense dislike for Hereward Palmer after he shoots a baby antelope on a hunt. Sammy arranges for a curse to be put on Njombo, and it literally takes an “Act of God” to get it lifted. After the railroad reaches Thika, Lettice gets a piano, but during a party held to celebrate its arrival, a leopard kills one of her dogs. During the hunt to get it, Hereward kills the leopard, but is almost killed by its mate, but saved by Roos. The Palmers, Tilly, and Crawford go on a safari, during which Lettice and Crawford have an affair. Hereward and Crawford are about to have a brawl when Crawford’s servant stabs Hereward. As a result, Crawford leaves and Lettice stays with Hereward. Then on August 4, 1914 the Grants learn war has been declared on Germany. Robin joins the army, while Tilly becomes a nurse and Elspeth goes to school, where she is bullied for being a know-it-all. She runs away back to Thika. Ian Crawford is killed. Then Robin is transferred to France so all the Grants leave Africa and return to Europe for the duration. | flashback | train | wikipedia | A wondrous mini series.
When I saw this back in the eighties, I watched it religiously.
It was an interesting story that kept unfolding week after week.
This is a story about wanting.
The wanting to conquer the African wilderness and make a good life for yourself and your family OR the wanting to break away from a life that seems like a prison cell, so you can love and live free from what's expected from you.This had a top notch cast featuring Hayley Mills and handsome David Robb as the Grant's, a couple looking to make a life for themselves in the wilds that is Africa.
Then you have Nicholas Jones and (Nescafe's UK/Tasters Choice US)Sharon Maughan as the Palmer's, a couple who are trying to make a relationship work by getting away from England and going somewhere new.
The actors are all great in this series, but the ones who make this one work are Ms Maughan, Ben Cross as the suave handsome know-it-all newcomer Ian, and the Grant's cute and inquisitive daugther Elspeth played by Holly Aird.
Elspeth sort of ties everything together and makes things happen, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad.
The script is well written and at times very exciting.I guess the real star of the series must be the beautiful scenery.
Watch this and you wonder how man can destroy such a wondrous place.
If you get the chance, SEE THIS!!.
TOTALLY DELIGHTFUL.
Sometimes you watch a bit of something, and you just KNOW you're seeing something special.I first saw this series around 20 years ago as a weekly mini-series on PBS.
The wonderful story, great acting, beautiful scenery and haunting music has stayed with me.
When I saw the video at our local library I was happy to renew my acquainenance with Elspeth and her family in Kenya.
The story plays just as well 20 years later.Thanks to all who had a part in "The Flame Trees of Thika" for giving us such a gift..
Vivid portrait of English colonial life in Kenya...with a disclaimer.
This is an extremely well crafted mini series that depicts one colonial British family's experiences in Kenya.
The African wilderness scenery is absolutely breathtaking.
It is based on one of three autobiographical books by Elspeth Huxley.
I found the series to have a similar flavour to the film Out of Africa (starring Meryl Streep & Robert Redford), another Kenyan coffee plantation saga based on the tale of the Danish woman, Karen (Isak) Dinesen Blixen.The series chronicles the life experiences of the Grants, an unconventional English family consisting of the mother Tilly, father Robin, and daughter Elspeth.
It shows their struggles as they endeavor to establish a coffee plantation in Kenya, their interactions with both the African natives and the other British colonials...all mainly as seen from the perspective of the young Elspeth.
The life they establish in Kenya is interrupted by the onset of World War I.
I tuned in to the series mainly because I am quite a fan of Hayley Mills, who is very effective here in her role as Tilly Grant, the lovely mother coping with the challenges of life in an exotic country.
Holly Aird is particularly engaging as her inquisitive daughter, Elspeth, who makes friends both from among the British and the native Africans.
David Robb plays her handsome father, Robin Grant.
Sharon Maughan is the bored Lettice Palmer who has an affair with a safari guide, and Ben Cross the know it all newcomer, Ian Crawfurd.Personally, I am not much of an advocate of past British (or other European) colonialism which intruded their presumed superior culture onto the supposedly lesser ignorant & savage peoples of Africa, India, or wherever.
The efforts of the British to make a good life for themselves were sometimes to the detriment of the native people's.
While I am no expert on the historical accuracy of this particular depiction, the natives are portrayed as superstitious, with a possible air of the condescension typical of such colonial tales.
Enthusiasts of the series might not be pleased to read my criticisms of colonialism, but they are true, nevertheless.
Despite my general misgivings about such ethical issues, I am ranking this generally well made series quite highly because it does paint such an interesting portrait and is a captivating story of this family's experiences..
Brilliant!.
Fabulous min-series making you wanting more.
Magnificently shot capturing the wilds of Africa and the superstitions of its people.
A story seen through the young eyes of Elspeth displays why these types of British mini-series are so wonderful even after almost 25 years to watch again and again.
Great supporting performances by Haley Mills and Sharon Maughan lights up the storyline and it is a shame they did not continue the series onto the next Huxley autobiographical book.
It was a pleasant surprise to see that Roy Ward Baker was also the director for one my favorite Titanic movies, 'A Night to Remember'.
A bit of trivia that had escaped me all these years.
If you enjoyed 'Out of Africa' by Dinesen, you will surely enjoy this series.
The quality of the DVD and extras were less than stellar but it does nothing to diminish the beauty of the story, the acting, or the beautiful wilderness of Africa..
Pioneering in South Africa before the WW1 as seen through the eyes of a young girl.
This series that I first watched on PBS on television is so very excellent.
At the time, I didn't know that it was based on a true story.
It was exhilarating to see Hayley Mills as a Mother playing a realistic, gritty role and exciting to see the history of what life was like then.
All of the characters added to the telling of this remarkable story.
Elspeth, the young girl, was especially a standout for me as she adjusted to life in the rough and making friendships with the people from there and having experiences first hand.I would certainly recommend this series to anyone who is interested in the history of South America, customs trying to be kept alive in a different culture and anyone who is a fan of Hayley Mills.I would love to know what happened to the Family during and after the War! |
tt0315110 | Twentynine Palms | With a Russian girl called Katia, a young American photographer called David drives a Hummer from Los Angeles to a motel in the little desert town of Twentynine Palms. As she hardly speaks English and he speaks no Russian, they talk in French, a language in which neither is confident. Much of their communication is therefore non-verbal and the two frequently misunderstand each other. Their days are spent driving and walking around the empty desert, sometimes naked. They make love, they fight, or just pass time. The camera contrasts the vastness, timelessness and emptiness of the landscape with the two small humans. Yet, as well as natural beauty, the desert contains menace. Stopped by a pick-up full of rednecks, David is beaten and raped while Katia is stripped and forced to watch. Back at the motel after their ordeal, David loses his mind and, after cutting off his hair, stabs Katia to death. The police find the Hummer in the desert with his corpse beside it. | dramatic, horror, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1566591 | Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals | Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird were rivals on the basketball court but unlikely friends off of it. After Johnson's team won in the 1979 NCAA championship game, Johnson would be drafted first in the 1979 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Lakers. Bird had been selected as an underclassman by the Boston Celtics at the #6 spot in the 1978 draft, but opted to play his senior season at Indiana State before signing the richest rookie contract to that time in a team sport. Bird captured "Rookie of the Year" in 1980, while Johnson's Lakers won the NBA Championship and Johnson was named NBA Finals MVP. The Celtics took the championship in 1981, the Lakers took it back in 1982. The Celtics would win again in 1984, while the Lakers would win the title in both 1985 and 1987. The careers of both men were cut short, Johnson by his diagnosis with HIV and Bird by a debilitating back injury.
This HBO Films documentary follows the two men from the early days of their rivalry up through their present day friendship. Edelman captures a variety of interviews ranging from family members such as Johnson's sister Evelyn and Bird's brother Mark, sportscasters such as Steve Springer and Charlie Pierce to NBA players such as Kevin McHale, Cedric Maxwell, Michael Cooper and coach Pat Riley.
The film also explores the deep racial issues as a major part of the rivalry between both Magic and Bird and the Lakers and Celtics generally. Bird's designation as "The Great White Hope" was a role he did not want to play. | dramatic | train | wikipedia | Wow. As a basketball fan and knowing that HBO does an excellent job with documentaries, I had high expectations for this, and it certainly didn't disappoint.Born in 1981, I never fully appreciated the rivalry as it was happening, but this certainly put it in perspective.
It covers every intricacy of both the rivalry and the two men as individuals.
After viewing it I'm not sure that there is any story in the history of sports that's as unique and special as Bird and Magic.It started in 1979 with the NCAA championship and continued on to the NBA for several years.On one hand you have Bird, the introverted type-A personality from Indiana; on the other you have Magic, the happy-go-lucky extrovert.
The two men couldn't be more different personality-wise.
So naturally in the early stages of the rivalry they had every reason to dislike each other.
Yet as things progressed and as they found out more about each other, the relationship softened.
For all their differences, they were eerily similar on the court and because of that there was a deep-rooted respect.
Things really started to change when they got together to shoot a commercial for Converse at Bird's home in Indiana.
And when Magic first announced he had HIV, Bird was one of the first people to reach out to him.
It's obvious how much that meant to Magic.I believe that every professional athlete can learn so much from both of these guys.
The respect they have for the game and for each other represents the greatness of sports.
It's really what it's all about and this documentary captures it like nothing else I've ever seen.
Brilliantly done.I also found it amazing how much pain Bird was in during the latter stages of his career.
Yet he kept toughing it out game after game, season after season.
You'd be hard pressed to find any one who'd do that in today's game..
Excellent Documentary.
Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals (2010) **** (out of 4)Exceptional documentary covering the rivalry between Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
The film covers their first meeting in high school, their battle for the NCAA National Championship and then their battles in the NBA.
Throughout their battles on the court we get to see what made the two men who they become, what different things they were doing off the court and finally what brought the two of them together as friends.
If you're a sports fan then you already know this story but it's really amazing what this HBO documentary is able to do because it's just so excellent that it really makes you forget what you already know and it makes you feel as if you're hearing these stories for the first time.
The documentary is just so much fun and so touching that you can't help but get caught up in the excitement in these two men.
The documentary starts off talking about Johnson and Bird's early lives and we learn where they got their drive to try and become the greatest of their era.
This strong passion forced both of them to see the other as the rival and it's just fascinating seeing two people with so much passion and fighting for the same thing.
If you know the story then you know many of the stuff discussed here but it's still very entertaining.
This includes their first shot at a friendship while shooting a commercial and then there's the story of Johnson's announcement that he's HIV positive.
Sport fans are really going to be impressed with this documentary but the film is so strong that even those who don't know Bird and Magic will still find this entertaining.
This is certainly one of the most energetic and touching documentaries that's out there and it's well worth watching..
Well Done Documentary.
What a lovely and well done documentary.
I didn't plan to watch it all but the story just made me sit back and soak it all in.
I wish I could have seen these two play.
I started following the sport when I saw Michael Jordan with the Chicago Bulls..
The Magic Bird :-).
For all my youth, Magic was the one, with even ever seeing the man play, but after seeing this Documentary, ewrything changed, and Larry Bird became my favorit Sports Star.
This is the one Documentary, and the one Sports Rivalry that Towers above any one in Sports History.
Its a Must watch..
Slowtime (web).
Well, this basketball documentary about Bird & Magic tries another approach than the amazing, fantastic, incredible comments from the NBA production.
Here, it's more psychological with less highlights and more interviews!
But, finally, I found it boring and as much « false » : it's like basketball which is a team sport can be reduced to only one player, even if he has extraordinary skills.
All the more i must say that Magic exhausts me with his constant smile and laughs and i prefer without hesitation Bird who does his job and quits.
The documentary is however interesting about their early career (rare footages) and make understand how those 2 players just fit with their city.
Just imagine if Bird had played in LA and Magic in Boston ???
The other thing that we can understand is how their competitiveness and thirst for victories can never be quenched !!!.
Absolutely One Of The Best Sports Documentary.
No question about it.This is definitely one of the best sports documentaries ever shown at HBO.Or better yet,the best documentary that tackles NBA legends and hall-of-famers Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird of the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics respectively.It gives the sports viewer tremendous information about the players' rivalry that started in college until their careers in the NBA as well as background on the players' humble beginnings from their hometowns until they found success in the NBA that included championships and MVP awards.Erstwhile,it also provides us some history of how these two greats helped the NBA survive the 70's when it was at the brink of its abolition as well as the leagues merger with the ABA.The sports doc started with the 1979 NCAA Championship between the Indiana State University or ISU Sycamores and the Michigan State University or MSU Spartans that featured Bird and Magic respectively.It highlighted the two college superstars particularly their race and their talent.After the Spartans won over the Sycamores,the rivalry between the two stars carried into the NBA when both got drafted with Bird going to the Celtics and Magic going to the L.A. Lakers.The league capitalized on their said talent and race as well as the renewing of the rivalry between the said teams that occurred mostly on the 1960's and 70's.We get to witness Bird and Magic winning championships on their own like in the 1981 and 1982 season respectively and their meeting in the 1984 NBA Finals where the Celtics won as well as the 1985 and 1987 NBA Finals where the Lakers won.It also addressed on both players helped the league survive the 1970's when it was diminishing popularity before Michael Jordan came and solidified its status of being the most popular pro basketball league in the world.
Finally,it brought into the end wherein Magic's career is cut short after being infected by the HIV virus and Bird retiring due to injuries in 1991 and 1992 respectively.Aside from Magic and Bird,there were a lot of interesting interviews made from the likes of family members such as Magic's sister Evelyn and Bird's brother Mark; sportscasters Steve Springer and Charlie Pierce;and former NBA players such as Kevin McHale, Cedric Maxwell, Michael Cooper and former NBA coach and current Miami Heat President Pat Riley.All of them provided a lot of insights about the players featured.This is definitely a great sports doc that one should not miss from an NBA fan whether they were old enough to witness these players or young enough not to see them at all.It will provide better appreciation of what they did to the league,the sport of basketball in terms of their greatness and how they revolutionized the game.Added to that,it also will give us better knowledge about them and the fact that the NBA does not consist of Air Jordan alone.Check this one out either on Amazon, YouTube or a DVD. |
tt0093857 | Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise | The Lambda Lambda Lambdas from Adams College are packing their suitcases to get ready for a national fraternity convention in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Just before heading to the airport, Lewis' (Robert Carradine) best friend Gilbert (Anthony Edwards) explains to him that he feels stupid that he cannot come, due to breaking his leg (during a chess match).
After the group arrive at Fort Lauderdale and head to the Royal Flamingo Hotel, a trainee named Sunny (Courtney Thorne-Smith) informs Lewis that their reservation is canceled and has been given to the Alpha Betas. The Royal Flamingo acting manager (Ed Lauter) explains to Sunny that they do not want nerds staying in this hotel. The Tri-Lambs also meet Stewart (Barry Sobel), a geeky bellboy at the hotel who is also friends with Sunny. Poindexter finds another (albeit dilapidated) hotel called the Hotel Coral Essex, located in a shady neighborhood, and makes their reservation there. Roger (Bradley Whitford), the president of the local chapter of Alpha Betas (and chairman of the regional conference) is seen planning with his fellow jocks to get rid of the Tri-Lambs by any means necessary. Furthermore, Ogre (Donald Gibb) is revealed to be at the conference, scheming with Roger and the Alphas.
The Lambdas arrive at the Florida swamplands hoping to attend the United Fraternity pre-conference barbecue. They take the wrong way (intentionally given wrong directions by Roger) and see a group of Seminole Indians capture an Indian maiden and throw her into a flame (an act concocted by the Alphas to humiliate the Tri-Lambs into leaving the conference). They are captured and forced to strip to their underwear, until Poindexter (Timothy Busfield) tests their ethnicity by yelling "Bite my crank" at them in Seminole, to which no one responds. They're chased off by Ogre, and forced to make their way across town back to their hotel in their underwear.
The next day, Roger announces a new bylaw to be voted upon by the conference; "Proposition 15", a rule that would require physical as well as academic standards to be met by all members of the conference. Before Lewis can make any argument against the proposition, he is co-opted by a wet-nightie contest happening poolside. The Lambdas decide to beat the Alphas at their own game and throw a party at the Hotel Coral Essex. The neon sign outside the hotel is deliberately broken (so that it reads "HOTel cORAL esSEX"), which draws people for miles. The Tri-Lambs (along with Stewart) perform a rock/rap "No On 15" song outside of the Hotel Coral Essex, winning over the crowd, and Prop 15 is voted down the next morning. At this time, Roger, seemingly sincere, expresses a desire to make peace once and for all with the Tri-Lambs, and to that end he proposes a bylaw stating that any fraternity found to be guilty of a crime will be expelled from the national conference and their charter revoked. The Lambdas, satisfied that the Alphas now cannot attack them without being expelled from the conference, accept their offer of friendship and their luxurious hotel suite at the Royal Flamingo. Roger encourages Sunny to grab a couple of girls and take the Tri-Lambs to the beach in his car. Wormser is able to procure alcohol at a liquor store, despite being under-age, using a fake ID proclaiming he is an admiral in the Navy. While on the beach Sunny and Lewis get to know and like each other. Unfortunately, Roger has reported his car stolen, and the Lambdas are arrested.
Stewart and Sunny bail the Tri-Lambs out of jail. Sunny apologizes and tries to explain that she knew nothing of Roger's plan, but Lewis doesn't believe her. Before she can explain, The Alpha Betas kidnap the Tri-Lambs along with Sunny and dump them on an uninhabited island. Disgusted by Roger's actions, Sunny jumps overboard. When they realize Ogre cannot be trusted to keep his mouth shut, they also throw him into the water, despite the fact that he cannot swim. Upon seeing Ogre drowning, Wormser jumps into the ocean and rescues him, though he is seemingly ungrateful. After smoking some of the weed Booger discovered on the island, Ogre and the others realize he is not so different from them after all. As the group sleeps Lewis has a dream about Gilbert, who explains to him that all is not lost and implores Lewis not to give up. He also points out that Lewis is acting like a jerk to Sunny, who is stranded with him on this island by choice. This helps give Lewis the confidence he needs to apologize to Sunny for his behavior and to try to find a way off the island.
The next morning The Tri-Lambs, using their combined intelligence and ingenuity, find a Cuban military officer's hidden cache of military supplies, including an amphibious vehicle. Meanwhile, at the conference, Roger is presiding over the vote to expel the Tri-Lambs, when, decked out in military gear, they literally crash the conference, driving right through the conference room wall, then chase the attendees out to the pool. Roger is unfazed and tries to continue to have the Lambdas voted out for stealing his car, until Sunny reveals that Roger set them up and kidnapped them. Roger states that it doesn't matter since he will always be cool, popular, and good-looking and the Lambdas will always be weird, different, and pathetic, and that there's nothing they can do or say about it. Lewis takes a moment and quietly agrees with Roger, stating that there's nothing he can say, but that there is "something I've gotta do about it." and punches Roger in the jaw, knocking him into the pool. The fraternity Council favors the nerds, cheer for them and voted Roger and the Alphas out of the fraternity council and their charter for good.
Back at Adams College, in an induction ceremony, Ogre is sworn into Lambda Lambda Lambda as the newest member. | cult | train | wikipedia | A terribly silly but awfully amusing little sequel, it may be a touch predictable, and it is missing Thomas Newman's excellent theme song, but having the same likable characters on hand helps it to be equally as fun as the first film.
They could've make this movie better if they would've kept the nerds at Adam's college, but the second one is still watchable, and funny.
Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise is a horrible sequel.
And though it was fun and somewhat nostalgic to see our favorite nerds again, the script was just awful, and the plot exceedingly thin.This was clearly made for the sake of making the studio money.
However, this film was put out three years after the original, allowing for plenty of time for a quality plot and script to be developed.
This time the nerds led by Robert Carradine and Anthonny Edwards go to Florida where there they meet a new breed of jocks who they face off against and basically destroy in the end, the problem with this entry is that the nerds this time are too cool to really be considered nerds and they even get a girlfriend sympathetic to their cause, this undermines all the humor, not to mention that away from the college dorm setting, there really isn't much the nerds can do that they didn't in the original.
As a sequel this is all disappointing stuff, but aside from James Hong who gives an inspired performance as well as maybe a few vaguely amusing moments, Revenge Of The Nerds II is a big disappointment..
Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise isn't as good as the first film mainly because the film wasn't rated R.
Curtis Armstrong as Booger steals the sequel he's funnier here in some scenes then in the first.
Revenge of the Nerds II (1987) was a useless sequel.
Not only did the product stink but it did like wise at the box office.A bad movie that shouldn't have been made in the first place.
Not only the film-makers didn't learn the first time around, two more made-for-t.v. sequels were produced during the 90's (I guess FOX didn't learn from that abortion Omen IV).
"Revenge of the Nerds" was far from a great film, but its enormous box office success led to this dud of a sequel.
We all know that this was not as good as the first nerds, how can it be when the first one was so original?.
And we all get to see the original nerds again, even Anthony Edwards makes a few guest appearances.
Probably a good film to watch when you are not functioning that well, because then you will not really have the opportunity to realise just how bad this film is in comparison to the many great films out there.
Yet still there are many that are worse, and let us not forget this film was made in 1987, when comedies in the same vein as Nerds were immensely popular.
Its not a good film, but its still watchable, I guess some of us find pleasure in juvenile campus comedies- even if we don't admit it to that many people..
Probably the worst thing about this movie is that, the "nerd" to first stand-up for "nerd persecution" in Gilbert (Anthony Edwards) has a small role.
Now, even though I didn't like Revenge of the Nerds but what was the point of making a sequel?
Aside from making money, of course.I mean as the song The Touch goes "After all is said and done" pretty much describes about making a sequel.
I mean, the first film told its story and didn't leave any possibilities of a sequel, it had something to say and it was done, what more is there to tell?
Now, as usual, the nerds, the jocks and the rest of the characters are annoying as hell even after a few years after the first film.
The script sucks, nothing more.But the music is actually good except for the song the "Nerds" sang, don't know the name but I won't bother to ask what it is.
The sequel is actually another case where the soundtrack is better than the movie itself.Overall, Nerds II gets 2/10.
The other day I bought the "Atomic Wedgie" edition of the Revenge of the Nerds movies, it was pretty cheap so I figured what the heck to have the sequels too, you know?
So I watched Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise this morning and I remember it's harsh rating on IMDb, so I was kinda scared about this not being a good movie.
But actually I found myself enjoying it, sure compared to the first Revenge of the Nerds film, naturally you'll be disappointed, but if you separate it, I think you might find yourself laughing too.
Our favorite nerds are back and they are now in tropical paradise facing the jocks once again.Lewis and the boys are going to Florida to represent their charter with the conference of all charters.
But the nerds have had enough and are going to make sure that the Alpha's go down once and for all.Now guaranteed, this wasn't the first Revenge of the Nerds, but Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise was still a lot of fun to watch.
The boys are still a lot of fun to watch, I just loved how Ogre kept saying "nerds!" every time they would walk into a room, he was such a fun addition for the story.
I really liked this sequel and I think people just need to cut it a break.
Like I said, if you compare it to the first film, you'll be disappointed, but if you just have an open mind, I think you're going to get a few laughs.6/10.
The nerds fight for equality at a fraternity conference in this funny follow up to the 1984 hit with the same crude jokes and most of the same performers on hand, especially Armstrong, perfect once again as the disgusting Booger.
This is what made it such an enjoyable movie.Revenge of the nerds II could have had so many possibilities but was clearly delayed in production and hampered by the fact that most of the original cast seemed to have opted out for the second go-round.
Three years after the first movie, he had already been in the popular movies "Top Gun" and "Gotcha," and probably did the cameo as a compromise.Only Gilbert, Booger, Wormser, Lamar, and Poindexter are around for part two and the entire movie takes place in Fort Lauderdale spring break, where the boys attend a fraternity conference.
Shockingly, only Ogre is around from the Alpha Betas this time.Lots of predictably stupid yuks come from Poindexter's bottle bottom glasses and overall clumsiness and Booger's extreme lack of couth.
Lamar and Wormser are mostly just "there" with Lamar glittering himself up more than he did in the first movie.Of course the Alpha Betas manage to get the tri Lambs kicked out of their desirable hotel reservation and of course they end up at the only other hotel available, a horrendous, fallen-down fleabag.
There is also a weird scene at a zoo park/bar.The best part of the movie happens in the opening credits, where 38 Special plays a snappy tune "Take me back to paradise." From there it's all downhill, including some embarrassingly bad camera work for a major feature.
There are also two new interesting characters – hotel owner and disgusting China man .It's not a quality movie , but certainly better than those made-for-TV crap sequels.
Revenge Of The Nerds II Nerds In Paradise may not a comedy classic like it's predecessor Revenge Of The Nerds but it's still an enjoyable movie to watch.This time our nerd heroes must once again fight back against their most hated enemy.
Robert Carradine's character Lewis grows up quite a bit and stands up for his fraternity brothers.Curtis Armstrong is as always his funny self when playing nose picker Booger his character is more hilarious, he says some great lines in the film.
brawn guaranteeing nerd freedom, Now Lewis (Carradine) and his friends Wormser (Cassese), Pointdexter (Busfield), Lamar (Scott) & Booger (Armstrong) are about to represent Adams College at a united fraternity conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.Once there they are prosecuted and picked on again by another chapter of the Alpha Betas run by Roger Latimore (Whitford).
Sunny Carstairs (Smith) a hotel employee befriends the nerdy gang and falls in love with Lewis.Towards the end after being marooned on an island the boys find military equipment and using an army tank they head back to the conference to confront Roger and his group with the help of Ogre (Gibb) who becomes a member of the Lambda Lambdas after being kicked out of the Alphas.This film may not be a laugh fest but certainly provides very little humour and memorable quotes..
While the original movie is silly and stupid, its heart and sentiment make it a lot of fun to watch.
Seeing it rerun repeatedly on Encore makes me want to call the cable company and demand my money back.It's also disturbing in hindsight to see such talented TV actors like Courtney Thorne-Smith and Bradley Whitford in such unmitigated crap.
Revenge of the Nerds II (1987) * 1/2 (out of 4) Poor sequel has the nerds heading to Florida for a fraternity convention but the place is full of jocks who don't want anything to do with the lovable losers.
As in the first film, the nerds must try to figure out a way to make those pretty people understand them.
Considering how much money the first film made I guess it's a little bit shocking that it took them three years to get a sequel made but after viewing this thing it's obvious they didn't take that much time trying to come up with a good screenplay.
It is with this in mind that I unequivocally declare Nerds in Paradise a cinematic masterpiece.This movie has EVERYTHING!!
from a choice soundtrack, great location shots to Booger at his comedic best and a feel good ending with the inevitable nerd triumph.
The persecution of the nerds cuts a little deeper than it does in the other three films, but the nerds certainly don't take it lying down, there frustration at being forced into sub-standard accommodation and having the tri lambda fraternity continually ignored despite lewis's assurances that they would be accepted this time culminates in an epic poolside battle, with a few surprises thrown into he mix.A highlight of the film would have to be Boogers inspiring impromptu speech, when he asks "who decides the standards" despite being in a room packed with jocks.
In addition to this the scenes on the beach and poolside as the nerds try their hand with the ladies have predictably hilarious results.Robert Carradine is amazing as Lewis and he really gives his all into his performance highlighting his commitment to the Nerd films..
how typical) entertainment that involves the further embarrassment of the gang of nerds, led by Carradine, as they vacation on an island resort and become the butt end of a lot of practical jokes by some island studs who get all the women.There's a sequence where the nerds find themselves in front of an audience, standing around in underwear, that finally made me realize the comedy was going nowhere but downwards.It's very juvenile and relies entirely on poopy humor for laughs.
One of the characters is a big rip-off of John Belushi from "Animal House," and he burps with his next-door neighbor on the island.I liked the original, and this film is adequate for a "lazy Sunday," but I don't recommend it as a rental.
You may never want to watch the first one ever again.2/5 stars.P.S. I consider the IMDb rating of 3.9 stars a bit of a "bandwagon jump." A lot of people who voted probably didn't hate the movie enough to give it such a low rating.
The return of most of the cast helps make Paradise better than the first one simply because it is funnier than the original.
Booger remains the funniest nerd, and the whole cast has fun with the film.
how mush can you expect from a sequel to a bad movie..
Good actors wasted talent being in this awful movie.
Typical sequel of the 80's, virtually the same movie with only minor differences and fewer laughs..
This movie is very typical of sequels of earlier years.
This film has the nerds going to an event in a nice resort town and of course they are once again picked on, because the popular people just have nothing better to do than harass these few guys instead of drinking and partying.
The thing they did with Ogre is stupid at the end and once again Booger just does not seem to fit with the nerds as he once again comes across as a guy who is going to be in a regular fraternity and being the cut up.
Like I said, there is not really a whole lot of revenge of the nerds in this one, they did a whole lot more in the first movie to get back at their tormentors.
They are also a nerd down as Anthony Edwards does not return, but they pick up another one to take his place.
For the most part, I don't think that the original needed a sequel, but "Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise" isn't terrible.
It just seems like they repeated a lot of the stuff from the first movie.
It's a good thing that "Animal House" didn't have any sequels.And yes, Robert Carradine's daughter Ever attended Lewis and Clark College (this was many years before I went there, so I never met her).
Some movies were never meant to have a sequel, Revenge of the Nerds is probably one of those.
What they encounter is more nerd prejudice from those Alpha Beta jocks.
The movie basically follows the same pattern as Nerds I however, not with nearly the laughs.
Die hard fans will likly enjoy seeng their heros back on screen but don't watch this movie in hopes of seeing the originality that was displayed in Nerds I..
Scott, Courteney Thorne-Smith, Donald Gibb, Bradley Whitford and Anthony Edwards star in this 1987 comedy sequel.
This entry has nerds, Lewis (Carradine), Booger (Armstrong), Poindexter (Busfield) and Lamar (Scott) traveling to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for a convention to represent Adams College fraternity, Lambda Lambda Lambda.
Smith (Summer School) plays Sunny, a hotel clerk who finds romance with Lewis, Gibb (Bloodsport) returns as Alpha Beta member, Ogre who eventually joins the Nerds and Edwards (Top Gun) also returns briefly as Lewis' pal, Gilbert.
I grew up watching this sequel and always enjoyed it almost as much as the original.
As with many sequels, this one is, alas, a definite step down from the original Nerds film.
The nerds are back, for the most part, the originals, but the story is written so differently from the first.
The story line in this is also somewhat similar to the first film and didn't seem very original to me.
I also hope that other viewers were not offended in any way by the portrayal of the African American chapter of Tri-Lambda, because I found them to be the *most* upstanding characters in both this film and the original.
With his sensitive nature and good looks beneath his "nerd" costuming, it is not too much of a stretch to imagine beautiful yet emotionally mature and smart ladies like Sunny falling in love with Lewis.
Not as good as the original, but a great sequel nonetheless....
The two that followed are inconsequential but this sequel, Nerds in Paradise, just HAD to be done.
I like the angle of involving national fraternities, which brings in NEW Alpha Betas, and I love how the inter-fraternity hatred extends beyond the local schools to the national chapters.This movie also does a great job incorporating the oh so hot "Beastie Boys" style of rapping by introducing Barry Sobel's character, "Stewart", a White Castle employee (in Florida, where there are NO White Castles - only Krystals) who happens to be a white rapper that sounds like he's right out of the Beastie Boys!
EVERYBODY liked them.I also love the beach/vacation/road trip quality this movie has.
"Fraternity Vacation", another Florida Spring Break movie with a nerdy hero, etc.).I love that the nerds are able to always use what they have to "beat out" the jocks and have their voices heard, and especially because this means having a musical performance with lasers and lights.
This was also a good way to work in the Beastie Boys-esquire Barry Sobel Rap, which establishes him as one of the nerds although he's not part of the fraternity.
Comprende, dickhead?" Bradley Whitford was such an awesome Alpha Beta, and that's saying a lot considering he had to follow Ted McGinley (Stan Gables) who was awesome in the first movie.
Roger was, throughout the movie, a PERFECT jock/preppy snob, I really think Whitford did such a great job with this role that he might be the best actor in the whole movie!!!
Whitford's delivery of it was what made it work.One little problem I have with it has to do with Ogre's "conversion" to being a Nerd.
It is good that he sees the Nerds for the nice people they are, and the Alpha Betas for the jerks they are; but why should Ogre have to stop being a Jock to stop being an Alpha Beta???
Anyway, I am definitely analyzing this too much, because this film is about fun and having fun, and overblown clichés and stereotypes, and turning Ogre into a "Nerd" is just part of all that.
But he's still Ogre, and drinks messily from the cup, like he did from the cup in the first movie. |
tt0101070 | Conspiracy of Silence | Father Sweeney (Patrick Casey), a gay Catholic priest living with HIV, commits suicide. His death leads local investigative journalist David Foley (Jason Barry) to write a story that publicly identifies Sweeney as having HIV.
At the local seminary, two students near ordination are expelled because one, Daniel (Jonathon Forbes) was seen leaving the room of the other, Niall (Paudge Behan). Niall is gay and Daniel is straight and they engaged in no sexual activity but were still expelled for the sake of appearances. Daniel returns home, where he is torn between his calling to the priesthood and his love for his ex-girlfriend Sinead (Catherine Walker).
Daniel meets with Foley, who writes a follow-up article exposing a covered-up AIDS protest that Sweeney had staged at the Vatican three years earlier and Daniel's dismissal. He also alleges that cardinals close to the Pope are engaged in sexual relationships and calls on the Church to re-examine its celibacy requirement for priests. The local bishop, Michael Quinn (Jim Norton), pressures the editor of the local paper not to run the second story. The editor acquiesces but after reading the story sends it to the Irish Times, which prints it.
The next day the bishop, his aide, Foley and Daniel appear together in a live television debate. Before the broadcast, agents of the Church threaten to harm Foley's family unless he retracts his story on the air. Bishop Quinn offers to reinstate Daniel if Daniel is willing to admit he has been wrong. On-air Foley capitulates but Daniel does not, asking the bishop if he himself practices celibacy. When the bishop refuses to answer, Father Sweeney's partner, former priest Matthew Francis (John Lynch) confronts Quinn with Sweeney's suicide note in which Sweeney discloses that Quinn and he had had an affair.
At film's end, Daniel is back at home with Sinead. | violence, murder | train | wikipedia | Excellent portrayal of prejudice against Indians..
Miniseries about the killing of an innocent Indian girl and the entire town that failed to bring the guilty to justice.
Set in The Pas, Manitoba, about as far north as civilization goes.
The girl leaves home to get an education, but on one night she gets picked up by a carload of rowdy white boys and gets killed and dumped out.
Originally shown on the CBC in Canada.
It has been shown on Lifetime in the U.S.A. Vintage cars and songs are featured in this.
Hypnosis is used to make a cab driver recall a license plate number.
Canadian Indians are typically called "wagon burners." Excellent study of crime and white narcissism.
You feel sad for the Indian mother who lost her daughter..
A very well made film that looks at the miscarriages of justice against North America's First Nations people.
I really liked this film because it focused on the wrongful injustices that have been committed against North America's First Nations people.
Helen Betty Osbourne along with Donald Marshall and JJ Harper are 3 examples of what they went through at the hands of Canada's so-called "justice system".
"Conspiracy of Silence" was well made because it accurately depicted what went on from that incident late that night in 1971 to the actual convictions that were FINALLY made in 1986 when all 4 men involved in the murder were brought to trial.
In the end, only 1 man (the guy who committed the actual murder) went to prison while the other 3 went free.
Now although justice finally seemed to be served, it literally took 15 YEARS for the 4 men to be brought to trial!!
That's what's so appalling about the whole situation!
Helen Betty Osbourne had something in common with Donald Marshall and JJ Harper.
All 3 victims were Native (Donald Marshall is the only one still alive).
Helen was a Cree First Nations woman who was never viewed as a human being by the Canadian laws and governments.
To them, she was only "an Indian" and because of that, it took a whopping 15 years for the offenders to brought to justice!
Of course the 4 men who committed the crime were white so it didn't matter to the "justice system" that they killed an innocent person (especially if the dead person was Native).
If I were the judge and jury of that case, ALL 4 men involved would have had a lengthy jail term because the law IS the law and it applies to EVERYONE in this country who commits a serious crime like that.
There's no room for racism and its bogus policies in this so- called "justice system" of ours.Well............
anyways...........
this is why I gave this film an 8 out of 10..
Anything but apathy.
There is a scene in "Midnight Cowboy" in which the newly arrived John Voight is flowing along a New York street with the rest of the pedestrians when, to his awe, the stream bifurcates in order to flow more smoothly around the spread-eagled body of a well-dressed man who had been carrying an attache case.
This seems to be emblematic of our attitude toward the death of a stranger, or even an acquaintance, in our midst.
In "River's Edge," the teenagers look wonderingly at the naked dead body of a classmate, and then go about their business, other things, like making out, occupying their minds.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
But the late Stanley Milgram's quasi-experiments at Yale suggest the real responses of witnesses are anything but apathetic.
They're emotionally aroused when a stranger is in a life-threatening situation; but they don't know what to do.
They feel that someone else, somewhere, must have the situation in hand.
In "Conspiracy of Silence," Milgram's findings are illustrated in the social dynamics of a small and snow-bound Canadian town.
The Cree belong to a different caste than the white people and move in slightly different circles, but everybody soon knows what happened, except the agents of social control whose job it is to see that justice is done.
In this superior TV miniseries we see just how things can go wrong.
I suspect that the racism may have been exaggerrated to provide an additional dimension to the story here, and that the murderers of a white girl might have taken almost as long to be brought to court.
Not sixteen years, maybe, as happened in this case, but probably not overnight either.
Canada has always had a pretty fair record with regard to its treatment of Indians.
Still, there are too many forces at work in small communities that are inimical to our acting like the upright citizens we like to think we are.
It would be relatively simple for the rest of us to make value judgments about the residents of this town, if the town were like the one Rod Steiger tries to ride herd on in "In The Heat of the Night." Even today, in some of the smaller towns in Texas, when a murder is reported, the sheriff is liable to ask, "Did he NEED killin'?" But these Canadians are confused and distraught, not at all complacent.
This film is very well done for its kind.
The brutality is mostly offscreen or in shadows but is horrifying.
The performances are uniformly good.
It would have been easy to turn this into a shoddy narrative of prejudice, and of good vs.
evil.
But everyone concerned with this production avoided the easy way and the effort pays off..
Chilling & Mysterious.
I've seen Conspiracy Of Silence numerous times over the years and even today it's still a haunting story to watch it's so unbelievable that a murder case like this one took over 16 years to end.
What made me a bit angry was that the town Of Pas, Manitoba, Canada kept silent, they chose to protect the killers and not come forward because it was only a native woman that died and they didn't care.Gemini award winner Michael Mahonen delivered a knockout performance as Lee Colgan one of the four men involved with the murder who was just a kid who turned into a alcoholic because of the guilt he carried for years.
I read the book written by Lisa Priest and it gives accurate details from the murder in 1971 to 1987 when the man who killed Helen Betty Osborne was finally brought to justice.On November 12, 1971 Helen Betty Osborne, (St.John) was a nineteen year old Indian woman who was out for a walk when she was beaten and murdered by Dwayne Johnston (Tracey).
After her body was discovered the town was scared and shocked, one of the suspects Lee Colgan (Mahonen) couldn't stop talking about what happened at the pump house that night.
The police continued to question anyone who might know something about who killed the young woman and why.
However the town chose to keep quiet and all four boys including Jim Houghton (Potts) & Norm Manger (Chambers) went free.
11 years later, the boys have all moved on with their lives however Lee Colgan turned into an alcoholic and hasn't stopped talking about that gruesome murder as a result his wife Sandy (Kidney) left him and took their children.
When a new constable Steve Frishbilski (Ouimette) sees the case file he becomes fascinated by the case and decides to investigate, another add is put in the paper asking people who know anything about the 1971 murder of a 19 year old Indian woman to come forward and hopefully help to close this case.Two women Sherrie Linder(Disher) and Angie (Johnson) both tell the officer what they know Sherrie says that Lee confessed to his involvement she wrote an anonymous letter to the town paper detailing Colgan's story about the murder which lead to his arrest in 1986.
In exchange for immunity he has to testify against Dwayne Jonhston & Jim Houghton his best friend.
Finally in 1987 the case was officially closed when Johnston was arrested and convicted of first degree murder .
After seeing this chilling tale I hated that the town was so racist against Indian people and how they kept quiet all those years it shouldn't have taken all those years to solve a murder.
amazing!!.
Saw this while on vacation.
I was amazed as well as saddened by the story.To try to imagine such hate and disregard for this young girl, simply because of her culture, is appalling to me.But, the fact that some people just did not give up until just was served, is gratifying.I hope that it will, at least be re-aired, here in the states, especially here in Boston, so that many others will see it, and perhaps LEARN from Helen Betty Osborne's story.Would LOVE to be able to locate a copy of the movie.Anyone out there know?Thanks!JQ.
A story that cuts to the heart.
I have seen this movie many times over the years, and it is no less gut-wrenching today.
Michael Mahonen won a Gemini award for his portrayal of Lee Colgan, a teenager who went out for a good time one night and ended up as an unwitting accomplice to a murder.
The story is a complex tale in which the high school students who know what happened are threatened with violence if they go to the police and the older citizens don't want to see whites go prison over the death of a Cree.The first half of the film takes place at the time of the murder, and the second half takes places roughly fifteen years later.
Lee Colgan has become an alcoholic, while the other three boys who were in the car have gone on with their lives.
Some of the young women who heard about the murder after the fact are still haunted by guilt at not having spoken up.
There is also a sense of frustration on the part of the Mounties at knowing they're surrounded by people who know something but refuse to tell.
I would like to add a personal observation here.
Michael Mahonen's transformation from a carefree teenager to an alcoholic who is far older than his years was impressive to me when I first saw it.
The performance became absolutely astounding to me when I learned that he made the film while he was working on the "Road to Avonlea" series.
In the mornings, he was playing a teenager in the early 1900's with an Irish accent.
In the afternoons, he was portraying a thirty-something alcoholic in the 1980's with a Canadian accent..
a Gemini Award winning performance in 'Conspiracy of Silence'.
Michael Mahonen is both sympathetic and chilling in his portrayal of 'Lee Colgan' in this acclaimed Canadian mini-series, based on a the true crime novel of the same name, by Lisa Priest.
This film is thought provoking, as the crime committed was motivated by racial prejudice in a small Canadian town, The Pas, Manitoba.
Mr. Mahonen won the Gemini Award for his role, and it was well deserved.
I recommend watching this film, which currently enjoys re-run status, on the U.S. cable networks Lifetime Television for Women & its 'sister network' Lifetime Movie Network (aka LMN)...Mr. Mahonen is truly an actor to watch out for in the near future!.
A Shocking Movie of Racism against Natives.
The true story of a Native Canadian girl who was brutally murdered in November 1972 by four white Canadian teenagers.
the four hour mini series is long enough to explain the town of The Pas' racism and reactions to the crime.
One murderer even confesses to the crime.
The character of Lee Colgan can become sympathetic to the audience.
Since that night, he has become the second victim in a psychological sense.
He himself has become unemployed, chronic alcoholic whose wife left him with their only son.
In the small town, it becomes a well-known fact of Lee's repetitious confessions on his drinking binges.
For fear of being killed, some girls remain silent but the town itself is fully haunted by the whole murder.
They themselves become an ignorant accomplices to the crime with their silence.
By protecting their own, they have cursed themselves into an real ugly image of racism.
Still, the racism exists between the white Canadians and their Native Canadians.
May Helen Betty Osburne rest in peace now.
One painful scene in the movie is the last moment between Betty and her mother before Betty departs on a small plane to The Pas. While justice went undone for many years, it still haunts Manitoba..
This is a very well done movie with an great job of acting by the lead characters and the setting and cinematography were absolutely dynamite..
I watched this movie when it first came out on CBC in Canada where I was born and raised.I grew up in The Pas (pronounced "the paw")....the town was about 7,000 in population, very rough and tumble place.I was 15 years old in 1971 when this horrible crime took place.Helen Betty Osborne was in my grade 10 home room class at Margret Barbor Collegiate that fall and early winter when she was murdered.She was extremely shy and was hardly noticed by the rest of us until (of course)she was found murdered.She had only been in town for the preceding few months since school started in September.The acting in this show is for the most part very good and quite realistic to the way I remember my youth there.with some notable exceptions...some of the supporting roles that were played to show the racism were sort of over the top and a little too cliché but all in all the movie portrayed things quite well.Some scenes left me physically shaking as I watched.The winter scenes were brilliantly done and outstripped anything Hollywood has ever tried in that regard.....they put me right back there ,to the point where I could feel the frost in my nose hairs.Most of the reviews i've read praise the lead role acting of the "Lee Colgan " character and rightly so....a fine performance.But, for me,the actor that played the convicted murderer,Dwayne Johnston was brilliant.Most of us teenagers partied together many times over those growing up years ....although we all didn't "hang out" together,if there was a house party on a Friday or Saturday night many of us would wind up at the same place so there where many times I was at the same party with Dwayne Johnston...and knew him as a casual acquaintance.The job Ian Tracey did in portraying him was very good.Although they don't really look alike,the clothing and make up and general swagger was spot on!The movie ,I think, was filmed in Kenora,Ontario but definitely had the look and feel of The Pas.Seeing "that car" and hearing the tires spinning on the icy roads...the way the characters foggy breath and car exhaust comes out into the frigid air was nothing short of brilliant cinematography....absolutely stellar.It put me right back there...I can't overstate that fact!All that being said , I would like to try (probably very clumsily)to give a little insight into the issue of racism and how this murder affected the town and those of us who lived there at the time.There was definitely racism but it was complicated and included paradoxes's like;if an Indian guy or girl lived in town as opposed to out of town on one of the three or four "Indian Reserves" that were just across the North Saskatchewan River then they most likely hung out with the white kids too.some of the white kids in town had native girl or boyfriends on "the reserve".There were quite a few mixed race families that lived in town and as I recall some of these mixed race kids hung out in the same group as Dwayne Johnstone did.My feeling is the movie (I also read the original book)oversimplified that whole issue and made it seem as though there was a clear line of separation between the races and that's not the way it was.It was much,much more complicated than that but I am doing a poor job of explaining just what it was like....the "whole town" did not know who the killer/s were....though a number of leading people did as the movie shows.Many of us teenagers also heard the strongly believed rum ours and didn't doubt them (I'm talking here about the first year or so after the murder).I'm not trying to absolve anyone of the collective guilt of "knowing and not saying anything" but.....I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say.....I definitely highly recommend this show but caution the viewer to take with a grain of salt , the idea that this was some sort of "Stephen Kingesque" type of town where everybody knew and creepily said nothing so as to protect these "home town white boy killers"........anyhow .....go and rent the movie..
a must-see miniseries.
I am compelled to say that this movie is awesome.
The plot makes you feel suspicious.
It's kind of dark, but you'll get to see some light at the end.
Michael Mahonen was just as brilliant as the movie itself.
He did a very great job.
I have no doubts whatsoever why he got the Gemini acting award.
Yes, I have seen him in the "Road to Avonlea" series as the lovable Gus Pike.
And I happened to observe a great contrast in the characters(Lee Colgan and Gus Pike) he had played.
This just means he is a very versatile actor.
You should see this movie yourself.
It's very telling and worthwhile..
Great movie ..if your a "Michael Mohonen or Gus Pike Fan..
This movie was awesome.
Michael Mahonen was great.
I'm a "Gus Pike" fan and when I saw this movie he was just as good as he was as gus pike in "Avonlea".
He kept me on the edge of my seat.
He was brillant in this movie.
I strongly recomend this movie if your a MM fan. |
tt2527186 | All Cheerleaders Die | The film opens with Maddy Killian (Caitlin Stasey) recording footage of her childhood friend Alexis (Felisha Cooper) as she prepares for the final days of school before summer break and for cheerleading practice. She discusses how important it is to remain fit and how dangerous cheerleading can be, pointing out how easy it is for some of the more advanced cheerleader moves to end with severe or deadly injuries. This proves to be the case when Alexis is thrown into the air and her teammates fail to catch her in time, resulting in her death.
Once school resumes Maddy decides that she will try out for the cheerleading team and manages to impress the entire team with her acrobatic skills. After being accepted, Maddy notes that Tracy (Brooke Butler) has begun dating Terry (Tom Williamson), a star football player who had been dating Alexis prior to her death. She begins to get along with the other cheerleaders, the overly religious and prissy Martha (Reanin Johannink) and her shy sister Hanna (Amanda Grace Cooper), who serves as the cheerleading mascot. This provokes Maddy's ex-girlfriend Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), who can't understand why Maddy would want to hang out with the cheerleaders. Unbeknownst to everyone else, Maddy has actually joined the cheerleading squad to take revenge on Terry for as yet unspecified reasons.
Maddy begins taking her revenge by convincing Tracy that Terry had cheated on her during the summer and even manages to successfully seduce her at a group gathering of cheerleaders and football players. This greatly hurts Leena (who had been watching the gathering from afar) and angers Terry, who starts a fight, and bans the "dogs" (football players) from dating the "bitches" (cheerleaders).
He then punches Tracy in a fit of anger. The cheerleaders all try to escape the raging football players, only for Terry to cause an accident that claims the lives of all of the cheerleaders. Horrified at what she's seen, Leena manages to revive all of the dead cheerleaders using Wicca magic and magic stones. The following day the girls are all disoriented and scared, especially Martha and Hanna, as they have also somehow swapped bodies.
None of them recollect exactly what happened until Leena reveals to them what occurred the night before. They're also very hungry, which prompts them to attack one of Leena's neighbors and suck out all of his blood. The girls then go to school, where the football players all watch them with disbelief, as they'd thought them all dead. During the day the cheerleaders pick off the football players one by one, either out of hunger or, in the case of Martha, out of anger when she realizes that her sister slept with her boyfriend, Manny (Leigh Parker), using her body.
While the girls were all initially willing to work together, their solidarity unravels due to the day's deaths and the discovery from Maddy's video diaries that she had joined the squad out of revenge. She tries to explain her cruel criticism of them, but none of the others will listen to her, especially not Tracy, as she had genuinely begun to fall in love with Maddy.
The only person who will listen is Leena and Maddy tells her that she had been raped by Terry while attempting to film a memorial video for Alexis and that up until that point, she had not wanted revenge. The girls are then picked off one by one by Terry, who has figured out what is going on and manages to defeat them by cutting out the magic stones (which reside in the girls' bodies) and swallowing them.
Terry manages to corner Maddy and Leena in a graveyard where he tries to force Leena to show him how to use her magic for his benefit, only for him to die after Maddy attacks him and Leena's magic somehow manages to force the stones out of him. Maddy dies again as a result of this but Leena manages to revive her through her own grief, the same thing that caused the original resurrection. The two embrace and kiss, only to find that a bloody Alexis is tearing her way out of Terry's corpse (as he had landed on her grave) and screaming Leena's name. The film then cuts to the title card, which reveals that the film is part one in a series and that there will be a sequel. | mystery, murder | train | wikipedia | Having Lucky McKee doing a movie like this might be the biggest surprise though.
And that is a good thing, because the movie works.Giving the cheerleader to do what they want and making this all about women/girls was a really good decision, even if at one or two moments I thought some of the guys where painted to dark, without some shades.
The Woman (2011) was definitely memorable and made headlines for its festival showing and a paying attendee that was less than thrilled with what he saw on the big screen (YouTube it, you'll thank me).McKee's newest project, All Cheerleaders Die, got a coveted spot amongst the 10 films picked as part of the Midnight Madness series at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where it will be making its World Premiere.The title sounds rudimentary, but the film is anything but.
The opening scenes before the title card set up a plot device that really comes full circle by the film's final shot and the audience at the packed Bloor Cinema collectively gasped and clapped with the first fatality.Fans of horrors films would likely yawn at such an introductory synopsis.
But the movie hardly heads in directions one can foresee and before long, Maddy, school friend Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee) and the whole squad of short skirt/white sneaker females are battling the opposite sex with a supernatural element under toning the struggles.McKee and fellow director Chris Sivertson throw the proverbial kitchen sink at the audience and I can best describe All Cheerleaders Die as a movie which if the creative makers behind Heathers, Carrie, the television Charmed and Jennifer's Body all took a big dump in a blender and the resulting mixture was then baked into a soufflé would be the result.Most of what is being cooked works.
Witches, evil quarterbacks, zombies, walking dead, supernatural, conjuring
like we said, "the kitchen sink" I liken All Cheerleaders Die therefore to last year's Monster's Brawl.
It's a lot of fun with an audience and there are some elements of originality, but if sitting in a darkened basement screening the film by one's lonesome, you might not enjoy the audience effect fun-factor that can sometimes elevate a reviewer's response.McKee is definitely out of his downer-phase.
It starts slow but it really picks up with a few twist that make it stand out from other horror flicks, kinda like the horror film, You're Next did a year back, putting a different spin on what at first seem like a by the numbers horror film, though All Cheerleaders Die is a few levels down from You're Next.
I went to go see the movie because I was hoping because of the title that I would see a group of hot sexy cheerleaders getting killed with some possible nudity and I got all that plus a little girl on girl, but it's technically not enough of it to really keep you interested.
It goes from a revenge flick to a supernatural horror flick and then to something else entirely, and the story all blends together well.This was a fun ride worth the watch..
All Cheerleaders Die takes it time before it all really starts but once it starts it does deliver the horror, it's low profile, I admit but you will keep watching it until the end.
Yet another step in the wrong direction for the once promising Lucky McKee and a major step up from Chris Sivertson's I Know Who Killed Me. TV production values don't help here either.www.moviehemorrhage.com.
A goth teen (Sianoa Smit-McPhee) who once dated one of the cheerleaders (Caitlin Stasey) finds their bodies and brings them back to life through witchcraft.
Certainly not one of McKee's best works, but it's better than a majority of the horror films that are being released nowadays..
Now i watched the original film and i liked it,but it was a low budget film..and i love low budget films.This was a great bigger film of a small film,now i read how someone didn't like the CGI blood and didn't care about the characters..are FFFFFnnn kidding me!Why cant people enjoy films anymore?Because they all think their critics.Well i loved this one made my night.If you like horror comedy this one the one to watch.Just the opening sequence got me into it now there is all the clichés of high school and jocks and cheerleaders but thats what we know,am i right.Good vs evil teenage style.In closing i put this up as at least a seven,hell crack a beer and have some fun..
It almost looks amateurish.Some High School cheerleaders get attacked one night by the High School Jocks and end up driving into the river.Lucky for them a girl at the High School and also a friendly, neighbourhood witch revives them and they have unusual powers such as a lust for blood.
Not sure how these girls have got a vampire type blood-lust.The girls ineptly plan revenge on the boys who attacked them but the alpha male, who is the most sadistic and vile figures out that these cheerleaders have special powers and he is hell bent on acquiring them.The film has a great deal of uneven tone.
This latest release from Lucky McKee, the man who brought us the fantastic The Woman and the very original May, and co-director Chris Sivertson (The Lost) strays from their more serious tone and delivers us a new take on the slasher movie.
Caitlin Stasey did a great job as Maddy, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing her develop her career, hopefully in horror.
Okay some of the SFX look a little basic, but the movie didn't have a huge budget and it really doesn't detract from the film.
We are treated to some of the silliness that is expected of a film from this sub-genre, and of course not all of the decisions the characters take are logical, but the way the film is made is reminiscent of some of the best teen horror of the 90's, which for me can only be a good thing.
The biggest plus for me is that the directors have imbued a definite feminist slant into the movie, which is something I absolutely love, and something that can be found in Lucky McKee's other work.
In a similar vein to Chastity Bites (also recommended), the directors have taken a familiar concept and updated and revived it, to provide audiences with a fresh angle, and I think making horror, particularly slashers, more empowering to women can only ever be a good thing.The obligatory teen-horror tropes are there, the pretty cheerleaders, the jocks, making the whole setup feel comfortingly familiar to those of us who are partial to a good slasher.
But McKee uses his talents to nicely subvert the traditional 'pretty girl gets slashed to bits' thread and provide us with an entertaining watching experience in the company of some female lead characters who seem distinct, more than mere stereotypes.
You grow to like them, particularly Maddy, Caitlin Stasey's character, which is more than can be said for many female characters in slasher movies.
It won't revolutionise the horror world, and it certainly isn't 'serious' horror, but if you're looking for a movie to have a laugh with, and one that is a little different from the norm, then you could do far worse than All Cheerleaders Die. Recommended.
I haven't seen any horrors lately so when "All Cheerleaders Die" got into my hands I was pretty excited!
I and my wife kept asking each other questions like "What did she want?" or "Why did he say that?" and the answer was always "I have no idea".Several moments in the movie were quite much fun and "All Cheerleaders Die" would be really enjoyable if they lasted more than 5 minutes out of 90.
Aside from the standard obnoxious demonization of men, or in this case, boys, All Cheerleaders Die is a well-done and somewhat original supernatural horror movie.
Of course a movie like this depends entirely on the girls, and Caitlin Stasey and Brooke Butler make it work.
Attempting to get through high-school, a group of cheerleaders get into an accident at a party and awake to find themselves possessed by spiritual stones that give them dangerous powers against their classmates and forces them to battle the men to stay alive.This one was quite the enjoyable and truly fun effort.
Given the accident that sets everything in motion and how that plays into what happens later on, there's some really good work here on that front so that it brings out some of the film's greatest parts here with the big party scene out in the woods which manages to be the film's big moment as there's the crazy high-school antics throughout the party as they all begin drinking, hanging out and generally acting as well as indulging in their witchcraft and lesbian tendencies that run throughout the scene and then brings up the big fight that starts the big change-over into their car-crash that includes the big resurrection scene on the beach afterwards which makes this such a fun sequence.
There's still plenty of good times here once they get back to the school and begin tormenting the population which allows for some really fun sleazy antics of them seducing everyone and going after the required blood to stay alive and trying to hold out on the killing but still managing to engage in plenty of overall rowdy activities that give that section a boost as well as some solid set-up for the final half where they get wind of their true identities and turn the tables on them in order to set up the great finale in the cemetery which makes for some truly fun times here.
No, seriously watch 'Who's That Girl?' This is just how bad 'All Cheerleaders Die' is!.
I was after the hot chicks and I love horror,Great Combo!but I got more then I wanted,Great story, love the twists,the action, Hot girls, killings and NUDITY!
This felt like an old film in a good way, originally story line with its slasher and horror but also like a black comedy..
Not for people who didn't like evil dead or only watch a movie to see two girls getting it on.
I had to turn my volume up to around 90 to hear anything with any real clarity.The effects are even cheaper - if you're going to kill people on the cheap you may as well throw some real dead bodies around the screen as I'm fairly certain their acting would at a minimum be on a par with what I was watching on screen.45 minutes in I had to remind myself if I didn't claw my way to the end of this film I'd have wasted 45 minutes.
In the end, as expected it turned out I'd wasted 90.Even the hot women couldn't save this movie.
As a result Maddy decides that she will join the cheerleading team, as they must now find a replacement for Alexis, with the intent to seek revenge against Terry and Tracy.This is a remake of a 2001 film of the same name that was also written and directed by McKee and Sivertson.
