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tt1956618 | Screwed | Willard (Norm Macdonald) is an overworked, underpaid chauffeur who works for a mean-spirited pie heiress named Mrs. Crock (Elaine Stritch), just as his father did before him. All Willard wants for Christmas is a new uniform, as the one he currently wears is the one his father was buried in, but Crock gives him a cheap pair of cuff links and a pie instead, while lavishing expensive gifts on her business partner Chip Oswald (Sherman Hemsley) and her prized dog Muffin. Finally fed up with being mistreated, Willard and his best friend, local chicken restaurant owner Rusty (Dave Chappelle), concoct a scheme to kidnap the dog and hold it for a $1,000,000 ransom. Muffin attacks him, leaving a great deal of destruction and Willard's blood at the scene, and the plan fails when the dog later escapes.
However, Crock and the Pittsburgh police misinterpret the hastily scrawled ransom note and believe that Willard himself has been kidnapped. Crock refuses to pay up initially until met with public protests led by Willard's on-again off-again girlfriend Hillary (Sarah Silverman). Willard and Rusty come up with a new scheme, in which Willard films a fake ransom video and releases it to the media, putting pressure on Crock to come up with the money to preserve her public image as a kindly old grandmother. The plan calls for Willard to mug his boss as she goes to drop off the ransom money, and to have a dead body left behind dressed as Willard to throw off the police. They enlist the services of a creepy morgue employee named Grover Cleaver (Danny DeVito) to find an appropriate corpse and schedule a meeting at night in the park.
This plan also goes wrong, however, when Willard succeeds in getting the money, only to lose it to two small children who attack him with a taser and a shiv and steal the suitcase. Willard is found by the police and sent to a hospital, as the children have soundly brutalized him. The police then find the dead body that was supposed to take the place of Willard as he made his getaway, and Willard claims that it was his captor. The police are suspicious, as Grover used the body of an old homeless dwarf, but Willard claims he was "more ferocious when he was alive". Willard dejectedly returns to work for Mrs. Crock (who claims that he now owes her the ransom as well) until the mother of one of his attackers shows up and returns the briefcase. Overjoyed, Willard and Rusty plan to go on a long vacation only to find that the briefcase was filled with newspaper and cabbage.
After interrogating Willard and Rusty (during which Rusty reveals his habit of striking people with desk lamps when nervous), the police go after Grover, who goes on a rampage, kidnapping Mrs. Crock while waiting for the share of money Willard promised him. Willard goes to Grover and confronts his employer, finding out that the money was actually in the briefcase but was stolen by Chip Oswald, who planned to double-cross them all and make off with his boyfriend. He also discovers to everyone's disgust that his father was also Mrs. Crock's lover as well as manservant. After the police converge on Grover's place, Crock convinces them that the trio are actually her rescuers.
In the end, Willard leads the police to Chip's apartment, where the ransom money is discovered. When Chip pulls a gun, Rusty panics and knocks him unconscious by hitting him in the head with a lava lamp. Mrs. Crock expresses her gratitude by paying for Willard to attend college at the University of Southern California and buying him a new Armani suit, and paying for Rusty to open a new Chicken Hole on the beach. Willard finally reconciles with Hillary, while Crock herself ends up in a romantic relationship with Grover. | adult comedy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0048452 | Ordet | The film centers around the Borgen family in rural Denmark. The devout widower Morten, patriarch of the family, prominent member of the community, and patron of the local parish church, has three sons. Mikkel, the eldest, has no faith, but is happily married to the pious Inger, who is pregnant with their third child. Johannes, who went insane studying Søren Kierkegaard, believes himself to be Jesus Christ and wanders the farm condemning the age's lack of faith, including that of his family and the modern-minded new pastor of the village. The youngest son, Anders, is lovesick for the daughter of the leader of a local Christian religious sect.
Anders confesses to Mikkel and Inger that he loves Anne Petersen, the daughter of Peter the Tailor. They agree to convince Morten to assent to the match. Later, Inger attempts to convince Morten to allow Anders to marry Anne. Morten angrily refuses, but changes his mind when he finds out Peter has refused Anders' proposal. Morten and Anders go to meet Peter, in order to negotiate the betrothal.
Morten tries to convince Peter to permit the marriage, but he continues to refuse unless Morten and Anders join his sect. As the discussion collapses into sectarian bickering, Morten receives a call announcing that Inger has gone into a difficult labor. Peter says that Inger's difficulties are punishment from God for Morten not joining his sect. Furious at Peter's comments, Morten attacks Peter and storms out with Anders, the two of them rushing home. While the doctor is forced to abort the baby, he is able to save Inger's life. After the doctor and pastor leave, Johannes angers his father by telling him that death is nearby and will take Inger, unless Morten has faith in him. Morten refuses to listen and, as prophesied, Inger dies suddenly.
While preparing to go to Inger's funeral, Peter realizes that he has wronged Morten terribly, and reconciles with him over Inger's open coffin, agreeing to permit Anne and Anders to marry. Johannes suddenly interrupts the wake, approaches Inger's coffin, and proclaims that she can be raised from the dead if the family will only have faith and ask God to do so. Inger's daughter takes Johannes' hand and impatiently asks him to raise her mother from the dead. Johannes praises her childlike faith and asks God to raise Inger, who begins to breathe and twitch in her coffin. Seeing what seems to be the miracle of resurrection, both Morten and Peter rejoice, forgetting their religious differences. As Inger sits up, Mikkel embraces her and proclaims that he has finally found faith. | insanity | train | wikipedia | She has the most elemental kind of Christian faith, and trusts that her husband's essential goodness of heart will lead him back to the fold.All these characters and forces come together in a terrible crisis when Inger goes into premature labor.
I'll not divulge the climax, for you should have the same experience of wonder and gratitude I--and probably most moviegoers who've ever seen it--had as it ended.Two important notes: All this Christianity stuff may turn you off, may make you think Ordet is some gloomy Scandinavian meditation.
His unmistakable film grammar--the hauntingly lit intereriors, the long pans from place to place in the same room, the slightly detached yet intense performances, the most purely photographed exteriors in cinema, echoing the Danish pictorial tradition of Hammershoi, Pedersen, and others who worked a modest magic with the windswept elements of Denmark's hard land--this fiercely personal vision is put to the service of something rare in the movie business (or any other business): love..
Based on a 1944 play by a Danish priest who was killed by the Nazis, the great Danish Director Carl Dreyer dramatizes this faith in the form of a Christian miracle which provides healing for an entire family in crisis.
Dreyer creates a moody, atmospheric, almost dreamlike rural setting, using light and shadow to contrast a life-affirming attitude with one that denies joy.Mikkel Borgen, one of three brothers, whose wife Inger is giving birth to their third child, has denied faith completely.
The movie has a long and very slow, almost agonizing buildup until the final scene which, when it comes, is one of the most moving and powerful climaxes in cinema.
There is too much of an inexorable quality about the final transition.I think that the film is best viewed as an allegory contrasting people who live in their mind and not their experience and feel powerless to change their lives, with people who know that they have the ability to transform the quality of their life and the lives of those around them.
The action moves right along without help of special effects or a distracting musical score.This picture at least alludes to the seldom-asked question, "Why do people believe?" Is it merely for the rewards of faithfulness, or something more?The final scene, utterly devoid of effects or music, has a dramatic power unexcelled in the ensuing 47 years of cinema to date.
'Ordet', even by Dreyer standards, is a gruelling experience, but in a different way from 'the Passion of Joan of Arc', which, with almost sadistic intensity, thrust the viewer into a visceral pummelling, dragging the spiritual out of us.
The situation and plots are straight out of classic 19th century realist literature - a stubbornly proud landowner refuses to let his youngest son marry a wealthy neighbour because of religious differences; his eldest son goes mad from studying too much theology, hoping to fulfil his father's messianic dreams, under the delusion that he is Jesus, with beard too match, although a joyless, Old-Testament kind of prophet-Jesus; another son has renounced his faith, disgusted with the daily evidence of God's indifference; his pious wife loses her baby in childbirth.
The film opens with a brilliantly orchestrated sequence, which introduces the characters, their dilemmas and their milieu, with a simple, yet intricate pattern, as each family member searches for the missing mad brother, a man linked to nature, the light and the dunes.
I prefer the way Dreyer turns the rare modern intrusions in the film, the doctor's car for instance, into a scary, almost medieval vision of death in motion; or the chillingly glum view of village life, in a film that keeps implicating the social only to drive it out.
To the average person it can tend to look boring lest one know how to read between the lines, and yet its so simple and beautiful, I've witnessed the ultimate skeptics(regarding God and religion) get engulfed in this film and enjoy it.
Another winner from Dreyer but i expected as much since i think every film i've seen by him is pretty much a masterpiece
that's taking into consideration The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), his final film Gertrud (1964) and now Ordet completes the string of 5 brilliant films he made from 1928- 1964 before dying at the age of 79 in 1968
he was one of the the few geniuses who wasn't given much time to make films, only 13 features in his career from as early as 1919
he was there right from the start and left with such a deep note on what can be done in cinema, that he has inspired generations to come with his meticulous detail for showing reality but in a very unusual manner
What is to be said about a story where one character believes he's the reincarnation of Jesus, yet the family think he's crazy
in the early 1900s where religion ruled & love was broken cause the fathers of the 2 families have different religious practices
where an atheist and his pregnant wife hopes for a boy but problems arise & all the families faith will be tested, and ultimately set the path for this very unusual and unsettling adaptation of a popular Danish play
If you haven't seen any Dreyer, you haven't experienced one of the masters of cinema who created a world & atmosphere like no other
http://samuellbronko.tumblr.com/post/119845549042/ordet-aka-the- word-1955-carl-theodor-dreyer.
The two, Peter and Morten, have been having sharp differences on religious issues for years and they really came into focus later on in the movie with Inger who was pregnant at the time.
Peter starts to feel that now his friend Morten will be tested by God like the Biblical Job. By having Inger die and having him accept what happens to her without any show of anger on his part to show his complete faith in God's work which is to test Morten.This unfeeling statement by Peter causes an angry and outraged Morten to almost clobber, and end up on nonspeaking terms with, him and end their friendship.
John, who was gone all this time, appears and with only young Meren believing him in his assertion that faith in God is the only force that can bring Inger back to life.
The classic status of Carl Dreyer's Passion Play has weathered years of change in attitude and taste better than the film itself: a stiff, theatrical meditation on the fundamental conflict between religion and faith.
But in what many believe to be his finest film Dreyer approaches the story like an undertaker to a corpse, carefully arranging each scene in a static tableau and embalming the script in the formal delivery of each line of dialogue..
This is certainly no action film, and another film of completely po-faced sincerity from Dreyer.You should know going in that this is a much slower work than Day of Wrath, and its charms are much subtler than something like Vampyr.
However, I was impressed how in an increasingly cynical world when it comes to religion that director Dreyer makes a film that is unashamedly religious and creates A LOT to talk about once the film has completed.Overall, a very slow film but one that's worth watching.
If you're not laughing at Johannes yourself every time he appears, I'm not sure I want to know you.And never have I been so let down by the ending of a film.
This film touches religious matters, such as faith and the real meaning of it and on a broader sense it can be a good source for reflection even today as we experience so much disharmony thru out the world because of religious differences.
Based with great fidelity on a play by Kaj Munk, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1944, it's formulated as a kind of rural chamber drama, and like most of Dreyer's films it centers on the tensions within a family.Ordet concerns two Danish families in the mid-1920s.
What makes Ordet so deeply moving is the way in which all the various pieces ultimately fit together and lead smoothly to the stirring climax, which involves a miraculous raising from the dead that might seem hokey in any other movie.
The intensity of the viewer's relationship with the film makes the closing scene (a miracle) one of the most extraordinary in all cinema.Of Dreyer's masterworks, Ordet is possibly his best.
My Rating : 9/10Ordet (The Word) is a beautiful film about a family living on a remote farm in Denmark and the test of their faith.
'Ordet' feels more like a play than a film as it moves through different scenes in different rooms.
The scenes with the little girl and her mad uncle are some of the most heart- aching.The parts in which Dreyer ruminates explictly on god and faith in a faithless world I pass by without much interest, I simply don't know what use I have for them, for example when the father is asked by a doctor if science saved his daughter-in-law or his own faith.
The world is always aglow with spirituality so long as the eye, the heart, remain effortless, able to let each thing mean itself.Now we come to the famous ending with the miracle; one of the most famous in cinema probably.It's possible, for Dreyer, that our ability to accept it or not is a test of our faith in the possibility of transcendence, it might be a case that to reject it out of hand is to already have a heart that is hardened.
Anders wants to marry the daughter of his father's rival, while Johannes believes that he is Jesus.The film is a very serious and powerful work, but it is not intended as entertainment and moves at a very slow pace.
In viewing "Ordet", a Danish film directed by Carl Th. Dreyer, one can scarcely avoid perceiving a religious theme.
The latter elements lend an altogether human aspect to the film, allowing even the religious facets to convey the doubts and skepticism associated with human nature.In the final scene of "Ordet", the setting is a funeral in the home of Mr. Borgen, the grandfather of the farm on which the deceased (Inger) lived and worked as the daughter-in-law.
Like all Dreyer's films, Ordet is mannered and stylized.
And most of us like to mention only as existed once a man who did miracles, to consider the power of faith as being in the past and kept within the time of biblical story, not as a truly, really fact that still exists.
Patriarch Borgen has three sons: Mikkel, a good-hearted agnostic whose wife Inger is pregnant, Johannes, who believes he is Jesus, and Anders, young, slight, in love with the tailor's daughter.All I wanted to say about this one was a general comment on the cinematography in the Scandinavian countries.
It'a obviously all based on a stage-play, which you can tell by the way the scene's are being set up and the story is getting told.Again, it's all rather slow and the movie does definitely take its time to get its story across.
Family patriarch Morten (Henrik Malberg) lives in rural Denmark with his three sons - faithless father Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen), the deranged Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye) who after going crazy studying theology, now believes himself to be Jesus Christ, and youngest son Anders (Cay Kristiansen).
Morten eventually agrees with the help of Mikken, but comes to loggerheads with Peter over their religious beliefs.I don't know much about the work of the great Scandinavian director Carl Theodor Dreyer, as the only other film of his I've seen is the fantastic Gothic 'horror' Vampyr (1932).
The result is a beautiful and humanistic study of religion and the miraculous.The main crux of the film focuses on the two fathers' views on religion, with Morten's beliefs allowing him to embrace life, while Peter lives a stricter, more sacrificial life.
Ordet (1955)*** (out of 4) Extremely powerful film from Dreyer about religion and death.
Ordet is the second Dreyers film I've seen - the first being The Passion of Joan of Arc which at the time both amazed and scared me with its dark, brooding and sinister camera work and acting.
I can only wonder what happened in between this and Ordet (I will soon find out though), but the latter surely makes a few steps backward in terms of almost everything I've seen in the Passion.I'm not a religious person and I can understand that this film may have a great appeal on a Christian (or, as someone else has put it, a quaker).
But the acting and overall ridicule views expressed within (that drag for two hours), make this film a cheap try at finding the meaning of life, death, god, faith and doubt.
The main characters are: the father Henrik, a member of a liberal Christian sect; Mikkel, a son who has lost his faith; Inger, Mikkel's wife; Johannes, a son who believes himself to be Jesus Christ; and Anders, a third son.
If religion were removed from the equation here, then I think all of these people would have been much happier.The movie is clearly based on a stage play and it has not been opened up much to make it more than the filming of a play.Given the language barrier for me and the fact that I could not identify with most of the characters, I did not find the acting to rise above average.
Children who don't question our faith and don't contest the ramblings of the insane prophet Johannes.Dreyer makes this point at the end when the local Christian minister (man of God) starts to protest the miracle, only to have the local doctor (man of science) hold him back.
"Ordet" is unique.Almost all the lines deal with faith,religion and God.It may repel some viewers but ,even if you are not a believer (or if like me,you used to be a believer),it's a fascinating absorbing drama.This is the kind of film you could talk about all night and at dawn it would not be over.There is no central character and everything happens in the space of a few days.Except for the scenes in the tailor's house,all the story takes place on Borgensgaard's farm and by the seaside where a restless wind blows.Johannes Borgen is crazy .That's what they say.He thinks he is Jesus Christ.But wasn't Christ Himself a crank for most of the people of His time?Preben Lerdoff Rye 's performance is all the more extraordinary since,with any lesser talent,such a character could have become ridiculous.His disappearance in a place "where you could not follow me" is probably a hint at Christ's descent to hell after His Death.
Inger's resurrection has been widely talked about ,and in this context,it makes sense:"miracles keep happening" is one of the many subjects of the film ,small ones (the tailor's wish come true) and this last one which leaves no room to coincidence.For a Christian like CT Dreyer,Faith is essential and he is no Saint Thomas."Life ,yes,life" are Inger's last words;life for Mikkel and her,but both do believe that their stillborn child is alive as well..
Despite having an abstract strength in the way the characters play off each other, and the direction, Ordet does not materialize itself until the final third of the film.
A long night leads to conflict between the 2 families.The best scene in the film is when Morten tries to convince Peter to let Anders marry Anne.
However, I wasn't bored by it, because of director Carl Theodor Dreyer's great directing.As great and engaging as the film can be at times, it can sometimes be a difficult wait getting to the good scenes, because the movie has pacing issues.
If the film would have had a tragic ending instead, that scene would've likely effected me a lot more.In conclusion, this was a well-made film that had the power to engage me quite a lot with Dreyer's great direction and writing.
From director Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr), this Danish film featured in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, and besides knowing the director that was good enough reason for me to see it.
It is August 1925 in Denmark, where on a farm Patriarch Morten Borgen (Henrik Malberg) has three sons in different situations, good-hearted agnostic Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen) whose wife Inger, Mikkel's Wife (Birgitte Federspiel) is pregnant, Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye) who is crazy or having a breakdown where he believes he is Jesus Christ, and young Anders (Cay Kristiansen) who is in love with and wants to marry Kirstin (Sylvia Eckhausen), the daughter of tailor Peter Petersen (Ejner Federspiel).
Inger has problems during the pregnancy, and a Doctor (Henry Skjær) is brought in to help her and ease the pain, and the night sees all four different views of faith come in to play, including Johannes who claims, as Jesus, that he can heal her, or that when she dies she will resurrect, like the true Holy son did.
The acting by many of the players is very good, I personally and particularly liked Lerdorff Rye as the son believing he is Jesus, the story has some very interesting scenes questioning sanity, and it really establishes that religion plays a big part of lives in the world for all sorts of reasons, it is a terrific religious drama.
If that happened in a lesser film without the religious and moral issues being thrashed out then it would be meaningless and a waste of time.Whichever way you want to look at it, those scenes are very moving.
Just like the resurrection itself, you either believe it or not, and if you think its a joke, then this film could become a joke for you too.I used to wonder why Dreyer is bringing this example of resurrection in his contemporary time. |
tt1349451 | Butter | Destiny (Shahidi) is a ten-year-old foster child in Iowa who gets placed with Ethan (Corddry) and Jill Emmet (Silverstone). While visiting the Iowa State Fair by herself, she wanders into the exhibit of the winning butter sculpture, a life-sized Last Supper, and skillfully finishes the Holy Grail cup, which impresses the sculpture's creator, Bob Pickler (Burrell).
Bob had won the fair's butter-sculpture contest for the past 15 years straight; because of his dominance, he is asked to abstain from future competitions to give others a chance. Bob's wife Laura (Garner), overly competitive and socially ambitious, goes to the home of the competition's organizer to protest. Bob goes to a strip club and solicits stripper Brooke (Wilde) for sex in his minivan. Laura discovers them and T-bones the van with her SUV.
Laura decides to enter the county's preliminary sculpture competition herself because of the social status that comes with winning. Destiny decides to enter as well, as does Brooke, who just wants to harass the Picklers because Bob owes her $600. Despite practice, Laura comes in second to Destiny.
When Brooke appears at the Picklers' seeking her money, Bob's daughter Kaitlin (Greene) admits her and takes her up to her room. After talking a bit, Kaitlin challenges Brooke to a game of truth-or-dare which escalates to them having sex. Kaitlin is drawn to Brooke's alternative style and attitude; Brooke just wants the money (she ups the amount to $1200) and Kaitlin says she can get it. While this is going on, Kaitlin's stepmom Laura is hooking up with Boyd Bolton (Jackman), an old high-school boyfriend who is now a used-car salesman. She's seducing him to get him to falsely testify to county officials that Ethan paid him to help Destiny in the competition. Laura suggests a rematch at the state fair. Destiny agrees; everyone else is disgruntled.
Brooke gets her money from infatuated Kaitlin, meets Destiny after school, and takes her to the mall to buy her a $1,200 set of chef's knives to help her in the rematch with Laura. When Destiny gets home, a social worker informs her that her biological mother has died.
At the state fair, Laura carves a replica of John F. Kennedy's car immediately after his assassination complete with the president's blown-up skull and Jackie Kennedy and Clint Hill crawling onto the trunk; Destiny creates her biological mother holding her infant self in a rocking chair. That night before the judging, Boyd sneaks into the butter-sculpture room and defaces Destiny's sculpture with a blowtorch. Destiny, disappointed and expecting to lose now, encounters Laura in the restroom and offers the forgiveness of her handshake. Laura tells Destiny that winning the butter-sculpting contest means more to her than the little girl can comprehend. Laura feels she has little opportunity to distinguish herself otherwise, while Destiny has talent and her entire life to realize her own potential. Despite the damage, Destiny's sculpture wins. The sabotage of the piece is recognized as "higher art", as the judges believe the melted face lends the butter sculpture a greater depth. Destiny goes on to win in the state competition, where judges give a positive critique on her piece, deeming it an "angst-ridden exploration of post-natal abandonment." Upon her victory, Destiny assures Laura that the butter-carving contest is "not all that you have". Laura kneels down to Destiny and hugs her, understanding that she must move on to greater triumphs that are her own.
Later, Destiny is officially adopted by the Emmets and Laura is running for Governor of Iowa, claiming that God appeared to her and advised her to run. | satire, entertaining | train | wikipedia | However, I figured it deserved a chance considering my love of Olivia Wilde especially, but also the other big names like Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Garner, Ashley Greene, and so on.
In small-town Iowa, an adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their town's annual contest.Let me say right off the bat what I did not like about this film: the political angle.
When butter sculpture king, Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) is asked to step aside after 15 years in the spotlight, his vengeful, social climber wife, Laura (Jennifer Garner) decides to enter to win to keep the Pickler name at the top.
There are some cute digs about race and ambition.I have never been a huge Jennifer Garner fan (the over perky grin) but luckily it makes use of the talents of other fine actors especially Olivia Wilde as a stripper, Alicia Silverstone, and Ashley Greene as a teenage daughter.
All we knew about it was that the cast is full of good names, it is a satire built around a butter-carving competition and that director Jim Field Smith is only known for by-the-numbers romantic comedy "She's Out of My League." But somewhere, somehow, the name "Juno" was mumbled by someone and comparisons were just waiting to be made.The question of similarity to "Juno" would be appropriately enough raised, but I'm afraid the similarity ends just past the 'Jennifer Garner movie' and 'Midwestern family ensemble comedy' labels.
Our first main character is Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner), wife of professional butter-sculpture Bob Picker (Ty Burrell), who has decided that after fifteen years he will retire and live a more quiet, controlled life.
She will join the championship, as well, knowing she will get under Laura's skin and show her that Bob and her were meant for each other.Laura has competition, mainly with a young black orphan named Destiny (Yara Shahidi), who has traveled from house to house, finally finding a family with Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone.
The other competitor is the dim-witted, yet good-natured Carol-Ann Stevenson (Kristen Shaal), a fan of Bob's who becomes convinced that she can win the next title, although she is victim to her own ineptitude.Butter plays just like Alexander Payne's film Election did, with its heavily satirized look at suburban culture, and also providing us with a character that has redeemable and despicable qualities.
Surely electric bills for the cooling containers wouldn't be paid contently.Starring: Jennifer Garner, Ty Burrell, Olivia Wilde, Rob Corddry, Ashley Greene, Alicia Silverstone, and Hugh Jackman.
From the cute trailer to the impressive cast to the quirky concept, I was excited to watch Butter for a few laughs, but all I got was misled at every turn; horrible mis-casting, failed joke after failed joke, embarrassing attempts at edginess, not an ounce of originality, culminating with the indulgent, obligatory "outtakes" at the end which were TWICE as unfunny as the movie itself.Director Jim Field Smith sh*t the bed with his attempt to deliver an edgy, midwestern comedy (trying oh so hard to be Election-esque) - having come from British TELEVISION - who thought he would be the right director to add a wry commentary on weird middle America?
Whatever the case, I found myself gritting my teeth after every ATTEMPT at a joke or a button - everything just fell flat!Jennifer Garner is great, but she gets way too much screen time for a villain, and her character (or the way she was directed to play it) is just a boring hybrid of Election's Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman in To Die For. Ty Burrell doesn't KNOW what he's supposed to do, and never becomes anything short of "there", Hugh Jackman?
All the cast pull their weight, and special credit has to be given to show-stealer, Olivia Wilde, who brings a free-spirited intelligence to her ridiculous character Brooke, as only Wilde can, and is probably the movie's funniest character.The one complaint I had with the otherwise great movie, is that the direction seems to jump back and forth between being an edgy, witty comedy for adults and a warmhearted feel-good for the family.
While I can see they were trying to be funny, and at the same time, touching - I felt the mixing could have been smoother.But that aside, Butter takes the overdone, unoriginal underdog-in-a-competition plot line, and manages to turn it into a pretty decent film by injecting with quirky subject matter and diverse, great characters.
Missing more than hitting, Butter churns (sorry!) at a predictable pace occasionally striking the scared cows it aims at w/a game cast including Jennifer Garner, Olivia Wilde, Ty Burrell & 'Clueless" herself, Alicia Silverstone but unlike Payne's films which often pierce their subject matters so hard it hurts, Butter barely leaves a bruise..
Butter Sculpting as a Political Metaphor Yields Good Laughs Upfront But Fizzles by the End. I have to give Jennifer Garner credit for playing a despicable character in sheep's clothing with such unfettered brio in this 2012 comedy, one that aspires to be a darkly eccentric political satire but ultimately becomes too soft-centered for its own good.
With her constantly pinched voice, crisp color-coordinated outfits, perfect hair and make-up and a triple strand of pearls strung tightly around her neck, Garner is obviously playing Laura Pickler as an amalgam of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman but with a more naked malevolence toward anyone who stands in her way toward the White House.Even though her congenial husband Bob, the Iowa State Fair's 15-time butter sculpting champion, is asked by the judges to bow out of the latest competition, Laura is not about to relinquish her powerful position as queen of the fair and decides to enter the contest herself.
The first butter sculpting contest is set up quite amusingly with the addition of two other contestants: Carol-Ann, a devoted fan girl of Bob's played with ditzy dexterity by Kristen Schaal ("30 Rock"), and a vengeful, hard-edged stripper named Brooke, who is waiting for a $600 payment from Bob for services rendered.As an unsavory character who wants desperately to annihilate Laura's dreams of higher status, Olivia Wilde is a genuine comic revelation who almost steals the entire movie as Brooke.
Although the movie has a sharper edge than "The Campaign", Micallef's screenplay reaches a certain point where you begin to realize that there is little to Laura's motivations beyond her small-minded ambition.It's at this juncture in the story that Hugh Jackman shows up as her former flame Boyd Bolton, a successful car dealer who still holds a torch for Laura and colludes with her to ensure her victory at the fair.
All of the actors and actresses were great in their rolls, Olivia Wilde, Jennifer Garner...etc, however the movie itself was just ridiculous stupid.
That title belongs to Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) who is retiring from the butter competition but finds no solace at home.He is married to Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner) who is a real balls- buster, clawing her way to control within this small town.
Meanwhile Ethan (Rob Corddry) and Jill Emmett (Alicia Silverstone) are new foster parents to young black child, Destiny (Yara Shahidi), who finds herself armed only with her wit in a sea of white people.Yes, the film is about butter carving, and yes it is exactly as funny as you would expect that to be.
Kristen Schaal plays one of Laura's butter carving competitors and remains unfunny since she attempted to find a touch-point for reality in her character, when, of course, there isn't one.There are a few ill-advised side plots and everything is extreme, but then again, it is a dark comedy so the jokes cross lines as the genre dictates.
Bob (Ty Burrell), with his domineering second wife, Laura (Jennifer Garner), at his side, has won Iowa state's butter-sculpting contest for the last fifteen years.
(I will give you the resulting film score at the end of my review.)Jennifer Garner and Ty Burrell play a married couple named Laura and Bob Pickler who live a very privileged lifestyle.
Kaitlin is at that rebellious age and her hormones and excitement get the best of her when she finds out that the mysterious hot lady at their front door who wants to talk to her dad, Bob Pickler, is actually a stripper named Brooke (played by Olivia Wilde) and Brooke is demanding a $600 payment from her dad for services recently rendered.While Laura and Bob Pickler are busily engaged with their hands in their current butter sculpture, their daughter is also busily engaged with her tongue in Brooke the stripper's mouth, learning how to climax properly.
Of course this scene has nothing to do with the butter competition but subconsciously, we as parents may get a chuckle out of the scene but may also choose to ask our pwn teenage children what they have been up to lately.The butter carving competition heats up and comes down to the championship battle between Laura Pickler and a cute little 10 year old foster child named Destiny.
And Jennifer Garner was that desperate for money?For writers who lack the imagination, the story of the REAL butter lady from the Iowa State Fair would have made for a good movie without even trying..
While this "film" does have some moments of laughter, it is mostly a series of head scratching moments strung together by cellulose.To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what happened on the set of Butter, the cast is made up of some seasoned veterans and the director has made some decent comedies before ("She's out of My League")but Butter falls flat.The scenes between Brooke and Bob's daughter are completely unrealistic and gratuitous.
Laura's sudden clarity seems cliché, and the whole movie feels cobbled together.Suffice to say, I'll think twice before assuming that the likes of Jennifer Garner, Ty Burrell, Hugh Jackman and Olivia Wilde can put together a quality flick..
The characters for instance never come quite across, as fun, quirky or likable enough ones, while this was obviously the approach the film-makers were aiming for.It tried to be like a fun, cute, heartfelt, warm, independent comedy, with a young kid in it, playing an important role but the movie really is lacking the right required warmth and depth to ever work out as a cute and involving one.
Again, you should blame the writing, that besides focuses on far too many different characters.You also feel that the movie really could had used a good and well known comedy actor in it, playing one of the lead roles.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of great and well known actors in this movie but what it is missing is a charismatic comedy actor who can handle its comedy and timing better and turn some average comedy scenes into something truly hilarious.There are plenty of well known actors in this (Jennifer Garner, Alicia Silverstone, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Ty Burrell, etcetera) but none of them truly makes a lasting impression.
First, Jennifer Garner's Laura Pickler, picturesque wife to the wealthy Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell), butter-carving champion, and who hopes to parlay the esteem she and Bob have amassed over the years into becoming a political power couple.
Her performance veers into hamming territory with some frequency, but she sets the tone for the film's lack of self-seriousness, which proves pivotal to enjoying its odd, almost black sense of humor.The comedy highlights come mostly from Shahidi and her interactions with Rob Corddry, who plays her foster father.
For fans of Burrell on "Modern Family," he's cast as a bit of a fool and completely non-extreme when compared to the shenanigans of his wife, Wilde's Brooke, and others.The script reaches for laughs a small but noticeable percentage of the time, but the fails are cushioned appropriately by the film's cheeky attitude and absolute fearlessness when it comes to political correctness (specifically the lack thereof).
She is not a catalyst for anything, and she does not add anything to the eventual outcome of the movie.I would like to think that an actor like Hugh Jackman is rather embarrassed about his role in the film, albeit with some real comic sense.These are just examples of the unconvincing characters and story line.
And who knew that one can sustain a legacy just by carving out memorable scenes and famous characters from a slab of butter, which sort of begins the story of the husband and wife team of Bob PIckler (Ty Burell) and Laura PIckler (Jennifer Garner).For the Picklers, theirs is a legacy within a small town in Iowa that has been closely linked to their small town fame and fortune.
Undeterred, here is a woman who is as nasty as she is beautiful on the outside, who decided to take things into her own hands, and whatever talent she lacked, she made up for it through sheer hard work to try and take back a title the husband had so willingly given up on.Much of the film revolves around Garner's character, an uber bitch who is hypocritical and very much disliked, where even daughter Kaitlen (Ashley Greene) can't stand her ridiculous ways, and Bob looking for an outlet to express his frustration, much of it sexually as well, in the tattooed stripper Brooke Swinkowski (Olivia Wilde).
And the subplot here is pretty interesting as it is hilarious where money owed from a transaction between Bob and Brooke developed into something a lot more explosive, which in any case Brooke is hell bent on getting back both on personal terms through a relationship with Kaitlen who strangely looks up toward Brooke as an outlet for rebellion and getting on her mother's nerves, and on the professional side by being the spanner in the same butter carving competition Laura competes in.On the other hand, it's not all just the nastiness on display, but a sense of sweetness as well from the other major story arc involving the orphaned life of Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a young girl who has been bounced around foster homes, until she becomes the adopted daughter of Ethan Emmet (Rob Corddry) and Julie Emmet (Alicia Silverstone, yes it's been a while), a childless couple who is adamant in making things work with their new adopted charge.
Destiny discovers having some artistic talent in butter carving, and with Ethan's encouragement, also enrols herself into, yes, the same butter carving contest, which now becomes more than just another small town competition, but develops into the melting pot of those seeking to further their hopes, dreams and even ambition.What's very much fun here lies with the ensemble cast bringing out the quirky characters in this black comedy, where despite some being caricatures, are surprisingly engaging to begin with.
Afterall, the movie is about butter carving.Acting/Casting: 6.5* Directing/Cinematography/Technical: 5.5*Plot/Characters: 5.5* Entertainment Value: 5* Total - 6.5+5.5+5.5+5 = 22.5/4 = 5.625* - Might be Worth watching on TV.
The little girl (Yara Shahidi) and her foster parents (Corddry and Silverstone) all put in enjoyable performances, and there's a cute little message about loving and caring for others.Where I feel this movie fails is as a dark or black comedy.
Ultimately, the light tone, character development, and social commentary make this a fun but forgettable film.The story begins with a super cheesy political-style video introduction praising Bob (Ty Burrell) and Laura (Jennifer Garner) Pickler for his great accomplishments and her unwavering support.
This time, we have Garner's ambitious, even ruthless Laura; Burrell's spineless, unfaithful Bob; Olivia Wilde's gold-digging stripper mistress; and Yara Shahidi's perfectly pure Destiny in a great contrast with her overzealous competitor.
Jackman is hilarious as a dim-witted car salesman used by Garner's character as a sexual pawn, and Corddry is surprisingly effective as Destiny's foster father, giving this mostly superficial comedy a few brief, heartfelt moments and a bit of emotional depth that I quite enjoyed.While the film is generally superficial, it does make an attempt at some social commentary, and while it does so with a satirical tone, it is not truly satire.
"Jennifer Garner try's to go for the comedy but she is unsupported by bad material." Butter is a movie about a couple Bob (Ty Burrell) and Laura (Jennifer Garner) who met when the husband was a champion butter sculpture, then fifteen years after they meet he has won the so many times that know they are asking him to step down to let someone else win.
Also another plot point is a stripper named Brooke (Olivia Wilde) who is looking to get payed from Bob after sleeping with him many many times.This main storyline of the film is a very strange one as I feel that the idea of this small town caring so much about who is the best at making butter into shapes that appeal to people.
The whole time the butter competition is happening is hard to watch and because it's the most talked about thing of the film just makes me hate it more.Garner playing this highly unlikeable women is OK as at times I found her funny even through the times when I could not stand her.
Other cast members include Hugh Jackman, Ty Burrell, Rob Corddry, Kristen Schaal, Ashley Greene and many more people are in the film but they are completely wasted of their talents that would be great in this type of film.I did not like the film feeling that it lived up to my expectations, by that I was not expecting it to be good and it was as horrible as I thought.
Bob seeks comfort in a stripper/prostitute (Olivia Wilde) who gets involved with the contest and also has some great swagger music.Meanwhile a young 10 year old African-American girl, Destiny (Yara Shahidi), is bounced around foster homes.
Enter Destiny (Yara Shahidi), a 10-year-old black foster child who discovers she's pretty darn good at butter carving herself, and takes on Garner. |
tt4103992 | Seeds of Yesterday | Thirteen years after If There Be Thorns, Cathy and Chris arrive at Foxworth Hall, which has been re-built by Bart, for his 25th birthday party. Bart has remained obsessed with Malcolm and has an estranged relationship with his mother and uncle/step-father due to their incestuous relationship. He's even changed his last name to Foxworth in order to emphasise his distance from them. His anger and hatred is particularly aimed towards Chris, though still showing a deep love for his mother. Jory and his wife, Melodie, arrive to announce she is pregnant with twins. Everyone, but Bart, is excited about the news and Bart is jealous of his brother because he secretly lusts after Melodie.
The next day, Cindy arrives and Bart welcomes her with contempt, not even wanting to acknowledge her as his sister due to her merely being adopted. At the birthday party, Jory and Cindy perform a ballet for the guests, but Jory has an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down and ends his dance career. Melodie is distraught since she is unable to live with a husband who can't dance, nor make love to her again. Cindy suspects that Bart was responsible for the incident since he had updated his insurance policy the day before the accident. When confronted with this suspicion, Bart denies this to Cathy and Chris, but they don't fully believe him.
As months pass with Jory hospitalized and Melodie becoming more depressed, Bart takes advantage of her vulnerable state and seduces her. When Jory comes home, Corrine's will is read and Bart is enraged to learn that he will inherit the Foxworth estate only on his 35th birthday, leaving Chris as the guardian of his money until then. Cathy discovers Bart and Melodie's affair when walking in on them having sex. Bart tells Cathy that Melodie loves him and points out that Malcolm was obsessed with his own mother until she abandoned him and how much he hates seeing his own mother with Chris. Cathy then confronts Melodie and threatens to ruin her life if she doesn't start supporting her husband Jory. Jory however soon attempts suicide by drowning in the pool, but is saved by Chris. Following this, Melodie promises Jory that she will be more attentive to him, but she soon tries to continue her affair with Bart, who having had her, rejects her. Cindy brings home a new boyfriend, Lance, to meet the family during dinner. However, Bart beats him after catching the two having sex. Despite his hatred towards her, Bart nevertheless starts to lust for Cindy.
On Christmas Day, Bart deliberately confesses his affair with Melodie to Jory, and the shock causes her to go into premature labour. She gives birth to a boy and girl named Darren and Deirdre. However, she shows no interest in them as well as Jory and abruptly abandons them. Bart follows Cindy meeting with another boyfriend at a bar and confronts her on her way home through the woods and, in the heat of the moment, has sex with her. Cindy is interested in having a relationship with Bart and admits that she has genuine feelings for him, even revealing she knows about Cathy and Chris' secret, but he rejects her having sated his lust. Devastated, Cindy returns to school in New York.
Chris decides to look for a new house for Cathy, Jory, the twins, and himself to give Bart his own space. They hire a nanny, Toni, to take care of the twins. Bart starts pursuing her, which troubles Cathy since she was hoping Toni would end up with Jory instead. Bart soon accuses Toni of being with him merely for his money and breaks up with her. He then forces the family to attend a baptism at the Foxworth chapel for the twins and almost drowns Deirdre in the font, causing Cathy and Chris to decide to leave Foxworth Hall with Jory, Toni, and the twins to get away from sociopathic Bart. Bart has a mental breakdown and accuses Cathy of abandoning him for Chris, and blames her for ruining the family. He is about to kill her with a dagger before he is stopped by Jory. Finally seeing that it is hopeless to help him, Cathy decides to leave Bart for good. As he returns home after finding them a new house, Chris pulls over to help a stranded motorist and is struck by a passing truck, which kills him instantly.
Several hours pass before the police arrive to inform the family of Chris' accident and death. This causes Bart to realize his wrongdoings and how he has pushed people away. He realizes his love for Cindy and confesses to her when she comes home for Chris' funeral. Bart remorsefully gives a moving eulogy at Chris' funeral and is thankful to Chris for raising him when he didn't need to. In the end, Cathy reveals that her children led successful lives away from Foxworth Hall. Jory thrives in his recovery, has married Toni, and they are raising the twins and expecting a child together. Bart becomes a televangelist and marries Cindy. However, Cathy chooses to remain at Foxworth Hall as she continues to mourn the loss of her beloved Chris. One day, she goes up to the attic, sits by a window and, as she envisions yellow paper flowers, there is an implication that she had died of a broken heart. | insanity | train | wikipedia | 'Seeds' concludes a whirlwind of a series in dramatic fashion.
The last installment in the Dollanganger series, which is hopefully never going to continue.
We began with Flowers in the Attic, a isolated story that was fairly interesting, and then Petals on the Wind, which was underwhelming at best, and then If There Be Thorns which was a suspenseful thriller that I thought was the best so far.
The only thing I know for certain is that James Maslow is in this one, and I enjoy him as an actor and he's a sexy beast, I mean, delightful human being.
this is......Seeds of Yesterday.
Seeds of Yesterday starts off thirteen years after If There Be Thorns, with Bart inviting the family to the newly built reproduction of Foxworth Hall for his twenty-fifth birthday bash, and all of them bringing news and their own problems that start to weigh heavily on Bart's mind.This is a very worthy sequel to If There Be Thorns.
The character of Bart is probably the most interesting character, in not just this film or the previous one, but in the entire series.
James Maslow gives an amazing performance in this film.
I wouldn't expect it from the guy who began on a show like Big Time Rush, but he honestly brings a sense of darkness to the character that just works so well.
Definitely the best actor in the film, just as Mason Cook was last time.The cinematography and music are all wonderful.
They all look very atmospheric and make any room seem either warm or cold, depending on what the situation is.All of the other actors do well, even some of the newer ones who have been recast again (I think this is the only time Chris and Cathy haven't been recast in a film!).
Some of the highlights, in my eyes, include Sammi Hanratty as a grown-up Cindy Sheffield, Anthony Konechy and Leah Gibson as Jory and Melodie Marquet, and they all do a great job.
All of them are forced to do some pretty despicable things in the film, or experience those things, so having actors who can properly convey that, is very important.The plot is pretty good.
Towards the end, it does go a bit crazy and Bart seems to be going off the deep end, but what I previously thought might have been possession could have also been delusion.
The way this film ends, it's kind of reminiscent of how the first one begins.
It begins, and ends, in the attic of a Foxworth Hall.
I don't know if that was in the book, but that is a very strange way to end the film.Perhaps my only issue is that I still can't believe that there's another incestuous relationship in this film, and the fact that for how much Bart preaches about sex being a sin, he really has a lot of it in the film.
I counted like four or five times he had a sex scene in the film.
The incestuous relationship kind of comes out of nowhere.
I won't spoil it, in case you have an interest in watching the film, but still.Overall, Seeds of Yesterday is on the same level as If There Be Thorns, better than the first two and a very intriguing story.
I personally enjoyed the acting, especially from James Maslow, the cinematography, music, and script.
The only things I disliked were some of the plot elements and the ending, but it's still a great conclusion to this roller-coaster ride of a series.8/10.
Grade: B+ (Film Grade) 7/10.
The fourth (and, presumably, final) "Lifetime" TV-movie in the "Flowers in the Attic" (2014) series continues to focus on the children who took the spotlight in "If There Be Thorns" (2015).
Blonde mom Rachael Carpani and doctor dad Jason Lewis and (as Cathy and Christopher "Chris" Dollanganger) return as the incestuous parents; they provide good-looking continuity and have more involvement in the storyline.
However, they take a back seat to the story's newest entry in the crowded "shirtless hunk" character sweepstakes, handsome James Maslow (as Bartholomew "Bart" Foxworth).
Here, he has restored the original Foxworth mansion, which burned to the ground in "Petals on the Wind" (2014).
No slouch in the shirtless department, Anthony Konechny (as Jory Marquet) assumes the role as Mr. Maslow's brother...The family gathers at the mansion to sort out inheritances and have uncontrolled sex with each other..."Seeds of Yesterday" ups the arousing female quotient, which had dipped in the previous movie; however, there are no nipples.
The new nymphomaniac in the mansion is sexually-charged Sammi Hanratty (as Cynthia "Cindy" Sheffield).
The little blonde girl adopted in the previous story reveals her real worth, herein.
Of course, she was meant to grow up and have sex with anyone willing, which she states is her insatiable "appetite." Also needing, as she says, "a man inside me," is ballet dancer Leah Gibson (as Melodie).
Lead actor Maslow attracts every woman in the cast, even getting his mom on her knees for a suggestive scene.
In between the sex, the story is lost and confused.
Andrews' characters seem only used to show various family members live simply to copulate with each other.**** Seeds of Yesterday (4/12/15) Shawn Ku ~ James Maslow, Anthony Konechny, Sammi Hanratty, Rachael Carpani.
Fourth in the Dollanganger series.
It is expected that religious Bart is inheriting the family fortune on his 25th birthday after years of psychiatric treatment and poisoned by Malcolm's journal.
His parents Cathy and Christopher Sheffield have been managing the money for him.
He has changed his name from Sheffield to Foxworth.
His brother Jory is a star ballet dancer and his wife Melodie announces her pregnancy.
Adopted sister Cindy overhears Bart talking about insurance on Jory over the phone.
Jory performs for Bart's 25th birthday and is paralyzed by a suspicious accident.
Bart and Melodie start having an affair.
I like that Bart is fully Darth Vader.
He makes this better than 'If There Be Thorns'.
As Lifetime movies go, this series is better than most.
Interesting movie but too much deviation from the original story.
I am a long time fan of this book series and of V.C. Andrews.
I have read and re-read the books dozens of times so needless to say, I know the Dollenganger/Foxworth story quite well.
I watched this movie on Lifetime last night and while I enjoyed it for the most part, I did not enjoy the massive deviation from the original book story.
For starters, anyone who has read these books knows that Foxworth Hall is the king of homes, the biggest and most elaborate structure in all of Virginia.
In the beginning of the film, when Chris and Cathy pull up to Foxworth Hall, Cathy remarks how Bart had built an exact replica as the original.
The home they use for the film seriously lacks the majesty that is Foxworth Hall.
In fact, it looks no different than your average home in an upscale neighborhood, hardly befitting someone like Malcolm Foxworth.
The Foxworth Hall from the books was imposing and frightening, standing alone on a high hill like a king over his subjects.
One big problem I had with this movie was the complete omission of Joel Foxworth, Corrine's long-though dead brother.
As those of you who have read the books know, Joel was a main character in Seeds of Yesterday and was also a significantly bad influence over Bart.
I suppose if the filmmakers did not intend to make "Garden of Shadows" into a movie, I can understand the omission of Joel but it took a lot away from the story.
The characters of Chris and Cathy lacked any real passion or intensity.
In the books, Cathy was stronger, more fiery and more of a fighter.
The Cathy in this movie was a passive pushover.
Cathy and Chris' relationship is always defined as intense and very sexual.
That did not come across in this movie at all.
Bart and his adopted sister Cindy having sex and then later getting married?
Definitely not from the book.
Jory Marquet is descended from the Russian Ballet and was always described in the books as having jet black hair and blue eyes, very intense.
The Jory from the movie did not fit the book character at all.
Jory was much more fiery and passionate, in the movie, he was turned into a pathetic character who didn't stand up for himself at all.
All in all, this was a good movie but I believe the books are always better than the films.
I would recommend seeing the movie but I would also recommend reading the books first so that you have a more accurate understanding of the characters.
The "Flowers in the Attic" series is best understood if you read from beginning to end.
I won't deny that this modern version of V.C. Andrews' 4th book in the Dollanganger series has a lot of cinematic style, highlighting the dark and ugly secrets of the rich and strange in a haunting and often surreal way.
But Seeds of Yesterday just came across as lame and overdramatic.
The acting was horrible for the most part, and the character of Cindy especially really got on my nerves.
She's this wealthy, worldly dancer, almost an adult, so it makes sense for her to just blurt out "d!ckhead" at her brother like a five-year-old?
The perverse sex scenes between siblings Cathy and Christopher were just shudder-inducing, disgusting and frankly silly.
The film takes place in an earlier point in time, yet every character talks just like a 21st century hipster.
All of them act like children.
The constant lines such as Bart's "your wife can't stay off my junk" and the pretentious speech style of the immature and dysfunctional family seemed out of place and a little stupid.I honestly think that this film series has been stretched out much longer than it needed to be, and that it's just a cash cow for a company already known for making identical films about shallow cookie-cutter families.
I never would've thought that Lifetime would be the company to revive this twisted series, and instead of focusing on giving the story some depth, they just kept on piling up the shock value of the incest, sexual phrases and violent theatrics.
I just kept laughing the whole way through, because it's impossible to take Seeds of Yesterday seriously..
I haven't reviewed the other three movies and almost didn't review this one, simply because there is no way to correctly deduce the expected outcome of a V.C. Andrews adaption.
This is for two reasons: one being that the books are practically a genre unto themselves; and two because there have been no serious efforts made to properly adapt them into visual media that can fully encompass the batcrap crazy rabbit hole that is the writing of V.C. Andrews.I say this with full respect to V.C. Andrews - she is by far, the most unlikely but gifted writer of her generation.
Her books were meant to be notional, dramatic, and horrifying.
V.C. Andrews books were marketed as horror books before they became franchised as family dramas.
People say V.C. Andrews books are trash - I say they've sold millions copies so judge away, as Flowers in the Attic still enthralls every generation after it's initial publication.Back to the review.
Being that the Dollanganger Saga are all produced by Lifetime, it was a safe guess that they would get the evening news treatment.
There is simply no way to accurately adapt one of V.C. Andrews' books without making it into a week-long miniseries.
V.C. was a writer extremely and emotionally invested in her books to the point of self-imposed isolation and grieving after one of the characters died.
For that, it's almost an insult that Lifetime would slap together a script so they could take advantage a series of books so notorious that Hollywood should have theoretically bought the filming rights decades ago.But because they didn't, fans of the books will have to take what they can get.
In this case, a separate movie for each book; the plot condensed and organized so that the viewer can follow along without having to think too much; with some titillating scenes sprinkled with 50 Shades of Grey mimicry.That about sums up Seeds of Yesterday, as well as all the other movies.
Yeah, I know, no book adaption will ever be the same as the book itself, but Seeds of Yesterday really deviated from the book (as if deviance even exists in the world of V.C. Andrews).
The movie is well made, and the acting is competent for the most part.
It's no secret that Jason Maslow stole the show, and has great chemistry with Sammi Hanratty.
However, in the book Cindy and Bart hate each other, and Cindy only provoked Bart because she hated him.
Well, he did try to kill her as a child so is it really logical that Cindy would grow up and want to have sex with Bart?
In the book, I was never given a reason to believe that there was sexual tension between Cindy and Bart.
Bart was too obsessed with getting the upper hand on Jory and Cindy displayed behavior that I can only describe as Borderline Personality Disorder.
I also say that with respect, as your mother dying at an extremely young age and having a psychotic older brother that rejects you your whole life and even tries to kill you WILL, without a doubt, give you issues.
For those who have never read the books, you are probably wondering why incest didn't occur between Bart and Cindy in the books as the movie makes it look like a great idea considering Bart is both insane and his mother is married to her brother.
I suspect that at the point of Seeds of Yesterday, V.C. Andrews got tired of writing about forbidden love vis-a-vis brother and sister; decided it played out enough with Cathy and Chris and so threw in the towel and called it a day.
There's two entire books devoted to forbidden incest, did we really need another installment?
Personally, I don't think so.Then there's the absence of Joel Foxworth, who was supposed come back from the grave after being found and nursed back to health by monks in the Italian Alps where he would then live for the next fifty or so years (give or take a decade).
Seeds of Yesterday, movie version, is bereft of the batty old man shuffling about Foxworth Hall making snide, undercutting remarks and sabotaging Bart's happiness which almost makes one want to feel sorry for him.
Joel Foxworth humanizes Bart in such a way that the movie lacks, and so it's a loss to the movie series.In conclusion, I am giving this movie a 7 out of 10; mostly because of the shameless butchering of the plot and what feels like a thinly transparent attempt to appeal to 50 Shades of Grey fans..
Seeds Continue To Grow.
The last movie based on the V.C. Andrews Dollanganger series ranks, along with the previous installment, "If There Be Thorns" (2015) as the best of the bunch, and in the case of "Seeds Of Yesterday" that is in large part due to James Maslow's performance as Bart.
In addition to being immensely good-looking, he has a commanding and magnetic presence and he shows the character's inner torment well, especially considering the running time.
Rachel Carpani and Jason Lewis return as Cathy and Chris, and while I feel the chemistry and emotional pull of the characters is lacking, it does make this last sequel feel more consistent.
Jory (Anthony Konechy) is portrayed quite well, although is character takes a backseat to Bart; the young females in the cast, particularly Sammi Hanratty as the adopted daughter and sister Cindy do well with what they were given, but once again, the lack of character development was an issue.
Fans of the novel will be disappointed and annoyed that the presumed dead uncle of Cathy and Chris, Joel Foxworth, who was a major character in the novel, was completely omitted and that the relationship between Bart and Cindy was turned sexual and romantic, which did not happen in the book.
It is likely that both time constraints and loosely adapting the material was at fault.
Another problem as I stated previously is that Cathy and Chris had larger roles in the novel as well and what is missing is the emotional investment in the characters and the direction their lives ultimately take.
The conclusion wraps things up rather hastily and as a result, the tragedy of the story, as well as hope for a new beginning for the descendants isn't nearly as moving as it could have been.
Watch this for James Maslow, and the slightly better budget and music, and put aside any expectations you might have if you have read the novels, and you might enjoy this film and the other movies in this series if you take them for what they are - glossy soap operas..
Good end to the Dollanganger series.
I thought even without Corinne's religious brother, Joel making a sudden appearance like he did in the book, the ending of the Dollanganger series was satisfactory.
James Maslow made an excellent Bart Foxworth (Dollanganger was a funny name Cathy, Chris, Carrie and Cory's father found in the genealogy).
Foxworth was the real last name of this family.
James was creepy, attractive, and rather scary as the ultra-religious Bart who thinks his family is mired in sin and will all suffer from hell's torment.
The other characters were great and I thought the newborn twins who were Deirdre and Darren Marquet (older brother Jory's children) were adorable!
Sammy Hanratty as slutty younger adopted Cindy was great and she and James Maslow had a love/hate sexual relationship.
The last scene with Cathy going up to the attic of the mansion and yellow flowers appearing was a fitting closure to this series! |
tt0058390 | The Naked Kiss | Kelly (Constance Towers) is a prostitute who shows up in the small town of Grantville, just one more burg in a long string of quick stops on the run after being chased out of the big city by her former pimp. She engages in a quick tryst with local police chief Griff (Anthony Eisley), who then tells her to stay out of his town and refers her to a cat-house just across the state line.
Instead, she decides to give up her illicit lifestyle, becoming a nurse at a hospital for handicapped children. Griff doesn't trust reformed prostitutes, however, and continues trying to run her out of town.
Kelly falls in love with J.L. Grant (Michael Dante), the wealthy scion of the town's founding family, an urbane sophisticate, and Griff's best friend. After a dream-like courtship where even Kelly's admission of her past can't deter Grant, the two decide to marry. It is only after Kelly is able to finally convince Griff that she truly loves Grant and has given up prostitution for good that he agrees to be their best man.
Shortly before the wedding, Kelly arrives at Grant's mansion, only to find him on the verge of molesting a small girl. As he grinningly tries to persuade her to marry him, arguing that she too is a deviant, the only one who can understand him, and that he loves her, Kelly kills him by striking him in the head with a phone receiver. Jailed, and under heavy interrogation from Griff, she must convince him and the town that she is telling the truth about Grant's death.
As Kelly tries to exonerate herself, one disappointment follows another, and enemies old and new parade through the jailhouse to defame her. In despair, she is at last able to find Grant's victim and prove her innocence. | suspenseful, murder, bleak, violence, flashback, melodrama, romantic, storytelling, home movie | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0426911 | Archangel | An English expert on Soviet history, Dr. Kelso (Daniel Craig) arrives in Moscow for a conference on Stalin. After the conference, an old man says that he has important information for Dr. Kelso. In Hotel Ukraine, where Dr. Kelso is staying, Papu Rapava (the name of the old man) tells how he, as a security guard in 1953 Beria I witnessed the death of Stalin. He saw Beria steal a safe from Stalin's Middle dacha some blog and dug in his yard in a box from under the instrument. Kelso went to Beria's former mansion, but saw that the blog has been excavated. The scientist comes to Mamantov (Lev Prygunov), led by the Communist movement Aurora and former agent KGB, and asks him to talk about his diary, saying that he has a witness. But Mamas drives it. Kelso goes to a nightclub, where Rapava's daughter works, Zinaida hooker (Yekaterina Rednikova). He asks to see her father. She takes him to the high-rise building, where his father lives. Once inside, he finds Rapava dead in the bathtub. On leaving the apartment of Dr. beaten by hooligans. He appeals for help from the police, but ends up being detained. | murder, historical fiction | train | wikipedia | This series piques the conspiracy fanatic to see beyond the need for popular 007-esque shoot-em-up scenes from Daniel Craig, and delves more fully into the cultural dissonance and still-oppressed lifestyles in today's Russia.
Archangel Set in contemporary Moscow and the frozen northern town of Archangel, the drama revisits the stark landscape of Communist Russia and takes place over four days in the life of academic Fluke Kelso.
He is led unwittingly through murder and intrigue towards his own personal "Holy Grail" - Joseph Stalin's secret legacy - a legacy that could change the face of Russian history forever.'Archangel' is quite friendly towards those not familiar with the legacy of Josef Stalin, and is an engrossing mystery as a result.
However, Daniel Craig and Russian actress Yekaterina Rednikova give reliable performances, and the ending is definitely not what I was expecting (but in a good way).
Set heavily in Russia, the film actually is acted by many Russian actors/actresses in real life.
All the old clichés are rolled out early in this adaptation of Robert Harris's spy novel 'Archangel': surly Russians, an arrogant English hero, a garrulous American.
Sadly, the ending can't quite deliver on this promise; both because of the risible suggestion that megalomania is an inherited quality, and also because it is surely not (as the film suggests) the worship of Stalin's image that is the real problem in today's Russia, but rather, the social circumstances which make such an absurdity possible.
Archangel, an excellent action/adventure story, was filmed in Moscow and Latvia and originally produced as a two part BBC-TV series.
The cinematography is impressive, the plot is fascinating, and the acting, by both supporting actors and principals is first rate - including what may be Daniel Craig's finest recent performance.
Filmed under what were obviously frequently challenging conditions of rain, snow and cold, Archangel manages to capture the bitter chill and desolation of the countryside in winter as well as the grit and grandeur of Moscow.As the plot unfolds it relates the tale of a Western historian, Kelso played by Craig who attends a conference in Moscow only to discover a mystery and a conspiracy dating back to Stalin's death in 1953.
His life in danger, Kelso teams up with a young Russian woman, Zinaida - brilliantly portrayed by Yekaterina Rednikova to solve the mystery and attempt to foil the plot.Although the story line sounds generally similar to "the Da Vinci Code", Archangel more credibly dramatizes a profound conflict in values between traditionalists and progressives in this case, in a society where socialism was once the opiate of the intelligentsia.
In that respect it is much like the earlier Russia House, which starred Sean Connery as the western visitor enmeshed in a dangerous conspiracy and internal conflict in the former Soviet Union.To one who lived through the cold war, Archangel does a marvelous job integrating current events with flashbacks - of depicting the complex ways in which the Russian people did and still do react to Stalin a proved mass murderer - with fear, with hatred, with admiration and respect, and even with love.
The story doesn't require too extreme a suspension of disbelief, and the portrayal of the Moscow streets and Russian people, rural and urban, powerful or impoverished, opportunists and petty bureaucrats, progressives who long for change and traditionalist who seek a return to an earlier era, is quite realistic.One of the greatest pleasures of Archangel is the opportunity to see Daniel Craig at his best.
He brings wit, charm and intelligence to the role of Kelso in a way that he was either unable or not allowed to do in either Casino Royale or Munich.Craig is obviously a very talented actor and in Archangel, delivers a performance that far outshines his work in Casino Royale as well as that of the other Bond Sean Connery in a similar role in the aforementioned Russia House.
About Russian history, lifestyle and society with a surprisingly great Daniel Craig.
As a big fan of history and Russian culture, I was excited to watch this movie but didn't expect very much from a TV production.
Useless to say that this movie is a must seen for anyone who likes Russian history, society and lifestyle.
I've travelled to Russia and seen and lived a lot of particular things there and must admit that the behaviours of the police, the military and the government in this movie are not a stupid cliché but quite close to reality.
Even the locations chosen for the shootings remind me of the modern Russian post-soviet lifestyle even though most of the scenes have been filmed in Latvia.Well, I got largely surprised as this movie is really intense and has a realistic scenario that makes you think a lot about nowadays's societies and ideologies.
The movie's finale is dramatically and interesting.The most positive surprise in this movie is the acting of Daniel Craig.
A total of two hours was not really long enough to do credit to the story, so given the time constraint, the end result was not too bad at all.
This is also the first time I have seen Daniel Craig in a movie since his rise to James Bond.
It is adapted from a Robert Harris novel - a western researcher discovers a secret notebook from Stalin which dark forces are prepared to kill to keep secret.
With the exception of the new series of DOCTOR WHO , this has got to be the most publicised BBC serial of the year , and with good reason I guess since Robert Harris is a popular and acclaimed novelist whose books make very informative reading !!!!
The FATHERLAND TVM set in a Nazi dominated world of the 1960s is hated by fans of the novel , while ENIGMA doesn't really lend itself to the way the movie was marketed and it's the same with this BBC miniseries Is the Russian tundra a good location for a thriller ?
Exposition in a book is one thing because you can dedicate many pages of characters thought process , but watching it on a television screen means the characters and dialogue come off as unnatural But ironically it's Harris's plot where everything comes apart - Stalin had a son who no one knows about and is trying to force the new Russia into communist dictatorship again.
result - Daniel Craig in a poor version of James Bond, dark secrets about Stalin and solutions - miracle to each problem.
I think Archangel still rates as one of the worlds great forbidden places so seeing it in this movie was definitely unique.
While watching this film I kept thinking of the Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov who wrote about political and economic matters in Russia and got very close to the inner circle of Oligarchs and then was eventually assassinated.He was the editor for Forbes in Russia and was shot while leaving the office one night.
Transported to the hospital in an ambulance with no oxygen, upon arrival the elevator broke down while being taken to surgery.Though the main character played by Craig in this film is not shot, he comes close to getting assassinated.This is a very interesting film if you are into the political history of Russia.
But it is slow at times and everyone is a bit too aloof, so the character development is shallow.But it's a good film in other respects.
"Archangel" is a BBC production in three parts done in 2005 and starring Daniel Craig and Gabriel Macht (Suits).
It's based on a novel I haven't read, so I'll say right off the bat I can't compare the two.Craig plays Fluke Kelso, a British history professor in Russia.
After lecturing about the evils of Stalin, he is approached by an old man who tells Kelso that he knows nothing.
When they track down her father, he has been murdered.Kelso and Zinaida, hounded by a TV reporter (Macht), then attempt to track down the notebook, translate it, and learn the secret.Actually filmed in Russia and Latvia, the scenery is amazing, and Daniel Craig is so good that one is willing to overlook an insane plot.
It's very much like the DaVinci code but doesn't quite get there.The script is okay but not great, and the characters are somewhat stereotyped, though Rednikova and Macht give good performances.
Craig is a brilliant actor and does a wonderful job.This film could have been a lot better, but as it is, it's interesting, well done, well acted, and holds one's interest.
And while Daniel Craig, looking gaunt, thin & very much the bookish professor was alright as the professor, it seemed just like an acting gig he took to go to Russia.
Yes, it was Russia and it was a hard story & the Russian characters had hard lives from the domino affect of Stalin, but there was absolutely no levity to transition from one scene to the next.
Daniel Craig does a wonderful job playing a determined journalist eager to make a buck; only to become so enthralled in his research that he soon began to forget about the potential money he would make by finally getting a hold of Stalin's lost memoirs and writing a book about it.In the end, we learn a startling truth.
Fluke Kelso (Daniel Craig) is an expert on Stalin.
He tells a shocking story that Stalin was killed by Soviet secret police chief Beria who then stole and buried Stalin's notebook.This TV movie is just pre-Bond.
You were dealing with characters that i met, lived with and drank with during my time in Moscow.I miss those characters and they were brought to life in the 90 minutes i spent watching the film.
The story line was a bit tough to follow though i didn't have the expectations of having read the novel and therefor was pleasantly surprised by the pace and interactions.Great movie in my opinion.
I recently watched the BBC's adaptation of Archangel, based on the Robert Harris novel.
Daniel Craig is fine here as academic Fluke Kelso, an expert in Stalin and modern Russian history.
Craig has some OK support in the form of Gabriel Macht, as an adventuring American journalist who hopes for the story of a lifetime, and in the pretty personage of Yekaterina Rednikova, who plays Zinaida, the call girl daughter of Papu (Valery Chernak), who as a young man bore witness to the suppression of Stalin's 'secret' when the dictator died.
With a surprising pace, Archangel developed a promising story, and continued to be interesting throughout the film, with a few moments of lazy writing.
Little Stalin's short speech en route to Moscow - watch his gloved hands - must be one of the cheesiest moments in the history of cinema.I hope that Russian actors had a good time participating in this silly production; I liked everyone involved, especially the memorable Communist honcho with a fake Russian last name - 'Mamantov' is really 'Mamontov', but who cares?
ARCHANGEL (the name of a northern Russian town that hides secrets the story discloses) is a film that is not without flaws both in script and in production, but it is a movie of intrigue that makes for a good night's adventure of escape...and political philosophizing.Dr. Fluke Kelso (Daniel Craig) is an American professor of history visiting Moscow to speak out against the persistent (though small) consistency who revere the dead Stalin and long for the Communist days of yore.
Along the line the obligatory television press correspondent, American O'Brian (Gabriel Macht) fast talks his way into participating in the chase and the strange group of men adamant to find the lost documents - a group led by Mamantov (Lev Prygunov) - attack and pursue the triad all the way to Archangel where the truths about Stalin's last days are made known: in flashbacks we see that Stalin (Avtandil Makharadze) had a lover Anna (Anna Gerasimova) who was impregnated by the dying Stalin and gave birth to a son Josef (Konstantin Lavroneko) who is just waiting for the right time to make Stalinist Communism rise again.
How all this intrigue resolves is the fairly impressive ending to the story.This may sound like a flimsy thread for a story but here it works, primarily due to the conviction of Daniel Craig as Kelso, Gabriel Macht as O'Brian and a cast of Russian actors who are very fine.
The Russian characters are consistent with people I have known.It would be interesting to know more about the background of the film.
Children of powerful, dominating leaders can have a charisma with the masses which can indeed be psychologically and politically compelling, and actor Konstantin Lavronenko was as convincing as he was chilling as the Young Joseph.The film is also extremely educational about what Stalinism was like and how it has haunted modern Russia ...
if less so, with time.Despite some recent attempts at Reversionism in Russia, I don't think neo-Stalinism is a threat there -- considering our past tradition and championing of humanitarianism and democracy, we became worse for a time -- but the film makes you think about what great historical evil was like and where it could head all of us.Lou Coatney.
Like Rifleman square in Riga, railroad bridge in Riga, but story is about not Riga:) Also the river, where Daniel Craig jumped to hide from Russian soldier is not located in Archangelsk.
A fine made-for-TV British thriller starring Daniel Craig, based on the even finer novel by Thomas Harris.
If movie thrillers can be thoughtful, literate and exciting -- and with no computer-created mega-explosions -- this fine British TV adaptation of the Robert Harris novel does the job.
Archangel stars Daniel Craig and was made before Craig hit the big time as James Bond.
It tells the story of British professor Fluke Kelso (Craig), a middle-aged man who had made a name for himself with impeccable research on Soviet history, concentrating on the life and career of Josef Stalin.
That will change dramatically when, at a Moscow symposium attended by other historians, he is approached by a coarse old man, Papu Rapava, with a story of the last hours of Stalin.
When Kelso and Zinaida finally locate the box and read the papers, they find themselves reading the stained and mouldering diary of a girl thrilled to leave her home in Archangel to go to Moscow and serve the great father, Stalin.
Nearly all of the cast is Russian, with the movie filmed entirely in Moscow and Riga, Latvia.
What makes Archangel work so well are the "what if" speculations by Robert Harris and Daniel Craig's fine performance.
***SPOILERS*** Interesting movie about an Amercan collage professor Fluke-named because he was a late born child-Kelso-named after 1960's 5 time horse of the year-played by Daniel Craig who uncovers a secret plan to return Russia into the hell that it was when Sovet dictator Josef Stalin, Avtandia Makhardze, ruled it with an iron hand.It's when Kelso runs into Papu Rapave, Valery Chernyak, at a Moscow restaurant that he finds out that Stalin though dead for over 50 years is now about to make his big move and take over the just freed from communism Mother Russia!
Kelso to let the world know the truth about Stalin's long planned second coming before he actually makes it and ends up, with WMD, not only destroying Russia but the entire world!
It's when Kelso hooks up with Rapava's hooker 27 years old estranged daughter Zinaida, Ekaterina Rednikova, that things start to crystallize in her father's, who was later murdered by pro-Stalin fanatics, hidden secret papers and diary in how this sinister and yes evil plan is supposed to be carried out!
The films surprise ending, which last for the entire last 30 minutes of the movie, does in fact shake you up but gets a bit overdone by being stretched out for so long.
Recap: Fluke Kelso is an American historian giving a lecture on Stalin in Moscow.
The notebook contains information leading to Archangelsk were a secret lies hidden that might threaten the fragile Russian democracy.Comments: Originally a miniseries of two one hour long parts that are put together to a movie.
The story is a classical treasure hunt, with hidden clues that need to be deciphered and followed to another clue that eventually leads to the treasure, albeit is set in recent times in Russia.
I actually had to check on some persons and events to see what was true, what could be true and what was fiction.If you're interested in recent history or political thrillers, this is probably something you might want to watch.
I am guessing that if this story about Stalin's biological child isn't exactly real, it is as true as any history about any important types of people from along time ago (and present day as well as what is truth any hows?).
Daniel Craig stars as a history professor specializing in the fall of communism in the former Soviet Union.
A surprisingly good book-to-movie adaptation.
This adaptation from the Robert Harris book is positively good and the director has stayed faithful to Harris' story.Daniel Craig shines as Professor "Fluke" Kelso, a British history professor based out of New York, a "specialist in all things Stalin".
Trying to resurrect a struggling career, Kelso meets an old man who claims he was present the night in 1953 when Stalin died.
The old man leads Kelso to Stalin's secret notebook but is then brutally murdered in his apartment.
The notebook leads Kelso, the old man's daughter, and an American reporter O'Brien, to a forest in the northern city of Archangel where secrets from the Soviet past are hidden.
The present-day Russian government sends special forces commandos with orders to make sure that the secrets in Archangel stay hidden but the past breaks free in one bloody battle and sets events in motion which ensures that history has a good chance of repeating itself...An excellent movie. |
tt0417229 | Venky | Venkateswarlu (Ravi Teja) is a wayward youth in Vizag who roams around with his friends Suribabu (Srinivasa Reddy), Ramana (Chitram Seenu) and Bujji (Ramachandra) all the time. One day he - along with his three buddies - accidentally gets selected in police selections. Venky and his friends embark on a journey from Vizag to Hyderabad to join police academy for the training. They however manage to board in sleeper class of Godavari Express without reservation. He falls in love with a co-passenger Sravani (Sneha) aboard the train. Sravani refuses the instant proposal of Venky. He also picks up a row in a state of inebriation with Sravani's father and another girl and threatens them that he would kill them. Next morning, surprisingly Sravani’s father and a co-passenger are found murdered, but Venky and his friends are not responsible for it. Feared of being blamed, Venky and his friends run away to the Hyderabad Police Academy, which is run by Yogendra Sharma (Ashutosh Rana).
There, in a TV Channel, it is reported that four guys killed two passengers in the Godavari Express. To avoid suspicion, they go to Yogendra Sharma’s room and change their date of entry. But they hide under a table only to know that the murders were done by a hired killer by Yogendra Sharma, but their main objective was to kill Sravani. They overhear Yogendra Sharma instructing the killer to kill Shravani that night. During the supposed night, Venky escapes from the Field Craft training and goes to rescue Sravani. He, after rescuing Sravani, shifts her to an old bungalow near the Police Academy and asks her to save herself, though not relying on him. Sravani believes Venky’s words and a small feeling of love buds in her, which she confesses to Venky on her birthday.
Later, on the directions of Venky, Sravani makes a call to Yogendra Sharma which leads to the discussion of a video cassette. Venky hurts the phone thus ending the call while the murderer fails to kill Sravani. Meanwhile D.C.P. Bharath (Bharath), who is a friend of Yogendra Sharma and the Police Officer dealing the Murder Mystery, tells to Yogendra that a Camera was found in that Compartment in which some photos of the suspects were taken. Venky hears this and steals those photographs and replaces them with some other photos as the originals contain Sravani and Venky’s Gang. In those photos, he observes that G.K. Gajala (Brahmanandam) is a thief who might have robbed the camera that contains the video footage. He goes to get the camera on a holiday but is cheated by Gajala.
Meanwhile Yogendra Sharma Inspects the Rooms of the Cadets and finds the original photos in Venky’s Room and releases a press note that the four (Venky and his friends) are the murderers. Yogendra Sharma is then called by Gajala to receive the camera in return for an amount of R500,000, but Venky takes the camera by force and he goes to Sravani’s friend’s house along with Sravani and his friends. There they find out that Sarat Kumar I.P.S. (Ahuti Prasad) was murdered by Yogendra Sharma in order to save himself from a fake naxallite encounter after seeing the cassette. Later Sravani recalls that her father made a call to Yogendra Sharma, telling that he was the witness of the murder of Sarat. But after knowing that he talked to the murderer himself, he escaped along with Sravani and boarded a train. Due to change in seats, Sravani didn’t die but the co-passenger was killed. Though having concrete evidence, he can’t give it to D.C.P. Bharath as he is a friend of Yogendra Sharma. Thus they seek the Governor’s Appointment.
Meanwhile Yogendra Sharma knows about this and tries to prevent them reaching Raj Bhavan but they escape anyway as the day the appointment was Holi (Festival of Colours). At the gate of Raj Bhavan, Yogendra Sharma blocks the five with his henchmen. Sravani finally runs taking the cassette and Yogendra Sharma runs behind her with a gun to stop her. He opens fire on Sravani but the bullet hurts a visitor of the Governor and Yogendra Sharma is arrested. Later the proofs are secured and the Four Friends are exonerated. Later these four are honored by Gold Medals by Chandrasekhar Rao (Suman), The DGP of Andhra Pradesh at a ceremony held by Police Academy.. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1525366 | Grabbers | Garda Ciarán O'Shea (Richard Coyle), an alcoholic, initially resents his new partner, Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley), a workaholic seeking to impress her superiors by volunteering for temporary duty in a remote Irish island. After discovering mutilated whale corpses, the quiet community slowly comes to realise that they're under attack by bloodsucking tentacled aliens of various sizes that came from a ball of green light that fell from the sky, dubbing them "Grabbers". When Paddy (Lalor Roddy), the town drunk, inexplicably survives an attack, the local marine ecologist, Dr. Smith (Russell Tovey), theorizes that his high blood alcohol content proved toxic to the Grabbers, who survive on blood and water. O'Shea contacts the mainland, but an oncoming storm prevents any escape or help. The group also realizes the rain will allow the remaining large male Grabber to move about the island freely. Seeking to keep calm in the town, Nolan and O'Shea organize a party at the local pub, intending to keep the island's residents safe but unaware of the danger. Initially hesitant to join in a celebration when no good reason can be offered, the people enthusiastically agree when Brian Maher (David Pearse), the pub owner, offers free drinks. O'Shea volunteers to stay sober so that he can coordinate the towns defenses, and everyone else becomes drunk.
In a drunken stupor, Nolan reveals that she has come to the island to escape the shadow of her more-favoured sister. When they are alone in a squad car, Nolan confesses to O'Shea that she has feelings for him despite turning down his advances earlier. Smith wanders outside the pub and tries to get a picture of the beast, reasoning that his inebriated state will protect him from being eaten. Instead, the monster throws him into the air and kills him. Nolan and O'Shea escape to the pub, where they try to protect the townspeople. Nolan drunkenly reveals the danger they are in while trying to reassure everyone that nothing is trying to kill them. Panicked, they retreat to the second level of the pub, and baby grabbers take over the first floor. Nolan accidentally sets the pub on fire while trying to sneak out, but she and O'Shea manage to draw the attention of the adult.
O'Shea and Nolan drive to a construction site, and the monster follows them. There, they hope to strand the monster on dry land, as it needs water to survive. Before they can successfully set a trap, the monster arrives and attacks O'Shea. Although wounded, he survives the attack, and Nolan uses the heavy construction equipment to mount a counter-attack, pinning it at the base of a pit. The monster grabs O'Shea, but before it can eat him he dumps a bottle of Paddy's moonshine into its mouth, sickening it and causing it to release him. Nolan then ignites nearby explosives with a flare gun, killing the Grabber. As the storm clears up, they return to the town and O'Shea throws away his flask. The film ends with a shot of more Grabber eggs hatching. | horror, comedy, humor | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0974662 | The Velveteen Rabbit | A stuffed rabbit sewn from velveteen is given as a Christmas present to a small boy. The boy plays with his other new presents and forgets the velveteen rabbit for a time. These presents are modern and mechanical, and they snub the old-fashioned velveteen rabbit. The wisest and oldest toy in the nursery, the Skin Horse, who was owned by the boy's uncle, tells the rabbit about toys magically becoming Real due to love from children. The rabbit is awed by this idea; however, his chances of achieving this wish are slight.
One night, the boy's nana gives the rabbit to the boy to sleep with, in place of a lost toy. The rabbit becomes the boy's favorite toy, enjoying picnics with him in the spring; and the boy regards the rabbit as 'REAL'. Time passes, and the rabbit becomes shabbier but happy. He meets some real rabbits in the summer, and they learn that he cannot hop as they do and say that he is not real.
One day, the boy comes down with scarlatina, and the rabbit sits with him as he recovers. The doctor orders that the boy should be taken to the seaside and that his room should be disinfected—all his books and toys burnt, including the velveteen rabbit. The rabbit is bundled into a sack and left out in the garden overnight, where he sadly reflects on his life with his boy. The toy rabbit cries, a real tear drops onto the ground, and a marvelous flower appears. A fairy steps out of the flower and comforts the velveteen rabbit, introducing herself as the Nursery Magic Fairy. She says that, because he is old and shabby and Real, she will take him away with her and "turn [him] into Real" - to everyone.
The fairy takes the rabbit to the forest, where she meets the other rabbits and gives the velveteen rabbit a kiss. The velveteen rabbit changes into a real rabbit and joins the other rabbits in the forest. The next spring, the rabbit returns to look at the boy, and the boy sees a resemblance to his old velveteen rabbit. | psychedelic, romantic | train | wikipedia | Disregard other reviews. This is a great family film.. I enjoyed this with my 3 youngest children (4,7,10). We all thought this was a great film.I liked how they intertwined real and cartoon in the movie. Speaking of cartoon, even though about half the film was in cartoon format, I did not loose interest in the film like I do with cartoons.Great story, wonderful acting, beautiful surroundings, touching message (I saw my 7 yr. old boy crying, had a tear myself, and my 4 yr. old told me "a drop came from my eye"), and a reminder to all of us to remember to use our imagination with our young ones.Nothing to complain about as far as inappropriate content for children.. Boring.. I remember we had to watch this at school a couple of times. Its really boring and I wouldn't recommend it.. A senseless movie to be avoided by the sensible.. Movies like this steaming pile of rabbit droppings make me sad that money gets wasted on their production (and viewing) instead of just given away to the indigent. The story is wretched. The characters morph without apparent justification from one bad stereotype to another. Their actions are equally senseless. For example, the boy--who seems afflicted with dissociative identity disorder--fritters his time interacting with animals he only just met instead of dreaming up scenes with his missing mother and father.While I hadn't read the book before, I did so afterwards (incredulous that this movie represented what the famous book was about), and I found that a charming story about love, faith, and the nature of reality had been perverted into something so treacly and cloying that they bore almost no resemblance to each other.There are SO many better ways to spend one's time and money. |
tt1884457 | The Package | The film follows Tommy Wick (Steve Austin), a man tasked with delivering a mysterious package to "The German" (Dolph Lundgren), a dangerous crime lord. Along the way Wick is attacked repeatedly by a rival gang that wants what he is carrying, eventually he discovers that his cargo is not what he was initially thought it was.
However, Tommy arrives at a bowling alley and beats up a rival for not paying back Big Doug. Afterwards he visits Big Doug who tells him he wants a package delivered to the German. En route he is pursued by a rival gang who wants what he is carrying, forcing him to fight them off and run.
Eventually Tommy is captured by the rival gang. He manages to escape, and is captured by the German and brought to see if he has compatible DNA with the German. He then breaks free and has a final showdown with the German, killing him. He then wishes Big Doug that the incident be filed away and they wish each other a hearty godspeed. Tommy then rings his wife about the cash and tells her 'I love you'. | comedy, murder, violence, revenge, humor, suspenseful, sadist | train | wikipedia | It looks pretty good and shows-off some stylish non Action camera work and a strong if padded plot that is not bad.There is enough here for Fans and maybe even enough for Slummers who dropped in just to make fun but found it reluctantly enjoyable.
The Story Thread keeps things strung together as it weaves familiar fisticuffs and gun battles together with some mildly interesting supporting Characters of note.This is probably as good as this type of thing gets and while it is attractive in a wet, dull, and gray way, it may have included one meaningless sub-plot too many (the wife or the brother, take your pick).
I watched THE PACKAGE last night and was surprised by it; mostly because the earlier Austin vehicles I had seen (HUNT TO KILL, TACTICAL FORCE) were really bad.
Of course, the highlight for me is Dolph Lundgren, who delivers another juicy co-starring role much like he did in the Cuba Gooding, Jr. action flick ONE IN THE CHAMBER last year.
While I'd still like to see Dolph get back in the directing chair, these smaller roles are good enough to fill the time in between..
Another Steve Austin movie, this time with Dolph Lundgren...do I really need to say more?
"I need a package delivered to the German." Tommy (Austin) has an easy task.
I know what your thinking Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren in the same movie...how can that be bad??
I've seen near all of Dolph Lundgren's movies and not all are great, not all are amazingly well written but all have something decent about them and this one is no different.
The Package, while ill acted at times, does have a good story line.
The only thing he has to do is deliver a package to a man only known as "The German" played by Dolph Lundgren.
What they don't understand is that "The Package" is not what they think it is and Tommy is not just a delivery boy.If you look past the semi bad acting you find a story that is actually pretty good.
This was much better, and the director played to all his strengths in respect of both his verbal and action abilities.There were several little plot twists, and a few surprises along the way, which added to the enjoyment.There are a number of recognizable supporting characters, which is also a pleasant surprise.So my conclusion is that if you are hunting around for an action movie one night with some time to kill, this movie is for consideration.
After a long string of action films and the highly successful Expendables series, action starts Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin team up to deliver an all-new action film The Package.
Both these guys have proved themselves numerous times over and it's always exciting to see these kinds of guys team up to deliver the action, but does The Package deliver or need to be returned to sender?
When you take two big bad ass guys like Austin and Lundgren you have certain expectations in an action movie.
Austin seems to be the more focal point of the story and has some decent action moments, but overall the film just doesn't deliver the epic punch you may hope for pitting these two together.
What action is here is pretty good and Austin is getting better and better at delivering more realistic fighting instead of his wrestler persona style.
Lundgren has always been a pro at the action scenes and is no different here.Overall this is a fine film, just falls a bit short when it comes to delivering to big action guys like this together.
Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren put in the same movie?
The plot of the movie will probably be of no surprise to most viewers - they will have seen the "delivery of a mysterious package" story countless times before, and they will more or less guess (like me) the twist near the end concerning the package long before it happens.
With better scripts, and more experience, Steve Austin can unequivocally be a top action star in Hollywood.
The movie is your basic routine low-budget action film, nothing more and nothing less..
'THE PACKAGE': Two and a Half Stars (Out of Five)Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren star in this B action film directed by stuntman turned director Jesse V.
It was written by Derek Kolstad (who also co-wrote another action film last year starring Lundgren, with Cuba Gooding Jr., called 'ONE IN THE CHAMBER').
The movie is your basic routine low-budget action film, nothing more and nothing less.Austin plays Tommy Wick, a courier working for a crime lord, named Big Doug (Eric Keenleyside), who takes on an assignment to deliver a package to another mob boss nicknamed 'The German' (Lundgren).
The movie has some decent action and fight scenes and the production values aren't too bad for this type of film.
It seems like Johnson could make a decent action film director if he only had better scripts to work with.
The movie is also filled with pretty atrocious acting but Austin and Lundgren deliver the goods that fans of theirs depend on them for.
Stunning Steve Williams is basically playing the Stone Cold Steve Austin Character in all his movies !!!
The Package is a very good film which I enjoyed watching.
Stone Cold Steve Austins character Tommy Wick had to use his fighting skills to fight against some pretty powerful people with Martial Arts skills.
Acting as the very dangerous and malicious killer called The German, he was very good and it was great to see him in this film alongside Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The Package was also a film that had very good acting by Stone Cold Steve Austin as Tommy Wick, Dolph Lundgren as The German, Eric Keenleyside as Big Doug, John Novak as Nicholas, Kristen Kerr as Darla and Darren Shahlavi as Devon..
The musical scoring is good, the plot is a bit generic but isn't too cliché that it's frustrating, and the casting/scripts were chosen well.To conclude, if you want to see a movie purely to just laugh and enjoy yourself, this is recommended..
Plot: A courier for a local crime lord must deliver a mysterious package while being chased by a horde of unusual gangsters.This was very disappointing to me, especially having Lundgren and Austin in a movie together would've been great, but the problem is the story is not very interesting, the writing is sub-par at best, the action is lackluster compared to their other films, and worst of all its just boring.
I'm glad the writer would then write the John Wick films which definitely improved his writing and gave the heroes and villains depth and motivations.If you're a fan of either Lundgren or Austin, avoid it at all costs watch Hunt to Kill for Austin and Skin Trade for Dolph, they are more worth your time and they deliver what you want..
This is a direct to video movie with Dolph Lundgren so it is fair to say that my expectations where not really that high.
Nevertheless, I do like action movies and I do have a faiblesse for Dolph Lundgren.
Both Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren are great as the tough silent gun-slinging hard-hitting bad guys.
I really liked them walking through the movie leaving a trail of surprised, knocked out or dead, mostly dead actually, people.The story is not really that bad and it has somewhat of a twist to it even though that twist is fairly easily guessed once you are a bit into the movie.
The movie moves at a brisk pace yet there are enough material in between to tie the action together in a logical (logical for a direct to video action movie of course) way.Dolph Lundgren have never exactly been an actor who would win any awards for his character portrayal or actual acting performance.
Well, of course there is the obligatory sex-appeal female in the movie but she is one of the bad guys so, not surprisingly she is not around for the grand finale.Bottom line: this is a fun classical action movie and I definitely enjoyed it..
In this movie Sean Austin is the hero , while Dolph Lundgren is the villain.
It's bizarre to see Lundgren in this kind of role and despite the fact that he has one shootout and fighting scene he's pretty much wasted here."The Package" has a very decent production values , especially for a straight-to-DVD movie.
He actually gives the best performance in the whole movie.If you want to see Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren in one movie together you should watch "The Expendables" instead .
Well, with a cast that includes Dolph Lundgren and Steve Austin it is no secret that this is a movie targeted for a male audience, and you know it is going to be a testosterone-filled movie.However, director Jesse V.
Johnson just didn't fully manage to deliver a package, pardon the pun, that would actually suffice and live up to whatever expectations there might have been given the cast list.The story is about Tommy Wick (played by Steve Austin) who is hired to deliver a package to 'The German' (played by Dolph Lundgren).
But getting from point A to point B is more difficult than it would seem, as the gangsters and other bad guys just come at him from every direction at any given time of the day.Indeed, the storyline in "The Package" was nothing impressive, and it was so simple that it was bordering on being insulting to the audience.
However, it was nice to see Dolph Lundgren in a sadistic bad guy role for a change."The Package" is an action movie that come a dozen a dime.
Four out of ten stars, generously given solely because I grew up with watching Dolph Lundgren action movies..
Steve Austin plays a collector for a local mobster who does what he does to pay a debt racked up by his brother.The mobster gives Austin a chance to wipe his slate clean if he delivered a package to the German (Dolph Lundgren.)As soon as Austin goes out to carry his task, other thugs attack him and pursue him repeatedly.
It seems they want a big payday for themselves and steal The Package.Meanwhile various people have a vendetta against The German as well who fends them off but he looks far from healthy.Austin brings a quiet dignity to his role, which he has done in several other films.
Lundgren buoyed by the cinema outings of The Expendables franchise gets to act flamboyant which he also did in One in the Chamber.Its a low budget action film, a lot of action, some nifty fight scenes but the story is rather predictable, even bland.
It isn't either of those, but it's no masterpiece either.It's simply average - the type of film you can have on in the background while you're doing something else and still understand everything that's going on.Steve Austin has to transport a 'package' across America.
It has fights, it has shoot-outs and it even has Dolph Lundgren to throw a few punches.There's really very little you can say about the film.
he was shot so many times in this movie, but turned out to be fine, like nothing happened.
he also acted like invincible but later was beaten up by tommy, a nobody played by steve austin.more funny thing was that tommy, the immortal got a wife, a sweetheart totally unnecessary for this movie.well, another stupid arrangement was the so-called "the package", something mysteriously borrowed from "ronin", a attaché aluminum case nobody knows what the contents inside but everybody tried their best to kill others to get hold of it.
Tommy (Steve Austin) plays strong arm for crime boss Big Doug (Eric Keenleyside).
Tommy has an offer by Big Doug to clear Eddie's debt by delivering a package to "The German" (Dolph Lundgren).
We don't know what is in the package, until about midpoint, when we can figure it out before they tell us.Dolph is introduced in a restaurant fight scene where he takes down about a half dozen to a dozen guys armed with automatic weapons by using a butter knife.
The climax scene where we expect the titans to fight was a let down.It is a typical fun Austin film, made better by Lundgren playing a likeable villain, a role similar to "One in the Chamber." If you like action films with simple plots, tough guy characters, fair dialogue and acting optional, this one fits the bill.
Finally things even out and become simpler as Steve Austin emerges as the hulking hero of the hour while Dolph Lundgren relishes the opportunity to play the villain set against him.
One day, Tommy is entrusted to deliver THE PACKAGE to rival crime lord The German (Dolph).
For us, the highlights naturally were the fight with Darren Shahlavi, who was so memorable as the baddie from Bloodmoon (1997), the fight with none other than Jerry Trimble, who we thought looked and sounded great, time has been very kind to him and we hope this revives his movie career, and of course the Dolph-Stone Cold battle that the whole film leads up to.
It seems his last bad guy role, or at least the only one that comes to mind, was way back as Ivan Drago.Not to be confused with the Gene Hackman vehicle The Package (1989), this particular The Package makes for entertaining and pleasant DTV action viewing, and has a different look and feel than another Anchor Bay-released Dolph outing, The Killing Machine (2010) (which interestingly also featured actress Monique Ganderton) - so if you're worried that Anchor Bay is just pumping out a mindless, samey stream of Dolph movies, have no fear, that's not the case.
Of course, the classic clichés are also delivered (pun intended?) - the Prerequisite Torture of the hero, the wife of the hero who wants him to quit his dangerous job/lifestyle, and a favorite of ours, when the baddies find a place where they know the hero is, then break out at least one machine gun and proceed to shoot up the place from outside, in an extended shooting scene, rather than go inside, giving the hero ample time to survive.It was comforting to watch a solidly-made modern-day actioner - it always helps to know you're in capable hands (speaking about the writing and direction, and all the other technical aspects, which were all pretty much right on target).
They are usually low budget action flicks, but they deliver nicely and I'm in for a good time.
Dolph Lundgren is also a star that i like, and owns several DTV movies he made, some pretty good, some not that great, but there is certainly more good than bads.This movie and Maximum Conviction(Austin/Seagal) came out nearly at the same time, but i had trouble finding The Package.
After having saw the previous Austin movie with Seagal i tough "hey if Austin can make a decent movie with Seagal, he surely can with Lundgren" but i think either the long wait have put my expectation too hight or i was misleaded by the cover.I tough Austin and Lundgren where partners in this, but the facts are that Lundgren end up being the big bad of the movie, even tough the movie present him as a main character and somewhat when Austin's charisma free partner get kill, you are waiting for him and Lundgren to team up together or something to go fight the baddies team lead by Darren Shahlavi.Honestly i can't understand where it got wrong.
Add a Jerry Trimble cameo(and the guy still delivers pretty good) for another sub boss and you end up wondering where the movie is going most of it.The final twist was kinda disappointing to me, and the fight between Austin and Lundgren is far from being impressive, especially considering the intro scene of Lundgren that was way better.
I know Dolph ain't getting younger, but not that many years ago he delivered some pretty cool fight scenes in his recent movie.
Lundgren dialogues are very OK, i just feel the general story of the movie could had been better, and the fights more impressive.
I know he is a brawler, but still...Anyway i am sure Austin's got many more nice action movie in store, and Lundgren will reprise his excellent role as Gunnar in Expendables 3, so it ain't the end of the world that this movie was under my expectation.I would give it a 6.5 could i use this rating, cause i had a decent time, i was just expecting more..
So, for the twist in the plot this movie also does not get any points.The acting is bad, but fine.
don't waste your time watching this movie.
They made action movies like this in the 80' with the dozen.
Dolf Lundgren still speaks as slow as a snail and Steve Austin still looks like a walking wardrobe, Louis XIV style or so.The action was sometimes very fake and the story with the blood type was far-fetched and unbelievable.
Stone Cold Steve Austin Versus Dolph Lundgren Through A lot Of Guys.
I don't go out of my way to see a Steve Austin movie and he does enough of them.
I'm an 80's action junkie so I sat down to watch this strictly because Dolph Lundgren was in it.
The script tries honestly enough and the main character is actually a pretty good anti hero but the script doesn't give up enough to make this last for a feature length film.
The fights are WWE style in true Austin fashion and the action scenes are basically okay but very, very choreographed and therefore look hokey.
It delivers what any person who loves Steve Austin movies would enjoy so I can't fault it for that.
The saving grace for the movie is actually Lundgren's sadistic "German" as he's known but he's very underused which is unfortunate.Steve Austin isn't a bad actor. |
tt2959536 | Apparition | On May 21, 1973, six people conduct The Charles Experiment, a parapsychological experiment, in which they stare at a drawing of a deceased man, Charles Reamer, hoping to summon his spirit. Years later, four college students, Patrick (Tom Felton), Lydia (Julianna Guill), Ben (Sebastian Stan) and Greg (Luke Pasqualino) attempt to recreate the Charles Experiment on a larger scale by using modern technology. During the experiment, something attacks the students and pulls Lydia into the wall.
Some time later, Ben and his girlfriend Kelly (Ashley Greene) are living together. One evening, they discover strange burn marks on their counters. Kelly finds both doors wide open, even though they had locked them. They decide to change the locks and install surveillance cameras. Later, Kelly finds a large amount of mold and spores on the laundry room floor while Ben finds even more in a crawlspace. Ben gets 36 "urgent" emails from Patrick that first inform him of a new attempt at the Charles Experiment, followed by a warning that "containment failed" and finally "you are in danger".
After witnessing the apparition, the couple go to a hotel, but they are attacked there as well. As they flee, they receive a call from Patrick and meet him. Patrick explains that the initial experiment enabled a malevolent entity to enter their world, but that he has built a room surrounded by a negative current that he believes protects him from it. They return to Kelly and Ben's house to try a new experiment to contain the entity. During the experiment, the house begins to shake and break apart, then abruptly stops. While Kelly and Ben are outside, Patrick is pulled into the darkness and vanishes. Unable to find Patrick, they flee to the safety chamber in his house.
Inside the house, they hear Patrick's personal log being played back, including information about the members of the original experiment. Of the original six, two died, one committed suicide and the other three disappeared. After entering the safety chamber, Ben disappears. Kelly exits the chamber and finds Ben's contorted corpse. Patrick's narration explains that the entity gets stronger with each person it claims, and that it will wear its victims down until they are too weak to resist.
With no escape, Kelly wanders around, and enters an empty Costco. She walks to the camping section, enters a tent and waits to be killed by the entity, having fully given up resisting. A number of hands appear from behind and the entity slowly grabs hold of her as the movie cuts to black. | murder | train | wikipedia | Clouded House.
On a dark and stormy night, attractive Katrina Law (as Lori) arrives at a farmhouse mansion.
We learn she's going to live there and marry strange boyfriend Jody Quigley (as Doug).
We know Mr. Quigley is strange due to how he sets up a scene to scare Ms. Law, before proposing to her.
Also, nobody but a set designer would set-up as many candles in a room as does Mr. Quigley; and, his character is never mentioned as being a set designer.
Well, Quigley's mansion is a "fixer-upper" and he is restoring the old house.
There is s shutter in the front he never gets right.
Of course, locals warn Quigley that his house has a dark past.
Early in the running time, Quigley meets flirty jogger Lili Bordán (as Jamie) and changes her flat...This could best be described as a psychological thriller...
Most of the action comes to rest on Quigley's "Doug" character.
While we see a progression, there may be no otherworldly reason for his exaggerated reactions, other than good (or bad) old-fashioned guilt.
At first, we assume the house is a "living" character, but perhaps the past tragedies are only a coincidence.
At the conclusion, it's not real clear.
It would have helped if there was some link between "Doug" and a more clearly defined house.
Although having him inherit the estate from distant relatives is a cliché, it would complement and add some authority to the story.
Director Quinn Saunders manages to engage with stark quietness surrounded by a few jolts, but the ending struggles to tie things up quickly and without satisfaction.*** Apparition/ Remorse (2015/05/05) Quinn Saunders ~ Jody Quigley, Katrina Law, Lili Bordán, Dave Droxler.
Nesting.
The mind can be a beautiful thing.
It can also be a tricky or deceiving thing.
Or it can be just used to make a horror movie.
Not a very good one at that though.
Unfortunately this is very poorly made and it tries to shock you into certain things.
I don't think it achieves anything by that for the viewer.It does tick all the boxes you need for a movie like that.
But apart from its predictability it just is weak in its script, setting and acting.
The lack of any real surprises and the clichés just add to the dread of watching this unfold.
Characters being stubborn is one thing (until someone literally hits them over the head and they realize it's too late) ...
it's a shame, there was a better movie hidden somewhere in between.
Problematic and overly troubling ghost effort.
Tortured over the death of his fiancée, a troubled man moves into a lonely farmhouse they were intending to move into together and immediately becomes tormented by her ghost as he tries to move on with the help of a neighbor to solve the mystery.This one certainly had some fine moments to it when it really tried.
What really helps this one is the rather strong sense of suspense that runs throughout here which is mostly featured through the interactions within the house.
Brought along nicely by the tragedy that sets the whole thing in motion, the effect of being there with the continuous amounts of shock jumps in here with the visions of his fiancée tormenting and torturing his new attempted romance.
While mostly being relegated to brief spurts that turn out to be dreams when they do occur, the scenes of the ghost girl walking around the house performing chores and getting trapped around in the various rooms here definitely make for a rather intriguing time here with the way they start the film going about the different intentions of getting back together with him.
Even later scenes of them around the house tormenting him have a rather nice time here, while the finale is where this one really picks up with the notion of finally letting the grief of the situation manifested in her ghost terrorizing him in long, drawn-out scenes that take nice effect of the strong storyline and great atmosphere to end this on a nice note.
Still, there's plenty of areas here that definitely hold this one back quite heavily.
The biggest issue with this one is the fact that there's just not a whole lot of time actually spent on the haunting moments throughout the first half here are just so brief and quick that it can't really showcase them at all.
The scenes are over in such a blink that it doesn't really register for much of the time that it was supposed to have been a terrifying experience he had when she quickly flashes around into an ugly ghost or throwing the different women ghosts as well which makes this all the more frustrating that hardly anything gets involved with these scenes.
The utterly irritating ploy about them nearly always being a dream doesn't help them all that much either, and along with the bland pace and drama-like feel that runs throughout the majority of the time here which are even bigger crippling factors.
As well with the inability to really tell what made the other ghosts appear or their influence on the story, these here all hold this one down.Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language..
Don't even bother!.
An extremely bad attempt at constructing a film based around the loss of a soon to be bride and the purchase of a house with a supernatural history needing renovation.The film starts badly with a male lead who makes my hairstyle look good (I am bald) and a marriage proposal that belies the law of physics with rose petals.Acting is poor, story and script weak and effects more aural than visual.The other reviewer I can only assume is both physically and mentally incontinent, reproducing what he saw on screen in his underwear.Don't waste your time.......
You have been warned..
Do not see this load of C R A P.A total waste of time, you have been warned.
Do not see this load of C R A P.I am a big fan of horror films, grudge,ring,conjuring one of the best.
This was nothing compared to them - NOTHING.
A total waste of time, you have been warned.
A total waste of time, you have been warned.
A total waste of time, you have been warned.
Do not see this load of C R A P.
Do not see this load of C R A P.
If you like films of Supernatural content without the gore, you should really like watching this film.
It has a well written storyline, great music score and very talented actors that bring the film to life.
The main characters do a great job at showing their emotional state, which allows the audience to experience their joys, sorrow and pain through out the entire film.
This film kept me guessing as to what was going to happen next, because it is not your average predictable feature film.
For me I really like films with twists and turns rather than figuring out the ending in the first 10 minutes of the film.
I really enjoyed viewing this well thought out film and gave it a big 10 stars.
Kudos!.
Eh...it's not terrible....
It's what I fear most about a horror movie I've never heard about.
The studio is one I've never heard of...and I watch a LOT of B horror movies.
The actors names are not any that I recognize.
Still, I'm open to a surprise or two.
I have to say, the acting is good.
However, having said that, there is such a thing about TOO many dream scenes.
I can stand one or two...but when there's too many...it seems like I can't tell what's real or not.
ANNOYING.
Also...not too many jumps in this movie.
It's a good flick, keeps you interested, but really not something that I'll watch again.
$1.60 goes to Redbox for bad movie night with my beautiful wife..
Great horror movie from start to finish .
One of the blockbusters of the year for all horror fans.
Will leave you on the edge of your seat.
So watch it.
Watch it till you crap yourself.
Have nightmares.
Don't miss this movie.
Tell everyone about this movie.
Sit and watch with Friends.
Please watch intently .pray for Satan .
OK thats all I have really to say other than please watch this movie I made .
Worth staying up all night and watching it .crap yourself silly , watch your underpants or knickers smell of crap after watching this movie .
You will love it , I wont tell you anything about the the movie cause I don't want to spoil it for you all ..
Apparition: Seen it all before.
With a budget of 3 million you expect a certain level of competence, alas no such thing can be found here.Originally titled Remorse this is another one of those horrors which leaves the viewer pondering whether what they are witnessing is supernatural or purely mental illness.Truth be told I didn't ponder too hard as I simply didn't care.This unforgivably dull, boring, lifeless horror effort has been done before so many times but rarely this poorly.Un-engaging, weakly made and an all round bore.The Good: Katrina LawThe Bad:Relies too much on jump scaresRecycledDreadful plotThings I Learnt From This Movie:The ambigous mental illness horror films are getting really old.
Spoilers follow ....
Doug (Jody Quigley) and his beautiful fiancée (Katrina Law) have their blissful engagement party interrupted by a former boyfriend, which despite Lori's tearful apologies, incites Doug to drive really fast and accidentally kill her.
It's hard to sympathise much with such petulance, despite the audience being treated to many subsequent images of Doug struggling to continue life alone
whilst apparently being haunted.
Wrong of me, isn't it, to mention Doug is far from heart-throb material, and how lucky he is to be with Lori and that perhaps should have exercised a little more humility?
Crusty old Woody (Thomas Roy) in the hardware store warns of vengeful spirits residing where Doug is living.
Certainly Doug's dreams are persuasively creepy.
And yet his waking hours are cheered slightly by the affectionate neighbour Jamie (Lili Bordán), herself suffering the repercussions of a troubled past – and inevitably, sex is had, with Lori barely cold in her grave.The spirit, which appears to be Lori and screeching newborn daughter, is not happy about Jamie.
The familiar conflict between what is real and what is being imagine ensues – but to the film's great credit, it is never specifically indicated that the hauntings and violence are entirely in Doug's mind.
Although there is a great temptation to think of the film as too restrained in its horrors, it is a persuasive examination of grief and mourning.
Only when (SPOILER) Doug - who has mentally tortured himself that he killed Lori - also kills Jamie, do things become intriguing on a different level.
The final scene with Doug enjoying family time with the three dead people in his life, redeems some of the film's earlier uneventfulness. |
tt1821700 | Waar | Major Mujtaba Rizvi (played by Shaan Shahid) is a former Pakistan Army officer, who took an early retirement. The plot involves a counter-terrorism operation being conducted in the northwestern tribal region of Pakistan, led by Ehtesham Khattak (played by Hamza Ali Abbasi) and coordinated by his sister, Javeria Khattak (played by Ayesha Khan), an intelligence officer. Ehtesham and Javeria learn of a major terrorist attack that can only be countered with the help of Major Mujtaba.
Major Mujtaba's family was assassinated by Ramal (played by Shamoon Abbasi), an agent in India's spy agency Research and Analysis Wing's (RAW) operative. Major Mujtaba wants to take revenge on Ramal. Recognizing Ramal's through his actions and tactics, Major Mujtaba is able to counter his attacks.
Mulla Siraj, a Taliban working with Ramal, operating from a fort in the tribal area gives Ramal two bombs which Ramal is going to plant somewhere in Pakistan. Planned by Laxmi, a RAW spy, terrorists conduct an attack on a police training center to divert the attention of the security agencies aimed at watching any suspicious activity as they are reported that a big terrorist activity is imminent. One bomb is loaded in a vehicle and Ehtesham drives this vehicle away to dispose the bomb and is killed in the explosion. The second bomb is planted in Jinnah Convention Centre, Islamabad but Major Mujtaba counters this attack and saves the country from another deadly terror incidence. He takes his revenge by killing Ramal. His powerful words are "Good wins over evil in the end" and this happens. | revenge | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0097438 | Gleaming the Cube | Brian Kelly is an underachieving high school student in Orange County, California. An avid skateboarder along with many of his friends, Brian is frequently at odds with his parents for his increasingly reckless behavior, which has landed him in jail on more than one occasion. The only person in the family Brian can relate to is his adopted Vietnamese brother Vinh, who works as a shipping clerk for the Vietnamese Anti-Communist Relief Fund (VACRF), an organization whose stated purpose is to send medical supplies to Vietnam.
When Vinh discovers a suspicious error in VACRF's shipping records, he brings it to his boss Colonel Trac, who dismisses the matter as a clerical error. But when Vinh tries to investigate further, Colonel Trac abruptly fires him. Determined to find out the truth, Vinh sneaks into Westpac Medical Supplies (WMS), the warehouse responsible for VACRF's shipping, but is apprehended by the warehouse's owner, Ed Lawndale. He is then taken to a local motel and interrogated by Lawndale and Bobby Nguyen, another of Colonel Trac's employees. When Colonel Trac himself arrives at the motel, it is revealed that he and Lawndale are conspirators in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons and ammunition to Vietnam. Convinced that Vinh poses no threat to their operation, Trac intends to set him free, but unfortunately Vinh dies from being strangled by Nguyen. The next morning, a housekeeper enters the room and finds Vinh's body hanging from a noose, purposely made to look like he committed suicide.
After the funeral, Brian finds the same list of medical supplies Vinh was investigating in their room, but written in Vietnamese. While looking for someone to translate it, he encounters Bobby Nguyen who immediately begins to follow him. When Nguyen stops to use a pay phone, Brian slips unnoticed into the backseat of his car. In a secluded area, Nguyen meets with Trac and Lawndale and attempts to extort them for $50,000 and plane ticket to Bangkok in exchange for information on Brian. A struggle ensues, and Nguyen is inadvertently shot to death by Lawndale. When Trac and Lawndale depart, Brian flees to notify the police. However, when they arrive at the scene, the authorities find no trace of the crime. Brian confides in Detective Al Lucero, believing that his brother did not commit suicide. While skeptical, Lucero offers to do what he can to help.
As Brian's suspicion of Colonel Trac continues to grow, he decides to reach out to Trac's daughter Tina, a fellow high school student and Vinh's ex-girlfriend. After an image makeover, Brian asks her out on a date and the two become closer. He accompanies Tina to one of VACRF's social functions, where he notices Lawndale and learns of his connection to Trac and WMS. Following in his brother's footsteps, Brian sneaks into Lawndale's warehouse and successfully uncovers a cache of weapons in a shipping crate.
Taking matters into his own hands, Brian causes an explosion at the warehouse and plants evidence to incriminate Trac, but Lucero immediately suspects Brian and admonishes him for the act. However, the incident causes Trac to panic and send his wife and daughter away to his brother's house, for their own safety. A distressed Tina spends the night with Brian and discovers a lighter belonging to her father in Brian's room, leading Brian to explain all his suspicions to her. Tina angrily confronts her father about the conspiracy, who is shamed by his involvement and contacts Lawndale to remove himself from the operation. In response, Lawndale begins to target Brian directly, sending a group of Vietnamese motorcyclists to run him down on the street. The police manage to apprehend the bikers and, with the aid of an interpreter, Lucero is able to confirm Lawndale's role in the attack.
Meanwhile, Brian visits his friend Yabbo, who builds a newer, faster skateboard for Brian and rallies the rest of the skateboarding clique. Brian and the police both converge upon Colonel Trac's house, where Lawndale takes Tina hostage at gunpoint. When Trac tries to wrestle the gun away, Brian crashes into the room through the window, but Lawndale shoots and kills Trac before making his escape in a stolen police car. A chaotic chase ensues, with Brian, Lucero, and the entire skateboarding crew eventually cornering Lawndale. As Lawndale prepares to shoot him, Brian soars into the air on his skateboard and knocks him out, injuring himself in the process. At the hospital, Brian tries to comfort Tina in the wake of her father's death and suggests that they go back to school together, implying that their relationship will continue. The film ends with Brian and Lucero visiting Vinh's grave before driving away. | tragedy, cult, revenge, murder | train | wikipedia | This movie just about wraps up the "rad" pop culture of the 1980's, and puts it into one film.
The skateboarding is incredible, and it features Tony Hawk who developed into the #1 skater in the world.
While this movie might not be realistic, it made me laugh all the way through.
The best scene by far involves Tony Hawk and a Pizza Hut truck.
Enjoy this movie and remember the 80's..
Perfect Late '80s Skater film.
Ok I know this film is old, but who cares?
I was 13 1/2 when this movie came out, and I know a lot of people even my age (27) would consider this a dated "old school" movie, but like I said, I don't care, it's still fun.I was a middle school skater in the very late '80s, and this film brings back great memories.
Ok the fashions got old by like 1991, but again who cares?
Forget the fashions and just concentrate on the skateboard stunts, they'll blow you away.
Legendary skater Tony Hawk is in this film, and everyone who was or is a skater knows how valuable Hawk was to skateboarding.
These days I see a lot of teenagers skateboarding in parking lots and malls, it seems the trend has come back since being dormant since 1990.