The story has an outsider named Maddy (Aussie actress Caitlin Stasey) joining the Blackfoot High cheerleading squad, determined to get revenge on the star jock Terry Stankus (Tom Williamson).
However, thanks to some intervention by the witchy Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee, another Aussie), they return from the dead - with a decided change in attitude and appetite.The movie is fast paced, so you have to give the filmmakers that much, but the script and the characters generally lack any truly interesting features.
ll Cheerleaders DIe(2013) Starring:Caitlin Stasey, Chris Petrovski, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Jordan Wilson, Brooke Butler, Leigh Parker, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink, Tom Williamson, and Natalie Castillo Directed By: Lucky McKee, Chris Sivertson Review Hello Kiddies your Pal The Crypt-Critic here with some hot stupidity.
We're also expected to overlook ridiculous things like the idea that magic, glowing rocks bring a group of air-headed cheerleaders back to life with an inexplicable (and unexplained) taste for blood.
The start was a little boring, I didn't watch it as I didn't think it'd affect my enjoyment of the main part of the movie if I didn't pay any attention to it and I was right.
I've waited a while before I finally tried this, heeding warnings like 'chick flick', 'silly FX' and 'terrible soundtrack' and lots of low ratings, but the title and the fact that Lucky McKee is one of the directors...
honestly i am not gonna waste my time writing a long review about this because this film don't deserve it is nowhere near entertaining its just got some sexy chicks that's it but guess what it lacks all the fun you want in a teenage horror comedy flick is available here the whole film is misleading i am not saying i expected something out of this but this was trash.the story goes as few chicks get attacked at party by boys of the same school they fall in the river & die next morning all girls wake up & find out that Leena a friendly witch saved their life & made them all just like herself.now the plot goes real bad & takes a turn to the worst these girls have discovered they got powers but they are so dumb instead of focusing on the next plan on how to take out & kill the boys who attacked them they go to the same school again giving them another chance by doing stupid things & wasting the time the film tries hard to be smart but end up being stupid.let me say this again nothing happens throughout the film until the climax & sadly it is one of the worst ending to a film ever these young amateurs don't know how comedy & horror works these guys should have take a lesson from master Johnny Depp his films are proof he made a career out of doing comedy,horror & suspense flicks.even with all the flaws not matter how much you try to enjoy this hoping this would get better in the next scene no way its got all those useless things like lesbian kissing,cheap dialogs & overrating by everyone except the good script.and since when did witches started behaving like vampires by drinking large amount of blood,eat flesh etc,this film categorizes itself in horror is a insult to the genre.the biggest turn off is the climax you won't believe it but hell yes it is abrupt yes the whole ending is unfinished so you won't get to see what happens in the end who win & who loose don't matter the funny thing is these stupid witches can kill a lot of innocent people but fail to kill one bad guy i mean common the directors were on drugs when they filmed it,critics are paid to praise this nonsense.the cast:well what can i say its got a lot of sexy girls in it but they get wasted here i felt sad for them the filmmakers wasted their chance to do something good with this huge cast almost every character is dumb.Overall All Cheerleaders Die 2013 is a terrible lame & extremely boring film my rating is 2/10.just watch anything else but not this title i am warning you this film is a waste or money & time stay away.Skipp It.
I've been a fan of director Lucky McKee since his 2nd film, May. Most notably, he's the man behind The Woman, which came out in 2011 and made a name both for itself and him due to the graphic violence depicted, and all around being a very good movie.
When I found out that Lucky was doing a new film, I instantly tweeted to him asking him three reasons people should watch All Cheerleaders Die, and he replied:These reasons weren't necessary for me, as I had already intended on renting it on VOD.
And, unbeknownst to most, All Cheerleaders Die is Lucky's remake of his very first film of the same title.
All Cheerleaders Die starts off in a shocking way, and I didn't expect what happens at all.
Leena sees this as a bad omen of things to come.When some football players discover that Maddy and Tracy (Brooke Butler) are hot for each other, it turns into a volatile situation that ends in all the cheerleaders dying.
However, the football team starts seeing weird things like the girls' lower backs glowing green, and know that something weird is indeed going on.
I don't know what it was about this movie that made me like it so much, but it definitely had me captivated from start to finish.
It was, at some points, pretty funny and at others, quite gruesome and lastly, in some parts of the movie, delved into the life of a teenage girl and the ups and downs of being in high school and having a relationship that starts off amazing, then can take a turn for the worst.
ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE (2013) ** Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink,Tom Williamson, Chris Pertrovski, Leigh Parker, Nicholas S.
HEATHERS meets THE COVEN could've been the pitch for this meandering horror flick about a squad of high school cheerleaders left for dead after a car accident only to be revived by a Goth babe whose unrequited crush on another outsider come-popular hottie provides the reason for revenge upon the football team responsible.
Added to this mix is witch Leena (Sianoa Smit-McPhee) who makes things happen with stones and crystals that act like a Monkey's Paw.The film takes 30 minutes to develop.
I love the title & artwork for this film, assumed that it was a slasher movie but it isn't.
Definitely a film aimed at a teen audience, it does have a Buffy/The Craft feel, plus of course girls in bikinis & guys with 6 packs. |
tt0082770 | Montenegro | Marianne Faithfull sings "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" over the opening credit sequence.
Marilyn Jordan (Susan Anspach) is a bored, depressed American housewife, married to a rich Swedish businessman with two seemingly perfect children. She tries to "spice up" her existence by surprising the family when she eats their entire dinner, setting the bedclothes on fire and poisoning the pet dog's milk and then advising it not to drink (the dog does not drink). Eventually Martin, Marilyn's husband, decides to show her to a psychiatrist, but that only serves to further her frustration.
One day, when she decides to accompany her husband on a business trip, Marilyn gets detained by security at the airport on a technicality. After missing her plane, she is befriended by a group of Serbs and is taken to a club they run, bearing the odd name of "Zanzi-Bar." There, Marilyn indulges in their fantastic, surreal world of shovel fighting, lamb roasting, striptease and free love. It all culminates with Marilyn having a passionate fling with a young man named Montenegro (Svetozar Cvetkovic) who works in a zoo.
After spending the night with Montenegro, Marilyn realizes that even though she adores this world, she is a stranger in it. Completely snapping upon this realization, she kills the young man and returns home. Once there, she serves her family a gourmet dinner, followed by a light dessert of fruit, which a caption announces is poisoned. The final intertitle states: "The story was based on real events". | comedy | train | wikipedia | It is funny, very erotic, passionate, and riddled with jabs into society's snobbish attitude toward sexual fulfillment
A very wealthy American woman is married to a dull Swedish businessman
When the husband is about to leave for Brazil, she decides to go along with him, but is held up in customs and misses the plane
Trying to get back home, she is caught up in the life-style of a group of vibrant Yugoslavian immigrants living in Sweden
She falls in love with the peculiar manners of the group and decides to stay for a couple of days, ending up in a romantic affair with one of the workers, singing in a topless bar, and having a lot of fun
In contrast to Makavejev's other noteworthy films, "WRMysteries of the Organism" and "Sweet Movie," "Montenegro" is light and uncomplicated...
It's a simple story simply told
The message is the samesexual repression leads to insanity, but sensual indulgence livens the spirit
"Montenegro" does not exploit its eroticism; it lets it grow out of the situation, out of the characters
When Susan Anspach is seen taking a shower, it is photographed in a very beautiful, soft manner...
Others who have commented on 'Montenegro' seem to miss the film's point.
'Montenegro' takes effete, overbaked, hypersophisticated, irrelevant Western sensibilities & turns them smack on their pointed little heads.American Marliyn Jordan (Susan Anspach in a tour de force performance) lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband.
Marilyn is not, as other commentators have misapprehended, a bored, psychotic housewife - she's a woman who, in her overbaked Western milieu of mind-blenching affluence, oversensitive men & women, diplomatic euphemism, & arcane, costly, "necessary", psychobabble (brilliantly depicted, & sent up, in the analysis scene), has lost touch with all that's primal, urgent, & vital in herself.Already whacked out from living in her gilded, padded, safe-till-she's-numbed life, Jordan impulsively hooks up with a completely primal, totally up front & no bones about it, caveman & club bunch of howling, lusty Montenegrans.
Once she's with them things happen very differently from the way they failed to happen in her previous ersatz saccharine-junkie life.Jordan is in for keeps with people who play for keeps.
Lust, blood, sex, ooze, vendettas, vengeance - all the primal, classical, down-deep-in-human-nature emotions & their instantaneous acting-out - are how things are for Jordan now in Montenegro.
All that's out the window in 'Montenegro' with Marilyn Jordan fast losing her melancholia & madness, & rushing headlong into shameless, unbridled lust, man-baiting, cat-fighting, & knock-down (with that caveman club!) & drag out sex.Watching 'Montenegro' we Westerners are intrigued, repelled, fascinated, revolted - but we can't turn away from the fluids & furze, the basal & nasal sensation, the genitals-out-in-the-winds-of-Fate abandon, & the cathartic, orgasmic, lethal, & vital primordial reckoning that is 'Montenegro' exploding on our retinae, in our ears, on our skin, in our nostrils, & in our wide-open mouths.One wonders if Camille Paglia has seen 'Montenegro' because one expects she'd love it, because this film delves into things primal that Paglia's betes noires - radical gender feminist ideologues - reject and label "patriarchal violence against women" & "not women's way of knowing".
Let's just say that 'Montenegro' isn't likely to be high on Gloria Steinem's, Patricia Ireland's, or Susan Sontag's list of all-time favorite films.
That alone tells how worthy this film is of wide open embrace & enjoyment: 'Montenegro' doesn't cave or cop to salon intellectualism, pop psychology, Botox beauty, animal rights activist solipsism, or moral relativism.
This is the real deal: down to brass tacks humanity stripped of culture & deodorant & Sani-Pure flush toilets & sparkling bidets & layers of insulation from the Real.'Montenegro' isn't Greek Tragedy, it's not Shakespearian artistry, & it sure isn't Frank Capra or Spike Lee - it's pure primal, take no prisoners, heads-on-lances, bareass naked human nature turning back the clock & stripping away the veneer of Western propriety.
'Monetenegro' gives us a pungent whiff of how we smell without deodorant, look without makeup, feel without politically correct "civilized" Thought Police cues, touch with unwashed hands, & taste blood-rare meat without first checking to be sure our side of veggies is certified to be "organic", washed, or attractively presented.
Nobody calls for a cop in Montenegro, watches Oprah, or cares less what Dr. Phil advises; nobody hails a waiter without ducking for the dagger that will come hurtling his way; & nobody bats an eyelash without understanding up front that it means, "Come hither: Now!" In 'Montenegro' nobody trifles with food & wine & sex & death because they're the stuff of everyday life - life on the edge, life in the Now, into which Marliyn Jordan, body & soul, hurls herself..
With Marianne Faithful singing her signature "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" tune, I just knew that the premise of this song was somehow linked to this movie.
I won't bore you with the synopsis of this film as others have already done this, what I will tell you is this is probably one of the most cleverly made movies I have seen in years.
All sorts of social commentaries can be concluded about this movie, but having owned a copy of the film and viewing it on numerous occasions, each screening presents a different interpretation.
What still blows me away is the closing scene of the movie, even after all this time and myself and friends have sat around a dinner table discussing what does it "really all mean".
Each glass of Merlot presented even more outrageous takes like the movie itself.
10/10 to Susan Anspach, director Dusan and hats off to the two young support players who play Susans children, the talent is all class.
Do yourself a favor and watch this movie for the wild ride that it is, even just to experience the wonderful unpredictable ending......I'd love to know what you all think..
From the director of Sweet Movie and The Coca-Cola Kid, this English-language film is very reminiscent of the latter (which was made four years later).
The film's most memorable bit involves an exotic dancer dodging a remote-control tank armed with a dildo.
The story involves a wife (Susan Anspach) who tries to catch up with her husband (Erland Josephson, RIP) as he boards a flight.
There she meets up with a Yugoslavian immigrant, with whom she attempts to catch a ride home.
I'd rank it a ways below The Coca-Cola Kid, but it's well worth checking out..
A quirky black comedy about a bored housewife in Sweden who spends some time with a group of Yugoslavian gypsies.
Anspach, in perhaps her best role, looks great and is terrific as the woman who's slowly going to pieces and must get away from home to regain her sanity.
The film is full of loony characters and bizarre situations but it has a strangely endearing quality to it.
The scenes at Zanzi Bar, where the Yugoslav characters reside in a Boheminian lifestyle, are brimming with raw sensuality, helped by Zachrisson as an Earth-mother and Gelin as a young prostitute.
Montenegro Black Humor At Its Best.
The movie is rather captivating in the way it teases you with the sexiness of the main character.
The sex scenes were tasteful for an early 80's film and the lure of the folk like style of the people displayed the fact that she was less naive then they were.
The last part seemed like a joke that sealed the blackness of the film.
I watched it with my wife and found the tension of what they would do to the lead character as she went deeper into their world almost unbearable.
Little did I know it was the opposite.Great movie that holds up well through time..
Anspach delivers a personal best as a housewife on the brink of insanity who befriends a band of eccentrics at the Zanzi Bar.
An hilarious and weird sex comedy from Dusan Makavejev, about an bored, neurotic American woman married into an insane and yet strangely uninteresting Swedish family, who finds release in a group of randy, freedom-loving (if scruffy) Yugoslavian immigrants.
Susan Anspach makes the most of her leading role, and is better than I've ever seen her before.
One of the best movies you never heard of..
This is a nihilist black comedy about the emptiness of success and riches.Susan Anspach is an American housewife, 40ish, married to a rich Swede, and living in a palatial Stockholm seaside residence.
Gradually, her behavior is becoming more and more erratic.When she is denied permission to board a plane to Brazil (because she tried to carry oversized gardening shears on board), she falls in with some struggling Yugoslavian immigrants, and is attracted by their zestful, lusty craziness.This movie is completely nihilistic.
(There's even a dysfunctional clock homage to Dali's "Persistence of Memory")This is one odd movie, but I liked it a lot.
One cannot expect the characters to behave as people really would, but the movie is energetic and hilarious in sections, erotic in other sections, and the production values are impressive.This was made in 1981.
The director never really made a brilliant movie, but he should have.
Susan Anspach is beautiful and delirious (must've been the acting lessons from Jack Nicholson), Marianne Faithfull singing "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" was a stroke of brilliance, and the scene of the husband prancing around the Danish moderne bedroom with his psychiatrist and his wife, wearing nothing but matching bathrobes juxtaposed to the gypsy basting the roast with the beer he's drinking is one of the most memorable scenes.I'd own this but there are children in the house.
Great acting.Great script.The story is quirky and pulls you in.The mixture of "conventional Sweden", the ex-patriot wife, and the Balkan immigrant community creates a powerful tension.Wonderful photography/editing,And charming theme song, thanks to Shel Silverstein.
Susan Anspach is a knockout in portraying the dislocated housewife amidst the bizarre immigrants of the Zanzibar.It is an example of why small, independent films rule over the excesses of Hollywood garbage..
This film was darn good in spite of the fact that almost all of the characters behave in utterly incomprehensible ways.
Marilyn Jordan (Susan Anspach) was at least characterized as a bit of a loon from the beginning.
Some really fine acting here, Anspach most notably, but also just about all of the Yugoslavian actors, none of whom had I ever heard of before.
I'll have to check and see if she has made other English-language films..
Weird, Non-Sense and Bizarre Black Humor Comedy.
In Stockholm, the American Marilyn Jordan (Susan Anspach) is a woman married with the Swedish Martin Jordan (Erland Josephson), having two children and a nice house.
She is bored with her life and presents some traces of insanity.
One day, after an incident in the airport, when her husband intended to travel to Recife, she meets a group of Yugoslavians, goes with them to a strange night-club, has an affair with a guy (Montenegro Svetozar Cvetkovic) who treats animals and comes back home with some fruits and a `big' surprise.
This movie is a very weird, non-sense and bizarre black humor comedy.
Although being awarded in Brazil, in the São Paulo Film Festival, I did not like it.
a wonderful black comedy.
it's a wonderful black comedy i have recently seen.the entire cast, direction are absolutely brilliant.especially, i want to mention characters named "marylin", "montenegro", maryline's son and daughter.
their acting are really good to me.special scenes which i like in this movies are when marylin sings under the cuburd at her kitchen, she mixed poisons in her dog's milk,the airport scenes, the shower scene of montenegro and marylin, and the arrival of marylin to her family.especially, i think characters named "marylin" and "montenegro" are nicely depicted in this movie.the bizarre, facial, slight abnormal expressions of maryline are quite brilliant and absolutely i like the character montenegro with his charming face and beautiful personality.well, it's not the movie for everyone but obviously it's a worth-watching movie.i rate this movie 8 out of 10..
An interesting enough film to watch, it is very unusual, yet it is not really satisfying stuff.
There is a great song, sung by Marianne Faithful, which is added into the mix very well, but the mix is awfully hard to make sense of, and it is even difficult to tell if the film is trying to be a comedy or a drama.
I am actually fully uncertain of what to make of this film - whether it is good or whether it is bad.
To say this movie is weird, is an understatement.
But that's what makes this great character study of a film, intriguing, with just the right amount of sex and nudity, complimented by an intriguing weirdness and stylishness.
Though it's that early pier scene, that stays in my mind, the great Anspach who just commands the screen, with each scene she's in, plays an insanely bored rich little wife, who husband's neglect has worsened to the point of making her completely tipped over.
Getting in a bit of strife at the airport, where she's separated from hubby, and ending up with some "not your typical but exciting immigrants", she happily embarks on a rejuvenating adventure with some pretty saucy scenes, some you can well tell, have been toned down.
The bizarre yet tragic ending based on fact, is the high point of this whole film, which if far from perfect, but one movie experience, you must indulge once, if even just for the great Anspach.
....Is the best way to describe this movie.
The storyline seems to me to be a rather weak way to tie together the sex scenes, which outside a porno are some of the raunchiest 80's Hollywood will have to offer (and both female and male frontal nudity).Outside of this, the storyline is typical and utterly predictable.
Rich, bored Northern European housewife seeks excitement and sexual fulfillment somewhere primal and vibrant: in this case Yugoslavian immigrants (specifically shown to be Serbian and Montenegrin).Of course this message is debasing to both cultures involved.
Mrs. Jordan is a rich house wife.
She got all the things that maybe all of us need: a family, a couple of kids, a palatial house by the sea...
But the movie shows the emptiness of her life: she is bored, she doesn't like her life.
She decides to go with him but at the airport she falls in with some Yugoslavian immigrants that run a bar called Zanzibar.
Attracted by their way of living she enters Zanzibar, she feels very well, she feels something different, she realizes that doesn't need all the things she had...
And this is the problem: since Mrs. Jordan is unable to understand that, that her family doesn't need her, that all her life was wasted, and although she feels alive in Zanzibar, she forgets that she doesn't belong to the world of the Yugoslavian immigrants: she is out of place.
Understanding that all your life was a nonsense, understanding that all your life has always been empty I suppose is not easy: so she kills the man who becomes her lover in Zanzibar and then kills all her family including the psychiatrist her husband hired !!!: the movie got some comic moments, but is not a joke in anyway.
Makavejev scoffs at family, materialism, capitalism..., he is telling you "forget the money, forget the clothes, just feel the heat of life..." Think of it.
Very good movie..
Very good movie..
I really don't like doing the whole, "Not many people will understand this," vein, but this movie really isn't for everybody.
A lot of this film is circuitous and self-reflexive, and everything breaks down so that any given meaning something may have eventually undermines itself later.
The acting is great but unnecessary because the characters just say what they're thinking/feeling/etc.
The story is of a bourgeois woman who falls in love with a man from a lower class and lives happily ever after...
Montenegro is a character only he's one of the most incidental and least important.
So by all means, believe my intentions are good when I say this film is not for everybody.--PolarisDiB.
Were it not for the wooden dialogs this could have been a better movie.
It is a little hard for the characters to come off as authentic when they sound as if they give dictation.
The humor was not bad, especially in scenes such as the group-photographs with the man with the knife sticking out of his forehead, but such scenes are few and far between in this movie.
The ending (no spoilers here) is too abrupt, as if the director wanted to end the film in the quickest way possible.
I could not identify with, or bring myself to like any of the characters, and that alone makes this a bad movie.
The one thing I would say for this endeavor is that the sex scenes are refreshingly original..
Anyone interested in how to fight society's anti-libido, control freak, exploitive mindset which Makavejev describes quite well in several of his works, may want to consider how humor, as he points out in interviews and with this film, succeeds in doing so.
Reading Listen Little Man and Character Analysis by Wilhelm Reich or Charles Konia's The Emotional Plague may open a heart or two to better appreciate Makavejev's subtle contrasts.
Marianne Faithful's ballad for "Lucy Jordan" found love hidden between the lines in this story's corners..
I guess with Sweet Movie Dusan Makavejev's bizarreness peaked and he decided to make something more straight forward.
It is still by no means a regular movie, but there's weird and then there's "weirdest".This one is like a feminist tract about a bored, rich housewife who leaves her snobbish husband and perfect kids to stay with some bohemian Serbs who run a debauched night club.She has a fling with a young man, and yes, that does mean they have sex on a pile of food.I think with his less bizarre, assaultively creative movies, Makavejev also became less interesting. |
tt0102303 | Life Stinks | Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks) is the callous CEO of Bolt Enterprises. Bolt shows little regard for other people's needs or for the environment, and has his eye on the slum of Los Angeles so he can tear it down. Bolt makes a bet with his biggest rival, Vance Crasswell (Jeffrey Tambor), who also has an interest in the property, that he can survive on those streets for 30 days. Should Bolt lose, Crasswell owns the property, but should Bolt win, Crasswell will sell it for practically nothing.
There are three conditions: #1) Bolt will be completely penniless; #2) He must wear an electronic anklet that will activate if he leaves the boundaries, forfeiting the bet if he exceeds 30 seconds out of bounds; #3) At no time can he reveal to any of the slum area residents that he is Goddard Bolt. To add to the look, Bolt has his mustache shaved off, then Crasswell confiscates his toupee and rips the top pocket of his jacket.
Unbeknown to Bolt, Crasswell schemes to make Goddard's stay on the streets as bad as possible. Bolt, homeless, hungry and filthy, is befriended by skid-row inhabitants like Sailor (Howard Morris) and Fumes (Theodore Wilson) and given the nickname "Pepto" after falling asleep in a crate with a Pepto-Bismol logo on its side. In the process, he meets and eventually becomes attracted to Molly (Lesley Ann Warren), a homeless woman who used to be a dancer on Broadway. During a scuffle with two muggers, Bolt is pushed out of bounds, which activates his anklet. To prevent the "30-second forfeiture", Bolt rushes back in, which impresses Molly with his supposed bravery as it looks like he is tackling the muggers.
Bolt learns a series of important life lessons during his 'adventure', namely that life is not about accomplishments or material success but rather the integrity of the human spirit. However, Bolt is unaware that the unscrupulous Crasswell has no intention of honoring their bet. When Crasswell realizes Bolt is honoring the bet fair and square, Crasswell bribes Bolt's lawyers into fabricating the story that Bolt had lost his mind and has his property seized. Forced to live on the streets for good and remanded to a free clinic by mistake, a drugged Bolt murmurs that "life stinks", but Molly implores him to remember small things such as the two of them waltzing that make life livable. Crasswell, meanwhile has his own plans for the slum area, planning to tear it down as well. Bolt incites Fumes and the other slum residents to stage a mock battle on the ceremony while it is televised. Crasswell attempts to stop Bolt with a steam shovel, to which Bolt fights Crasswell in another steam shovel akin to "dinosaur fights". When Bolt's shovel has plucked Crasswell and has him hanging by his jacket, the scene is freeze-framed into a news report saying that Crasswell, in a court case, was forced to admit he made a bet with Bolt in order to get him to understand the slum conditions, then reneged on the terms. Bolt, now in control of the area, has plans to renovate it into the "Bolt Center" which will give the slum residents employment, renovate the tenements into livable homes and give the children a private school financed entirely out of pocket by Goddard Bolt. The news report ends by saying Bolt has married Molly and the press are expecting an extravagant CEO-type event, only to then be shown Goddard and Molly taking their wedding vows in a simple chapel in the slum area, then driving off in a limousine with a vanity plate "PEPTO". | satire | train | wikipedia | Growing up around downtown LA as a kid in the seventies didn't look much different than it does today as far as the kinds of odd characters you'll run into while passing through it and I think this movie really captures some of the authentic types of characters you meet when you really get to know them, but you also run into those other types that are always looking for trouble as also depicted in this Mel Brooks movie who brings a lighter and even comical side to this scenario that is so prevalent and filmed in downtown Los Angeles.Mel Brooks also stars as Goddard Bolt, a ruthless billionaire who soon begins to experience how the other half lives by unintentionally making a bet with his conniving business associates, from there he goes from riches to rags and meets some strange, funny but good hearted souls on the streets as well as endless comical mishaps, but with the help of a bag lady (Lesley Ann Warren) he begins to discover what really matters most unlike his former business associates.Although this is one of my favorite movies, I still think the ending could have been done much better, but the comedy throughout never ends..
Many Mel Brooks fans like the laugh-a-minute spoof humor that is usually incorporated into the movies.
A lot of my friends who are also Mel Brooks fans, found this movies to be less enjoyable simply because of the lack of humor.
A few of my friends who had never really cared for Mel Brooks movies liked this one more simply because it was more serious, and with less of the typical Brooks styled jokes.
While this movie isn't my favorites of the Mel Brooks movies (how can one compete with Spaceballs, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Young Frankenstien, etc.?) it was still enjoyable, and I don't think it's nearly as bad as some people are making it to be..
Mel Brooks gives a great performance as the lead character, I think somewhat different from his usual persona in his movies.There's not a lot of knockout jokes or something like that, but there are some rather hilarious scenes, and overall this is a very enjoyable and very easy to watch film.Very recommended..
It certainly has its moments(Mel's dancing, getting knocked into the dumpster), and forms a more cohesive whole then most recent Brooks movies(it contains more then a series of gags loosely tied together by a plot that could have been created by a 3 year old).
I enjoyed it, but it's not like Mel Brook's other movies.
I think most people could enjoy this movie on some level if they forget it's a Mel Brooks project, which is hard since he stars in it..
A different Mel Brooks movie, but manages to make you smile and think.
Most people think of the homeless as just a lost cause while worrying about things such as racism, the war on Iraq, pressuring kids to succeed, technology, the elections, inflation, or worrying if they'll be next to end up on the streets.But what if you were given a bet to live on the streets for a month without the luxuries you once had from a home, the entertainment sets, a bathroom, pictures on the wall, a computer, and everything you once treasure to see what it's like to be homeless?
That is Goddard Bolt's lesson.Mel Brooks (who directs) who stars as Bolt plays a rich man who has everything in the world until deciding to make a bet with a sissy rival (Jeffery Tambor) to see if he can live in the streets for thirty days without the luxuries; if Bolt succeeds, he can do what he wants with a future project of making more buildings.
He's given the nickname Pepto by a vagrant after it's written on his forehead where Bolt meets other characters including a woman by the name of Molly (Lesley Ann Warren) an ex-dancer who got divorce before losing her home, and her pals Sailor (Howard Morris) and Fumes (Teddy Wilson) who are already used to the streets.
He's not used to reaching mutual agreements like he once did when being rich where it's fight or flight, kill or be killed.While the love connection between Molly and Bolt wasn't necessary to plot, I found "Life Stinks" to be one of Mel Brooks' observant films where prior to being a comedy, it shows a tender side compared to his slapstick work such as Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, or Spaceballs for the matter, to show what it's like having something valuable before losing it the next day or on the other hand making a stupid bet like all rich people do when they don't know what to do with their money.
Mel Brook's imitation of the little guy dancing is one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a film.
It is really good and funny movie, and if you like Brooks - this is a must!
In short - Brooks (billionare) gets to the streets as homeless for 30 days in order to win the entire poor district from his competitor.
This movie has some Capra flavor, that´s why is so good.There are some unforgettable gags such as the one when Brooks tries to earn some money dancing in the street, and all the people passing by just ignore him, or when he meets a funny crazy man who believes is Paul Getty and then start arguing and slapping each other.If you haven´t seen it, you don´t know what you´ve missed.This movie tells us about the old and eternal struggle of the poor against the rich.
True, it did not have the adults rolling around the floor, but the sound of the children's enjoyment made it seem so.It is a true Mel Brooks farce, with plenty of moral content - how sad it is to be loved for our money, not for whom we are, and how fickle are our friends and associates.
Every character is lovable in someway and I personaly think shows homeless people in a positive way, true this isn't real life.
The plot centres around a bet that Brooks can't live without his millions.As film plots go, this one is easy to follow and very enjoyable..
Goddard Bolt (Mel Brooks) is a wealthy businessman who doesn't understand why cutting down a rainforest or tearing down an old folks home might create problems, if such a thing is counter to his plans.
If you like Mel Brooks, do not shy away from this film.
Nice story, funny riches-to-rags situations, Mel Brooks is not a bad lead, maybe not perfect but he is funny ;D Don't pay attention to the rating, it's BS.
I liked the way Mel Brooks pays homage to Charles Chaplin in this film.
If you have watched Chaplin's earlier silent films then you'll get the humor as well.Recommended for Mel Brooks fans..
It starts out nicely enough, with Mel as Trump-like mogul Goddard Bolt ("You can call me God"), who accepts a bet that he can't live on the streets for 30 days.
But the moment the movie hits the streets, it turns into a pathos-laden mess, with occasional "funny" bits interjected (Mel sees a black kid break-dancing for money and tries to do a vaudeville buck-and-wing, yuk, yuk).
The worst part is this movie's musical number, in which Brooks and Warren do a silent dance to Cole Porter's "Easy to Love." Brooks's musical parodies are usually the highlights of his movies; here he plays the whole thing straight, like a dancing excerpt from an aging guest star on "The Carol Burnett Show" (on which Rudy DeLuca, this film's co-writer, began his career).
It's their job.Perhaps those who are less than satisfied with the film were expecting something similar to "Blazing Saddles" "The Producers" and "Young Frankenstein." But "Life Stinks" is a new direction for Brooks.
Mel Brooks is hilarious and Leslie Ann Warren is wonderfully paired with him in this film.
Long before Wall Street and the greed mongers took so much from average citizens in such a big way -- Mel Brooks understood how to send a message about a very serious issue, using comedy.It's always been very easy for well-heeled and also even average citizens to be repulsed by homeless people and the less fortunate.
Mel Brooks won't one of my favorite filmmakers but this time he gets to the target in this dramatic comedy and pay tribute to those invisible people who lives in the streets as human remains,scorned by the society and must to be hidden to landscape,people like "Sailor" who bring to character homeless's heart and end up died on the sidewalks of the cities,Mel leave a sublime message to the audience and this critic to society and how says the tittle life stinks!!!
BUT, films like Life Stinks and Space Balls are chock full of Mel and are pretty dopey movies (yes, I DID NOT LIKE Space Balls--but this isn't the place to talk about that).Second, apart from cancer, rectal itch and mental retardation, I can't think of a less funny topic than homelessness.
The FUNNIEST(?) scene in the movie has Mel making whoopee with Leslie Ann Warren in a dumpster!!
Preachy, self-indulgent, depressing, but not funny.I consider Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles" to be on the short list for Funniest Movie Ever.
The ending is cute but unrealistic to say the least, as are many Mel Brooks films.
In this, it has a lot of similarities with Dan Akroyd's character in Trading Places, an earlier hit comedy.There's a palpable second tier somewhat budget look to this film, but that gives it a charm that aligns with it's unusual theme.Where this film really shines is in showcasing for long periods of time, the struggles of being homeless and broke in modern urban America.
Here, Brooks does less hamming, plays his character, and employs others to do much of the slapstick, while at the same time, creating a strong romantic bond between him and Leslie Ann Warren's character, a homeless woman.
Before viewing it I had heard it was considered Mel Brooks' worst movie and that it was more of a serious film in comparison to his older work.
I thought maybe it got a bad rap because being serious it was not what people were expecting from a Mel Brooks film at the time, and I enjoy seeing filmmakers break their usual territory in branching out to try something different.
Also this was Mel Brooks' first film in four years after Spaceballs which had developed a massive cult following by that time, so I am sure audiences were expecting comedy gold yet again from Brooks'.
Mel Brooks' is universally known as a comedic director, but if he wanted to take a more serious approach in directing, he should have focused on the film being a drama entirely and getting someone else other than himself to play the lead role.
The film does have its merits and I guess Brooks is trying to give his audience a message, that there are always people who have it worse than we do, and that we need to pay more attention to the homeless people on the street because they aren't begging for what we think they might be, they really need help, but what is funny about that when it's all said and done?
Granted the film does have a few laughs, very little of them come from Brooks' signature parody- style comedy, but I laughed maybe about five times, which is really unusual for a Mel Brooks' film which have reputations for being laugh out loud all the way through.
Leslie Ann Warren provides some nice comic support to Brooks' here and makes the film at least watchable, several other actors playing the homeless also keep the film afloat.
And then the film just gets downright annoying at the end with Brooks' recycling old jokes from earlier in the film, that weren't really even that funny the first time.
Those guys really brought Mel Brooks' to a rapid decline in his work, and this film is proof of that.
And it's sad, though not hard to see why Brooks only directed two more films after this before taking a step away from the director's chair for good.
A filthy rich businessman (Mel Brooks) bets a corporate rival (Jeffrey Tambor) that he can live on the streets of L.A. without the comforts of home or money, which proves to be tougher than he thought.This is not one of those Mel Brooks films you hear about.
An artist must be inspired in order to achieve any kind of work of art, be it a painting, a building, or anything creative.Movies are mainly a product of art and artists.However, I have developed, through my 1400 movies that I have watched, a certain ability to detect uninspired movie directors, and boy Mel Brooks is one.This is my explanation of why this movie is so unfunny, distasteful, and even offending in its jokes: a director forced to continue to produce "comedies", at any cost.
If they are, then movies like this spurt out inexorably, like snakes in the desert.For the record, I have never considered Mel Brooks, nor his films, funny.
A funny Mel Brooks film.
Well, if you like Mel Brooks' films but for one reason or another haven't seen this one, it is a good one.
Homeless Molly (Lesley Ann Warren) comes to his rescue when two crazy thugs try to rob him.A rich man bets to live as a poor man.
"Life Stinks" (Mel Brooks, 1991).
This movie was a kind of turn for Mel Brooks.
Of course, Brooks has not made a comedy about _real_ homeless people.
Charming little film from Mel Brooks.
By directing 'Life Stinks',director Mel Brook was able to give viewers a basic idea about the problems of homeless people..
I agree with those who see a different Mel Brooks in "Life Stinks," and one whom they like better.
"Life Stinks" has a real story line and good plot – qualities others have noted that are missing from most early Brooks films.
Life Stinks (1993) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Mel Brooks co-wrote, directs and stars in this rather tasteless comedy where plays a billionaire who makes a bet with another billionaire who doesn't think he can live as a homeless person for a month.
Brooks hits the streets and soon realizes that having nothing in life isn't that easy and this is especially true when he meets a homeless woman (Leslie Ann Warren) and soon finds himself without his fortune.
However, when viewed on its own the film isn't nearly as bad as its reputation but at the same time we've all come to expect more from Brooks..
Don't read this review if you haven't seen this film, but please see it.Life Stinks was very very very funny, and they say that the best way to get a point across is to do it with humour.This film had billionaire business man Mel Brooks via a bet with his colleagues, thrown into the dark hidden world of America's underclass, their homeless, with stark, hilarious and very moving moments.Mel Brooks learned what being alone, hungry, and helpless felt like, he also learned that there was much more community among the homeless than there is among suburbia.And at the end of the film he realised that people needed homes, so he built low cost homes for the homeless and other facilities they needed.What I got from this film was the darker unseen side of America's free market, and Britain is the same.I was left wondering if Mel Brooks made this film to highlight homelessness in America, or whether homelessness is an accepted part of corporate America, and that Mel Brook just wanted to make just another comedy ?Either way, this film said much more about America's awful political system, than it did Mel Brooks as a comedian..
Dark comedy not Brooks' best work, got better toward end (SPOILERS).
Toward the end, the movie takes a more positive tone.Brooks is wonderful, but I've seen better work from him.
This year is the 20th anniversary for Mel Brooks' underrated comedy Life Stinks, which was a departure for Brooks in that it was the first straight story he had done since The Twelve Chairs in 1970.
As to this film, the best moment to me is when Brooks' character sees a homeless friend has died and he is just being taken away to the morgue.
Good, easy to watch comedy from Brooks.
This is a good film by Mel Brooks.
'Life Stinks' could have been a better film if was written and executed in a different way..
When you hear or see the name 'Mel Brooks', your mind usually tells you to laugh and think of his spoof comedy work, including 'Blazing Saddles', 'Spaceballs', 'Young Frankenstein', and 'Robin Hood: Men In Tights'.
There are many other films that fall into this spoof category that Brooks has made, but back in 1991, Mel wrote, produced, and directed a dramatic movie with comedy elements.
The usual funny dialogue Mel writes for his parody films just doesn't fit into this movie, and the way the script is written to make jokes about the homeless people and their families, simply doesn't work.
A good example of how to shed light on these subjects was with the film 'Trading Places'.It seems like Mel wanted to make the same movie, but was incapable of producing something of that valor that perfectly mixes comedy and drama, while shedding light on the lower class and homeless people of America.
Meanwhile, Vance has a sinister scheme in play that will destroy Bolt.'Life Stinks' could have been a better film if was written and executed in a different way.
The slapstick comedy and the intent on trying to bring laughs to issues such as homelessness, just doesn't work with this movie. |
tt0032264 | The Blue Bird | When poor old widow Berlingot asks Tyltyl and Mytyl, the young son and daughter of her more prosperous neighbors, for the loan of their pet bird to cheer up her ill daughter, Mytyl selfishly refuses. That night, when the children are asleep, the fairy Bérylune enters their home in the semblance of Berlingot, before transforming into her true beautiful appearance. She insists that the children search for the bluebird of happiness. She gives Tyltyl a magical hat which has the power to show him the insides of things. As a result, the souls of fire, water, light, bread, sugar and milk becoming personified, and their pet dog and cat can now speak with their masters. Before they all set out, Bérylune warns the children that their new companions will all perish once their quest is achieved.
The fairy then takes them to various places to search. At the Palace of Night, the traitorous cat forewarns the Mother of Night, having heard the fairy's prediction. The dog saves Tyltyl from one of the dangers of the palace. In a graveyard, the dead come alive at midnight, and Tyltyl and Mytyl are reunited with their grandmother, grandfather and siblings. They receive a blue bird, but when they leave, it disappears. Next, they visit the Palace of Happiness. After seeing various lesser joys and happinesses, they are shown the greatest of them all: maternal love in the form of their own mother. Finally, they are transported to the Kingdom of the Future, where children wait to be born, including their brother. Nowhere do they find the bluebird.
Returning home empty-handed, the children see that the bird has been in a cage in their home the whole time. Mytyl gives the bird to Berlingot. She returns shortly afterward with her daughter, now well. However, the bird escapes from the daughter's grasp and flies away. Tyltyl comforts the upset neighbor girl, then turns to the audience and asks the viewers to search for the bluebird where they are most likely to find it: in their own homes. | whimsical, fantasy | train | wikipedia | After having watched this movie, for the life of me I can't figure out why this picture flopped at the box office when it was released in 1940.
Shirley Temple plays Mytyl, a young girl who is not happy because her family is poor.
Shirley is supported by a wonderful supporting cast such as Spring Byington, who plays her mother, Gale Sondergaard, who plays an evil cat come to life, and Nigel Bruce (usually remembered as Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movies opposite Basil Rathbone) as Mr. Luxury.
I have read that people felt that this was a "rip-off" of the Wizard of Oz which was released the year before, but even though there are some similarities in the story lines (young girl goes on a magical journey only to find her happiness is truly in her own backyard) but other than that, the similarities end.
Although 'The Blue Bird' was not a resounding financial success at time of release, and has always been cited as being a poor imitation of 'The Wizard of Oz', it is an unjustly neglected film.
(You can spot Dickie Moore and Scotty Beckett among the unborn lads.) Shirley Temple and Johnny Russell are tremendously appealing as the young sister and brother searching for the elusive blue bird of happiness.
This curious enterprise, based on the play, would seem to have a great deal in common with "Oz" (it even begins in black-and-white and turns to color), but the crucial elements of an identifiable plot are missing, and the young girl at the center of this story is consistently petulant.
It was a fundamental error to make Shirley Temple unsympathetic; as the scowling, complaining daughter of a poor woodcutter, she wakes one night to an elderly fairy-woman knocking on her door and soon finds herself and her little brother on a search to find the Blue Bird of Happiness.
An obnoxious girl, unable to find joy in her life, is sent by an elderly fairy into the Lands of the Past & the Future to seek for THE BLUE BIRD of Happiness.
She tries hard, but the role is very unsympathetic & we are never told why her character is so wicked - indeed, capable of murder.It's interesting to note that both Temple & Sondergaard were important contenders for major roles in OZ, but were instead rejected for Judy Garland & Margaret Hamilton.There are several cast members that do an excellent job with their material: Spring Byington, tender as Shirley's mother; wonderful old Jessie Ralph as the fairy; Eddie Collins, often very funny as the Dog; Nigel Bruce & Laura Hope Crews, giving ripe performances as Mister & Mrs. Luxury; and dear Cecilia Loftus & Al Shean as Shirley's lonely, dead grandparents.Some of the minor casting is also very effective, witness Thurston Hall as Father Time, Edwin Maxwell as Old Man Oak & Sterling Holloway, on screen only a few seconds as Wild Plum.
Kids today in 2005 would certainly immediately respond to the more severe points of this very strong lesson in life - and aware adults who watch it with them will have much to discuss - especially after the 'heaven' sequence with the unborn children.
Apart from the Pixar 3D cartoons, family movies made today are not better than this 1940 and 1975 production, in fact this film of 1940 is easily as well produced and as emotionally powerful as THE WIZARD OF OZ which is the template (as opposed to Shirley) for this version.
THE BLUE BIRD (20th Century-Fox, 1940), directed by Walter Lang, adapted from the story by Maurice Masterlinck, is an interesting failure in Shirley Temple's movie career.
A worthy follow-up to her previous success of THE LITTLE PRINCESS (1939), a family oriented story also produced with lavish scale settings and glossy Technicolor, THE BLUE BIRD, a dream-like fantasy often labeled as the studio's answer to THE WIZARD OF OZ (MGM, 1939) starring Judy Garland, could have or should have become a box office success, but it didn't.
Unlike her most typical films where she often played either an orphan, or a daughter of a widowed parent, THE BLUE BIRD gives her a set of parents as well as a little brother.Black and White prologue: Set on Christmas Eve in a little German town sometime in the 19th Century, Mytyl Tyl (Shirley Temple), and her little brother, Tyltyl (Johnny Russell) at the Royal Forest are introduced trapping a rare little bird into a cage.
As the children go to bed for the night, (shift to Technicolor) they each dream of themselves searching for the Blue Bird of Happiness, thus, meeting with numerous characters to guide them: Fairy Berylune (Jessie Ralph), Light (Helen Ericson), their dog and cat, Tylo and Tylette (Eddie Collins and Gale Sondergaard), magically changed to human form.
While going through many aspects of human experience, Mytyl and Tyltyl visit the past, going to the land of memories in the cemetery where they are briefly reunited with their deceased grandparents (Al Shean and Cecilia Loftus); living the life of richness in the mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Luxury (Nigel Bruce and Laura Hope Crews); roaming through the forest where danger awaits, with uprooted trees and blazing fire; and moving into the future where the children visit the Palace of the Unborn where they make the acquaintance of children awaiting to be born before finding their destinies on Earth - but still no finding of the blue bird of happiness.
(While it would be asking too much to accept two children to be having the exact same dream while sleeping, but considering this to be a fantasy, it's possible acceptance to the viewer).Other members of the cast are Thurston Hall (Father Time); Sterling Holloway (Wild Plum Tree); and possibly every child actor in the movie business appearing briefly as Gene Reynolds; Ann E.
Johnny Russell, the doll-faced little boy has that rare distinction of having and sharing equal time with Temple, while the lesser known name of Helen Ericson as Light stands out as a sort of glowing guardian dressed in white angel with that Heavenly glow.First produced as a stage play, then adapted as a silent movie (Paramount, 1918), and much later retold again (20th Century-Fox, 1976) directed by George Cukor, regardless of its negative reputation, it's the 1940 edition that's become the best known of the three due to frequent television broadcasts starting in the late 1960s, usually around the Christmas season.
Though there are those who claim this BLUE BIRD has laid an egg, overlooking some dull passages, it does contain some fine moments of honorable mention: lavish scale settings with crisp, glossy Technicolor; the beautiful yet haunting score to "Through the World so Far Away" sung by children on with giant ship with the golden sail on their way to be born, this being one of the longer dream segments of the dream; and one with an important message.
Eddie Collins adds occasional humor as the humanly frightful dog while Gale Sondergaard adds tastes of cat-eye wickedness, but no threat to Margaret Hamilton's scene stealing Wicked Witch of the West from THE WIZARD OF OZ.Formerly available as part of the Shirley Temple Playhouse on video cassette in 1989, and later in DVD format, THE BLUE BIRD has turned up on numerous cable channels over the years, ranging from The Disney Channel (1980s), American Movie Classics (1996-2001), Fox Movie Channel, and finally Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: December 20, 2015).
With the reportedly heavy editing of songs and scenes to abide to Temple's attention throughout, it's a wonder how THE BLUE BIRD might have turned out theatrically in completed form of more musical sequences as opposed to its 83 minute release of the blue bird search for happiness?
the film deals with the journey of a quest to find the elusive bluebird thru many trials and adventures....the echos of oz are quite evidenti first saw this film wen i was about 9...and it still grips my imagination...even tho i haven't seen it for 20 years...i can still remember the unborn children sequence, and the earthquake/storm ....
But watching the entire film, I can only say that is an amazing experience of fantasy, spectacular set decorations, unforgettable characters (Tylette and Tylo are lovely!)...and the most important thing: the beautiful meaning of the blue bird at the end of the movie.
I search the movie 'The Blue Bird' with 'Shirley Temple' because I want it to buy.
It's making was a particularly pertinent bit of point-making by 20th Century Fox, since its star Shirley Temple had lost out to Judy Garland for the lead role in The Wizard of Oz. However, the fantasy movie Fox gave to Temple got wrong everything The Wizard of Oz got right.The failure of The Blue Bird is usually blamed upon the fact that Temple plays a mean-spirited little girl, and it's true this is at least part of the problem.
Ironically though it's the deliciously evil Gale Sondergaard who I find myself routing for, especially since the "good guys" in this movie are so flimsy (or in the case of Fairy Berylune, downright rude).But there are still deeper flaws running through The Blue Bird.
Admittedly a little poignancy has been eked from the scene with children waiting to be born, but the concept of unborn babies being love-struck teenagers is a little too weird even for a fantasy movie.
There is a tacked-on "daddy going to war" subplot, very much a Shirley Temple staple, but it falls flat because unlike in The Little Princess an emotional bond between father and daughter is not established.And when one compares The Blue Bird to its predecessor The Wizard of Oz, its woeful banality reaches depressing proportions.
You wonder if the folks who came up with the idea of making "The Blue Bird" were either psychotic or they were deliberately trying to make the public hate Shirley Temple.
Shirley Temple is about as good as ever and there are some other nice acting performances but this is otherwise a second-rate film.It is obvious that 20th Century Fox was looking for their own Wizard of Oz but this movie lacks much of what made that classic what it was.This film is released one year after that breakthrough smash but was a flop.There are some nice special effects and the Technicolor is excellent but there is not enough substance here.The plot is largely too dark and doesn't fit well with Temple's persona.There are some brilliant cinematic setups, particularly one in the forest and another that is supposed to be a mix of heaven and a Greek temple that is reminiscent of the castle scene in The Thief of Baghdad (same year - 1940).This is one of the first films to feature Ann E.
Essentially Shirley Temple's child star career ended with The Blue Bird.
If not the best way to end her child star career and the biggest money maker at the box office it certainly was one expensive way.Interesting as well because the rumors had it that Darryl Zanuck saw the big money that The Wizard Of Oz made over at MGM with Judy Garland and decided this was action he wanted 20th Century Fox in.
A magical fairy played by Jessie Ralph sends them on a journey into an Oz like land with their animated pets, Eddie Collins as their dog and Gale Sondergaard as the cat.
Sondergaard is truly interesting, she plays the animated cat like she was being the Spiderwoman and really acts like a fifth columnist for the kids.The story even resolves itself like the Wizard Of Oz.The Blue Bird got Oscar nominations for Special Effects, but lost to Alexander Korda's The Thief of Bagdad.It never came close to raking in its cost for 20th Century Fox. It was the end of Shirley Temple as a child star.
I finally saw this film tonight, thanks to the British cable channel "Talking Pictures" screening a really gorgeous print and at last, I can understand why it was such a major box office flop in 1940.The reviews here on IMDb are mostly from people living in the USA and a large number of them express being entranced by this heavy-handed fantasy.
In this movie (her first in colour), she is even less appealing than usual and the thought that she was ever considered for the part of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz just beggars belief.The main problem with The Blue Bird as far as I'm concerned is that it lacks charm, though it tries very hard indeed.
The composer Alfred Newman (a musical genius) scores the film with as much sweet-toned romantic melody as he is capable of, but it just does not match what is happening on screen.Some wonderful character actors do their best in various roles and the colour photography is often ravishing - but at the end of the day, one never warms to the central character (Temple) and the "message" of the film is so obvious, the final scene is painfully predictable.The Blue Bird is often compared to Oz and I can see why.
But Oz had great songs, humour (Eddie Collins as the dog just leaves me cold) superb special effects (in Blue Bird, the effects are obvious and cheap looking, with gaudy painted backdrops at every turn) and also had a terrific narrative drive thanks to Mr Baum.It also had the unique talents of Judy Garland, who brought pathos, wit, charm and musical verve to the role of Dorothy that had audiences transfixed then and forever afterwards.
Based on a children's play about a sister and brother Mytyl (Shirley Temple) & Tyltyl, who are visited by a fairy Berylune one night to find "the bluebird of happiness," along with Tylo the bulldog and Tylette the cat and a lantern transformed by Berylune's magic.
Throughout the journey, Mytyl's bratty attitude starts to change.I was quite intrigued with the original play/story after watching the version starring Sanrio's "Little Twin Stars" who are a pair of angel-like characters named Lala (sister) and Kiki (brother).
It is about a child (Shirley Temple) who goes on an imaginary journey with her brother to a lot of places to search for the bluebird of happiness.
It flopped at the box office but so have many others like It's A Wonderful Life that have come back to become great classics.
The Blue Bird is a beautiful fantasy film with a great cast and characters.
The majority of the movie is part of the lead characters dream, but the wonderful adventure that she goes on to find the "blue bird" is enjoyable.
What many today miss is the fact that the search for the blue bird is actually the search for happiness and/or hope which was needed so much during the time that it was made.
It does preach wisdom over pure entertainment content.I also love this film in particular because it features Shirley Temple in probably one her most serious acting roles at this time.
A role that was out of character for Temple as a child.As of today this film, and the 'Bluebird' fairy tale in general, fails to capture the same popular interest that other fairy tales like 'Snow White', 'Pinocchio' and 'Peter Pan' do.
I tuned it at the point where Shirley Temple's character was just meeting the witch/fairy so I didn't know this little girl was an obnoxious child and I didn't know their pet dog was a bulldog.I immediately saw the Oz connection, but this story seemed much darker and sadder.
It seemed to me that the little girl was too anxious to leave such a happy time with the grandparents she supposedly missed so much and was so happy to see, and for no other reason than to look for something that was supposed to make her happy.I couldn't figure out the cat character.
Mr. Luxury all but ignores the little girl when she comes to him and he speaks to her in harsh tones and is concerned only with whether she will hurt his gouty foot.A few reviewers mentioned the last scene, where the children meet the unborn.
The little girl meets her sister who is not yet born, but the sister says she will not be with them very long before she goes away (dies), and what does Shirley Temple's character do?
"The Blue Bird" is an excellent study in how not to make a children's movie, and stands in stark contrast to "The Wizard of Oz".
Shirley Temple does a good job, but none of the supporting cast seem up to the task of really selling the fantasy world in which the children find themselves.While I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt for children's films, even my 8-year old daughter pointed out some of the inconsistencies and plot holes, including the fact that while the fantasy of the "Blue Bird" occurs as Shirley sleeps (similar to the "Wizard of Oz"), when she wakes up, her younger brother has also had the same dream and "shared" the experience..
It stars Shirley Temple as a girl who goes in a magical adventure when she comes into the possession of a forest bird.
A kindly old witch sends Shirley Temple (and her brother) on a quest for the proverbial "Blue Bird of Happiness".
I also own several other Shirley Temple films for my family to watch, but not this mess..
Johnny Russell is easier to take than Temple for much of the film, and Eddie Collins and the always deliciously slinky Gale Sondergaard absolutely superb as the human versions of the loyal dog and calculating cat.
It's the individual segments of fantasy that stand out, whether it be trips to see their dearly departed or even to heaven where they meet the spirits of children yet to come, all somehow involved on their search for the blue bird of happiness. |
tt0127919 | Tale of the Mummy | In 1948 Egypt, an archeological dig led by Richard Turkel (Christopher Lee) reaches a tomb (of Talos), which is apparently cursed. The hieroglyphics at the entrance warn that all should avoid the place as it has been abandoned by all that is holy. Despite this, they proceed to open the chamber's door only to be blasted with a cloud of dust, which causes them to crumble apart as though they are made of fragile stone. Richard manages to blow the tomb shut, killing himself in the process.
In 1999, Richard's granddaughter Sam Turkel (Louise Lombard) continues where he left off. When they break into the burial roost, they see Talos's sarcophagus suspended from the ceiling. One of the team falls to his death, and another (Brad) (Sean Pertwee) has a seizure while experiencing Talos' past atrocities.
Nine months later, a power cut occurs, during which the container holding Talos's sarcophagus is broken into and a guard is killed. Detective Riley (Jason Scott Lee) warns them the killer will undoubtedly strike again. At a party, a youth is assaulted by Talos in the bathroom and dragged down the toilet. A man is attacked by Talos in a car park while Sam explains the core of Talos' myth to Riley. Talos directed that his body parts be removed by his followers; and they believed he would someday be resurrected to reclaim them, gaining physical perfection and immortality. Talos was exiled from Greece for sorcery and came to Egypt where he fell in love and, in a pagan ceremony, married the pharaoh's daughter Nefrianna.
Neighboring factions of Egypt ordered the Pharaoh to kill Talos, as all who opposed him were struck with disease or tortured into believing his theology. To save Nefrianna from death, the Pharaoh told her about Talos' upcoming execution and she in turn told Talos. When the Pharaoh's army reached Talos' chamber they saw Nefrianna eating Talos' heart. They were all put to death including Nefrianna.
Brad surmises that the murder victims are reincarnations of the pharaoh's followers and that killing Sam (Nefrianna's reincarnation) is the only way to stop Talos, who plans to be reborn when the planets align. Brad further explains that part of Talos' curse is that the only one who knows what's going on will be deemed a madman. A reborn Talos tracks down Sam to her apartment, but she manages to get away; however, Talos captures her after posing as a dog. After further incidents, Talos continues in his quest to destroy the world. | paranormal | train | wikipedia | This somewhat unknown mummy movie starts excellent, with a great mysterious touch and some nice special effects.
"Tale of the Mummy" is a better than expected though somewhat problematic entry.**SPOILERS**Discovering a long-lost Egyptian tomb, Samantha Turkel, (Louise Lombard) and her team, Bradley Cortese, (Sean Pertwee) Burke, (Gerald Butler) and Claire Mulrooney, (Lysette Anthony) bring the contents back to the British Museum.
Discovering that it is the work of Prince Talos, (Enzo) claimed to be one of the most ravenous men in Egyptian history, trying to collect the body parts required to resurrect himself, they race to stop him and put an end to his plans.The Good News: this wasn't all that bad and had some good moments to it.
I took a chance on this, based on the cast (Christopher Lee, Honor Blackman, Sean Pertwee, Lysette Anthony, etc.) and because I liked some of the director's previous films (HIGHLANDER, THE SHADOW).
It had some good moments (and, like many mummy movies, the early scenes in Egypt were among the highlights), but overall the film's plot unraveled faster than the mummy's wrappings.
Would like to point out something, however: Throughout many of the reviewer comments made about the film on IMDB, it is repeatedly stated that writer/director Russell Mulcahy must be an American because of all the mistakes the movie made when it comes to London lifestyles...sorry, folks, but Mulcahy is from Melbourne, Australia..
But if you want to spend 2 hours of your free time with a good special effects, action and sometimes horror you should see "Talos the Mummy".
This is My second comment on the film.Tale of the Mummy is really decent and yet one of the most different of all mummy films.Christopher Lee has a short but very good part in the film.He actually shows a side of himself that is rarely seen on screen.Jason Scott Lee performed well and his relationship with Louise Lombard was good but it didn't go to the distance it could have because of the situation.Sean Pertwee put on a very act in the film.A very troubled but serious character.Shelley Duvall,Michael Lerner,007's Honor Blackman,Jon Polito,and Gerard Butler was in this as well!As for the movie itself it is very interesting from start to finish.The Mummy is very different and I like the way he changed into many forms in the film and when he came into formation at the end it is really scary.The music in the film is excellent.I really don't know what else to say.Tale of the Mummy is a good mummy movie that doesn't disappoint and if you have a chance check it out!.
The incredible thing about this mess is that it actually got released, usually when a company makes a movie this bad they hide it on the shelf for a few years and then melt it down to make ash trays.
About a week ago, I said that I didn't believe that a movie could be "so bad it's good." Then I saw Russell Mulcahy's "Tale of the Mummy." The special effects are terrible, the lead actor is more wooden than a fencepost, and the movie is edited down so much that the storyline struggles to remain coherent.
In fact, it's actually moderately engaging.When I put the DVD in the player, I was expecting a movie that I would regret watching, filled with bad acting and no plot coherency, and so on (I love Ancient Egypt, so I sort of had to see it).
And Christopher Lee is good in the film's top-billed cameo.However, the special effects are hideously bad.
It could be fun watch and laugh at the bad special effects (this could make a great drinking game), but it's also a decently made movie.
this is a pretty good movie,with good performances all around.it's not the most exciting movie,but it is mysterious and suspenseful.i like Loise Lombard(CSI:Vegas)and Jason Scott Lee,the two romantic leads,but i didn't feel much chemistry between them.the special effects were all right,nothing spectacular.but then again,this is a relatively small scale movie.it does have some exciting moments during the last 30 minutes.one thing that i really liked about this movie is that it is unpredictable.it didn't end at all like i thought it would,and i mean that in a good way.i thought the ending was great.all in all,i'd give Tale of the Mummy a 6/10.