It was uncool to be a 19 or 20 year old skating back in the heyday of grunge, but once a skater, always a skater.
Many times when I see these kids skating today, I want to haul my old 27 year old butt out there and show them how us 13 and 14 year olds did it back in 1989..
Cold War Skate Movie.
I love Gleaming the Cube, with the exception of the coyingly senitmental dialogue going on and some of the forced grief by Slater.
It's a pretty cool 80s action movie for skaters.A kid mysteriously winds up dead after he goes poking his nose into questionable problems with shipping orders for the Vietnamese Relief.
The cops say all signs point to suicide (or at least they're not conclusive of any other cause of death), but his skater brother is determined to prove that he was murdered.
Gleaming the Cube, as Brian's (Slater) friend Yabbo (Perlich) explains, is about finding your place.
It's actually a pretty fun, if not different, story involving athletes, nevermind skaters.
Plus, you have a pretty rad soundtrack, and Christian Slater and Max Perlich make believable teenagers, and entertaining ones at that (rather than obnoxious or totally stupid).
I love this movie!
It's got a plot, good skating, and its entertaining.What more could you ask for.
It is just your typical 80's movie and personally, I think those are the best kind.
That usually works for me.My recommendation...Check it out if you need something to do late at night and you're tired of watching all of the normal blockbusters that come out these days..
A fun stupid film.
This is the story of a young confused high school punk who loses his adopted Vietnamese brother to a couple of gun runners.
To lighten things up, he could hit on his dead brothers girlfriend.There are many famous skaters who lent their abilities to this film.
This is the best skate boarding movie ever.
There are some really impressive scenes and the movie totally rocks.
It just adds charactor and proves that it doesn't matter how advanced technology gets, they don't make gems like this anymore.
Check out Christian Slaters hair!
The only thing I would ever slamm this movie for was some of the acting.
Christian Slater is cool, but there were some weak performances by others.
This doesn't effect the movie on bit though!
Great 80s film, nothing amazing, but certainly competent in what it does, and not many films like it.
One of the first films of its kind that I had seen and is still really entertaining, after I hunted it down on DVD and watched for the first time last night for years.
I like the portrayal of the skater guys.
Slater's 'I miss you' speech was pretty cringing for me, but apart from that, the film carries itself really well without trying to take itself too seriously, and it comes off better for it.The Corvette guy was a terrible addition in many ways, but despite being so bad, it was hilarious.
this movie is great, if you like skating you will love it.
if you like mad effects from an 80s movie you will love it.
if you like Slater you will indeed love it!!!it is a good movie with a very bizarre story but it works well and is a great feel good movie.
the story is about Slaters brother getting killed when he finds out some imformation about his work that he shouldnt know.
Slater takes it in to his own hands to find out why his bro was killed and in the process finds out serous stuff.
Must see, one of slaters classics!!!!8 out of 10.
Thriller, tension and intrigue in this skateboarding movie.
This movie deals about a skateboarding adolescent(Christian Slater) investigates his fostered brother's killing.
His brother from Vietnam origin is killed by an organization led by a nasty(Richard Herd) but he aware that the store he worked sends arms to Vietnam instead of medicament.
The down-and-out teen has a skateboarding team(Max Perlich) and and he suddenly become involved in several risks, helped by the group skateboarding Trashers.The film displays action, suspense, thrills and, of course, spectacular skateboarding.
Another films about Skateboarding sub-genre are ¨Skateboard: The movie(78), Skateboard kid I(93) and II(95) and Skateboard madness¨, though the classic movie is ¨Lords of Dogtown¨ directed with Catherine Hardwicke and with Emile Hirsch and Heath Ledger.
The whole style of the movie was real cool back when I was 10, and the feelings kind of stuck.The story line is stupid but the skater-guys are cool.
A lot of the acting is poor, but a GOOD MOVIE.
You have to look past all the bad stuff and just try to sink into the whole 'nice family' good brother avenging the death of his step-brother theme.
Brian Kelly (Christian Slater) has his group of skateboarding friends in Orange County.
His adopted brother Vinh is the star of the family.
Brian knows better and investigates.
After witnessing a killing, he goes to police detective Al Lucero for help.It's weird that a skateboarding film turns into a crime drama with a Vietnamese flavor.
In a skateboarding movie, one would like lighter fare.
The story is trying to be smart but it's really only B-movie quality.
It's got a nice cult movie feel..
When I first watched Gleaming The Cube probably twenty years ago, I was highly excited by this farce.
I liked it so much I probably watched it everyday for a week, hell maybe even a month.
Then once I had finished watching I'd take my skateboard round to my friends then we'd head down to school, climb onto the long flat roof and skate around for hours rein-acting scenes from the film.
Gleaming The Cube was just one of many films that had us acting like this in our youth.Having just finished watching Gleaming The Cube for the first time in years I realised two things.
2. It isn't anywhere near as bad as some of the reviews I've read over the years.Starring one of my all time favourites 'Christian Slater' in the lead role of Brian and starring no-one else worth mentioning, Gleaming The Cube is without doubt the best skateboard/mystery/drama that the world has ever produced.
Slater spends his usual amount of time trying to pull of intense 'Jack Nicholson' style faces, but that's one of the things I always loved about him.When Brian's stepbrother is found dead, the police say its suicide but Brian thinks different, so he sets out on his skateboard and tries to solve the mystery of his death.
That's basically it as far as plot goes, but the film is carried forward with chase scenes and skateboarding action.All in all it's everything an 80's skateboarding film should be.
Pro Slater Movies.
I absolutely love this movie, no doubt about it!10/10.
A great display of tacky, bad acting, bad storyline, eighties brilliance at it's best.Drop me a line if you the same way.
The film is really enjoyable if you get past the slightly lame plot, but it does contain some really cool skating sequences and some of the dialougue is cool.
The stage curtains open ...This is the first Christian Slater movie I've ever seen on the silver screen.
I'd seen Christian Slater in movies before this one, such as "The Legend of Billie Jean" and "The Wizard", but this is the first movie where he headlined and starred that I can remember ever seeing.High School student, Brian Kelly (Slater), really didn't care about anything other than hanging out with his friends, music and skateboarding - much to the chagrin of his disapproving father.
But when his adopted brother, Vinh, is found dead in a motel room and it is ruled a suicide, Brian isn't buying it and he begins to investigate what he believes is a murder.
Finally, he is able to confide in Detective Lucero (Steven Bauer) and together they find out more than what they bargained for, leading to a climatic confrontation between the bad guys and Brian and his skateboarding gang.Bolstered by a solid music soundtrack, this fun piece of 80's teen action is one of the best of its time.
Slater began to come into his own about this time and this movie was a stepping stone into the prime of his career.
Skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk, also makes an appearance in the film as a character named Buddy.
The stunt work is incredible and the skateboarding sequences are outstanding.I highly recommend "Gleaming The Cube".
It is one of my personal favorite Christian Slater movies and gets plenty of play time out of my own collection..
this movie is iconic for the 90's and the entire skate boarding era.
If any one that is a true skater and has not seen this movie they need to re-evaluate their priorities and get it done.
NOTHING BEATS THIS skate film period.
I have been obsessed with this movie since it came out and have been introducing it to many a young-en and older my entire life.
Average Movie...Great Time.
As anyone knows who has seen it, "Gleaming the Cube" is not on par with Citizen Kane or a film with A-list acting, but what it does do is capture the "zeit geist"(I think thats how its spelled?) of the late 80's.
It captures the "spirit of the time" in a way that few other movies have, maybe Thrasher, but that movie is almost impossible to find.
I remember five of my skater buddies and I pooling our money together to get the movie.
It was one of those movies we could watch over and over.
We loved the skating!
Christian Slater's "fuck off" attitude didn't hurt either.
We would watch that movie and then go out and skate for hours, it was great.
this is a great movie...........slater before he so blatantly rips off jack nicholson.
in fact it must have been lame for tony as he doesn't do any skating in this movie at all.
he drives a red utility with an old pizza hut roof on it (u have to see the movie just for the pizza car) and according to the credits he doesn't perform any of the stunts nor is he listed as a "skater" the story line is a bit "dads film" for a skate board movie which conflicts with the whole alienated teen thing however with some things, the more over the top the better..
i used to love this film.....
i remember watching this film when i was much younger and i loved it to bits as i was an aspiring skater at the time, i used to really like the first bit with the theme tune and them skating down the airstrip.
i saw it again a short while ago and i will definitely say it hasn't lost any of it's character, i probably like it still because i liked it so much when i was younger but it is definitely a top film, the skating is superb even if it is on those old school boards and the bit where slater is skating down the massive hill is awesome.
a true skating classic..
Gleaming the Cube is the only half-way decent skating movie around.
As far as cinematic art goes I don't know how I'd rank it, but as there aren't any others like it we'll just have to settle.
Decent Movie.
This was a decent movie...if you were ever into skateboarding then this movie is a must see...it's good for the time frame it was created in(late 80's)..it also has a lot of big time pro skaters in it Mike Vallely,Tony Hawk,Rod Mullin,Lance Mountain,Mike McGill,Natas Kaupus,and Eric Dressen.....I think the only big actor is Christian Slater...so this is obviously a "skater oriented" movie..
check it out...its worth the money if you can handle the "old skool" skating and a little cheesy storyline drama...
fun movie, if you like Slater films..
this movie was fair, and most of the time was fun to watch.
i'm not a fan of skateboarding, but, it was fun to see slater's character go after the man for his brother's death.
some action in this film to keep you excited..
One of silliest male bonding movies ever...Should wind up at the top of Christian Slater's list of movies he wishes nobody remembers.
Cone to think of it, the only male bonding movie Slater ever succeeded in was Interview With the Vampire, because all he did was to interview Brad Pitt's Louis.
One of Christian Slater's early hits finds Slater as a high school kid with the biggest passion of his life being skateboarding.
Gleaming The Cube casts him as the son of Ed Lauter and Nicole Mercurio.
He has an adopted Vietnamese brother Art Chuddabala that the parents may have gone overboard to make him feel like one of the family, possibly ignoring Slater.
In any event he's a misfit kid with skateboarding on his mind 24/7.Chuddabala works for Le Tuan a Vietnamese exile who has an electronics store but who also works to supply arms needed for counter revolutionists in the old country.
One night Chuddabala discovers some bookkeeping errors and it gets him killed by arms dealer Richard Herd.They fake a suicide, but that does not stop Slater.
After the cops have closed the case he starts his own little investigation and when needed Slater's skateboarding posse is at his command.Gleaming The Cube does not have Slater as one of the more outrageous and quirky characters he specialized in the 90s playing.
The skateboarding acrobatics by the pros who worked on this film are spectacular.
Christian Slater fans will like it as will others..
A cube not that gleaming, but.....
There's a scene in this movie, one would say freakily idenitical to one in another Christian Slater, years later, Kuffs.
It's Slater farewelling his stepbrother here, spouting the words "I fu..in' love you man" Watch Kuffs and you'll see the same dialogue.
GTC is no Kuffs though, with fantastically shot skateboarding scenes, some quite breathtaking.
They do quite well compensate for some of the films faults, although GTC is quite entertaining, too being one of Slater's first films, which had a brief run at the cinema.
Again making references to Kuffs, Slater is again, an avenging hero, not playing by the rules, and causing s..t and some tempers to flare.
One being a young detective, Al (Steven Bauer) who sides with him, to take down the corrupt party who wasted his Vietnamese stepbrother (again I drawer reference to Kuffs, Slater's brotherly love problems).
I don't really know how Bauer's character fits in, as far as Slater's acquaintance, (Is he just some old friend, now a cop who busted Slater and pals one too many times) e.g. Slater and skate addicts crashing a house, and using a deep unfilled pool as a skating rink.
GTC isn't really a film that impresses.
It's a good popcorn flick, but don't look for anything beyond that, except the great thrill seeking skating sequences.
Try and count the time Bauer, flicks Slater's ear.
Christian Slater is out for some get-back in this 80's skater classic with a wacky title.
This is what the movie comes down to.
Whatever gleaming is its awesome and all skaters do it, or did about twenty years ago.
Watched this often as a child and it helped propel, sustain, my skateboarding throughout the careless 80's into the carefree 90's and on and on.
I still skate and conjure up images from the film when I'm in a helicopter scoping out some killer bowls or when I'm skitchin off Tony Hawk's Pizza Hut delivery truck, which happens quite often.
The movie follows Slater as he tries to connect the dots of his brothers murder.
Adopted as he may-be Slater nonetheless goes on a crusade that includes pool halls, weapons cache's and in true 80's fashion a geek to chic makeover scene that has to be witnessed to be real.
The scene with him skating mad through the warehouse is probably my favorite, but to nail down one thing alone i like about this movie would be an impossibility.
Slater looked cooler in this movie then he has before or since and everyone on film cash's in a good performance to back him up.
Slater ill never let you down girl!
Christian Slater is a good "skater" character, and yes, Tony Hawk does some skating in the movie (beginning pool scene), but I just couldn't buy the "death" emotions portrayed.
And that Brian's friends would pick on him for dressing like a prep instead of noting that he might be grieving his brother? |
tt0366548 | Happy Feet | Every emperor penguin sings a unique song called a "heartsong" to attract a mate. If the male penguin's heartsong matches the female's song, the two penguins mate. Norma Jean, a female penguin, falls for Memphis, a male penguin and they become mates. They lay an egg, which is left in Memphis' care, while Norma Jean leaves with the other females to fish. While the males struggle through the harsh winter, Memphis briefly drops the egg. As a result, Mumble is unable to sing, but he can tap dance instead. Nevertheless, he is enamored with Gloria, a female penguin who is regarded as the most talented of her age. One day, Mumble encounters a group of hostile skua, with a leader who is tagged with a yellow band, which he says is from an alien abduction. Mumble narrowly escapes the hungry birds by falling into a crevice.
Now a young adult, Mumble is frequently ridiculed by the elders. After escaping from a leopard seal attack, Mumble befriends a group of Adelie penguins called "the Amigos", who embrace Mumble's dance moves and assimilate him into their group. After seeing a hidden human excavator in an avalanche, they opt to ask Lovelace, a rockhopper penguin, about its origin. Lovelace has the plastic rings of a six pack entangled around his neck, which he claims to have been bestowed upon him by mystic beings.
For the emperor penguins, it is mating season and Gloria is the center of attention. Ramón, one of the Amigos, attempts to help Mumble win her affection by singing a Spanish version of "My Way", with Mumble lip syncing, but the plan fails. In desperation, Mumble begins tap dancing in synch with her song. She falls for him and the youthful penguins join in for singing and dancing to "Boogie Wonderland". The elders are appalled by Mumble's conduct, which they see as the reason for their lean fishing season. Memphis begs Mumble to stop dancing, for his own sake, but when Mumble refuses, he is exiled.
Mumble and the Amigos return to Lovelace, only to find him being choked by the plastic rings. Lovelace confesses they were snagged on him while swimming off the forbidden shores, beyond the land of the elephant seals. Not long into their journey, they are met by Gloria, who wishes to join with Mumble as his mate. Fearing for her safety, he ridicules Gloria, driving her away.
At the forbidden shore, the group finds a fishing boat. Mumble pursues it solo to the brink of exhaustion. He is eventually washed up on the shore of Australia, where he is rescued and kept at Marine World with Magellanic penguins. After a long and secluded confinement in addition to fruitlessly trying to communicate with the humans, he nearly succumbs to madness. When a girl attempts to interact with Mumble by tapping the glass, he starts dancing, which attracts a large crowd. He is released back into the wild, with a tracking device attached to his back. He returns to his colony and challenges the will of the elders. Memphis reconciles with him, just as a research team arrives, proving the claims of the existence of "aliens" to be true. The whole of the colony, even Noah the leader of the elders, engages in dance.
The research team returns their expedition footage, prompting a worldwide debate. The governments realize they are overfishing, leading to the banning of all Antarctic fishing. At this, the emperor penguins and the Amigos celebrate. | cute | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0121955 | South Park | While on a school field trip to a candy factory, Butters spots actor Tom Cruise working there, packing fudge into boxes. Stan, who previously told Cruise that his acting is not as good as others' in "Trapped in the Closet", accidentally insults him again by calling him a "fudge packer", as Cruise claims to be fly fishing. Cruise then recruits 200 other celebrities who have been ridiculed by the town of South Park to bring a class action lawsuit against the town. Stan returns to the factory with his father Randy to try to apologize and convince Cruise to drop the suit, but also finds it difficult not to call him a fudge packer as well since he was literally packing fudge while they spoke. An angry Cruise agrees to do so, but only if they can help Cruise meet Muhammad. This causes an uproar because depictions of Muhammad are forbidden, and the townsfolk fear that forcing Muhammad to appear in public will drive Muslim radicals to bomb the town. Stan and Kyle go to the Super Best Friends, a squad of superhero-like religious figures (Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, Moses, Krishna, Laozi, Joseph Smith) of which Muhammad is a member, to request he return with them to South Park. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Cruise and the other celebrities only want Muhammad for his "goo", as Rob Reiner, previously shown to be filled with "goo" in "Butt Out", has invented a machine to transfer Muhammad's "goo" to the celebrities, which they believe will make them immune to ridicule, just like Muhammad.
By this time, Cartman arrives with "Mitch Connor", a face painted on his hand as one-half of a ventriloquist act. Previously, Connor had successfully impersonated actress Jennifer Lopez in "Fat Butt and Pancake Head", and now Cartman and Connor return to the Lopez imitation in order to get involved in the lawsuit along with the other celebrities. Connor soon secretly convinces Cartman that they should steal Muhammad's goo for themselves to sell on the black market for more than the lawsuit could offer. Meanwhile, Kyle and Stan convince the Super Best Friends to let Muhammad come to town, but only if he stays in the back of a U-Haul truck and is not seen. When the townspeople realize they must bring Muhammad to Cruise's limo, they allegedly put him inside a bear mascot outfit. South Park is about to give Muhammad to the celebrities when the exchange is interrupted by a bomb planted by the Ginger Kids, a group of fair-skinned, red-haired children who are tired of being made fun of for their physical appearance. The Gingers want Muhammad for themselves, hoping to use his goo for their own means. They threaten to blow up the town if Muhammad is not turned over to them.
The people of South Park decide to turn Muhammad over to the Gingers, fearing the violence that will befall their town if they do not. The celebrities are angered by this change in events, but refuse to resort to violence for fear of ruining their careers. Instead, the celebrities decide to awaken the rebuilt Mecha-Streisand, a giant mechanical monster form of Barbra Streisand, who previously terrorized the town of South Park before being destroyed. The celebrities hope to use Mecha-Streisand to force South Park to accept their demands. Meanwhile, due to the chain of events, Cartman decides Connor's scheme has become too complicated and tries to quit, but Connor convinces him to stay involved by revealing that the townspeople of South Park have lied to Cartman about his true father. Although they previously claimed his hermaphroditic mother was also his father, Connor insists this is a lie. Cartman confronts his school teacher Mr. Garrison and Garrison's old hand puppet Mr. Hat, who admits to Cartman there was indeed a cover-up. Mecha-Streisand roars threateningly and continues her reign of destruction as the episode ends. | comedy, adult comedy, violence, absurd, psychedelic, satire, humor, prank | train | wikipedia | And it's funny how people still react the same way to the show as they did 20 years ago:The self-proclaimed flag bearers for our nation's moral standards still can't see anything in the show beyond its naughty language and (perceived) vulgarity (and while half of them are genuinely offended by the show for those reasons, the other half secretly loves the show precisely for its naughty language and overall vulgarity and toilet humor).The ones who make fun of the self-proclaimed flag bearers still believe only they are smart enough to see anything beyond the obvious naughty language and overall vulgarity in it (and while most of them pretend to only love the show for its satirical elements, the majority of them actually love it because of its naughty language and overall vulgarity and toilet humor).And then there's the third group of people who get the satire but just flat out admit that it's effing hilarious seeing Gerald getting peed in the face by his loving wife Sheila or when the boys protest the girls' protest by proudly taking their tiny wieners out while raising a fist.If anything comes close to good satire and ruthless comedy in the vein of Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' today, it's South Park.
Network: Comedy Central; Genre: Animated Comedy, Satire, Parody; Content Rating: TV-MA (for dark comic content and graphic language, sexual content, violence & animated gore); Available: DVD; Classification: Modern Classic (Star range expanded: 1 - 5);Season Reviewed: 10+ seasonsStan Marsh, Kyle Broflowfski, Eric Cartman and (sometimes) the ill-fated Kenny McCormick are 8-year-old boys growing up amid an adult world in the backward, frozen-over mountain town of South Park, Colorado.
Their adventures, that make up creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone's animated comedy "South Park", include fending off everything from supernatural demons to the biggest names in the Hollywood intelligentsia.
South Park is probably the most misunderstood show in TV history.Sure, it does have fart jokes but what it has really involved into is a show that depicts a wide range of current events, pop cultures references, social problems through the lenses of a group of 10 year olds and all the wacky characters that surround them.The fact that the drawings are fairly simple also makes a lot of people shy away from it, but actually this show has a completely unique approach to several divisive or thought-provoking subjects.
To name a few:'The Hobbit" looks at how photoshopped photos makes society expectations of a woman's body hard to reach and the amount of pressure it may put on little girls (whilst taking hilarious jabs at Kanye West and Kim Kardashian)"You're getting old" takes you over the nightmare that is feeling like you might be mentally older than you friends and that may make left outConsole Wars episodes dive into the consumerism involving Black Friday, video games and the world's obsession with Game of ThronesThese are all great episodes and I think the show if anything has aged well with time.The other brilliant thing about South Park is that because each episode gets produced in the span of week, it can be more up to date than any scripted show - just this season it referenced Kavanaugh nomination controversy in an episode even before he was eventually confirmed.Second 10/10 I have given on IMDb and South Park is well deserving of it..
South Park is an intelligent, humorous and thought-provoking show that is often ignored or decried by people who judge it only by the very things it deliberately throws in their face, such as profanity, simple animation, and graphic violence, because the creators know that people like this are easily offended by these things, and will always miss the point.
The episodes tackle a wide range of issues, from 9/11 to violence on television to celebrity obsession to religion, through the use of comedy, which is usually the best way to handle such matters.The main characters are four children who are basically mouthpieces for their creator's opinions, expressing views that would sound arrogant coming from adults.
Other characters on the show usually represent majority/opposing views as the plot requires.Like any long-running show, some episodes are better than others, not all have something to say, and not all are funny.
Kyles Mom and Dad, Cartman's Mother, Butters, Timmy!, Sherrif Bar Brady, Principal Victoria, Wendy, BeBe, and..Big Gay Al..etc....etc..you name it, they are just too much.Wonderful and ground-breaking (even though the animation isn't state of the art) nothing is out of bounds for these guys...South Park is an instant classic and a great time to be had by all..
It seems that every time I get into a discussion about current events I can site and episode of Southpark to support my (or someones) point.I ask that no matter how terrible you think the show is, watch it and look past some of the obscene jokes and interpret/understand the underlying meaning in the show.
A great improvement has been made to series 4 and series 5 is even better.The Simpsons maybe everyones favorite family, but this show is improving and quite frankly the Simpson's plots are getting worse.South Park already has a movie (quite successful and a good laugh) and it hasn't finished it, unlike the apparent rumors that The Simpsons will be finished when the movie is being made.How the kids respond to Kenny's death now has been improved, so you don't put up with "Oh my god, they killed Kenny" every week.To finish, great show hope it goes on..
People might have issues with some of the stories and language used throughout, but if you like comedy with satire and some adult references you would enjoy this series.I liked the episode based on Warcraft game(season 10,episode 8), if you are going to start watching it you can start with this episode.Big applause for Trey Parker and Matt Stone the creators of South Park.
One episode of "South Park" had so much swearing, a profanity was outlawed from public television "indefinitely." Sometimes the gags are kind of lame because they are so juvenile, but for the most part it's really funny.
At first I thought, "this show is completely crude and has no purpose." Recently I started watching South Park again because of it's comedic interpretation of modern day culture.
One of my favourite episodes was when the Internet broke down for the entire world, and how it crippled society.South Park is about four boys: Stan, Kyle, Eric and Kenny who started out in 3rd grade and then went to 4th grade.
When people who only watch Rick and Morty hear South Park, they think it's a very lazy and crude show (I will be ripping my friends' love for Rick and Morty to shreds).
Unfortunately, lots of people don't like it because of how inappropriate and vulgar it is, even though what ''South Park'' says in the show is completely accurate.
Garbage like Family guy tries to be funny, South Park probably throws away jokes that show would love to have.
South Park is HILARIOUS!It is very much a satire, but it being animated gives the creators and writers freedom to do practically whatever they want, and there are NO restrictions in this show.
You really gotta evaluate the times you live in when even South Park, the only remaining voice of reason of today's TV (let's call it that) caves under political correctness and starts pandering to women (not all, just the hateful and insecure ones who need to be patted on the back and called "smart and funny" every 5 minutes).I've gotten used to the fact that my "male privilege" is to be the only one who's allowed to be bullied, called anything, hit, having to work hard for everything I have, and see men portrayed badly in all TV shows and advertisements while those same pander to women, and being quiet about it.
Even bottom-tier shows like Family Guy made me chuckle more this year.One thing's for sure, I'm not buying the new South Park game nor will I keep supporting what went rock bottom in pandering flames this year after 19 years of me praising and advertising it.
I get it, its better than the rest of their recent episodes and i think its very big of them to admit that but its not necessarily what defines good television and if they're going to keep it on the air the least they could do is bring back good plot and original, 3 dimensional characters.
South park also usually has its own message at the end For example It hits the fan a episode many people thought was just how many times can we use the s word uncensored on TV, but were wrong when the whole message of that episode was why are certain words different and offend people when other words don't and a very good point why is OK for TV dramas to curse and say curse words when a animated show wants to everyone flips out shown in this episode which features the s word 182 times..
I find myself thinking that everything they do is based on common sense and I appreciate that they believe in equality when it comes to calling out idiotic behaviour.If you don't give South Park a proper chance you will never understand the genius behind it or if you cannot get over your righteous beliefs to look at the world objectively then you will remain disgusted with the so-called decline in popular culture.
I started watching South Park right when I was a senior in high-school, mainly as an act of defiance- it was rated TV-MA and most people said it mainly revolved around absurd story lines with generous amounts of crude and offensive humor, and fart jokes thrown in.
And if its not that, the show deals with the kids just being kids, and the characters interacting with each other in silly situations.Personally I have watched over 200 episodes of Park and it still hasn't failed me in terms of its originality and freshness.
After Season 13 finished, I stopped watching; the show had gotten too ridiculous with its plots and the show had lost a lot of its humour.I feel the reason why South Park went on a steady decline when the 6th season finished was not down to lack of ideas or originality in their episodes, it was down to character development.
This TV show used to be awesome with a lot of good adventures but the last episodes were very bad , so bad that i had to stop watching the show I changed my 10 star rating to 1 star just because of last season they made one of the funniest comedy shows into boring not funny cartoon Pc principal is very bad character and cartman and randy are not awesome as they were used to I know a lot of people will still like this show but i know a lot of guys that agree with me that its not that good anymore.
It's just that it's no longer original nor attracts the adult audience as it once did.If South Park wants to survive I think they need to seriously reduce the amount of temporary pop-cultural trends they use, often in a way that make entire episode one big "huh?" for people that may not have heard or care much about such a reference.South Park needs to realize that their platform are no longer suitable as a way to be the most extreme of everything.
This doesn't even count as entertainment; it's the worst form of punishment any human being could get.I could only think of a few other experiences in my life that rank as bad as the show: Finding out a Republican was going to win prior to the "I'm right and you're wrong" Reagan years; Seeing my pet lizard (which I loved) dead from starvation because my neighbor refused to feed it when I was on vacation; and then, watching any movie affiliated with the names "Sandler" and "Shore." Alas, "South Park" will now have a place on this list..
Season 3 was when South Park really started getting better, season 4 was also pretty good.
Season 8 is is for sure my favourite season of South Park with great episodes classic episodes like "Good Times With Weapons" which is in my top 5 favourites, and in my opinion, every single episode in that season gets at least a 9/10 rating.
But overall it's a great show, and if Matt Stone & Trey Parker are able to keep the pace up for another year of great episodes then it'll have a better run than the Simpsons, in my mind, that had stopped being good at around Season 9 or 10 (I don't really see the first 2 seasons of that show being that great either, so that's 7 seasons of Simpson's genius hilarity against about 8 of South Park that were great) My Grade: A+.
And sad thing is, alot of shows are starting to mimic these "South Park" qualities too, such as the recent "Simpson" episode and "The Family Guy".
The characters are hilarious; Cartman, Randy and Mr Macky are amongst my favourites.Many people will probably argue with me when I tell them that South Park is the greatest cartoon show ever.
I remember going to see the movie, "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," when I was 10 with my parents, and still count the movie as one of the greatest achievements not just in animation or musical history, but in all of film history (by the way Phil Collins did not deserve that Oscar).Today though, I feel I can afford to miss out on recent episodes because I feel I am not missing anything.I don't know what's wrong with the show but it fell overboard sometime during season 8.
First of all I must say scriptwriters of the south park is very brave.Because they can kidding every kind of religion and every kind of political idea.They don't care what other people said.They don't afraid of anybody and honestly it's so cool.And if we are talking about jokes in south park the truth is sometimes jokes could be very mature and about adult stuff.but except this things south park is very funny with Eric,Stan,Kyle and Kenny.If we are talking about the effects and vocalization actually we can't see fascinating effects in the series and you can't hear amazing voices.Songs which characters sang are awesome and funny.I'm really fanatic of this guys the series is almost same age with mewhatever I must go but if you didn't watch south park ever you need to watch it at least 1 time.
One of the strongest tens I ever gave.10/10(I'm near the end of the 8th season now and it still kicks ass.)24 December 2018In the last year I have seen all 22 seasons of "South Park" and, although it had its ups and downs, overall it's one of the best TV shows of all time and definitely the ultimate animated one.
But the thing that keeps me from giving this show a perfect 10 is because i think the show has changed for the worst.So like i said first 18 seasons of South Park we're excellent, even the bad episodes in there still had great memorable moments.
But when Season 4 the show became better and they also became 4th graders came on the show still kept its comedy of the kids being kids and it also started to get more satirical with politics and various subjects happening in the US which was done smart and funny and yet be true to the series with its weird sense of humor and edgy jokes for the alternative audience.
The show has gotten to serious to be called South Park.The show lost it satire and go overboard in to politics to the point where i can just watch the news to here about that.
I'll just state a couple of the supporting characters that are my favorites and there are lots of them but these two always stood the most in my mind.I even like how there seems to be a bit of a contrast to most of the adults and kids in South Park.
Though he's a bit oversexed or obsessed with it as he constantly sings a lot of songs about lovemaking to a woman sometimes at the most inappropriate times and in front of the South Park kids, those songs are both fun and funny as their a slight parody on Isaac.Wendy Testinburger I just love her character.
Everyone takes one look at it and sees the silly animation and the foul mouth young kids and automatically assume its the dumbest show ever but on the contrary it is one of the smartest comedies on T.V. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are clearly very smart and very talented writers using hilarious satire in their episodes to laugh at the world.This show is about 4 foul mouth young boys who live in a small town in Colorado called South Park.
As much as I'd like South Park to be a short two or three season failure, I just don't think it's going to happen.
There is nothing to like about the characters in South Park.
The animation style of South Park was refreshing and seeing preteens swear was funny at the time.
Now, with other adult comedic TV shows around (which are usually very bad), and with the return of Beavis and Butt-Head (2011), South Park feels like it has issues to remain significant.
In it's defense the earliest episodes had to be the funniest like Cartman Gets An Anal Probe and An Elephant Makes Love To A Pig and I like Cartman's voice.The creators of South Park Matt Stone and Trey Parker are a lot funnier than their creation. |
tt4635372 | Masaan | Set in present-day Varanasi, the plot of Masaan follows two seemingly separate stories that converge eventually.
The first of these tells the story of Devi. The film opens with her and her fellow student, Piyush, checking into a hotel room. They are interrupted during sex when the police bursts in, after being tipped off youngsters indulging in “indecent behaviour”. As the inspector records the barely clad Devi on his mobile phone, the boy Piyush, who also is barely clothed locks himself in the bathroom and commits suicide. Devi and her family are subjected to blackmail by the police, particularly by Inspector Mishra, who demands a hefty bribe of three lakhs from Vidyadhar Pathak, Devi’s father to hush up the matter. While he struggles to fulfill the demand, she switches jobs due to the 'stigma' associated. She eventually gets a government job in the railways in Varanasi. News regarding her pre-marital sexual indulgence reaches there, marred by the supposedly parochial mindset of people, she leaves Varanasi and joins a course in Allahabad.
The second narrative concerns Deepak, a boy (also from Varanasi) from the Dom community (a low-caste of corpse burners) whose family works in cremation ghat by burning funeral pyres. Deepak wants to transcend the restrictions of his caste. He studies Civil Engineering at a polytechnic college where he meets and falls in love with Shaalu, an upper-caste girl. They start meeting each other and during a trip to Allahabad at the banks of Ganga, Shaalu falls for Deepak and accepts his proposal. Back in Varanasi, Deepak tells her about his caste and the work he does of burning corpses. Shaalu remains firm and tells him that she will be with him even if her parents refuse. She asks him to focus on his placements and get a job, while she reaffirms her commitment to him.
However, unfortunately, during a pilgrimage trip along with her family, she dies in a ghastly bus accident. Her body with some other victims ends up at the same cremation ground. Deepak is shattered on seeing her dead body and loses all purpose in his life for a while. But eventually comes to cope with the support of his friends. He also gets an engineer's job in railways landing up in Allahabad.
The film reaches its climax as Devi comes to the bank of Ganga to immerse the gift Piyush had given to her on the fateful day in the hotel. Deepak notices her crying and offers her water to drink. A boatman beckons offering them a ride towards Sangam. They board the boat striking a conversation. Devi tells Deepak that this is her first time she is going towards Sangam. Deepak tells her he has been there earlier once and adds that there is a belief one should visit the Sangam at least twice, once alone and once in someone's company. With that, the film ends. | romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0090291 | War and Love | The film begins with Major Rajendran (Suresh Krishna) being killed by the Pakistani terrorists in the Indo-Pak border and the war between India and Pakistan begins. Pakistani Army led by General Jaffer Khan (Mukesh Rishi) sends a battalion to capture a village on the Indian side of the Line of Control. Indian Army Brigadier Nayar (Captain Raju) sends the Madras Regiment to recapture the village. Madras Regiment contains Lt.Col Sharath Chandran (Prabhu), Captain Gopinath (Dileep), Major Prabhakar (Saikumar), Captain Kabir (Siddique), Captain Vijayan (Vijayaraghavan), Havildar Kurian (Jagadish), Private Basheer (Kalabhavan Mani), Naik Haneefa, Havildar Prashanthan, Naik Kunjunni (Machan Varghese), Captain Hema (Indraja) and Private Shankar. They recaptured the village after a fierce gun battle that killed all the Pakistani soldiers. Prabhakar and Kunjunni died during this battle. Jaffer Khan was angered by this defeat and hatched a plan to capture the entire Madrasi Regiment alive. He calls Colonel Mushtaq Muhammad, an ISI agent in the Indian Army and pays him 5 crores rupees for capturing the Madras Regiment.
Mushtaq Muhammad hatched a plan in which all of the Madras Regiment except, Gopinath and Vijayan were captured. Gopi kills Mustaq, but was captured by the Pakistanis. All the Prisoners of War were sent to a Pakistani camp, where they were tourtured. They were forced to work like slaves. Kabir, Haneefa, Kurian and Hema (Sharath's love interest) were killed by the Pakis. Meanwhile notorious Pakistani terrorist leader Mansoor Akthar arrived in the camp. Jaffer Khan's daughter beautiful Serina (Laila) also arrived there. She was about to be raped by Mansoor, but Gopi killed him by dropping a big rock on the terrorist's head. Serina fell in love with Gopi while he decided to use it to save his country. Serina knows Malayalam since Jaffer Khan's father migrated from Mallappuram to Pakistan during the Partition. Meanwhile, Captain Vijayan has infiltrated the Pak military and got information that Pakistan is going to use nuclear weapons in the wake of a lost war with India. Gopi with the help of Serina gets access to the defusing codes of the missile. The climax is fully war between Indian POWs freed by Vijayan and Pak army-terrorists. Finally, the nuclear bomb is defused by Gopi and entire Pak army is killed. Jaffer Khan is killed by Sharath, who also dies due to injuries. Entire Pak camp is blown up and only Gopi, Serina and Vijayan survive the holocaust. India wins the war and Gopi is given Param Vir Chakra on his return to India. Gopi marries Serina. Movie ends with Serina chanting 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. | romantic, autobiographical | train | wikipedia | A touching love story amidst the horror of 'The holocaust'. I saw this one when i was young and right about the time i was beginning to have some of my teenage crushes. It taught me about how it felt when you lose something you cherish-your loved ones.I saw it again recently and i felt the pain of the characters in this movie again(proving that i wasn't a mushy teenager).This may not be a very famous movie but i feel its like 'Titanic',both movies being love stories set amidst a backdrop of disaster.Here the backdrop being the second world war.It tells us the story of a youthful romance much like that of Jack and Rose in the Titanic.Here Jacek and Halina's love story is rudely interrupted by the German invasion of Poland(the story is set in Poland). Most of the incidents in this movie are true like the main characters joining a band of fighters fighting 2 whole German divisions in Warsaw and would have defeated them had their numbers were more. Then comes the inevitable concentration camp for our heroes. (I was not that aware of the horrors that the Nazis unleashed until i saw this movie and Schindler's List later that year)They really do go through hell after that and finds(i feel) shadows of each other.The war and the devilish concentration camps take their toll on them.I don't want to give away the story but this movie really captivates us from start till end. The fresh faced Kyra Sedgwick made me fall in love with Halina(who sadly suffers a lot because she is a Jew). This is a movie for romantics(i'm one) and is a thorough tear jerker.Watch the movie to find what happens to them.I am sure you will be haunted for a long time after this experience and you will and should stop taking your loved ones for granted.Love them cus they are here now and maybe gone tomorrow because of unexpected and uncontrollable events like what happened to Jacek & Halina. |
tt0076167 | Hum Kisise Kum Naheen | The story begins with a wealthy man selling his entire estate in Africa, converting it to diamonds. He carries them in a belt. He suffers a heart attack in the washroom and requests a passerby to deliver the diamonds to his son, Rajesh (Rishi Kapoor).
The man is chased by goons who are after the diamonds. He hides them in a bicycle toolbox. The bicycle belongs to Sanjay Kumar (Tariq Khan), who is unaware that his bicycle has 25 crore rupees worth of diamonds hidden in its toolbox. Saudagar Singh (Amjad Khan) is after the diamonds. He and his partner Ranbir Kumar Dana set a trap for Rajesh telling a false story to him.
The whole plot is speedy after that with Rajesh pretending as Manjeet Kumar Dana is to fall in love with Kajal (Kajal Kiran) who is in love with her childhood love, Sanjay. There are a series of meetings between the two. A few years ago when motherless Kajal's father Kishorilal was in deep financial crisis, Sanjay's father gave shelter to him, who has now become filthy rich. The promise of getting Sanjay and Kajol married is forgotten when Kishorilal insults them and forgets the promise that was made years prior. To unfold the plot, Sanjay becomes Manjeet's manager. Saudagar uses Manjeet to get the diamonds himself in the climax. | romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0047490 | Sign of the Pagan | During the fifth century, the Roman Empire is divided into two parts: the West, with its capital in Rome, run by Emperor Valentinian III, and the East, with its capital in Constantinople, run by Emperor Theodosius.
The Empire is under attack by the Huns under Attila. Roman soldier Marcian is carrying a message from Valentinian warning Theodosius against the Huns, when he is captured by Attila. Attila is impressed by Marcian's honesty and courage. He carves out the arrow that has been shot into his leg, causing Marcian to pass out.
Over the next few days, Attila keeps Marcian hostage in the hopes of learning more about the Romans' plans. The Huns capture a local king's family and Attila orders them killed, except for the daughter, Ilduco, whom he takes as his wife. Later, when Attila's daughter, Kubra, shows off her father's prize stallion, Marcian steals it and flees to Constantinople.
In Constantinople, Marcian is befriended by General Paulinus, who confides that Theodosius is planning to join forces with the Huns against Valentinian. This is confirmed when Marcian brings his emperor's message to Theodosius, who throws him out.
Theodosius' sister, Princess Pulcheria, calls Marcian to her chambers. She admits that she loves Rome, but is kept prisoner within the palace walls. She names Marcian the captain of her guard, asking him to protect her from Theodosius' mutiny.
That night, Theodosius holds a feast to welcome the Hun leaders. Although Attila has not been invited, he arrives to command the allegiance of all other Barbarians, and easily defeats the strongest man in Constantinople. Frightened, Theodosius offers him furs and jewels, but Attila demands only that Marcian teach the Huns how to use Roman weapons.
Although Kubra is the first to practice with the weapons, Marcian deposits her in the harem bathing pool.
Later, Pulcheria sends for Attila. She asks him to release Marcian from his duties, but Attila kisses her roughly and then leaves to meet Theodosius, who agrees to pay each month in return for Attila's promise not to attack.
Later, Marcian also approaches the Hun, warning him that because Rome is Christian, it will never fall. Attila merely laughs at him, but when Kubra visits the church the next day, she is awed by the portrait of Mary and longs for the peace she feels there. She tries to refuse to leave, but Attila forces her to accompany the Huns out of the city.
The next night, Attila gathers the Barbarian leaders and announces that they will attack Rome immediately. As soon as his soothsayer announces that the signs are positive, a bolt of lightning strikes a tree that falls on him. Although this concerns the Huns, Attila names it a good omen.
Soon after, his men bring two captured monks to him, and Attila, who does not dare anger the Christian god, orders the soldiers killed. The monks then beg him not to kill the soldiers, baffling Attila.
As the Huns gather outside Rome, Marcian, finding no help for Valentinian with Theodosius, prepares to flee the palace, but is captured upon stopping to bid Pulcheria goodbye.
While Attila's new seer, whom he calls Persian, relates a vision of Marcian as emperor, Paulinus releases Marcian from the dungeon and the two sneak into Pulcheria's. Together, they decide to gather the army against Theodosius and install Pulcheria to the throne.
After Theodosius is forced to abdicate, Pulcheria names Marcian her top admiral and announces her plans to travel to Rome with him and their army to help guard its walls.
Meanwhile, Persian is plagued by visions of God and martyrs in the clouds calling for Attila's death, and Attila remembers an image his childhood nurse saw in which he died under the shadow of a cross. Though fearful, he continues to disregard the signs.
When Marcian reaches Rome, he finds Valentinian leaving, but retains two battalions to add to his own to protect the city.
That night, Attila orders the attack, but stops when Pope Leo I arrives to name Rome the temple of God and foresee Attila's downfall, as portended by the lightning strike.
Afterward, Attila realizes that Kubra must have told the Pope about the lightning, and, though he is heartbroken, kills her for betraying him.
In his sleep that night, he sees a vision of the martyrs marching against him and, crazed, orders the Huns to retreat. Marcian hears and immediately plans to ambush Attila when he reaches the nearest city. The surprise attack demolishes the Huns, who soon fall.
Marcian finds Attila and duels with him, but it is Ilduco, who has spent the last months overflowing with rage, who drives the fatal dagger into his chest. As prophesied, Attila dies with the sword's handle forming the shadow of a cross on the ground.
Days later, Pulcheria reunites the halfs of the empire and names Marcian emperor, to the delight of the Roman people. | murder | train | wikipedia | For a tough guy, Marcian was very eager to volunteer details of his mission when he was captured by Attila, and I don't know he he got intelligence of the pagan hordes' move on Rome and was able to rush some of his troops to its defence across considerable distances.
Panther like Jack Palance sporting a Fu Manchu moustache is perfectly suited to playing Atilla the Hun which he does with much relish.
The closest he came to really great acting was "The Big Knife" made the following year.Although Sirk wasn't originally allotted to this movie, it would seem he was willing to try his hand in a genre new to him.
As with his only western "Taza Son of Cochise", he proved himself able to work in the genre as well as most, though added little extra of any note.Expertly filmed by the great Russell Metty who Sirk wisely used on most of his movies..
Chandler's the Roman centurion who must push back the invading armies of Atilla the Hun. Ludmilla Tcherina is one of a number of flashy looking women (Blonde Allison Hayes, later the sixty foot woman, is another).
This is a 1954 Universal International film titled Sign of the Pagan , full of historic inaccuracy and being well starred Jack Palance as Attila .
On arrival, he meets the eastern Roman emperor Theodosius (George Dolenz) scheming with Attila to look the other way while the latter marches against Rome .
But Marcian (who really was emperor and succeeded Teodosio) gains the favor of Pulcheria (Ludmilla Tchérina of Red slippers) , lovely sister of Theodosius , who favors a united Empire and plotting against Attila .
Emperor Valentinian III sent three envoys, the high civilian officers Gennadius Avienus and Trigetius , as well as the Bishop of Rome Leo I (Moroni Olsen) , who met Attila at Mincio in the vicinity of Mantua and as the conqueror had an awe of the power of the Christians' God , he obtained from him the promise that he would withdraw from Italy and negotiate peace with the Emperor .
. Against his ruthless pagan lusts , the power of a woman's love!This spectacular movie contains action , breathtaking battles , thrills , romance , hokey historical events and the crowed scenes of the Huns are impressively made .
There takes place a fictitious battle of wits and wills between Attila/Jack Palance and Marcian/Jeff Chandler .
Jack Palance dominates with his overacting this historical adventure , while Marciano being grumpily performed by Jeff Chandler .
Great support cast provide some solid secondary interpretations such as Allison Hayes as Ildico who was actually wife wife to Attila , Rita Gam , Alexander Scourby , Michael Ansara , Leo Gordon , Eduard Franz as Astrologer , Jeff Morrow and final film of Moroni Olsen .
Remembering how the Gershwin estate, not liking the Porgy and Bess movie, have tried for years to prevent anyone seeing it, could Ludmilla Tcherina and her estate have somehow bought out this dance scene and are now withholding it because it does not enhance her memory as a classical ballerina?
"The Sign of the Pagan" is a pretended swords and sandals epic film about Attila the Hun's attack on the remains of a divided Roman empire.
The screenplay tries somehow to follow historic facts and show us some events in the Hun King's life that we know about (his merciful attacks on villages while marching against Rome, his meeting with Pope Leo, his contacts with the Romans -he had been a hostage in Rome as a young boy- and his death by the hand of slave girl Ildico).But in all the movie lacks a sense of greatness and the big spectacle other films of the same genre that were released about the same time achieved ("Quo Vadis" and "Helen of Troy" are clear examples).The cast is not very accurate either.
Jeff Chandler was always a standard actor but no more than that (perhaps his best performance was that of Apache chief Cochise in 1950's western "Broken Arrow"), and he looks wooden and unconvincing as the Roman Centurion that tries to defeat Attila.
What makes this film worth a watch is Jack Palance's performance as the Hun chief; he has the proper "physiche du rol", some make up helps him too but he manages to transmit the strength and conviction a warrior leader like Attila was supposed to have.Too many indoor shooting doesn't help the picture either.
I think Douglas Sirk was a fine director but he felt more comfortable in contemporary dramas such as "Written in the Wind"."The Sign of the Pagan" is just for fans of the genre or to watch a fine performance by Jack Palance as an historical figure.
A Roman officer sets out on a quest to stop Attila The Hun from destroying Rome..
However, Jack Palance is excellent as Attila the Hun. He really does come across as a barbarian, giving a very intense performance that compares well with his earlier role as Toriano in "Arrowhead" with Charlton Heston.
Jeff Chandler's subdued performance is a good match for the stoic Christian Roman he plays.
According to Marilyn Kirk's biography of Jeff Chandler, Chandler was originally offered the role of Attila in Sign Of The Pagan.
When Jack Palance is on screen as Attila the Hun there ain't a stick of furniture safe in his view.
Nothing remotely historically accurate about Sign Of The Pagan other than Attila's meeting with Pope Leo I and his turning back from his conquest of Rome.
Not one among the top notch epics that come to mind while encountering the genre, SIGN OF THE PAGAN by Douglas Sirk is an intriguing production and the one that occurs to offer a bit more than its typical concepts.
Seemingly, it appears that there are two persons who make this film still mentioned on lists: its versatile director Douglas Sirk who became renowned in Hollywood and whose hallmarks are herein noticeable and the actor Jack Palance, the face that hardly results in negligence, who, actually, portrays the protagonist of the story.
Unlike some colossal Roman epics, SIGN OF THE PAGAN deals with an already 'Christianized' Roman empire (something Tony Keen critically points out in his review) or rather the divided empire into two of its 'wings': the west with the capital in Rome and emperor Valentinian (Walter Coy) and the east with the capital in Constantinople (perhaps one of the most spectacular cities in the history of mankind) and emperor Theodosius (George Dolenz).
Yes, it is the 5th century, the proud Roman eagles have already been replaced by the humble Cross (reference to Walter Pidgeon's prologue to 1951 QUO VADIS) but the enemy is approaching: it is the king of the Huns, Attila, the barbaric leader who has been granted many portrayals in both opera and film (just to name Anthony Quinn who portrayed the figure in another 1950s epic).
Although it is not one of the most famous portrayals, this performance deserves credit.Hailed by Gregor Torinus as depicting 'Attila's humanity' and 'sweeping portrayal of a crazed warrior with modern ailments' (Dennis Shwartz, 2007), Jack Palance is the highlight of the movie.
The director's spirit can be found, however, in the love story of Marcian (Jeff Chandler), the centurion and future emperor of Rome and Pulcheria.The HISTORICAL INACCURACIES are, indeed, multiplied.
Made the same year as another sword and sandal movie dealing with the same subject ,"Attila Flagello Di Dio" (starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren),it is an icily impersonal movie from Douglas Sirk.It's watchable ,but it could have been done by anyone at all.Sirk's métier was melodrama (he was the master of the genre in the fifties) and western ("Taza,son of Cochise" ) and epics are not obviously his forte.Although Jack Palance was potentially as ideal as Anthony Quinn to portray the king of the Huns,the screenwriters made him a too polite ,too sentimental ,not bestial enough character (just compare with Anthony Quinn's performance,in a movie which was not better though).Sirk did not seem to put of lot of effort into his work:"Christian" best describes it:the thunderbolt,the Roman talking about the Virgin and her son to the pagan daughter ,the pope 's intervention (there's a similar scene in the Italian movie),the final victory which was given by "their" God....
You can take it as a might of been as it sets the scene in the Roman Empire as Attila the Hun was menacing invasion.
adventure costumer.When we non-luminaries were allowed to enter, the picture being previewed was Universal-International's big budget (for that second-string studio, anyway) "Sign of the Pagan." The Fox Village's enormous screen enhanced the almost top-of-the-line production values and the performances by Rita Gam and Jack Palance, especially, made the chore of sitting through it somewhat bearable.
I have to admit that "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" was the happier viewing experience that night and was certainly grateful for my parents' forbearance in sitting through two full-length features, something they hadn't done since their courtship some years before.Playing that little game of "Six Degrees of Separation from Kevin Bacon" which was fashionable a few years ago (maybe even now and one that I'd never be proficient at, by the way, failing to find Mr. Bacon in the least appealing as an actor), the earlier equivalent of it might have been, as their romantic entanglements played out, connecting Arlene Dahl, once married to Fernando Lamas, who eventually married Esther Williams, who at one time (most probably before she married Senor Lamas) had an affair with Jeff Chandler, the leading man in "Sign of the Pagan" - the American/Hollywood version of "La Ronde", n'est-ce pas?.
"Sign of the Pagan" tends to live in the shadow of the great 1950's Hollywood epics such as "Quo Vadis", "The Robe", and "Helen of Troy" among others.Based on Attila the Hun's invasion of the Roman Empire, "Sign of the Pagan" stars Jack Palance as Attila.
Although the script plays fast and loose with history, most of the characters are based on real historical figures including Jeff Chandler's Marcian, who became the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire.There are some powerful scenes in the film although many of them are shot on foggy, dimly lit sound stages that would suit "Phantom of the Opera".
Some nicely rendered glass shots give scope to a few scenes, but the palace interiors are less than sumptuous and look as though they were filmed in a couple of spare rooms at Universal.The film plays up Attila's superstition regarding Christianity, which seems based on fact; one of the best scenes is when Pope Leo I psyches him out and stops the sacking of Rome.One disappointment is the way Attila's death is handled.
A tricky one for a 1950's movie, but director Douglas Sirk and the team didn't even try - she still kills him, but far less spectacularly.It probably doesn't pay to be too pedantic about costuming in a film such as this, but the Roman Army seems equipped with armour and weapons from a far earlier time; this was the early 5th Century AD and things had changed over five-hundred years - the costuming here is a little like making a movie about D-Day with U.S. troops hitting Omaha Beach wearing the uniforms of George Washington's Continental Army.Although it is hard to see a modern audience getting too much out of "Sign of the Pagan" - a mini-series such as "Rome" has higher production values - I still enjoy this film.
Maybe its partly nostalgia, but I find it fascinating watching actors as unique as Jeff Chandler and Jack Palance.
With chiselled features and prematurely grey hair, Chandler had a great presence even if he was a little wooden, but Jack Palance was a scene-stealer in every film he did, and he made a perfect Attila - all he needed was a bigger horde behind him..
Yes even with the occasionally muddled plot and dull performance of Jeff Chandler.Sign of the Pagan is an example of a movie that is strikingly photographed in early CinemaScope, lustily staged by the director Douglas Sirk and terrifically scored.
"They don't make 'em like this any more!" and one is tempted to say "Thank Heavens!" A typical 1950s Hollywood sword and sandals caper with one eye on the folks in the Bible Belt so references to "the Cross" and this strange new force coming from Gallilee while, on the other hand, lots of scenes of young ladies, (all of whom seem to have disconcertingly easy access to 1950s hair salons or lip-stick stores), either splashing about in Roman baths or being leered at by nasty barbarians, led by the worst of them all, Jack Palance in the guise of Attila the Hun. The more the 90 minutes dragged by, the more you came to appreciate Palance's appearances as virtually the ONLY saving grace for this family-sized slice of ham.
Nonetheless, with the help of his regular cinematographer Russell Metty, Sirk manages to create some memorable set pieces, especially when he depicts the movement of Atilla the Hun's (Jack Palance's) army on its doomed trek to Rome.Perhaps more so than any other epic, except perhaps for QUO VADIS?
My fascination for history and antiquity certainly started by all sorts of "peplum" movies of which "Sign of the Pagan" was the first, setting my standards for this type of film for a long time, being a schoolboy of 10 at it's release.
the HUN"!!!Grinning Jack Palance, in silvery armour as well as bare-chested, immediately stole my youngster' Heart & Soul, sometimes conflicting though with some encouraging feelings for the silver-hared Jeff Chandler as the good guy: his becoming emperor in the end even started off a search as for the movie's accuracy in telling these events...
As has been rightly said by some french author: in this movie the "bad" eclipsed the "hero", the brutal conqueror turning into the "tragic hero", and Jack Palance (whom I had never seen) made an overwhelming appearance with his face as kind of a expressive, terrifying and pathetic masque, and certainly ideally casted for the historic barbarian the real Atilla was.Two more scenes to remember, brilliantly directed by Sirk : the pope encountering Atilla (who as a pagan clearly panicks for this ghostlike creature coming out of the mists as of creeping out of the underworld even he fears), and the confrontation of Atilla with a shining cross, driving him out of a burned-out church and, as I imagined, driving him to his fateful end by a woman's dagger instead of by Marcianus' sword.
Even if this kind of film-making is outdated by movies as Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Gladiator or Troy, this Sign of the Pagan can still be appreciated ...
Before settling down to being almost exclusively the purveyor of glossy melodramas, Douglas Sirk tried his hand at the historical spectacle with this dealing with the exploits of legendary warrior Attila The Hun (vigorously played here by Jack Palance) and CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT (1955), which I had watched as a child and also tried to acquire not too long ago (but it didn't pan out).
The plot sees the Barbarian hordes joining forces (under the leadership of Attila) to attack the divided Roman Empire; the film starts with Attila releasing a Roman centurion (Jeff Chandler) in order to alert his rival Emperors of their coming: this proves an unwise decision because, with the help of the sister (Ludmilla Tcherina) of one of them, he manage to unite the Roman legions to face the impending onslaught.
Chandler doesn't look too bad in Roman garb, while Palance predictably chews the scenery (his Attila is something of a neurotic who organizes his campaigns on the basis of his astrologer's advice!); on the other hand, Tcherina is saddled with a rather underwritten part but Gam does well in her mix of tomboy and ingénue.
By the way, for Palance this was a sort of precursor to Andre' De Toth's similarly interesting THE MONGOLS (1961), which was actually an Italian production; from that same country and contemporaneously with SIGN OF THE PAGAN came another outing about the bloodthirsty Hun, ATTILA (1954), with Anthony Quinn in the lead (my father had rented the English-language version back in the day but, having recently taped the original on late-night Italian TV, I'll be re-acquainting myself with it presently as a companion piece to Sirk's epic)..
Until Now I've only seen Castle Films 8mm 10 minute excerpt, Attila the Barbarian.
UPDATE 2: Hello, I saw both versions of this movie directed by Douglas Sirk at a little film fest where they ran concurrently until attendees said stop it please.In filming, Director Douglas Sirk ran two cameras most of the time, with the CinemaScope Camera in the center and the flat camera to its right.
This move is directed by Douglas Sirk and stars Jack Palance as Attila, the Hun who will listen to everyone.
There is some question about whether Universal could provide Mr. Sirk with the budget needed for a Roman Empire battle movie All Mr. Sirk needed was the technicolor film and a bonfire.
(ADDED NOTE: the end looks like a b-western shoot-out as the Huns have changed their mind about attacking the walled city of the Holy Roman Empire...
The box said, Attila the Barbarian, and the man featured surely looked like a young Jack Palance.
This movie wasn't meant to be funny, but in the clumsy hands of way- over-rated director, Douglas Sirk, and writers Oscar "The Sword of Ali Baba" Brodney and Barre "Sign of the Pagan" Lyndon, it emerges as a veritable feast of nonsense with laughable dialogue ("Which way to the emperor's palace?" – "Just beyond the square!" – "If the emperor had sent me a legion instead of just one centurion, I could stop this treason right now!").
Jack Palance has a stab at making Attila a neurotic twit. |
tt0140888 | Central do Brasil | Dora is a retired schoolteacher who has become embittered. She works at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station, writing letters for illiterate customers, in order to make ends meet. She can be impatient with her customers and sometimes does not mail the letters that she writes, putting them in a drawer or even tearing them up. Josué is a poor 9-year-old boy who has never met his father, but hopes to do so. His mother sends letters to his father through Dora, saying that she hopes to reunite with him soon, but when she is killed in a bus accident just outside the train station, the boy is left homeless. Dora takes him in and traffics him to a corrupt couple, but she is made to feel guilty by her neighbor and friend Irene and later steals him back.
Dora is initially reluctant to be responsible for the boy, but ends up deciding to take a trip with him to Northeast Brazil in order to find his father's house and leave him there.
Dora tries to leave Josué on the bus, but he follows her, forgetting his backpack containing Dora's money. Penniless, they are picked up by a kind, Evangelical truck driver who abandons them when Dora encourages him to drink beer and then grows too friendly. Dora trades her watch for a ride to Bom Jesus do Norte. They find his father's address in Bom Jesus, but the current residents say that Jesus won a house in the lottery, and now lives in the new settlements, adding that he lost the house and money through drinking. With no money, Josué saves them from destitution by suggesting Dora write letters for the pilgrims who have arrived in Bom Jesus for a massive pilgrimage. This time she posts the letters.
They take the bus to the settlements, but when they locate the address they have for Josué's father, they are told by the new residents that he no longer lives there and has disappeared. Josué tells Dora that he will wait for him, but Dora invites him to live with her. She calls Irene in Rio and asks her to sell her refrigerator, sofa and television. She says that she will call when she gets settled somewhere. After she hangs up, she learns that there are no buses leaving until the next morning.
Isaías, one of Josué's half-brothers, is working on a roof next to the bus stop, and learns that they are looking for his father. After introducing himself, Dora says that she is a friend of his father and was in the area. Isaías insists that she and Josué, who, suspicious of the stranger, has introduced himself as Geraldo, come to dinner. They return to his house, where they meet Moisés, the other half-brother. Later, Isaías explains to Dora that their father married Ana, who he doesn't know is Josué's mother, after their mother died, and that nine years ago, while pregnant, Ana left her drunken lover for Rio and never returned. Isaías asks Dora to read a letter that his father wrote to Ana when he disappeared, six months ago, in case she returned. In the letter, the boys' father explains that he has gone to Rio to find Ana and the son he has never met. He promises to return, asks her to wait for him, and says they can all be together—himself, Ana, Isaías and Moisés. At this point Dora pauses, looks at Josué and says, "and Josué, whom I can't wait to meet." Isaías and Josué both say that he will return, but Moisés doesn't think so. The next morning, while the sons sleep, Dora sneaks out to catch the bus for Rio. She first leaves beside the letter from Jesus the one from Ana to Jesus, the one Dora carried with her from the Central Station but never mailed, expressing Ana's wish for the family to be reunited. Josué wakes up too late to prevent her departure. Dora writes a letter to Josué on the bus. Both are left with the photos they had taken by which to remember one another. | realism, bleak, dramatic, cute, romantic, sentimental | train | wikipedia | She is retired now, but in order to make ends meet, she sets a letter writing desk at Rio's train station where she writes letters dictated to her by the illiterate and eager people who can't do the job as they want to communicate with distant family and friends through Dona Dora.
Josue also realizes that Dora, in her own way, has been, for however short, the mother he lost in the tragic accident.Fernanda Montenegro, perhaps Brazil's best actress, is amazing as Dona Dora.
The interesting cinematography by Walter Carvalho, shows the immensity of Brazil's interior as the odd couple go to find the little boy's father.This film is a triumph for both Walter Salles and Fernanda Montenegro..
And the final destination for the boy (you're on the edge of your seat hoping things will turn out right) is not a happily-ever-after, but seems to indicate a new direction for the character.If I sound overly sentimental (I'm sure I do) it's because very few films have moved me like this one.
How was I to know that Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro who got robbed of an Oscar by Gwyneth Paltrow in the almost preternaturally ridiculous and superficial "Shakespeare In Love" gave a performance that is rarely imaginable at the movies?
'Central do Brasil' is basically a road movie about a boy Josué (Vinícius de Oliveira) who just lost his mother searching for his father.
She knows Josué because he and his mother used to write letters to Josué's father and when his mother dies she takes care of him, although she has other intentions at first.The movie is mainly about the relationship between the boy and the woman.
Each is so clearly delineated and so clearly defined that the film is a pleasure from beginning to end.Central Station actually beat "Life is Beautiful" at some of the world's top awards ceremonies for that year, and you can see why.
This movie is special.It shows the real Brasil with a simple but beautiful and touching story about a little boy looking for the father he never knew and a woman looking for a second chance.
What makes one movie telling the same storyline more worthwhile to see is a combination of creative expression, in depth character development, superb acting, exquisite photography, and believability, or the ability to persuade the moviegoer to suspend disbelief.How many times have we been exposed to a retelling of Shirley Temple's Heidi, where a young non-related child falls into the life of an old curmudgeon, and teaches that curmudgeon to enjoy life and/or develop morals and values?
And you will see a lot of films before you will see an acting performance like Fernanda Montenegro's as Dora again.This movie thankfully is not overly sentimental, that would get in the way of the story, it is just a great film to watch and enjoy.
Like Gena Rowlands in this country (who ironically did a similar film, 1996's "Unhook the Stars"), Brazil's Fernanda Montenegro is a masterful actress who inhabits her characters wholly with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of personal depth.
In this beautifully filmed 1998 film directed by Walter Salles, she offers a superbly realistic portrayal of an aging, embittered spinster named Dora, who earns money by writing letters for illiterate passers-by at Rio de Janeiro's Central Station.
Helping considerably is the stunning cinematography of Walter Carvalho, who presents vividly inhabited tableaux with each new phase of the journey from the bustle of inner-city Rio to the open roads to the religious pilgrimage to the new shoebox-style settlement.But it is Montenegro who dominates the proceedings as she gradually develops a character who earns our sympathy economically and honestly as she makes every moment count.
The climax comes a bit out of left field with the introduction of new characters that provide some amount of closure to Josué's fate and wrap up many of the open plot threads, but the somewhat pat turn does not undermine the genuine strength of the film.The DVD provides a nice extra with Montenegro, Salles, and producer Arthur Cohn contributing invaluable audio commentary in English.
At a certain point of the movie, Dora said "eu tenho saudade de tudo"(I miss everything).Whoever met and lost friends, had memorably happy moments in the past, or knew once the true meaning of love, can understand the unequal mixture of joy and sadness.Now I have a movie to recall to me those feelings,and I will watch again and again,to help me celebrate life!.
The main character, a jaded and bitter letter writer working in Brazil's largest train station (Fernanda Montenegro), is suddenly burdened with a kid who eventually wins her over.
The acting, the camera work, the soundtrack, and the beautifully written story all come together to produce just an amazing movie, well worth watching, that may just jerk a tear from your eye..
Brazilian director Walter Salles (of "Motorcycle Diaries" fame) has created a visually beautiful and emotionally heartwarming film.
Hearing the various stories and letters that the travelers dictate to Dora are touching and set the tone for the movie.
Walter Salles' gleamingly beautiful film CENTRAL STATION is one of those films that most people who appreciate the art of cinema will place in their personal library.
Not only is the story raw and touching but it is graced by the magnificence of actress Fernanda Montenegro who continues to be Brazil's finest actress both on stage and on film.
The story is a bit disturbing at first: Doña Dora is an elderly educated woman, with a history of turning to grifting for life support, sit in the Central Station and makes her money by writing letters dictated to her by the illiterate people who line up for her services - but Doña Dora often trashes the letters after collecting her fee.
Central Station is a special film for us, brazilians because we can see our real people on the screen.
Central Station is one of the most poignant films I have seen in a long time.There are two reasons I prefer to rent at the video store: being of typical English stock I loathe to show emotion in public, and second public theaters can't afford to play movies that don't pander to the lowest common denominator.
Once you get over your western prejudice of all that which isn't new and gleaming and begin to pay attention to the beauty of the indomitable human spirit your exuberance cascades back onto what you initially presumed to be the ugly decay of poverty.This film is great exactly because I can't express in words the manifold emotions expressed through the eyes of a mature woman and a brutally honest child caught up in a city of people just trying to cope.
Well after seeing Central Station , I saw that Brazil is full of life - just like India - same dense population , same cut-throat living competition , every day existence driving goodness out of even among good people.
while story , the plot of a con-woman ( not intrinsically) interwoven with an young boy made orphan by a sudden twist of fate is good to watch with great scenarios of Brazil - I really fell in love with the background location - I felt that the movie moved a little slow.
it is amazing the ability of director Water Salles to play at the heartstrings with such painful eloquence; fluid in a sense that the ubiquitous issues explored within the context of the film "Central Do Brazil" or "Central Station" were secondary to the road trip of two lives intersecting at a train station; a place where people come and go on their own subjective way.to be honest I couldn't tell if Walter Salles view on religion were pro or con; even after the continues repetition of religious symbols.
From spectator feelings of ambivalence to hatred, and coming full circle to being the hero of the story, we see acts of courage in Dora's transformation from the poster boy of everything ugly in Brazil, to the embodiment of true altruism.
She is the "clarity" in a convoluted Brazil - or humanity - who is left on its own without the so-called benefits and safety of civil society or an absolute dogma.in Central Station, we are like flocks of migrating birds together for safety from an indeterminate existence; in search of intangibles be it love, god, or an answer for mass suffering.
'Central Do Brasil' can easily be described as an extraordinary road movie, perhaps a prototype film of the genre.
Says movie director Walter Salles, "I come from a country and a continent whose identity is in the making, where things are not yet crystallized." And that's true for each of his personages; like their country, their characters are on the making, they are on the road.
The kid, Josué (played incredibly by Vinicius de Oliveira, a shoe shine boy found by Walter Salles on the street), can become a crock, like old Dora (the great Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro).
Dora a retired teacher works in a train station concourse where she writes letters for illiterates and usually does not post them even though she has been paid for this service.Josue is a young boy who has been orphaned since his mother was hit by a bus.
Central Station is a heart warming and heart breaking film that's among the best Brazil has to offer, especially in its leading lady.8/10.
Central Station is a heart warming film with a lot of depth that isn't evident the first time you watch it.
The shot is linked to the next scene that takes place on ground level of the station, that being a pouring out of emotions that happens when several people partake in dictating letters to a woman they've never met but entrust to write down what they've said before mailing them off to the chosen address' of loved ones.
Just in the opening, director Walter Salles foretells the spilling out of emotion the characters will go through in this film whilst, some might argue, bringing to attention the illiteracy problem that he believes plagues his native Brazil.
The opening also goes a long way in establishing the protagonist of the film, a certain Dora (Montenegro), and how she is 'before' the film develops her.Central Station is, essentially, a road movie but it is one of the better road movies that I have ever seen.
But what makes Central Station so memorable is the gradual changes Dora undergoes in order to become a better person and this is accomplished through the time she spends with a very young boy named Josué (de Oliveira).So the film is a character study, made in a language that is not of the English variety and stretches out to a little bit under two hours.
She figures he is helpless and may need to steal to live, similarly to what the prior, now dead, youth had to do also.The centre of the film revolves around Dora delivering Josué to his father, an address that she acquired a few days earlier when the boy's own mother dictated a letter to her.
Perhaps the father is a better person for at least he, as pointed out by the boy, could mould wood and earn a living out of a skill.While thoroughly engaging and always interesting as interactions and situations are played out, Central Station takes time to develop exchanges and studies like all great, slow-burning character studies do.
It's about Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), an old woman who fooled simple minded and illiterate people from Northeast writing letters for them, keeping the money and not delivering the mail.
Montenegro is our Prima Donna, doing her work superb as usual - if (argh!) Roberto Begnini won an Oscar, she would deserve 10; the boy was very realistic, even if his acting wasn't brilliant by that time - he did it fine, though; Marília Pera, one of my favorites, was gold-shining as that neighbor who helps Dora on escaping from the criminals - she has a real perfect comedy timing that beats even professional comedians; pay attention on Matheus Nachtergaele, playing one of Josué's brothers and the always efficient and ready-for-the-action Otávio Augusto, as a corrupted police detective.I recommend this movie for all non-Brazilians so you can learn about the real thing.
This movie requires either: a very open minded audience; or an audience that understands the brazilian way of life.For example: there were comments about the biblical names of the characters.
This are the preconceived ideas that makes us brazilians mad.Some comments also mention the brazilian society and culture, which, believe me, is portraited VERY realistically by the film, and shows Brazil just the way it is: poor, religious, sometimes cruel, but most of the times compassionate and benevolent.
This is what makes Brazil such a unique country, according to sociology, and the BEST country, in my opinion: although it sometimes is difficult to survive in Brazil, every one can sense the friendliness, always-ready-to-help initiative, and companionship off the brazilian people.The poor life condition of the majority of the brazilians makes them cruel, and sometimes dishonest, but their kind hearted approach to life makes the story of the movie true and realistic to any person that knows how brazilians REALLY are.Believe the film, it's a real portrait!
The "jeitinho" is often done in a good way, although the movie gives a mean (but true) example of it.Also don't consider the comment of a Brazilian Artemis, from Belo Horizonte, in this forum, who is ashamed of the real Brazil, and wants to make people believe that Brazil is such a developed country.
This person is either very ignorant or very stupid, because the Brazil she describes is only true for a minority of the brazilian people: the ones that live in big Cities, like São Paulo and Rio, and that have MONEY.Brazil is a great country, the best, but it's far from developed.
Central do Brasil is a Movie filmed by the heart of an authentic South-American person.
You just have to watch the minute or so before the titles appear to know that you're in for a treat: a real picture with real people.First it's a story about a woman, Dora, and a nine year old Josue, who is looking for his father.
So, if you want to enjoy a touching and realistic film which will probably have you in tears, give it a try and take a couple hours to watch this masterpiece of the Brazilian movie industry..
Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is a petty deceitful selfish old woman who writes letters for illiterate people at the central station in Rio de Janeiro.
It follows a "less is more" philosophy, which means that the simplest things can be good.This Brazilian piece of cinema is almost a road movie, although it does a good job in two different things: taking us to the streets of Brazil and to places outside of the town.
provided they like it, of course.This motion-picture tells the story of Dora (a grumpy and apathic middle-aged/old woman), an ex-school teacher who writes letters for illiterate costumers as a job and Josué, a poor boy who just lost his mother tragically and son of a father he never met.
The film tells the story of two characters, Dora, a retired schoolteacher who writes letters for the illiterate public in the train station, and Josué, a young boy in search of his estranged father.
Likewise, I believe the relationship that develops between Dora and Josué to be just as beautiful, portraying two people who want nothing to do with one another, yet, who need each other in order to discover the truths of life's journey.
'Central Station' is one of the best Brazilian films ever made.
Bernstein, by the way, is an excellent director himself, which debut film, "Do Outro Lado da Rua", brings back to the movies the fabulous Fernanda Montenegro, the first Brazilian actress nominated for an Oscar ("Central do Brasil"/"Central Station" in 1999)..
Central Station is a intimist film that in its dense and full atmosphere of the most human feelings involves us, of the beginning to the end, and in which many of us identify with Dora and Joshua.
This quiet little film, with it's sincere, poetic magic, tells the heartbreaking story of its main characters with a glimpse of hope at the end, suggesting a better tomorrow.The main characters are a 60-ish woman, Dora, and a suddenly orphaned 9-year old boy, Jesuel.
`Central Station' is a beautiful movie made with sensibility and a touching feeling of love, courage and adventure.
Not to be missed!Fernanda Montenegro, one of the best Brazilian TV and theatre actress (who got the Academy nomination for this role plays a woman who writes letters in the name of illiterate people.
Everyone in Brazil is talking about the race between "Central Station" and "Life is beautiful" for this year's Foreign Language Film Oscar.
An utterly beautiful film with two wonderful performances by Miss Montenegro and the young boy!.
I love the way the movie depicts characters as being both good and bad and I think the bus trip scenes are just perfect.
The movie shows how hard can be the life for billions of people all around the world and that we try not to see, even in poor countries such as Brasil..
I know these places and these kind of people the movie is about, and Walter Salles, developed the story without importing foreign cinematographic languages.
You learn about changing, about soul and about love in every meanings.For who doesn't know, the little boy on the movie, Vinicius de Oliveira was a poor child, who used to work shining others shoes until the day he met Walter Salles Jr. who took him to the movies tests.And for the ones who doesn't know too, Fernanda Montenegro is our best actress. |
tt0046927 | 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. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0384832 | Jigoku Kôshien | It's every high school baseball team's dream to go to the legendary Koshien Stadium Tournament. For the first time in years, Seido High School has a chance—star player Gorrila Matsui has finally given the team an opportunity to succeed. Most delighted at this prospect is Principal Kocho. His hopes are dashed, however, when the Head teacher reveals to him that the first game will be played against the infamous Gedo High School.
Gedo is notorious for its brutal killings during games. They hardly play at all, instead engaging in a form of martial arts combat called "fighting baseball". Their matches erupt into brutal battlefields, Gedo slaughtering its opponents in any way possible, and the competing team vainly struggling for their lives. The Gedo team is almost inhuman in its slaughter, and their bizarre weapons and attire coupled with their green-grey skin only increase this reputation. Understandably, Kocho is distressed—not only at the likely murder of his students, but at the loss of yet another chance to win the Koshien Stadium Tournament.
Much to his delight, however, is the appearance of mysterious newcomer Jubeh, played by Tak Sakaguchi. Jubeh rescues Four Eyes (Megane, so named because of his eyeglasses.), played by Atsushi Itō, from a gang of expelled students, beating Bancho (Japanese for "boss" or "leader") and catching Kocho's eye. He begs and pleads with Jubeh to join the team to help them defeat Gedo, but he steadfastly refuses. During this time Kocho and Jubeh are also confronted by a resurrected Bancho, though his "face changed". Bancho joins the team, explaining that the injuries that prevented him from playing baseball were cured by Jubeh's punches.
When confronted by Four Eyes, Jubeh reveals why he has stopped playing baseball–in song. He musically laments his pitching skill, explaining how he became so skilled he was a danger to himself and others. Only his father, with an absurdly huge catcher's mitt, will allow Jubeh to pitch. However, when an accidental ball to the head kills him, Jubeh vows never to pitch again.
Despite this sorowful story, Four Eyes insists that Jubeh join the team, explaining his own plight. His mother hates baseball, and would be furious if he were to play. As a result, he must keep his presence on the Seido team a secret. Four Eyes' sheer love for the game touches Jubeh deeply, and he joins the team.
However, when the game against Gedo starts, Jubeh is nowhere to be found. As a result, the team is, predictably, slaughtered by the Gedo students. Jubeh gets there in time to hear Gorilla's last words. Finding a body he believes to be Four Eyes', Jubeh laments the loss, before realising that it's in fact a Gedo trap. The "body" explodes, hurling Jubeh across the field, sending him to an early grave.
Jubeh finds himself in a sepia-toned small town street in the afterlife. He sees a man he has not seen for some time–his father. He convinced Jubeh to embrace his pitching skills, and defeat Gedo once and for all. Jubeh pledges to do so as he watches his father ride off. Returning from the afterlife, he introduces his pitch, dubbed the "Super Tornado". Bancho also returns, again, this time as a child. He too met Jubeh's father in the afterlife, and was given his catcher's mitt.
In the meantime, somehow Four Eyes' mother has discovered that he was on the baseball team. As punishment, she locks him up in a cage, and watches over him day and night. Jubeh comes to rescue him, fighting Four Eyes's mother. He confronts her, asking her why she hates baseball so much. She reveals that her husband was killed by a baseball pitcher. All three come to a sudden realization—They are family. In jubilation, Four Eyes' mother gives him permission to play.
Kocho, Bancho, Jubeh, and Four Eyes, having formed a new Seido team, confront Gedo. The Gedo coach mocks the size and strength, or more accurately the lack thereof, of the new team. Much to his surprise however, several new team members show up—Head Teacher and Gorilla, now cyborgs, having been resurrected by "advanced technology", one of the school's cheerleaders, and Four Eyes' mother all team up to defeat Gedo.
Ultimately, all except Jubeh and the Gedo coach have been knocked unconscious. They duel with elaborate baseball bats, before Jubeh is knocked to the ground. Then, the Gedo coach unveils his ultimate weapon: the Gedo Poison Bat. Filled with a combination of deadly poisons and healing herbs, the effect is to create a horrific pain that will last for "hundreds of years." The coach slams it down onto Jubeh—However, Four Eyes has sacrificed himself, jumping in the way of the coach's attack. Jubeh, furious at the loss of his brother, leaps up and bitterly attacks the coach. However, before he can kill the coach, the Gedo players plead for his life, explaining how he brought them out of orphanages and became like a father to them. Seeing their heartfelt plea, Jubeh can't help but allow the coach to live.
Happily, the coach gains a newfound respect for life, and throws a bottle of antidote to Jubeh. A crowd gathers, and the sun begins to shine. However, this peace is soon interrupted by one member of the Gedo team, his head wrapped in bandages. He guns down everyone on the field, firing randomly and hitting everything in sight, including his own teammates. Jubeh manages to escape only through his own dexterity and the gunman's limited ammo. Looking around in outrage, Jubeh sheds a tear. As cherry blossoms fall, everyone on the field returns to life, before Jubeh attacks the bandaged gunman, literally knocking the muscles off his bones.
Joyously, the crowd celebrates, and the narrator states that they lived happily ever after—Including the one person on the field that day who wasn't resurrected by Jubeh's tears. | absurd, psychedelic, murder, violence, flashback | train | wikipedia | Battlefield Baseball (2003) is a fine adaptation of a Japanese manga comic.
One day his worse fears come true when he looks into the paper and finds his team playing against the undead brutal team from Gedo.
Unless he can convince the new transfer student to play for his school's baseball team.
Find out when you watch Battlefield Baseball!!Not a classic film but it's highly entertaining.
It's a total manga film so be prepared for cheesy melodrama, exaggerated violence, adult humor and musical numbers!!Highly recommended..
The Japanese love to mix genres, and with this one it is comedy, action, zombie film and musical all rolled into one big laugh fest.
The wackiness starts off with a baseball team trying to make it to the finals but facing their first opponents the Gedo team, which consists of zombie/demons kills almost the entire team.A rogue ex-player joins the high school and is recruited to the failed team in hopes that they can defeat them.
The recruitment leads to the films first of 3 (that I can remember) comedic musical numbers giving background information on the characters.The wide array of characters blends well for the film, and lends to the ridiculous scenes with the team facing off against the Gedo zombie team, who have their own rules for baseball, which doesnt even contain the actual game of baseball, but just attacking the other team attempting to kill them all.
Theres no way this strange humor would work in America, so if you like off the wall comedies, try to get a copy of this movie and see for yourself..
BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL (3 outta 5 stars) Okay, this is a low budget movie...
How can you not love a movie about a high school baseball team that has to fight an evil team that slaughters everyone they play against...
but I loved the team of bad guys, particularly the head coach who is one of the coolest looking villains ever.
The extremely round-eyed Bancho that we meet at the start of the movie is pretty funny, too.
The movie plays out like a feature length Monty Python sketch...
^^ Anyway, with cheesy SFX, over-the-top acting, and absolutely nonsensical jokes, Battlefield Baseball comes out as one hilarious film that doesn't take itself seriously for nary a minute - mixing some neat AoD tricks with the kind of Japanese humor, which is pretty typical of manga and anime.I haven't had the pleasure to read the original manga, but the closest comparison I can call, considering all the lampooning going on here, is the anime version of Excel Saga (which incidentally has an episode about baseball heroes - make sure you watch that if you haven't yet!) The movie is quite successful in what it was trying to do (and probably one the few that manages to pull it off): it's guaranteed to make you laugh - provided you like the styles of the source material.
...it would probably look a lot like this; because like Monty Pythion, this movie deliberately goes out of its way to be as ridicules as possible.
The story involves a high school baseball team, who's opponents happen to be a vicious gang of superhuman, green-faced monsters; the monster team enjoys horribly mutilating the players on the opposing team (sorry to disappoint you sports fans, but there is very little baseball is actually played).
Anyhow, the high school's last hope is to try and recruit a new student with incredibly powerful baseball skills; unfortunately he has vowed never to play baseball again, after one of his pitches ends up killing his father; are you following this so far?
There's a bit more to the story then that, but its not that important, sense the whole movie is really just an excuse to show us some of the most insane gags ever brought to the screen.
In my humble opinion low budget Japanese movies tend to be quite interesting and original, sometimes containing really odd ideas for the story and scenery.
The film do have a few really good moments where I was having a big smile and a bit of a laugh but as another other user here at the IMDb boards wrote, quoting "low budget ultimately hurts it too much" - something I'd definitely back up.
But if you are into Japanese movies and are just looking for some good time-killing, perhaps this one would do the trick..
Fun. Ever wanted to see an action / comedy / musical about baseball playing zombies?
He is a great baseball player, but he won't allow himself to play, that is until his new school, Seido High has to face the Gedo High School team, a team of baseball-playing zombies, whose stadium is apparently not to subject to any laws.
Awesome.'Battlefield Baseball' is nothing but 90 minutes of insanity: packed with fights, deadly baseball matches, all sorts of strange characters, musical numbers, crazy dialog, the most convenient and bizarre plot twists, and all-round awesomeness, 'Battlefield Baseball' is one bizarre, but very funny movie.Don't watch 'Battlefield Baseball' with any expectations, and don't take it seriously at all, and you should enjoy it.
I saw Battlefield Baseball at the Fantasy Film Festival in Munich, and it's really one of the funniest movies i've ever seen in my live!
The story is basically about a High School Baseball Team which has to face the brutal Killer Team of the Gedo High in a Baseball Match to death.
I don't want to tell u anything about the funny scenes, 'cause they are difficult to explain to someone who hasn't seen the film.
BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL (2004) This low-budget baseball zombie comedy is arguably a mixed bag, but one likely to develop a sizable cult following.
Desperate to make it to the big leagues, the Seido High School baseball team must face their much more successful rivals at Gedo High, a team made up entirely of well-armed zombies.
Their ace in the hole may well be transfer student `Jubeh The Baseball' (Tak Sakaguchi), who's signature fastball killed his own father, a tragedy which prevents him from helping the team.
Directed by the writer of VERSUS (Yudai Yamiguchi), produced by that film's director (Ryuhei Kitamura) and starring that film's lead (Tak Sakaguchi), BATTLEFIELD shares that film's low-budget ingenuity, but wisely knows when to take up stakes and call it a day around the 90 minute mark.
From the star and assistant director of personal favourite VERSUS comes what may best be described as SHAOLIN SOCCER as seen through the eyes of the Takashi Miike that made HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS.
i.e. one of the strangest, campest and most ridiculous films the world has ever seen.Tak Sakaguchi plays "Jubei Baseball", a student with extraodinary baseball talent that has sworn off the sport because of...
which he believes he is about to achieve until he discovers his opponents are a team of zombies renowned for not leaving their opponents alive at the end of a game.
Can Jubei be persuaded to join the team and help them achieve victory?Battlefield Baseball is based on a manga, and it shows - the styling of the film is extremely comic-book like, coupled with bizarre soap opera styled melodrama.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from an extremely low budget that robs it of most of the coolness that it could have had - and it shows that Ryuhei Kitamura was the real talent behind making VERSUS go so far beyond its budget, not his AD.
If you like movies that are just plain stupid and silly, then this is for you.
But, in doing so, it is hilarious and just great.You really can't get any better with vicious (and cheesy!) baseball brawls !
I know I had expected to at least like it a little bit as it has a tie in with Battle Royale and Jubeh is played by the star of Ultimate Versus, I loved both movies.
Someone else mentioned that there is never actually a baseball game and that's true, but we do see a baseball and bat a couple of times and they do wear uniforms (I had to write something good to justify my rating of 2 rather than 1) I could go on but then this would become as tedious as the movie itself, avoid this one..
I got this movie because i loved Battle Royale and was looking for similar stuff - but this movie is not the crazy japanese hack n' slay genre that i was expecting.
I thought about zombies playing baseball, but they never really play baseball in this movie.
But the worst thing of the movie is the absolutely stupid story that keeps you waiting for something that never happens (Inculding absolutely awful singing parts - like in a Disney Movie - Oh my God) Don't waste your time with this movie - that's my conclusion.
I always thought that VERSUS was one of the greatest Japanese movie, but I've to say that I was wrong...
The plot of Battlefield Baseball (Battlefield Stadium) might be stupid for some, but I loved it...
It was like watching Shaolin Soccer with Baseball, with good comedic performance from the actors (and once again a stupid but plausible story...
I would not consider myself a fan of this type of cheesy, campy zombie movies (I have yet to get through Army of Darkness without turning it off in disgust), but I did like Versus.
I really didn't know what to expect when I started watching it, but right away I was laughing at the terrible acting and dialogue.The movie centers on a baseball coach who wants to get to the finals, but he finds out that the first team he has to play against is the Zombie team from Gedo High School.
He then recruits Jubeh the Baseball, played by Tak Sakaguchi, to help fight the zombies.
The fight scenes and dialogue between the characters is just so cheesy that you can't help laughing at it.
I almost fell off my chair laughing.Once you get over how bad the acting and script is, this movie is pure fun and comedy (plus it has one of the greatest endings ever!).
I don't what to make of this movie, it as got to be one of the most strangest, weediest horror comedy movie I have ever seen.The plot to this Battlefield Baseball is a tough game--it doesn't end until all the members on the opposing team are dead.
In this game the Gedo High team is composed of blue-faced zombies, and their opponents on the Seido High team know they don't have a chance at beating themThis movie like no other zombies, I have seen, the first part of the movie is with about the headmaster who is coaching baseball team, They going face the same Zombie team who killed his players in the last time, which we see before the titles.
We do get see one gory death on scenes but all we see is the aftermath of the dead body parts torn off all over the place, he hated the fact it's same team again.He one of funniest people in the movie, he had me laughing a number of timesalso a New kids as come to the school who seem to be really good at baseball but he stopped playing and then he explains though song , yes a song!, how his dad died, in a very funny song!As this movies goes on, it's gets weird and wearied and never stops at all until very last scene of the movie.There some really funny moment in this movie, that I could not stop laughing and great jokes as well, worked really well.
and I loved the ending of the movie, thought really classic ending and very funny!The most bizarre, Horror, Comedy and I never seen anything liked this before!
some movies can take a super low budget and make something great with it.
This was utter crap.I get the feeling they created the plot for this with a couple hundred posted notes and a collection of darts.the special effects were probably made by a team of fourth graders The jokes were groan worthy It was a parody, but even so, the characters were so clichéd it wasn't funny.There were some neat ideas in this and some mildly zany "death" scenes but overall the best thing about this movie was the ending, because it was finally over..
I had such high hopes for this movie, as I first heard of it recently after seeing some great movies that this one tried to emulate, like shaolin soccer and god of cookery.
However as much as I wanted to enjoy viewing this movie, I ended up hating every single minute of it.
It uses every stupid hackneyed plot device and character type in the history of stupid movies, and doesn't pull off a single element convincingly, and was completely devoid of entertainment.
The producers probably wanted to do a movie like shaolin soccer, except they refused to pay a single yen more than the cost of the materials this abomination was shot on.
I have never seen such a thoroughly unfunny movie attempt so many bad gags.
Before watching this movie I thought it was going to be something like Shoalin Soccer but then with baseball.
I was left disappointed because I totally dig the idea of baseball with kung-fu moves.It is very hard to describe this movie but I'll try and explain why it's so goofy.
There are like 2 or 3 songs in this movie and they have the most ridiculous lyrics.
Now this is exactly why I was left disappointed because I was waiting for him to kill 1 or 2 bad guys with his super pitch but you never get to see it, only in his memories.It has it's funny moments but it's so damn goofy that you're sometimes scratching your head and wondering what the hell your watching.Don't expect shoalin soccer with baseball, but if your into Japanese goofiness then don't miss it..
It was the only time I laughed for this flick.You can still have fun with Jigoku Koshien if: -you are less than 22.(geeks add 4, girls remove 5) -You gather friends who wish a heavy duty low-budget Japanese no-brainer.
-If your local laws permits smoking pot, you should consider doing so.I loved many of the films cited in comments: Bad Taste, Evil Dead, Shaolin Soccer, Army of Darkness, many Monty Python, Battle Royal.But did NOT enjoy Jigoku Koshien.
If you thought Shaolin Soccer was wicked and funny, you've gotta see this one - some ideas are just so stupid that you can't believe, for example when this Head Teacher guy was killed while fighting against Evil Godo Team, he comes back from the dead after a while wearing some stupid metal stuff, and the dialogue goes like this:Head Teacher!
How can one not like a film that parodies "Lost in Translation".Quality is irrelevant to this movie - practically everything is.I have seen comments that this is a derivative film - derivative of what, I don't know.
There just seems to be an awful lot of funny movies coming out of Asia right now.
It's good to know someone has a sense of humor.There's little doubt that this is not a baseball movie - except of course that it is.
Sadly, the film leaves much to be desired.There's little in the way of zombie mayhem--most of the action, incredibly, happens off screen--and even less baseball.
As a result, this 'baseball' game consists of little more than a few fist fights with some poor special effects thrown in for good measure.There are a few amusing moments: Jubei's flashback to his father's death, for example, involves the most obscenely large catcher's mitt ever seen, but by and large, this is a poor tribute to the films of Takashi Miike..
I love horror movies, foreign films and baseball.
A Japanese zombie baseball flick?
And why does a movie with "baseball" in its title have virtually no baseball action in it?
I was curious to see the myriad ways one could defeat the undead on a baseball field generally within the games rules: Anticipating a line drive decapitating the pitcher, or a base-runner sliding into second with razors on his cleats, eviscerating a middle infielder while breaking up a double play.But there's nothing like that here.
There's also little sense of the game how it's played and revered in Japan, and the tiny differences I did notice I'm not sure I believe.
Apart from the lack of actual baseball and blood & guts, the movie offers little to recommend it otherwise.
There are a few small, funny moments, but most of the movie is shot through a sickly pea-green filter, the characters substitute nuance for monotonous yelling (just like DAY OF THE DEAD, the most disappointing American zombie movie I've seen), the zombie makeup is embarrassingly bad (they've got more pancake than IHOP), and, for some reason, the lead ghoul is dressed in vaguely Old-West fashion, resembling the elderly zombie from HOUSE II (*not* a movie one should be reminded of).And the humans keep coming back to life.
Why care about what happens if there's no doubt everyone will be around at the end?Oh well, burned again on another bad baseball flick.
Hope BALL OF WAX, when I get around to buying it (my store doesn't have it to rent), is at least watchable - a low-expectation descriptive that certainly does not apply to BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL..
This movie is totally stupid.
This movie is for those who lack intelligence, since it does not contain any intelligent thingBad acting+Bad script+Bad effects=Bad movieEveryone is silly in this movie, then zombies comes or some stupid guy with several baseball bats inside him and is still alive.
I still cannot decide which Japanese movie is the worst, this or Koroshiya IchiAvoid at all cost, even if you are curious, download it so you know that you wouldn't spend a dime on this. |
tt0087852 | Ordeal by Innocence | While serving a sentence for killing Rachel Argyle, his adoptive mother – a crime he insisted he didn't commit – Jacko Argyle dies in prison. His own widow, Maureen, believed him to be responsible. Two years later, the man who could have supported Jacko's alibi suddenly turns up; and the family must come to terms not only with the fact that Jacko was actually innocent, but that one of them is the real murderer, and now suspicion falls upon each of them. Christie's focus in this novel is upon the psychology of innocence, as the family members struggle with their suspicions of one another.
The witness, Arthur Calgary, who was unaware of the events and thus failed to come forward and not otherwise locatable by the police, believed the family would be grateful once he cleared their son's name. He failed to realize the full implications of his information. However, once he does so, he is determined to protect the innocent by finding the murderer. To be able to do so, he visits the retired local doctor, Dr MacMaster, to ask him about the now-cleared murderer, Jacko Argyle. MacMaster states that he was surprised when Jacko killed his mother. Not because he thought that murder was outside Jacko's 'moral range', but because he thought Jacko would be too cowardly to kill somebody himself; that, if he wanted to murder somebody, he would egg on an accomplice to do his dirty work. MacMaster says "the kind of murder I'd have expected Jacko to do, if he did one, was the type where a couple of boys go out on a raid; then, when the police come after them, the Jackos say 'Biff him on the head, Bud. Let him have it. Shoot him down.' They're willing for murder, ready to incite to murder, but they've not got the nerve to do murder themselves with their own hands." This description seems to be a reference to the Craig and Bentley case which had occurred in 1952.
While two outsiders attempt to find the murderer, it is an insider – Philip Durrant – whose efforts to uncover the truth force the actual killer to kill again. Ultimately it is revealed that the murderer was indeed acting under the influence of Jacko Argyle. The failure of Jacko's carefully planned alibi was, in hindsight, an ironic stroke of fate when the police failed to locate the absent Calgary. Jacko was not innocent at all and had a hand in the death of his adoptive mother. The killer is revealed to be Kirsten Lindstrom, the Argyles' middle-aged housekeeper. Jacko had persuaded the plain Kirsten that he was in love with her, and persuaded her to murder his adoptive mother under cover of a "foolproof" alibi to steal some much needed money. But once Kirsten learned that Jacko was secretly married, she decided not to cover for Jacko, abandoning him to his fate. | neo noir, murder | train | wikipedia | Mediocre rendition based on Agatha Christie novel with big name cast and atmospheric setting.
In this realization of yet another Agatha Christie novel there is a good cast who gives average acting , nice set design , a twisted intrigue and logic absent .
An American Paleontologist called Dr. Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) visits Mister Argyle (Christopher Plummer) to give him an address book that belongs to his son Jack Argyle (most of the scenes featuring Jacko Argyle were cut because of budgetary reasons) , but the latter has been executed , condemned for murder his mother (all of Faye Dunaway's cameo is a black and white flashback) .
Calgary has proof that the convicted killer is innocent , but no one , neither Police (Michael Elphick's police inspector, modeled to some extent after a harder-nosed American-style police officer) , nor villagers wish to reopen the case .
Once the murder was solved , the real mystery began and Calgary learns that justice has been ill served in a small British community .
, can he find the true guilty?The film is a detective story with Sutherland as an amateur sleuth , in which you are the detective ; being middlingly shot , though filmmaker conjures up some atmospheric scenes .
In the picture there are mystery , emotion , murders , suspense , pointless scenes and gorgeous outdoors .
It packs a very good British support casting such as Sarah Miles , though miscast as Faye Dunaway's daughter , Ian McShane as Philip Durant , Diana Quick as Gwenda Vaughan , Annette Crosbie as Kirsten Lindstrom , Michael Elphick as Inspector Huish , George Innes as Archie Leach , and a young Phoebe Nicholls as Tina Argyle in some nudism scenes .
The movie gets a lush costume design and acceptable production by known Cannon films , Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan , being well set in 1950s England .Colorful and glowing cinematography in Eastmancolor by excellent cameraman Billy Williams .
The inappropriate and anti-climatic soundtrack was not by Dave Brubeck but by Pino Donaggio, who wrote his typical , lush and beautiful score ; when the film didn't test well, they decided to jettison the Donaggio score and replace it with Dave Brubeck music.
Brubeck included an obtrusive jazz score seems to belong to some other film , but was told he'd have two weeks to write an original score , he said no ; they then agreed that they'd use already existing Brubeck tunes and newly record them .
Without doubt the worst production of an Agatha Christie novel.
For a start the musical score by Dave Brubeck is totally out of place in a Christie murder mystery.
At some points in the movie the backgroung music is so loud it is actually difficult to hear the on screen dialogue.
However for me the worst part of this movie is probably the most appalling piece of casting ever seen.
This is really & truly the absolute worst Agatha Christie movie ever!!
(And I've seen 10 little Indians with Frank Stallone!!!) Sutherland & Plummer are greatly wasted in a go no where "mystery".
This is indeed one of the weakest films based on Agatha Christie's work, a lifeless, muddled mystery that clearly lacks the grace (and the budget!) of its predecessors ("Death On The Nile", "Evil Under The Sun") and Donald Sutherland is a pale shadow of Peter Ustinov as far as screen detectives go (of course, he is playing a character much less interesting than Poirot).
The film manages to coast as far as it does on the strength of Christie's plot alone (all her plots have a certain amount of inherent interest), but the direction is hopelessly flat.
I am a purist Agatha Christie fan, so I dislike adaptations which spoil her work.
The cast are talented, but wasted - especially Faye Dunaway, who has about three words.
Agatha Christie's books are not easy to transfer to the screen.The main problem lies in the fact that there's not much show and many many questionings ,deductions and explanations.As always ,the director tries to make up for it by gathering an all-star cast (see yourself) :it sometimes worked in the past ("Death on the Nile" "Murder on the Orient Express"),it does not here.The film is much too short and we have not enough time to make acquaintance with the many-characters-who -had -a reason-and -an -opportunity-to -kill-Dunaway.However ,the very subject of the movie could have been interesting:an innocent was hanged and his family does not care when a witness claims that he was his alibi a couple of years later.The ending is terribly disappointing,which is a shame .Dame Agatha Christie would turn in her grave..
Far From Mrs. Christie's Best Film Adaptations.
When at the very start of the film Paleontologist Donald Sutherland arrives at the Argyle family's house and it comes out he is the undeniable alibi for one of the members executed for murdering his mother two years ago your sensation is that you are about to watch a top thriller; an innocent man has been convicted and a killer is still around.
But as the film runs along your disappointment increases inevitably."Ordeal by Innocence" is a dull and at times even boring film that doesn't raise at any moment.
Nothing interesting happens all along and even the final revealing of the facts lacks surprise and intensity (wether you guessed or not).Donald Sutherland, Cristopher Plummer, Faye Dunaway and Sarah Miles (far from her good performance in "Ryan's Daughter") just pass through their roles and not very enthusiastically either.You won't miss much if you skip this one..
Dreary and muddled despite good cast..
The film begins with some style with the viewer taking a leisure boat ride to a small village in England with a pleasant Dave Brubeck score in the background.
Brubeck's score continues through the movie and by the first half hour becomes annoying due to its over use.
Donald Sutherland is layed back as an American doctor who after a two year expedition to Antarctica learns he was the only alibi to a hitch hiking stranger accused of murder and ultimately hung.
True to Agatha Christie Sutherland becomes a sleuth and we are introduced to the stranger's family and associates.
Rarely do we see them interact with each other and nearly the entire film Donald Sutherland is interviewing each of the cast one-on-one...including the police!
Mid-way the director makes a truly terrible decision to replay some of the audio from previous scenes over present scenes (to represent Donald Sutherland thinking) including muddled whispering under more of Dave Brubeck's score.
At the beginning the police tells Donald Sutherland not to get involved that it is not worth it and at the end Donald and the viewers agree.
The one joyous spark to the entire film was Cassie Stuart (Isabella in BBC's "Northanger Abbey") as the innocent stranger's wife.
Her face and voice literally lit up the dark and damp film in her two scenes which occur in the last twenty minutes of the movie.
She has such fun with her topless scene she should have won a special award just for attempting to bring some entertainment to an otherwise dreary movie..
As stated in other commentaries, a who's who of talent, such as, Christopher Plummer, Faye Dunaway, Donald Sutherland, and many more were thrown together in a film that is not recognizable as an Agatha Christie story.
The film has even less intimacy than the Christopher Reeves 'Superman' movies.
The large cast makes the slick production even less effective than in those films, because there is not enough time to get to know anyone.
From someone who has seen most Christie films (that's what attracted me to this, it was one of the few I hadn't seen) miss this one.
It is not an Agatha Christie movie.
Golan-Globus are better suited to producing flicks about big time wrestling, rather than the snug atmosphere of English mystery..
It's actually one of my favorite movies.I find that Donald Sutherland's performance compelling and subtle and the visuals gorgeous.
The choice of Dave Brubeck's music as a soundtrack, while challenging at times presents an fascinating counterpoint to the visual narrative.Undoubtedly the film is unfaithful to the novel.
This 1984 version of Ordeal By Innocence doesn't just fail as an adaptation, it also fails on its own terms too, the latter of which I always try to base my opinion of a film on.
The story is not perhaps masterpiece status, but it still has all the ingredients that make Agatha Christie so well worth reading.
Just reading what it's about alone makes you want to engross yourself in the book and also watch an adaptation of it.
Christopher Plummer is appropriately wry, Cassie Stuart is just lovely and lights up the film and while Faye Dunnaway deserved much more than a 2-3 cameo appearance she is quite memorable as a character who's easy to hate.
Donald Sutherland is rather workmanlike and Ian McShane brings some wit to his role but is given little to work with, while Annette Crosbie Sarah Miles are wasted and Michael Elphick- looking miserable with one of the worst Scottish accents I've ever heard on film- is embarrassingly bad.
You have a vague sense of what their roles in the story are but little more than that, so it makes the audience find it difficult to properly care.
The story is a great one, but told in this film confusingly and ploddingly with next to no suspense or life, and that is including the ending(further disadvantaged by the murderer being revealed way too early).
So much so that I had a temptation to watch something else, something I don't want to feel from an Agatha Christie adaptation.
And the music is just awful, overbearing and of the films I've seen recently it is by far the most out of place score I've heard for any film since watching 1965's Ten Little Indians(a film I actually liked).
I had heard about this film for a while due to the many international faces that appear in it and also the bad reviews the film has attracted due to the inappropriate music score.I finally got my hands on a DVD this week.
First of all, the story is most compelling and i really enjoyed Donald Sutherland's lead performance as the doctor who wants to solve the mystery.The film is beautifully shot; very moody night scenes and the stars are flatteringly shot.
The film has all the hallmarks of a good British thriller.The only criticism i can give the film is the music score.
It's quiet most of the time and not throughout the entire film like most reviews led me to believe.Faye Dunaway, who was living in England at the time, weaves in and out of the story.
The supporting cast of players were also on top form with a surprisingly stand out performance by Annette Crosbie (better known for One Foot In A Grave on TV).Give the film a chance; it is fairly fast paced, beautiful cinematography, top notch cast...
I only watched the movie to see Ian McShane.
Guilt-ridden after learning that an acquaintance was executed for murder since he was his only alibi and could not be located, an archaeologist conducts his own investigation when the man's family and local police shown no interest in this Agatha Christie murder mystery.
The film has a reputation as the most underwhelming Christie big screen adaptation to date - a charge that is understandable but unfair.
This is a very different sort of mystery movie, and while one might tempted to dismiss it due to its early revelation of the actual killer, the lack of urgency in the air or lifeless supporting characters, solving the mystery and our protagonist putting all the clues together is actually a secondary concern.
'Ordeal by Innocence' is an incredibly mood film too, full of atmospheric lighting choices and much fog in the air, capturing a dreariness in post-World War II Britain as rarely seen on film.
One almost gets a sense that the entire town is jaded by all the trials and tribulations of war with the murder mystery representing old wounds that they simply do not desire reopened.
This may not be a Christie film worth seeing for an imaginative twist, stellar performances or excellent period costumes, but it is noteworthy nonetheless..
Ordeal for the viewer, poor Agatha Christie.
Adapted from good Agatha Christie book this is one bad movie produced by Cannon Group.
It's far from Mr. Christie's best adaptations.
This 1984 version of "Ordeal by innocence" doesn't just fail as an adaptation, it also fails on its own terms too.The musical jazz score by Dave Brubeck is pretty cool itself , but feels out of place in the movie.
Scoreless it would have been a better film The story is so muddled , that I doubt that anyone who didn't read the book would understand it.
The story is a great one, but told in this film confusingly and ploddingly with next to zero suspense or life .This is a "mystery that goes nowhere" as somebody said it.
The murderer is revealed half way through the movie.
We don't have time to care for any of the characters or even remember their names !
Director makes even a mistake of replaying some of the audio from previous scenes over present scenes to represent Donald Sutherland thinking !
The movie doesn't have a big budget , but this kind of story doesn't really need it.
The costumes and sets are very handsome Donald Sutherland gives a good and believable performance as amateur sleuth.
Others like Christopher Plummer and Faye Dunaway are wasted.
The musical score has to be one of the most out of place scores I have ever seen in ANY film.
The musical score has to be one of the most out of place scores I have ever seen in ANY film.
I just cannot imagine who thought a Dave Brubeck jazz score would complement an Agatha Christie mystery film.
It boggles the mind and, more unfortunately, muddles this film pretty good.
Ordeal by Innocence is not a great film but does have a solid mystery and good acting.
The music isn't bad by no means just loud and over-intrusive and not for a film of this ilk.
Anyway, the story about a man trying to clear the name of someone who was tried and executed for a crime this stranger knows for a fact he could not commit is rather interesting.
Donald Sutherland does a workmanlike job.
The character suspects include a wry and devilish Christopher Plummer, a witty Ian McShane, a drunken(and wasted)Sarah Miles, a gorgeous Diana Quick and Annette Crosbie from One Foot in the Grave fame.
No one wants to help the stranger, other people die, and the mystery is not all that hard to figure out by the end but all of it is done with some style and workmanship by director Desmond Davis(he did actually direct the original Clash of the Titans - though I am sure deferred to Ray Harryhausen more often than not!).
All makes for a reasonably enjoyable story and then...then...then that music intrudes and even covers up what is said.
I marked this film down two stars just because of the music.
Anyway, Faye Dunaway has a couple flashback scenes as the murdered mother/wife and Cassie Stuart plays the wife of the murdered innocent man.
She is the best highlight that this film has to boast and she has two short scenes..
Agatha Christie rides again, but, alas, the pleasures of this one are offset by a wildly inappropriate and cursedly intrusive jazz score by Dave Brubeck.
Sutherland is aptly cast as the meddling do- gooder, but Dunaway is wasted in a few brief flashbacks.
Alas, for some unknown reason, the killer is revealed to the audience well before the actual climax, so that it no longer comes as a surprise.
It's the outrageously intrusive music score that's the source of most audience irritation..
This film is on my list of worst movies ever made.
The story is disconnected and it is difficult to understand what is going on or the reason for the characters' actions.
To see Faye Dunaway, Christopher Plummer and Diana Quick wasting their talents in this movie is a crime.
Faye Dunaway is the lucky one, because she plays the victim and gets killed early in the film.
On the other hand, Donald Sutherland must be an amazing actor because he manages to look good in spite of bad directing and bad writing; his performance is believable and he manages to stay in character in spite of everything.
If Dame Agatha Christie were alive she would die laughing!
Donald Sutherland, an American paleontologist visiting England, picks up a hitch hiker one evening.
Nobody in or out of the family seems to care that the hitch hiker could not have committed the murder (of his own stepmother) because he was in Sutherland's car at the time of the crime.Sutherland is the man's alibi but he's turned up too late.
Out of a sense of guilt, he tracks down the real murderer.Agatha Christie's mysteries usually involve a number of diverse people, all of them with one or another motive for the crime, all of them suspect, and a puzzle that depends on the construction of a strict time line.
Christie's movies are of the rare kind in which the use of famous faces in subordinate characters is actually useful.
Oh, yes, that's Mia Farrow.) But this version of "Ordeal by Innocence" is a Golan-Globus production, with all that implies in the way of production values, a thoughtfully prepared script, and skill behind the camera.The first few minutes, in which Sutherland discovers that an innocent man has been hanged, are fine.
The musical score consists of four instruments doing irritating atonal jazz riffs. |
tt0256276 | Possession | A newly separated couple Clyde (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and Stephanie Brenek (Kyra Sedgwick) live in different homes. After Clyde picks up their two children, Emily "Em" (Natasha Calis) and Hannah (Madison Davenport), for the weekend, they stop at a yard sale where Em becomes intrigued by an old wooden box that has Hebrew letters engraved on it. Clyde buys the box for Em, and they later find that there seems no way to open it. That night, Em hears whispering coming from the box. She is able to open it, and finds a tooth, a dead moth, a wooden figurine, and a ring, which she begins to wear. Em becomes solitary, and her behavior becomes increasingly sinister; she stabs her father in the hand with a fork during breakfast. That night, the house, especially Em's bedroom, becomes infested with moths.
At school, Em violently attacks a classmate when he takes her box, resulting in a meeting with Clyde, Stephanie, the principal and the teacher. Em's teacher recommends that she spend time away from the box, so it is left in the classroom. That night, curious about the mysterious noises from the box, the teacher tries to open it, but a malevolent force, the dybbuk, murders her by violently throwing her out a window. Em tells Clyde about an invisible hag who lives in her box who says that Em is "special". Alarmed by her behavior, Clyde attempts to dispose of the box. During their next weekend at Clyde's, Emily gets progressively more upset with the disappearance of the box. She begins yelling at Clyde in the hall with Hannah watching in the back. The dybbuk seems to slap Em across the face. She begins yelling, asking why he's hitting her, from Hannah's perspective it looks like her father actually does. Em flees the house, recovers the box and the dybbuk begins conversing with her in a strange language.
Clyde takes the box to a university professor who tells him that it is a dybbuk box that dates back to the 1920s; it was used to contain a dybbuk, a dislocated spirit as powerful as a devil. Clyde enters Em's room and reads Psalm 91; a dark but invisible force throws the Tanakh across the room. Clyde then travels to a Hasidic community in Brooklyn and learns from a Jewish priest named Tzadok (Matisyahu) that the possession has three main stages; in the third stage, the dybbuk latches onto its human host, becoming one entity with it. The only way to defeat the dybbuk is to lock it back inside the box via a forced ritual. Upon further examination on the box, Tzadok learns that the dybbuk's name is "Abyzou", or the "Taker of Children".