I don't understand why this movie has such a low rating on IMDb. It has a stellar cast (with a bit of an annoying bait and switch), it has an interesting story, characters that are actually developed and it is a UK coproduction, so you know it is better than a normal US movie from the start.The film starts with an Egyptian dig (how else) where the likes of Christopher Lee are excavating the mysterious burial place of Talos, the cursed Greek who came to Egypt and learned forbidden magic.
This is annoying if you started to watch the movie because of the cast, but I didn't so it didn't bother me.Present time, stuff happens and two detectives, played by none others than Jason Scott Lee and Jack Davenport, need to investigate.
Add to this the two British hotties Louise Lombard and Lysette Anthony and the movie is interesting on that alone.The film lasts for almost two hours, which is a bit too long for the level of tension that the movie manages to maintain, but in no way is it a bad story.
If you take the special effects (which were not bad, but certainly were cheap in Talos) out of the equation, the only possible reason why The Mummy would be better is Arnold Vosloo and a slightly more fleshed out (pardon the pun) character for the mummy.
Talos the Mummy (or Tale of the Mummy as the video says) was an awesome special-effects horror film that is in fact opposite of Stephen Sommers' excellent Mummy remake because it is a horror not an adventure as the box art claims it is.
Sad story that Russel Mulcahy's best film to date has been tossed on the video shelf half a year too early from its supposed theater release just so Miramax/Dimension can shamefully cash in the success of the big-budgeted smash hit.
The opening is awesome and if you expect the film to get worse - it actually just stays the same throughout - until the unexpected, yet disappointing ending with a last frame that will scare even the strongest of wills like me!
I wasn't expecting much from this film, especially with the title "Talos the Mummy", to be honest I was quite surprised at how enjoyable the first 20mins or so were.
You guys were acting foolishly.I actually found this film to be much better than "The Mummy." While I immensely enjoyed the summer movie, I feel that it was more of an action/adventure than horror.
This movie goes back to its roots: pure horror, and that's what really makes it work.Set in London, the film follows an American detective and an assortment of other characters as they battle Talos, a banished Egyptian sorcerer who whose body was never found in the days of Pharaohs.
Being a movie that includes a mummy and being a horror movie, I naturally found it interesting and immediately decided to give it a chance, without reading the synopsis or taking notice of who starred in it.The movie does start out in an adequate pace, and does establish some characters pretty early on, which was good for the movie."Tale of the Mummy" has an adequate storyline, although parts of it seemed a bit forced.
The storyline is simplistic and very easy to follow, making it feel like writers Keith Williams, John Esposito, Russell Mulcahy and writer/director Russell Mulcahy were followed a generic blueprint of 'how-to-make-a-mummy-movie'.I must admit that I was more than genuinely impressed with the ensemble of cast that had been hired for this movie, because there are some rather good names on the cast list here.
It was a nice surprise to see the likes of Christopher Lee, Gerard Butler, Lysette Anthony, Sean Pertwee, Shelley Duvall, Jon Polito, Jason Scott Lee and Michael Lerner in a movie such as this.The effects in "Tale of the Mummy" were quite good and actually do, to some extend, still hold their ground even today.
The scene where they brought him back from the dead was pretty creepy, there are so scary moments in this flick unlike the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies, tho I generally liked them too.
But after that prologue and after Lee's character dies off and the film flash forwards thirty years the rest of it is an awful let down.Jason Scott Lee plays an American detective over in London where the mummy has gotten loose and he's trying to resurrect himself.
This movie follows the old mummy formula of "archaeologist unearths cursed tomb whose occupant proceeds to emerge to slaughter many horribly".Its largely British cast fails to rise to the major movie performance required and the most brilliant star amongst them, master of the horror genre Christopher Lee, plays too small a role to support them through the action.
That being said, Sean Pertwee and Louise Lombard produce solid performances as psychotic and English rose respectively.My major criticism goes to the lead actor whose Chinese-American accent renders a good half of his character's dialogue inaudible to all but the keenest ears.If credulity is a feature of horror films, then it is stretched by the profusion of firearms - even a newspaper vendor has his own 9mm automatic!Special effects vary from the laughable (parcel tape as "mummy wrappings"?!) to competent but lack the competence of those we see in The Mummy to which Talos has the misfortune to be compared.
It has been well publicized in specialty magazines that Russell Mulcahy had trouble finding a producer for this pet project of his, which would finally show on screen a startling effect that the classic Hammer film THE MUMMY (1959), due to technical limitations, could only show on its poster -- a walking mummy with a light beam going through a hole in his chest.
(Schrader's version of CAT PEOPLE at least justified having its main characters howl and growl, but would a reincarnated mummy behave the same way?) Worse of all is the incoherent script, which caps an elaborate (if unconvincing) buildup of situations, motives and circumstances with an idiotic, cheap-shot "shock" ending that contradicts and denies everything that happened so far.One usually is compelled to root for maverick filmmakers who are willing not to compromise their vision and push their projects over the stubborn narrow-mindedness of conservative producers.
Talos the Mummy is a typical B-movie horror film.
Pretty much everything about it is either wrong (like casting Jason Scott Lee in the main role) or simply bad (abysmal writing).
The list of mistakes goes on and on.Couple this with a terrible plot, a stupid ending and poor quality special effects and you have a recipe for a disaster.The only redeeming quality was laughing at the errors as the occurred.Don't waste your time..
The special effects were terrible, the acting was bad and above all the end was ridiculous: All the good guys died and the mummy survived.
this is one of the worst films that i have had the misfortune to see,apparently the film is only 119 minutes long, I'm sure that i must have seen an extended version because it seemed to last at least 5 hours!it also had some of the more cheesier moments that i have seen in film, which is evidence of a director having the budget to use some cgi but really shouldn't as they don't know how to use it to its full effect and just ends up looking terrible.
Ever since movies like Star Wars and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Studios should be ashamed of special effects like the ones in Talos The Mummy (except for, off course, things like Beetlejuice, in which special effects are made bad on purpose, but even Beetlejuice had better effects than this).
italian dubbing is convincing for some characters, and just at amateur-level for some others, and I don't think that the original version would have been much better.Most of actors surely didn't play their best performance here.The plot is that kind of story in which you always understand before what will happen in the next 5 minutes, except for the ending, which was the best part in my opinion (expcept for the ridiculous 5 last seconds).Effects are rather ridiculous in the first part, then they are good, but the floating toilet paper idea which should represent the mummy, though well realized, is still some toilet paper floating, in the end..Music was just absent during most of the movie, and decent in the end.I've seen the 88 minutes version, but I don't really think that the 120 minutes one would be better: there would be just 34 minutes more to laugh at, given that you want to laugh at an horror movie.Good to see if you are into a "let my girlfriend have some laughs at least" mood.Oh well..
The storyline went on as any normal mummy story should go, but the last 20 mins or so of the movie made no real sense in the whole scheme of things.
Special effects range from fair to below average, but that's not the reason this is a bad movie.
While Talos the Mummy is often portrayed as a horror movie, anyone who watches the movie as this will be sorely disappointed.Instead Talos the Mummy can be seen for the sometimes crude - but often cute - special effects and the okay acting by Sean Pertwee.
The special effects are in general rather poor, and for a large portion of the far-too-long running time we are treating to the spectacle of people being chased and killed by demonic rags that look remarkably like moving toilet paper..
This really was a poor film , full of corny lines , bad acting and dull special effects.
The acting was terrible the special effects appalling and the chemistry between Louise Lombard and Jason Scott Lee was so not there at all.
The movie is pretty boring, they should have shown more violence (actually show what's happening) The story is some archaeologists break a cursed seal of a tomb an they vanish without a trace only leaving a log book telling of the tale of TALOS.
Tale Of the Mummy had the potential of being a great movie, i think being set in modern time was much better than back in time.
Good mummy films are hard to find and this isn't one either.
Starting with script confusion, wooden acting, ending with amazingly poor special FX (very disappointing if you consider that KNB, the guys who made the incredible FX for "From Dusk Till Dawn", even co-produced), in fact some of the worst CGI-effects I've seen for quite a long time.
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable.****Very Good.***Okay.**You Could Go For A Meal Instead.* Avoid At All Costs.Honor Blackman,Michael Lerner,Sean Pertwee,Bill (Arthuuuuuuur)Treacher,Christopher Lee,Louise Lombard......Talos:The Mummy has a whole pile of veteran cum not so veteran stars on screen,but was not enough to stop it getting a straight to video release over here.It boasts an interesting premise:Talos must complete his mission before the colligning of the planets on Thursday night.But this movie is kind of let down by,amongst other things,an uncertain and overall confused pace.The ending,for example,serves to just drag on.And,I mean,come on,the end slimeball monster had me laughing out loud.All that crafty,impressive FX work for.....that.The initial mummy monster was surpassably neat...but that just looked like a man in a suit.Like a tall,middle aged bloke with a deep voice who'd just had a load of stale strawberry whip melded onto him.I enjoyed the stripes grappling Talo's victims.They were eerie and left an eerie sense of mystery with them wherever they went.
The CGI effects used for the bandages aren't bad, but in the end it all seems a bit pointless anyway as the bandages take the form of a proper mummy after all.Things look cheesily promising in the opening scenes, of a tomb excavation in Egypt.
However, things fall totally apart at the end of the movie, when Talos is reincarnated as a being that looks like an alien (but which is still pretty cool, I have to say) and people run around a dark and gloomy factory (déjà vu perhaps?).
Sadly by this time I didn't have a clue as to what was going on, making this one of the most disjointed, confusing endings ever.Imported American lead Jason Scott Lee (more at home as a bad guy in SOLDIER, I feel) seems stiff and unsuited to this type of film, especially in his growing romance with Louise Lombard.
The movie gets off to a good start with a strong prologue featuring the great Christopher Lee, who of course once played one of the most impressive mummies in movie history during the heyday of Hammer Films.
Not only do we have a brief but important turn by Christopher Lee, but there's also Lysette Anthony, Shelly Duvall, Sean Pertwee, Jason Scott Lee, and even Gerard Butler (though Mr. Butler's character meets his demise just a few minutes into the proceedings).Though nothing really breaks with established mummy-movie formula at first, at least the first act of the film lays what appears to be a solid foundation for things to come.
The Tale of the mummy started out to be a good movie and then it had become more Science fiction than egyptian.
The movie was good in a sense it could have been better if the mummy had been an alien or something.
"Talos the Mummy" is slightly better than Sommer's film, but that really isn't saying much.
Christopher Lee died within like 1 minute into the film.
This comment/review may contain information about the film.Well to start with I thought this was the OTHER Mummy movie. |
tt0108885 | Ocean Girl | Neri - the title character - is a young girl with an affinity for water, super-human strength, the ability to swim long distances, and super-human lung capacity. She lives alone on an otherwise deserted island, and sleeps in a nest in a tree. Early in the first season, Neri befriends two Australian boys: Jason and Brett Bates. The Bates brothers live in an elaborate underwater research and environmental protection facility called ORCA (the Oceanic Research Center of Australia), located near Port Douglas, Queensland. At the beginning of the series, their mother, Dr. Dianne Bates, has been assigned to ORCA to study whale song in the hopes of facilitating cross-species communication. A significant portion of the series takes place on ORCA itself, and looks at the activities of its inhabitants, which includes the school-aged children of the resident scientists, such as Jason and Brett. Jason initially discovers Neri while on a whale-tracking expedition with his mother. While attempting to tag a whale using a harpoon from the boat, Jason is startled by a young girl (Neri) who appears in the water and positions herself between Jason and the whale, saying "No, no!" Jason freezes and fails to release the harpoon. Dr. Bates rushes out to the ship's deck, grabs the harpoon and tags the whale, albeit missing the intended target area. Dr. Bates is furious with Jason, and doesn't believe his story about a girl appearing in the water. Actually, no one believes Jason at first and he is ridiculed by the other children on ORCA. Brett is the second character to know of Neri's existence. Brett and Jason's friendship with Neri is at first a highly guarded secret due to Neri's fear of other humans.
As the series progresses, it is revealed that Neri came to Earth on a spaceship with her father when she was young, though his death soon after the ship's crash left Neri to fend for herself. Prior to meeting Jason and Brett, Neri's only friend was a humpback whale (a jali in Neri's native tongue), whom she names "Charley", and with whom she can communicate. Later in the series, Neri's curiosity leads her to explore ORCA, while Dr. Bates's study of Charley's whale song helps her identify Neri as the intended recipient of that song. Eventually, Dr Bates and her assistant, Dr. Winston Seth, become embroiled in Jason and Brett's effort to keep Neri a secret, while also performing numerous tests on Neri to understand how she's able to communicate with whales.
At the same time that the Bates family learn about Neri, a rival research organisation, the UBRI Corporation, are introduced. Headed by the sinister Dr. Hellegren, UBRI have learned that a spacecraft landed somewhere in the vicinity of ORCA, and begin their own search for any personnel that may have survived. Simultaneously, they work on other projects which threaten the natural ecology of the ocean around ORCA. Eventually, they put in play an effort to build the so-called "ORCA City", an elaborate underwater construction that will likely eradicate much of the natural life on the seabed. In response, Dr. Bates's mission changes over the course of the series from cetologist to environmental protectionist. This role becomes more prominent beginning with the third season, when UBRI representatives establish themselves on board ORCA. Accordingly, the series shifts to a more serious tone in its later seasons.
As Neri gradually discovers more of her island and ORCA, she also begins to understand her greater purpose. This self-awakening is particularly enhanced by encounters with others of her kind. In the second season, she discovers her sister, Mera, and the two are given the opportunity to return to their home planet. Mera avails herself of this option, but Neri stays, feeling that she must discover what her father was trying to do on Earth. In the third season, she gains entry into the downed spacecraft that originally brought her to Earth. There, she finds another of her people in suspended animation. The new character, Kal, proves to be the son of the commander of the vessel, and helps her tap into the ship's memory core. She finds the ship's log, in which Kal's mother explains that Neri's father was to repair the damage done to Earth's oceans with an advanced device called the Synchronium. She then dedicates her life to her father's cause, giving her a genuine sense of purpose that she had perhaps lacked earlier in the series. Kal grows jealous of the strong bond between Neri and Jason Bates, and begins hating Neri's friends on ORCA. As protest, Kal leaves the island. Neri and her ORCA mates go looking for him, but are unable to find him as he's been captured by UBRI. UBRI tricks Kal into believing that the male should lead (as he had been indoctrinated into the matriarchal social mores of his people), and he creates an alliance with Dr. Hellegren to steal the Synchronium pieces that Neri and Mera have hidden in a secret cave.
While the primary cast gets new motivations by UBRI's move to ORCA and Kal's appearance on the island, the secondary cast radically changes at the outset of the third season. All of the original kids are replaced by a new crew, and more adults are added to the ORCA staff.
As Neri begins her father's mission, she is drawn farther and farther away from her island. Beginning in the middle of the third season, some episodes are primarily based on land. By the fourth season, some episodes are set in Egypt, and her father's quest eventually leads her back to the "Ocean Planet", her home planet. Most of the plots involving the secondary kids on ORCA are reduced in the final season, in order to allow for greater exploration of Neri's homeworld. Several new characters of Neri's species are introduced. Likewise, the threat of UBRI fades, to be replaced by a new organization, PRAXIS (Preventative Response And eXtraterritorial Intelligence Service) and by rebels on the Ocean Planet. This group is dedicated to protecting against any threats posed by extraterrestrial life, and its agents comes to believe Neri and her people are a problem for Earth. They thus chased Neri and the Bates boys around the world. When a mysterious underwater pyramid is discovered in the ocean, Neri and the Bates boys enter it and discover more about the Ocean Planet, and Neri's mission on Earth.
When the rebellion in the Ocean World is growing, Mera escapes to Earth and is reunited with Neri. But PRAXIS sees this pyramid as a danger to the Earth. Much of the final season is thus concerned with PRAXIS' attempt to attack the pyramid, as well as with a "Red Virus" which is spreading in the oceans of Neri's homeworld, the Ocean Planet. Eventually, in the series finale, Jason, Brett, and Neri are able to repulse PRAXIS' efforts and the rebellion, and Earth is saved. Neri remains on Earth as the ambassador of the Ocean Planet, and she and Jason finally become a couple.
The Bates family, Winston, Neri, Charley, and the ORCA computer H.E.L.E.N. (Hydro Electronic Liaison ENtity) are the only constant characters for the show's entire run. However, the part of Dr. Bates is recast with Liz Burch after the second season — Kerry Armstrong being committed work-wise — and H.E.L.E.N. is "upgraded" in the fourth and final season. | good versus evil | train | wikipedia | Ocean Girl is the most enjoyable and certainly one of the most intelligent children's series that it has been my good fortune to experience.
Made in the time before now, when the producer's of children's TV believed in quality rather than budget, it carries well on all levels.Far more than just an "alien on earth" program.
Ocean Girl deals with friendship and bullies, the environment, family and life.
The plots are in interesting, inventive and attention catching with a strong emphasis on the necessity of protecting our oceans.One of the most important aspects is the high quality of the acting from the main and supporting cast members.
A strong attachment to the characters is easily developed and one genuinely cares about what happens to them.The strong performances and excellent visual effects lend a strong sense of realism to the tales and unlike modern programs adults can enjoy it nearly as much as their children.
The beautifully shot scenes of The Great Barrier Reef, the ocean and the islands also lends a sense of loveliness to the happy scenes.Ocean Girl is a science fiction program, but the language and ideas are no different from today's and the technology is mostly current, although with elements such as AI computers which are perhaps a few short decades beyond us..
Ocean girl was a show on the Disney Channel that my sister and I used to watch when I was probably like 7 or 8.
I really used to love it and looked forward to the new episodes on Monday night.
It was about a girl who lived on an island and could actually communicate with a whale who was her best friend.
She later met 2 teenage boys that lived on an underwater community with their parents, who studied whales.
She also had a sister but she didn't come until later on in the season or maybe even the second season.
I remember that she could also hold her breath for like 4 minutes, and she some times talked to her father who was dead, but I forgot how exactly they communicated.
There were also these "villain" scientists who were also trying to learn about the whales and were competing with the people from the underwater habitat.
While it's been too long since I've seen this show (I was a mere 7th grader when it was on the Disney channel), I remember this show being very intellectual for a children's primetime series.
Neri was a mysterious girl who lived in the ocean (and a nearby island) could communicate with the whale.
Meanwhile there was a group of scientists, complete with an underwater city that boasted a school for the teenage children.
Neri befriended two of the teenage boys of the ocean city, and together they tried to help save "Charlie" - the whale that Neri was friends with.
The show had it's villains - a group of scientists that were competing against the Ocean city for whale research.
This is pretty much all I remember about the series - aside from the fact that i was completely in love with the complicated stories - but it was canceled shortly before it's mysteries and loose ends were finished (Neri's island was a spaceship of sorts, suggesting she was an alien; and she had a sister - and a brother if I'm not mistaken).
I was very young back then when I watched this show, but I remember that it was one of my first TV addictions.
Ocean girl was into that category somehow.
It was intriguing and the audience didn't know the deal most of the times.
I would watch it any time again if I have the chance and I highly recommend it..
In the summer holidays this always used to be on, under the title of 'Ocean Odyssey' if I recall correctly.It was an interesting and entertaining show, with a good central performance from the Ocean girl herself.It's a shame that this isn't repeated on TV now, because it's far better than half of the dross that kids are brought up watching today.You can pick up the DVD's online, and even now it's well worth a watch..
I must have been around 12 or so when this show aired in Portugal on a cartoon channel and I accidentally caught the first episode (how many times does that happen?).
The story is intelligent, with some very intriguing plot twists and it grows with you while approaching themes like ecology, respect for life, acceptance of one another's differences, courage, friendship and love.
It was intriguing, believable for sci-fi and the perfect 12 to 15 yo show, one that parents wouldn't object but I still didn't find boring or childish, in fact both my (then 6 year old) brother and my (obviously adult) mother got glued to it eventually and both enjoyed it their own way.
My 11-year old son and I have gotten hooked on Ocean girl on Netflix, where all 4 seasons are available.
It has nature, beauty, conservation, and it consistently decries the spoiling influence of corporate greed.There are two main characters: the young man Jason is really the main character since most time is spent on him, but the series is named for the beautiful Ocean Girl.
I thought that the Ocean Girl Neri is played in an unusually pure and unaffected way by the beautiful young actress who was also a ballerina, and it shows in how she moves in the water.
The handsome young lead character, Jason, is also an admirable young man in that he honorable and passionate about all the right things -- Neri's right to remain unspoiled in herself and habitat, the ocean, etc, but my one caveat is that he shown as being way too disrespectful and dismissive to his giving and kind researcher mother.
So far, into the 2nd season's 11th episode, I have not yet seen him have anything but a disparaging word towards his mother.
After a few episodes he also complains when Jason is unkind or distancing to his mother.On the upside there is a co-researcher character played by a very likable an actor named Pinder...an Indian guy who displays almost constant cheeriness and a desire to bring people together and to solve problems in kind ways.
He is an excellent role model.The other negative I notice (and I notice this a lot on TV anyway) is that people who do not tan redheads, fair skinned folk) are almost always shown as the ugly aggravating character in the show.
I don't know anything about Australia, but it would appear that red hair and fair skinned people are unpopular, as they now are in America.
I've read it's even worse in Britain.I certainly don't mean to compare this with indignities suffered in race discrimination and even discrimination against heavy people -- they have it much worse, but in this series too we are given the message that fair skinned people, redheads and not-slim are unattractive and aggravating.
I am sure to mention these things to my son when we watch together, as I do when we see magazines and other movies.
On the contrary, an obviously aboriginal boy is a very likable genius character so that is a real plus.Despite these minor downsides, the series has much beautiful scenery and important messages, as well as some really quirky creativeness.
Now he begs for us to watch more together.Highly recommend for family viewing with the proper guidance about certain themes in the series..
I only watched the first 4-5 episodes of season one, I just couldn't get into it and I found the main female character to be a bit of a hypocrite, the script writers try to show us she cares about sea creatures, she says they're her friends, she rescues whales from fishing nets, removes probes scientists have put on them etc but apparently she only cares about the big fish because she puts her spear through the smaller fish and eats them for dinner!.
As a full grown adult at the time I used to watch this series on The Disney Channel on long, boring Sunday mornings when there was nothing else on TV.
Occasionally I would tape episodes when there was a good discussion on the Sunday morning political shows and watch the episode later.
To all of you who were children at the time and remember it, I wish to reassure you that there were many different references in the stories to things that really were more on an adult level.
The series pretty much held up at an adult level.
There was an underlying message of environmentalism and taking care of our planet in addition to the references to mermaids and the general remaking E.T.:The Extra Terrestrial story lines that were common in the 15 years after Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking film.The series only lasted three years.
In year one we were introduced to the Ocean Girl Character.
In year two, it was discovered that she had a sister who had been adopted by a human family and was then taken back to the island by the Ocean Girl.
In year three, it is discovered that there is a spaceship buried under the island, inside of which is a boy who knows nothing about how things work on Earth.
The boy is the key to turning on the spaceship, which sends a distress signal, that brings a ship from the Ocean Girl's home planet and takes the ocean dwelling aliens back home.
This is one of the best TV series to come from Australia.
SPOILER ALERT It centres around Neri, an alien girl from the ocean.
Along with human kids from the underground city of Orca, she overthrows an organisation called UBRI.The series ran for four seasons, with 13 episodes a season.
It later introduced Neri's sister Mera, another alien called Kal, and Neri's mother Shallamorn..
Read this if you wish to know about the show's fourth season".
I recently watched all four seasons of Ocean Girl on DVD and I loved it!
The heroine of the show Neri is a wonderful character.
She's so peaceful, innocent and beautiful.Neri is a mysterious teenage girl who lives alone on an uninhabited tropical island off the coast of northern Queensland.
Neri has lived alone on this island for as long as she can remember.
Neri is no ordinary girl as she has incredible abilities.
She can also communicate telepathically with a humpback whale she calls "Charley".
Off the coast of Port Douglas is an underwater research and environmental protection facility called ORCA (Ocean Research Centre of Australia).
In the pilot episode of Ocean Girl a marine scientist and cetologist (i.e. whale scientist) named Dr. Diane Bates comes to ORCA along with her sons, teenage Jason and his younger brother Brett.
The Bates brothers encounter Neri and befriend her and agree to keep Neri a secret.
At the same time the Bates brother's mother Dr. Bates and is studying Neri's whale "Charley" and she eventually learns about Neri.
Dr. Bates is able to gain Neri's trust and becomes a surrogate mother to her.
She also attempts to keep Neri a secret while secretly doing experiments on Neri to try and understand her extraordinary physiology.
At the same time a rival research organization called UBRI headed by the corrupt Dr. Hellegren is introduced.
In the last few episodes of the first season, a spy from UBRI steals a copy of recorded whale song and UBRI uses it to trap Charley.
In the last episode of the first season the Bates Brothers reveal Neri to the other children living on ORCA, then the Bates brothers, the other ORCA children and Neri work together and successfully free Charley.Neri doesn't learn her origins until the second season when Neri with the help of the Bates brothers discover a spacecraft buried under the sand on Neri's island.
In the spacecraft they find a holographic recording made by Neri's father explaining that he and Neri are "Ocean People" who come from the "OceanPlanet".
Neri's father was a scientist who came to study and protect the Earth's oceans, but the spacecraft crash-landed on Earth.
Neri's father also explained that there was another member of Neri's family on the spacecraft Neri's younger sister Mera who was a baby at the time and was placed in a capsule which landed somewhere off the coast of Northern Queensland.
The Bates brothers and the other children are eventually able to locate Mera who is living in a foster home.
UBRI also learns about Mera and her abilities but the ORCA children persuade Mera to flee with them before UBRI can take her.
Mera is reunited with Neri and two sisters live together on Neri's island.
The Bates brothers and the other ORCA children are able to thwart UBRI's attempts.
Then two Ocean People come to Earth to take the two girls home.
Mera happily returns to her home planet but Neri decides to stay on Earth to finish her father's work.In the third season of the show Neri and the Bates brothers search further into the buried spacecraft and discover logs revealing that Neri's father had with him this powerful device called the "Syncronium", which has the power to revitalize the worlds oceans and thus save the Earth from destruction.
When the spacecraft crashed all the pieces of the "Syncronium" landed in different areas on the ocean and land.
The Bates brothers, along with several children living on ORCA help Neri locate the pieces of the "Syncronium".
Unfortunately Dr. Hellegren of UBRI also learns about the "Syncronium and wants it for his own selfish reasons.
So the ORCA children have to try and stay ahead of UBRI.For some reason the fourth season of the show wasn't shown in the U.S. I've no idea why as the fourth season is really enjoyable.
Neri and the Bates brothers discover an underwater Pyramid located in the South Pacific built by the Ocean People thousands of years ago.
In this Pyramid is a hologram of Neri's mother Queen Shalamorn of the "Ocean Planet" who informs Neri that her destiny is to become princess of her people.
The Ocean Planet and the Ocean People are finally revealed in this season.
There is great chaos on the Ocean Planet as a deadly plague known as the "Red Virus" has contaminated the planet.
A group of rebel Ocean People led by Malakat (a deranged tyrant) and Shersheba (a depraved member of the Ocean People royal family trying to steal Neri's heritage) lead a coup and make plans to invade and conquer Earth, something the majority of the Ocean People are highly opposed to.
PRAXIS learns about Neri and believes that her people are a problem for Earth.
So the Bates brothers have to protect Neri from the both PRAXIS and the rebel Ocean People, save the Earth and help Neri achieve her destiny as princess of her people.So Ocean Girl is a wonderful show.
I remember watching this show every Monday night!
This much I remember in the first season there was a girl named Nira that could talk to her best friend whale under water (that's also where she lived).
She later befriends to teenage boys who are living in this underwater city with their mom and fellow scientists and i remember a teenage girl that lived there too and she didn't like Nira for the longest time.
There was an enemy of bad scientist too who was trying to conduct experiments on the whales.
In the second season i remember Nira and her friends looking for her long lost sister who had been living with adopted parents and everyone was awed because of how fast she could swim and how long she could hold her breath.
I remember something in sadly the last season about a spaceship and how Nira and her sister were aliens from another planet.
This t.v. show was awesome and I wish I could watch them all over again so i could understand them better....considering i was like in 3rd grade last time i saw an episode..
Ocean Girl an AMAZING show with an amazon cast.
Ocean Girl is about a teenage girl called Neri (Marzena Godecki) who can communicate with a Whale which is called Charlie.
Neri makes friends with two boys who live in an UnderWater research community called Orca.
The boys are Jason Bates (David Hofflin) and Brett Bates (Jefferey Walker) who throughout all the 4 seasons (series) introduce Neri to a load of new people and the world.
Together they work out who Neri is and where she comes from, Find Neri's long-lost sister, save the world (not once but twice), and bring up some important issues concerning the world and the people in it.
This show has a fun, entertaining and it also teaches you a few things all at the same time.
It was and still is a great and amazing show to watch.
:)It follow Neri and the Jason and Brett as well as their mother Dianne (Kerry Armstrong/Liz Burch) (two seasons each)and her Research Assistant Winston (Alex Pinder) on some amazing adventures and meeting some amazing people.
They are constantly trying to keep Neri's secret with the help of some other ORCA teenagers and protect the oceans.
they constantly have to ward off UBRI, which is another research company that is after Neri and Charlie, as well as PRAXIS, which is an Alien Intelligence Agency who is after Neri........did i mention Neri was an Alien from a planet in our language 'The Ocean Planet' and it is revealed in season 4 that she is the Princess of her planet!!........
as well as in season 4 the Earth and the Ocean Planet from the 'Red Virus' which was created by Malikat a Evil person from the Ocean Planet.
Once again i loved this show and i still do (I am only 15 years old at the time of writing this) and i wish that their were more episodes. |
tt0045828 | The Golden Blade | The movie opens with a raging desert battle between the cities of Basra and Baghdad, during which Basran, the father of Harun (Rock Hudson), is fatally wounded. Before he dies, he gives his son a medallion he has pulled from his killer's neck, and urges him to somehow end the senseless killings.
Harun rides to Bagdad, where he meets the beautiful Khairuzan (Piper Laurie), who tries to sell clothes to shopkeeper Barcus (Steven Geray). He bargains with Barcus that for 10 dinars, he can pick any item in the shop. Under a pile of rags, he finds a golden sword that seems to somehow call him. Khairuzan ignites a riot when she defends the citizens of Basra. Barcus watches in awe as Harun cuts solid metal in half with his golden sword. As soon as soldiers appear and spirit Khairuzan away, the fighting stops, and Harun finds a medallion on the ground identical to the one his father gave him.
Barcus discovers that the sword will cut through iron only when Harun wields it. He warns Harun to be careful until they can translate the inscriptions on its blade and discover all its powers.
Meanwhile, in the palace, sinister Vizier Jafar (George Macready) urges Badgad's Caliph to fight Basra, but the Caliph refuses. Khairuzan, who is in fact the princess, is soon brought in by her guard, Jafar's dim-witted son Hadi (Gene Evans). Jafar convinces the Caliph that Khairuzan's headstrong ways may be tamed by marriage to his son, then later plots with Hadi to undermine the Caliph by inciting more battles against Basra. When Khairuzan learns of the arranged marriage, she escapes again and disguises herself as a boy. Harun is waiting outside for an audience with Jafar, and when the guards spot Khairuzan, she steals Harun's horse. She is finally caught by both Hadi and Harun, who begin a fight which Harun wins. He discovers that he is actually invincible while wielding the golden sword.
Khairuzan claims to be a boy slave and Harun brings her to the city, where she eavesdrops as Barcus reveals that the sword's first inscription promises that whoever unsheathes the sword will gain the throne. Later, Harun, realizing that Khairuzan is a girl, protects her when a guard questions them, and they are both thrown to the dungeon, where they fall in love and kiss. After a minor quarrel, Khairuzan makes herself known to the guards and moves back to her harem. Knowing of the sword's magical powers, she declares that only the winner of a tournament may claim her hand. She names Harun as her guard, and although he is infuriated to discover she is a princess and he her servant, he later watches admiringly as she is very kind to the poor townspeople.
Meanwhile, Khairuzan's handmaiden, Bakhamra (Kathleen Hughes), informs Hadi about the magic sword, and he and his father steal it by creating a replica and then drugging Harun in order to switch the two. Khairuzan wakes Harun from his stupor and later asks him why he has not yet signed up for the tournament. When she disagrees with his response that he is not aristocratic enough to marry her, he kisses her. He then races to Barcus to proclaim his newfound joy, and refuses to listen when Barcus warns him that the second inscription counsels that the bearer's true reward will arrive in a grave of stone.
At the tournament, Hadi tampers with Harun's saddle. Quickly, all but Hadi and Harun are eliminated from the contest, and Hadi finally wins by throwing Harun from his saddle.
Harun realizes his sword was switched and suspects Khairuzan. He breaks into the palace and finds Bakhamra, who has just been jilted by Hadi and so reveals his scheme to Harun. Harun locates Hadi just as he is about to bring his unwilling bride to bed, and fights with him. He is captured by Hadi's guards and brought before Jafar. Bakhamra and the Caliph overhear the vizier plan to kill them and blame Harun. When the Caliph orders Jafar arrested, the vizier brings out his medallion, which is the same as the one Harun carries, and tries to kill the Caliph with the magic sword, but it slices into a stone pillar and remains stuck there. The guards kill the Caliph, but Harun and Khairuzan escape by fooling the guards into believing they have died.
Jafar and Hadi soon discover that they cannot pull the sword out of the column and call men in from across Bagdad to attempt to pull it out. While Khairuzan gathers the townspeople around her, Harun and Barcus sneak back into the palace. Harun fights with the guards and is almost captured when Khairuzan rouses the people to storm the palace. He grabs the sword from the stone, causing it to collapse on top of Jafar and Hadi. Khairuzan bestows on Harun the title Al-Rhashid (the righteous). Then they kiss. | revenge, action | train | wikipedia | Lively, physically beautiful, with delightful comedy and John Rich's script.
Young Piper Laurie and handsome newcomer Rock Hudson were both featured to great advantage in this clearly-plotted and lively adventure-comedy.
Imaginative veteran Nathan Juran directs very accurately and imaginatively, and the acting by George Macready as the ambitious villain, aided by Gene Evans (not quite up to a classical accent) and Kathleen Hughes and that of their opponents played by Edgar Barrier, the crafty Stephen Geray and others is above average for any genre.
Adding to the fun is lovely Laurie impersonating a boy, a mysterious magic sword (which in lesser hands would have been a detriment) and its magical unwillingness to obey other than a virtuous owner.
There is a prolonged sequence when various magicians attempt to remove the sword--which Macready needs to claim the throne--that has become embedded in a wall, and more physically colorful and beautifully-realized scenes than in any ten mean-streets melodramas of the post 1970s.
If you do not fall in love with the spirited Khairozan, as Hudson does in the film, then you are probably dead.
If you cannot delight in this youthful and stirring adventure of a bygone era, you had best give Grecianized Near-Easterns, our richest adventure genre in so many ways, a consistent miss..
Doom may be our future as much as success..
The Golden Blade is directed by Nathan Juran and written by John Rich.
It stars Rock Hudson, Piper Laurie, Gene Evans & George Macready.
Music is by Joseph Gershenson and Technicolor photography by Maury Gertsman.By Allah!
It would be magic, indeed, that this sword were mine at such a time as this.Colourful, energetic and costumed with skill, The Golden Blade doesn't lack for effort in the low expectation realm of Arabian Nights adventures.
Sadly it's actually TOO daft and goofy when it's not meant to be.
True enough that it isn't a film to be taken seriously in the first place, and judging by the performances of Laurie and Hudson, the cast are playing it purely for the undemanding popcorn munching crowd.
But once over you just get reminded that there are far better films of this type out there and that the interesting premise, a sort of Arabian/Arthurian blend, isn't fully realised.
Not enough swishing and swashing of the titular title weapon also annoys greatly.
THE GOLDEN BLADE (Nathan Juran, 1953) **1/2.
Arabian Nights adventures were staples on Italian TV in my childhood; this (acquired fairly recently on DVD as part of Universal's "Rock Hudson: Screen Legend" set) was one of them, though I'd practically forgotten all about it in the interim.
Not that it's in any way a memorable entry in the genre, and certainly not original since this is basically the Excalibur legend transposed to ancient Bagdad but a pleasant diversion nonetheless.Having watched two of the star's 'oaters' back-to-back (the other was SEA DEVILS [1953]), I can say that he was rather more at ease as an Englishman than an Arab (though he does well enough by the action required here, involving a handful of swordfights and even a jousting[!] contest which he loses for the hand of leading lady Piper Laurie).
The latter petite and vivacious lends some freshness to the mostly familiar proceedings; a similar outing of hers I'd like to revisit someday is THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF (1951) featuring Tony Curtis, another then-rising Universal star who dabbled in actioners (read: potboilers) of every kind during this period.Anyway, the rest of the cast here is equally creditable: George Macready as the (typically conniving) Grand Vizier, who's eventually revealed to have also ordered the decimation of neighboring Basra (from where Hudson emanates); Samuel Fuller regular Gene Evans as Macready's incompetent son(!) the old man wants him to marry princess Laurie in order to secure the throne for themselves, but he actually loves her subordinate; Steven Geray as the merchant who first comes into possession of The Golden Blade, and subsequently steers Hudson into fulfilling its destiny (that is, apart from supplying the film's comedy relief); and Edgar Barrier as the reigning Caliph (I've watched him recently in two other exotic ventures for the same studio, namely ARABIAN NIGHTS [1942] and COBRA WOMAN [1944]).The climax of this compact swashbuckler running a mere 80 minutes incorporates a bit of magic (and campiness) as the blade becomes entrenched in the walls of the palace; consequently, a host of muscle-men, inventors and sorcerers are recruited so as to try and dislodge it
but only the dashing hero is able to, the direct result of which is to have the column in question crumble and bury the two villains underneath it!
By the way, director Juran would later helm two other (and far more notable) mythical adventures THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) and JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962), both of which had the added appeal of stop-motion animated monsters..
Rock Hudson as a swashbuckler is OK.
Who could picture in their minds Rock Hudson swinging from drapes, jumping over balconies, or subduing the sultan's guards with his sword?
But that's just what Universal gives us in "The Golden Blade." He's surely not on the scale of Errol Flynn, Ty Power, or Stu Granger, but Hudson does a nice swashbuckling turn here.
The Golden Blade is a light-hearted movie of fiction set in a mythical Baghdad.
It has some skulduggery that is usual for these desert tales of the mid-20th century.
Hudson's physical trysts combine with the energy and rebelliousness of a princess (Piper Laurie) who is always sneaking off to see the world outside the palace.
And to do good turns with the people that endear them to her.
The plot isn't complicated and the script is just average.
The color, cinematography and costumes add to the enjoyment of the movie.
It's not serious filmmaking, but the cast seem as though they are enjoying their craft.
Viewers should do likewise.
Just sit back and enjoy the color, action, humor and romance of this light but entertaining film..
The Sword In The Palace Stone.
When Universal Pictures made those Arabian Nights films with Jon Hall, Sabu, and Maria Montez in the Forties a lot of expensive period sets were built on that lot.
The rule is get use of them, so even after Universal became Universal-International in the Fifties with a crop of new leading men like Jeff Chandler, Tony Curtis, and Rock Hudson they still kept cranking out those old tales set in the Caliphate of Old Bagdad.This film is a reworking of the Christian Sword and the Stone legend into the Arabian Nights.
Haroun of Basra played by Rock Hudson comes upon his dying father in an ambushed caravan and he's given a mission to find the murderer who is also trying to stir up trouble between Basra and Bagdad.
While on the mission he comes upon a magic sword in a marketplace and discovers he's invincible with it.
He also comes upon the Caliph's daughter the blond Piper Laurie who likes to roam the streets of Bagdad incognito to sample public opinion and get a taste of adventure to the annoyance of her father Edgar Barrier.But there's treason afoot in the palace with Grand Vizier George MacReady and son Gene Evans who want the throne for themselves.
Evans wants to marry for it which bothers his mistress Kathleen Hughes a lot.During the course of the film the magic sword is stolen from Hudson and later when Evans was trying to use it, he rammed it into the palace wall and no one can get it from the stone foundation.
I'll give you one guess who can.The Golden Blade is the average Universal Arabian Nights epic with a lot of gaudy color cinematography, with a bigger budget you'd think it was a DeMille film.
No better or worse than some of what Universal was putting out in those years.
I'm sure Piper Laurie felt the same as Maureen O'Hara did in these kind of films, Maureen in her memoirs realized how ridiculous a redhead was in the Middle East.
George Macready was one of the best movie villains ever in just about any kind of genre be it western, noir, sand and sandal, you name it.
He does a wonderful job mouthing some lines that were quite frankly ridiculous with earnest conviction.
By the way if you were to make a golden blade it would not be much use to you if it weren't enchanted.
As any geologist will tell you, gold is the softest and most malleable of metals, remember in the days of gold coin people would bite into it to see if it was genuine and if the coin had teeth marks, you knew it was good.
The Golden Blade is entertaining enough and not to be taken too seriously..
Actually gold-plated.
A bizarre cross between the Thousand and One Nights and the legend of KIng Arthur and the sword in the stone ,this is routine exotic story,saved by the two leads ,Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie.The latter portrays an outspoken princess who often leaves her palace to see what's going on in the town of Baghdad ,while a vicious VIP is doing very bad things against her noble father .Meanwhile,Hudson is searching the man who killed his also noble father .Both will discover they have things in common.Action-packed movie,nice colors,heroes , villains and a Greek merchant whose shop is full of bargains and of course a golden blade ..
The 28 Year Old Rock Hudson.
Having appeared with Lee Marvin in 'Seminole', Rock Hudson now needed a film to lift him out of the status of being the best newcomer to being a screen legend.
Films like 'The Golden Blade' only padded out his c.v., but did nothing to lift his career..
This is pretty awful stuff.
"The Golden Blade" is an embarrassingly bad film.
The most notable thing is that NO ONE belongs in the film, as it's set in ye olde Baghdad--but it's filled with the whitest actors Universal Pictures could find!
They hired the likes of Rock Hudson, Piper Laurie, George Macready and Gene Evans to play Middle Eastern Muslims--and I wonder why they didn't also include Wally Cox and Phyllis Diller as well!
Now had the only problem been the casting, it could have still been a nice little adventure film.
However, the dialog and characters simply suck.
No one talks like real people and the dialog sounds like a 12 year-old's conception of olde tyme talking!
Additionally, the characters are amazingly one-dimensional.
The worst is the anachronistic Princess (Laurie) who acts like a spoiled child...and a rather annoying one at that.
The film is dumb and probably offensive to anyone from that region.
I can understand why this film is relatively unknown today--it deserves to be that way..
For entertainment purposes only, lacking the camp fun of Maria Montez..
Take a red-headed Caliph's daughter and pair him opposite a very American looking Arabian Knight and you have the type of sword and sandal adventure that had the kiddies flocking in on Saturday afternoon but left critics cold.
Universal was the king of these types of films from the early 40's through the mid 1940's when the Italians took over, leading Peter Graves to ask that question, "Billy, do you like movies about gladiators?" It isn't just the obvious Caucasian casting, but the many clichés used over and over since the days of Sabu, Jon Hall and Maria Montez.
At least in those films, you know that the creator's tongues were in their cheek.
Here, the writers were just looking for a fast buck, and thanks to the quarters of the adolescent crowd, many of these films scored big.
There are too many of them, so in film history now, they all meld together in a stew of sameness.The saga is based upon the legend of the sword of Damascus which gives the man who is able to pull it out of a wall the "power of many thrones", much like the legend of King Arthur and the sword of Camelot.
All is fine with that, but with Rock Hudson as the hero and red-headed Piper Laurie as the feisty "lady in distress", you know that nobody gave much thought to reality in casting.
At least with Montez, Sabu and Hall, they looked the parts, and with Tony Curtis as "The Prince Who Was a Thief", you had a "Hellzapoppin'" like spoof of the genre that audiences still laugh both with and at today.Colorful photography barely hides the fact that the hanging props of the lavish sets are obviously cheaply made and look like things you'd see hanging in an elementary school classroom.
They do not at all give the impression of the ancient middle east, coming off as ostentatious and gosh rather than remotely sophisticated.
The villains are one-note, the sidekicks silly rather than comic, and the dancing girls more off of Broadway than of Bagdad.
The action sequences are exciting, but some moments seem more like filler than like plot development.
This is the type of film that a realist might buy popcorn to eat during the movie but may find themselves throwing at the screen as the film drags on. |
tt0103295 | Xiao ao jiang hu: dong fang bu bai | Linghu Chong, Yue Lingshan and members of the Mount Hua Sect are planning to retire from the jianghu (martial artists' community). They learn that Dongfang Bubai has seized control of the Sun Moon Holy Cult and is secretly plotting with some Japanese rōnin to rebel against the Ming Empire and dominate China. Dongfang Bubai had castrated himself in order to master the skills in the Sunflower Manual, and his appearance has become more feminine, even though he is now a formidable martial artist.
Linghu Chong meets Dongfang Bubai by chance without knowing his true identity, mistakes him for a beautiful young woman, and falls in love with "her". Dongfang Bubai knocks out Linghu Chong while he is not looking and imprisons him in an underground dungeon. In the dungeon, by coincidence, Linghu Chong meets Ren Woxing, Ren Yingying's father and the former leader of the Sun Moon Holy Cult. They escape from captivity together. One night, while Linghu Chong is distracted by Dongfang Bubai's lover Shishi, Dongfang tracks down his Mount Hua Sect fellows and kills them.
Linghu Chong brings Yue Lingshan, Ren Yingying, Ren Woxing and Xiang Wentian with him to confront Dongfang Bubai at Black Woods Cliff. In the ensuing battle, Dongfang Bubai apparently dies after refusing Linghu Chong's help and falling off the cliff. Ren Woxing regains control of the cult and starts killing the traitors who defected to Dongfang Bubai. Linghu Chong and Yue Lingshan secretly escape with help from Xiang Wentian and Ren Yingying because they know that Ren Woxing cannot tolerate them. | good versus evil, tragedy, cult, violence | train | wikipedia | many of the previous comments have cited this film as one the best in the martial arts genre.
it is also, arguably, the central question of Chinese Buddhism.recall that the film premises on the withdrawal of Jet Li's character and his clan from the world of martial arts (the uniquely Chinese, "Jiang-Hu").
the events of the movie--Jet Li's involvement with Ying Ying, the rescue of Ren Woxing, the appearance of Dong Fang Bu Bai, the brutal slaughter of the Hua Mountain clan--all serve to problem's the possibility of exiting the world.Linghu Chong's (Jet Li's) conversation with Ren Woxing captures this conflict in these immortal words (my translation): "you (Linghu Chong) know so little about the world.
This one packed the best of all that kept HK's movie industry at the forefront of the action/ martial arts genre.
the guy's surname is Dong Fang, which is a normal chinese surname, means "the east", he call himeself Bu Bai, coz he has not, did not, and thinks would not be defeated, so it means The Undefeated.I know translation is a tough job, no matter how good you think you did, you still cannot transform all the meanings, undertones, indications in a culture sense.
This is a very beautiful movie, all the lines, the scenes, the costumes, all very authenticly chinese, and stunning.
And the poems recited in the movie, and the haunting song...hate to see all of these been ruined by the rediculous translantion.You know, many things are just not meant to be translated, many words in chinese, they just can't be properly translated, such as "tian xia","qian kun", they are somewhat close to the meaning of "the world", but never is in the same sense of it.So, for those who deminished the plot of the movie, I just wana tell you, it was based on one of the best selling Wuxia books in China, and the lines, they are very beautiful, in chinese.
Wiring doesn't neccesarily mean it's not googd KongFu, This movie has some of the best fight scenes I have ever seen, wiring is only a basic requirement for action fantasies, but the thing they did with the fight scene, that's art, man.
You have to be a KongFu master and an artist at the same time to be able to design, to creat such beautiful things.In short, advice for people from America, Europe, Africa...no-china£¬If you wana have a better understanding of the movie, READ THE BOOK FIRST, and before that, LEARN SOME CHINESE!
The costume, fight scenes and compelling cast all add up to an excellent and engrossing film.
The story revolves around swordsman Ling Wu Chung (Jet Li) who on his way to retreat from the martial arts world, having to rescue a kidnapped leader of the Sun Moon Sect and confronting the powerful Asia, a person who have master an invincible form of martial arts, but at a terrible price.
Yes, the plot is complex but is far more interesting than the simple and cliche "you kill my master, I want revenge" plot we get from some other martial arts films.
The brillant colours and thrilling action scenes are also well-made and serves to grab and hold the attention of the audience until the very end of the film.
Those who thought "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was the best martial arts will have to see this film..
The plot is completely confusing, but it helps if you've seen "The Swordsman", the first movie in this sequence.Don't worry; you won't be paying too much attention to the plot, because if you do you'll get a headache.
(The Wachowski brothers worship Jet Li.)As in "The Swordsman", I appreciated the fact that there are a number of strong female roles in this film.
Hollywood doesn't allow many women action heroes, and this film shows how women can knock your socks off, if given the chance, in the fighting sequences.Assume movie essence absorbing stance!.
Having been a big fan of Hong-kong fantasy action movies(chinese ghost story 1,2,3..and etc..) especially I completely captivated by this one.
this movie was brought a great popularity and main stars Brigitte Lin and Jet li became household name in here, South Korea.
I still remember when these two stars visited here to promote, Brigitte Lin had to escaped from being run over by her fans in Korea.She plays "Asia the invincible" who's gave up his manly symbol to become the best sword man.
Jet li plays another great sword man who's pure, sincere to his belief.
In fact I think this made this movie more unique, and sensual, joyful to watch.Striking, powerful performance by Brigitte.
can't believe she was almost 40 when she did shoot this one.The early Jet li so cute, and I really admire his martial arts skills( although most of his martial arts here are computer-generated or wire actions ) I can't count how many times I've seen this movie.
Provided you are slightly interested in fantasy, horror, and a little kung-fu, this film is the best in the genre.
Great choreography and music, ok humor, very good lighting, nearly perfect sound (unlike many fantasy flicks), a very good story and colorful and dynamic cinematography (Lau Moon Tong) that surpasses even Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Lee, 2000) sometimes though it is nine years older.
:-PIn Asia Jet Li is very famous and most Chinese who are interested in movies will probably have seen this already.
In the rest of the world this is probably only seen by people who liked Evil Dead (Raimi, 1982), Chinese Ghost Story (also directed by Siu-Tung Ching, 1987) AND at recently CTHD.
Featured are Recoiling whip, Flying bomb, Rotation of the stars (massive action scene with 6 swordfighters), Essence absorbing stance, Invincible Dawn, Kiddo and Scum Bag (last two are characters).
The action scenes in CTHD may be shot beautifully and without many cuts, but Swordsman 2 definitely has more fantasy and the director isn't afraid of showing blood like Ang Lee WAS unfortunately.
Swordsman 2 tries to embed the story in Japanese civil war and therefore the film starts with Japanese swordfighters (speaking Kantonese though) and Japanese music.
Swordsman 2 (haven't seen part 1 yet) is NOT over-rated with 8.6 (211 votes), and provided you liked Iron Monkey (Woo-Ping Yuen, 1993), this one will blow you out of your socks and chop you in half.
The manic pace of this film never lets up, the assault of flashing swords, flying bodies, snakes, needles, throwing stars, whips, needles and kitchen sinks (all right, not really, but I think you get my point) is almost too much to absorb all in one sitting.
But what really makes the film is the striking performance by Brigitte Lin as the villain.
For fans of HK fantasy/action films, this is very much worth your while..
Ling Wu Chung (Jet Li) is a great young swordsman with a big problem: the question on which side he shall fight means only choosing the lesser of two evils.
On the other hand, there is Asia (Brigitte Lin), a wicked, mysterious woman of great beauty who hides many secrets from Ling and cannot be trusted.
The movie has many wild, over the top action scenes from the director of "Chinese Ghost Story", but it was impossible to find a happy ending for it.
My only little grudge is that the characters in the first Swordsman movie were more sympathetic than here in the sequel..
If you've seen Swordsman 2 or any of the very best Jet Li films it is very difficult to be impressed with knocks offs done with bland actors like Keanu Reeves and Chow Yung Fat. I anxiously await the day that a picture this exciting and/or sexually provocative gets a release in this country..
The color is dark sometimes, the plot is odd to some extent, but the movie is great after you understand the meaning of every scene.
This movie is much better than the original novel in which "Asia the invincible" is a man.
She is a woman falling in love with Jet Li when they met the first time.
How can a powerful body works with a peaceful mind?It's a movie designed for Chinese or East-Asian culture.
The fights are just badly filmed, and since thats all this movie has going for it...
Breeze smile, flowers are falling.People laugh, even no anger no hate no cause.The film, about is how valuable a free and had free access to how difficult it is, even if is a Kong fu master, invincible, but always involuntarily.
If you want to see where 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' and some of the fight effects in the 'Matrix' series come from 'Swordsman 2' is certainly one of the original sources.
It is not a bad film at all, there is good camera work all over, characters have structure and are different one from the other (even for an Asian film seen by European eyes) and all seems authentic - but I know little about the history of the area in the past times, unfortunately.
If you are going to have a plot this stupid (see 'man turns into woman to become all-powerful then falls in love with Jet Li') you best have some great fighting to go with it.
I'm a big Jet Li fan and this is a great character for him.
Simply put and without undeserved hyperbole, this is one of the greatest fantasy/action-adventure films of all time.
Should be seen many times to truly appreciate the amazing action sequences by Ching Sui Tong, Hong Kong's best action choreographer..
I got the fact that Jet Li's clan was looking for there master who had been locked up in a woman/man's dungeon, but apart from that I was completely lost.
Once again, there's loads of flying action with people fighting in mid-air, which I found a bit ridiculous but the various characters made the movie watchable, even though I didn't know what was going on half the time.
I couldn't believe that none of the characters didn't know that the man was a woman because she really did look like a man.
Average!Round-Up: Why do these oriental film makers have to make there movies so confusing when the concept is about different clans.
Also, I'm getting really fed up with these flying on strings and fighting in mid-air action scenes.
Most people who are into there Kung Fu movies, prefer the old ones which didn't have this flying in the air rubbish.
Jet Li puts in a good performance, alongside the different characters in the film but I'm yet to see a performance from Jet were he isn't flying in the air.
Hopefully I will see a more realistic action movie from this fast fighting actor, when I watch the earlier movies.Budget: N/A Worldwide Gross: HK$34.5millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their Jet Li movies about a clan who are looking for there master whilst fighting against different clans.
It was a superb piece of work, strikingly photographed, brilliantly choreographed, and, more importantly, written and acted with a depth and subtlety that did full justice to its possibilities.This version with Jet Li has many excellent qualities, but the limited running time necessary for a theatrical film, plus the unnecessary addition of the Japanese story, robbed it of the ability to develop the psychologically and dramatically fascinating story to anything like its real potential.
(I can't see the smallest relation to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which it seems to me is an entirely different kind of story.) For a Jet Li fan, this is one of his more interesting films, but anyone interested in the adaptation of this classic novel into a truly superior dramatic version should seek out Laughing in the Wind..
I have watched a lot of kung fu movies lately, and this one, from 1991, is nowhere near groundbreaking.
No one who's watched the good stuff from the '60s and '70s can claim that there is much originality in Swordsman II.This movie disappointed me because it was too ridiculous.
But the story and the effects never really worked that well, and as someone else has pointed out, the English subtitles are really, really terrible.So on a scale from one to ten, I can only give this movie a 5, but I will raise that to 6 because of the attractive women in it.
Not only Brigitte Lin, but Rosamund Kwan and especially Michelle Reis (who's got some great fight scenes here, unlike in Fong Sai Yuk, where she was just helpless) are a big bonus for this movie, and makes it well worth watching.Thus: 6 out of 10..
(in full disclosure, I wrote this when I was a dumb 17 year old, I remember enjoying the movie and recommend it, so that's all that counts): Tonight I saw this movie, a unusual Chinese action movie with a plot about a guy who has a sister and brothers and they get entangled up with fighting people who want to take over China.
The rest of the movie consists of action scenes that may or may not have been sliced off of the deleted footage of The Kentucky Fried Movie and the sound effects sound like bites from he Crippled Masters.
I'm not biased by his hyper-use of wires in his films (although I wished more of his action scenes would be like Blacksheep Affair).
There are a lot of great visual ideas in this film, but they are shown in one scene, and that's it.
As with most Ching Siu Tung movies, the action scenes are too short.
although many who did not know much about ninjas believed that they had mystical powers such as flying, running so fast that they could not be seen, invisibility and so on.
This is one of a kind and belongs up there with "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" This is one movie I recommend.
Although The Kung Fu Cult Master is my favorite movie, this is a wonderful movie, and anyone who likes the Fantasy genre should watch this imidiatly!
People may call me weird, but I actually wanted Jet Li to get together with Brigdet Lin in the movie.Plus, like the Kung Fu Cult Master (Nowhere near as good, but very good) this movie also had everything, Action, drama, A funny love triangle, sex (Jet Li's first on-screen sex scene.
It may not be all that great but It's believable) and of course, Jet Li's cute little face to light up the screen!.
Ching Siu Tung, Jet Li, Brigitte Lin, and more exploding bodies than you've ever seen..
Swordsman 2 begins with Brigitte Lin as Asia the Invincible flying through the air and, with greater ease than it takes most people to put on their socks, ripping off a rivals head.
In the first thirty minutes of Swordsman 2, we see characters flying, running across the top of wheat stalks, horses and people getting ripped in two, scorpion fu, snake charming fu, and ninjas that glide across the air on big shurikens as they battle.
are jammed with delightful trickery and steady pacing that wont leave the viewer bored.Brigitte Lin plays one of kung fu filmdoms greatest villains, Asia the Invincible, who gave up his manhood in order to become the most powerful figure in the martial world.
The rest of the cast is great too, but it is Lin and Jet, who command the film.Easygoing Ling and his Wa Mt. students rendezvous with their friends in the Sun Moon Sect (friends with names like Black Tooth, Smart Ass, and Scum Bag), but find that the clan has been overtaken by Asia's Highlander Clan, witch is aided by some nasty Japanese ninjas.
This is a nifty little martial arts film, that has some great supernatural elements, with a good story and solid fight scenes!.
This is a nifty little martial arts film, that has some great supernatural elements, with a good story and solid fight scenes!.
It was cool to see Jet in a different type of film, and I thought the fight choreography was just great, plus it's very bloody and violent as well.
It's very well made and written and I thought Brigitte Lin was quite menacing as the main villain, plus while I thought Yee Kwan Yan was a bit too OTT as the psycho Master Wu,but he still gave me the creeps especially near the end!.
This deserves it's 7.4 rating, and I thought the ending was really cool, plus Rosamund Kwan had a great and very mysterious character!.
The final fight is extremely good, and it had some cool emotional moments as well, plus I loved Wu's evil laugh!.