Em has a seizure and is taken to the hospital for an MRI. During the procedure, Stephanie and Hannah are horrified when they see the dybbuk's face in the MRI scans next to Em's heart. Clyde and Tzadok join the family at the hospital and attempt to conduct an exorcism. Where Em is taken to a room that has a tub full of water and a stretcher to keep Em stable during the exorcism. During the exorcism, the possessed Em attacks Tzadok. Clyde grabs Em from him, and Em runs out of the room. Clyde follows her out and finally finds her in the morgue where the lights are off. As he nears her, she starts to attack him. Clyde survives the attack, but the dybbuk is passed from Em to him. Tzadok performs a successful exorcism; Abyzou emerges from Clyde and crawls back into the box. The family is reunited, with Clyde and Stephanie's love rekindled. Tzadok drives away with the box in Clyde's vehicle. The car is hit by a truck, killing him. The box lands safely from the wreckage, and Abyzou's whispering is heard from it, the same Polish rhyme heard at the beginning of the film. | murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | The clues come in the form of journal entries, love letters and snippets of enigmatic poetry that, when pieced together, afford a glimpse into the inner yearnings of these two young, but essentially unrequited lovers.As a narrative, `Possession' runs on two parallel tracks, one set in modern times (that's where the detective story aspect comes in) and the other set in 1859, as we learn the details of the romance that took place between the writers.
In the contemporary plot strand, Aaron Eckhart stars as Roland Michell, a handsome young American research assistant who has come to England to study the work of famed poet Randolph Henry Ash, a writer with a certain misogynistic strain who nevertheless enjoys the rather unique reputation among poets of having been utterly faithful to his wife.
Confronted with this startling, revolutionary and, perhaps, priceless piece of information, Roland sets out to unravel the mystery, accompanied by Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), an expert on the life and work of Miss LaMotte (and a distant descendant of that famed poet in the bargain).`Possession' earns points automatically simply by providing us with a unique storyline and a fascinating glimpse into a world we have rarely if ever seen portrayed on screen - the world of literary investigation.
Based on the novel by A.S. Byatt, the David Henry Hwang/Laura Jones/Neil LaBute screenplay provides highly charged scenes between our two romantic couples, particular those involving Roland and Maud.
This film offers some gorgeous visuals and some great performances - notably those by Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle (a bit of a casting joke since those two are famous for playing Jane Austen's Mr. Knightley and Elisabeth Bennet, respectively) - but as a literary adaptation, the movie falls short on too many points.
For some unfathomable reason, the screenwriters have decided to cut out completely two crucial characters from the modern-time storyline - Val, Roland's girlfriend, and the feminist (and Lesbian) researcher friend of Maud's, whose name I forget - their equivalents in the Victorian period are Ash's wife, and Christabel's lover Blanche.One of the main interests of the original story lies in the ways in which the relationships between those characters have changed because of the changes in society that the 20th century has brought - particularly the way the main characters relate to each other (significantly, Maud is the stronger and more successful person in the modern-time relationship) - but also with respect to all the other characters involved (Roland and Val's relationship, which is based almost exclusively on sex, as contrasted with Ash's and his wife's relationship, which is entirely sex-less - the point here being that in a truly fulfilled relationship, these two things must be in balance).Also, the characters, particularly that of Roland, are bent and twisted beyond recognition - I have nothing against Aaron Eckhard or his performance, but he simply plays a completely different character from the Roland Mitchell of the novel - who is *not* brash (nor is he celibate), but has a certain mousy-ness about him that is quite essential to the plot.
Judging from the director's commentary, the main reason for casting Eckhard was that he's a buddie of director Neil La Bute's - it's a sad thing that the filmmakers decided to twist the character and plot to accomodate the actor, rather than making a more informed casting choice, as I am sure there are plenty of suitable British actors out there that would have fitted the part admirably.Gwyneth Paltrow offers a convincing enough performance, and is well-cast as Maud Bailey - a woman whose physical attractiveness stands in the way of her being taken seriously as the bright academic she is.
But she is not being given enough scope to be the reserved intellectual she is supposed to be, because her relationship with Roland developes far too quickly, and with not enough plausibility (particularly given a certain lack of chemistry between the two actors) - thereby missing another of the main themes (and contrasts) in the novel.Having said that, the film is worth watching for its final five minutes alone - and incidentally, this is the one scene that catches most accurately the spirit, and the point, of the original novel..
It's just too bad that we don't see more of why he likes Ash so much and what really motivates him to take up the literary chase with Maud...and this is why I would recommend to anyone who's enjoyed the movie that they should read the book...it will amaze you how much LaBute managed to keep in, and it will astound you to become more acquainted with the quadrangle of characters and their individual passions and motivations..
Following her performances in "Emma", "Sliding Doors" and "Shakespeare In Love", for the fourth time Paltrow adopts an impeccable English accent.This time she plays an academic specialising in the work of an obscure 19th century poet called Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle, whom I enjoyed in "This Year's Love").
She is approached by an American researcher, Roland Michell, played by a permanently unshaven Aaron Eckhart, who has discovered a possible romantic connection between LaMotte and fellow poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam, last seen in that other costume drama "Gosford Park").
Because, as this film so richly reveals, love indeed lives eternal, and is borne on the very same flame throughout the ages.Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart), an American, is in London on a fellowship researching the life and work of 19th Century poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam), poet laureate to Queen Victoria.
And what follows is a journey of discovery for Michell and Bailey; about the tenets of truth, history, and most importantly, about love.LaBute, Laura Jones and David Henry Hwang wrote the screenplay for this film, adapted from the novel by A.S. Byatt.
In Ehle's Christabel, we discern a character of independence and strength, beneath which lies the romantic nature of the poet; in Northam's Ash we find gentleness and charm, a dreamer who seeks out and finds that which is beautiful and good about the world, the spirit of which he manifests in his work.
The bad news is that the director only put his heart into one of the story lines, namely the costume one, and as a result, the modern day lovestory between Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as literary sleuths suffers greatly.
Nevertheless, Possession makes for an OK diversion into quasi-romance.Starting in the positive end then, period-junkies Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle are breathtaking to watch as poets during the Richmond period in England.
The graceful words in their letters even invests the film in a lyrical flow of sorts.For our modern day story, Gwyneth Paltrow plays the icy literary expert Maud Bailey, who is also a descendant of Ehle's character, but clearly lacking in her passion.
Eckhart plays an American literary researcher in England who stumbles upon some long lost and completely unknown love letters by a Victorian poet (who just happens to be having his centenary celebrated!) He pairs with an icy doctoral researcher (Paltrow) and they begin to piece together a heretofore undiscovered relationship between the married poet (Northam) and a fellow poetess (Ehle) who is involved in a long-standing lesbian love affair.
And so does "Possession," also based on a novel and beautifully realized by Neil LaBute, a sensitive director with an outstanding leading cast.Set in England with a side trip to France, "Possession" follows the path of laconic American scholar "Roland Mitchell" (Aaron Eckhardt) as he works for an eccentric Irish academic.
The "period" portion of the film is excellent, mainly due to some uncharacteristically good directing by LaBute and excellent acting by Jennifer Ehle and the always great Jeremy Northham (if there was any justice this guy would be a major star).Sadly the modern day characters are not played by actors of such caliber.
He clearly had no insight into a character who is supposed to be this sophisticated, and instead played him as a stereotypically cartoonish American male slob who inexplicably loves English poetry (and is a scholar to boot!) Add in some truly bad writing, dialogue and a screenplay that suffers from logic gaps and you've got a frustrating movie that might have been good but ultimately isn't.
The supremely literary and ambitious novel by A.S. Byatt has been streamlined into a more conventional love story for two beautiful Hollywood actors in this screen adaptation directed by (of all people!) Neil LaBute.Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow play scholars of a Victorian poet and poetess, respectively, who discover that their two subjects were romantically involved and find themselves in a race with rival scholars to prove it and change the face of scholarship forever.
The film intercuts modern-day scenes of Eckhart and Paltrow falling cautiously in love with flashbacks to the two poets, played by Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle.
(Perhaps I need to give his other movies another look.) Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart were beautiful to look at and enjoyable to listen to, and made the impossible task of reading letters on screen seem easy - and interesting.
Unfortunately, despite it's acclaimed art-house director and cast of well-known actors, "Posession" falls firmly into the latter category.A graduate student of Victorian-era poetry named Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) has stumbled onto a potentially fascinating discovery: two famous poets, Howard Ash (Jeremy Northam) and Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) may actually have been lovers.
The 1850's lovers, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, aren't exactly better, but they have chemistry, which makes them more appealing.The film isn't a total loss; it looks great, and I always have a special place in my heart for historical mysteries (even poorly done ones).
When you have watched so many good English period dramas, this one really astounds you with its dreadfulness.Byatt must be fuming.There is a total absence of true English character in this most English of books,we have only a few glimpses of priggish people who say "old chap".The director really should have spent more time in England before making this film, he might have learnt something of the wit,intelligence and subtly that makes English films so terrific.The highly overrated Gwenyth attempts her own version of the English reserve as Maud ,but manages to do it in such an unoriginal and obvious way that she should have just stuck a sign on her head that read "repressed English person with a clip folder".Lebule uses the revolutionary metaphor of Maud taking her hair out of a pony to signify her final release from rigidness.One can only conclude that he has been watching to many American sitcoms where the librarian takes of her glasses and unties her bun and begins her rolling love affair.This film really gave me a greater appreciation of actresses like Emma Thompson who plays a 'maudesque' character in sense & sensibility but does it with so much more insight and orginality..
S. Byatt's Possession, the girlfriend & I were looking forward to watching the DVD.Unfortunately, someone (presumably director Neil LaBute) decided that it would make a better movie if Roland were recast as (this is how he put it in the fragment of "director's comments" that I glanced at) "a brash American...to give the movie more 'spark'".That's like casting Pee Wee Herman in the lead role of Conan the Barbarian ("we thought his manic antics would lend new energy to the role").Aaron Eckhart mugs and smirks his way through the whole movie, apparently under the impression that he's Harrison Ford in a remake of Star Wars and Professor Maud Baily is spoiled Princess Leia.
So many compromises have been made to get this richly textured novel onto the screen that where the book interwove the stories in a fascinating counterpoint, convincing in voice and detail, the film is simply a bog-standard romance between good-looking actors with some pretty victorian stuff tacked on.You have wonder about the wisdom of even attempting to convert a book which is powerful tribute to the power of words and language and turning into a would-be powerful tribute to Gwyneth Paltrow.
I was even quite disappointed in Jennifer Ehle, whom I loved in "Pride and Prejudice." The only performances I liked at all -- but not quite enough to actually make me want to finish watching the movie -- were Jeremy Northam's and Lena Headey's.I know most readers will hate me for this, but if you've ever read the book, don't bother with this movie.
Having had some time to reflect on it, though, I feel I'm able to put a few of my thoughts out more concretely, and maybe my impression of the film will shape itself through my writing.Basic synopsis of the film, to start: Roland Mitchell (Eckhart), an American scholar living in England, comes across a pair of mysterious letters written over a hundred years previously by poet laureate Randolph Henry Ash (Northam).
The film shows the parallel stories of the 20th century investigators and the 19th century lovers, and how the two relationships change as time passes.Firstly, the "good": Northam and Ehle are fabulous.
But Roland and Maude dig further, finding out far more about these two long dead people than they ever expected.As this mystery and investigation is going on in the present day, the movie begins to flash back to the 19th century story.
The melodramatics come on a bit strong towards the end like some old silent movie plot, and the second or third bed room scene in the present seems to become boringly dull, nevertheless, this love story or love stories are a testament to love and its ability to pass through time, the mystery of letters, historical records, the permanent remains of passion that exist from past to the future.
American Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart) discovers clues to a secret love affair between Victorian era poets Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) and Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle).
As Roland and Maud make further discoveries, they fall for each other.It's very weird that every character comments on Aaron Eckhart being an American and there's Gwyneth Paltrow playing a Brit.
However Possession has kind of ripped the guts out of the novel so the mirroring is not as evident.Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) is a brash American scholar in London studying the works of English poet Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) whose poetry was devoted to his wife.Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) is an English academic researching the life of a lesser known Victorian poet Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) who was also bisexual.Mitchell has discovered letters that appear to link both poets as secret lovers and therefore put a twist to what is known about Ash and his devotion to his wife that would create a literary scandal.
POSSESSION is a handsomely produced romantic affair combining both modern and period romance skillfully with overlapping flashbacks that delve into the research being conducted by GWYNETH PALTROW and AARON ECKHART as they gradually fall under the spell of romance themselves.Its leisurely pace and artistic trappings make it the ideal sort of romance for viewers who like relationship tales rather than a constant stream of fireworks.
JEREMY NORTHAM and JENNIFER EHLE are impressive as Victorian lovers caught up in an illicit relationship.Paltrow is more appealing than usual even though her role is rather one dimensional and Eckhart is appealing as the American doing his earnest research believably.
Of course, I haven't read the book, so I don't know just how important the modern story is to the readers in this film, but I think the screenplay, acting and direction in the period piece is just more intriguing and much, much better done.I listened to a bit of the director's commentary, and he mentioned taking a screenwriter's license to changing the original story so it would work the way he wanted it to, which I think is a shame, because I have heard the book is such a good read.
The differences between the scenes involving Paltrow-Eckhart and Ehle-Northam are like the differences between Victorian and Romantic literature.
However, the movie is overall good entertainment for a few hours.The atmosphere of Possession is very engaging and does use effectively some beautiful scenery.Furthermore the story between Ash and Lamott is what kept my interest during the film.
I'd recommend it to people who like romantic dramas and lovely sets, not really caring if the story is a bit thin.This movie has at least inspired me to go and by the book!Hope it will do the same to you!.
So, if you want some romance, poetry, great landscapes, some humor and a great story, then check out this great movie with Gwenyth Paltrow (Shallow Hal, The Talented Mr. Ripley), Aaron Eckhart (Erin Brockovich, The Pledge), Jeremy Northam (Amistad, Gosford Park) and Jennifer Ehle (Wilde, Sunshine).
A scholar, Roland Mitchell(Aaron Eckhart) finds a letter written by a poet, Randolph Ash(Jeremy Northam), who is loved because of his fidelity and adoring passion for his wife, Ellen(Holly Aird), which reveals itself through his poetry.
A scholar, Roland Mitchell(Aaron Eckhart) finds a letter written by a poet, Randolph Ash(Jeremy Northam), who is loved because of his fidelity and adoring passion for his wife, Ellen(Holly Aird), which reveals itself through his poetry.
In "Possession", a rough-hewn American poetry researcher in England (Eckhart) meets a lithe and icy Brit (Paltrow) and together they retrace the footsteps and thoughts of a renown English poet laureate of the mid-1850s, methodically piecing together unknown portions of his life involving romance, love, infidelity, and more, all the while falling in like with each other while trying to outwit their competition.
The contemporary story pairs up Gwyneth Paltrow and LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart as two literary historians who get caught up with one another as they uncover surprising new information, via a chain of age-old love letters, of a torrid, highly discreet affair between two unlikely Victorian poets, played in flash-back by the charismatic Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle.
All I have to say is well done Neil LaBute, Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle. |
tt1148165 | Bran Nue Dae | In Broome in 1969, Willie Johnson (Rocky McKenzie) is having trouble wooing his girl Rosie (Jessica Mauboy), who ends up with a bandleader named Lester (Dan Sultan). His mother Theresa (Ningali Lawford) sends him back to boarding school in Perth to continue his education for the priesthood. One night, he and several others steal food from the college kitchen but are caught. Willie admits to being the thief, but runs away before he can be punished. He spends the night on the streets of Perth before meeting up with 'Uncle' Tadpole (Ernie Dingo), who offers to help him get home. They go to Fremantle where Tadpole allows himself to be run over by a Kombi van, hoping that the two hippies inside will help him. Not realising how far it will be to Broome, the hippies, 'Slippery' the German (Tom Budge) and Annie (Missy Higgins), his girlfriend, agree to drive them.
Father Benedictus (Geoffrey Rush), head of the College, has seen Willie's potential and determines to locate him; through Tadpole's homeless friends, he learns that Willie is heading to Broome. The travellers drive north, stopping at a roadhouse where Willie meets the tarty 'Roadhouse Betty' (Magda Szubanski). Tadpole steals some food, a bottle of wine, and an audio tape, nearly causing them to get shot by Betty, but they manage to escape. Slippery becomes disillusioned, and leaves Willie and Tadpole behind in the middle of nowhere; Tadpole curses the hippies by pointing a bone, and the van promptly breaks down.
Willie then gets a ride with a passing truck carrying the members of a football team. They end up in Port Hedland where he meets flirty Roxanne (Deborah Mailman), who takes him to the 'condom tree' and offers to 'show him a good time', but her boyfriend turns up and a fight ensues. Willie is rescued by Tadpole, who says that all young men end up there at some point. The next morning, they are driving along a desert road when a hung-over Roxanne emerges from the back seat, startling everyone. While smoking some pot, they are discovered by police and arrested, despite Annie's attempts at stopping the police from arresting them. At the police station, Slippery reveals that his real name is Wolfgang Benedictus. The police then put them in a jail cell for a night.
They are released next morning, and drive on to Broome, where they go to the bar where Rosie is performing. Willie tries to win her back, but ends up in a fight with Lester, only to be disrupted by a church temperance march, which invites everyone to the beach to testify. Willie tells Rosie he loves her, and they kiss. At the beach, Willie's mother reveals that she had a son to another man, who turns out to be Father Benedictus. Wolfgang is their son. Tadpole is spotted by Willie's mother, and she tells Willie that he is Tadpole's son. | romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0043794 | The Medium | === Act 1 ===
The medium's parlor
Monica, Madame Flora's daughter, and Toby, a mute servant boy rescued from "the streets of Budapest" play dress-up. When Madame Flora, or "Baba" as they call her, arrives home drunk, she violently chastises them for not preparing for that night's seance. Soon the guests arrive, Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau, regulars, and the widow Mrs. Nolan who is attending for the first time. With Madame Flora in a trance in her chair, a fake seance is held where Mrs. Nolan speaks with what she thinks is her deceased sixteen-year-old daughter but is really Monica behind a screen. As Monica disappears, Mrs. Nolan rushes toward the figure and is restrained by the Gobineaus. When order is restored, Mr. and Mrs. Gobineau "communicate" with their deceased two-year-old son Mickey who does nothing but laugh. After they say goodbye to him, Madame Flora "suddenly, with a loud gasp... clutches at her throat with both hands." She feels a phantom hand clutching her throat and is "terror-stricken." After demanding that the guests leave, she calls for Monica and tells her what she felt, eventually blaming Toby who was in the other room the whole time. In an effort to calm Baba's drunken rage toward Toby, Monica sings her the dark lullaby "The Black Swan" which is interrupted by a voice that Baba hears causing her to fly into a terrified rage at Toby for not telling her where the voice is coming from. The act ends with Monica again singing the lullaby while Baba recites her Hail Marys.
=== Act 2 ===
A few days later
Toby is giving a puppet show for Monica. Their mutual love becomes more obvious. When Baba comes home, she resumes her accusations on Toby, sure that he knows what went on that night. The guests again arrive, expecting another seance but are driven away by Madame Flora who tries to convince them that the whole thing was a sham by revealing all the tricks that she and Monica used. But the guests are not convinced and leave claiming that while she might have thought she was cheating them, she in fact was not. Once the guests are gone, she drives Toby out despite Monica's pleas on his behalf. With everyone gone, and Monica in her room, Baba pours herself another drink and questions her own sanity, becoming wild with drink and eventually passing out. Once she has fallen asleep, Toby sneaks back in and tries to get into Monica's room, but finds it locked and eventually goes to the trunk to find his tambourine. While searching, he knocks the lid of the trunk down waking Baba. Toby quickly hides in the puppet theater. As Baba tries to see where the noise came from and fetches a revolver from a drawer in the table. "Hysterically" she shouts out "Who is it? Speak or I'll Shoot!" and the puppet theater curtain moves. " Baba screams and fires at it several times." As Toby's bloody body collapses grasping the curtain, Baba says "I've killed the ghost! I've killed the ghost!" Monica, hearing the gunshots, enters, sees Toby's lifeless body and runs for help. As the final curtain falls very slowly Baba asks, in a hoarse whisper, "Was it you?" | paranormal | train | wikipedia | Performances of a lifetime. This film certainly did not lack for admirers in its own day.It took the Cannes Award for best lyrical drama(lyrical is not exactly the best word to describe what is going on)and received BAFTA and Oscar nominations.It was a conversation piece for years after."Were you ever able to see it?" and later,"Whatever happened to Marie Powers?","Wasn't that Leo Coleman flitting through the Fellini movie?" And ,sorrowfully , it was. For this film brought together three dynamic performers, who had no where better to go cinematically. Marie Powers ,an expatriate American married to a respected but uninfluential Italian opera conductor,had a reputation as a Wagnerian interpreter among Italians who preferred Germanic opera. I have never been able to find a recording from her Italian heyday in the USA.Maybe this is not such a loss. Ms.Powers must be seen to be believed ,and this film offers the only opportunity that either the majority of her contemporaries or all of posterity has to do so.In the very late fifties or early sixties,this reviewer wandered into a lower New York Church and found he had accidentally caught the unviewable Powers live.She was playing Noah's Wife and doing it to the hilt.She could handle religious folk comedy as lightly as she had swept us along the road to damnation with Madame Flora and the hapless Romany boy,Toby.And there were perhaps two hundred locals in the audience, to whom she was giving all that the role could take.I have seen Maria Callas live and Licia Albanese.There is no question Powers stands in that world class of great singer actresses. How many such are there in any century? The two youthful co-stars give equally impressive and perfectly integrated performances.With Powers it is our loss that there simply never are enough good dramatic roles for powerhouse actresses who first come on at age fifty. The young people had different problems.Both reached the apogee of their unforgettable talents at ages fifteen and twenty-eight in their first major roles.Leo Coleman has to be seen to believed,particularly as he plays a mute to a pair of hyper-dramatic women leads.Their five minute ensemble,"Why weeps my child unborn?"must have had Val Lewton gnashing his teeth that he hadn't thought of it first.For this is great story telling as well as compelling music.In fact the script is so good I can hear some disgruntled Gothic fan complaining ,"Why did they want to slow it down with all the singing?" Composer-writer-director-photographer Menotti on this occasion assumed the Orson Welles persona very credibly.To my knowledge it would be nearly thirty years before he tried anything as ambitious a second time,a haunting televised version of his script "Vanessa " during the late seventies.But that's quite all right.It is what the last Romantics are about.. Outstanding film version of Menotti's opera. Amahl and the Night Visitors may be Menotti's most well-known and most performed opera, but the 1960 production of The Consul and this film version of The Medium are great examples of why those two operas deserve to be almost in the same class. It is true that this film is not The Medium that you would see staged at the opera house, that doesn't matter because it is truly outstanding in every department. And Gian-Carlo Menotti is a huge part of the film's success, being not just the composer but also the director and writer, while he is best known as a composer he shows great skill in the writing and directing departments. The film looks great with a film-noir look to it and some of it is bizarre but in a good and striking way, especially with Madame Flora's visions. The drama and staging is intelligent and grabs you right in, with a moving ending and a quite disturbing scene with Toby and Monica at the fair and with Toby being harassed. The music is just lovely and dramatic, the highlight for me has always been Monica's beautifully dark lullaby The Black Swan, rhythmically relatively simple and the hauntingly beautiful main theme will stay in your head long after but with some very awkward note intervals in the middle(even if you are a good sight reader or have absolute pitch you might still struggle). And what is so good about Menotti's writing is, as librettist, lyric-writer or script-writer, is how vivid and poetic his way of words are and the impact they have, particularly apparent in The Black Swan which with the right word painting creates some quite harrowing imagery. The story is easy to follow and has a lot of emotional power, also good in filling in the short running time with good development or not much filler, even giving more to subsidiary characters like Mrs Nolan. Menotti's directing is controlled, and the performances are really impressive apart from some too obvious lip synching(not an uncommon problem in filmed opera though actually). Like Patricia Neway in The Consul, Marie Powers is one performance you are unlikely to forget, her contralto voice is very powerfully projected and Madame Flora's tormented character is brought to life most vividly and movingly. Anna Maria Alberghetti is adorable and sings with a clear, pure tone to her soprano voice. Leo Coleman is both savage and affecting despite not saying a word. Overall, outstanding film, an example of filmed opera done really well. 10/10 Bethany Cox |
tt0034241 | Sun Valley Serenade | Ted Scott (John Payne) is a band pianist whose publicity manager decides that, for good press, the band should adopt a foreign refugee. The band goes to Ellis Island to meet the girl and soon discovers that the refugee isn't a 10-year-old child, but a young woman, Karen Benson (Sonja Henie). The surprise comes right before the band is to travel to Sun Valley, Idaho for a Christmas gig. While on the ski slopes Ted soon falls for Karen's inventive schemes to win the heart of her new sponsor, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend, Vivian Dawn (Lynn Bari), a soloist with the band. Vivian promptly quits the band out of jealousy, and Karen stages an elaborate ice show as a substitute.
Of particular note is the elaborate "Chattanooga Choo Choo" sequence. The scene begins at a rehearsal with the Glenn Miller Orchestra practicing "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and includes two choruses of the song whistled and sung by Tex Beneke in a musical exchange with The Modernaires. As the Miller band concludes their feature the camera pans left to reveal a railway station set. The band continues with the production number and accompanies Dorothy Dandridge and The Nicholas Brothers in their song and dance routine.
Sun Valley Serenade is the first of the only two movies featuring The Glenn Miller Orchestra (the other is 1942's Orchestra Wives). Besides "Chattanooga Choo Choo", other Glenn Miller tunes in the film are "Moonlight Serenade", "It Happened in Sun Valley", "I Know Why (And So Do You)", and "In the Mood".
An instrumental version of "At Last" was recorded by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra as well as a version with vocals by John Payne and Pat Friday, but these recordings would remain unused and unissued. "At Last" can be heard in the movie in three scenes, however, in an orchestral performance by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra in the Lido Terrace night club after they perform "In the Mood", as part of the orchestral background score in a scene between John Payne and Lynn Bari, and in an orchestral version with vocalization but without lyrics a minute and twenty seconds in length during the closing skating sequence with Sonja Henie. "At Last" would also appear in the 1942 follow-up movie Orchestra Wives performed by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra with vocals by Ray Eberle and Pat Friday.
Glenn Miller vocalist Pat Friday provided the pre-recorded vocal tracks that Lynn Bari lip synced in the film.
Future Olympic gold medalist Gretchen Fraser was the skiing stand-in for Sonja Henie. Fraser was a member of the Olympic team in 1940 (cancelled) and 1948. | romantic | train | wikipedia | Anyone who has ever paid a visit to the mountain-cradled village of Sun Valley, Idaho knows that one of the luxuries of staying in its well know resort, of the same name, is that you can view this charming "boy-meets-girl, and then another girl" romantic-musical-comedy, 24 hours a day!
If you are very lucky, as I was during my most recent visit, you can do so from a room overlooking the very ice rink that Sonja Henie performed upon, in this snowbound, big-band era classic "Sun Valley Serenade".When war refugee Karen Benson (Henie) arrives from Sweden to meet her sponsor Tom Scott, the piano player for a big band played by John Payne, it is clear that she has her romantic sites set on our non-assuming hero.
The band gets a gig in Sun Valley, Karen tags along, and the fun begins.Henie's unshakable effervescence and contagious smile allow you to forgive, and even admire, her calculated attempts to win Scott's attention.
And now we know that Jimmy Stewart must have studied this performance prior to doing his bio-pic "The Glenn Miller Story" (1953).Watch for cameo appearances by the adorable 18-year-old Dorothy Dandridge, the show-stopping Nicholas Brothers, and Joan Davis as Berle's gad-fly.If you are a fan of romantic-comedies, the big-band era, ice-skating, or just an old film buff there are special moments for all.
I have long been a Glenn Miller fan and was pleased to find out the my 8 and 10 year old kids love this film and the music also.
Even immigration is covered as the band goes to Ellis Island to pick up the "little" refugee.Chattanooga choo choo was featured in the film and many not know that it was the very first gold record, the first million seller.
You can have all the glamour and pastels of the MGM musical - for sheer fun, give me the Fox musicals, especially this one, Sun Valley Serenade, starring John Payne, Sonja Henie, Glenn Miller, Lynn Bari and Milton Berle.
She connives her way into the train that's taking the band to Sun Valley, where she quickly gets in between Ted and the band's singer, Vivian Dawn (Lynn Bari) whose claws come out in full force."Sun Valley Serenade" is filled with skiing, Glenn Miller music, and Henje's fabulous skating.
Payne does well and sings pleasantly as her leading man.One outstanding musical feature, "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," a Miller standard, is performed first by Tex Beneke and the Miller singers and then - brilliantly - by Dorothy Dandrige and the Nicholas Brothers.
Some of it is filmed on location in Sun Valley, Idaho about 1940.The movie is filled with big band music, featuring Glenn Miller and his band.
It has a lot more music as well and a lot of skating by Sonja Henie.I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the big band sound..
Sun Valley Serenade is remembered today for being one of the two films that Glenn Miller and his Orchestra were featured in, the other one being Orchestra Wives for 20th Century Fox. Miller was the number one swing band in the country and his presence in the film was more important than stars Sonia Henie and John Payne.Payne's a pianist/vocalist with the Miller Band and his romancing of singer Lynn Bari gets the band a gig in Sun Valley during the ski season.
Which is doubly fine for Payne because he likes all kinds of winter sports, indoor and outdoor.But then an old publicity stunt that manager Milton Berle pulled some months earlier comes back to haunt them.
So the band goes to Ellis Island to meet their sponsored urchin, but instead it turns out to be a rather big girl who also likes winter sports, Sonia Henie.The band thinks to park her with Berle's aunt in New Jersey, but Sonia hears about Sun Valley and that sounds too much like home to suit her.
Give you a guess who Payne winds up with.Of course this whole fluffy plot is just an excuse to hang some skating sequences and some music by the Glenn Miller Orchestra.
In fact Sun Valley Serenade was nominated for an Oscar for black and white cinematography and musical scoring.It also received a nomination for Best Song, one of the best known that the Glenn Miller Orchestra was known for, Chattanooga Choo Choo.
John Payne gets to vocalize another great song I Know Why And So Do You which sold a few platters back in the day.I don't know if Payne could play a piano in real life, but even if he was faking it for the film, he got a rare chance to jam with Glenn Miller as he was doing In The Mood, probably his best known hit song.
I'd have paid Darryl Zanuck to do that myself.The Miller Band's presence made a lot of folks forget this was a Sonia Henie film.
Her skating sequences or good, but I'm betting she didn't like being upstaged.Nearly all the big bands in their era which was roughly 1935-1945 got into one film or another.
Some got into better films than others and Miller's band did well by their two films before Glenn Miller went into the army and to his untimely disappearance over the English Channel.Not to forget that the Nicholas Brothers and Dorothy Dandridge got to do specialty numbers.
One of the lesser known (possibly because of the short running time and limited number of songs, but probably just because it's black and white and incredibly quaint), but absolutely classic movie musicals..
How could you miss with such talents as Sonja Henie, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, John Payne, Lynn Bari, Milton Berle, the Nicholas Brothers, and Dorothy Dandridge.
I've seen clips of a few other films including Sonja,the reigning ice queen of the times, and this is by far her most entertaining performance.
While Berle is trying to romance her, she definitely has her eye on a reluctant John Payne, who becomes engaged to the band's singer, played by perennial loser Lynn Bari.
Their collaboration produced such memorable songs in this film as "It Happened in Sun Valley", "I Know Why", "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and "At Last".
John Payne, one of those often underated actors who turn up with regularity in the 1940s, makes a good partner for the sensuous Sonja Henie in this entertaining big band romp in the snow.
Ms. Henie is charming in her role as Karen, a Scandinavian refugee, who has been "adopted" by Ted (John Payne) and his band, who were expecting a little girl.
The classic "In the Mood", the gorgeous "I Know Why and So Do You" (THE most romantic song ever) and the stupendous "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (performed by Tex Beneke and the Modernaires, the number also features the supreme dancing and singing talents of the Nicholas Brothers and the lovely Dorothy Dandridge).
Throw in the presences of Milton Berle and the wacky Joan Davis, the beautiful snow and ski sequences, and the marvelous "black ice" ballet at the end, and you've got one of the best Hollywood musicals from the 40's, indeed, from any decade!.
An odd combination, this one, with the Glenn Miller Orchestra alongside Olympic skater turned film star Sonja Henje.
She plays a refugee who arrives to the USA at the invitation of band member Ted Scott (John Payne) - he's expecting a juvenile and gets little hottie Henje instead.
Miller himself appears as a fictional band leader with many of his real band - there's also a chance to see specialties The Nicholas Brothers and Dorothy Dandridge appear during numbers.There isn't an awful lot of plot, there are the usual hokey misunderstandings and the presence of one of those secluded log cabins out in the middle of nowhere.
John Payne's on as the leading man, Lynn Bari's adding spice to the other woman, and the legendary Sonja Henie is an effervescent leading lady.
I've seen this movie maybe twenty times and I still enjoy it.Almost all the big Miller's standards are there, especially CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO, with its savage coda (missing from all audio versions) and the terrific Nicholas Bros/Dorothy Dandridge number (the Brothers were even better afterwards, in ORCHESTRA WIVES and STORMY WEATHER) Also remarkable is the featuring of the famous Idaho ski station, with a tune I can't identify (it's not Sun Valley Jump).
The story is lightweight, but it's supposed to be, and it is sufficient to tie the rest together.Sonja Henie brings energy and talent to her role as a war refugee who is taken in by a band member.
Glenn Miller's band and the performers in the musical sequences get lots of screen time, making good use of most of it.
The best of all the Sonja Henie films thanks to Glenn Miller and His Orchestra!.
It's got Glenn Miller in full swing with some of his big toe-tapping favorites--including 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' danced by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers, 'I Know Why' and 'In the Mood'.
With all of the skating, skiing and great Miller music, this one can't miss.
Lynn Bari plays it straight as the jealous woman trying to keep Sonja away from Payne and her singing is obviously dubbed--but her song, 'I Know Why', is given a great treatment with the Miller band.
Glenn Miller + Sonja Henie + Romantic comedy: unexpectedly great.
This very agreeable romantic musical comedy from 1941 links two seemingly incompatible elements, both very popular at the time it was filmed: Sonja Henie's ice skating and Glenn Miller's big band jazz.
It's admittedly fluffy, but is also very hard to dislike.The slim plot of sorts: Ted (John Payne), a pianist in a struggling jazz big band headed by Glenn Miller (though he is given another name here), has volunteered for publicity reasons to take a refugee from war torn Norway.
When Ted and Viv goes to the ski resort of Sun Valley for a performance there in the middle of the winter, Karen decides to join them hiding in the train with the help of the band manager (Milton Berle).Of course more than the plot, the important thing here is the music (In the Mood and Chattanooga Choo Choo are some of the pieces included) and Henie's skating.
Maybe a little SUN VALLEY SERENADE will do the trick...Sonja Henie was Norway's ice queen when she won Olympic gold medals in 1928, 1932 & 1936.
Gentle & soft-spoken, he nevertheless provides the strongest competition yet, in any of her films, to capturing the viewers' attention away from Henie.The Miller Band performs In The Mood' and the absolute definitive version of Chattanooga Choo Choo,' which is further enhanced with performances by the fancy-jumping Nicholas Brothers (Harold & Fayard) and the beautiful Dorothy Dandridge.
Fans of the Swing Era should recognize several of Glenn's band members, including saxophonist Tex Beneke, all of whom appear uncredited.John Payne plays Sonja's love interest, and she goes to great lengths to get him, including the willingness to compromise her moral character.
Lovely Lynn Bari is the vocalist also interested in Payne, and the script does her something of a disservice, letting her appear sweet & charming until its time to clear the decks for Henie, at which point Miss Bari's character becomes a jealous virago.
Comedienne Joan Davis, who had already enlivened a couple of Henie's films, makes three appearances so brief as to be little more than a cameo.Ultimately, though, this is Sonja's show.
Almost seven decades after Sonja skated off Olympic ice for the final time, no one has yet laid claim to be her successor in this role."Sun Valley Serenade" lives on in Sunday-morning PBS television screenings and that ultimate mulligan for the golden age of film, home video.
Sun Valley Serenade provides a hot number with Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers.
In a brief specialty number at the end of Glenn Miller's "rehersal" of "Chattanooga Choo Choo", The Nicholas Brothers-Fayard and younger sibling Harold-tap dance up a storm after first doing some steps and singing with Dorothy Dandridge in her only appearance with her future husband (Harold) and his brother.
Otherwise, it's a mostly entertaining movie with John Payne providing some excellent physical comedy near the end, Milton Berle being his amusing wisecracking self, Miller playing his great classics with his band before disappearing in a plane during the war after finishing another picture, Sonja Henie as the refugee from Norway doing some pretty good acting for a skater, and Lynn Bari, who while her role as Payne's first love takes a back seat after Henie appears, does the best she can with the material she's given.
The bright spots were often her, the ice skating sequences and the music, while the weak link was often typically the story.The story is the weak link in 'Sun Valley Serenade'.
8/10 Bethany Cox. Chataneegie Cha Cha. Milton Berle (Nifty) manages the Glenn Miller (Phil) band that includes piano player John Payne (Ted).
Every musical number is a highlight with the showstopper being Glenn Miller's "Chatanooga Choo Choo" which also includes a sequence with Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers.
The film also serves up Sonja Henie and her ice skating spins.
Sonja Henie's skating and the big band music are obviously the highlights of this movie.
You have Sonja Henie who does some beautiful skating, John Payne, choreography be Hermès Pan and music by Glenn Miller and his orchestra.
Throw in Lynn Bari and that voice of hers, Milton Berle playing the bands manager, a cameo by comedienne Joan Davis, and a dance routine by the Fabulous Nicholas Brothers and you have a wonderful film.
Sonja Henie was so cute and her paired with John Payne was amazing.There were some great numbers and of course the ice skating was amazing.
John Payne plays the pianist/arranger for a big band led by Glenn Miller and managed by Milton Berle.
With Glenn Miller around, you know the music is going to be top-notch; the movie introduced the Oscar-nominated "Chattanooga Choo-Choo".
That number also offers a scene for a young Dorothy Dandrige and the Nicholas Brothers.Like is often true in Fox musicals, this one is a split decision The story I give just a 5/10.
Sun Valley is for those who like fun romantic movies..
Sun Valley Serenade has many delightful little songs throughout the film.
Although John Payne is the big actor in the film, his co-star, Sonja Henie is very enjoyable to watch as well.
The dialog was dumb, the humor (mainly Milton Berle's) was downright stupid and the music was just not up my alley.I've never been a big-band fan, anyway, and if I hear "In The Mood" one more time I'll puke.This was my first look at famous skater-actor Sonja Henie and I have no complaints about her.
This musical has the Glenn Miller band and some wonderful songs-- Chattanooga Choo Choo (charmingly performed by Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers), I Know Why, At Last.
"Sun Valley Serenade" is a quite a fun & pleasant movie starring one of the most famous big bands of all time: the Glenn Miller Orchestra!
But the presence of Miller and his band (as Phil Corey and the Dartmouth Troubadours), performing a fair number of old favorites, is what provides this film with a lot of its charm.
The primary love interest in this movie involves the figure-skating Norwegian refugee Karen Benson (Sonja Henie) and the Troubadours' pianist/vocalist Ted Scott (John Payne), who happens to be Karen's sponsor.
By the end of the film, Ted realizes how stuffy Vivian is and how wonderful it would be to have Karen for a wife.My favorite highlights from "Sun Valley Serenade" include the following.
Before Vivian joins the Dartmouth Troubadours, she does a miserable audition of "It Happened in Sun Valley" with her own band, which proves to be a fine accompaniment for her until the second chorus; she walks off the band and continues her audition with the Troubadours, and after their short rendition of the classic "Moonlight Serenade," Vivian chimes in with "I Know Why and So Do You." "Sun Valley Serenade" is a fine showcase for Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, as well as for the figure-skating talent of Sonja Henie.
I highly recommend this film for all admirers of big band music and love stories with mischievous twists..
Arguably in 1941 the average Big Band fan would have been satisfied with just the orchestra and not asked for a story but for the benefit of run-of-the-mill audiences Fox concocted a storyline that had 'pianist' John Payne falling for the band vocalist Lynn Bari until the arrival of Sonja Henie as a refugee he has unwittingly sponsored provides the conflict.
Comedy was provided by Milton Berle and Joan Davis but the icing on the cake was the standout score by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon which included I Know Why, Chattanooga Choo-Choo and The Kiss Polka.
What's not to like about any film that has a good dose of big band music?
"Sun Valley Serenade" has Glenn Miller and his orchestra with a fine cast, wonderful scenery, superb skiing and filming and an unusual, far-fetched but good plot.
The film is only one of three in which Glenn Miller's band appears, and the only one of two in which he has much of a role.
But the band plays half a dozen tunes, including a smashing rendition with repeats of "Chattanooga Choo Choo." Of course, we see and hear the Glenn Miller signature tunes, "Moonlight Serenade" and "In the Mood."Besides Miller and his orchestra, Tex Beneke and The Modernaires sing, Dorothy Dandridge sings, and the Nicholas Brothers have a fine song and dance routine.
The last of the show entertainment comes from Sonja Henie on the ice.
She plays Karen Benson, whom Miller band member and composer Ted Scott is sponsoring as a refugee.
"Sun Valley Serenade" was one of a dozen movies Sonja Henie made in Hollywood.
She has been waiting for the band to begin rehearsals while John Payne's Ted Scott is off skiing with Sonja Henie's Karen Benson. |
tt0410650 | Species III | Hours after the events of the previous film, the medical van transporting the lifeless Eve has lost its way, but when the co-driver tries to radio their superiors, the driver stops and holds him at gunpoint. They are ambushed by the "half-breed" alien child hiding in the van, who kills the co-driver with his tongue. The driver discovers both the half-breed and a reviving Eve in the back of the van; the half-breed strangles Eve to death while she gives birth to a newborn alien, which the driver flees with. Government agent Wasach orders an autopsy, discovering Eve's pregnancy, then has her body burned.
The driver, Abbot, returns to his usual job teaching biochemistry at a university, where he teaches his belief that it is wrong to decide whether a species should live or die. He raises Eve's child in his home, and over a few months she has grown into a young girl he names Sara. One night at his office, Abbot is visited by the half-breed from the van, who has dramatically aged and is critically ill. Before partially decaying and dying, the half-breed demands to see Eve's child and reveals to Abbot that there are other half-breeds suffering from similar illnesses. Shocked by these events, Abbot approaches Dean, one of his students whose funding for an experimental power plant project is in jeopardy, and asks for his aid in perfecting the alien DNA to save the species. In return, Abbot promises Dean a share of any funding or awards their work receives.
In Abbot's absence, Sara undergoes a pupal metamorphosis that ages her into a young woman. Abbot's superior, Dr. Turner, arrives at the house seeking Abbot and comes across Sara, who initially tries to seduce him but then rejects him when she senses imperfections in his genes. He attempts to rape her, and Sara kills him. Sara leaves to seek a mate, while Abbot discovers the evidence of her transformation and disposes of Turner's body. Sara eventually connects with another half-breed but discovers his illnesses and rejects him as well. As Abbot and Dean continue their experiments on Sara, Dean begins to bond with her. Abbot informs Dean of the government's "Project Athena," which created Sil in the first film and Sara's heritage as the child of an astronaut infected with alien DNA and Eve, Sil's clone. The half-breed Sara rejected breaks into the lab, mortally wounds Abbot and attempts to impregnate Sara, but is killed by hydrochloric gas Abbot sprays over the lab. Left alone, Dean ponders whether to continue Abbot's work, and Sara urges him to save her species.
Dean's roommate at the university, Hastings, discovers a website posted by a woman named Amelia who wants to date biochemists. After snooping through Dean's notes, he forwards them to Amelia, who agrees to meet him. En route, Amelia - who is another half-breed - has sex with and murders a gas station attendant who attempts to rape her. At the campus, she senses Sara and kidnaps Hastings, taking him to Abbot's home. Both Amelia and Sara force Hastings to work on perfecting the alien DNA using Sara's purer biology to save the half-breeds and create perfect mating partners for them. Agent Wasach, whose team also monitored Amelia's website and discovered its connection to Project Athena, picks up Dean and helps him save Hastings.
Dean, Hastings and Wasach flee to Dean's experimental power plant with Sara and Amelia in pursuit. While attempting to keep Sara's harvested eggs away from them, the three decide to try trapping Amelia and Sara in the plant's core, but this tactic risks causing a catastrophic meltdown. Dean drops the eggs into the core, prompting Amelia to attempt to kill him, but Sara attacks her and throws her into the core as well. Dean, Hastings and Wasach manage to close the core in time to prevent a meltdown, but Sara seemingly falls in to her death as well.
Later, Hastings visits Dean at Abbot's home and discovers both Sara and a younger alien boy. Dean reveals that he actually managed to pull Sara to safety before sealing the plant's core, then completed the refined alien DNA to make a mate for her so she would not be alone. Dean asks Sara why she saved him from Amelia when there was no reason to; she does not answer but it is implied she has come to care for him. Once Sara's mate has aged, Dean and Hastings see them off into the world, with Dean reassuring the nervous Hastings by revealing he ensured Sara's mate would be sterile, preventing them from reproducing. | violence, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt2145829 | Robot Overlords | Not long after the invasion and occupation of Earth by a race of powerful robots wanting human knowledge and ingenuity, humans are confined to their homes. Leaving without permission would be to risk their lives. Monitored by the electronic implants in their necks, the robot sentries are able to track the movements of humans in order to control them. If any person comes out of their home, they are given warnings by the robot sentries to get inside their home. If the person does not comply, they are immediately incinerated.
In what starts out as a bit of fun, a bunch of clever kids in a British town manage to tamper with the implants in their necks and stay out after their curfew. Having discovered the capabilities of the electronic implants, they quickly realise how important this information could be to save the imprisoned human race.
Led by the talented Sean (Callan McAuliffe), who discovers he has the mental ability to interface with and control the robots, the kids band together and recruit other people who want to stand up against the robots’ rule. Standing in their way are human collaborators, led by Smythe (Ben Kingsley, using a northern English accent), and the kids must summon all their emotional and physical strength in order to battle against their control. After a run-in with the collaborators, clues eventually lead them to a hideaway community in an abandoned mine where Sean is reunited with his father, but the robots soon descend on the community seeking Sean, offering an amnesty in exchange for him. Sean mentally controls a robot craft that rams and destroys the cube, the local robot mothership, halting this invasion. He narrowly escapes the impact. He interfaces with a damaged Mediator, a robot in human form, and mentally sends commands to end the invasion of the Earth, destroying the robots and their craft. The film ends with jubilation as the local population celebrate in town. In the closing scene, Sean looks up at the stars. | good versus evil, revenge, romantic | train | wikipedia | I've never posted a review before.I'm sick to death of reading reviews from nobodies full of self-aggrandising rubbish of the look-at-me-I'm-so-knowledgeable kind.When I read IMDb reviews I want to know the answer to one question: is this film worth watching.Answer: Yes.Extra comment for people who need more: It is not blade runner nor star wars nor aliens nor any other visually stunning or game changing movie.
With that film being a complete disaster, it saddens me that it gets just about a lower score than Robot Overlords, because the latter is far superior.What to expect: Good but not incredible CGI (again, far more believable than FF'S The Thing...or anything else in it for that matter...) Good acting: Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson are great, and the kids are surprisingly good too.
The teenager Sean Flynn (Callan McAuliffe) misses his father Danny (Steven Mackintosh), who is a pilot, and his mother Kate (Gillian Anderson) is constantly harassed by the collaborator Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley).
The film entertains but despite the names of Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson, it is only reasonable.
How can someone spend so much time, money and effort (Significant amounts by the look of things), get names such as Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley to join his project and end up with this sad excuse for a sci-fi blockbuster wannabe?The storyline is stupid beyond anyone (above 3 year old) belief.
IT'S GOT KILLER ROBOTS, the vfx are creditable for such a relatively small film and look solid.Probably the least believable thing in the entire film is Gillian Anderson's English accent, and it's got robots flying around English suburbia for goodness sake.
Many holes in the plot and the cinematography is as bad as hell.If your time has a value don't watch this movie.
Robot Overlords does sum up with that standard, it's formulaic about its own plot: an evil force, unlikely heroes, a protagonist who has something special inside him which becomes the only hope to save the day.
There's nothing novel about it in the end, but this is a film that intentionally gives you the pleasure to turn off your brain.Aside of its title, the movie seems totally committed to be this cheesy, but that doesn't let the negativity get in the way.
When the robots start clashing, it gets too loud, the effects look good enough for a B-movie, bringing a sense of scale for these typically designed machines.
but the shining moments are basically when the heroes are finding new discoveries in this world, it's basically just embracing what this should be an adventurous ride.And just like any generic action film, the hero is the good-looking white guy.
Unlike many dumb B-movies out there that doesn't accept its absurdity by glossing it over with gravity that makes no sense until it stops being watchable, this film at least has the joy over its preposterous nature; the hero kids do impossible things, the villain sneers his plans, and they're against giant robots.
But again, there's nothing brilliant about it, it never gave us anything meaningful in the end, but it sure is amazing seeing a movie like Robot Overlords that is confident enough to be released in today's blockbuster cinema..
For some reason this movie reminded me of a Famous Five story - possible because when I started watching it I didn't know it was aimed at a pre-teen to teen audience, however that soon became clear...Group of kids on an adventure to save humanity from robots that have overrun the Earth and made everyone prisoners in their own homes.Low budget, but surprisingly good effects and acting, story line that flows well, but not much to it and most of the situations the are not realistic.I don't really think this one is for the Sci-Fi fans - there's just not enough Sci and too much Fi!Would appeal to ages 10 to 16 or so, not much of a target audience which is why this film is getting low scores.I give it 6 because it is good for a low budget movie and deserves more credit than it is getting..
They only have one strict rule for the earthlings to follow during their occupation: "Stay indoors!" The story follows a group of teenagers led by Sean Flynn (Callan McAuliffe) who defy the robots, venturing out of the safety to his home to search for his lost father.
But Smythe is distracted by his attraction to Sean's mother Kate, (and I do not blame him as Kate was played by Gillian Anderson).When we first saw the trailer for this film, I had no plans to watch it because it looked like a low-budget B-action flick with robots and unknown young actors.
The film lacks the warmth and heart of Doctor Who. A more apt comparison was a cheesy 1980s serial, Tripods.The setting is a planet occupied by Robot invaders who wish to study humans.
Chasing them is a robot collaborator Mr Smythe (Ben Kingsley) who has the hots for one of the kids mom (Gillian Anderson.)The film was shot in the Isle of Man and Northern Island.
There are some great mountain scenes, the special effects are very good and Kingsley and Anderson lend the film some class.The story was thin, even cheesy.
can/t understand why this film has a low score its got everything a good film needs a good storyline (most importantly the characters are believe able you can understand the plot )it goes along at a steady pace its not too slow, its aimed at the longer generation but grown ups will enjoy it too, its got some funny moments that make you chuckle and the special effects don't overshadow the scenes.
I mean, it is not today's kids movie, it does not seek to be mild or comedic or innocent, and it does not aim consciously at a specific target audience - it is just out there for whoever feels like watching it and it does not categorize or underestimate its audience.
You cannot actually tell if it's made for teens, kids, young adults, family film, sci-fi fans...
If you have watched any British or Australian sci-fi TV series for younger audience, things like "Aquilla", "Escape from Jupiter", "Return to Jupiter", The acting is good, I really enjoyed all the characters, and by the way, is Gillian Anderson actually getting younger and hotter with time?!
It's it's clearly done on a budget, it does not look like a 200-million-dollar picture, but I am so tired of shallow "all style and no substance" hyped up blockbusters that I even enjoy this indie feel of the film.
The film is by no means gloomy and at the same time delivers a feeling of tension and peril with a pinch distopian atmosphere.For me, "Robot Overlords" has all the elements of a modern sci-fi cult classic!
The story may seem a little thin but the actors and the special effects is not bad for independent film.
I found it entertaining with a good mix of action and humor and not relying too much on special effects but it does feel a bit short at times.
I had extremely low expectations because It looked like a kids movie.
do yourselves a favor, watch Red Dawn or any number of better films with the same plot, you know, the old "kids vs oppressors" troupe..
All the Transformers had to do was watch TV and hack the net!The robot overlords are obviously not that good at Overlording as they need a pantomime human villain to do the more mundane stuff, like kidnapping and using the mind probe machine and other admin duties.
I'm not really sure how he fitted into the plot as the whole premise seemed so ludicrous and un-apocalyptic that I got bored at the point where Gillian Anderson escaped from the castle and stole the horse!I understand this was low budget but then so were the original episodes of Dr Who. The cybermen made for much better, and scarier adversaries.
Youth films can also be entertaining, with a subtle story and surprisingly good looking special effects.
But just as "Big Game" this film fails on several levels and even sounding names like Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley can't change that.First, there are the pitiful-looking special effects.
But are you a "Dr. Who "fan and you're hooked on old-fashioned-looking Lego-blocks-like robots, this adventure film for kids might be able to entertain you.
There doesn't seem to be much hope left for the human race, apart from those who have decided to cooperate with the robots, like uber-smug collaborator Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley).
Sean's predicament also contains quite a few good sci-fi ideas, as he realises how he might be able to take down these apparently invincible machines.But Robot Overlords never really fulfils its potential.
Turn your brains off, lower you expectations to a minimum, and if you love sci-fi genre no matter movies budget, you can enjoy it as well.I won't go into details of this movie plot, in short it would be : big transformer-type (can transform only to a box actually) alien robots overtake the earth and after some major battles (which due to budget issues were left off screen of course) makes a curfew - all human must stay inside of their houses.
Ben Kingsley - i have no idea what he thought when reading this script - probably as an Englisman tried to help his countrymen in giving his name in this movie - there are no other explanation here, he couldn't do it for money, even N.Cages has more self respect.Overall, turn you brains out, lower your expectations, and skip 4.6 rating at IMDb - this movie is fun if you are willing to go with the plot and premise.
The current rating when I'm writing this is 4.6/10, which is pretty ridiculous cause it's a perfectly watchable.It's sort of like a British Red Dawn meets Transformers teen movie but with a lot smaller budget, it manages to do well with the budget it has tho I mean compared to like Asylum or SyFy movies the CGI in it is great.Sure it has quite a bit of plot-holes but overall it didn't take me out from the movie and managed to sustain my interest.Gillian Anderson and Ben Kingsley have important roles but it's primarily the unknown younger cast who's the main focus in the movie and they do just fine.Overall is it a movie that will blow you away?
Like watching an actual bad movie, because this is not..
A decent British scifi that feels like a not so insane an episode of Doctor Who. This is a low budget movie.
The robot mediator is also done very interestingly, apparently trying to maximize the uncanny valley effect and succeeding quite well.Bottom line: I feel this is the British version of a summer blockbuster: medium to low budget, a simple story that appeals to teens, but filled with interesting ideas in the way they use the special effects and the direction of the movie.
I would say this : If you are a fan of Doctor Who you might enjoy it as it feels like a feature long episode of something from the same universe as the good old Doctor.If you are after a fun family romp with adventure and comedy , you might be disappointed.It's pure British Sci Fy and it definitely not to try to be something else.
Released in 2014, Robot Overlords starred Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson.
The humans fight against these invaders and in this not bad film exploring this premise.Since the release of this film, a TV series based on it is now in the works.What prompted me to watch this movie was coming across reviews comparing it to Doctor Who.Television drama producer Tony Wood described Robot Overlords as "a great British sci-fi brand in the tradition of classics such as 'Quatermass' and 'Doctor Who' - packed with special effects and rebellious excitement."The Guardian says it "plays like a slightly-more sweary episode of Doctor Who" and The Telegraph branded it quintessentially British, with its many "plucky" characters, but found the plot to be thin and the robot overlords clumsy and harking back to earlier sci-fi movies: like a "rusty Dr Who episode" with Dalek invasions of Bedfordshire quarries.Matthew See
Oh and i had to laugh at one of the comments on here saying the least believable thing in the whole film was Gillian Anderson's British accent, don't listen to them, they clearly have no idea what they're talking about and need to get their facts straight!
i don't know what they thinking about making Sci-Fi movie with really really limited budget (it's like 21 millions) which makes the CG terrible i mean CG is really bad it's laughable and the design of these robot itself is like a super cheap children toy , so the reason of seeing some cool CG like in Transformers is just out of the window.Even the script itself is terrible i mean at first it's fells super cliché and repetitive but after a while you will like "what the hell is going on ?" there's so much plot hole and a lot of question left unanswered and don't even ask about the logic in this movie because there's none.One other thing that really confused me is how in the hell Ben Kingsley actually in this movie i mean why did he do that , is it because on the paper it look so cool ?
This movie captures exactly what it would be like to have Robot Overlords.
A group of English kids on the run from robots that have overrun the Earth must find a way to defeat them or die.Surprisingly good effects and okay acting.
The story line flows well but there is not much to it and most of the situations the are not realistic.I give it six out of ten because it is good for a low budget movie, kept me interested, made me care about the characters and is well paced..
just normal people.It had Gillian Anderson which is never a bad thing.The story was simple, and the ending obvious, but still...
Robot Overlords...a look at the poster made me expect something along the lines of Sharknado or some Z-level movie.
Oh wait...it's got Ben Kingsley and Gillian Anderson...in a cheap movie about alien Robots.
We can conclude that this film hardly adds anything to the genre, the acting is okay and the effects aren't bad but it really does not stand out in any way so I find it hard to recommend this flick..
Sir Ben Kingsley appears as a traitor to the human race with a northern accent and Gillian Anderson stars along side the young lead actors who figure out how to defuse their restraining blots that keep them under home arrest.Writers Jon Wright and Mark Stay borrow elements from classic film and TV science fiction shows, Matrix and Terminator-like flying machines, giant century robots, Borg space cubes and Stars Wars droid restraints to name a few.
I expected a dumb fun time but instead I came out wanting to watch Movie 43 again.
ROBOT OVERLORDS is an odd little B-movie from the UK that feels a bit like an Asylum version of a TRANSFORMERS movie.
It's shot in a low budget, on the street way, but it has a number of CGI effects of giant robot oppressors that turn out to be surprisingly good given the limitations.
But upon watching it, I found out why the UK film industry seldom makes movies like this.
I will give this to the movie - for what had to have been a limited budget, some of the special effects aren't that bad.
Not so much as a plaster was needed because the heroes have impenetrable main character armour.This isn't really a spoiler to reveal what happens in the end, because I am in fact saving you the 120 minutes or so of your life you would lose from watching this miserable piece of trash.So, i'm just going to reveal it.One of the boys has unexplained magic that lets him control robots nearby.
I like the directors other movies, as they are tongue in cheek nods to their respective genres, so I was hoping that this would be also semi parody,me specially with the inclusion of Kingsley, who is always good for his ham.But no, it's pretty serious all the way through, despite unintentional laughs, and the film cannot decide what it wants to be, despise 'homaging' almost every known TV series and film that is popular at the moment.It's like a massive melting pot consisting of elements from The Walking Dead, Dr. Who, Transformers, Coronation Street, War of the Worlds, and those children film foundation movies we saw at school in the eighties.But with all the fun and character detail taken away.So we are left with a group of children looking for Steven Mackintosh, while dealing with a sub plot of Kinglsey trying to get it on with Gillian Anderson, which just doesn't seem right in a supposed family film.And if things couldn't get any more incoherent, we then have Geraldine James and Tamer Hassan running some Burlesque type fight club for football supporters.
This all led to the film feeling like a Kids' TV play.
He is just cool as the rather careless bad guy.Gillian Anderson in the role of the former Teacher and Mother was surprising different as known from other movies I remember to have watched with her.
Australian actor Callan McAuliffe was as well very good and the movie had even the one or other comedic moment like when Sean controls the robot and makes him do stupid poses.Verdict: It is surely not the best Science Fiction movie ever created, but that is not the aim anyways.
If you like Science Fiction movies than Robot Overlords is certainly one to watch and be entertained..
Set in the UK (actually filmed mostly in Northern Ireland) we have been invaded by huge robots – who just like politicians 'never lie'. |
tt0079180 | The Frisco Kid | Rabbi Avram Belinski (Wilder), newly graduated at the bottom of his class from the yeshiva, arrives in Philadelphia from Poland en route to San Francisco where he will be a congregation's new rabbi. He has with him a Torah scroll for the San Francisco synagogue. Belinski, an innocent, trusting, and inexperienced traveler, falls in with three con men, the brothers Matt and Darryl Diggs and their partner Mr. Jones, who trick him into helping pay for a wagon and supplies to go west, then brutally rob him and leave him and most of his belongings scattered along a deserted road in Pennsylvania.
Still determined to make it to San Francisco, Belinski spends time with some Pennsylvania Dutch (whom at first he takes for Jews). Because he was injured when he was dumped out of the speeding wagon, the Amish nurse Belinski back to health and give him money for the train west to the end of the line. When he reaches the end of the line in Ohio, the rabbi manages to find work on the railroad. On his way west again after saving up enough money to buy a horse and some supplies, he is befriended and looked after by a stranger named Tommy Lillard (Ford), a bank robber with a soft heart who is moved by Belinski's helplessness and frank personality, despite the trouble it occasionally gives him.
For instance, when Lillard robs a bank on a Thursday, he finds that Belinski (an Orthodox Jew) will not ride on the Shabbat — even with a hanging posse on his tail. However, they still manage to get away, mainly because with the horses rested from having been walked for a full day, they are fresh and able to ride all night, outdistancing their pursuers.
On another occasion, due to Belinski's insistence on riding into foul weather, he and Lillard have to use an old Indian trick and snuggle up next to their horses, which they have gotten to lie on the ground, to wait out a snowstorm. While traveling together, the two also experience American Indian customs and hospitality, disrupt a Trappist monastery's vow of silence with an innocent gesture of gratitude, and learn a little about each other's culture.
While stopping in a small town not too far from San Francisco, Belinski encounters the Diggs brothers and Jones again. He gets into a fight with the three of them and, after taking a beating, is rescued by Lillard, who takes back what they had stolen from Belinski and more besides.
Seeking revenge, the three bandits follow the pair and ambush them on a California beach where they have stopped to bathe and a firefight ensues. Tommy shoots Jones dead and creases Matt Diggs, who flees the scene. Belinski experiences a crisis of faith when he is forced to kill Darryl Diggs in self-defense after Darryl wounded Tommy. Lillard restores his faith by an eloquent argument with simple language, reminding him that he still is what he is inside, despite what he had to do on the beach.
When Matt Diggs, sole survivor of the ambushing trio, prepares to avenge his brother by killing Belinski and Lillard springs to his friend's defense, Belinski, regaining his composure, shows his wisdom and courage in front of the entire community by disarming and exiling Diggs from San Francisco. The film ends with Belinski marrying Rosalie Bender, younger daughter of the head of San Francisco's Jewish community, with Lillard attending the ceremony as his best man. | violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0054176 | Peter Pan | Set in London, circa 1900, George and Mary Darling's preparations to attend a party are disrupted by the antics of their boys, John and Michael, acting out a story about Peter Pan and the pirates, told to them by their older sister, Wendy. Their father, who is fed up with the stories that have made his children less practical, angrily declares that Wendy has gotten too old to continue staying in the nursery with them. That night, they are visited in the nursery by Peter Pan himself, who teaches them to fly with the help of his pixie friend, Tinker Bell, and takes them with him to the island of Never Land.
A ship of pirates is anchored off Never Land, commanded by Captain Hook with his sidekick, Mr. Smee. Hook boldly plots to take revenge upon Peter Pan for cutting off his hand, but trembles at the presence of a crocodile, which consumed Hook’s hand and is eager to taste the rest of him. The crew's restlessness is interrupted by the arrival of Peter and the Darlings. Tinker Bell, who is very jealous of Pan’s attention to Wendy, persuades the Lost Boys that Pan has ordered them to shoot down Wendy, which Tink refers to as a “Wendy bird”. Tinker Bell's treachery is soon found out, and Peter banishes her. John and Michael set off with the Lost Boys to find the island's Indians, who instead capture them, believing them to be the ones responsible for taking the chief's daughter, Tiger Lily.
Meanwhile, Peter takes Wendy to see the mermaids. The mischievous mermaids delight in tormenting Wendy but flee in terror at the sight of Hook. Peter and Wendy see that Hook and Smee have captured Tiger Lily so that they might persuade her to disclose Peter's hideout. Peter and Wendy free her, and Peter is honored by the tribe. Hook then plots to take advantage of Tinker Bell's jealousy of Wendy, tricking her into revealing the location of Peter's lair. Wendy and her brothers eventually grow homesick and plan to return home. They invite Peter and the Lost Boys to return to London and be adopted by the Darling parents. The Lost Boys agree, but Peter is so set against growing up that he refuses, presumptuously thinking that they will all return shortly. The pirates lie in wait and capture the Lost Boys and the Darlings as they exit, leaving behind a time bomb to kill Peter. Tinker Bell learns of the plot just in time to snatch the bomb from Peter as it explodes.
Peter rescues Tinker Bell from the rubble and together they confront the pirates, releasing the children before they can walk the plank. Peter engages Hook in single combat as the children fight off the crew, and finally succeeds in humiliating the captain. Hook and his crew flee, with the crocodile in hot pursuit. Peter gallantly commandeers the deserted ship, and assisted by Tinker Bell's pixie dust, flies it to London with the children aboard. However, the Lost Boys decide to return to Never Land rather than be adopted in London. Mr. and Mrs. Darling return home from the party to find Wendy not in her bed, but sleeping at the open window. Wendy awakens and excitedly tells about their adventures. The parents look out the window and see what appears to be a pirate ship in the clouds. Mr. Darling, who has softened his position about Wendy staying in the nursery, recognizes it from his own childhood. | fantasy, action | train | wikipedia | It was preserved in color, which is a miracle considering there were virtually no color sets in existence then.Mary Martin is great as Peter (she was 47 years old when she did this very acrobatic role!), but Cyril Ritchard pretty much steals the production from her with his Hook.
I think I can add some information.The 1955 version of Peter Pan was done live from NY and then redone the following year.
That version was preserved on Kinescope, but not videotape.In 1960, NBC re-staged the production and videotaped it in their wonderful old Brooklyn studios - by the way, I believe that The Cosby Show in the '80s was produced at the same NBC Brooklyn Studios.The 1960 production was videotaped and rebroadcast a number of times, and may be available on VHS now.As the 4-year old son of an NBC publicity flack, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the taping of the show and I have a magnificent b&w photograph of me, in a gray flannel suit - in gray shorts no less - with Mary Martin in full costume.It is one of the treasures of my childhood and Peter Pan has always been a favorite of mine.By the way, there is/was a cast recording of Peter Pan - I want to say that it was on RCA Victor records, since of course, RCA owned NBC.
Mary Martin embodies Peter Pan so gracefully and whimsically that I cannot imagine this character as played by anyone else.
It should be clarified that the wonderful Mary Martin actually did "Peter Pan" on television three different times, and I'm relatively sure that only the last version is available on home video.
(There are production stills of all the performances, and Martin's costume and hair color are slightly different each time.) It was finally videotaped, in 'living color,' in 1960, and if you are as old as I am, you may remember the network re-broadcasts always being preceded by the blooming NBC peacock.
This movie is one of the best versions of the Peter Pan story that I have ever seen I've been watching it for years and now at the age of 20 I still find myself singing the songs and tapping my toe to the beat.It was done in the traditional theater way, with a woman playing Peter Pan, but Mary Martin did such a wonderful job you never think of her as a 'girl'.
This makes a great play for children with active imaginations to watch and which parents can sit through without hitting themselves over the head with an empty video box.
A great score, a great cast -- what more is there to say.Yes, Miss Mary Virginia Martin was 40-something when she played the title part, all the while introducing the world to The Sound of Music on Broadway, and she played THAT splendidly as well.As this great story marks its centennial in 2004, it would be a coup to offer the 1960 version on DVD.Just think lovely thoughts..
My earliest recollection of seeing PETER PAN (which, like Marta's, was second only to THE WIZARD OF OZ as the "movie" of my childhood) must have been sometime around 63 or 64 (when I was only 6 or 7)--I'm not even sure of the year, maybe earlier, maybe later, but I remember watching it on my aunt and uncle's TV in their basement family room and clapping for Tinker Bell.
Despite the primitive video tape recording of the picture and sound, this version of PETER PAN still enchants me at age 43 (well, in two weeks, anyway).
What is more interesting to me is that when I finally had the opportunity to direct the music for a stage production (in 1994, and with a wonderful actor named Kathy St. George as Peter) it was that the adults in the audience were the ones most caught up in the spell--but the children, too, "believed." I'm watching the video now and Tink's about to die, so I better get ready to show my belief in her..
In my opinion, this film should not be missed by any child, adolescent, or adult who likes music and loved J.M. Barrie's masterpiece novel.
Unlike the animated Disney film made seven years earlier (also a classic musical), this film follows the original story more closely, as adapted by Jerome Robbins for the stage.
Peter Pan is portrayed by a woman because any male old enough to play the role would have gone through puberty -- thus no longer looking or sounding like a 10 year old.
The teaming of Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard as Pan and Hook, along with the wonderful songs in this musical version, make this production a fondlyremembered treat -- one which ought to be available on video and DVD formodern viewers.
It'sinteresting that the most current version of Peter Pan (2003) and this 1960version (a TV production of the 1955 Broadway musical in which Ritchard won a best supporting actor Tony for his role as Hook/Darling) are similar in plot and tone, both being based on Barrie's play, and each standing well above both the lightweight 1953 Disney animated film and the other more recent treatmentssuch as "Hook".
This movie is a delightful Broadway play with Mary Martin as Peter Pan. It features cute little songs and dances, not to mention the humorous lines of Cyril Ritchard.
I grew up watching the video and I always enjoyed it, even if Peter Pan was a woman and Tiger Lily was a blonde, blue-eyed girl.
That is not to knock off Martin's in any way, it has great nostalgic value, the accents are more natural-sounding(pretty much the only real criticism with the Rigby version was how overdone some of the accents were) and does a marginally better job of bringing out the inner child within you.
The script is filled with snappy lines, it's often hilarious especially with Hook and Smee- and with Tiger Lily's priceless "Famous Indian proverb, when in doubt RUUNNNNNNN!"- and it seemed like everybody in the cast thought so, while the choreography is full of energy(like the Rigby version especially with the Pirates and the Indians) and the whole storytelling has a light-hearted charm.
Cyril Ritchard and particularly Mary Martin are what you'll remember most about this Peter Pan. Ritchard is both funny and menacing, the funniest parts at their best are hilarious though it's not a performance that is played-for-laughs, there are times like in the capture of the children where Hook is quite dangerous.
He also plays Mr Darling, a tradition is for Captain Hook and Mr Darling to be played by the same actor, and he is very convincing at being uptight As Peter, Martin is just wonderful, Cathy Rigby may be more boyish and more athletic but the energy and likability levels between the two actresses are equal.
For a 1950's live production originally telecast in black and white (or was that because we did not own an expensive color TV back in the 60's?) my baby boomer childhood has wonderful memories of this simpler time when the family would gather around our black and white 24 inch television and be entertained by Peter Pan somehow magically flying out of the Darling families bedroom window with the children in tow.
It is a time in my imagination that left me as a six year old just breathless.I have subsequently viewed Peter Pan many more times and in the decades that have followed I have passed the original Peter Pan dream VHS film on to my own children.
The musical score with Mary Martin playing Peter Pan and Cyril Ritchard playing the dual role as the mean spirited (and for its time) quite scary Captain Hook as well as the Darling families father was just priceless and with so many exciting musical numbers to wow children of all ages.Quite simply television should bring back the luster that has seemed to have been forgotten by television programs such as this fine live musical telecast.
If you ever get a chance to view this telecast which is rarely seen on television anymore I suggest that you gather up the family regardless of their age shut off your cell phones, computers, IPads, PlayStations and XBoxes and watch this original 1950's musical version of Peter Pan in its purest black and white form.
Your family will enjoy the musical score and dance sequences, Tinkerbell's luminous glow, the tick-tocking clock that resides in the crocodiles stomach and constantly scares the nasty Captain Hook, and the children of Neverland wishing to find adoptive parents that will love them as much as our parents loved us.Exposing your children to a magical performance such as this Peter Pan version is worthy of a five ***** star perfect 10 out of 10 rating..
If you can look past that, watch the performance of Martin, with her eternal optimism and Ritchard, dancing and prancing with that glint in his eye, up to no good.
Now of course not much beats the original animated version that Disney made, but for a movie with real people, it is the best one out there.
It is a great version of Peter Pan. Has some good songs in it as well!.
Having taped it off the air in 1989, and finally played it back tonight, that makes 3 (or 4!) times I've seen it.I probably listened to the LP more times than any other version, so I'm no doubt coming to this from an unusual place.
I used to wonder about the Disney film, as, being so familiar with the Mary Martin stage play, the promos for the Disney film just seemed "wrong" somehow.
I came to love the Disney film on its own merits, though I recognized, especially when I was able to tape the stage play, the big differences.I see it this way...
Teenagers are at that stage of growing up where growing up and being "cool" makes them forget childhood innocence-- but when you get old enough to have kids of your own, if you're lucky, you can remember it all over again.I guess one does go thru "different rooms" as one goes thru life-- because, having gone to quite a number of live stage shows in the 1990s, I found this MUCH easier to watch now than I did back in '89!
He liked it but he likes the Disney animated show better.The technical quality of this VHS version from GoodTimes Home Video is only fair.
Although I loved it as a kid, it disappoints me now.Mary Martin is good but Cyril Ritchard as Captain Hook is fantastic!Even as a kid, I never did understand why they had a woman play Peter.
This version of Peter Pan was, in my opinion, better than the Disney animation.
Peter Pan is played by Mary Martin, and the film is made like a theatre production.
It was much more enjoyable to watch than the animation, although I never really enjoyed the story of Peter Pan and the lost boys.
Mary Martin played Peter Pan on television many times.
The version of Peter Pan that we have available to the public today was done in 1960 and done on video.
It should be noted that Mary Martin and her husband had this version of Peter Pan written for them to do on Broadway, according to her autobiography.
Mary was also in the original Broadway production of "The Sound of Music", but by the time the movie was made she was considered to old.
While she was doing "The Sound of Music" on Broadway, she was in rehearsals for the stage version "Peter Pan".
This is however taped on a soundstage and it is a first class production.Mary Martin plays "Peter Pan".
She the originator of the musical adaption so all other versions will always be compared to Mary Martin!
There is no school but lots of danger including the pirate "Captain Hook" who is out to get Peter Pan at any cost!The other television adaptations had "Ashlie Williams" and "Cathy Rigby".
One aim of the series was to broadcast expensive color spectaculars to promote the new color television system developed by NBC's parent company RCA.On March 7, 1955, NBC presented Peter Pan live as part of Producers' Showcase (with nearly all of the show's original cast) as the first full-length Broadway production on color TV.
Both of these broadcasts were produced live and in color, but only black-and-white kinescope recordings survive.Peter Pan was restaged on December 8, 1960, this time in a 100-minute version rather than 90 minutes (not counting the commercials), and with a slightly different cast because the original children had outgrown their roles.
Peter Foy re-created the signature flying sequences he had staged for the 1954 Broadway production and the two Producers' Showcase broadcasts.
Gone also was the intertitle bearing the credit Peter Pan: Act III, but not the other intertitle credits, so that the show seemed to be performed in three acts, just as in the stage version..
This re-telling of the Pan story, set on stage with Mary Martin portraying the rambunctious youngster, has a certain charm that is all its own.Unlike some Pan stories that may take themselves a bit too seriously, this edition is made for children and it shows in nearly every scene.
Both Captain Hook and his merry band of pirates and the Tiger Lilly-led Indians are played for slapstick/silly humor, while Martin's Pan and Wendy are quite whimsical themselves.Yet, despite the child-oriented humor and content, adults can also enjoy the film for the exact same reasons.
Instead of playing like, say, a typical Disney film (where little tidbits are thrown in every once in awhile to keep parents moderately entertained) this production will charm adults on the sole premise of its youthful exuberance.Perhaps the highlight of the entire Pan experience, though, are the musical numbers (especially those featuring Cyril Ritchard's Hook).
I don't even have to re-watch Peter Pan to rate it; all that counts is experience of a small child sitting in front of a black and white TV more than 50 years ago, and that child rated it as perfect, right up there with Captain Kangaroo, Shari Lewis, and the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz. Peter Pan was written and performed for children, and with the advent of television, it reached into the hearts of virtually all baby-boomers like me.
But when I put on that old 1960 television version of Peter Pan and listened to Mary Martin sing some of those songs, I was transported back to my childhood home, the snug happiness of a good, old-fashioned protected childhood of the 50s and 60s.
How many times I had seen this version of Peter Pan on TV.
To me, THIS is Peter Pan, not the Disney version or any other movie.
Sometimes adults can sure act like little children, and not in a good way.As to the video quality, I can't complain because I, like 99 percent of America, watched this originally on a B&W set, with far less detail than today's digital video.
And that is the the strength of this version.There is a reason for adults to watch this: Mary Martin.
I agree that the lead character of "Peter Pan" was masterfully played by the late Mary Martin.
Also they were thrilled with the movie magic of flight, which was pretty good, considering this was a televised stage play from over 40 years ago.
It's a badly done play of Peter Pan with really bad special effects.
Mary Martin was wonderful in the lead, and even at 6 I could accept her as Peter Pan.
Now I have it on video and my little three year old daughter watches it, the Disney original cartoon version, and the newer one with Cathy Rigby, all over and over again.
I find that hard to believe, considering she performed Peter Pan many times.
Like so many others, I was a young thing when I saw Mary Martin's PETER PAN for the first time.
Years later, this is one film that still remains near and dear to my heart.Out of all of the adaptations of PETER PAN I have ever seen (including the Disney version which is also a classic), this is my favorite.
And Mary Martin - I don't even know if I can put into words how incredible she is in the role of Peter.
PETER PAN is a filmed version of a STAGE MUSICAL, folks.
After all, that is what Peter Pan is really all about.All in all, this is an amazing film, and I have no doubt in my mind that even though youngsters today have been brought up with films using phenomenal CGI technology and such, they will fall in love with the beautiful and catchy music, the energetic choreography (by Jerome Robbins, no less!), and the story of a boy who could never grow up..
The best production ever, due to the charismatic Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard as Peter Pan and Capt.
Yes, peter pan is a girl in this, and yes, they do sing quite a bit, but when i first saw this, i was hooked.
i always liked peter pan, since he could fly and never go old and play with indians and pirates forever and ever.
so, enjoy the real old version of peter pan, and even though the effects stink, try to overlook it and see the music, because some of those tunes are kinda catchy.
Growing up in the 80s we had two real versions (possibly only two) of peter pan.
Walt Disney's original, and Mary Martin play taped "peter pan" with Cyril Ritchard.
Since then, I've seen this on stage live with Cathy Rigby, took a trip into how Peter got the hook on the notorious captain in a Broadway prequel, and took on an adventure with Barrie himself in his own Broadway musical. |
tt1408253 | Ride Along | James Payton is a detective, on an undercover operation where fake passports are being smuggled into Atlanta by a man named "Omar". After a shootout with the smugglers, and a car chase that leaves one injured, the lieutenant leading the case ask James to drop the case on "Omar", something James doesn't do.
Ben Barber, a fast-talking, jumpy high school security guard who plays video games on his spare time, applies for the Atlanta City Police Academy. When he gets in, he decides to ask James for his blessings to marry his sister Angela. James then says Ben has to be worthy of Angela, making him go on a "ride along" to prove it.
After picking up Ben and taking him to the police station, James tells dispatch to give him all the 1-26's that are called into the station. James makes Ben take care of all the 1-26's. James then arrives at the park to question an informant Runflat, about a connection of Serbia and "Omar". He finds out that a shipment will come in later that day. After leaving the park, James takes Ben to the local shooting range where he finds out that Zastava M92's have been given to the store, Ben realizes he has a clue for James. When a 1-26 is called in, Ben and James are called to the Sweet Auburn Curb Market where a drunk man named Crazy Cody is being disorderly. Ben tries to subdue him but is unable to, so James arrests him.
Ben asks to be taken home before he receives a call from Angela. He tells her about his stressful day, before Angela says that James plays poker with a guy named Crazy Cody, along with telling him that 1-26's are a code for annoying situations for new-comers as a joke. He then goes into the police station and sees Cody laughing with James and his partners Santiago and Miggs.
Upset at James, Ben refuses to go home and instead takes a 1-26 call to respond to a disturbance at a strip club, where two men get into a mexican standoff with James and Ben, which Ben thinks it's another joke call, so he fools around. James subdues the men, and the two are then tipped off about a gun deal involving Omar's men. Ben then confronts James about the 1-26's. James receives a call from Santiago in the car, when he finds out that Runflat had turned himself in, Ben says how Runflat's brother in the park said that Runflat had just got out of prison. James then contradicts, saying that Runflat hadn't been in prison for over two years, leading to another clue.
The men go to talk Runflat's other brother, J, trying to find out the location of the gun deal, during the confrontation, Ben accidentally shoots J, who subsequently reveals that the deal will take place at an old abandoned warehouse at 9 PM.
James decides to infiltrate the warehouse with Santiago and Miggs, after leaving Ben behind in the car. James is then betrayed by Santiago and Miggs, who turn out to be crooked cops working for Omar. James is then tied up, just when Ben witnesses. Santiago not only mocks James, but also criticizes him for his unsociable, egocentric personality. As the deal begins, Ben enters pretending to be Omar (since no one has ever actually seen the real Omar). Having successfully fooled the crooks, Ben then wreaks havoc at the deal, and right as Ben is about to leave with James, the real Omar appears. A shootout ensues, and many of Omar's men are killed. Ben reveals his sharp reflexes and extensive knowledge of battle (a result of his video game experience). James and Ben take the money meant for the deal and escape right before the warehouse blows up because of Ben's grenade that hit a box of explosives and destroys James's car. Unbeknownst to them, Santiago, Miggs and Omar all escape.
Santiago and Miggs arrive at Angela's apartment and tie her up. As she was playing one of Ben's video games, Ben's fellow players hear the confrontation ensuing between Angela, Miggs and Santiago from Ben's headset. At the hospital after being shot in the leg, Ben receives a call from the fellow player, and tells James that there's something going on at the apartment. After seeing some dirty cops arrive at the hospital, James takes Ben and leaves to go to the apartment, along with Omar's money. James then injures Miggs, before getting into a fight with Santiago. As Santiago is about to shoot James, Angela knocks him out with a frying pan. Ben gets knocked out by Omar in a fight, before Omar takes the bag of money and Angela, and leaves the apartment.
James follows Omar and Angela and confronts them. Right as Omar is about to shoot James, Ben slides over a car and kicks him, and James shoots Omar twice, injuring him. Police arrest Omar, Miggs and Santiago. James gives Ben his blessing.
In a mid-credits scene Ben and Angela are engaged, and Ben is weeks away from graduating from the police academy. At a barbecue at James' house Ben blows up the barbecue grill and is sent flying back into the bushes, killing the neighbor's dog. | violence, humor, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0105943 | As Time Goes By | Second Lieutenant Lionel Hardcastle (Geoffrey Palmer) and Middlesex Hospital nurse Jean Pargetter (Judi Dench) met in the summer of 1953 and fell head over heels in love, calling her "Pooh", but then Lionel was posted to Korea. He wrote, but Jean didn't receive his letter (it becomes a topic in a later episode). Because of this mix-up, each assumed the other had lost interest. After his war service Lionel emigrated to Kenya, became a coffee planter, and married Margaret, whom he later divorced on grounds of "mutual boredom". Some time after his divorce he returned to England. Meanwhile, Jean had also married and bore one child, Judith (Moira Brooker). After her husband's death, Jean opened Type for You, a secretarial agency. Her daughter Judith, 32 years old during the series, is twice divorced (from Ken, who had "sad eyes", and Edward, who was "very clever") and, during most of the series, lives with her mother and also works at the secretarial agency.
Lionel, now writing his memoir, hires a typist through Type for You, unaware that Jean owns the agency. His and Jean's awareness of each other occurs as Lionel picks up Judith for a dinner date. Although Lionel's and Jean's reunion is full of missteps and miscues, their romance gradually rekindles. In the third season, Lionel moves into Jean's house in Holland Park, London; they marry during the following season.
In the first season Judith develops a crush on Lionel while Lionel's publisher, Alistair Deacon (Philip Bretherton), who likes to call her "Lovely Lady", takes a similar interest in Jean. Both crushes are brief; eventually Judith and Alistair fall for each other and, in the final season, marry. Other story arcs feature Lionel being asked to write an American TV mini-series, Just Two People, based on his early romance with Jean. The mini-series fails after much rewriting and network interference. Jean eventually retires from Type for You and later volunteers at a charity shop.
Jean's very efficient secretary, and Judith's best friend, is Sandy (Jenny Funnell), who eventually moves in with the Hardcastles after splitting with her boyfriend Nick. After Jean's retirement, Judy and Sandy become co-managers of Type for You. Sandy dates Harry (David Michaels, later replaced by Daniel Ryan), a policeman and rugby player, whom she marries at the end of the series.
Other notable characters include Lionel's irrepressible father Rocky, whose favourite saying is "Rock On"(Frank Middlemass) and who owns a large country house in Hampshire which he later gives to Lionel; the housekeeper, Mrs. Bale (Janet Henfrey), who has an unusual interest in the Shipping Forecast and gives exact times that meals are ready, and the gardener, Lol Ferris (Tim Wylton), who says Jean is a "tender woman". In the early seasons of the show, Lionel received news from Rocky's physician that his father was dying and had less than a year to live, but this plotline was dropped and Rocky continued to appear throughout the show's later seasons, including the final "Reunion Special" in 2005.
Rocky marries Madge (Joan Sims), as much a character as Rocky is, when he is 85 and she is 78. They travel the world, listen to country music, tool about in Madge's classic convertible (with steer horns on the grille), and hang out at the local pub, where Madge sings. In Series Nine, Madge is mentioned as being on an archaeological dig in Egypt; in reality Joan Sims died before filming began. Jean's first husband's neurotic sister Penny (Moyra Fraser), who always calls Jean "poor Jean", and Penny's flaky dentist husband, Stephen (Paul Chapman), who once accidentally declined the OBE, also make many appearances. | romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0062782 | Carry On... Up the Khyber | Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond (Sid James) is Queen Victoria's Governor in the British India province of Khalabar near the Khyber Pass. The province is defended by the feared 3rd Foot and Mouth Regiment (The Devils in Skirts), who are said to not wear anything under their kilts. When Private Widdle (Charles Hawtrey) is found wearing underpants after an encounter with the warlord Bungdit Din (Bernard Bresslaw), chief of the warlike Burpa tribe, the Khasi of Khalabar (Kenneth Williams) plans to use this information to incite an anti-British rebellion. He aims to dispel the "tough" image of the Devils in Skirts by revealing that contrary to popular belief, they do indeed wear underpants under their kilts.
A diplomatic operation ensues on the part of the British, who fail spectacularly to prove that the incident was an aberration. The Governor's wife (Joan Sims), in the hope of luring the Khasi into bed with her, takes a photograph of an inspection in which many of the soldiers present are found wearing underpants, and takes it to him. With this hard evidence in hand, the Khasi would be able to muster a ferocious Afghan invasion force, storm the Khyber Pass and reclaim India from British rule; but Lady Ruff-Diamond insists that he sleep with her before she parts with the photograph. He delays on account of her unattractiveness, eventually taking her away with him to Bungdit Din's palace.
Meanwhile, the Khasi's daughter, Princess Jelhi (Angela Douglas), reveals to the British Captain Keene (Roy Castle), with whom she has fallen in love, that the Governor's wife has eloped, and a team is dispatched to return her and the photo to British hands. Disguised as Afghan generals, the interlopers are brought into the palace and, at the Khasi's suggestion, are introduced to Bungdit Din's sultry concubines. Whilst enjoying the women in the harem, they are unmasked amid a farcical orgy scene, imprisoned, and scheduled to be executed at sunset along with the Governor's wife. The Khasi's daughter aids their escape in disguise as dancing girls, but during the entertaining of the Afghan generals, the Khasi, contemptuous of an annoying fakir's performance, demands that he see the dancing girls instead. After their disguises are seen through, the British and the Princess flee, but Lady Ruff-Diamond drops the photograph on leaving the palace through the gardens. The group returns to the Khyber Pass to find its guards massacred and their weapons comically mutilated, in a rare moment of (albeit tainted) poignancy. All attempts to hold off the advancing hordes fail miserably, and a hasty retreat is beaten to the Residency.
The Governor, meanwhile, has been entertaining, in numerical order, the Khasi's fifty-one wives, each one of them wishing to "right the wrong" that his own wife and the Khasi himself have supposedly committed against him (though no such wrong took place). After a browbeating from his wife, Sir Sidney calls a crisis meeting regarding the invasion, in which he resolves to "do nothing". A black tie dinner is arranged for that evening.
Dinner takes place during a prolonged penultimate scene, with contrapuntal snippets of the Khasi's army demolishing the Residency's exterior, and the officers and ladies ignoring the devastation as they dine. Shells shaking the building and plaster falling into the soup do not interrupt dinner, even when the fakir's severed - but still talking - head is served, courtesy of the Khasi. Only Brother Belcher fails to display a stiff upper lip, and panics like a normal person. Finally, at Captain Keene's suggestion, the gentlemen walk outside to be greeted by a bloody battle being waged in the courtyard. Still dressed in black tie, Sir Sidney orders the Regiment to form a line and lift their kilts, this time exposing their (implied) lack of underwear. The invading army is terrified, and retreats at once. | satire, historical fiction | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0174269 | Tierra de pasiones | In a beautiful valley where the most exquisite grapes are farmed, an intense and sizzling love story will flourish between Valeria San Roman, a beautiful woman with a strong character, which has given her the strength to face life's deceptions, and Francisco Contreras, renowned publisher, widower and a man of will.
Valeria, who manages the San Roman vineyard, hasn’t had an easy life. Her own father, Jose Maria `Chema` San Roman, the family's patriarch, has always hated her because she is the only one who doesn’t obey him. A man without scruples, selfish and womanizing, Chema arrived to the United States, married Valeria's mom to steal everything from her and later disposed of her. If that weren’t enough, Chema schemes a hideous plan causing Valeria to experience a horrible betrayal.
Meanwhile, Francisco arrives to visit his father at the ranch only to learn that he has married Marcia, a woman much younger than he who leads him to the brink of bankruptcy and drives him to suicide. At that time, Francisco decides to stay in the valley and save the family business from bankruptcy.
When Valeria and Francisco meet, their strong personalities undoubtedly clash, although it is evident that there is a strong chemistry between them. They team up to form a partnership convenient to both and are resigned to the idea of having to put up with each other. As they get to know one another, a love stems between them that will survive all the challenges they will encounter along the way.
But, when destiny finally gives Valeria this new opportunity, Pablo, an old flame she thought was dead, comes back from the past to change everything. | melodrama | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0095936 | Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak | Dhanakpur village farmer Thakur Jaswant Singh (Alok Nath) and Dhanraj Singh (Dalip Tahil) are brothers. They have a younger sister Madhumati, who was used, made pregnant and ditched by Ratan Singh (played by Arjun), the son of Thakur Raghuveer Singh from a big Rajput family. The family refuses Jaswant Singh's request to get his sister married to Ratan. Ratan's family refuses to accept that he is guilty, as they are interested in their status.
Insulted, Jaswant leaves the village. Unable to tolerate the events, Madhumati commits suicide. Frustrated, Dhanraj kills Ratan at his wedding and gets imprisoned. The two families are now bitter enemies. Jaswant moves to Delhi, develops his business, and reaches good status; he also raises Dhanraj's kids. Years later, Dhanraj gets released from the prison. Upon release, Dhanraj receives a letter from his son, Raj (Aamir Khan), an ardent music lover, who completes his education in Rajput College. An emotional Dhanraj sneaks into Raj's college farewell party and is glad to see his son fulfill his dreams.
In a twist of fate, Raj and his buddy go to Dhanakpur to clear his family's land deal. While returning home, Raj falls for Rashmi (Juhi Chawla), a relative of Raghuveer Singh. Raj sneaks into Rashmi's birthday bash. The two meet again at a holiday spot. They become lost in the forest and fall in love while finding a way out. Raj finds out about Rashmi's family but is unable to tell her the truth. When Randhir Singh, Rashmi's father, finds out about the affair, he immediately arranges Rashmi's wedding. The lovers take on their families and elope, dreaming of an idyllic life together.
Furious, Randhir hires a contract killer to kill Raj. The lovers have a brief interval of happiness. They stay in a deserted fort, happy in their own paradise. When Randhir learns their whereabouts, he goes there to bring Rashmi home and ensure that Raj is killed. Randhir's mother does not wish for this so she goes to Dhanraj and tells him to save them. Raj leaves the fort to bring some wood for their house. While Raj is away, Randhir meets with Rashmi and tells her to come home; he has "accepted their love". Rashmi is overjoyed at her father's words, not knowing the truth. In the forest, Raj is chased by the henchmen.
Dhanraj reaches the fort and repeatedly asks about his son's whereabouts. They get in a fight and a gunshot is heard. Rashmi leaves the scene to make sure that Raj is okay. He is about to be shot but, on seeing Rashmi, the henchman shoots her instead. She is shot twice and rolls down the hill. Raj overpowers the henchman and reaches Rashmi's side, crying. They promise never to leave each other. On saying this, Rashmi breathes her last in Raj's arms. A grief-stricken Raj is devastated by Rashmi's death, and says that nothing can separate them. He commits suicide with a dagger given to him by Rashmi and dies with his head on her chest.
The final scene is both families running toward them; the lovers are together, never to be separated, as the sun sets behind them. | tragedy, revenge, murder, romantic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt2073661 | Stranded | The episode begins with Jerry and George at a drug store to purchase medicine where George becomes involved in an altercation with the cashier (played by Gwen Shepherd), accusing her of short-changing him ten dollars. He is removed by the security guard. George gets invited to a party on Long Island and brings Elaine and Jerry with him. Jerry and Elaine have a bad time trapped in boring conversations, and Elaine confronts a woman because of her fur coat. At one point during the party, Elaine does a mock Australian accent from the film A Cry in the Dark and exclaims "Maybe the dingo ate your baby?"
When a co-worker starts coming on to George, he strands Jerry and Elaine at the party, leaving them to wait for a very late Kramer. As a sign of gratitude for allowing him and Elaine to wait at his home, Jerry suggests the hosts, Steve (played by Michael Chiklis) and Jenny, stop by his apartment if they are ever in Manhattan.
A week later, to Jerry's surprise, Steve takes him up on his offer just as Jerry is heading out the door. Jerry allows him to wait in the apartment until his return. However, Kramer stops by and he and Steve have a drink and bond. Eventually Steve hires a prostitute to come over to Jerry's apartment. Jerry and George meet at the drug store where they speak about George's coworker, whom he slept with after the party. Then, after Jerry picks a medicine, George puts it in his shirt under his jacket as retribution for the short-changing incident before. The security guard witnesses the whole event and takes him to jail.
Just as Jerry arrives, Steve leaves the apartment without paying the prostitute, who refuses to leave until paid. As Jerry is paying the girl off, cops arrive and he's "busted" for fomenting prostitution. Elaine arrives and prepares to squabble with the prostitute over her fur coat. In the final scene Jerry and George fondly reminisce about their time in jail. | revenge | train | wikipedia | null |
tt3569788 | Naan Sigappu Manithan | In the middle of the night, Indhiran (Vishal), accompanied by his two friends, Sathish (Jagan) and Karuna (Sunder Ramu), purchases a gun illegally from a local gangster. Back home, Indhiran stares at his wishlist and recalls his past.
Since childhood, Indhiran has been suffering from narcolepsy, a rare disorder, which makes him fall asleep whenever his emotions reach an extreme and hinders him from living an ordinary life. He needs to be accompanied all the time, companies hesitate to hire him, although he has excelled in academics, and he cannot impregnate women since he would fall asleep during sex. However, he can still hear whatever is being said when he is sleeping.
Indhiran creates a list with 10 goals he wants to achieve on his own. One day, he ventures out alone, which was one of his goals. When he is almost hit by a vehicle while crossing the road, his fear mounts and he falls asleep in the middle of the road. A passerby (Mayilsamy) makes him pose as an orphaned corpse and gathers money from onlookers for his burial. Meera (Lakshmi Menon), who passes by, takes pity and shells out almost five grands.
She later meets Indhiran in a mall and falls unconscious, seeing him alive. After clearing up the misunderstanding, they start dating and fall for each other. Meera makes one of the dreams of Indhiran come true (i.e.) getting a kiss from a beautiful woman by kissing him. But Meera's father opposes their marriage as Indhiran cannot give birth to a child. Meera urges Indhiran to find a way how he could stay awake. It dawns on Indhiran that he had never fallen asleep while taking a shower. Believing that her father will accept Indhiran only when his potency is proved, Meera and Indhiran have sex underwater in their pool, resulting in Meera becoming pregnant.
On a late night drive, Meera and Indhiran find themselves in an under-construction bridge. Their car is hit by another car and the shock makes Indhiran doze. Meera is brutally attacked by four thugs. Indhiran can hear the entire incident but remains asleep. Meera falls into a coma and her baby has been aborted. A heartbroken Indhiran vows to exact revenge on the perpetrators.
The narrative moves back to the present. Deciding to venge all by himself, Indhiran fails to testify to the police. To safeguard himself from any sudden shock, he buys a portable audio player and uses it with full volume. Enquiring Meera's friends, Indhiran first suspects Karthik (Rishi), a rich but ill-mannered guy, whose marriage proposal was rejected by Meera. Indhiran confronts him, but he feigns ignorance about the incident.
Indhiran remembers that there were four persons, with one of them named Sekhar, and Sekhar's ringtone, while the police finds out that the offenders rode a red car. Indhiran stumbles upon a red car in a petrol bunk and enquires the driver who claims that the car was with a mechanic named Sekhar on the day the crime took place. At the workshop, he spots the mechanic who tries to abscond, recognising Indhiran, and a chase ensues leading them to a building under construction. Informed by Sathish, Karuna arrives there and kills Sekhar. He then slits himself and is admitted for treatment. Karuna then recollects.
Married to Karuna for two years, Kavitha (Iniya) was dissatisfied with her drunkard husband; she begins an affair with Aravind, a rich friend of Karuna. He spends a lot of money on buying her expensive gifts. Indhiran gains knowledge of this and advises Kavitha against it. It turns out that Karuna, to realise his ambitions of running a business in US, had been using his wife to manipulate Aravind. Citing Indhiran's confrontation, Kavitha bluffed to Aravind that if Karuna gets to know about the affair, he would kill them both. She suggested that the only way to solve it once and for all is to arrange the amount of ₹ 20 million Karuna needs to settle in the states. With him gone, they could enjoy being together. Aravind agreed to finance Karuna out of his lust for her.
Later, when Karuna and Kavitha are celebrating their success, Indhiran drops by unexpectedly. They mess up; Indhiran suspects them and informs Aravind who confronts the couple. When Aravind realizes that he had been cheated, he hits Kavitha in a fit of rage and she dies. Infuriated, Karuna retaliated and kills Aravind. Karuna arranges for disposing them with the help of the thugs and lies to Indhiran that Kavitha has eloped with Aravind. Since he assumed that Indhiran was responsible for the death of Kavitha, Karuna had planned to take revenge by making him suffer the same way and requested the thugs to hides the bodies of Kavitha and Aravind and rape Meera.
The remaining thugs insist Karuna to bring Indhiran to the same place where Sekhar was killed. Finding out that it was Karuna who had killed Sekhar, they beat him up. The thugs then remove the audio player from Indhiran who gets an adrenaline rush and dozes off. While the thugs are assaulting him, one of them breaks a water pump which splashes water all over and awakens Indhiran. He kills them all and finally Karuna too. Indhiran tells Kaurna just before he dies by Indhiran, that he had seen Karuna killing Sekhar but had come with him only to locate the other thugs.
With all his wishes fulfilled, he has a new wish that he would make Meera recover soon. The final scene shows Indhiran hugging Meera, who is tearful hearing him which shows that she is definitely recovering. | violence, murder, romantic, flashback | train | wikipedia | His Sleep keeps us wide awake....
In the footprints of Ghajini, Chandramukhi, Anniyan we have in our hands another well made disorder-based-thriller.
Though the grandiose, as in the case of the former movies, is missing the plot has been kept simple and to the point and hence strikes a chord among the viewers.Vishal's "Nan Sigappu Manithan" is the third venture from Vishal Film Factory and also the third film in Vishal-Thiru combination.
Indiran (Vishal) suffers from Narcolepsy, a disorder that puts people to sleep at the slightest excitement of emotions.
When his love life with Meera (Lakshmi Menon) is affected by this disorder he finds a temporary solution after which a tragedy strikes which forever alters his life.Vishal with the tinted, and often cracked, glass is well suited for the role of a narcoleptic patient.
Be it his innocence during the job-hunt or the shyness during his love-life or the anger during the revenge episode, he has very well distinguished his expressions and has lit up the screen.
Though his disorder initially tickles the viewers, "the scene" totally shakes everyone to the core.Lakshmi Menon as Vishal's Juliet has done her part with no blemishes.
If Vishal sleeps in the first half, she takes over the job during the second.
Besides the lead, the art director deserves appreciation for his well made backdrops during the desert number and also for looking into the tiniest details (the mirror in the Vishal's home with a lot of stains is an example).Nevertheless, Thiru's script is the first and foremost hero for spinning a web around a disorder and making it into a full length entertainer.The only flaw that I found out: Indiran's mother initially thinks that her son falls unconscious.
Later Indiran uses water as a recovery strategy.
In any normal situations the first thing we do is to use water to wake up an unconscious person.
But it took Indiran over two decades to discover that water-idea.
Does it add up??Still, "Naan Sigappu Manithan": Green Flag..
A Revenge thriller that will keep you engaged.
Vishal's Naan Sigapu Manithan is a Revenge thriller film with a medical disorder tale in the plot.
It can be compared to Gajini though this will not make a huge impact like Gajini because of some commercial elements here and there in the plot.
Vishal has justified the role of a Narcolepsy patient and portrays the problem they face with the social world.
Saranya Ponvannan as usual plays the caring mother character yet it's not boring what she does, make us laugh.
Lakshmi Menon for a change as the modern rich man's city girl impresses us with her new looks and acting (credits to the makeup man for using enough touch up coats and colour contacts).
She had a good scope in the first half of the movie and in the second half she goes as the sleeping beauty.
Iniya the vaagai soodava girl has played the similar role of Thirutu payale Malavika which perfectly fits with her new transformed stunning looks.
Her role is short but important and impressive.
Supporting roles by Jagan and Mayakam Enna fame Sudar Ramu gives a good hand to the plot.
Jayaprakash comes in a short role.
The screenplay was good and quite engaging except for the fact of misplacement of songs.
Story is also fresh keeping in mind that without digging much into the real medical syndrome if see this as something newly presented it feels fresh.
BGM so much was mostly stolen from myakam enna and Gajini.
Music was average not impressive by GV.
The controversial lip-lock was not so laudable but of course the plot had adultery in so many sections justifying U/A certification.
Second half twist might offend so many people particularly female viewers.
Overall 3/5.
-Reviewed by Sivakumar Balachandran.
Watch it for Narcolepsy!.
Story - A man suffering from Narcolepsy disorder, have to strike back for his love.Positives: New term Narcolepsy in the story, Vishal & Lakshmi Menon, extraordinary first half, Good cinematography, Excellent BGM by GV.Prakash.Negatives: Last 30mins.Vishal-Director Thiru combination for 3rd time.
Most of us now only came to know what is Narcolepsy.
The way director explained about a guy suffering from Narcolepsy from childhood is brilliant.
Vishal shared a romantic screen with Lakshmi Menon for the second time.
Naan Sigappu Manithan is completely good until the story unlocks something in the screen.
Iniya appearance is not fair.
Some flashback for revenge is not so strong.
Remember still NSM have more +ve than -ve.Bottom-line - Average commercial with some new dose..
Thiru and Vishal once again won the hearts of people.
I saw the film a couple of days ago .
It was awesome.
The film is about a man (Vishal as Indiran) who suffers from Narcolepsy and faces his problems.
Vishal's acting is very good.
Lakshmi Menon comes in the first half ans a few minutes in second half but second half runs based on her .
Jagan and Sundar Ramu as Vishal's friends does a good job .
Jayaprakash in a small role foes a good job.
first half is full romance and comedy but post interval and after interval takes a turn and the film turns into a thriller.
The twist in the second half is unexpected .
No one would have expected it.
The most important thing is Thiru's screenplay and direction.
Don't miss this film.It is definitely worth a watch..
Naan Sigappu Manithan (Tamil) (U/A) --------- my Rating : ★★★½ NARCOLEPSY THRILLER.
Naan Sigappu Manithan (Tamil) (U/A) New movie Reviews and lots more Hot news ....
LIKE THIS PAGE : English Hindi TAMIL TELUGU Facebook : Movie Review by Yunus Irshad https://www.facebook.com/YunusIrshadsMovieReviewNaan Sigappu Manithan (Tamil) (U/A) --------- my Rating : ★★★½ NARCOLEPSY THRILLERSTRENGTHS :- * Story Screenplay Direction : was interesting ...
* Casting and Performances : were really great ...
* Twists and Turns : plays main role ...WEAKNESSES :- * Post interval portion : was little over.....
* Songs were boring...FILM VERDICT :- * Overall...
a must watch who loves twists and turns ....This film talks about a neurological sleeping disorder called narcolepsy.
Co-produced by Vishal, the film stars himself in the leading role with Lakshmi Menon and Iniya in supporting roles..
brilliantly plotted.....
Naan Sigappu Manithan by THRIU is an excellent story,casting vishal, lakshmi menon.
The plot revolves around indiran (vishal) who has sleeping disorder..
he has his own wishes to complete..
while on the process of completing his wishes he meets with meera (lakshmi).
she helps him with his wishes and eventually falls in love with him..
her father is not happy with indiran and avoids the proposal..
one night meera gets raped by four people and goes into coma...
meanwhile indiran is urging to seek his revenge..
what he undergoes is a totally unexpected criteria...I enjoyed watching it...
it didn't make me sleep..!!
watch it..
love it.
Naan Sigappu Manithan (2014).
The movie was worst.
The movie was not at all good.
The movie was not at all good.
The movie has a worst story and many vulgar scenes.
Songs and BGM in the movie was also worst.
Boring movie..
Red is for anger!!.
I watched this movie with the least expectations and frankly speaking I was quiet intrigued by this rare disorder which Indran had, narcolepsy.
Indran played by Vishal convinces us and he keeps us engaged by creating funny moments and at the same time he makes us understand his pain.
As the plot unfolds I thought that the movie was only about narcolepsy and how Indran with the help of his mother, friends and love overcomes his troubles.
But no that is not the complete plot as I was shocked near the interval segment after all I did not expect the plot would take such a shocking and brutal turn.
This movie aptly named "Naan Sigappu Manithan" brings out his anger and his guilt and how he confronts the people responsible for it, and the sub plot which was shocking to the core as unexpected things pile up in front of you which eventually leads to the finale.
This movie is a must watch by everyone for both narcolepsy and the movie's take on violence against women. |
tt0046799 | Boot Polish | Belu (Baby Naaz) and Bhola (Ratan Kumar) are left in the care of their wicked aunt Kamla (Chand Burque) after their mother dies. She forces them to beg in the streets and takes their money.
A bootlegger named John uncle (David Abraham) teaches them self-respect and to work for a living instead of begging. They save to buy a shoe-polish kit and begin shining shoes. When Kamla discovers this, she beats them and kicks them out of the house.
Meanwhile, John Chacha is arrested and the children are left to fend for themselves. When it rains and people stop having their shoes polished, the children are in danger of starving. Bhola wishes to never beg again and rejects a coin tossed to him on a rainy night. When Belu takes it out of hunger, Bhola slaps her and she drops it.
When police come, intent on taking the children, Belu escapes onto a train but Bhola is arrested. On board the train, Belu is adopted by a rich family and she is sad for her brother.
Bhola searches for Belu after getting out of custody but cannot find her. After running away from an orphanage, he is unable to find work and extremely hungry, and resorts to begging. He encounters Belu while begging at railway station where Belu and her adopted family are boarding a train for vacation. Humiliated, Bhola runs away but his sister pursues him. John Chacha has also come to the station to say goodbye and joins the chase but he falls and is injured. Bhola stops running and Belu and Bhola are reunited.
The rich family adopts Bhola also and they live happily ever after. | satire | train | wikipedia | Immensely Rich Cinematic Experience.
"There is no difficulty such that you cannot overcome it and no height such that you cannot reach it; you must keep trying." Raj Kapoor...I saw Boot Polish once when I was a student in Michigan many years ago and I never forgot it.
I was thrilled to be able to see it again this week in its new DVD release by Yash Raj Films, and I loved it just as much if not more.
Boot Polish is a pure example of Hindi cinema (now called "Bollywood").
It is filled with songs and dances, stylized artifice, idealized characters, myriad sub-plots, and an inspiring message.
Though not a musical, the joyous and hypnotic songs are interwoven into the plot in a way that both enhances the drama and reminds you that it is "also" a movie.The direction is attributed to Prakash Arora, assistant to the "great showman" Raj Kapoor; however, the story is that Kapoor took one look at the rush print and realized he had made a mistake in assigning it to Arora, then re-shot the entire film himself.
The film won the 1953/54 Filmfare awards (India's version of the Oscars) for best picture, best supporting actor, and best cinematography.The story is about the relationship between a ten-year old boy, Bhola (Rhatan Kumar) and his seven-year old sister Belu (Baby Naaz).
The children are without parents.
They live in a slum area in Bombay with Kamla, a cold and unloving relative, and must beg to stay alive.
Bhola and Belu undergo verbal and physical abuse from Kamla when they don't bring home enough money each day.
Their only friend is a neighbor, John Chacha (David Ebrahim), who operates a bootlegging business outside the law.John Chacha provides the kids with the emotional warmth they need and tells them not to beg but to find some work.
"Starve, die, but don't beg.
Do something with your two hands", he says and instructs them in the art of polishing shoes.
Bhola and Belu gradually become proficient in their trade and eke out a living, refusing to take alms.
The monsoon rains come, however, and their business suffers.
In addition, John's arrest takes from them the little love and comfort they had.
Beg or die is the question that the children must now face.Some may dismiss Boot Polish as melodrama but, for me, it is a life affirming and immensely rich cinematic experience.
The love of the children for each other is very real, and their struggle for survival and social respectability is deeply moving.
Filled with positive energy and the "heroic face of innocence", Boot Polish is now more than ever one of my all time favorite films..
Touching Social Drama.
This film ranks as one of the finest thought provoking social dramas asking how we look at ourselves given the limited resources and choices and faced with overwhelming odds.
Raj Kapoor's presentation of the humble lifestyle of two children who wish to overcome the obstacles of abject poverty shows the importance of the spirit of endurance and dedication in the face of adversity.
We can learn from children when they try to face challenges in the world created by greedy souls.I would recommend this film as a lesson in the triumph of the human spirit when facing the evils of man made adversity.
We probably can relate to the two youn protaganists of the film in our everyday lives.
Life can be a bitch, and films such as BOOT POLISH show the more dramatic encounters of what we call the human struggle..
Badalega Zamaana Ye Sitaaron Pe Likha Hai ....
Boot Polish tells the story of two orphan children - Bholu (Ratan Kumar) and his younger sister, Belu (Naaz).
The fostering aunt of theirs is a wicked lady (Chaand Burke) who forces them to beg on the streets.
They feel that begging is wrong but don't have any other option.
Destiny brings them into contact with a kind-hearted bootlegger - John Chacha (David) who inspires them to lead a life based on hard-work and earn self-respect for them.
The innocent children save money and buy a shoe-polish kit .
Now they don't beg but earn money by polishing the shoes of the people.
Their villainous aunt expels them from the house.
The poor children are now under the sky to support themselves by all means.
The ill-fate strikes them when first the rainy seasons arrives and people no longer approach them to get their shoes polished.
And thereafter, John Chacha gets arrested when he tries to sell liquor to get some money to buy food for these hungry kids.
Then starts a chain of heart-piercing incidents bringing about the separation of the brother and the sister.
As times change, their fate also takes a twist and they get reunited to lead a better life now.Boot Polish is a very touching movie and able to move the spectator deep within his / her heart at several places.
Any emotional person will find it hard to stop his / her tears while watching this movie.
The writer - Bhaanu Prataap, the director - Prakash Arora and the ultimate visionary - Raj Kapoor all have worked in harmony to make it a memorable movie.
The movie does not bore at all any place and it can be watched many times.
Though more Bollywood movies based on children came later also, this movie is definitely in a league of its own.However, I have some reservations about this movie, mainly its script.
Begging and moreover the begging of the children (who are actually forced by the grown-up ones behind the sight) has always been a great problem in India.
It was there when Boot Polish was made and it is there when this review is being written.
Frankly, several boot-polishing children found on the railway stations and the scavenging children seen in the train are no different from the beggars.
This is the real, ugly face of the so-called shining India.
And when this movie was made, India was not shining even on paper.
Hence the script-writers could have done better by focusing the story on this issue only.
However the track of first begging and then shoe-polishing of the children is short and the major footage has gone to the other happenings in their life.
I, therefore, felt that the filmmaker's motive was more to exploit the sentiments of the audience and less to draw attention to a burning issue.
The problems of the children have been resolved in the climax in an utterly filmy way which seldom happens in real life.All the same, I have no hitch in admitting that quality-wise this black and white movie is by all standards, a very superior movie.
True to the repute of the R.K. Banner, this movie scores in all the departments - may it be the art direction or the cinematography or the acting or the background score or the music- everything is superb.
Just superb !
The movie belongs to the child artists - Master Ratan Kumar and Baby Naaz and both have delivered performances of a life time.
They make you smile, they make you weep.
Mainly, it's them which makes this movie a winner all the way.
The viewer is bound to lose his / her heart to these innocent faces and their innocent mannerisms.
Among others, seasoned artist - David deserves a special mention.
He never acted badly throughout his career and Boot Polish is a showcase of his abundant talent.Raj Kapoor's permanent music directors - Shankar Jaikishan have composed memorable melodies including Chali Kaun Se Des Gujariya Tu Saj Dhaj Ke (Talat Mahmood - Asha Bhosle), Lapak Jhapak Tu Aa Re Badarwa (Manna Dey), Tumhaare Hain Tumse Daya Maangte Hain (Asha Bhosle - Mohammad Rafi), Raat Gayi O Raat Gayi Phir Din Aata Hai (Asha - Manna Dey), Theher Zara O Jaanewaale (Asha - Madhubala Jhaveri - Manna Dey), Taaron Ko Dil Ki Baat Sunaaye (Asha), Saari Duniya Hai Mujhpe Deewaani (Asha) etc.
with the beautiful lyrics penned by Shailendra and Hasrat Jaipuri.
But the song which is definitely immortal is - Nanhe Munne Bachche Teri Mutthi Mein Kya Hai.I recommend this great movie to one and all who are interested in watching socially relevant quality cinema.
I hope against hope that things will improve for the innocent unsupported children in our country with the efforts of us all humming the following lines of the song Nanhe Munne Bachche Teri Mutthi Mein Kya Hai - 'Aane Waali Duniya Mein Sabke Sar Pe Taaj Hoga, Na Bhookhon Ki Bheed Hogi Na Dukhon Ka Raaj Hoga, Badalega Zamaana Ye Sitaaron Pe Likha Hai...'.
A masterpiece in Indian cinema.
Boot polish is a masterpiece in Indian cinema.The movie is well scripted with powerful performances by baby Naaz and Ratan Kumar.Baby Naaz steals your heart through her fantastic performance and also through her dialogue delivery.
Boot polish is a masterpiece because the theme of the movie is relevant even today.The writing is exceptional which makes this movie a masterpiece.Even the songs are exceptionally wonderful.boot polish will remain as a masterpiece in Indian cinema for the unique performance of baby Naaz.The dialogues are heart touching.David Abraham gives a memorable performance as uncle john.Shankar Jaikishan music is excellent with fantastic songs.A masterpiece that requires high Honour forever in the Indian cinema.A masterpiece with an fine social melodrama.A must see for every Indian..
Excellent, socially aware film from classic Bollywood.
This is the sort of film which shows both the strengths - and the weaknesses - of classic Bollywood cinema.
Conceived and executed more often than not with the mass audience in mind, but hoping to make some serious statements behind all the light entertainment, 'Boot Polish' suffers from being a little too long, as well as possessing an over- simplistic ending.
On the plus side there is some great acting by the two young leads and some excellent social comment to be gleaned, conveyed through the fine black and white cinematography.
Raj Kapoor, who makes a cameo appearance in the film, apparently saw the first cut of the project, then promptly scrapped a lot of what had been produced to start over again.
His presence is perhaps most felt in some the Chaplinesque scenes and reforming sentiments which which surround Belu and John's kindly uncle (Prabhu Arora).
The inherent decency of people, and the cinematic pathos of children torn from their guardians are all familiar from some of Chaplin's films.As some critics have noted the two children, with Uncle's then John's particular insistence on the dignity of labour and disavowal of begging as a way of life, can be seen as symbolising the ambitions and hopes of Young India - which interpretation explains the somewhat naive ending of the film.
Despite the distress which overtakes some of the young participants, Boot Polish ends on a note of optimism for the future, presumably echoing the Congress Party's offical line at the time.
Before the two reach their just deserts however, and during their struggles to make ends meet and make their boot cleaning business work, there is a more obvious cinematic influence: that of the Italian Neo-Realists, especially Vittorio De Sica, whose own 'Shoe Shine'/'Sciuscià' had appeared in 1946.While one or two of the songs interspersed through the film might be willingly dispensed with by modern Western audiences, there's one comic number (sung by Uncle in prison with a cell full of bald men) which is priceless and shouldn't be missed.
Uncle is a convincing proseyltizer for the national Way Ahead, while a minor disreputable scoundrel in his own right.
Less convincingly drawn are the parents who adopt Belu.
Their all-round charitable concern reminds one of the childless couple who take Oliver Twist in off the streets, which is a form of symbolic caring rather than one dramatically fulfilling for the reader/viewer.A word should be said about the excellent performance by Baby Naaz as the young sister Belu, in this her first appearance on screen.
Although she only made a handful of films, her talent is amazing (as self aware and as talented as the young Jodie Foster IMHO) and is one of the biggest reasons to see the film.Taken as a whole, 'Boot Polish' is very entertaining as well as being typical of the time at which it was made.
If you enjoy classic Bollywood at close to its best, then this will worth looking out for.
Admirers of the great Raj Kapoor will need little persuasion, but those who wish to see a great comic turn by Arora (is this really his only film?) will be advised too..
Well made thoughtful parable.
I must admit I've always enjoyed the films of Raj Kapoor especially from his early golden period, but can find his moralising laid on a little heavy at times.
He took the best pathos and melodrama from Chaplin and spun it out relentlessly.
As in Boot Polish.
It's not that I can argue with any of his philosophising and moral instruction, just that history has proved Film itself will never change the social system; it never brings shame to the faces of our Betters, but it probably would just make them wonder how much more they can turn the screws on us.
After all, Film represents an entertainment they have paid their paisa or pennies for us to waste production time watching.Two young children are orphaned and thrown onto the not so tender mercies of their scolding prostitute aunt and nice but drunken uncle in a Mumbai slum.
She teaches them to beg for a living, he tries to teach them of the better, honest and more painful way, in their case the complicated profession of polishing other people's boots.
It's done very well, and if it wasn't for the comedy and the songs almost neo-realist - RK even makes a fag-in-cheek cameo at the beginning.
To beg or not to beg, that is the question - but the pain of surviving the slings and arrows of capitalism goes on
and on for the children, although their destitute situation does eventually improve.
Baby Naaz must have been very young but she provided a marvellously believable performance.
My favourite bit though amidst all the grinding poverty is the energetic comic raag Lapak Jhapak To Aare Badarwa sung by Manna Dey for the uncle and his fellow bald headed companions in jail – delicious stuff!
I always wondered whether bits like these were particularly edited out in the Russian versions?Needless to say self-sacrifice and self-effacement bring their reward - so basically it's another rewarding film from RK, an expertly produced moral melodrama..
Breathtaking,Inspirational And True Indian Masterpiece Movie Ever.
All I want to say that every person living in this world should watch this Indian movie.Especially Who are Afraid ,Coward and thinking about themselves that they are of no use in this world, in their life.Whoever is Hating Himself must watch it.
As I watched this movie for first time I broke into tears .I am a teenager Guy Though.I can't explain how beautifully every thing is Explained In this movie that gives you a Strong Determination & Inspiration to not lose hope and have self respect.
Finally i wanna request you that for god's sake go for this movie at least once if you have true compassion within you.Hat.s off for the respective director including his cast and crew..
A story of love, heartache, destitution and restoration..
Boot Polish is an excellent movie.
I watched it around 10 years ago late at night just for something to pass time, before I realised I was totally captivated.The film is well written, the acting very good.
At times you feel very involved with the central characters, especially where brother and sister are split up.As soon as I realised this movie had been released on DVD I purchased it, I became so involved in it I didn't even realise I was reading English subtitles.Since watching this movie I have been a convert to Hindi films, the whole structure of these films is set to entertain the viewer which is something most new films do not think of. |
tt0500092 | Serial Experiments Lain | The series focuses on Lain Iwakura, an adolescent middle school girl living in suburban Japan, and her introduction to the Wired, a global communications network which is similar to the Internet. Lain lives with her middle-class family, which consists of her inexpressive older sister Mika, her emotionally distant mother, and her computer-obsessed father; while Lain herself is somewhat awkward, introverted, and socially isolated from most of her school peers. But the status-quo of her life becomes upturned by a series of bizarre incidents that start to take place after she learns that girls from her school have received an e-mail from a dead student, Chisa Yomoda, and she pulls out her old computer in order to check for the same message. Lain finds Chisa telling her that she is not dead, but has merely "abandoned her physical body and flesh" and is alive deep within the virtual reality-world of the Wired itself, where she has found the almighty and divine "God". From this point, Lain is caught up in a series of cryptic and surreal events that see her delving deeper into the mystery of the network in a narrative that explores themes of consciousness, perception, and the nature of reality.
The "Wired" is a virtual reality-world that contains and supports the very sum of all human communication and networks, created with the telegraph, televisions, and telephone services, and expanded with the Internet, cyberspace, and subsequent networks. The series assumes that the Wired could be linked to a system that enables unconscious communication between people and machines without physical interface. The storyline introduces such a system with the Schumann resonances, a property of the Earth's magnetic field that theoretically allows for unhindered long distance communications. If such a link were created, the network would become equivalent to Reality as the general consensus of all perceptions and knowledge. The increasingly thin invisible line between what is real and what is virtual/digital begins to slowly shatter.
Masami Eiri is introduced as the project director on Protocol Seven (the next-generation Internet protocol in the series' time-frame) for major computer company Tachibana General Laboratories. He had secretly included code of his very own creation to give himself absolute control of the Wired through the wireless system described above. He then "uploaded" his own brain, conscience, consciousness, memory, feelings, emotions – his very self – into the Wired and "died" a few days after, leaving only his physical, living body behind. These details are unveiled around the middle of the series, but this is the point where the story of Serial Experiments Lain begins. Masami later explains that Lain is the artifact by which the wall between the virtual and material worlds is to fall, and that he needs her to get to the Wired and "abandon the flesh", as he did, to achieve his plan. The series sees him trying to convince her through interventions, using the promise of unconditional love, romantic seduction and charm, and even, when all else fails, threats and force.
In the meantime, the anime follows a complex game of hide-and-seek between the "Knights of the Eastern Calculus", hackers whom Masami claims are "believers that enable him to be a God in the Wired", and Tachibana General Laboratories, who try to regain control of Protocol Seven. In the end, the viewer sees Lain realizing, after much introspection, that she has absolute control over everyone's mind and over reality itself. Her dialogue with different versions of herself shows how she feels shunned from the material world, and how she is afraid to live in the Wired, where she has the possibilities and responsibilities of an almighty goddess. The last scenes feature her erasing everything connected to herself from everyone's memories. She is last seen, unchanged, encountering her oldest and closest friend Alice once again, who is now married. Lain promises herself that she and Alice will surely meet again anytime as Lain can literally go and be anywhere she desires between both worlds. | sci-fi | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0279331 | Dark Blue | Set in Los Angeles, in April 1992, Dark Blue takes place from a few days before and during the acquittal of four officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King and the subsequent L.A. riots. The film begins with footage of the Rodney King beating and switches to a scene showing Sergeant Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) pacing in a motel room. Perry grabs a shotgun and pistol, and then the film cuts to a scene with two men in a car five days earlier, Darryl Orchard (Kurupt) and Gary Sidwell (Dash Mihok), appear to be robbing a convenience store, when they are actually after a safe in the room above the store. Four people are murdered in the robbery and one severely wounded. The story then shifts to Detective Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman), who is in a Gun Board hearing in relation to an application of deadly force. His partner, Perry, defends him, and the two leave.
Perry, Keough, and Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson) are all sitting in a room when they find out that Keough is exonerated. Jack Van Meter is Keough and Perry's superior and a man of poor moral character—he often has his subordinates fabricate stories and evidence. It is later discovered that Perry killed the man that the Gun Board thinks Keough killed, meaning Perry and Keough perjured themselves earlier. Later that night Van Meter goes to Orchard and Sidwell's house and takes the money the two stole from the safe, indicating that the two work for him. That night Keough is shown having sex with a woman who is also a police officer (Michael Michele); the relationship is casual, and they do not reveal their surnames to one another.
The next morning Van Meter tells Perry and Keough to investigate the convenience store murder-robbery. Their investigation ends with them finding Orchard and Sidwell as lead suspects; when this is brought to Van Meter, he tells them to pin it on someone else and provides a false alibi for Orchard and Sidwell. Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Arthur Holland (Ving Rhames) finds Perry's actions suspicious and also does not believe Keough killed the man he was charged with killing at the Gun Board hearing. He asks his assistant Sergeant Beth Williamson (Michael Michele), who has a mutual fling with Keough, to help him. When Williamson is pulling files on Perry and Keough, she discovers the identity of her lover to be Keough.
Later in the night, after obtaining a search warrant with underhanded techniques, a SWAT team raids the house of the ex-cons who are to be the fall guys. One of the ex-cons escapes and goes into a back alley, but is chased by Perry and Keough. When they catch up, Perry tells Keough to kill the man, but Keough has trouble pulling the trigger. Ultimately, however, Keough does kill the innocent man and is visibly shaken. Later on, Perry arrives at home mid-day and sees a moving truck outside of his house. His wife informs him that she is leaving him for another man. Perry tells her that she can keep the house, and leaves. Keough, still distraught after shooting an unarmed man begging for his life, goes to Williamson's house and confesses to her that he killed the man under Perry's orders. During this time, Van Meter decides he wants Perry killed and calls Orchard and Sidwell to do the job.
Van Meter calls Perry and tells him that there is a witness at the address 12657 Juliet. Perry initially balks at this proposal, citing the fact that this "witness" was not directly involved, and that this suggested murder would be far different. He finally accepts, and the call ends. Perry then runs the address 12657 Juliet with the department, and it is uncovered to be the address of Orchard and Sidwell. Shocked at this revelation, Perry ultimately decides to arm himself and head out to the address anyway, perhaps to kill Orchard and Sidwell. This links back to the start of the film.
Believing that Perry was sent by Van Meter to Orchard and Sidwell (as they are unaware of Van Meter's ambush for Perry), Keough and Williamson also drive to 12657 Juliet. It is while driving there that they learn that the officers involved in the Rodney King beating were found not guilty and the city begins to break down. Turning a corner near Orchard and Sidwell's house, Perry sees Keough and Williamson and all three stop. This pause is only broken as Keough is killed by Orchard and Sidwell firing from the rooftop, and the latter subsequently flee. Before dying, Keough tells Perry that he has ratted him out. Infuriated, Williamson blames Perry for what happened, saying she hopes he will burn in Hell. Perry calls in the incident, hesitating briefly before stating his intention of pursuing Orchard and Sidwell.
As they are driving through what are the L.A. riots, Sidwell is dragged out of his car and beaten to death by rioters while Orchard is captured by Perry. Perry then heads to the police academy promotions ceremony (he is promoted to Lieutenant), where he confesses about the corruption and implicates Van Meter. Van Meter attempts to discredit Perry, but ultimately fails as Perry volunteers himself to be arrested, and Holland orders an officer to do so. After the ceremony is adjourned, Perry and Holland chat briefly; Perry is well aware he will be incarcerated, and asks Holland to help him avoid the rougher prisons. Holland says he will see what he can do. The film ends with Perry gazing at a burning skyline of downtown Los Angeles. | violence, neo noir, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0067866 | El topo | El Topo is traveling through a desert on horseback with his naked young son, Hijo. They come across a town whose inhabitants have been slaughtered, and El Topo hunts down and kills the perpetrators and their leader, a fat balding Colonel. El Topo abandons his son to the monks of the settlement's mission and rides off with a woman whom the Colonel had kept as a slave. El Topo names the woman Mara, and she convinces him to defeat four great gun masters to become the greatest gunman in the land. Each gun master represents a particular religion or philosophy, and El Topo learns from each of them before instigating a duel. El Topo is victorious each time, not through superior skill but through trickery or luck.
After the first duel, a black-clad woman with a male voice finds the couple and guides them to the remaining gun masters. As he kills each master, El Topo has increasing doubts about his mission, but Mara persuades him to continue. Having killed all four, El Topo is ridden with guilt, destroys his own gun and revisits the places where he killed those masters, finding their graves swarming with bees. The unnamed woman confronts El Topo and shoots him multiple times in the manner of stigmata. Mara then betrays him and rides off with the woman, while El Topo collapses and is carried away by a group of dwarves and mutants.
El Topo awakes in a cave, to find that the tribe of deformed outcasts have taken care of him and set him up as a God-like figure, while he has been asleep and meditating on the gun masters' "four lessons". The outcasts dwell in a system of caves which have been blocked in — the only exit is out of their reach due to their deformities. When El Topo awakes, he is "born again" and decides to help the outcasts escape. He is able to reach the exit and, together with a dwarf girl who becomes his lover, performs for the depraved cultists of the neighboring town to raise money for dynamite.
Hijo, now a young monk, arrives in the town to be the new priest, but he is disgusted by the perverted form of religion the cultists practice. Despite El Topo's great change in appearance Hijo recognizes him and threatens to kill him on the spot for abandoning him as a child, but agrees to wait until he has succeeded in freeing the outcasts. Hijo grows impatient at the time the project is taking, and begins to work alongside El Topo to hasten the moment when he will kill him. At the point when Hijo is ready to give up on finishing the tunnel, El Topo breaks through into the cave. The tunnel has been completed, but Hijo finds that he cannot bring himself to kill his father.
The outcasts come streaming out, but as they enter the town, they are shot down by the cultists. El Topo helplessly witnesses his community being slaughtered and is shot himself. Ignoring his own wounds he massacres the cultists, then takes an oil lamp and immolates himself. His girlfriend gives birth at the same time as his death, and she and his son make a grave for his remains. This becomes a beehive like the gun masters' graves.
El Topo's son, girlfriend, and baby ride off on horseback, the son now wearing his father's clothes. | avant garde, murder, allegory, cult, violence, atmospheric, psychedelic, satire, revenge | train | wikipedia | I have seen three movies by Alejandro Jodorowsky - 'El Topo', 'The Holy Mountain' and 'Santa Sangre' - each are amazing, but 'El Topo' to me is the most successful.
I doubt whether anyone but Jodorowsky himself truly "gets it", but it is still the most watchable and entertaining of the three, and the best introduction to his work.Jodorowsky not only writes and directs he plays the title role (translates as "The Mole"), a mysterious black-clad gunfighter who claims to be God. I won't bore with a detailed retelling of the plot, but it initially involves El Topo's quest to find and fight the four masters of the desert, and ends up with him becoming part of strange community of outcasts who live underground.
I thought I detected more than a little of misogyny in the film-- --however, as Jodorowsky essentially told me--none has been intended, except that the world now, like in the past, has always brutalized women and men have insisted on brutalizing themselves.Seeing it with an audience in a theater also means you can discuss it with people of all types.
"El Topo" was one of the first midnight-movie cult hits because of its visually stunning, mentally exciting indulgence in gratuitous sex and exaggerated violence
Avenging angel El Topomeant to be wise and mysticalrides into a town whose population has just been massacred
He guns down some of the cruel and perverse bandits responsible and brutally punishes their leader
He leaves his seven-year-old son with some monks and goes away with the gang leader's woman, Mara
In the desert sands, El Topo and Mara make love, and she quickly falls in love with him
After their frantic love-making, she tells him that he can prove that he's the 'best' by killing the Four Masters
For no apparent reason other than to please Mara, El Topo begins his mission, defeating and killing each of the Four Masters
The film has been quite controversial
It lacks clarity and has painful emotions that make it quite compelling.
This is my first venture into Jodorowsky's territory and I can safely say that I'm highly impressed."El Topo" is one of the most bizarre and impressive movies you'll ever see.It features plenty of interesting,weird characters,lots of religious symbolism and extremely violent gun-fight scenes.One of the producers of this one is Mexican horror veteran Juan Lopez Moctezuma("Alucarda","Mary,Mary,Bloody Mary").I urge you to see this masterpiece right now.Simply breathtaking!.
Shot in Mexico, El Topo (or the mole in English) is a gunslinger (played by Jodorowsky), who, dressed completely in black leather, rides on his horse with his seven-year-old son through the desert; until they come across a massacre of people.
I think that is a totally closed mind of approach to this fascinating film.Even if you hate it,you have to admit the power of the film, great imagery.Alejandro did a great job,this movie is a real labor of love,it deserves rediscovery.One of the greatest films of the seventies,unforgettable is the only way to sum it up..
Thematically, the story hints at the connection between Taoist concepts of acting through inaction and mystical aspects of some western religions - simultaneously suggesting that only God can know the mind of God and that if no god exists, humans must acknowledge their dependence on the forces that govern the universe and seek harmony by yielding to them.Like most westerns, there is a great deal of killing and gun play in El Topo, and the death scenes are often grueling and over-dramatized.
Unlike most westerns, however, none of this violence is pointless, and it is not the central action of the story.Jodorowski is a deeply spiritual film-maker, but is also intensely critical of organized religion and the demystification of religious ideas.
Notably, Jodorowsky never makes any statement whatsoever about science.The meta-narrative of El Topo can be read in many ways, and is the level at which the film achieves high art.
Each thoughtful viewer will take away a different message.Gender is a major theme in El Topo, and although the main story is clearly presented from an androcentric perspective, Jodorowski adds a lot of details which effectively deconstruct this, and, in some cases, unmask it as an arbitrary convention of patriarchal religious doctrine.
This is a man who didn't have a happy childhood with his father trying to force him not to have children to not carry on the family name and eventually being gay, it's an interesting choice to have the main character kill off a manifestation of his father early in the film.Many people that i know probably know who director Alexandre Jodrowsky is, especially if they are Marilyn Manson fans since that dude practically worships him.
First, the entire film is a biblical allusion (Old and New Testament), which would be great...BUT Jodorowsky's religious references are so blatant and redundant that they become annoying, tired and expected (like moral ground in a Disney cartoon geared toward a six year old).
Well, a lot of films don't have any interesting message, and you watch, just to be entertained, This movie even doesn't have that.
Out of Jodorowsky's films, it is "El Topo" of 1970 which is most treasured by cult-cinema lovers, and for good reasons.
While "El Topo" looks like a (highly unusual) Western at first, it can not be attributed simply to this genre, as the film goes way beyond the borders of traditional film genres.
The film's beginning is already bizarre and unique, and it gradually gets more surreal.El Topo (played by director Jodorowsky himself), a grim-looking, full-bearded gunfighter dressed all in black leather rides through the desert with his seven-year-old naked son (played by the directors son, Brontis Jodorowsky).
Eccentric Characters like they can not be found in any other film, such as four 'masters of the desert', demented bandits or sadistic townspeople, appear in an unreal and demented world of weirdness, violence, symbolism and insanity.
Jodorowsky's weird symbolism comes along with an incomparably surreal atmosphere, and it is not easy, no, not possible to determine what it all means - and it does not need to be - 'What the hell is going on?' is a question that one might ask oneself multiple times while watching "El Topo" - but in a manner that could not be more fascinating.
A film filled with all kinds of beautiful people and unique individuals and it comes across like a bad LSD trip.
What's interesting is the stunning visuals Jodorowsky produces: El Topo rides into frame on a white desert dressed all in black (black horse, black umbrella, black hat, a savage black beard) with sidekick "Hijo" (Brontis Jodorowsky), a small profoundly naked boy wearing only a hat, as if to announce the film's recurring theme, the duality of man; knowing v.
domineering) in which the lesbian context is not left to imagination, especially after they dispatch el Topo in a gunfight culminating in an allegory of crucifixion, after which the protagonist is reborn in a Brahma-like state, assigned to free outcasts from a cave (by digging a tunnel: hence "the mole" metaphor), only to release the outcasts into an "American" western town whose citizens worship only money (note the ubiquitous triangle containing a single eye) with yet more devastating consequences.
Released the same year as "Fellini Satyricon", the Fellini-esque "El Topo" was hailed as a masterpiece by a small group of undoubtedly stoned New Yorkers (ah yes, the 70s, mea culpa), and can only be appreciated by a handful of hard-core film buffs willing to endure a video copy of a video copy of a badly overexposed print with bad sound; but still the film is interesting as a cultural artifact, the progenitor of western genre influencing the superior "Dead Man" (1996, dir.
Prior to my viewing El Topo I had given Jodorowsky's other movie Holy Mountain a ten.
Jodorowsky as writer, director, producer, has this attitude of 'why not' in his unique form of gonzo cinema, where it's more about taking in individual scenes, images, sights, like a manic freak-show with lots of harsh violence (for its time at least).
Jodorowsky plays El Topo, a lone, odd gunman who stops a group of wildly deranged bandits (a sign of things to come, making Leone's bandits look like playground kids), lets his naked son off with a group of monks, and sets off to defeat the four best gunmen in the world.
OK, if that may give an idea as to what the film is about, keep in mind that this was made in 1969/1970, at a time when a director like Jodorowsky was not only accepted but needed by movie fans who were looking for films that shook the culture.
But to say it's as exceptional is really about as subjective as you can get.Going into the film, all I really had to go on what to expect came from a documentary on midnight movies (where El Topo found its first audience as the first of its kind), and the clips shown and Jodorowsky's own words on it had me excited to see it- though not with the highest of expectations.
In a way, it's too much fun to be a dull, pretentious work- the filmmaker seems to be too talented to really force feed all of this to some amorphous blob of an audience.So, is it a little dated, sure; does it have an entire midsection where certain scenes involving El Topo and his female tag-alongs that jump ahead and misses any conventional logic, of course; does it skate along the edge of being almost a very bad movie, absolutely.
But as a fan of westerns, and surrealism, the two do merge well enough for the film El Topo, especially for the fact that it accomplishes what each do- it gives action and daring-do like the westerns, and it provides a level of humor and no-holds-barred outrageousness that marks the tops of surrealist works.
i quite like this film, which is called 'El Topo' which i believe translates in English to 'Al Topper', the name of the main man in the movie whose adventures we follow.
This flick is one of those that is definitely more than a mere 2D light show: There's something about the experience of it that makes it very, very personal; psychedelically like your presence in the theater, watching it, is very much a part of the reality of the film.
"The top" or second film by the cultured director Alejandro Jodorowsky brings the viewer a Western mystic with surrealism and religious metamorphoses, but interesting, very well directed, hypnotic and captivating, with the same mysterious air.
Technically, Jodorowsky conducted his western in an excellent way, with clear inspirations in Sergio Leone, Jodorowsky does not leave anything out in his western that here, escaping from the traditional does not pass old Mexican and not American, and even this never being explicit, fans of the good western repair the details of the western created by Jodorowsky, a mystical and lonely western, we feel bad like the scenery, it is like something wrong, it is a construction of the scenery, the use of open plans All the moments to demonstrate a grandiosity of nothingness, an almost inhospitable environment and cruel to be human, as well as making a wonderful costumes, great sound tracks that are a 70's face, that half sadistic melody that complements our journey well, of course, the good performances, especially of Jodorowsky as "El topo where we perceive that the character has the knowledge of his character, he can also, just live his character, with his solutions and objectives, a highlight also for Mara Lorenzio.
Jodorowsky's El Topo is an extreme and surreal vision of what Mr. Leone did with the traditonal western.The violence and it's execution is botyh intriguing and disgusting at the same time and there is plenty of the director's unique visual iconography.
(Jodorowsky, as a filmmaker, is a master at crafting bizarre ideas and symbolism into filmed images.)The plot is...um...weird.
I won't tell you the plot, because it's honestly a good deal better in the execution than in the planning--this is why I think nobody but Jodorowsky can film the movies he's done.On a side note, it seems most copies of El Topo are taken from Japanese laserdiscs, meaning several things: one, there is a loss in quality, as the minimal transfer is master film; film reel used for LDs; master cassette; tape you get.
(I believe copies of The Holy Mountain are the same, but I have yet to pick one up for myself.)In any case, El Topo's a film for people who enjoy bizarre, violent films, and probably just as good an introduction to Jodorowsky as you can find..
The title character is also the director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, who at the beginning, looks like Zorro, dressed in black, riding a horse with his naked young son on board trekking through the desert of Mexico.
I watched Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain on the come down of an acid trip and I enjoyed that very much and I imagine that this movie would also pair wonderfully with said substances..
It has been said that Jodorowsky's "El Topo" is like a Spaghetti Western directed by Luis Bunuel and who am I to argue, but you may find the excessive blood-letting, copious displays of nudity, (including a seven year-old boy), emphasis on all kinds of physical deformity and some girl-on-girl action more in keeping with an exploitation picture albeit one dressed up in some very fancy new clothes, (at least of the emperor's variety).
What is a cult movie?in my point of view is a movie that makes an impression in you for so many years that you want to watch it over and over again and is hard to find, it turns into a legend.I watched El Topo in its original version in spanish a couple nights ago, i own a VHS taken from what it looks to be a DVD because before the movie begins there´s a screen menu with some options; anyway, let me explain you some things about the spanish spoken version that makes it unique.
El topo legend will continue when Jodorowsky finds money to film it "the sons of el topo" is called.El topo is an interesting example of how to make good movies with low budget especially in countries where the cinema industry is so bad like in Mexico product of the lack of interest in it.
While I didn't love it I can at least respect what the director was going for, which was pure madness.I think the best thing that can be said about the film is that it has a unique look that isn't like any other movie ever made.
I have had the great good fortune to see this movie in a local cinema, and I have to say I don't think I've ever spent so long with my mouth hanging open.Almost every reviewer has made some comparison to other works just to try and describe El Topo, and so here's my take: imagine a Western co-written by Lewis Carroll and the Monty Python team, co-directed by Terry Gilliam, Sergio Leone and Ingmar Bergman, and with design by Salvador Dali and Heironymous Bosch.
So a good attempt and I'd recommend this movie to others interested in bizarre films; however its not one of the greatest ones I've seen.
Knowing that he wrote and was the director for the film, one could assume that he also thought he was powerful because he was "the guy making the film" and thus pedestrian-like people who are weak-minded look up to him and will do whatever he says and be ok with it.In the version that I saw the scene may have been cut but from everything that I've read, consensual sex happened.
As with films like Embrace of the Serpent from South America, you feel that Jodorowsky is both critical of the bizarre Christian symbolism he mixes with the native peoples of those parts.
Writer, director, and actor Alejandro Jodorowsky's definitive cult Western is not a film that should be missed.
The film is an experience like no other, even if it is difficult to decipher just what it all means.Personally, I was awed by El Topo, but I didn't like it as much as Jodorowsky's next film, The Holy Mountain.
I can't wait to watch El Topo a few more times to collect the interpretive meaning of the film in my mind.
Later on the film takes a very different turn and feels a lot less like a western.
We only feel the story cutting back together as El Topo reunites with a character earlier in the movie.The film has a superb visual flair and is littered with many types of religious imagery and symbolism.
While watching Alejandro Jodorowsky's cult classic "El Topo," one would think this is a film David Lynch would have taken Dennis Hopper to on a date.
While it would be easy to dismiss El Topo as an exercise in surreal film-making (the kind one would expect from a filmmaker in 1970), it is undeniable that many of the scenes land with striking resonance, and will stay with you long after the movie has ended.
Jodorowsky' use of animals is reminiscent of movies like "4" and the fact that whenever an act of violence occurs in this film an animal noise or cutaway to a beast is shown.
If one were to teach a cinema class about where film was going during the 60's and 70's (and where it ultimately didn't go thanks to people like Lucas, Spielberg and Coppola) "The Last Movie" and "El Topo" would be required viewing.
This one certainly isn't like anything I saw on Saturday mornings growing up.Alejandro Jodorowsky is definitely a surrealist, and incorporates many different religious themes in this film.
El Topo was director Alejandro Jodorowsky's second feature film - following the low-budget surrealist parable Fando and Lis in 1967 - and, as a result of its violent content and scenes of grotesque symbolism, was the first film to bring him to the attention of a western audience. |
tt0071519 | Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell | Baron Victor Frankenstein (Cushing) is housed at an insane asylum where he has been made a surgeon at the asylum, and has a number of privileges, as he holds secret information on Adolf Klauss, the asylum's corrupt and perverted director (John Stratton). The Baron, under the alias of Dr. Carl Victor, uses his position to continue his experiments in the creation of man.
When Simon Helder (Briant), a young doctor and an admirer of the Baron's work, arrives as an inmate for bodysnatching, the Baron is impressed by Helder's talents and takes him under his wing as an apprentice. Together they work on the design for a new creature. Unknown to Simon, however, Frankenstein is acquiring body parts by murdering his patients.
The Baron's new experiment is the hulking, ape-like Herr Schneider (Prowse), a homicidal inmate whom he has kept alive after a violent suicide attempt and on whom he has grafted the hands of a recently deceased sculptor (Bernard Lee). Since Frankenstein's hands were badly burned in the name of science (possibly in The Evil of Frankenstein or Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed), the shabby stitch-work was done by Sarah (Madeline Smith), a beautiful mute girl who assists the surgeon, and who is nicknamed "Angel". Simon tells the Baron that he is a surgeon and the problem is solved. The Baron reveals that Sarah is the daughter of the director and has been mute ever since he tried to rape her.
Soon new eyes and a new brain are given to the creature. When the creature – lumbering, hirsute and dumb – is complete, it becomes bitter and intent on revenge. It ultimately runs mad on a killing spree in the asylum, killing several individuals, including Klauss. Eventually, it is fully overpowered and destroyed by a mob of inmates. Simon is devastated by the loss of life and reports to Frankenstein; however, the Baron feels that it was the best that could happen to such a creature, and is already considering a new experiment with other involuntary donors. The three start tidying up the laboratory whilst Frankenstein ponders who should be first to "donate"... | violence, gothic, murder | train | wikipedia | "Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell" of 1974 is the final entry to Hammer's Frankenstein series, director Terence Fisher's last film, and arguably the goriest Hammer production (maybe along with "Scars Of Dracula" from 1971).
The last Frankenstein film from Hammer is a vastly underrated, grim, eerie and excellent finale to the fantastic series, and it is fun to see how Baron Viktor Frankenstein (brilliantly played by Peter Cushing) becomes more and more insane and ruthless throughout the series.
The setting in the insane asylum, the typical Hammer score, photography and atmosphere and Peter Cushing's great performance make this movie a must-see for a lover of Horror.
One day, Dr. Helder discovers Dr. Frankenstein's secret laboratory and accidentally releases a Monster (David Prowse) in the institution, bringing panic to the inmates and staff."Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" is the last Frankenstein movie by Hammer once again with Terence Fisher and Peter Cushing.
Hammer's last Frankenstein outing is one of their best; despite the great sadness that went in its production (inherent in the film's overall effect but thankfully not swamped by it), the film emerges as a pretty solid and well-crafted chiller with a remarkable Gothic flavor (all the more impressive for being made on such shoddy finances - the film allegedly carried one of the companies' lowest-ever budgets!).Script and direction keep the action of the plot moving, despite the necessarily cramped settings.
JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971), DEMONS OF THE MIND (1972) and CAPTAIN KRONOS - VAMPIRE HUNTER (1974), this is one of the last great Hammer films.The Baron had evolved a great deal during his sixteen-year period at Hammer (producing seven films in all, only one of which did not feature Peter Cushing and only two were not helmed by Terence Fisher), reaching its zenith perhaps in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969) where virtually no trace of humanity could be detected in the character!
The rest of the cast is equally admirable: Shane Briant, one of Hammer's bright young hopefuls, building upon his achievements in both DEMONS OF THE MIND and CAPTAIN KRONOS - VAMPIRE HUNTER; Madeleine Smith graces the screen with her presence, managing to give her character (an abused mute inmate) an inner strength and compassion that would normally be difficult to communicate without words; Dave Prowse's monster is a memorably designed hulk (somewhat overdone in the style of Fredric March's Hyde persona in the 1931 version of DR.
However, Paramount really dropped the ball by opting to release the edited U.S. version: I have to agree with those who condemned them for it, because the missing footage (the artery clamping scene chief among them - as it stands now, the dialogue follows on too hurriedly, making the cut extremely obvious; the scene was not particularly graphic, but it certainly amplified the Baron's character and his dedication to his work) is certainly important and, if anything, helps keep the film's pace balanced as the 'stitching' together of scenes {sic} is awkwardly handled on more than one occasion (see also Bernard Lee's funeral, where Cushing suddenly appears beside the coffin when it is dropped to the ground); similarly, the climax is marred by the loss of footage where the inmates tear the monster apart (on the DVD it would seem that the monster was entirely made up of bits and pieces of flesh, so easily is he dismembered, when we know full well this isn't so!); interestingly, however, though all these bits of added gore are to be found on my murky full-screen VHS, one shot from the DVD is not in fact present - the slashed throat of the John Stratton character!
Acceptable Frankenstein entry with colorful photography ,thrilling as well as chilling musical score by James Bernard and Peter Cushing , as ever , does a top notch performance in the role which made him a terror movie legend , it still stands as one of the great screen acting .
In the insane asylum resides hidden the notorious Doctor Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) who along with inmate Dr. Simon Helder (Shane Briant) , being attended by the dumb-mute Sarah (Madeline Smith , this character was first offered to Caroline Munro) carry out creepy experiments .
Followed by six sequels as ¨Revenge of Frankestein¨ by Fisher , ¨Evil of Frankestein¨ by Freddie Francis , Frankestein created woman¨ by Fisher , ¨Frankestein must be destroyed¨ by Fisher , ¨The horror of Frankestein¨ by Jimmy Sangster and this ¨Frankestein and the monster from hell¨ by Fisher ; all of them starred by Peter Cushing and one by Ralph Bates , besides similar artistic and technician team as the cameraman Jack Asher , Production designer Bernad Robinson , musician James Bernard and make-up by Philip Leaky .This ¨Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell¨ results to be the last of Hammer's Frankenstein movies , being compellingly directed by Terence Fisher , though inferior to previous installments .
I also liked the character of Angel, and the Director as well, the film has it's funny moments as well, not to much that i didn't like about the film,, the brain transplant scene, well could have been better, and a few other scenes , but hey that's minor stuff, all in all i thought this was a great film to end the Hammer Films collection of Frankenstein, and i would recommend this to all horror fans,, and Peter Cushing fans also..
British body builder and future Darth Vader David Prowse once again makes an appearance as "The Monster" (In here he looks like a big bulky hairy Neanderthal).A mild mannered doctor is working in a mad house.
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell for me is one of the weaker films from the Hammer Frankenstein series- Horror's the weakest with Evil second weakest- but that is not meant to be disparaging, just that I preferred Curse, Revenge, Destroyed and Created Woman.Unlike the previous films the low-budget unfortunately does show in the production values especially with the Monster and the brains.
When Simon Helder (Briant), a gifted doctor himself and a follower of Frankenstein's work, is committed to the asylum on sentence of sorcery, the pair quickly form a partnership that will unleash Frankenstein's latest project
Actually made in 1972 but released two years later, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell came out as Hammer Horror was limping along on its last legs.
But what I have come to find is that staunch Hammer Horror fans have a kind regard towards the film, and I think that is fair given that it pretty much goes back to past glories, if not in scope, but in narrative and atmospheric toning.Yes it is viable to say that it's pretty much a re-jig of the earlier Revenge of Frankenstein, so in that it's a bit lazy, but I like to think that the return of Cushing, Fisher and Hinds suggests they were making one for the fans here, and it's not without merits in spite of familiarity and budgetary restrictions.
I love all Hammer horror films simply because they are a part of my childhood."Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" is great-the acting is really good and the film is quite scary in a subtle way.Peter Cushing as a Baron Victor Frankenstein/Dr Claus Victor is as always amazing,and Dave Prowse is very believable as an ugly monster.There's a bit of gore,which is quite unusual for Hammer horror.Fans of "Scream" and similar teen-oriented garbage won't like this one-you have to be a true horror fan to fully appreciate this film.However if you like old-fashioned horror,give this one a look..
Last of the Hammer Frankenstein films, this one deals with the Baron (Peter Cushing) hiding out in an insane asylum, so that he may continue his experiments with reanimating the dead, along with inmate Simon Helder (Shane Briant), who has been institutionalized for conducting such experiments.This was directed by Terence Fisher and produced by Hammer Film Productions, so you know it is good.
Cushing is as great a baron as ever, and David Prowse (Darth Vader) makes an excellent "monster from hell" -- a hairy beast with the mind of a professor and violinist.Prowse, interestingly, went in cold to Hammer Studios hoping to play a monster and was initially turned down.
The last of Hammer's Frankenstein series, "
and the Monster From Hell" once again stars Peter Cushing as Baron Victor Frankenstein, who, having faked his own death in an asylum, now works there as the resident doctor, continuing his experiments on the side.
When young surgeon Dr. Simon Helder (Shane Briant) is sentenced to five years in the asylum for following Frankenstein's ghoulish work, he recognises Victor and confronts him; before long, Simon is assisting the Baron in building another monster (played by Dave 'Darth Vader' Prowse) using spare parts from inmates who have conveniently passed away.
For once, Victor succeeds in creating a cognisant creature, one that can think, talk and do advanced mathematics, but eventually the body begins to take over the brain—not good news since it originally belonged to a violent ape-like man with a fondness for stabbing people with broken glass.This set up allows director Terence Fisher to explore some interesting themes, not least the emotional trauma of waking up with a face like a baboon's backside and more body hair than Tom Selleck: as Baron Frankenstein's creations go, this is one of the most pitiful, and is rightfully miffed at his predicament.
Fisher also makes great use of the film's harsh asylum setting, delivering plenty of atmosphere, with the gibbering inmates adding to the overall sense of madness and the sleazy director of the institution proving to be as much of a monster as Frankenstein and his creature.
The story is watchable and if you are a Peter Cushing fan, which I am,or you wish to view the complete Hammer Frankenstein series you will definitely want to watch "Monster from Hell" but if you are just wanting to see a chilling horror movie some dark and stormy midnight, you will probably want to find something else.
Sporting the ultra-camp title, 'Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell', this film is important for reasons other than the fact that it's a lovely slice of camp horror, as it also marks Terence Fisher's last film for the great Hammer studios.
In "Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell" (1974), the 7th and final entry of the Franky series from the legendary House of Hammer, we find the good Baron in what I believe used to be politely called "reduced circumstances." He has been committed to an asylum for the criminally insane, which institution he nevertheless lords over as head doctor while continuing his, um, extracurricular hobbies.
Upon the arrival of a crazed young doctor (Shane Briant) who becomes his assistant, Dr. F is back in the lab experimenting with body parts to create a hairy, flesh-munching ghoul.Fisher's attention to atmosphere and Cushing's patented mad doctor lay down a solid foundation, but John Elder's stilted script, cheapo production values (nice miniatures!) and poor make-up FX (the monster looks like Big Foot mixed with Cornelius from PLANET OF THE APES) kill its serious intentions.
In this last movie of Hammer Studios' Frankenstein, Peter Cushing proves once again why he is perfect as the Baron.
Peter Cushing played Baron Frankenstein in every one of these except "The Horror of Frankenstein." The reason being "Horror" was a remake of the original story and they needed a much younger actor to play the role; they chose Ralph Bates (who superbly played the love-to-hate OTT satanist in "Taste the Blood of Dracula," released the same year).Anyway, "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" was the last hurrah for the series.
There he meets the thought-to-be-dead Baron Frankenstein, now going by the name Dr. Victor (Cushing), and they team-up to carry on his gruesome work, creating -- you guessed it -- a monster from hell!
Another plus is the beautiful Madeline Smith of "Live and Let Die" fame, who plays the Baron's mute assistant, Sarah.The story is basically a drama with horror trappings so those expecting the overt horror antics of most slasher films will be let down.BOTTOM LINE: "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" is a solid Hammer horror film and a fine way to end their Frankenstein series, but it lacks the color and pizazz of the previous two installments.
The movie is made with quite some skill and solid acting performances but the story doesn't ever really become interesting.What fun it was to see Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein and David Prowse as The Creature in this one together.
David Prowse was also convincing as the large powerful creature, it's too bad that his make-up makes him look like an over-sized monkey.The effects look fairly acceptable and there is actually quit some blood and gore in this one, so fans of those two things will also be fairly satisfied.Like most Hammer movies, it never gets scary but it has a brilliant atmosphere and some well placed British humor and crazy characters.
Although not the worst of the British Hammer Frankenstein films, it certainly isn't the best.Peter Cushing (looking gaunt and clearly affected from his wife's recent passing) again plays Baron Frankenstein with his usual cold, slightly mad authority creates another monster, this time from the pieces of dead inmates at the asylum he's been condemned to (but basically runs).David Prowse, who later played Darth Vader in the Star wars series, plays the monster who unfortunately looks like a unimaginatively realized half human, half ape mishmash and showed Hammer was at the end of the line creatively as well as financially.The movie has a sort of sad finality to it as it was to be one of Hammer's last horror films, and the declining budget shows in the cramped, claustrophobic sets.
Shane Briant as Simon Helder also became a well known face as did Madeline Smith just coming from To Live And Let Die 1973.Not a bad flick and excellent directing again by Terence Fisher but it shows painfully that they (Hammer) were trying to keep up with the Gothic feeling.
Terence Fisher directs(for the last time) this sixth and last entry in the Hammer studios Frankenstein series starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein, now hiding out in an insane asylum conducting more experiments in life and death.
He is now helped by fellow inmate Dr. Helder(played by Shane Briant) and a mute girl(played by Madeline Smith) The Baron is building a new monster from the bodies of dead inmates, but of course it will all end tragically as it always does...
Where as the Monster was he focus with the Universal series here with the Hammer studio it was Baron Frankenstein who was the linking between the films .
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) *** (out of 4) The final film in Hammer's Frankenstein series has a young doctor (Shane Briant) trying to do work that would make him the next Dr. Frankenstein but he's busted and sent to an asylum.
Peter Cushing makes all the difference in this final entry in Hammer Studios' cycle of Frankenstein films.
Naturally, the experiment is fraught with problems.Marking the swan song for prolific Hammer director Terence Fisher, "Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" is good, not great, Hammer horror, that does remain watchable with its new twists on the familiar formula.
Luckily, he soon discovers a fellow inmate just happens to be Victor Frankenstein.Presumed dead, and working as the asylum's doctor under an assumed name, the Baron - Marquis de Sade-style - has been given virtual run of the institute and its patients, having blackmailed boozy, lecherous director Klauss (Stratton) to secrecy.Together with the Baron's mute, beautiful assistant, Sarah 'The Angel' (Smith), Helder becomes Frankenstein's collaborator in necromancy, filching body parts from dead inmates.
Inside the asylum, Simon realizes that Baron Victor Frankenstein(Peter Cushing, in perhaps his finest performance as the mad scientist)is actually running things as the director(John Stratton, playing him with twitches, almost as loony as the patients under him, overcome by his vices for drink and sex)sits idly by allowing him to secretly have almost total control.
David Prowse plays Frankenstein's Monster for the second time, becoming the only actor to do so in a Hammer film.
The first film in the British Hammer (Horror) Studios series of Frankenstein movies is the best, the second was worth watching, the third was terrible, the fourth was alright, the fifth was good, the sixth entry (more a remake) was rubbish, this seventh and last entry I hoped would be a fitting end, directed by Terence Fisher (Dracula, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Mummy).
Cushing just about remains sinister, despite his ridiculous wig, the monster played by Prowse to too absurd looking, I don't know fully why critics consider this a fitting final film for either the series of the career of director Fisher, it is predictable, there is no creepy atmosphere throughout compared to the previous films (the good ones), and I was not that happy with the unresolved ending, they could have just left it at the last one where the mad scientist was meant to have been burned alive, there are moments I liked, overall I found it an average horror.
Madeline Smith is also a very engaging "Angel"; Dave Prowse, who'd played him in Horror, does much better as the monster here - shows you what a good director can do with actors - but it's Cushing's movie of course.
"Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell" is a fitting end to Hammer's Frankenstein series in some ways, with Peter Cushing's Baron continually following the same pattern throughout the series, but now from the confines of an insane asylum.
This is Hammer's last Frankenstein film (the 7th in a brilliant series) and it's a good one albeit the monster has seen better days.
The great Peter Cushing playing Dr. Frankenstein for the last time in a Hammer film.
I believe this was the last feature film that Mr. Fisher directed and the last time that Peter Cushing played the Baron in the series. |
tt0814129 | Half-Life 2: Episode One | === Setting ===
The original Half-Life takes place at a remote laboratory called the Black Mesa Research Facility. The player takes on the role of Gordon Freeman, a scientist involved in an accident that opens an inter-dimensional portal to the world of Xen and floods the facility with hostile alien creatures. After the player guides him in an attempt to escape the facility and close the portal, the game ends with a mysterious figure who offers Freeman employment. The protagonist is subsequently put into stasis by this mysterious character known as the G-Man.
Half-Life 2 picks up the story, in which the G-Man takes Freeman out of stasis and inserts him on a train en route to City 17 an indeterminate number of years after the events of the first game, with Earth now enslaved by the transhuman forces of the Combine. The player guides Gordon to aid in humanity's struggle against the Combine and its human representative, Dr. Wallace Breen. He oversees the occupation from his base of operations in the Citadel, a monolithic building at the heart of City 17. Fighting alongside Gordon is an underground resistance led by former colleague Dr. Eli Vance, as well other allies including Dr. Vance's daughter Alyx Vance and the enigmatic Vortigaunts, an alien species. Half-Life 2 ends with a climactic battle atop the Citadel that inflicts critical damage to its dark fusion reactor. When it seems as if Alyx and Gordon are to be engulfed by the explosion, the G-Man appears once more. After giving a cryptic speech, he extracts Gordon from danger and places him in stasis once again.
=== Plot ===
After the explosion of the Citadel reactor from which Gordon was extracted by the G-Man and where Alyx Vance was left behind, time suddenly freezes. Several Vortigaunts appear and rescue Alyx from the blast. After she is rescued, the Vortigaunts appear before the G-Man and stand between him and Gordon. They teleport Gordon away from the scene, much to the G-Man's displeasure.
D0g retrieves Gordon out from under some junk outside the Citadel, and Gordon reunites with Alyx, who is relieved to see him. Alyx contacts Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner, who have escaped the city, and is informed the Citadel's core is at risk of exploding at any moment. Kleiner states the explosion could be large enough to level the whole of City 17, and the only way for them to survive is to re-enter the Citadel and slow the core's progression toward meltdown. Eli reluctantly agrees when he sees no other option.
Alyx and Gordon re-enter the now-decaying Citadel to try to stabilize the core; Gordon is successful in re-engaging the reactor's containment field, which delays the explosion. Alyx discovers the Combine are deliberately accelerating the destruction of the Citadel to send a "transmission packet" to the Combine's homeworld. She downloads a copy of the message, which causes the Combine to prioritize them as targets. Alyx also downloads a transmission from Dr. Judith Mossman, in which she mentions a "project" she has located, before she is cut off by a Combine attack. Afterwards, Alyx and Gordon board a train to escape the Citadel.
The train derails en route, forcing the duo to proceed on foot. As they fight through the disorganized Combine forces and rampant alien infestations, Kleiner appears on the screens Breen once used to pass out propaganda, and gives out useful updates to the evacuating citizens about the latest turn of events as well as reiterating the Citadel's imminent collapse. Alyx and Gordon eventually meet up with Barney Calhoun and a group of other survivors who are preparing to move on a train station to escape City 17. Alyx and Gordon provide cover for the passengers as they board.
To keep the survivors safe, Alyx and Gordon opt to take a different train. They manage to escape just as the reactor begins to detonate; the energy sends out the Combine's message. Several pods containing Combine Advisors are ejected from the Citadel as it detonates. The resulting shockwave catches the train, derailing it. | alternate reality, sci-fi | train | wikipedia | For the hardcore fans of the series, it's a must!!!.
First off, the main thing you notice when playing this game is it's length.
In about three hours, its done and the only thing to do then is to wait for episode 2, but, of course, it's a trilogy so when it's all put together, it'll make one big game.
The game is pretty dark and it still keeps the Half-Life blood pumping through its veins.
It augments the atmosphere with excellent special effects and sound and some of the games aspects have been tweaked.
The difficulty can be a bit mediocre, but can get difficult in dark rooms with zombies swarming from all sides.
These games open a whole new portal for the series AND gamers alike.
The G-Man doesn't play as much of a part as in previous games, in fact, he really just plays a cameo, but he would just get in the way of this exhilarating game.
For 30 euro, its a bit steep for such short game, but at the same time, its money well spent.
You can get it through STEAM but you can only play it on that PC, whereas I got the CD.
The decision is entirely up to you: get one of the best games for Half-Life or keep playing Half-Life 2 over and over again.
Three hours is enough to keep you amused for as long as you like!.
The first excellent PC episode.
PC Game: Half-Life 2 Episode One.Genre: Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter.Developer: Valve Software.Publisher: Valve Software.Release Date: 01.06.06.Engine: Source.Protagonist: Dr. Gordon Freeman.Settings: City 17 and its outskirts, somewhere in Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania or Ukraine).The episode takes place immediately after the end of Half-Life 2, in and around the war-torn setting of City 17.
Episode One continues to follow scientist Gordon Freeman and his companion Alyx Vance as they deal with the events of HL2 and humanity's continuing struggle against the Combine.The series of following events in HL2, Episode One starts out after the explosion of the Citadel's dark fusion reactor from which Gordon was extracted by the G-Man and Alyx Vance was left behind.
As time stops, several Vortigaunts appear and rescue Alyx from the blast.
The G-Man is then seen walking toward Gordon Freeman.
As he opens his mouth to speak, he is distracted by blue lights and is separated from Gordon by another group of Vortigaunts - much to his displeasure.
More Vortigaunts then surround and teleport Gordon.Gordon wakes up outside the Citadel, buried under a pile of rubble.
Dog removes these rocks, and Gordon is reunited with Alyx.
Alyx contacts Eli Vance and Isaac Kleiner, who have managed to escape the city, and is informed that the Citadel's core is at risk of exploding at any moment.
Kleiner states that the explosion could be large enough to level the whole of City 17, and that the only way for them to survive would be to re-enter the Citadel and slow the core's progression toward meltdown.
Eli reluctantly agrees when he sees no other option.
Alyx and Gordon re-enter the Citadel to try to stabilize the core.As a direct continuation of HL2, no significant changes to the gameplay were undertaken.
As in HL and HL2 players make their way through a linear series of levels, encountering various different enemies and allies.
The gameplay is broken up between combat orientated challenges and puzzles; these include physics-based puzzles.
Episode One also integrates tutorial like tasks into the story itself as in the previous games in order to familiarize the player to any new gameplay mechanics, such as the ability to re-program rollermines, without breaking immersion.
Like HL2, the gravity gun continues to play a crucial function throughout the game, granting the player extensive use of physics in combat and puzzle-solving.Enemies such as Stalkers and areas of the Citadel glimpsed at the end of HL2 are encountered and explored by the player.
Other new additions include the Zombine, Combine pods and Hunters; the latter two introduced as set-up for Episode Two are only briefly interacted with.
While new creatures were added, there were no additions to the game's current weapon arsenal.While no entirely new locales were introduced for Episode One, large alterations were made to the appearance of both City 17 and the Citadel from the end of HL2 to reflect the changing shape of the world and to serve as a story reminder to the player how their actions have affected the greater whole.
The Citadel has degenerated from the cold, alien and imposing fortress of the previous game to an extremely unstable state, providing a visual cue to remind the player of the catastrophic damage they inflicted, to allow for new gameplay elements that accentuate the new dangers that come with the Citadel's imminent collapse and to serve a thematic purpose in highlighting the weakening of the Combine's dominance.
Likewise, City 17 has been altered to reflect the aftermath of the resistance's open rebellion, with vast swathes of destroyed buildings and the introduction of foes previously kept outside its confines in HL2 in order to further emphasise the scale of the uprising.Commentary mode, a new feature tested in Half-Life Lost Coast, added to Episodes allowing for more replayability, I completed HL2 & HL2EP1 3 times each.
Both Episode’s replays – with commentary on.
Various Valve’s employees give monologues about juicy details of development process.
Hugely entertaining.Original score by Kelly Bailey consists of 10 tracks in .mp3 format.Critical and public response to Episode One was broadly positive, with some reviewers praising the game for having more intricate, well-paced gameplay than the acclaimed HL2.
The game's interactivity, particularly in the shape of the character of Alyx and her reactions to the player's actions and the events of the game, has also received praise.
PC Gamer magazine gave an 85% in the US edition, summarizing that "...while this inaugural episode may not be the essential FPS that HL2 is, I can't imagine any shooter fan who'd want to miss it".
The game received 90% in the UK edition, which directed particular praise on the balance between puzzle orientated and action orientated challenges throughout the game.
Edge gave the game 8/10, praising the "deftness" with which the game was able to direct the player's eyes, and the strength of Alyx as a companion; concluding that "...in an interactive genre bound to the traditions of the pop-up gun and invisible hero, it simply doesn't get more sophisticated than this".
Episode One earned an overall score of 87% on review collection websites Metacritic and Game Rankings.
My rates (compared to 2006’s level, of course):Gameplay: 9.5/10.Graphics: 10/10.Sound: 9.5/10.Score (OST): 8/10.Story: 9/10.Controls & Interface: 9.5/10.OVERALL: 9.5/10.If you like this game I also recommend: Half-Life, Half-Life Uplink, Half-Life Opposing Force, Half-Life Blue Shift, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Lost Coast, Half-Life 2 Episode Two, Portal, Half-Life 2 Episode Three, F.E.A.R., F.E.A.R. Extraction Point, Doom 3, SiN, SiN Episodes, Call Of Duty, Call Of Duty United Offensive..
Amazing Quality VS Short Gameplay.
I think this game has the same quality like "Half-Life 2": It has the same fantastic characters, the intense atmosphere, the amazing sound effects etc.
What I even like better is the fact, that Alyx Vance is beside you.
She adds stronger feelings in the proper situations (for example panic).The largest disappointment is clearly the short gameplay with only five chapters, but you have to expect this when it's called an "episode".
I'm a Half-Life fan, but also a hobby reviewer, so I can't just rate "Episode One" as high as the original Half-Life games...9/10.
Couldn't have been better!.
It starts off with showing Vourtigants saving Alyx and stealing you from the Gman.
It then continues with Alyx and Gordon going through the Citadel and City 17 fighting the remains of the Combine trying to get out of the city.What I first noticed with this game is that the characters are a little bit more playful and lively than in the other games.
This was quite fun to watch.
The graphics are only slightly better than in Half-Life 2 but kinda noticeable.
There are no new weapons but you still have your crowbar.
There's only one new enemy which is a Combine zombie (zombine) which frankly are quite scary some times.
Some of the sequences in this game are really psychological.
Such as the one in complete darkness when all you have for light is your flashlight.
Scary stuff.A very good addition to the saga...
can't wait for episode 2!.
An excellent addition to the franchise.
Half Life 2: Episode 1 is the first of 3 expansion packs to the Half Life 2 game, although you don't need Half Life 2 to play it.The game kicks off right where Half Life 2 dramatically left off, with a time warp freezing Gordon and Alyx right as the Citadel core was about to explode.
Intervention comes in the form of the Vortegund and our heroes are teleported to safety, with Gordon being pulled out of the clutches of the mysterious G Man.There's no time to relax however, as the core is still on its way towards a meltdown.
A meltdown that will result in the complete destruction of City 17.
With no time to flee to safety, Gordon and Alyx must enter the Citadel and avert the meltdown, and then join the exodus of City 17.I wont go any further into the details of it, but suffice to say, its a wild ride from start to finish as you battle through the Cidatel, the underground and the ruins of City 17.
Alyx is with you as your parter throughout almost the entire game, and her AI is improved considerably.
There are often times when your ammo is low that you rely on her to pull your fat out of the fire.A little disappointing is the fact that there's no new weapons to try out, and only 1 new enemy, a Combine Soldier who's been zombified by a head crab (Zombines as Alyx calls them) The game is also quite short.
I managed to complete it on the same day I purchased it.
But given the low price tag, id say its well worth the price.The game started on a cliffhanger and I don't think its surprising to hear that it ends on one too.
I personally cant wait for Episode 2!.
An amazing expansion of the Half-Life 2 story.
I've read some people criticizing Steam on places like Amazon - and giving the game poor reviews simply because of that - and in fact Steam hindered my enjoyment of the first game because it took so long to install and slowed down my computer...but if you can look past Steam and judge these games for what they are, they're amazing!
Originally planned to be an expansion pack called "Aftermath" (I actually preferred that title), the video game makers at Valve decided to pull a George Lucas and release continual expansion-pack-like standalone games (that is, you don't need Half-Life 2 to install this add-on - it's an add-on in story only).The Valve engine is upgraded a bit with better texturing, lighting and so on.
The graphics in Half-Life 2 were amazing, but now it's even better - Dog's motion in the beginning is eerily realistic, as are the facial expressions of characters in the game (one of the downsides of the realism of HL2 was its poor facial expressions for characters; this game is fully textured and, for example, when Alyx smiles you can actually see her gradually move her lips - it's almost creepy!).The game takes place right after the events of the last game and has Gordon and Alyx trying to escape the city before the core explodes.The first few levels are a nice twist because you have to complete them in pitch dark with a flashlight and a gravity gun.
One thing I enjoyed about this game however was that Alyx stays by you most of the time unlike in the second game when she would suddenly disappear for silly reasons.
It's more like a partnership and as such there is actually a good amount of character development in this game - making it a truly surreal experience for any video game; I felt like the characters were real people, and even the dialogue isn't that bad most of the time (although Barney is somewhat cheesy).The beginning is great, and the only mistake is that they start you off with the blue-powered ultra gravity gun and then downsize you to the regular gravity gun afterwards.
It feels anti-climactic.
I understand why they did this, but I would have preferred they just left it out at the beginning because once you are running around zapping people into the air, to suddenly be stuck with nothing is a bit sudden and disappointing.The middle goes on a bit too long and the level in the hospital gets old pretty fast.
Other than that the rest of the game is basically superb and just as good as the last game, only shorter.
There are a lot of "cut-scenes" where not much is happening - but I actually found them entertaining and made me feel more submersed into the game itself.The ending is fantastic and leaves you really wanting more.I can't wait for the next installment and I'm really, really glad Valve decided to release these in segments rather than having to wait, as they said, twelve years for Half-Life 3.If you enjoyed HL2, you'll love this - just be forewarned it only takes about five hours to complete...but what would you expect for $15?
I think the price is worth the first level alone..
Even though it has its problems, its a really good sequel..
Half Life 2 I thought did not live up to my expectations.
But the adventure was so addicting that I had to replay it again.
So I started replaying all the Half Life Main Games again and I have yet again completed Episode 1 of Half Life 2.
This is the 8th game (Including Expansions Opposing Force, Blue Shift and Playstation 2's Half Life Decay and the Demo Lost Coast but not including Half Life Uplink) in the entire series.
So far from what I have been playing, this is the best in the Half Life 2 series.The game continues where the last one left off.
Gorden is awakened from the rubble as Alyx and Dog find him.
The core of the Citadel is about to collapse and explode City 17.
Gorden and Alyx with the ideas from Dr. Kleiner try to get the core to stay as steady as it can with a Direct Intervention.
After that, you must escape on a train with the help of Barney from the last game.The game may have the same problems like in Half Life 2.
Problems like stupid NPCS who block you constantly.
But this game is a huge improvement over the last game.
Alyx is still a great character and her development is stronger than the last one.
Drama is also amazing in this game and really effects the player.
Although short, the games pacing is great as the story progresses smoothly.Half Life 2 Episode 1 is a really good game.
It continues Half Life 2's story with amazing pace.
Next Thing To Review Is Half Life 2 Episode 2.78/100 B.
As usual Valve set the standard.
As I have said in the past, valve are a truly talented team, but with over 100 people working on the game I would expect the game to be good or even fantastic which it truly is.
The thing I noticed the most was the change to Barney.
His face looks so much more lifelike and the facial expressions add to his character.
There is a more cheekier side to Alyx emerging in this episode and I found some weapons had more detail.
One cant help but notice the new HDR Technology.
For instance if you enter a brightly lit room from the dark, it will quickly go from bright to normal as your eyes adjust.
The ending (again) leaves you guessing but I suppose that,s to be expected and I was quite surprised to see very little of The G-man except that at the start he seemed to be in a predicament with the Vortigons.
More will be revealed no doubt.
I took away a point for the sheer shortness of the game.
This is getting beyond a joke.
I played a half hour a night so it would last longer and I still managed to finish it in two weeks.
I think this is very unfair.
Especially since I live in Australia and had to pay $48.00.
whatever happened to the days when you would start a game in January and finish in June?
I,m going to complain to Valve and I suggest all that read this do as well.
If we don't, they will assume short is good and keep making them that way.
Ratcat.
(australia) |
tt1413495 | Paranoia | Adam Cassidy is a low-level inventor who works for a corporation run by Nicholas Wyatt. After being fired for insubordination, Adam uses the company's credit card to pay for bottle service for his friends at a club. Wyatt and his enforcer, Miles Meachum, blackmail Adam into becoming a corporate spy for Wyatt by threatening to have him arrested for fraud.
Adam is trained by Judith Bolton and infiltrates a company run by Wyatt's former mentor, Jock Goddard. He provides Goddard, who stole several of Wyatt's ideas, with an advanced software able to hack into cellphones, with potential military applications. FBI Agent Gamble interrogates Adam, revealing that three other employees of Wyatt who transferred to Goddard's company were found dead, but Adam ignores him.
Adam finds out Emma Jennings, a woman he met during the party, is the Director of Marketing of Goddard's company. He initiates a relationship with Emma in order to steal files about Goddard's upcoming projects. Wyatt threatens to kill Adam's father, Frank Cassidy, if Adam doesn't steal a revolutionary prototype cellphone developed by Goddard. Adam later finds out Meachum and Bolton are monitoring him, so he destroys the cameras in his apartment. In retaliation, Meachum runs over Adam's friend, Kevin, with a car, nearly killing him. Adam is given 48 hours to steal the prototype.
Adam uses Emma's thumbprint lifted from a spoon to gain security access to the company's vault. He is confronted there by Goddard, who intends to take over Wyatt's company with evidence that Adam was acting as Wyatt's spy. Emma finds out Adam used her. Adam recruits Kevin to help him. A meeting is set with Wyatt and Goddard, where it is revealed that Bolton has spied against Wyatt on Goddard's behalf. Both men speak of the crimes they have committed to sabotage each other's companies.
Adam has secretly used software to transmit their conversation to Kevin, whose computer recordings are turned over to the FBI. Goddard, Wyatt, Bolton and Meachum are arrested by Gamble, while Adam is released for contributing to the FBI's investigation. He reconciles with Emma and opens a small startup company in Brooklyn with Kevin and their friends. | comedy, suspenseful, neo noir, murder, intrigue, flashback, revenge | train | wikipedia | Firstly they don't have much screen time and the time they do have seems to have been filmed in a hurry with little effort put into it by anyone.The main character is that of Liam Hemsworth, who plays Adam Cassidy; the best he has going for him is that he a good looking guy.
It is a shame because I was excited to get to see Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman face off once again, but Paranoia easily belongs on my worst films of 2013 list mainly because these talented actors can't do anything to improve a weak script.
There aren't any interesting thrills either and the narrative is pretty straight forward and predictable.Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth) has been working for an important technological company known as Wyatt Corporation for the past six years.
Blinded by greed Adam accepts and soon will find himself way in over his head.Richard Dreyfuss has a small role in this film as well and his presence only reminds us that a film focusing on him or the other secondary characters such as Oldman and Ford, would be so much better.
A thriller about the dark world of tech business giants, with big shot start like Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford, what could go wrong, right?
It's slow, boring, repetitive and overall just disappointing.Adam (Liam Hensworth) is a programmer (I think, because character development apparently wasn't a priority in this movie) who gets stuck in the middle of a feud between two tech giants, Wyatt and Goddard, played by Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford.
There's some background as to the rivalry between Wyatt and Goddard and a hard-to-believe love story between Adam and one of Goddard's executives, but overall, the film feels like an unfinished job, with a lot of potential, but no real charm to it.I've got to accept the movie has some good things worth mentioning.
Gary Oldman is great, as expected, in his limited screen time, and the final scenes are actually pretty good, but all in all this was not a good movie, and I would not recommend it..
It seems to be a vehicle to see Liam Hemsworth shirtless as much as possible, as well as in some gorgeous suits.Amid a lot of techie razzle-dazzle, the plot is rather thin and predictable and there is absolutely NO character development, except a small amount for Richard Dreyfuss, who seems to be the most interesting character in the movie.
Of course he's caught and with that Goddard wants to buy Wyatt's company or put him in jail, but Cassidy has some plans of his own.Paranoia has a lot going for a it- a decent budget, impressive cast, an OK story, good visuals.
I wanted to like this movie as the cast does a good job, except for Oldman's and Davidtz's obnoxious British accent.
But forgetting these ridiculous situations, the viewer can enjoy the beauty of Amber Heard; the always great Gary Oldman and Richard Dreyfuss; see Josh "Sawyer" Holloway once again; and a good cast with Harrison Ford, Embeth Davidtz, Julian McMahon and Liam Hemsworth.
This movie shows us all the reasons that the main character SHOULD be paranoid, but he doesn't know what's happening behind the scenes, so instead of being paranoid, he's just oblivious.Liam Hemsworth is Adam Cassidy, a cocky and ambitious young technology developer who is forced by his boss (Gary Oldman) to steal corporate secrets from a rival technology company CEO (Harrison Ford).
Embeth Davidtz does well as a woman who teaches Adam the art of corporate espionage, while Richard Dreyfuss' talents are wasted in the role of Adam's ailing father.Let's see
this movie has
some great shots of New York City!
Of course, it would've helped if more members of the cast could actually act.There are a couple half-way decent twists near the end of the movie, but by then, I was more interested in what time it was than what was going to happen to these characters.
It's almost as if there were a conspiracy to put out a movie with a cool title and a few great actors, then distribute an interesting trailer, all to get ME into the theater to waste my time and money.Maybe that's just my paranoia talking.Or not.
After seeing the cast, with Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Richard Dreyfuss, Julian McMahon, and the stars of the new era, Liam Hemsworth and Amber Heard, I didn't want to believe what everybody said: it's an unwatchably bad movie.
This film is basically like Only God Forgives but with Liam Hemsworth acting like a poor version of Ryan Gosling for a wanna be version of The Net but its not even The Net, its the Net 2.0, it might as well be a Skinemax without the porno bits to it, its basically a 1000 yard stare that says nothing, does nothing, tries to screw your day up, and has a pretty bow-tie on, I SWEAR TO THE LORD ALMIGHTY YOU COULD PUT THAT THE ON THE POSTER ITS THAT BAD, IT MIGHT AS WELL BE LIKE ONLY GOD FORGIVES MIXED WITH A SKINEMAX FILM WITH APPLE ADVERTISINGI cannot recommend this film at all, it isn't worth the amount of money it had spent on it, I think if you want to go see this movie, don't say I didn't warn you, it like Smoking Aces and The Departed with cell phone companies going to war with each other every freaking day.....and also a crap ton of blackmail will not save this film at all, due to the fact if this was a Skinemax film without the porno in it, it would possibly be a bit more drawn out with people who have guilt complexes, and the two antagonists by this film might as well be known as the protagonists since Liam Hemsworth is basically Harvey Dent, he saw himself become the villain in the end which was totally screwed up to begin with.......I will never get my money back for seeing this film.......
While these two power houses are obvious the draw to see this film, Liam Hemsworth is leading the charge backed up by a great supporting cast including Amber Heard, Josh Halloway, Lucas Till and Richard DFreyfuss, but does it pack the punch needed to bring this thriller to life?Paranoia follows a young superstar in the tech world who is forced into a world of corporate espionage between two of the most powerful tech billionaires in the world.
Liam Hemsworth does a fine job with the lead role, but never comes across as much more than a pretty face, which works for what the character needs to be, but doesn't pack the emotional punch that it needs for the rest of the story.
Once friends and colleagues, both of the two corporate CEO's enlist the talents of young Adam Cassidy, who boasts that he knows what young people want; one CEO to advance and market his new smart-phone and the other to infiltrate, spy, and steal the other's secrets As the greedy antagonists, Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman hold the film together; the seasoned actors bring weight to their lively performances.
The question if that is a good thing or a bad thing, will not be answered here (although there is a moral finger pointing).Thor's little brother (and while he had a small role in Expandables 2, up to now that is what people will call Liam Hemsworth) struggles to keep this movie in line.
While he does have help from actors like Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman (the latter having a really nasty accent, at least it sounded bad to me), there is not really much that lets this movie off the hook or be better than similar themed movies.
The movie is mildly entertaining while you're watching it but instantly forgettable.Hemsworth plays Adam Cassidy, a wannabe inventor who dreams of making it big in the corporate world.
He then unwittingly puts himself (and his friends) in grave danger as he realizes Wyatt will stop at nothing to make sure Cassidy gets the info he wants.The film is as routine as they come and plays out just like every other B movie crime thriller out there.
Poor acting, though Ford and Oldman do okay, but the others, both main characters played by Liam Hemsworth and Amber Heard are very poor IMO.Air Force One was a much better film featuring Oldham and Ford, both fine actors..
As for the cast, the older generation (Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss) is much stronger / more interesting than the younger one (Liam Hemsworth, Lucas Till, Amber Heard); Oldham-Ford short-term dialogs are the best in this movie.
In the film he's supported by a real all-star cast, that includes Harrison Ford, Richard Dryfuss, and Gary Oldman, all of whom do what they've been doing for half a century, making great films even better.
See the thing is I am pretty sure that Paranoia is supposed to be a thriller and the thing with that is it's just not in any way shape or form thrilling which virtually nullifies any chance this film had at being solid entertainment and with a cast like this mixing in old hands with the new it's a real shame that Australia's very own Robert Luketic couldn't direct the cast and material into a manner that made his film 21 the entertaining jaunt it was.To be fair it would of taken a director with some serious savvy and smarts to make this material more than adequate with a daft script and equally bland characters the film was doomed to mediocrity before a single scene had been shot.
With the weak material Paranoia presents one would think with a cast like this in the film it could of still succeeded in a throwaway type of deal but sadly this is also not the case.Not possessing any of his older brothers charm and getting lost in a myriad of designers suits former Mr. Miley Cyrus Liam Hemsworth fails in one of his first leading roles instilling Adam with not an ounce of likability.
Filled with silly looking ties and a seemingly put on cockney accent Oldman completely frizzles his material with only a few tiny screen time scenes with Harrison Ford generating any real obvious recommendations.Paranoia is a film to bland and generic to tear shreds off so therefore will not get a low of a rating as perhaps some think it deserves.
Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Josh Holloway (in a nothing role disappointingly), even Liam Hemsworth hadn't done anything overly terrible up to this point (although nothing great either).
Review: This movie isn't anything amazing, but it's good to see veteran actors like Gary Oldman & Harrison Ford on the screen together.
PARANOIAAfter watching this film I was extremely surprised to see that this film only managed to muster a5.6 user rating on IMDb, so that rating has prompted me to write the following review!!!Paranoia is filmed in Philadelphia USA and the plot focuses on a young ambitious digital genius Adam Cassidy played by (Liam Hems-worth) In the beginning of the film Adam is desperately attempting to land a pitch trying to revolutionize the digital world and cement his future with the company he works for called Wyatt Corp that specializes in technological devices.
Unfortunately for Adam and his friends this free night out will have serious consequences for Adam, his friends and their future.To avoid prosecution from authorities, Adam is blackmailed by Wyatt Corp and must secure a job for a rival company who's owner is Jack Goddard played by (Harrison ford) Adam is to infiltrate and and abuse the trust of several people, one of whom is Emma Jennings Adams love interest in the film played by (Amber Heard) this job is simple, to steal the corporations secrets and any new advancements made on their technologies that can give Wyatt Corp financial gain in this competitive market, suddenly the digital world adam wanted to succeed in is being used against him as they watch every move he makes & will no doubt compromise his safety if he is unable to deliver in this deadly game.The film is directed by Robert Luketic from films '21 & killers' in his films its obvious that his strengths as a director is the ability to deliver both suspense and romance to the audience & this film slots into his genre perfectly with both those elements and an additional element of darkness portrayed in both Villains in this story who are ruthless and will do anything to win at all costs Luketic has also done a fantastic job of taking the audience into the digital wold in this film with specialized technology that is intriguing & really gets the imagination working,In particular most visual aspects of this film are very pleasing on the eye from hand held devices to a very stylish set design delivering a warm tones throughout the film.This highly addictive thriller Paranoia takes into a new digital age & the cost of global success to a ugly desire driven world of greed and deception hate, love and pain.
Paranoia The key to being a titan in the Tech industry is to create an App that creates Apps.Contritely, the creators in this cyber-thriller concocted a less remarkable product.Unable to impress his boss, Nicholas Wyatt (Gary Oldman), with a program that allows users to sync their cell phones to nearby television screens, Adam (Liam Hemsworth) is fired.But after a night-out with friends on the company's credit card, Wyatt blackmails him into infiltrating a competing company, run by Wyatt's former partner, Goddard (Harrison Ford).To bypass Goddard's firewalls, Adam needs to seduce an employee (Amber Heard) to give him the Intel he needs.A failed study of wireless communications, Paranoia is instead padded with cardboard performances, pointless car chases and a hackneyed hacker subplot.Furthermore, when you send a twenty-something year old to go work for your competitor and spy for you, they usually show up late and hung-over.Red Light vidiotreviews.blogspot.com.
****SPOILERS****A bit boring as well as overly-complicated movie about corporate espionage that has young 27 year old inventor Adam "Hop-a-Long-Cassidy, Liam Hemsworth,get fired together with his crew from his job at Wyatt Corp.
It's not an Oscar winner but it's a very satisfying way to spend some time.The acting was impressive and even the often-criticized Liam Hemsworth was more than adequate.Of course Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford did their typically strong performances.
Liam Hemsworth is a good actor, along with Ford and Oldman, why they chose this movie is beyond me.
I think that Hemsworth was just eye candy, while Oldman and Ford were just supposed to try to make movie buffs and critics just want to each their work.
Or did those fly away just like the logic of this movie...The biggest question is: why on earth would Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman decide to join the cast?
And finally another legend in his own right Richard Dreyfuss plays Hemsworth's Dad. It was great to see him on screen and he was very good in another role that was excruciatingly cookie cutter.I was a little surprised to see the director of this film was Robert Luketic.
The plot is has about as much depth as a book for 12 years old.The actors were average save for a few talented actors.Adam Cassidy is a passable character with nothing interesting about him.,he wasn't too bad....but it is just that he failed to make it captivating.The story is predictable,dull and failed to entertain me or thrill me.If it is any consolation,I enjoyed seeing Gary Oldman act....at least that was something worth watching.However,the movie has too many flaws to enjoy or even tolerate.Nothing else is really noteworthy in this film.With the exception of the plot,the rest of the movie is mediocre.The plot just makes it worse by making it boring and predictable.Come back with a betterplot and I might give it a shot.To whoever interested in this movie I would advise you to stay away from this it..
The only thing this movie has going for it is the 2 ruthless CEOs (Harrison Ford & Gary Oldman) and getting to look at Baby Thor's girl Amber Heard for 1-1/2 hours.Aside from the LAME characters, predictable plot and bad acting from Liam, there is also a constant Occupy-wall st under-tone to this movie.
It stars Liam Hemsworth and Amber Heard together with Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford.The screenplay was written by Barry L.
It is far from being stylish and thrilling but there is not much to offer in this formulaic script.While Gary Oldman and Harrison Ford are good as usual, Liam Hemsworth is pretty much decent in it although we are far from being absorbed with his character nor do we feel sympathetic for him despite being used as a pawn by both tycoons.
In the case of Paranoia, however, that bar could not possibly get any lower.And despite starring several Academy Award-caliber performers (previous nominees Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, as well as winner for 1977's "The Goodbye Girl," Richard Dreyfuss), this picture (directed by Robert Luketic, "Killers") wastes that talent with an undercooked script that defies the viewer to find anything near paranoid within the entire premise.Using Liam Hemsworth (Thor's little brother) in the lead is also a mistake.
And by the time Liam Hemsworth, as tech climber Adam Cassidy, begins to feel someone's out to get him
which is called PARANOIA
the film's title makes little to no sense: he knows exactly who's after him (and why he's being sought after) and so does the audience.The first half is WALL STREET meets
THE HANGOVER.
Adam (Liam Hemsworth) is coerced by his former boss Nick (Gary Oldman) to become an industrial spy on Nick's former boss Jock (Harrison Ford).
"Adam Cassidy" (Liam Hemsworth) and his team have a project that needs to be pitched to their boss "Nicolas Wyatt" (Gary Oldman) who owns a hi-tech company worth millions of dollars. |
tt0117110 | Muppet Treasure Island | Jim Hawkins is a young orphan who lives in the Admiral Benbow in England with his best friends Gonzo and Rizzo. Jim listens to the tales of Billy Bones, who tells of his former captain, Captain Flint, who buried his treasure trove on a remote island and executed his crew so only he would own the island's map. One night, one of Bones' crewmates Blind Pew arrives, giving Bones the black spot. Bones gives Jim the treasure map and reveals that he had been Flint's first mate. Just before dying of a heart attack, he begs Jim to go after the treasure and keep both it and the map safe from pirate hands. An army of pirates attack the inn, destroying it, but the boys escape with the map.
The trio takes the map to the half-wit Squire Trelawney (Fozzie Bear), who arranges a voyage to find the treasure. The boys are enlisted aboard the Hispaniola as the cabin boys, accompanied by Trelawney, Dr. Livesey (Bunsen Honeydew), and his assistant Beaker. The ship is commanded by Captain Abraham Smollett (Kermit the Frog) and his overly strict first mate Mr. Arrow (Sam Eagle). The boys meet the cook Long John Silver, a one-legged man who Bones warned them of but Jim and Silver become good friends. The ship sets sail, but Smollett is suspicious of the crew, believing them to be of shady character. After Gonzo and Rizzo are kidnapped and tortured by three of the crew who have turned out to be pirates, he has the treasure map locked up for safe keeping.
It is revealed that Silver and the secret pirates in the crew had been part of Flint's crew and want the treasure for themselves. Silver fools Mr. Arrow into leaving the ship to test out a rowboat, claims he drowned and has his minions steal the map during Arrow's memorial service. Jim, Gonzo, and Rizzo discover Silver's treachery and inform Smollett. Arriving at Treasure Island, Smollett orders the entire crew save the officers to go ashore, planning to keep himself and non-pirate crew aboard the ship and abandon the pirates on the island. However, his plan falls through when it is discovered that Silver has kidnapped Jim to have leverage against the captain. On the island, Silver invites Jim to join them in the treasure hunt using his late father's compass. When Jim refuses, Silver forcibly takes the compass from him. Smollett, Gonzo, and Rizzo land on the island in an effort to rescue Jim. However, unbeknownst to them, Silver had hidden a squad of pirates aboard the Hispaniola before leaving, and they capture the ship in Smollett's absence. On the island, Smollett and the rest of the landing party are captured by the native tribe of pigs, where Smollett reunites with his jilted lover Benjamina Gunn (Miss Piggy), the tribe's queen.
The pirates find the cave in which Flint hid the treasure is empty, leading to a brief mutiny against Silver. Silver reveals that, even though he is a pirate, he cares for Jim and allows him to escape. Smollett and Benjamina are captured by Silver, and Smollett is hung from a cliff to fall to his death. In an effort to save Smollett, Benjamina reveals the treasure is hidden in her house, but when she spits out a kiss from Silver, he hangs her off the cliff as well. Jim rescues his friends and with Mr. Arrow (who is revealed to be alive), the group regains control of the Hispaniola, and rescue Smollett and Benjamina. The group engages the pirates in a sword fight until only Silver is left standing, but he surrenders when he finds himself outnumbered. While the pirates are imprisoned, Silver discovers he still has Mr. Arrow's keys and tries to escape with the treasure. Jim confronts him but allows him to leave as long as they never cross paths again, much to Silver's disappointment. Silver rows away, but not before returning Jim's compass to him. However, Mr. Arrow informs Jim and Smollett that the boat Silver used was not seaworthy, and Silver is stranded on the island with no gold.
With Jim promoted as the ship's new captain, the crew of the Hispaniola sails away into the sunset, while some scuba-diving rats recover the treasure from the sea. During the credits, Silver is left marooned with only a wisecracking Moai head for company. | action | train | wikipedia | I got that feeling during Muppet Treasure Island, and as a result it is one of my favorite movies.
The jokes and asides were too, too funny (like Gonzo finding Henry Kissinger's book Diplomacy' in Captain Billy Bones' trunk), the songs were fun and catchy, and the pace was brisk and exciting.
Tim Curry looked like he was having the time of his life playing Long John Silver amidst a sea of Muppets.
Whether it's the wonderfully fun "Cabin Fever," the touching "Love Led Us Here," or another one of the wide array of tunes, nobody can say that they are inferior to any other Muppets melodies.The script is full of one liners and clever dialogue that never grows old, delivered by a cast and vocal talents who are incredibly talented.
And young Jim Hawkins is just as he should be, albeit surrounded by a crew of muppet pirates.This is my favorite Muppet film, and I think everybody should give it a try and embrace a different sort of humor-filled extravaganza..
Wow. Seems like people fall totally on one side or the other when considering this movie.All I can say is that this is my favourite Muppet film (I'm in my 30's).
Fun songs, Tim Curry is enough to watch the film anyway, good plot.Where else will you hear a name like 'big fat baby-eating O'Brian' ???.
Others are character humor, such as the exchange in which Rizzo laments that they are "captured by crazed wild pigs and about to be sacrificed hideously on a pagan altar," to which Gonzo breathlessly adds, "Are we lucky or what?!" Anachronisms abound, such as when Miss Piggy reflects on her dalliances with the murderous Captain Flint and her most recent beau, Long John Silver, who has tied her by the feet and left her dangling at the edge of a cliff.
Muppet Treasure Island is by far not the best Muppet film ever, but it is good and enjoyable..
I've never been a fan of Miss Piggy so I was glad to see her with a minor role here.Tim Curry played "Long John Silver" and he was entertaining, as was young Kevin Bishop as "Jim Hawkins." The songs were okay: not outstanding, but not bad.
Even when i was a kid i thought like that.I still love the Muppets on tv, that backstage setting was a brilliant creation and the perfect home to those characters and situations.
And i loved that cute sad little bunny hero !Anyway, then i bought this new one, MUPPETS TREASURE ISLAND, and i think it´s an absolute masterpiece, on what Muppets are concerned.All the "problems" the other movies had are gone, and this finaly looks like a great Muppets movie.
No more dull scenes, no more boring guests, now it´s got a great storytelling rithm and the perfect pace of a real movie.Funny story, great gags particulary the ones with the rats, fantastic landscapes and scenery, cool songs, and good special effects.
Props go to Tim Curry for his fine job as Long John Silver, and to the entire cast of puppeteers, without who this film would not be possible.
The Muppets are hilarious and touching, as usual, the music is catchy, and Kevin Bishop and Tim Curry act and sing beautifully.
The songs, Muppets, sets, and live acting make this movie a very fun experience for kids, as well as adults.
The adaption of this classic story written Robert Louis Stevenson into a Muppet world is, in my opinion, one of the best adaption ever made in the history of Muppet movies.The movie is quite family friendly, but I can say, as an adult, that I enjoyed it immensely.
The humor is never dull, and the numerous musical numbers in this movie makes it a pearl in the world of the Muppets.I'd just like to point out Tim Curry's role in this movie.
From the fabulous opening song with every ominous creature participating, from skulls to alligators, to the hilarious roll call before the ship embarks, where each crew member is identified by a funny name or situation, to the hallucinogenic becalmed fever production in the middle to the touching and adorable song by Kermit and Piggy, "Love Led Us Here," as they are hanging over a cliff about to die, to the many double entendres meant to amuse grownups, this is one movie we never get tired of seeing!
As an adaptation of a classic work, as was the Muppet Christmas Carol, this zany recreation holds some intrigue, some good tense moments, and great laughs, while managing to project a strong moral center.With the wild popularity of Disney's Pirates line, I can see why a reissue of this work was necessary.
Muppet Treasure Island is a great movie with a very enjoyable storyline and a terrific cast of both live action actors and voice actors/puppeteers.It is certainly one of the worst Muppet movies,in fact in my opinion it is probably the weakest,but I still thoroughly enjoyed it,I love all the wonderful characters and they never fail to make me laugh and also make me emotional at times.Like all Muppet movies there are loads of great songs,this movies is no exception,the songs are very catchy,although there is certainly no songs as good or as memorable as classic Muppet tunes such as Rainbow Connection or Saying Goodbye.I really enjoyed Tim Curry's performance,he toned down on the usual creepy performances he gives,and portrays a more comedic character,although I thought the ending involving Long John Silver was quite lazily written.Muppet Treasure Island certainly has its flaws,but if you're a fan of the Muppets you can certainly look past them,I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good family film.
After the so-so 'Muppet's most wanted' it was nice to go back and watch this film, which really does show the beloved characters off at their best.Using a lot of the same techniques as the earlier success 'Muppet Christmas Carol' the Muppets give their own fun filled interpretation of Treasure Island.Tim Curry holds the film together with a fabulously over the top performance, that more than makes up for the rather slow beginning.
In typical Muppet fashion there are cameos and songs, as well as some now rather dated pop culture references that kids won't get but it doesn't matter.If you feel a bit let down by their recent outing, then a look back at this truly classic Muppet film could be what you need..
The pitch must have been a doddle: "Treasure Island, yeah, but throw in the Muppets for comic appeal, add a little intrigue and lovely sets, and Bob's your father's brother - a definite money spinner".Half of the problem with the film is the running time: it's a hundred minutes according to the IMDB, but it still seems to be far too long.
If you're watching the film with kids, as I was, they will probably enjoy it loads, particularly if they know the Muppets already.
That's the great thing about the Muppets: you're watching a character you know and love take on a different persona in the film, like you're watching one of your mates play a big movie role.
You laugh because she's not just Benjamina Gunn, she's Miss Piggy too.Tim Curry is merely all right as Long John Silver (a little too bit over the top in places, and the stereotypically swarthy laugh will probably grate after a while), Jennifer Saunders is adequate in her brief role, as is Billy Connolly.
Miss Piggy is, as usual, fabulous as Benjamina Gunn ("I'm a pig: I need commitment") - but isn't on screen for nearly long enough.The sets are great, the one-liners are good fun, the original score is top-hole (by noted movie composer Hans Zimmer).
Better movie.There's a line in the film by Statler and Waldorf (the two old guys in the balcony in "The Muppet Show" - remember?) which goes something along the lines of:"Hey!
I absolutely love Muppets Christmas Carol as well, but here there is Tim Curry and a great storyline based on one of the best children's books ever.
The set designs as usual in a Muppet movie are splendid, and the songs by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil are fun, and are embedded with great jokes.
I especially Tim curry as Long John Silver and Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins, they both portrayed their characters well and had good natural chemistry on screen together.
Humorous film with great catchy songs and a good performance from Tim Curry.
Muppet Treasure Island is a great film!
stars: Kevin Bishop, Tim Curry, Billy Connely and Jennifer Saunders.Muppeteers: Steve Whitmire as Kermit the frog, Rizzo, Beaker and others.Dave Goelz as The Great Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Hunnydew, Waldorf and Zoot.Jerry Nelson as Blind Eyed Pew, Statler, Mad Monty, Floyd Pepper, Lew Zealand, Robin the frog and others.Frank Oz as Sam the Eagle, Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy and Animal.Kevin Clash as Polly the Lobster and others.Bill Barretta as Clueless Morgan, Rowlf the dog and others.John Henson as Sweetums and Sal Manilla.Brian did an excellent job in directing this!
So anyways, it's about Muppets and some humans heading to an island with treasure and having trouble when the captain (Kermit, of course), finds out that half the ship's crew are pirates and that mutiny is on the horizon.
I mean, we've got pirates, Muppets, swordfights, comedy, musicals, and Tim Curry, who steals every single scene he's in.It's more or less the same story we've heard before: Jim Hawkins finds a map to the treasure of Captain Flynt and manages to get himself a ship, captain and crew to go look for it.
He befriends Tim Curry a.k.a. Long John Silver and after a bout of Cabin Fever explodes into the craziest song ever put on film, they find the island, Long John is torn over his bond with Jim, yadda yadda you know how it goes.But you don't.
Tim Curry steals the show as Long John Silver, his performance confirming long-time fans of his that he is, indeed, actually a Muppet.
How else could one explain how his obnoxious and over-the-top personality blends so well with the other Muppet characters in the film?Viewer beware: you might not be able to watch another Muppet movie after seeing this one.
Though it does not have the reputation of its predecessors, this is perhaps the most consistently entertaining Muppet movie so far; like the previous entry, MUPPET Christmas CAROL (1992), it transposes the lovable 'characters' into the environment of a popular children's classic in this case, R.L. Stevenson's quintessential pirate yarn "Treasure Island".
On the human front, we get two name actors Tim Curry as an adequately roguish Long John Silver and Billy Connolly (with heavy Scots accent intact) as Billy Bones; the kid playing Jim Hawkins acquits himself well enough, too, and there is a hilarious running-gag early on involving the female inn-keeper's acute sense of hearing.
Muppet Treasure Island (1996, Dir. Brian Henson) After telling the story of Flint's last journey to young Jim Hawkins (Bishop), Billy Bones (Connelly) has a heart attack and dies just as Jim and his friends are attacked by pirates.
Tim Curry, who can be seen obviously having a wonderful time, is the highlight of the film and the young Kevin Bishop portrays a good Jim Hawkins, but some Muppet fans might be disappointed in the lack of Miss Piggy who only turns up in the last quarter of the film.Oh, aye, and then old Flinty up and died before they could get back to that cursed island and dig up the treasure.
from small appearances by Billy Connolly play Billy Bones to Tim Curry playing Long John Silver was great.
I do not think this film would be worth watching without the humour, really.You probably know the story, a boy called Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map and sets sail out for Treasure Island for treasure (duh) and meets the evil Long John Silver - with one leg.
Meet Gonzo and Rizzo, Jim's companions, Kermit as the Captain of the Hispaniola (Captain Abraham Smollett) and more!I recommend this fantastic film to anyone who likes the muppets and their sense of humour and films with mad songs.
MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND wasn't meant to be a serious adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure story, so why not simply enjoy it.
Although adults will find much to deprive and annoyed, this is a fun and enjoyable romp for the young, young-at-heart and for those willing enough to be so.The story is basically similar, as we once again go across the sea, joining the young Jim Hawkins (Kevin Bishop) and the feisty pirate Long John Silver (Tim Curry), in search of the long lost treasure.
The film is given a Muppet twist, which includes much of our favorite Muppet characters, including Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzy Bear, Gonzo and all of those other rambunctious little Muppet characters are here and there.Adults may find a small discomfort when watching this kid-oriented film, but it's still a fun and bright family movie, mostly recommended for the younger set.
The plot works well for a muppet film with the voyage giving rise to lively songs like cabin fever, sailing for adventure and professional pirate.
The usually dose of intelligent muppet humour that adults can appreciate is also present.Tim Curry is great as Long John Silver and Kevin Bishop, Rizzo the Rat and the Great Gonzo make a very watchable trio.
Featuring the entire Muppet cast (including Sam Eagle and the ever-popular Rizzo the Rat), and introducing several new characters (such as Polly the talking lobster), this is one movie you'll want to watch over and over.
Plenty of great actors feature in this movie as well as the classic muppets Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Rizzo The Rat, Fozzie etc.
Tim Curry plays Long John Silver, and does a good--and serious--job of it.
Still, I don't think they'd put those scenes into the movie today.)Believe it or not, what saves the film is the fact that Treasure Island is one of the greatest adventure stories of all time.
Tim Curry expectedly overacts as 'Long John Silver' and he looks adequately embarrassed while he does it.Jim Henson was a genius who was responsible for the rise of the muppet empire, but that empire should finally fall by disappearing from American movie theaters for good..
A tale as only the Muppets can tell, they set sail for a treasure with a crew of cutthroat pirates and scallywags.This is in fact, the first and only Muppet film where someone dies (Billy Bones played by Billy Connolly at the hotel).
The only time I've even seen that 1999 film was in 2008, and I remember finding it kind of hard to believe that came only three years after "Muppet Treasure Island".
The other five are good, even though some are better than others, and "The Muppet Movie" is probably the best of them all.
As the Muppets' second flick made after Jim Henson's sad passing, "Muppet Treasure Island" may not be as good as the first 90's film featuring the famous puppets, but at least it comes very close.
I know it's far from being the most popular film in the franchise, but I thought it was a good family adventure movie when I was around ten years old and still do now..
This is one hilarious movie, with Tim Curry as Long John Silver and the whole Muppet crew as the rest of the cast.
The film isn't just an adaptation of 'Treasure Island' all the great Muppet humor and heart is intact and in some instances as funny as ever.
Best Muppet Movie made, 2nd is definitely "A Muppet Christmas Carol." Also worth a watch.PS: If you enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean, Tim Curry makes a much better pirate than Johnny Depp..
If you want fun, adventure, and laughs...then Muppet Treasure Island is for you.
Tim Curry plays Long John Silver, and is very funny as the one-legged man.
And this is supposed to be a kids movie!") Young Kevin Bishop (who would be about two years older than me now...I'm 23) plays Jim Hawkins, and interacts well with the Muppets and with Long John Silver.If you like the Muppets, and love to laugh, then you'll love Muppet Treasure Island.
Muppet Treasure Island (1996): Dir: Brian Henson / Cast: Tim Curry, Kevin Bishop, Billy Connolly, Jennifer Saunders, David Nicholls: Weak Muppet entry being too bland and unoriginal.
It features Tim Curry as Long John Silver the pirate of the old Treasure Island movies.
Like the rest of the Muppet movies my family and I have on video, I remember seeing them all as a kid, but there was a long period I didn't watch it for a while.
I loved this film - it was my second favorite Muppet movie!
What they don't know is Long John and some other pirates on board are planning on committing mutiny and taking the treasure for themselves.Like "The Muppets Christmas Carol," the movie follows the story pretty well.
I think it's very Disney-ish, as if the executives from Disney wanted this song to be in the film because there's always a romantic moment in Disney...That, and we need a moment between Kermit and Piggy.In closing, I like this movie.
I think it's a good movie that tells the story of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" pretty well.
Director Brian Henson gives us the fifth Muppet movie with Muppet Treasure Island.
Jim meets Long John Silver played by Tim Curry who wants the map for himself.
The muppets are really funny in this film, the musical performances are spot on, and Tim Curry is as encentric as ever.
Although in this film The muppets really don't have a lot to work with, the film is a little to violent for small children, and Miss Piggy does not show up until 1hr 6min in the movie. |
tt0462199 | The Black Mirror | The story largely takes place at Black Mirror, the ancestral manor of the Gordon family located in England in the 1980s. The protagonist, Samuel Gordon, is forced to return to Black Mirror after 12 years absence upon hearing of the death of his grandfather, William Gordon. Despite occurring under mysterious circumstances, William's death is considered a suicide by everyone except for Samuel.
Arriving in Black Mirror, Samuel begins his investigation of his grandfather's death. Samuel's investigation soon reveals that his grandfather had interests in the arcane, and up until his death had spent near every waking hour working to uncover the mystery of the Gordon family's curse. From his grandfather's writings and other sources, Samuel discovers that centuries ago in the 1200s the Gordon line began with two brothers, Marcus and Mordred Gordon. The eldest, Mordred, was a monster of a man, opening a dark portal known as the Black Mirror deep under where the manor now stands. The younger, Marcus, fought his brother, killing him and containing - but not closing - the Black Mirror. In his dying breath the elder cursed the younger, stating that he and his descendants would be forever cursed until five souls were sacrificed and his evil was unleashed once more. William's notes also speak of five sacred keys required to shut the portal for good, entrusted to different members of the Gordon family. Samuel then begins his quest to seek out the five sacred keys and close the Black Mirror permanently.
As the story progresses, further strange and unexpected deaths occur to individuals around Black Mirror, each one accompanied by a strange blood red sigil. Samuel travels the land around Black Mirror, visiting a local town, chapel, and sanatorium, and also at one point travels to his family's second manor in Wales to obtain a key there. At long last Samuel obtains the five keys, but moments later also discovers the horrifying truth: he is the killer responsible for all the deaths, ending the lives of the victims in his sleep; this is the nature of the Gordon family curse. Samuel enters the catacombs beneath the mansion, enters the Black Mirror, and using the five keys seals the portal. After this, unable to live with the atrocities he has committed, Gordon jumps from the top of the mansion, falling onto the same spiked fence which killed his grandfather.
The game is divided into six chapters:
Chapter I: Return of the Future
Chapter II: Back to the Light
Chapter III: Hidden Legacy
Chapter IV: Forgotten Bound
Chapter V: Confession of the Truth
Chapter VI: Look Through the Mirror | murder | train | wikipedia | Atmospheric, mildly interesting game ruined by terrible ending. I'm not really all that interested in adventure games for the PC, to be honest. I was really into them on the Commodore 64 back in the 80s, which is weird considering how much more visual and dynamic they are these days. The Black Mirror does have some gorgeous graphics and an impressively Gothic atmosphere, but it's ruined by perpetual slowness and many, many scenes of long, long conversations.Samuel Gordon (the most arrogant man in a video-game ever) is the wayward heir to the Gordon Manor (Black Mirror Castle) who returns to his rural England roots when his grandfather is killed in suspicious circumstances. It's up to you to guide him around the Manor and village, talking to people and investigating.Typical 'adventure' gameplay mechanics are involved in progressing through the chapters. Which is fine, but when the game makes you wait for other characters to do stuff for you, boy does it make you WAIT. I've had the game running for over 6 hours while other characters waste you're time doing stuff for you (or not doing it rather). And there's nothing else for YOU do to when this is going on. It's infuriating.The ending to the game is profoundly weak. A lame twist I should have seen coming is capped-off with dull, whogivesadamn cut-scene and then the end credits. When I play a game for so long I expect more than that! It also leaves many questions unanswered. Who EXACTLY killed William Gordon? Where did Uncle Robert really go? What's the deal with Samuel's long-dead lover? How did the Priest not find the secret crypt halfway through the game? Why is it set in 1981? I was impressed with the game at first but in the last third it got pretty damn tiresome and the end is no real pay-off. For serious adventure gamers ONLY.. A solid and thrilling adventure that could have been excellent but just isn't. From the start this adventure offers us a mystery that we want to solve! For a game that is made in 2003 it looks real good! Most of it looks realistic and authentic! Only the animations of the characters could have been done better! Because the main character is walking real stiff! (And yes,you can assume that he deserves it because Samuel Gordon acts like a real arrogant uppercase bastard sometimes) But I doubt it that they made the animation with that in mind! Solving problems and puzzles in "Black Mirror" can be rewarding and frustrating at the same time! Most of the puzzles are logical and certainly won't be a problem for the experienced adventure gamer! And some are illogical! You have to do certain things in order to advance without any connection to the event itself! So at first it seems that you have to wait a lot! But if you don't do anything and just wait it can take ages for something to happen! This means that you have to visit other places until you will trigger an event! All of this is nothing compared to the one puzzle that can make your head spin! And that is the "zodiac slider puzzle". This puzzle is random and changes every time you start it! (Sometimes in such a way that it is impossible to solve!) One of the most frustrating puzzles ever made in these type of games! The only motivation for me to solve this puzzle was that I was hoping for more than a decent conclusion to the mystery! Sadly I have to report that the climax will be very disappointing! You can see the big twist coming! Worse, this twist doesn't even bother to explain how it was possible only that it did! And the finale is very weak in contrast to the mystery that was introduced to us! Is it still worth your time! Well,yes! If you are prepared for the dull climax and ending and don't expect too much this adventure will be very enjoyable! This game does succeed in presenting an ambiance similar to classic horror stories! The atmosphere of this game is thrilling and chilling! "Black Mirror" is flawed but solid!. Interesting Adventure Game But With Ultimately Mixed Results. "The Black Mirror" is one of those adventure games that almost reaches greatness, but there are too many points holding the game back for it to be considered among the better entries in the genre.The main character is hard to like due to his arrogance and moodiness, but somehow you end up feeling sorry for him as he returns home to the ancestral home of his family, the Gothic mansion Black Mirror that he left many years before. Most of the other characters are clichéd like the Irish barman and the sinister German pathologist. The voice acting is inconsistent in the extreme, being generally good, but the grave digger on his own pulls down the average immensely. The actor sounds like he is falling asleep during the recording and I almost joined him on several occasions.You need to be a skilled adventure gamer to complete this one without reference to a walk-through or outside source, since some of the puzzles require outside knowledge such as the signs of the Zodiac and their correct sequence. Other sections just require you to walk in and out of locations while you wait for another character to do something for you, which is both frustrating and pointless.The graphics and interface reminded me of the first two adventures in the Broken Sword series and they are probably the closest reference point I can think of. The general background graphics are good to look at, especially in recreating the manor itself. The weather effects are very atmospheric for a 2D game adding greatly to the realism of the game. The cut-scenes are very well thought out and presented, building up to what should be a chilling conclusion, but sadly the real revelation is revealed some time before the end and so the final segment is rather a wash-out after quite a long game.It has recently been announced that they are planning a sequel though based on the ending of the first game it is hard to see where this would fit in and how it would work. This game had just enough promise for me to look forward to the release of the follow-up albeit with some reservations. With very few decent adventure games for the PC being produced these days this was a good attempt. |
tt0074205 | The Big Bus | Coyote Bus Lines' scientists and designers work feverishly to complete Cyclops, a state-of-the-art articulated jumbo bus, enabling man to achieve a new milestone in bussing: non-stop service between New York City and Denver. Almost immediately after the bus's engine is equipped with nuclear fuel, a bomb goes off, critically injuring Professor Baxter, the scientist in charge of the project. Cyclops itself is undamaged, but Coyote Lines has lost both its driver and co-driver.
Kitty Baxter, the professor's daughter and the Cyclops designer, is forced to turn to Dan Torrance, an old flame. Once a promising driver, Torrance was disgraced after he crashed his bus atop Mount Diablo, and was accused of saving his own life by eating all of his passengers. (Torrance blamed his co-driver for cannibalism, insisting that he himself survived by eating the seats and the luggage, and only ate part of a passenger's foot by accident.) Narrowly surviving an assault by vindictive fellow drivers with the help of "Shoulders" O'Brien, Torrance is recruited to drive Cyclops.
Meanwhile, a sinister tycoon plots with oil sheikhs to destroy the bus. Known as "Iron Man," he is encased in a huge iron lung while directing his brother Alex to sabotage Cyclops using timebombs. Alex would prefer to use a manmade earthquake, but Iron Man insists that the bus be destroyed and discredited. Before its maiden voyage, Alex sneaks aboard and hides a bomb within the bus.
Amid public fanfare, the bus finally leaves New York bound for Denver. Among the passengers are the Cranes, a neurotic married couple waiting for their divorce to finalize; Father Kudos, a priest who has lost his way; Dr. Kurtz, a disgraced veterinarian; Emery Bush, a man with only a few months to live; and Camille Levy, whose father died in the aforementioned Mount Diablo bus crash.
At first, Cyclops journey is a success, and Torrance triumphantly breaks the 90 mph "wind barrier" (referenced as "breaking wind"). Soon, however, disaster strikes. Investigating a mechanical problem, Dan finds Alex's bomb. He disarms it only before an explosion rips through another part of the bus. Now unable to stop, Cyclops speeds across America. Dan is determined to achieve Cyclops historic goal of non-stop service to Denver, but he also needs to surpass a treacherously curvy road where his father died. Dan almost succeeds, but not before a truck collides into the upper deck windshield, and the bus runs partially off the road, finding itself teetering over a cliff. To save the bus, Dan and Shoulders shift all weight to the back of the bus by pumping all of the vehicle's storage of carbonated beverages into the opposite end of the bus into the galley, as well as jettisoning all of the passenger luggage.
Knowing he has only one more chance to destroy Cyclops, Iron Man is finally persuaded by Alex to use the earthquake. Unfortunately for Iron Man, Alex has somehow set the coordinates for Iron Man's house instead.
Back on the road, Cyclops is once again headed to its destination, when, only 25 miles outside of Denver, the front and rear halves of the bus split from each other. | absurd, comedy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1124062 | Caminhos do Coração | The plot develops around Maria Luz who is accused of killing Dr. Socrates Mayer, owner of one of the largest private clinics in the country, Progênese. Dr. Júlia, an affiliated physician of Progênese created genetically modified human beings, mutants with superpowers. Júlia has always maintained a secret laboratory on the fictional island of Arraial, where she performs the experiments that originated the mutants. She is helped by Gór, who has the power of hypnosis, and the superintelligent child Eugênio.
Maria Luz has lived in the circus of Don Peppe with her parents Ana Luz and Pepe all of her life. She is the main attraction of the circus where she was raised and met first love interest Fernando. Maria is also the best friend of Juanita, her sister-in-law. Maria falls out of love with Fernando when he gets involved with Esmeralda. After Maria discovers that she is an adopted child, she finds herself in a tight spot: the police find her lying near Socrates' dead body and accuse her of killing him. Maria then discovers that her real father is the person she is accused of killing. This was set up so that Maria could not inherit Socrates's large wealth.