This is a nifty little martial arts film that has some great supernatural elements, with a good story and solid fight scenes, I highly recommend this one!.
Siu-Tung Ching and Stanley Tong both do a great job here with very good camera work, excellent angles and keeping the film at a very fast pace.
Brigitte Lin is great as the evil Asia, she was quite sexy and was wonderfully evil, she played the perfect villain, I loved her!.
Yee Kwan Yan is a bit too OTT at times, but he still gave me the creeps, as he was quite menacing as Master Wu, I also loved his evil laugh!.
I won't throw out any spoilers, just assure you that this is a great classic of fantasy martial arts films.
If you find yourself unable to follow the story or action, just rewatch it a few times.
The only regrettable thing is that different actors play the same characters (Only Blue Phoenix is played by the same actor in both films).If you enjoy complex plots, scheming factions, dreamlike landscapes and outrageous martial arts all tied together in a whimsical Daoist song about the transient comedy of life, the Swordsman series is for you. |
tt0063821 | With Six You Get Eggroll | Abby McClure (Doris Day) is a widow with three sons who runs the lumberyard her husband owned. Her matchmaking sister Maxine (Pat Carroll) tricks her into calling widower Jake Iverson (Brian Keith) and inviting him to the business dinner party Abby is having later that night. Not interested in the trouble his sexy, adultery-minded neighbor Cleo (Elaine Devry) is trying to get him into, Jake arrives at Abby's, only to be bored by all of the matchmaking dialogue. Jake makes up an excuse to leave, but later runs into Abby at an all-night supermarket. Embarrassed by being caught in a fib, Jake meets Abby at a local drive-in run by the wise-cracking Herbie (George Carlin) and the two stay out until 2 a.m. A romance develops, much to the chagrin of Jake's teenage daughter, Stacey (Barbara Hershey); and Abby's three sons, Flip, Mitch and Jason (John Findlater, Jimmy Bracken, and Richard Steele). The children make certain that neither Jake nor Abby can be comfortable at the other's home, so the pair wind up more than once at the drive-in, before finally falling in love. Getting fed up with the situation, they elope, not telling their children that they have married until the next day after being discovered in bed together.
Although now married, Abby's sons fight with Iverson's possessive daughter Stacey, while Flip and Stacey both are hostile to the idea of a step-parent. Even Abby's sheepdog and Jake's poodle are incompatible. Neither of their homes is large enough for the family of six—which doesn't include Abby's live-in maid Molly (Alice Ghostley), and while they move into Abby's house and eventually put Jake's up for sale, the newlyweds borrow a camper, which they use as a bedroom.
The morning after a bedtime argument, Abby drives off in a rage in the camper, with Jake falling out in the process, clad only in boxers and clutching a teddy bear. After running through the neighborhood, he enlists Herbie to give him some clothing and a ride back to his house. Once Abby discovers what has happened, she returns only to find Jake gone. She is joined by a band of hippies she meets when she shows up at the drive-in. When the camper collides with a livestock truck carrying chickens, Abby and the hippies are arrested. Hearing of the accident, Jake and the children rush to her rescue, colliding with the same chicken truck. The angry driver assaults Jake, and the children (and the pets) unite in his defense. At the station house parents and children are joyfully reconciled, and the family finally buys a huge two-story house big enough for a family of six, a maid, and two dogs.
The title of the movie comes from a scene where the family goes out for Chinese food, and one of the kids notices that because they are a large group, they get something extra. "Hey! With six you get eggroll!" | romantic | train | wikipedia | People have commented that Doris Day's later movies were not as good as the ones from the early '60s, but I disagree.
If you love the classic comedies of Doris Day, I heartily recommend this one..
Sadly, Doris Day's Last Film.
When I saw "With Six You Get Eggroll" in a plush New York theatre, I had no idea that it would be Doris Day's last film appearance.
This one was an old idea with a modern look: a widow with three boys marries a widower with a teenaged daughter (Barbara Hershey)and all hell breaks loose.Even though I am not partial to films with children in them or "family pictures", I enjoyed Miss Day's performance in this film as well as her supporting players.
People like Jaime Farr, Vic Taback, Jackie Joseph and George Carlin.Brian Keith was a "comfortable", but gruff leading man for Doris.
Many female stars avoided kids like the plague, but not Doris.
She could handle the situation.Even though this is a comedy, there were a couple of very dramatic scenes in which Doris shows what a marvelously serious actress she can be.
This came when she and Keith had a blowout about his daughter cleaning the house without any help from Doris' older son.
Day was so into the scene, you could see her actually shaking with anger.The film became a tearjerker at the end when everybody "saw the light" and came together after a big car chase, an accident and a fist fight.
This fun family film came out a few months after Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball's "Yours, Mine and Ours".
Besides that, Doris Day wafts through this sitcom like a spring daisy.
I loved it when she spies Brian Keith in a go-go club with "a young chick" (his daughter) and says to sister Pat Carroll, "Why take a bus when you can fly?" There are big laughs and some thoughtful scenes and I enjoyed them--until the final 15 minutes when the picture goes to hell in a handbasket.
It may be "With Six You Get Eggroll", but Day plays the material like it's "Love Me Or Leave Me".
Doris Day's last feature film is a pleasant success, although it somehow isn't recalled as a such.
Backtracking for a moment
Ms. Day's 1960s "sex comedies" were very big at the box office.
They weren't the first "bad" movies Day did, but they did come at a time when she was a "superstar".
Day was able to make these bad movies better through her presence; as usual, she put a good effort into each assignment.By 1966, Day was firmly entrenched in the "Quigley Top 10" poll of box office stars, and had become a very dependable, consistent attraction.
It was a CBS-TV series deal that prevented Day from continuing her film career.
But, Day was committed to work on the television series, against her wishes, by the now deceased Mr. Melcher.Seeing the success of the earlier released Lucille Ball comedy "Yours, Mine and Ours" (1968), the studio promoted "With Six You Get Eggroll" as similar fare.
Actually, this film is a little better, overall (both are good movies).
Day reluctantly accepts self-professed sex-minded sister Pat Carroll's arrangement of a date with widow Brian Keith (as Jake Iverson).
Their courtship is marvelously depicted, thanks to fine scripting and performances.Some have debated whether or not the characters played by Day and Keith have pre-marital sex.
By the third act, the film has become more unfocused and ordinary, but it never really obliterates its appeal.******* With Six You Get Eggroll (8/7/68) Howard Morris ~ Doris Day, Brian Keith, John Findlater, Barbara Hershey.
Light comedy romance is Doris Day's last film.
But, Doris Day and Brian Keith carry it off fine, with the help of her three sons and his daughter.
This was Doris Day's last movie.
Except for her last few films, arranged by hubby Martin Melcher to bail out the estate he had poorly managed for years, Doris Day's star shone bright for movie and TV audiences alike for 25 years.
Many, many fans and movie buffs would have loved to see Day in more films.
She never won an Oscar but was nominated nine years for Golden Globes as the favorite female film star in the world – winning three times, in 1958, 1960, and 1963.Brian Keith's background is very different.
After that, he had many roles in films, TV movies and TV shows, and continued acting until his death in 1997 at age 75.
It's a good family film that may be a little slow for kids of the 21st century..
Along with "Yours, Mine and Ours" (Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda) this film marked the start of the "let's-create-a-family-by combining-each-of-ours" genre and soon several variations of the theme plowed their ways into theaters (including the much forgotten "Mulligan's Stew" where childless parents adopt a variety of ethnic representatives).
Soon these shows would be replaced by the examination of same sex parents (disguised as "good heterosexual friends") in such shows as "My Two Dads," and "Kate and Allie." Shows such as "The Cosby Show," "Home Improvement," and "Family Matters" brought television full circle so perhaps the 21st Century will see more single parent television and in another ten years a remake of "With Six You Get Eggroll." Of course the title would have to change for political correctness.
Unless someone persuades the 84 year old Doris Day to do an appearance in a Gloria Stuart like Titanic role, With Six You Get Eggroll will be her farewell big screen appearance.
Not exactly the greatest film to go out on.Anticipating The Brady Bunch by a year, With Six You Get Eggroll is a pleasant enough family comedy about another lovely lady only she's the one with three boys of her own.
Doris is a widow with sons Jimmy Bracken, Richard Steele, and John Findlater who's getting a lot of static from her sister Pat Carroll about her social life or lack thereof.
He's an old friend of Day's late husband who wouldn't you know it, is now a widower with a teenage daughter, Barbara Hershey.
If you've seen episodes of The Brady Bunch, Step By Step, and Life With Derek, I think you'll get the idea where the rest of this film is going.
Keith and Day look so comfortable together you do kind of wonder what their respective late spouses were like.
Look for George Carlin to make his big screen debut as an obnoxious fast food stand owner and Vic Tayback as the poultry truck driver whose repeated run-ins with both sides of the family brings them finally together.
And in that rather anarchistic climax note the presence of Jamie Farr and William Christopher as a pair of hippies who help the course of true love.With Six You Get Eggroll is an average screen comedy, but with all the blended family TV shows that have come and gone since, it's nothing no one hasn't seen before..
Doris Day's upbeat, cheery, and sunshiny career (with exceptions like "The Man who Knew Too Much," "Love Me or Leave Me," and "Julie") ended with "With Six You Get Eggroll," a film which shows how a father with one daughter gets along with a mother and her two sons, when the parents marry.
This is one of Ms. Day's not-so-subtle movies, as the laughs come courtesy mainly from the youngest boy and his disposition and his crazy antics dealing with the change forced on him.
I give this a '6', only because, while funny, it seems to come with a price of feeling rather uncouth, and maybe an embarrassment to the career of all concerned, including a young Barbara Hershey as Brian Keith's daughter.
Bass, this is one family film that will either be a hit with families laughing at obvious jokes or fall flat with those who demand more from a Doris Day outing..
'With Six You Get Eggroll' was yet another film as part of my Doris Day completest quest, being a fan and realising that there were still films of hers to see.
Day driving off in the trailer leaving Brian Keith in his underwear on the road stands out.Some of the story has an energetic bounce, and there are moments that really charm.
Pat Carroll is great fun in support, and it was nice to see George Carlin and a young Barbara Herschey.
One mustn't forget the personality-filled dog either.However, the children are rather annoying (not the first time that's been the case in a Doris Day film), while the production values have a very low-budget feel and looks very made for TV.
'With Six You Get Eggroll' gets rather absurd towards the end and the final scene is a sea of messy chaos.For all the fun, bouncy and charming parts of the story, there are also a few dull and tired moments that is suggestive of padding things out, and while the predictability is forgivable not so much is including very 60s elements like hippies and an appearance from The Greenshots that just date the film and a rather clumsy effort to make the film current of the time, inconsistent pacing, the messy final scenes and a sense that it would have fared better as an episode for a sit-com considering the relative thinness.In conclusion, not awful, not great, somewhat mixed instead.
My mom always tells me about how idiotically bad Doris Day's movies were: Day always played wholesome women who never had sex.
She plays widow Abby McClure, who hooks up with widower Jake Iverson (Brian Keith), and they get really close."With Six You Get Eggroll" - so called because of a scene in a Chinese restaurant - seems like a precursor to "The Brady Bunch" (accentuated by the presence of Allan Melvin, who played Alice's hubby Sam in the latter).
Also starring are Barbara Hershey, George Carlin, Vic Tayback, and Alice Ghostley (aka Esmerelda on "Bewitched")..
This was Barbara Hershey's first film and Doris' last and that's about the most interesting thing about this poky sitcom posing as a theatrical film.
Similar to The Brady Bunch, Yours, Mine and Ours(68), and Day's own TV series, With Six YOu Get Eggroll was released the same year as 2001:A Space Odyssey, Rosemary's Baby, Faces, Planet of the Apes, Wild in the Streets, Pretty Poison, and The Night of the Living Dead, and it's a dull and witless comedy that was a relic even in 1968.
Talented Brian Keith takes a back seat to a bunch of "cute" kids, George Carlin, and a dog.
On the other hand, if you are discussing yours, mine and ours, remember that "With Six You Get Eggroll." There are plenty of films and television shows about blended families (e.g.
But this film is really a hybrid of the Day/Hudson pillow talkies, any Irma Bombeck story, and Laugh-In. Doris Day and her three boys have to share a home with Brian Keith and his daughter.
The theme has been done many times, the blending of two families and of course they children are at odds with that until some extremely contrived event pulls them together, with the standard misunderstandings due to poor/no communication thrown in.I've read other reviews and am surprised how may folks enjoyed this move, but if you're a Doris Day fan, choose something from the 50s.Initially I was going to give this 3 stars but bumped it to 4 as it was fun seeing William Christopher and Jamie Farr together prior to the M*A*S*H days, with Herb Voland as well who had a recurring role in some early M*A*S*H episodes.
There is also George Carlin and a few other familiar character actors you will certainly recognize not to mention a very young (and pretty) Barbara Hershey..
And it is this- while this is Doris Day's last film, it is also comedian George Carlin's first film and breakthrough into acting in movies (even though he was in a episode of That Girl).
B. Another formula comedy for Day just about ended her career....
WITH SIX YOU GET EGG ROLL is directed by Howard Morris (from television) and it shows, because it's the kind of tale that plays like a half-hour situation comedy padded out to feature film length--but with a scarcity of laughs, or to put it differently, only the number of laughs that would have been possible within the half-hour limits of a TV show.DORIS DAY decided to call it quits after this film--and it's rather easy to see why.
BRIAN KEITH, BARBARA HERSHEY, PAT CARROLL and ALICE GHOSTLEY do their best, but the script is the real problem and should have been left untouched for the big screen.Nothing much can be said in favor of it.
Doris Day ended her film career with this rather lame little movie, one of many contributions to the "Let's-join-our-families-together" genre of the late 60s.
"Your, Mine and Ours" covered the same material, only better, and "The Brady Bunch" brought it all to fruition a year later.The film wants to combine the standard Doris Day "sex farce" of the period, with a typical 60s family sitcom, and the results are disappointing, at best.The children are a bratty bunch, and the early screeching scenes almost made me turn the whole thing off.
No, my parents didn't take me to see this - not surprising, being that this "G" rated movie likes to use the word "sex" quite a bit, and nobody is exactly a role-model.
Good old time movie.
Doris Day is Abby, a divorcée with three sons.
Brian Keith plays Jake a divorced parent with a daughter (Barbara Hershy in her first movie role) who has also just graduated.
Every thing comes out well (it usually did in a Doris Day film) When they all end up at a police station and end up defending each other as family.
You see, her pal (construction company boss Doris Day) has just eloped with Brian Keith, and the four kids in the mix have mixed ideas, particularly Day's oldest son and Keith's daughter.
Sexual tension is sure to develop between these two 18 year olds, but the two youngest rambunctious pre-pubescents are cool with their new daddy.Sound like "The Brady Bunch", "The Partridge Family" and "Yours, Mine, and Ours" with a touch of "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" thrown in?
Day goes off on stepdaughter Barbara Hershey like you've never seen her go off before, showing some huevos as she hands over the lady of the house duties to the spoiled teen not used to sharing daddy with another woman, let alone one he's sleeping with.
Keith suits Day as a screen partner, then involved in his own sitcom ("Family Affair"), and well remembered as a dad with two perplexing teenagers in "The Parent Trap".
As the newlywed couple face crisis after crisis (switching between each of their houses to suit the four kids not ready for total change), the film is realistic in its identification with the structures of 60's families.
Alice Ghostley, Jamie Farr and the family dog (who is first seen eating Day's wig, certain it is a possum) offer amusing scenes.
After disasters like "Caprice" and "Where Were You Where the Lights Went Out?", Day could be happy that her film career concluded on a nice note..
Granted it follows a screwball comedy plot which was getting old by 1968, but Doris Day is excellent in this one.
Brian Keith, taking some vacation from Mr. French on Family Affair is in his patented father role here which he has much much practice with including the original- Disney - The Parent Trap.
A young Barbara Hershey is a delight here as Keith's daughter.
George Carlin is a rare find acting in a film character and he is here.
The minor roles have faces like Jamie Farr (Klinger on TV Mash), Vic Tayback (Mel on Alice), William Christopher ( Father Mulcahey on MASH), Pat Carroll (Disney), Alice Ghostly (Bewitched), Allan Melvin (Sgt Hacker on Gomer Pyle), and more.
They play Feelings, a really good song.A whole is is more than the sum of it's parts, but this is so much better than the big studios Yours Mine & Ours of the same year it is too bad the little studio film did not get more box office.
Doris goes out with a fairly good comedy..
WITH SIX YOU GET EGGROLE had the timing misfortune of coming out in the movies at the same time as YOUR, MINE, AND HOURS, the Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball comedy about two people who get married and try to bring their individual broods of three kids each together.
Here it was Doris Day and Brian Keith, trying to bring her three sons (John Findlater, Richard Steele, and Jimmy Bracken) and his daughter (a young Barbara Hershey) together, and finding it nearly impossible.
Her sister, Pat Carroll, is trying to get her to remarry (one wonders why - Day's comment that she has a house full of sons and is not lonely, happens to be perfectly sensible...it's not like nobody is in the house since her husband died).
Watching it now is like seeing a major film that had many people in it who had substantial careers...but not necessarily on the big screen.
Alice Ghostly is recalled for BEWITCHED and DESIGNING WOMEN (although she did appear in other films, like THE FLIMFLAM MAN).
He was better in later film parts like OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE.
It is easy to recall that with all their fine movie work, both Day and Keith had decent successes in television too (in THE DORIS DAY SHOW and FAMILY AFFAIR).
Actually the only star of the film with a substantial movie career after it was made was Hershey, as Day did retire from the screen...although Keith would still be available for movies up until the end, when his poor health led him to a tragic suicide. |
tt0045810 | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes | Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) are American showgirls and best friends. Lorelei has a passion for diamonds, believing that attracting a rich husband is one of the few ways a woman can succeed economically. She is engaged to Gus Esmond (Tommy Noonan), a naïve nerd willing to do or buy anything for her. However, Gus is under the control of his wealthy, upper-class father. Dorothy, on the other hand, is looking for a different kind of love, attracted only to men who are good-looking and fit.
Lorelei plans to wed Gus in France, but Esmond, Sr. stops his son from sailing, believing that Lorelei is bad for him. Although Lorelei's job requires that she travel to France with or without Gus, before she leaves, Gus gives her a letter of credit to cover expenses upon her arrival, and promises to later meet her in France. However, he also warns her to behave, noting that his father will prohibit their marriage if rumors of misdeeds make their way to Esmond, Sr. Unbeknownst to both of them, Esmond, Sr. has hired a private detective, Ernie Malone (Elliott Reid), to spy on Lorelei.
During the Atlantic crossing, Malone immediately falls in love with Dorothy, but Dorothy has already been drawn to the members of the (male-only) Olympic athletics team. Lorelei meets the rich and foolish Sir Francis "Piggy" Beekman (Charles Coburn), the owner of a diamond mine, and is attracted by his wealth; although Piggy is married, Lorelei naively returns his geriatric flirtations, which annoys his wife, Lady Beekman (Norma Varden).
Lorelei invites Piggy to the cabin she shares with Dorothy, whereupon he recounts his travels to Africa. While Piggy demonstrates how a python squeezes a goat by hugging Lorelei, Malone spies on them through the window and takes pictures of the two, but is caught by Dorothy as he walks away nonchalantly. She tells Lorelei, who fears for her reputation. They come up with a scheme to intoxicate Malone and then search him to recover the incriminating film while he is unconscious. They find the film in his pants, and Lorelei promptly prints and hides the negatives. Revealing her success to Piggy, she persuades him to give her Lady Beekman's tiara as a thank you gift. However, Malone reveals he had planted a recording device in Lorelei's cabin, and has heard her discussion with Piggy about the pictures and the tiara. Malone implies that Lorelei is a golddigger and, when Dorothy scolds him for his actions, admits that he himself is a liar. However, Dorothy reveals to Lorelei she is falling for Malone, after which Lorelei chastises her for choosing a poor man when she could easily have a rich man.
The ship arrives in France, and Lorelei and Dorothy spend time shopping. However, the pair are then kicked out of their hotel and discover Lorelei's letter of credit has been cancelled due to the information Malone shared with Esmond, Sr. When Gus shows up at their show, Lorelei rebuffs him, after which she performs Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend, the musical number whose lyrics explain why and how women need to pursue men with money. Meanwhile, Lady Beekman has filed charges regarding her missing tiara, and Lorelei is charged with theft. Dorothy persuades Lorelei to return the tiara, but the pair discover it is missing from her jewelry box. Piggy tries to weasel out of his part in the affair when Malone catches him at the airport.
Dorothy stalls for time in court by pretending to be Lorelei, disguised in a blonde wig and mimicking her friend's breathy voice and mannerisms. When Malone appears in court and is about to unmask "Lorelei" as Dorothy, she reveals to Malone in covert language that she, Dorothy, loves him but would never forgive him if he were to do anything to hurt her best friend, Lorelei. Malone withdraws his comments, but then reveals Piggy has the tiara, exonerating Lorelei.
Back at the nightclub, Lorelei impresses Esmond, Sr. with a speech on the subject of paternal money, and also makes an argument that if Esmond, Sr. had a daughter instead of a son, he would want the best for her, to which he agrees and consents to his son's marriage to Lorelei. The film closes with a double wedding for Lorelei and Dorothy, who marry Esmond and Malone, respectively. | romantic, satire | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0026599 | The Lady in Scarlet | In New York City, Dr. Phillip Boyer admires an antique clock at the premises of antique dealer Albert J. Sayre, who has apparently missed his appointment with him. Sayre is however, present and covertly watching Boyer. Deciding to buy and with Mrs. Sayre present, Boyer arranges with salesman Arthur Pennyward for the clock to be delivered that afternoon "about 4.30 or a little after." After Boyer departs, Sayre accuses his wife of a romantic interest in him and obliquely threatens her.
Sayre telephones his attorney Jerome T. Shelby who dismisses his suspicions about Mrs. Sayre and the "4.30 or a little after" being a coded signal for an illicit rendezvous, and asks him to bring his latest will to his office for signing.
About 5.30pm, Mrs. Sayre meets Dr. Boyer at a restaurant. Also present at the restaurant are Private Investigator Oliver Keith and his "girl friday" Ella Carey. When Boyer departs, Mrs. Sayre approaches Keith, asking for his help in finding out why a man has been watching the Sayre house and the reason for her husband's strange behavior. To reassure her, Keith escorts her home and together they find an unlocked front door, salesman Pennyward absent, and the dead body of Sayre in his office.
Soon after, Pennyward returns. He states that he left the premises about 4pm, delivering the clock to Dr. Boyer's home about 5.30 and setting the time correctly to 5.35.
Police are called and establish time of death at "about 5 o'clock." Mrs. Sayre says she went to her hairdressing salon at around 4pm. Questioning is interrupted by the arrival of Dr. Boyer who is returning the clock because it's not the one he ordered. Questioning is again interrupted by the arrival of Sayre's daughter Alice who accuses Mrs. Sayre, her stepmother, of being in love with Dr. Boyer and murdering her father for inheritance money. Dr. Boyer strongly denies any romantic interest in Mrs. Sayre. Fingerprints provide a lead to rival antique dealer F.W. Dyker but he cannot be found.
Questioning reveals that Pennyward and Alice married the previous day and when they told her father he fired Pennyward and told them he would disinherit her, a strong motive for murdering him before any change in the will. Boyer's alibi of being at his medical practice till 5.30 is found to be false as he left about 3.30.
Dyker, Pennyward and Alice, Boyer, and Mrs. Sayre are now all under suspicion. Dyker turns up at Keith's office in response to a fake art collection ad designed to lure him there, and is arrested by Inspector Trainey. In questioning, Pennyward reveals to Keith that Sayre ran a profitable enterprise selling fake antiques through Dyker, but they argued over payments.
Mrs. Sayre admits that neither she nor Boyer has told the entire truth as they were at the restaurant not long after the time of the murder, but their relationship was platonic. She genuinely loved her husband but he was a very difficult man.
The family assembles for the reading of the will by attorney Shelby. The estate is shared equally between Sayre's wife and daughter, as Sayre was murdered before signing the new will. Strangely, $100,000 in bonds which Alice knows should be hers upon marriage are not mentioned in the will. Shelby suggests the bonds may be in Sayre's personal effects in the safe but when it's opened by Mrs. Sayre, who alone knows the combination, the cash box is found to be empty. Alice accuses her of theft.
Arriving at Boyer's medical premises to interview him, Keith, Ella, and Inspector Trainey are told his whereabouts are not known. In a side room they discover the man who's been seen watching the Sayre home. Named Quigley, he's been doped with truth serum. Recovering, he reveals he was paid by Sayre to follow Mrs. Sayre and that she and Boyer were together much earlier on the afternoon of the murder than they had admitted.
Later that evening, Dr. Boyer is found murdered in his car.
Keith makes use of a planned meeting between Pennyward and his wife and attorney Shelby to hold a meeting of his own, with Mrs. Sayre, Dyker, Quigley, Inspector Trainey, and Ella also present. He disposes of each suspect's motive and alibi. Quigley is found to have not only followed Mrs. Sayre on behalf of Sayre but falsely led him to believe that she was being unfaithful, and then blackmailed him over it.
Several of the missing bonds are found in Pennyward's satchel and are identified by Shelby as exactly the same type as the missing bonds, despite his remark on the day of the reading of the will that he knew nothing of their type or denomination. Caught in a lie, Shelby is accused by Keith of murdering Sayre when he visited Sayre's home for the signing of the will, taking the $100,000 of bonds from the open safe, and planting some on Pennyward to implicate him. Shelby pulls a gun and fires it but is overpowered, with the bullet expected to provide ballistics evidence that he killed Boyer too.
Quigley is arrested for blackmailing both Sayre and Boyer, which had led Boyer to dope him and find out that while watching the Sayre house, Quigley had spotted Shelby entering and probably killing Sayre. Boyer had then confronted Shelby, but was killed by him. Quigley had been too afraid to mention any of this as he was guilty of blackmail and feared Shelby would kill him too.
Alice and her stepmother reconcile, Pennyward and Alice go off on their honeymoon, Dyker goes free but with his reputation even more tarnished. | murder | train | wikipedia | Witty little who-done-it.
Who killed Albert J.
Sayre?
Another witty gem from Chesterfield.
The dialog between sleuth Reginald Denny and his "secretary" Patricia Farr (who died at age 35) is every bit as good as that between Nick and Nora Charles in "The Thin Man" series.
They certainly have an interesting relationship.
Unfortunately, Ms Farr looks nothing like Myrna Loy. Sayre's daughter, Julia, however, is played by the very beautiful Dorothy Revier.
Lew Kelly does his slightly dimwitted slow burn as Police Inspector Trainey.
There are plenty of suspects.
It's a well-kept secret who done it right up to the end.
You'll just have to guess..
Hell Hath no Fury.
Pretty decent presentation of a man who sets up his daughter for failure and poverty because he doesn't like her choice in men.
Unfortunately, he meets his demise and that launches most of the plot.
A couple of Nick and Nora type detectives get into the act at the behest of the young wife of the man.
It turns out she really loves the old jerk and wants to see justice done.
Many are dragged into the fray, but, of course, the facts will set you free.
This is a fun movie because of the byplay between the two private detectives.
There are lots of conflicting clues and some surprises.
I have seen many of these types of films and have to admit that this one isn't half bad.
It has a little bit of sexual tension which works pretty well..
Reginald Denny plays detective in a good mystery.
Reginald Denny stars a a detective who gets involved with the murder of an antique dealer.For the most part this is a by the book murder mystery with several interesting twists in it.
The plot basically is that a wealthy antique dealer is suspicious that his wife is having an affair.
People are watching the house and the husband appears to be involved in crooked dealings.
The wife while out with her lover notices an old friend and semi famous detective at the bar.
The lover leaves and the wife talks to the detective whom she talks into taking her home.
Once there they find the husband dead and a very twisty, and not entirely fair, murder investigation is set in motion.Denny is as always a joy to behold and his interplay with his girl Friday is funny, if not rather cruel.
Frankly if it wasn't clear they loved each other it would be abusive.A friend watched most of this with me and sat there in disbelief at the creakiness of it and of the bad acting.
But this is an independent programmer that was made fast and cheap so that fact it is of any quality is usually a plus.
Its not as bad as she made it out to be, and I don't think she hated it, she just enjoyed the camp value of it all.I liked it, but I didn't love it.
Its a movie that sort of is unexceptional in anyway, and so just sort of is.
Its a pleasant time killer and nothing more.
In answer to Lucy's question, yes at some point I will watch this again, if only to see what I missed plot wise since the clues appear to all be there even if not clearly.....
Fox Takes a Fling on Poverty Row. Universal was the only major Hollywood studio to have regular dealings with Poverty Row, so it comes as something of a surprise to see a 20th Century-Fox package wrapped up in the mantle of Chesterfield producer, George R.
Batcheller.
Admittedly, by Mr Batcheller's extremely sparse expenditure norms, the budget for this one is somewhat superior, but nonetheless the witty script by Fox's ace writing team of Robert Ellis and Helen Logan is not all that well served by plodding Reginald Denny (at least he plays the role straight) as the egomaniac detective and most of the second-string support players.
Thomas, Bush, Murray and Kelly are especially dull in key roles, but fortunately the girls are okay.
In fact, Patricia Farr (part of the Fox package) is quite winning as the put-upon secretary (even though she is forced to wear the same drab outfit throughout the entire movie).
As for the solution of the mystery, this is a bit of a let-down, although it will come as no surprise to most fans.
The real killer is Charles Lamont's scrupulously unexciting direction..
Good Mystery From Poverty Row.
"The Lady In Scarlet" is a good murder mystery with a good plot and a good star turn by Reginald Denny as the detective/ hero.
As expected, it is a bit dated but engrossing nonetheless.
It was written better than interpreted by the actors and it suffers from several lapses into amateur acting.
Apparently the budget was so tight that second takes were in short supply, and it needed a few.Enjoyed the interplay between Denny and his secretary, Patricia Farr.
As several contributors have noted, it bears a strong resemblance to that of Nick and Nora Charles, only not as witty.
Special mention should be made of Jack Adair, who plays a crooked art dealer.
I have awarded him the Hand-Painted Mustache Cup for the Worst Performance By A Supporting Actor In A Poverty Row Movie.
It has to be seen to be believed - breathtakingly bad by any measure, and ruins every scene he is in.Good story, and in only 65 minutes.
It will keep you guessing right up to the end.
It makes you think a bigger studio could have done wonders with material such as this.
And hired some better actors..
Pretty good, considering.
For the genre and the time, this is a pretty good murder mystery.
Other reviewers have noted the similarity to the Thin Man Nick and Nora roles.
I found the couple in this movie to be many rungs down on the ladder from Nick and Nora.
The couple are husband and wife, and she's not a detective - she's his secretary.
Unfortunately, the faux battling between the couple is less than playful to modern eyes - he shoves her from behind, taps her drink into her face, takes a slap at her body, and constantly refers to her in explicitly belittling terms.
Yes, we're supposed to understand that it's 'banter,' but the writing took it to far - unlike the Thin Man, which is always played in an obviously affectionate manner.
Here, the last words out of his mouth are "Come on, stupid." Not nice at all.Having said that, the movie works fairly well.
The detective is smarter than the police inspector, but the inspector is not a clown - he's just one acceptable step behind.
The wife/sidekick is given some stilted lines - they just didn't get the Nora Charles role right here.
There are multiple suspects, and attractive women.
For fans of the genre, it's definitely worth watching, though you may cringe at some of the husband's 'playfulness,' as I did.
There's a fine line between playful and cruel, evidently..
About average but I did really like Oliver Keith's assistant.
During the 1930s and 40s, the quality as well as cheapo studios made zillions of murder mystery films--so many that it's easy to get them all mixed up in your head.
While some of the films were stand-outs, such as the Charlie Chan or Saint films, too many just weren't made very well or offered nothing but retreads of the same old same old characters and stories.
In many ways, "The Lady in Scarlett" is yet another dreary mystery films--with the usual get 'em all together in a room and get one of them to incriminate him/herself at the end of the film finale.
These were ludicrous but so many of the films followed this same sort of formula.
In most ways, this film did too...but fortunately, it did offer two things to set it apart--Reginald Denny's erudite persona and his assistant, who was anything but!
In fact, she was a complete smart aleck and kept me interested in an otherwise passable film.
Well worth seeing just because of her!.
Poor Dorothy Revier in a thankless part.
Dorothy Revier never seemed to play anything other than flappers or (when they were passe) sultry femme fatales.
Like co-star Claudia Dell, who in 1932 was supporting Tom Mix and Tony, Dorothy ended up supporting cowboy star Buck Jones (in "The Cowboy and the Kid" (1936)) but, also, like Claudia she was fun to have around.Albert Sayre, an antique dealer has a "trophy" wife, Julia (Dorothy Revier) who he insists on belittling at every opportunity.
He suspects her of having an affair with Dr. Boyer (the unappealing Jameson Thomas) and is having her followed.
Oliver Keats (debonair Reginald Denny) is a jaded detective, who is called in by Julia to investigate some shady characters she has noticed hanging around the house.
Strangely enough she loves her husband and is worried about him - but when they arrive at the house they find he has been murdered.Alice (beautiful Claudia Dell) bursts in - she is convinced Julia is guilty - those in the audience familiar with Revier and her roles, probably thought she was too!!!
Alice is married to Arthur Pennyward, Sayre's assistant and Sayre was her father.
Sayre wasn't all he seemed - he also had a sideline in faking antiques and villainous looking Dyker (Jack Adair) is charged with his murder.
Alice still isn't convinced that Julia is innocent and insists the will be read immediately.
She is astounded when she realises that she is a joint inheritor with Julia.
(She had had a fight with her father that day about her marriage and she thought she was disinherited.) That means she is also under suspicion.Everyone acts guilty, there are plenty of red herrings - when Julia and Boyer are having supper they phone Sayre but get no response - he is already dead!!!
but it looks suspicious for them and it isn't explained.
Patricia Farr - "courtesy of Fox Films" - plays Keat's sassy secretary who is kept busy dishing out quips and wisecracks..
"Someday I'm gonna have a lot of fun investigating her murder"..
This is generally an 'in the middle' murder mystery and detective story, but considering it's mid-Thirties release it's got a few things going for it.
What sells it is the banter between private detective Oliver Keith (Reginald Denny) and his attractive younger secretary Ella (Patricia Farr).
It would have been more believable if the story kept any semblance of a relationship between the two out of it, as Denny was twice as old as his co-star in real life.
But for the most part it worked, especially at the end when they smooched it up to allay viewer fears that Denny's character might have been a bit too abusive.For all intents and purposes, this could have been virtually any movie detective's show of the era - think Charlie Chan, Mister Wong, Bulldog Drummond, or the favorite on this board, Nick Charles.
The story plants a number of red herrings surrounding the murder of antique dealer Albert Sayre (John T.
Murray), the most obvious being his wife Julia (Dorothy Revier), and business associate Dyker (Jack Adair).
The mystery is solved using your typical 'gather all the suspects in one room' approach, as the detective hero successfully conveys the solution of the case by eliminating the suspects one by one.The bigger mystery once the film is over is how they came up with the title.
The term 'Lady in Scarlet' was mentioned early on in reference to a play Albert and Julia Sayre were discussing, she having favored one called 'The Frolic of '32'.
However none of the principal female characters had any connection to the title by virtue of their attire.
Be that as it may, it made me think of a similarly named Sherlock Holmes flick from a decade later called "The Woman in Green".
In either case, who could tell when the picture's in black and white..
"He Can't Work Overtime, It Interferes With His Drinking".
Fast-paced murder mystery with plenty of snappy dialogue.
Patricia Farr, as Reginald Denny's assistant Ella, really steals the show with wall-to-wall sarcasm.A bunch of suspects, each with a tangible motive, surround Albert Sayre's (John Murray's) murder: his wife, daughter, son-in-law, and assorted business associates.
The plot teasingly points to one, then another of them as the murderer.
In a rather formal expose, Keith (Denny) leads, through cunning deduction, to the actual culprit.
This drawn-out Sherlock Holmes bit has its own convoluted drama.Some of the characters are slightly nutty, but that works out well because Keith and Ella are by far the most eccentric.
Though intricate, the plot makes sense.
What doesn't work so well are some of the characters' relationships.The Inspector treats Keith as a colleague, if not his superior.
I could buy some easy familiarity between the police and a well-regarded private eye, but Keith's role is so inflated that the Inspector really has nothing to do.Others here have dwelt on the disgusting way that Keith treats Ella.
The fact that his more than verbally abusive behavior wouldn't raise as much of a concern eighty years ago is beside the point.
It's so relentless (he calls her "stupid" about a dozen times) that it undercuts the clever camaraderie that's obviously the focus between these main characters.Why would she want to work for such a jerk?
With some milder put-downs the relationship would lose nothing, and seem more believable.
Likewise, it would be better if the Inspector took charge, or at least asserted himself more with Keith.As it is, The Lady In Scarlet gives us an entertaining mystery with a ton of one-liners..
All the usual suspects are there......
Even though this is a predictable murder mystery with the victim (John T.
Murray) seemingly deserving of becoming the victim, there's a lot to enjoy in this "B" programmer where the dialog makes an otherwise predictable storyline more enjoyable.
The story is set up with the extremely jealous Murray making it clear to his wife (Dorothy Revier) that he is keeping a close watch on her, being totally aware of her infidelities, while the obviously embittered daughter (Claudia Dell) from his first marriage makes it clear that Revier is the prime suspect.
There's also assorted business partners or rivals and Dell's fiancée (whom Murray disapproved of), all questioned by playboy private detective Reginald Denny and his wise-cracking "Girl Friday" (Patricia Farr).It's Farr's character who gets the bulk of the great dialog here, saying such great hard-boiled lines as "He can't work overtime.
It interferes with his drinking".
When she finds her employer/lover on the phone, she makes her own suspicions known by saying, "I know you didn't go into that booth to fix your girdle!".
The wife/lover, daughter/fiancée characters are not sterotypically one-dimensional, giving reasonable motives for each of them as to why they might want to see Murray killed off.
Not bad for a bottom of the barrel second feature where the camera moved in obviously very close onto the set to hide how cramped and small it really was. |
tt0019591 | A Woman of Affairs | Diana Merrick (Greta Garbo), Neville (John Gilbert) and David (Johnny Mack Brown) were playmates as children, members of the rich British aristocracy. Diana and Neville are in love, but his father (Hobart Bosworth) opposes the match, disapproving the Merrick family's lifestyle. Neville is sent to Egypt for business purposes and to become wealthy.
Diana, after waiting in vain for two years for Neville's return, finally marries David, who is also in love with her and good friends with her brother Jeffry (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). During their honeymoon to Paris and after the arrival of police inspectors, David commits suicide without an explanation. Diana does not explain the reasons behind her husband's action. Jeffry, who was deeply connected to David, blames his sister for his friend's death; he falls deeper into alcohol as his sister starts a reckless life, seducing man after man.
Years later, Neville returns to England to marry Constance (Dorothy Sebastian). Jeffry is now gravely ill, and Diana brings Dr. Trevelyan, a family friend, to his bedside and then leaves since Jeffry still refuses to see her. As she starts to drive away, she sees Neville who has followed her and Dr. Trevelyan in a cab. Diana and Neville go to his apartment, realize they are still in love, and spend that one night together. During the night Jeffry dies. Dr. Trevelyan goes to Neville's apartment in the morning to give him the news and discovers that Diana has spent the night there. Three days later, Neville marries Constance.
About nine months go by: Diana falls ill (in the script she is supposed to have suffered a miscarriage, but because of censorship, this couldn't be mentioned) and is visited by Neville. Diana professes her love for him before realizing Constance is in the room.
The reason for David's suicide is revealed: he was a thief, pursued by the police. Diana, realizing that her and Neville's love will ruin Neville, tells him that his wife is pregnant and sends him away. Diana drives her car into a tree, in front of which she and Neville had fallen in love and sworn eternal fidelity. | romantic | train | wikipedia | A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS (MGM, 1928), directed by Clarence Brown, from the then controversial novel, "The Green Hat" by Michael Arlen, reunites then popular love team of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in their third collaboration on screen.
Initially teamed under Clarence Brown's direction in the highly popular FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926), followed by LOVE (1927), taken from the Leo Tolstoy's classic novel, "Anna Karenina," Gilbert and Garbo once more star in a silent melodrama about love and tragedy.
Unlike their earlier screen efforts, their characters in this story are already acquainted since childhood, leaving no chance of meeting and falling in love, but the difference here is that their relationship is interfered by a third party who happens not to be another lover or spouse.
And unlike their earlier two films, Garbo is more the central focus here than Gilbert.The story begins quite amusingly, finding the wild and merry Diana Merrick (Greta Garbo) driving recklessly down the road in the Mack Sennett Keystone comedy fashion, nearly missing the ditch diggers as she drives over them.
Moments later, the characters in the story, the Holderness and the Merricks, are introduced with each passing scene.
Diane is a carefree woman who has loved Neville Holderness (John Gilbert) since childhood.
Jeffry's closest friend, David Furness (Johnny Mack Brown), tries to stop him from his wild and wicked ways, but to no avail.
Neville's father, Sir Morton (Hobart Bosworth), disapproves of the Merrick family's way of life.
When he learns that his son wants to marry Diana, he manages to send Neville away to Egypt for a few years, in hope that the two will forget one another through the passage of time.
Two years later, Diana marries David.
Over the next few years, Diana makes the gossip columns as being a widow of many love affairs throughout the world.
As for Neville, he becomes engaged to marry a nice young girl named Constance (Dorothy Sebastian), whom, as Diana describes through the title cards, as a girl "whose eyes are so true and clean." But Old Man Holderness, knowing how his son and Diana still feel about one other, continues to keep the scandalous Diana away his son, causing Neville to become like Jeffry, an unbearable alcoholic.While not as famous by today's standards as FLESH AND THE DEVIL, A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS somewhat predates those "Peyton Place"-type soap-operas or Lana Turner melodramas quite popular during the 1950s and 60s.
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s portrayal as an unhappy youth who turns to drink, is quite believable, especially when his glassy eyes, uncombed hair almost covering a portion of his eye, with whiskey glass in his hand that at times has him resemble a young John Barrymore.
Fairbanks, however, does well with his early screen performance.Clarence Brown's direction with the Gilbert-Garbo loves scenes do have some bonuses, but are not as "hot" as in FLESH AND THE DEVIL.
One scene that stands out is finding Diana, wearing a special ring on her finger, making love to Neville on the couch, with Diana telling him, "I would only take it off for the man I love." The camera then pans down to her hand just as the ring slowly slips off her finger.
As for the story itself, it takes place during a span of ten years, yet the characters in the plot don't look any different in the conclusion as they appear in the opening, making the storyline look more as if it takes place in a span of ten months than ten years.
And although Garbo has that special beauty, especially when properly photographed, she doesn't look particularly attractive in some of those costumes designed for her, mainly when wearing those flapper-designed hats.
Essentially a silent movie that was initially distributed in theaters with recorded scoring, one wishes such a score for this film have been used for its current video distribution, which comes with a Thames stereo orchestral soundtrack.
Both versions are available for viewing on cable TV's Turner Classic Movies.One final note: A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS was one of the 13 feature films presented on the public television series, MOVIES, GREAT MOVIES (Original air date: October 26, 1973), a 50th anniversary tribute to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer of the silent era, as hosted by Richard Schickel, on WNET, Channel 13, in New York City.
Yes, it is true that not many people have seen A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS (1928), comparing its popularity to her other films, like FLESH AND THE DEVIL, NINOTCHKA or GRAND HOTEL.
Yet, it is one of the most unforgettable films where Garbo's silent performance has a soul throughout.
But, at the same time, the movie can also boast marvelous cinematography, great performances from all cast, an interesting content, and the original soundtrack which opens it to a new era of the 1920s cinema, something in between silent and sound films with dialogs.
I was absolutely astonished when I saw the moment where Diana (Greta Garbo) walks down the hill in the garden.
The light is directed towards Diana's figure walking quickly but desperately after a bitter conversation with Morton Holderness (Howard Bosworth), an honorable father of her beloved Nevs (John Gilbert).
Soon before he comes to visit her, there is a brilliant shot of Diana lying in bed, in the state of delirium, and looking at flowers.
The CONTENT of the movie is based on controversial novel by Michael Arlen, THE GREEN HAT.
Therefore, the content was so much changed that the film becomes quite a different story.
Morton's character is expressed in another moment when he says to his son trying to convince him to give up the relationship "Ten generations are watching you!" Secondly, the content perfectly shows what a passionate love really means.
Although Nevs is happy with his wife Constance (Dorothy Sebastian), he cannot stop thinking about Diana whom he has known since the light hearted days of childhood.
It is the third film in which Garbo appears with her real-life love interest John Gilbert and they both give marvelous jobs here.
Lewis Stone, a mainstay of most Garbo films (from this one to many others, including GRAND HOTEL and MATA HARI), does a great job as Dr Hugh Trevelyan, who approved of the relationship.
So with these great performers, you see all of them in the final 10 minute-long scene at Holderness' house, where Diana comes to talk things over with Morton.
I don't know how you will react to this, but I consider the scene a masterpiece of silent performances.All things considered, A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS is a highly recommended film which stands out in our modern era of cinema, as an example of cinematography, performances and well selected content.
Nevertheless once the historical perspective is in place this is still a simple timeless classic, one I've now seen a dozen times over the years.Very honourable woman falls in love with equally honourable man, much to his even more honourable father's disfavour.
Garbo and Gilbert were perfect for the roles (making this a lovely bookend for Flesh And The Devil) and both never looked more gleaming beautiful, although Garbo had a few odd costumes along the way.
Everyone undulates their way to a fitting climax and conclusion (although didn't Neville come back into the room to Constance rather fast after Diana told him ---- ?)All in all one of my favourite silent melodramas, strangely neglected nowadays - or is there no honour left?.
Garbo is one of the two of the last "Mad Merricks", not much more is said about the family name except that Diana is independently wealthy and somewhat reckless.
In the opening scene she is driving her car wildly through the countryside with her first and only true love, Neville Holderness (John Gilbert), as a passenger.
No valid reason is given other than perhaps he does not want the pitter patter of little mad Merricks to end up being his heirs.Neville has no money in his own name, so his dad uses this fact to get Neville to agree to take a job in Egypt, before he marries Diana, so that he can earn some money and start a career.
Complications, heartache, and tragedy ensue.The reason I say this is almost a feminist film is because the only two women in the film - Diana and Constance (Dorothy Sebastian) are the only virtuous people in the entire cast.
Hugh (Lewis Stone), long time family friend of the Merricks, comes close, but near the end breaks a trust in doing what he thinks is a good deed.
Jeffry, Diana's brother, is an alcoholic, Neville is ultimately a coward, his dad is a snob, and David Furness, who has always loved Diana and been Jeffry's hero since childhood, has his problems too.
She can see Neville and Diana are still in love, and does not blame either of them for something they cannot help.
I think it is Garbo's best silent film.
She gives a strong performance in a film with a good plot and a good cast surrounding her, and as always, her chemistry with Gilbert is wonderful.
A soap opera on the grand scale with the great screen team of John Gilbert and Greta Garbo.
The opening subtitles tell us that Garbo/Diana is a gallant lady.
Garbo is perfection in her shifting moods - first as a young woman in love, playful and happy with her true love, Gilbert, then when she makes that fateful mistake which she thinks brings honor to herself, and so on right up to her death 10 years later after her self-image of an honorable woman has been taken from her.Gilbert's role is subsidiary, not sympathetic, and of all things, boring.
The actor who does exhibit fire is the young Douglas Fairbanks Jr, whose self-loathing is redirected to a passionate hatred of his sister.I liked Garbo's action in the reconciliation scene where she walks over to Gilbert's father with an unlit cigarette and when he strikes a match she takes out her lighter and lights it herself, thereby emphasizing that she will not bow again to his idea of honor.
I also liked the director's choice of showing the widow Diana's 7-year exile in Europe through a series of newspaper photos and their captions.
And THE main character, Garbo, is so superb that the script problems make no difference to one's enjoyment of this flawed film..
That's because in the original novel, the Garbo character's husband commits suicide on his wedding night because he has syphilis; due to censorship, this was changed to his being an embezzler.
Yet the brilliant cast and director manage to put the original meaning across anyway.But although sex and scandal are the story's raison d'etre, what makes the movie memorable is that it captures something essential about the time it was made (the end of the Roaring 20s): a restless, heedless cynicism and emptiness, a bitter gaiety, a mixture of desire and melancholy.
And in that respect, being so true to its own time, it achieves timelessness.There's a great moment when Garbo strides up to her disapproving older nemesis in a belted polo coat and cloche hat with a cigarette dangling from her lips.
Another when she's on her honeymoon with a man she doesn't love, and she lies in bed switching the light on and off -- you realize that she's bored, impatient, horny, and regretful all at once.The story seems most dated when the characters are discussing whether or not Garbo is "good" or "decent." The men in the movie all stand around, trying to understand her and failing.
When MGM (of all studios) decided to make a movie of the novel - the name of the book or any allusion to it was not to be mentioned, hence the name "A Woman of Affairs".
Diana Merrick (Greta Garbo) and her dissipated brother Jeffry (Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.) are determined to live their lives in the pursuit of pleasure, earning them a bad reputation.
Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. gives the performance of his young career as the alcoholic Jeffry (in the book he and Diana were twins).
Jeffry has an unhealthy hero-worship of David and Fairbanks seems to really get inside his character.Neville (John Gilbert) is offered a post in Egypt and is eager to take it as it means he and Diana can be married when he returns.
They marry but Diana does not return his love.
The title says "He died for - decency" and Diana puts up with a lot of allegations and rumour.Years pass and Diana is back in London to visit her critically ill brother, who has never recovered from David's death and is drinking himself into an early grave.
Neville is about to marry giddy Constance (pretty Dorothy Sebastian), who proves during the film that she has just as much character and honour as the rest of them.
Dr. Hugh Trevelyan (Lewis Stone) has always been Diana's protector and supporter and it is he who informs her of her brother's death (she has spent the night at Nevilles).Diana suffers a nervous breakdown and I think it is this hospital scene in which Greta Garbo lifts this film to it's highest sphere.
Everyone in the scene (Gilbert, Sebastian, Stone) seems transfixed as Garbo goes through this astonishing performance.
Sir Morton Holderness (Hobart Bosworth), Neville's father has never held a very high opinion of Diana.
He learns the real reason for David's suicide - he was an embezzler and Diana gave up her reputation for his honour - not to mention paying off his debts secretly.
For the last time Diana proves she is a "gallant lady" by driving her car into the tree that had always symbolized her and Neville's love and leaving Neville and Constance free to begin their lives together.Greta Garbo is mesmerizing - you can't watch anyone else while she is on the screen.
John Gilbert shows none of the personality and passion that characterizes his acting - he definitely takes a backseat to Garbo in this movie.
I love silent films but I will be the first to admit that some plots from the early days of film tend to look a bit old fashioned and silly today.
Despite the presence of the often overrated Greta Garbo, this film lacks believability.
Don't believe any reviews that give this film astronomically high ratings simply because they love Garbo--the script is just too flawed to merit scores of 9 or 10.Greta and John Gilbert are in love.
John is a bit of a weenie and reluctantly agrees to listen to his dad and take a job in Egypt instead of marrying Garbo.
This was dumb because there was no legitimate reason for this self-sacrifice--especially when Greta's brother (played by a young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) refuses to ever talk with her or see her again and pretty much everyone else treats her like a leper.
Later, however, Garbo's one true friend tells Gilbert and his nasty father the truth and everyone agrees that she's a living saint and everyone (including the wife) give Gilbert permission to divorce and marry Garbo!!!
Well, the film is lovely to look at due to nice cinematography.
An above average Greta Garbo silent with John Gilbert and Lewis Stone.
Directed by Clarence Brown, this Michael Arlen story earned Bess Meredyth an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Achievement.
The film is an above average Greta Garbo silent with John Gilbert, Lewis Stone, Johnny Mack Brown, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., among others.The plot follows Diana (Garbo in the title role), the carefree daughter of the Merrick family and sister to Jeffry (Fairbanks Jr.), who grew up the childhood sweetheart of Neville Holderness (Gilbert).
Anita Louise appears, uncredited, as the child Diana.Unfortunately for the young lovers, Neville's father, Sir Morton Holderness (Hobart Bosworth), disapproves of the "reckless" Merricks, so he sends his son abroad to prevent his further involvement with Diana.
Later, Diana ends up marrying David Furness (Brown), who is not only Jeffry's best friend, but the man her brother idolizes most in the World.
Lewis Stone plays Dr. Trevelyan, a friend of the Merricks.Some years later, under a mountain of debt unknown to everyone but his wife Diana, the outwardly proper David kills himself to escape his creditors by jumping out a window.
Besides Diana, only Dr. Trevelyan knows the truth.Of course, a reunion with Neville, now married to the beautiful Constance (Dorothy Sebastian) is inevitable.
Constance, ironically, is curious about Diana's notoriety, and causes another reunion between the former lovers later herself.After the earlier loss of his friend and idol David, Jeffry descended into the depths of depression with drugs and/or alcohol, refusing to see the sister he blames as he takes his last breaths and dies in the presence of Dr. Trevelyan.But the title of this film does not mean what you think or, perhaps more precisely, is actually a double entendre.
As it turns out, Diana had actually been settling her husband's affairs (e.g. his debts) over all these years such that, in the end, even Sir Holderness comes to respect her.Back within her presence (caused by Constance's aforementioned fascination), Neville is willing to chuck everything (e.g. his marriage) to be with her.
Originally issued with a music score (including an original song by William Axt and David Mendoza called "Love's First Kiss") and sound effects, the film is now available only in a silent version with a new orchestral score composed by Carl Davis.
This is a sumptuous, yet beautifully made film, exquisitely photographed, most inventively directed, and superbly acted by an outstanding cast, not the least member of which, the young Douglas Fairbanks, almost steals the production from the divine Garbo herself.
Garbo literally lights up the screen, even when her face is partly hidden by the green hat of Arlen's title.
As a result, the characters of the film are far more believable than their counterparts in the novel. |
tt0107034 | The Good Son | In Arizona, 12-year-old Mark Evans (Elijah Wood) has recently experienced the death of his mother, Janice (Ashley Crow). Heading for a business trip to Tokyo, Mark's father Jack (David Morse) drives Mark to the home of his uncle Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly) and aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson) in Maine where he will stay during the winter break. Mark is reintroduced to his extended family, including his cousins Connie (Quinn Culkin) and Henry (Macaulay Culkin). Mark and Henry get along at first and Henry seems to be nice and well-mannered. However, Henry displays an abnormal fascination with death and his talk of the death of Mark's mother and that of his younger brother Richard, makes Mark feel uneasy.
Henry begins to display psychopathic behavior, which Mark is unable to tell Wallace and Susan about due to Henry's dark threats. One of Henry's violent actions is to throw a dummy off a bridge and on to the highway, causing a massive pileup. Later, Henry plans to kill his sister Connie. Afraid that something might happen to her, Mark spends the night in her room. The next morning, Mark awakens to find Henry has taken Connie ice skating. At the pond, Henry purposely throws Connie toward thin ice. The ice collapses and Connie nearly drowns but is rescued and taken to hospital. Susan becomes suspicious and sitting in the dark, out of view, is able to interrupt Henry when he visits Connie's room, planning to smother her.
Susan finds a rubber duck that Henry has hidden in the shed. It had once belonged to Richard and was with him in the bathtub the night he drowned, after which it went missing. When Susan confronts Henry, he coldly reminds her that the toy had belonged to him before it had been Richard's. He asks for the duck back but Susan refuses and Henry tries to take it from her. After a violent tug-of-war, Henry snatches the duck and runs to the cemetery where he throws it down a well. As Susan and Mark grow closer, Henry insinuates he will kill Susan rather than let Mark continue to develop a relationship with her.
When a fight breaks out between the two boys, Wallace locks Mark in the den. Henry asks a suspicious Susan to go for a walk with him, while Mark escapes the den and chases after them. Susan confronts Henry, asking him if he killed his brother. Henry replies, "What if I did?" Horrified by what her son has become, Susan tells Henry that he needs help but Henry flees into the woods. Susan gives chase and upon arriving at a cliff, Henry shoves her over the edge. As Susan dangles precariously, Henry picks up a large rock he intends to throw down at her but Mark intervenes and tackles his cousin. They fight and Henry viciously tries his best to kill Mark. Susan manages to pull herself up on to the clifftop and is just in time to dive forward and grab hold of the boys as they roll over the edge. Lying flat on the rock she hangs on to both boys, one in each hand. Henry holds on with both hands but Mark's one-handed grip begins to slip. Henry says, "Mom, I love you." Then Henry says to his mother, "I need your other hand." With only enough strength to save one of them. Susan, realizing the malevolence in Henry's nature, reluctantly releases him and he falls to his death. Susan pulls Mark up from the ledge and they look down upon Henry's body on the rocks below, before it is washed away into the sea. When Mark returns to Arizona, he reflects upon Susan's choice to save him instead of Henry and wonders if she would make the same choice again but knows it is something he will never ask her. | mystery, cruelty, murder, violence, good versus evil, melodrama, suspenseful | train | wikipedia | I think one of the interesting things was that people rated this movie really low because they didn't like the concept of an evil child or they added, there was no WHY concept to the reasons why the character did the things he did.
I think this is where people kind of go, "yeah, this movie is flawed, there's no such thing." But remember, little Frodo wasn't looking down the staircase at his mother hugging another son.
'The Good Son' revolves around Mark, a motherless boy of twelve who is sent to stay with his Uncle Wallace, Aunt Susan and two cousins, twelve-year-old Henry and six-year-old Connie.
It is a film that pulls no punches in just how malevolent Henry is and how easily he will pick off anyone who dares to interfere with his twisted sense of fun.Macaulay Culkin was excellent as the angelic-looking Henry whose boyish cuteness hide his true nature and his performance here proves he could have been one of the few child actors who graduated into a successful young adult actor had his personal life not been such a mess.
Young Wood, only eleven years old when he filmed this, delivered a great performance as a young boy faced with the awful truth and desperate to stop Henry while juggling his grief over losing his mother.
The scene where Mark is convinced Henry has poisoned the food is a perfect example of how Wood portrayed Mark's desperation, hysteria and helplessness in the face of his cousin's evil.However, one of the flaws of the film is that is a bit choppy, jumping from scene-to-scene without giving you a feel for the other characters, which is a shame because this is one film where you do need to have an understanding of just how Henry's nature affects all those around him and how he gets away with it all.
The book not only gives greater insight into Mark's budding fraternal friendship with Connie and his need to seek a mother in Susan but it also shows Susan's growing awareness to the monster Henry is and how she feels when she is made to choose between Mark and her murderous child.Overall, this film is enjoyable enough for a psychological thriller (although a few TV detective shows have done this idea in a slicker way) and it is nice to see a film that doesn't take a softly-softly attitude when dealing with the matter of children who kill.