The Mayer family belongs to São Paulo's traditional elite. It is composed of the brothers Sócrates, Aristóteles and Platão Mayer. Ari is widowed and has three mutant children: Toni, who can deviate from bullets and has over human strength, Rodrigo, who has hypnotic powers, and Danilo, who has super agility and marries Lucinha to hide his homosexuality from his father. Platão is married to Irma and has two daughters: Regina and Cléo, who are discovered to have the powers of survival and astral projection. The Mayer family is one of the shareholders of Progênese, together with Mauro Fontes and Josias Martinelli. Josias is married to Cassandra and is the father of Lucas, who reads thoughts, and Janete, who has the power of clairvoyance.
After her arrest, Maria is helped by federal police officer Marcelo Montenegro, with whom she falls in love. Marcelo had recently been widowed by the death of Mabel who was poisoned. The poisoned sweet that killed his wife was intended to be eaten by his mutant daughter Tatiana. By helping Maria to escape from the prison, Marcelo becomes a fugitive from the law and the couple go through several adventures to escape the unscrupulous commissioner Taveira, who feels an unanswered desire for Maria.
Platão and Josias are murdered when they discover who is responsible for Socrates', Dr. Walker's (an American researcher who discovered the truth about the mutants) and Mabel's deaths. Maria and Marcelo are seeking to discover who hired serial killer Eric Fulisy to commit all the crimes.
It is revealed in the last chapter that Júlia hired Fulisy. She also hired attorney César Rubicão to kidnap Maria, when she was still a baby, and leave her anywhere. He chooses to leave her at the circus. Thirty years later, Socrates reveals that he would leave his entire wealth to a foundation, shocking his family. Afraid that it would harm her experiments, Júlia hired Eric to kill him and put Maria on the crime scene because she knew that Socrates would leave Maria his fortune if they ever met each other again. She suspected that if Maria received his wealth, she would close Progênese and harm her experiences. Júlia then decided to eliminate all those who discovered or suspected that she was responsible for Socrates' death. She also hired Eric to kill Rosana and nurse Ruth among other failed killing attempts. Helga, former wife of Eric, who became a better person after leaving him, also suffered attacks, as did Tatiana, Marcelo and Maria.
The season ended with Rubicão revealing in court, via hologram, who was responsible for the crimes. In the following season, Os Mutantes: Caminhos do Coração, Júlia drank some of the youth serum that she produced and adopted the pseudonym of Juli Di Trevi. | psychedelic, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1629375 | Room 33 | === 1926 ===
Elizabeth (Lady Gaga) goes to the Murder House to visit Dr. Charles Montgomery (Matt Ross), revealing that she is three weeks pregnant. Before the abortion, the nurse is skeptical about Elizabeth's abnormally low body temperature. During the process, the baby attacks the nurse assisting Charles with the operation. When Elizabeth wakes up, he announces she had a boy.
=== 2015 ===
In present day, John Lowe (Wes Bentley) is awoken from sleep by Holden (Lennon Henry), and he chases him reaching the underground swimming pool where he sees Alex Lowe (Chloë Sevigny) and Holden in a coffin, and faints upon seeing them. Liz Taylor (Denis O'Hare) and Tristan Duffy (Finn Wittrock) have sex and profess their love for each other, but they are wary about Elizabeth. In the meantime, Elizabeth and Will Drake (Cheyenne Jackson) also have sex, but stop due to Will's erectile dysfunction. She texts Tristan to join them, asking him to perform fellatio on Will. Alex drugs John and with Liz's help destroy the coffins. John awakes again and sees Alex on his bed. She explains that his "vision" of the pool filled with coffins is from Scarlett's (Shree Crooks) description. She follows him down to the now emptied sleeping chamber. Elizabeth visits her son in Room 33, before leaving for Paris.
Donovan (Matt Bomer) and Ramona Royale (Angela Bassett) visit the hotel. In the elevator, Ramona says her plans to kill the children, however, Donovan backs out and goes to the penthouse in hopes to see Elizabeth. Ramona is surprised that the coffins are gone and confronts Iris (Kathy Bates) about it. Ramona goes to Room 33 to kill the baby, named Bartholomew, but it attacks her and escapes. Upstairs, Donovan sees Agnetha and Vendela, the two Swedish tourists, who ask him the way out. Donovan explains that until they find a purpose, they will stay trapped. Meanwhile, somewhere in the hotel Justin's ghost appears outside a room yelling and demanding for kale.
Liz finds the Room 33's door opened and explains to Alex that they will get in trouble if Bartholomew is not found before Elizabeth gets back. In order to find purpose, Agnetha and Vendela kill a guest, but are disappointed. Alex finds them beside the dead man, and tell them to haunt John. The latest crime scene involving the Ten Commandments Killer is in a church where the televangelist pastor was stuffed with coins until he exploded. John learns that he had been fired and police already have someone in custody. He drinks in the corridor in the hotel, where Agnetha and Vendela approach him. During sex, they scare John, covering him with blood. John returns to the room with Liz, and sees the girls leaving. He also sees Miss Evers (Mare Winningham) and James March (Evan Peters). He readies himself to leave and while showering, Bartholomew hides in his suitcase.
At home, Scarlett is upset that Alex has not returned her calls for the last two days, and questions why John is there. John returns to his room to find his clothes scattered. He gathers his gun from the closet and investigates, finding Bartholomew in the kitchen. He shoots at the creature, with Scarlett nearby, who runs away screaming. Elizabeth, Will, and Lachlan (Lyric Lennon) return. While unpacking, Liz reveals to Elizabeth that she and Tristan have been carrying on an affair for a few weeks. Elizabeth says that she does not share, but maybe when she is done with Tristan. Liz pleads her case again, and Elizabeth says they will talk it over.
John's partner drops Alex off at the house, concerned for John's health. Alex tries to talk to him, but he realizes that she has moved to the hotel full-time and he shuns her. She follows a rustling in the bushes to find Bartholomew. Tristan greets Elizabeth in Liz's room, and she asks the two lovers to sit while she pours them each a drink. She says that she does not enjoy betrayal and afterwards she slices Tristan's throat. Elizabeth leaves to find Alex and Bartholomew in Room 33. Elizabeth is impressed that Alex saved her son, and Alex responds that Elizabeth saved Holden. As Alex leaves, Elizabeth cradles her son. | violence | train | wikipedia | It's about what you're expecting..
What you're promised: a group of roller derby girls and a few guys crash at a abandoned, haunted insane asylum.
Oooh, creepy.What you get: many shots of girls wearing very little clothing, a killer ghost, and quite a few scenes of people walking down hallways in an abandoned building.
Also, a bit of digging around in old filing cabinets, scanning documents that say "CLASSIFIED".Does it live up to the promises?
Some of the girls even put on Rollerblades.
There's a bit of hurried exposition that explains the mystery of the haunted asylum, but I wasn't paying enough attention, so I never really learned what was going on.
I can live without knowing the secret of this nameless asylum.This was a pretty generic movie.
The acting was pretty decent, even good at times, but the writing and directing never impressed me.
It's not like it was especially bad or anything, but they never went anywhere more creative or interesting than your average haunted house movie.
Along with the lack of atmosphere or tension, that makes for a bit of a lame horror movie.
While exploitative in nature, this movie is curiously inhibited, with no real gratuitous nudity or gore, though there's a voyeuristic strip scene and a few quick shots of mutilated corpses.
So, in the end, I'm left wondering to whom this movie was intended.
It's not gratuitous enough for exploitation fans, and it's too tame for horror fans.
The leads are obviously too old (mid-to-late 20s) to appeal to teenagers, and it doesn't seem to work very well as a mystery, either.
Does that mean it's a bad movie?
It can't hurt to watch this movie, if you find it on a streaming service, like Netflix, but I wouldn't actually waste the time otherwise..
Room 33- (7.5/10) " Dull title, slow building tension but good climax"..
Room 33 film review - (7.5/10) "Slowly building to good tension using expressions and the camera".
Room 33 has an excellent upbeat opening with nature and sets the scene for a real adventure.
You might ask what could possibly wrong and you end up thinking, what couldn't.
As turmoil begins, the film rumbles on and doesn't really have many tension building effects.
It is the acting that makes it well worth a watch in the end.
The characters are played very well and actors formulate their personalities individually , to help you get to know the characters.
This is vital in any horror so that you feel a sense of loss without them.
The plot has enough mystery to keep you engaged.
The tale has history and needs the full film duration to truly understand what is going on.
The film consistently does camera angle well.
The camera homes in on precisely where facial expressions or events are happening.
The setting is nice and confined, keeping tension reasonable throughout.
Not your typical horror film and a nice surprise.
Definitely an adventure horror if such a thing exists.
I have to say it is worth a watch and you won't be disappointed.
It does enough to build tension, and has a good storyline.
For a good horror film I don't think anything else is necessary.
A good film with a dull title..
I'm a big fan of low-budget horror, but this is unwatchable.
Made by people who have watched many horror films but never understood the hows and whys of them.
Unfortunately I don't think experimental deconstruction was the intended point of the film."When I was out there looking for Natasha, I saw something." "What did you see?" "I saw a guy in the road." "Well, why didn't you say something earlier?" "I JUST DIDN'T, ALRIGHT?!?"Etc.Etc..
If you are a horror or suspense buff, this is a film you will surely recognise.
A group of teens/teens-plus find themselves stranded miles from anywhere, but conveniently there is a deserted building just over the hill.
There is one human denizen, a girl who is likewise haunted, not to mention terrified.
She seems also to have a strange psychic connection with the villain of the piece, a black clad wraith who may not look quite like the Grim Reaper, but certainly acts like him.The only real question is how many of them will he dispatch before the riddle is solved?
Actually, if you don't mind a proper resolution, this is not a bad film, certainly it is vastly superior to the common or garden slasher flick..
Although clearly low-budget and with some poor camera work and a cast of young actors who could do with a few pointers to say the least, this film was surprisingly entertaining with a few good scares despite the limited and rather basic 'special effects', consisting almost exclusively of blood on and around the eyes In a pretty sad attempt to make It appear that the eyes have been removed.
Nevertheless, the movie Is lively enough to keep the viewer Interested and although the story and It's events are rather Clichéd It has It's fair share of scares and some Interesting characters - the skating, amazonian-like young lady with her baseball bat and In-your-face attitude Is someone I wouldn't like to upset!
The general premise Is that a bunch of guys,late teens to early 20s,find themselves spending the night In an apparently abandoned and empty Psychiatric hospital about 80 miles from the nearest town and soon discover a weirded-out young woman with little to say and who Is obviously mentally disturbed.
Murders soon ensue, the deaths seemingly caused by, or at least Including, the removal of the eyes of the victims.
Some think the disturbed girl Is somehow Involved In the grisly deaths.....
I don't think I'd watch It a second time but,all things considered, this Movie Is worth a watch, particularly for fans of Horror and suspense..
Better than expected....
Better than expected....
When getting a movie by way of 4 pack usually holds minimal promise for good flicks.
The feature of the bundle was curtains an 80's slasher film, which is good, but that's another review....This has a decent story with borderline good acting and hot bodies in little clothing.
It's like having your mail man as a villain....
Aside from that the film features roller derby chicks lost, with a dead car, and no cell service.
They find themselves in an abandoned asylum, and they aren't alone.
The end left some to be desired, but I enjoyed this movie, it's worth a try..
If you're here looking for a review for this movie, you most likely saw it as a $5 movie pack at your local Mart.
This movie lacks gore.
It also lacks tension and suspense.
It really is a boring movie.
It really is a boring movie.
There are hot chicks to arouse attention.
But since there isn't any nudity, viewer will lose interest quick.
Many deaths are off-screen.
The few on screen deaths feature the killer running toward people sticking jelly into the eyes of his victims.
It really does look as if the killer is sticking jelly into peoples' eyes.Judging from a lot of the reviews, many people didn't learn what the secret of Room 33 was.
I guess they were too bored or spent too much time fast forwarding to figure it out.
No. This movie is unable to keep any viewer interested long enough to care..
Room 33 leaves me wondering..
What exactly was this movie about?
How is it that a lunatic can project a demonic father figure into reality to kill people by smudging their eyes out with goo?
(I know it was supposed to be an effect of tearing eyes out but it really looked more like a smudging to me.) The "monster" in this movie was really rather annoying and came off like some sort of "euro-trash-thug-demon" more than a scary supernatural presence.
How exactly a former government LSD scientist became this ghastly presence in the old hospital is beyond my comprehension, or perhaps it just wasn't clearly stated in the story?
I liked the main cast being a roller derby team of smokin' chicks, the fact that none of them show any skin is a little weak.
They couldn't even deliver the cheap thrills in this plot hole ridden flick.
I just kept watching in the hopes that the story would eventually make some sense, but alas, no such luck..
A good try is lost among silly script ideas.
Some Roller Derby girls on their way to a match with their managers come across a broken down car and its occupants Allie (Highsmith) and Chad (Collins).
When the van won't start the girls and the rag tag team of people discovers the only thing close by is an abandoned hospital that once was an insane asylum.
They search the place and come across what seems to be a remaining patient named Roxy (Olivia Leigh) who seems crazy.
When one of the members of the group turns up dead, Sarah (Hauser) thinks it is Roxy, but Allie doesn't and sticks up for her.
The group is being stalked by a mysterious man in black with supernatural powers.
Obviously low budget, the movie is full of weird characters and silly circumstances.
Did they really need to be Roller Derby chicks?
And did we really need to see no less than three of them try to escape the asylum on roller skates?
This silly stuff is mixed in with a pretty straight forward approach by the film makers to at least try to make it scary.
Some of the acting is really quite good but it is unfocused because of the weird wrappings of things like chicks wearing skates talking tough.
This one tries hard but can't seem to get out of its own way and bring some real scares..
Room 33.
Room 33.
Roller derby girls, their camera man and manager, along with a young couple they pick up, must spend the night at an abandoned mental institution when the group get lost on the way to a competition.
Something evil lurks within(and on the outside)not to mention the gang come across a damaged, injured girl seemingly possessed and warning of a dangerous threat to them.
Chad and Allie's car breaks down, lucky to find Stuart(the camera guy and techie)driving the van of roller derby girls.Chad admits to derby girl Barbie that Allie recently had a breakdown.
Barbie has an obvious interest in Chad and doesn't exactly hide it, but he clearly feels awkward when she makes passes or uses insinuating statements.
Sarah is the derby girl with a rotten attitude who spends most of her screen time cursing folks and tossing insults, mainly towards Allie.
To Sarah, Allie's a "know-it-all" college girl with all the answers, clearly the type she harbors a dislike for.
Anyone who even attempts to be reasonable with Sarah gets chewed out..Sarah considers herself quite a tough chick, with a mouth that reiterates this aggressive personality.Nelson is the token black guy of the group, and, as usual for a horror flick such as this, spends most of his time afraid, shivering and quivering in fear.
Stuart is your typical pervert with a camera, and voyeuristic impulses towards the girls..he doesn't exactly shield the fact that his camera "catches all the sweet spots".
Anyway, the killer of the film likes to gouge out the eyes of "his" victims, which we see in one case where the group find a camp with a slaughtered family..Roxie, the traumatized girl found by the group in the institution, has bloody hands which could implicate her as the human tool, a "host organism" so to speak, used by the evil spirit of a killer.
There are a lot of horror movies, slashers and the like, which have long stretches where characters walk through large buildings, with many rooms, flashlight and a weapon of some sort in hands, seeking(or looking to protect themselves against)whatever can potentially harm them.
ROOM 33 is no different in that it has plenty of investigation with the characters moving through corridors, down halls, in the basement, etc.
Sarah, in roller derby gear, skates down floors pounding lockers with a baseball bat, skulking and angry(she has issues, no doubt, always at odds with Allie).
You know that this institution has a disturbing history which produced the sinister specter appearing, disappearing, and reappearing at will anywhere he wants, and Allie, a pre-med student, will learn a little about the place and him.
Roxie knows what she must do to possibly halt the madness and Allie will do whatever is in her power to save the girl.
And, inevitably, poor Allie might just be the specter's next chosen vessel to inhabit..
The movie has that 70's slasher feel to it.
A van full of roller derby babes and a few guys are traveling in the Pacific NW when they come across a wreaked car.
They pick up the young couple (never old people) and head down the road only to find a gate/fence is crossing the highway.
The group jumps the fence only to find the proverbial abandoned mental institution (where bad things used to happen) out in the middle of zero bars on my cell phone country.
Sarah "Crash" smashes a window with her aluminum baseball bat because she decides they might as well spend the night there as they can't all sleep in the van which BTW is very low on gas.
They quickly discover they are not alone, there is a psycho there named Roxy who tries to kill Crash, then cowers in fright.
As the group tries to figure out what is going on, they foolishly separate etc.
etc.Some nice legs in shorts roller skate around.
Movie drops the f-bomb, has brief simulated oral sex, and no nudity.Not the worse horror movie out there.
If you want to do a theme horror movie night of abandoned mental institutions, you might use this one as a warm up..
Waste-of-time independent horror with a clichéd asylum setting.
The only surprising thing about this laughable no-budget horror film is the praise it has received online.
Having just finished watching it, I can report that ROOM 33 is a completely forgettable independent film in which yet another group of teenagers visit a supposedly haunted asylum in order to investigate it.
Once there they discover a frightened girl and a mysterious killer with his sights set on them.Everything about this film is cheap and predictable and it doesn't even utilise the popular found footage angle to provide an excuse for the cheapness of the filming style.
The script is non-existent, the acting very bad, and the attempts at horror more laughable than frightening.
ROOM 33 is just yet another asylum-themed waste of time horror film..
Room 33 (2009) is Directed by Edward Barbini , who also wrote it with Donnie Dale.
Spoiler alert as I will be discussing plot points.
The longer it goes on the less sense it makes.
The obvious set up, A group of mixed young people stranded overnight at a haunted, long abandoned Asylum.
There they are terrorized by a stalking killer, and an abandoned young girl who haunts the vacant building.
What makes this a bit different, and gives it it's twist?
Unlike most teen victim films, here the girls in the group are tough as nails, roller derby brawlers.
Allie and Chad, played by Austin Highsmith and Chad Collins, are two unfortunates, stranded in the middle of nowhere, are happy to be picked up by the roller blade team, Sarah the leader of the pack is played by Nina Hausser.
The group is well played and the dynamics are interesting.
Then the plot gets in the way.
Here there is not much of a plot , Rather the movie resorts to the standard set of clichés to take us to the inconclusive conclusion.
The dark form running before the camera, accompanied by mysterious sound effect, has long since ceased being an effective jump scare.
In this movie "I'll find them" is an overused phrase.
Anytime there are group separations, and there are many, "You stay here, I'll find them" is put into play.
Then there is the mysterious figure that disappears before the surveillance cameras.
The Creepy girl who talks in voices, "You are all going to die" And so on.
Production values are good, effects are minimal, It is the roundabout ending that is problematic.
Here it is the writers who fumbled with the hit and miss plot points.
In the end it did not really matter, just ride it through like a Roller blade session.
A group of road trippers that includes two survivors of an automobile accident and an all-female roller derby team are forced to seek shelter at a dilapidated abandoned mental institution located deep in the woods.
The group discover the frightened and enigmatic Roxy (a sturdy and sympathetic performance by Olivia Leigh) living on the premises.
Moreover, a mysterious Man in Black (a genuinely creepy portrayal by Taras Los) starts picking folks off left and right.
Director Edward Barbini, who also co-wrote the compelling script with Donnie Dale, relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, evokes a strong sense of decay, isolation, and vulnerability from the rundown remote setting, effectively creates and sustains a nicely spooky atmosphere that becomes more increasingly eerie and unsettling as the narrative unfolds, and provides a few cool bits of mild gore (the killer removes his victims' eyes).
The sound acting from an attractive and capable cast helps a lot, with especially stand-out work by Nina Hauser as the snippy and angry Sarah, Austin Highsmith as the sweet Allie, Adam Key as resourceful and libidinous hipster Stewart, Kim Manning as the sassy Barbie San Juan, Nicole Dionne as the foxy Natasha, Chad Michael Collins as nice guy Chad, and Ace Gibson as antsy coach Nelson.
Terence Pratt's crisp cinematography gives this picture an impressive polished look.
The final explanation for what's going on is pretty sad and tragic.
Worth a watch. |
tt0097230 | Dracula's Widow | The film, situated in Hollywood, or Tinsel Town as the narrator (Lt. Lannon/Josef Sommer) calls it, opens with Hollywood House of Wax owner Raymond Everett (Lenny von Dohlen) receiving a delivery of some valuable antiques from Poenari, Romania. He anxiously takes delivery of a sixth crate even though he was only expecting five. Later that evening at a Jazz bar called The Blue Angel, a sleazy but lonely patron hits on a mysterious dark-haired woman (Sylvia Kristel) who wonders in. Soon after, they leave together and travel to a secluded park where this peculiar woman kills the man. More shenanigans ensue that night when over at the wax museum, two thieves break in while Raymond is upstairs watching Nosferatu. During the robbery, a creature with webbed hands and dagger-like nails attacks one of the thieves. The thief’s throat is ripped open and his blood drained by a long tentacle emitted from the creature’s mouth. The other man escapes. Following this attack, the mysterious brunette from earlier enters the room where Raymond sits unsuspecting. After a very short battle of wills, Raymond is taken possession of (with a bite) and forced to renounce his girlfriend Jenny Harker (Rachel Jones).
The next day, Lt. Lannon and his partner Citrano (Traber Burns) are called to the crime scene at the park. A clue left in the grass leads them to The Blue Angel, in which witnesses are unable to contribute much. Meanwhile, Raymond tries to free himself from the Vampire’s hold but fails; instead, he cleans up her mess before Jenny arrives. Raymond’s girlfriend, who also works at the museum, observes his distress. She tries to comfort him but instead Raymond tries to bite her, unsuccessfully. As night falls, the creature attacks again. This time it is a night watchman who is ironically watching a news report about the park murder at the onset of his death. Summoned by the vampire, Raymond picks her up in his car. She tells him that he must return her to Romania to her husband Count Dracula. However, Raymond informs her of Count Dracula’s death and that van Helsing is responsible. At this moment, Raymond’s girlfriend, Jenny, glimpses him in the car with the other woman. The police receive a valuable part of the puzzle from the frazzled burglar who witnessed his accomplice’s death at the wax museum the previous night. Later, through van Helsing’s aged grandson (Stefan Schnabel), we learn that all vampires were destroyed with the exception of Vanessa, who is the true wife of Dracula. She is described as both beauty and beast. In a sleazier part of town, Vanessa and Raymond encounter a group of hardcore occultists who seem to sense Vanessa’s evilness and welcome her. She surprises them though when she transforms into the beast and slaughters all save Raymond.
The next morning, Jenny angrily confronts Raymond over the phone and then abruptly hangs up. Distressed, Raymond writes a letter confessing his predicament hoping she will forgive him. Back at the wax museum, Raymond is met by Lt. Lannon who casually searches the premises. The lieutenant confronts Raymond with the burglar’s admission, which he denies. However, their meeting is cut short when Lannon is called to another of Vanessa’s massacres. There, Lannon meets van Helsing’s elderly grandson who tells him that vampires not devil worshippers are to blame. To establish his theory, they journey to the morgue where Vanessa’s first victim is located. With a wooden stake and mallet, Helsing makes Lannon a believer as the victim is briefly reanimated at the moment of his true death. Later, Lannon visits Jenny hoping to discover more information about Raymond and gain her trust. Jenny afterwards meets up with Raymond and he gives her a cross to protect her. Night arrives and more murders follow as Vanessa slays Citrano and Helsing. Consequentially, Raymond is arrested and his wax museum searched for evidence, which police discover.
While in custody, officers try to elicit a confession from Raymond that does not involve a beautiful vampire-monster. However, the only cop who believes him is Lt. Lannon. He and Jenny eventually collaborate to locate Vanessa and exonerate Raymond. As night approaches, Raymond is taken to a vacant warehouse by a few officers for a bit of police brutality, but Vanessa intervenes hoping to eliminate Raymond herself. Jenny, via supernatural intervention, discovers the warehouse. Both, she and Lannon are able to distract Vanessa, while Raymond takes the opportunity to kill her thus regaining his humanity. | violence, murder | train | wikipedia | Time For a Vampire Turkey!.
The young owner (Lenny Von Dohlen) of a waxworks in Hollywood receives six instead of five ordered chests with Romanian antiques.
He does not know that Vanessa (Sylvia Kristel), widow of Count Dracula, sleeps in the sixth chest.Why does this have such a terrible rank on IMDb?
I have given it double, simply to spite those people who voted it so poorly.
Seriously, people, this 1980s horror-comedy is worlds better than 99% of the films that come out today, and you still rank today's movies above a 5.
Geez!Sadly, Sylvia Kristel (who you may know from multiple Emmanuelle films) passed away recently (October 2012).
She really tears it up in the titular role.
But Lenny Von Dohlen is no slouch, either, adding the necessary comedy bits.
(You hopefully know him from "Twin Peaks" -- and if not, you should.).
Mildly amusing piece of trash..
"Dracula's Widow" features a 70's soft core sex symbol Sylvia Kristel,who plays the true wife of Dracula.She is something of a monster herself and upon arriving at the Hollywood House of Wax sets about dispatching various lowlifes and Satanists before tracking down Van Helsing's great grandson in order to wreak her revenge."Dracula's Widow" is directed by Nicolas Cage's brother Christopher Coppola.The film is loaded with huge plot holes and there is plenty of cheesy gore to enjoy.The acting is pretty bad and the script is nothing to write about,however if you want to see Sylvia Kristel in her only one horror film you can give this one a try.Unfortunately she doesn't provide any nudity in "Dracula's Widow".5 out of 10..
Fun B-movie.
The owner of a wax museum receives a crate containing the titular character.
She makes him her slave and starts to massacre various idiots throughout town.
A hard-boiled cop slowly catches on and tries to take the fiend down.I don't get all the hate for this one.
Sure, it's no masterpiece.
But as a fun monster flick it works well.
Good pacing and suspense.
Plenty of gore and cool creature effects.
I also loved the cinematography, particularly the use of colored lights.
So while it may be a b-movie, it sure wasn't boring.
I was entertained from beginning to end.
The only bothersome problem in my opinion was the plot, which should've been more cohesive.
A better outfit for the vampire widow could've helped to as she looked more like Lois Lane rather than the bride of Dracula..
I saw this film some years back and it scared the crap out of me.
I mean this movie is a real fright of a film to watch.
It flipped me out totally.
The whole atmosphere of the movie is dark, wet and dreary and then along comes Dracula's Widow and then things go Red. This is a very scary film and is not well know.
If you are here then i recommend picking this one up along with Salem's lot and another film called Vamp.
This is really truly scary.........
............by the way all my friends have said that the most scary movie of all time is one called 'The Woman in Black' and was made for T.V in 1989.
It is supposed to be totally off it's game..
Silly "horror" Movie that doesn't live up to R rating.
The only reason I am commenting on this dumb '80s B-movie is because this is the first R-rated movie I rented at the video store when I was 14 back in 1990.
It wasn't the first R-rated movie I saw in my life, but I remember this was the first one I rented and got away with renting at 14.
So I will always remember this stupid piece of filth.
I was hoping for loads of nudity and plenty of sex scenes back at that age.
I spent the whole time fast forwarding to "the good parts", but alas there really weren't any.
There is very BRIEF nudity in here and ZERO sex.
Oh yeah, the story sucks too and its not scary or interesting in the least bit..
Amusing Piece Of Crap.
I saw this film back in 1989 and bought it at a video store for $1.00.
I feel the same way about this film as I did back then: it's craptacular!The SFX is crappy (ESPECIALLY the make-up)and a lot of the plot is garbage (If Vanessa was so much in love with her husband, how could she not know that he was dead?)and the acting is just HORRIBLE!!!
(Sylvia Kristel is just BAD!!!).Still...It makes for a fun evening!
Just great for a horrible horror movie fest!.
Pointless and forgettable.
When a film is titled "Dracula's Widow", and we see the title character seducing and killing a guy within the first 5 minutes, what's the point of having nearly half the running time taken up by a police investigation that can only eventually lead to what we already know from the start?
Also, I thought that getting bitten by a vampire wasn't enough to make you a vampire, you also had to drink blood from the vampire that bit you.
Ah, never mind, it seems that every movie in this genre is making up its own rules.
Sylvia Kristel is pretty bland in a role that a better actress could have done MUCH more with, wears an awful wig, and doesn't provide any nudity either.
The special effects are mostly terrible - when Kristel is in full-beast mode, she looks more like a werewolf than a vampire!
The lovely Rachel Jones, as the hero's girlfriend, is one of the film's few bright spots.
a lot of gore and blood but not frightening.
Only 8 reviews here online and that for a movie made by Nicholas Cage his brother Christopher Coppola.
I give him some credits because this was his first attempt.
I really enjoyed the movie because I was surprised by the amount of gore that was in it.
But the flick sadly is ruined by Sylvia Kristel.
I just couldn't believe her acting.
She holds her hands just like Nosferatu (1922).
Once she's between a vampire and herself the make up is really laughable but luckily once she's a bat that worked out very well.
You will only see it at the end of the movie but that part was really great.
It's weird but every time I saw Sylvia I thought, nudity time because she was best known for Emanuelle (1974 - 1993)but here she kept her clothes on, the other females do strip their upper parts.
I would recommend it to watch it with friends to start off an excellent horror night..
Dracula and Coppola Never Seem To Be A Good Combination.
I didn't expect a masterpiece in "Dracula's Widow" of 1989, but I was still somehow disappointed.
Directed by Nicholas Cage's brother Christopher Coppola and starring 70s sex icon "Emanuelle" Sylvia Kristel, "Dracula's Widow" may not look like a promising Horror film as such, but at least I expected an entertaining sleaze and gorefest.
My humble expectations were not reached, however, since the film features hardly any sleaze and the gore is existent, but not to an extent that would make the movie worthwhile.
The performances are amateurish, of course, but that was to be expected, so I don't regard the lack of acting talent as a flaw.
Nothing in the movie really makes any sense, and it is only the joy of seeing Sylvia Kristel as a lady vampire, as well as some pretty funny parts that make the 86 minutes endurable.
My favorite character is an old antique dealer who happens to be Dr. Van Helsing's grandson.
In the funniest part of the movie, the old fellow, who looks like a friendly grandpa, takes out a hammer in a morgue, driving a stake through a corpse's heart with the words "In the name of my grandfather, I destroy you".
Moments like this (and Sylvia) make the movie bearable, but it is definitely quite tiresome, even though it's not even 90 minutes long.
This was the first "Dracula" attempt by a Coppola family member, Christopher's famous (and usually brilliant) uncle Francis came along with a kitschy and over-hyped mainstream Dracula film in 1992.
As far as I am concerned, the Coppolas would be well advised to keep their hands off the Prince Of Darkness in the future.
"Dracula's Widow" is only recommended if you really have nothing better to do..
Lacking in Several Areas.
This film begins with a young man named "Raymond" (Lenny Von Dohlen) preparing to display a new exhibit for his wax museum in Hollywood.
Having ordered five crates worth of merchandise from Romania he is surprised to learn that another crate has been added.
Since there isn't much he can do about it he signs for the shipment and then proceeds to turn out the lights and retire to another part of the museum as he has already worked for quite a while.
Meanwhile, upon noticing that the lights in the building have been turned off, two burglars decide to break into the museum to steal anything of value.
What they don't count on, however, is that a vampire named "Vanessa" (Sylvia Kristel) has awakened from her slumber in one of the crates and is quite thirsty.
And not long after disposing of one of these burglars she then ventures upstairs to find yet another victim of sorts-Raymond.
Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that, although this film certainly had some potential, it failed to capitalize on it and was lacking in several respects.
For starters, although the horror was aided by some adequate special effects, there really wasn't that much suspense.
Additionally, the humor wasn't very sharp and the script needed significant improvement as well.
That being said, I didn't think that this was a very good film for the most part and have rated it accordingly.
Below average..
An underrated horror classic.
It has a great story line.
It also has great acting.
It also great special effects.
It is one of the scariest movies ever made.
This movie is scary then The Exorcist and that is not easy to do.
This is a sequel to Dracula.
It is very scary.
It is very scary.
It a true horror classic.
Sylvia Kristel was a great actress.
Josef Sommer is a great actor.
Christopher Coppola is a great director.
This movie is great.
This is one of the best horror movie of all time.
It will scary you out of your mind.
Lenny v.o.n Dohlen is a great actor.
Marc Coppola is a great actor.
Stefan Schnabel was a great actor.
See this movie..
See this movie..
See this movie..
Can you do Wid or Widowd Dracula's Widow?.
Could this have been the very film that inspired the director's uncle, Francis Ford, to make "Dracula" some three or four years later?We're supposed to ignore other reviewer's comments, but I can't resist mentioning another opinion in these hallowed "comment" pages, where the film viewer sounded scared out of his wits.
Fear is a relative thing, isn't it?
The shock moments were awkwardly handled for the most part, in this film; note the guard who's sitting by a window, and the monster uses the old "crash through the window" trick (Argento, for example, used this trick a little more effectively in "Tenebre" six years earlier) to make the guard wish he had a guard.
How could you crash a window and dig long vampiric fingernails into the victim's neck at the same time?
I've tried it, and believe me, it takes some doing.Then there's the create havoc with over a dozen devil worshippers scene.
Talk about one uninspired montage of creating havoc.A friend lent me this, along with a few other vampire films...
he loves vampire films...
and I happened to see "Midnight Kiss," another obscure film about bats.
As it was made a few years after "Dracula's Widow," perhaps it was Dracula's Widow that inspired it (since Uncle Coppola may have been inspired by Dracula's Widow, why shouldn't the makers of Midnight Kiss?), but I was struck by some similarities.
Let's see...
vampire bites victim, and victim takes a few days while the vampire virus goes to work.
Meanwhile, victim has to wear sunglasses and be tempted to feast on animals.
There was even a "morgue" scene, where recent victims get served stake, coming to life as soon as they got the point.Sylvia Kristel did a credible job as the widowed Dracula, conveying an otherwordly and monstrous power pretty effectively.
Raymond, our hero-turned slave (or is it slave-turned-hero?) played by Lenny von Dohlen, reminded me of a Jon Stewart-ish Harry Langdon...
the helpless child trapped in an adult's body.
He even had silent film star Langdon's eye make-up.
My favorite performer was Stefan Schnabel, who played the grandson of Dracula's famous nemesis, Van Helsing.
Boy, what a great ham!
He was like a combination of Burgess Meredith as "The Penguin" from the old Batman TV show and Gilbert Gottfried.
Josef Sommer was also very solid and watchable, as the police hero.
As far as sweet girlfriend Jenny, played by Rachel Jones, at least we get to see her topless in a bathtub scene..
A Minion Journey -- Character Spoiler Alert.
When people focus on the character of Vanessa in this movie, they are actually missing the point of the film.
This isn't about vampires, this isn't about sex or gore, this is about what it is like to become the enslaved servant of a vampire.The main male character Raymond, is the owner and operator of a wax museum preparing for a new display about Dracula and vampire in folktales, legends, and popular culture.
He accepts an extra shipment of boxes and soon finds himself in the thrall of Dracula's wife, Vanessa.
Played by Lenny von Dohlen, Raymond is confused, enchanted, terrified, aroused, and even giddy at various times in the movie.
He clings to his humanity by clinging to love of his girlfriend, Jenny, as he struggles in pure Renfield fashion to resist his own blood lust.With so much romance about vampires in our literature and films, it was a nice change to see a truly horrific vampiric creature and her nevertheless strong hold over a main character.
Too often female vampires are belittled as sexy or subordinate but Vanessa is a real monster and she holds Raymond in her hand, using mental powers on him even while she sleeps, and forcing him to witness her murderous rampages.While not the best vampire film ever, this hardly qualifies as one of the worst either.
If you step back and look at Raymond in the film you may appreciate it on a new level..
I like the vampire woman in "Dracula's Widow".
I rented the video "Dracula's Widow" in October, 1989 and I enjoyed watching that video.
I am not really sure why I like that move; it may be because I like the cinematography, the atmospheric music, the fact that the vampire woman Vanessa portrayed by actress Sylvia Kristel is not a lesbian and yet a strong heterosexual woman..
Vanessa's victims are males and her male companion is the character Raymond portrayed by actor Lenny von Dohlen.
I have read other reviewer's comments and most are critical of the video "Dracula's Widow." Yet, I enjoy watching "Dracula's Widow." I think seeing a strong woman on film may intimidate some male viewers.
The story line, the cinematography, atmospheric music, a strong woman vampire, a helpless victim being a male, and a girlfriend fighting to get her boyfriend back help makes the video "Dracula's Widow" exciting for me to watch..
Has Potential.
Francis Ford Coppola did a great job with Bram Stoker's Dracula so I was looking forward to this one directed by Francis Ford Coppola's nephew, however let me say this was Chris Coppola's first feature, and this was filmed before Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The plot is relatively simple enough, which is a good thing if you ask me.
When an eccentric owner of a small wax museum in Hollywood receives an extra crate which has Dracula's wife, Vanessa in it, all the problems begin.
If you like gore, there is quite a bit of it.
I'm personally not into that, if the gore was there to show some kind of dynamic between how sensual she is and how violent she can be, it would have been much better for me, but I didn't feel that kind of relationship.
The main problem though I have to say is with Vanessa herself.
The 80s business suit she walks around in the entire duration of the film seemed like a waste of wonderful possibilities.
With Dracula's wife, they could have had historical costumes to something along the lines of fantasy and so on.
Her personality was also unattractive, with someone like Sylvia Kristel they could have explored a sensual/dominatrix style character, Dracula is a sex symbol, you would assume that his Queen is similar.
The yelling and tantrum like parts were not attractive.
The scene with the Devil worshippers was memorable and I wish it was explained a bit better.
Always nice to see a Van Helsing in a Dracula film, the part where he is reading an old book about Dracula's wife and acts like it's the first time he's ever read that made me raise my brow.
Nice to see the main character's GF sleep walking, for some reason I like seeing sleep walking in vampire films.
All in all, it had potential, I would like to see a remake!
-2 (for senseless gore and Vanessa) |
tt0110948 | Raw Justice | New Orleans journalist Donna Stiles (April Bogenschutz) is in her home one night, preparing to take a shower, when a man sneaks into her home and kills her.
Donna's father, mayor David Stiles (Charles Napier), calls on Donna's former fiancee, cop-turned-bounty hunter Mace (David Keith), to stop chasing bail-jumpers and bring in the killer. Mitch McCallum (Robert Hays), who once dated Donna, with disastrous results, and is now accused of the murder, insists that he is innocent.
Mace has an uneasy relationship with the regular police force, especially Detective Atkins (Leo Rossi). Mace tackles his mission wholeheartedly until Mitch is nearly killed by a bomb planted in his home. Mace and Mitch are ambushed and pursued; they barely escape, accompanied by Sarah (Pamela Anderson), a hooker who witnessed the attacks and must go into hiding with Mace and Mitch.
Mace threatens Bernie (Bernard Hocke), a bail bondsman, with a baseball bat to find out who posted Mitch's bond and wanted him killed out on the street. After Mace leaves Bernie's office, Atkins uses the same bat to beat Bernie to death, setting Mace up to be blamed for Bernie's death.
Later, Mitch saves Mace from a gunman in his hotel room. Mace figures out that Mitch has been framed by Deputy Mayor Bob Jenkins (Stacy Keach), who had Donna killed so he could steal a disc from her computer, fill it with false accusations of incest, then use the disc to blackmail Mayor Stiles into refusing to run for office again, because Jenkins is tired of playing second fiddle to Mayor Stiles. Atkins has been working for Jenkins.
Jenkins admits to Mayor Stiles that Jenkins is the mastermind behind Donna's murder as Atkins pursues Mace, Mitch and Sarah across the bayou, finally cornering them in a clip joint, where Mace uses a giant dart to kill Atkins. Jenkins takes Stiles hostage and demands safe passage out of the city.
Jenkins shoots Mayor Stiles in the shoulder, and a helicopter arrives for Jenkins, who releases Mayor Stiles and gets on the helicopter. Disguising himself as Jenkins's pilot, Mace parachutes to safety just before the helicopter slams into a skyscraper, causing an explosion that kills Jenkins. | revenge, comedy, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | I love this film, i dare you to watch it and not laugh at the series of lame gags and poorly co-ordinated action scenes.
I didn't think it was possible but this film manages to be both nonsensical and predictable at the same time.
Around about this time Pamela Anderson must have been one of the most famous TV actresses around, but as you can see from this, her Film career never really took of, and to be fair her performance here is fairly terrible.
The lead character of Mace is your typical loose-cannon angry ex-cop who despises "bleeding-heart judges" and does things his own renegade way.
The character of Mitch is a man wanted for murder and completes the intrepid threesome who are the focus of the film, and for some reason our heroes have to run from the baddies chasing them through New Orleans.
Although in all honesty its not a great film, or even a good film, its by the numbers approach to presenting a cops and robbers action movie complete with lots of unnecessary sex and violence is just fun.
I would recommend this film if you want a good laugh at a film that shouldn't really be taken seriously, especially if you find the "McBain" scenes from the Simpsons funny as this film could easily be a Ranier Wolfcastle production..
Would've loved to be David Keith for this movie.
Fantastic scene even if the rest of the movie isn't up to much.
No doubt Pam makes the movie as good as it is.
It is however, hilariously awful and I'd like to recommend it for that very reason.In the opening scene Mace (David Keith) is out to bust some guy who's just jumped bail.
Somehow this genius plan doesn't go smoothly and the bail jumper manages to make a run for it, and what follows is a foot chase with David Keith dressed in drag.
Funny, right?Meanwhile, Mitch McCullum (Robert Hays) has just had a one-night stand with the Mayor's daughter.
After dropping her off at her home, Deputy Mayor Bob Jenkins (Stacy Keach) orders some hit-man to kill her, not before showing us her rubbing herself repeatedly as she showers nude.
So in order to live his dream, he decides that killing Mayor David Stiles' (Charles Napier) daughter who was currently writing a book, adding a chapter about incest to her book then threatening Stiles that if he doesn't resign his position as Mayor in his next speech, he'll release the book to the public.
It just doesn't know where to go.Mayor Stiles hires Mace to investigate, as apparently a loose cannon is exactly what he needs.
He meets up with Mitch, the guy who had the one night stand and was initially accused of the murder and the two reluctantly team up and get involved in a couple of shootouts, a crappy car chase, a barfight and a swamp boat chase with hit men and corrupt cops all appearing out of nowhere.
As for Pamela Anderson, her character is completely detached from the main plot and the reason for shoehorning her into it is the lamest thing.
During the middle of the movie, Mace bumps into her by coincidence and she's angry because he left her outside in her underwear and never returned her clothes.
Now she's been seen with them, she's now part of it and can't be let go.Yeah, I know...Just prior to the Mayor's speech, our heroes have just won a barfight.
Mace presses corrupt cop Atkins (Leo Rossi) for information as to who he's working for, he gives in and says he's working for Deputy Mayor Bob Jenkins.
Mace doesn't even interrogate him for any more information, all he gets is a name before Atkins goes for his gun and is killed, so the only evidence they have against Jenkins is the word of a now deceased cop who our heroes have killed.So the Mayor's speech has now begun, and if he doesn't resign his position, Jenkins will release the edited book to the public.
Jenkins responds by claiming that Stiles had her killed when suddenly our heroes enter the room in and Mace says "I don't think so.
Now, the only evidence they have against Jenkins is one name from a deceased cop who the heroes have killed.
He's so unbelievably stupid it's a wonder how he obtained his position as deputy mayor in the first place.But it gets worse.
He basically rapes Pamela Anderson's character just after a shootout.
Robert Hays is not as bad as Keith but that's not saying much.
Reliable B-movie veterans Charles Napier, Stacy Keach and Leo Rossi are wasted.
Pamela Anderson has absolutely no reason for being there other than to have two long and boring sex scenes.
Her acting is atrocious and her line delivery is at times hilarious, especially in the scene where she tries to comfort Mitch who's feeling sorry for himself by telling him "I think you're being a bit hard on yourself".
Overall, this is awful but I highly recommend anyone who loves bad movies to check it out.
Robert Hays,whose career had a handful of early successes--the short-lived success of TV's "Angie" and the two wildly funny "Airplane" movies--followed by a long string of films that would elicit blank stares of confusion if mentioned to the average film viewer--"Touched",anyone?--and numerous TV projects that would not last past a year(my fave was the TV treatment of "Starman"),ends up in this flick which really has little going for it except the film debut(?) of Playboy mega-babe and "Baywatch" fixture Pamela Anderson.
Her nude/sex scenes along with a very lovingly filmed shower scene with starlet model April Bogenschutz really seem to be all that makes this flick seem watchable.
David Keith(here a LONG ways from "An Officer and a Gentleman" and even "Firestarter") as the gruff,angry,hard-bitten cop seems to barely register here.
Stacy Keach's usual oiliness is underused here, and the film is set squarely on the shoulders of Keith,Hays and Anderson.
It seems as if the writer(s) of the movie,in desperate need of a catch-phrase for Keith' s character,is best able to come up with the "Don't EVER insult my mama!"when a thug or goon he runs into calls him an S.O.B. Not very inspired,need I say.Strictly late-night cable viewing.
Silly action flick saved by Pamela Anderson.
Good Cop Bad Cop is one of a handful of 90's films that were promoted around the sex appeal of the world's number one pinup of the time, Pamela Anderson.
Like all of the other flicks, Anderson once again is the best thing about this one.
I guess, strictly speaking, many people will think this this isn't enough of a reason for the film to exist and fair enough.
Amazingly, he is the 'good cop' of the title, yet his heavy handed tactics like smashing up a bondsman's office with a baseball bat, punching innocent people out and treating Anderson's character with a fair degree of misogyny means that I couldn't help but think that the film should really have been called 'Bad Cop, Marginally Better Cop'.
The cast is rounded off with three other B-Movie regulars, Charles 'Supervixens' Napier, Robert 'Airplane!' Hays and Stacy 'Longriders' Keach; all of whom do what is needed and no more, yet all are preferable to David Keith.The film is an action thriller, yet it definitely plays things for comedy value quite a bit so it's fairly light-hearted mostly.
If it wasn't blessed with a couple of hot Pamela Anderson erotic scenes, I am guessing I would have marked this one down a notch or two but she saves it from irrelevance and gives it its lasting interest value.
I put a 3/10 but for a girl or anyone who thinks Pam is ugly, this movie is not even worth that....
OK, so there is virtually no plot in this movie, the acting is atrocious at best and there are some very annoying characters in it.
I know it sounded like there was going to be a but...., well there isn't, this movie is rubbish and it would be a waste of time to watch it..
But if you watched this movie to see fine Shakespearean actors giving their all, then I have no pity for you.
The movie is fun on a few levels, but should in no way be taken seriously..
Why. i thought this movie was kind of funny because david keith had sex with pamela anderson after a high speed chase.
the movie had D- action and a plot that only John Woo could do something with.
It was a stupid movie but the sex scenes were good..
One of the worst movies i ever watched.
A movie just made for two scenes (minute 39 and 58).
When the daughter of Mayor Stiles is murdered, the chief suspect is a shy young loser who had a date with her that night.
The Mayor goes to ex-cop and bounty hunter Mace to make sure Mitch doesn't skip bail, however almost immediately Mitch is set up to commit `suicide'.
When Mace is also framed from murder the pair realise that something sinister is going on and they go on the run with hooker Sarah.Basically this film couldn't have been more see through and obvious if they had dropped the original title and called it `A Chance To See Her T*ts' - for that simply appears to be the entire raison d'etre of the film.
The script jumps around all over the place with actions hardly explained and things just happening - it's like the film exists in a world where sense does not exist.The action scenes are idiotic.
The yare like a bad A-Team shoot out with fights that try to be funny and fail - thus damaging the scene in more than one way!
Some reviewers have praised the sex scenes and claimed them reason enough to watch the film - sorry, but no.
The fact that easily spotted errors were left in the film proves how little even the crew cared (look at the helicopter blades at the end, or the open hotel room where Sarah goes to be with Mitch).The cast are awful, truly awful.
Keith is a joke; he tries to be charismatic but only succeeds in giving a bad impression of much, much better action actors.
Anderson has big breasts that look good, but why should I have to suffer her inability to act because of that.
Napier and Keach are familiar faces but just as bad as they often are.Overall this is a film that is based on the premise that people would like to see Pamela Anderson naked.
This is not a film that cares about characters, logic, plotting, suspense, drama, thrills or action.
This is the standard American action / thriller soup with : gunfights, car chases, death, nudity, corrupted politicians, explosions, sex, corrupted cops, bar fight,
However, this movie has a jewel that is to say Pamela Anderson.
She is rather fun here and notwithstanding she is dressed very lightly all the movie, she manages to give 2 hot scenes as well !
I don't know why she chose to do it while she was already a star in « Baywatch » but it's better than her other (bad) movies (« snapdragon », « naked souls »)..
It's funny to notice that the french video cover shows clearly the skin action and that all the cast is credited with their famous movies.
To have good character actors such as Robert Hays (Airplane movies), Charles Napier (Rambo II), David Keith (Officer & Gentleman, U-571), and Stacy Keach (too many to list); you would expect better acting.
The plot of the movie is basic and definitely predictable.
The main bad guy is the only one who is even using a semi-auto pistol and he can't even hit the side of a barn except in one scene; two shots, two dead.
As it turns out April was the daughter of a man named "David Styles" (Charles Napier) who just happens to be the mayor of New Orleans.
So when an anonymous person posts bail for Mitch the mayor asks a bounty hunter named "Mace" (David Keith) to keep an eye on Mitch to make sure he doesn't try to flee the area.
What neither the mayor, Mace nor Mitch realize is that April was deliberately targeted and the person responsible for her death has an agenda that threatens all three of them.
Additionally, when a prostitute by the name of "Sarah" (Pamela Anderson) becomes accidentally associated with both Mitch and Mace she is also targeted as well.
No doubt those who enjoy chase scenes and pyrotechnics will love it but I thought it would have been nice if the director (David A.
So when Mayor Stiles' (Napier) daughter is mysteriously killed, he runs straight to Mace's pad, because he needs someone who will work "outside the law" and by his own rules, to get to the truth and find the killer.
A goofy guy named Mitch McCullum (Hays) is the prime suspect in the murder but of course is innocent.
So Mace and Mitch go on the run (as the original odd couple, of course) in an attempt to get justice, perhaps of the raw variety.
And what do Lieutenant Atkins (Rossi) and Deputy Mayor Jenkins (Keach) have to do with all this intrigue?
Prior movie from the time when he wasn't with AIP anymore, just like Felony (1994), and even some Felony cast members are reunited here, namely Napier and Rossi.
The Felony formula of "reluctant buddies on the run" is tried once again, but this time instead of Joe Don Baker and Jeffrey Combs, it's David Keith and Robert Hays.
Prior clearly was unashamed to make a movie of stupid, undemanding fun.
It's perfect for 1994, and the cast of B-movie names would surely be enough to garner a rental at the old video store, especially with Pam front and center to attract potential renters.Leo Rossi does yet another wacky "Southern" accent, Stacy Keach is almost unrecognizable, Pam Anderson does the prerequisite nudity, and Robert Hays does what we've always wanted from him, Robert Hays-Fu in a fight scene.
Charles Napier barks his lines as we all expect, and David Keith is the main hero.
Keith really seemed to give his all and be very invested in the role of Mace.
Of course, being the ultimate gentleman, when Robert Hays drops off his date at the end of the night, he gives her one of those Troll dolls that were so big at the time.
We've reviewed many of Prior's movies on this site, because we're fans of his, and he'd refined his style at this point to its most professional level to date.
**SPOILERS*** Muddled big city crime drama involving this former New Orleans cop now turned bounty hunter Mace, David Keith, getting involved in finding the city Mayor's David Stites, Charles Napler, daughter Donna's, April Bogenschultz, murderer.As things turn out the #1 suspect is Donna's date the night that she was killed Mitch McCullum, Robert Hayes.
we soon find out that Bennett was working for Mayor Stites' deputy Bob Jenkins, Stacey Keach, who's looking to blackmail the mayor by planting, in a tell all book that Donna's was in the process of writing, the false story that he molested Donna when she was a little girl and end up getting his job by forcing Stites to resign from office.In covering his tracks in Donna's murder Jenkins later guns down Bennett as he comes to get his payment for offing her leaving no one to implicate him in her murder.
It's when Mace starts to suspect that Donna's murder was political not a random act of violence that Jenkins gets hold of members of the New Orleans police department to knock both Mace as well as McCullum off to keep them from bringing the truth out.
We get the heat turned on at least an extra 20 degrees in the movie with the appearance of the 36-24-35 Sarah played by the sexy "Baywatch" lifeguard Pamela Anderson.
This combination of bounty hunter pasty and dizzy blond in the end puts an end to Bob Jenkins' attempt to not only grab the keys to the city in becoming its next mayor but later to become the states's governor!With all three-Mace Mitch & Sarah- now a threat to Jenkins' future political ambitions he gets his paid off stooges in the New Orleans Police Department as well as a number of local hoods to try to both arrest and gun them down in their being responsible in poor Donna Stites death.
**SPOILERS*** In the end Mayor Stites in a news conference staged by Jenkins to announce his resigning as mayor instead lets the cat out of the bag, on live TV, in the fact that it was Jenkins , not Hayes or even Mace, who murdered his daughter!
The films exciting ending sequence has the now exposed killer and blackmailer Bob Jenkins try to make his escape to an unnamed Caribbean or South American banana republic, where he would feel quite at home in, by holding Mayor Stites as a hostage.
What turns out to be Jenkins biggest problem is not the police FBI or SWAT team that's hot on his tail but the person, the helicopter pilot, who's to fly him out of the country!Lots of action with an explosive pre 9/11 air crash into a high rise office building and actor David Keith doing a pretty good hot headed Sonny Corleone "Godfather" number, while dressed in drag as a hooker, on one of those bail jumpers he's out to bring in.
By far the best reason to see the movie is the hot as a pistole Pamela Anderson, as Sarah, getting it on with Mace in a deserted alley that came very very close to getting the movie an X rating! |
tt0275491 | La mala educación | In 1980 Madrid, young film director Enrique Goded is looking for his next project when he receives the unexpected visit of an actor looking for work. The actor claims to be Enrique's boarding school friend and first love, Ignacio Rodriguez. Ignacio, who is using now the name Ángel Andrade, has brought with him a short story titled "The Visit" hoping that Enrique would be interested in making a film out of it giving him the starring role. Enrique is intrigued since "The Visit" described their time together at the Catholic school and it also includes a fictionalized account of their reunion many years later as adults.
"The Visit" is set in 1977. It tells the story of a drag artist and transgender woman called Zahara, whose birth name is Ignacio. Zahara plans to rob a drunken admirer but discovers that the man is her boyhood lover Enrique. Next she visits her old school and confronts Father Manolo, who abused her when she was a boy. She demands one million pesetas from him in exchange for halting publication of her story "The Visit". The story is set in a Catholic boarding school for boys in 1964. At the school, Ignacio, a young boy with a beautiful singing voice, is the object of lust of Father Manolo, the school principal and literature teacher. Ignacio has found his first love and cinema in the company of Enrique, a classmate. One night, Manolo discovers them together and threatens to expel Enrique. In an attempt to prevent this, Ignacio gives himself to Manolo. The priest molests Ignacio, but expels Enrique nonetheless.
Enrique wants to adapt Ignacio's story into a film, but Ángel's condition is that he plays the part of Zahara, the transsexual lead. Enrique remains skeptical, for he feels that the Ignacio whom he loved and the Ignacio of today are totally different people. He drives to Galicia to Ignacio's mother and learns that the real Ignacio has been dead for four years and that the man who came to his office is really Ignacio's younger brother, Juan.
Enrique's interest is piqued, and he decides to do the film with Juan in the role of Ignacio to find out what drives Juan. Enrique and Ángel start a relationship, and Enrique revises the script so that it ends with Father Manolo, whom Ignacio was trying to blackmail to get money for sex reassignment surgery, having Ignacio murdered. When the scene is shot, Ángel breaks out in tears unexpectedly.
The film set is visited by Manuel Berenguer, who is the real Father Manolo, who has resigned from Church duty. Berenguer confesses to Enrique that the new ending of the film is not far from the truth: the real Ignacio blackmailed Berenguer, who somehow managed to scratch together the money but also took an interest in Ignacio's younger brother, Juan. Juan and Manuel started a relationship and after a while realized they both wanted to see Ignacio dead. Juan scored some very pure heroin, so that his brother would die by overdose after shooting up. After the crime, the relationship disintegrates; Berenguer wants to continue the relationship with Juan, but Juan is uninterested. Berenguer claims that he will never let Juan go, and Juan threatens to kill him if Berenguer continues to pursue him. Berenguer attempts to blackmail Juan for his part in the murder of Ignacio.
Enrique is shocked and not at all interested in Juan's weak vindications for what he did to his brother. Finally, before he leaves, Juan gives Enrique a piece of paper: a letter to Enrique that Ignacio was in the middle of typing when he died.
In the epilogue, it is mentioned that Enrique releases his film later and achieves great success. Despite the grief and guilt of his brother, Juan also achieves success, but was later relegated to television work. Berenguer dies in a hit-and-run (caused by Juan, who was being blackmailed by Berenguer, and thus fulfilling his promise made earlier in the film). | mystery, neo noir, murder, boring, dramatic, revenge, flashback, romantic, queer | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0081494 | Shao Lin da peng da shi | The story opens at a fabric dyeing mill. The quality of the dyes has noticeably worsened, and the factory owner, Wang, and his subordinate chief, Boss Wa, decide to hire some Manchu overseers to improve the work. Wang decides to cut the workers' salary to pay the mercenaries, and when the workers protest they are viciously thrashed.
When sitting in a tea house discussing their problems, the workers are joined by Chu Jen-chieh, a good-hearted small-time con man and the foreman's younger brother who is posing as a monk. He offers to help, but since he cannot actually do kung fu, he and the foreman's assistant, Ah Chao, devise a plan to trick the Manchu into reinstating the full salary pay, with Jen-chieh posing as the Shaolin's head abbot, San Te.
At first the scheme works, but Wang quickly works out that this man is an impostor, and has him driven away and his Manchu hirelings retaliate against the workers. Feeling guilty about what has happened, Jen-chieh leaves and heads for the Shaolin temple to learn the real fighting arts. His first attempts to enter by stealth are thwarted by the vigilant monks and his own bumbling, but eventually he manages to sneak his way in, just to run into the abbot San Te. He, too, realizes that Jen-chieh is not what he claims to be, but he announces that he wants to give him a chance: Jen-chieh is to build a set of scaffolds all around the temple and renovate the entire complex.
Somewhat reluctantly, Jen-chieh goes to work, but he is constantly distracted by the monks practicing martial arts in the 36th Chamber, which he can overlook from his high vantage point. Eventually, he begins to train himself in kung fu by using the conditions of his assignment to improvise training facilities. However, this causes him to lag behind in his work, and it takes him more than a year to finish the gantry. As soon as Jen-chieh announces that he is finished, San Te wants him to dismantle the structure and leave the monastery. Rebelling against this decision, Jen-chieh lands himself inside the chamber, and while trying to evade the abbot chasing him, he inadvertently manages to pass all hazards set in the chamber with ease. San Te finally corners him and forces him to leave, with a strange smile on his lips.
Jen-chieh returns to town to find that the conditions of the workers have worsened: Their salary has been cut by nearly half, and any who have protested had been laid off to eke out a meager existence. Elated by his return, some of the ex-workers begin to pester Jen-chieh with their high expectations, which leads to Jen-chieh instinctively and to his own surprise fighting them off with his newly acquired kung fu skills. The next morning, Jen-chieh appears at the dye mill and thrashes the overseers, using bamboo fibers (like the ones he used when building the scaffolds) to tie them up and incapacitate them, introducing his style as "scaffolding kung fu".
Once the overseers are dealt with, Wang and his bodyguards appear at the scene. Jen-chieh lures them out of the city to a mansion under construction, where he uses the building equipment and the tight quarters to his advantage. Finally overpowering Wang, he forces him to pay his workers their full wages again. Wang admits defeat, and Jen-chieh continues his training on the half-finished grounds. | revenge | train | wikipedia | This movie is one of the many "Kung Fu" action films made in Asia in the late '70s - early '80s, full of cheap sound effects, dubbed dialog and lightning fast martial arts action.
But unlike most films of this genre it also has a decent plot and lots of great comedy.
When workers of a dye factory are forced out of their jobs by Manchu bullies, they hire a con-artist (Gordon Liu) to try to scare them off.
When his attempt fails miserably, he cons his way into a Shaolin temple to learn to fight for real.
But instead of making him a Kung-Fu student, the Master instead orders him to build a scaffolding to cover the roofs of all 36 chambers.
Well, it turns out that while he's performing these menial tasks (stacking and tying bamboo poles) that he's learning the skills to be a Kung-Fu expert!
There's lots of great comedy from beginning to end, and plenty of action at the end when Gordon Liu once again faces his Manchu tormentors.
"This time it's not just tricks- it's the real thing!" Liu declares, proudly thumping his chest.
If you like classic Kung Fu films you don't want to miss this one!.
Like the bit where he showing the bad guys what he's learned at the Shaolin temple, and he's working his way up from showing them a mere 50% of his new powers, to "the full 90%"....
What happened to 100%?And the bit where, in order to show his pals what he's learned, he beats them all up!
He whacks his best mate in the stomach, and his mate (who has teeth that are literally about two inches long sticking out of his mouth), bends over and exclaims; "eeeeuuuuurgh, GREAT KUNG FUUUUUU".
It's a classic movie moment!
I wasn't expecting it to be better then the first one, but the comedic element definitely hindered it.Gordon Liu once again stars, but his time he plays an actor impersonating his character from the first one.
The manchus are oppressing a dye factory and hire someone who looks like San Te to fool the manchus.
Gordon gets his butt kicked so he goes to Shaolin to actually become a shaolin master.
Once he learns kung fu he goes back and frees the dye workers.Its not a bad film, but all the comedic parts got really annoying.
I am a big Gordon Liu fan, but a consider this one of his weakest roles..
I agree with another user here and have to say that this is one of the best Kung Fu movies ever!
The scaffolding scenes are brilliant and you can really empathise with this guy because he is treated as an outcast.
Nice humour and fantastic kung fu this movie rocks!
If you like Kung Fu you would love this!!!.
Return to the 36th Chamber is one of those classic Kung-Fu movies which Shaw produces back in the 70s and 80s, whose genre is equivalent to the spaghetti westerns of Hollywood, and the protagonist Gordon Liu, the counterpart to the western's Clint Eastwood.
Digitally remastered and a new print made for the Fantastic Film Fest, this is "Presented in Shaw Scope", just like the good old days.This film is a simple story of good versus evil, told in 3 acts, which more or less sums up the narrative of martial arts films in that era.Act One sets up the premise.
Workers in a dye-mill of a small village are unhappy with their lot, having their wages cut by 20% by incoming manchu gangsters.
At first they had a minor success in getting Liu to impersonate a highly skilled Shaolin monk (one of the best comedy sequences), but their rouse got exposed when they pushed the limit of credibility by impersonating one too many times.Act Two shows the protagonist wanting to get back at the mob.
However, without real martial arts, he embarks on a journey to Shaolin Temple, to try and infiltrate and learn martial arts on the sly.
After some slapstick moments, he finally gets accepted by the abbot (whom he impersonated!) but is disappointed at the teaching methods - kinda like Mr Miyagi's style in Karate Kid, but instead of painting fences, he gets to erect scaffoldings all around the temple.
Nothing can keep a good man down, and he unwittingly builds strength, endurance and learns kung-fu the unorthodox way.Act Three is where the fight fest begins.
But it is rather refreshing watching the fight scenes here, with its wide angled shots to highlight clarity and detail between the sparring partners, and the use of slow-motion only to showcase stunts in different angles.
You may find the speed of fights a tad too slow, with some pause in between moves, but with Yuen Wo Ping and his style being used ad-nausem in Hollywood flicks, they sure don't make fight scenes like they used to!
This movie has a lot of comedy, not dark and Gordon Liu shines in this one.
scaffolding kung fu action!!.
I thought this would be a sequel to the original "36th Chamber of Shaolin" but actually it's more of a light-hearted "sister" to the original.
Gordon Liu still stars as a would-be hero on a quest to learn kung fu to defeat those pesky Manchus...
The film centres around the local dye mill, where wages are cut due to the hiring of 10 new Manchurian bosses.
Liu plays "Chao", who is able to fool the mill bosses into thinking he is a shaolin monk possessing almost magical kung fu skill.
But his luck runs out, he is exposed as a fraud, and he promises the mill workers that he will go to the Shaolin monastery to learn kung fu, and return to protect them.The comedy really begins at the monastery where Chao makes several bungling attempts to get accepted.
This sets up lots of really funny moments, and lots of great fight choreography.
Continuing in the "36th Chamber" tradition we see all kinds of neat and interesting (and supremely hokey) training methods at the monastery as well as creative uses of wooden benches as weapons.Also unique and of note is the blending of kung fu and the craft of bamboo scaffold building.
Chao is not accepted as a student at Shaolin but is made to build bamboo scaffolding for the "10 year restoration" of the monastery.
On the DVD I bought there is a special on bamboo scaffold building and the inspiration that director Lau Kar-Leung drew from it.
This is a craft many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of years old, and in Hong Kong scaffolding is still built of bamboo even on large high-rises, though the West exclusively uses steel tubes and clamps.
As a result of his scaffolding work, Chao develops a special style of kung fu...
when asked what kind it is, he hilariously replies "scaffolding kung fu!!" which he first tests during a dust-up with the monastery's Abbot.
In the final confrontation with the Manchus, there is a dazzling array of creative uses for bamboo poles and ties.From a comedy perspective, I think it's one of the best of the kung fu genre.
As a kung fu film in general, it also stands out...
Cheesy Classic Kung Fu Flick.
However, even during this era of simplicity, films such as The Return To The 36th Chamber does a lot of things right that modern action flicks don't.
The paramount example would be, relying on mostly good ol' fashion elbow grease instead of special effects.The fight scenes though dated, still looks good and this is due to the players knowing theatrical wushu.
A fight has to look like 2 guys are fighting to be convincing, even though we know that Scaffolding Kung Fu is ridiculous.
Bring on the Kung-Fu. The workers of a dye factory have their pay cut by 20% when the factory owner brings in some Manchu thugs to try and increase production.
Desperate to reclaim their full wages, the workers hire an actor to impersonate a priest and kung-fu expert from the temple of Shaolin.Director Lau Kar-leung excels in this action-comedy.
When I think Shaw Brothers kung fu, I think of Chang Cheh, which may be very narrow of me (I am still learning).
But Lau is every bit as great, and in some ways maybe even greater, because although much of this looks like a Shaw action film, the comedy is excellent, clearly drawing on old-school American slapstick..
In my opinion the best Kung-Fu movie ever..
This is one of the few Kung-Fu movies with a decent plot.
The whole movie is great!.
When the Republicans- sorry: the Manchus- take over a factory and promptly strip the workers of EVERYTHING but their undies, Jen Chieh (Gordon Liu) attempts to do good by standing up to the oppressors.
He's a con man and he pretends to be a kung fu master come to set things right.
Determined to make good on his promise to DO good, he sneaks into a Shaolin temple in the hopes of learning a useful trade (i.e.; kung fu).
There, too, he is quickly discovered (so much for being a good con man) and is promptly charged with building a scaffold.
Unlike in THE 36th CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN, where he literally walked on water after some strenuous training, Liu here learns the less demanding "scaffolding kung fu." Among the techniques he masters is the use of bamboo cords (which comes in handy during the final showdown).
More comedic than its predecessor, RETURN TO THE 36th CHAMBER is nonetheless worth a look..
I love kung-fu and bought this movie under the name 36th chamber, I thought it was THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN.
I paid $1 for it and the quality was horrible, so I decided to go and buy the DRAGON DYNASTY release of THE 36TH CHAMBERS OF SHAOLIN.
I was going to toss the older version when I happened to notice it was Johnny Wang on the cover, so I put it in the player and sure enough it was RETURN TO THE THE 36TH CHAMBERS.
Now I've gotta get a better version of this film, because the DVD I have is a VHS transfer dollar DVD and it's horrible.Anyway so Gordon Liu is back, but this time around he is playing a new character.
I really loved him as San Te on the first one, it was a serious and dark Kung Fu gem.
This one he plays Jen Cheh and its one of those comedy/kung-fu mixtures.
I wish it had been under another name completely and still used the 36th chambers, its not like anyone could replace Gordon for the part, it just needed a different title.
I hate when sequels get off from the first movie and do something like this....
NOT TO SAY THIS IS A BAD MOVIE AT ALL...Far from bad, this is a great film, unfortunately I have a horrible full screen version so I couldn't appreciate all Master Liu's direction had to offer, I know it was good for what I could tell and even in full screen it captured a lot of the beauty of the fights, especially in early scenes where Jen was pretending to be a monk.Gordon put on a lot of weight in the few years in between these movies and looked less like a kung-fu champ and more like a regular guy, which was good for his characters humble beginnings but not so good for where his character would've ended up with all that work and pseudo training.The movie has a small town's biggest economical leader (a dye shop) taken over by ruthless bosses in order to get a better assembly.
They cut the pay and refuse to let workers leave, so when a beggar posing as a monk comes to town they use him to fool the bosses and scare them with his fake fighting style.
He then goes to Shaolin Temple, and unlike San Te in the first film, Cha Jen Cheh doesn't get in to train with the others, he is instead told to work and build scaffolding and repair all the roofs of all the chambers.He sets off working, and even sleeping on the roof and spends all of his time watching the other pupils train.
Once he finishes the job over a year later he asks to join now that hes done the work and the monk still refuses.
He soon realizes that he is a master of kung fu simply by watching and the imitation practices he had been doing and he takes on the evil boss played by Johnny Wang in one of the best fights ever filmed.You can never go wrong with the Shaw Bros.
here brothers Gordon and Chi-Liang once again made a damn good movie...It a great film and if you love martial arts you will wanna check it out, its not a true sequel, but stands alone perfectly.
My flaws was that it was super slow building up to the action, it had way too much of a comedy aspect and I gave it 6 out of 10 stars..
Highly rated Shaolin sequel offers something a bit different.
RETURN TO THE 36TH CHAMBER sees Gordon Liu returning to the film series that he's most famous for, playing a different role in a very different story which nonetheless features the Shaolin Temple.
This one's a very good Shaw film, directed with his exemplary professionalism by the esteemed Lau Kar-Leung who injects finesse and quality into the film's many fight and training sequences.Some viewers may be put off by the way that RETURN TO THE 36TH CHAMBER is more of an out-and-out comedy than the original film but I enjoyed the change of pace and style.
Liu plays a small-time actor who gets beaten up at the hands of Manchu thugs (including my top guys Johnny Wang Lung Wei and Chiang Tao), so he decides to break into the Shaolin Temple and spy on the monks training.
It's pretty funny stuff, with Liu on top physical form and convincing both as the novice weakling and as the kung fu expert.The Shaolin Temple scenes are fun and entertaining with all of the bizarre training we enjoy watching.
I loved the way that Liu learns amid scaffolding here which gives him an addiction to bamboo which plays a big part in the fights at the film's climax, which are lighter than usual but no less gruesome.
As with almost all Shaw Brothers movies, this is well shot, well paced, and looks absolutely brilliant in high definition; a great mix of comedy, drama, and action..
The original 36th Chamber is known as one of the best Kung Fu movies of all time and I personally echo that sentiment, putting it right up there with The Master of the Flying Guillotine, Seven Grandmasters and The Invincible Armour.
I was therefore worried that this movie has been tagged as sequel, knowing that it was unlikely to live up to its predecessor.
It turned out to be one of the best movies I have seen in the Kung Fu/Wuxia genre.
The story began in a not unfamiliar fashion, where a group of laborers are exploited by their employer who hires some Manchus to essentially frighten them into working harder for less money.
They try to fight back and to go on strike but are badly beaten by the Manchus.
The workers then get there friend Chao Jen-Cheh (Gordon Lu), an actor, to pretend to be a dangerous Shaolin priest so he can intimidate the Manchus and the boss into treating them fairly but he is eventually found out as a fraud and he too is beaten terribly.
After this, Chao vows to go to Shaolin and learn Kung Fu for real and to return to set things straight.
For the next while the movie takes a comedic turn as Chao tries many tricks to emerge himself in Shaolin's 36th Chamber (a Kung Fu training zone) and the Abbot takes pity on him, allowing him to stay at Shaolin to put together Scaffolding and fix the temple roofs.
Chao does this happily as it allows him to observe the 36th Chamber and he presumes he will be taken on as a student when the roof has been mended.
However, 3 years later when the work is complete, he is distraught to find that he is asked to leave the temple without have received any Kung Fu training.
He goes back to the village and explains to his worker friends that he has learned nothing.
They are angry at him for having learned nothing the entire time he was away and attack him, only to find that Chao has in fact picked up quite a bit simply from having observed the Shaolin students and having incorporated what he has seen into his scaffolding work.
Having discovered him strength, Chao challenges the Manchu and the boss who he is now able to defeat with considerable style.The oblivious "training" sequences in this film are great and again they justify the use of the label "36th Chamber" as the original movie is well known for it fantastic training act.
All great Kung Fu movies have an amazing training act and this one is no exception.Another thing which I loved about this movie was the unique "scaffolding Kung Fu" style which Chao learns.
His time as a scaffolder means that his fighting style is one which largely consists of tying his opponents up.
When the Manchus are introduces, they bare their bamboo batons and declare facetiously "these are our colour sticks".
These in the final fight scenes are reminiscent of the bamboo poles that Chao uses in scaffolding the temple and as he takes the Manchus on, he ties each of them and the batons together like scaffolding.
Firstly I found it hard to believe when Chao returns to the village completely unaware that his skills have improved...then again this is a Kung Fu movie and anything can happen. |
tt0057773 | The Munsters | The Munsters live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane in the city of Mockingbird Heights, a fictional suburb in California. The running gag of the series is that the family, while decidedly odd, consider themselves fairly typical working-class people of the era. Herman, like many husbands of the 1960s, is the sole wage-earner in the family, though Lily and Grandpa make (short-lived) attempts to earn money from time to time. While Herman is the head of household, Lily makes many decisions, too. According to the episode in which Lily and Herman Munster were trying to surprise one another for their anniversary, they were married in 1865. Despite the novel approach of the family's being (mostly) supernatural creatures (except for niece Marilyn, who is "normal"), the show followed the typical family sitcom formula of the era—the well-meaning father, the nurturing mother, the eccentric live-in relative, the naïve teenager and the precocious kid.
The costumes and appearances of the family members other than Marilyn were based on the classic monsters of Universal Studios films from the 1930s and 1940s. Universal produced The Munsters as well and was thus able to use these copyrighted designs, including their iconic version of Frankenstein's monster for Herman. Other studios were free to make films with the Frankenstein creature, for example, but could not use the costume and style of make-up originally created by Jack Pierce for the 1931 Universal Studios film Frankenstein. The make-up for the show was created and applied to the actors by Bud Westmore, who pioneered many make-up effects and designs for many of the Universal monster movies. | horror | train | wikipedia | Save for the cable-TV comedies, adventurous shows like "The Munsters" don't get made today.
What a bunch of great characters these were (with kudos to Al Lewis and--God bless him--Fred Gwynne).
They may have been ugly, they may have been weird and they may have been totally eccentric but they loved each other and cared so much about each other.The Munsters emphasized traits such as loyalty to your family and love (qualities not found in many shows today).
The show starred legendary actors Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, Al Lewis, Beverley Owen, Pat Priest, Butch Patrick, and Mel Blanc!
I remember enjoying every minute of it.The catchy theme tune, the spooky house, the dinosaur under the stairs, Grandpa's experiments and the brilliant central performance from Fred Gwynne all added up to a terrific half hour comedy.Watching it ten years on it seems a little more cheesy than I first remember it to be - but it is one of those shows I will always fondly remember..
That they all looked like they'd just stepped straight out of a classic Universal horror movie (with the notable exception of Marilyn, who actually turned out to be a shape-shifter of sorts...) only added to their many charms.
Though the level-headed head of the household, Herman was often just a great big kid at heart, with an infectious laugh and boyish charm; Lily Munster, if not THE sexiest woman to ever ramrod a telefamily, was certainly Number Two- and I never laid eyes on Number One; and Grandpa was that iconic family elder who dispensed the Wisdom of the Ages with a mad cackle and an abra cadabra.
None of the subsequent attempts to revive the show ever came close to the charm of the original (the MOCKINGBIRD LANE debacle of just a month or so ago has to be by far the worst of the worst); but, as long as Home Video exists, THE MUNSTERS will live on (and on, and on)..
My all-time favorite sitcoms would start with The Honeymooners and find room for (in no particular order): Seinfeld, Cheers, Taxi, Beverly Hillbillies, Dick Van Dyke, and The Munsters would be in the mix.Superb writing (it worked as a young kid and it still works for me today), amusing plots, great family dynamics and a terrific, multi-faceted performance by the late, great Fred Gwynne.
Although I liked the Addams Family quite a bit, the Munsters were it for me.
I'll say that "The Addams Family" was actually cleverer, but still, "The Munsters" definitely had its merits.
Basically the story of a household in which the father, Herman (Fred Gwynne), is Frankenstein's monster, the mother, Lily (Yvonne DeCarlo), is a vampire, the son, Eddie (Butch Patrick), is a werewolf, the grandfather (Al Lewis) is Count Dracula, and the niece, Marilyn (played by two different people), is the ugly (make that "pretty") duckling in the family.
While the Munsters' everyday routine is the same as everyone else's, everything that's normal to them (e.g., a house that looks like a Halloween party should be held there) is weird to the rest of the world, and vice versa.
The simultaneous runs of Munsters and Addams Family doomed both to two-season lifespans.
Munsters fans would not watch Addams Family and vice versa, but if either show had been on without the other it would have attracted almost the full audience of the other.Either could have become a major, long-running classic.
After scrapping the ill-conceived and twice miscast role of Marilyn, the enormous talent and charisma of Fred Gwynne and his chemistry with Al Lewis (good friends off-camera, too) could have carried that show for many years..
Credit where credit is due: Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo and Al Lewis are what keep you coming back to the Munsters.
"The Munsters" was filmed at the Universal-Hollywood lot, where the original monster movies of the 30's and 40's featuring Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, Wolfman etc,were made.
By the 1960's it was felt these creations(makeup copyright still owned by the studio)were ripe for spoofing(well they had actually already been in comedy films with Abbott and Costello a few years earlier)."The Munsters" could have been terrible-its easy to get this sort of thing all wrong, witness the appalling 80's remake "The Munster's today"; but this series works beautifully.It's not the scripts-though there are some great lines,they are often not especially outstanding.
What makes the show so good is the cast, particularly Fred Gwynne as scary, hopeless, lovable Herman-what a performance he gave!
A word of appreciation too for Al Lewis, the vampire Grandpa, whose mad scientist Count comes over like a third rate vaudeville magician from New York (he even works as a stage magician in one episode!),and who enjoys nothing more than insulting his clueless son in law, Herman.
The rest of the cast are fine, though Yvonne DeCarlo as Lily was given little else to do but be shrewish with Herman as the series went on.
Another fortunate thing was that in the mid 60's,when the show was made, there were many marvelous character actor/comedians in Hollywood, and lots appear on the show, such as Frank Gorshin, Neil Hamilton, Jessie White, John Hoyt, Louis Nye(his TV horror host character, "Zombo", is actually scarier than any of the Munsters)and best of all Paul Lynde, who shows up twice as the Munster family doctor,and has some classic comedy moments with Herman.
What makes THE MUNSTERS a true TV classic is, of course, the brilliant character comedy of the late Fred Gwynne.
"The Munsters" isn't quite as good as its contemporary, "The Addams Family," but it's still a great show-- just very different.In fact, the Munster/Addams comparison, I've come to realize, is totally unfair.
As "AF" cast member Lisa Loring said on a DVD commentary, "the Addams Family is more like the Marx Brothers and the Munsters were like the 3 Stooges." That's a great way to sum it up.
Lily is also a far more independent and formidable wife than Morticia, who's not afraid to bend Herman to her will, and she's played so perfectly by the late, great Yvonne de Carlo.
The humour is perhaps broader than a 60s series like The Addams Family(also a classic) but goodness isn't the humour hilarious too?
The stories are always well-paced and entertaining, Grandpa's experiments are worth the viewing alone and the characters are so lovable and genuinely for each other as a family, my personal favourite is Eddie.
The acting is spot on, Al Lewis, Fred Gwynne, Yvonne DeCarlo and Butch Patrick are just perfect.
If you liked the Addams Family, this sitcom is to die for!!
You had the father and head of the household Herman Munster, who bears a very strong resemblance to Frankenstien's monster, Lily Munster his vampire wife, who is a cross between the bride of Frankenstien (with the white streak in her crazy length hair) and Lilith who was from the Universal film Dracula's daughter.
Thirdly there was Grandpa, who was Count Dracula in his old age and who was Lily's father, Eddie Munster, the son of Lily and Herman and who looked rather like a cross between a wolf and a vampire.
Excellent episode plots, brilliant unique characters - you've never seen monsters so cute and cuddly.Along with these memorable family members you get to meet other famous universal monsters such as the creature from the black lagoon, in the form of uncle Gilbert and Lily's brother who is a wolf-man.Some of the plots are similar to the Addams Family and others evolve around certain characters like Herman or Grandpa.
Non-conformist Fun. I was almost 11 when both "The Munsters" and "Addams Family" had their debut in 1964.
I always favored "The Munsters" for its slapstick play between Herman and Grampa, its broken-down haunted house look, their "ugly ducking" niece, Marilyn, Grandpa's bumbling spells and their fabulous dragster, among other things.
In "Love Locked Out", as Lily fumes when Herman stays out late at an office party, the smart-alecky raven in the clock gives the time, "It's midnight...and the bum's not home yet!!!" If "The Munsters" ever becomes available on DVD, I will be one of the first to order it..
made up by a great cast and lots of great in jokes to the classic universal horror films.now all i need is for it to get a DVD release and i will be a very happy munster's fan.
Only actors Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis, Yvonne DeCarlo and Butch Patrick were the only cast members that stayed throughout its entire two-year-run.
In fact "The Munsters" premiered the following week after the debut of "The Addams Family"(which was over at ABC).
"The Munsters" did quite well in its first season,but by the second season the ratings were declined due to the competition of not only NBC's "Daniel Boone",but also the it took a fierce beating in the ratings opposite ABC's top-rated show "Batman" which was on the same time slot and was in color.Who can forget the show's theme tune(from Jack Marshall who also produced the theme for Henry Fonda's TV show "The Deputy",and numerous other shows as well),and that opening sequence of that spooky haunted house on Mockingbird Lane.
What made that show a huge success was the comedic timing of Fred Gwynne as the reliable and sometimes unpredictable Herman Munster.
Also how can I forget the Grandpa with those experiments under the house and he was always conjuring up something down there who most of the time was a vampire who hanged upside down a lot,and the family pet Spot(who was a fire breathing dragon who lived under the stairs),and the wife Lily who was played by the lovely Yvonne DeCarlo,and the son Eddie who was a werewolf played by Butch Patrick,and their daughter Marilyn(who was played by two different actresses: Pat Priest in Season One and Beverly Owen in Season Two).
This show was side-splitting hilarious at every turn never knowing who may show up at the Munster's house,or the other way around which was extremely funny for a family of ghouls who were ordinary but in a weirdly sort of way just to see Herman Munster and even Grandpa get into one hilarious mischief situation right after the other.However the show ran for two seasons on CBS before the rest of the cast made the jump from the tube to the screen in "Munster Go Home!" (1966)that Universal Pictures released around October of 1966 where TV's first family of ghouls got the full Technicolor treatment after more than two years on the black and white television screen..
Whenever anyone looks at this show, it is inevitably compared to "The Addams Family", which premiered the same year as this show.
Even though Ed Gwynne and Yvonne DeCarlo were the stars, Al Lewis provided a great anchor as Grandpa.
Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster was outstanding.
Al Lewis as Grandpa Munster was funny.
Yvonne De Carlo as Lily Munster was brilliant Pat Priest as Marilyn Munster and Butch Patrick as Eddie Wolfgang Munster where cute.
I don't think any spoilers can ruin a perfect show like this one.Fred Gwynne plays Herman Munster, part machine, part human who looks a little like Frankenstein's monster.
Beverley Owen played her for a while, then she left the show to get married, and Pat Priest took over.Not having seen any of the second season, I can't say it was 100% perfect, but from what I saw, it was rally good..
The release of The Munsters first season is a nice addition to anyones collection.very sixies in its humour and sometimes very silly it is still a great family comedy.The sets and backgrounds are very Universal Studios .the characters are funny and the fact they don't know they are monsters is part of the humour.except for being monsters they act like any sitcom family from the 60's .the series has a long list of character actors guest stars who most old TV show fans will recognize.besides who wouldn't love the Munster Koach and Dragula ,two of the coolest cars ever to be on a TV show[hey i'd drive them if i had them].bottom line for me is its a enjoyable show and i enjoy watching it..
It was several years later before I saw the Addams Family, but Gomez was no Herman.I think the greatest draw of the show was Grandpa, (aka sam dracula) No one knew how to stir up a batch of mischief like him.
The Munsters is about a group of friendly monster like people and their normal cousin Marilyn.
Both the Addam's Family and the Munsters aired the same season and even shared similar episode storylines.
This is where it all began (and in my opinion where is should have ended as it could not have been improved AT ALL!) i was only a nippa when the re-runs of this show were being shown, and recently we found an old video with about 7 or 8 episodes on so i sat down to watch and see if they were as funny as i remember, and to my delight they were even funnier, having just turned 20 and remembering watching this show when i was about 11 i find that i appreciate it more now as more jokes become apparent and the comedic talents of Al Lewis and (the late) Fred Gwynne were top notch, right from the word go this show proves its class, the guitar solo for the title credits and Fred Gwyne crashing through the front door and his face after realising he hadnt opened the door set me crying with laughter and that carried on till the end of the episode when i was faced with it all over again, the plots in the show were great, basically this show rocked, forget the remakes n movies (apart from the 1981 one as this has Al Lewis and Fred Gwynne in it!) Just watch this show as its classic stuff and proof once again that great writing and casting produce gold dust!.
I grew up watching the reruns and have always felt that the portrayals of Herman Munster(Fred Gwynne and Grandpa( Al lewis) were absolutely brilliant.
Even the Addams family never got a feature film, the original Addamses that is.Meet Herman and Lily Munster Fred Gwynne and Yvonne DeCarlo.
He had some socialization issues as you can imagine.Two actresses played Marilyn Munster, Lily's nice Beverly Owen and Pat Priest.
Come on down to the spooky-looking mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane and join The Munsters, a happy family of friendly "monsters", who (consider themselves "normal") manage to get themselves into all sorts of silly, hair-raising situations that have the folks in town running away in fright.This goofy, yet, fun and good-natured TV Sit-Com from the mid-1960s is enjoyable entertainment for all ages.The crazy antics of Fred Gwynne, as Herman Munster, and Al Lewis, as Grandpa, are the highlight of the show.Filmed in black and white - I really liked this show's spooky, up-tempo theme music..
I never thought much of the Addams Family,it was too weird what with all the goofball cast members (Lurch,Hand...)plus I couldnt stand John Astin as Gomez or Lurch (Ted Cassidy),I did find Uncle Fester quite unique and funny,and without a doubt Carolyn Jones was a graceful lady I preferred her far beyond Yvonne DeCarlo.Its just a real shame what happened to her later in her life.You just had to feel for her...a sad ending to such an appealing person.The Munsters Al Lewis was/is a real enduring character...perfectly cast,as well as Herman (Fred Gwynne).As for Lilly,Eddie and Marilyn,well....the less said the better.The custom cars that George Barris created for the Munsters were just breathtaking.The Ford 289 seemed a favorite powerplant for his work,and the Munsters custom with a 289 V8 and 8 1-barrel carburetors was just outrageous.The Addams Family could never boast of such transportation..
On the playground of my elementary school, back in the sixties, there were two types of people, those who liked the Munsters and those who liked the Addams Family, the two shows being exact contemporaries.
Though I didn't mind the Munsters, I loved the Addams Family.
It's about these monsters (or in this case Munsters)who live in a haunted house on 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
I was more familiar with the Munsters than with the Addams family.
The show had a first rate cast that featured Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster, the lovable Frankenstein father figure, Yvonne De Carlo as Lily Munster, the vampire's daughter, and Grandpa played by Al Lewis.
Or that lovely Lily Munster looks like a vampire herself?
or that little Eddie Munster looks like a future wolfman?
Scary In A Funny Sort of Mockingbird Way. The prime series from 1960's lore along with The Adams Family both arrived at the same time.
Herman Munster (Fred Gwynn) is just the right kind of oblivious.
Herman (Fred Gwynne in his most famous role...I wonder how he felt about that?) looks like the Frankenstein monster as he was seen in the movies.
Eddie, Herman and Lily's son, looks like a miniature wolfman.
Finally, there is cousin Marilyn who looks like your classically beautiful and completely human blonde.
The Munsters (1964-1966): Starring Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick, Pat Priest, Mel Blanc, Bob Hastings...Director Earl Bellamy, Norman Abbot, David Alexander, Jerry Paris, Don Richardson....The Munsters was on ABC channel 7, and from 1964-1966, enjoyed a successful run as a highly creative and one-of-a-kind sitcom, though they were similar in "Halloween family" theme to CBS' The Addams Family.
Fred Gwynne, of comedic cop movies in the early to mid 60's, portrayed Frankenstein-look-alike Herman Munster, head of a household of folks who are NOT wearing their Halloween costumes.
They include his wife Lily (Yvonne De Carlo), a vampire woman, Grandpa Dracula (Al Lewis)son Eddie Munster (Butch Patrick) a were-wolf and the "odd" one in the family, the normal and beautiful Marilyn (Pat Priest, originally played by Beverly Owen in the first season). |
tt0089604 | Missing in Action 2: The Beginning | Ten years before freeing the US POWs from a brutal General, Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris) was held in a North Vietnamese POW camp run by sadistic Colonel Yin (Soon-Teck Oh), who forces the POWs to grow opium for a French drug runner named François (Pierre Issot), and tries to get Braddock to admit to and sign a long list of war crimes. During his team's time in captivity, they are relentlessly subjected to various forms of humiliating torture, and Braddock being told that his wife has left him and has remarried. Frankie, another US POW, starts to suffer from malaria, and Braddock exchanges an admission of guilt to Yin's charges of war crimes for medicine for the infected soldier. However, breaking his deal with Braddock, Yin gives the soldier a lethal dose of opium instead. Enraged, Braddock escapes from the camp, and plots to free his fellow prisoners and destroy the prison camp. Yin then betrays François, taking control of his drug ring. Braddock inflicts several losses against Yin's men, leading to Yin's second-in-command to dress a Vietnamese soldier as Colonel Yin and shoot him in an attempt to lure Braddock into the open. Braddock however notices that the decoy is not wearing Yin's boots, and proceeds to kill Yin's men. Eventually, Braddock fights Yin hand to hand in Yin's quarters. Subduing Yin, Braddock escorts the prisoners to an awaiting chopper, although not before exploding charges planted around Yin's quarters. | revenge, cult, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | Which we already saw in sporadic flashbacks in the first movie.Missing in Action 2: The Beginning shows the capture of Colonel Braddock (Chuck Norris) during the Vietnam war in the 1970s, his captivity with other American POWs in a brutal prison camp, and his plans to escape.
Norris and his crew are holed up in a prison camp for the whole picture, ruled by tyrannical Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh) who resorts to psychological mind games, torture and murder to try to make Braddock sign a statement admitting to war atrocities he never committed.There seems to be no end to the different scenarios and interesting scenes that play out during the film: escape attempts, arranged fights between prisoners, a guy who stumbles onto the prison camp and gets executed.
But Chuck really delivers in the end, especially in his final feel good showdown with Yin. In my opinion, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning is the best of the Braddock movies, it's part action film and part action drama, which sets it apart from the other movies.The first time i ever watched this film was in the early 80's in the cinema and it was great, and i still think it's great....
Exciting prequel dealing with Vietnam prison camps , it stars the incomparable Norris' Colonel Braddock as liberator.
The tough Braddock continuously attempts to free the prisoners held captives and they receive numerous tortures and sufferings in charge of the concentration camp wardens and their evil ruler .The screenplay of the movie is plain and simple .
In the wake of : ¨Uncommon valor¨ (directed by Ted Kocheff) and ¨Rambo II¨ (by George Pan Cosmatos) and Norris imitating to Silvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as one army man , shooting and killing numerous enemies The film results to be the second installment from a trilogy , concerning the first ¨Missing in action¨ (made by Joseph Zito) on Braddock accused of war crimes by a Vietnam general and he then escapes to free inmates ; this second part (directed by Lance Hool , the first one 's producer) about tortures and Braddock suffering in a prisoner camp , and the third part (directed by Aaron Norris , Chuck's brother , who in 'Missing in action 1' was the stunt coordinator) upon looking for his wife after downfall Saigon .
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs1985 was a top year for Chuck Norris,with Invasion USA and this immensely enjoyable actioner coming out.Following on from the disappointing,slow moving original,this charts his highly involving experiences in a Vietnamise POW camp,and his eventual escape.A lot of depth is invested into the characters,which fully envelops at the end when Norris faces off against Soon Tech Oh.Given that the films were created by Chuck as a tribute to his brother Wieland who was killed in Vietnam,it's not really so surprising in hindsight to notice the extra invested energy and emotion he displays in these films.And all the better for it.****.
While the acting may not be top-notch, the plot and setting give the impression that you are actually a member of a POW camp and must struggle along with Colonel Braddock (Chuck Norris) to escape.
Following Braddock's plight as a prisoner, the death of his comrades, and his final showdown with Colonel Yin (Soon Tek Oh), the movie nicely builds up to its climax and leaves the viewer with a sense of finality that many movies tend to lack in their endings.
Prequel to Missing in Action covers Braddock's years as a POW and his eventual escape.
This is one that will probably be torn to shreds critically by snobby europeans, and wannabe intellectual movie-goers who just cant get enough of their bullet time, and 200 million dollar epics.This is actually the prequel to the first Missing In Action movie.It tells the story of a forgotten group of P.O.W.'s who are being brutalised by an overbearing colonel who enjoys watching the vet's suffer.As the prisoners numbers dwindle, one James Braddock decides to take charge of the dire situation before its all too late.From the opening to the fiery, action packed finale this film boasts raw combat and even dares to throw in some emotion.I actually truly cared for the characters as I wanted to see them survive and extract revenge upon their communist enslavers.Truly strange times we live in when one cannot be proud to be an American.I will always be proud and you can go back to your dull German expressionist films.Chuck Norris is the man.I love 80's action!.
And the good guys are fleshed out enough as characters that you do feel bad for them, and want to see them get their revenge.As one can guess, this is a prequel to the original "Missing in Action" film of 1984.
It shows how Chucks' colonel character, James Braddock, was shot down and captured during the war, and the tortures that he and his men are obliged to endure for the next several years, even after the war has basically ended.
The sadistic colonel in charge of his work camp, Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh) acts like a dictator, and just when you think you can't hate this guy any more, he ups the stakes yet again.With Lance Hool taking the directors' reins, this proves to be a high old time for the action junkie, underscored by the genuine poignancy to be found in stories about prisoners of war.
What makes Missing in Action 2: The Beginning, is not the great supporting cast of Cosie Costa, Professor Toru Tanaka, Steven Williams or Joe Michael Terry: Nor is it the effacious use of props such as "the tree" or Francois' helicopter.
Simply put the storyline which was developed by the renowned writer Steven Bing, makes the film a simple test of wills between Colonel Braddock(Chuck Norris) and Colonel Yin(Soon-Teck Oh)!
It makes little sense that this was released later than first one since this happens before and is much better movie.I prefer prison camp part at beginning over action part at the end.
The inevitable duel in the end was one of the most memorable martial arts combat scene of the decade.Good movie that could have been better if Chuck wasn't so down all the time, but part 3 answers to that..
Missing in Action 2 (1985) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Prequel to the first film has Col. James Braddock (Chuck Norris) and his men thrown into a POW camp where they are constantly abused and tortured.
This film has "B" movie written all over it due to the poor performances and lackluster direction but it still manages to be entertaining due to some nice action and a fun ending.
Soon-Tek Oh plays the bad guy in the film and actually steals the movie.
Death camp - with action, drama and war substance in a Chuck Norris style my personal favorite.
Missing in Action 1 and 2 are really good movies, this is one of my favorites of Chuck Norris and Vietnam war flicks that come out in the 80's.
My favorite is still Missing in Action the original film of the MIA trilogy, this is my second favorite of MIA trilogy.Come out the same year as Rambo: First Blood Part II and Commando were released and it is a good decent brutal death camp action war flick in a Chuck Norris style.
I love this film to death it is still one of my personal favorite Chuck Norris films.This film was filmed back to back with the original Missing in Action and was originally intended to be the first film of the two but Cannon switched the titles cause they thought the sequel Missing in Action would be more successfully movie, than this movie the prequel they were right.
I love the cast in this movie: Chuck Norris, Soon-Tek Oh, Steven Williams, Bennett Ohta, Cosie Costa, Joe Michael Terry, Christopher, Cary, John Wesley, David Chung and Professor Toru Tanaka.
This was always my favorite action war film of the Vietnam flicks beside First Blood and Rambo: First Blood Part II, Missing in Action I and II belongs right there with the Rambo movies.Chuck Norris returns as Colonel James Braddock in this intense, action packed prequel to the original hit .
With fists, high explosives and shear courage, he becomes one man army!Soon-Tek Oh was a good, fantastic as sadistic psychopath villain Colonel Yin who was leading Death Camp in North Vietnam while he was smuggling opium.
Real automatic weapons are used in the movie and that well.This is my favorite action war prison camp Vietnam flick alongside with First Blood, Rambo First Blood Part II and Commando the film is rated R and they are practical effects for real.
It is a decent action prequel and one of Chuck Norris best movies from the 80's..
Prequel to Chuck Norris' quite successful first film in the "Missing in Action" franchise.
The prequel tells the story of how Norris' Colonel Braddock was captured and held prisoner by the NVA during the Vietnam War. The film is a fairly standard POW war film story, complete with an evil camp commandant, cruel torture, and daring escapes.
Unfortunately the film also did not ask Chuck show off his martial arts skills much either, with the exception being a final confrontation with venerable character actor Soon-Tek Oh as the evil Colonel Yin. Chuck takes some beat downs from Professor Toru Tanaka and has some nasty torture scenes, particularly one involving rats, throughout the film as the NVA try to get him to confess to war crimes, but why have a karate champ in your film if you're not going to let him fight?
Producers made the wise choice to release what was originally filmed as a sequel ("Missing in Action" where Chuck goes back to Vietnam to rescue POWs) as the first of the franchise and then released this weaker film later as a prequel.
Well, pure and simple because it is set to be a prequel to the first movie, and we follow Colonel Braddock during his time in the Vietnam War where he was captured and held at a P.O.W. camp.The storyline was simple, for sure, but it worked out quite well, because the movie had a good continuous flow to it, and the characters were very detailed and came off as being believable characters.Chuck Norris manages to establish the Colonel James Braddock character as a memorable character with "Missing in Action 2: The Beginning", and he does a good job in this movie, both in acting and action sequences.It should also be said that the movie does include other good talents on the cast list, especially Soon-Tek Oh as Colonel Yin, the leader of the Vietnamese camp."Missing in Action 2: The Beginning" is the best of the trilogy because it puts the audience into the Vietnam War and right alongside with Colonel Braddock in the P.O.W. camp, which is what we want to see, and not some political drama about retrieving possible prisoners of war..
Prequel to the 1984 hit Missing in Action depicts the hardships of the prison camp where Col. Braddock is held and his attempts to escape with the few remaining American soldiers.
It's a bad sign when Chuck Norris is pretty much the best actor in a film.
There is no way Yin would ever let these men get out alive.The balance of the film basically depicts the torture that these men endure before Braddock is able to escape and eventually free the other prisoners.
Ten years later, they are in a prison camp run by the ruthless Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh) who demands Braddock's confession.
Braddock is still holding out and only Nester has caved in to Colonel Yin.Even by the standards of cheesy 80's action movie, this is pretty bad.
The actors are bad, Chuck Norris is extremely unlikable as Col.Braddock just like in the first MIA, therefore these scenes are neither involving nor convincing.
Nevertheless, if you like 80-Style action and have already seen the gems of that decade, than MIA 2 is an acceptable time-waster, but this movie isn't even one of the better Chuck Norris-flicks.
I am only semi joking as I just enjoy a good Chuck Norris movie every now and then and this one was rather interesting and had some good action as one might expect and a very nice finale that was very explosive.
No, it's a prequel, which doesn't explain why it has the number "2" on the title."MIA2: The beginning" takes place before the first film, which has Norris' character, Col. Braddock, still a captive in post-war Vietnam.
Cannon productions backs another American colonel James Braddock film to the surprising hit that was the 1984 Chuck Norris starring post-Vietnam action-flick "Missing In Action".
After a slowly lean get-up amongst the stinking hot jungle setting and POW camp (which for most part is completely dreary), it finally breaks the shackles in the last half-hour or so with blistering action (even if some of it is poorly conceived) complete with explosions and Norris suitably paying back some of his own medicine in what is a fittingly tough and cheering confrontation (due to what has gone before it) with the sadistically malevolent Colonel Yin performed with smarting glee by Soon Tek-oh.
Chuck Norris once again plays the tough as nails, Colonel James Braddock who finds himself and a few of his men at the mercy of a sadistic prison warden when they are captured in Nam. What follows is a mercilessly drawn out representation of the prisoners hardships and humiliation in their confinement for the first half of the film, and a fairly lacklustre action fuelled second half.
This was filmed at the same time as Missing in Action and was supposed to be released first, but they liked the other one better.
It is basically a Hogan's heroes with Norris at a POW camp being tortured by Colonel Yin (Soon-Tek Oh) for 10 years until he has had enough.
It has good fight scenes, but you won't find the over-the-top action that you saw in Rambo II.It is a forgettable movie and you won't lose anything in the MIA series if you never see it..
"You lose."In Missing in Action 2, Soon-Tek Oh's soulless character says this phrase several times to the equally soulless character played by Chuck Norris.But when the movie is over, it is clear that the only real loser is the viewer himself.
Revenge of the 80's: Chuck Norris Mania/Multiple Sequels/Vietnam War movies!.
Just another Chuck Norris vehicle that was filmed back-to back with Missing in Action.
If you have a strong constitution by all means watch Missing in Action 2!!!Another bad film from Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris returns as Col Braddock, in this inert sequel which shows how Norris escaped the prison camp in Vietnam.
Luckily Colonel Yin quickly shoots down the idea that the real world has any bearing on the movie's setting and we're off to the races- Jungle style.***there may be spoilers**** The beginning of the movie shows all of the members of Norris' crew being captured and declared Missing In Action (hence the title).
So does that mean every time someone tries to escape he shoots at them with the flamethrower, the bridge burns down, and he has to rebuild it the next day to go back to the camp?In the final scene Norris gets his revenge and beats down the colonel like an arcade wizard using cheat codes at the Mortal Kombat machine.
Chuck Norris for the most part was fantastic as always, and really did good with some of his emotional scenes, however he looked bored at times, and as a result was kinda bland, however he kicks that ass, and for the most part was tons of fun to watch!
This middle chapter of the James Braddock trilogy is a prequel to the original Missing In Action that traces the origin of Chuck Norris's not-quite-iconic franchise player.
A superior sequel to Chuck's first Vietnam effort, this is a small-scale drama of prison camp torture and escape, the second half packed with simplistic but pleasing action as Norris kills off dozens of enemy soldiers and generally acts as a hero.
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning starts during the Vietnam war in 1972 & starts as Colonel James Braddock (Chuck Norris) of the US army hitches a ride in a helicopter to Cambodia, however the helicopter comes under enemy fire & the crew along with Braddock have to bail out in the Vietnamese jungle only to be captured by the Vietnamese & taken as POW's.
Imprisioned in a POW camp in the middle of the jungle run by the strict General Yin (Soon-Teck Oh) & left to rot there by the country they once served there seems little hope of escape, but Colonel Braddock is a strong man & when the time is right will make his move in a bid for freedom...Directed by Lance Hool this supposed sequel to the original Missing In action (1984) was actually filmed first & chronologically is set before the original Missing in Action but the producers (probably the executives at Cannon) felt the original Missing in Action was the better film & decided to release that first & promote Missing in Action 2: The Beginning as a prequel.
A scene that needs to be seen, it really is quite funny even though it's definitely not meant to be.Filmed in Mexico the lush green jungle locations look nice, the action is alright but again like the original Missing in Action a little bit wimpy, why when Chuck Norris throw's a grenade into a wooden hut at the end & it goes off does the hut not even catch fire?
The acting is bad, Chuck Norris can't act & that's all that needs to be said.Missing in Action 2: The Beginning was indeed meant to be the beginning & be released before the original but as it stands it's good for a few laughs & some nice jungle scenery but little else. |
tt0220757 | Shool | The film opens with a late night telephone call from Patna asking to speak to Bachchu Yadav (Sayaji Shinde), an MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) of the ruling political party in Bihar. Bachchu Yadav' lackeys trace their boss to a prostitute's abode, where he receives the telephone and is informed that his party has selected another MLA for the ticket this time. Yadav wastes no time, reaches the newly selected MLA candidate's home and pressurises him to give up his nomination in lieu of money. When intimidation fails, Yadav's thugs stabbed the MLA-candidate under Yadav's supervision. When his deadliest cohort, Sudhir Vinod, stabs him in right-side of the chest, Yadav rebukes him for this "mistake" and stabs the half-dead man himself on the left, jokingly reminding him that heart is on the left side, by enacting Madhuri Dixit's famous Bollywood song, "Dhak Dhak Karne Laga".
Meanwhile, Inspector Samar Pratap Singh (Manoj Bajpayee) arrives at Motihari, where he has been transferred as an inspector, with his wife (Raveena Tandon) and daughter. At the railway station he gets into a confrontation with a coolie (Rajpal Yadav). The two have a tiff on the payment of Rs. 30/- to be paid to the coolie for his services, which Singh refuses to pay, as he (rightfully) thinks he is being overcharged. As the situation goes to the verge of fisticuffs, a local police hawaldaar intervenes. Not knowing that Singh, too, is a police officer, the hawaldaar tries to manhandle Singh. Infuriated, Singh takes the matter to the police station to which he is posted. As Singh writes a complaint against the hawaldaar for harassing an innocent local (Singh), a sub-inspector, Hussain, intervenes. Hussain asks Singh to forgive the hawaldaar, to which Singh does not relent. Singh later learns that the Motihari police station runs according to the whims of a local politician and criminal, Bachhu Yadav, and his henchmen. Singh is an idealist who respects the constitution and the law, and expects that everyone else should do the same. But no one follows the law in Motihari, especially the policemen who receive hafta (illicit weekly payments) from Yadav to do his bidding.
One day, the Deputy Superintendent of Police (Shrivallabh Vyas) asks Singh to break up a fight between two rival gangs and arrest the people who attacked some of Yadav's men. Singh investigates and finds out that Yadav's men are the real culprits. Among them are Sudhir Vinod (Nagesh Bhosle) and Lallan Singh (Yashpal Sharma), so Singh arrests them instead. When the D.S.P. orders Singh to release them, he refuses to do so, saying that he has already registered the case against the thugs. This is the first time Singh's superior learns of his real character and express concern over his future. Sub-inspector Hussain, who shamelessly admits to subjection to Yadav, declares that Singh won't last long in his current job if he continues in his ways. Singh sadly learns the limit of his official prowess, when the court releases Yadav's men (the men who were beaten up refuse to testify, understandably out of fear of Yadav's wrath).
Meanwhile Yadav is giving a fine demonstration of his rustically unsophisticated learning by arguing in the Bihar Legislative Assembly against the building of a certain dam over the river Ganges on the grounds that "stealing" electricity from water will result in loss to farmers. He further gives proof of lack of basic education and awareness by misquoting the famous political slogan "jai jawan, jai kisan".
Things begin worsening and Singh soon finds himself alone in his fight against a corrupt and rotten system. One day, while buying vegetables in the local market, he sees three young men sitting on a wall teasing passing girls by singing lewd Bhojpuri songs; when he confronts them they react defiantly to Singh (who is in plainclothes). However, on learning that he is the S.H.O., the two become defensive and tell him meekly that they are students of M.S. College, but the third declares proudly that he is younger brother of an influential politician Pranav Thakur (not Yadav), hoping that Singh will be impressed, but Singh retorts with a slap and forces him to apologise to the girls.
On his way home, Yadav decides to give an interview to a female journalist who boldly asks him if he is a murderer. Yadav, understandably, gets annoyed and tries to confuse and intimidate her, and upon failing to do so, simply asks her to get out of his car.
Yadav gets irritated by Singh's methods, particularity because he arrested his men. He decides to annoy him and organises his own marriage anniversary and arranges a folk dance by hiring a beautiful nautch girl (Shilpa Shetty) late into night. Singh reaches the scene and asks to see the permission papers that are required in India for operating loudspeakers late into the night. When no such official papers are produced, Singh seizes the music system and disrupts the party. Yadav confronts him and asks to be forgiven (in a patronising and satiric manner). The inebriated D.S.P. who is also present at the party tries to cool Singh's tempers by telling him such rules are inconsequential in small villages. Singh refuses to yield, which angers the D.S.P. who gives Singh a direct order to let the matter go. Singh stands firm, and states that he will let the situation go only if is given written orders. The following morning, the act of defiance by Singh causes a heated debate between Singh and the D.S.P., who, with the help of the corrupt sub-inspector Hussain, falsely frames Singh for a physical attack on his senior (D.S.P.). Tiwari (Vineet Kumar) tries to help Singh but in vain. Singh gets suspended from his post.
Yadav and his men decide to land the final blow on Singh and finish him once and for all. One day, when Singh takes his daughter to a sweet-shop, Yadav's goons begin passing disgustingly indecent comments towards Singh's daughter, which causes Singh to lose his temper, who single-handedly beats them. One of the henchman attacks Singh with a heavy wooden club, but instead bludgeons Singh's daughter on her head, killing her.
When the badly injured Laljee goes to Yadav and tell him that Singh has beaten them badly, Yadav, who cares next to nothing even about his most loyal men, finds it a golden opportunity to accuse Singh. He immediately takes a shotgun from the wall and hits Laljee on the head forcefully enough to kill him, and then orders his henchmen to register a complaint that Laljee actually died because of the beating by Singh. The police waste no time and arrest Singh while he is still grieving over his daughter's dead body. Singh's parents come to help him, and his father (Virendra Saxena) pleads with Yadav to get him released. Yadav uses this situation to his advantage and gets Singh released by asking none of his henchmen to testify. When Singh realises that Yadav was behind his release, he insults Yadav.
A few days later, Singh's parents leave, and he has a big fight with his wife over their situation and her accusation that his idealism is to blame for the quagmire they find themselves in and for the death of their daughter. Singh leaves in anger, and his wife tries to commit suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. Singh's only true friend in town, the honest sub-inspector Tiwari, informs Singh about his wife's suicide attempt and both rush to the hospital. Singh manages to speak a few sentences of comfort with her, where she absolves him of his guilt and asks him to avenge her and their daughter, before she dies.
Singh, having lost the woman he loved; feels he has lost everything and has nothing to live for anymore. He goes home, readies himself and wears his police uniform, visits the police station and snatches his service weapon in spite of sub-inspector Hussain's warning. Singh kills Hussain, then makes way to Patna where the state legislature is in session, enters the well of the house, defying heavy security. Singh finds Yadav and drags him by his collar to the Speaker's dais. After an emotional appeal to members of parliament on the leadership crisis and criminalisation of politics that is rotting and consuming the entire system in India, he shoots Yadav in the head, declares his patriotism and yells "Jai Hind" twice. | good versus evil, murder, tragedy | train | wikipedia | strong performance by manoj bajpai.
Shool is an excellent crime drama about corruption and murky politics in India.
This plot isn't anything new, but what makes the movie work is the mind-blowing performance of Manoj Bajpai as an honest cop trying to do his job in a corrupt environment.
With his work in this film, Bajpai has proven himself as a great character actor, at par with another cinema great, Shah Rukh Khan.
Both these actors have proven that you don't need good looks to make good movies.Aside from Bajpai, Shool is filled with wonderful performances, such as the de-glamorized Raveena Tandon's heart-breaking portrayal the police officer's wife, and Sayaji Shinde's genuinely scary villain!A mature film intended for a mature audience, Shool is a film that shouldn't be missed by anyone looking for quality in the otherwise lackluster world of Indian cinema!.
Good eye-opening movie depicting the ground reality of Bihar.
Motihari is a one-train town in the badlands of Bihar.
As a sanctuary of evil it resembles a piece of pre-riots Bombay, without the smells and the early closing.
As though in recognition that the underworld everywhere is essentially the same, debutant director E Nivas -- who began his career as spot boy under Ramgopal Varma and graduated to become his chief understudy -- has shot Shool in dank, washed-out colours, so that the red is drained to maroon and the blue to navy.Hi Any influence, unconscious or otherwise, that Satya may have had on Shool and Varma on Nivas, however, ends there.
Although cast in the typical Bollywood potboiler formula, its portrayal of the political milieu in the Hindi heartland is as authentic as it is rivetting.
Shool offers enough on this score to be a tempting alternative to curling up with the latest of William Darlymple's prize-winning despatches, if not a sojourn itself to Bihar's back of beyond.
Bacchu Yadav (Sayaji Shinde) is the MLA of Motihari for 15 years running but, more pertinently, is the lord of all he surveys in the district.
The film itself begins with a midnight call informing Yadav that the ''high command'' has decided to give the ticket this time to his local political rival, a Thakur.
The caller, before hanging up after confidentially confiding this information, darkly hints that the announcement will be made public only in the morning and that Yadav could do a lot by then.
It's a simple expedient: he himself leads his goons to Thakur's home, wakes him up and makes some small talk before stabbing him through the heart.The next shot cuts to a sylvan sunrise and a train steaming into a station.
A young man, lugging two ancient trunks, and with wife and kid in tow, steps out into the dappled light and...
well, a few sequences later, to a cutting knowledge of what life as an idealist police inspector means in Bihar.
Manoj Bajpai, as inspector Samar Pratap Singh, has risen to the expectation, pulling off a robust and salty performance.
At times he tends to go overboard, as with the scene where he pleads with the mute crowd for a glass of water for his dying child, and the result is smirky and jejune.
Otherwise, whether as a character out of his kilter or as a villain in a script he can't remember writing, Bajpai's acting is controlled and commendable, and he has an advantage here for so much of his personality resides in his eyes.The scene-stealing performance, however, has come from Sayaji Shinde.
Incidentally, Bacchu Yadav is the darker confiere of Bhiku Mhatre in Satya, played ironically enough by Bajpai.
Yadav is a vain priss who reigns through terror and wouldn't be remotely liked by his dependants even if he were to declare a general amnesty and donate a mangalsutra to every family with an unmarried daughter.
As though that weren't enough, he is truly reptilian in temperament: his eyes narrow in mock scrutiny of an unfortunate henchman, even as his smile has a pixie twist to it, making his next step unfathomable.
It's a memorable performance of a feudal politician, dumb and dictatorial, his virility and maschismo shading into bullying, his sheer physicality flatulent and dangerous.But Inspector Singh, the cop on the tear, is scarcely deterred by all this.
Each transgression by Yadav and each new incident revealing the obsequiousness of his superiors, rather than making our hero lose scales from his eyes, makes him more amped up.
His wife's -- played by Raveena Tandon who has done a subdued and convincing no-frills job --- remonstrations, as that of a trusted colleague, the only one, fall on deaf ears.From now on, formula takes over.
The climax is not predictable only in the excess of melodrama it contains.
And you have music accompanying the whole scene which sounds like something the music director-trio --- Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy --- dreamed up after a Mexican meal.
Understandably, the whole thing turns the movie into mush.
Trying for an infernal starkness, Nivas has achieved an infernal tackiness.
In the earlier parts of the movie the camera whirls and swoons among bursts of fauvist light and that combined with the authenticity of the various characters' nuances.
Their dialogue had managed to convey something feral and ominous.
In the end one can only say that Shool is for the most part a slovenly film and its politics fuzzy, but there is a vitality to the fuzziness.
Not something every Hindi movie can claim.
And lastly, congrates to the director and the actors team for working in such not-so-commercial serious movies..
The Limit Of Tolerance.
Debutant director E Nivas bravely tells the story of a courageous police officer and his fight against the system for justice.
Though the man-against-the-system story has been overused in Indian cinema, 'Shool' has a grittiness and honesty that makes that sets the tone apart.
The movie doesn't merely show the battle but it delves into the psychology of the protagonist and his inner conflicts.
The viewer can really connect to Samar Pratap Singh and his wife Manjiri.Shot in washed out green-tinted colours and the use of the shaky camera and with the lack of overdone sets, 'Shool' looks very raw and authentic.
The violence, though suggestive, implies very brutal and graphic mental images.
The film starts with a telephone-call which is followed by a brutal murder and this already tells us what kind of a person Yadav (the antagonist played by Sayaji Shinde) is.The performances are superb.
Manoj Bajpai nails the part.
The character seems to have been written for him and a lesser actor could have easily made a caricature out of this, but not Bajpai.
He's simply excellent in displaying even the toughest expressions and this ranks among his best works.
Sayaji Shinde is great.
Even though his mannerisms are the same as other characters he's played, they perfectly suit Yadav's personality.
Raveena Tandon takes the role of Manjiri after Juhi Chawla who had to walk out due to an accident which caused her to be hospitalized.
'Shool' couldn't have come at a better time for Ms. Tandon.
After all the glamorous roles and comedies, the actress was looking for something different and in 'Shool' we see a deglamourized Raveena Tandon.
Here she gives a very subtle, convincing and heartbreaking performance as Manjiri.
The child actor is expressionless.On the flip side, 'Shool' is quite predictable but one can't think of an alternative ending that would have made it better.
Nonetheless, even though we know what will happen, the last scene is very effective, mostly due to Manoj Bajpai's performance and dialogue delivery.
Anurag Kashyap's dialogues and E.Nivas's screenplay are good.
Some scenes would have stood out more without the background score (which isn't that impressive).
The songs are passable (and fit the situations) and of course there's the famous item number 'Main Aayi Hoon UP Bihar Lootney' filmed on a raunchy Shilpa Shetty.
This is perhaps one of the few films where an item number actually works as it both fits the situation and tells more about the character of the actors (e.g. Sayaji acting all wild around Shilpa).On the whole, 'Shool' is a great piece of Indian cinema.
Although the story isn't new, it's presentation is and unlike others this one digs into both the protagonist's and antagonist's psychology..
One of the 2 best Hindi movies I have seen (other being RDB).
It is too real to be a movie.
If you have been to that part of India, eastern UP and Bihar, you will feel as if the things happening to Samar Pratap Singh or others have, or may have, happened to you / your family / your friends.
Particularly for me it seemed more near to my heart as My Dad, though he is not a police officer like Samar Pratap Singh, is idealistic like him, and faces problems like he faces.
After watching this movie, the desire to become an IAS officer and start cleaning up the system becomes very high, it took some days to put it back under control.E Niwas, a 23 yr old boy, probably in his directorial debut has given a marvellous movie.It is story of an honest police officer, in fact an honest man who happens to be a police officer.
His only fault is that he is honest, honest as per the real definition of being honest.
Here it should be noted that in India in general and in those parts of India in particular, the definition of honesty is changed.
In those parts, If a person demands his share from the bribe that his colleague has taken, he is normal, if he does not demand, he is honest.
And if he does neither of these, he tries to stop his colleague from taking bribe, he is .....
there is no adjective to describe a person, probably people never felt the need, exactly as Eskimos did not feel the need to have a word for cactus.The only unrealistic part in the movie is its end, where Samar, after having lost his wife and kid, goes on to kill Bachchoo Yadav the villain, a rowdy who becomes politician.
But however unrealistic it be, it should have been that only.
After all it is this unrealistic stuff that differentiates between a movie and a documentary.
And Shool is a movie, not a documentary.Let us all hope for the day, when after watching Shool, instead of the end, one will feel the other things were unrealistic.http://shadkamislam.blogspot.com/.
watch this piece of Gem. excellent story, close to daily life of Indian corrupt system, and a honest police officer against it, pushing the law and order over corrupt politicians and system.
Strong script, gripping story, very tense, Manoj at his best performance, reading out the true close to reality story with his best acting.
After shool many director try to copy the same story with a bit of change in script but nothing close to this true gem.
give it a go, you wont be disappointed.
i don't usually watch Indian movies because of the length of story, but this one i watched many times, and every time i watch i enjoy it more.
Manoj is the best actor and at his best in Shool, Once true and honest police officer against the corrupt system from streets to Parliament, if you are into gangsters movie against law, this is your thing.
don't be distracted by some user reviews, its not a popcorn flick with some un necessarily sex scene and funny fight which could be torture for some people like me..
An unexpectedly bad movie from RGV.
When we see a Ram Gopal Verma movie, we expect a certain quality.
This defies all of the expectation built over the years.
The performance of Manoj Bajpai is good.
But the character development is very weak and story telling is pathetic.
To begin with to portray a police officer who is sincere and short-tempered is not new.
Add to that, the police officer is a DSP and lacks all possible traces of intelligence.
No script can possibly support such a bad story.
None of the scenes look natural, especially the one where Manoj Bajpai loses his daughter after he is provoked into a skirmish by the goondas.
Raveena has given a decent performance, but her role has not much to do with the story itself.
In the final scene Manoj Bajpai (who has been suspended from Police) walks into the police station in his khaki dress, shoots the corrupt officer, takes his pistol and heads off to the Legislative Assembly and breezes through all security and gets close to his villain.
And what does he do?He stands near the entrance and aims a shot at the villain, over and above the clamorous assembly members, when he could have walked 100 more meters and stood face to face and taken a shot.
He misses as usual and commotion ensues.
All the police are there with their pistols and MB has the villain under pistol and what does he do?
Give a 20 minute lecture, during which he raises his pistol hand to be expressive.
And what do police do?
Listen to the lecture till finally MB shoots the villain and says Jai Hind.I say do not watch this movie.
Very bad script, very bad story telling.
Then what use having a good performance?.
Great Movie, Nice dance by Shilpa Shetty.
Should be seen.
One of the few movies which touch of reality a bit in Bollywood.
The norm in Bollywood being that reality goes out of the window the moment somebody starts writing a script.
There are numerous examples of the rule.
But revenue seems to be more important than good film making.
That argument aside, Like I said this happens to be a better made movies.
Powerful performances by Bajpai and Sayaji Shinde.
The film has some funny moments balanced well into the whole script.
I simply loved that "why the sun rises from the east" question and its answer.
Good flowing speed and it doesn't bore you.
Watch it.
one of the highlight performances by Manoj Bajpai.
A superb film.
In 1990s RGV slowly post RANGEELA became a director to reckon with, he also produced several great films, SHOOL was one of them.
The film brings together the talents of Anurag Kashyap and E-Niwas together The film narrates a story of an honest cop told hundred times but treated with difference, here the cop doesn't dance on the road but is a human character.
The film is set in Bihar and looks realistic,and the film sticks to the main story,hardly shifting the focus.
The film starts off well and has several scenes well told, though many things have been witnessed before, but the manner in which it's treated is superb.
The film does get a bit filmy in the climax and may not seem convincing, but Manoj's speech is superb(A similar flaw was in E-Niwas's Bardaasht too)Direction is amazing, E-Niwas did a few more films like LKLKBK, Dumb and Bardaasht and later De Taali and hardly his films worked but got acclaim Music is decent, UP BIhar Lootne became famous and made Shilpa famous tooManoj Bajpai who became famous after SATYA did a great job yet again in Shool, no other actor could play his part better, he is simply brilliant Raveena Tandon who was busy doing films with Govinda took a break and did a good role after GHULAM E MUSTAFA where too she had an interesting cameo, she is superb Vineeth Kumar is amazing as Tiwari, Ganesh Yadav is superb, Yashpal Sharma is as usual(one of his first roles),Nagesh Bhosle too is good, Sayaji Shinde is simply marvellous in his role, sadly he got typecast after this, but he was so realistic that he makes you believe his real life persona is like that.
Virendra Saxena is good,Pratima Kazmi, Valabh Vyas are as usual The film has interesting cameos by Nawzuddin Siddiqui(playing a waiter not knowing English) who is just for one scene, Rajpal Yadav too plays a coolie,both in their struggling days. |
tt0103044 | Gam yuk fung wan II: To faan | Like the first film, this follows the fraternal bond of two inmates, once again Ching, but this time with "Brother Dragon", a boss of the "Black Rats" gang. Ching escapes the prison in order to see his son, Leung was placed in an orphanage after his grandmother died, and gets into trouble with "Assassin"'s replacement, Officer Zau. Ching escapes a second time to follow Boss Dragon after he lied about jumping off a cliff to escape. Ching looked for his son and intended to bring him along, but was refused by the social worker.
He was later apprehended by the police and was brought back to prison. On the way, Officer Zau tortures Ching. Ching gets thrown into the prison cell of the Mainland group and is beaten up by them as they thought he was the one who betrayed Brother Dragon. Skull takes a toothbrush, with a sharpened back and stabs Ching. Ching then convinces Brother Fireball and the other cellmates to set a fire in the prison cell, so as to escape from prison.
After the fire breaks out, all the prisoners assembles outside, but Ching yells for help and runs towards to the Hongkie group for help. A fight then occurs between the Hongkie group and the Mainlanders, resulting in the arrival of more police personnel, who use water jet sprayers to control the situation, while Skull goes into hiding inside the canteen. Ching follows Skull and a violent fight starts. Officer Zau and his officers witness the fight and instead of breaking it up, Zau gives the order to lock them up, watching them fighting behind the gate. Skull begs Officer Zau to open the gate but Zau refuses.
Skull self reproaches on his mistakes to Ching, and when Ching turns his back, Skull tries to stab Ching with the toothbrush again. Ching eventually knocks Skull down by dragging him over the table. Officer Zau then opens up the gate,and tries to use his baton to hit Ching, but was stopped by a good officer. Unfortunately, the good officer gets knocked down by Zau's barbaric act. Ching picks up the toothbrush and hides it while Officer Zau approaches him. Zau hits Ching's left arm and Ching uses the toothbrush, and stabs it into Officer Zau's left eye. Officer Zau screams in pain and engages in delirium. Officer Zau collapses on the floor and Ching faints. Ching awakes in a hospital and takes up his son's report card and reads it.
His cellmate commented that his son's "handwriting was not bad", also a message for his dad: "Dad, don't be naughty in prison, Don't let me worry about you, remember..." this sentence is meaningful, "Tolerate, Tolerate, Tolerate...." Ching was discharged from the hospital and was being brought back to his cell, an officer told him that he was lucky that he had an officer to stand witness for him about the fight.
A new superintendent visits the cell and it is a coincidence that they met together back at the orphanage when he escaped the prison for the first time. Ching requests the superintendent, when he visits the orphanage, to look out for his son. Before the ending credits roll, an officer says "Long time no see" to Ching, and it's Officer "Scarface" from the previous film, Ching then self mutters ... about how unlucky he is. | sadist | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0144700 | 101 Dalmatians: The Series | American video game designer Roger Dearly (Jeff Daniels) lives with his pet dalmatian Pongo in London. One day, Pongo sets his eyes on a beautiful female dalmatian named Perdy. After a frantic chase through the streets of London that ends in St. James's Park, Roger discovers that Pongo likes Perdy. Her owner, Anita Campbell-Green (Joely Richardson) falls in love with Roger when they meet. They both fall into the lake as a result of their dogs chasing each other, but they return to Roger's home and Anita accepts his proposal. They get married along with Perdita and Pongo. Anita works as a fashion designer at the House of de Vil. Her boss, the pampered and very glamorous Cruella de Vil (Glenn Close), has a deep passion for fur, going so far as to have a taxidermist, Mr Skinner, skin a white tiger at the London Zoo to make it into a rug for her. Anita, inspired by her dalmatian, designs a coat made with spotted fur. Cruella is intrigued by the idea of making garments out of actual dalmatians, and finds it amusing that it would seem as if she was wearing Anita's dog.
Anita soon discovers that Perdy is pregnant and is then informed by Nanny (Joan Plowright) that she (Anita) is, too, much to her shock. Some time later, Cruella visits their home and expresses contempt upon meeting Roger. Her initial disgust at them having a baby turns to excitement when she finds out Perdy is expecting too. Several weeks later, she returns when a litter of 15 puppies are born and offers Roger and Anita £7,500 for them, but they refuse. She dismisses Anita and vows revenge against her and Roger. She has her henchmen, Jasper and Horace (Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams) break into their home and steal the puppies while Roger and Anita are walking in the park with Pongo and Perdy. Along with 84 others dalmatians that were previously stolen, they deliver them to her ancient country estate, De Vil Mansion. She also hires Skinner to kill and skin them to create her coat.
With the family devastated at the loss of their puppies, Pongo uses the twilight bark to carry the message via the dogs and other animals of Britain, while Roger and Anita notify the Metropolitan Police. A dog who had witnessed the stolen puppies follows Jasper and Horace to the mansion, and finds all of them inside, before helping them escape under the duo's noses. They make their way to a nearby farm, where they are later joined by Pongo and Perdy. Cruella arrives at the mansion and soon discovers what has happened. Furious, she decides to carry out the job herself, while Jasper and Horace attempt to search for them also. After several mishaps, Jasper and Horace discover nearby police on the hunt for Cruella and her henchmen and hand themselves in, joining Skinner who was beaten earlier while trying to kill Lucky (one of the 15 puppies), who had been left behind. Meanwhile, Cruella tracks the puppies to the farm where they are hiding and tries to retrieve them. However, they outwit her and cause her to fall into a vat of molasses and get thrown through a window into a pig pen. Shortly afterwards, the fleeing dalmatians (including Lucky) are found and sent home via the Suffolk Constabulary, while those looking for Cruella arrive at the farm to arrest her. In the police van, she belittles Jasper, Horace, and Skinner for their incompetence before they are sprayed by a skunk which she had mistaken for her bag. Pongo, Perdy and their puppies are reunited with Roger and Anita.
After being informed that the remaining 84 puppies have no home to go to, as they have not been claimed by their original owners, they decide to adopt them, bringing the total to 101. Roger designs a successful video game featuring dalmatian puppies as the protagonists and Cruella as the villain and they move to the countryside with their millions. Roger and Anita have a baby daughter and a year later Anita becomes pregnant again. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | I absolutely love the series 100-percent!.
I think the series is a brilliant addition to the whole 101 Dalmatians franchise.
It blends together all the different versions of the story: the live-action film, the animated film, and the original Dodie Smith book.
My favourite characters from the show are Lucky, because he's brave, Two-Tone, because she's lovely, and Cruella, because she is an interesting villain.
I'm not saying this show is a failure, I'm saying that what they have all done on making the show has paid off very successfully.
I have seen just about 7 episodes of it in a week and not the whole show.
It will be lovely if Disney allowed the show to be released on DVD, even though Disney haven't decided on that yet.
I enjoyed it, and I'm sure all fans of the show did as well.
I enjoyed this show and I give it an excellent 10/10..
Best show ever!.
This is probably my favorite show, I have all the episodes on tape, I have all but 101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London adventure.
I don't care what that other dude says; I am 12 and I watch this show, people laugh at me for watching it but I don't care.
The greatest Disney creation was 101 Dalmatians, Disney and Dodie Smith were were the greatest people in the world to do all this.
You can call me Gipdac, I am on a mission from god to make the world remember 101 Dalmatians, join me my fellow 101 Dalmatians brothers, go to my Cadpig fan site and let us vote for a DVD set, let us black out the non-believers and fight for it!
If you want to join me: Gipdac, and the other 101's, E- mail me at jnj1@sbcglobal.net!.
It was cool!!!.
I loved this show!
My favorite was Tripod.
My fave episode is when the De Vil family tried to get rid of the Dearly family.
Yup, those were the days...
It's on Toon Disney if you want to see.
I recommend this to any kid that loves the movie, or person that is young at heart..
It's NOT as good as the movies...it outdoes the movies!.
Hey, I like it a lot!As a kid, I grew up with the original animated 1961 movie and I liked it plenty.
I also paid for the 1996 live-action movie (with Glenn Close as the diabolical Cruella DeVil) and I own the DVD of "101 Dalmatians 2: Patch's London Adventure".
I've enjoyed them all.
The only "Dalmatians" film I haven't seen (thus far) is "102 Dalmatians".
(would anyone tip me off if it's any good?
Or should I just not bother?)However, my personal favorite "101D" medium is Disney's "101 Dalmatians: the Series".
It combines many themes of the existing material (Dodie Smith book, 1961 and 1996 movies).
But still does its own things, too.Our main pups include brave Lucky, who gets a strong personality mirroring his character in the book, lovable Rolly, the gourmand of the pups, and sweet little Cadpig, who is the true runt of the litter.
Also there is Spot the chicken, who longs to be a dog.
I find them all extremely amiable and enjoyable to watch.
They are usually foiling Cruella's schemes for their land, or outwitting Lt. Pug (I'll get to him later), or sneaking into Grutely, or...just having fun, making a very likable show.I also like the majority of the other characters.
There's Tripod, the resident athlete dalmatian pup, he has only has three legs and is a positive "handicapped" character.
Patch is designed after his character in the book (he's supposed to be large).
Pongo and Perdy are much like their characters in the original animated movie.
Lucky's nemesis Mooch the Mutt is like all the jerks you knew in school.
Two-Tone is really cute (she even has a pierced ear).
Roger and Anita are written like their characters in the live-action movie, they were much more involving in that film.
Of course, Cruella DeVil is now their neighbor, constantly scheming to take over Dearly Farm.
Even Cruella can now have funny moments.
The one-shot characters are also charming and likable (a popular example is Lucky's friend Blaze the German Shepard pup from "Dog's Best Friend").
The only character I just don't like is Lt. Pug.
He feels rather tacked on, and the show never benefits from him: just a weak link.I personally like the modern theme (I really just don't need a "That '60s Show"), and the American setting (evidence is through American flags in many places, cars driving on the right-hand side of the road, American Southerners, etc).
It makes the characters more relatable, and the little truths the main pups discover in their lives lend a Simpson-esque feel.
The focus on these modern-day puppies reminds me of "Tiny Toon Adventures" (another show I loved and still love.
^_^)So, yes, I love this show.
I believe it is better than the movies.
It's just too good.
Giving this show a chance on Toon Disney, I'm glad I took the time to see it.
If the guys at Disney are listening, I'd just love to see more of this show.
I'll recommend it to anyone.
When the good points can override the flaws easily, and can even outdo a favorite film from my childhood, how can I refuse?
Of course, you can't go wrong with so many cute puppies.It receives an enthusiastic 101/10..
Entertaining and enjoyable little series.
I used to watch this show along with Aladdin all the time as a child.
One time the Dearly family decided to move into General Smedley's old farm but Rolly, Lucky, and Cadpig didn't want to.
Another time the main puppies decided to adopt an elephant that ran away from the circus.
In another episode some pups decided to help out pug due to the fact there was a mean dog.
Another time Lucky turned into a jerk to get somebody to be his partner on a game show.
Another time Roly fell in love with Dumpling.
This show can still be found on Toon Disney..
Fully an average cartoon series.
Although the original Disney cartoon for the 101 Dalmations was, in my very humble opinion, an awesome show, the series left much to be desired.Instead of being cute, or old fashioned, or even great storytelling, the series focused on several of the puppies themselves as they were growing up on a farm.
The recurring characters are mostly the puppies along with a few other animals thrown in for some diversity.I think that perhaps if I were much younger, and this was one of my choices for a morning viewing, I would most certainly review my options to see if anything else caught my fancy.
Considering this as a choice only if nothing else suited my early morning cartoon desires.I do like the fact that most every episode teaches some sort of lesson, and it does so without the requirement of going the gross path that some modern cartoons are going, but then I would expect little else of Disney and thus I place them a little higher on the expectation pedestal.Just my opinion.
I hope that you give the show a shot for yourself and then make your own opinion.Thanks.Dan. Personally I find it on the average side.
Just for the record, this is not as good as the 1961 animated film, which is a classic, but I think it is better than the sequel, which I was disappointed by.
However, this series while having some good moments wasn't particularly good, in my opinion that is.I liked some of the characters, especially the brave Lucky and the lovely Two-Tone, and the voice acting on the whole is very well done bringing some energy and spirit.
Plus every episode moves briskly and the theme tune is pretty funky.However, there are things I don't like.
The animation is not great to me, lacking in colour and too scratchy- before you point the gun at me I know people say that the 1961 film has a scratchy animation style, maybe so, but in an elegant and sophisticated way, whereas the animation here is rushed and lacks finesse, not to mention straight-to- video quality.
The stories can be very predictable as well, and the writing while it has its funny and cool moments was uninspired.
Then there is Spot, I cannot begin to describe how infuriated I was by Spot, such an unnecessary and annoying character.
And I was disappointed by how Cruella was like here, Cruella was truly evil and just a wonderful villainess, here she has lost her class and elegance and her motives get tiresome.Overall, it has its moments but it should have been better.
5/10 Bethany Cox. A nice show indeed.
Ah, a show that is very nice indeed.
Has all that a show could want, comedy, family oriented...stuff...
Though, finding the show on TV is basically impossible now with the addition of the whole Jetix block (I myself haven't seen it, but have heard of it) replacing this show and a few others.
You wont find it on DVD either though, as the series hasn't even been around to being produced for DVD, whether Disney wants to or not.Basically, if you are a fan of the series, you can wait for it to come to DVD, but me, if it does, it does, if it doesn't, it doesn't, simple as that really.
I'm not worried one bit, however, it was nice to have it on when it was on.My rating for this show is...an average one, probably....
6/10 (SpongeBob out does this series either way).
Not too much of an enjoyable cartoon!.
For a while, I thought this cartoon was good at first, but then I say episodes where Lucky, Rolly, Cadpig, and Spot ended up being punished or grounded.
My only favorite episodes of this cartoon were Lucky to Be Alone where Lucky got to live with rich dalmatians and Love 'Em and Flea 'Em where there was a touching romantic ending between Lucky and Two-Tone.
I do like Two-Tone, but I think Cadpig is the cutest pup around since she's so little and adorable.
This cartoon was not all that fun because if there's one thing I hate it's when parents get tough with their children.
I'm just glad this cartoon isn't on Toon Disney anymore.
If it was, I would only record those two episodes mentioned above.
If this show had no episodes where the pups were grounded or being punished in any way, I would give it a 10 out of 10, but now that I have seen all episodes, I'm going to give it a 5 out of 10. |
tt0008891 | 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. | fantasy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0102590 | Once Around | The Bellas are a close-knit family of Italian-Americans living in Boston, Massachusetts. Joe, the head of the family, owns a construction company. He's been married to Marilyn for 34 years and they have 3 children—Tony, Renata and Jan. Jan is about to get married, leading Renata to wonder why boyfriend Rob has not yet proposed to her. Once Rob reveals that he never plans on marrying her, she leaves him and moves back in with her parents.
Renata travels to the Caribbean, where she takes a course on selling condominiums. She meets Sam Sharpe, a highly successful salesman who makes a speech at a training seminar. They become instantly attracted and Sam accompanies her back to Boston, where Renata introduces him to her family. A chain-smoking, abrasive Sam is overly eager to please. While the majority of the Bellas give Sam a chance, Jan seems to have a particular dislike of him. This upsets Renata and the siblings' rapport becomes strained. Jan eventually apologizes and gives Renata her blessing.
Sam and Renata get married, with Sam relocating his business from New York to Boston so he can spend as much time with Renata as possible. At a memorial for Joe's late mother, Sam attempts to sing a song in her honor, but the Bellas, especially Marilyn, tell him it is highly inappropriate. Renata tells Sam he's tearing her family apart. They reconcile, and the next day Renata gives birth to their child. At the baptism, Sam suffers a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital.
Now in a wheelchair, Sam is welcomed home to the Bella residence to celebrate Christmas as a family. During dinner, he lights up a cigarette, which an irritated Renata throws into a glass of wine. On a frozen lake, Renata goes skating while Sam and their daughter watch from a distance. Sam passes away while still holding his child. After the funeral, Renata mourns but is grateful for the time they spent together and for Sam changing her life for the better. Renata's father directs the funeral procession through several rotations on a traffic round-about, something Sam greatly enjoyed during his life. | dramatic, romantic, home movie | train | wikipedia | It is a richly textured, completely unique character study of a youngish woman named Renata, played superbly by Holly Hunter in what is arguably her best performance.
Renata comes from a close Italian family outside of Boston, and has drifted from job to job without much confidence or direction.
A compelling and utterly captivating story ensues, which unlike most small films, takes major risks, and allows every character to be completely human.The story deals with the power of acceptance, of love, of the magic and complete idiocynracy of personal connection, and of what it means to be alive and human.
Yet the film is equally balanced in showing his many kindnesses to Renata and her entire family; his generosity, his love for her, and his pride that she loves him.
Renata tells her parents, "This is MY adventure!" and when you watch this, I think you will agree..
I've seen this movie probably 10 times and I watched it again yesterday with the love of my life.
Sam Sharp's behavior can be painful at times to watch, but he is so full of childlike belief in the goodness of everyone else that you can't help but feel real affection for him and no more so than when he kisses Joe Bella on the cheek in the most tender and loving way even after the cruel way he was treated.
Gena Rowlands,Danny Aiello, Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter are all so believable in their roles.
When Marilyn Bella says to Sam Sharp "I will not allow you to make my husband's family uncomfortable"(or words to that effect) she is like a mother lion defending her cubs.
I love this movie and now I start to tear up even when something good is happening because I know what's coming next.
An extremely well-crafted script developing a wide range of individual psychologies within an extended family, together with good casting and acting make this an exceptional film.
Dreyfuss plays the most enigmatic character, the one "tearing apart" the family, and so has the central role, but his past remains a mystery.
He delivers a materialistic and self-gratifying speech, with horrifically inappropriate humor, to a flock of aspiring condominium salespeople and proceeds to "fall in love" and quickly marry the immature "baby" member of the film's subject family.
Dreyfuss' character has large gaps, gaping scars - like the ragged edges of a piece of a puzzle, a piece that fits perfectly into the poorly developed, ragged edges of the family's youngest and otherwise socially inept and professionally helpless daughter.
As said, this film develops the characters of a extended family - not just the two above.
A funny and serious movie about a man who meets his wife and tries to fit in with her family.
The trials and tribulations that each member of the family go through upon meeting 'Sam'(Richard Dreyfuss) and the things said amongst the characters are sad, funny and a good representation of life within families.
Danny Aiello plays the father of Holly Hunter and really makes the movie in my opinion.
Without him being the way he is, the other central character played by Holly Hunter, would not be able to change and grow and ultimately be able to separate herself from her parents.
I also agree that you have to accept (like Her family) Dreyfus's character for who he is, allow it to be part of the plot.
This is not a GREAT movie, but a darn good one, with a touching ending..
"Once Around" has a great cast, an excellent story line and a song track that I just love.
Any film that has Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter as leads and Gena Rowlands as a supporting actress should be a must see film and I don't know how this one got passed me when it was first released.
Danny Aiello gives a great performance without going over the top and a young, Laura San Giacoma, before her "Just Shoot Me" days gives a glimpse of the star she should have become.
Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter star in an offbeat comedy where the characters are the punchlines.
Although Danny Aiello and Gena Rowlands add to the movie, it is Hunter's story.
A touching story that keeps the character development moving until the end of the movie.
I don't know why, but every time I watch Once Around I'm assured in the knowledge that it is un-important how unlike or disagreeing family members are, no argument can tear them apart.
The head of the family Joe Bella, wonderfully played by Danny Aiello, is about to retire.
After Jan Bella (Laura San Giacoma) is married, her sister, Renata (Holly Hunter), asks her boyfriend to marry her.
There she meets larger-then-life character Sam Sharpe (Richard Dreyfuss), and falls in love with him.
Once he becomes part of the Bella family, the usually close-knitted family starts to experience difficulties, and arguments become a daily occurrence.Holly Hunger and Richard Dreyfuss have brought their talents together before with good result (Always), and are as successful here in creating chemistry between the two characters.
The one character that stood out the most, in my mind,is Danny Aiello's family patriarch.
What could improve the ending is have daughter (Hunter) and father (Aiello) walk hand-in-hand in the snow, to symbolize her journey home and finds love and support where she always knew were there.
I loved the way the film portrayed the dynamics in the family.
Renata finally falls in love and then has to deal, at first, with her close-knit family's not accepting her husband.
Yes, her husband is different and a bit loud....but he has a heart of gold and loves Renata.
After watching the preview a local tv-station broadcast a couple of times I expected a kind of lame film about a silly romantic girl who falls for the wrong guy who presents himself as a rich spoiled arrogant piece of work and then turns out to be the imposter type.
The only reasons I decided to watch it nonetheless were a lack of alternatives at the time, Holly Hunter and good old Richard Dreyfuss.
Richard can do the arrogant -yet loving, caring- schmuck on autopilot and clearly has a ball portraying his character, so full of energy.
The rest of the cast also display great performance in this little film that keeps surprising.
They had nothing to lose and everything to gain by developing their relationship with him.I actually felt the family members were envious of Renata and Sam and their love for each other.It's a great study in family dynamics.
but let me tell you that Sam became the way the Bella´s family feel alive!
I falled in love with Richard Dreyfruss with this character!
Richard and Holly make me cry and laugh every time I see the movie...
The lead, Richard Dreyfuss, is obnoxious and annoying and the characters' behavior doesn't always make sense.
Yes, it is true that Sam (Richard Dreyfuss) is an obnoxious and over-the-top salesman.
A splendid scenario about love, a masterpiece of play on the part of Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter.
This scenario is original because it brings the idea, the topic of a rich, disproportionate, dazzling, invading and perfectly sincere love which happens to submerge all the family of beautiful woman involved, and this is due to the fact they forgot that kind of love they haven't known for a long time; one could love so much, and the joy could be so large, so big, so powerful, that the faith carried in such a love would upset any false life, superficial, timid, afraid way of living.
Yes, Lasse Hallström shamelessly pushes the limits of sentimentality (heck, it's a trademark with him), but I love this movie even at its sappiest.
Richard Dreyfuss creates a character that miraculously manages to be utterly lovable and repulsive at the same time.It's a film filled with surprises and unforgettable moments.
Richard Dreyfuss, in his patented-jerk mode, plays the self-centered, provoking, irritating new husband of family-oriented nice girl Holly Hunter, a woman in her thirties who has never been married before.
Once Hunter, her parents and her sister come to realize that he's nothing but a pain, the film hits a snag and doesn't have anywhere to turn except to sentiment (which doesn't quite play).
Nice supporting cast, including Gena Rowlands and Danny Aiello as Hunter's mom and dad, but a mostly unpleasant experience.
I love roundabouts and this movie is filled with several rounds of them, Renata's father (Dany Aiello) has a special attraction with the excitement it brings to drive a car in a roundabout and takes the chance every time he's able to.I've seen this movie lots of times and I can't believe it's been 18 years since it was released.
It's a fresh, funny, romantic Italian family movie and I do believe it's one of the best performances of Holly Hunter and also Richard Dreyfuss.I love when the father sings her "the glory of love" at the wedding, it's such a nice scene and also the way Renata sings "Fly me to the moon" all the time after she meets Sam..
The mousy daughter (Holly Hunter) of a blue-collar Boston clan finds her true love (Richard Dreyfuss) on a bogus business trip to the islands.
Hunter gets pregnant, Dreyfuss never slows down or eases off, and the friction he creates within her family slowly comes to a boil.
Part comedy, part drama, ONCE AGAIN is worth a look by the women in the audience and those men who will not mind watching a film that smells, however faintly, of a chick flick.
It takes a helluva long time for Aiello to come around to Dreyfuss, but watch for the key turning point, a moment that had me blubbering like Hunter's newborn.
Great feel-good movie!
The cast was incredible, and you want to hate Dreyfuss, but can't help but love him.
Yes, Richard Dreyfuss plays an arrogant man.
Today's families need to see this film.Yes, Richard Dreyfuss plays an arrogant man.
Today's families need to see this film..
I love the music (the one song!) and I really enjoyed the cast, yes, even Dreyfuss.
ONCE AROUND (1991) ***1/2 Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Danny Aiello, Gena Rowlands, Laura San Giacomo, Danton Stone, Roxanne Hart.
Warmly engaging comedy about a very close eccentric Boston family whose eldest daughter (winsome Hunter) suddenly marries a seemingly too good to be true Lithuanian man (Dreyfuss) with the clan up in arms with one another.
The character Richard Dreyfuss plays in this film is annoying but very interesting.
Danny Aiello shows us that he is capable of some terrific moments and Holly Hunter is good as usual.
The Oscar winning Holly Hunter ("Renata") delivers one of her unique and consistently brilliant performances, she accurately portrays a woman stuck in a rut facing the pressures of being slightly older and unmarried with no real career and a very possessive Italian American family.
The film is also very funny in a "When Harry met Sally" kinda of way and by the end you will want to play the Frank Sinatra tune "Fly me to the Moon" again and again..
Sweet movie for those who believe in true love!.
Renata(Holly Hunter) and Sam(Richard Dreyfuss) are soul mates, but she has the most protective family ever featured in a movie.
He sings "Glory of Love" and "Fly Me to the Moon" in a touching way, if you already heard him singing in movies, Hudson Hawk(1991) for example, you will understand why is so nice to hear his nice Italian accent.
What's worse, it pairs cute-as-a-button Holly Hunter with the obnoxious Richard Dreyfuss, who looks like Jack Warden (venerable character actor and "Big Ben" in the epic "Problem Child" series).
I kept expecting exchanges like:Holly Hunter: I love you.Richard Dreyfuss: You got me a whore?!?!?A weird cinematic experience..
Most likely, it is all of the above.Holly Hunter stars as Renata, an unlucky-in-love Bostonian who falls for Sam (Richard Dreyfuss), a smooth-talking salesman who is similar to her parents in age but worlds away from them in personality.
Conflicts arise when Sam, a strong-willed Lithuanian, forces his beliefs on Renata's equally strong-willed Italian parents, Joe and Marilyn, played by Gena Rowlands and Danny Aiello.The performances are excellent, though Hunter's exaggerated New England accent is a distraction at times.
A scene with Marilyn castigating Sam at a funeral stands as an example of the pivotal performances Rowlands delivers even when she's a supporting character.
I can see why many people love it, though, and I have a few movies like this in my own favorites category.
"Once" is a good movie owing to director Hallström ("Gilbert Grape") and stars like Richard Dreyfuss ("The Goodbye Girl"), Danny Aiello ("City Hall") and Gina Rowlands ("Something To Talk About").Writer Maria Scotch Marmo tells a story about a young woman, Renata (Holly Hunter is on his worst) who falls in love with a contradictary personality called Sam Sharp (Dreyfuss).
Sharp is a rich and successful agent who has an ability to persuade everybody to love him except Renata's father, the newly retired Joe Bella (Aiello).
The only vulnerable point of "Once" is the lead character Holly Hunter herself.
Joe (Danny Aiello) is the king of his domain who's been married for almost 35 years to his classy wife Marilyn (Gena Rowlands) and have three adult children Tony (Danton Stone), Jan (Laura San Giacomo) and Renata (Holly Hunter).
There she meets a hotshot real estate agent named Sam Sharpe (Richard Dreyfuss) and is immediately attractive to his high-spirited, confident and spontaneous appearance.
Sam eventually marries Renata and relocates his business from New York to Boston to spend more quality time with Renata and the rest of the Bella clan.
At his funeral, Renata gives a eulogy thanking Sam for changing her life for the better and in his honour, Joe leads the procession on a traffic round-about.Most people under the middle-aged demographics might find this story to be uncool and just another clichéd formulaic romantic comedy.
Sam and Renata truly deserve each other and their reasons to fall for each other is what drives people to see this film.
Renata loves Sam because he's fun, caring and uplifting in charm, plus he's wealthy.
Sam loves Renata because she's intelligent, easy-going and care-free.
And at times it felt Sam's outrageous personality was too manipulative for Renata who just seems too easily charmed by him.
I saw this movie last night TWICE on Bravo and loved it.
I have lived in Boston and it is the portrayal of what happens to a very real Boston-style family (has heart, but doesn't like to show it off too much) when an obnoxious but full-of-heart real estate salesman comes into their life.
Another nice thing here is that events are not just dropped, they are picked up again: we start with Holly Hunter wanting to cuddle with her parents when she breaks up with her boyfriend and moves back home.
At the end the parents ask if she wants to cuddle, and she says, "I love you guys" but she can't do that any more, now that she's a woman.
The story is told through a progression of family celebrations and ceremonies, which bring out most of their character and tell us the most in a quiet way.
The cast is wonderful, especially the re-teaming of Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter (Both were fantastic in the film, "Always," too).
Renata Bella (Hunter)comes from a close knit family.
They fall in love and she takes him to meet her family, who are dismayed by his behavior and equally dismayed when Sam marries Renata.
A different but very close family is torn apart when their daughter Renata meets and brings home the arrogant, obnoxious and much older Sam Sharp."Once Around" is too akin to "Moonstruck", with its old fashioned melodies and family drama.
We have all met Richard Dreyfuss character - loud, passionate, enthusiastic & overbearingly positive - life is pure joy for him & Holly Hunter falls madly in love.
Superb performances, particularly from Dreyfuss & excellent dialogue - this is a little gem - think this gave the director his big break & whilst good films followed, Chocolate, Cider House Rules etc.
I enjoy Holly Hunter's acting so I thought I would watch this film "Once Around." I found Sam's character to be wildly inappropriate and selfish.
The funeral scene in which Renata's father had buried his mother was particularly telling of Sam's poor qualities.
As the Renata's family circled her and her little baby girl, Sam brought in some musicians so he could sing his damn song.
Sam was also too friendly with Renata's mother, sister, and almost every other female character.
While not a total jerk in regards to providing for Renata and her family, he lacked the moral intellect and partnership skills necessary for true human relationships.Sam soured my viewing and enjoyment of the film.
The characters are well drawn and the wonderful Richard Dreyfuss steals the whole film (for me).
It explores the relationships within the family.After being rejected by her boyfriend at her sister's wedding, Holly Hunter meets Richard Dreyfuss by chance and love blossoms from the first second.
Problem is that the Dreyfuss character, a free spirit with a golden heart, goes overboard and gets off to a bad start with Hunter's parents, Danny Aiello and Gena Rowlands.Dreyfuss means well, but his persistence is overwhelming and causes a family fracas.As is so true to life, it takes a major illness to resolve things.This is a marvelous story of found and lost love..
SPOILERS!!!!!I've seen this movie several times now and if it's ever on I cannot helpmyself from watching it again all the way through as I did 2 nights ago.This is the story of a very close knit Italian family living in Boston(love the accents). |
tt0862707 | Goldilocks and the Three Bears | In Southey's tale, three anthropomorphic bears – "a Little, Small, Wee Bear, a Middle-sized Bear, and a Great, Huge Bear" – live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. Each of these "bachelor" bears has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed. One day they make porridge for breakfast, but it's too hot to eat, so take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. An old woman named silver hair approaches the bears' house. As she has been sent out by her family, she is a disgrace to them. She is impudent, bad, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty, and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction. She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. Assured that no one is home, she walks in. The silver haired old lady eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Prowling about, she finds the bears' beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The dark end of the tale is reached when the bears return. Wee Bear finds his empty bowl, his broken chair, and silver hair in his bed and cries, "Somebody has been lying in my bed, and here she is!" silver hair starts, runs away, breaks her neck and goes to the hospital. | fantasy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt2461520 | Man Down | A U.S. Marine named Gabriel Drummer (Shia LaBeouf) has a wife, Natalie (Kate Mara), and a son, Jonathan (Charlie Shotwell). Jonathan gets bullied at the school because Natalie said "I love you" to him in front of his schoolmates. Gabriel and Jonathan come up with "man down" as a secret code for "I love you". Before serving a tour to Afghanistan, Gabriel promises to get in touch with Jonathan. Gabriel's best friend and fellow Marine Devin Roberts (Jai Courtney), who injured his arm, stays at the city and takes care of Natalie and Jonathan for a while.
Gabriel serves a tour to Afghanistan. Later, he is joined by Devin. They are attacked by the Afghan armed group. Devin is fatally shot and apologizes to Gabriel. Gabriel finds a memo, on which Devin's password for a video chatting website is written. Gabriel accesses to the website and realizes that Natalie had a relationship with Devin.
Gabriel is interviewed by Captain Peyton (Gary Oldman) about the incident in Afghanistan. Peyton is concerned about Gabriel's mental condition. However, Gabriel insists that he is okay and leaves Peyton's office.
When Gabriel returns home, he finds that the city is devastated. Accompanied with Devin, he searches desperately for the whereabouts of Natalie and Jonathan. The two encounter Charles (Clifton Collins, Jr.), who has an envelope of the letter that Gabriel wrote to Jonathan. Devin scuffles with Charles and accidentally shoots him. Gabriel finds Jonathan and takes him out. The police surround them.
Coming into the building that Gabriel and Jonathan are hiding, Natalie talks to Gabriel. Gabriel realizes that he is confused. It is revealed that the city is not devastated. Devin died in Afghanistan. The one who shot Charles is not Devin but Gabriel. He cries and apologizes to Natalie and Jonathan. Immediately after, he is shot by the police. Jonathan runs up to him. Gabriel tries to hand over a memo to Jonathan. It says "man down". | alternate reality | train | wikipedia | Wow the critics went hard on this film and I don't know why.It's probably one of the most under-rated films I've seen, and I'm glad I did, as it was excellent.I'm not a huge Shia LaBeouf fan but his performance in this was outstanding!
Although I'm not a fan of back and forth time lines (I actually hate too much of it), this was done very well, and it was necessary to keep the viewer guessing and in suspense of what happens next.The film did very well in getting a strong point across about vets and PTSD.
As much as you might hate him personally, he knows a good story when he sees one.This film I had heard very little about, I knew it had something to do with war, but not much else.
I kind of started losing interest and was barely paying attention, when all of a sudden...The movie took a crazy turn, and I realized what was really going on, and why everything seemed confusing and off with the timing.
The movie is about war and love and there are many film about that, but the way they did "man down" I've never seen before.
Here I thought I was going to watch some post apocalyptic film, and yeah I do like those sorts, but this film just left me breathless.
I know the subject at hand is politically a very touchy subject, but no matter what side of the fence you sit at look at the damage that is still done to the best part of our generation, young men and women!Sadly war is and has been part of humanity's own downfall, but seeing the numbers regarding the forgotten heroes at the end brought tears to this stone cold hearted tough as nails old mans eyes.I don't know what else to say but to watch this film, one of the better on the subject for years.10 out of 10 for me, and yeah I don't even care for the main lead actor, but man did he nail this role on the head.Bring back our soldiers and look after those that needs us..
I got invested in the protagonist as the story unravels from two ends at the same time, it jumps between present and backstory explaining Shias behavior little by little as the movie goes and the ending had me pleasantly surprised since it came very unsuspecting.
Overall it is a good movie, but it could have been better.+ Great cast - Cheap production.
I just saw this tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival (with Shia LaBeouf and Kate Mara in the audience), in the lovely Roy Thomson Hall, and had absolutely no expectations going in.
The premise sounded interesting (a marine returns from the Afghanistan war to post-apocalyptic America in search of his wife and son) , but in all honesty Shia was a bit of a red flag.
But when it comes to Man Down, just because its main character suffers from PTSD episodes doesn't make it a good film.
In fact, it's what makes it bad because here it treats PTSD as if it's some form of schizophrenia, when the film's main character former U.S Marine Gabriel Drummer (Shia LeBeouf in his second collaboration with director Dito Montiel) is put through a desperate search for his estranged son and wife.
If you can be bothered to look up what connects the two films then might you be filled with another sloppy 'big reveal' feeling.The best thing about this film is Clifton Collins Jr and he didn't really have a big part, but you just get the feeling that if he playing LaBeouf's character, then it would've turned out a lot better..
Like his character says in the film: "You don't discuss it." (BTW --there were a fair number of Shia-haters at the screening that just wanted to trash him.
Shia Labeouf's acting in this movie is absolutely top notch.
Man Down is a quite frankly, banal....There's nothing original on offer here.It incessantly flip flops between past and present events, with a post apocalyptic world on the one hand and a past life, that looks like a recruitment video for the US military.
The only reason this has good reviews here must be because the movie tries to gain sympathy for the murican troops..Unless your a no-argument-against-it supporter of the troops, or unless you are madly in love with lebouf, stay clear.
Shia Labeouf delivers a great performance in the film as he carries but overall the plot and style may seem like a letdown.
It could have been written a little better, but Shia LaBeouf delivered a powerful and an emotionally driven performance about PTSD.
Personally I'm not a fan, but his acting in this film is top quality, and he gets excellent support from Jai Courtney and Kate Mara.
Unbearably, we feel as though we are aging when we watch this film, as Kate and Shia and Gary insanely perform with near perfection within a structure possessed by incompetence and grounded down by ineptitude.
Most pathetic of all, the manifold and multiform editing of Man Down, trying far too hard to encapsulate and replicate the phenomenology of the trauma of PTSD, feels completely cheap and derivative, trying to illuminate a condition the creators of the film clearly know absolutely nothing about, inauthentically trying to make us believe what is real and what is not is a clever plot device rather an an absolute failure in all things imaginable.
Perhaps this movie and story would have hit me harder had I not recently watched Michael King's documentary When War Comes Home.
That said, the dramatization offers a few worthy moments.The story/stories revolve around a new Marine named Gabriel Drummer (played by Shia LaBeouf).
We are bounced between three timeframes: a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world; the time Gabriel is serving on the frontlines of Afghanistan; the pre-Marines time when we see Gabriel as a loving father, husband and friend
he's the kind of dad who surprises his son with a birthday puppy, and creates a secret phrase so he can tell his son he loves him without embarrassing him at school.An interrogation sequence between Gabriel and the military counselor (played by the great Gary Oldman) provides the film's best scenes
the two actors go head to head in what is really psychological warfare in a trailer office.
Once we are provided the details of the incident, we fully understand why Gabriel is an emotional mess, and basically shut-down from conversation and life.Kate Mara appears as Gabriel's wife and Charlie Shotwell (Captain Fantastic) as his son.
The effects of war provided plenty to make the point director Montiel is going for, and the cheap/clumsy gimmick only distracts.LaBeouf is in fine form and in quite a different role than his quick-with-a-quip charmer in this year's American Honey.
Can't believe it doesn't have at least 7 rating here.Incredible movie that makes a brilliant point about lack of mental health and overall support for vets..
I was taken on an emotional rollercoaster and couldn't take my eyes off it , as the story unfolds it shows the stark reality of returning from a war zone broken and not helped in any way, I think it's a good film about a terrible thing that happens to our soilders.
What a measage it carries!Alot of the critics reviews don't seem to like this film but I think thats because they simply don't understand and haven't taken the time to be sucked into the story line and see the wider picture.Throughout this film, the story will take you on a rollercoaster of confusion and feelings.
It takes just that bit of patience and understanding to realise what is going on, and that is just like the real thing.This film has really opened my eyes and I thank it for that.Again, brilliant movie, ignore what the critics say and just put the time in to truly understand it and enjoy..
Well played, well directed and defiantly well made.What a spin on a end to world movie, to use the topic of bringing the challenges faced by soldiers who have killed.
Gabriel Drummer (Shia LaBeouf) is a marine with his comrade Devin Roberts (Jai Courtney) searching for his family in a post apocalyptic America where they encounter Charles (Clifton Collins, Jr.).
My opinion-.This very good film was realized by Dito Montiel, I can say that he worked very well his subject by showing us a film from the start or he just transposed his idea to a post-apocalyptic war movie.
It must be said that his idea was superbly treated well and that it is only at the end of the film that one really understands the strength he has given and is able to treat with rigor a most dramatic subject And which affects a very large number of soldiers on the post-traumatic séquelles that these wars are reaching to the deepest of the human mind in their situations often dramatic.
This film is treated with subtlety, to take us to images of apocalyptic warfare such that the human spirit who has undergone the traumatisme feels it in the depths of its mind, confused by all the dramas that awaken in them this fear of a future For it can not be otherwise for many who are more sensitive to all these events created by wars and their disasters.
The film follows the story of a soldier deployed in Iraq with his unit, and who is precisely found in a dramatic situation that disturbed him deeply and reached the depths of his mind that will govern later His way of reacting to himself on his return home.
"They're not feelings sir, they're real." Gabriel Drummer (LaBeouf) is a loving father and husband who is in the marines and is ready to ship off to war along with his best friend Devin (Courtney).
LaBeouf's acting in this is the best I have ever seen him do and the movie is almost worth watching for that.
The critics definitely got it wrong with this one it's a great movie.
Completely different from usual war flim , this movies sheds light on the aspects of war and post war , the plot , storyline is amazing keeps you guessing thru out the film it starts off a little slow but then it starts to hit you non stop.
Shia Lebouf was great in the movie and the ending was unexpected..
No, it's not a post-apocalyptic SF movie like there have been so many in recent years (both excellent and bad).
When reading the quotes of digital articles, you'll lose the will to watch this seemingly horrible film : "Man down is a Cliché-Ridden Mess", "A meandering mystery", "A disappointing hodgepodge of ideas and styles" and also "A convoluted tangle of idiotic time-lines".
The first story-line deals with the family life of Gabriel and the start of his training as a marine which was recommended by his best friend Devin (Jai Courtney).
I also appreciated the decent acting performances of Shia LaBeouf, Jai Courtney, Charlie Shotwell and Kate Mara.
By the time the third act rolls around and you see what's really going on, you're emotionally sucker punched when least expecting it, and the film's quiet, devastating anti-war message is hit home with the force of a sledgehammer.
I can't say too much more without ruining it, but it's one of the most thoughtful, understanding war films I've seen, one that gets the reality of what it's like to have seen such atrocities, and come out of it a different person.
This may only be the third of fourth review I've written, but I felt that people should hear some praise about this movie because it really was a surprisingly good.Shia Labeouf does a superb job.
Shia LaBeouf never strike me at a actors i only know him as the main character of Transformer series.None of his filmography leave any impact on me and lately he also involving with a lot of crazy stuff on newspaper so he also very bad in public eye but after read a news about his latest movie Man Down being bombed super hard at the box office and had a very low rating on IMDb so i decide to check the movie out and you guys know what?For the first time ever Shia LaBeouf truly shine in my eyes at a actors.Don't read the description because it might give you a false expectations when the movie describe as a post- apocalyptic thriller in fact it a very heartbreaking drama story about a U.S. Marine played by Shia when he go through a journey full of blood and sand just to get back with his son.The relationship with his son is the best aspect of this movie and Shia deliver the most raw and gritty performance yet in his career.The movie kinda messy at first when it often jump back and front to different time line that can really hard to follow but when you get used to it in the end when all the puzzle pieces together it very surprising and caught me off guard.I guess the main problem with this movie for me is beside Shia all the supported characters very blank.
Just watched Man Down (the one that sold a single ticket in the U.K. in theaters opening weekend)...you can hate Shia LeBeouf and his political stances all you want but that was a BRILLIANT performance.
Shia LaBeouf, Kate Mara & Charlie Shotwell all delivered stunning performances and I hope get recognized.
I can only explain this movie's poor reviews on its staunch anti-war message and focus on veteran's mental health, troubling subjects in today's media, especially America's increasingly militarized society.
It's a shame the critics were so depreciative & derogatory of Shia's performance & film director..
The film reteams star Shia LaBeouf with director Dito Montiel; the two first worked together on the 2006 critically acclaimed drama 'A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS'.
I respect it a lot more than most critics do.Gabriel Drummer (LaBeouf) is a marine who recently experienced a horrendous tragedy, while at war in Afghanistan.
At the same time we also see Drummer interviewed by a military Captain (Oldman) about his recent traumatic experiences at war.Right from the beginning of the movie I knew things were not as they seemed.
This predictability is the weakest part of the movie, and I can understand why some critics would rate it lower because of this, but the rest of the film is still pretty good.
His tremendous acting is definitely the highlight of the movie, but it's also a very emotional (and thoughtful) look at the traumas of war; and it takes a very poignant look at those suffering from PTSD.
It's a pity that many viewers would probably lose interest before it comes to the end.But again, I'd say this film is worth 90 minutes of your life, especially if you like the kind of war movies like Jarhead and American Sniper..
Even if you won't like the movie you will enjoy Shia's performance.
The film includes performances from Gary Oldman, Kate Mara, and Jai Courtney.
This is a Shia LaBeouf movie.
This is a Shia LaBeouf movie.
Watch the movie to the end, and if anything, take away an understanding of the effects of PTSD and mental illness.
The direction that the film is attempting is valiant, but sadly as someone who has served, and understands combat this movie misses the mark completely.
Man Down is a movie that wants to make a statement about PTSD and suffering but it handles the subject matter like a bull in a china shop.
Dito Montiel, the director, wanted to take an emotional movie about the ravages of war but his direction and understanding is terrible.
It takes a deep dive into PTSD, and shows how it affects not only the soldier, but those close to him.I loved the cast of characters; very raw and passionate performances given by everyone, including the son, and the story line was amazing.
Shia LeBeouf gives a most solid performance here as Marine Lance Corporal Gabriel Drummer, who begins to suffer from PTSD after suffering traumatic events both on the battlefield and in his personal life.
Man Down is the story of U.S. Marine Gabriel Drummer (Shia LaBeouf) who fought for his country in Afghanistan only to return home to an America very different than the one he left, a post-apocalyptic hell that is no better than the war zone he just left.
Accompanied by his best friend, Drummer goes on the hunt for his missing wife Natalie (Kate Mara) and their son.Man Down marks the return to the mainstream big screen movies for LaBeouf who has been somewhat absent since his last appearance in Transformers: Dark of the Moon in 2011.
Through much of the movie, we are watching Gabriel Drummer in four different phases: with his wife and child before the Marines; the mission in Afghanistan, his session with counselor Peyton after "the incident", and finally back in the United States that has been destroyed as he desperately searches for his wife and child with his best friend.
Though I don't foresee Man Down being nominated for Best Picture, it would be a crime if LaBeouf isn't recognized for this role in this tragic, gripping, heart-breaking film that earned a solid 4 stars from me.
And so are the movie critics who have weighed in on Dito Montiel's Man Down.
If your going to make a war drama or a statement about PTSD then you should sell the movie that way.
Whilst the film does little new in this area, it was still good to watch and this is all helped by a wonderful performance by LaBeouf - he hasn't always been brilliant in the past, but here he does excel and is very believable (both before his PTSD and during his PTSD). |
tt0161981 | Sureiyâzu | The powerful teenage sorceress Lina Inverse and her traveling companion and self-styled archrival Naga the Serpent, having been reunited after Naga was (once again) hired against Lina, obtain two discounted tickets for a tour to the fabled hot springs of Mipross Island. However, they discover almost immediately that those hot springs are fake and the island is controlled by a group of bandits. The two heroines clean up the island from them but learn they have been sent by someone called "the Great Master".
Meanwhile, Lina is repeatedly visited during sleep by an old insistent man that narrates about the love between a heroic boy Rowdy and a young elf girl Meliroon, tragically interrupted by the appearance of a mazoku (demon) named Joyrock that destroyed the city of elves and killed Meliroon. In another dream, between an event and another, Lina discovers that the old storyteller is the young hero himself and he gained the power of elves, with the ability of seeing the future, and that he was the owner of the legendary Sword of Light.
Lina and Naga deliver the most dangerous bandits to the king, who asks Lina to take action against Joyrock. He and the queen were contacted by the old sage Rowdy in dream and he told them the demon came back again to Mipross and is wreaking havoc in the northern part of the island, blocking the natural flux of hot spring's water, so the girl named Lina Inverse is the only able to beat him. Lina is initially reluctant, but in exchange of a reward (and Rowdy's promise to reveal the secret location of a hot spring that make things growing up) she and Naga decide to take action against the demon.
Joyrock shows himself in the form of a frog, then turns into a reptile-like creature and reveals to be the Great Master who pulled the strings of the events that took place on the island. Lina attempts to slay him with her destructive Dragon Slave spell, but he disappears and reappears from the astral plane and injures Lina, who luckily is rescued by Naga and Rowdy. The old sage heals Lina and tells them he could use his magic to get back in time and change history, but the two sorceress must help him defeating the Joyrock from the past. At the same time he casts the spell, the demon appears and kills Rowdy. Luckily, Lina manages to travel in the void of time (Naga is missing at this moment), she meets the young Rowdy and, with the help of the Sword of Light combined with Dragon Slave, they finally destroy the demon. Along with coincidentally rescued Naga, they return to present time.
Before going back to the mainland, Lina remembers she has to visit the hidden hot spring promised by Rowdy, but there she discovers it is a magical water that makes things like vegetables growing older, and not growing bigger as she hoped for her breasts. Shouting angrily to the ghost of Rowdy, Lina runs away in shame, followed by Naga, and they keep on running until late night. During the end credits, it is shown that the inhabitants of Mipross have erected a statue in honor of the two heroes of the island: the young Rowdy and Lina Inverse. | good versus evil, psychedelic, fantasy | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0267130 | Yodha | In an unknown location in the Nepalese Himalayas, a young monk (played by Siddharth) is about to be crowned the Rinpoche of the monastery, when a gang of black magicians led by an unnamed character (played by Puneet Issar) kidnap him. It is revealed that the leader of the black magicians wishes to make a human sacrifice of the Rinpoche to attain invincibility. The other monks in the monastery understand that the Rinpoche's saviour will arrive from across the Himalayas to rescue him from the clutches of the black magicians. In the meantime, the young Rinpoche manages to escape from the clutches of the magicians and runs away to Kathmandu.
At the other end of the subcontinent, in a small village in Kerala, Ashokan (Mohanlal) is an unemployed youth who, with the other members of his club, whiles his time away competing with his cousin Appukuttan (Jagathi Sreekumar) and his club in a series of trivial competitions. Appukuttan finds himself on the losing side every time, adding to his insecurity complex, which leads him to suspect Ashokan of having an affair with his (Appukuttan's) fiancée Damayanti (played by Urvashi).
When an astrologer predicts to his mother, Sumathi (played by Sukumari), that Ashokan is likely to commit a murder if he remains in Kerala, Ashokan is bundled away to Nepal to stay with his uncle Captain (retired) Krishnankutty Menon (M. S. Thripunithura), whom he hasn't met since childhood. Unbeknownst to Ashokan, Appukuttan flies to Nepal beforehand and establishes himself in Krishanankutty Menon's (Kutty Mama) house, masquerading as Ashokan. Ashokan is cast out onto the streets of Kathmandu, where he meets the Rimpoche and forms a friendship with the young lad. Appukuttan attempts to connive his way into marrying Kutty Mama's daughter, Ashwati (Madhoo) — a researcher into Nepalese traditions and black magic at a university in Kathmandu. But Ashokan, with the Rimpoche's assistance, manages to cast doubt into the mind of Kutty Mama and win over Ashwati.
Ashokan and Ashwati then witness one of the black magician's minions kidnapping the Rimpoche. Upon following the kidnapper, they end up confronting the black magician himself. In the ensuing melee, the magician grievously wounds Ashwati and blinds Ashokan, and leaves the two of them to their deaths in the forest. Both of them are rescued by the adivasi tribe tasked with protecting the Rimpoche's monastery. Ashokan is then told of how he is the Chosen One and is trained by an adivasi teacher to overcome his blindness and become a warrior tasked with rescuing the Rimpoche.
In the meantime, the jealous and suspicious Appukuttan follows Ashwati and Ashokan into the forest and is captured by a tribe of adivasis who torture him. Ashokan then ventures into the magician's hideout, rescues the Rimpoche, and brings him back to the monastery. The Rimpoche then, aided by an ailing old monk, restores Ashokan's eyesight. As the solar eclipse nears, the monks begin the coronation of the Rimpoche. The black magician rushes to the monastery to kill the Rimpoche before he is crowned. But Ashokan stands in the black magician's way and, in the climactic fight, kills the latter.
Ashokan then discovers that Ashwati is not dead as he had previously feared. Appukuttan makes a final appearance, trained as a warrior by the adivasis who captured and tortured him. In the comical fight that ensues, Appukuttan is beaten up by Ashokan. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0038321 | Badman's Territory | Just north of Texas and west of the Oklahoma border is "Badman's Territory", a region not yet governed by statehood. This is where Jesse James and brother Frank head after a train robbery, along with their partner, Coyote.
Mark Rowley, a lawman, and his deputy brother Johnny are after the James gang. So is a ruthless U.S. marshal named Hampton who shoots anybody who gets in his way. He even wings Johnny Rowley just to take the newly captured Coyote away from him.
In the town of Quinto, newspaper editor Henryetta Alcott is a crusader for law and order. Mark takes an immediate liking to her. He also helps Belle Starr's horse win a big race.
Johnny's injuries mend, but the Dalton gang persuades Johnny to go bad and join them. Mark tries to dissuade him. He shoots a man named McGee who stole his horse. Hampton puts up wanted posters on both Rowleys.
Henryetta spreads the word that Oklahoma has annexed this territory into the union. Mark is appointed a "regulator" and proposes marriage to Henryetta before he rides to Coffeyville, Kansas, where the Daltons are about to pull a job with Johnny as part of the gang.
Johnny is shot and killed, and Hampton also kills Coyote. A determined Mark Rowley must deal with Hampton once and for all if Henryetta and he are to have a future together. | violence, murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0097768 | Lobster Man from Mars | Young filmmaker Stevie Horowitz (Dean Jacobson) eagerly awaits a meeting with big shot Hollywood film producer J.P. Shelldrake (Tony Curtis). Shelldrake has been desperately searching for a way to avoid problems with the IRS and unpaid millions owed them in back taxes. His brilliant yet overpaid accountant (Phil Proctor) devises a scheme to allow the producer to write off the expenses of his next movie release, but only if the film is a box office flop. Armed with his foolproof plan, Shelldrake agrees to meet with Stevie and screen his film "Lobster Man From Mars" (financed by Stevie's jailed con man Uncle Joey). The plot resembles the premise of The Producers by Mel Brooks.
Inside Shelldrake's private screening room the "film within the film" begins. They watch the weird plot unfold: Mars suffers from a severe air leakage. The King of Mars (Bobby Pickett of "Monster Mash" fame) commands the dreaded Lobster Man and his assistant Mombo (a gorilla wearing a space helmet, in a nod to Robot Monster) to pilot his flying saucer to Earth then steal its air. Once landed, the Lobster Man wastes no time transforming hapless victims into smoking skeletons.
On a lonely road, John and Mary, a young and innocent couple (Deborah Foreman and Anthony Hickox) discovers the hiding place of the flying saucer in a dark and mysterious cave. They attempt to warn the authorities but are ignored. Successfully contacting Professor Plocostomos (Patrick Macnee), a plan is created to lure the Lobster Man to Mr. Throckmorton's (Billy Barty) Haunted House that just happens to be surrounded by boiling hot springs.
Once lured, it's simply a matter of pushing the Lobster Man into the hot water where he will be boiled to death. The plan is interrupted by Colonel Ankrum (Fred Holliday) and his troops. The house is shelled and destroyed, the Lobster Man flees to his cave, taking Mary with him.
She manages to escape, but the Lobster Man follows. A wild chase ensues, but Professor Plocostomos uses the hot engine coolant from his overheated vehicle to drench Mombo causing his foamy demise. The chase concludes in Yellowstone Park where the dreaded Lobster Man is tricked into walking into the Old Faithful Geyser and a steamy end.
The screening is over. Shelldrake cannot believe his good fortune to witness such a bad movie with potential to lose every cent invested in its distribution and promotion. He buys the production on the spot, but once in release it becomes a big hit and makes a huge profit sending Shelldrake straight to tax prison, with Stevie taking his place as the studio's new boy wonder. | absurd, cult | train | wikipedia | Dircector's Statement about the DVD.
It took two weeks to write and ten years to finish.
In 1977 writer Bob Greenberg and I were offered $50,000 to make a science fiction movie.
We thought that instead of trying to hide the low budget, we would make it a central theme using the gimmick of a film-within-a-film.Such was the genesis of Lobster Man From Mars.
We wrote the screenplay in two weeks, but the money to shoot the movie never appeared.
The project was set aside until the tragic demise of Bob Greenberg in an auto accident.
I was determined to get Bob's name on the screen as a writer, and thanks to the efforts of producer Steven Greene, this became a reality.
Production began during the summer of 1988 --- a mere 10 years after writing the screenplay --- and culminated with the world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival six months later.
The version shown at the festival was a 95 minute "first cut", later revised to 81 minutes, then released to theaters, television and home video in the shorter format.The special director's edition DVD is one that has never been seen by the public, having only existed on a computer editing program!
I've taken some of the better moments from the long version and have integrated them with the shorter version.
And now, thanks to the modern miracle of computer editing, I've added new low-tech, even cheaper looking special effects, never before possible.
Once again, the Lobster Man lives!.
So bad it was hilarious....
Well, I wasn't really expecting to be wowed by this movie, but it turned out to be the funniest movie I've seen in a long time.
I rented it mainly because of the title.
After all, who doesn't want to see a movie named "Lobster Man from Mars"?
I settled down with some friends and chocolate, and had the most laugh out loud night.This movie is filled with ridiculous moments, akin to the old fifties Scifi movies, complete with a badly costumed lobster who's face keeps changing between scenes.
The acting isn't that good, but then again, it really isn't meant to be.
This is the perfect movie to watch when you want to have a good time, and if you're full of too much energy..
Mars is running out of air....
Voracious flesh eaters from Mars invade the Earth!
A very funny bad movie made for the cost of coffee and donuts on any of today's blockbuster epics.
The film's star Tony Curtis puts this picture right up there with "Some Like It Hot" and "Spartacus" - he says so right there on the DVD edition this movie.If you are a fan of trashy science fiction, you will most certainly enjoy this humorous spoof of such classics as "Invaders from Mars", "Night of the Ghouls" and "Teenagers from Outer Space".It can all be summed up in this typical line of dialogue spoken by Professor Plocostomos (Patrick Macnee)...
"If you were a Lobster Man, would you enter a haunted house surrounded by artillery?"Well, would you?.
Enjoyable spoof..
A film within a film; a producer needing a tax write-off agrees to screen and buy the rights to a student film called LOBSTER MAN FROM MARS.
Most the of the film spent viewing the film which about an alien lobster man wrecking havoc on Earth.
The producer finds the film so shoddy that he agrees to buy it in order to lose money so he doesn't owe the IRS so much money.
The film is obviously inspired by the producers.
The film is loaded with many jokes that only buffs of horror and science fiction films would get.
For example: the colonel is named "Ankrum", after Morris Ankrum who played military men and other authority figures in dozens of 1950's science fiction and horror films.
The film is loaded with gags like these that most viewers probably would not get.
I would mention any more as I would not want to spoil it for people who are in the know..
A great, great, great parody.
This movie is an excellent parody of the American horror movies from the 60s.
I don't know how people who watched this movie can make a negative comment on the camera, the lightning and the play.
They just didn't get it I guess.
The special effects, the play and the camera were all meant to be badly done so they can resemble the 'drive in' movies from the 60s.
This is one of those movies which you can't and must not take serious.
The quality of such productions lays by my opinion in the way that the story is served to the viewer.
A thing that Stanley Sheff and Bob Greenberg have done in a very good way.
Overall a great parody - 10/10!.
brilliantly bad.
i just bought this movie for 2bucks thinking that it will surely be worth it's cost...
and i was so right!!
i saw it with a friend of mine and we just loved it's (mostly intended) badness.
There are movies that are just bad and then there are these flicks that are so freaking' bad that they are really entertaining.
the movie made me really laugh hard a couple of times and Tony Curtis just rocked being this bad producer.
the day after i watched it i immediately wanted to watch it again..
and if that's not positive about a film..
for a movie as "b" as one movie could be, the cast isn't that bad: Tony Curtis and Patrick McNee are two stars of the 80ies, starring here and they do a good job (being bad).
the story is really strange: i mean a lobster man and his adjutant, an ape with a spacehelmet, stealing earth's air for the mars is not a common thing in Hollywood.
the characters are all very funny and the story is except for some lengths in the middle very amusing..
so silly, so very silly.
i saw this film some years ago now, and i can still remember it.
at the time, and on subsequent viewings, it made me laugh myself quite silly, not quite as silly as this film however.
it is somewhat like a cheaper, tackier, Z grade, sci-fi version of gremlins two, just taking the piss out of as many things as it can.
somtimes it misses, but mostly it hits.
a bizarre indie classic.
go find it now, you won't regret it..
A harmless, somewhat amusing parody of 1950s scifi movies..
First of all, I understand what parody is, and I realize that this movie is supposed to be bad, as it's poking fun of bad 1950s science fiction movies.
My rating is not based on the acting, special effects, or dialogue, which, as I said, are meant to be bad.
Unfortunately, I just didn't think this was particularly funny!
For one thing, the whole film-in-a-film conceit seemed to be weakly developed.
I wasn't quite sure why they even bothered doing this, except to highlight that the movie isn't meant to be taken seriously.
However, if you have to explicitly tell people that your movie is a parody, maybe you're not doing it right.
Or you're underestimating your audience (and thus insulting their intelligence).Anyway, I thought it was somewhat amusing, and I dutifully recognized each of the pop culture references, but, really, it just wasn't all that funny.
Something like Killer Klowns From Outer Space makes me laugh hysterically every time I watch it, but this....
Chalk it up to personal taste, I guess.Again, I've been rather let down by Anthony Hickox, after really liking Waxwork and Waxwork II.
I just don't think I've ever really liked anything else he's done since then..
Unfortunately It Is Not Bad Enough to be Good.
So what have we got here with this "Lobster Man From Mars" (1989) movie?
Think "The Producers" (1968) meets "Plan 9 From Outer Space" (1959).
If you don't get parody you should give this one a wide berth.
If you want really "clever" parody you should probably skip it as well.
If you thought Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon stuff was fun because it was so "unintentionally" hokey you might want to go into avoidance mode along with the others.
The hokey elements in "Lobster Man From Mars" are anything but unintentional, it wants your attention like a one-trick pony mad for a carrot.
This lack of subtlety would pretty much doom the thing had it not already expired from a case of terminally lame screen writing.
The root of the problem is that they were given too much money to make this thing.
Much like the fake disaster movie playing in the background of "Drive-In", it utilizes a film within a film device; only this time a Hollywood executive is screening what is supposed to be a bad "student" film.
The saving grace of bad student films is their unity of weak writing, poor production values, and unpolished acting.
But the student film being viewed in "Lobster Man From Mars" has some recognizable cast members and enough money for semi- authentic production design; which does not work to its benefit.
Here's the premise: a Hollywood studio needs a really bad film to use as a tax write-off.
They screen a high school kid's science fiction film, which while really bad would be another "Citizen Kane" compared to any bad student film.
In the film within the film, Mars is running out of air and sends the "dreaded" Lobster Man to earth where he and a hairy sidekick begin randomly zapping people with a ray gun.
The too competent cast includes Patrick Macnee (playing a British scientist) and Deborah Foreman looking (as the film moves along) like she is gradually deciding in favor of retiring from acting (which she actually did-was it coincidence or was her decision made midway through the production of this turkey?).
The problem is that there is very little in the movie that is particularly funny, intentional or unintentional.
The only bit that works repeatedly involves the zany space bats who fly around cackling manically.
And there is one good line by Tommy Sledge, as a film noir parody private detective who inspects the giant lobster tracks leading away from the site of an explosion and then says: "It means that either he escaped, or he walked backwards from the horizon to commit suicide in this bonfire".
If you want to see this stuff done right, cleverly written and with a student film level of production design, check out Larry Blamire's "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" (2001).
90 minutes of inspired spoofing.
Then again, what do I know?
I'm only a child..
Lobster Man from Mars.
Oh boy!
With a title like that you can probably already guess.
Is it cheap, super cheesy and have complete sub-par effects?
Yes. But, is it also funny and slightly inspirational?
Yes. This is not trying to be a B-movie, this is trying and quite successful at aiming at being a Z-grade movie.
Everything in this movie is intentional and sucked right out of those cheesy 50s horror/sci-fi flicks that everyone gets a good chuckle at when viewing.Tony Curtis plays mega-millionaire film producer J.P. Shelldrake who has just found out he owes more than 4 million to the government.
He needs a total flop at the box office to act as a tax write-off.
In steps Stevie Horowitz a young filmmaker who has tried his best to get Shelldrake to see one of his movies.
Let me tell you a young Orson Welles he ain't.
Shelldrake thinks there might be a stinker present so he watches the film.
It is the story of Lobster Man being sent to Earth to get air for Mars.
Soon human beings are attacked by gorillas in space helmets, possessed hand puppets and of course Lobster Man.It keeps going back to Curtis' reaction to the movie and he does an amazing job of showing his dissatisfaction of the film before going back to the wonderful trashy film.
I do give Tony Curtis credit for being in this movie.
I mean being in great classics like SOME LIKE IT HOT, SPARTACUS or THE DEFIANT ONES this is quite a step in the opposite direction.
Main thing to remember about this movie is don't take it seriously and just try and enjoy yourself.Also has some great music done by Sasha Matson and has a great title song 'Rock Lobster' from the B-52's.Certainly gets a thumbs up from me and quite a clever and enjoyable spoof.
Also starring Deborah Foreman (from Waxwork), Patrick Macnee (also from Waxwork), Anthony Hickox (who directed Waxwork) and Billy Barty (who sadly was not in Waxwork)..
Enjoyable Camp.
In addition to parodying lovably bad Sci-Fi movies this movie is also,in essence, a remake of The Producers.
The difference is that instead of a movie designed to fail in order to make money, the failure of the movie is to lose money for a tax write off.
The improbability of the IRS allowing such a loophole to work can be easily dismissed by the viewer as you're already on board for the ride by the insane title of the film.I'm partial to everything I've seen Deborah Foreman in, and this is no exception.
It is a shame that she moved away from acting with only one film appearance past the year 2000.
While hardly a classic film role here, her presence alone makes it worthwhile..
What Can I say about this movie that hasn't been said other then it's one of the best movies ever.
Then I would be lying to you all.
The Camera angles and the lighting were well.....you already know.
The acting was down right humor.
Who thought of this idea anyway?.
Funniest SF film since Dark Star?
(or: Earthman beware, He's after your air).
"He came from the Stars, Lobster Man from Mars...Earthman beware, he's after your air!!!No place to hide, Lobster's right outside!!!"The theme song suggests we are about to see a bad, bad movie.
Not so.This is a hilarious and great movie about a bad, bad movie (which turns out to be better than expected), and is probably the funniest science fiction movie since Dark Star.
(It's a bit like a small-scale version of Mars Attacks with a smaller budget and more(!) jokes.)I was quite surprised to see such a low score here for it.
I suspect a few people who rated it poorly are just unfamiliar with the style of films it is parodying (think "Robot Monster"), or see only the surface "badness" of the movie in the movie without realising it is deliberately "awful" and does not take itself seriously.In other words, the low quality of this film is only a translucent veneer; one sufficient to fool a surprising number of people, apparently.Mild, small-scale, incidental spoilers:There's a lot to like about this movie.
The earnest over-the-top melodrama, the in-film narrator, the deliberately wonky effects, the range of stereotype characters from multiple genres added to the mix (how many sf movies have a hardboiled gumshoe as a supporting character?) all contribute.
The music is especially perfect: the theme song, the spooky warbling electronic chase music, and the use of Siegfried's Funeral March could not be bettered.But these are all touches of finesse to a great parody.
The quality and caricatured accuracy of the parody is what makes this film so entertainingly amusing.
This affectionate and good-humoured homage to low-budget science-fiction monster flicks is probably the funniest such since at least The Rocky Horror Picture Show (while being considerably different in tone!), and possibly since Dark Star.The sheer ludicrous excess and exaggeration of the evil of the Lobster Man, the goodness of the heroes and the stakes of peril are all almost operatic, and would not seem out of place on the stage of Victorian melodrama (science-fictional trappings aside).Many, many images, plot points and lines are delicious: the Lobster Man's entire character design, the way we see that most of the characters are sexist but the movie makers (at both levels) aren't, phrases like "smoking bales of Big Monk"...If you've a passing familiarity with drive-in science fiction, and a sense of the ludicrous, I think you'll enjoy this little film; if your idea of visual science fiction starts with Star Wars and finishes with the X-Files, or you think humour and sf shouldn't mix, you may not. |
tt0047424 | Rogue Cop | Christopher Kelvaney is a crooked police officer who takes bribes and payoffs from criminals and other nefarious folk. His brother Eddie is a young member of the police force who is honest and loyal.
In a penny arcade, a drug dealer is stabbed to death by a man who claims the territory for himself, and Eddie witnesses a gangland murder. Mob boss Dan Beaumonte gives orders to Kelvaney to buy his brother's silence. Eddie refuses, and Kelvaney is unable to persuade Eddie's sweetheart, nightclub singer Karen Stephenson, to change his mind.
The ruthless Beaumonte brutally mistreats his moll Nancy Corlane, who then tries to help Kelvaney do what he has to do. Kelvaney exposes the fact that Karen was once a mobster's girlfriend in Miami. He gets her to admit that she's not in love with Eddie and is willing to let him go if it will save his life.
An out-of-town button-man named Langley is brought in to kill both brothers, but succeeds only in killing Eddie. His conscience aroused, Kelvaney goes after the mob leaders himself. He admits his corruption to superiors, but asks for a chance to bring them evidence that will put Beaumonte and others behind bars, particularly after Nancy is also found murdered. Kelvaney succeeds in gaining revenge for his brother. | murder | train | wikipedia | Audiences had seen the crooked cop with the straight-arrow younger brother (The Man Who Cheated Himself); the shantoozie with a past (Gilda, Dead Reckoning, The Last Crooked Mile); the slick mobster beyond the reach of the law with his alcoholic, trophy mistress (Key Largo, Railroaded,The Big Heat); the street-savvy old jane who passes on scuttlebutt for a price (Pickup on South Street).
But, as Roy Rowland's Rogue Cop demonstrates, there were still changes to be rung on those themes, jazzed up with fresh casting and pithy writing.Here, the cop gone sour isn't a homicidal brute like Edmond O'Brien in the same year's Shield For Murder (both movies were adapted from books by William McGivern, as was Fritz Lang's The Big Heat).
When his younger brother Steve Forrest, also a policeman, identifies a connected hit-man, Taylor receives a summons from his paymaster, crime boss George Raft.
Upon delivering the ultimatum, Taylor gets rebuffed by Forrest; he then tries to blackmail his brother's fiancée Janet Leigh, a nightclub singer, into trying to change his mind.
And so the worm turns: Using both Leigh and Raft's discarded moll Anne Francis as his allies, Taylor swears vengeance....Crisply photographed by John Seitz, Rogue Cop burrows snugly into its rotten urban core a city of dreadful night.
There's plenty of brutal, even sadistic, action, but Rogue Cop is less an action picture than a character study that Taylor, somewhat surprisingly, manages to pull off.
Robert Taylor plays Chris Kelvaney, a dirty cop on the take with the mob in this exciting police drama.
Taylor goes on a campaign of revenge against those very mobsters, who decide to kill Kelvaney's brother, also a cop, for witnessing something that could incriminate the mob leaders.The biggest surprise here is Robert Taylor's performance as the dirty cop.
With some of the roles he played as he got older, it's hard to believe that at one time MGM was worried about a powder puff image that Robert Taylor had in his youth.Seeing Taylor as Chris Kelvaney in Rogue Cop is like seeing a whole different player than Armand in Camille.
But it's the same guy and a film like Rogue Cop brings out the maturity and depth Taylor had as an artist as well as a person.Taylor is a long time big city cop on the take to gangland boss George Raft.
He's a pretty cynical dude, in his chosen field he's seen a lot of the worst that people can be.But he's got a kid brother played by Steve Forrest who's a straight arrow.
Forrest's death gives Taylor a mission, he'll take Raft down no matter what it costs.There are two prominent female roles, Janet Leigh as Forrest's girl friend who later develops an interest in Taylor and Anne Francis as Raft's moll who turns against him.
Also both Rogue Cop and The Big Heat have blackmail of a syndicate boss as the underpinning of the story.Raft of course is in his element as a gangland boss.
The final shootout with Raft and company with the two of them is one of the best and most realistic ever staged in a film.For Robert Taylor fans, Rogue Cop is an absolute must and people who don't think much of Taylor as player will be jolted at how well he does in this film..
Probably the closest that studio ever came to a noir thriller, only the overall gloss gives it away as an MGM film (guess they just couldn't help themselves); otherwise it could well have come from Warners or RKO.
Robert Taylor is in top form as a hardened detective who has been immersed for so long in the seedy, seamy world of big-city crime that he finally succumbs to its corruption and is even tempted to sell out his younger brother, who is also a policeman.
George Raft as the slimy crime boss, Janet Leigh as his brother's pretty, sweet (but hardly naive) fiancé, Robert Ellenstein (in a standout performance) as his partner and friend who doesn't want to see Taylor become the kind of lowlife he's always hated, all combine with a Chandler-esqe script by Sydney Boehm, tough, no-nonsense direction from Roy Rowland (a reliable but somewhat stolid director of mainly westerns and musicals) and a violent, action-filled climax to make this a must-see for noir fans.
Robert Taylor puts an even harder edge on his 'Johnny Eager' type of role with another hard-boiled, even tougher characterization as a man steeped in underworld crime until his brother (Steve Forrest) is killed by mosbsters.
Crisply directed, nice all-around performances from an attractive cast--Janet Leigh, Steve Forrest, George Raft, Alan Hale, Jr.--with Taylor highly convincing in the tough central role.Not the kind of gritty film noir one would suspect coming from the MGM studios--but well worth it with its Raymond Chandler type of dialogue and a climactic gun fight that is extremely well handled.Crime buffs should enjoy this one--as will Robert Taylor's fans..
Well I wont go on anymore about personal observations other than to say this is a great 1/2 of a movie and Taylor is looking really rogueish and bad, even saying if you cross me again "I'll break both your legs", thats pretty tough talk!
But in the second half we get the polished MGM treatment and there is some pretty lame action and a lot of dialog, and Taylor turning a new leaf to be a good cop after all.
Mayer had been forced out of MGM in favor of the more current Dore Schary who promised harder- hitting films on subjects more topical than Andy Hardy.I guess it's easier to shift personnel than it is to change tradition, because this crime drama has neither the look nor the feel of the real thing.
In short, the movie's an antiseptic treatment of a seamy subject, and all Robert Taylor's tedious tough talk or George Raft's gangster reputation can't muddy up the sheen.
In "Rogue Cop" (1954) Robert Taylor did great.Dev. Sgt.
Chris Kelvaney (Robert Taylor) has a younger brother Eddie (Steve Forrest) who is a street cop.
Eddie can identify a murderer he saw run from the scene of the crime.Big brother Chris, who is "on the take", is contacted by gangster Dan Beaumonte (George Raft, of course) with bribery in mind.
Needless to say that may leave allot of excess bodies lying around...It also may not be as easy as he'd like it to be.Other cast members include: Janet Leigh as Karen Stephanson (Eddie's fiancée); Anne Francis as Nancy Corlane (Beaumonte's alcoholic ex-girl); Robert Ellenstein as Det. Sidney Y.
Myers (Bob does a great job as Chris's partner who is an honest cop); Vince Edwards as murderer Joey Langley (later "Ben Casey" of TV fame 1961-66); Olive Carey as Selma (Chris's connection to snitches) (wife of Harry Sr., mother of Harry Jr. and well-known character actress in her own right.).
Rogue Cop is directed by Roy Rowland and adapted to screenplay by Sydney Boehm from the novel written by William P.
It stars Robert Taylor, Janet Leigh, George Raft, Steve Forrest and Anne Francis.
Seitz.Christopher Kelvaney (Taylor) is a cop on the take from the mob that's fronted by Dan Beaumont (Raft).
When his brother and fellow cop, Eddie (Forrest), is requested to withdraw testimony about a crook covered by Beaumont, Chris is compromised and danger lurks for all involved.A face wrinkled like Venetian blinds.Out of MGM, Rogue Cop is a better than average venture into film noir territories.
"Rogue Cop" is a 1954 film starring Robert Taylor, George Raft, Janet Leigh, Anne Francis, and Steve Forrest.People seem surprised Taylor pulls off the tough guy act - I've seen him do it before, and he was good at it.This is a no-nonsense film about a cop on the take (Taylor) whose honest cop brother (Forrest) can identify someone involved in a murder.
The guy who pays off Taylor (Raft) wants him to convince his brother to suddenly not identify him.
Janet Leigh is beautiful as Forrest's girlfriend with a past, and Anne Francis is Raft's decades-younger alcoholic girlfriend.
Robert Taylor stars as a crooked cop who's caught between a rock and a hard place when racketeer George Raft tells him his idealistic kid brother, rookie Steve Forrest, must recant his testimony in a murder investigation...
McGivern who turned all the hoopla into a topical roman-à-clef trilogy: THE BIG HEAT, ROGUE COP, and SHIELD FOR MURDER.
It was nice seeing Vince Edwards in an early role but the stand-out is Anne Francis as Raft's tipsy moll, a "sister under the mink" to Gloria Grahame in THE BIG HEAT.
Like true Noir, Robert Taylor is not a typical cop but one on the take from the mob.
The problem is that while Taylor isn't above lying or cheating, his brother (Steve Forrest) is a decent guy and won't play along with the crooks.
Robert Taylor at his best as the hard nosed, corrupt cop!.
Robert Taylor was a wonderful choice for this film about a crooked cop, who likes the high life and has little respect for his honest colleagues.
What would eventually stop Chris Kelvaney (Taylor), would be the death of his brother Eddie played by Steve Forrest.
This is the part of a lifetime for Taylor as he walks with the dirt and corruption of the mob boss, George Raft.
Janet Leigh does a nice job as Eddie's reluctant girl, not knowing if she loves him, and when she is confronted by Chris about her shady past with the mob, falls apart.
**SOME SPOILERS** Being on the scene of a murder by giving the escaped killer "Wrinkels" Fallon, Peter Brcco, a parking ticket policeman Eddie Kelvaney, Steve Forrest,has him picked out of a lineup and put in jail to be tried at a later date, What Eddie doesn't know is that "Wrinkles" got the goods on big time mobsters Beumonte and Ackerman, George Raft & Robert F.
The two hoods are now literally scared to death with what Wrinkles' got on them that he'll make a deal with the D.A for a lighter sentence to turn states evidence on them.Beaument and Ackerman do have an ace up their sleeve in having Eddie recant his testimony and that's non-other then his big brother Det. Chis Kelvaney, Robert Taylor, who's been taking payoff from them for years.
It just turns out that Eddie is an incorruptible good and honest cop like his and Chris late and highly decorated father and in trying to do the right thing.
The right thing ends up landing him right on a cold slab in the city morgue.Robert Taylor playing a corrupt cop is at his handsome and devilish best as Det. Kalvaney as he goes through a change of life realizing what a creep he was all these years and a disgrace to not only the police department but to brother Eddie and late hero cop dad.
Kalvaney dealing with crumbs like Beaumonte & Ackerman in the end redeems himself by getting blasted and left bleeding to death in a violent shootout with them.Trying to get Eddie's girl Karen, Janet Leigh, to talk him out of testifying against Wrinkle's Det. Kelvaney blackmails her.
Det. Kelvaney given by his bosses, Beaumonte & Ackerman, 48 hours to turn Eddie around is instead double cross.
The two hoods have Eddie gunned down that evening in full sight of his terrified girl Karen even before she has a chance to get Eddie to change his mind in testifying.It's during these stressful and heart wrenching times that Det. Kelvaney finally sees what a disgrace he was to both his brother dad and finally to himself and has a complete break with his sleazy past.
The rogue cop goes full out, even if it cost him his life, to get Beaumonte & Ackerman not only to clear his guilty conscience but also bring his brothers killers to justice.Also in the movie is a pre-Ben Casey Vince Edwards playing hit-man Joey Langly who's brought in from out of town to knock off Eddie.
With him being gunned down himself in a shootout between Kelvany, and unlike himself, straight laced and honest cop Det Myers, Robert Ellenstein, and gangsters Beaomonte & Ackerman.There's also a very young Anne Francis as Beaumonte's live-in moll Nancy whom he keep drunk all the time,to keep her mind off his business.
The cast includes, Robert Taylor, Steve Forrest, George Raft, Janet Leigh, Anne Francis, Robert Ellenstein, Alan Hale Jr, Robert F.
Simon, Olive Carey and Vince Edwards.Robert Taylor plays a crooked Detective who is on the payroll of Mob boss, George Raft.
Raft needs Taylor to have a word with Taylor's kid brother, rookie cop, Steve Forrest.
Taylor also has a word with Forrest's girl, nightclub singer, Janet Leigh.
(As does Raft's bodyguard, Alan Hale Jr) Taylor warns Raft and Simon that he will be most upset if anything happens to his brother.In the middle of all this is the alcoholic girlfriend of Raft, Anne Francis.
The film now goes to a straight up vengeance picture as the Mob does indeed kill Forrest.
Robert Taylor is excellent as the bent cop as is Raft as the mobster.
Eddie Kelvaney, who sees the murderer running away from the scene, identifies the man as a hired assassin working for the powerful Dan Beaumonte.
The squad detectives that work with Chris have all figured that Chris is a man on the take.Beaumonte calls Chris to try to convince his brother to change his testimony in exchange for fifteen thousand dollars, something that appalls Eddie.
When Eddie is found murdered, Chris makes a decision that will put him against the big boss.
The inner turmoil within Chris will ultimately let him do the right thing as he avenges the death of his brother, thus redeeming him from the bad choices he had made."Rogue Cop" an MGM release of 1954 was a surprise.
The idea that an enforcement officer, in this case a detective that loved the kind of life he could not afford, working for the other side, was a change of pace for the way audiences accepted them, which was always a gamble on the part of the big studios.The film works because of the right elements came together to make this story credible and the appearance of Robert Taylor, who excels as Chris Kelvaney.
Janet Leigh plays the sweet Karen Stephanson, who never really got over of what she felt about Chris, only to hook up with his brother.
Others in the cast included Anne Francis, Robert Ellenstein, Steve Forrest and Alan Hale Jr. doing good ensemble work.
Chris Kelvaney (Robert Taylor), a crooked cop.
He has a younger brother Eddie (Steve Forrest), a uniformed cop on the beat.
One night Eddie sees a murderer escaping from the crime scene and subsequently identifies the crook from mug shots.The murderer, it seems, has friends in high (or low) places in the underworld, Beaumont (George Raft) and Ackerman (Robert F.
They tell Chris to call off Eddie unless he wants his brother killed.
The rest of the movie concerns Chris Kelvaney's quest to avenge his brother while avoiding disgrace from his superiors.Chris Kelvaney is played by Robert Taylor in an Oscar worthy performance as a man who is, at first, satisfied with himself but who comes to realize what a mess he's made of things.
Taylor is utterly convincing in the role, first as the self-satisfied crook and later as the devastated man looking to make amends by turning informer and closing down Raft's crime empire.Steve Forrest's role is underwritten but he makes the best of it.
Unusually for a gangster film, Rogue Cop has two female characters who actually do something.
Janet Leigh is Karen, a former mobster's moll whose escape from the world of crime inspires Chris.
His gentleness is a step on his way to redemption.Robert Ellenstein is especially good as an honest cop who turns on Kelvaney for his dishonesty then supports him at the end.
Rogue Cop. Cop-on-the-take Sgt Chris Kelvaney(Robert Taylor)vows to take down the two mob bosses, Dan Beaumonte(George Raft) & Ackerman(Robert F Simon) responsible for the death of his straight-arrow beat cop brother Eddie(Steve Forrest).
Chris finds out that Eddie's new squeeze Karen(Janet Leigh)was once a mobster's moll from Florida and tries to convince her to talk sense into him against remaining loyal to keeping Fallon in prison.
Through it all, Chris will go rogue as his own as his superiors will desire his badge and resignation for his being under the mob's payroll, but not before he finds the man responsible for Eddie's death.
He plans to not only take out the hit-man, but the two mob bosses as well in a climactic shootout with assistance of good cop Sidney(Robert Ellenstein)who feels resentment from the sergeant for not going the crooked route.Taylor gets a really juicy role as a crooked cop certainly a bit responsible for his brother's death.
He has to face the music when it comes to his activities with the mob and this film puts it to him, but Taylor is good at getting sympathy from the viewer despite his nose-thumbing at being the honest, hard-working cop instead of getting paid, no matter who is forking over the extra salary lining your pockets.
Anne Francis gets one of her best roles as a moll who genuinely loved her man and seems damned for pushing him too far..
While it lacks the sheer grittiness of "Kiss of Death" or "In a Lonely Place" - probably because MGM was the studio that turned out the likes of "The Wizard of Oz", so a crime picture was a bit of a challenge for them - it still packs a punch.
I found the most effective scene to be where Janet Leigh's character takes Robert Taylor's character to task for using the case to advance his career.
Aside from Taylor and Leigh, the cast includes George Raft, Anne Francis and Alan Hale Jr. In other words, it stars Marion Crane, Spats, Altaira Morpheus and the Skipper. |
tt0085052 | Mansfield Park | At the age of 10, Fanny Price is sent to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, as her own parents do not have enough money to support their many children. Once at Mansfield Park, Fanny meets her cousins Tom, Maria, Edmund, and Julia, as well as Fanny's other maternal aunt, Mrs Norris. Fanny does not feel welcome, and Norris treats her more like a servant than a relative. Edmund behaves kindly to her, and the two develop a friendship that grows as the years progress.
When Fanny is eighteen, Sir Thomas and his eldest son Tom travel to Antigua. In their absence, the Bertram family is disrupted by the arrival of Henry and Mary Crawford, relatives of the local clergyman. Worldly, cynical and beautiful, Mary and Henry arrive looking for amusement. Edmund is instantly smitten with Mary, somewhat ignoring and hurting Fanny. Maria and Julia both vie for Henry's affections, even though Maria is already engaged to Mr Rushworth. Henry shamelessly flirts with Maria. Later, Tom returns from Antigua, arriving drunk and bringing a friend, Mr Yates, with him. Yates and Tom convince the Bertrams and Crawfords to stage a risque play, Lovers' Vows. The play allows the young people to openly flirt with each other. Edmund initially speaks out against the play, but changes his mind when he is offered a part that allows him to act out flirtatious scenes with Mary. Sir Thomas arrives home, and in anger immediately stops the play.
Maria marries Rushworth, esteeming his fortune above his character. Henry decides to pursue Fanny as a means to amuse himself. However, Fanny's gentle and kind nature gradually captures his fancy, and Henry becomes emotionally attached to her. After his behaviour towards the Bertram girls, Fanny distrusts him and does not believe his declarations of love. Even so, Henry proposes and Fanny is pressured by her uncle to accept the offer; she disappoints the family by refusing. Angry, Sir Thomas gives Fanny an ultimatum – accept Henry's proposal of marriage or be sent back to her poor family and experience the difference in comfort. Fanny looks to Edmund for support, but his indifference forces her to choose the latter. Several days after her return home, Henry pays a visit to convince Fanny that his affections for her are genuine. Although she looks more favourably on him, Fanny continues to cling to her feelings for Edmund and rejects Henry. Only when a letter from Edmund arrives which discloses his hopes of marrying Mary does Fanny accept Henry's offer. However, Fanny realizes she does not trust him, and takes back her acceptance the next day. Henry leaves, exceedingly hurt and angry. Edmund arrives to take Fanny back to Mansfield Park to help care for Tom, who has fallen seriously ill and is near death. Edmund confesses he has missed Fanny.
Henry gains Maria's pity when she learns of Fanny's refusal of his marriage proposal, and together they succumb to their lust. The affair is discovered by Fanny and Edmund. Shocked, Fanny is comforted by Edmund and the two nearly kiss, but he remembers himself and pulls away. News of the scandal spreads rapidly and Mary quickly devises a plan to stifle the repercussions. She suggests that after a divorce, Maria would marry Henry while Edmund would marry Mary; together they might re-introduce Henry and Maria back into society. Fanny questions Mary as to how a clergyman could afford lavish parties, and Mary shocks everyone by stating that when Tom dies, Edmund will be heir to the family's fortune. Edmund is appalled and tells Mary that cheerfully condemning Tom to death whilst she plans to spend his money sends a chill to his heart. Having betrayed her true nature to the Bertram family, a shamed Mary leaves the Bertrams' company. Edmund ultimately declares his love for Fanny, and they marry. Sir Thomas gives up his plantation in Antigua and invests instead in tobacco, while Tom recovers from his illness. Fanny also mentions that her younger sister Susie has joined them at the Bertram household while Maria and Aunt Norris take up residence in a small cottage removed from Mansfield Park. | romantic | train | wikipedia | It stayed very faithful to the book and unlike a few of the other reviews I read here, I did not find it at all dull nor did i find the acting lacking in any fashion.
That being said, the 1983 Mansfield Park still has a distinctive on-location look and the cast is uniformly strong - Sylvestra Le Touzel has just the right mix of prettiness and austerity and Nicholas Farrell is excellent as Edmund.Where the 1999 film sacrificed the book's moral subtlety for pretty obvious ends (Fanny becomes a sort of pseudo-feminist icon, but of course back in the eighteenth century, before it was cool) the 1983 film contains all the troubled morality of the book - its characters, many of whom are failures in way or another, are presented with sympathy and irony, and the faithfulness of the screenplay is infinitely to be preferred to the 1999 film's racy, but ultimately pedestrian value system..
Ok so maybe you all disagree, but I prefer this old mini-series to the modern 1999 film.I read the book before I had seen either, and this version is so much more true to the book.
For me that is much more important than modern touches that spoiled the movie.Even though Sylvestra may not give a good performance as Fanny Price, I find her much more believable as Fanny than Frances O Connor.The camera work is very dodgey.
Henry Crawford is not played well I feel, the way he speaks seems all wrong and strange, I think they chose the wrong actor there.I was struck by the scene where Maria wants to go through the locked gate and sends Mr Rushworth to get the key.
For users of digital televisions the picture and sound quality is very low, but understandable since this production was made in the early 80s.The thing that amazes me most about this rendition is how faithful it is to the book.
This most noticeable in the characters of Henry and Mary Crawford.Lady Bertram is very much like she was in the book -except for her voice.
That was rather cheesy looking but it was the only scene that I was less than satisfied with.This production lacks the polish of BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1995) but it is worth seeing for the serious Austen fan..
Sylvestra le Touzel is appropriately mouse-like and really embodies the real Fanny Price, (one of my favourite Austen heroines).
If you enjoy Jane Austin's novels, this is the best of the two available versions of Mansfield Park.
It is very true to the book, but lacks the beautiful production values and outstanding cinematography of the 1999 version that stars Frances O'Connor.Fanny Price has always been a problematic character for Austin's fans.
Sylvestra Le Touzel does a nice job in this very challenging role.The best performance in the movie, though, is Jackie Smith Wood's Mary Crawford.
Mansfield Park, unlike Austin's other successful novels, is really about the failed love affair between Edmund and Mary.
The wedding at the end is a natural result of Edmund coming home to Fanny as the one stable element in his life.It's a solid movie with good acting and a complicated plot.
It is the third version of Mansfield Park that I saw (although the first made) and after seeing this version, I cannot stand how inaccurate the other two versions are.Anna Massey is absolutely fantastic as the controlling, miserly, class conscious Aunt Norris.I also liked Jackie Smith Wood's performance as Mary Crawford, the polar opposite personality to Fanny Price, the heroine.I thought that Bernard Hepton's Sir Thomas Bertram was much more likable than the more recent versions in which he was played overly harsh.All in all, if you are a fan of period dramas and don't mind long adaptations, this one is definitely worth watching..
This is a gentler, truer version of jane Austen's novel than the appalling 1999 film and I am thankful for that !
The casting could have been done with more thought and the whole production would have welcomed a larger budget but - overall - this version remains the yardstick by which all others should be measured.Fanny Price is, despite the actress chosen to play her, essentially the heroine of the book and it is her views, fears insecurities and morals which are pivotal to the story.
The fact that Fanny does speak out against the play and Henry Crawford shows the strength of her misgivings.
Anyone who finds her insipid has either not read, or not understood, the book and should look again.In this day of fast paced films and often nonsensical dialogue, this adaptation may seem a little slow at times, but it is worth persevering.
I thought a smaller, frailer-looker Fanny would have more suited the character and I did not care for Miss Crawford's close-cropped hair, either, but these were not difficult to accept.
It obviously had a much lower budget than the recent 1999 adaptation, yet it was not nearly as awkward to watch as they did not massacre Jane Austen's meanings in an effort to make the setting and plot more palatable for modern audiences.
Production values and locations are adequate for the story and the acting, and I now value this Austen adaptation as highly as the best versions of the other books..
I liked the actress playing Fanny-she grew on me and did a good job changing from nervous mouse to a little more self-assured, but always unassuming and deferring as the character was.
The Frances O'Conner version was entertaining, but missed the book entirely, not only by changing the story and adding all the current socially relevant commentary, but by its half-hearted, after the fact, leaving out the main theme Austin was exploring-maybe not so popular in our time, but perhaps more relevant in our cynical times.
I agree with a previous poster that the actor playing Edmund seemed somewhat miscast, and I thought the Mary Crawford actress was a little flat even though she had the best lines.
Fanny is pursued by Henry Crawford a man who has no scruples about pursuing her married cousin or any woman he thinks he can make fall in love with him as a lark.
Fanny persevere and wins the love of Edmund and the respect of Mansfield Park's residence..
There have been many great versions of Jane Austen's books, such as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 Sense and Sensibility and the 1995 Persuasion, but there are also some disappointing ones such as 1987's Northanger Abbey and 2007's Mansfield Park.
This 1983 Mansfield Park is neither one of the greats or the disappointments regarding Jane Austen adaptations.
It's not perfect, with a slow start and some stiff camera work, but it's still leagues ahead of the other two adaptations of the book, the 1999 version I disliked but had one or two decent things and the 2007 version I hated with a miscast Fanny Price and no actual sense of the era.
The acting was generally fine, Sylvestra Le Touzel's Fanny is not my definition of a great performance, but in the most challenging Austen heroine role she does do a good job being pretty and austere and is miles ahead of Frances O'Connor and Billie Piper.
Nicholas Farrell is excellent though as Edmund and Bernard Hepton is a joy as Sir Thomas, but the best performances came from Jackie Smith-Wood in the complex but thankfully more subtle than before role of Mary Crawford, and Anna Massey who is as always great as Mrs Norris.
I liked Henry Crawford mostly, except he didn't make me fall in love with him when he addressed himself to Fanny.
Indeed, this 1983 version is "dated" as are other BBC/ITV productions of the time -- this is especially notable when compared to, for example, the Keira Knightley-version of "Pride & Prejudice," which is lush and beautifully shot.However, this mini-series has the luxury of time (as it is episodic) and is able to convey the finer points of the novel missed in director Patricia Rozema's 1999's "deconstructed" version and the lively (but far less faithful) 2007 Billie Piper version (in which very pretty and likable, but inconceivably blonde-haired and dark-browed, Piper is constantly running and giggling throughout the Bertram estate).
Her sister, Mrs. Norris, married a clergyman and they live on or near the estate of yet another sister, Lady Bertram, who, in turn, has married very well, and has four children, two boys, Tom and Edmund and two girls, Maria and Julia with her husband, a baronet, Lord Bertram.Mrs. Norris -- for reasons not entirely clear, although likely to give the appearance of having a charitable nature -- has convinced her wealthy brother-in-law and sister to take in their unfortunate sister's oldest daughter, Fanny.
Fanny grows up at Mansfield Park, always aware she's the family's "poor relation." Her affection for her cousin Edmund is at the core of Austen's love story.The acting in the mini-series is really excellent and Sylvestra LeTouzel is really Fanny, as Austen describes her in the original novel.
Some have mentioned her Lady Bertram seems medicated, but she actually comes across as touched/special/mentally deficient, and it defies credulity that Lord Bertram would marry her and that she would subsequently be running an estate like Mansfield Park (although the argument might be that Mrs. Norris does a good deal of the "running," with Lady Bertram as merely a figure head.
Pleasence's vocal stylings are reminiscent of Shirley Henderson's as "Moaning Myrtle" in "Harry Potter," but without Myrtle's wit and passion.Christopher Villiers and Jackie Smith-Wood, as Tom Bertram and Mary Crawford, are very, very good, and, like Massey's Mrs. Norris and LeTouzel's Fanny, offer up performances that are clearly what Austen intended for the characters.
Austen still leaves us, through this faithful adaptation, hopeful that good character, conscience, and courage do sometimes triumph over situations and people that are beyond our control..
This is, as other reviewers have commented on, a very faithful adaptation of Jane Austen's novel, which is the best thing I can say about it.
The acting is so stagy that it looks like a theatre piece taken off the stage, and most of the actors are obviously uncomfortable in their roles, something a good director would have noticed and tried to amend.
Fanny Price [Sylvestra Le Touzel] is not the prettiest of actresses, at least not in this series, but she was chosen for the part and I have to say, I fell in love with the character.
Of note are Sir Thomas Bertram [Bernard Hepton], Aunt Norris [Anna Massey], Edmund [Nicholas Farrell] and Maria [Samantha Bond]..
for everyone who has read this book, Fanny Price ends up maturing into her own woman, a beautiful woman...with a brain.
The rest of the cast gives a solid good performance but Sylvestra Le Touzel ( as Fanny) and Nicholas Farrell ( as Edmund) are just too dull.
You hardly care for them and it's very hard to believe that Henry Crawford falls in love with her.This may be true to the book but it does not work in a movie / TV- series.
I found this the most accessible of Jane Austin's novels.Look for some of the same actors to appear in the other novels that were filmed at this time..
Not the most exciting of novels, it is the story of Fanny Price, sent from the cramped house she shares with her parents and siblings in Portsmouth, to the home of her rich aunt and uncle Bertram.
Here she becomes part of high society, although barely tolerated by her snobbish Aunt Norris, and finds her first taste of love and infatuation.Played by Sylvestra Le Touzel, Fanny in this version is plain, quiet, and unassuming.
Although many of the characters are caricatures to some extent - and none more annoying than Angela Pleasance as Aunt Bertram - there's some good work from Anna Massey as Aunt Norris and Bernard Hepton as Sir Thomas, Fanny's initially remote uncle.Paced far slower than dramas would be nowadays, and not as filled with incident as, say, Pride and Prejudice or Emma, 'Mansfield Park' requires some patience in viewing, but will reward that patience if you stay with it..
It is the only adaptation of Mansfield Park to actually stay true to the book and its characters, so if that's what you like and you were disappointed by either the 1999 or 2007 versions, you should check this one out.Most of the acting was perfectly adequate (with one big exception)- Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny Price.
Yes, she was written true to the book character of Fanny Price- timid but highly moral inside and all that.
Henry Crawford' s (Robert Burbage) acting is semi-decent, but unfortunately he also is a poor choice to play a romantic hero.