Macaulay Culkin,(Henry Evans),"Party Monsters",'03, gave one of his best performances and really showed his great talents which made you hate him through out the entire picture.
It's the first movie I've seen where I was actually scared of the bad character, Henry [Macaulay Culkin] and the first movie I've seen where I find myself routing for the good character, Mark [Elijah Wood].
The Good Son is about Mark(Elijah Wood), a young boy suffering in the recent loss of his mother, going to visit his aunt, uncle, and two cousins in Maine while his dad takes a business trip to Tokyo.
Cousin Henry Evans(Macaulay Culkin) is Mark's age and they soon become good friends and have loads of fun each day, but soon Mark starts to see another side of Henry when they start putting some of Henry's ideas into action, including throwing a dummy called Mr.Highway over an overpass that causes a huge multi car wreck and a big smile on Henry's face, and shooting a dog with a homemade gun.
Elijah Wood is an unusually good boy, Macaulay Culkin is an unusually bad boy; both look perfectly real.
Henry turns out to be a psychopath and is determined to do anything to stop Mark from telling anyone else.This movie originally had a different director attached to it who (understandably) did not want Culkin in it.
OK a lot of critics said this movie was bad because Macaulay Culkin turns from the sweet kid from home alone to a freakish killing one, I mean a lot of websites I've seen said this movie it really bad, but the only bad thing they have to say about it, is that Macaulay goes bad, and that the kids don't understand how sick and twisted the character there playing or co-staring to really it, and thats all!!!
And it's still my favorite movie!I know most people thought that the ending was stupid, but I liked it.Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin both did great, and I highly recommend this movie to everyone!!10/10..
The Good Son (1993) ** (out of 4) When Mark (Elijah Wood) loses his mother and his father most go a business trip, he goes to stay with his family and at first everything seems great.
That's until he starts to realize that his cousin Henry (Macaulay Culkin) isn't normal yet none of the adults will believe him.I still remember all the hype surrounding this film when it first came out.
The biggest problem is certainly the screenplay because it's a rather generic story where we see Henry do one bad thing after another while the parents of course don't believe the really good kid.
I thought he handled the brat side of the character quite well but I never really believed we went far enough in showing how crazy or demented this kid was.THE GOOD SON is mildly entertaining in a cheap "B" movie kind of way but there's no question that as a thriller it's a failure..
What results is a mess of a movie that, at the time of its release, appealed to the wrong demographic entirely.Macaulay Culkin got the headlining credit, even though Elijah Wood is really the lead actor and the moral compass of the story.
It would be one thing if the child actors were unknowns, but since Culkin made a name for himself with the hugely popular "Home Alone" films, kids wanted to see whatever movie he was in.
After seeing it recently as a mature adult, the movie has some major problems.Elijah Wood plays Mark Evans, a child whose mother has just died.
Mark's Uncle Wallace (Daniel Hugh Kelly) and Aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson) seem normal, which is why you wonder how their son Henry (Macaulay Culkin), who is Mark's age, became so messed up.
All the while, Henry's parents, while they are good people and not abusive or inattentive, manage to be completely oblivious to their son being a reincarnation of Ted Bundy.It's not unbelievable that a kid can act like this.
"The Good Son" is about Mark (Elijah Wood), a young child who recently lost his mother to cancer.
With nobody willing to believe Mark (dismissing him as a troubled boy who is suffering the loss of his mother), he finds himself responsible to stop Henry from trying to take the lives of his family and reveal the true dark side of his manipulative sociopathic personality.An intriguing thriller in the vein of the 1956 horror film "The Bad Seed", "The Good Son" is a very smart and inventive horror/thriller.
The supporting cast consisted mainly of Wendy Crewson as Henry's mother (who is also very good) and Culkin's real life little sister, playing his little sister on screen.
The Good Son was the moment you really realize that Culkin couldn't act because Elijah Wood could.
Of course, in a movie like this, no one believes Mark that little Henry could be a bad kid, so Mark takes it upon himself to protect Henry's unsuspecting family (and especially Henry's mother) from their twisted little boy when they would not do so for themselves.
I saw this movie a lot when I was a kid because I was so in love with Elijah Wood at the time.
Unfortunately, that mistake is largely due to the fact that they cast Macaulay Culkin as the evil son in this rather tame thriller in the first place - meaning, had they cast anyone else as Henry, the film would have been much better.This is the story of a young boy, Mark (Elijah Wood), who just lost his mother to illness, and has to go live with his Uncle and his family out of necessity for a couple of weeks.
I think more people were shocked with the fact that Macaulay Culkin dropped the F-Bomb in this movie rather than what a creepy kid he was playing.
I always thought it was ironic that Elijah Wood's career took off after this movie, and Macaulay Culkin's practically died..
This was the darkest movie I've seen in my lifetime, I mean by darkest that the whole script of McCaulay Culkin playing role Henry were really scary and heartbeating the whole time.
Slickly-made but overwrought, brainless thriller has young Elijah Wood mourning the death of his mother, going to stay with relatives and falling victim to cousin Macaulay Culkin's twisted pranks.
After suffering first-hand through a (suspicious) death in the family, Culkin's parents don't even think twice about leaving the kids home alone, nor do they seem cognizant of their child's dark side (is he that good an actor?).
Not only is it stupid, it's disturbing seeing filmmakers having an eleven-year-old kill people.The film starts out with Elijah Wood going to live with his Aunt and Uncle after his mother dies, because his father has a business deal in Japan (or something like that).
So then Wood has to convince everyone that Culkin is a homicidal maniac with serious problems before the sister dies.I read a review of Roger Ebert's on this film, and it's exactly what stuck out at me when I originally watched the film: What kind of filmmakers have a small child in a role where he is killing people?
The excellent child actor, Elijah Wood, was thrown into this Culkin star-vehicle(with his sister and brother also having cameos) as the good kid that no-one believes and he's fine in the movie.
The title is kind of confusing because the movie is about a child(who is not a son), played by Wood, who's mother dies and he has to live with a cousin while he's away on a business trip.
I loved the film Elijah Wood is truly an amazing and very, talented actor and at such a young age, if you like movies that keep you on the edge of your seat "The Good Son" is the film for you!
The film starts out with Mark (Elijah Wood) has lost his mother, and is sent to stay with his cousin Henery (McCally Caliclukin) who seams to be a normal 10-12 year old boy but later as we see is truly disturbed.
It is about a boy named mark(Elijah Wood), and his cousin Henry(Macaulay Culkin), mark's mom dies, and he has to go to his aunt's and uncle's house, while his dad jack(David Morse)is on a important trip.
When I saw this movie I was surprised by Culkin's new role as a young boy who enjoys to kill including his sister, but now he's an x-child actor the one who deserves the most credits is Wood as Mark Evans who struggles hard to prevent his evil cousin from harming people just for fun, and everybody refuses to believe him because they think he misses his mother badly.
I am a huge fan of Macaulay Culkin and I think this evil character of Henry is his best yet!
If that's not frighten enough, think about the fact that every serial killer on earth was at one time a child, and films like The Good Son represent a story that could be happening right now.
Both families think it will be good for Mark to be around someone his own age, his cousin Henry (Macaulay Culkin), but what they didn't know is that Henry is pure evil and has killed before.
When you think Killer Kids, movies like The Omen come to mind, but this is different as Henry isn't possessed, he's just a psychopath.
I've seen Wood in dozen's of things since The Good Son and his eyes still creep me out, it's almost like he can see right through you, and that might have made him a better choice to play Henry.
The Good Son is so outstanding and out of this world when you watch it you really feel like your a character in this film too..
I thought the subtleties they used to progress the audiences awareness of Culkin's character without fully alienating Wood was very good and kept the viewers attention, however, that did slip a little further into the movie.
Like "The Bad Seed," this film concerns an evil child lacking a conscience but not a wide variety of ways to kill whatever living things cross his path.
By the time "The Good Son" came out, Macaulay Culkin's overexposed shocked appearance in posters for "Home Alone"(1990), was making a few people sick, and I wouldn't doubt for one second that he was tired of the typecasting as cute little kids.
The scene where Henry Evans(Culkin) confides in his cousin Mark (Elijah Wood) that his youth and innocent demeanor makes it easy to do anything is just one example of this message.
From their acting, the actors playing the parents seem to think they're in an antihistamine commercial, or maybe one for Campbell's soup.I don't mean to suggest I went into this movie expecting it to be good, but the problem is it really isn't entertainingly bad either.
(Cause it sure as hell isn't art.)What's really upsetting is that when the credits roll, with the theme music that suggests the promise of the opening moments, we realize that had the director scrapped everything after the first five minutes with Morse and Wood this could have been one of those great "little" movies, in this case about a child grappling and coming to terms with the death of his mother.
This movie has some of the best young stars including Henry (Macaulay Culkin) who plays the role of the horrible kid in this movie.
The Good Son when released in 1993 was a film starring it child actor Macaulay Culkin.
Macaulay Culkin's performance was not as good as Elijah's, but is was great to see them working together.
The plot involves 12-year-old Mark (Elijah Wood) by the way, Mark IS a very wholesome character)whos mom died of cancer, who goes to live with his long time no see cousins, aunt, and uncle in Maine.
Yes Henry(Macaulay Culkin)is the bad son that likes to do these terrible things and worth trying to kill his family.After Mark(Elijah Wood)lost his mother who died of cancer;Henry got jealous that when Mark crying about he misses his mom and his aunt comforts him and treats Mark like her own son and Henry didn't like that,so that's why he killed his baby brother by drowned him in the bathtub.He only did that if so he can have his mother to himself.Mark realize about Henry's evil smile behind him and tries to warned the family about Henry's behavior by threw his sister Connie(Quinn Culkin)in the thin ice at the skating pond,no one believes him at all.When Susan was looking for Richard's toy duck in the shed,she realize that Henry had kill his baby brother if so he can get his duck toy back,because it was his before it was Richard's.When Susan asked Henry that did he kill Richard,he says he did and begin push his mom from the cliff.When Henry tries to drop a rock on his mom,thank goodness that Mark came to the rescue his aunt and Susan drop Henry from the cliff.I can tell that this movie is similar to THE BAD SEED!
If you ask me, Mark (Elijah Wood) was really gutsy to stand up to that little devil, Henry (Macaulay Culkin).
Now, in conclusion, if you are a fan of Macaulay Culkin or Elijah Wood, you're in for a good time and lots of laughs, so see this movie today..
The movie was under appreciated, but if you look past the errors, this can definitely be a thrill.The story is about a boy named Henry (Caulkin) who's cousin (Wood) comes to live with him after his mother has passed away.
I think this was a pretty good thriller, the acting was excellent by both Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin.
The Good Son is a REALLY great thriller about Mark (Elijah Wood, and when his mother dies, Mark is sent to his cousin Henry's (Macauly Culkin) house.
Mark (Elijah Wood) has just lost his mum to cancer and is sent off to his cousin Henry (Macaulay Culkin) to help.
Macaulay did a reasonable job, especially at the beginning of the movie, but like many things in The Good Son, he lost his strength throughout.
If Kevin was like this, he would have killed his family and Harry and Marv...Ironically, the movie's title refers precisely to Culkin's character instead of Elijah Wood's character (who really is the good son).
I, for one, love the movie.**SPOILERS** Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood do awesome jobs portraying Henry and Mark Evans, respectively.
Both, Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Woods are wonderful in the roles, they play in this film.
At first Elijah (Mark) has fun until he finds out that his cousin Mac (Henry) is really an evil boy who likes to try to kill his family member.
Henry even finds ways to make Mark seem like the insane child.This movie was enjoyable to see, because I think the world was tired of seeing Macaulay Culkin as just the typical child actor, who plays pranks on people.
I think most people say they don't like it just because they hate Elijah Wood or Macaulay Culkin, and they are both EXCELLENT in this movie.
Elijah Wood does a great job being the kid who nobody believes and Culkin is amazing as a boy without a conscience.
Strangely enough though, the first time I saw the movie, I didn't even know that Elijah Wood played Mark, even though he is an actor that I really liked from seeing him in "The Lord Of The Rings" and stuff. |
tt0260054 | Gojô reisenki: Gojoe | Set in 12th-century medieval Japan, the film takes place after the war between the Heike and Genji clans, which concluded in the defeat of the latter. However, lurking at the Gojoe bridge in Kyoto, a mysterious force ravages the lands of the Heike. At the same time, Benkei (Daisuke Ryu), a samurai turned Buddhist monk out of repentance for his past crimes, learns from an oracle that a great evil is coming. He then receives a divine signal from Acala, represented by a Sankrite inscription on his chest, informing him that he only will be forgiven after slaying the demon of the Gojoe bridge. After borrowing a sacred sword from a yamabushi sect, Benkei sets out to destroy the monster and save his soul.
At the scene of one of the battles in Gojoe, Benkei meets a former weaponsmith Tetsukichi (Masatoshi Nagae) who now survives from scavenging armors and swords from battle corpses. Although skeptical to Benkei's claims and the existence of a demon, Tetsukichi joins him in his quest. They soon discover the demon is in reality a young warrior with a demon mask and extraordinary sword skills. He is Shanao (Tadanobu Asano), a former lord of the Genji clan who is out for revenge against the Heike clan and wants to destroy all false gods and every single religion. Benkei and Shanao face off, but the monk's sword breaks when his will vacillates due to his reluctance to fight. Turning to Tetsukichi to forge him a new sword to duel Shanao one more time, Benkei will have to overcome his doubts to defeat the evil. | revenge, violence | train | wikipedia | Vibrant and violent samurai action film from the underrated Sogo Ishii.
Gojoe (2000) is a typically vibrant and vivid piece of film-making from Japanese firebrand Sogo Ishii, who remains perhaps one of the most radical and underrated Japanese filmmakers of the last twenty-five years.
Ishii began his directing career in the late 1970's when he was still a student at the Nihon University, and his work of that particular period with films like Panic High School (1978), Crazy Thunder Road (1980) and Burst City (1982) reflected an interest in performance art and his involvement in the Tokyo punk scene.
Though later films like Angel Dust (1994) and Labyrinth of Dreams (1997) saw a greater sense of maturity and more clearly defined emphasis on character and atmosphere, he remained a consistent and interesting talent with a truly original vision.Gojoe returns somewhat to the style of Ishii's earlier, bold and energetic work; combing grand spectacle with clearly defined storytelling with roots in actual Japanese folklore.
However, the way in which the narrative unfolds is really quite interesting, with the story beginning with a scene of murder and the notion that the killing could have been supernatural as opposed to political; with Ishii's subtle use of cinematography, editing and sound design creating a staggering sense of tension from the very first frame.
Added to this, there are definitely shades of Masaki Kobayashi's classic anthology-film Kwaidan (1964) and Kaneto Shindō's masterpiece Onibaba (1964) being developed here, with that great atmosphere of supernatural intrigue, murder, violence and dread being continually juxtaposed against an expressionistic period setting, which seems somewhat nightmarish and vaguely ethereal.
The violence of Gojoe is occasionally fairly explicit and definitely over-the-top, but there is a distinct balletic grace to the way in which Ishii captures the action; creating something that falls halfway between the over-the-top fountains of gore seen in the majority of Japanese Anime (or the more extreme films of Takashi Miike), with something that is perhaps closer to the heavily choreographed kabuki theatre or interpretive dance.As the story progresses the supernatural elements give way to political intrigue and elements of actual historical fact, but the whole arc of this notion seems designed to add some sense to the story of warring rivals, as opposed to giving us a full-blown history lesson.
Though ultimately the plot is slight and simplified to the point of near abstraction, the film manages to keep us motivated through the continual combination of Ishii's imaginative direction and the fine performances of lead actors Daisuke Ryu who portrays the warrior monk Benkei, and the always surprising Tadanobu Asano as the mysterious and deadly Shanao.As an actor, Ryu is probably most familiar from Akira Kurosawa's historical masterpieces Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985), as well as Takashi Miike's more recent remake of Graveyard of Honour (2002), while Asano has worked with a number of highly esteemed Japanese filmmakers, including Shinya Tsukamoto on Gemini (1999) and Vital (2004), Nagisa Oshima on Taboo (1998), Takeshi Kitano on Zatoichi (2003), the aforementioned Miike on Ichi the Killer (2001) and Sogo Ishii again on subsequent films Electric Dragon 80, 000 V (2001) and Dead End Run (2004).
Though essentially playing antagonists, the two actors complement each other exceedingly well, creating bold characters that manage to instil a sense of purpose and authority from a film that tends to rely heavily on action and excess.
In terms of martial arts, swordplay and a greatly choreographed sense of movement, the film has certain similarities to director Zhang Yimou's trilogy of historical set martial arts films, Hero (2002), The House of Flying Daggers (2004) and The Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), with Gojoe's reliance on historical content, culture and subtle shades of politics probably stressing a similarity with Hero in particular.Certainly, I wouldn't go as far as to call Gojoe a masterpiece.
It has its flaws, most of which are in the plotting, the heavy reliance on historical context, the awareness of the Japanese folklore that inspired it, and the over abundance of lengthy fight sequences, but still; this something that is definitely worth checking out.
Ishii's direction is filled with an eerie sense of atmosphere, energy and imagination, masking the limitation of the budget until a few sadly fake looking FX shots towards the end, and offering us some of the most vibrant and violent scenes of action and combat you're ever likely to see..
Many people seeing it for the first time and knowing little about many of the themes in the movie probably won't understand why I find it so enthralling so I will try to explain...The movie is very rich in historical detail and cultural insights, and while it has a few minor anachronisms, they are completely forgivable.
The story is a retelling of the famous duel between the Monk Benkei and the young Prince Yoshitsune on Gojo bridge.
This movie is a revision of that story however and involves war, dark prophecy, and political maneuvering.One of the main themes in the movie is "Mappo", which is the prophecy by the Buddha that after 1000 years his teachings would fail and the world would fall into chaos.
It is a time of demons.Next you have the way in which the movie resolves the issue of Yoshitsune's sword training by the Tenku (Raven Goblins) of Karuma.
These are all depicted quite accurately, and just to add a little extra, the movie manages to convey the power of meditation and Ki energy in a way that makes it integral to the story, i.e. it uses magic realism to add an extra dimension to the film but does it in such a way as to make it tactical and menacing.All-in-all it is filled with fascinating tidbits and rings surprisingly true-to-life for the period.
Benkei is a great brooding anti-hero, Shanao (Yoshitsune)is depicted as a young man testing his limits and growing increasingly drunk on his own power, and Tetsukichi the scavenging sword-smith makes for and interesting depiction of the "common man" and his less than flattering opinion of the killers who fancy themselves his social betters.As to the plot, to see why it is so good, I really suggest you dig up an old book on Japanese history and see how this retelling turns an almost lighthearted Robin Hood vs Little John story into a gory tale of intrigue, violence and infernal karma..
Not one the length of Gojoe though, even though it had some of the most remarkable cinematography I've seen since the Korean period piece MUSA.
Vague ones, but definitely thoughts :pOne department in which the film could have been better is the action.
It does create some very intense and impressive visuals, but it would have been nice to see some more actual moves, something to make it more believable that the villains could just wade through entire armies laying waste to everyone.Still, the film is definitely one of the most interesting and most beautiful films I've seen for quite some time.
Successful, and not, in varying degrees.Buddhist monk has a vision that he is to slay a legendary (and very active) demon at the Gojoe bridge in order to attain enlightenment.
While not at the forefront, Buddhist thought is at the heart of this movie, much like Kurosawa's "Ran".
Stylish visual direction and excellent photography keep the movie mostly interesting throughout the two hour and eighteen minute length.
And the fight scenes are mostly filmed in blurry close-ups.
This works for most of the film but the finale feels like a cheat.
Another recent film like this is Tsui Hark's "Seven Swords", great film but the promised fight scenes are disappointing.
Asano really doesn't move like a sword wielding demon, his acting is great but he would be an extra in a traditional chambara fight scene.Good movie, you'll probably find it interesting just don't expect traditional sword fights..
This story is set in 12th century Japan and shows the fight of a non-violent monk against a demon protector of the Gojoe bridge.
The pace is slow, which is successful at times, but feel overly drawn out for the majority of the picture.The fighting scenes are not very well choreographed and are truly long and boring with the exception of the finale one.
I think this was a mistake.As much as the story fails to convey anything substantial, the cinematographic work of Makoto Watanabe is some of the best footage I have seen in a while, who exploits some interesting visual technics and has an amazing grasp of the power of colors.
If you like artistic cinematography, I suggest you endure the tedious story (put mute if you want) and enjoy some excellent footage..
The movie may seem a bit similar to other anime-inspired Samurai film at first, but it does eventually delve into more mature/adult territory soon after.Not to be missed.
GOJOE is one of the better samurai movies to come around post-Kurosawa.8 out of 10(go to www.nixflix.com for a more detailed review of the movie and reviews of other foreign films).
i love Japanese movies, and i think another film by the same director, electric dragon 80,000 v, is a masterpiece.
i really wanted to like this movie - asano is a terrific actor and the storyline was immensely appealing.
I personally thought the movie was pretty good, very good acting by Tadanobu Asano of Ichi the Killer fame.
I really can't say much about the story, but there were parts that confused me a little too much, and overall I thought the movie was just too lengthy.
Other than that however, the movie contained superb acting great fighting and a lot of the locations were beautifully shot, great effects, and a lot of sword play.
Well I really can't say anymore about the movie, but if you're only outlook on Asian cinema is Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or House of Flying Daggers, I would suggest you trying to rent it, but if you're a die-hard Asian cinema fan I would say this has to be in your collection very good Japanese film..
On paper, GOJOE sounds great: a 12th century storyline which sees a demonic force haunting Gojoe Bridge in Japan, slaughtering clan members like there's no tomorrow.
With only a righteous Buddhist monk able to save the day, the scene looks to be set for an explosive showdown, but sadly the reality is anything but.This has to be one of the most boring films I've ever sat through.
The entire movie consists of a waiting game until the over-too-soon climax, and even the climactic battle is a example of disappointing, CGI-effects filled nonsense.
The historically-significant background to the movie promises much, but is glossed over in expository scenes that add little to the movie as a whole.The most impressive thing about this movie is the level of quality that's gone into the construction of the various sets and costumes; they don't disappoint, but the rest of the movie (and especially the script) does.
There's no faulting the acting, but with low budget films like this, a little verve, a little vitality, goes a hell of a long way – take a look at the yakuza vs zombie action flick VERSUS for a good example of this.
Sogo Ishii can be a skilled filmmaker under the right conditions, but Gojoe tells the story of a warrior monk and his only rival, a scion of the Genji clan.
The film-making has the main hallmarks of a low-budget production, including blurry fight scenes and clumsy montages (the kind you might find in an under-produced dorama).
The monk Benkei informs his spiritual teacher that his destiny lies in defeating the mysterious spirit that guards Gojoe bridge at night, but he doesn't realize that this decision will bring him squarely into conflict with nearly every element of society at that time - but which could earn him enlightenment.
Well, if you are one of those Katana's film-nuts (just like me) you sure will appreciate this metaphysical Katana swinging blood spitting samurai action flick.Starring Tadanobu Asano (Vital, Barren Illusion) & Ryu Daisuke (Kagemusha).
The body-count is countless.Demons, magic swords, Shinto priests versus Buddhist monks and the beautiful visions provided by maestro Sogo Ishii will do the rest.A good Japanese flick for a rainy summer night..
Gojoe is part of a new wave of Japanese cinema, taking very creative directors, editors and photographers and working on historic themes, what the Japanese call "period pieces".
The new wave of Japanese samurai films allows a peek at traditional beliefs in shamanism, demons and occult powers that were certainly a part of their ancient culture, but not really explored in Kurosawa's samurai epics, or the Zaitochi series.
Other recent Japanese period pieces I would highly recommend include Yomada's Twilight Samurai (2002) and Shintaro Katsu's Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman (2003)..
Beautiful action and interesting story...western audience may miss....
The visual effects complement the supernatural themes of the movie and do not detract from the plot furthermore I loved how this move was unlike Crouching Tiger because this time the sword action had no strings attached and most of the time you can see the action up close.I think western audiences will be very confused with 2 scenes one of which involves a monk trying to burn himself alive and the other concerning the villagers chanting that it is the end of the world.
The mentioned scenes are derived from certain interpretations of Mahayana Buddhist text (Mahayana Buddhism can be found in China, Korea and Japan) and the other scene deals with a quirk in the Japanese calendar...people back then really thought that the world would come to an end...
Gojoe has the action, story and visuals to mesmerize any viewer.
Sogo Ishii has taken the old myth of Musashibo Benkei and stood it on its head to produce a dark, gory, spellbinding and terrific-looking movie.
I basically picked up this movie because I had seen Kitano Takashi's brilliant remake of Zatoichi and was in the mood for another updated samurai tale which also starred Asano Tadanobu.
Zatoichi added humor and depth to its characters and subverted traditional samurai movie clichés.
Gojoe goes off the deep end in the other direction.First off, I hate movies that have other characters inform the audience what the main character is like instead of having the character develop over the course of the movie.
Asano's character is undeveloped and even he looks like he is bored and doesn't know what he is doing there.
I know that he usually looks distant and cool and that is part of Asano's appeal, but this movie doesn't serve him.A lot of the camera movement is nauseating.
There is a scene that goes on forever in which the camera spins around the main characters until my wife and I felt like vomiting.
Its too bad that really good samurai movies aren't being made in Japan nowadays with this type of budget.
A movie made for foreign film audiences--who always find something good to say about a movie..
It is as if the director was so in love with his work that instead of cutting the movie down to a pace that kept your attention, he added all of the footage he had shot together.
There are maybe two cool scenes in the entire movie.
It may be because unlike in the earlier sword-handling scenes, Shanao isn't masked--but just because the director couldn't find a stuntman who somewhat resembled Asano Tadanobu doesn't give him the right to go ahead and make up 80% of the sword fight with extreme close-ups of sword clashes!
The movie versions of GTO and Salary Man Kintaro are two other recent examples *END SPOILER* I don't understand.
Maybe the worst was lost in the translation.The ending of the movie--on which marketing played a lot, is a different interpretation of the legendary encounter between Shanao and Benkei.
But that legend is not the most popular in Japanese folklore, and it is so detached from contemporary themes, that after 138 minutes of over played visual techniques, who cares how the director wants to re-interpret the story!?
The final giant battle, like the rest of the fight scenes, was also a let down.
However it gets lost among some truly awful and amateurish scenes - the big spinny one for example.After Yume no ginga, and some of his excellent shorter works, I expected far more out of Ishii.
This ankle of the film is effectively portrayed through the protagonist (a great acting job done by Daisuke Ryu), a killer-turned-to-boddhist-monk Benkei.
Benkei has sworn never to kill again, but he still takes up the sword to fight what he thinks is a demon invasion...Gojoe is a film difficult to rate.
If only the director Sogo Ishii would have been wise enough not to overuse his bag of tricks.Other problem with Gojoe is the amount of violence.
For a film with such an anti-violent message Gojoe wastes way too much energy and screen time to depict the endless battle scenes.
Still, it seems that Ishii is not sure whether he's making a traditional action film or a deeply moral allegory.
The audience can't be sure of this, either, until the very end of the film.
The powerful (albeit cynical) ending is what saves Gojoe; it clearly emphasizes that this film is something more than a mere gore-fest..
I thought the production values was great like the costumes and settings with the bridge.
It was interesting to see how the concept of spirit and demons were handled.I do agree with some of the other comments about the fight scenes.
It would be interesting to know what some Japanese viewers thought of the film.
It is a film I would like to see again.Some scenes like the ones where Benkai and the Prince were fighting on a "psychic" level were well done.I did come out of the cinema thinking what has just happened here. |
tt0172179 | Black Dahlia | On January 15, 1947, LAPD Detectives Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert and Lee Blanchard investigate the murder and dismemberment of Elizabeth Short, soon dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press. Bucky learns that Elizabeth was an aspiring actress who appeared in a pornographic film. Through his investigation, Bucky learns that Elizabeth liked to hang out with lesbians. He goes to a lesbian nightclub and meets Madeleine Linscott, who looks very much like Elizabeth. Madeleine, who comes from a prominent family, tells Bucky that she was 'very close' with Elizabeth but asks him to keep her name out of the papers. In exchange for his silence, she promises him sexual favors. Continuing his relationship with Madeleine, Bucky meets her wealthy parents, Emmett and Ramona.
Bucky's partner, Lee, also becomes obsessed with Elizabeth's murder. Lee's obsession leads him to become erratic and abusive towards his long-time girlfriend Kay Lake, who is also one of Bucky's close friends. After Lee and Bucky have a nasty argument about a previous case, Bucky goes to Lee and Kay's to apologize, only to learn from Kay that Lee was responding to a tip about a recently released convict, Bobby DeWitt. Bucky goes to the location and gets into an altercation with DeWitt in the atrium of the building. DeWitt is gunned down by Lee, standing on the stairs across the atrium. Bucky sees a man sneak up behind Lee, and wrap a rope around Lee's neck. Lee fights back while Bucky, paralyzed with shock, watches from across the atrium as a second shadowy figure steps out and slits Lee's throat. Lee and the man holding the rope fall over the railing to their deaths several floors below. It is then that Bucky is helped by Millard and Morrie Friedman, a friend of Lee's whom Bucky saw with Lee at the New Year's party in 1946.
Dealing with the grief of losing Lee propels Bucky and Kay into a sexual encounter. The next morning, Bucky finds money from a bank robbery hidden in Lee and Kay's bathroom. Kay reveals that she had been DeWitt's girlfriend, that DeWitt had mistreated her, and that DeWitt had done the bank robbery; stealing a large sum of money from one of "Bugsy" Siegel's nightclubs. Lee had rescued Kay and stolen DeWitt's bank robbery money. Lee needed to kill DeWitt now that he was out of prison; leading to the encounter that resulted in Lee's death. Bucky leaves, furious with Lee and Kay for their actions and lies. He returns to Madeleine's family mansion and continues his intense relationship with her. Kay is furious when she discovers the relationship, especially with the fact that Madeleine bears a striking resemblance to the same girl Lee obsessed over before he was killed, and leaves the scene.
Watching an old movie one night, Bucky notices that a bedroom scene matches the set in Elizabeth's pornographic film. The credits at the end of the film includes the statement "Special Thanks to Emmett Linscott", Madeleine's father. Bucky's search for answers leads him to an incomplete housing project that Madeleine's father had started just below the Hollywoodland sign. In one of the empty houses, Bucky recognizes the set that was used to film Elizabeth's pornographic movie. In a barn on the property, Bucky finds where Elizabeth was killed and her body butchered, as well as a drawing of a man with a Glasgow smile. The drawing resembles a painting in Madeleine's family home and matches the disfiguring smile carved into Elizabeth's face during her murder.
Bucky confronts Madeleine and her father in their home, accusing them of murdering Elizabeth. Madeleine's mother Ramona reveals that she was the one to kill Elizabeth, who looked so much like Madeleine. She confesses first that Madeleine was not fathered by Emmett but rather by his best friend, George. She further reveals that George had been on set when Elizabeth's pornographic film was made, becoming infatuated with her. Finally, she felt that Elizabeth looked too much like Madeleine, was bothered that George was going to have sex with someone who looked like his own daughter, and decided to kill Elizabeth first. Upon finishing her confession, Ramona kills herself.
A few days later, remembering something Lee had said during the investigation, Bucky visits Madeleine's sister Martha with some questions. He learns that Lee knew about the lesbian relationship between Madeleine and Elizabeth and was blackmailing Madeleine's father to keep it secret. Bucky finds Madeleine at a seedy motel, and she admits to being the one who slit Lee's throat. Although she insists that Bucky wants to have sex with her rather than kill her, he tells her she is wrong and shoots her dead. Bucky goes to Kay's house. Kay tells him to come in and closes the door. | murder | train | wikipedia | The Greatest Game Ever.
Hopefully some lucky person who hasn't experienced this game yet will read my comments and go out and purchase it.
I actually saw it the other day inside a big bin of ugly and timeworn clearance software that nobody really wants.
I tell you, it hurt me to see a game of this nature dumped into some crate of obsolete things.
It is old but I probably play through the game at least once every month- it's that fascinating and good.
I guess the experience of playing Black Dahlia is like being totally immersed inside a mystery movie.
I have great nostalgia for the 1940s era and the game is set entirely within this time and all the characters are dressed sharply and speak cleverly in the quick and slightly queer way of the period.
The lead is played by a very charming man, Darren Eliker, and you take charge of him in a way and you really start to feel like your traveling all over the place with this guy, or as this guy I should say, and it's excellent fun.
I implore you to try out this game.
I only wish they would make more like it, FMV style.
There are hardly any decent adventure games being made with animation let alone with actors.
I was told that a game like Black Dahlia simply costs too much to make, basically the same as shooting a film.
Yet, it would be obvious to anyone who plays the game the work and quality that's gone into it on every level.
I think the story's really great too and that plays a big part in its appeal.
In fact, I would love to see this game turned into a feature film- like it almost is already..
Great mystery cinematic PC game..
This is one of the greatest games so few people have played.
It's a mystery game that involves Nazi plots, a mysterious gem, and the Torso killings of 1940s Cleveland.
It got great reviews and has very good graphics quality.
Eight CDs long!
Worth it; even if you cheat you still feel like you acomplished a lot by beating it..
It was very pretty.
And then it sucked.
No, seriously.
We are Jim Pearson, vastly amusing and not bad to look at, but does seem to think he's Indiana Jones.
They told us our mission was to discover the vast subterfuge of Nazi-ism in Cleveland, but in reality, we get to play with psychics, runes, crotchety insane ex-detectives (played by Dennis Hopper in all his crotchetyness), wannabe actresses, and a slimeball named Dick.
The point is actually to find the Black Dahlia, a mystical stone which contains all sorts of swirling evilness.
This should be simple.
The puzzles are extremely finicky.
Casual gamers should get the walkthrough, lest they find themselves sitting there asking, "How the heck am I supposed to know that?!?" 2.
The graphics are fantastic.
They do occasionally have that live-action blue screen artificial feel.
3. The story was "inspired by actual events".
The actuality only went so far as the fact that there really was a Torso Killer, and the Black Dahlia did exist...only it was a SHE and not a STONE.
4. The ending(s).
AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!
It felt like so much effort and oh so very little payoff.
We want to rewrite it.
Better things can happen.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't play it, though.
Just be prepared.This would make a fabulous pulp novel.
More so than an adventure game..
a great game.
This game is a blast!
It's very long, but very cool, about 1/2 of it is short film segments, which makes the story way more interesting.
There are tons of puzzles, but if you don't want to solve them, just find a cheat sheet, the games is still awesome without solving everything yourself.
The lead (Jim) is very good, and cute.
;) I recommend this game to anyone who likes higher-minded fare than shootem-ups..
I loved it..
The first game I ever played, I am in my 50's.
I had just gotten a computer and had never played any video games so it was my first experience.
I thought the whole thing was great.
Everything was new to me, I had nothing in my own experiences to compare it with.
I was really into it, then my computer locked up and I would have to start all over again until I got the knack of saving where I was at.
The Easter Eggs were fun.
When I could no longer move forward I did find a cheater.
That made it even more fun.
This kind of story is something a person my age can really get into, I had not found any up until I got Black Dahlia that even interested me at all.
Are there more games like this, or are there any in the works?
I would like to try them..
storyline better than "Seven".
I have played this game several times and it never gets boring.
The plot is wonderful.
If you like fmv games, then this one you will love.
The acting is good, the graphics are beautiful and there are some special effects which are simply superb.
Dennis Hopper and Teri Garr just appear briefly in the game.
If you bought this game just because you are a Dennis Hopper fan, you don't have to be disappointed, because this is one storyline which is even better than "Seven".
To give a little indication of what to expect.
The producers of "Ripper" have outdone themselves.
They have created a better game with better actors.
Buy this game.
If you are a movie buff like me, then this is one interactive movie you have to own..
Great, but difficult, game with a good storyline.
This game is more a movie with puzzles in between than an adventure.The story is superb, it spans almost 10 years and there are locations in the USA and Germany.
The plot revolves around a black gem, the Black Dahlia, that has mystical powers, and an ancient brotherhood of knights.
Throw in some Nazis and you have a true Indiana Jones type of story.
The actors are ok.
Darren Eliker delivers a good performance as the main character Jim Pearson, and there are cameos by Dennis Hopper and Teri Garr.
The acting is sometimes a bit cheesy, but that gives the movie a real B-movie feel.The puzzles are moderately difficult and occasionally nearly impossible, so I would recommend playing the game with a walkthrough (but don't use it too quickly!).The game is fairly long (8 CD-ROMS!), so it will keep you occupied for quite a while.
Definitely recommended, especially for the good story and atmosphere!.
A unique take on the Black Dahlia case!.
This game is a unique take on the Black Dahlia case.
For those unaware, the nickname "Black Dahlia" was given to Elizabeth Short, a young woman murdered in 1947.
To date, the case remains an unsolved mystery.More interestingly, however, is the fact that the first half of the game features an alternative take on the notorious Torso murders from Cleveland, Ohio in the 1930s.The player takes on the role of Jim Pearson, an agent working for the COI, a Federal government agency created just before America entered World War II.
The remit of the COI (in the game at least) is to investigate Americans who the Federal government suspects may be spies working for the Nazis.As anyone will expect, a simple plot soon develops rapidly and the player becomes an investigator rather than a mere "Fed" agent.
The investigations take the player right into the heart of World War II and witness some alternative (albeit fictional) insights into the events and motivations behind this disturbing chapter in world history.Gameplay consists mainly of solving puzzles and interacting with other characters in the game.
Whilst it is evident that puzzles have been designed carefully to fit neatly and logically into the storyline there are some that seemingly defy logic.
It is recommended that those playing the game for the first time have a walkthrough, strategy guide or at least a hint sheet handy just in case they reach a point where further progression seems too difficult.
Those familiar with the developer's previous venture, RIPPER, will understand what to expect as far as the gameplay goes.Most of the game is rendered in Full Motion Video (FMV), with some computer rendered images for background.
Video cut scenes are played when the player interacts with another character.
Again, those familiar with the developer's previous venture, RIPPER, will know what to expect.Just as RIPPER did an excellent job of creating a view of the future (2040s), so too BLACK DAHLIA does an equally excellent job in re-creating the 1940s setting.
The gameplay begins in 1941 and runs through 1947.First-rate talent in the form of Dennis Hopper and Teri Garr make the gameplay experience even more enjoyable, despite their characters being not quite as memorable as supporting characters in RIPPER.
But it is the superb leading performance by Darren Eliker as the main character, Jim Pearson, that really carries BLACK DAHLIA.
Unlike Jake Quinlan in RIPPER, Jim Pearson has a much more overt sense of humour and delivers many great lines with sarcastic wit.
As such, his character is easier to connect with.Special mention should be given to David Whalen, who gives a superb performance as Dick Winslow, a very smarmy FBI agent.
He steals every scene he's in and makes those scenes compelling viewing (even for those who do not like the game as a whole).The game was originally released on 8 CDs and is now long out of print.
Fortunately, it can easily be purchased from online auctions and trading websites without paying too much.
Hopefully, some company will take advantage of the DVD medium to re-release this game on a single disc.The game maintains a very good balance of mystery, suspense, tension, action, drama, intrigue and comedy to ensure it obtains a status as a classic of video gaming.I highly recommend this game to anyone interested in murder mysteries, the developer's previous games, the Indiana Jones franchise or FMV gaming..
For the love of god DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME.
Being a video game enthusiast i've often pondered what were the best and worst endings to a video game I've ever seen.
Deciding on the best would take some time, but as far as the worst goes i don't have to rack my brain for very long before I remember that I once played thru a little known PC game called Black Dahlia.
I use the word 'played' loosely because about after the 3rd puzzle the game becomes so damn difficult I had to seek internet walkthroughs from that point on to the horrific end of the game.
On a difficulty scale i would rate this game a Migraine.
Seriously I doubt anyone including the people that have posted their thoughts here before me have went through this game without seeking some type of help online.
Having Hopper and Garr make cameos was just a marketing ploy they lend little if anything to the game.
For it's time i guess the graphics were pretty good and the setting is just perfect for a great FMV video game but these people really blew it.
In fact I think the company must have gone belly up in the final days of production and the office janitor went ahead and decided how the game would end.
I used to love FMV games and i still do but in the year 2005 they have pretty much been phased out.
I'm still always on the look out for FMV games i may have missed over the years and on the off chance you're on the lookout too stay the hell away from this one! |
tt0080297 | Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | It is 1973, at the height of the Cold War. George Smiley, former deputy chief of the Circus, has been living in unhappy retirement for a year after an operation in Czechoslovakia, code-named Testify, ended in disaster with the capture of agent Jim Prideaux and resulted in the dismissals of Smiley and his superior, Control. Smiley is unexpectedly approached by Peter Guillam, a former colleague, and Under-Secretary Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for overseeing the Intelligence Services, to hear Ricki Tarr, a British agent now in hiding, tell of the existence of a Soviet mole, code-named Gerald and handled by Moscow Centre's Colonel Polyakov. When Tarr cabled the information to London, his contact was immediately and forcibly returned to Moscow and Tarr went on the run to escape Soviet agents.
Smiley accepts Lacon's request to investigate in total secrecy, since all senior Circus staff are suspects. He soon focuses on the details of British intelligence's best Soviet source, code-named Merlin, which Control had deemed suspicious from the start. Merlin had been developed and vigorously sponsored by four ambitious senior Circus men, led by Percy Alleline, who wanted to oust Control and had rallied Circus overseers in Whitehall to their cause at the time of Testify. Gerald must be one of these four: Alleline himself, a vain and politically skilled Scot who took over as Chief from Control; Roy Bland, a gifted if boorish intellectual of humble origins; Toby Esterhase, a self-serving Hungarian refugee hungry for promotion; or Bill Haydon, an aristocratic polymath and a Circus legend who once had an affair with Smiley's now-separated wife Ann.
Working through Circus documents surreptitiously provided by Lacon and Guillam, Smiley discovers that Merlin is not one source but several and that the operation has an ultra-secret London end: a safe house where Alleline and his inner circle personally collect information from a Merlin emissary posted in London under diplomatic cover. Eventually, Smiley realizes the truth: the Merlin emissary is none other than Polyakov himself and that the actual flow of information goes the other way, with Gerald passing actual British secrets while receiving fake and worthless Soviet material.
Smiley suspects a link between Merlin and the botched Operation Testify, whose details Control had hidden from him at the time. He tracks down Prideaux and all other Circus participants and confirms the connection. Control had independently concluded the existence of a mole and mounted Testify to learn his identity from an aspiring defector in Czech intelligence privy to the information. Polyakov and Karla, Moscow Centre's spymaster and Smiley's nemesis, were both present at Prideaux's interrogation which focused exclusively on the extent and status of Control's investigations. The Czech defector was a plant, engineered by Karla to provoke Control's demise through Testify's failure and so protect the mole.
Smiley traps Esterhase, whose deep involvement in Merlin has made him vulnerable, forcing him into revealing the location of the safe house. Tarr is sent to Paris where he sends a coded message to Alleline about "information crucial to the well-being of the Service". This triggers a "crash" (i.e., "emergency") meeting between Gerald and Polyakov at the safe house where Smiley and Guillam are lying in wait. Haydon is revealed to be the mole.
Haydon's interrogation reveals that he was recruited several decades ago by Karla and became a full-fledged Soviet spy partly for political reasons, partly in frustration at Britain's rapidly declining influence on the world stage. He is expected to be exchanged with the Soviet Union for several of the agents he betrayed but is killed shortly before he is due to leave England. Although the identity of his killer is not explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied to be Prideaux. Smiley is appointed temporary head of the Circus to deal with the fallout. Smiley visits Ann in an attempt to salvage their relationship.
=== Title ===
Control, chief of the Circus, suspects one of the five senior intelligence officers at the Circus to be a long-standing Soviet mole and assigns code names with the intention that should his agent Jim Prideaux uncover information about the identity of the mole, Prideaux can relay it back to the Circus using a simple, easy-to-recall codename. The names are derived from the English children's rhyme "Tinker, Tailor":
Alleline was "Tinker", Haydon was "Tailor", Bland was "Soldier", Toby Esterhase was "Poor Man", and George Smiley was "Beggarman" ("sailor" was not used due to its similar sound to "tailor".) | murder | train | wikipedia | In six hours of television they lay out piece by piece the background of each of the characters in a slow and gentle manner enabling the viewer to capture a sense of both the person and the time in which they are placed.Irvin permits the story to move in a 'typical English manner', with George Smiley, the principal character almost rolling along from one event to another.
The goodies are all flawed people while the badies, many of who are within the British Secret Intelligence Service, are bad in the way that only the English can truly be to each other.If you enjoy Le Carre and are prepared to put in 6 hours to view the entire series you you will be richly rewarded..
Definitely in the BBC pantheon (alongside I Claudius and Pride and Prejudice), partly for its formidable cast, but mainly for John Irvin's taut directorial grip - a model of visual economy and uncompromising narrative drive.A double-agent or 'mole' is suspected at the top levels of the British secret service and retired spymaster Alec Guiness must narrow down the suspects amongst his former colleagues.
Arthur Hopcraft's adaptation, while capturing the bureaucratic intrigue and perfidy of John Le Carre's novel, will demand viewers' utmost attention if they want to stay with the unfolding plot.Irvin shoots Tinker, Tailor as if for widescreen - edge of the screen compositions, careful background detail - and demonstrates how a determined director can overcome the limitations of television(usually seen as a writer or producer's medium).
(For another example of very superior television direction, check out James Goldstone's handling of two first-season Star Trek episodes - 'Where No Man Has Gone Before' and 'What Are Little Made Of').Author Le Carre may have topped Tinker,Tailor with a dazzling sequel (The Honourable Schoolboy, published 1977), but this is still far and away the best espionage suspenser ever televised.
You expect to see 1980 Czechoslovakia as a run-down, provincial dump; but this film's England reminded me of Svankmajer's 'Alice', as it details a society, a system, an ethic, a code grinding towards inertia, a world becoming increasingly closed in that it can only be jabbed into life by shocks of betrayal.This England is a pure mirror image of our stereotypes of the East - a system run by chilling, amoral men with perfect manners (the most frightening thing about the narrative is that any one of the suspects could have done it, each one has so lost any kind of basic humanity, never mind idealism, that it is almost irrelevant who the traitor is) gathering together in anonymous meeting rooms, or an endless rondelay of joyless dinners; a world of cramped, impersonal decor, generally sucked in by shadows, so that we can't even be sure it's men we see, or the flickering grin of the Cheshire Cat; a world of men, where one of the three female characters is an absent joke until the last five minutes, another is tortured and murdered by her superiors, and the third is sacked for competence, reduced to scraping money from grinds, a paralysed, blubbing outcast; a drab world where all colour and life has been seeped out, or goes by unnoticed, where jokes are bitter and grim, where the (very Soviet) elevator disrepair signals a wider, fundamental malaise.If it's fun you want, get 'You Only Live Twice' - the action here is generated from its milieu - dank, meticulous, pedantic, slow, inexorable, unsensational.
This is where a 6 hour TV adaptation has the edge on a feature film - cramming a le Carre plot into the latter can make it seem rushed and exciting; this film brings out all its civil-service ingloriousness superbly (although the figure of Karla is a little too SMERSHy for my tastes).Bill Hayden says you can tell the soul of a nation from its intelligence service, and this film, despite the go-getting yuppie 80s or the success of heritage TV ('Jewel in the Crown', 'Brideshead Revisited') is perhaps the closest representation of a kind of soul, public school, Oxbridge, Whitehall, male.
The 'good' guys are no better than the bad - Peter Guillam, though dogged and loyal, is little more than a thug; Ricky Tarr is new yuppie incarnate in all his cocky repulsiveness.Smiley, marvellously essayed by Alec Guinness - more obviously sharper than in the book, Hercules cleaning out the Aegean stables - loses even the barest traces of humanity, with vast reserves of calculated sadism and bureaucratic immorality, his thick glasses seeing all the detail and none of the big picture.
Smiley needs the rules of the game more than anyone; without them he is left adrift in life, and the stupendous final shot shows how deeply that defeats him.Unusually for TV, this is a film of rare visual imagination, not in the mistakenly flashy, spuriously 'cinematic' sense beloved of ambitious tyros, but in its exploration of the medium's claustrophobia, as it traps its protagonists, in particular the way the camera's point of view chillingly suggests somebody else looking on, spying on the spies, making everything we see provisional, especially the flashbacks, which elide as much as they reveal..
The BBC is to be commended for making 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' (as well as 'Smiley's People') into fine adaptations for television.
Being very familiar with all three of the 'Karla' novels I have a few, very minor, quibbles as to casting and editing, but nothing that gets in the way of great enjoyment of the finished product.Guinness was born to play Smiley, as others have already noted.
. .it is a story of belief and manipulation, it is NOT James Bond.This is "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" many, many years later, after a bitterness and loss have become a way of life.This is one of the best films you will ever see..
Although it helps to love John le Carre's novels, particularly those set during the Cold War, this series and its sequel, "Smiley's People," should be seen for their quality, which may be unsurpassed by anything on television before or since.
"Tinker, Tailor..." also offers the first glimpse of Patrick Stewart as "Karla," Smiley's chief antagonist, a leading figure in "Smiley's People." Americans used to see BBC films as part of the "Masterpiece Theatre" series on PBS, sometimes on "Mystery," another PBS staple.
While many of John le Carre's novels have been made into feature films (some of them quite good), they lend themselves better to the series mode, which allows for more detailed exposition and fuller development of character.
If you see the TV series before reading the book, then it's impossible to think of the Smiley character in any other way than as played by Guinness.This is how I imagine the espionage world to be - painstaking research, surveillance and investigation, interspersed with occasional moments of high excitement.
This is the best of BBC drama and I cannot recommend it too highly.The sequel, "Smiley's People", follows on like an old friend you lost touch with for a few years.
Although more schematic than its marvelous sequel, Smiley's People, and carrying less emotional weight, the BBC adaptation of John LeCarre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which aired in the colonies on PBS, is still superb.
Barring that, even post-Cold War mystery fans will relate well to Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy.As in Smiley's People, George Smiley, now and forever in the minds of most John Le Carre aficionados Sir Alec Guiness, is no longer with British Intelligence, termed by Le Carre `The Circus', although the plot periodically flashes back to times when he was still active.
But when a resourceful, low-level field agent (Hywel Bennet), thought to have defected, turns up in Britain with solid evidence pointing to the existence of the mole, thereby validating Control's long-term suspicions, Smiley, the sole remanent of the old order who can be trusted, is called in to `spy on the spies'.Here, the incomparable, dialog-driven, Le Carre plot engine begins its juggernaut roll as Smiley goes to work.
But in the mid-1970s, he wrote the best novels of his career, and 'Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy' was perhaps the best of them all: at heart, a character study of his long-time enigmatic protagonist George Smiley, wrapped in a detective story itself wrapped in an espionage thriller.
It is through this film that we realise that the creation of George Smiley is a work of pure genius, and Guinness so perfectly portrays this, simply dominating every scene.The plot seems quite simple at first, but as I have watched and re-watched the work (and read the novel) I realise that it is much more complex than it seems.In conclusion, a first class cast giving superb performances throughout.
This film, based on the novel by John LeCarre (like "Smiley's People", "Spy Who Came In From The Cold", and "Russia House") explains to me more than anything from other writers about what happened during the "Cold War".
Having read most of John Le Carre's books I found this portrayal of his most famous and unique character George Smiley absolutely fantastic and not to be missed.
I especially like the interrogation/debriefing scenes, and in particular one with a captured Russian spy played by Patrick Stewart, in which Stewart never opens his mouth.The sequel, "Smiley's People,' is also good but darker..
The acting is just one of the many strong/outstanding assets of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. All fill their roles comfortably, with Michael Jayston, Ian Richardson and Michael Aldridge particularly impressive, but at the end of the day it is Alec Guinness' show.
Watching "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" again after a number of years reminds me just how well done the film (and the John LeCarre book) was done.
It's the Cold War (over and over again) and British "family" is in its usual turmoil(the "Days of Cambridge" are never far behind, it seems with British espionage history)--a mole is suspected and the out-to-pasture (for past sins and indiscretions) George Smiley (Alec Guinness) is called in to uncover him (or her).Amazingly, the film (the mini-series) seems to capture the pacing,the nuance, the landscape and atmosphere of that time and that place.
Superbly acted by a quite unfeasibly good cast, with a script that actually improves on LeCarre's original novel, each episode is so addictively watch-able that you can't help but view the whole thing in one go.And yes Mr Haydon, that does mean I like it..
The dialogue is undoubtedly witty and delivered with aplomb by the unanimously first-rate cast, with Alec Guinness turning in yet another brilliant performance.But after the fourth episode the pace gets bumpy and the whole scenario appears somewhat trivial were it not for some intelligent or exciting moments here and there.Irvin's direction uses interior spaces to maximum effect, but overall there's a slightly dowdy air to it.Still, this Cold War reptile is definitely preferable to all those contemporary action no-brainers pretending to be spy movies.
Of course this slow pace and lack of traditional action may frustrate some – not helped perhaps by the fact that, although easier to follow than the film, it is still a mystery so there is a fair bit of not totally understanding what is going on, simply because you're not being told everything all at once.The cast are mostly very good but of course the standout is Guinness who tells a long story of hurt with just his plain expression.
I also liked that the camera had the patience and trust in the material to often be quite static while the dialogue did the work.Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is not the easiest story to follow but the miniseries is more engaging and accessible because it gives you the space and time to keep up and for everything to make that bit more sense as it unfolds.
I have never read the novel so I am not in a position to appraise the adaptation from book to screen.This was a prestige BBC adaptation and a lot of money was spent on getting Alec Guinness star as Smiley and some location set pieces.However once you get over such trappings the production values are still very much interior settings.
Based on the novel by John LeCarre, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is one of the great British miniseries, towering among many great British miniseries we in the U.S. have been privileged to see on public television.This one stars the great Alec Guinness as retired M16 operative George Smiley.
While undoubtedly the story is fictionalized and may not particularly reflect the way intelligence agencies actually operate, but unlike most everything else in the genre, it's at least plausible.The series stars Alec Guinness and his work here definitely holds the movie together..
This show is about character development done to its best, and the actors especially the sublime yet superb Alec Guinness and Beryl Reid give a beautiful and profound performance.The story line is well done too, you feel a part of the Cold War era and the spy machinations and the intrigue grip you.
The dialogue you read in the book finds its way almost invariably into the film, so there is a certain feeling of deja-vu.Alec Guinness fits the part of Smiley very well, but he makes hardly any impression on me.
I revisit John Le Carre's books every few years, and just finished the Smiley trilogy...Had seen the movie version of Tinker, Tailer when it came out, and I must say, it left me very confused....Hungary, Smiley swimming, Prideaux in a shopping mall, and on and on....Hadn't seen the TV series version in quite some time, so I decided to watch it again....It felt like returning to the heart of a great spy story....Brilliant....
i would certainly recommend reading the books as they give an insight into the TV series.of course Alec Guiness was superb as George Smiley and the entire series was stuffed full of British actors, including star trek's Patrick Stuart.
Although the series seems slow at times and around 10% of each episode are dedicated to credit titles, the thrill is there, with several distinct performances (particularly Alec Guinness as George Smiley/"Beggarman"), but overall quality and outdated aspect ratio do not enable to enjoy the series "in modern manner", and the 2011 film excelled at the cast and screenplay.
John Le Carré's anti-James Bond character the taciturn yet brilliant George Smiley was presented to readers in several novels, including "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and the Karla trilogy, which consists of Smiley's greatest efforts, in order "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People".
A bright intelligence, great worker for the British intelligence but whose life at home isn't completely sorted out, always having to deal with the infidelities of adored wife Ann. An enigmatic character and a challengeable role for an actor since Smiley is a man who holds back every emotion, and Oldman had to use a lot of nuances to express feelings and thoughts without let them completely visible.
In fact, the great advantage this film has over Alfredson's work is the fact that they covered the book in very faithful ways (obviously BBC had the time for it, 7 hours!), including verbatim from Le Carré's novel, descriptions and sequences, providing minor altering (they don't focus on much Peter Guillam is a ladies man - good point - but they made the special relationship between Prideaux and Haydon in innuendo terms that don't explain much for those who haven't read the book or seen the 2011 film).
By making it as much a character piece as a spy thriller, Hopcroft gives the series a life of its own separate from the original book by Le Carre.
The actual 'action' and/or violence occupies at most a tenth of the 315 minutes running time which is eloquent testimony to 1) the source material, a novel by John Le Carre who, like Raymond Chandler before him, is a 'real' writer whose subject happens to be crime and espionage respectively and 2) the acting, led by Alec Guiness as Smiley, head and shoulders above the supporting cast, none of whom are to be sneezed at and include Michael Jayston, George Sewell, Hywel Bennet, Patrick Stewart and Sian Phillips.
This story falls under the second type, but while not so entertaining is one of the best spy stories ever done.Based on the classic spy novel by John Le Carre, this series tells the story as follows: In the 1970s, a fiasco at the British Secret Service shakes things up, forcing the head of the Service out and all his subordinates, including protagonist George Smiley.
That would be "The Honourable Schoolboy," which is in my very humble opinion one of the best spy novels ever written and is different from most of Le Carre's work in that it has almost more action going on than you can pack into a movie.But I digress: by the end of the mini-series, it was impossible for me to imagine anyone else in the role of George Smiley.
I loved the way Le Carre's book was translated to the small screen, and I felt that Alec Guinness set the bar impossibly high for anyone else who ever undertook the role of George Smiley.If you like the spy thriller genre, "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is well worth watching.
The cast works together as the characters did, and they make the mini-series rise above the genre.It's based on the novel by John le Carre, and we find George Smiley (played by Sir Alec) called back from retirement to ferret out a mole in the British Secret Service.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I knew about the British all star cast film, starring Gary Oldman, but I knew before I was going watch that I had to see the original and renowned TV miniseries, also with some very good names in the cast, based on the novel by John le Carré. |
tt0120199 | Space Truckers | At a corporation's base on the Neptunian moon Triton, mercenaries are setting up a defense perimeter to try to hold off an unstoppable cyborg warrior. The commander Saggs and scientist Nabel, seal themselves inside the control room. The cyborg destroys the soldiers' tank and then attacks a helicopter—which crashes into the control room. The soldiers are killed one by one, until Nabel finally deactivates the cyborg with a remote control. The remaining corporate employees discover that the cyborg was created by Nabel for company owner E.J. Saggs. Saggs takes the remote from Nabel. He reactivates the cyborg and orders it to kill Nabel.
Meanwhile, John Canyon, one of the last independent "space truckers", drops off his cargo of square pigs at a "truck stop" space station, but becomes embroiled in a brawl with the trucking company head, Keller, who is sucked out into space. He and his two passengers—Cindy, a waitress who has promised to marry him in exchange for a ride to Earth to see her mother, and Mike, an up-and-coming trucker working for the company—take on a deal to transport alleged sex dolls to Earth. Chased by police investigating Keller's death, John takes his rig into the "scum zone", a region controlled by pirates. The rig takes damage, leaving them adrift; they are soon captured by the pirate ship Regalia, commanded by the company-hating Captain Macanudo. Cindy agrees to have sex with him if he would take the cargo and let them go.