Bothered me every time he had a scene.Story: Well done, sticks to the novel like glue, which is what a literary adaptation should do.Resumee: I've watched this series twice now and it did grow on me slightly, however the terrible wigs and poor casting decisions for the romantic heroes (both good actors but just wrong for their parts) and the heroine spoil what could have been a good attempt.
The supporting cast is actually rather good, specially Mrs Norris, Maria and Mary Crawford.
Granted it is a low budget production but the script is good and follows the book more accurately than anything.
On the one hand, it is true that series stayed faithful to the novel and of course I found that very nice, but on the other hand terrible casting, poor acting, especially of key characters like Funny Price, impression of stage play, I mean theatrical way of acting makes you irritate from the beginning to the end.
The Good and Bad. This adaptation is very true to the book.
.i liked the other females leads playing Aunt Norris and Mary Crawford.
On the surface, sitting down to watch this miniseries, I can understand why the modern viewer (accustomed to film instead of videotape, and filming budgets and schedules that go more for locations than sets) might think this Mansfield Park a little dated and less than exciting, but - on the other hand - it was made twenty-five years ago and arguably still has something about it.Fanny Price, admittedly, is not the most wild or exciting of Austen's heroines.
The other aunt, Mrs. Norris, is such a hypocrite - when things come to a head and Maria and Crawford cause scandal, she has the front to say it's Fanny's fault for refusing to marry Crawford.
Although wordy, the dialogue used by the aunts is very Austen-like - they start out intending to do one thing, then talk themselves out of it and feel good about the result.
There is a good distinction between Mary's ultra-fashionable look and Fanny's simple wardrobe and plainer hairstyle.
Similarly, the choice of furnishings are excellent - contrast the laden tables at Mansfield Park with the simple china and the tin plates of the Prices' home.Overall, although not as exciting perhaps as the 1999 film version, this adaptation is much more faithful to the book and I think takes more time over the subtleties of the plot..
I love watching these old BBC adaptations you feel that all sins dodgy makeup, some slightly stiff acting and static camera-work are atoned for by the mere fact of them having bothered in the first place to devote so much, and such proper, attention to one of Austen's more disputed triumphs.Fanny Price, eldest daughter of a large, poor naval family, comes as a child to live with her wealthy aunt, the wife of a baronet, Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park.
I liked her as I confess I had not much liked Fanny Price in the book.Edmund as played by Nicholas Farrell was decent, not handsome but then he's not really meant to be.
But as with other reviewers here, I found Robert Burbage's Henry Crawford insufficiently fascinating for the romantic damage he is to do though quite unappealing enough for Fanny's dislike.Forget the great license taken by Rozema's big, blustery version; this one does Austen's writing justice, but perhaps hasn't been treated kindly by time.
When I really like a book, I expect a movie or TV adaptation to be faithful to that book.
(Contrast this to, say, the 2005 Keira Knightley "Pride and Prejudice," a pretty good movie, perhaps, but a lousy representation of the author's intent.) If you're not much of a reader but you want to know what Jane Austen was trying to express in "Mansfield Park," this version will tell you faithfully.
The script, casting, staging, locations, sets, costumes, and acting are all very good with very limited exceptions.Had this been produced in 1994 alongside "Pride and Prejudice"--a truly world-class production in every way--it no doubt would have had a much better technical outcome and perhaps have had a little more "snap" to it.
As a viewer of this miniseries, I grew irritated by the mannerisms, gestures and look of the lead character, Fannie Price.
Many have said it was true to the book, if that is the case I find it hard to believe that Jane Austen would create such a character as her lead heroine.
Fanny character played by Sylvestra Le Touzel was lackluster; she often appeared to be about to faint.
This version of Mansfield Park, while being extremely accurate to the novel lacked the compassion I felt for Fanny which is crucial and central to this Jane Austen story.
I suggest skipping this version of Mansfield Park for the real thing...the Novel.
total crap.I was kind of excited to see this as it is the only film version I have seen of Mansfield Park.
A most tedious version of Mansfield Park, which to begin with is less interesting and engaging than Austen's other works (i.e. Emma, P&P, S&S). |
tt0061189 | The Wild Angels | In between sprees featuring drugs, fights, sexual assault, loud revving Harley chopper engines and bongo drums, the Angels ride out to Mecca, California in the desert to look for the Loser's stolen motorcycle. They blame a group of Mexicans in a repair shop, and the two groups brawl. The police arrive, chasing the Angels on foot, and the Loser escapes by stealing a police motorcycle. After a chase on mountain roads, one of the officers shoots the Loser in the back, putting him in the hospital.
Blues leads a small group of Angels that sneaks him out of the hospital, and one of them begins to sexually attack a black nurse until Blues pulls him away. The nurse identifies Blues to police though he stopped the attack. Without proper medical care, the Loser goes into shock and dies. His cohorts forge a death certificate and arrange a church funeral in the Loser’s rural hometown. Blues interrupts the service, and the Angels have a "party". The Angels remove the Loser from his Nazi flag-draped casket, sit him up and place a joint in his mouth, knock out the minister, place him in the casket, and two Angels drug and rape the Loser’s grieving widow, Gaysh, while Blues is apparently having sex with another woman.
Later, the Angels proceed to the Sequoia Grove cemetery to bury the Loser. There, the locals throw stones at the Angels and provoke a fight. As police sirens approach and everyone scatters, Mike begs Blues to leave immediately, but he refuses and tells her to leave with another member of the gang. Blues stays behind, and before burying his friend on his own, says with resignation, "There's nowhere to go." | cult | train | wikipedia | Many a Peter Fonda poster from "Wild Angels" went up on bedroom walls as parents pondered where they had gone wrong.The gang in "Wild Angels" did not wear Hells Angels colors, they were "Angels-San Pedro" although some Hells Angels from the Long Beach chapter actually appeared in the film.
AI's biker films had very colorful titles and often mentioned Hell or Angels in the title: "Devils Angels", "The Born Losers", "The Savage Seven", "The Mini-Skirt Mob", "Angels from Hell", "Hells Angels 69", "Hells Belles", and "The Hard Ride"."Wild Angels" was ground-breaking stuff when it was released and featured more Nazi stuff than the later films because once the surfers adopted the Iron Cross it was no longer cool.
Roger Corman, the genius of low budget (no budget) exploitation filmmaking, decided to pioneer the 60's biker genre by making this picture about the Hell's angels.
Then Corman hired the Angels, along with Peter Fonda (his first succesful movie), Bruce Dern, Nancy Sinatra (Daddy must have not liked this), and Diane Ladd, along with a few others who knew how to deliver their lines when asked for.
The result is a decently entertaining picture (which most Corman films tend to be), but overall full of filler material that gets boring after a while (such as party sequences that go on for a very long time) as a substitute for character and story development (another Corman trademark as well).
This film, however, wasn't inexpensive according to Corman standards - it cost almost 1 million to make (and it raked in over 3 million in its first week alone, with many bikers rolling in to drive-in cinemas to see it).For 1966, the content (people clad in swastikas, partying and drinking their lights out in a protestant church, women scantily clad in their underwear, passing the occasional joint, and 2 inexplicit rape sequences) was obviously a shocker.
Today a film like this would have been ten times more disguisting and explicit, and the church scene would be milked for it's offensive potential (and it wouldn't be able to earn the profit this one did, given today's consolidated theater market).The film's visual style is exciting, with some interesting camera movement and handheld camerawork, lending a documentary feel (complete with soft focus shots).
Plot has Southern California biker gang enjoying rumbles, cycle jousts, hassling the Mexicans, and outrunning the local heat; but when Bruce Dern steals a police-bike and gets shot, gang "president" Peter Fonda hatches a plan to break him out of the hospital and thus keep him out of prison.
Sort of the older brother to "Easy Rider", "Angels" was eclipsed in popularity and relevance only a few years later, but it's fairly gripping and visceral overall, occasionally amusing, and features some fine actors in support (Diane Ladd, Gayle Hunnicutt, Michael J.
Producer Roger Corman set out to make a film based on the notorious California-Based ''Hell's Angels'' motorcycle gang, having seen a cover story about them in Life Magazine.Legendary ''B'' movie studio, American International Pictures was just as anxious to jump on the ''Biker Bandwagon'' (they eventually produced or distributed eleven more films on this subject) and gave the OK to Corman.
Playing his ''Old Lady'' was Nancy Sinatra, who was then riding high with her hit single ''These Boots Are Made For Walkin'.Bruce Dern played ''The Loser'' the part originally intended for Fonda, and Dern's then wife Diane Ladd portrayed his on-screen spouse.
Since ''The Wild One''aside, this was the film that started the whole ''Cycle'' cycle, it's not surprising that it has a very experimental feel to it.The location photography is excellent, and belies the brief three week shooting schedule, while the musical score written by future AIP Biker music stalwart (and future Lieutenant Governor) Mike Curb, is dynamic and fits the visuals like a glove.
Fonda is a bit weak as ''Heavenly Blues'' the leader, but Sinatra makes a pretty tough ''Momma'' and though her natural beauty is downplayed, she is still very easy on the eyes.Upon it's release, the low-budget film proved enormously popular (AIP'S biggest hit so far) and convinced them to launch a whole series of ''Protest'' films.
The Biker genre would have it's share of hits and misses, and, thanks to a few Poverty-Row, independent productions like ''The Hellcats'' ''The Rebel Rousers'' and ''The Cycle Savages'' (starring Dern) all of which made this one seem fairly lavish by comparison, it had petered out by the early seventies.
In Venice, California, the leader of Hell's Angels Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) tells his friend Joe 'Loser' Kearns (Bruce Dern) that he had located his stolen motorcycle in Mecca.
The opening title shots of Peter Fonda riding along the California coast to the sound of some very cool music gives the false hope that this is a classic film.
it had been many years since,The Wild Ones had been made with Brando.Hollywood disdained biker movies,there for, good writers were not going to have their name linked to one.the actors in this made it on a lark.they went to party and have fun.they knew they wasn't making any sort of an epic.but in a way they did.people who went to see this didn't care about the script or story line.this was a movie made with people from their generation,and not the same Hollywood old guard.so in many ways this started a trend in Hollywood of making movies,for the young adults,that wasn't Frankie and Annete on the beach.I personally like this movie,and see it to just have fun,not to learn any thing.I know the story is b.s.but it's got bikes,babes, partying,and dudes acting like horse's asses,how can you go wrong?.
Everything you love about kitschy, youth-oriented drive-in 60s film fare is here: acting as wooden as teak; insane California biker culture; Nancy Sinatra in a mini; music that tried hard to be hip but was plainly written and performed by 42-year-old session men; tough-as-nails babes with Aqua Net-petrified hair.
Certainly one that Peter Fonda would probably have liked to forget at one time, the pairing of he and Nancy has entered it the pantheon of truly good bad movies.
'The Wild Angels' was start of AIP's and Roger Corman's counterculture and biker films that itself grew into popular sub-genre in late '60s and early '70s.Screenplay of 'The Wild Angels' is as empty as it's characters.
We are introduced to Blues (Peter Fonda) and Loser (Bruce Dern) and their girlfriends Mike (Nancy Sinatra) and Gaysh (Diane Ladd).
Peter Fonda is terrible, he oozes coolness sitting on his bike and wearing sunglasses but when he opens his mouth that illusion washes away.Although the screenplay is shallow and acting is passable at best, the direction by Corman is smooth and the pacing is perfect that the film doesn't feel dragging.
Smooth bike riding scenes accompanied with cool soundtrack make 'The Wild Angels' one of the best examples of style over substance.Recommended to everyone who are interested where the biker movie craze started.
Another trademark with this type of film is the fact that he, and other low-budget directors, rely on the children of Hollywood legends (Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra) to attract an audience.
I don't speak from Peter Fonda (he is only solid like Nancy Sinatra too), the guy is Bruce Dern, one of the most underrated actors of US-cinema.
Much better biker films have been made later like "Hell's Angels On Wheels", "The Rebel Rousers", and my all time favorite movie "Easy Rider".
I didn't want Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern to be remembered for this film but I'm afraid they are, especially Dern, whose role as "Loser" reminded me of "Weekend At Bernie's".
Except for Bruce Dern's great performance as Loser, this is actually one of the worst biker films, although not terrible.
Peter Fonda looks right, Nancy Sinatra is a hot biker mama, Michael J.
There are choice moments (The church scene is classic), but most of it is pretty white-bread.I know this was a hit, that helped Easy Rider in a strange way get produced, but it doesn't stand up to Hell's Angels on Wheels for sure.
The Film was released in various running times, most edited to take out some of the more violent, racy bits.Bikers in this film and many to follow would never again be looked as good guys until 'Easy Rider' many years later..
This is typically the kind of movie which retains a small cult-following and does not deserve it at all.First of all,it came ten years to late:see Lazlo Benedeck'"the wild ones" with Marlon Brando which seems very passé today too.And who could believe in a bunch of weirdoes commanded by Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra?Bruce Dern is ,so to speak,the stand-out:he manages to play the first half of the movie alive,and the second half dead(yes,he does play dead!).The final party wants to shock the spectator but nets only horse-laugh and disgust:you can't make fun of the nazi flag and get away with it,when you know the horrible things this sinister emblem represents.The rapes scenes are unpleasant to a fault(a pleonasm,anyway,can a rape be pleasant?).It seems that ,in the last minutes,the director suddenly realizes how mean is his film:he tries to redeem himself by getting a little "emotion "in the final.So Peter Fonda,in a grand gesture ,stays by the grave waiting heroically(and comically) for the police.But it is all to little to late..
Roger Corman, though having his rightful clout as one of the pioneers of drive in movies and exploitation pictures, doesn't have a great film with The Wild Angels, but then it's not meant to be.
But on the other hand, as a purely drive-in movie, where people watching aren't necessarily meant to keep track of the whole picture ALL the time (likely 'making out' Corman must've thought), it doesn't break under time that much.
And, sometimes, Corman is actually pretty creative and intuitive as a filmmaker.His cast is Peter Fonda (quite similar to Easy Rider which means maybe too esoteric and contemplative to be the wild leader of the angels), Nancy Sinatra (not that great, though she can fake a crying scene pretty well), and Bruce Dern (in a role that actually does ask for some real 'acting' as opposed to biker posing).
There are also other real Angels riding about in the background, and basically the story revolves around the wounding- and later unnecessary death- of Loser (Dern), who is also given a proper Biker funeral.
Sometimes the scenes are pretty basic, lots of generic (even for the period) rock and roll tunes put to the Angels riding around, and partying, though once in a while Corman actually makes it interesting.
But for the most part, it's just the simple tale of youth who just "want to be free, to ride without getting hassled by the man...and we want to get loaded!" In short, it's kind of like the fast-food equivalent of a biker-movie.
Roger Corman is responsible for starting the biker flicks phenomenon with this film.Peter Fonda is the essence of coo as he performs a role that he made even more popular in Easy Riders three years later.He is accompanied by Nancy Sinatra as Monkey, Michael J.
Pollard as Pigmy, and Bruce Dern as Loser; along with three time Oscar nominee, and Golden Globe and BAFTA winner, Diane Ladd in her first credited movie role.Radical scene in the church where Fonda debated the preacher (played by Frank Maxwell, Det. Lt.
Fonda plays a biker named "Heavenly Blues" who has second thoughts about his life-style after a plan of his gets his best friend fatally shot.
Roger Corman's trash classic that started the biker movie cycle of the 1960s/70s..
In fact more than one person has made the connection that 'The Wild Angels' plus Corman's psychedelic propaganda movie 'The Trip' equals 'Easy Rider'.
Peter Fonda, who would go on to co-star in and co-write the seminal biker flick "Easy Rider", stars here as "Heavenly Blues", leader of a pack of Hells Angels.
Said monologue is an absolute hoot.While "The Wild Angels" did make stars out of Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, and Diane Ladd, the acting wouldn't exactly have been award worthy.
In Venice, California, the leader of Hell's Angels Heavenly Blues tells his friend Joe "Loser" Kearns (Bruce Dern) that he had located his stolen motorcycle in Mecca.
While trying to retrieve the bike, Loser is shot on the back by a police patrol end goes to the hospital.This film's pedigree is amazing: Dern, Peter Fonda, Diane Ladd, Nancy Sinatra, Roger Corman, Arkoff-Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich...
Just kids being kids, Peter Fonda, as the Iron Cross wearing rebel leader, Bruce Dern as the Loser (who does) Nancy Sinatra as Mike the gorgeous leaders lady.
This rebel movie was made before "Easy Rider",too much points in common:between these flicks:bikes,gangs,road movie,drugs,leathered rebels non system,pretty girls,one generation with all the craving to protest against the Establishment.Those were the times to protest against Vietnam war,the American youth despised this unnecessary conflict,the "Flower Power" charmed the teenagers,the traditional "American way of life" was in discuss,the "Major Morarilty" begun to sound old-fashioned and decadent,"Hell's Angels" were a nightmare to a rotten system,but one reaction can lead to a brutal counter-reaction.
Peter Fonda,an icon of the '60s,puts the best performance,Dern,Sinatra, Ladd were good fellas in this outraged film led by Mr.
"movies B" Roger Corman,though "Easy Rider" three years after will take the point of break at the top..
Corman's film features pretty much all the essential aspects that determine a biker movie.
Peter Fonda depicts, for the first time of many, the ruthless gang leader of a biker gang called The Angels.
Story is about the leader of the Venice Hell's Angels named Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) who tells his biker pal Loser (Bruce Dern) that they might have found his stolen chopper in a nearby town called Mecca.
This Roger Corman's classic was the first movie to portray the biker culture of Southern Calfornia in a modern way.
Peter Fonda portrayed a character that had refined good looks that never appeared in any biker movies before.
By now the police is on to them, and as they go to the cemetery to bury Loser's body, they hear the cop's siren approaching.This film was like a prototype for the movie "The Easy Rider".
If you take "Blues" (Peter Fonda) character from this movie, and have him appear as the same person only a year or so later in the Easy Rider, the transition won't look so unnatural.
That's how similar the two movies are.What's striking about this film is how good Peter Fonda looks as a Hells Angels biker.
(SPOILERS!!!) Peter Fonda and a gang of idiotic bikers are riding around Mexico or somewhere, and along the way, one of them gets shot.
Fonda looks atrocious in his biker punk get up, and the whole film is less interesting than watching an old lady knit for 86 minutes.
Perhaps however, 1966, when the film was made, would be different from 1968.The first time we should realize that we should not be for Heavenly Blues (Peter Fonda) and his gang is when they attack some Mexican youths in a garage.
The police are never shown as being brutal authority figures, but just as people trying to keep things in a peaceful way.Bruce Derns name in the film (The loser) is apt for the whole group.
When at the end the police are on the way, Nancy Sinatra tells Fonda's character, lets get away, He responds for the first time with any real sense of his own life, "there is no where to go".
Indie Corman flick about how the lives of a group of Hell's Angels, particularly leader Blues(Peter Fonda), change when one of their own(Bruce Dern) is harmed after stealing a police officer's bike.More of a curio regarding neo-nazi riders living by their own rules and partying non-stop, but I kind of felt there's not a lot here except that.
Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra was all members of the Angels--a sort of biker 'club'.
"Heavenly Blues" (Peter Fonda) is the leader of a motorcycle gang known simply as "the Angels" and has as his girlfriend the beautiful "Mike" (Nancy Sinatra).
Those who like biker films, or movies from this particular period of time, will probably enjoy it.
Roger Corman's "The Wild Angels" was released in 1966 and kicked off the biker film craze that ran for less than a decade, which makes it the perfect introduction to the genre, not to mention it's the best of the lot I've seen.
THE PLOT: Heavenly Blues (Fonda) and The Loser (Bruce Dern) are members of The Angel's bike gang (modeled after the Hell's Angels).
The first half hour shows them and their "old ladies" (Nancy Sinatra & Diane Ladd) living the wild & crazy lifestyle of a biker gang in Southern California.
Yeah, the "party animal" lifestyle gets old real quick, and then ya gotta grow up (everybody grows older but not everyone grows up).Despite what some say, Nancy Sinatra does a fine job as Fonda's girlfriend; she would later renounce the film, however, due to it's over-the-top immorality.FINAL ANALYSIS: The first time I saw "The Wild Angels" I was completely taken aback by the shocking immorality of The Angels; I simply wasn't prepared to see this in a 1966 picture.
Oh, Peter Fonda was sorely miscast for this and any other biker movie such as Easy Rider.
No one like Roger Corman has been able to get into the zeitgeist of any particular time, but that doesn't mean he comes out on top with every movie.
It reminds me that the 1960s was probably the last time people could really be enraged and protest in a way that wasn't completely marred by self-interest, cynicism, and parochialism.What I liked best about this movie, being born after this film was made, is that these bikers were the original punk rockers but with more of a clear cause. |
tt0460943 | The Ritual | Dr. Alice Dodgson (Jennifer Grey) is fired from a hospital due to her involvement in the death of a patient. With few options, she decides to take a job as a nurse in Jamaica caring for Wesley Claybourne (Daniel Lapaine), a young man apparently suffering from encephalitis. Alice falls in love with Wesley, but she fears that she and Wesley are the targets of a voodoo cult. She befriends Caro (Kristen Wilson), a local girl. Caro advises Alice that any recrimination from the Voodoo community will only come as a result of her interference with their practices. Tension mounts as Alice suffers additional unexplained phenomena. Caro is revealed as the cause of the strange goings-on; she is seeking revenge against Wesley because their father killed Caro's mother and rejected Caro as his daughter, denying her an inheritance. Caro attempts to paralyze Alice and turn her into a zombie, but Alice is only partially paralyzed. Alice causes Caro's plan to backfire, and Caro is turned into a zombie instead. Alice and Wesley abandon Jamaica and move to the United States. The local Police Chief takes Caro into his home and puts her in his bed. | suspenseful | train | wikipedia | Horrible.
Serial killer Wayne Montgomery was inadvertently "outed" in December 2006, after DNA evidence linked him and his wife Andrea to a series of brutal unsolved murders in the small town of Claymont, Delaware - as well as the disappearance of their own daughter Monica.
However, Andrea was the only one arrested.
Authorities were unable to locate Wayne, who had simply vanished.
Countless hours of Wayne & Andrea's home footage, allegedly depicting several of these vicious acts being committed, had also vanished.
Recently discovered footage recorded by Wayne in 2007 details his activities in the months following his wife's arrest - adjusting to his life as a fugitive...and beginning a sadistic, twisted relationship with a teenage male hustler named Jared, whom Wayne has selected to groom as a successor.
However, things will soon become unraveled when outside influences threaten to destroy the foundation that Wayne has created for his young student.
This movie is not a horror movie.
It's a talking head movie and boring beyond belief.
Slow, tedious, talkie.
And oddly directed.
Don't bother.
Unless you want a new version of Lunestra..
Incredible Sequel to an Original.
This follow-up to Head Case is quite impressive.
Spadaccini took a completely different direction in The Ritual and I like it.
The Ritual takes the disturbing horror elements from its predecessor and adds some depth to the story.
This film introduces some new characters.
Jared, played by Joey Garrison, is one of my favorite characters.
His performance was stellar.
We also got to see more from Brinke Stevens, whose performance was also outstanding.
She had such an intense presence in the film, even with little screen time.
The characters all meshed together so well.
The cinematography and editing improved dramatically in comparison to Head Case.
Head Case was gritty and raw, while Ritual has a more elegant feel, yet maintains its realism..
Very well written...great story line but.........
The acting of the supporting cast left much to be desired.
Don't get me wrong, the leads were great, story line was great but the supporting cast just could not keep up.
Wayyyyy out-classed.Good movie overall but the the actors that played Holly, Robert....etc.
need to get more acting lessons before embarking on something as intricate as this.
Hopefully they will get better with time.I really look forward to more shorts and features from this director.
Anthony appears to be a natural at this craft but it is almost like he cast some of his friends with little or no real training to play bit parts thus bringing down what was a film with potential.I look forward to watching Post-Mortem but the supporting cast has some of the same names that did not impress me in this one.
Hopefully, they give a better performance in Post-Mortem.Alex.
Engrossing serial killer drama.
The Ritual is a sequel to the 'found footage' horror film Head Case.
It isn't what I was expecting.
I wouldn't even consider it to be a horror film.
It's more of a serial killer drama.
The story, about a fugitive serial killer and his teenage accomplice, is engrossing.
It's beautifully shot and well-acted.
Paul McCloskey returns as serial killer Wayne Montgomery, whose even-keeled demeanor and matter-of-fact delivery make him a very endearing character.
Joey Garrison plays his teenage accomplice Jared with a frightening (and all-too-realistic) blend of angst and glee.
The chemistry between the leads is one of the strongest parts of the film.
The Ritual (much like Head Case) isn't for all tastes.
It's a character-driven film with improvised dialogue and a low body count.
But it's very entertaining and stuck with me long after it was over..
The teacher sometimes is the one who gets taught a lesson....
...and in this case, it was a deadly one.This film takes you a step further into the life of Wayne Montgomery.
With his wife behind bars, he needed someone else to help him with his dirty work.
It seemed as though he had scoped Jared out.
He pulls him into his world of killings and teaches him the ways of murder.
One of the most controversial parts of the film is when Wayne takes his mother's life.
Wayne killed his mother because he was jealous of the relationship that she and Jared were forming.
He saw it was creating a weakness in his relationship with Jared.
Wayne was very clear with Jared in telling him not to kill someone you know, and to not make it personal.
Ultimately, Wayne's death was a result of his negligence and going against his own set of rules.
It is interesting that someone who flew so far under the radar and who had committed so many unsolved crimes would be murdered by his own "student." Although he is no longer a menace to society, Jared lives on and so does those who follow in his footsteps.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film and I like how it sets you up for the 3rd Head Case film "Post-Mortem." Bravo, Anthony!
Bravo!.
Yeech!.
This movie is horrible.
Granted, I only got about two minutes into it, but it was the longest two minutes of my life.
It felt like twenty.
The heavy-set man that Wayne Montgomery was talking to at the beginning reminded me of my son-in-law, which was a good thing for him.
It made him likable for me.
However, the milquetoast sounding 'serial killer' just rubbed me the wrong way.
The effort to make him sound like 'every man' was a pathetic attempt to gain some sympathy for the 'antihero', and it failed abysmally.
Then they throw in some young, smug looking punk as the new 'protege', and it all slides downhill from there.
For a 'found footage film', it had no interesting shots, no real flow, and no realism.
The black and white filming was intended to make the film, and therefore the subject matter, seem bleak and ugly, and they succeeded, at least with the ugly part.
Not worth the time or effort, in spite of the fact that I got it for free through Prime. |
tt0038346 | Behind Green Lights | Police Lieutenant Sam Carson spots Walter Bard's bullet-ridden corpse in a car brazenly left in front of the police station. Carson questions Janet Bradley after finding her name in the dead man's appointment book. She admits that the Bard had been blackmailing her friend for $20,000, and that she went to see him, though she had been able to raise only half the money. When he refused to settle for that, she claims she took what she came for at gunpoint. Max Calvert, a newspaper owner, pressures Carson to arrest Bradley to hurt her father's election campaign for mayor. Carson declines.
When Dr. Yager, the corrupt medical examiner, informs Calvert that Bard actually died from poison, Calvert orders him to get the body out of the police station and substitute another corpse for it before anyone else finds out.
Meanwhile, Carson interviews Bard's estranged wife, Nora, who is accompanied by her lawyer and boyfriend, Arthur Templeton.
Complications ensue when a prisoner pulls his own switch, taking the place of Bard's body to escape from the police station in an ambulance. Johnny Williams, the new reporter on the police beat, finds the missing body in a closet. He gets a scoop for his newspaper, and Carson gets his corpse back. The lieutenant notices there is very little blood for a fatal gunshot, so he orders another autopsy, by someone other than Yager.
Then Nora Bard and Arthur Templeton voluntarily confess to him that they lied before. Nora was in her husband's apartment when he died. She had gone to plead for a divorce, and hid in another room when Janet Bradley arrived. After Janet left, Nora found Walter dying after drinking some liquor. When she ran out, she was seen by Templeton. He went into the apartment, assumed Nora had committed the crime, and staged the fake suicide to protect her.
Noticing a fresh flower among Bard's effects, Carson questions flower seller Flossie. She mentions that when she went to try to collect what Bard owed her, she saw Yager unlock and enter Bard's apartment. Carson confronts Yager. Knowing that Bard had been investigating Yager for a malpractice suit, the policeman guesses that Yager stole the evidence Bard had found and poisoned the liquor. Yager makes a break for it, but is caught. At Detective Oppenheimer's suggestion, Carson then takes Janet Bradley out. | murder | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0178965 | Vampires | A team of Vatican sponsored vampire hunters led by Jack Crow rids an abandoned house of vampires in the middle of New Mexico, only to be wiped out by a master vampire called Valek. Only two members of the team survive, Jack Crow and Tony Montoya as well as a prostitute named Katrina who was bitten by Valek. Crow later meets his boss, Cardinal Alba, who introduces him to Father Adam Guiteau.
After Crow reluctantly allows Guiteau to come along with him, he tells the priest some of his past, about how his father was bitten by a vampire, killed his mother and came after Jack, who ended up killing him. He then asks what it is Valek is after and Guiteau tells him that Valek is seeking an ancient relic called the Black Cross of Berziers and that Valek was once a fallen priest who was thought to have been possessed by demons. The Bérziers Cross was used in an exorcism that was cut short but the result was that Valek was forever changed into the first vampire.
Using the changing Katrina's mind, Jack, Montoya and Guiteau find out that Valek has seized the cross and they arrive at an old church to kill more vampires, but they are soon set up as Cardinal Alba sides with Valek and kidnaps Crow, revealing that his plan all along was being turned by Valek so he too can become immortal. Katrina turns into a vampire and allies herself with Valek after biting Montoya. Cardinal Alba agrees to perform a ritual using the cross which will allow vampires to walk in sunlight and be invulnerable, but Guiteau, who was in hiding, appears and kills him before he can finish the ritual. Montoya and Guiteau then rescue Crow as the sun rises, and Crow heads off to confront Valek, whom he kills by ramming the Berziers cross into his chest and exposing him to sunlight, which causes Valek to explode.
Guiteau realizes that Montoya is about to turn into a vampire now that he has been bitten by Katrina, but Crow knows that Montoya has been loyal to him and so decides to take Montoya's fate in his hands, telling Montoya that after two days he will hunt down and kill both him and Katrina. After Montoya and Katrina leave, Jack and Guiteau head off once again to kill the rest of the vampires that made it to shelter. | good versus evil, murder | train | wikipedia | Very low budget vampire movie without much cohesion. VAMPIRES is an exceptionally low budget vampire movie, filmed in 1986. It doesn't make much sense in terms of editing or narrative cohesion. The story is set at a girl's school which hides a very dark secret and the headmistress is involved. If you think this all sounds a bit like SUSPIRIA then you couldn't be further from the truth, because this is very cheap and lacklustre as a result.The film is most notable for starring a middle-aged Duane Jones, he of the instantly recognisable face from his role as Ben in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Jones plays in support as an academic who assists our film's youthful heroine in her quest to uncover the truth. Inevitably, he's the best thing about the production. Otherwise, you get incessantly loud music drowning out the scenes, some nudity, an adequately-realised high school setting, and not much in the way of incident. It's a bit of a time waster, if I'm honest.. One-timer. "Vampires" is a low budget Vampire-Horror movie settled around a university somewhere in the States. There, an ever-young director draws suspicion when more and more of her students die or disappear. As time passes, we learn that her husband once made a powerful invention that stops aging itself and now his wife is on a hunt to collect the positive souls she needs to stay alive and well.As you can probably already tell by now, the plot is one of a typical vampire movie. Whiel we don't really see the stereotypical vampire here, who sleeps in his tomb and stuff, the motives like the innocent, good-looking young girl who gets endangered are quite known by now. The movie manages to create enough tension to prevent it from being boring, so in my opinion this is quite an easy watch if you just want to free your mind. I liked the idea of incorporation of good and evil energy, unfortunately the producers didn't make more out of that concept.All in all I don't have negative feelings towards this film. It is not a very good movie but it serves its purpose and if you are not in the mood for a film classic, this one will be perfectly fine. |
tt0245622 | Five Children and It | The film begins with five children (Robert, Cyril, Jane, Anthea and The Lamb), that let their father go to the fight in World War I. That's in 1914, but the children are asked to stay at their uncle's house with his son, Horace. While exploring the house, Robert finds a locked door in the Greenhouse and brings the other children. They manage to open the door and discover a creature called It, a sand fairy. They wish to make the house tidy without having to do the work. When they come back, they see dozens of copies of themselves doing the chores and wrecking the house in the attempt.
Suddenly, everything disappears in clouds of golden dust. They are then forced to tidy up the mess and learn that wishes only last till sunset. The children blame It for the mess. They need money to fix all the broken items, so they wish for buckets of gold and go off to buy some items. Meanwhile, Horace becomes suspicious. The children aren't able to buy anything because the owners will not accept gold, believing it is fake. They purchase a car, having nothing else to do with the gold, and end up crashing it. Robert goes to It and wishes for wings so they can go off to France and find their father. While flying, they are almost killed, managing to escape in time. When sunset comes, they have no choice but to go home. They lose their wings and are about to fall into the sea but are blown back by It.
When the children's mother returns, the children learn that their father has gone missing. Robert falls asleep next to It on the beach. Horace follows Robert and captures It. The next morning, Robert confronts Horace but is unwilling to act, as Horace has his father's compass. Robert suggests Horace wish for something rather than dissect It, as he wanted to do. Horace wishes for his Dinosaur to hatch. The children arrive in time to see Horace's dinosaur standing high above them. After trying to calm it down, It makes the dinosaur vanish. Shocked, Horace passes out, and Robert takes him to their mother, while the other children wish for their father to come home.
The children go to Horace, settle their differences, and agree to share the secret of Its existence together. On It's birthday, the children wish it a good future and prepare to return home. When their car breaks down, they are forced to stay in the house and Horace suggests a game of hide-and-seek. As Robert counts, his father appears. When Robert realizes that its really their father, he and the children are overjoyed, joined by their mother. Finally reunited with their father, the children prepare to go home. | fantasy | train | wikipedia | Enchanting children's fantasy with genuine escapism..
This was made as a six part serial for the BBC in 1991.
It was very successful and much of this is due to the quirky charm of the Psammead, a sand fairy.
The story is a faithful adaptation of E.Nesbit's classic novel and possesses all of the enchantment and magic of the original.
The children happen on an ancient and temperamental sand fairy, the Psammead, as they play in a gravel pit.
It finds itself compelled to grant three wishes a day which it does somewhat resentfully by inflating its wrinkly stomach, these moments alone are well worth the price of the video (the DVD fully remastered with extras is due for release in October 2004).
This is well worth a look..
Beautifully done childlike fantasy film.
This is a beautiful adaptation of an Edith Nesbitt book, very full of a beautiful childlike innocence and wonder.
The Sand Fairy(or Psammead) is one of the best creature puppets I have ever seen- its movements are amazingly lifelike and full of personality.
An excellent fantasy film- highly recommended..
It wasent all that bad to be honest.
I have vague recollections of this...and until the new film version came out I had all but forgotten it.It was a bbc children's program and the acting was not too bad.
( from the usual child actors that sometimes ( as is with most bbc serials)....you just wanted to slap for being so well spoken and polite)but the star was the sand fairy, the puppet was amazing and captured all his indignity and self pride.all in all i would say 8.5 /10psthe sight of the wee sand fairy as he granted wishes...........was a thing that NOBODY should miss seeing.
hard to explain but best way to describe it would be "a bad case of constipation".
Childhood favourite.
FIVE CHILDREN AND IT is another sterling example of Children's BBC back when they made decent, cultured fare for children.
This one's a six-part adaptation of the E.
Nesbit (THE RAILWAY CHILDREN) novel, featuring a quartet of kids who discover a mysterious Psammead (or 'Sand Fairy') living in the local sandpit who has the power to grant a wish a day.Okay, the quality of this production - not to mention the acting - isn't up with the likes of, say, THE BORROWERS, but it's still a lot of fun and I loved it as a kid.
The child cast are, shall we say enthusiastic, if not incredibly talented, but they come second to the excellent Psammead, whose combination of animatronics, voice acting, and mannerisms is unforgettable.
I particularly love the way he sings the lyrical song over the closing credits.Each of the six episodes offers a mixture of mini-adventures as the kids wish for something that inevitably goes wrong somehow.
The special effects are dated, but the budget extends to some fairly impressive milieus of circuses and medieval castles.
Some of the sub-plots are better than others, but there's plenty of wry humour which works well, and by the end you've fallen in love with both characters and Psammead.
A sequel, RETURN OF THE PSAMMEAD, followed, but avoid the 2004 Hollywood-ised film like the plague; it takes the original novel, shreds it, and throws in nonsense about dinosaurs and assorted nonsense..
Grant me one wish, don't watch this movie!.
This movie, about a little puppet fairy in a gravel pit grants four English kids three wishes.
The children make horrible wishes, and screw their lives up.
An extremely worthless movie, it's not worth your time, money, or attention.
Please, disregard this movie. |
tt0115819 | Alferd Packer: The Musical | The film begins with a reenactment of the gruesome events of cannibalism as described by the prosecuting attorney during Alferd Packer's trial in 1883. Packer insists that things happened differently than what has been recounted, and begins to tell his story to journalist Polly Pry through flashback.
In 1873, a group of miners in Provo, Utah hear of new gold discoveries in Breckenridge and decide to travel to Colorado Territory to stake a claim. After the original guide, Lucky Larry, dies from a lightning strike, Packer is nominated as the replacement since he claimed knowledge of the area. He and his trusty horse, Liane, set off with five miners, Shannon Wilson Bell, James Humphrey, Frank Miller, George Noon, and Israel Swan, on what Packer estimates will be a three-week journey.
Four weeks later, they become convinced they are lost. At a nearby frontier post, they run into a group of three fur trappers, Loutzenheiser, Nutter, and their diminutive leader, Frenchy Cabazon. The trappers despise the miners, "diggers" as they call them, yet seem to like Packer’s horse. They tell the group they are heading towards Saguache. The next day, Packer wakes up to discover his horse and friend, Liane, is missing. The men press on and cross the Green River near the Utah border. The group asks Packer if there are any other big rivers that they will have to cross to which he replies, “Oh no, just the Colorado River.” Eventually, the Packer party is spotted by two “Nihonjin” Indians (obviously played by Japanese actors and speaking Japanese). They are taken back to the tribe where they learn the trappers are waiting for the winter storm to pass as recommended by the chief.
The story returns to the present time, where Polly continues her research of Packer’s story by herself. The next day, Packer is sentenced to death by hanging. Polly visits Packer once again in prison, where he continues his story, and she reveals her growing affection for him through song.
The men set out in the wilderness after Packer learns the trappers have already left. The group begins to suspect that Packer is really only interested in following the trappers to find his horse. They soldier on until they encounter the foreboding Cyclops (Henwood) who recalls how a Union soldier shot out his eye in the Civil War. He realizes Packer's men are not “Southern boys” after they can not finish the lyrics to "Dixie". They escape and the badly frostbitten Swan tries to cheer everybody up with a song about building a snowman. They soon run out of food, resorting to eating their shoes as they become lost in the snow-covered Rocky Mountains. Out of frustration, Bell shoots Swan in the head because he does not appreciate his (Swan's) Pollyanna-esque perspective on their predicament. The men discuss their dire situation that night over the fire, speaking of the cannibalism that the Donner Party had to resort to in California. They decide to consume the body of their dead companion, but “not the butt”. Only Bell refuses. A few more days leads to talk of sacrificing one of their own. Packer convinces them for one more chance for a scouting trip, but when he returns, Bell has killed the others, claiming they planned to kill and eat him after Packer left. Packer is forced to kill Bell after threatening to turn him in, realizing he has gone insane.
Arriving in Saguache sometime later, Packer finds Liane, who has taken to Frenchy Cabazon. The sheriff of Saguache eventually finds and arrests Packer for cannibalism during a bar-fight between him and the trappers. On the day of Packer's execution he is saved at the gallows by Polly. They had gotten a stay of execution from the governor which states that Packer could not be convicted of a state crime since Colorado was not a state at the time of the incident. Cabazon tries to trigger the gallows, since the townsfolk came to see bloodshed. The Indian chief saves Packer by cutting his rope with a katana before beheading Cabazon, satisfying the crowd's blood-lust. Polly and Packer kiss only to be frightened by a still-alive Bell. | cult, comedy, murder, violence, flashback | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0050419 | Funny Face | Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) is a fashion magazine publisher and editor, for Quality magazine, who is looking for the next big fashion trend. She wants a new look for the magazine. Maggie wants the look to be both "beautiful" and "intellectual". She and famous fashion photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) want models who can "think as well as they look." The two brainstorm and come up with the idea to find a "sinister-looking" book store in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. They subsequently find a bookstore named "Embryo Concepts".
Maggie and Dick take over Embryo Concepts, which is being run by the shy bookshop clerk and amateur philosopher, Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn). Jo thinks the fashion and modeling industry is nonsense, saying: "it is chichi, and an unrealistic approach to self-impressions as well as economics". Maggie decides to use Jo in the first fashion shot, to give it a more intellectual look. After the first shot Maggie locks Jo out of the shop to keep her from interrupting the rest of the photo shoot.
What Jo wants more than anything else in the world is to go to Paris and attend the famous philosopher/professor Emile Flostre's (Michel Auclair) lectures about empathicalism. When Dick gets back to the darkroom, he sees something in Jo's face which is "new" and "fresh", and which would be perfect for the campaign, giving it "character", "spirit", and "intelligence". They send for Jo, pretending they want to order some books from her shop. Once she arrives, they start treating her like a doll, trying to make her over, pulling at her clothes and attempting to cut her hair. She is outraged and runs away, only to hide in the darkroom where Dick is working. When Dick mentions Paris, Jo becomes very interested in that she would get a chance to see Professor Flostre, and is finally convinced to model for the magazine. Soon, Maggie, Dick, and Jo are off to Paris to prepare for a major fashion event, shooting photos at famous landmarks from the area. During the various photo shoots, Jo and Dick develop feelings for each other and they fall in love.
One night, when Jo is getting ready for a gala, she learns that Flostre is giving a lecture at a cafe nearby. She attends, forgetting the gala. Eventually, Dick finds her and they get into an argument at the gala's opening, which results in Jo being publicly embarrassed and Maggie outraged. Jo goes to talk to Flostre at his home. Through some scheming, Maggie and Dick make it into the soiree at Flostre's home. After performing an impromptu song and dance for Flostre's disciples, they confront Jo and Flostre. This eventually leads to Dick causing Flostre to fall and knock himself out. Jo urges them to leave. When Flostre wakes up, he tries to make a pass at Jo. Shocked at the behavior of her "idol", she smashes a vase over his head and runs out.
Before the group leaves for home, there is a final fashion show. Jo and Maggie try to get in touch with Dick, who has made plans to leave Paris. Jo does the runway show and before her wedding gown finale, she looks out the window and sees the plane Dick was supposed to be on, take off. Heartbroken, she runs off the runway in tears at the conclusion of the show.
Meanwhile, Dick is at the airport. He runs into Flostre and learns that Jo bashed him on the head with a vase. Dick, realizing how much he cares, goes back to find Jo. He goes back to the runway show, only to find that Jo is nowhere to be found. Finally, after a long search, Dick finds Jo (in the wedding gown) by a little church where they shared a romantic moment during an earlier photo shoot. They embrace and kiss. | philosophical | train | wikipedia | The DVD format we watched recently seems to have been transferred with great care as the colors have a vibrant look, something that wasn't the case with the technique used during that era that made colors fade.The film owes its appeal to Audrey Hepburn, an actress not known for being a singer, or a dancer, but who had enough charm to make the movie her own.
Ms. Hepburn's costumes by Givenchy and the way she carries herself in them is one of the best assets about "Funny Face".The other surprise of the movie is Kay Thompson, who plays the magazine editor Maggie Prescott.
Ms. Thompson makes an excellent contribution to the film as the no nonsense woman who ruled what the fashions of the day should be as shown in the pages of the magazine.The songs of George Gershwin are complimented by the original music composed for the musical by Roger Edens, Adolph Deutsch and Leonard Gershe.
Astaire never is shown taking pictures of great or famous people in the film but several times he demonstrates a refinement that separates him from the rest of Kay Thompson's entourage (most of whom don't care what havoc they cause, as long as they get their jobs done).
The bookshop salesgirl Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) is accidentally found by the photograph Dick Avery (Fred Astaire), who convinces the owner of the fashion magazine Quality, the powerful Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson), that she could be the new model she wants for the magazine.
Once there, Dick falls in love for her."Funny Face" has a great cinematography, art direction, set decoration, costume design and most important, a charming and delightful Audrey Hepburn.
The second big mistake is Fred Astaire (58), thirty years old older than Audrey Hepburn (28), therefore more than twice her age, as her romantic pair.
As long as you do not take the premise or the characters or the plot too seriously, this is an enjoyable movie with an interesting pairing of Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, plus an excellent supporting performance by Kay Thompson and some good-looking settings and scenery.
Stanley Donen has the right touch in keeping things together without making the seams show too often.Hepburn is cast in a somewhat unexpected role, as a drab intellectual store clerk who gets involved with Fred Astaire's (much older) photographer character.
This is a rare bird indeed, a Hollywood musical that succeeds as parody as well as musical entertainment, featuring the best song and dance man of all time, Fred Astaire, and the Hollywood establishment darling, Audrey Hepburn, who was always magnificent despite being pampered and fawned over by the media moguls.
Like his dancing, his singing flowed naturally and freely.The story to "Funny Face" is a simple one, a musical variation on Shaw's Pigmalion which was already a hit musical "My Fair Lady," turned into another Audrey Hepburn vehicle a few years after "Funny Face." What makes this movie stand out is the spellbinding choreography by Astaire, Et.Al., Ray June's cinematography, George Gershwin music, such as the title song, the direction of Stanley Donen, and the Paris fashions by Hubert de Givenchy.
One of my favorite numbers from "Funny Face" is the hilarious yet imaginative parody of modern dance performed by Audrey Hepburn in a Paris cabaret.
This snappy musical teams an ageing Fred Astaire with the young and lively Audrey Hepburn, puts them in Paris with a lovely Gershwin score, and piles on the slush to create romantic confection that really is irresistible.Audrey is at her best here, whether singing (in her own voice) How Long Has This Been Going On?', dancing wildly around a café, or looking like a mannequin in the fabulous frocks.
This beautiful, sublime, light-hearted musical pairs the incomparable Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn.
All the care in casting, production, and direction is MGM-like, thanks probably to a large degree by frequent MGM director Stanley Donen and MGM jack of all trades musical Kay Thompson.The plot is typically a piece of fluff--"drab" Audrey Hepburn (it is genetically impossible for Audrey Hepburn ever to be drab) is discovered by Fred Astaire and transformed into a high-fashion model for Kay Thompson's fashion magazine, "Quality."Although the job of fashion model goes against all her values, Hepburn signs on as the Quality Woman to get a trip to Paris where she hopes to meet the renowned philosopher Emile Flostre, who has developed the concept of empathaticalism.
Entertaining but thin musical -- Stanley Donen's take on "American in Paris." Astaire is a bit too old to be plausibly linked with Hepburn (who we're supposed to believe is unattractive in wool dresses and glasses.
Good Gershwin songs culled from a handful of plays (including the original "Funny Face", which was a better show starring Fred and Adele Astaire), mostly inferior versions of often-done standards.
The plot-thread about the philosopher in Paris is dire, and the film laughably compares a beatnik lecture to a spiritual, but Hepburn works hard to create chemistry between she and Fred Astaire (older and less enthused) and she has some feisty, enchanting moments.
Guess which film I have seen today - no, not Funny Face again, but The Devil wears Prada, and it was impossible to me not to think at the Astaire-Hepburn movie from fifties years ago.
I haven't read yet the 'Prada' book, so I don't know if the similarities are also in the original story, and of course there are many points where the two movies are quite different, but in the whole the new film is sort of a modern version of this old masterwork..
So you've got two of the most famous, most classic film stars of ANY generation in one film--that would, of course, be Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn.
Funny when it's gently skewering the fashion industry and self-righteous pseudo-intellectualism; banal in its clichéd and predictable love story; emotional when Audrey Hepburn gets to hint at the powerful emotions she can't reveal and weak in its rapturous "Oui, oui, it's gay Paree!" swoonfest over arriving in Paris.So, no, it's not one of the great classical musicals (even the chosen Gershwin songs were far from the best selections from that vast repertoire).
FUNNY FACE is notable as a colourful '50s-era music teaming the talents of two of the best-known stars of all time, Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn.
In this film, whose story feels like an earlier version of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, Astaire and Hepburn consummate a May-December relationship when they're brought together by chance.Hepburn stars as one of those unbelievable mousy characters - here a bookshop assistant - who's transformed into an ultra-glamorous model when she goes to Paris for a photo shoot.
Astaire is the top-of-his-game photographer, and much of the film gets by on their easy charm.Of course, there are there requisite song-and-dance numbers to enjoy, and a storyline that's never too heavy or too much.
I get the feeling that the producers decided that since they were giving us Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn (with Kay Thompson thrown in to help with the Astaire/Hepburn overdose), Paris, its fashions and locales, and Gershwin tunes, then that would be more than enough.
I'll admit there are inconsistencies in Jo Stockton's character, and having Fred Astaire at his age as the paramour for Audrey at her age is a little absurd, but the movie is such a lot of fun that you get sucked into it and plot problems et cetera tend to recede into the distance.
George and Ira Gershwin's songs are superb, I especially loved Funny Face and How Long Has This Been Going On?, and the incidental music is suitably mellow, while the story is wonderfully romantic if very simple and the script sparkles with wit.Stanley Donen's direction is credible, and the choreography fits each musical sequence very nicely, especially that of He Loves, She Loves which is beautifully filmed and Audrey Hepburn is so elegant in this scene.
8/10 Bethany Cox. Lessons in style from Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Audrey Hepburn and Richard Avedon.
For the first not-quite-half of Stanley Donen's Funny Face we are in the midst of a stylish, high-fashion fairy tale, populated by the likes of Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson, and transported along by some fine George and Ira Gershwin songs.
Another highlight is Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire's dancing duet "He Loves and She Loves".
Being a trained ballet dancer, she did the ballet sequences the best.As usual, Fred Astaire plays his role with perfect comic timing and dances like that way he always has.
With sprightly direction from Stanley Donen, a sparkling performance from Audrey Hepburn, a colorful performance from Kay Thompson, and Mr. Good Old Reliable, Fred Astaire.
I know most Audrey Hepburn fans think My Fair Lady (1964) is her best musical, but my money is on Funny Face.
Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment), the Astaire-Hepburn pairing is a revelation.I can only mourn the fact that Audrey didn't get more opportunity to display her singing and dancing skills on film.
The worst thing about this movie was how attracted my friends and I were to Audrey Hepburn *before* she gets "made over".The other sad thing is how Fred Astaire looks in contrast to Hepburn; he's likeable enough, but his dancing is definately better in other films, and he looks like her grandpa.
Audrey Hepburn plays a beatnik who joins up with fashion photographer Fred Astaire in order to visit her favorite philosopher in Paris.
To win her over, he says flattering things like, "That guy's about as interested in your intellect as I am!" Annoyingly, the movie takes his side, and tries to convince Audrey, not to mention the female viewers, that women should give up thinking and concentrate on looking pretty.
Funny Face (1957)I was prepared to love this movie and it let me down even though it has two fabulous leads, the classic musical dance man Fred Astaire and the new star Audrey Hepburn.
In both of these, again, director Stanley Donen (a consummate pro at this stuff) let things drag on just a minute too long, which is a long time in a fast moving movie like this.Then there is Fred Astaire, at ease and warm and really wonderful.
"I love your funny face, your sunny, funny face" sings the marvelous Fred Astaire to the lovely Audrey Hepburn in this musical comedy from 50 years back.He plays a fashion photographer named Dick Avery.She plays a shy bookshop clerk named Jo Stockton.He wants to take her out of the book store, make her a model and take her to Paris.And so it happens.Soon there is romance in the air.Stanley Donen is the director of Funny Face (1957), a movie filled with wonderful music.The wonder brothers George and Ira Gershwin are behind the music, that they made to the 1927 Broadway musical production.Fred Astaire is unbeatable with his dance moves and smooth talks.Audrey Hepburn was just what she is in this movie; an intelligent woman with incredible beauty.And she could sing too!
Together these two make an unforgettable pair- despite their 30 year age difference.It's magical to watch them singing and dancing in the dark room.I also have to mention the great work by Kay Thompson.She plays the magazine editor Maggie Prescott.It's fantastic to watch these three performing 'Bonjour Paris' in the streets of the French capital.Funny Face is a delight to your eyes and your ears.It's a delight to all your senses.A kind of movie that brings a smile to your face..
Hollywood confections don't come any sweeter than teaming a young, coltish Audrey Hepburn with an effortlessly debonair Fred Astaire in a classic Gershwin musical.
The elegantly mounted numbers provide the ideal complement to the soufflé-light plot centered on Dick Avery, a world-renowned, Richard Avedon-like fashion photographer who discovers his next model in Jo Stockton, a bookshop clerk and aspiring philosopher, in time for a major event in Paris.
Audrey Hepburn must have a special power because even though I'm not a romantic movie fan and hate musicals, she made me love Roman Holiday and Funny Face.
Especially, I liked the scene Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson and Audrey Hepburn sing "Bonjour Paris" very much.
Of course she does not sing and dance as mature as the profession musical actors, Astaire and Thompson, but her amateurism makes this movie more fresh and delightful..
Audrey Hepburn as usual has a delicious performance, an innocent and very lady-like which makes men both crazy and crazy in love.A classic movie to be watched in Valentine's day and especially if you are in Paris, it will certainly raise your mood up.
Audrey Hepburn stars in this beautiful take on the musical that tells the story of a normal girl with a funny face and a whole lot of heart.It's another film in the long list of movies that Audrey Hepburn's love interest is significantly older than her.
It's one of Audrey's best roles and a highly re-watchable film.+Audrey is having fun +Expression dance +Colorful +Set in Paris+Hepburn's gorgeous photo-shoot scene -Chemistry between Astaire and Hepburn wasn't there 8.5/10.
Even now when I view the movie I want Maggie to "skip" like my record has for many years when she sings, "who cares (if the new look has no) bust?"I recently (finally) bought a television that has closed captioning and I can't beleive how many song lyrics I had been singing wrong all these years (especially "There's Something Missing" , and "Think Pink)".Just this last week I noticed that in Fred and Audrey's dance behind the Church, they dance onto the raft cross over, dance a little more and suddenly are magically back on the original side of the water without dancing back onto the raft!
It disappoints me that for many people Funny Face will be their only encounter with Fred Astaire due to the fact that it is an Audrey Hepburn film.
I first watched Funny Face for the Hepburn factor (unfamiliar at the time with Fred Astaire) and was left unimpressed with the film.
While Hepburn does fair better in this film than Astaire, having one musical number which I quite liked, The Basal Metabolism.
Not only does she act well,but she also does an outstanding job singing and dancing with the also outstanding Fred Astaire.Plus,one of the best color movies in movie history with beautiful music to boot.An excellent movie!.
It seems she is out to find a new model with a new look and her photographer (Astaire) notices a lady that Maggie completely overlooked--cute little Jo, the girl at the bookstore (Audrey Hepburn).
Splashy colors, Paris locations, Fred Astaire's dancing, Audrey Hepburn's pixie-ish charm, Stanley Donen's direction, and George Gershwin's music should have melded into an enduring musical classic in 1957's "Funny Face." However, the talented individuals involved produced a dated, clumsy film with but a few bright moments.
Further undermining the film's credibility, the supposed pictorial output of Dick Avery, a successful fashion photographer, and Maggie Prescott, editor of "Quality" magazine, is limp at best; Avery's photos are mediocre, and Prescott's earth-shattering idea is "think pink." As always, Fred Astaire's dancing is worth watching, and, although her singing is more flat than melodic and her dancing mixed, Hepburn is always a winning charmer.
Director Donen employs some tricksy cinematography to mixed effect as he strains for modernity, but in the final analysis, like the pairing of the old Astaire with the young Hepburn, the marriage of traditional Hollywood musical characteristics with modern film-making ideas just clashes and doesn't come off..
FUNNY FACE is a charming and breezy musical starring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson.
Too much gauze.Aside from these problems, the rest of the film is great, even with the badly cast Fred Astaire playing Audrey's love interest.
Paris has never looked better, in colorful Technicolor.For fans of musicals and Audrey, FUNNY FACE is a definite must see..
Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and music by the Gershwins-what more can you ask for?.
Good, but not great, it has audrey Hepburn *sigh*, Fred Astaire and some wonderful songs by the Gershwins.
I have no illusions about my looks - I think my face looks funny."Bookshop assistant and amateur philosopher Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) gets noticed by fashion photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) and is offered to be the new covergirl of Quality magazine, owned by Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson).
Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Kay Thompson are all fabulous and perfectly cast.
But even those two great stars can't make the film enjoyable.Astaire plays fashion photographer Dick Avery, Hepburn his reluctant model Jo. Jo is a shy, bookish, almost drab Greenwich Village bookstore clerk.
Astaire is a great song and dance man and in this film Hepburn gets to show off some vocal chops and smooth moves as well.
There is a stage musical entitled "Funny Face", written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1927, but it has a totally different plot to that of the film, although several of its songs are included.
Fluffy, to be sure, but also colorful, well-written, and a great showcase for the endless charms of Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn.
I actually stumbled across this and wondered how it was that I had never seen a film with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire ...
Fred Astaire plays fashion photographer Dick Avery who stumbles upon book shop assistant Jo Stockton {Audrey Hepburn} and proceeds to turn her into a beautiful top of the range Paris model.The End..............well not quite!
of course it starred Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn; but they and the lovely color cinematography were far from being this feature's only first-class assets.
The film's choreography is by Astaire, and the songs such as "Funny face" and "Think Pink" are a delight.
Funny Face was based on an old Broadway revue, but had a bright new 50's story attached to it to fit the large talents of Fred Astaire & Audrey Hepburn.
but I was expecting more.I quite like musicals and when I heard that this one had Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire in it I thought it would be really good.The story is OK... |
tt0048477 | Pecos Pest | Jerry receives a telegram from his Uncle Pecos, saying he is on his way to the big city from Texas for a guitar solo and will be staying with his nephew for the night; Pecos then arrives shortly after. The mustached mouse (who stutters in a fashion similar to Porky Pig) gives Jerry a performance on his guitar, playing his new song, "Crambone" (his variation of the song "Frog Went A-Courting"), which he gets through most of until he breaks a guitar string toward the end.
Uncle Pecos asks Jerry if he has a spare guitar string, but Jerry shakes his head in the way of saying no. Pecos looks out the mouse hole and claims he sees another string. He walks up to a sleeping Tom and fearlessly plucks a whisker off the cat's face and installs it into his guitar, startling Tom awake. As Pecos starts to play a song, a shocked Jerry comes to the rescue and quickly carries his reckless uncle away from Tom back to the mouse hole, accidentally banging his uncle's head on the wall just above the hole whilst doing so. Just as Tom is about to get them, Jerry drags Pecos into the hole, but Pecos quickly sticks his head out and thanks a confused Tom for his "service".
Tom then heads to the bathroom to examine his severed whisker in the mirror, but then he hears the sound of Pecos breaking another string. Pecos then appears and plucks another whisker from Tom's face. An angry Tom seizes Pecos, but Jerry arrives, rescuing his uncle again by squirting a tube of toothpaste into Tom's face, with the toothpaste forming into a pair of glasses. As Jerry makes a run back to the mouse hole with Pecos, they fall through a floor grate. Tom arrives and listens to Pecos continuing to play his guitar until he breaks another string and claims he needs another whisker. Scared of feeling any more pain due to another whisker being plucked, Tom barricades the grate and flees. He hides next to the basement door, which Pecos throws open on top of him, and calls for the cat while Jerry holds onto his uncle's tail, trying to restrain him.
The force of the impact causes the basement door to break into pieces, revealing a flattened Tom, who immediately runs away as Pecos follows. Tom slams anything he can find onto Pecos in order to keep him at bay: first a bread bin, then the top half of a Dutch Door shut (without realizing that, because Pecos is a mouse, he can simply walk underneath it), and finally a mop. As if uninterrupted, Pecos keeps coming and tries to reason with the cat that he needs a whisker to fix his guitar and is not going to let a broken string stand in the way of his fame and fortune. As a last resort, Tom jumps out the kitchen window and runs back to the front door before shutting it. He slowly checks through the peep-hole to see if the coast is clear, but Pecos suddenly reaches through and yanks off a whisker.
Pecos installs the whisker, which immediately snaps after he tunes his guitar. Tom frantically runs away to look for another place to hide. Pecos comes searching for him again, and finds him sitting on a chair wearing a knight's helmet and holding a book and a lit cigar. Tom dumps some cigar ash onto Pecos's head, but an unfazed Pecos responds by flipping the chair over and removing another whisker. Adamant not to lose the two leftover whiskers, Tom dashes into a nearby closet and slams the door shut. Pecos then invites Jerry to listen to the song he's going to play for his encore, which he plays at first with no problems. This causes Tom to calm down a little and he steps out of his hiding place. But just as he is liking the music that Pecos is generating, the snap of yet another string is heard, causing Tom to instantaneously gasp and retreat back into the closet.
Determined to get another whisker, Pecos approaches the closet door, declaring, "You know darn well I can't leave without a guitar string." before he proceeds to attack the door with an ax. Tom finally surrenders with a white flag, pulls out his fifth whisker and hands it to Pecos. Later, Pecos announces to Jerry that he has to leave and reminds him to watch his concert the next night. The night comes, and both Jerry (excitedly) and Tom (who now has only one whisker left and is very irritated) are watching his performance on the living room TV. Pecos starts playing, but midway through, one of the guitar's strings snaps again. Tom goes up to the TV and laughs hysterically at Peco's situation, knowing that he has no replacement strings. But in a comical twist, Pecos reaches through the TV screen and yanks out Tom's last whisker, leaving the feline baffled as Pecos finishes his performance. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | Very good Tom and Jerry-I love Uncle Pecos!!!.
This cartoon introduces (for the only appearance, sadly) Jerry's Uncle Pecos (voiced by Shug Fisher, who also plays the "gee-tar" here, marvelously) who is gonna be a star on TV.
A word of advice: stay on his good side.
You do not want to rile this boy at all!
I wonder if Uncle Pecos is the father to Jerry's cousin Muscles?
Oh, well, I digress.
The end of this is hilarious and there is an incredible guitar solo that Uncle Pecos does for an encore.
Most highly recommended..
Froggie went a-courtin' to bring us a cool cartoon!.
Jerry's Uncle Pecos comes to visit, during which he practices playing for his big moment when he will get to play his guitar on stage in public.
Trouble is, he keeps having an accident with the strings (they have a habit of breaking), and this trouble is further enhanced when he finds suitable replacements on Tom's face...Very funny -- but then would you expect anything less?This cartoon was the last to be produced by the legendary Fred Quimby.
He retired after this cartoon was finished.
Hanna and Barbera were to produce the remaining eighteen cartoons they did before MGM pulled the plug on the animation department in 1957..
The greatest.
Although I am now 48 Years old, and have seen "Pecos Pest" countless times over the Years it is "still" funny as all get out, and even my Children just love this Cartoon.
If I am on my out of the Door and I happen to see that it is on, whatever it is will have to wait for those 7 Minutes.
It is I would say my number One favorite Tom & Jerry Cartoon.
I also was intrigued by the person doing the voice of Uncle Pecos, and I always told my best friend I thought it was the guy who portrayed Shorty Kellems on the Beverly Hillbillies TV Show.
Low and behold I found out Uncle Pecos was indeed voiced by Shug Fisher (aka George Shug Fisher)who did portray Shorty..
Jerry's Uncle.
Jerry the mouse's guitar playing Uncle Peco from Texas comes to spend the night with him before he goes for his big debut on national TV.
When his guitar string breaks he just plucks the whiskey of Tom the cat.
This happens multiple times.
Yea it's pretty much a one-joke premise, but it's pretty entertaining none the less.
Perhaps not the best of the tom and jerry shorts, but I enjoyed it enough.
Someone should post the lyrics to Peco's song LOL This humorous animated short can be found on disc 2 of Warner Brother's 2-DVD Spotlight Collection set.My Grade: B-.
Different, But Not One Of The Better T&J Cartoons.
Having seen a lot of these Tom and Jerry cartoons, I usually enjoy a departure from the normal cat-chasing-mouse story, but this one just didn't connect.
Once again, Tom suffers needlessly.The story begins when Jerry receives a telegram one night which reads: "Me and My Guitar On Way To Big City for Television Debut --Stop - Will Spend Night With You, (signed) Uncle Peso"Soon Uncle Pecos is there, a little guy with a long mustache, sombrero hat, cowboy boots and a two-string banjo.
He can't stop singing, "Frog Went A- Courtin," which is going to perform the following night on TV.The gag of the entire cartoons come next when a string breaks on the guitar.
Uncle Peso wakes a sleeping Tom Cat and plucks out one of his whiskers.
This happens about every 15 seconds the rest of the way, no matter what Tom does to get away from this maniac.As mentioned, once again, poor Tom gets hurt while just minding his own business.
The stuttering singer Uncle Peso, was cute for a short while but his act grew thin and too much of this cartoon - over half of it - was just him singing that stupid song..
Another example of a one-joke Tom and Jerry cartoon, but it works.
The story is a little on the predictable side, but this was still very enjoyable.
Pecos Pest is very one-joke but it works.
Tom and Jerry are both great, but the real star is Uncle Pecos, marvellously voiced by Shug Fisher.
Uncle Pecos has a big moustache, an over-sized cowboy hat and plays the banjo while singing constantly at the top of his lungs.
The song itself may grate to some people, but I like it, it has a real country flavour to it, as does a lot of the music here.
The animation is lovely, and the visual gags all work perfectly.Overall, Pecos Pest is not the best Tom and Jerry cartoon, but it is a very enjoyable one, that's all that matters really.
8/10 Bethany Cox. Crambone..
I'm not usually a fan of 'guest' characters in T&J cartoons, who are more often than not unbearably twee, but Jerry's Uncle Pecos (voiced by Shug Fisher) is anything but: when he needs a new string for his guitar, he pursues Tom like an unstoppable Terminator, fearlessly plucking the poor cat's whiskers to mend his instrument.
As if this wasn't funny enough, he does so all the while singing a very silly song (Froggy Went A Courting) in a stuttering style that is quite frankly just bizarre.
Bizarre and very funny!To top it all off, there is a delightfully surreal gag at the end of the cartoon where Pecos, performing on TV, breaks another string and reaches out of the television set to pluck Tom's last whisker.
Great stuff!.
One-Joke cartoon....but what a joke!.
The brilliant team of Hanna/Barbera knew that their "Tom and Jerry" series was pretty much creatively out of gas by the early fifties (though the Oscars didn't realize this--the safest bet in Hollywood was on a T & J cartoon for at least an Oscar nomination)...so they began introducing 'guests' to attempt new plots.
This short was by far the most successful!Uncle Pecos is hilarious...as he warbles and sputters through "Froggie Went A'Courtin'" time and time again--and breaking his "geee-tar strangs" as he preps for his big television debut (in color, no less!).
It falls upon Tom to supply the replacements--with his whiskers painfully removed (all six are ultimately sacrificed for the guitar).Some marvelous guitar playing--one solo is so remarkably like Les Paul, I checked the Internet to see if it was him.
It wasn't--but that doesn't detract from a marvelous cartoon.
There are not many Tom and Jerry cartoons worth watching today (their violent and racist antics throughout their overview are rather repulsive), but this one is worth watching over and over.
Give Hanna/Barbera credit--they knew when to let other characters do what the 'stars' could no longer pull off. |
tt0062395 | The Trip | Paul Groves (Peter Fonda), a television commercial director, takes his first dose of LSD while experiencing the heartbreak and ambivalence of divorce from his beautiful but adulterous wife (Susan Strasberg). He starts his trip with a "guide," John (Bruce Dern), but runs away and abandons him out of fear.
Experiencing repetitive visions of pursuit by dark hooded figures mounted on black horses, Paul sees himself running across a beach.
As Paul experiences his trip, he wanders around the Sunset Strip, into nightclubs, and the homes of strangers and acquaintances. Paul considers the roles played by commercialism, sex, the role of women in his life. He meets a young woman, Glenn (Salli Sachse), who is interested in people who take LSD. Having learned from Paul recently that he would be taking LSD, she has been looking out for him. Max (Dennis Hopper) plays a role as another friendly guide to his trip.
Glenn drives Paul to her Malibu beach house, where they make erotic love, interspersed in his mind with a kaleidoscopic riot of abstract images intercut with visions of pursuit on a beach, a scene that is a sly homage to Bergman's, The Seventh Seal. Driven into the surf by his pursuers, Paul turns and faces both of them, and they reveal themselves to be his wife and Glenn.
As the sun rises, Paul returns to his normal state of consciousness now transformed by the trip and steps out to the balcony to get some fresh air. Glenn asks him whether his first LSD experience was constructive. Paul defers his answer to "tomorrow." His face is frozen in close-up, and his image cracks like glass through an animation special effect. | cult, psychedelic, flashback | train | wikipedia | null |
tt2573750 | Gulaab Gang | The Gulaab Gang members are activists and vigilantes in Bundelkhand Uttar and Madhya Pradesh. They wear pink sarees and take up issues like domestic violence, the dowry system, rape, electricity matters, and education. Their fierce leader, Rajjo (Madhuri Dixit), locks horns with a conniving and shrewd politician, Sumitra Bagrecha (Juhi Chawla), who uses people.
Rajjo runs a Gulaab gang in the village of Madhopur, where she teaches little girls their alphabet, and grown-up girls how to wield a lathi. Her gang is made up of women who wear bright pink. Rajjo's closest friends in the gang are a tomboy (Divya Jagdale), a woman abandoned by her husband (Tannishtha Chatterjee), and a kohl-eyed woman (Priyanka Bose). These ladies go about standing up for the meek and the downtrodden, and clash against villainous husbands, cops and politicians. The plot gains momentum when Rajjo decides to take part in the local elections against a manipulative and conniving politician, Sumitra Devi (Juhi Chawla). Sumitra does her best to make sure Rajjo is incapacitated during election campaigns by having most of her gang members killed by the henchmen. Towards the end, Rajjo decides to take revenge against Sumitra. During Holi celebrations, when Sumitra conspires to finish off the Gulaab Gang, Rajjo retaliates by chopping off Sumitra Devi's hand as the latter tries to shoot the gang with a machine gun. At the end, Sumitra is arrested and is sentenced to life in prison and Rajjo is also arrested for her violent retribution. However, Rajjo eventually realises her dream of establishing a school for unprivileged girls. | revenge, violence | train | wikipedia | First, i would like to appreciate the director for making movie on gulabi gang.
After watching the movie i started surfing online about gulabi gang and it's leader sampat pal.
when it comes to the movie,you may watch it once for madhuri and juhi.
Soumik Sen's 'Gulaab Gang' released amidst some controversy especially the lawsuit it faced from real Gulabi Gang leader Sampat Pal. After seeing this mess of a film I completely understand why.
Of course, when the lead actress Madhuri Dixit describes it as her 'Dabangg' (another overrated awful movie) one pretty much knows what to expect: that this wouldn't be a film that intends to depict the Gulabi Gang and tell their story but just another meaningless good versus evil 'masala' flick masquerading as something that depicts and supports women's rights.
Sen's 'Gulaab Gang' (should have been titled Madhuri's Gang) are all good looking thin women with nice makeup.
This film was supposed to be about the real Gulabi Gang and not Madhuri the hero.
The tongue in cheek dialogue appears forced at times.The only interesting thing about the movie are the Sumitra's sequences especially those with Rajjo.
She's clearly a sociopath who's managed to get away with so much all those years.And of course, Juhi Chawla is transcendent as she steals every scene and is the only reason why the film is even watchable (despite limited screen time).
Soumik sen casts female protagonists: a vigilante group leader Rajjo and a power-hungry politician Sumitra Devi, as the horn-locking leads and delivers a sucker punch.
Bolstered by a terrific supporting ensemble (Divya Jagdale, Priyanka Bose, a mellow Tannishta Chatterjee, and all the guys) the two leads stand tall and deliver the goods like only they can.
She nails those dialogues in close-ups, absolutely convinces in action sequences (who wants to watch a CGI overloaded 300 sequel when you see some awesome, well contextualised wire-fights right here!) but what still haunts me, much after the screening's finished, is how she had completely internalised Rajjo's crusade for education.
So getting over with its weaker points first, the film's basic plot is now widely known to all after the recent controversy over its title and the court case filed by the original Gulaabi Gang's leader Smt. Sampat Pal. A well made documentary on the amazing social work by this famous women group was released just a few days back.
And though the film is not entirely based on the real life facts, still it is quite evident from where the idea has been borrowed for its basic theme.Directed by Soumik Sen, GULAAB GANG is a sheer commercial adaptation of a serious mission wherein the women power is shown in full force with some well directed confrontation and action sequences along with many punchy dialogues.
Also including a clearly forced HOLI song in the final moments, in which Madhuri starts singing and dancing right after a pretty serious sequence in an utterly silly manner.
So mainly due to this worst feature of the film (i.e. the songs), GULAAB GANG fails to make that desired impact which could have easily been achieved with just a theme song being played repeatedly.The film begins at a very lazy pace coming to the point after a long introduction and the entertaining tension actually commences, once Juhi Chawla enters the scene with her cunning smile.
The reason is that yes GULAAB GANG turns out to be a clear masala interpretation of a relevant theme as expected, yet it gives you something unique and entertaining in few of its well conceived sequences focusing on the powerful clashes between the two veterans i.e. Juhi Chawla and Madhuri Dixit, executed like never before.
Plus the pleasantly shocking Juhi replying to Madhuri's every move with just a playful, teasing smile like a typical shrewd politician.In fact here I would like to admit that though the project was widely promoted as a Madhuri Dixit film in its entire promotional campaign and print advertisements.
Hence as an exciting surprise, here we have the beautiful Juhi in a completely new negative avatar played real well, offering a lot more than the viewer's expectations from the talented actress.
In other words, where Madhuri's decent attempt struggles to make an instant connect due to her mixed language (accent) or all meaningless songs (dances), there Juhi takes the full advantage of this unintentional flaw and emerges as a clear winner in this on screen contest evidently.Now if truth be told then the only person responsible for this visible imbalance in the two key portrayals is the music composer residing inside the body of the director only, who forced him to put so many songs & dance numbers into the film, which actually weakened the entire aura around Madhuri's strong character of a revolting lady ultimately.
In other words, if only this film was made with just a theme song and stressing more upon the balanced depiction of both the clashing characters thoughtfully, it would have surely become a gem of a trendsetter in all possibilities, as it seems.Technically speaking, GG has a splendid camera-work complementing the enjoyable actions sequences of the film superbly and one really keeps waiting for all the tension filled scenes of Madhuri-Juhi together, eagerly.
All the men featuring in their various negative roles are fine, especially the one playing the local politician forced to face the cruel humiliation.In short, do give GULAAB GANG a chance, especially for the two veterans clashing with each other like never before and I am sure you would not regret the decision made, celebrating this year's Women's Day with Madhuri and Juhi together..
Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla shines in this messy political drama..
The early 90's of Bollywood was ruled by gorgeous and talented Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla,Karisma Kapoor who set the screen on fire with their charisma and versatility in acting.
Gulab Gang will blow your mind with powerhouse performance by Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla.
Rajjo ( played by Madhuri) leads the gang and fights for crime against women.
The movie is exceptional in the first half with few moments like introduction scenes of Madhuri and Juhi , confrontation between them and shutting down then entire office of local office are definitely applauding.
You will probably remember Juhi Chawla as chirpy and bubbly next-door-girl characters she played in various film but you will be taken in for surprise as she plays the negative role with aplomb.
She emotes expressively through her eyes with devilish charm.Overall, decent flick where Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla shines in this political drama.
RodIjGod. Watch it for the superior women empowerment it covers and terrific performances by Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla!.
Although GULAAB GANG raises a strong voice against years of patriarchal pain and suffering -- one might assume it tilts towards art-house cinema -- the fact of the matter is, Soumik presents the classic conflict between good and evil like any other masala film, replete with high-voltage drama, song-and-dance routine and of course, action sequences.
Additionally, the bravura performances of Madhuri and Juhi add immense weightage to the film.
Madhuri's Gulaab Gang is a film about two key things:1) Women's situation in India and how women can change their fate - through education 2) Good is always > Evil; no matter how 'sexy' doing evil things and saying bad things lookMadhuri Dixit reflected and stood for "Good" and she succeeds in it !
No body I mean no body could have done justice to this role in Indian cinema.Her acting will make you cry, feel proud, and also stand up for other women...Gulaab Gang is a great movie, a must watch for every Indian...
But Gulaab Gang is the only movie where one woman - Rajjo, does everything from acting to singing to dancing to fighting...and it is our greatest actress Madhuri Dixit who portrays this role to the T.She stands for good, fights for good and succeeds in being good - it is a classic tale of good vs.
bad and one more reminder to all of us that we should always tread on the righteous path.That is the message conveyed by the director and Madhuri proves it once again that there is no other actor that can portray this character with such poise and elegance.Make no mistake, even the supporting cast has done a good job.
The protagonist, played by Madhuri Dixit is a very impressive character.
Gulaab Gang - A Special Gift to Indian Women from India's Darling - Madhuri Dixit.
You won't be disappointed !Madhuri Dixit, India's biggest female superstar ever plays the role of a courageous and righteous woman he fights for justice and education, specially girl child.
She faces struggles and hurdles in her way but she triumphs in the end.Madhuri performs outstandingly well - she emotes, expresses, fights, dances, sings and does everything you can imagine in this movie.
The supporting cast including the villain complements Madhuri well and you enjoy the conversations..Direction is OK; Dialogues are good in particular the one's spoken by Rajjo, the lead actor; Choreography is good; Sound mixing is superb and action is outstanding !Go for it guys...proud to be father of three girls...and Madhuri is a true inspiration...Kudos to her !.
Madhuri Dixit's portrayal does a greater impact on-screen, while I am disappointed with Juhi Chawla who decided to flash her white pearls throughout the movie defining a stupid air as a minister.While the action sequences are good enough to entertain, the writing is flawed.
Needless to say, this movie is a must watch for everyone who enjoy good cinema.
Although I planned to watch the movie only for the film's protagonist Madhuri Dixit, I was in for a big surprise.
Madhuri and Juhi do tremendous justice to their roles; but the supporting cast takes the movie to the next level.
Nevertheless, it was a treat to watch Madhuri shake a leg.All in all, an entertaining and enriching movie..
GULAAB GANG is a political thriller directed by Soumik Sen, starring Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla.The film revolves around how a woman named Rajjo (Madhuri Dixit) started the Gulaabi Gang, who fight to prevent injustice to women, and teach education to children for free.
That being said, the film was only recognized due to the fact that two of the most iconic actresses in Bollywood were sharing the big screen together.And Gulaab Gang pretty much delivered what we expected in terms of acting.
Madhuri Dixit gave a stellar performance but Juhi Chawla clearly overpowers her, playing the film's antagonist.
One more problem was that Juhi Chawla didn't quite have much screen time compared to Madhuri Dixit.
That being said, she is STILL able to overpower Dixit's acting, but there should have been equal screen time for both the lead casts.
Also, the film tends to be a bit slow, so everyone may not like it for the way it drags its story.So, in conclusion, GULAAB GANG is quite an okay movie.
If you're a die hard fan of Madhuri Dixit or Juhi Chawla, you too might enjoy, purely because the acting keeps this film together.
however, it being dedicated to Women's Day, I will give this film credit for trying to get the message through that women are people and not objects, except in a more violent way to attract all types of audiences.GULAAB GANG- 5.5/10.
gulaab gang is a commercial film,stated soumik sen,but yet it is still intelligent then silly blockbuster and more real to be called commercial,the most violent portrayal of women in Indian cinema,and goddess avatar of our superheroine madhuri dixit,and no way less devilicious chawla, who is tough to fight with.its not a MAIN HOO NAARI type preachy parable,but a social drama about rural women fighting not for liberalisation,but their existence indeed.
its a shame that some male chauvinistic critics have shunned it, who could not digest womens performing hand to hand action sequences, music and background score is classical and folk,and is for different taste,if u r not fond of women centric films,still u can enjoy,bcoz madhuri n juhi r true heroes of GULAAB GANG..
Gulaab Gang is a typical movie with nothing unpredictable and unexpected.
Yes the songs, dance, the gang all are enjoyable and must be watched for entertainment but not as a technically powerful film.New experience to watch two great artists on the same screen, not a big deal though but yet it can serve to aware a tiny tiny fraction of usual folks by a tiny amount to look towards corruption, social injustice and have a hope for something better that is about to come ahead after getting acknowledged about women who are shining in adverse situation..
The acting skills of Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla are well suited to the overall plot.
Madhuri Dixit was too inspirational but the action sequence filmed on her gave a bit clumsy and super hero touch that looked a bit out of reality.
The film is dedicated to women empowerment and nothing could have been a better gift for women on this "Women Day" than "Gulaab Gang".
Therefore, the filmmaker has no choice but to stick to the basic storyline and extract extremely good performances from the star cast to be able to hold the viewers' attention and this is precisely where Gulab Gang fails miserably.
Yes, even with two good box office bets of yesteryears – Madhuri Dixit & Juhi Chawla.The script demanded dialogue delivery of typical Hindi belt.
It is difficult to comprehend why Juhi was given such rustic dialogues when she was so ill at ease delivering them.Coming to Madhuri Dixit, well, sadly for her fans even she couldn't do much to save her Gang.
Cases in point, Smita Patil in Mirch Masala, Meenakshi Sheshadri in Damini, Tabu in Chandani Bar, Vidya Balan in Kahaani and Madhuri herself in Mrityudand (arguably her best performance) and Lajja.Another thing not understood is why it is a prerequisite even in a movie based on a serious/real topic to cast an actress with a beautiful face (even at the cost of acting).
To rule out one thing upfront - except for the Pink saris there isn't much similar between Gulaab Gang and Sampat Pal's life who has been going all out to oppose the release of this film.
That however, is not a good sign for the dramatisation of events in Anubhav Sinha's Gulaab Gang is what takes this film to unfathomable lows of boredom.
Rajjo (Madhuri Dixit) is a messiah for unfortunate or suppressed women who not only provides for basic schooling for girls but also runs a gang of pink sari clad women called Gulaab Gang to stand up against the atrocities on downtrodden women.
In a typically hero vs villain plot, the battle begins between the two women, and needless to mention it's the good that wins in the end.Soumik Sen takes a different approach towards addressing women issues in the Indian heartland but in the bid dramatises the plot to make the film appear extremely boring and banal.
Who would've though actors like Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla would come together for the first time after years for a film as indolently written as this?
Both leading ladies appear miscast for a film that requires women who don't get on board with an image that may be far too strong for them to fit into a character that realistic.
However, even at that, it's Juhi Chawla who outshines Madhuri in this film.
There are way too many numbers in the movie which is supposed to be hardhitting and it isn't quite a convincing sight to watch a gang leader such as Rajjo break into jigs or croon away to glory.
After a lot of hype and hoopla, Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla's first film together, Gulaab Gang has finally arrived.
Madhuri and especially Juhi in her first villainous role have given their career best performances in this film.
Juhi Chawla takes coldness and villainy to a whole new level in Gulaab Gang.
Madhuri does an equally brilliant job as the hardened leader of a girls' gang who is always ready to fight injustice.
The film is actually quite entertaining and both Madhuri and Juhi are in their top form here.
Gulaab Gang excels as a movie with empowered women in the lead..
Juhi Chawla as politician Sumitra Devi, in her very first villainous character is very convincing.
The supporting cast Divya Jagdale, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Priyanka Bose, Lata S Singh, Vinitha Menon, Rani Patel, Tanvi Rao are all good and convincing as Gulaab Gang members.
The director Saumik Sen has portrayed Gulaab gang in an excellent manner.
Madhuri Dixit has given voice to a song Rangi Saari Gulaabi.Gulaab Gang, a perfect treat on the eve of International Women's Day..
When the film was announced it caught my attention as it brought together Juhi and Madhuri who never worked together till date.
Also the topic seems bold however the director opts to make it a mix between masala and realism There are too many dance numbers yet the problems and also several dramatic scenes are brilliantly handled, The clash between Juhi and Madhuri is interesting Another problem is that a documentary called Gulaabi Gang was released few weeks before which showed more realistically the story that mars the impact.Direction is decent Music is okay but too many songs and they do look out of placeMadhuri Dixit is fab in the role that demanded an actress, she is superb though her accent may not be 100% but her expressions and acting is spot on Juhi Chawla for the first time in a negative role is simply outstanding, she makes you forget the Juhi we know Divya Jagdale seen in small roles in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam(Ajay's sister) and other films is simply outstanding, Priyanka Bose and others are good.
That shows the kind of lows human beings have fallen to...No surprise there...yet there will always be very few people who will like such movies and cherish them...Go for good ... |
tt0097967 | Next of Kin | Truman Gates (Patrick Swayze), raised in Appalachia, has migrated to Chicago to become a police officer. Married to Jessie (Helen Hunt), who is pregnant, he seems to have made the transition from hillbilly to respectable lawman. When the local coal mine closes, Truman persuades his younger brother Gerald (Bill Paxton) to look for work in Chicago. But things take a turn for the worse when soon after landing a job as a truck driver, Gerald's vehicle is hijacked by mobsters and Gerald is killed by Joey Rosellini (Adam Baldwin), the nephew of mob boss Poppa John Isabella (Andreas Katsulas).
Truman returns to Kentucky for the funeral. When his surviving brother, Briar Gates (Liam Neeson), insists on a traditional mountain blood feud, Truman urges his family to let the police deal with Gerald's murder. Briar finds Truman's reluctance to be disgraceful. Determined to deal with the murderers in his own way, Briar travels to Chicago in search of his youngest brother's killer.
Meanwhile, Truman desperately tries to solve the crime before Briar takes revenge on his own. He approaches John Isabella and explains the mountain code to him. He suggests that if Gerald's murderer surrenders peacefully, it would save them both a lot of trouble. John, however, refuses on general principle, and Truman is left to continue his investigation.
After arriving in town, Briar gets a room at a flop house. Before he leaves, he gives the front desk clerk the phone number of his cousin back home and asks him to call the number if he doesn't return by morning.
Not wasting any time, Briar goes looking for information on the man who killed Gerald and, during his search, shoots up a local mob hangout. When Truman arrives a little later, Joey, embarrassed by the attack, says he is not pressing charges against Briar. He intends to "handle things" himself. When Poppa John says he feels things are getting out of hand, Joey dismisses the threat, saying that the Gates family, "plow rocks for a living." John responds, "That's what they said about 'our' people back in (Sicily)."
Working together for a time, Briar and Truman learn the identity of the hijackers from a witness. Truman pressures Lawrence (Ben Stiller), the son of Poppa John, to turn state's evidence against Joey. Lawrence goes to Joey for help, only to have Joey betray him. Lawrence's body is found with evidence of being tortured and evidence found at the scene points to Briar. Joey goes to Poppa John, who devastated by his son's death, sanctions a hit on the supposed culprit. Before he can, Briar breaks into Rosellini's trucking company and engages in a gunfight with Joey's crew and kills two of Joey's guys before Joey shoots Briar twice. Fatally wounded, Briar dies in Truman's arms.
When the flop house desk clerk hears about the deaths at the Trucking Company on the news, he calls Briar's next of kin.
Even though both Truman and the police know the evidence against Briar was planted, and Briar's death was an ambush, there is no proof. Truman resigns from the police force and goes after the Rosellini mob himself. As the Gates family gathers together and travels to Chicago to begin a war against the Outfit, Truman goes on the offensive and throws one of Joey's guys into the window of a restaurant. When Joey comes out, he finds "You forgot one," painted on Joey's car and vows to murder Truman without his uncle's permission.
Truman lures the Rosellini crew to a darkened cemetery, where an extended battle ensues, including the arrival of the Gates clan (and their hound dogs and rattlesnakes). In the end, Truman has Joey pinned on the ground with a knife to his throat only to be stopped by Poppa John Isabella arrives with members of the Gates family held at gunpoint. He orders Truman to drop the knife and move out of the way. But Poppa John has learned the truth about Lawrence's murder, and to Joey's horror, he points the gun not at Truman, but at him. Joey asks him what is he going to do. The Don tells Joey, "This is for killing my son," and shoots him dead.
The Gates and Isabella families call a truce. Back at the police station, Truman finds Jessie and tells her, "You're my family." | revenge, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt1071812 | Mao's Last Dancer | In the era of Mao's Cultural Revolution (in the 60s), 11-year-old Chinese boy Li Cunxin resides in a rural village commune in Shandong Province, destined to labour in the fields. As often occurred in those times, government officials fanning out across the nation seeking young candidates for centralized training arrive at this school. At first bypassed but selected after a plea by his teacher during the school visit, Li seems bewildered although piqued by the gruff preliminary inspection screening at the provincial capital city of Qingdao. Forwarded to a Beijing audition for a place in Madame Mao's Dance Academy, he is admitted for ballet training based on a series of physique and flexibility examinations.
Years of arduous training follow, Li surpassing his initial lukewarm interest and mediocre performance after inspiration from senior teacher Chan (whose advocacy of classical Russian ballet as opposed to the politically aimed, physically strident form required by Madame Mao leads to the teacher's apparent banishment). Later during the course of a groundbreaking cultural visit to China, American-based English ballet director Ben Stevenson, impressed by Li's standout talent, seeks him as an exchange student at his the Houston Ballet. Li's determined courage garners a formerly disparaging teacher to influence the Academy to allow him the opportunity for a three-month stay in the United States.
Li's encounters with US life cause questioning of the Chinese Communist Party dictates upon which he has been raised, and he begins a relationship with an aspiring American dancer, Elizabeth Mackey. Quickly attracting the attention of the local ballet scene, Li together with Stevenson requests a time extension in America, but the Chinese government refuses. Overwhelmed by the opportunities offered in America and in love with Mackey, Li is determined to stay. With legal advice that the Chinese government would recognize certain residence rights arising from an international marriage, Li and Mackey rush into a marriage. To declare personal responsibility for his decision and hopefully avoid consequences for his family and Stevenson, Li visits the Chinese Consulate in Houston. The Chinese resident diplomat forcibly detains Li in an attempt to coerce his return to China. Unknown to Li, the situation quickly evolves when the media and high level government agents both in the US and China become involved. When Li perseveres in his refusal to repatriate, the Chinese Government agrees to release him but revokes his citizenship and declares he can never return to the land of his birth.
Li and Elizabeth are set to depart for Florida but Li is persuaded to stay by Stevenson for his ballet company, dooming Elizabeth's prospects of dancing success. Burdened by this, plus concerned for and unable to communicate with his family, Cunxin continues to excel as a dancer, but his relationship with Elizabeth disintegrates and their marriage ends. Five years later, as a show of goodwill the Chinese government allows Li's parents to visit him in the US where they finally witness his performance of the The Rite of Spring and even reunite with him on stage. Li is eventually granted permission to visit China. Together with his new wife Mary McKendry (Camilla Vergotis), an Australian ballerina, and coming back to the village of his youth, he rejoins his family and his former teacher Chan, who expresses regret that he never got to see Li perform. Li and McKendry give an impromptu outdoor ballet performance to the village's uproarious cheer.
Closing credits announce that: Li Cunxin danced in China with the Houston Ballet in 1995, a performance broadcast to an audience of over 500 million people. He and Mary McKendry now live in Australia with their three children. Ben Stevenson left the Houston Ballet after 27 years as Artistic Director. Acclaimed as one of the world’s leading choreographers, he is now Artistic Director of the Texas Ballet Theater. Charles C. Foster still practices law in Houston. He is recognized internationally as an authority on Immigration Law. Elizabeth Mackey (Liz) danced with the Oklahoma Ballet for some years. She is now a speech therapist, working mainly with children. | avant garde, storytelling, flashback | train | wikipedia | Mao's last Dancer tells the true story of Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin who grew up in rural poverty in Mao's communist before being given the opportunity to dance in the West in the early 80s.
Li is forced to examine his conscience as he must choose between his career, family, culture, politics and love whilst having to make heart-wrenching decisions of what he must choose to sacrifice and what he must choose to save.Li Cunxin is played magnificently by Chi Cao (as an adult) as well as Chengwu Guo (as a teenager).
The rest of the cast are also fantastic including Bruce Greenwood who plays the difficult and complex part of a slightly camp Ballet Director who must confront his own values.Kyle MacLachlan ("Sex and the City") takes a relatively brief but delightfully forceful turn as a Houston lawyer and Australians will delight in the cameo by the ever wonderful Jack Thompson.As an Australian production I was extraordinarily proud.
Had it gone one way or the other, the film wouldn't have worked nearly so well but Beresford dealt with this delicate theme with such craftsmanship that it never becomes an issue for the audience.Jan Sardi (who also wrote Shine and the Notebook) has also produced a highly commendable script for what must have been a daunting project - given the success of the book the movie is based on.At 132 minutes, the film is long and this can be felt slightly in the middle.
There were a few subplots and parts of the novel left out but I found that, unusually, this didn't bother me as much as it normally does with movies based on true stories.This is because the film told the essence of Li's story extraordinarily well in this irresistibly moving telling of one man's struggle as he's caught between two cultures at a time of when they were pushing against each other.This year's Slumdog Millionaire upstart is Mao's Last Dancer..
The American / Australian support cast was OK (Jack Thomson reprising his good ole legal boy act, Kyle Maclachlan playing a straight role), though I found Bruce Greenwood as the Houston Dance Company director Ben Stevenson mildly irritating.
I had some idea of what the movie was about prior to going to see it but it was even better than my expectations, and the lead actor was a truly magnificent dancer, as were the others.The story was moving with a few humorous moments, and showed how disciplined a person must be in order to become a great dancer.
I had the vague idea its about a boy from my hometown that went on to become one of the best ballet dancers, but then, being a Chinese immigrant myself, I'm not particularly pleased with people 'cashing in' on their stories.
I admit that I was none too anxious about seeing this film about dancing but after the opening scenes in rural China and a quick cut to Li Cunxin and early dance years and I had become a total fan of the movie.
Beresford's direction married to the acting and dancing ability of Chi Cao result in a movie about dance but that theme is only the canvas upon which this moving and quite dramatic story unfolds.
I suppose every ladies' book club in the English-speaking world has read Mao's Last Dancer, so if you wanted to make a film based on that autobiography, you'd first have to find a brave director.
In a village of China, the eleven year-old Li Cunxin is selected by the Comunist Party to study ballet at the Madame Mao's Dance Academy in Beijing.
Years later, he travels to Houston in a cultural exchange program invited by the artistic director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood) and he is promoted to principal dancer of the Houston Ballet.
Meanwhile he secretly dates and falls in love with the dancer Elizabeth Mackey (Amanda Schull).When the China's government asks Li Cunxin (Chi Cao) to return to his country, he marries Liz and defects to USA.
"Mao's Last Dancer" is a film about the true story of the Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin.
I think the film captures well post-revolutionary China and the US in the early 1980's.Even though the story is based on a actual events and you know actors are portraying these real people, the acting is quite believable (both Chinese and Western) .
It's been a great year for showcasing classical music, framing it with hilarious comedy, such as "Le Concert", and now with the beauty and exuberance of ballet in "Mao's Last Dancer", a beautifully told real-life story of a man who opens his mind, heart, and see his dreams come true.Raised in Communist China, a young man's strong and determined spirit make him climb higher and higher in the competitive world of ballet.
To watch the part early on where the benefits brought by Chairman Mao to the Chinese people, are laid out by Party Functionaries, has a dark poignancy, given that today we know he was directly responsible for the death of many, many millions.The dance sequences are done very well and the film pleases at that level as well as a tale with more twists and turns than you might imagine.
Mao's Last Dancer tells the tale of Li Cunxin (Chi as an adult, Guo Chengwu as a teenager, Huang Wenbin as a child), born into poverty in a Qingdao village, and at the age of 11 selected by Madame Mao's cultural advisers to enroll in her Beijing Dance Academy.
The film is also based on Li's autobiography of the same name, so chances are it is very true to life.Director Bruce Beresford, of Driving Miss Daisy fame, brings Li's remarkable story to life in sweeping fashion, with the scenes in the Qingdao village almost reminiscent of now-classic Chinese films like Not One Less.
Beresford is careful not to turn his film into an overly-political anti-communist spiel, keeping the focus square on Li Cunxin, but also addressing the brainwashing and hothousing, as well as the vilification of capitalism and "imperialism".Mao's Last Dancer is definitely a tearjerker, but not in a superficial Marley and Me kind of way, where the Kleenex moments are painfully engineered.
Kyle McLachlan looks the part as a lawyer who sorts out Li's immigration woes and veteran Australian actor Jack Thompson cameos as a judge.Li Cunxin's story is one that deserves to be told on screen, and fortunately, it is told well in a film equal parts artful and emotional, concise and beautiful..
The decorations, the music and the dancers are majestic and were touching and you don't have to be a fan of ballet dancing or classical music to feel so.The acting of the movie was brilliantly played by every single actor.
This film surprised me in a couple of ways, the first being an unbiased look into China during the peak of its Cultural Revolution--the Mao Era. Americans often view the Chinese as being oppressed victims during this time, but most of the Chinese were in fact committed to their leadership.
But we can forgive the shallowness for the beauty of the dance while we watch the actor playing Li move so impossibly on stage.I wish Beresford had devoted more time to Li's evolution as a dancer and person rather than focused so much on the political and social intrigue, which I would have found more captivating.
Yes, the plot is predictable and Li's reactions to America perhaps excessively awestruck, but this is probably the best ballet film since "The Red Shoes." In most dance films the director abandons the totality of the performances by inserting closeups of faces and feet, whereas Beresford knows when to just leave things alone.
Adapted from the autobiography by the same name by Li Cunxin and adapted for the screen by Jan Sardi and directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Bride of the Wind, Breaker Morant, Double Jeopardy, etc), this story gradually unfolds in both China and America and is in both Chinese and English.
One day he would himself become a star: Mao's last dancer and the darling of the West.' The film opens when Li Cunxin (Chi Cao, who joined Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1995 and was promoted to Principal in 2002.Trained at the Beijing Dance Academy and the Royal Ballet School.His parents were two of Cunxin Li's former teachers at the Beijing Dance Academy.
that's why we've got so much those kind of Chinese ballet.....Anyway, it's a good movie because it reveals some trueth and the actors performed very well that you can feel the touching moments.
Based on the 2003 autobiography of the same name by Li Cunxin, Bruce Beresford's Mao's Last Dancer is the story of a Chinese ballet dancer whose special talent is only matched by his courage and determination to live in freedom.
At age 11 his life is altered forever when he is selected by a group of visiting inspectors to go to Beijing to train as a ballet dancer at Madame Mao's Dance Academy.
Eventually, however, he hones his skills and develops enough emotional maturity to be sent to the United States to dance for the Houston Ballet, becoming one of the first two cultural exchange students allowed to go to America to study under Mao's regime.
Chi Cao from the Birmingham Royal Ballet plays the adult Li who is nurtured in Houston by British-born dance director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood) to become a star dancer.
He learns to appreciate the freedom in America, and falls in love with dancer Elizabeth Mackey (Amanda Schull), a relationship marred by dialogue reminiscent of "As the World Turns" and a laughably melodramatic scene where the distraught girl throws herself into bed.The transition to capitalism is filled with all the usual clichés – jaw dropping amazement at Disco Dancing, ATMs, and shopping malls, quite a contrast we are repeatedly told with his poor peasant village.
It is a powerful sequence and kudos must go to Kyle MacLachlan who delivers a strong performance as Charles Foster, the attorney representing Li during his detention at the Chinese consulate.Produced by Jane Scott and written by Jan Sardi, Mao's Last Dancer is an inspiring story of determination, courage, and love complete with excellent dance sequences choreographed by Graeme Murphy.
The Madam Mao figure demanding the gypsy-musical ballet be re-figured into a People's Opera is sharper on ballet than anything since the Herman Ross NIJINSKY and carries on through, with the Americans commenting that what they see is more like athletics.However the thing which should be the heart of the piece, the lead weighing up what he's believed all his life against what he finds in the US, is frustratingly reduced to a few mall bought consumables and a virginal blond.The film has it's strengths - MacLachlan's performance, the montages, the dream of an execution at dawn are stand outs, some of the ballet material is striking but the big finale with the suspiciously brief performance, followed with the on-stage reunion with the family, again lacks all the culture shock material that the film could have pivoted on and that Asian films that deal with the subject foreground..
Unexpectedly, this turned out to be quite enjoyable, even if t does have some things missing out, because this film is the intriguing story about Li Cunxin, a Chinese man, who at the age of seven or nine was send to study ballet far, far away from his parent.
Even though the film must be two hours long, at least, it felt to me like I watched a movie for thirty minutes and when something like that usually happens, it means that I love the movie so much that time flied by so quickly, stopping me from digesting what I had just seen.A drama based on the autobiography by Li Cunxin.
Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.The dancing is purely incredible portrayed in this movie.
This film is about a young ballet dancer from Communist China, who goes to Houston for an academic exchange.
Based on the life story of Cunxin Li, "Mao's Last Dancer" contains some wonderful dancing, but it's the story that drives this film.
Chosen to represent his country as an exchange student for the Houston ballet, Li soon begins to question the Communist dictates on which he has been raised.Whilst Mao's last dancer is one of the best Australian produced movies to emerge in about a decade, it is not without it's flaws.
Screenwriter Jan Sardi's script consistently builds dramatic tension throughout, such as when communist party dictates begin to infiltrate the dance academy as well as Li's standoff at the Chinese embassy, only to have such story arch's be resolved with disappointing anti climaxes.Despite the scripts faults, Beresford deserves a pat on the back just for tackling the project considering he had the unenviable task of finding a bilingual actor who could carry the picture whilst needing to be one of the best ballet dancers in the world.
his clever and down right amazing...portrayal of the character...Stevenson..in The Mao's Last Dancer!...he was so believable...I was totally taken aback at his acting abilities..and kept smiling throughout the movie.....at the sheer brilliance of it!...this actor always dares to add just that little bit extra to make his roles even more plausible and honest..I have seen many of Bruce's roles...but I was blown away by this character..the subtle mannerisms!....and the British accent was perfection...with each lilt the tone became more convincing..(he must have had a fabulous speech/voice coach)...this was I think ..his best performance...to date...even though playing JFK came close...(for me)......BRAVO Bruce Greenwood....I would very much like to see an ITAS ..and hope the producers of that show are reading this!.
After leaving his family to train in Beijing, the next big event is as an 18 year old when he is invited on a cultural exchange to the Houston Ballet Academy by it's director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Geenwood).
One of the better true stories out there - Chinese dancer Lu Cuxing - whose book was a runaway hit - makes a good, but not great, film.we loved the dance sequences which are very well done and those set in China - both of which look and feel very authentic.Our problem was with the plot development in Houston - we never became quite involved enough with the characterization - even though the plot is compelling.All in all one of the better of a handful of serious films about ballet and a good human story - we just couldn't quite get by the occasional glimpse of a Hallmark moment among the American actors.Definitely watchable it is a decent biopic, but fails to really capture the extraordinary story....
Seeing him dance was worth the time invested in the film.Director Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy) manages to keep tugging at your heartstrings throughout, especially in the scenes in China.It was a little melodramatic outside of the dancing and that keeps it from being rated higher.You certainly can't help becoming emotional at the final scenes in Houston and in China..
Thanks to Qantas' great in-flight entertainment programme, I was able to watch a very good Australian film entitled "Mao's Last Dancer." I watched it not because of the ballet (which does not really interest me that much), but more about the Cultural Revolution in China which the title seems to suggest.The story tells the true-to-life experience of a a boy Li Cunxin, born sixth in a poor peasant family with seven sons.
He ended his performance of a ballet solo (in "Don Quixote") with such a passionate flourish -- that, for me, was the best dance scene, and Cao's best acting moment in the whole film.
Mao's last dancer is a film based on a true story, the story of a regular boy in China that gets chosen to dance ballet.
Coming from a poor family, he had almost no chances to pursue a career as a dancer, let alone to have been singled out to go to America to study for a limited period with the Houston Ballet, under Ben Stevenson's artistic direction, gave him an opportunity, first to study, and then, to shine as a gifted soloist that conquered the hearts of whoever saw him dance.Li Cunxin got caught in between his loyalty to his birth country and what he wanted to accomplish as an artist with a great gift to give the audiences that flocked to watch him perform.
There have been other great ballet films, but "Mao's Last Dancer" resonates with audiences thanks to Mr. Beresford's intelligent take on the dancing world.Chi Cao plays the title role as an adult.
Mao's Last Dancer never really chooses sides, it's more about the freedom of the heart, the tolls and the triumphs associated with it.The movie tells the true life story of ballet dancer Li Cunxin.
There he became a star and got the opportunity to study for three months in Houston, TX, problem is, once coming to America, Cunxin finally learns to "fly" and does not wish to return to Communist China.The movie was competently directed by Driving Miss Daisy director, Bruce Beresford, though I feel some of the dance sequences could have been suited better, not filming them as if a spectator and rather as the dancer themselves.
Mao's Last Dancer is the life story of ballet dancer, Lu Cunxin.
The heart-tugging scene of his reunion with his parents just as he finishes his last performance as the principal dancer of the Houston Ballet and also the exuberance of Lu's triumphant visit to his home village after years in exile are emotional scenes that characterize this film.
"Mao's Last Dancer" is a very enjoyable and inspiring film--even if, like me, you have absolutely no interest in ballet.
Regardless, eventually Cunxin (Chi Cao) is given an opportunity to dance in the US by the leader of a ballet troop in Houston (Bruce Greenwood) and the rest is history. |
tt0037077 | The Miracle of Morgan's Creek | Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is a small-town girl with a soft spot for soldiers. She wakes up one morning after a wild farewell party for a group of them to find that while drunk the night before, she married a soldier whose name she can't remember, except that "it had a z in it. Like Ratzkywatzky [...] or was it Zitzkywitzky?" She believes they both used fake names and she doesn't know how to get in touch with him or even what he looks like.
The matter is complicated when she learns that she became pregnant that night as well. Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), a local 4-F boy who has been in love with Trudy for years, steps in to help out, but Trudy's over-protective father (William Demarest), a policeman, gets involved and complicates matters. Before long, Norval is arrested on 19 different charges, and then he finds himself on the run as an escaped prisoner.
All seems lost until Trudy gives birth to sextuplets. At that point Governor McGinty (Brian Donlevy) and The Boss (Akim Tamiroff) step in and provide a phone call which results in a happy ending for everyone.
When Norval discovers that Trudy has borne not just one son but six, he faints, and the movie ends with this epilogue on a title card:
But Norval recovered and
became increasingly happy
for, as Shakespeare said:
"Some are born great, someachieve greatness, and some
have greatness thrust upon
them."
THE END | comedy, satire, flashback | train | wikipedia | This movie may be the best comedy produced during World War II, especially in reference to the timing and the language related to the humorous treatment of a serious subject.
Often overlooked, The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek ranks with Sturges' absolute best work.Sturges takes an almost Capra-esque WWII America and turns it on its pointy little head, with Betty Hutton as a girl who's more than willing to give "the boys" departing for the war the utmost reason to fight for our country.
Eddie Bracken is his usual self-effacing self, and his sad-sack Norval Jones is an earnest, often moving portrayal of the kind of understanding, devotion and love almost never seen in American movies of the era.A "screwball comedy" only on paper, the often frenetic pacing and physical humor was sufficient to distract censors (and often audiences) from Morgan Creek's almost brutally derisive satire about the hypocrisy of small town "values" and military behavior during wartime, satire that still resonates given the current political climate.
It is easy to see how in most of his films he keeps showing a lot of the same faces, as it's evident the actors loved the quick tempo he gives to the movie.Betty Hutton was an incredible appealing Trudy.
After all, Trudy only wanted to do the best for the boys going to a war where most of them wouldn't come back alive.Eddie Bracken was given one of the best opportunities of his career to play the kind hearted Norval.
William Demarest, who played in a lot of Mr. Sturges' films, is seen as Trudy's father, the nutty Constable Kockenlocker.
Eddie Bracken is a well put-together package of the Sturges comedy trademark: physical humor, good comedic timing, articulate performance just a little beyond the fringe but not too broad for the time (remember that Laurel and Hardy were simultaneously competing for screens).
This film has acquired a devoted following of supporters who find "Morgan's Creek" very funny, along with a goodly number of detractors, who see it as an essentially strained and bloated one-joke yarn.As usual, Sturges makes sharp social comments along the way and handles large groups with Capraesque skill.
Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, Diana Lynn and William Demarest give phenomenal performances (Lynn is particularly funny as she keeps her composure while everyone else is cracking up around her), and Preston Sturges's writing and direction were never more frenetic and explosive.
Many of their scenes are done in one long take and it's amazing how much material and physical comedy they had to memorize for such extended takes.Some of the storyline seems a bit dated by today's standards but on the whole the film holds up well in the laugh department.
I liked it much better than HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO with Bracken in a similar role.Preston Sturges deserved his nomination for Best Original Screenplay but lost the award to Lamar Trotti for WILSON.
Not as well known to the general public as the Marx brothers movies, this film is unquestionably one of funniest, best-written, best-acted & best-directed comedies of all time, right up there with Bringing Up Baby, Duck Soup & The Bank Dick.
They are one-to-one experiences - even if you see a film like Preston Sturges' MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK in a packed revival house laughing uproariously en masse, you can only share a surface pleasure with those strangers: the deeper joys of this movie are yours and yours alone, shocking you into an awareness of how potent the alchemy of a great film can be, no matter how often you've felt that seismic shift with other great films.
A STAR WARS or Tarantino fan clucking terms like 'dated' or 'foolish' at a Preston Sturges movie is too pitiable a wretch to deserve actual scorn: maybe one day they'll figure it out, if they're lucky.
The story of a small-town girl who finds herself both married and unmarried at the same time - but DEFINITELY pregnant in either case - is deliriously funny and brimming with great heart and honest sentiment, yet it's never less than a devastating indictment of the kind of mean-spirited provincialism that brought the Code into being in the first place.
Rather than single out exemplary performances, I direct you instead to the complete cast-list (for the mark of a Preston Sturges movie is a wealth of expert actors, each blessed with scenes and dialogue devised to play to their respective strengths).
In the middle of WWII comes this film that is full of references to that war yet manages to undermine the usual image of the valiant warrior marching off to battle, suggesting that along the way one of them took advantage of a tipsy girl, maybe even drugged her drink from her lack of recollection of the evening that was supposed to be an innocent farewell dance for the soldiers, and left her pregnant from a one night stand, never to inquire about her again.
Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is an underaged girl, probably late teens, back when legal age was 21, who is told by her widowed father, the town constable (William Demarest), that she is not to go to the farewell party because he rightly fears the rowdiness of the event.
The trouble appears later when Trudy realizes she is pregnant by her anonymous husband, and she has no marriage license to prove her story.As in any Sturges film, there is a veritable cornucopia of wonderful one liners, which can come from any and every member of the large comic ensemble cast, at any time.
As for the cast, Hutton plays it sweet and somewhat dizzy, showing that she could prevail in other genres besides musicals, Eddie Bracken plays it nervous and a bit over the top as the only man in Morgan's Creek between 18 and 40 who is not in the military because of his 4F status, and the always funny William Demarest is full of pratfalls and one liners and even compassion when it is called for as Trudy's exasperated dad.