The captain is revealed to be Nabel, who rebuilt his grievously-injured body and went into piracy as revenge against Saggs for betraying him. The cargo that John's rig is carrying is in fact a full supply of the cyborg warriors Nabel designed and built for Saggs' company. One of the cyborgs comes alive, kills most of the crew, and severely damages the ship. John, Cindy and Mike take their rig and escape as the Regalia explodes. As they make their way back to Earth, John and Mike find a mortally-wounded Macanudo in the hold, who reveals the true nature of the cargo to them. John releases Cindy from any obligation of marrying him, and tells her and Mike to take the escape pod while he releases the cargo in the atmosphere, where it will burn up on re-entry. Cindy and Mike land safely, but the rig is unable to return to space and explodes in the sky; however, John is able to safely escape before the explosion.
John, Cindy and Mike go to the hospital to see Cindy's mother, who became ill twenty years earlier and was frozen until a cure was found; John is smitten with her at first sight. Meanwhile, Saggs—now President of Earth after the government was privatized—visits John, Cindy, and Mike in the hospital, where he offers John a new rig and gives the trio a suitcase full of money to keep them quiet about his cyborg invasion plan. John agrees to the deal, but Mike angrily throws the suitcase out the window. Below, Saggs re-enters his presidential limousine; having planted a bomb in the suitcase, he triggers the detonator just as the suitcase lands on his limo's roof, killing him. With Saggs dead and Earth safe, Mike, Cindy, John, and Cindy's mother blast off in their brand new rig. | cult | train | wikipedia | null |
tt5568438 | Rillington Place | The film begins in 1944 with John Christie murdering his neighbour Muriel Eady: he lures her to his flat in 10 Rillington Place by promising to cure her bronchitis with a "special mixture", then incapacitates her with carbon monoxide gas, strangles her with a piece of rope, and has (implied) sex with her corpse. He buries her in his flat block's communal garden, where a dog uncovers one of his previous victims.
In 1949, Tim and Beryl Evans move into 10 Rillington Place, west London, with their infant daughter Geraldine. Beryl is pregnant again and attempts an abortion by taking some pills. When she informs Tim, they have a violent argument, which Christie breaks up. Soon after, Christie offers to help Beryl terminate the pregnancy. He pretends to read a medical textbook one day in an effort to convince Tim of his expertise. Tim is essentially illiterate and cannot tell that Christie is lying. The Evanses agree to let Christie perform the procedure.
Christie occupies his wife, Ethel, by sending her to his office with some paperwork. He grabs his killing tools, makes a cup of tea, and hurries upstairs to Beryl. He is interrupted by a team of builders who are there to renovate the outbuilding. He lets them in, and when he sees they are well-occupied, he pours a new cup of tea and heads back upstairs. Beryl has a violent reaction to the gas, and Christie punches her in the face to knock her out. He then strangles and sexually assaults her.
When Tim returns, Christie tells him that Beryl died of complications from the procedure. Tim wants to go to the police, but Christie convinces him that he will be seen as an accessory before the fact. Christie suggests that Tim leave town that night, while Christie disposes of Beryl's body. He promises that he will place the baby in the care of a childless couple from East Acton. Tim reluctantly agrees, and leaves the house in the middle of the night. Christie then strangles Geraldine with a necktie.
Tim hides out with his aunt and uncle in Merthyr Tydfil, pretending that he is in town on business. He claims that Beryl and the baby are visiting her family in Brighton. Tim's relatives send a letter to Beryl's father, who telegraphs in response to say that he has not seen Beryl in months. When confronted by his relatives, Tim admits what (he believes) happened, and he visits the local police. He confesses to disposing of Beryl's body in the sewer after the botched abortion. Three London police officers lift the manhole, but do not find Beryl's body. A search of 10 Rillington Place eventually uncovers the bodies of Beryl and the baby in the bathroom, where Christie hid them.
When Tim is brought back to London, he is charged with the murders of his wife and daughter. In shock, and despondent over the news, he confesses to both crimes, though he is guilty of neither. During his trial, Christie is a key witness. Tim's defence shreds Christie's credibility by airing his previous criminal activity. Nevertheless, Tim is found guilty and hanged.
Two years after the trial, Ethel begins to fear her husband, and informs Christie she will move out to stay with relatives. When he begs her not to leave him, Ethel implies that he should be in prison. Christie murders her that night and hides her body under the floorboards. Later, he meets a woman suffering from a migraine in a restaurant. He pretends to be a medical expert and promises her a cure. He is next seen putting fresh wallpaper on a wall in his living room; it is implied that he has hidden the woman's body in the space behind the wall.
In 1953, Christie is living in a hostel. Meanwhile, new tenants are moving into the Christie's flat. They complain about the awful smell, and one of them peels off the wallpaper to find a space behind the wall, where they find three of Christie's victims. Soon after, Christie is noticed by a police officer in Putney and arrested. The film ends with an intertitle explaining that Tim Evans was posthumously pardoned and reinterred in consecrated ground. | murder | train | wikipedia | The suspense, mood, performances are the best thing I've seen for a very long time- including cinema, TV, or DVD.
Samantha Morton & Tim Roth, whom I've long admired, are nothing short of superb in their understanding of the characters, their tenuous daily existence, the era in which they lived and their relationship.
Samantha Morton's portrayal also speaks volumes about a 'woman's place' in society & in a marriage in those times.
Tim Roth had me recognising the complete lack of emotion that Christie masked, READILY, with appropriate & socially accepted comments and lies; and the ability to portray himself as the victim, as employed by true psychopaths.
If only to provide some contrast to the slightly negative reviews, I must say I thought this was a superb production.Roth's whispering was as intentional as was the shifting accent of a character who was wanting to 'fit in' with any environment he found himself in.A thoroughly unnerving performance by Roth, admirably supported by Morton's portrayal of a character seemingly unable to find her voice all contributed to a very unsettling, but rewarding viewing pleasure.It too lead me to Wiki for a round up of the historical facts and travesties of justice..
Another look at the Christie serial killer saga starring Tim Roth and Samantha Morton - what could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot as it turns out mostly connected to the name of Craig Viveiros the director.
The acting throughout was fine but the director decided to make the whole enterprise in the mode of a horror movie complete with dark lighting, dark sinister music and slo-mo sequences with yet more dark sinister soundscapes.
The scenes that worked best had no music at all and were quite sinister enough because of the work and effort the actors had invested in them.
Why Mr Viveiros decided that the audience would find it necessary to add a music track and film techniques to tell us what to think is beyond me?
After the second episode I was compelled to look up Wikipedia and learned more in five minutes than I had in two hours.
I persevered with the third episode partly so as not to waste the previous two hours but also because I was enticed by Tim Roth and Samantha Morton's performances.
But in spite of them the whole experience still left me wishing I'd watched the movie with Richard Attenborough instead.
The slow pace of this is like that of a snail leaving a trail of slime.The lighting is dark.
Squalid but normal given the time and place.Tim Roth is so convincingly creepy and his speech, whispery and spare, so steeped in threat, it's a task just to undertake to watch each next horrible installment.
Horrible as in effective.There is no actual violence and yet it is as if every single second of the entire production is violent.I'd give it a higher rating, in that I think it is so evocative, but the subject matter is too dark and I prefer to save high marks for work that stimulates us to loftier places.Still, simply as art, all the skills are wonderful.
Many are saying this is slow and it is, but its done in a masterful way which builds to the end that we all know.
Excellent series.
Wow Tim Roth and Samantha Morton are just brilliant in this series based on real events, believe me you'll want to watch the whole series in one go, its so well worth it.
Tim Roth is creepy but so damn good at it..
One aspect of making a drama based on actual events is that we mostly know what's going to happen.
This has the disadvantage of removing some of the apprehension needed to make good dramas work but it has the benefit of letting the viewer focus on other things.And in this case, there are plenty of 'other things' to absorb.
The exquisite attention to detail on the sets, the (sometimes odd) writing, the inconsistent accents of some cast members and the masterful performances of Tim Roth and Samantha Morton.For some viewers (like me) it's worth re-familiarizing yourself with a little backstory about these characters and the events that happened, as they give some reason and motivation behind some of the strange decisions that are made.There is probably too little material for a three-hour miniseries to satisfy a young audience and the violence of the events that unfold are implied rather than displayed...
which leaves the drama somewhat lacking in suspense...
especially in a story where such inventive ways were used to dispatch the victims.In the end, this BBC drama is drab, uneventful and too long.
Long, slow, and not worth spending time on..
While the acting of the principal actors is fine, especially Tim Roth.
The way they have set up the narrative is odd and it just plods along.
The story is mildly interesting because it was the mishandling of the case against Timothy Evans and his subsequent execution that eventually led to the abolition of the death penalty in the UK.
The series is very dark and the ending is abrupt.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone despite the fact that it is from the BBC which has produced a lot of fine programming.
Since this story has been told several times before, I am not sure why another telling was necessary..
Being a TV series Rillington Place can (and does) go into so much more detail.
Unlike the film, this is also about the life of his poor wife Ethel and the ill-fated Timothy Evans.
The squalid area of Notting Hill and the dimly lit streets, look like something out of the darkest Victorian times and the conditions are almost inhuman.
The feel and vibe is very creepy and leaves a lot to the imagination, right up the the final third of the last episode (of three).
Depressing but a gripping true story.
Tim Roth is magnificent and Just like the original movie, this will burn deeply, disturbing your mind..
Bone-chilling performance.
Tim Roth plays the notorious serial killer John "Reg" Christie with bone-chilling eeriness, a masterly performance to no small extent aided by the cinematography and lighting, which would have had Hitchcock nodding in approval, and which borders as closely on the exagerrated as it gets without overstepping the line (in my opinion).
The set design provides the appropriately grim backdrop of the poorer areas of 1940s and 1950s London, and the soundtrack is certainly enough to make anybody lie awake wondering what might be lurking under the floorboards of the house you just moved into.
The story is very well told, leaving enough for the viewer's imagination to add to the horror as the ghastly details creep into your mind.
But there is a piece missing at the very end, as if the director suddenly realised that the allotted running time was quickly running out, and had to cut out a large chunk without forethought.
Nevertheless, it's well worth a watch - you'll never look at your balding uncle the same way again..
This was a very stylised dramatisation of the life and heinous crimes of serial-killer John Reginald Christie who besides killing seven women, his wife included and almost certainly a baby girl (to which he never confessed, right to the end), also caused the execution of one of the victim's husband, the hapless Timothy Evans, who was given a Royal Pardon in 1966 some 16 years after his hanging.
Stylised in that the filming itself is low-key and washed-out in appearance, while the direction makes use of slow-motion shots, unusual camera-angles and a strangely disembodied soundtrack of contemporary songs, most notably "Whispering Grass".Then there's Tim Roth's turn as Christie, where he reminds me of none so much as Leonard Rossiter's classic comedy creation of Rigsby, another sleazy landlord-type but with a less murderous bent.
Roth speaks in a hissing whisper, walks with a shambling gait in his miles-too-big overcoat and hides his evil behind a pair of National Health spectacles.
Almost everywhere he goes, creepy background music surrounds him.
I also found it strange that each episode started with a scene after his arrests, such as the discovery of the bodies in his bricked-up kitchen, before abruptly stepping back in time to depict the lead-up to the murders.Interestingly, there are almost no graphic recreations of his killings, rare but welcome in modern TV and cinema, indeed there's no murder shown in episode one at all, plus we only start the story after he's killed his first two victims, before the doomed Evans family arrive as upstairs neighbours.
As I indicated, Roth's mannered acting dominates proceedings, not completely to the production's advantage, but there is good support from Nico Mirallegro as Evans and Samantha Morton as Christie's long-suffering wife.
However, I never really felt at any point that Roth's Christie was truly evil, for example, there are only the vaguest hints of his necrophilia and while I can imagine the difficulty in compressing eight murders into a three hour duration, can't help but feeling the concentration on the Evans murders detracts from the fact that the man was an evil serial killer as well as showing a disrespect for his previous victims.
Arguably, the key murder was the first one, which set him on his grisly path, yet we get no real indication it ever happened and are thus given no real motive as to how this lecherous little man could be driven to his terrible crimes.Naturally, those of us with longer memories will compare this dramatisation with the excellent feature film from the 1970's starring Richard Attenborough, where I sensed the aura of evil much more than Roth emanates here.
Perhaps that was partly due to effective casting against type, but in the end I felt that the depiction of Christie was misguided here and that this, plus the strained direction ultimately detracted from the dramatic impact of the piece as a whole..
I felt this telling of the story was brilliantly acted.
Notting Hill looked grim enough but probably not as grim as it would have been in reality back then.I must have enjoyed it so much that is was not aware of any soundtrack.
To think that there were workmen coming and going at 10 Rillington Place while the murder of Beryl Evans was committed.
To realise that her body was in the middle floor flat for 3 days while Timothy Evans was still living there prior to moving off to Wales.
There were so many bits of luck for Christie to not getting caught.Chilling..
The subject matter and atmosphere, are excellent but the story is plodding and flat.
It is to a degree impressive that Tim Roth is unrecognizable and credit should be given for an excellent convincing accent, which often proves to be the downfall of many an A-lister trying to do serious Drama.
But therein lies the issue, there never feels like there is much serious Drama, it is a dark and brooding subject matter but it comes across as meandering and lethargic.
The audio is variable, often needing subtitles as the set pieces of dialogue were often breathy or quiet.Interesting, but did not live up to, or make the most of it's potential..
John Christie was a monstrous example of the banality of evil, the kind of funny little man found in every street and apartment block in the world.
Most of them are just that, funny little men who are perfectly harmless and eventually pass off to their reward without doing a single mischief to anyone.
John Christie was one such, operating in button-down post WWII England, and the whole, shocking story could have made a chilling series.
Indeed, Tim Roth's portrayal of the murderer is desperately creepy and utterly believable, but the whole thing doesn't rise to the level of the 1971 Richard Attenborough effort, 10 Rillington Place.
This can be put down to a single sentence - political correctness at the BBC.
Everything before the pill was dark and dank and hellish, and always accompanied by sinister music.
This just ruins the performances of a stellar cast working at the tops of their game.
Next time somebody films this story, let's hope it's someone who isn't intent on turning it into politics..
Tim Roth's whispery characterisation of the early 20th century serial killer is extraordinary but the dark, smokey interiors and the hard edits across timelines make it pretty hard going.
For me, the ponderous pace would be fine if it felt like the slow burn was winding up to something but there's an extraordinary lack of light and shade.
What it did capture was the bleak existence of the working poor and cracking performances from Roth and Samantha Morton.
For my money, those performances weren't enough to make a great production and I was left wanting more..
Tim Roth was excellent in this role and at times I wanted to strangle him because of his whispering, which I was still able to understand.His long-suffering wife also had be pulling my hair out.
I found this show by accident on Netflix and was really glad I did because this is my type of show - British dramas with a mixture of crime in it..
I have wondered for many years why there had been no attempt to retell the grizzly story of the goings on at number 10 Rillington Place.
The fabulous 1971 version featuring the marvellous Richard Attenborough will live on as a classic forever.
So once again, well done BBC for retelling a story in such a thorough and compelling way.The three hour format worked well, it allowed the story to develop naturally, at no point did it feel rushed, each character was given time to deliver.Tim Roth was sensational in the role of Christie, softly spoken, calm, yet monstrous and conniving, I believed utterly in the character he portrayed.
It feels unkind to say that Samantha Morton is a safe pair of hands, but that she is, an actress of immense talent, who always seems to deliver the goods, a super performance as Mrs Christie.This drama made me curious about the case, and I've picked up a book for some further reading.If I was brutally honest, I'd say Part 1 was a little too slow, and felt like it had been padded out, twenty minutes into the second part though it takes a very sinister turn, and transforms into something nasty, but enthralling.Harsh, unnerving, but very impressive.
True serial killers are mercifully rare.
But Reginald Christie strangled six women for no good motive, and an innocent man, Timonthy Evans, was sentenced to death for one of those before Christie's guilt became unarguable.
In 'Rillington Place', Tim Roth is excellent as the mass murderer, a sad little man for whom you might feel sorry if not for his method of relieving his frustrations.
Overall, however, the drama is mostly painful, and while this is probably inevitable, what is lacking is a sense of ordinary life going on around the sad world of the Christie family.
Instead, we see a world only of smog, austerity, and a mood of unremitting gloom - if London was really as dreary as this, it's a wonder there weren't thousands of Christies, not just one..
Mind to murder.
Rillington Place is a three part drama based on the events of the 1940s and 50s when John Christie (Tim Roth) is said to have murdered at least eight women in his dinghy and dank Notting Hill flat.
One of the victims was his wife.The first episode was from the point of view of Ethel Christie (Samantha Morton.) The Christie's have had a turbulent marriage where they have separated in the past and they have moved to London from Yorkshire.
There is distrust as she suspects her husband cavorting with prostitutes in seedy pubs.The second episode focuses on dim Tim Evans, the young man in over his head as his wife dies during a botched abortion and daughter later disappears and he is framed for their deaths.The final episode really goes in for the kill, the lies John Christie tells at Evan's trial and then we see him get rid of his wife and others before the authorities figure out that they might have executed the wrong man.The series really is dark and depressing as the grim post war years.
Roth speaks in a quiet voice, he admits to almost emulating writer Alan Bennett in his tone of voice.
However this is a chilling, devious man, involved in criminal activities throughout his life ranging from stealing to assaulting a woman with a bat.Roth had a hard act to follow, Richard Attenborough played John Christie in the film 10 Rillington Place.
Here Roth is hemmed in by the script because it builds up slowly to Christie's murderous spree and because it wants to approach the drama through different perspectives.While I admire the period setting, all dimly lit and rather squalid.
The BBC comes a cropper once again.
RILLINGTON PLACE once again sees the BBC come a cropper with their reworking of period-set drama.
To my mind, the Richard Attenborough film version of 1971 is pretty much untouchable, an acting masterclass with matter-of-fact direction that makes the depicted events all the more shocking thanks to their gritty realism.
By comparison, this 3 hour marathon is all about directorial style: ominous music, gloomy interiors, desperate attempts to build suspense.
And none of it works.The only person who comes out of this with any shred of credibility is Tim Roth.
No patch on Attenborough, of course, but at least he's acting.
Samantha Morton isn't bad either, but given very little to do aside from the usual 'downtrodden' role she so often plays.
The pace is languid and unhurried, and the depicted events are played out surprisingly subtle.
The entire first episode does nothing aside from setting up the main characters, and the film version contains about ten times the amount of atmosphere, realism, and power. |
tt0051519 | Darby's Rangers | The US Army has decided to form an elite strike force similar to the British Commandos. Major William Darby (James Garner), a staff officer, gets command of the 1st Ranger Battalion, to be formed entirely from volunteers.On June 19, 1942 the 1st Ranger Battalion was sanctioned, recruited, and began training in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. Darby and Master Sergeant Saul Rosen (Jack Warden), who also narrates the film, select a variety of men for training in Scotland by British Commando veterans. Darby tells his men that the Commandos are the best soldiers in the world, but in time they (the Rangers) will be. The Americans are quartered in Scottish homes and several of the Rangers pair off with local lassies: Rollo Burns (Peter Brown) with Peggy McTavish (Venetia Stevenson), the daughter of the fearsome but humorous Scottish Commando instructor, Sergeant McTavish (Torin Thatcher), and vagabond Hank Bishop (Stuart Whitman) with the proper Wendy Hollister (Joan Elan).
The Rangers prove their worth in Operation Torch (the invasion of French North Africa), and two more Ranger battalions are formed, with Darby promoted to colonel. Joining the Rangers is Second Lieutenant Arnold Dittmann (Edd Byrnes), a by-the-book West Pointer. The Rangers fight successfully in Sicily. There are several action scenes in a bombed-out Italian village where the men face a sniper, and a running firefight with the Germans. Lt. Dittmann is humanized by his encounter with Angelina De Lotta (Etchika Choureau).
Darby confides to Rosen a recurring dream of being run over by an oncoming train, foreshadowing the tragic climax. During the Battle of Anzio, the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions are sent on a dangerous mission; they are ambushed and wiped out by the Germans in the Battle of Cisterna. Of the 767 men who go in, only seven come back, the majority being captured. Burns is among the dead. Darby leads his 4th Ranger Battalion in an unsuccessful rescue attempt.
After the heavy losses at Cisterna, the Ranger units are disbanded. Brief vignettes show Bishop on leave with Wendy and her family, and Dittman with Angelina. Darby leaves the Anzio beachhead to report to Army HQ, taking salutes from newly arrived troops as he walks alone down the beach to board a landing craft. | romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1119146 | The Nutcracker | Below is a synopsis based on the original 1892 libretto by Marius Petipa. The story varies from production to production, though most follow the basic outline. The names of the characters also vary. In the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story, the young heroine is called Marie Stahlbaum and Clara (Klärchen) is her doll's name. In the adaptation by Dumas on which Petipa based his libretto, her name is Marie Silberhaus. In still other productions, such as Baryshnikov's, Clara is Clara Stahlbaum rather than Clara Silberhaus.
Act I
Scene 1: The Stahlbaum Home
It is Christmas Eve. Family and friends have gathered in the parlor to decorate the beautiful Christmas tree in preparation for the party. Once the tree is finished, the children are sent for. They stand in awe of the tree sparkling with candles and decorations.
The party begins. A march is played. Presents are given out to the children. Suddenly, as the owl-topped grandmother clock strikes eight, a mysterious figure enters the room. It is Drosselmeyer, a local councilman, magician, and Clara's godfather. He is also a talented toymaker who has brought with him gifts for the children, including four lifelike dolls who dance to the delight of all. He then has them put away for safekeeping.
Clara and Fritz are sad to see the dolls being taken away, but Drosselmeyer has yet another toy for them: a wooden nutcracker carved in the shape of a little man, used for cracking nuts. The other children ignore it, but Clara immediately takes a liking to it. Fritz, however, accidentally breaks it. Clara is heartbroken.
During the night, after everyone else has gone to bed, Clara returns to the parlor to check on her beloved nutcracker. As she reaches the little bed, the clock strikes midnight and she looks up to see Drosselmeyer perched atop it. Suddenly, mice begin to fill the room and the Christmas tree begins to grow to dizzying heights. The nutcracker also grows to life size. Clara finds herself in the midst of a battle between an army of gingerbread soldiers and the mice, led by their king. They begin to eat the soldiers.
The nutcracker appears to lead the soldiers, who are joined by tin ones and dolls who serve as doctors to carry away the wounded. As the Mouse King advances on the still-wounded nutcracker, Clara throws her slipper at him, distracting him long enough for the nutcracker to stab him.
Scene 2: A Pine Forest
The mice retreat and the nutcracker is transformed into a handsome Prince. He leads Clara through the moonlit night to a pine forest in which the snowflakes dance around them, beckoning them on to his kingdom as the first act ends.
Act II
Scene 1: The Land of Sweets
Clara and the Prince travel to the beautiful Land of Sweets, ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy in his place until his return. He recounts for her how he had been saved from the Mouse King by Clara and had been transformed back into his own self.
In honor of the young heroine, a celebration of sweets from around the world is produced: chocolate from Spain, coffee from Arabia, tea from China, and candy canes from Russia all dance for their amusement; Danish shepherdesses perform on their flutes; Mother Ginger has her children, the Polichinelles, emerge from under her enormous hoop skirt to dance; a string of beautiful flowers perform a waltz. To conclude the night, the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier perform a dance.
A final waltz is performed by all the sweets, after which the Sugar Plum Fairy ushers Clara and the Prince down from their throne. He bows to her, she kisses Clara goodbye, and leads them to a reindeer drawn sleigh. It takes off as they wave goodbye to all the subjects who wave back.
In the original libretto, the ballet's apotheosis "represents a large beehive with flying bees, closely guarding their riches". Just like Swan Lake, there have been various alternative endings created in productions subsequent to the original. | good versus evil, revenge, fantasy, storytelling, flashback | train | wikipedia | A sweet Christmas classic. As far as the Jetlag Christmas outings go, I do prefer Magic Gift of the Snowman, but still find it an improvement on A Christmas Carol. The ending is perhaps abrupt and the voice acting is a little too corny at times, however the animation is overall warm and smooth, and Tchaikovsky's music proves to be as timeless as ever. I loved all the obligatory three songs too, Seasons of Love is really one to cherish forever, the dialogue is sweet and not too simplistic and the story has all the heart and charm it should. The characters do engage at least, Marie is very likable, the Nutcracker is dashing and the Mouse King is suitably menacing.All in all, a classic for the festive season, and one of Jetlag's better animations overall. 9/10 Bethany Cox |
tt0117089 | Mosura | Millions of years ago, a titanic terror from another realm arrived to destroy the planet Earth. Named Desghidorah, this three-headed dragon was forced to deal with resistance in the form of a species of highly advanced, enormous moths. These monsters were the protectors of the Elias, a race of tiny, humanlike beings who inhabited the planet. After the ensuing battle, Desghidorah was defeated and sealed within the Earth, although a great deal of life on the planet Earth was lost. Three Elias sisters, Moll, Lora and Belvera, were all who were left of their once prosperous civilization. Though the benevolence of Moll and Lora was undeterred, Belvera became twisted and vengeful due to the mass extinction of her race. These tiny fairies, along with one final guardian named Mothra, lingered on for thousands of millennia. To preserve her species, Mothra created an egg in 1996; however, she became physically exhausted from the ordeal. Shortly thereafter, a logging company uncovered the subterranean prison of the demonic space beast that had ravaged the Earth so long ago. When the seal that had bound the creature was removed from the area, one of the workers of the company took it home and gave it to his young daughter, Wakaba, as a souvenir. Seizing the advantage, Belvera controls Wakaba and uses her to torment her brother Taiki, reminding Belvera of her hatred towards her sisters.
Moll and Lora, riding a smaller Mothra named Fairy, then fought Belvera for control of the artifact. Belvera prevailed and managed to release Desghidorah from its rocky tomb to exact her warped plans for destruction of the human race. Mothra was summoned to halt the detestable dragon, which was absorbing the life out of the environment. She fought a long and difficult battle to repel her ancient adversary, and in response to her declining strength, her young son, named Mothra Leo, hatched prematurely to assist his mother. Though his energized silk seemed to turn the tide of battle in the favor of the protectors, Desghidorah sank the teeth of two of his heads deep into Leo and Mothra became desperate. She quickly airlifted her son to safety, and to keep Desghidorah at bay, lured the beast to a dam. With Desghidorah distracted by a wall of raging water, Mothra carried her son to safety. Unfortunately, Mothra's wounds, age, and exhaustion were ultimately too much. Her strength failed, and she plummeted into the sea below. The crestfallen larva attempted to save his beloved mother, but she died in the ocean, to no avail.
Angered, the young moth created a cocoon and began to change into his adult form. Desghidorah had to be defeated; his mother's death couldn't be in vain. Desghidorah then goes on a rampage, destroying everything in its path as the humans watch helplessly. Moll and Lora, who had befriended Taiki and Wakaba, encourage them to have hope that reminded them that Mothra will be reborn to save the Earth. Fortunately, Leo emerged into his adult form as a swarm of multi-colored butterflies. As the butterflies coalesced into one massive insect, Leo took to the air and headed back towards Desghidorah, righteous fury burning in his wake. Arriving in a hail of energy beams, Leo relentlessly blasted his mother's murderer, throwing wave upon wave of searing beams and energy blasts at Desghidorah, who could only feebly attempt to defend himself against this, the most powerful Mothra of all time. Drawing upon an ancient legacy, Leo relentlessly assaulted Desghidorah, eventually renewing the seal that bound the world destroyer beneath the soil of the earth; but his work was not done with the end of the fight.
Drawing upon the power of life that filled his very being, Leo restored the balance to a blasted region that was deforested during the assault of Desghidorah. His work done for the time being, Leo went to his ancestral home and planet Earth was once again safe from Desghidorah. Moll and Lora thanked the children for helping them on their journey and returned home to Infant Island with their pet, Fairy, as Belvera, still vengeful, escaped into a hole in a tree. | good versus evil | train | wikipedia | This movie was the first of three solo Mothra adventures following the Heisei Godzilla series.
However, I thought the movie was too kid-oriented and that the final battle was too short.
The monster battles lacked the ferocity of Godzilla battles and Mothra's powers seemed overkill.
Unfortunately he's unsealed the resting place of Desghidorah, a three headed, fire breathing beastie that's soon freed to run wild and destroy the local scenery, sucking Earth's precious energy.Only a giant plush moth can save the day!
A tired old Mothra - tending a lovely big egg - is reluctantly summoned (in a slightly more J-pop than usual fashion) by her tiny priestesses Moll and Lora.
These cuties are from a race called the Elias, and they spend much of the movie astride a mini-Mothra called Fairy, battling their nemesis Belvera, who gets to fly a mini dragon thing and cackle a lot.First in a trilogy of Mothra films for the nineties, while Godzilla was taking a well earned break.
Clearly aimed at kids more than the average kaiju fan, this is still great fun, and while no cities get totalled in this offering, the countryside looks nice and there are some cool fight scenes between Death Ghidorah and Mothra.There's a 'save the planet' theme going on that gets rammed down your throat a bit before the movie ends, but the more obvious beef many western fans are going to have with this flick is the lack of a Japanese language option on seemingly the only version available.
Yes, the film's been tarted up nicely, and the dubbing is lip-synched and not overly annoying, but some people will always prefer the original language and there seems to be little reason why it shouldn't be included..
In this movie, Mothra is the protector of earth, and when a monster which threatens to destroy earth's habitat, Mothra comes to rescue.
I rather liked this movie because of its beautiful cinematography and a plot that was not based simply on destruction, but about the importance of protecting our environment.
The plot was a typical kaiju (Japanese for monster, i.e. Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, etc.) plot, with a seal being removed and a wicked monster coming out to wreak havoc on the planet.
The special effects were pretty cool in places, and bad in others and there was some pretty good cinematography.
The human plot, if I could even call it that, was boring and pointless and pretty much just had a couple bratty kids sitting on a mountainside watching the battle.
There were a few really great looking scenes, and Desghidorah (which was pretty much like a black King Ghidorah with four legs) was pretty badass looking.
Mothra looked pretty cool in a few scenes, too.
I don't really want to give it away, but the underwater Mothra scene looked really good.
The only problem is, there can't be the same kind of action that's in a Godzilla movie, and cause Mothra just isn't as tough or limber as Big G.
This is pretty evident through most of the movie, when Mothra's getting beaten pretty badly.
But there is one pretty cool scene near the end where it actually convinces you that Mothra CAN kick some ass.
This Mothra won a previous battle with Death Ghidora many, many years ago but that was when she was still a young Moth.
Can the little fairies defeat the evil fairy "Belvera?" This film is a good story of "evil vs good" and also of "family!" A must for all those fans of Japanese monster films..
With Godzilla dead and gone (yah, right), Toho concentrated on their other major star, Mothra.In this first of a trilogy (more, more!) Mothra (the 1992 Mothra) battles a creature called Death Ghidorah (a cousin of King Ghidorah?).
Thrown into the mix is the new Mothra, called MothraLeo. With time running out for Earth, can MothraLeo survive to carry on the long line of Mothras that have defended the planet?Of course he can!
How can one moth have so many beam weapons?I have to say that Megumi Kobayashi and Sayoko Yamaguchi, who play the priestesses of Mothra, now called the Elias, are excellent in this movie, as well as Aki Hano, who plays Belvera, one of the new elements to the Mothra saga.
Of the two Elais, Moll is more determined than Lora, especially on calling the "old" Mothra into battle.On the whole, a very good movie!
Although not generally one of the most popular kaiju (Japanese for monster) movies, Mothra: 1996 is in my opinion one of the most beautiful.Mothra: 1996 is the first in a new trilogy from Toho studios.
Mothra battles a new creation in the form of Death Ghidora.
This film contains no less than 4 separate battles between Mothra and Death Ghidora.The special effects are up to par and the creation of Belvera, the evil fairy is interesting.
Mothra begins a new solo adventure, battling Desghidorah to save Earth's green landscape.
She hatches an egg and out comes her son MothraLeo. To pick up where his mother left off, MothraLeo battles Desghidorah to the finish.There are amusing battle scenes and great special effects by Koichi Kawakita.
This movie is a big change from the concepts of the original Mothra of the 1960s.
The two tiny priestesses are not twins like the original one who were portrayed by The Peanuts, and each one in this movie is actually given a name: Mona and Lora (the "Elias").
The central character in this movie is a kid who helps Mona and Lora battle their evil sister.
The scene where the Elias and Belvera riding on their "Mothra" pets and shooting rays at each other at the kid's home is too childish and took away to much time in the movie.
The Mothras in this movie are not treated like the Sacred Goddess in the Mothra films from the 1960s, but more like superheros ready to defend Earth.
e) even the serious bits (Eg the home chase at the beginning ) are handled in a Disney-ish way.This time Mosura goes solo against King Gidorah freed from its stone grave when an incautious foreman removes a sacred seal of atlantean origin.
There are other typical subplots mixed in from the less fortunate TOHO movies: a couple with hard times in parenting because say the husband must work long hours; two children who can't get along.
All in all, a nice relaxing movie: of course do NOT expect any "final wars", "tokyo sos" or "battle for earth" kind of fights.
There is the "mosura larva" subplot, but this time the larva got new powers & turns into some super-mothra.
Not the worst of the Japanese big monster bashes, but far from good, The Rebirth of Mothra will appeal mainly to kiddies under the age of 12 and should not be viewed by anyone older, unless they are die-hard completists of this particular genre.
Thank God for the fast forward button.The only interesting parts of this trilogy are the monster battles, which are pretty good, though they don't stomp on any cities in these owing to a small budget.
Due to the budget constraints, the army never makes an appearance, which is strange considering giant monsters are rampaging through the countryside and, in the third movie, snatching children by the hundreds.
Bad Ass Monsters, Annoying Kids.
This is the kick off of Mothra's very own series and I must say it wasn't a bad move by Toho.
You see, Mothra, like Rodan, was originally a solo character who was introduced to the Godzilla franchise in the cross-over "Mothra vs.
Her first film had been back in 1961 and for whatever reason, audiences like Mothra a lot.
Want to guess which monster co-star has been in the most Godzilla films?
The real downside is that to save money Toho had Death Ghidorah rampage through a forest the entire movie without even touching a single building!
Toshiyuki Watanabe is a great composer, giving Mothra a heroic theme and everything.Unfortunately, most will find the bad outweighs the good and find watching the film unbearable.
I guess it can be argued that all kaiju is for children, but this one is in the way that the old Gamera films were.
This is not so much about monster battles but kids having an adventure and saving the day.It's nice and entertaining, but those expecting a typical Godzilla-type kaiju film are going to be disappointed..
"Rebirth of Mothra" is an unsubtle morality-play in which evil loggers remove a sacred seal, releasing an ancient monster ('Desghidorah') who threatens to suck the life out of the Earth.
This attracts the attention of a tiny 'witch' flying a miniature dragon, who torments the family of the man who took the seal until Mothra's fairy acolytes show up riding a cloying-sweet mini-Mothra to defend the kids.
Needless to say, most of the second half of the film is a kaiju battle, featuring pyrotechnics, inexplicable coloured lights, and, since this is a new-age Mothra movie, lots of sparkles.
The 'witch' character (her dubbed voice sounding like the "Wicked Witch of the West") is especially puerile and, like the later Showa-era Gamera films, the human 'heroes' are a couple of irritating kids.
The original Mothra song is briefly heard (the current fairies lack the charm of the original pair), but in general the film's score is trite and derivative, especially in the action scenes.
The 'dog fight' between flying fairies and the witch in the kids' house is endless, as are the repetitious scenes of Desghidorah emerging from the fire, and the ending of the film is an interminable series of good-byes and reminders of what the 'message' is (in the unlikely event that you missed it).
I admit that the giant moth has a long history of being a 'guardian' of the Earth, but the heavy-handed 'eco' message in this film is a bit hard to take considering Japan uses about 24 billion disposable chopsticks every year (the equivalent of about 1.6 million trees)..
Rebirth of Mothra (1996) * 1/2 (out of 4)The mean Death Ghidora is threatening to destroy all of humanity but have no fear because Mothra comes to the rescue.I typically like to start my reviews off with a bit more of a plot description but there's really no point here.
Toho's Godzilla character was in retirement so they decided to dust off Mothra and get him back on the big screen.
The original MOTHRA movie was a really fun monster movie and he would eventually make apperances in various other Godzilla films.
REBIRTH OF MOTHRA has the creature returning but sadly it turned out to be his worst film up to this point.I've always found these type of films to be quite interesting because they are so child-like but at the same time so many adults love them.
There are a few good things about it, being that it's a kaiju film and whatnot, but the flaws are too strong to be looked past.
The first 2-3 minutes of the film are very promising, as we are introduced right away to Mothra.
However, as soon as that's done, we are taken right to, without warning, the absolute worst part of the whole movie: annoying, bratty, screaming, whiny kids.
That one scene in Pacific Rim (2013) with that crying kid may have been annoying enough, but this makes that scene look normal.The other biggest, most unforgivable flaw in the whole movie is the CGI.
Normally, I could forgive them for being bad since it was the mid 90's, but keep in mind that this is Toho, who previously used CG for Godzilla's fire-breath and lasers in prior films, and they actually looked really convincing!
Overall, Rebirth of Mothra is just about one of the worst films of all time in my opinion.
Annoying kids unforgivably bad special effects make this a joke entry in Toho's long line of giant-monster movies.
It is not as good the 7th M.o.t.h.r.a movie Godzilla and M.o.t.h.r.a and the battle for the earth.
It is not as the 6th M.o.t.h.r.a movie Godzilla vs G.i.g.a.n. It is not as good as the 12th M.o.t.h.r.a Godzilla M.o.t.h.r.a and King G.h.i.d.o.r.a.h giant monsters on an all out attack.
It is not as good as the 5th M.o.t.h.r.a movie Destroy all monsters.
okay monster movie, but nothing special.
I was actually hoping to see a little bit more out of Rebirth of Mothra than what I did see.
The story concentrates too much on those little fairies flying around on tiny moths and dragon-things.And the monster battles, which are reasonably long, have their moments in this film.
Mothra's death after the first battle sequence was perfect, however.
Destoroyah.Overall, Rebirth of Mothra is an okay kaiju film, not the best and not the worst.
Mothra still looks like a flying Beanie Baby but the rest of the special effects are very good, especially the explosions and light beam effects.
I've seen that movie last week on TV and was quite disappointed.The story: The bad sister of the sweet little ELIAS ( known from every other movie including Mothra ) wants to steal the "Seal of the Elias", which was found by a family father at a mountain.
But the Elias can't let that be, take the mini-version of mothra, called "Fee" and also fly there.
It looks like an old ATARI-Game, when Fee and the little Dragon fly through the house and shoot at each other!However, the bad sister is victorious in stealing the seal and uses it to free a three-headed monster: Desghidorah.
To stop Desghidorah from killing all life on earth, the Elias decide to call Mothra - what's done with a song.
Yeah, okay, we know the girls like to sing - but they do it three times in that movie!
A funny things about it is the background, which starts to get coloured and coloured flowers flow around - looks like a seventies-music-video!Mothra arrives to fight Desghidorah, but is to weak and old for the strong-growen monster!
I don't want to tell the whole story here, some people reading this may not have seen the movie yet...So I start with my final judgement: The story of the film is weak - but that's not important in a monster movie.
Mothra and Desghidorah have nearly no moveable parts, the flying scenes are bad as hell ( there are better ones in some 70's movies!
And Desghidorah doesn't radiate enough threat to build somewhat like tension...So the movie gets along boring and tensionless and you get angry about the bad special effects, supporting the bad impressions.
If you can imagine one of those goofy old Mothra flicks with great soundtrack music, good acting, very nice cinematography, and special effects at least as good as those in "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger," then you can imagine "The Rebirth of Mothra." Though obviously aimed at kids, and with all the genre's intrinsic ridiculousness firmly intact, the movie is a resounding success on it's own terms mainly because the filmmakers of this entry in the series wisely chose to downplay the Sci-fi elements in favor of a magical fairy tale approach (there's a wicked witch and even a mini-mothra named "Fairy").
I know many may find this hard to swallow, but Rebirth of Mothra is a lot of fun for kids and kids-at-heart alike.
After ending the Godzilla series with the Heisei series, Toho wanted to maintain a higher grossing monster movie.
But actually, Mothra had her own movie before all of this, like some other monsters best known for their role in Godzilla movies (Rodan comes to mind).
Her 1961 movie is something to check out, but getting that history out of the way brings us back to 1996's Rebirth of Mothra.
Mothra looks okay, but a bit fuzzy in moth form.
Her offspring, named Mothra Leo, looks pretty good and doesn't fall apart like the larvae of the Showa series.
How about the villain monster in this movie, Desghidorah?
He sure makes you hope for his death the way he heartlessly attacks Mothra and Leo in larvae stage.
Overall the monsters are a plus and the action is pretty good.
The drawback is that the final battle between Leo in moth form and Desghidorah is just way too easy.
Desghidorah overpowers the aging Mothra in the beginning, but then Leo just comes in and gives him a good one-two.
But for all this kid theme talk, I still like the movie and have a copy on DVD..
It seems silly to say that a monster movie could touch someone but this one does.
In a nutshell, this movie picks up where Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth left off.
Mothra is a few years older at the beginning (I don't know what that is in human years).
During one of the many great battle scenes Mothra is hurt, her strength diminished.
My heart broke as Mothra with her last breaths tells her child it must continue the battle.
There wre human actors in this movie, however, I feel that the message was there from Mothra and her chld.
All in all the best of the giant monster films.
But after the success of GODZILLA AND MOTHRA: BATTLE FOR THE EARTH she managed to break free of the Godzilla franchise and star in this flick and boy is it an experience.
First of all I should mention that I kinda like the fact that the twin fairies are not the same actress and talking at the same time, like they did in some of the earlier Godzilla movies.
Speaking of dragons in this movie we are introduced to a new Ghidorah named DesGhidorah.
Actually he kind of looks like King Ghidorah from GODZILLA: FINAL WARS.
Oh wait and let us not forget how King Ghidorah actually appeared in REBIRTH OF MOTHRA 3, which I think was actually Ghidorah's First movie appearance outside of the Godzilla franchise. |
tt0030418 | Marie Antoinette | Fourteen-year-old Maria Antonia (Kirsten Dunst) is the beautiful, charming, and naive archduchess of Austria, youngest of Empress Maria Theresa's (Marianne Faithfull) daughters. In 1770, the only one left unmarried among her sisters, she is sent by her mother to marry the Dauphin of France, the future Louis XVI of France (Jason Schwartzman), to seal an alliance between the two rival countries. Marie Antoinette travels to France, relinquishing all connections with her home country, including her pet Pug "Mops", and meets the King Louis XV of France (Rip Torn) and her future husband, Louis Auguste. The two arrive at the Palace of Versailles, which was built by the King's great-grandfather. They are married at once, and are encouraged to produce an heir to the throne as soon as possible; but the next day it is reported to the king that "nothing happened" on the wedding night.
As time passes, Marie Antoinette finds life at the court of Versailles stifling. Her husband's courtiers disdain her as a foreigner, and blame her for not producing an heir, although the fault really lies with her husband, for the marriage remains unconsummated for an inordinate amount of time. The French court is rife with gossip, and Marie Antoinette consistently ruffles feathers by defying its ritualistic formality. Marie Antoinette also refuses to meet or speak with Jeanne Bécu, Madame du Barry (Asia Argento), the mistress of Louis XV. Over the years, Maria Theresa continues to write to her daughter, giving advice on how to impress and seduce the Dauphin. Unfortunately, Marie's attempts to have sex with her husband fail and the marriage remains childless. Marie spends most of her time buying extravagant clothes and gambling. After a masquerade ball, Marie and Louis XVI return to find that the King has smallpox; he orders du Barry to leave Versailles, and soon dies. Louis XVI is crowned King of France, with Marie as Queen.
Marie Antoinette's brother, Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (Danny Huston) comes to visit, counseling her against her constant parties; advice that she finds easy to ignore. Joseph meets Louis XVI at the Royal Zoo and explains to him the "mechanics" of sexual intercourse in terms of "key-making", as one of the King's favorite hobbies is locksmithing. Thereafter, the King and Marie Antoinette have sex for the first time, and on December 18, 1778, Marie Antoinette gives birth to a daughter, Princess Marie Thérèse of France. As the baby princess grows up, Marie Antoinette spends much of her time at the Petit Trianon, a small chateau in the park of Versailles. It is also at this time that she begins an affair with Axel Fersen (Jamie Dornan). As France's financial crisis worsens, food shortages and riots increase. Marie Antoinette's image with her subjects has completely deteriorated by this point: her luxurious lifestyle and seeming indifference to the struggles of the masses earn her the title Madame Déficit.
As the queen matures, she focuses less on her social life and more on her family, and makes what she considers to be significant financial adjustments. A year after her mother's death on November 29, 1780, Marie Antoinette gives birth to a son, Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France on October 22, 1781. She also gives birth to another son, Louis XVII of France on March 27, 1785, and another daughter, Princess Sophie of France on July 9, 1786, who dies on June 19, 1787, a month before her first birthday. As the French Revolution erupts with the storming of the Bastille, the royal family resolves to stay in France, unlike many of the nobility. Rioting Parisians force the family to leave Versailles for Paris. The film ends with the royal family's transfer to Tuileries Palace. The last image is a shot of Marie Antoinette's bedroom, destroyed by angry rioters. | tragedy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0060802 | Ostre sledované vlaky | The young Miloš Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He admires himself in his new uniform, and looks forward, like his prematurely-retired railwayman father, to avoiding real work. The sometimes pompous stationmaster is an enthusiastic pigeon-breeder with a kind wife, but is envious of the train dispatcher Hubička's success with women. Miloš holds an as-yet platonic love for the pretty, young conductor Máša. The experienced Hubička presses for details of their relationship and realizes that Miloš is still a virgin.
The idyll of the railway station is periodically disturbed by the arrival of the councillor, Zednicek, a Nazi collaborator, who spouts propaganda at the staff without success. At her initiative, Máša spends the night with Miloš, but in his youthful excitability he ejaculates prematurely before achieving penetration and then is unable to perform sexually; and the next day, despairing, he attempts suicide. He is saved, and a young doctor explains to him that ejaculatio praecox is normal at Miloš's age. The doctor recommends Miloš to "think of something else" (at which point Miloš volunteers an interest in football), and to seek the assistance of an experienced woman. During the nightshift, Hubička flirts with the young telegraphist, Zdenička, and imprints her thighs and buttocks with the office's rubber stamps. Her mother sees the stamps and complains to Hubička's superiors, and the ensuing scandal helps to frustrate the stationmaster's ambition of being promoted to inspector.
The Germans and their collaborators are on edge, since their trains are being attacked by the partisans. A glamorous Resistance agent (a circus artist in peacetime), code-named Viktoria Freie, delivers a time bomb to Hubička for use in blowing up a large ammunition train. At Hubička's request, the "experienced" Viktoria also helps Miloš to resolve his sexual problem.
The next day, at the crucial moment when the ammunition train is approaching, Hubička is caught up in a farcical disciplinary hearing, overseen by Zednicek, over his rubber stamping of Zdenička's backside. In Hubička's place, Miloš, liberated by his experience with Viktoria from his former passivity, takes the time bomb and drops it from a semaphore gantry, that extends transversely above the tracks, onto the train. A machine-gunner on the train, spotting Miloš, sprays him with bullets, and his body falls onto the train. With the Nazi collaborator Zednicek winding up the disciplinary hearing, dismissing the Czech people as "nothing but laughing hyenas" (a phrase actually employed by the senior Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich), the implicit retort to his jibe comes in the form of a huge series of explosions that destroys the train. Now Hubička and the other railwaymen are indeed laughing — to express their joy at the blow to the Nazi occupiers — and it is left to a wistful Máša to pick up Miloš's uniform cap, hurled across the station by the power of the blast. | humor, satire, murder, storytelling | train | wikipedia | The story centers around a train station in a Czech, German occupied small town and an apprentice train watcher, Milos Hrma, who is confused about his place in the world.
Scattered throughout the film are affable characters such as a pigeon loving, crap covered Train master, a noble, aristocratic woman, a benign, slightly insane, photographer uncle of Masa, and a Nazi ideologue who refuses to believe that the Reich is in ruins.
It makes Hitchcock's train going into the tunnel shot from 'North By Northwest' look like the work of a rank amateur.Ostensibly 'Closely Watched Trains' is the story of Trainee Milos Hrma (Václav Neckár) starting his job at the local train station during the Nazi occupation of what was then Czechoslovakia (only I guess it wasn't, because it was officially absorbed by the Reich).
Throughout most of the film the war, complete with what the local Nazi functionary describes as "beautiful tactical withdrawals," is a long way off and Milos has more important matters to attend to.
Specifically he's trying to lose his virginity and deal with another problem common to young men everywhere, one which the local doctor advises him to solve by thinking about football during critical moments.Made in 1966, when some Czechs were clearly already looking ahead to 1968's Prague Spring, the film slyly uses the Nazis as a stand-in for the Soviets.
As proof of this, and the Hollywood establishment's anti-Communist bent in the late 60s, 'Closely Watched Trains' won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1968.
It is, however, imminently deserving of the win on its own merits.History lessons aside 'Closely Watched Trains' is beautifully shot, well acted, and absurdly hilarious, while still tasting of tragedy.
Note: Closely Watched Trains won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1967..
Closely Watched Trains is a a film to be watched again and again.It's a coming-of-age type story that delves into the viewers psyche, young Milos who has some troubles with his girlfriend, seems to have this dwell on his life.
And the world around him reacts, from the woman riding a horse to steam coming out of the train, the woman working her baking, and simply the movement of young Milos becoming a man in his own sense.But this film isn't just a sexual innuendo, smart comedy presides through it all which most anyone can pick up on, a lot of it is sexual but not all.
It is hilarious as Milos works at a train station where his coworker Hubicka (Josef Somr) doesn't seem to have problems getting action whenever he wants.He does manage to arrange help for Milos, but tragedy strikes before he is able to use his new found knowledge with his girlfriend.An excellent picture and a real funny story that manages to avoid the crudity of modern tales of the same sort..
However, embracing the possibility that this may ruin my status as a reviewer for ever, I believe its undeserved reputation significantly underestimates Czech cinema.The film has a dreamlike quality which emphasises the bumbling sexual innocence of the main character, the Railway Despatcher's Apprentice,Milo, and which gives the unexpected dramatic ending real force.However, it is only then that the grim reality of the Nazi dominated world in which the film is set is really acknowledged.
None of its cardboard characters are really developed and Closely Observed Trains seems very much like a slow paced version of a British "Carry On" film.
The film is a product of this trend which is why the resistance elements seem rather tenuously inserted into the story.The film revolves around young Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar) who follows his father's example and goes to work for the railroad; becoming an apprentice dispatcher at a rural station.
But "Watched Trains" is really Milos' coming of age story, complete with the requisite line: "is the first time you have been with a woman?" Milos' first time proves a disaster and leads to an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
'Ostře sledované vlaky', the winner of 68's Foreign Film Oscar, tells the story of the workers of a small railway station in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as WWII rages on and the railway is a target for Czech partisans.
Young Milo Hrma is in love with the conductor Máa but is unable to perform sexually in his first time; the somewhat perverted dispatcher Hubička tries to help him while also ending up in a sexual scandal; and a plot by the partisans is set in motion to attack the trains.This Czechoslovakian film stands apart from others in that it is a serious war film but has the feel of the silly spy/noir films from the Cold War Era, as well as a strange, more sexually charged but still naive style of comedy.
Sometimes it tries too hard (or maybe too little) to make the comedy come naturally, making it not work well; however, when not funny, it is still often amusing to watch, more so when you consider its sexual aspect in a time it was probably a scandal in most places for it to be shown this blatantly.The movie is at times slow, a trademark of European dramas, but at only 93 minutes there is too little time to actually be boring.
The explanation for the title of Jiri Menzel's film is that it was apparently derived from a military designation employed by the Germans who ran the railways in occupied Czechoslovakia, and would probably have indicated that the highest level of security was to be observed for the whole length of the railway system over which a train so designated had to pass.'Closely Observed Trains' - its title in Britain is probably the better translation - sounds like the rambling memoir of some harmlessly eccentric train-buff: Gauge numbers, timetables, wheel configurations - that sort of thing!
The film alerts us to the fact that the gentlest contempt is as cruel and destructive as the most brutal jackbooted hate: A collaborationist gesture is satirized, and the inky soul of bureaucracy is exposed.The most decent and honest person in the film, apart from the young Conductress (who appears to be a Resistance agent), is Václav, largely because of what is conventionally seen as the tragedy of his doomed love-life: He is untainted by the conforming adult world around him - a tormented innocent, like Christ, and similarly destined to be mankind's saviour through suffering.Perhaps his cap, rolling down the Station platform before the blast, represents the crown of thorns that every Czech had to pick up, before the new Rome of Hitler's Germany could be defeated?
I won't say it's great--it's a good comedy of the absurd, done in grand style with a wonderful cast of actors doing justice to the sly comedy inherent in every scene.VACLAV NECKAR is the novice station attendant and JOSEF SOMR is the randy supervisor with his mind on anything but trains, even CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS which might be carrying German ammunition.The humor is a constant factor in the slowly developed story and you get a sense of how the Czech countrymen felt about the Germans during the early days of WWII.
The coming of age aspect is concerned mainly with Neckar's "premature ejaculation" problem--one that he almost commits suicide over--which is a rather strange aspect of a tale meant to be taken as absurdly hilarious.I'd have to say the film has been over-hyped as "great", although I found it sufficiently entertaining but dull in spots.
Photographed in crisp B&W, it's one of the better foreign films of this period but I think the praise has been too extensive for what is essentially a one-note comedy about a boy's obsession with what the doctor calls "a normal occurrence" that is cured--predictably--by a mature woman who understands his problem.The final explosive scene with the German ammunition train being blown up--and the wind machines blasting away at the station--is a satisfying but odd conclusion to the story for reasons undisclosed lest I spoil your enjoyment of the finale..
But there are fine moments - the horse ridden across the tracks and out of the steam, its lady rider adjusting her seating, the delightful young girl who lays down to be rubber stamped up to her bottom but it isn't quite enough to make this as good as the Milos Foreman films just before and just after..
The film is based on a 1965 novel by Bohumil Hrabal.The young Milo Hrma, who speaks with misplaced pride of his family of misfits and malingerers, is engaged as a newly trained station guard in a small railway station during the Second World War and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Problems arise when Máa wants sex with Milo...It is a coming-of-age story about a nervous young man who is going through a kind of "sexual crisis" to a desperate knowledge.
An apprentice train dispatcher at a village station seeks his first sexual encounter and becomes despondent when he is unable to perform.Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Closely Watched Trains "as expert and moving in its way as was Jan Kadar's and Elmar Klos's 'The Shop on Main Street' or Milos Forman's 'Loves of a Blonde'," two roughly contemporary films from Czechoslovakia.Indeed, the so-called Czech New Wave really deserves more praise.
1968's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to this debut feature from Jiri Menzel, which concerns the comedic and tragic events at a small railway station during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia during the Second World War.Essentially a coming-of-age story, the film focuses on Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar), a young man learning the ropes as a station guard.
But all Milos wants to do is get his end away with flirty conductor Masa (Jitka Bendova) without falling prey to premature ejaculation.Certainly, like his father, Milos has no intention to actually do any work – until, that is, his sexual frustration is harnessed by a beautiful Resistance agent, who convinces him to blow up a Nazi ammunition train.
It's a deliberately tonally-awkward film, juxtaposing broad sex comedy with, amongst other things, a surreal air raid, a properly distressing suicide scene, and brutal gut-punch of an ending.So, the tone is mutable, the style is formal, and the comedy is deadpan – the influence on modern filmmakers like Wes Anderson and Jared Hess is in abundance.For all its whimsy and kinkiness and ironic jabs at moral imperialism (one character wails to his wife about the decline of social morality as he lusts over the dispatcher's saucy cousin), the ultimate message – that youthful lust can be so easily appropriated for the cause of another's ideology – is dead serious.
During the Nazi occupation in a small Czech town, a shy and uncertain young railway assistant learns about sex and accidentally becomes a wartime hero.Darkly humorous, accurately detailed satire with some typical philistine characters and a tendency to push the Anti-Nazi resistance off its pedestal.
Sad, but funny; satirical, but not cynical; "Closely Watched Trains" is among the finest films to come out of the legendary Czech New Wave.
It will likely be relatable for many (I could certainly identify with the film to an extent), and through this relatability comes all of the comedy a viewer could possibly hope for.This is a brilliant and quick movie that may have moments of juvenile humor and seem like a mainstream flick that happens to be in black and white featuring subtitles, but it is also intelligent, satirical, poignant, profound, insightful, important, and genuinely funny..
Václav Neckář's guard in the train station in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia has the hots for Jitka Bendová's conductor and they have an awkward experience at first.
It's probably the best product of the Czech New Wave.In part it's about a boy discovering his sexuality -- while performing the least sexy job in the universe: watching trains.
The "Closely Watched Trains" are those that are carrying supplies to the German army in and through occupied Czechoslovakia during World War II.
But they are also closely watched by the people of Czechoslovakia, especially dispatcher Hubicka (Josef Somr) and his trainee Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar) for another reason, which will become apparent as the movie ends.Not that Milos and Hubicka are especially diligent workers.
Director Jiri Menzel, who appears briefly in the film as Dr. Brabec who diagnoses Milos's "affliction," spun this off from a novel by Bohumil Hrabal, but it could easily have come from a novel by Jaroslav Hasek, who wrote the celebrated Czech classic, "The Good Soldier Svejk," so alike in treatment and tone are they, and so very characteristic of the Czech national mind-set vis-a-vis all the horrors of the European wars.
The final scene in which it looks like Menzel may have employed a wind machine is just so perfectly presented, combining as it does the stark realism of the war and a delicious (but soon to be mixed) personal triumph of the resistance.This is one of the classic films of all time.
He also decides it will be nice to watch the trains go by.This rather quirky comedy set on a railway station somewhere in Czechoslovakia during World War 11 ridicules the rules and regulations of the railway system where responsibility is passed down the line to the trainee who pulls the levers but who is not authorised to use the rubber stamps nor to use his hot moist breath to ensure a good print out.A lot is made of the authorisation stamp in this film and much of the humour revolves about its use.
It's the simple story of a young worker at a train station, during World War II when the Nazis are spreading like disease throughout Europe.
Closely Watched Trains is a petite film that is incredibly and darkly amusing, chronicling the sexual coming of age of an apprentice stationmaster--or something like that.
Closely Watched Trains is a great movie and one you should seek out.
The film "Watch the train" (Dutch title) tells the story of Milos, a young points-man, in Czlechoslovakia during the German occupation in the Second World War. The film combines a mild humor with a sketch of the Nazi's cruelty and stupidity.
Although we do have something of a main character in Milos (Vaclav Neckar)the teenage virgin apprentice trainee there is a full complement of support both in and around the station from the stationmaster Max (Vladimir Valenta) and his wife (Libuse Havelkova) who are active in poultry, train dispatcher Hubicka (Josef Somr)the Czech equivalent of a babe magnet and who is ultimately responsible for Milos getting laid, Milos's girlfriend of sorts, Masa (Jitka Bendova) who is unable to make Milos a 'man' and Victoria Freie (Nada Ubankova) who succeeds where Masa fails.
After stumbling upon the stunning film Romance for Bugle,I decided to take a look at other Czech titles that the up-loader had put on,and I spotted the first ever Czech Oscar winner,which led to me getting ready to catch the train.The plot-WWII-Nazi Occupied Czechoslovakia:Following in his family footsteps, Milos Hrma gets set to be a guard at a train station,in the hope of having to avoid any real work,esp on the front line.With the idyll life at the train station only being interrupted by the odd appearance of Nazi collaborator Zednicek,Hrma talks to fellow staff member Hubička about still being a virgin.
Encouraged to chat to a pretty young conductor called Máa,Hrma ends up having a night with Máa,that goes off the tracks prematurely.As Hrma starts to question his manhood, Hubička starts making plans to stop the Nazis in their tracks.View on the film:Placing the train station in the middle of nowhere,co-writer/(along with Bohumil Hrabal) director Jirí Menzel & cinematographer Jaromír Sofr track the horrors of war in the countryside with a ride to Milo Hrma's rites of passage.Keeping both feet on the ground,Menzel avoids flashy tricks for an elegant,rustic atmosphere,as Menzel's lingering shots pick up on the locals attempting to keep their livelihood in tack,whilst making explosive plans against the occupying Nazis.
Following Hrma on his agonising rites of passage,Menzel takes a restrained approach with jazzy fade ins/fade outs fading in on Hrma's sexual awakening.Filmed as the country was in the early stages of an economy recovery, Menzel & Hrabal's adaptation of Hrabal's own book lays superbly allegorical Czech New Wave tracks down against the Soviet Union,by making Hrma and all the other locals undermine all of the rules that the occupying rulers are enforcing on them.Making sure to not go off track with the political notes,the writers weave the allegorical edges with a delightfully ill-at-ease coming of age Drama,that shakes all of Menzel loose hormones out onto the station.Secretly going against the barking orders from the Nazis, Josef Somr gives a great performance as Hubicka,whose playfulness Somr reveals to be a shell for a cunning mind.Topping the charts with Czech Pop at the time, Václav Neckár gives an excellent performance as Hrma,thanks to Neckár coating Hrma in a shaky bag of awkward nerves,as Hrma closely watches the trains..
The film's narrative traces the attempts of a young man, Milos--an apprentice station agent--to be comfortable with his manhood despite suffering from premature ejaculation on his first attempt at sexual relations with his girlfriend; she's a very inviting, pretty conductor on a local train that often stops at his station.My only problem with this is that its story-line depends on 2 small town, Czechoslovakian young (18?
If you can put aside the incongruous sexual freedom of the two girls, it works very well.SECOND LOOK: This film was made in 1966 when Czechoslovakia was under Russian domination.
Basically, set during World War II, at the time where Germany were losing to the other countries of the world they were fighting, young Milo Hrma (Václav Neckár) is employed by a small railway station, but his is not being paid.
This film of the Czechoslovak New Wave has a gentle sense of the absurd, as if young Milos was still stuck in his childhood and unable to reconcile with what was looming to be a second world war.
Closely Watched Trains by Jiri Menzel is a film that particularly deals with youth and its connections with memories and its various afflictions. |
tt0104132 | Double Jeopardy | Nick Parsons (Bruce Greenwood) and his wife Elizabeth (Ashley Judd), known as Libby, are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. He buys her a yacht and they set off sailing for the weekend. After a session of love making, Libby falls asleep. She wakes to find her husband missing and blood all over her hands, clothes, legs, and the boat's floors. A Coast Guard vessel appears and Libby is spotted holding a bloody knife she found lying on the deck. She is arrested, humiliated in the media, tried, and convicted of her husband's murder.
Libby asks her best friend, Angela Green (Annabeth Gish), to look after her 4-year-old son, Matty (Benjamin Weir), for the duration of her prison sentence. On a phone call with Matty from prison, Libby hears a door open in the background, then Matty exclaims, "Daddy!" right before the line goes dead.
Libby realizes that Nick possibly faked his death and framed her, leaving their son as the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policy, as people convicted for murder are not allowed to collect the life insurance on their victims. After attempting (unsuccessfully) to get investigative help, she is told by a fellow inmate named Margaret (Roma Maffia) that if she were to get paroled for good behavior, she could kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Libby is paroled after six years and begins searching for Nick and Matty, while living in a halfway house under the supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones). Libby violates her curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's school on Whidbey Island to try to get Angela's records, but manages to escape from Lehman and continue her search.
After discovering Angela has recently died in Colorado, Libby recognizes a Kandinsky painting in a newspaper photo. Tracing it through a dealer's database (which nearly again allows her capture by Lehman) leads her to New Orleans, where she finds Nick living a luxurious lifestyle under an assumed name, Jonathan Devereaux.
Libby confronts him after making a winning bid of $10,000 on him at a bachelor's auction. She demands he return Matty in exchange for her silence about his real identity. Nick agrees to bring Matty to a meeting in a cemetery. There he uses a decoy boy to distract Libby, knocks her unconscious, and locks her in a casket inside a mausoleum. Using a .38 caliber handgun she had snatched from Lehman, Libby manages to shoot the hinges off the lid of the casket and escape the mausoleum by throwing a flower vase through a stained glass window.
While tracking Libby in New Orleans, Lehman himself becomes suspicious of Nick's death and begins to believe Libby's story, based on the clues uncovered in his search. He finds a picture of a different Nicholas Parsons when searching the Washington State DMV records to prove his suspicions, and later confirms them when he uncovers six DMV records under that name, including Nick's DMV application and photograph. After seemingly capturing Libby later in the city, the two actually team up. Lehman visits Nick in his office under the pretense of asking for money to keep his identity secret. He records a remark by Nick that he had murdered his wife, the only witness to his true past. Libby enters, holding Nick at gunpoint. Nick is given a choice of surrendering to the authorities or getting shot by his vengeful wife, whom he believes would go free for this deed because of double jeopardy.
Nick responds with violence. In the ensuing melee, Nick pulls out a hidden gun, shoots Lehman, and fires away at Libby. Lehman manages to bring Nick down before he can shoot Libby. Nick gets the upper hand, but before he can kill the wounded parole officer, Libby shoots Nick dead.
Lehman promises to help Libby get fully pardoned. Together, they travel to Matty's boarding school in Georgia, where he is playing soccer. Matty (Spencer Treat Clark), now eleven years old, recognizes his mother and they embrace with Lehman watching them. | romantic, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0115822 | Capitaine Conan | In the French infantry on the Macedonian Front during the First World War, Conan, an officer of the élite Chasseurs Alpins, is the charismatic leader of a special squad, many from military prisons, who raid enemy lines at night taking no prisoners. Despising career soldiers, his only friend is the young academic Norbert.
When the Armistice with Bulgaria is signed in September 1918, his unit is sent to Bucharest, capital of France’s ally Romania, as part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Neither fighting nor demobilised, morale plummets and courts-martial begin. After a successful defence, Norbert is coerced into becoming the prosecutor by the threat that, if he does not, Conan will be charged. In a brutal raid on a crowded nightclub, some of Conan’s men seized the takings, crippling a female singer and killing the female cashier. With the help of the Romanian police and a French prostitute, Norbert finds the men but gets them light sentences.
A widow arrives from France looking for her son, who she finds awaiting trial for desertion. After listening to her story, Norbert thinks that the boy may be blameless and that his officer is out to get him shot. Conan, who hates the officer, agrees and takes Norbert over the old front line where the boy got lost in action. Both become convinced of his innocence.
Fighting breaks out again when the French move up to the Danube and come under attack from the Red Army. During the action, Conan empties the prison and leads his men to one final victory. In a sombre coda, years later back in France, Norbert visits Conan to find him no longer the dashing hero but the sick owner of a little shop. | violence, cruelty, murder | train | wikipedia | Very good war film.
This is in many ways a very good war film but not in the typical way.
The film opens in the closing days of WW1 on the Eastern Front where Capitaine Conan (Philippe Torreton in a Cesar winning performance) leads a band of ruthless hand to hand fighters, equivalent to a modern special forces unit.
They prove themselves far more effective than the regular army in the final defeat and are envied by many including a friend of Conan, Lt Norbet (Samuel Le Bihan, IIRC was nominated for a Cesar in this).
But when the armistice is signed Conan and his men find themselves in limbo while Norbert, working for the Court Martials finds himself accusing the very men he admired for robbery and murder.
This film does take a while to get going but it is worth it, giving time for the characters to develop and also establishing the monotony the soldiers find, going from combat to walking the streets of Bucharest.
The film also deals with the beginnings of the Russian Civil War and the problem of soldiers fighting with no motivation.
Tavernier's direction is superb and visually the film equals a number of classic war films while the performances help to give it an edge as it goes into territory that Hollywood war film's in particular have tended not to go into..
The Best film of the '90s, hands down; Tavernier ROCKS!.
Tavernier is probably the greatest film artist working in the world today.
With Capitaine Conan, he accomplished what all the New-Wave directors dreamed about but never quite got the chance to do (except maybe for Bertolucci on The Last Emperor, if you want to consider him part of the original new-wave): to make a high-budget film with thousands of extras and elaborate, detailed sets which completely conforms to their vision and stays uncompromised, an auteurist epic.
Well, how's this for uncompromised: Most of the shots in this film are made using only available light or the light that would be available given the circumstances of the scene!
As a result, the film looks uniquely dark and authentic, as if it was shot in 1918 when the events took place.
This takes some getting used to, and of course, people conditioned to being spoon fed every scene lit up like a christmas tree will be disoriented, but the shadowy effects achieved far outweigh the negatives.
Some of the shots are kept in total darkness (as they would be in real life) with barely a face showing to indicate who's talking to who!
Then the people gradually come out of the darkness into different shades of light, each more nuanced than the other.
The cinematography and art direction are breathtaking; there isn't a single shot in the entire film that couldn't be called a masterpiece of its own, perfectly framed, perfectly composed and perfectly moved.
Tavernier rarely uses a shot-reverse-shot preferring complex camera movement or long uninterrupted takes capturing the scenes from different angles without a cut.
The scenes themselves, however, don't drag on forever, they are compact and to the point, making a Tavernier film usually one where a lot of things happen very fast and in order to pick up all the details and nuances, many viewings are essential.
The acting from the awesome leads of Thoreton (a richly deserved Cesar award for best actor), Le Bihan, and Le Coque, down to the smallest bit player is uniformly brilliant.
No American film I've ever seen has acting on this high a naturalistic level.The film is mainly about the thin and precariously balanced area called 'amorality' that some people have a knack for staying within, racking up only enough whites (good deeds) and blacks (bad deeds)to stay mostly in the perfectly shaded middle gray.
In a war-time situation the people who have this knack tend to do very well for themselves.
Conan, a tough special forces officer whose group makes sneak attacks on the enemy and kills at knife-point, is that perfect 'amoral' character or for lack of a better term people have come to call an 'anti-hero', i.e., that guy who sometimes does 'bad' or 'evil' things, but integrates this within a higher integrity that's essentialy 'good' and admirable.
His friend, Lt. Norbert is the more traditionally 'moral' man who comes to admire the guts it takes for Conan to operate rather openly in that precarious zone against all the hypocrisies of his superiors (which keep them protected).
When Conan comes to defend a few of his men who have clearly gone over the line and committed atrocities which must be punished, Norbert, given the job of prosecuting the men, makes his position clear and breaks with him.
All through the film he tries to become more like Conan and yet stays wary of the line that Conan could easily cross into madness and fanaticism.
What draws Conan and Norbert together is their common integrity against the hypocrisies of society, as opposed to Lt. DeSceve, the other main character, who's an honorable soldier and strong man, but who kisses-up to the top brass and has a fascist attitude.This film never got the distribution it should have in the U.S. simply because it was a subtitled foreign film and Americans have practically stopped watching foreign films!
What a damn shame!
They missed the greatest film of the '90s!
I would conjecture that not 1 out of a 100 people who've seen Spielberg's melodramatic "Saving Private Ryan" have even heard of "Capitaine Conan." Catch it on the Sundance channel on cable or rent it on video and experience a true masterpiece.
Then watch it again and again and experience deja-vu..
Interesting but also a bit slow and uninspiring at the beginning.
Historically speaking, this is a very interesting film, as very few films have dealt with what occurred between the Armistace in November 1918 and when the troops were ultimately brought home--some as late as 1920 or 1921.
During this period, an undeclared and practically forgotten war raged off and on between soldiers from several nations and the Red Army along the Russian borders.
Apparently, France, the United States, Germany and several other nations were worried that the Russian Revolution might spill into other nations and so troops were sent to eastern Europe.
Not a whole lot was gained from this, though it did help to keep some of the problems from spreading somewhat.
The problem is that while I am familiar about this period, I wonder just how many non-history teachers know about this.
While the film does give us some information about this, it's a shame it wasn't more clear and exactly why the troops were sent into Bulgaria and Romania and who they were fighting wasn't really discussed.
Perhaps the writers and director wanted this confusion in the film in order to mirror the confusion of the troops, as they seemed to have no idea why they were there either--but still, more information would have been nice.Despite the setting for the film being this undeclared war, the theme running through the film was the extreme difficulty some soldiers had adjusting to peace.
Captain Conan and his group of irregulars were savage guerrilla fighters and could not adapt to a post-WWI world.
This all came to a head when some of Conan's men were accused of committing crimes against the Romanians as well as when Conan was drug into resulting trials for these accused soldiers as well as a deserter.
This is where the film became more interesting and I started to enjoy the film after a very slow start.
Once again, the film was important because rarely is this transition to "normalcy" addressed in war films.So do I recommend the film?
Well, it really depends on your tolerance for a slow film (in the beginning) as well as your ability to follow the script--after all, if you don't have at least a basic knowledge of this period, you might feel a bit lost..
Nicely shot, very well played, visually impressive but lenghty.
This film is about how the military experience can transform a person, and no, it's not about the army making men out of boys.Conan leads a group of trench cleaners, who, in reality, were thugs and pathological killers who enjoyed butchering their enemies after infiltrating their lines at night.Problems emerge when the war is over, but some of these men cannot deal with their wartime homicidal pathologies and keep doing what they were trained for and mount a heist which results in killings.Conan then has to choose between his camaraderie for his men and his responsibilities as an army officer.This film has many originalities, especially in its war scenes and, I must admit, the whole thing is entertaining.It's lengthy at times, but Torreton gives a great performance and really deserved the Cesar for best leading role that he got that year.It is, in my knowledge, the only film which treats of that very particular post-World War I episode, when the "Reds" tried to invade Bulgaria and the French came to stop the expansion of what was not yet know as the Soviet block..
good show.
This movie left me severely impressed.
Most war films, particularly those intended to be viewed as a deep form of art tend to be much more shallow (Perhaps it has something to do with a lack of first hand military experience among film makers in the US.) Often the writers and directors are simply trying to support an anti war thesis by illustrating suffering, injustice and cruelty.
But anyone can illustrate suffering, injustice and cruelty in a generic way and then squeeze it into an ill fitting war context.
What impressed me about Bertrand's work is that he didn't do this.
There were no shallow caricatures and he did not spoon feed the audience with anti war propaganda.
Bertrand instead, tried to paint an accurate picture of some very complicated events and circumstances, and the equally complicated people who are trying to deal with them.
The suffering, injustice and cruelty are there, but the audience must find these elements for themselves..
More madness at war!.
Conan and his men call their own shots on the battlefield and create fear within the enemy with their surprise attacks.
By 1918, the mother of all wars comes to an end on the Bulgarian border.
By this stage the men have had the taste of blood and cannot seem to settle down.
When they are transferred to Romania for a bit of rest and recreation, a new battle commences with each other.
The rules of combat have altered for the sake of peace and hypocrisy runs rampart to the disgust of Conan.
At times, the style falls into dark humour territory, producing bizarre moments on the battlefield and words of wisdom on the human condition at war..
Capitaine Conan by B.Tavernier:Captaine Conan by B.Tavernier is certainly a great moie.
The story takes place during the WW1 in the French's army.
French's army go into European West and notably Romania, the Balkans, up to Russia.
One of the officer , Captan Conan led a special force composed of murderes,criminals.
This special force group commites sneak attacks and kills the foes by hand.
In Budapest they are bored and commite criminal action..
When I saw this movie, I was fascineted by the way war scenes are filmed.
When I saw this movie, I was fascineted by the way war scenes are filmed.
Tavernier films "craggy" landscape in the Balkans to give the impression of a busy war.
The special's effect as canon shoot, bombs add to this fabulous spectacle.
On top of that, the director dwells on this dark period with dim scene.
It participates in the tragic atmosphere and certainly in the total realism of this movie.
It obviously an emergency in the French army and its hypocrisies.
Its silly organisation critisized throught commandant Bouvier, a stupid man.
Actors are exellent for instance P.Torreton as Captain Conan with his witty eloquence.
This is a magnificient movie in spite of the lack of communication about the context which losts spectactors.Briefly by this movie Tavernier fullfills a successful career.
This movie as La princesse de Montpensier occurs in the margins of history.
It is why he declared " I want to film histor at man size".
disappointing end of the war.
I saw this film for two reasons - one is Bertrand Tavernier, the other is the fact that much of the action of the film takes place in my country of birth Romania.
I was disappointed.The historical background of the story takes place in the last couple of months of the first world war and in the year that followed.
The heroes are two French officers, one of them is the commander of a special unit which turns the fate of battles on the war fields with brutality and efficiency, but cannot find its place when the war ends.
The soldiers are part of an unfortunate minority of the French army which remained conscripted in the area, which was undergoing political changes - empires fell down, new nations where raising and forming their national states, borders where moving and still fought, and revolutions were threatening the order sought by the victorious powers.Unfortunately nothing of the changes around are reflected in any way by the film, which focuses on the fate of the French soldiers and officers and not only misses completely the events around but also presents the local people in an folklorist and non flattering manner.
Neither does the film say anything new that was not already said in the great films about the absurdity of war in general or the cruelty of WWI in particular.
The story is composed of several sequences not too well related, acting is good but cannot save the day, and seeing this film is overall an experience to forget for these who saw it and to avoid for these who did not see it..
`Capitaine Conan' is a very good movie, one of the best of 1996.
"Captain Conan (Capitaine Conan)' ***1/2.
(1996, France, Not Rated, 129 min Directed Bertrand Tavernier with Philippe Torreton, Samuel Lebihan, Bernard Le Coq).
History on the cusp of any war is most often overlooked.
How many of us have or take the opportunity to study or learn about the United States during the 1760s or 1870s?
When did you last read about Europe in 1900, 1920, 1932 or 1946?
`Capitaine Conan' is a movie about men on the cusp, at the end of World War I.
For this alone, `Capitaine Conan' is a movie worth seeing.
For more than a year after the Armistice, over 100,000 French troops fought in Eastern Europe.`Capitaine Conan' opens on the battlefront in Bulgaria.
Conan (Torreton) is the leader of a guerrilla troop that fights behind enemy lines.
They live off the land, fighting where the rules of engagement are brutally one on one.
Conan tells his friend Norbett (Lebihan) `
3000 men like me won the war.
Anyone can kill at a distance, but only a few learn to kill with the knife, eye to eye.
It took all the millions of soldiers like you to fight the war, but it took the few like myself to win it.' But when the Armistice is announced Conan's men are thrust back into the civilized world, a world of army regulations, boredom, and restrictions.
Conan's guerrillas aren't easily tamed.
There's a robbery and murder at the nightclub.
Conan's men are the primary suspects.
But before there is any resolution in the military court, the French troops are called to fight the Bolsheviks on the border of the newly formed Soviet Union.
The Bolsheviks attack the French and Conan leads his men into the battle.
As the scene fades they are running into the reeds and rushes of a huge river delta.The movie ends with Conan and Norbett meeting some years later.
Conan is dying.
Their discussion is unsettling and doesn't resolve any of the unanswered questions about how the war ended.
I've watched the movie twice and the ending still seems out of place.
But then maybe wars and history don't end.
Maybe history is a continuum and life on the cusp between events is more difficult to define and understand than the events themselves.
Maybe this is why most history is about events and less so about the life and lives around the events.If you're put of by the thought that `Capitaine Conan' is nothing more than a history lesson, be not afraid.
The acting, direction, and photography are very well done.
One of the most interesting features of this production is the hand held camera work during the battle scenes.
The camera moves through the battle like another pair of eyes often distracted by an explosion, an obstruction or a scream.
The camera flinches as it makes its way though the mud and the muck of the battle.
The staging of a battle in the hills of Bulgaria is up to the standards of the battle scenes in `Patton.'`Capitaine Conan' is a very good movie, one of the best of 1996.
It's out on video, I recommend you see it. |
tt0105483 | A Stranger Among Us | Emily Eden (Griffith), a hardened New York City homicide detective, goes undercover to investigate the murder of a Hasidic diamond-cutter. To do so, she lives with the family of the Hasidic rebbe (Lee Richardson), an elderly Holocaust survivor who is revered for his wisdom and compassion toward his fellow Jews. He says to her, "You and I have something in common: We are both intimately familiar with evil. It does something to your soul."
While living with the rebbe's family, she takes a liking to his son, Ariel (Eric Thal), a young man who works as a diamond-cutter but teaches in the yeshiva and is expected to follow his father as the next rebbe. In addition to keeping all 613 Mitzvot, he is waiting for his intended, or basherte, the daughter of a Paris rebbe whom he has not yet actually met. They are the subjects of an arranged marriage, but he believes that she is his soul mate, chosen by God. He is also studying the Kabbalah, which is regarded as rather daring for a man under 40. Its discussion of sexual intimacy is restrained but specific, as well as a metaphor for the relationship between Man and God.
The crisis of the film is when Emily finds out that the "inside man" in the murder plot is the rebbe's adopted daughter Mara (Tracy Pollan), who had been living a disorderly life until the future murder victim, Yaakov Klausman (Jake Weber), introduced her to the rebbe. Afterwards, she joined the community as a repentant baalat tshuva, "one who has returned," until a person from her past approached her and she let him into the Diamond Center to steal diamonds worth about $750,000 and kill Yaakov.
This is all Emily needs to solve the case and arrest Mara as an accessory to murder (or for the crime of felony murder); but when Emily returns to the rebbe's home with Ariel, she finds that Mara has taken the rebbe's daughter hostage. After Emily attempts to negotiate, Mara knocks her out; and Ariel shoots Mara with Emily's gun. Ariel comments that sometimes an evil deed has a partially good result.
The film ends with the wedding of Ariel and his basherte, Shayna Singer, which Emily watches from a distance. | violence, neo noir, murder | train | wikipedia | In New York, Detective Emily Eden (Melanie Griffith) is a tough detective and daughter of a former cop.
When her partner Nick (Jamey Sheridan) is stabbed during an arrest of two drug dealers, Emily is assigned to a case of missing person, Yaakov Klausman, in a Hasidic community.
Emily concludes that Yaakov knew the killer and asks the rebbe (Lee Richardson) permission to work undercover in the community.
The rebbe brings Emily to his home and his stepdaughter Leah (Mia Sara) and his stepson Ariel (Eric Thal) help her to know people in the community and understand their habits and rules.
Emily works in a department store with Leah, Ariel and Yaakov's fiancée Mara (Tracy Pollan), who was former drug addicted embraced by Yaakov and the rebbe, and her partner Levine (John Pankow) gives support to her.
But soon she has a discussion with Ariel and she concludes that the killer is another person from the community."A Stranger Among Us" is an underrated movie that entwined crime, drama and romance.
Most of the bad reviews of the critics are based on the similarities of this movie with 1985 "Witness", but anyway "A Stranger Among Us" is an engaging film.
The first time I saw this movie in the 90's, I did not understand how and independent woman like Emily Eden could fall in love with Ariel, but this time I have understood her need of fraternal love.
I found it to be interesting look at the Hassidic way of life.The first half of the film is much better than the second half, or this would rated higher.
It's probably too low-key, at least in that second half which needed more suspense and action to be a better-liked and known film.Despite being difficult believing the soft-spoken Melanie Griffith as a tough NYC cop, she still does an excellent job in the lead role and Eric Thai, ditto, as the romantic interest.
I truly enjoyed this movie, despite bad reviews and comments about Melanie Griffith's role being not suited to her.
It takes a cynical worldly woman cop (Griffith) into the strange world of Orthodox Jews when she goes undercover to investigate a murder.
The warmth in the family meals and celebrations can be felt by the viewer and lets you understand how this cloistered world with rules for everything starts to look good to a woman who is so jaded and cynical in her outlook on life.
Then again if one has only 5 pigeon holes (or less) to file films into - then go ahead.MG was just fine in the film - her voice is always going to be with her - and she's made it through 100 roles already with it.The portrayal of the Hassidim was surely an education for many.The 'background filming' was good - even as a born New Yorker - got to see some new 'shots'The plot was there - but jumpy - I doubt very many predicted the killers - but did wonder why accomplices not revealed.Sure there were inconsistencies and illogical stuff - but not any more than the bloody Crichton films which most of the time require you have to forget you have a brain - yet take themselves VERY seriously.
(And no, I'm not Jewish).First off, Melanie Griffith as a hard-boiled cop is like casting Prissy from "Gone With The Wind" as Dirty Harry.
Even if she was, wouldn't you expect someone who grew up in New York to have at least *some* familiarity with Judaism?She treats every one of the Hasidim with arrogant condescension, in the type of "rude asshole" role that makes a viewer's teeth ache, yet we're supposed to somehow care whether, by the end of the movie, she's managed to understand and perhaps even respect them somewhat.
Director Sidney Lumet is no hack - his resume includes classics such as "The Pawnbroker," "Serpico," "Dog Day Afternoon," and "Network." But every artist is entitled to the occasional misstep, and at least "A Stranger Among Us" is more an interesting failure than the outright disaster "The Wiz" was.Lumet is dealing with a number of problems here, first and foremost among them a meandering script that can't quite decide what its main storyline should be.
Ostensibly a crime drama centering on the murder of a merchant in Manhattan's diamond district (the stretch of 47th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues), it persists in wandering off in two other directions - Brooklyn's Hassidim community and its age-old traditions, and the threat of forbidden love between one of its members and the detective assigned to the case.
Less compelling are those moments involving Ariel and Emily of the NYPD, since their interest in each other strains credulity, not only because their backgrounds make it unlikely, but due to the lack of any chemistry between Eric Thal and Melanie Griffith.Griffith is Lumet's other major problem here.
No doubt she was cast because at the time she was still Hollywood's flavor-of-the-month, but we are asked to suspend disbelief and accept her not only as a New York police officer, but as one who would be selected to go undercover and infiltrate the Jewish community and live with them as one of their own.
Yet - oddly enough - although plainly she's out of her element, the fish-out-of-water aspects of the story just don't work.By the time whodunit is revealed, you may not care who was responsible for the nearly-forgotten crime lost in a jumble of sub-plots - but give it a moment or two of thought and you'll wonder how the victim's body could have been hidden where it was by the person implausibly identified as the killer.
It's a plot twist that just isn't quite - forgive the pun - kosher.The actors cast as the elder Jews and the atmosphere in which they live and worship add an air of authenticity that's missing from any of the scenes involving police procedures.
John Pankow, Mia Sara, and Jamey Sheridan do well in their small supporting roles, and James Gandolfini makes an appearance as a thug in a foreshadowing of his career as Tony Soprano, but Eric Thal is saddled with the almost impossible task of making us believe he would forsake his strong religious beliefs and dedication to Kabbalah for the hard-talking, gun-toting Griffith.Despite its many flaws, "A Stranger Among Us" is one of those films that makes a long flight, rainy day, or dateless Friday night easier to endure.
The main point of the movie, as far as I am concerned, is to portray aspects of the Hasidic community, which most people do not know much about.
(SPOILERS) Earlier reviewers have focused on this film as a rip-off of 'Witness.' But let's take it on its own terms.A Chasidic diamond dealer, Yaakov Klausman, is reported missing.
A cynical, assertive NYC cop, Emily (Melanie Griffith), is assigned to investigate.
(I guess Chasidic corpses don't start to smell after a couple of days like the rest of us.) Emily then decides she must live among the Chasidim to learn about their community, to prevent further murders, because the murder looked like an inside job, a possibility considered unthinkable by the Jews.
Emily makes friends with the Rebbe's daughter Leah, played by (the very Italian) Mia Sara (obviously owing to the scarcity of Jewish actresses in America).
Melanie Griffith is horribly miscast and would fool not one Hacedic Jew in Crown Heights with her undercover role.
And he's Jewish which should have told him that this was a script to stay away from.Melanie Griffith stars as a New York City homicide cop who catches the case of a young Hassidic man who works in the diamond district as many do stabbed to death.
I thought Melanie Griffith was horrible in "Working Girl" but she was even worse in this movie.
It goes without saying that this film is a total "Witness" ripoff, except now the tough-guy cop is a woman (Griffith) and the religious setting is within the Hasidic Jewish community instead of the Amish.
"Witness"= superb, "Stranger"stinko).The first scene shows Emily Eden (Griffith)and her partner in front of a club, reminiscing about their "rock" days, and how bad they are.
We cannot buy Griffith as a tough talking rebel cop with that Betty Boop voice of hers, and it's easy to see why "Stranger Among Us" is one of the top 10 "butt of movie jokes" films of all time..
She thinks it's an inside job and goes undercover in the community with the help of the rebbe's adopted son (Eric Thal) and daughter Leah (Mia Sara).
Emily (Melanie Griffith) is a tough New York City detective.
Her new friends in the community include handsome Ariel (Eric Thal), who is destined to become the new rabbi, unmarried-but- looking-for-a-good-husband Leah (Mia Sara), who is kind and understanding, and Mara (Tracy Pollan), who was engaged to the missing man.
Griffith gives a terrific performance as Emily, a role which requires her to be a tough-as-nails cop AND a caring woman at the same time.
Griffith strikes out as a police woman who goes undercover in New York's Hissidic Jewish community to solve the disappearance of a young jewelry shop keeper whom she ultimately discovers murdered..From one of the opening scenes when Griffith asserts her character as a tough talking, trigger happy cowboy, or girl in this instance, we know the plot is headed for ridicule.
For one thing, Griffath, who looks like she's lived the hard party life she has, looks way too old for Thal, as she does for all her leading men.
Thal tries to play it straight as the fledgling rabbi but has only his costume to work with.The whole thing plays out like kind of a reverse version of the Harrison Ford film 'Witness' Only the plot is much less imaginative and the romance can not find any foothold here.
Griffith is touching as the undercover "police-person" working overtime to protect her shell -- it's precisely because she looks and sounds so soft that her attempts to act hard work.
I thought the movie did an excellent job of personalizing the hasadic atmosphere and the effect it had upon Melanie in changing her outlook on life..
Nice plot line but the whole thing falls on its butt because of Melanie Griffith's weak acting.
In both films, the internal richness of the social bonding within these closed communities is shown in contrast to the helter-skelter on and off relationships in our self-confessed "liberated" society.It's too bad that Melanie Griffith, whose films I keep going to see in hopes she will eventually learn to act, does not have what it takes.
Melanie Griffiths, displays an excellent performance as Emily Eden, the detective/cop.
Detective Emily Eden (Melanie Griffith) is assigned to find him and missing diamonds.
Has Emily and/or others learned from the experience?Bottom line: If you love to explore other cultures, if you are Jewish, if you live in close proximity to Jews, definitely watch the movie.
Melanie GriffithDespite the glaring weakness of miscasting Melanie Griffith in the role of Emily Eden, A Stranger Among Us still remains one of the better films I have liked in the last 15 years.
I give it the favored status based on the cinematography and the strength of Sidney Lumet's direction in showing the world a side of New York the few people would see otherwise.While some of the elements of the story are indeed quite fascinating to watch, some of the others are flat-out hard to watch.
Griffith's character (Detective Emily Eden) tries to come across as sympathetic by dying her hair and going undercover to catch the killer, but looks too much like a Cover Girl® model to be convincing as either a Hassidim or as a cop.There was some good supporting cast around her in the film, but all in all, while I found the film fun to watch for the cultural value, Griffith's performance and especially that of Burtt Harris who plays Emily's loathsomely dysfunctional father, was just not enough to carry the day in this film.On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this film a 5/10.
Melanie Griffith creates a many-sided, believable character as the detective, and Eric Thal is wonderful as the Rebbe's adopted son, he plays his role with passion and vulnerability, but also an inner strength.
Beautiful blonde police detective Melanie Griffith (as Emily Eden) loses the services of her lover and partner in a shooting.
Her next assignment is to investigate the disappearance of a well-respected man in New York City's Hasidic Jewish community.
Suspecting an inside job, Ms. Griffith goes undercover as a Hasidic Jewish woman.
Melanie Griffith builds a strong characterization as an unsentimental homicide detective, who goes undercover to probe the murder of a Hasidic diamond cutter.
It does something to your soul." And after the very brief, not overly graphic latter sequence, Griffith shows both grit and mercy to a dying thug played by a fine actor in a debut role, who cries, "I'm so scared." Lumet's camera looks sharply down at him as she lets him hold her hand as he dies.Thematically, A Stranger Among Us is definitely a Sidney Lumet film.
The movie is clearly recycling the Witness/Beverly Hills Cop fish-out-of-water convention, but Lumet and Avrech's steadiest level of operation is not in telling a whodunit mystery which basically hibernates for a good portion of the film just to resurface at the climax seemingly to recap us on an overlooked job half-done.While there are a couple of imaginatively worked and remarkable enough moments of action, one introducing Griffiths' character with expert terseness, and one much later, such sequential touches blanch in contrast to the enigma of a people's dedication to a god, the enigma which this minor Lumet effort attempts to explore.
Melanie goes undercover as a hasidic woman in New York.
Griffith gives a luminous performance as a confused cop going undercover to discover the murderer of a Hasidic diamond merchant.
OK, so, I myself am not the world's biggest Melanie Griffith fan, but I really enjoyed this film.
Detective Emily Eden goes undercover in a New York City Jewish community to expose a Jewish boy's killer, and she does that very well!.
After being involved in a shoot-out at a mid-town Manhattan movie house where her partner Nick,Jamey Sheridan, was stabbed and sent to the hospital and the perpetrator shot and killed New York Police Detective Emily Eden, Madaline Griffith, after being cleared of using unnecessary force is put on light duty on a missing person case in the Brooklyn Hasidic community.
It's only later that they find out that there's bad among all men and women no matter how law abiding their supposed to be.Even though Madiline Griffith was the star of the movie it was really actor Eric Thal who played the grand Rebe's, Lee Richardson, adopted son Ariel who stole, figuratively not literally, the acting honors in the film.
In the end Emily turned out to be right about who murdered Yaakov but even she had no idea just how close the killer was to him and his family..
She gets scolded for this, but it's no skin of her back, as she's got bigger fish to try: She's gonna move in with some Hasidic Jews after she suspects someone close in the murder of one of their own (in a corpse reveal scene so hilariously obvious I think my 8-year-old niece could have found it).Melanie Griffith is among the dumbest, most obnoxious characters I've seen in some time.
It seems inconceivable that the same man that produced Twelve Angry Men, Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Murder on th Orient Express and Fail-Safe could produce something like A Stranger Among Us. I understand that every producer of art and media can sometimes make missteps, but this production is so flawed from its very core and goes about its business in such an offensively patronizing manner that I am unable to even fathom what he could possibly have been thinking.This film is commonly sighted as one of Lumet's failures, along with the following year's Guilty as Sin. But at least that mess had a trashy charm about it (It stars Don Johnson and Rebecca De Mornay for chrissake!) This has no such thing.
"What's new and exciting?" Detective Emily Edith is on a case in a closed Hasidic community.
Good attempt at Witness-type thriller by Sidney Lumet and star Melanie Griffith, but the true goal & direction of the film seems to change from moment to moment.
Griffith's character goes undercover in a Orthodox Jewish community but her change isn't dramatic enough to even seem undercover.
Emily (Griffith) & Ariel (Eric Thal) look at each other a lot but there aren't many sparks flying.
As a police drama it falls short there too, because we don't see Emily doing much investigating, just living among the Hasidic Jews & getting a feel & appreciation for their lifestyle.
I still recommend this movie because it has Melanie Griffth & shows a culture that is not often depicted in films..
But what irritates me that most is the blind faith that producers have when they take the plot of a great film, change it a bit and hope we won't notice that it is the exact same movie.In the case of the great 'Witness', the rip-off is 'A Stranger Among Us', a languid murder mystery which casts Melanie Griffith in the Harrison Ford role and sets her up as a cop moving into a community of Hassidic Jews instead of the Amish.She is there to solve a disappearance which is connected with the theft of some jewels so she sets herself among them to try and weed out the perpetrator.
I do not want make any bad critic but when Melanie Griffith sit first time front of the rabbi she has one type of cloth. |
tt1191122 | Kung Fu Panda | Years before the events of the first film, Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), the scion of a peacock clan that rules Gongmen City in ancient China, seeks to weaponize gunpowder, which had recently been invented to create fireworks. After discovering from the court's goat Soothsayer (Michelle Yeoh) that "a warrior of black-and-white" will defeat him if he does not change his ways, Shen leads an army of wolves to exterminate the panda population to avert the prophecy. Shen's parents are horrified at this atrocity and exile their son, who swears revenge.
About twenty years later, Po (Jack Black) is living his dream as the Dragon Warrior, protecting the Valley of Peace alongside his friends and fellow kung fu masters, the Furious Five. His teacher Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) tells him, however, that he has yet to achieve inner peace. While defending a village from wolf bandits who have been stealing refined metal for Shen, Po is distracted by a symbol on the wolf leader's (Danny McBride) armor, which causes Po to have a flashback of his mother and allows the wolves to escape. Po asks his goose father, Mr. Ping (James Hong), about his origins. Ping reveals that he found Po as an infant in a radish crate and adopted him, but Po remains unsatisfied, wondering how and why he ended up in the Valley of Peace.
Shifu receives word that Shen has returned to Gongmen City and killed Thundering Rhino, the leader of the kung fu council protecting the City, and is plotting to conquer China with his newly developed weapon, a cannon. Shifu sends Po and the Furious Five to Gongmen City to stop Shen and destroy his weapon. They find the city occupied by Shen's forces, with the two surviving council members Storming Ox and Croc imprisoned. The six heroes ask the council members for help to liberate the city, but the two cite their helplessness against Shen's weapon and refuse. Po and the Five are discovered by the wolf boss and give chase, only to be arrested in front of Shen's tower.
Upon being brought before Shen in his tower, Po and the Five free themselves and destroy Shen's weapon. However, Po is again distracted by a flashback upon seeing the same symbol as before on Shen's plumage, realizing Shen was there the last night Po saw his parents. This allows Shen to escape and destroy the tower with an arsenal of cannons. After Po and the Five escape, Tigress (Angelina Jolie), confronts Po over his distraction, who reluctantly explains that he remembers Shen's presence on the night he was separated from his parents, and wants answers about his past from Shen. Though empathetic, Tigress tells Po to stay behind for his own safety. Despite this, Po breaks into the factory to question Shen, inadvertently foiling the Five's plan to destroy the factory. Shen claims that Po's parents abandoned him, and then blasts Po out of the factory into a river with a cannon, where he is presumed dead.
Po survives and is rescued by the same soothsayer, who takes him to the ruins of the nearby village where Po was born. Guided by the soothsayer to embrace his past, Po remembers that when he was an infant, his parents had sacrificed themselves to save him from Shen's army, his mother hiding him in a radish crate and luring Shen's forces away from him. Po attains inner peace, realizing that he has lived a happy and fulfilling life despite this early tragedy.
Po returns to Gongmen City to save the captive Five and prevent Shen's conquest of China. A battle ensues between Shen's armada, sailing in the heart of Gongmen City, and Po and the Five, joined by Shifu, who has persuaded Ox and Croc to help. Po modifies the movements used during his inner peace training to redirect Shen's cannonballs against his own armada, destroying it. Po then urges Shen to let go of his own past, but Shen attacks Po until Shen slashes the ropes holding up his last cannon, which falls on top of him, crushing him to death. Victorious, Po returns to the Valley of Peace and reunites with Mr. Ping, lovingly declaring the goose to be his father.
At the same time, Po's birth father, Li Shan (Fred Tatasciore), is revealed to have survived Shen's attack and is shown to be living in a far-off, hidden village inhabited by surviving pandas, and senses that his son is still alive. | violence | train | wikipedia | Wonderful. Quite simply the best animated movie of the year and one of my all time favorites.Both both adults and children will love it. We all laughed out loud again and again. You don't often get that and it is one of the movie's strong points.As you may expect from a movie with "Kung Fu" in its title it does have some fighting but kids over 6 years old should be fine in my opinion.Almost makes up for the disappointing season for animated films. I know which DVD will soon be in my collection.The only question in my mind is about the sequel, because there IS going to be a sequel. Will it be as good or is it going to be another Madagascar2? :( |
tt0150153 | Closure | === Setting and characters ===
Halo 4 takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting in the year 2557, four years after the events of Halo 3. Backstory details that hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era, humans were one of several interstellar civilizations. Following a war with the parasitic Flood, the humans came into conflict with the Forerunners, a powerful race that upheld a policy of benevolent shepherding of other races known as the Mantle of Responsibility. Humanity had begun an aggressive campaign of destroying any Flood infestations on a planet, which was misinterpreted as a desire for conquest. After centuries of war the Forerunners defeated the humans, ancestors of the contemporary human race, and stripped them of their technology and empire. The Forerunners soon fought the Flood themselves; after exhausting every other strategic option available to them, the Forerunners activated weapons of mass destruction known as the Halo Array. The Array's firing killed all sentient life in the galaxy to deprive the Flood of their food. Life that the Forerunners cataloged was then reseeded throughout the galaxy.
In the 26th century, space-faring humanity (organized under the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC) comes under attack from a splinter faction of the former Covenant, an alien collective of species that worships the Forerunners as gods. This Covenant faction believes that activating the Halos will bring about salvation, not destruction. The human supersoldier Master Chief John-117, along with his artificial intelligence companion Cortana, are instrumental in stopping the Halos from being activated, and the Flood from once again menacing the galaxy. At the end of Halo 3, Chief and Cortana are left stranded in unknown space aboard the remains of the vessel Forward Unto Dawn. Much of Halo 4's campaign and Spartan Ops' missions take place on or near the Forerunner planet Requiem. Part of the game also takes place on Ivanoff Research Station—a human base in orbit around the Halo ringworld Installation 03—and in Earth's orbit.
=== Campaign ===
Four years after the events of Halo 3, UNSC Forward Unto Dawn drifts towards Requiem from the destroyed ring. Cortana wakes Master Chief from cryonic sleep shortly before rogue post-war Covenant forces board the vessel. The remnants of Forward Unto Dawn are caught in Requiem's gravity well and pass through an opening to crash-land on its interior. As Chief and Cortana explore Requiem, fighting hostile Covenant and mechanical warriors called "Promethean Knights", Cortana malfunctions. She reveals that she is experiencing "rampancy", a declining mental state where AIs past their operating expectancies "think" themselves to death. Chief promises to get Cortana to Earth, believing that Cortana's creator, Doctor Catherine Halsey, can fix Cortana's condition. Chief and Cortana pick up garbled transmissions from a human ship, UNSC Infinity, who have picked up Dawn's distress call. Cortana attempts to warn Infinity away from Requiem's gravity well and directs the Chief to deactivate what she believes are communications jammers. Instead, the Chief unwittingly releases the Didact, an ancient Forerunner warrior, from imprisonment. The Didact takes control of the Prometheans and Covenant, and attacks Infinity after it is dragged into Requiem.
Chief makes contact with Infinity and helps repel the Didact's attack. Chief and Cortana recommend attacking the Didact while he is vulnerable, but Infinity captain Del Rio orders them to destroy the gravity well so their ship can escape. In the process, Chief is contacted by a Forerunner known as the Librarian—the wife of the Didact, as well as ancient humanity's protector. She explains that the Forerunners were divided on how best to combat the Flood. After failing to discover a way to immunize biological beings from the parasite, the Didact used a device called the Composer to convert the warriors under his command into mechanical Promethean Knights immune to infection. Requiring more soldiers, the Didact forcibly converted captured humans into Prometheans, before being stopped and imprisoned by the Librarian. The Librarian, who has guided humanity's development, accelerates the Chief's evolution; this grants him immunity to the Composer.
After destroying the gravity well, Del Rio orders a retreat back to Earth, doubting the Chief and Cortana's testimony. The Master Chief disobeys orders to stand down and relinquish the malfunctioning Cortana, and stays behind to oppose the Didact. Infinity executive officer Commander Lasky gives Chief an armed transport and wishes him luck. Chief and Cortana attempt to sabotage the Didact's ship before he leaves, but when they are unsuccessful they follow the Didact to a Halo ring, Installation 03. The Composer has been moved from the ring onto the nearby Ivanoff Research Station, which the Covenant attack. The Chief defends Ivanoff, but the Didact retrieves the Composer and uses it on the station, composing every individual except the Chief.
Chief and Cortana use a fighter to follow the Didact's ship through slipspace towards Earth. Aided by Infinity, now commanded by Lasky, and the UNSC home fleet, the Chief boards the Didact's ship with a nuclear warhead. Cortana inserts copies of herself into the Didact's computer systems to overwhelm the Didact's shield, but not before the Didact directs the Composer at Earth. With the help of Cortana, the Chief defeats the Didact, who falls into a slipspace portal generated underneath the Composer. The Master Chief activates the bomb but is saved by Cortana, who sacrifices herself. The Chief is found by a UNSC rescue team and is taken back to Infinity, where he, mourning the loss of Cortana, talks with Lasky about Earth, humanity, and what his duty as a soldier means.
In a post-credits cutscene, UNSC forces descend on the city of New Phoenix, the location the Didact used the Composer on, to find its inhabitants composed. In a narration, the Didact proclaims the Forerunner's role as custodians of the galaxy having to bear the Mantle of Responsibility, and humanity as the greatest threat in the galaxy. Master Chief removes his armor aboard Infinity; if the player completes the game on Legendary difficulty, the Chief's eyes are briefly shown.
=== Spartan Ops ===
The events of Spartan Ops take place six months after Halo 4's campaign. Infinity returns to Requiem, where Covenant insurgents—led by Jul 'Mdama, who styles himself as "the Didact's Hand"—and Prometheans are still active. Sarah Palmer, commander of the Spartan-IVs, deploys Spartan squads to clear out the Covenant and Promethean forces in Requiem's interior in order to set up research bases. Crimson Squad recovers a mysterious artifact excavated by Covenant; Infinity scientist Doctor Glassman disappears after studying the device.
Catherine Halsey is brought to Infinity due to her knowledge of Forerunner technology. She is kept under guard by marines and Spartans including Gabriel Thorne, who lost his family during the Didact's attack on New Phoenix. While studying the artifact, Halsey begins receiving messages on her computer from an anonymous sender. The source of the transmissions is 'Mdama, who captures Glassman and forces him to work on a Forerunner device that supposedly contains the Librarian. Pursuing 'Mdama's troops, Crimson Squad recovers another artifact. When Halsey examines the device, it displays images Thorne recognizes as depicting New Phoenix. Lasky reveals to Halsey and the Spartans that the UNSC knows Prometheans are former humans. Approaching the artifact looking for answers, Thorne is teleported to Requiem and captured by Covenant. Palmer arrests Halsey for communicating with 'Mdama. Thorne escapes captivity outside 'Mdama's base, and escapes with Glassman; they are rescued by Majestic Squad.
Halsey uses an override code to force Infinity's AI, Roland, to assist her. Seeking information withheld from her concerning the Librarian, Halsey learns that Master Chief is alive. Halsey contacts M'dama to try and strike a deal, as they both want to find the Librarian; Roland breaks free of Halsey's control and summons guards to apprehend Halsey. Lasky decides to place Halsey in cryogenic sleep to prevent further trouble, but Promethean forces invade Infinity, capture Halsey and teleport her to 'Mdama's base. Serin Osman, head of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), orders Lasky to kill Halsey, but he is reluctant to do so. Palmer sets off to Requiem to kill Halsey; Lasky tells Majestic Squad to intervene and rescue Halsey from 'Mdama.
Halsey steps into the Forerunner device and makes contact with the Librarian. The Librarian gives Halsey the two pieces of the "Janus Key", an instrument that provides the location for all Forerunner technology in the galaxy, and instructs Halsey to use the key to advance humankind. Upon receiving the key, Halsey exits the device and 'Mdama takes half of the key from her. Halsey passes the second piece to Thorne as Majestic Squad and Palmer arrive. Palmer wounds Halsey in the arm just before a Promethean teleports 'Mdama and Halsey from the base. 'Mdama sets Requiem to collide with the nearby sun and his forces evacuate the planet. Crimson and Majestic disable devices that anchor Infinity to Requiem, allowing the ship to escape before the installation is destroyed. Meanwhile, Halsey, who lost her wounded arm, tells 'Mdama she has been betrayed by the UNSC and offers to ally herself to exact revenge. | violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0097631 | Judgement | Park Chan-wook draws on a disaster that took place in South Korea to ironically criticize the greed of rampant capitalism. In 1995, in Seoul, a huge shopping centre, the Sampung department Store collapsed, killing about 500 people and injuring many others. This tragedy was caused by human negligence. Half a million dollars were offered in indemnity to the victims' relatives, and this triggered a merciless looting made by unscrupulous people. In a morgue where the lifeless body of a girl lies, waiting to be identified, a man and a woman, who introduce themselves as the parents of the victim, are distraught over the loss of the young girl. However, after a moment's hesitation, a morgue employee claims the body of the girl. The grotesque controversy about who is the real "owner" of the corpse and the legitimate beneficiary of the money starts here. Between turn of events and paradoxical punishments of fate, the ending leads to a tragic and ironic conclusion. In black and white, the whole story is set in the cold morgue, where the characters' absurd and pathetic dialogues take place, like a journalist and a police detective who keep on squabbling. Halfway between Hitchcock and Polanski, Judgement reveals all Park's irony about a shabby, ignorant and greedy humanity, that does not hesitate to come to vile compromises for money. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0058241 | Island of the Blue Dolphins | In 1835, a group of white hunters, named the Aleuts, slayed most of an Indian tribe at Ghalas-at inhabiting an island off California, forcing the survivors to flee the island. Young Karana, realizing that her 6-year-old brother, Ramo, has been left behind, returns to the island. Karana and Ramo are left alone, menaced by a pack of wild dogs. The most ferocious of the dogs kills Ramo, and Karana teaches herself archery and hunts the dog. She puts an arrow in its chest but then takes pity on the animal and nurses it back to health.
She and the dog, whom she names Rontu, become fast friends. When another group of hunters come to the island, Karana hides, and although Tutok, a girl in the group, finds her and tries to befriend her, Karana refuses to trust anyone. Years pass, and Rontu dies of age. Karana finds a wild dog, that looks like the son of Rontu, and names him Rontu-Aru which means, son of Rontu. Later, a boat carrying a missionary arrives, and this time Karana decides to trust the strangers. Taking her animals, Rontu-Aru, an otter, and some wild birds she has taught to never leave her, she leaves the island. | revenge | train | wikipedia | It's been a long time..
I saw this film once when I was in 6th grade (over 3 years ago) as part of a class project.
We were reading the book so my teacher brought this in to watch.
Even though it's been 3 years since I've seen it I'm ready to go back and review it.
The story is of a young Native American Girl who was abandoned by her tribe (accidently) and left on her island.
She befriend wolves and other wildlife as she makes her solitary life on the island for over 18 years until she was discovered.
The film and book are both based on the real story of Juana Maria.
The film's acting is decent and the story id great so I can recommend it.
It's hard to find on DVD but it should still be available somewhere..
Extra.
I am biased, I suppose, as I got to be an extra in this movie which was filmed at Anchor Point, California.
I was an Airman, stationed at the Point Arena Air Force Station.
Us Air Force guys got into the act because the Universal production company was seeking local native Americans to play the part Indians in the movie.
They were to play the part of poor, starving people but the local natives were of large stature, and they could not get a full compliment of Indians so they came to the Airbase and enlisted some of us poor,staving G.I.'s to be Indians.
We met at Anchor Point, where we went into tents and were sprayed with brown stain, given dark, long haired wigs, and loincloth es.
I have a picture standing next to the female lead, Celia Kaye.
By gosh, I really looked like a native.
I really enjoyed my experience as an extra as the production crew was ever so nice.
When the Aleut ship shot it's cannon and blew up all the Indians, I wanted to be able to see myself from amongst all the other bodies, so I didn't die instantly, as I was supposed to, but rose up on one elbow, before dying.
This trick allowed me to see myself when I got to see the movie.
I don't think anyone noticed but me.Many years later I got a chance to be an extra in Fire in the Sky, a story about an alien abduction.
In this one I was a Doctor, and got about 15 seconds of film time, plus a 1/2 second full face shot.
Another company, but still all very nice people.
I have never worked in any job to this day that treated everybody so well and these people from Hollywood.Don TimmonsDillingham, Alaska.
Very Sad. I Remember watching this when I was very young in the Philippines.
It would be shown for weeks at a time.I just learned the tragic true story recently.
She was the last of her tribe.
Every one of her tribe died when the ship she missed sank.
Karana's fate was just as sad.
Seven weeks after she was rescued she died from illness, contracted from the White men..
Check out the real story of Juanna Maria.
The ship that took her people went to Mission Santa Barbara where they all died of illness and are buried there.
After several years they returned for her and she also died shortly after her arrival at the mission where she was buried under the name the missionaries gave her Juanna Maria.
The island that her people lived on is San Nicolas Island 60 miles off the coast of Point Mugu,California.
Her story is not much like the book or movie.Look it up on the web under Juanna Maria or island of the blue dolphin.
The Navy now owns it and uses it as a missile test range.They do not allow visitors to the island but there is a lot of info on the web about the island and Juanna Maria..
Beautiful inspiring movie for youngsters.
This movie had a profound impact on me when I saw it as a child.
The strength, resolve, and intelligence, as well as dealing with isolation, was so inspiring.
I've drawn on it throughout my life to emulate the same when faced with difficulties.
The bonding with the wild dog, unconditional love, devotion and encouragement was a gift from the creator of all life.
Highly recommend for young kids..
I liked the movie well enough, considering it came from 1964.
I felt that they didn't depict the passage of time very accurately and I was surprised when all of a sudden, the movie was over.
I know that books and movies are usually very different, but I think this movie could have been a far better representation of the book.
Add some more details, don't change some of the details from the book.
But hey, I'm not the director or in charge of the budget.
That is the other thing to consider, budget.
They didn't have big budgets back then and this was what they got for their budget.
All in all, I enjoyed the movie well enough.
I would enjoy seeing a remake with some better details, more representative of the book.
Still an OK movie though..
Sad, but true.
I remember seeing this movie years ago.
It was based on the book, which was a true story.
However, it is true that when Europeans came along, they did bring along diseases, and sadly enough murdered innocent natives.
Those people tried hard to defend their territory, but were outnumbered.
This movie tells the story of a girl who survived after her tribe left the island.
It's too sad to think about much more.
I would only recommend it if you like true stories about history.
Otherwise, all you will see is a lot of people dying, and sad stuff along the way..
Where`s The Devilfish ?.
ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS by Scott O`Dell was a novel that my class had to study for a project when I was eleven years old .
We had to come up with things like " What would you have as a food menu if like Karana you were stuck on an island " and we also had to write a story as to how we thought the novel would end .
Being a massive fan of monsters I wrote an ending that featured a great battle with the " Devilfish " which is - While not referred to in the book as such - in reality a giant squid The giant squid features in several passages in the book and I looked forward to seeing the movie version simply because I wanted to see how realistic the special effects team could handle this endevour , I mean a convincing giant squid is very difficult to realise on screen especially before the technique of CGI .
Unfortunately when the end titles ran I was still excitedly waiting for a giant squid to turn up and was slightly disgusted when it didn`t appear .
You could argue that the producers had the right idea by not attempting the difficult task of bringing a squid to screen since its appearences in the book don`t affect the plot , but this movie version of ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS is very bland , slow moving and in need of some excitement , an excitement that would have been helped by a giant squid.
Great for insomnia.
We rented this video because my 10 yr old son read the book and loved the story.
The only redeeming part of the movie was watching 23 year old Celia Kaye (playing a 15 year old who doesn't age or wear out her clothes over the course of 5 years) in her fake-Indian leather outfit with the slit skirt.
Hubba hubba.
Wooden acting, stupid ending.
The kids liked it.
I liked Celia's skirt..
Island of the Blue Dolphins story by Vijay Woods.
Island of the Blue Dolphins movie is about a girl named Karana.
She and her brother Ramo are on a Island with their tribe .
They saw a boat in the middle of the sea so Karana told Ramo to telltheir father about the boat.I thought the movie was sad because her brother died then she lost her dog and her friend went away to the man that killed Karana dad |
tt0048037 | Ensayo de un crimen | Archibaldo de la Cruz (Alonso) is a wealthy Mexican man. As a privileged child during the Mexican Revolution, he witnessed the death of his governess, who died as she told him a fable about a music box that his mother had just given him. Because of the contents of the story and the coincidental timing of the governess's death, a young Archibaldo concludes that he had killed the woman using the music box. It is from there that his desire to kill begins.
As an adult, Archibaldo relates this story to a nun, and threatens to kill her with a straight razor. The terrified woman runs from Archibaldo, eventually running into an empty elevator shaft to her death. Archibaldo is called in by a judge investigating the incident. He confesses that he is responsible for her death, and for many others.
Patricia Terrazas (Macedo), is rather loud and constantly at conflict with her lover. After witnessing a fight between her and her lover, Archibaldo follows her and offers to drive her home, which she accepts. On arriving, he fantasizes of killing her with his straight razor, but is interrupted when her lover arrives home. The next morning a police officer arrives at Archibaldo's home, with news that Patricia had committed suicide.
Next, Archibaldo turns his attention to Carlota Cervantes (Welter), a woman who outwardly appears very religious, and is purported to be a virgin. However, she is having an affair with a married man. Archibaldo approaches her saying that he is very conflicted between good and evil. He thinks that Carlota can fix his problems, and proposes to marry her.
In the meantime, Archibaldo pursues another woman, Lavinia (Miroslava), whom he met in an antique shop, and later a bar. Lavinia works as a model for mannequins, and also shows American tourists around town. Archibaldo invites Lavinia to his home under false pretenses. He tells her that when they met, she reminded him of Joan of Arc being consumed by flames. He plots to strangle her and burn her in a kiln, but unexpectedly, the doorbell rings. It is Lavinia's tourist friends, the gringuitos. Lavinia has a disappointed Archibaldo take them on a tour of his home. When they leave, Lavinia says that she must go as well, and that she cannot see Archibaldo again because she is getting married.
Just as this is happening, Carlota comes in with her mother to accept Archibaldo's proposal. But Archibaldo soon learns of her adulterous relationship, and is displeased. He fantasizes about making her kneel and pray on her wedding night, and shooting her while she is praying. The wedding goes through, however, her jilted ex-lover ends up shooting her instead.
After having heard all of this, the judge says that Archibaldo has committed no crimes, and that merely thinking of killing people is not a crime. Archibaldo, despite his intense feelings of guilt, is deemed innocent. As if to be processing this unexpected reaction, Archibaldo takes a walk in the park. He then throws his music box into a lake, and moves on. He runs into Lavinia, whose marriage did not work out. The two walk together and the film ends. | psychedelic, comedy | train | wikipedia | EL (1952)/THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (1955) - Films Sans Frontieres DVD Review.
Following your advice, I recently `relented' to buying from Alapage the two Luis Bunuel Double-Feature discs released in France by Film Sans Frontieres.
After watching them in their entirety, I cannot believe that I, who consider Bunuel my all-time favorite director and one of the true masters of the medium, have waited this long to acquire these DVDs. Actually while Alapage listed these DVDs at EUR25.73 on their site, they only cost me EUR21.51 each (excluding EUR12 shipping charges).
It afforded Bunuel ample opportunity to make practical use of overt Freudian symbolism without lending the film a heavy-handed air of pretentiousness.
While there are some critics who consider it as merely `an engaging, minor work', I regard it as being among Bunuel's finest; arguably, with this film, Bunuel reached the culmination of his work in Mexico, but it also looks forward to similar sequences and themes he would tackle later on in his career, especially TRISTANA (1970) and, his last film, THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977).
EL was beautifully abetted by another of his low-budget Mexican films, the great black comedy THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ (1955).
Again, critical reception was a bit muted in some circles, dismissing it as `just a throwaway oddity' typical of Bunuel's films of the period.
It allowed Bunuel to create some of the most memorable images in all of his films, especially the celebrated dummy incineration scene, which could have been "inspired" by a similar scene in Michael Curtiz's marvelous MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933) which Bunuel must have seen while working at Warner Bros.
For me, one of the enduring assets of THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ is the charm and great beauty that was Miroslava Stern (who played the part of Lavinia and was the model for the ill-fated dummy).
Tragically, she would take her own life a mere two weeks after the film's release with her body, ironically enough, ending up cremated!
However, EL's overall visual and aural qualities where distinctly superior to those of ARCHIBALDO which suffered from excessive specks and slight audio dropouts at times, but were never so alarming as to dispel from one's viewing pleasure of the film..
Psychological Dark Comedy Another Great Film of Buñuel.
In the 50's, in Mexico, Archibaldo de la Cruz (Ernesto Alonso) comes to a judge to confess crimes of his own.
He tells his life since he was a spoiled boy, in the days of the Mexican revolution, when he won a music box from his mother and developed a bizarre desire of killing women, becoming a serial killer.
In the end, this movie is a psychological dark comedy of the Mexican phase of Buñuel.
I have just had the chance to see this film on DVD, recently released by the best Brazilian distributor (Versátil), and I found it another excellent work of Buñuel, one of my favorite directors ever.
The story is very ironic and unpredictable, and I totally disagree with the User Comments `Minor Buñuel' indicated for this film.
I don't understand why some reviewers call "Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz" (1955) - "minor" Bunuel.
I consider Bunuel one of the best and original filmmakers ever and nothing he had done is minor for me."Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz is B/W comedy of Don Luis' Mexican period which is surreal, disturbing, erotic and funny satire about a perverted young wealthy man, an amateur sculptor.
Since he was a boy, and one evening witnessed the sudden death of his young attractive governess and became sexually exited by it, Archibaldo De La Cruz dreams of committing a perfect crime of an attractive woman to recreate the feeling but something always prevents him from fulfilling his dreams.
As he often did with his even unlikable and perverse characters, Bunuel gives some of his own sexual fantasies, fetishes, and dreams that he freely admits to Archibaldo thus making him more human and sympathetic..
Perhaps my favorite of Buñuel's Mexican years.
As a child, Archibaldo de la Cruz willed the death of his young, sexy nanny through the device of a magical music box.
As an adult, he finds this box at a pawn shop, and it awakens the exciting feelings he had as he stood over the corpse of his nanny checking out her exposed thigh.
Every person he sets out to kill ends up being murdered by another's hand.
Actually, I shouldn't say "person," as Archibaldo's violent emotions only arise towards women.
Watch the two actions Archibaldo performs with his cane.
Ensayo de un crimen should be watched back to back with Buñuel's 1953 film, Él, also about a man being driven insane over his wife because of his strict religious beliefs.
Is this the only Bunuel film with a seemingly happy ending?
There are still, of course, many shocking moments, like the bloody/sexy death of the woman looking after him as a child, the whole business concerning the mannequins (that seems burned in my memory for ever) and the most surprising early death of the nun/nurse.
I've seen Los Olivados, El Angel Exterminador, L'Age D'Or and Un Chien Andalou and i thought Archibaldo matched up well alongside them.
I found it both interesting/sensual/compelling and with interesting meaning."The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz" begins with a childhood memory of Archibaldo's governess making up a myth about Archibaldo's new music box, to distract him from misbehaving: "The King compelled (his Queen) to look at him, but she lowered her eyes, and the King took it as a sign of guilt.
Without a second thought he opened up the little music box and immediately the queen was struck dead." As she is telling this story, and gets to the part of the Queen looking down, Archibaldo's governess looks down.
Archibaldo immediately desires to open the music box, with his governess in mind, and at that same moment a stray bullet from the fighting in the street breaks through the window and kills the governess.We cut to Archibaldo telling this story to a Nun, who dismisses his childhood memory, "I think you like to pass yourself off as being wicked." She leaves the room, and Archibaldo retrieves a flick-knife from his drawer.
Archibaldo: (pause) I'll give you that joy.Archibaldo de la Cruz is a fascinating look into the meaning of the label "criminal." I believe you need to go into a Bunuel movie not having heard too much about it, to get full enjoyment out of it, so i won't say anything else, just commend it to you.
If you've never seen a Bunuel movie, i would start with El Angel Exterminador, then you'll be hooked and won't be able to keep from checking this and others out..
The film has some wonderful touches like the demented music box theme, the fantasies when Archie gets in one of his murderous moods, and again a focus on the lower half of the female form.
Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz, The (1955) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Luis Bunuel film that sounds more interesting than it turns out to be.
As a young child, Archibaldo is told of a magical magic box that when turned on will kill.
As an adult, Archibaldo comes across this box again and this times plans to use it to help him become a serial killer.
There's a lot of black humor scattered throughout the film but very little of it made me laugh.
Adapted from a mediocre novel by Mexican playwright Rodolfo Usigli (gladly the only one he wrote) "Ensayo de un Crimen" gathers several of the worst cinematographic moments issued from such an uneven filmmaker as Luis Buñuel.
Its many clumsy aspects are generously distributed on all areas of its making: there is not a single actor that can deliver his/her lines without sounding like your average end-of-semester College play.
To mention just one, in the initial flashback Archibaldo (as a young child) is playing in the 20's with a Lionel train from the 40-50's!
Buñuel's directing job is plainly bad, even if he tries to embellish it with a couple of his famous "oniric" sequences that just don't work here.Maybe the worst part of all is the script.
Undoubtedly this shows that to most moviegoers and critics -moviegoers of the Summa cum Laude species, I guess- suppose that the sole name of a famous filmmaker must mean you're watching a work of art.To this I must add that practically none of the movies that Buñuel filmed during his stay in Mexico is a true masterpiece.
Maybe Buñuel considered necessary giving a little lick to the hand that was feeding him at the moment....
You can go through Ensayo de un crimen looking for symbolism and satirical details about bourgeois life.
The smooth Buñuel style only works when the script is witty enough to keep you brisk with every single line and every single move.
Example: El Angel exterminador (1962) keeps you awake, caring for a dozen characters and not having time to think it over.The criminal life of Archibald de la Cruz can be divided in three parts depicting three criminal cases told by Archibald himself.
(Spoilers) Misogynistic, yet emasculating serio-comedy from the great Buñuel.
Although it has misogynistic implications (actually rather more explicit than implicit), the fact that Archibaldo (perfectly played by Ernesto Alonso)never does succeed in carrying out his daydreams of harm to the various women in his life, this fact emasculates his character.
Therefore, the misogyny prevails.I was a bit offended by this film the first time around (when I saw it about 3 years ago), but having seen more of Buñuel's work and more films, both foreign and domestic (US)) of its ilk since, I decided to give it another chance, and am glad that I did.
That and the fact that, after the talk with the doctor, Archibaldo seems to reform at the film's end, drowning (in effect burying or suppressing) the music box (the symbol of his deranged desires, and the object to which he attributes dominance, power and virility), throwing away his cane (another crutch), and walking off with Lavinia, who seemed to make him happiest during the film (as opposed to the other women).The characters of Particia and Carlota (and Lavinia, to a slightly lesser extent) are seen as shrewish and scheming they certainly all have their own agendas and never come across as wholly innocent which lends feelings of sympathy towards Archibaldo (who is being used by all of them).Themes of Catholicism pervade the film, although not in a heavy-handed way.
The symbolism, typical of Buñuel, was strong and put to good use, i.e.: the mannequin (represents Lavinia), the music box (see above), the straight razor (a phallic symbol and violence), the cane (a `crutch'), the pottery wheel (goes around and around and no way out, representing Archie's situation), the flaming drink (foreshadows his fantasy for Lavinia), her tour guide/interpreters job (language barrier miscommunication/repression of the true feelings of the characters).It is interesting to note that Alejandro, the married man with whom Carlota is having an affair, is often addressed as `Architect' instead of by his name.
An architect creates and builds, whereas his character destroys another great touch in a movie full of them.Some thoughts: 1) How long will Archie's reformation last if it is genuine at all?
2) I felt sorry for Archie for not being able to actually carry out one of his dastardly fantasies instead, in each case, he was `saved' by circumstance.
4) I think the writer(s) and director did a an excellent job of conveying to us Archie's early life at home with his mother (who didn't seem to care about him), the hated Nanny (whose death started the chain of events), and the (absent) father.
In including this glimpse of his early life, we gain a better understanding of Archie's character (his up-bringing plus this event) and can perhaps conclude that these may be contributing factors to why he did what he did/why he was who he was.RECOMMENDED!.
"Ensayo de un Crimen" describes a man that after a childhood experience intimately connected with a music box revels in murder dreams - sex, pleasure and murder being intimately linked: In the time of the Mexican revolution his baby-sitter was killed by a stray bullet in front of him.
All this is punctuated by the sound of a musical box.
In the chaos of the times the musical box disappears and these feelings are buried and forgotten.
One day, Archibaldo de la Cruz, already a grown man, finds that musical box in a shop and, barely concealing his excitement, buys it and his old dreams come to the surface again.In the beginning of the film (after a mysterious accident suffered by a nun), he goes to the police station in order to confess a murder and tells the story of his life to the police chief.
From now on it is difficult to tell reality from dreams.Buñuel is a very good actor's director and aptly describes the straight-jacket morality of the time where official marriage is mandatory (for women this is like a prison where the warder is her husband), and the icons of the catholic church are a dominant presence.
Here are the essential elements present in the films of Buñuel.
Fantasy/ Reality, double-standard morality and the church - the only road to freedom seems surrealism, fantasy overtaking reality.Buñuel's films are sensuous and full of atmosphere and here as usual reality is not what it seems.
Even if he, in his early Mexican films, seems to make concessions to the producers, you will notice under the surface all the themes that obsessed Buñuel and that would come to the foreground in films like "Viridiana", "El Angel Exterminador", "Belle de Jour" etc...
That of course is where Jesus supposedly said "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That is to say, thinking about doing a thing is as bad as doing it.
That precept never made much sense to yours truly, and apparently it didn't to Luis Bunuel either, because the whole point of this movie seems to be to refute that notion.
The title character fantasizes about killing various women he comes across, but circumstances always seem to conspire to prevent it.
You didn't do anything." The best part of the film is the opening sequence apparently taking place around the end of the Mexican revolution period c.
1920, with Archibaldo as an insufferably spoiled only child giving grief to his long-suffering but stoic nanny.
Filmed in Bunuel's trademark style with long takes and barely perceptible camera movements, this battle of wills is fascinating until the arrival of the lad's rich idiot mother (rich idiots being one of Bunuel's favorite lifelong targets).
Meanwhile the nanny watches through the window as a gun battle unfolds in the street below; she catches a stray bullet, and young Archibaldo finds himself fascinated with her corpse.
Cut forward to the adult Archibaldo, now a rich idiot in his own right plus an obsession with being a serial killer.
This main part of the film was less interesting for me, mostly because Bunuel allows the adult actor to perform almost like a cartoon, with bulging eyes and goofy leer, like a mentally retarded Snidely Whiplash.
There are some nice fantasy sequences, such as Archibaldo ordering his bride to undergo an elaborate Catholic ritual before shooting her.
Probably the best known sequence, Archibaldo cremating a mannequin, left me more or less unmoved, although it probably seemed more sensational in 1955.
Also there's a lack of that great sexual tension that Bunuel was able to generate in some of his other Mexican work, such as "Susana" or "El Bruto." But certainly it's a must see at least for Bunuel fans; like Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry" from the same year, this is the closest this director comes to true whimsy (especially the parts with the American tourists) in a career of mostly much darker shades..
The most ironic thing about this early Bunuel film is the English title: Archibaldo does not commit a single crime in the entire course of the film!
Actually, much like his murderous plans, the film plays better in one's mind than in reality; the opening is intriguing and there are successful isolated moments, but on the whole this black comedy is talky, meandering and belabored.
The ending is almost jarringly happy - Bunuel must have been in an especially good mood when he was making this one.
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955) **1/2.
My third Luis Bunuel film, and interesting enough, if not as good as the others I've seen so far (EL - ***, and BELLE DU JOUR - ***1/2).
In this movie I missed being treated to some of director Bunuel's more representative stylish flourishes, and I didn't know quite what to make out of this erratic story about a laid back type of fellow who keeps getting the urge to murder the various women he encounters, only to have his plan sabotaged always at the last moment.
I'm thinking this was intended to be a black comedy, but it didn't strike me as very humorous except in occasional moments.
This seems more of a "middle of the road" Bunuel film, based solely on the few I've seen.
The ending left me thinking about the female character (which I suspect may be the idea) but when I read the biography of the young actress Miroslava Stern and the circumstances of her premature death just two weeks after completing this film, it sort of gave me a chill... |
tt0163084 | Mama | Distraught after losing his fortune in the 2008 financial crisis, stockbroker Jeffrey Desange kills his business partners and estranged wife before taking his children, three-year-old Victoria and one-year-old Lilly, away from home. Driving dangerously fast on a snowy road, Jeffrey loses control and the car slides down the mountain, ramming into the woods. Surviving, he takes the children into an abandoned cabin. Planning to kill his daughters and commit suicide, he holds a gun to Victoria's head, but a shadowy figure kills him. The girls, huddled by the fireside, are tossed a cherry by the mysterious figure.
Five years later, a rescue party, sponsored by Jeffrey's identical twin brother Lucas, finds Victoria and Lilly alive, but in a feral state after years of isolation. The girls are put in a welfare clinic under the psychiatric care of Dr. Gerald Dreyfuss. They make reference to "Mama", a maternal protector figure. The girls are initially hostile to Lucas but Victoria recognizes him after he gives her a pair of glasses and she can see him properly. Dreyfuss agrees to support Lucas and his girlfriend Annabel's custody claim against the girls' maternal great-aunt, Jean Podolski. Victoria acclimates quickly to domestic life while Lilly retains much of her feralness (language regression, growling, lying on the floor), not being used to being around people.
While in bed with Lucas, Annabel is startled by the appearance of a monstrous figure. Lucas is attacked by "Mama" and is put into a coma. Annabel, who is uncomfortable being around the girls, finds herself left alone to care for them. Although Annabel makes progress with Victoria, she finds Lilly hostile. Alarmed by nightmares of a woman and Victoria's warning about Mama's jealousy, Annabel asks Dreyfuss to investigate. He initially thought "Mama" to be an imaginary alter-ego of Victoria; however, his research corroborates Victoria's story that Mama is an aggrieved mother and brings to light the story of Edith Brennan, a mental asylum patient in the 1800s.
Dreyfuss recovers a box from a government warehouse containing a baby's remains. Annabel has a nightmare revealing Mama's past: when Edith Brennan ("Mama") was sent to St. Gertrude's Asylum for an unknown reason, her child was taken from her and given to nuns. She escaped the asylum, stabbed a nun and took her baby back. Fleeing her pursuers, Brennan jumped off a cliff, but before hitting the water below, Brennan and the child made impact with a large branch and she drowned; Edith's child's corpse snagged on the branch and did not fall with Brennan into the water. Annabel realizes that Mama still hasn't realized her child died from hitting the tree; Mama unsuccessfully searched the woods for more than a century and had taken on Victoria and Lilly as substitutes.
Lucas regains consciousness after a vision of his dead brother, Jeffrey, tells him to save his daughters. Victoria's growing closeness to Annabel makes her less willing to play with Mama, unlike Lilly. Dreyfuss visits the cabin and is killed by Mama. Annabel and the girls are attacked by a jealous Mama, who kills Jean and uses her body to scare the children away in Jean's car. Annabel and Lucas find the children on the same cliff where Brennan leaped with her child to their deaths over a century earlier. Mama is preparing to re-enact her fall with Victoria and Lilly.
When Annabel offers Mama the remains of her child, Mama transforms into her human form and sobs at the baby's death. However, when Lilly (remembering only Mama as her original parent, since she was abandoned in the woods for most of her life) calls out for her, Mama reverts to her monstrous form and takes the girls again, nearly killing Annabel and Lucas, but refraining mainly because Victoria cares about them and does not want them hurt. Annabel clings to Victoria, who asks to stay with Annabel instead of leaving with Mama, which Mama accepts. After a tearful farewell, Mama and Lilly fall off the cliff, turning into a shower of moths when they hit the branch. Mama and Lilly are shown as spirits happy to be united while embracing and smiling. Annabel and Lucas embrace Victoria, and Victoria notices a bright blue moth landing on her hand, indicating that Lilly is still with her in some form. | insanity, allegory | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0156208 | Front Page Challenge | The long-running series featured notable journalists attempting to guess the recent or old news story with which a hidden guest challenger was linked by asking him or her questions, in much the same manner as the American game shows, What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth. Each round of the game started with news footage that introduced the news story in question to the studio audience and home viewers out of earshot of the panelists. After the guest was identified and/or the news story determined, the journalists then interviewed the guest about the story or about achievements or experiences for which he or she was known. Unlike American quiz shows that steered clear of controversy in the 1950s and 1960s, Front Page Challenge seems to have been affected by just one censorship practice, that of avoiding four-letter words.
Guests came from all walks of life, including politicians like Pierre Trudeau and Indira Gandhi, activists like Malcolm X, sports figures like Gordie Howe, entertainers like Boris Karloff and Ed Sullivan, and writers like Upton Sinclair. From 1957 to 1979, the show featured many non-Canadians whose trips to Canada were paid by the CBC. (Gandhi was even flown from India to Toronto in the 1960s at the CBC's expense.) Occasionally, guests were featured for their involvement in stories that had nothing to do with their celebrity status. For example, Karloff was featured because he served as a rescue worker following a devastating 1912 tornado in Regina, Saskatchewan, where he was appearing in a play many years before horror films made him famous.
Jayne Mansfield appeared in late 1961 to represent the recent victory of British prime minister Harold Macmillan's Conservative Party in parliamentary elections. The American actress, whose high IQ was well-publicized, was filming a movie in the United Kingdom at the time of the decisive votes.
Occasionally, the challenger was one of the panelists themselves, unbeknownst to the other three panelists. After the game, the relevant person simply moved to the guest seat for the interview.
The show ran for nearly forty years and featured a remarkably stable cast of panelists, including journalist-historian Pierre Berton, Betty Kennedy (who later become a Canadian senator), Toby Robins (who later became a movie actress) and radio commentator Gordon Sinclair. Columnist Allan Fotheringham joined the panel after Sinclair's death. A guest panelist, usually another Canadian journalist, politician or other celebrity, was also part of each episode. In 1990, journalist and radio/TV personality Jack Webster joined the show as its permanent fourth panelist.
For its initial summer 1957 run, the show was hosted by Win Barron, best known for his voice-over narration of newsreels produced by the Canadian division of Paramount Pictures. However, Barron proved ill at ease in the moderator's seat, so both Fred Davis and panelist Alex Barris rotated as guest hosts in the early part of the fall before Davis was chosen to take over as host full-time (a position he retained for the rest of the show's run), though Barris continued to appear as a guest panelist occasionally. In 1981, the CBC published an oversized book written by Barris about the history of the program. It was titled Front Page Challenge: The 25th Anniversary. Four years after the show's cancellation, another book by Barris was published chronicling the last fifteen years of the show. It included more details and anecdotes about the show's earlier phases not found in his first book.
Several weeks after its debut, Ottawa Citizen television columnist Bob Blackburn deemed the programme to be noticeably improved and predicted that if that trend continued "and if the program doesn't run dry on its slightly limited subject matter, Front Page Challenge might well become an institution on Canadian TV".
In his book, Barris says that at the height of the show's popularity in the late 1950s, the individual panelists became major celebrities in Canada. He relates how Toby Robins, a beautiful brunette, donned a blonde wig for a few episodes as an experiment, attracting hate mail including a death threat over the change of appearance. The books also include journalist Barbara Frum's remarks about how influential Robins was for 1950s-era female equality through her decision to appear on the program while pregnant.
Unfortunately, the show's stability proved to be its undoing, as the producers did not see fit to add younger panelists while the regulars aged and the audience demographics became less desirable. The show always was videotaped in or aired live from Toronto prior to 1966. During that year four shows originated from Montreal including one with challenger Jessica Mitford. The show continued going on the road, being videotaped in cities across Canada. The oldest regular, Gordon Sinclair, continued travelling with his fellow panelists to videotaping locations until he was well into his 80s. Although the location of the studio was not always noticeable to home viewers, they did notice the lack of guest challengers from foreign countries after 1979. The program no longer featured internationally known controversial figures to match the likes of Timothy Leary, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and William F. Buckley who had held viewers' attention in the 1960s and most of the 1970s. Alex Barris says in his second book that the absence of non-Canadian guests after 1979 resulted from budget cuts for CBC Television that ruled out travel expenses.
Barris also claims that the advent of multiple cable channels in the 1980s and early 1990s (in cities, towns and rural areas near the border of the United States where people could receive programming from both countries) presented another challenge to the staff of Front Page Challenge and contributed to its demise. Prior to the 1980s when there were no 24-hour news channels competing with Front Page Challenge, each round of the game began with silent black-and-white newsreel footage of the news story in question while a narrator, not heard by the panelists, summarized it. Even after the segments started including colour videotape, the only voice heard introducing the topical issue and the challenger was the voice of the narrator of Front Page Challenge.
Producers continued to use the same off-screen narrator, which made the Front Page Challenge footage less appealing to young people than the multiple sound bites featured by CBC Newsworld, which began 24-hour newscasts throughout Canada on July 31, 1989. CBC Newsworld offered sound bite interviews with people who had witnessed events or were knowledgeable about them. Young viewers using remote controls stuck with the multiple sound bites and ignored the Front Page Challenge narrator's summaries of the news stories, according to the book by Alex Barris published in 1999.
When Front Page Challenge ceased production in 1995, it was the longest continually running non-news program in Canadian television history. Among the contestants on the final show was then emerging country music superstar Shania Twain. | non fiction | train | wikipedia | Time's Up Panel!. I believe Front Page Challenge was a temporary replacement show that became popular enough to bump the original program. The concept was as follows: A mystery guest (still visible to those at home) would be hidden from the view of the panel, who would have to find clues by asking the guest a time-limited selection of questions. Whether or not the guest's identity had been found out, the panel would have the opportunity to interview the guest briefly. Usually each half-hour show consisted of two mystery headlines for the panel to solve.The curmudgeonly Gordon Sinclair would always ask the first question, which was always "How much money do you make?" Once that was out of the way, it was over to YOU, Betty Kennedy, who filled the chair of glamorous actress Toby Robins later in the life of the show. Betty, herself a real hottie in her youth, could be relied upon to ask hard-hitting journalistic questions like if the guest was married, if they had children, or who was their favorite Beatle. Then Pierre Berton would impress everyone with a smarmy fact he uncovered while researching his latest book, but before he could really get into the interview, the theme music began to play and studio lights dimmed, followed by host Fred Davis' goodbye.Speaking of the flavorless host Davis, he appeared only to be there to direct traffic on the show, not impress anyone with his sharp wit, or willowy stage presence. The non-descript show, which was evidently done before a live audience, seemed somehow to have enough relevance to hold the interest of most who tuned in. The impressive mystery guest list included such luminaries as Pierre Trudeau, Malcolm X and Ed Sullivan. Often the guest panelists were quasi-famous Canadian actors, or journalists.While Front Page Challenge' production values aimed not to overshadow their famous guests, they probably 'blanded' themselves right out of work. This was a pretty good concept for the late 1950s, but it was really wearing thin by the time it left the airwaves for good in 1995. No matter - by that time it was the longest continually running non-news program in Canadian television history.. "How much money do you make?". Every guest had to endure Gordon Sinclair asking this question. The reactions were priceless. An excellent show as it both entertained and informed. |
tt2279373 | The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water | A pirate named Burger-Beard travels to Bikini Atoll, where he obtains a magical book with the power to make any text written upon it reality. The book tells the story of SpongeBob SquarePants and his adventures in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. SpongeBob loves his job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab fast food restaurant, where he cooks burgers called Krabby Patties and works for Mr. Krabs. He has spent years guarding the secret Krabby Patty formula from Plankton and Karen, the owners of a competing restaurant called the Chum Bucket.
One day, Plankton attacks the Krusty Krab in an attempt to steal the formula. After a military battle involving giant foods and condiments, Plankton feigns surrender. He uses a decoy of himself to give Mr. Krabs a fake penny, which the real Plankton then hides inside in order to gain access to Krabs' vault. As the decoy distracts Mr. Krabs, Plankton steals the formula, leaving a fake in its place. SpongeBob catches Plankton and the two engage in a tug of war over the formula, which magically vanishes before anyone can claim it.
Without the secret formula, SpongeBob cannot make Krabby Patties, causing the customers to become ravenous. SpongeBob is the only one who believes Plankton is innocent of stealing the formula, and when all of Bikini Bottom turns on them, SpongeBob creates a giant soap bubble for them to fly away in. Bikini Bottom is soon reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to the absence of the much-relied-on Krabby Patty. SpongeBob proposes he and Plankton team up to find the formula. SpongeBob tries to explain the concept of teamwork to Plankton, who does not quite understand. The two head to the Chum Bucket to rescue Karen, who helps them power a time machine that will take them back to the moment before the formula disappeared. They assemble the machine at an abandoned taco restaurant and end up traveling far into the future, where they meet Bubbles, a magical dolphin who acts as an overseer of the galaxy. SpongeBob and Plankton succeed in retrieving the formula, but it turns out to be the fake one Plankton had left.
Burger-Beard converts his pirate ship into a food truck to sell Krabby Patties at a beach community. The final page of the book is discarded in the ocean and lands on Sandy Cheeks' treedome. Crazed by the lack of Krabby Patties, Sandy assumes the page is a sign from the "sandwich gods" and suggests a sacrifice be made to appease them. As the town attempts to sacrifice SpongeBob, he and Mr. Krabs smell Krabby Patties. The townsfolk follow the scent, which leads to the surface; Bubbles returns and reveals he hated his job. He thanks SpongeBob by granting him and his sea creature friends the ability to breathe on land; Plankton also joins by stowing away in SpongeBob's sock. Bubbles launches SpongeBob and the others out of his blowhole to the surface.
The team soon lands on a beach and finds the source of the Krabby Patty scent: Burger-Beard's food truck. Burger Beard reveals he stole the formula by using the book to rewrite their story and then uses it to banish the gang to Pelican Island. SpongeBob uses the book's final page to transform himself and the others into superheroes with special powers – The Invincibubble (SpongeBob), Mr. Superawesomeness (Patrick), Sour Note (Squidward), The Rodent (Sandy), and Sir Pinch-a-Lot (Mr. Krabs). They return and find Burger-Beard, who runs away with the formula, forcing the team to give chase. During the ensuing battle, the team manages to destroy the book, but Burger-Beard overpowers them one by one.
Having been left on Pelican Island, Plankton becomes a muscle-bound hero and comes to assist them. Plankton and SpongeBob create one final attack to defeat Burger-Beard and retrieve the formula. After sending Burger-Beard flying to Bikini Atoll, Plankton returns the formula to Mr. Krabs, having learned the value of teamwork. The gang uses the final page's magic to return home to Bikini Bottom. With Krabby Patties back, the city is finally return to normal and Plankton re-assumes his role as business rival, thus "putting things back the way they were". | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | There were also some suggestive themes in the movie, so the adult appeal is definitely back!On the kid side, it was also EXTREMELY different than I've ever seen in SpongeBob. At first, I didn't like how over the top and WEIRD this film was on the kid friendlier side, but I stopped and realized that kids from 1999 and kids from 2015 are ENTIRELY different and have different appeals.
I know what the kids are into these days (not trying to sound old), and SpongeBob definitely pulled it off in this new movie.With an entirely different, hilarious, and refreshing comedy stance than seasons 1-3, and a huge attempt at actually appealing to kids of 2015 rather than following a bland formula, I have to say that Season 10 is going to be one of the best seasons since the show started.
Sponge Out of Water is an absolute TREAT for both old and new fans of the series alike, and the movie kept me entertained to the very end.
Also this movie is sure to leave you wondering "what will happen next?!" As you can never quite predict what the writers will throw out at you (others have compared this movie to an acid trip, and I don't want to spoil anything, but I found it a rather enjoyable one) The only thing I did not like was the "superpowers" part, (this was the part that turned me off in the first place) as I felt some of them tried "too hard" to make the audience laugh, and it just didn't feel like Spongebob.
If you're a long time fan of Spongebob, this is a great movie to relive your childhood a little bit more.
I enjoyed the plot, but I sometimes wished they would have made it a bit more complex, as that could safely have been done without making it harder to understand for children.The first part of the movie seems like what could have been a regular episode, with small Banderas-breaks in between.
The latter part is the fish out of water-story, which could probably have worked just as well without the build up from the first part.I'm sure children loves this movie, and if you're open to silly characters breaking the fourth wall, you'll have no trouble watching it with them..
This latest Spongebob film might be the end of its glory as it seemingly panders the audience into another lame Alvin and the Chipmunks/The Smurfs approach, but surprisingly that only becomes a marketing stunt, and it turns out that most of the movie is basically just like the show, but at its original form.
It didn't need any grand or blockbuster type of plot to save the material, we just need to revisit the stuff that we truly loved about Spongebob.Other than its creative animation and zany undersea world, Spongebob Squarepants has always been known for its richly established characters and unique sense of humor.
The film doesn't offer anymore bigger plot than retrieving the Krabby Patty secret formula, it's all about fooling at the audiences as it messes with the logic and their senses, the Spongebob way, of course.The mix of animation and live-action is definitely never a stranger to Spongebob, but its involvement is often taken as a joke.
But we don't have to underestimate this approach too much, because apparently it's still pretty fun when they are in the real world, giving the humans some hilarious reactions, like the one who's wondering if the Krabby Patty he's eating is hallucinogenic after encountering the gang as superheroes.As feature film goes, it doesn't go beyond bombastic, if it does then it's all about the weirdness instead of epic proportions.
While Antonio Banderas makes a fun turn as the villain, but his moments are the one where he interacts to talking seagulls which amazingly works for this character.The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is what the fans deserve.
When I watched the first trailer of this new movie I was very happy to know I would have the chance to see Spongebob, one of my favorite cartoons, in a big screen, and the best part, in 3D!
i got to go t the screening premiere of the movie and i gotta say the animation was awesome, the 3D was amazing, the comedy made me fall out my seat, what more can yo ask for?i wont spoil anything but they make a few references and you have to keep a sharp eye out for themalso Antonio ban deres does an excellent job at playing his characteri also like how they spend half of their time under water, and the other half on land.other than that, i recommend you to see this movie!9 out of 10.
Half 2D animation like the TV show, half live action with Spongebob and his friends done in 3D CGI, Antonio Banderas plays a pirate captain of a ship telling what feels like another episode of Spongebob with Plankton's new attempt on trying to steel the formula for Krabby patties to make the Chum Bucket better.
I thought the seagulls and Antonio Banderas got far too much screen time, I think they were trying to appeal to a younger audience instead of the die hard sponge bob fans.
Sometimes, though the time is worth the wait and this can be said for Spongebob's 2nd big screen entry with some of the usual flaws (most obvious being continuity).Like many other Spongebob episodes and the movie before this, Plankton is up to his old tricks again; attempting to steal Mr. Krabs' secret Krabby Patty formula.
It was eleven years ago since we got Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie and though it's no masterpiece, I thought it was a big step for the little sponge and remains a strong animated film from Nickelodeon.
I say this in a good way for fans like myself who expect a lot of the characters oddball personalities and even the show's somewhat abstract animation.The film's trailers have advertised the live action sequences even though they take up only the last twenty minutes.
As a fan of the Spongebob Squarepants series I gotta say this movie was a disappointment.I stand by the idea that great children's movies are enjoyable for both kids and adults, but that is not the case for this movie; the humor is dull and cheap, there is no true, meaningful message, and the script is badly paced: some scenes develop too quickly, others are awfully slow and smothering, and a few things just make no sense at all.
That's right, the next SpongeBob movie has landed in theaters and here is
What you might expect: Childish Humor, A basic SpongeBob plot, interesting animation choices, and Antonio Banderas making a fool of himself.
SpongeBob doesn't pull any punches in this film, starting over the top with a war against plankton using condiments and spanning across familiar plot elements like time traveling and super powers.
While I like the first movie much better, Sponge Out of Water has a plenty of silly fun to enjoy.
This is because unlike these other SpongeBobs, this movie is not written well and the characters are a bit heartless and behave oddly to say the least.The film begins with Plankton making yet another attempt to steal the Krabby Patty formula.
I remember one of the first DVD collections of the show was called "Nautical Nonsense," and what a perfect summation of "Spongebob" to anyone who hasn't seen or heard of the program (if there are people).The film opens with live-action footage of a pirate named Burger-Beard (Antonio Banderas), who discovers a book that tells the story of Spongebob and his friends, all of whom living under the sea in Bikini Bottom, and that anything written in the book immediately becomes truth.
This results in a bitter war between the two restaurants, through the use of condiments and fast-food, which is surprisingly fun and sets the film's zealous, incredibly chaotic tone right away.Plankton has always tried to get the secret formula for the Krusty Krab's delicacy known as the Krabby Patty, and just when he has the bottle that contains it, fighting Spongebob for it, the formula disappears right before their eyes.
Consider the scene where Spongebob and Plankton embrace time-traveling in order to obtain the formula and stumble into a plethora of different dimensions, one where they meet a live-action Dolphin named Bubbles, who is ordered to assure Jupiter and Saturn do not collide.Even the songs in the film, unlike in the original, 2004 film, are built off entirely random verses and harmonies, and this is one of the biggest issues with "The Spongebob Movie" as a whole.
No it has to be 3D to be worst.(i mean really ?)5)The Big one has to be with story (and is really bad)it goes like this :A pirate find a magic book to use it to take the Secret Krabby Patty Formula so to make Krabby Patty to sell it to be rich and famous but meanwhile Spongebob and he's friends goes to the surface to take back but in order to this they have to use the magic of the book to be super heroes and is a huge battle to take back Secret Krabby Patty Formula.(so not only this story make no senses but is stupid & lame)6)The Battles scenes are boring & lame7)The songs are bad, you though the songs from the Atlantis Squarepantis Episode are bad here are the same.8)Character are either really stupid or annoyingThis movie is a waste of your time don't watch it and don't buy it in DVD (and especially Don't watch it in 3D)2/10 20/100 1/5 of stars.
The movie about Spongebob and Plankton, who were once rivals, teamed up together to find the secret formula is a fun one and sometimes, even a little bit too crazy.
But it's not going to be easy getting it back, as a scurvy pirate stands between Spongebob and the recipe.I remember the time when Nickelodeon was the best with are favorite programs that we use to watch and enjoy the hell out of, but after a while when all the programs was getting cancelled one by one and Nickelodeon itself was getting watered down with endless bullsh*t that we didn't want, we already sawed what was coming for Nickelodeon and now it's now known as the dropping ground of uninspiring ideas of new TV shows that wouldn't even make it to season 2 or 3.
The animation was pretty good, now in the trailer you can see the live action 3D animation well that's actually a couple minutes long in the last part, the whole movie is the good old animation that we loved in the first place.Antonio Banderas as the villain was surprisingly enjoyable.
Now normally when big names actors do these kids movie just for money and nothing else, not even trying in they role, but here is totally different I mean was Antonio Banderas actually put effort in his character and that's why his character was a enjoyable and fun villain.For problems these a couple like: Now I talked about Antonio Banderas villain and how enjoyable he was, but his story ark and his big plan I didn't really give a care about.
Much is made of the flick's CGI final movement in which our heroes take a step onto live-action land, but the majority of 'The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water (2015)' plays out in fantastic, elastic 2D animation that brings the form back to the big-screen in a big way and should not be overlooked.
Unlike other kids films such as "Toy Story", "Spongebob" is not a family movie, most likely being depicted as annoying to anyone above the age of ten.
The town has collapsed into anarchy as the townspeople go mad from lack of Krabby Paddy's, and SpongeBob turns to Plankton to travel across the ocean, and throughout time itself, to try and bring the formula back to Bikini Bottom.This film features much of the same humour as the television program.
Instead of quotes that we could easily generate relatable memes from, this movie relies too heavily on bland songs and unnecessary pop culture references to duplicate the same charm that made SpongeBob and his friends famous.The plot of nautical nonsense is treated like an extra-long episode of the show, starting with a pirate's quest to retrieve a magical book that tells about this Sponge's story.
SpongeBob decides to clear Plankton's name, and find the Krabby Patty formula, by means of time travel, before this cyberpunk post-apocalyptic black leather Bikini Bottom turns them both over as a living sacrifice to restore the patties themselves (yes, you read that right).All of the crazy psychedelic scenarios of SpongeBob's quest stems its logic entirely by the jokes, which create both the movie's greatest strength and greatest drawback.
Then it's just twenty wasted minutes of exploration on the surface world, which causes us to question: why should I care if they get this Krabby Patty formula back from Burgerbeard?Maybe if the story boarders spent less time making jokes about a Claymation watcher dolphin named "Bubbles" who's held his bladder for 10,000 years (no, I'm not making this up), and more time delivering what they wanted to do in this film, then the end product would not feel like a ninety-minute commercial for the television series..
I've seen clips of the Smurfs movies, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Scooby- Doo, those little M&M men where the characters are in real-life with real people, animated alongside them, but this one looked a lot stranger than them and somewhere during the experience I began to feel as if I had consumed some amount of bad mushrooms, the cow poop kind, that make you go funny inside like you're seeing things from different dimensions.
"Vloggers Casper Lee and Joe Sugg have each landed a role in The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water.The boys will feature as Antonio Banderas' side-kick seagulls in the new 3D animated film along with Alan Carr and Stacey SolomonJoe is voicing a seagull called Kyle while Casper is pretty down about the fact his part is so minor his seagull simply goes by the name of Seagull Number Two.Alan Carr will voice Seagull Number One, and is still trying to figure out whether the part is an insult or a compliment and we're still unsure as to whether Stacey will be Seagull Number Three"..
I would say, 2004's "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" was pretty much the final straw for me.And so "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water" was my first true venture back into this world in ten years and boy were my expectations low.Synopsis: When pirate Antonio Banderas steals the top secret Krabby Patty formula, SpongeBob SquarePants (the one who lives in a pineapple under the sea) and Plankton (the archenemy of Mr. Krabs) must team up and venture onto land (into the world of live-action, 3-D animation) in order to retrieve it before a patty-less Bikini Bottom (the place where they all live...under the sea) becomes a scene of out "Mad Max".While this sounds like (for lack of more inspired verbiage) a totally-awesome premise worthy of being labeled as vintage SpongeBob, the movie doesn't rise above the realms of the occasional chuckle, until its weirder time traveling sequences near mid-point; and then again during a 3rd act which felt as if it took forever to get to, as director Paul Tibbitt finally gives his audiences all of the "out of water" stuff that we were promised.Final Thought: About 50% of this movie is psychedelic, Meta, Adult Swim-esque humor which had me rolling, but had most of the children in my screening staring at the screen with puzzled gazes.
"The SpongeBob Movie - Sponge Out of Water" has too few entertaining moments for adults - or kids..
I found "The SpongeBob Movie – Sponge Out of Water" (PG, 1:33) to be floating somewhere in the middle.This movie is based on the long-running Nickelodeon television series "SpongeBob Square Pants" and is a sequel to the first SpongeBob movie, 2004's "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie." Like the first film, all of the popular characters from the TV show are here (voiced by their long-time human counterparts) and both films feature a mixture of traditional animation and live action.
But, unlike the first film, this one animates its characters in the live action scenes with CGI, sets up a scenario in which their appearance is very different from what SpongeBob fans are used to and makes things even more interesting by pairing up traditional adversaries to work towards a common goal.
Most of the movie is made up of traditional animation and feels like an extended version of the cartoon, with a few live action scenes driving the main plot at the bottom of the sea.
The search for the formula leads to a time travel adventure, an encounter with a magic celestial dolphin and a trip into the non-animated world above the sea where they use a page from that magic book to write superhero identities for themselves."The SpongeBob Movie – Sponge Out of Water" has a clever premise which is diminished by a lackluster script and some false advertising.
I just cannot say it for his most recent outing as an avid fan of the character.'The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water' is for the first fifteen minutes business as usual.
All in all, a great movie for the kids, and fun for old sponge bob fans like me.
This movie is nothing like the first one, the first one was actually fun and entertaining to watch but in this film, I couldn't believe how terrible it is! |
tt0109442 | Class of 1999 II: The Substitute | John Bolen is the new substitute teacher at a local high school in Bend, Oregon. When he sees some punks ditching class, he confronts them. However, when the lead punk pulls a knife, John uses martial arts to dispatch the students and when a fellow teacher sees the downed punks, John informs the teacher that the punks were on their way to class. Meanwhile, Jenna McKensie is a teacher who is getting heat from the school administration because she had witnessed gang leader Sanders pull a gun on a student. Sanders uses all sorts of tactics to harass Jenna into not testifying against him in court. However, Jenna's boyfriend, Emmett Grazer, tends to be there to chase Sanders away much to the chagrin of Jenna, who feels she doesn't need the protection 24-7. The punks wait in their car until school is over to confront John. John gets the upper hand by chaining the doors so they cannot escape and throws a grenade in the car, causing it to explode.
When John attends his class, he finds trouble in the form of student Tiller, a local troublemaker. When a fellow student drops a book, John hits the floor and begins to hear gunfire in his head. He finds the book to be Tiller's and sends him to the principal's office. However, Tiller goes to the roof of the school to take a hit of the drug "edge" when John shows up and throws Tiller off the roof. Tiller attempts to hang onto the flagpole, but his hands slip and is hung from the flagpole dead. The next day, Jenna goes out for a jog when she finds Sanders and some of his goons begin to once again harass her. When Sanders leaves his boys to attack Jenna, John shows up in time to save her. Jenna and John soon bond and while sheriff Tom Yost is taking Jenna's report, he notices John sporting a tattoo for Special Forces. When Tom asks John about a military background, John walks away.
Emmett is in charge of a small military museum and as a military expert, he is planning a friendly paintball competition between the students. John begins to show interest in some of Emmett's military gear but is still hesitant of revealing who he really is. Meanwhile, a mysterious man named G.D. Ash is reporting on the incidents that occurred in Kennedy High School two years ago involving android instructors malfunctioning and killing the students. John and Jenna continue their friendship with John teaching Jenna a bit about military tactics and quotes. To make sure Jenna is safe, John hunts down a member of Sanders' gang and at first, use martial arts before chaining him to a wall and setting him on fire. However, the day of the paintball competition, John wages war on everyone involved and even targets John and Jenna. He kills some troublemaking students and when Jenna is once again confronted by Sanders, this causes John to arrive again but this time seal the deal and kill Sanders and the rest of his gang.
When Jenna confronts John, John finally reveals he is a military android. When G.D. Ash arrives, he uncovers something interesting about John. John is not an android, but rather the son of Dr. Bob Forrest, the creator of the android teachers who have killed the students at Kennedy High two years ago. John had served in the Special Forces and has suffered from post traumatic stress disorder to the point where he actually believes that he is an android. Instead, John is actually sporting a new brand of body armor, making him impervious to bullets and even blades. When John and Jenna end up in Emmett's military bunker, John intends to kill both himself and Jenna by planting a bomb in the bunker. However, Emmett makes the save and as he and Jenna escape, but John arrives and shoots Emmett. Jenna shoots John in the head causing him to fall back into the bunker. Jenna covers Emmett and declares her love for him as the bunker explodes.
Two days later, Jenna is preparing for school and as she is on the phone with Emmett, opens her shirt to reveal she now sports the body armor John also had, thanks to Emmett having a copy of the armor in his museum. Jenna copies a quote John once said about preparing for battle as she is set to begin her day. | cult, murder | train | wikipedia | "Class of 1999 II: The Substitute" is a bad movie with terrible plot points.
The story of a substitute teacher, who seems to be a killer android that comes to a high school where a gangster and his dangerous gang are intimidating a teacher that witnessed him killing another student is a complete mess.
sasha mitchell is perfect in the role of john bolen..
i think the story is really cool, sasha mitchell is truly inspirational to me in this film..
i know a lot of people don't really like the film but, i think it has a unique feel good factor that appeals to me..
Sasha Mitchell is very good as John Bolen.
Sasha Mitchell who originally starred in Dallas, comes across nicely as the school teacher with a secret, inside he is in conflict between all the traits that he holds dear.
Now maybe I will watch it.It's development of the 'paint ball' warriors was informative as to how this activity actually goes on.But getting to the point - Jenna is extremely hot, especially in the flesh shown.
I liked the plot - a crazy kid thinking he is a droid and developig droid characteristics - original.
I thought this was way better than those other "Class of..." movies.
Sasha Mitchell (star of Kickboxer 2,3 and 4) really acted like a cyborg , it's kinda funny sometimes.
I don't know why some people don't like it , I think it's a good movie.
OK, the past 3 days I have watched "Saturn 3", "Shredder" and now "Class of 1999 II: The Substitute" and by far Class of 1999 II was the worse, compare all 3 movies, that is really saying something.
The 'gangs' in this movie wear the most ridiclous clothes, who is going to be in a gang and look like that?
This movie is pretty bad in and of itself, but the thing that makes it over-the-top ridiculous is that all the students look about 30 years old, while the cyborg/substitute looks about 16.
The protagonist, Sasha Mitchell, plays good his role of cruel cyborg teacher, killing and destroying all things he hates around him.
I think Sasha Mitchell was perfectly cast, while others say that woman was hot, I say he was :D but that's not the only reason I love this film.
I love how dangerous he is, I like how serious this movie takes it self for...sick of movies being low budget and just jokes for a Saturday night for people to complain and moan about or worse being stupid and silly with degraded crap like Family Guy and South Park, that's right, I'm pissing on the high budget stuff that is trash unlike this film!!!!!
I love all the cool explosions..I like the story/plot and yes there was one even though no one says there is one.
The twist at the end had me very fooled, I was like what I love Sasha so naturally I went to IMDb and wanted to see his other movies since I loved his Kickboxer movies and him as Cody in Step by Step..a show which needs to be on DVD.
Bad acting, but not a terrible movie.....
OK the acting was pretty bad and there were too many corny lines that were tried to be played off seriously, but the fighting was good when there was some (the movie was a little boring), Sasha Mitchell really does know how to fight in real life so at least the hand to hand fighting was realistic and somewhat interesting.
Perhaps the best reason to watch this movie is the incredibly hot lead lady played by Caitlin Dulany.
Although her character is naive, corny, and a little overplayed, She's still very hot and she was willing to do a nude sex scene in this film so it wasn't a total waste of time.
Maybe I didn't think the movie was so terrible because I like Sasha Mitchell and hot babes that do sex scenes.
A cyborg poses as a substitute teacher in schools and kills kids who are misbehaving....yawn.
Sasha Mitchell stars as John Bolen an android teacher (From the original) who terminates a bunch of unruly kids and some innocent ones just for the hell of it in this baffling sequel.
The director could put anyone in there and I wouldn't know the difference.I watched it all the way through and in the last scene I was hoping for a killer robot teacher to rip the girl in half or at least come through my wall and rip me in half.
John Bolen is a substitute teacher who travels from school to school, secretly killing troublesome students.
He heads to Monroeville High School, where he helps a female teacher who is being pressured into not testifying by a student who she saw murder someone in cold blood.
For the acting, Sasha Mitchell plays the lead role with a wooden determination, which is appropriate for the role.
Sasha Mitchell stars as John Bolen the robot teacher who is the only connection to it's moronic predecessor, in this movie he unleashes stern justice to gangs that sorely need it and in the process saves a teacher from the bad guy gang, while killing the usual innocent by standers.
Class Of 1999 II:The Substitute actually starts out fairly well with Mitchell dispatching a gang not that unfamiliar from the gang in Class Of 1984 but after we hit the subplot involving a teacher who witnessed a shooting and the new gang's antics to force her not to testify.
The movie actually manages to become watchable whenever Mitchell springs into action but because the movie lingers to much on the clichéd boredom of the gang and the teacher the movie stops dead in it's tracks.
So at the end of the day, you have a sequel (Which should be part 3) that is better than it's first predecessor but far inferior to the exploitation classic that spawned it and no amount of kickboxing from Mitchell will change this fact.*1/2 out of 4-(Poor).
OK, first of all, yes its a cheap movie n stuff....but I've learned to look beyond that kinda things, cuz thats not the most important thing about a movie, if u disagree go watch Titanic...i also love Cyborg with Van Damme, and this falls into the same category , i think....but Sasha Mitchell somehow is soooo cool in this role...his kickboxer movies are worse, cuz they don't have the fun element, this movie has...if u approach this movie in a serious way, you will turn it off quick.
But if you're open for a fun action 80s style ride..its your movie.Its hard to explain what this movie does to me....i just find the John Bolen Character so cool....and in the end i almost feel sorry for him...badmouth this film as much as you like, i love it!!!!This movie makes me feel good in a weird way.....80s style b-movie action , i love it!.
When a young, pretty, and somewhat naive teacher, Jenna McKensie (Dulany) wants to testify in a trial because she witnessed a murder perpetrated by evil student in his mid 30's Sanders (West), school authorities do nothing, local cops advise against it, and her boyfriend Emmett (Cassavetes) is relatively ineffectual.
It's a good thing John Bolen is here to bring corporal punishment back to the school system!
It needed to have a giant lunch like John Bolen does in the movie.
The movie is at is best when Bolen is going around killing punks, but can that sustain a whole 90 minute film?
Sasha Mitchell is great as Bolen.
Mitchell has some good lines and some very entertaining stone-faces that help the movie along.
While some people may say this movie is nothing more than a "Substitute" for a better film, we say it brings back video store memories and isn't bad.
The Premise: A government agent is tracking what he believes to be a rogue android on a killing spree, disguised as a substitute teacher.
That teacher is John Bolen, who arrives at a new high school to implement deadly discipline.The conclusion: People may not like this movie, but it has some good moments.
A somebody is out to track him thinking it is the a surviving robot teacher from the 1st movie.
The climax is at a paint ball war games where John Bolen is doing a killing spree but the bully is out to kill the female teacher.
He eventually gets blown up in a bunker and all is good but with a twist at the very end.This movie would be rated R, a nudity sex scene and blood and violence..
I just love this film, because it triggered something...it has a certain charm about it, and anyone who likes 80s action B movies(although this isn't even from the 80s) should understand what i mean by this...Sasha Mitchell is great in this role....he is cocky and cool, funny at times...just the right approach for this type of role, i think.
no surprise there, but sad nevertheless...The war poem is something that really stuck in my head..How anybody feels about a movie is rooted in personal feelings and observations...to me its a fun ride, and id so love to be John Bolen for a day or two....enjoy!!!
This film (the sequel) was so bad that I am suprised I managed to watch it once.
There's this guy, that starts killing people, the film tries to convince you that he is a robot, then at the end there's a twist - he is not a robot.
They showed some androids which looked pretty good, but on actual viewing of the film, there is none of this.
In fact the reason I watched it was to wait and see the actual special effects of the robots - which were shown on the back cover.
The acting is incredibly bad - even worse than in a television movie.
The substitute bloke is played by someone out of KICKBOXER 2, which tells you something about the level this film achieved.
What little budget was available was obviously wasted on some huge explosions, which are nice to look at but, as is the case with the rest of the film, lack substance.
To make matters worse, some interesting-looking clips are shown - from the first film, presumably, just to rub in what we're missing out on here.The big finale involves happenings at a paintball game, giving you some idea of the tiny scale events are played out on here.
The high school and its population doesn't look that hopeless, even though the students are wearing orange jump suits resembling a prisoner's outfit, and there even still are some teachers – like the lovely Miss.
I would say the latter sub plot has something to do with the huge success of "Dangerous Minds" (the actress Caitlin Delany even looks a lot like Michelle Pfeiffer) but "Class of 1999 II" actually came out one year prior, so I'm guessing it's just a coincidence.
In the first film, the high school was located in the middle of a no-police-patrolling zone and two competing gangs were killing off each other.
John Bolen is the last remaining cyborg in its type, designed by the late Dr. Bob Forrest who was killed by his own creations at the end of the first film, and he infiltrates in a troublesome high-school by posing as a substitute teacher.
Sasha Mitchell is decent as the supposedly (but not really) emotionless robo-teacher and grabs every possibility there is to demonstrate his impressive kick-boxing skills.
Class of 1999 II: The Substitute starts like any other ordinary morning at at an everyday American high-school except that they have a new substitute teacher named John Bolen (Sasha Mitchell) who is in fact a reprogrammed military robot.
A reprogrammed military robot who likes to kill off the unruly students & when local school thug Sanders (Gregory West) & his scumbag gang starts to hassle his fellow teacher Jenna McKensie (Caitlin Dulany) he takes a very dim view of it...Directed by Spiro Razatos I thought Class of 1999: The Substitute was an OK time waster, I thought this sequel to the original Class of 1999 (1990) was going to be awful & in that respect it didn't disappoint & I suppose it was but not quite a bad as I thought it was going to be.
The script by Mark Sevi moves along at a fair pace although after the opening 20 or so minutes it leaves the classroom & descends into a drama as a teacher is harassed because she is going to testify against a student & this is what the bulk of the film consists of rather than the classroom action & violence of the original before it ends with a paint-ball contest gone wrong, in fact I can only remember one scene set in a classroom during the whole film.
The character's & narrative could have been better too, for instance early on in the film Bolen kills the schools principal & this is never mentioned again which seemed odd considering he was the principal & therefore a pretty important person & the kid that he recognises & kills for reasons we never discover.
There is also a distinct lack of exploitative elements which don't help, overall it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but it's still pretty bad all the same.Director Spiro does OK, there's some low budget but reasonable action scenes but I'd liked to have had some gore as there isn't any as it stands at the moment.
The acting isn't up to much I'm afraid.Class of 1999: The Substitute isn't a particularly great film, in fact if I was pushed I'd say it was a pretty crap one but it did keep me watching until the end & at least it wasn't as bad as I had been expecting..
The only two redeeming qualities to this film were Sasha Mitchell (John Bolen)and Rick Hill (G.D. Ash.)Sasha Mitchell plays a renegade cyborg bent on keeping order in schools, much like his predecessors in the first "Class of 1999." Rick Hill plays a government agent desperately searching for him, but not for what he leads others to believe the reasoning to be.
Instead of being set even further in the future (in the first one, even the cars were futuristic)it seemed to be set in some remote, backwoods, hick, town.Sasha Mitchell's performance was riveting as the cold, emotionless, calculating and cunning battle droid, posing as teacher John Bolen.
Like I said, this movie could have been good, it really could have.
I've gotta start by saying that I'm quite a fan of both 1984, and it's massively entertaining, sort of pseudo sequel 1999.originally watching this film when first arriving on VHS (as I said being a big fan of 1999, the mere sniff of a sequel was all it would take to sucker me in a second time) I was hugely disappointed, where were the androids?
And ya know what I'm glad I did.Whilst this is by no ways a great film, in fact it's not even a good 1999 sequel, it does have some interesting ideas (most of which are thrown out the window)It all looks very 90's in that crossworlds, warlock 2, kinda way and the point of the original is completely lost, but the idea of the substitute, fighting against positive emotions (e.g his unexpected and unwanted feelings towards Jenna) the fact that he's not even like a killer android, more just a literature spouting, psycho ex-seal suffering from a real bad case of green eyes, adds some sort of Frankenstein meets fatal attraction element.The acting is relatively mediocre, Sasha Mitchel is as emotionless and stiff as the character he's playing, as is pretty much everybody else and the direction is as simple and uninspiring as the soundtrack.
The twist ending just adds to confuse matters I mean If he's not an android it still fails to explain how he manages to fire continuously for about five minutes without having to reload once, or how he can still throw some unruly, orange jump suited street punk student through a brick wall, I know these seals are tough, but really?As for the very final shots of Jenna getting ready to teach a new class, loaded up with Johns knife, gun, kevlar vest and a new mission statement, massively betray her character, turning the rule abiding, war game loving belief's of the android into an ideal, instead of a malfunction.Yet despite all of this I still quite enjoyed it, fun if you fancy a cheesy 90's, lowish budgeted sort of scfi action thriller, it deserves better than 3.8, not much better mind but fun all the same :).
I thought that Sasha Mitchell (Kickboxer sequels) handled his role pretty well.
The story has a couple of flashbacks from the original movie, but that is about it concerning any big special effects: (WARNING SPOILER !!) It all turns out that teacher Bowen is not a WarDroid but in fact the psychotic son of the professor in the first movie.
But still, I watched this movie last night and I hadn't seen it for 10 years or so.
And I can understand who some people do not like this movie, it is after all a hoax..
I watched Class of 1984 on Zone Horror and loved it, I even went out and bought it on DVD.
So when I saw Class of 1999 II on the same channel I thought OK, I didn't expect much with the reviews it got but I thought I'd try it out.The plot is about a new substitute teacher John coming to a new school and killing off unruly kids but he's apparently a Cyborg.
Meanwhile a man is tracking him and planning to stop him before he kills them all like the Cyborgs almost did in Class of 1999. |
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