Nowadays with the relentless progress of acceptable "taste" none of this matters - we are not spared the littlest thing!The main actors give it their best and play it with gusto: live-wire Betty Hutton and 4F Eddie Bracken as the simple young lovers who don't find it so simple, Diana Lynn as her sidekick cynical 14 yo sister, but especially William Demarest who turned in his finest knockabout and farcically violent performance here - at 50, too.
It stars Betty Hutton (the Carol Burnett and Bette Midler of her generation), Eddie Bracken, Diana Lynn, and William Demarest.
Throw into the pot that Sturges cast the pristine Betty Hutton as a man mad airhead with few morals of note, well you can see that Sturges was pushing the censors as far as he could.Trudy Kockenlocker (Huton) gets drunk one night and has a night of passion with a soldier, in the morning she has sketchy recollections but thinks she may have married the guy?
This sets us on an hilarious journey as Norval winds up being sought after by the authorities for a number of crimes he is oblivious to committing, thus is no hope for the couple unless a miracle can save them...The performances here are sublime, both Hutton & Bracken seem to be having a competition to see who can out zany the other the best in each scene, and it really results in comedy gold.
All the other actors give special shows as well, William Demarest is top dollar as Trudy's Policeman Father, Brian Donlevy, Diana Lynn & Akim Tamaroff are all in on the fun, and no frame is wasted, no line is a throw away, it's all right on the money.
The scene where Betty Hutton encourages Bracken to propose to her is one the cleverest pieces of comedy put to film.Possibly Preston Sturges' masterpiece; then again 'Hail the Conquering Hero' is just as funny..
In The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek, Betty does in fact really give her all to the boys going over there.How Preston Sturges got this one past the censors is beyond me.
I like it almost as much as I like my favorite Preston Sturges film, Sullivan's Travels.Betty Hutton as Trudy Kockenlocker of Morgan's Creek feels it her patriotic duty to give her all for our fighting men.
All this is watched with some amused detachment by Hutton's younger sister Diana Lynn.The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek got Preston Sturges an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
I saw this film a month ago and it instantly took a place as one of my all-time favourite comedies; the enthusiastic feedback of most of the other IMDB reviewers begs the question, Why hasn't it got legendary status on a par with, say, Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday?The core of the film is the amazing chemistry between Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton; they summon up extraordinary levels of endearing daftness as Norval and Trudy, out of what was obviously very edgy material for its day.
William Demarest and Diana Lynn provide top rate support as Trudy's curmudgeonly father and smart-alec kid-sister and the entire film sprints along as a delicious combination of verbal dexterity and outlandish slapstick.Now how do I get hold of some other Preston Sturges classics?.
Into the latter category falls Norvil Jones: 4-F Marine Corps reject and reluctant fiancé of happy-go-lucky Trudy Kockenlocker, who after getting a little too happy and too lucky finds herself pregnant by an outbound soldier whose name she recalls only dimly as something like Ratskywatsky.Of all the classic Preston Sturges comedies in the 1940s none was more miraculous than this outrageous wartime farce, which dared to satirize the war effort while the war was still being fought.
How it ever escaped the censors is anyone's guess (critic James Agee maintained the Hays Office was "raped in its sleep"); perhaps because the Allied armies were by then on the offensive Sturges was allowed to do likewise at home.Either way, it remains a model of sophisticated slapstick entertainment, as fresh and funny now as it was more than 60 years ago.
Betty Hutton is responsible for "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," a 1944 comedy written and directed by Preston Sturges.
Hutton shares the screen with Sturges regulars Eddie Bracken, William Demarest, Brian Donlevy, as well as Diana Lynn, Akim Tamiroff and Porter Hall.
Hutton plays Trudy, a small-town girl who lives with her sister (Lynn) and irascible father (Demarest).
A lot of people claim that "The Philadelphia Story" is the best comedy, but I don't believe that, as much as I love that movie, Barry can touch Sturges for laughs.
Girl lies to father, goes to party, gets drunk, married, and pregnant, then falls for the guy next door.Huh?I had three (and only three) genuine laughs at this so-called classic "screwball comedy." That's probably because I never really cared about any of the characters.
I love William Demarest in a number of other films, but here he's just loud and even somewhat violent and unpleasant.A lot of the laughs are SUPPOSED to be in the physical comedy - pratfalls, double takes, etc.
Betty Hutton, who dosen't sing a note in this turns in a hilarious performance as Trudy, matched by Eddie Bracken.
I guess it's very similar with The Palm Beach Story in that Trudy cares a lot about Norval (Bracken) thus she does what she does, but at times, I wanted to slap her in the face for being selfish.What I noticed about Sturges's films is that I focus on every scene.
Then there's the tender scene in which an exhausted Betty Hutton softly tells Eddie Bracken that he will be a true & loving father even though he's not the birth father (which must have had rich resonance for writer/director Preston Sturges, since he was raised by a loving stepfather) --- a poignant interlude devoid of Capraesque sentimentality.
Detailed accounts of this 2-year studio delay can be found in 2 wonderful books -- "Between Flops" by James Curtis (still the best biography to date of Preston Sturges), and "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges" by James Harvey.I anxiously await the DVD release of this masterpiece --- I've been told (via e-mail from son Tom Sturges) that it will include a wonderful interview with the late Eddie Bracken, who remained to the end a beloved friend to the Sturges family..
Betty Hutton is great as a woman who thinks she married an anonymous soldier in what may or may not have been a one-night stand (how did this one get past the censors of the time?) and hapless Eddie Bracken does his usual good work as the lovestruck loser willing to help her out.
When Preston Sturges was in his prime (1940-1944, with 'The Great McGinty', 'Christmas in July', 'The Lady Eve', 'Sullivan's Travels', 'The Palm Beach Story', 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' and 'Hail the Conquering Hero') it made for one of the best golden years/prime periods for any director in my view, where five or more very good to masterpieces in a row were made close to each other.Of those seven films mentioned, the top two for me are 'The Lady Eve' and especially 'Sullivan's Travels' (on a side note, also love his, for me, last great film 'Unfaithfully Yours', though that wasn't made during this period of a consistent if too short career).
Although the subject matter was controversial for the time, the film never stops being full of energy, hilarious and still manages to be accessible.A big star of 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' is the script, razor sharp, witty, slyly cynical and sophisticated.
'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' has that, with charming, spirited performances from both Eddie Bracken and particularly Betty Hutton, both also with great comic timing and terrific interplay.
That is the substance of the story that meets the eye in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek." It's a wonderful comedy that Preston Sturges wrote and directed during World War II.
Although Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton got top billing, this movie is a vehicle for William Demarest whose performance outshines that of the other performers.
I would like to rectify the misunderstanding so many reviewers have about the Betty Hutton character, Trudy Kockenlocker ("...a reckless moment of pleasure...", "...a drunken joyride...", "...one drunken night...", "...more than willing to give "the boys" departing for the war...", etc).
"The Miracle of Morgan's Creek", like most Preston Sturges films, starts out maniacally, this time told in a series of flashbacks.
While they are coming up with a solution, Trudy discovers that she is falling in love with Norval herself, so the solution is now to find Ratzkywatzky to divorce him so she can marry Norval.It is amazing to me that "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek", Preston Sturges' film (released in 1944 but filmed in 1942) was able to make it past the Hayes code.
This was one of the first film roles for Eddie Bracken, at the time already a veteran song and dance man from vaudeville, and his portrayal of wormy, tender hearted Norval is both charming and fun.Though my favorite Sturges film remains "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948) he really did a great job on this film, and it has plenty of belly laughs.
Fortunately, I have films like "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and others to look back on when I have a yen for comedy, and I recommend that when you do too, you should do the same.
Support is roundly good because mostly they match the tone of the film.I'm not sure of the relationship between Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail The Conquering Hero (it looks like they were made back to back) but for me they both have similar problems when watching now.
After an all-night send-off party for the troops, a small-town girl (Betty Hutton) wakes up to find herself married and pregnant, but with no memory of her husband's identity.There were problems with the censors at the Hays Office over the film's subject matter.
In the small town of Morgan's Creek, Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) likes to dance with the soldiers going off to war.
Betty Hutton is Trudy Kockenlocker (amusing name!), a small-town girl who feels it's her civic duty to give the boys a good time before the go off to war.
"The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is a first-rate comedy from Director Preston Sturges...
it's the story of a girl named Trudy (Betty Hutton) who gets drunk, married & pregnant by a GI who ships off to war the next morning.
Great moments include Trudy picking up Norval after her wild night, Norval with Mr. Kockenlocker on the front porch, and Norval's "escape" from prison.This was a very good movie and Eddie Bracken really walked the fine line between comedy and genuine sympathy...
(Available on an excellent Paramount DVD).SYNOPSIS: In the small town of Morgan's Creek lives Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), who works in a music store and whose father, Officer Kockenlocker (William Demarest) is the traffic policeman and a sergeant of the last war.
Little sister Emmy (Diana Lynn) is worldly wise and sharp-tongued and Trudy's boy friend, Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), is a bashful guy who works in the town bank.Norval would like Trudy to go to the movies with him the evening the story opens, but Trudy is sorry, she is going to dance with the soldiers.
Three: older teen Trudy(Betty Hutton), min-teen Emmy, and her father(William Demarest), have the last name of Kockenlocker, while Trudy's nerdy, stuttering, boyfriend Norval(Eddie Bracken) has the bland name of Jones.
Yes, Betty does much remind me of the later, comical, Lucy.My main criticism of the film is that the whole beginning episode, where Trudy goes on a movie date with Norval, but really wants to dance and party with some anonymous soldiers about to leave town, is wholly unbelievable. |
tt0139157 | Dil Ek Mandir | Sita (Meena Kumari) is married to Ram (Raj Kumar) who is diagnosed to have cancer. Ram is admitted to a hospital where he is to be treated by Dr. Dharmesh (Rajendra Kumar). Dr. Dharmesh is Sita's former love and both of them are very much uncomfortable to interact in front of Sita's husband. Sita suspects that Dr. Dharmesh will not be able to give her husband a fair treatment because of his love interest in her. When she mentions this to him he promises her that he will try his best to save her husband. Ram overhears this conversation and later suggests to Sita that she should get married to Dr. Dharmesh after his death. Ram is to undergo a major surgery under Dr. Dharmesh which will decide his fate. Dr. Dharmesh seized with a feeling that he can't afford to fail in this surgery as it might seem that he was biased due to Sita. He works hard for the preparation of the surgery, without proper food/sleep for a long time. Finally at the end the surgery takes place. Dr. Dharmesh comes out from the operation theater and tells Sita that the operation was successful and her husband is safe. He takes couple of steps forward and collapses. Long days of hard work for the preparation of surgery takes its toll, and he dies on the spot. Last scene shows Ram and Sita at the inauguration of a hospital built in Dr. Dharmesh's memory. Dr. Dharmesh's mother inaugurates his statue and everybody places flowers there. | romantic | train | wikipedia | A heart touching movie with finest performances. Dil Ek Mandir is a heart touching movie.I would proudly say that every character performs to a great extent.The songs are like honey which can even make a hard heart a soft one.Meena Kumari's one of truly finest performance which you cannot forget till your death. Rajendra Kumar touches the hearts of audiences at the climax scenes.Raaj Kumar is best as supporting actor by delivering Dialogues in a finest way.Every scene touches the heart which can even make you lose your sleep even after watching it.When I watched recently I felt why nobody told me about this movie.Really the climax scene brings tears in your eyes.Really one of heart touching love story with finest performances.. The superb classic love story brilliantly played by Meena Kumari. Dil Ek Mandir is a superb movie dealing with a triangular love story between Dharmesh ( Rajendra Kumar, Ram ( Raaj Kumar ) and Sita ( Meena Kumari) While Dharmesh and Sita were in love and was planned to become husband and wife, circumstances did not let that happen that way and Sita ended up marrying Ram while Dharmesh was abroad. The story starts with Ram brought by Sita to Dharmesh for treatment of cancer. The dialogue is just marvelleous and keeps you glued to the story. The entire movie is shot in one place - the hospital where Ram was waiting for his operation. This movie is probably one of Meena Kumari's stellar performances supported by equally great acting by both Rajendra Kumar and Raaj Kumar. The story is heart breaking you cannot stop crying when Ram asks Sita to marry Dharmesh if he dies after the operation which Ram thinks is a certainty. Also the final scene when Dharmesh finds that the operation was successful and Ram is going to live with Sita - Rajendra Kumar gave a magnificent performance. Dil Ek Mandir is a classic Meena Kumari movie where she played a tragedy queen role like many other movies where her performance will be remembered as a masterpiece. It is a must see.. An amiable social drama...... A conscience of a doctor between his professional ethics to save the life of a patient and his own love life forms the crux of this handsomely crafted tear-jerker which found a huge fame at its time. The story is pretty familiar, but the way it's executed brings the sweetness raising curiosity till the last minute. Apart few interminable sequences, the camera focuses mainly on the three protagonists of the story, Rajendra Kumar as the doctor who needs to operate upon a critically ill cancer patient played by Raaj Kumar, who happens to be the husband of his former lover, Meena Kumari. It's the performances of all three, and especially Raaj Kumar, which rises the film above an average tear jerker with songs. Overall, I enjoyed the film; and it pretty much represents the era of a fine film making.Rating: 2 stars out of 4 |
tt0020784 | Congo Jazz | As Bosko is hunting in the jungle, a tiger creeps up behind him and gives him a lick. Finding his gun useless, Bosko tries to flee. After being chased and having his body stretched and his head slapped off, Bosko pulls out a flute and begins playing music, which greatly entertains the tiger. Bosko and the tiger play patty cake, dance, and Bosko plays the tiger's whiskers and tail like guitar strings. Now that the tiger has been rendered thoroughly harmless, Bosko kicks it off a cliff. Bosko then spots two little monkeys playing leap frog. He picks one of them up, but the monkey spits in his eye. Bosko begins spanking the monkey's behind, until he notices the monkey's father looming above him. Acting nonchalant, Bosko offers the ape some chewing gum. The ape accepts, and seems to enjoy the gum very much. They both stretch the gum out of their mouths and begin plucking a tune. The rest of the jungle animals join in: monkeys, ostriches, kangaroos, and more. They play music on themselves, on each other, or with the jungle scenery. A kangaroo plays a tree, monkeys play a giraffe, and an elephant plays its trunk. A tree does a provocative fanny-slapping dance, gyrating its coconut bosoms, until one flies off and hits Bosko in the head. Bosko and three hyenas laugh. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | Bosko does some of what Bugs Bunny later did.
Bosko, in case you've never heard of him, was the original Looney Tunes star, appearing in the cartoons from 1930 until 1933, when his creators moved to MGM.
In "Congo Jazz", the character hunts animals.
What's interesting is that in the instance of an attack by a gorilla, Bosko makes the big guy forget that they're supposed to be enemies; just like what Bugs Bunny frequently did!
True, there's not much in the way of plot.
Of the few Bosko cartoons that I've seen, this was far from the best.
Mostly it functions as a cultural historical reference, a look into the early days of what within a few years became the domain of Porky, then Daffy, and finally Bugs.BTW, is it just me, or when Bosko spanks the monkey, do they show the monkey's butt?
Seriously, I know that this was before the Hays Code, but still..
The music is excellent and the animation isn't bad either.
This short is an early Warner Brothers that features a character named Bosko, who is in ill favor in certain politically correct quarters.
My take on it all is that the few shorts I've seen in the series vary greatly in quality, some being very good and others not terribly interesting.
This is one of the better ones I've seen.
Warner Brothers almost always had excellent music throughout their run, up to the 1950s and this short has excellent music, if a limited plot.
Well worth watching.
Recommended..
I'll Have Some Bosco.
In this quite ordinary cartoon, Bosco, a chimp (?) goes hunting, but like most of the principle characters in these cartoons, he has no success.
He is soon being confronted by gigantic gorillas and other creatures.
As it turns out, he gets them to dance and participate with him.
It's just not all that entertaining..
Bosko in the jungle.
The Bosko cartoons may not be animation masterpieces, but they are fascinating as examples of Looney Tunes in their early days before the creation of more compelling characters and funnier and more creative cartoons.After two decent but not great previous cartoons, that are noteworthy mainly for historical significance, 'Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid' and 'Sinkin' in the Bathtub', 'Congo Jazz' joins them in the decent but not great category.
It fares least in the story, which is more a paper-thin excuse to string along music and gags with a few draggy stretches and an ending that doesn't feel that well rounded off, it feels like it peters out in fact.However, the animation is not bad at all, not exactly refined but fluid and crisp enough with some nice detail, it is especially good in the meticulous backgrounds and some remarkably flexible yet natural movements for Bosko.
The music is 'Congo Jazz's' highlight component, its infectious energy, rousing merriment, lush orchestration and how well it fits with the animation is just a joy.While never hilarious, 'Congo Jazz' is at least an amusing cartoon, with the ape and palm tree parts faring best.
The sound isn't static, the cartoon is quite cute and it is difficult not to be cheerful watching.
Bosko is never going to be one of my favourite cartoon characters, or among the all-time greats, but he has more personality this time round and it's more endearing than before.In conclusion, decent but not great.
7/10 Bethany Cox. Ha ha, sweet, almost as good as "Sinkin' in the Bathtub.".
I did not think I would enjoy this "Bosko" episode as much as the first official one (Sinkin' in the Bathtub), because the start was annoying and spooky in a arbitrary way.
However, the episode became better as it went along and by the end I found little to criticise.What I like about this episode is the way Bosko is not so cruel a main character, he is very positive and tries to find ways of making angry people happy rather than making them more angry (this is not the case with the tiger, but the tiger was trying to eat Bosko, so it makes some sense that Bosko whacked him off a cliff after being relatively friendly to him).
I also liked the music and the various ideas played into the episode.
I've found with the cartoons, both by Disney and WB, that were made before around 1935, play with slapstick more cleverly and in a much more surreal manner than they really ever did later on.
This is shown by the body shapes of the moving characters, the actions they make and the objects they use(not all the time, but this is when the slapstick playing is most noticeable).Things I can slightly criticize about the cartoon are the very beginning, the fact that it is slightly repetitive in places, the vaguely "innappropriate" scenes (like coconuts on a tree representing a woman's breasts) and the fact that Honey is not in it!
:-( Honey was one of my favourite characters in "Sinkin' in the Bathtub," and she did not play a part in this episode.One thing that people may not realise and may dislike about all the Bosko cartoons, is that Bosko is meant to be a black person.
In those days the makers would not have realised it was racist and would have thought it was perfectly OK.
If you ignore that fact while watching this cartoon, I am sure you would enjoy it more (if you have problems with racism).I recommend this cartoon to people who like old black and white cartoons, to people who have watched SITB and enjoyed it and to people who like cartoons with "unusual" slapstick.
Enjoy "Congo Jazz"!
:-) 8 and a half out of ten..
Congo Jazz is another pretty entertaining Bosko cartoon short.
In Congo Jazz, Bosko is a hunter who is chased by a tiger.
He shoots but the bullet comes out with a whimper instead of a bang.
Eventually, Bosko pulls a flute out and serenades the tiger to the edge of a cliff before kicking him off.
He then encounters a couple of young apes.
One of them gets in trouble with Bosko so he opens the baby's butt-fur and attempts to spank him (this was obviously pre-Code).
The father arrives.
Feeling threatened, Bosko offers some gum.
The father ape obliges.
They then make beautiful music together when both play with their tongues.
All the jungle animals join in.
It all ends with two laughing hyenas laughing at Bosko's expense though Bosko himself does too...Another musical Bosko that has its own charm despite no real plot to speak of, just gags connected by music and setting.
Pretty entertaining though a far cry from later Looney Tunes that became classics after Tex Avery and other "new blood" arrived in 1936....
If you look past the inconsequential music revue .
. Warner Bros.' animators are urging the World to hunt down and kill EVERY wild animal that can harm people with this 1930 release, CONGO JAZZ.
This brief cartoon opens with Buzz Bosko hunting down one of the World's few remaining tigers.
When his gun misfires, Mr. Bosko tricks the giant feline to careen off a high cliff to its doom.
Unfortunately, he loses his gun in the process, so he's unable to foreshadow how Real Life Ohio Zookeepers recently gunned down the giant ape who got too curious about people when a cartoon giant ape threatens Buzz.
If you stop and think about it, JAZZ's animators would have been incredulous at the idea that sharks would still be chowing down on the humans NOT already offed by poisonous snakes, rabid bats, baby-eating dingoes, and killer mosquitoes this late into the 21st Century.
Most science fiction prognosticators of their day pictured Mankind enjoying a virtually sterile, threat-free environment in the 2100s, with the only non-human animals--dangerous or not--confined to Jurassic Parks and Time Travel Tours..
One of Bosco's better efforts, but still not convincing.
"Congo Jazz" is a 6.5-minute cartoon made by successful animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising in the year 1930, so it had its 85th anniversary last year.
It is in black-and-white, but it has sound and the title already gives away that the music in this little movie is one of the core components, actually the core component I would say.
It is still better than most other Bosco stuff I have seen, but the funny moments about the hunter becoming the hunted and some chewing gum music action alone are not enough anymore, not even for the early 1930s as animation was improving drastically around that time and the Bosco cartoons became outdated really quickly.
I think only huge cartoon lovers should check this one out.
No English is spoken, so you can watch it wherever you are from and won't need subtitles.
But the real question is, do you really want to?
I give it a thumbs-down..
Music, music, music!.
"Congo Jazz" is one of the earliest Looney Tunes starring Bosko, a highly energetic character created by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising.
Bosko himself is quite elastic, able to stretch himself into unbelievable contortions.
(Well, maybe not so unbelievable - it's a cartoon!) Musical accompaniment seems to be a big part of these early cartoons, too, particularly this one, as "music soothes the savage beast".
Bosko is a hunter of wild game in this film, you see.There's one sequence in "Congo Jazz" that I especially admire.
Bosko and an ape play strings of chewing gum like pizzicato strings, then a lot of other jungle inhabitants joyfully join in with their own instruments."Congo Jazz" is a cartoon that is likely to brighten your mood when you see it.
Find it on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 Disc 3. |
tt0059434 | Massacro al Grande Canyon | After finding and killing the Slade brothers, who have murdered his father, Wes Evans returns home to Arriba Mesa. The judge offers him to be sheriff and Cooley, the holder of the office and a friend of Wes, is anxious to step down. Wes however only wants to settle down, but when he learns that his love Nancy (who believed Wes to be dead) has married Tully Dancer, he decides to leave again.
However he is drawn into the ongoing ranch war between the Dancer family and Harley Whitmore. When learning that the Dancers have called in an outlaw gang led by the notorious Flake Manson and his brothers, Whitmore acts quickly and rides with a large body of men against the Dancer ranch. They are ambushed by Tully Dancer’s men at a pass and the groups entrench against each other. Wes, who worries for Nancy, negotiates a truce: Whitmore will refrain from pushing through and the Dancers will send off the Manson gang. Tully and his father decide to secretly offer Flake Manson more money to get him to act, even if this endangers the life of Tully’s brother Clay, who is sent to Whitmore as a hostage for the truce.
Wes and Cooley arrest the other Manson brothers that are in town, one of them when he tries to rape Nancy. However, Tully finds Flake and they besiege the prison and leave men to hold Wes pinned while they attack Whitmore’s force. Wes and Cooley (with the help of Nancy) manage to trick the men into revealing themselves and kill them, but Cooley dies too. Wes convinces the townspeople to take sides and ride to the pass. Tully and Flake, who had Whitmore between two fires, now suffer the same fate. Wes kills Flake and Tully escapes with Wes in hot pursuit.
Tully tries to set fire to the disputed grassland, but he is killed by Fred, a farmer who earlier had lost a leg in the ranch war. Wes arrives with the corpse of Tully just in time to stop Whitmore from hanging Clay. Wes will stay on as sheriff, with Nancy by his side. | western, violence | train | wikipedia | Undercooked Pasta With Historical Significance. The court is still out on this one. The second of Sergio Corbucci's Euro Westerns that I have managed to track down lacks the punch that he would find in DJANGO and represents a genre in search of it's form. It's actually a very unique looking production, using exteriors located in the former Yugoslavia rather than Spain and existing as a sort of brooding, somber range war movie than a slick cartoon about Pistoleros and Gringos battling it out under the hot sun. James Mitchum is adequate as the Yankee imported to sway box office receipts, with genre legends George Ardisson and my hero Giacomo Rossi-Stuart adding a bit more color in supporting roles.The issue with the film is that it's a bit of a slog compared to the hip, visually revolutionary movies like DJANGO and the Sergio Leone DOLLARS films, and still hadn't quite achieved the sense of fun & invention from contemporaneous Euro Western hits like SEVEN GUNS FOR THE MACGREGORS or FURY OF THE APACHES -- over the top examples of the Western as an exaggeration, where MASSACRE AT GRAND CANYON seems to dwell on understatement. It's a bit more enjoyable than Corbucci's followup MINNESOTA CLAY which I have a strong aversion to that cannot be put into words. I hate MINNESOTA CLAY but I merely dislike MASSACRE AT GRAND CANYON.Yet it's historically significant, with the presence of Albert Band helping to cement the film as a transitional effort between the Karl May influenced Schnitzel Westerns of Harald Reinl et al & the full blown Spaghetti Western boon precipitated in part by Corbucci's DJANGO. By then he would have found his balance between the brooding, languid sense of pessimism and an arty flair that would become his trademark. Here he was figuring out the tune, and while I may not sing praises for the results they are certainly interesting, and spoke of greater things to come.5/10. Not completely bad, but not worth seeking out. Unlike many westerns made by the Italians during the spaghetti western craze, "Massacre At Grand Canyon" seems to have been a serious attempt to come across more like an American western rather than having done things in the spaghetti western style. The flavorable music sounds more American, the nice-looking Yugoslavian locations look more American, and the screenplay devotes a lot of time to character development over action. Unfortunately, in the attempt to flesh out the characters, the movie unintentionally ends up being surprisingly boring for a great deal of time. There's far too much talk here - I would have gladly given up a lot of the talk for some more action. As for the action, while there are one or two action sequences that are passable, most of the time it comes across as flat and disappointing. Director Sergio Corbucci made some good movies in his career, but this isn't one of them.. Lethargic. His father's style of acting is often described as laid back and laconic but I'm afraid his son, James Mitchum's is just lethargic. With his dad's looks and sleepy eyes he does just sleepwalk through this film without any of the intense screen presence that Robert Mitchum could bring to a role. Doesn't help that the film story is pretty dull too, the old warring cattle barons trying to take over the whole land and everything. The film plays much like an American one from an earlier era, such as 'High Noon or Duel in the Desert' and not the spaghetti western that it is. One thing about the spaghetti's that though short on plot most of the time, they did fill it out with lots of action set pieces. This one doesn't, a couple of short one on one barroom fights but mainly the opposing factions shooting at each over from one rock cliff to another. I was tempted at times to fast forward on the DVD remote, which is always a bad sign...Very much a standard oater and while not that bad, it just doesn't deserve much attention.. This movie was indeed a bit undercooked Spaghetti-Western.. It's hard to believe that this movie is indeed a Spaghetti-Western. The movie was produced in Italy in the same year as Sergio Leone's Dollar series is about to start. You can really tell that director was really trying to carbon copy, the old American style westerns. Due to this reasons, the movie is kinda bland, unlike the Sergio Leon's film-making style that was a bit more entertaining. The movie was such a disappointment when it came out; with such an epic name like 'Grand Canyon Massacre'. It's doesn't have a high body count. Yes, there were some shoot outs, but they wasn't any one-sided slaughter, or massacre. Also, the movie didn't even have the cool ass location of the Grand Canyon. Why is this movie, call Grand Canyon Massacre if it doesn't have any of that? Directed by Sergio Corbucci whom went under the pseudonym name of Stanley Corbett. The movie is a returning cowboy Wes Evans (James Mitchum) whom after searching for his father's killer, return home, only to find himself involved in a bloody land dispute between three families, the Dancers, the Whitmores, and the Masons. The movie plot is just a recycle plot that been use in Westerns since the days of 1953's 'Shane'. This movie nearly mirrors that movie to everything that happens on screen. The movie is pretty boring. Even the gun-fight in the middle was stop for more talking. The film builds to a dramatic, but ultimately predictable conclusion. Honestly, the last 20 minutes of the movie was pretty entertaining, but why are they fighting in the same area as in middle of the film. You would have thought the bad guys would had learn, not to fight there, as they were getting gun-down earlier. Anyways, the rest of the film was such a snore. It really took me a while to get through this movie and I love old school westerns. I think the movie was supposedly going to be about the Whitman massacre of 1847, since the movie had a similar family call the Whitmore, but the movie didn't play out like the real life events. Actors and directors names were changed to make them look more American. Actors were also imported from the States to get a marquee name on the billing such was the case of James Mitchum, the son of fame actor, Robert Mitchum. He's a spitting image of his famous father. He did inherit his dad's sexy, sleepy eyes and taciturn good looks. Like his father, Robert Mitchum, he would had been better in anti-hero role, or villain. Not this all out boring plain hero. Robert Mitchum was truly talented man. He was able to still manage to scare the hell out of me in movies like 1955's Night of the Hunter, and 1962's Cape Fear. Now that's acting, sadly James Mitchum couldn't show the same edge; that his father has, with his Boy Scout role. Still, he actually hold the film together for the most part, even with his flat performance. The supporting cast is just forgettable. It is not at all easy to keep track of who is who. Honestly, it was hard to tell the different between the Dancers, Masons, and the Whitmores. Characters that stood out like Nancy (Jill Powers) were just one-dimensional. She was just a damsel in distress with little depth, whom only purpose in the film is to get rescue time after time by Wes. George Ardisson as Tully Dancer was a rare bad-guy role for the actor. He really seems to relish it, but mostly felt-lost in the crowd. The movie did had a solid production, but nothing stood out. The soundtrack from composer Gianni Ferrio is a mix of European and American influences. There are parts throughout the film where there are only some guitar shuffles which fit perfectly and sound beautiful, but the main theme is awful. The opening theme song is way too cheesy. The image and audio quality is very good for such a quite rare movie. It has aged well in most DVD released. The colors are clear and strong, but some notable speckles. In one short scene the print quality is much lower, VHS quality. The movie still have sharpness enough to be watchable, but there are a few brief moments in the second half, where the image quality moderately strong roars down. Overall: I cannot particularly recommended this movie. Corbucci fans looking for films of the quality of his later productions will be probably be disappointed. All of his famous trademarks like the 'look under the rim of a hat' shot and distinctive gunfight angles are missing but he does go in for some good hand-held shooting during a fist-fight sequence. The next year, 1965 was a defining year for westerns. Producers realized the potential for shooting Westerns in Europe, and story lines like the old Classic American Westerns weren't in most audience's interest, anymore. They wanted more complex story lines like those, saw in Sergio Leone's 1964's hit 'Fistful of Dollars'. You can see how much Sergio Leone's film-making style influence director Sergio Corbucci's next big work, 1966's Django. When you watch this movie compare to Django, you can really tell how much two years can change the genre. Sergio Leone's film-making style would indeed reinvented the genre. So if you want to see what a Spaghetti Western was like before that. Check it out. Just note, that's it's not so grand. |
tt0099171 | Box-Office Bunny | The action takes place in a massive movie theater, called "Cineminium". It is a 100-screen multiplex, constructed right above Bugs' rabbit hole. When Bugs surfaces within the theater, usher Elmer Fudd attempts to drive him away. Meanwhile, Daffy finds the admission fee of the multiplex to be too high for his tastes. He instead uses his library card to force open a door and sneak inside.
The would-be free rider stumbles on the usher, Elmer. To divert attention from his own illegal entry, Daffy drives Elmer to further focus on Bugs. He also joins forces with him against Bugs. Following a chase through the movie theater, Bugs manages to trap his opponents within a projection screen and within the film depicted on it. Said film is apparently part of the slasher film subgenre and the trapped duo are confronted by a "hockey-mask wearing, chainsaw-wielding maniac". During the "That's all, Folks!" sequence in the end title card, Daffy and Elmer break through the ending card in their attempt to escape. Bugs pokes out of the hole they made and simply says to the audience "And that's all, folks!" | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | Good, but nothing terribly exceptional..
Though this is a good, enjoyable cartoon, they did much better ones later on, like Carrotblanca.
This is almost like the first Star Trek feature, which would have been welcomed with open arms and glee no matter what, just for existing.
This is really a patchwork of old bits with some nice touches, but nothing special.
Reminds me a bit of the hunting trilogy in spots and the ending is priceless.
Available and certainly well worth watching just for the novelty and the good bits.
Recommended..
Reasonable update on the old formula.
When Bugs Bunny discovers that a 100 screen cinema has been build on top of his rabbit hole, he pops up to watch a film.
However usher Elmer Fudd notices that he didn't buy a ticket and tries to eject him.
A chase kicks off that is only disturbed when Daffy Duck, sneaking in himself, gets involved.When I saw this was a modern version of the old cartoons I braced myself to be assaulted by some very poor stuff, however I was pleased to find that, on the whole, this was quite enjoyable.
The plot basically allows for one chase sequence where Bugs attempts to outwit Elmer in the good old style that he does.
The addition of Daffy Duck was OK but totally unnecessary in my opinion and I spent most of the cartoon wondering why he had been added other than just getting another character in there.The gags are OK but there are few moments where the film becomes very modern that just don't work.
Specifically there is an awful `scratch' moment where the three dance to the scratching music, but more generally I was a little put off by the look and actions of the modern Bugs - he didn't totally fit with the 50's character I love.Despite this it is still a good cartoon.
It is unfair to compare it with the classics but it is impossible not to do so.
If you gave me the choice between this modern cartoon and a good old one, I would always plump for the old one, but as it is, this is quite funny and enjoyable to watch..
It stinks.
Expectedly terrible modern Looney Tunes short.
Bugs Bunny goes to the multiplex where Elmer is working as an usher.
Then Daffy Duck tries to sneak in.
Basically the whole cartoon is the three of them doing things that vaguely resemble humor and, pathetically, calling back to old Looney Tunes shorts that were actually original and funny.
The animation is colorful and the characters are well-drawn but the backgrounds are flat.
Basically the Colorforms approach to animation.
The voice work is okay if we put aside all comparisons to Mel Blanc or Arthur Q.
Bryan.
The short is never funny and, from what I could tell, they didn't try very hard to be.
The worst part of the whole unpleasant affair is the sound.
The music is loud and overbearing.
The sound effects are even louder.
So obnoxious!
Avoid this trash and go watch the classic shorts.
Five minutes or not, this stuff isn't worth your time..
Extremely funny and long overdue.
The Looney Tunes have existed for over fifty years and somewhere along the line, they lost the thing that made them so special and became, at best, tiresome.
Box Office Bunny changed that.
It was a return to what made Looney Tunes so great and put Bugs Bunny back in his element.
Very good and highly recommended..
Nice cartoon but nothing exceptional.
Don't get me wrong this was fun to watch.
It has some nice animation with exception of an odd looking Bugs, and some nice music.
And the standout scene was definitely Elmer, Bugs and Daffy's dance on the floor, that was such a nice and fun touch.
As a matter of fact, the whole cartoon is nice to watch, but all in all it is not what I call exceptional like Carrotblanca.
There are some very nice gags, but they have been used before I feel, and there wasn't much that I would deem hilarious.
And Daffy joining forces with Elmer?
Somehow seeing as he was a target of the hunter, didn't it seem odd that he would be friends with him.
Though I will admit it was nice having Daffy there.
The voice acting was above average too, but somehow I missed Mel Blanc.All in all, unexceptional but very nice cartoon.
7/10 Bethany Cox. The gang reloaded.
"Box-Office Bunny" is an American 5-minute cartoon from 1990 and fans of old animated works will immediately recognize from the film's title that here we have a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
But despite the retro style, if you take a look at the brief runtime, the frequent use of costumes and the names of the people who worked on it, like the writer or Darrell Van Citters, the pretty prolific director, or the voice actors, you won't find any names from the Golden Age of Animation.
The reason is simple.
This one is from 1990, so still over 25 years old now, but also from 50 years after Warner Bros.
peaked.
It was an okay cartoon as a whole, but maybe trying too much to be witty instead of funny, even if the wit is undeniable on several occasions.
It peaked probably early on already when Bugs turns the tables on Elmer and shows us his police inspector outfit.
Everything afterward is just mediocre sadly and this includes the final twist on being stuck inside the screen too.
Daffy's addition here really added not much quality at all and at this runtime, the certainly could have kept it at Bugs vs.
Elmer, especially as Elmer became less and less significant the longer it went.
The potential was there, but as a whole the execution was underwhelming.
Watch something else instead..
THE RETURN OF MR BUGS BUNNY (but kind of disappointing).
Hooray, Mr Bugs Bunny is finally back in action.
However, 'Box-Office Bunny' is worse than the other shorts than Bugs Bunny appeared in the American Animation Golden Age. I think that the film is a bad disappointment.
I was expecting the short to be great as it is the return of Bugs Bunny since his final short in 1964.
However, I was wrong.
The plot is weak.
However, the good thing about 'Box-Office Bunny' is that there are some funny and interesting scene.
One example of this is that seeing Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd dancing on some kind of sticky floor.
Lastly, it is a good thing that Bugs Bunny returns.I am a fan of Bugs Bunny since I was young.
Despite the plot, I still enjoyed it because of its funny scenes.
Finally, HAPPY 67TH BIRTHDAY, MR BUGS BUNNY! |
tt4730986 | Divines | Dounia is a teenage girl living in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris with her mother. She and her best friend Maimouna hustle for money, shoplifting from supermarkets and then reselling their wares on the streets to their classmates.
The two girls have a secret hiding place in the catwalk of a local theatre where they observe dance auditions. Djigui, an untrained dancer, catches Dounia's eye. One day Maimouna dares Dounia to spit on him and she does, resulting in him trying to chase her down. Trying to follow Dounia he ends up slipping and she rescues him by pulling him up from the catwalk.
During school Dounia is expected to be trained as a receptionist, rebelling against her teacher she makes fun of her for having no money and then vows to earn more money than her teacher could ever dream of, before quitting school. One of the older students at school, Rebecca, shows the kids video from a trip abroad and says she wants to go and open a bar and enter the sex tourism industry which is constantly booming. Determined to be part of Rebecca's crew, Dounia observes her giving drugs to Samir and then follows him. Discovering where he hides his drugs, she steals them from him and brings them to Rebecca, telling her that she would do a better job as a dealer. Impressed, Rebecca agrees to let Dounia start working for her.
Rebecca gives Dounia and Maimouna a series of odd jobs which they successfully complete, working up the ranks from chores, to dealing drugs. Rebecca eventually confides in them that she wants to use Dounia as bait to sneak into the apartment of Reda, a rich man, to steal one hundred thousand euros off of him as he once told her where it was hidden in his apartment during a drug binge.
Dounia continues to hide her money in the theatre but when it is gone she confronts Djigui who refuses to give it back.
Dounia and Maimouna succeed in getting the mark to notice Dounia, however when it's time to leave the club they find Samir isn't where he said he would be. Going home Dounia finds Samir having sex with her mother. Enraged she goes to his home and burns his car. When the firefighters show up she throws glass bottles at them leading her to be arrested. When her mother picks her up at the station, the two are berated by Maimouna's parents and Dounia loses Rebecca's favor.
Dounia goes to Djigui to get her money back in order to gain favour back from Rebecca. Djigui tells her he has been hired as the principle dancer in the show and gives her tickets to watch him perform. Instead of going to see him Dounia goes on a date with Reda. He takes her to his apartment and when he leaves to take a shower Dounia begins searching for his secret cache of money. She is discovered by Reda, who savagely beats her before attempting to rape her. Dounia fights back, knocking out Reda and then manages to locate the money. She leaves some of the money with her mother and hides some for Maimouna intending to leave on tour with Djigui.
Before she can go she receives a message from Rebecca who is holding Maimouna hostage until Dounia returns. Dounia brings the money to Rebecca, but she notices that some of it is missing and in a rage, douses Dounia with gasoline and threatens to burn her. Before she can Samir realizes that the money is at her mother's home and leaves to go get it. When Rebecca insults Dounia, she furiously attacks her, and in the ensuing fight Rebecca throws a lighter and the room they are in catches fire with them locked inside. Maimouna is able to knock through a vent but is too large to go through. Rebecca escapes and Maimouna urges Dounia to leave as her face is covered in gas. The money they were fighting over burns behind them. The firemen arrive in time, but wait outside as they are not allowed to fight fires in the neighbourhood anymore without the presence of riot police. Dounia begs them to save her friend, but they are unmoved and say they cannot go inside until the police arrive. By the time the riot police arrive the building explodes and the crowd, furious that they waited so long, begin to attack them. | violence | train | wikipedia | Scene after scene, the characters, the settings, the relationship, each and every element comes in your face with incredible strength; from classroom argument to daughter-mother interaction, nothing is easy and nothing doesn't hurt.
Praise must of course go towards the main character, surprisingly multifaceted, rich and intense in about any moment of the film.
All actresses and actors did an amazing job.£ Thank you Houda, the film maker for making us such a beautiful movie..
This is one very affecting movie, a type of film that fills you with a sense of real people feeling real emotions --nothing is fake, all the characters and all their needs are as real and painful as it gets.
And just as in life, nothing is resolved in a satisfying ending.The lead actress is one very ambitious young lady, Oulaya Amamra, who will make her mark on cinematic history soon, but you might want to catch her in her early stage to see how she progresses quickly to Meryl Streep (or at least Jennifer Lawrence) status.
Her character's name is Dounia, and she is a daughter of the town slut in a Roma (Gypsy) camp.Her best friend, Maimounia, a black girl, daughter of a Muslim priest, is as lovable as they come.
There is no simple resolution, and therefore, the film is just like life: it is completely and utterly unfair.Although the plot seems simple, it is extremely more complex and a summary of the action doesn't do justice to the story.
Dounia has a love-hate relationship with a male dancer that takes too much away from the rest of the film, and the scenes of the dancer are way over long and unnecessary, but thankfully it is the relationship that she has with her best female friend that is the true heart of the film.To say more would detract from one's enjoyment of the twists and turns that ensue during the course of the film.
Rest assured, you will be glad you spent time in the company of the actresses and the female director of this very impressive film..
What I expected to be a medicare classic sentimental a girl-from-the-ghetto story, turned up to be an extraordinary experience of incredibly acted, beautifully complex, unconventionally artistic movie.
If this is the director's first feature movie, I am genuinely looking for next one.The story is about a 15-year-old Muslim girl called Dounia and her black friend Maimouna that both grow up in a poor migrant superb of Paris.They have both different characters and family situation, but they both share their insecurities and hopes with each other openly and you can feel the strength of their influence on each other even when it seems like they paths split.They are both clueless teenage girls, that feel like they deserve more in life than what they were given by their parents or society.
And what's more, her friend Maimonua doesn't seem to be so impressed with him as Dounia, so she acts very ambiguously toward him and even sees him as weak, even though she is not sure that what she sees as a weakness is actually a weakness after all.
This split between her contradictory emotions is amazingly well acted (in my opinion by a rising star) young actress Oulaya Amamra.The ghetto, lack of meaning, lack of guidance and respected adult authorities, lack of social (economic) opportunities and feeling of being an alien in someone else's society is the true antagonist of the story.It drives Dounia (and Maimonua follows her in admiration) to make naive and bad choices, but at the same time you feel something very authentic and even admirable in her drive to find the most accessible way out of her frustrating situation.
So when she drops out of school and start selling drugs, the world looks like it belongs to her (and her best friend), unable to see inevitable consequences of the path she puts herself and their friendship in.And as the movie progress, you ask yourself how much she can get away with and will she finally learn harsh life lessons on her own or will the unusual relationship with the dancer help her to see beyond distorted values she desperately tries to believe in?
Besides I read that the "self-thought" director Houda Benyamina herself grew up in the type of suburb she captures in this movie, so you can't accuse her of over-dramatization or stereotyping.I've seen A Man called Ove (2016) and Toni Erdmann (2016) which are both nominated for 2017 Oscars for foreign movies, but I think Divines deserves it more.
This is a heart-wrenching and breathtaking story, with some of the best acting I've seen all year.
I recently visited Paris and this movie really shed light on the crime rate that I hear so much about in the states.
From the story line, to the actors, to the scenery, to the video quality this movie should easily rise to the top of the charts.
Hmmmm, a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign movie ??
We have this girl living in a Roma camp in some Paris suburb, so we know this is a social drama.
They add some social stereotypes around her, a slutty mother, a friend with very religious Muslim parents, a local gangster/drug dealer, (well, you get the drift i'm sure), all people with no real prospect of a future.
Well it seems the Globe jury bought the premise, but in my opinion this movie is 90 % window dressing to cover the fact that it's not much of a story.
The girl is obsessed with making a lot of money, but she's also completely clueless and goes from one stupid plan to another, without realizing that there might be consequences for her actions.
To me it seems like some new director straight out of film school, and determined to make an impression just piled a lot of clichés on top of each other and forgot that really great movies are driven by good stories..
This is undoubtedly one of the best movies I've seen.
The acting by the main character (Dounya) is phenomenal, and I am hoping to see her in more films in the future.
Overall, its a must see film that shows the dark realities many people around the world face.
The director, like the main character, wants success.
The film was made to please the eyes and the minds of old f*rts that fill the juries and the commissions that are specialized in turning the taxpayer money into alms for those who know how to please.There are social statements, but they are void and not offensive, like the small exercise in accountancy at the beginning: "how much you make?
She can in one scene have a hard time coping with the promiscuity of her mother pointing out her decision to fight that, and in another scene go lure a violent man with sex.In the end there is no story.
And the story is not on screen but in the white old man's mind, the one who handles the taxpayer money.
The high rise building is only the backdrop to remind the viewer of the 5 o'clock news.It could have been a 100 minutes story on a budget with only Oulaya Amamra, Déborah Lukumuena and Jisca Kalvanda.
But that association is another way to make a living dancing with the state and tearing the stories apart while moving from place to place to please white old men in power.
Stronger films, more accessible stories.
When you follow the story of the movie, a few questions are coming up and the most important one is What the movie was trying to say to audiences?
Well, the movie is trying to point out that achieving money in any dirty deal cannot buy a good true friendship.
She dreams for having money to change her life and her mother's too.
By making wrong decisions, she lost her best friend.
Moreover, it doesn't show what happens after murdering the boss guy (I forgot his name) for stealing his money from his home.If the story could be going on, then Dounia had to be arrested by police.
In addition to the explanations stated above, the action of players was OK, specially Oulaya Amamra as Dounia.
All in all, I was expecting a better movie.
My big problem about this movie is its story.
If I was to list all of the things that the director/writer, Houda Benyamina did well with this film I would be writing for days, so to name a few, the story was fascinating and unique, the acting was better than superb and with the entire cast, the cinematography was outstanding, choice of musical composition was just perfect for the film and the story progression was just awesome and left the viewer guessing the entire time with what will happen next.
The two films follow similar protagonists, both 16 year old girls growing up in the rough banlieu of Paris.
But while Girlhood was the story of a girl growing up in the ghetto told by someone who wasn't from that area, Benyamina is someone who came from those places and understands it intimately and as a result her film feels more vibrant and multi- dimensional.
Divines is focused on Dounia (Oulaya Amamra, phenomenal), a plucky young teen who lives in makeshift tent camp with her mother who drinks too much and sleeps around.
Instead, thinking only of money, she hustles her way into getting a job with Rebecca, the neighbourhood drug dealer.
Now in another movie (like Girlhood) this would be represented in a very moralistic fashion but Benyamina shows how for someone like Dounia, working her way up to drug dealer is probably the quickest, most interesting way for her to achieve her goals.
And while Dounia does some morally dubious things the movie understands why and never judges her.
Benyamina also has some fun playing with her characters and her style and there are some dance and fantasy sequences that make this play like a ghetto fairy tale.
Divines is ultimately a film about forgotten people trying to make it anyway they can and Benyamina makes sure that you remember them..
I really wasn't expecting this to be so good, thinking it to be a Netflix Original, but upon further investigation, I see that they just bought the film, after it was shown at Cannes.
Perhaps Houda Benyamina is a devotee of Jacques Audiard, but how could one criticize that?This is not really a movie about race; rather one that allows us (I'm white) to transcend race, and imagine living a different life, at least for a part of two hours.
The story got me hooked from begining to end.
For me, the best things about this movie are:
Those "magical" moments dancing.I give it 10 stars because it has moved me to tears (only a few lol) but that's quite a feat in my case.Really good movie: good story, good characters, good actors and good end.
From an artistic point of view, this movie is beautiful.
A young girl trying to escape the financial fate her mother has accepted gets involved with a local hoodlum in order to make money..
If there is one reason to love Netflix it is because it gives you access to films like these in the comfort of your own home.
With all that said, let's talk about Divines.Characters & StoryDounia (Oulaya Amamra)When you grow up in a Roma camp with a mom who is not only embarrassing but seems to lack maturity, it makes your desire for a better life skyrocket.
That is Dounia's dream and she plans on bringing best friend Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) right with her.
A dancer who originally is just someone Dounia, with Maimouna, watch from the rafters.
Which life will be available to her and ultimately, can her dreams come true despite all that she has done?HighlightsExperience FriendshipIt isn't clear when Dounia and Maimouna's friendship started, but similar to Girlhood, it is beautiful to watch two girls empower each other, be ride or die for one another, and have this sisterhood like bond which is enviable.
For while often it seemed Maimouna was just along for the ride, she never fell prey to just being the big black best friend.
For whether it was showing us her parents, us understanding how deeply she believed in her faith and how that influenced her, she wasn't made out to be shallow.A Cute Love AffairThough certainly not a huge part of the film, it was hard to not swoon a bit when it came to Dounia and Djigui's relationship.
For while Amamra's youthfulness made you question if Djigui was too old for her, you can't help but lose yourself in the type of romance you could see being its own movie.
For their scenes dancing together and you being able to tell he is definitely her first love, oh my god it makes you want to squeal.The Desire For MoreWhat is always necessary, but not always done, is understanding the motive and what drives the characters.
With this film, it is clear from Dounia to Samir (Yasin Houicha) and everyone in between.
For whether it is Maimouna sticking with Dounia because she makes her feel wanted, beautiful and free; Samir desiring Rebecca's approval for she calls him her brother and it makes him feel good; or Djigui wanting to dance because of the feeling it gives him, everyone's motives are clear.The one especially clear though is Dounia who between seeing her mother, a lecture from her teacher, and the environment she grows up in, sees crime and drugs as the easiest way to stability and money.
So whether it is robbing someone to prove herself, figuring out how to drive a scooter to be more useful, or even how to go from a plain Jane to a seductress, she figures out a way and seeing her do so is something to watch.Oulaya AmamraLeading to the last bit of praise required: That for the lead Ms. Amamra.
Amamra does that for whether it is hoping love will be true with Djigui, that she doesn't end up dead working for Rebecca, and that Maimouna doesn't abandon her when she needs her most, she gets you so emotionally invested.CriticismA Cheap & Rushed EndingThus making me wonder why the ending that was done was chosen?
Which, considering all that preceded, honestly the ending seemed like the writers either didn't want you to have closure or decided to end things there for otherwise this movie would be ridiculously long.Overall: Worth SeeingI hope, similar to Lea Seydoux, this introduction to Oulaya Amamra is her invitation to the world stage.
The story is set in gay Paris - and told through the eyes of Dounia, a young girl struggling to find her way (cliche number one).
First, she tries to get credibility with the dealer she idolizes, then she struggles with her family situation and mother, then she struggles with her emerging feeling of horniness towards a male dancer, then she struggles to get away from the dealer she previously idolized, etc.The character is unpredictable, doing things that later come back to get her and not learning the error of her ways at all.
I get the feeling that at the end of the story the character hasn't matured at all - in fact her spazzy unpredictability results in the death of a friend.
And the message is so mixed that there's no feeling of learning or growth in the movie - is it about the hard circumstances of migrants in France?Soundtrack is weird too, a few scenes completely spoiled by music that does NOT work for that particular act.I'd give it a miss - much better fare on Netflix these days such as John Wick, The Last King, etc..
The film incites who's watched it into a reflection about life and about the system we live!When the film ended I felt like I lost a part of me!
I was still wanting to watch it and see the main character's fate.
The Mozart's Requiem in the film was as divine as the movie was!.
Winner of the 2016 Audience Award for New Auteurs at AFI Fest, DIVINES is a feature film loaded with emotion that pivots from one side of the spectrum to the other.
It is not a coming of age story but rather, a story about two girls that are best friends and the lead's, Dounia, conflict of her soul.
Director Hounda delivers a touching piece of cinema that blurred my emotion of how I feel about the lead character played by Oulaya Amamra.
The protagonist's circumstances and choices make for a masterful narrative story that ultimately leaves you feeling the characters emptiness and guilt.Dounia is an ambitious girl who lives in a gypsy camp in Paris with her mother, who is considered the camp slut.
The only person in her life that brings light and joy is her friend Maimouna.
Throughout the film I am constantly changing my mind on how I feel about the two friends.
This creative storytelling provided me the opportunity to care for the girls despite their wicked and edacious actions.The pacing of the film is superb doubling down on Dounia's disturbed circumstances and poor decision making motivated by disease only money could cure.
On one side, my inner child wants Dounia and Maimouna to succeed in obtaining the riches they desire, even through indecent means.
The harsh reality of Dounia's choices surrounded by the reality of a young girl involved in street life and her motivation of easy virtue slowly pulled me back ultimately lead me to judge the character as immoral.In the end I was left feeling empathy for the characters.
The happy ending presented for Dounia was just that a fairy tale.
The characters motivation provided her heart and soul with meaning but ended up being the very thing that left her heartless and empty in the end. |
tt0106350 | The Ballad of Little Jo | Josephine Monaghan (Amis) is a young society woman who is seduced by her family's portrait photographer, and as a result, bears an illegitimate child. She is expelled from her family and home in disgrace, and with no other resources, she leaves her newborn son under the care of her sister and heads West.
On the road, Josephine discovers that her options are very limited. As a single woman traveling alone, she is viewed with suspicion, or as sexual prey for any man. She assists a traveling salesman (René Auberjonois) who subsequently tries to sell her services as a whore to passing strangers. Seeing it as her only protection, Josephine scars her face, and begins to dress as a man – thus becoming "Jo."
At a mining camp in Ruby City, she meets Percy (McKellen) who takes her under his wing. Percy recommends Jo for a job at the stable, and teaches her about how to survive in the frontier. But Percy nurses a deep suspicion of women, viewing them to be "more trouble than they are worth." He later demonstrates his misogyny by slashing the face of a prostitute who refuses to give him oral sex.
Jo no longer feels safe with Percy or her secret, so she accepts a job herding sheep, and heads for the mountains. After returning in the spring, Percy gives Jo a letter for her that he had received months earlier. The letter is from Jo's sister, and Percy having opened it, now knows he is a she. He is furious at being made a fool of by a woman and "a whore at that," referring to the mention of her son in the letter. He attacks and tries to rape Jo, but she draws her gun and subdues him. Largely ostracized by the town's people since the incident with the prostitute, Percy promises Jo he will not share her secret if she finances his journey out of the territory. She agrees, though swears to him she will find him and kill him if he breaks his silence.
For five years she works as a shepherd, braving the deadly winters alone to the worry of her employer, Frank Badger (Hopkins), who has taken a liking to the "young man" he nicknames "Little Jo." When Jo has enough money saved, she quits Badger, and buys her own homestead.
While frequently viewed as "peculiar", Jo is clearly educated, and earns the respect of the people in Ruby City and the surrounding territory. A local girl, Mary, (Graham) has her eye on Jo. Blind to the truth, most hope the two will court. However, Mary ends up wedding her cousin, Lucas Brown, soon after Jo returns from her first winter as a sheep herder.
One day in town, Jo comes across a mob about to lynch a Chinese laborer for trying to "take our jobs." Jo intervenes, and Badger insists the "chinaman", Tinman Wong (David Chung), go to live with Jo to help with the homestead.
Tinman accompanies Jo to the homestead, and takes on the duties of cook and housekeeper. Though he seems slow-witted, Jo is not happy at having company forced upon her, and is afraid he will discover she is not a man. She keeps as much distance as possible. But Tinman easily discovers the truth about Jo, and in doing so, reveals he is far more intelligent than he has pretended to be—he, too, has been masquerading for his own safety. Jo drops her guard and the two begin a love affair.
A feud begins to brew between the sheep herders and cattlemen who are moving into the territory. The Western Cattle Company wants to buy up all the land in the area, and they kill anyone who does not comply. One by one, the sheep herders give in, or are murdered by masked gunmen. Jo has witnessed the brutal murders of too many of her friends, and the violence that will be necessary to win this kind of fight goes against her gentle nature. This is a masculine quality that goes beyond her ability to "pass," so Jo dons a dress once again in a feeble effort to step back into a more traditionally feminine role. Tinman argues that it will be impossible for her to go back being the society woman, urging her to keep the homestead, and stand against the cattlemen in the upcoming election. Jo will not be swayed, and meets with the representative from the cattle company, Henry Grey (Anthony Heald) to tell him she will sell.
Tinman falls ill, and Jo summons Badger's wife (Snodgrass), who practices folk medicine, to tend him. Badger comes along, and is furious when Grey arrives with his wife so that Jo can sign the final papers for the sale of the homestead. Feeling betrayed by Jo for helping the cattle company to "squeeze me," Badger hits Jo, proclaiming, "By God, boy! I thought you'd amount to something."
As Grey prepares the papers inside, Jo watches his wife who, through the warped glass, is visually reminiscent of Jo when she was a woman of society. In an instant, Jo changes her mind and refuses to sell to Grey, who leaves in disgust issuing less than veiled threats.
Tinman recovers, and on election day, Badger and Jo ride to Ruby City but are met by several of Grey's masked gunmen. Badger shoots one of the gunmen, but is wounded, so it is up to Jo to finish the fight. She kills the two remaining men, but the pain of the act of killing is clearly indicated on her face.
The plot jumps to many years later, after Tinman Wong has died. Jo collapses while fetching water, and Badger finds her in bed, near death. He takes her in his wagon to the Ruby City doctor, but she is dead before they arrive. As Badger buys rounds of drinks at the saloon in memory of Little Jo, the undertaker rushes in with his shocking discovery—Little Jo was a woman. The town elders rush back to the undertaker's to inspect. All stand around the preparation table in shock, all except Mrs. Addie (Cathy Haase), the saloon owner, who laughs and laughs.
Badger is furious at the betrayal by his friend, and because Jo "made a fool out of me." He goes back to her homestead, and as he tears the place apart in anger, comes across the letter from her sister, and a picture of her as she lived as a woman. In town, the people tie Jo's dead body to her horse for a photograph.
The final shot is of the newspaper story with the before-and-after photographs, and the headline, "Rancher Jo Was a Woman." | violence | train | wikipedia | Suzy Amis' performance has stuck with me since I first saw this movie in 1994.As for the story, yes it's hard to believe that no one would notice a "man" who never had any facial hair, whose voice was fairly high and had such narrow shoulders but despite the unrealistic premise, it's a good story that keeps your attention all the way without the need for action (although there is some.) Amis does transform her looks from a fairly pretty woman to someone that looks like a frail 17-year-old boy.
David Chung, who plays her Asian friend (well, more than that) also is very good and Bo Hopkins also has a strong contribution as the neighbor.But this movie belongs to Amis all the way and just the painful looks on her face alone are memorable enough for me.
Thus, it is not a happy story, but it's powerful one and worth seeing.
Worth hearing, too, with some nice guitar work for the soundtrack.If you are looking for a western that has a different angle, this certainly qualifies..
I've been waiting to see this film ever since it premiered in 1993, but only a couple of days ago I finally got a chance to see it on TV.
It was well worth the wait, although I would have loved to have seen it on big screen instead.
First of all, Suzy Amis who I think has repeatedly been miscast and generally far too unappreciated as an actress does a brilliant, intuitive job in the lead role.
Her transformation from Josephine to Jo is touching and believable, and her performance all through the film maintains the very same characteristics.
She avoids the trap of being a mere male imitation and instead builds her own tough concept of what constitutes a true man of honor living in the middle of the rough wilderness.
Director Greenwald lets her story flow beautifully in its own calm pace; she makes Jo's expressive face the very core of this remarkable film - that's where all starts and, finally, ends.
Film's gorgeous landscapes and panorama may take your breath away as well, but it's really the director's ability to understand Jo Monaghan's incredible life story that makes The Ballad of Little Jo such a magnificent experience..
It's directed by Maggie Greenwald and stars Suzy Amis as a woman in a rich family who is kicked out after she has a kid out of wedlock and she decides to go west.
Amis knows she isn't going to survive as a woman because on the first night she is almost raped by two soldiers and barely escapes.
So Amis decides to dress as a man and then makes a big cut on her face so it will leave a scar.
Amis winds up staying in a mining town and the people believe she's man.
Ian McKellen is a man who takes Amis in and shows her the ropes but he can get pretty violent when he's drunk.
Amis doesn't stay with him long and winds up buying a place away from town so she can have her privacy.
It's a great movie and i can't see why it isn't more well known..
The greatest movie I have ever seen!.
It is really a great movie.
Believe it or not, I saw it 6 times in 2 days!The performance of Suzy Amis and other actors are really excellent, the music and the photographs are excellent too!I am so exciting to find such a good movie.
Again, it is one of the best movies I have ever seen!.
This is a non-action-oriented Western about a woman who, for years, masquerades as a man.
At the beginning of the film, she is thrown out by her father after she gives birth to an illegitimate child, so she travels west.
Instead, it is a smart film that takes a very slow and leisurely pace to the ultimate conclusion.
I would have preferred the pace and mood to perhaps be a little less somber, but considering how intelligent the film was, I will certainly forgive this.Particular standouts are Suzy Amis as Jo and Bo Hopkins.
It's a real shame neither of these actors got much work after the film debuted--they certainly deserved it..
I remember reading the review in the paper, and thinking that the movie might be worth seeing the one time.
I rented it and loved and then once I got my video collection up and running, it was one of the first movies I bought.
Suzy Amis is outstanding as Jo and does an excellent job at first portraying the out of her element woman, and gradually over the film does a fine job of conveying the woman who lives a hard life as a man..
Josephine made a fatal mistake: she got pregnant from a photographer, her father throws her out, she goes west.
The film shows the options for a pretty woman like Josephine, alone, with no money, at that time on the west: to be sold like merchandise, to be raped.Her choice is to disguise herself as a man, so she becomes Little Jo. Suzy Amis has a great performance as Jo, she is very pretty, the fact that she does not really look like a man is not important, she is very convincing as a human being.
Throughout the film you realize how Jo is a great person, she accepts her fate and tries to do the best she can about it.
Bo Hopkins is Frank Badger, her tough friend and their relationship, and also Jo's relationship with David Chung are the best things of this western..
I liked the movie.
I really think Suzie did a great job of portraying a woman trying to survive in a man's world.
All in all, I was very impressed by the whole story and the way it was portrayed by the actresses and actors in this film.
I would recommend it..
This is an incredible movie.
It is one of the most visually beautiful films I have ever seen.
It is based on the true tale of a woman who went out west in the 1800s, and dressed and passed as a man.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
If you're looking for an inspiring film about an inspiring woman, check it out..
I remember watching Suzy Amis in The Usual Suspects and several other films.
Facing hardships going West, she buy men's clothes and live in a mining town as a man.
One of the best portrayal in a movie with a woman standing her ground..
I saw this movie years ago on the Lifetime channel.
I have looked for this movie since then and it has never been shown again.
What makes it even better is that it's a true story.
Yes, I'm sure some of it is embellished, but the fact that she lived as a man and no one noticed?
Viewers looking for a classic western risk to be disappointed by this movie.
Most disappointed will certainly be action movies fans if they happen to see this film, as the pace is slow and the emphasize is on something else.
Director Maggie Greenwald focused here on the life of women in the West, and on the possibility of leading an alternative style of life during that period.The result is a different type of movie, different in subject, style and pace than you would expect.
The title says it all maybe, the film is a ballad in the sense that it focuses on the hero - in this case a woman thrown out from her Eastern rich environment, running away, and choosing to live all her life in disguise as a man.
Probably so, as the film is said to be inspired by a true story.There is some fine acting especially from Suzy Amis which sustains the film, and also a very closely and carefully rendition of details of the day-to-day life in the epoch.
However this is not enough to maintain interest for the full duration of the two hours, some of the characters seem too remote and too hard to read missing the chance to involve the viewer in becoming interested in their destinies.
Maybe the director kept intentionally the distance and did not want to reveal too much of their secrets, same as the folks around Little Jo did not push too much to be able to understand her real secret.
The result is that a film which could shock and involve by presenting the continuity of the harsh realities of the status of women and other minorities all over the American history fails to do so completely.It is still worth watching, especially as the end brings at least part of that dose of sharpness and weirdness missing in much of the rest of the movie.
I am however wondering where talents like director Maggie Greenwald and actress Suzy Amis disappeared in the fifteen years that passed since this film was released..
I'm sure that is *is* possible for a woman to pass as a man - given a masculine enough face and mannerisms, but...
I can't help thinking that this movie would have been better starring a man as a woman pretending to be a man.
At least then the viewers wouldn't have had to suspend their belief for two hours while the 'awful' truth unfolded in front of dozens of men who couldn't tell the difference 'twixt girl and boy.
An Absolutely Excellent Movie - Underrated & Overlooked.
08/16/2018 I suggest that you read the wiki bio of Josephine Monaghan and look at the images before watching this movie.
The movie is perfection and the fact that it's based on a true to life woman makes it all the more special.
Cast out of her rich family home for having a child out of marriage, Josephine takes the road in the new west of America.
When she is attacked and nearly raped by outlaws she goes into hiding, disguising herself as a man.
Jo settles into a small mining town under her new identity but can she keep the charade up?Based on a true story this film is a reasonably worthy story of one woman's life in the old west as a man.
However, the actual delivery of the story here is all a little bit dull for my tastes.
The lack of actual story beyond the `woman dressed as man' shows through, and instead we have (probably fictional) episodes from Jo's life the captions `months later' and `several years later' pop up at random breaking up any sort of narrative flow.As a result I never really got into the film and it just didn't have a drive to it.
The one line summary is worthy enough but it still needed to tell me a story and not just expect me to sit and go `wow, she lived as a man' all the way through the film.
Put simply, far too little happened of interest and it all took too long to tell.The cast is not great and fit with the inconsequentialness of the whole film.
Amis is a bit bland in her delivery and her lines sound flat, in fairness she was trying to sound like a man but even still!
Amis is a very pretty woman and it is hard to make her look like someone who could be taken for a man, a less feminine actress would have been a better choice for the role as it would have made it easier for the audience to suspend belief.
McKellen is good but all too brief, Hopkins is an enjoyable character but has little to do, Chung is actually quite good and Heather Graham has a fleeting early role.Overall the story is worth hearing but only as a few page story.
As a two hour movie it drags and finds that it doesn't actually have much to say or do after the pitch is delivered.
A sad use of Hollywood millions on a story worth telling..
Some will argue that Suzy Amis "delivers an outstanding performance as a woman passing as a man", but this viewer found it unbelievable and chaotic.
Opening the door to the most incomplete scenes of the film, director Maggie Greenwald treaded lightly, giving us mere glimpses of her past instead of what should have been nightmarish remembrances.
The sound of her father's angry voice should have been repeated throughout the film, giving us a sense that Jo struggled with this throughout her life but instead they faded in an out continuously, giving us only short times to remember the truth before it was forgotten again.
She lived, like this film, randomly and transformed this film from pushing the sexual envelope to merely a documentary.
"The Ballad of Little Jo" had no message, simply demonstrating to us that if you wanted to escape, fool those who cared, and forget about the past it was possible.Suzy Amis was a major contributor to the downfall of the film, but the same blame can be placed on Mr. McKellen who left us more confused and bewildered with each tangent step.
While he was essential to Jo understanding the ways of "man", he seemed more like filler than influence.
What was her purpose with this film?
The message, like this film, is unclear.
Forced tears are constantly a staple of Greenwald's shots, but those man-made rivers go nowhere.
Greenwald is your average director, never quite reaching her full potential, while never slipping below the "I learned this in Directing 101" line.Sloppy acting coupled with sloppy direction, my critique of there being nothing positive to say about this film stays firmly in place.
Greenwald took liberties in the simplicity it was to transform one's self into a man.
This leads us to the ending, which (without giving any parts away), is a disaster because we work ourselves up for two hours, questioning Jo's every move that may consequently stumble upon the truth, only to get our wind let out as nothing happens to bring Jo full circle.
One could argue that this was simply a ploy to end a train-wreck of a film, but with Greenwald behind the camera, anything is possible.
My heart hoped this would have been a darker film with more attention spent on the horror of man towards women, or at least a film about the struggling voice of a woman, but instead it was a shady film about one woman's ability to cower away from responsibility (she should have fought for her son) and trick everyone around her.
Amis, Hopkins, and McKellen were atrocious in their respective roles as they never quite understood the period they resided.
"Ballad of Little Jo" was missing important elements like style, themes, reality, and cohesiveness.
While I was hoping it wouldn't be another "Brokeback Mountain", I was at least hoping for purpose, reason, or point, but found nothing but the truth that women could easily hide from men if randomly excommunicated from their families.
This was an embarrassment of a film, and a disappointment for those hoping for a clear, concise message about sexuality.
i had never heard of this film, and after seeing it wish i hadn't come across it in the video store.
the only believable performance was by the always excellent ian mckellan, who breathed life into the woman-hating character he was portraying, although i kept wondering what he was doing in this movie.
I screened this movie in a film class and was horrified by the violence towards women.
The acting was horrible and, with the exception of Carrie Snodgrass whom I adore, this movie is a waste of time unless you enjoy watching women portrayed solely as whores and victims of violence.
All of the men in the town take turns with her until one of them assaults her because, "she wouldn't put it in her mouth." The prostitute is bleeding from the mouth and is moaning and crying as the man who assaults her (played by a very convincingly digusting Ian McKellan) is bleeding from the crotch of his long underwear.
I really liked this film.
I've been around enough real cowboys and stockmen to know that a woman could successfully masquerade as a slender, somewhat pretty young man.
Especially if she deliberately gives herself a disfiguring scar (an old trick to discourage people from looking closely at your face).
It was clear in the film that many of Jo's fellow miners and stockmen felt that she was a bit effeminate and, as Frank Badger puts it, "peculiar".But being peculiar wasn't a crime and a small man who kept to himself on a remote ranch, didn't bother other men, and made an honest living in the hardscrabble world of livestock ranching probably wouldn't have been subject to close scrutiny.
And, once Jo has saved Frank's life and killed two ambushers, her status as a man would have been pretty well assured.I felt the final scene where Frank Badger is angrily smashing Jo's cabin furnishings was revelatory.
I think Frank was angry that he never found out that his friend (for whom he had feelings he couldn't understand or acknowledge) was really a good-looking woman with whom he could have had a more intimate friendship without compromising his heterosexuality..
Until this movie, I had seen nothing but movies about the men of the west.
This movie, however, is so much different.
It shows a woman's struggles in a man's world, and she succeeds.
Jo is a woman who was disowned by her family and goes west to start a new life.
After coming under attack by several men, she decides to pretend to be a man.
Overall, this movie is worth watching, buying, whatever.
I've seen this movie many years ago, after awhile I began searching for it again.
XP Also the fact that it was based off a true story.as for ink, your probably a woman hating man anyway.
no wonder you didn't like the movie. |
tt0030035 | Daffy Duck in Hollywood | At Wonder Studios, producer I.M. Stupendous is interrupted in his office by Daffy asking for an acting position, and quickly responds "No!" and breaks the fourth wall by stating, "Y'know, that duck's screwy!" The phone rings and Daffy pops out of it saying "You're correct, absolutely correct!", pinching Stupendous's nose. Stupendous then phones Director von Hamburger (a parody of Josef von Sternberg) and orders him to finish the picture he's working on that day.
On the set, all the crew rushes to follow Hamburger's order for a close-up, who starts smoking a cigarette. Daffy then swipes and starts smoking the cigarette, spelling out Warner Bros. with the smoke ("Just givin' my bosses a plug", he tells the audience. "I've got an option coming up!"). Hamburger asks how the sound is, and Daffy whistles into the microphone. He orders the lights turned, which Daffy has connected the emergency fire hose to, causing water to gush out of the lights and down on the set. When the camera rolls, it starts shooting bullets Daffy planted. Hamburger begins crying. Daffy sympathetically gives him a gift, promising to stop being screwy, and walks away. However, Daffy then pops up out of the gift box, bites Hamburger's nose and starts jumping around.
As filming begins, a typical romantic scene between a rooster and hen plays out. When the inevitable kiss comes up, Daffy jumps in and kisses the hen; he is so excited that he does it again. Hamburger declares the scene ruined and gives orders to cut the scene. The time being noon, Hamburger asks for lunch: turkey with all the trimmings. However, Daffy is under the platter and bites Hamburger's nose beak again, then jumps away. Then, in the film room, Daffy begins clipping and pasting together random film clips, which he switches out with Hamburger's film when Hamburger tells Stupendous that his film is finished. Hamburger shows the "film". At first the title card reads "Gold Is Where You Find It" (a movie produced by Warner Bros. the same year), showing film clips of gold mining, but then suddenly plays humorous live action clips of random scenes, such as square dancing, the World Championship Fight in Madison Round Garden, etc. Despite Hamburger's obvious (and justified) fear, Stupendous approves highly of the film.
As a result, Daffy is now the director, uttering the same line asking for turkey at lunchtime as Hamburger, complete with Hamburger's accent and clothing. Hamburger is now the screwball, hiding under the platter, biting Daffy's nose, then jumping away, as Daffy did earlier. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0141974 | The War Zone | 15-year-old Tom (Freddie Cunliffe) is upset after his family move from London to a rural house in Devon, where he misses his friends. He lives with Dad (Ray Winstone), 18-year-old sister Jessie (Lara Belmont), and Mum (Tilda Swinton), who is in the late stages of pregnancy. Tom and Jessie are close to each other and everyone helps Mum during her pregnancy.
One night, Mum goes into labour and is driven to the hospital by Dad, accompanied by Tom and Jessie. The car crashes, but nobody is injured and a baby girl is born to much joy around the family. While coming home from shopping with Mum, Tom tells her he doesn't know anybody, but she assures him that he will make friends. When they arrive home, Tom enters the house through the backdoor and something catches his attention.
Tom confronts Jessie and asks about what he saw: Dad and Jessie, naked in a bathtub together. Jessie acts as if nothing happened, but he is definite about what he witnessed. The family go out to a bar and Jessie introduces Tom to her boyfriend Nick (Colin Farrell). The three go out to a beach and engage in awkward conversation. After returning home Tom tells Jessie he suspects her and dad's behaviour has been ongoing. Jessie neither confirms or denies this causing Tom to lash out in anger.
Later on, Dad tells Mum and Tom he is going for a run. Full of suspicion and armed with a video camera, Tom follows Dad and Jessie into an old war bunker on their ocean-side property to film them. Filming through a hole in the wall he witnesses Dad raping Jessie. Tom walks off and, devastated, throws the camera into the sea.
Tom accuses Jessie of being sick because of her actions with their father. Jessie lets him burn her breast with a lighter in order to make him feel better. Later she takes Tom on a trip to London to see her friend Carol (Aisling O'Sullivan) who attempts to seduce him at Jessie's behest, but stops when she walks in on them.
One night, Tom is woken up by Mum, who tells him there is a problem with the baby and they must go to the hospital. At the hospital, Dad and Jessie go home, leaving Tom with Mum and the baby. Tom decides to tell Mum what he saw but becomes scared. Mum takes Tom to see the baby, who is bleeding. He tells Mum never to let Dad near the baby. Before she can respond, he leaves.
When Tom returns home, Dad tells him that Mum called from the hospital and told him what Tom had said to her. While Dad confronts him, Jessie begins crying. Dad asks Tom why he would lie to the family, but Tom says he is telling the truth. Dad demands to know why he said such horrible things about him. Jessie sobs at the table, while Dad shouts at and hits Tom for trying to break up the family. Dad then leaves.
Tom and Jessie lie next to each other and Jessie thanks him for standing up to Dad. Tom and Jessie enter Dad's room after he returns. He continues to deny his behaviour and claims Tom is making things up because he misses London and is unhappy, and threatens to send him into care.
While in mid-speech Tom stabs him in the stomach with a kitchen knife. Dad screams in pain on the floor, Tom and Jessie watch him dying then Tom runs from the house to go to the bunker. Jessie follows him there to comfort him silently. Tom asks what they will do now to no response then walks over and closes the door to the bunker. | murder, storytelling, sadist | train | wikipedia | The actors are in their natural appearances with not much make-up: Tilda Swinton you see her with the pregnant creased skin-folds of a tummy inelegance; the two teenagers (Lara Belmont as Jessie, Freddie Cunliffe as Tom) in their casual demeanor/slouching poses; Ray Winstone as the seemingly unsuspicious father who looks like any man of the house, full of himself and chatting incessantly (in a way, an indication of certain insecurity and self-doubt?).
With crushing results.At the beginning of the film, we're introduced to a nameless clan: a genial father (Ray Winstone), a mother exhausted from recently giving birth (Tilda Swinton), a sullen teenage boy (Freddie Cunliffe), and his strikingly beautiful older sister (Lara Belmont).
All four have recently moved from London to the remote, seaside village of Devon, leaving the two kids feeling isolated and adrift.What follows for the next hour or so is a brilliantly confusing experience--Roth presents a series of odd quirks about the family that makes the audience question what is merely eccentricity and what hints at something darker.
I think part of the "penalty" for such a horrible thing as incest and child abuse is to watch "The War Zone".The cinematography is outstanding and serves as almost a beautiful counterbalance to the main story's theme.
Tim Roth as director delivers a drama with the kind of gut-wrenching family story that happens only so often in the movies; not even Todd Field's films, however excellent, come close to The War Zone as being truly insightful into a specific dark corridor of a family slowly ripping itself apart.
Part of it is the exceptional naturalistic acting, wherein actors I've never seen before like Lara Belmont and Freddie Cunliffe are subtle in just glances and stares to one another, and when they dig deep into the tragic parts of the story they're revelatory, maybe even more so than Ray Winstone and Tilda Swinton.
You can't take your eyes off of Cunliffe.In the War Zone the family is a father, mother, son and daughter, with the mother giving birth to a newborn daughter at the opening of the film.
But what's brilliant about the story, as well as rightfully heartbreaking, is how logically the tragedy unfolds, how the secret soon comes apart and leads into some unexpected scenes (one of which involving self-abuse, the other towards the end, a more conventional but still shocking act of violence).Roth could be considered purely an actor's director, and he is one first and foremost.
But he also is able to convey a profound sense of agony if only with the choice of scenery, of this quiet and dark seaside area and the bunker by the house where the incest takes place (apparently the R-rated version omits some explicit bits, but it doesn't feel compromised and actually helps by showing little), and the shots he films linger as much on the characters as in the viewer's mind.
I have seen many powerful films in my life, but few compare to the off-beat, unsettling and totally uncompromising 'War Zone', actor turned director Tim Roth's first film.
'The War Zone' is a very hard-to-watch film because it portrays incest -- such a terrible and disgusting event going on in some families today.
'The War Zone' is a brilliant film and an incredible first effort from Tim Roth.'The War Zone' follows an isolated British family living in the lush green hills somewhere in England.
The family consists of a dad (Ray Winstone - Sexy Beast), a mum (Tilda Swinton - The Deep End), a baby (Megan Thorp), a in-her-late-teens daughter (Lara Belmont) and a in-his-younger-teens son (Freddie Cunliffe) who's perspective the film is shot from.
"The War Zone" is a special film about incest taken entirely from the perspective of the teenage son, Tom, and his sister, Jessie, giving it a quality of children versus their parents.
Probably the worst thing about Tim Roth's audacious directorial debut is its title: 'The War Zone' conjures images of something rather noisier, and less subtle, than this film about aberrant sexuality within a family unit.
Roth also gets great performances from all his cast: in what is essentially a four-hander, Tilda Swinton is good in a limited part, Ray Winstone shows (not for the first time) that he has talents beyond those required for his customary hard-man roles, but it's the young actors who are most outstanding: Freddie Cunliffe as the troubled boy who discovers dark secrets, and especially the beautiful, opaque Laura Belmont who is simply tremendous as his sexually aware, not-as-cool-as-she-seems sister.
I went to see Tim Roth's directorial debut "War Zone" to get insight into a deeply talented actor, much as that's a reason to see Sean Penn-directed movies.
"War Zone" is a cross between "Once Were Warriors," the visceral NZ movie on domestic violence, and "Wuthering Heights."It's visually stunning, painterly, as the dysfunctional family is set in almost Edward Hopper-still life isolation on the moors, surrounded only by the elements--lots of rain, sea and relentless wind--with the characters mostly silent you sure hear that howling wind instead of conversation-- with an occasional human being staring them down.While the family's close-knit physical intimacy was realized in an almost 17th century way of togetherness, I'm not sure the abuse was, as I thought most incest more pedophiliac than this.
So the universality of any message is lost, other than the lesson that family members are love-tropic and take it any way they can get it with some fine lines dividing functional from dysfunctional.If Bergman did an abuse movie, it might look like this.
The son, Tom, is unhappy and feels alienated in the new surroundings, but when he discovers a dark family secret, things become much much worse.It's an uncomfortable viewing experience at times, making it a film you don't readily recommend, but Roth's approach to the story gives out a powerful message without exploitation or sermonising.
All of the actors are incredible, Ray Winstone is a fine actor and so are the two children, the boy Tom is excellent, when he finds out what his dad is doing he is completely cold to him, what he does to him at the end of the movie is understandable.This is a very gritty film quite slow as well but it needs to be I think to give a harsh account of the family.
The scene of the actual incest will be very disturbing for some, their is quite a lot of nudity in this film from most of the actors, also there is a lot of swearing ad violence too.I think this film is harrowing at first but after all things like this happen in real life and I think Tim Roth has done a great job of portraying a touchy subject to film..
Watching THE WAR ZONE Tim Roth's first - And hopefully last - movie behind the camera it's a safe bet that actor Roth won't be gaining too much acclaim as a director I have to question Roth's judgement for picking THE WAR ZONE as a directorial debut , couldn't he have done a romantic comedy instead ?
Instead of filming a story with commercial potential Roth has made a movie centered around a teenage girl being sexually abused by her father .
It should also be pointed out that one of the aspects Roth fails in as a director is the sound mix since I could hardly understand a single line of dialogue I will give Roth credit for getting the best out of the cast but since the actors are playing characters crushed by revelations of sexual abuse the performances are difficult to watch .
I read the story on the IMDb trivia page of the man who attended the Toronto Film Festival and who became almost hysterical while watching the movie and I can understand how he felt and the more I think about THE WAR ZONE the more I start to wish I had never seen this movie in the first place .
Especially notable is the work by Lara Belmont and Freddie Cunliffe, the young actors who portray the brother and sister in the film -- I would have never guessed from their performances that this was their first time out.Many viewers have been caught off-guard by this film -- it's easily one of the most gut-wrenching I've ever seen.
One woman I've talked with saw it at the Sundance Festival, without knowing anything about it beforehand, and was totally devastated by it -- but moved to such an extent that she went back to her community determined to do something positive to help survivors.A film that can touch people on such a deep level should be more widely seen -- especially when it deals with a subject as important as this one..
Portraying a family about to discover an unpleasant secret, Tim Roth's directorial debut really turns your stomach.Like many other English movies, "The War Zone" discredits what I call the "Mary Poppins" image of England: a bunch of happy-go-lucky rich people and humorous cockneys.
Only a couple days after watching No Way Home, a Tim Roth lead role flick, I happened to stumble upon The War Zone, his directorial debut.
Containing issues of jealousy, confusion, love, disgust, innocence....it goes on and on.Tim Roth's directorial debut is a great success, and when mixed with a fantastic cast, great writing, and beautiful cinematography and music, it's very hard not to be swept up while watching this thought-provoking and disturbing film.
His middle-class family, composed by his mother (Tilda Swinton), his father (Ray Winston) and his eighteen years old sister Jessie (Lara Belmont) has just moved from London to an isolated house nearby the coast.
I'm not denying the film is powerful, and well acted, particularly by Lara Belmont as Jessie, Ray Winstone and Tilda Swinton as Dad and Mum, and Freddie Cunliffe as Tom, but what's there is empty, alienating, and takes too long to bring to resolution.
Like Gary Oldman's study in family violence and alcohol abuse, 'Nil By Mouth', Tim Roth's The War Zone takes chances and doesn't pull any punches.
The film is a raw portrayal of the complex family dynamics that result from sex and sexual desire between family members.With the help of cinematographer Seamus Mc Garvey, Roth takes an art house approach to story telling, with masterfully bleak cinematography and inspired use of the camera.
The days were forever rainy and overcast which helped add to dreary life lived and suffered by Jessie (Lara Belmont) and Tom (Freddie Cunliffe)- sister and brother.Based on a novel by the writer of the screenplay, Alexander Stuart, it's built around a father (Ray Winstone) practicing incest with his daughter, Jessie; a mother (Tilda Swinson) who is totally blind to this behavior; and a son, Tom, who becomes suspicious of the father-daughter relationship.There seems to be a correlation between the opening scene and the balance of the movie where the home that the family lives in is isolated (they moved from London to a rural area), much like the lives of Tom and Jessie.
Like fellow "Britpack" member Gary Oldman, actor Tim Roth chooses a difficult and emotionally disturbing subject for his directorial debut, in this case, an adaption of Alexander Stuart's 1989 novel dealing with incest.
Keeping the film perfectly within the perspective of the children's view of events, Winstone and Swinton's characters are simply referred to throughout as Mum and Dad. We never find out their real names and that's how they are listed on the credits.Stuart and Roth were motivated by examining the emotional bonds between parents and their children and the consequences of what happens when that bond is broken.
Newcomers Freddie Cunliffe and Lara Belmont were picked from over 2,000 young hopefuls who responded to an advert placed in England's Guardian newspaper which read "young actors wanted to audition for film to be directed by Honey Bunneys favourite Pumpkin", a reference to Roth's cockney thief who appears in Tarantino's hit movie Pulp Fiction.
The War Zone is about a family who move to Devon from London, things are going well until the son discovers His sister is a victim of an incestual relationship with his father.
Not only is the is the direction brilliant but the acting is out of this world especially from Lara Belmont and as per usual from Ray Winstone.If you need cheering up then The War Zone is not for you if you just want to watch a super piece of movie making then this is the film to watch.
That is the case for Tim Roth's only directional effort with The War Zone.In the Devon countryside a family have moved from London: this family includes Tom (Freddie Cunliffe), his older sister Jessie (Lara Belmont), their dad (Ray Winstone) and pregnant mum (Tilda Swinton).
After Mum gives birth to a new daughter, Tom makes a horrible discovery when he finds out his Dad is having a sexual relationship with Jessie.Roth takes a hard-hitting approach to film and he does not flinch from the subject manner.
Belmont gave a great performance and Winstone was a great examination of a underpowered form of evil.The War Zone is very compelling film that is brilliantly acted and directed.
One of the lingering questions is whether Swinton's character knows what's going on.While Roth's direction and Alexander Stuart's screenplay are integral to the film's success, the consistently high level of acting is of paramount importance.
This minimalistic, atmospheric and unsentimental psychological drama about incest which is set during a spring on the countryside in South West England in the late 20th century, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity and the understated and poignant acting performances by English actor Ray Winstone, English actress Tilda Swinton and British actress Lara Belmont and British actor Freddie Cunliffe in their debut feature film roles.
His family, consisting of 18 year old sister Jessie (Lara Belmont), Dad (Ray Winstone), and Mum (A bloated Tilda Swinton) have moved to the Devonshire countryside to live on an isolated property, leaving their London city life behind.
But special mention must be made of the actors who play the siblings, Lara Belmont and Freddie Cunliffe who had no prior acting experience but emerge winners with their effortless performances.Do not miss Tim Roth's "The War Zone".
One of the most uncomfortable, uncompromising sex scenes you are likely to see in a full length picture.I am surprised Tim Roth has still not directed another film but I would definitely be up for watching them even if the story is not as bleak as this one because the direction and casting is spot on.Overall, I recommend this to people who like this sort of film.
It is also one of the most difficult movies I've ever had the opportunity to watch.The film opens with Tom (played by Freddie Cunliffe), a teenage boy who is angry with his family for moving away from the city and into Middle of Nowhere, England.
!. According to Tim Roth a taboo as well as disturbing subject of incest has rarely been judiciously tackled by Hollywood.This is because most of Hollywood films have too much of preaching involved.So he has deliberately chosen to avoid this trap while he was making his debut film.He was also bothered about the fact that there are not so many challenging roles for children.This is the reason why young actors like Lara Belmont and Freddie Cunliffe have given bravura performances under his direction about which it can be said that they are far superior then the likes of Tilda Swinton and Ray Winstone.According to Alexander Stuart who wrote the book based on his novel,there is no solution to such an evil problem of incest as family members are forced to bear the consequences arising out of shame and guilt.In "The War Zone" much of anger is depicted through angry eyes of its talented actor Freddie Cunliffe.His portrayal of tormented boy Tom is so convincing that he will surely appear as the only innocent soul of this sordid tale who did not commit any sin..
Throughout the film,director Tim Roth lets many scenes play out in almost silence,aware that a look can say as much as five pages of dialogue.Immediately one is grabbed by the film,the tension is extraordinary as you know things are not right in the family.
Exceptional the interpretation of the young Lara Belmont (but where Tim Roth found her ?), who performs with such realism to make to experience pain to the audience for the sufferings that her character lives in the story, but all of the cast is of excellent level.
Highly talented actor Tim Roth tried his hand at directing with this irregular little film, THE WAR ZONE.
However, even if you come prepared, you might go out of this movie, feeling that weird feeling in your stomach.Tim Roth in his debut, is fine director, I would really like to see making more films.9 of 10..
I, on the other hand think that in showing things the way he did, he successfully achieved his goal of making the audience shocked at what they saw - by highlighting the dichotomy in the mind sets of the abuser and the abused - and to make the audience feel uneasy at the 'human face' worn by Ray Winstone's character.There is no question that this is a difficult movie to watch, but Roth is attacking a difficult subject.
The actors play their characters extremely well, showing the confusion, desperation and the repression of the feelings, which are slowly, and quietly tearing their family and their lives apart.There are some things Roth should work on (some of his establishment shots were too long and the overall rhythm of the film was a little slow), but on the whole this is an excellent first effort.
Tim Roth's, The War Zone is a highly disturbing film that makes you look at society today and how corrupt it really is. |
tt0123322 | What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? | The special opens with Charlie Brown back home, assembling a photo album of pictures taken from the trip. His younger sister, Sally, approaches and asks him how it went. From there, it is shown in a flashback:
As they begin to head back from the chateau to the train station for the return trip to London (where they would return to America by plane), their problematic rental car (a Citroen 2CV) slows their progress, before breaking down entirely in a small French town. Renting another one from a French lady (who immediately accepts their offer after realizing Snoopy is, in fact, a World War I Flying Ace) they soon become lost and camp at a nearby beach for the night. Linus, however, wakes up shortly before daybreak and walks along the beach, realizing they are at Omaha Beach.
Linus then tells of the battle of D-Day, leading the group to the nearby cemetery for all of the American soldiers. The voice of General Dwight D. Eisenhower is also heard, reminiscing about the experiences of the battle. Archival news footage is also used, in some cases with the characters inserted through rotoscoping.
While proceeding up north, they head towards Ypres, which Linus recognized as the site of a series of battles during World War I. They arrive at a field of red poppies, which grew throughout the wastelands of battles fought during the war, and which serves as a marker for the Ypres battle site. Linus then recites the poem In Flanders Fields, after directing the group to the British field dressing station where McCrae was inspired to write the poem.
They come away realizing what the impact of the wars were, and how important the sacrifice of the soldiers was. Standing among the field of red poppies, Linus then turns and asks, "What have we learned, Charlie Brown?". The scene flashes back to him and Sally. She then tells him that he is pasting the pictures upside down. | psychedelic | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0046754 | The Barefoot Contessa | Down on his luck, a washed-up movie director and writer Harry Dawes (Humphrey Bogart) is reduced to working for abusive, emotionally-stunted business tycoon Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens), who has decided that he wants to produce a film to stroke his monumental ego. Looking for a glamorous leading lady, they go to a Madrid night club to see a dancer named Maria Vargas (Ava Gardner), whom Kirk had already been told about. Maria is a blithe but proud spirit who likes to go barefoot and has a troubled home life. Maria immediately likes Harry, whose work she knows, but takes an instant disliking of Kirk. Although she flees during their meeting, Harry tracks her down to her family home and convinces her to fly away with them to America to make her first film. Thanks to his expertise and the help of sweaty, insincere publicist Oscar Muldoon (Edmond O'Brien), her film debut is a sensation. With subsequent films by this team, Maria becomes a respected actress, Harry's career shines bright once again, and their relationship becomes a healthy friendship.
During a party at Maria's house, Kirk and wealthy Latin American playboy Alberto Bravano (Marius Goring) become involved in an argument over Maria. Alberto had conspicuously admired Maria during the evening, while believing that she is Kirk's mistress. When Alberto invites her to join him on his yacht in the Riviera, Kirk orders her to stay away from him. Freeing herself from the dictates of Kirk, she accepts Alberto's invitation. Also seeing an opportunity, Oscar, tired of stooging for Kirk, switches his allegiance to Alberto.
She is a great star, but Maria is not satisfied. She envies the happiness her friend Harry has found with his wife Jerry (Elizabeth Sellars) and wants a prince charming of her own. Alberto is too frivolous and shallow for her. One evening at a casino, while Alberto is gambling, Maria takes some of his chips and cashes them, throwing the money to her gypsy lover from a window. When Alberto goes on a losing streak, he berates Maria in public for ruining his luck. Subsequently, he receives a slap in the face from Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini (Rossano Brazzi), who escorts Maria from the casino.
Maria has found the great love of her life. They wed in a lavish ceremony, but there is a problem. The count and his widowed sister (Valentina Cortese) are the last of the Torlato-Favrinis; without offspring, the noble line will die out. The Count has a secret. Due to a war injury, he is impotent. He does not tell Maria about this until their wedding night.
Some time later, Harry is in Italy and an unhappy Maria tells him about her husband and confesses that she is pregnant. She believes the count will want this child and plans to tell him about it that night. However, her husband has suspected she was unfaithful and shoots both her and her lover before she can tell him about the child. Harry arrives just as the shots are fired and does not tell the count about the pregnancy. The story ends (as it began) with flashbacks at her funeral. | romantic, fantasy, satire, murder, flashback | train | wikipedia | null |
tt2325002 | Freezer | Robert Saunders (Dylan McDermott) wakes up to find himself bound and locked inside a meat locker. After he is able to cut himself loose, two Russian mobsters Kiril and Stepan enter the freezer to question him. It becomes apparent that neither understand English, but before they leave they tell a confused Robert they want "money". Left alone, Robert finds a ventilation duct in the top of the ceiling that appears to lead to the fans inside the locker. Just then, he finds a ringing cell phone on the floor and speaks with Detective Al Dorian, who first addresses him as "Sam". Robert explains that he was having dinner in a restaurant with his girlfriend for his birthday before being knocked unconscious and thrown into the freezer. Before Dorian can complete a trace, the mobsters return and destroy the phone. They are accompanied this time by the bi-lingual Alisa (Yuliya Snigir), who accuses Robert of having stolen $8 million from them and demands its return; otherwise, he will freeze to death within four hours. He tries to convince them that he is innocent and this is a case of mistaken identity, but the Russians are undeterred and take his shoes before leaving.
After finding bags to wrap his bare feet, Robert tries to keep his body temperature up by exercising. While running around the room, he knocks over some boxes revealing a seriously wounded Detective Sam Gurov lying in a shelf. Sam tells Robert that he will not be allowed to leave the locker alive regardless if he is able to convince the mobsters he is innocent. Before passing out, he confesses that he was an undercover cop trying to bring down the mobsters' boss, Oleg. Robert hides Sam again and begins attempting to stop the fans by beating them with a fire extinguisher.
The Russians return and again Alisa demands to know where the money is. Robert maintains his ignorance of the matter and evades her questions, but a groan from Sam alerts Kiril. Robert takes advantage of the situation by grabbing Alisa as Kiril threatens to kill Sam. Sam shatters Robert's innocence by telling them Robert took the money despite his protests. Robert deduces that Alisa was supposed to be in charge of the lost money and she begs Robert to confess if not to save himself, then to save her. After the Russians leave again, Sam explains that after a failed hit, Oleg began moving his vast fortune around for protection; during the shuffle, the $8 million was lost. Sam volunteers to change clothes with Robert and pose as him in order to allow Robert a chance at escape. The plan fails, and Robert, in a bid to save Sam's life, confesses that the money is hidden in the restaurant where he was abducted. Despite this, he is knocked out and Sam is killed.
Upon waking up, Robert makes Alisa believe that Stepan is the real thief and Robert is being framed, since Stepan was responsible for both the death of Sam's informant and identifying Robert as the thief. Robert kills Kiril with a meat hook, but is incapacitated by Stepan before he can escape. Alisa, now clearly shaken, tells Stepan that Robert accused him of taking the money. Enraged by Kiril's death, Stepan drags Alisa out of the freezer and locks Robert inside once again. After he puts on Kiril's clothes, he continues to search for but fails to find any way out of the meat locker. When Stepan and Alisa return, Robert convinces them to let him contact Detective Dorian because, as Sam's partner, he will know where the money is. Stepan impatiently ends the call and throws a bucket of water on Robert before leaving.
With hypothermia setting in, Robert again tries the disconnect to fan wires in the ventilation shaft, but is unable due to his state. At that time, a well-dressed and bound Russian man is thrown into the room with Robert. The man, introducing himself as Danil, offers to help Robert escape in exchange for a portion of the money. Robert instructs Danil to cut the electrical wires in the shaft, but when the mobsters enter the room, Danil is electrocuted to death. Alisa reveals that Danil was merely a plant to get the truth from Robert and was in fact Vadim, Oleg's son.
When Oleg arrives, he finds Robert and identifies him as the assassin who previously failed to kill him. Once Robert drops his claimed innocence and acknowledges the truth, he and Oleg fight as Alisa and Stepan look on. Due to his weakened state, Oleg gains the upper hand but is killed by Alisa before he can finish off Robert. Alisa is in fact Robert's girlfriend and had been working on the inside for him. A wounded Stepan escapes and locks the two inside. Robert uses the severed electrical wires to cause the metal meat rack to give off enough heat to warm their hands. At this time, Detective Dorian arrives and demands to know where the money is after instructing the two to bind their hands to the rack. Alisa confesses that the money has been inside the meat locker the entire time, hidden inside the boxes of cuts. While Dorian is distracted with this, Alisa and Robert escape by burning through the zip ties binding their wrists together on the heated rack.
Robert and Alisa use a semi-truck to hook up to the freezer with the money and Dorian inside. After traveling to a port, they load the container onto a cargo ship. Alisa gives Robert a "birthday present" from Oleg, a box of cuts holding a large amount of money. They drive off planning a warm vacation, but not before knocking an injured Stepan into the bay. | boring | train | wikipedia | Robert (Dylan McDermott) wakes up in a walk-in freezer with hands and feet bound.
There will be some big twist at the end so I decided to hang for a while or until Robert dies from hypothermia.
Hmmmm
..Two Russian heavies come in and demand to know where the money is and, of course, Robert has no way of knowing what they are talking about.
Later, more Russians come in but this time Alisa (Yulia Snigir) is with them and she, too, is asking for the money.
The Russians want their money: $8-million.
The Russians come and they go and the beatings continue and they take his shoes (oh, no, not that!).
So this is how it goes and Robert is getting closer to freezing to death, but keeps looking for a way out or to stop the freezing .
) Let's review: Robert in a freezer, gets beat up many times by the Russians, the woman seems softer and may be able to help, but she makes Robert take his clothes off – so no help there, many fights break out with Robert getting the worst of them.
Then the big crime boss comes into the freezer to get his money and wait a minute: did I hear Robert speak Russian?
I have to admit that for a limited space in the freezer I was kept in suspense and Robert's quips may have saved him at times, but the Russians need him alive to find the money.
Great acting performances from McDermott and the supporting cast and great dialogues and some things we are not told until the very end.
Violence: Yes. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: Yes..
This movie was so bad it actually began to hurt to watch it.
Twenty minutes into this action/thriller we were all laughing at its stupidity.The directing looked like it was a made for TV movie and the writing was pure adolescent.
Don't waste your time and, more importantly, don't waste any money on this...um...waste.Then again, if you are intellectually challenged and don't quite understand the meaning behind the story of the 3 pigs, then...
I'd bet my life on it." Robert (McDermott) wakes up in a freezer with his wrists and ankles cuffed together and no idea why.
When a gang of Russians come in they tell him he owes them 8 million dollars and won't let him go until they are repaid.
The main difference is that this one has people coming in and out and more things happen but that is still the best way to describe it.
The twist is both unexpected and predictable, when you watch it you will see what I mean.
A less horrific Saw type movie.
A less horrific Saw type movie.
If you want to watch a movie that seems to go nowhere until the last scenes then this is one you might enjoy.
Yuliya Snigir gave a good performance.
If you watch the movie to the half way point, then you might as well go the whole route.
There is nothing better than to see a movie end right..
Wrong place, wrong time, who hasn't been in that situation?For a limited location movie, and a limited cast movie, this was a hit in my eyes.
I put this in the category of phone booth and man on a ledge, both of which much better than Freezer, it would of been more suited to a TV show rather than a full movie!
The movie left me cold..
The movie left me cold..
I prefer sitting in that freezer than having to watch this garbage again..
A couple of days ago I saw a beautiful movie so I guess to put everything back in balance my time for an awful movie had to come.
It's been a long time ago that I did watch a movie with such a bad script.
Watch it and I can guarantee you that every time Dylan McDermott opens his mouth something completely stupid comes out.
He knows his going to die and apparently he thinks this is the time to have an opportunity to flirt a little bit.
What strikes me the most is that some people did like this movie.
And the extremely bad acting of Dylan McDermott is my limit.
Next time I'd rather go sit in a freezer for the entire movie than having to watch this one again..
While this Low-Budget Movie Suffers from Multiple Problems it isn't a Complete Waste and is Worth a Watch as a Time Waster.
These Types of Films, those set in Virtually One Location are Obvious from the Start Announcing Not Much Money and the Project can't Help but be Cursed with that most Basic of Restrictive Residue, Movies are Supposed to Move.While it can be Novel the Premise Tends to be Boring and Redundant.
The Wisecracking Protagonist does His best to keep Things Lively with Sarcastic Quips, even the best of them Wear Thin and get Irritating over the course of a Full Length Film and are better left to the Stand-Ups.Not the Worst Production Culled from Limited Resources, this One Remains Mediocre and Rather Flat after all is Said and not much is Done..
"May contain spoilers?"I watched this movie just to see how bad it was going to be from a technical stance.
Great for a similar movie that you'd see on ordinary television.
No real climax, but throughout the movie a good flow of entertainment.
The movie starts and finishes in a freezer so the name actually ties in well ( I have seen titles that don't) throughout the movie I encourage to watch for the good guys and bad ones for an easy game to stay active.
There were only 4 main people in the movie so fairly easy to follow characters and associated attributes..
What keeps this movie from being a cold chill flop is it's ability to keep the level of suspense and mystery at full speed from start to finish.No I didn't believe Robert could last as long as he did in the freezer.
etc.But what kept my attention was the constant twist and turns Robert pulled in psychological tricks on the Russian mob members.
And the suspense in guessing what his next move would be in his quest to save himself.The story is worth it just for that reason.
I did get a bit confused at the finish because you never actually see what was in the box Alisa gives Robert.You decide..
In this confusing mess of a movie, Dylan McDermott stars as Robert Saunders (why he's even in this film is the first good question to ask).
At the beginning of the film Robert finds his hands and feet bound, and that he's locked into a meat freezer, where the average survival time is 3-4 hours before hypothermia kicks in.He's soon visited by two Russian mobsters, and we slowly learn that $8 million of the Russian mob's money is missing, and they think Robert knows where it is.
What's amazing is that no matter how perilous and dire Robert's situation gets, he's always able to come up with a Cagney or Bogart-like wise-crack, like you'd see in a 1940's B-movie.
Since this is kept up the entire film, it can quite annoying after a while.Various characters will enter and depart from the freezer, including an undercover NYPD Narcotics Detective (Peter Facinelli), who's clinging to life under a box of meat.
Also, another NYPD Detective (David McNally) who manages to get a call through to Robert but mysteriously doesn't seem in any hurry to help him.Of course, we must have a beautiful Russian woman come onto the scene, as that would be Alisa (Yuliya Snigir) who apparently was the "mule" that brought the $8 million up from Miami and is also the girlfriend of the son of the Russian mob boss Oleg.As the story continues, the various twists and surprises get more and more ridiculous and convoluted.
I would suggest that you don't try and figure them out or your brain cells may freeze-up from "Freezer"..
This is a good one room suspense sorta thriller kinda movie.
It has been McDermott's year over all, and this movie is just a very formulaic example of why.
The rest of the cast are basically just stereotypes meant only as props for McDermott to bounce around, or flirt with.
I Enjoyed the story, and was kept off my toes long enough to Enjoy the ride as well so I would recommend this one for an evening in, and can safely say you will have a fun time in the Freezer the Movie..
There is a major twist in this movie which is never actually revealed other than being obvious to anyone with half a brain.He's not in a walk in freezer, he's in a walk in fridge.The clues.
He hits some hanging meat which was surprisingly bouncy in texture, therefore not frozen, I guess it could have just gone in but no, this is another clue that its not a freezer.3.
There are some jars of some kind of liquid, like sauces, they are still liquid, yeah OK, could be alcohol but then what are they doing in a fridge/freezer?
There are quite a few items in there which shouldn't even be in a fridge, such as tins of tomatoes, but in a freezer that's just crazy.7.
There are some more boxes which state to be stored at 33-37 degrees F, this is a fridge temperature, not a freezer.There is one point where he takes an icicle to get water for the cop.
This is the only icicle in the place and certainly wouldn't have formed at those temperatures.The movie was pretty bad but to be honest I was entertained as my mind was totally preoccupied with the "spot things that prove its not a freezer" game.Personally I'm looking forward to the sequel "Bakers Oven", where Dylan is trapped in a Sauna full of raw bread dough for an hour and a half..
The arrival of the 3 Russians really signals the end of the film for me.
The crazy one with the gun, the beauty with the tragic accent, the bodyguard with the acting skills of a hamster and the lead himself, bantering inanely trying to save his life.The conclusion is predicable, the acting in general stilted and unless you get this movie free, then just re-watch several of the other films available in this genre, then you won't feel you've lost 90 Min's of your life..
Robert (Dylan McDermott) wakes up in a freezer in the very first scene.
The Russian mafia has him held there and they want their money.
He has their money, the Russians don't make mistakes.Robert is very chipper for a guy facing death.
Just as the film slows up, it introduces another character or twist keeping you engaged, but not overly entertained.It isn't bad for a movie where 99% is filmed in one room as one might expect.
Normally this is something I would love, except the characters didn't give me a convincing performance, nor was Robert a decent protagonist whose character we got to know late...i.e. it failed to hook me.Makes for a rental.Parental Guide: F-bombs.
No sex or nudity..
They referred to this film as a "lukewarm" freezer.
Freezer has some potential certainly, and it is entertaining at times, twisted and well acted.
I am personally constantly impressed when a film maker can make a movie even remotely interesting set entirely in one location.
This film is set in the now tried and true genre of Buried, Brake, Saw (to a lesser extent) and Phone Booth.
Freezer is fortunate to have a decent sized star at the front of the cast who turns in a very good performance.
One of the best things about this type of genre is the "big reveal" at the end.
Most times it is the opportunity to truly shock the audience like Buried or Saw truly did in my opinion.
The big reveal at the end of Freezer is average at best and just feels really anti-climatic.
It isn't that I saw it coming, its just that it felt forced and like they ran out of ideas so its a bit of a let down.I very much enjoy Dylan McDermott.
I think he saves this film from being completely mediocre.
McDermott shows an intensity and really does put everything into the performance.
Yuliya Snigir is average in her role as the mysterious woman overseeing McDermott's torture.
Peter Facinelli is also decent in an unfortunately small role as a Detective in a similar situation as McDermott.The film is good, the story is good, the performances are good but it definitely doesn't go beyond just good.
It tries very hard but unfortunately that came come across as more desperation to be entertaining than creative.
There is nothing wrong with that, he's been involved in some strong Television credits but Freezer feels like it wants to be a TV episode rather than a full film.
When all is said and done Freezer will entertain you but I understand those that found it disappointing.
Mercifully the movie was less that 90 minutes.
My summary-You just won't care-is an actual line used in the movie when Alisa (Yuliya Snigir) tells Robert (Dylan McDermott) that he will get so cold (he's trapped in a freezer-hence the title) that "you will crawl into a cold, dark corner and wait for death.
And the worst thing will be, you just won't care." At the end of this movie, it summed up how I felt: I just didn't care.
The most charitable things I can say are Dylan McDermott looks good for his age (52) and Yuliya Snigir is very pretty.
I will say some of Robert's cheeky lines did help to lift the movie up a little.
Next time I watch "Frozen" again with my 2 kids .....
"Happy f*ckin' birthday" "Freezer" is like a refrigerator at someones home who suffers from bulimia.
You only get a few glimpses of other locations in the beginning of the film and in the end.
But that's the last thing I will tell you, otherwise there's nothing left from this unlikely,far-fetched thin story.When a complete movie takes place in one specific area, then it can only be successful by using a surprising twist in a clever put together story that takes you by surprise.
A movie like "Devil", which is almost exclusively set in an elevator, was equipped with such an original story.
Robert (Dylan McDermott) is the unfortunate mechanic who awakes in a cooling room, with a plastic bag over his head and his hands and feet tied with straps.
After a while two sturdy guys come in who start beating him up.
The Russian tough guys know only one English word: "Money." Apparently they are seeking for 8 million dollars they've lost.
And they claim that Robert has pinched this considerable sum of money.What follows is a fairly monotonous routine in which the two Russian mobsters disappear and reappear.
Soon after they are also accompanied by a Russian tough lady called Alisa (Yuliya Snigir), who seemed to be quite superior at first, but after wards appeared to be just another third-rate accomplice.
Between these interludes Robert tries to save himself out of this situation and starts to search for a possible escape route.
If I were him, I would have emptied the fire extinguisher unceremoniously in the face of the gangsters at the time they walked into the freezer and subsequently crush the empty fire extinguisher on their Russian heads.
I guess the cold hindered the ability to think.The story itself is already wafer-thin.
But that didn't save the movie.
An admirable performance in a meaningless movie.
And after removing his shoes, Robert had difficulties to stand on his feet because of the so called freezing cold.
And how you can make a glowing stove with only two electrical wires and an iron rack, remains a mystery to me.If I ever want to watch a movie again with frost in it, I'll look for the umpteenth time "Frozen" again together with my two kids.
There's more story, tension and content in this wonderful Walt Disney movie than in this would-be thriller ...More reviews at http://opinion-as-a-moviefreak.blogspot.be/.
Even if you can freeze time, it still will be a waste of 90 minutes.
A man wakes up in a freezer after he was celebrating his birthday in a restaurant and while he was at the restroom some Russian mobsters have kidnapped him and put him in a freezer and threats that they will leave him there and freeze to death if he doesn't tell them where he has hided an important amount of cash.
Just like other movies that the action takes place in one location for almost the entire duration and here we remind of Buried or Brake this one has a few moments when it can be boring in fact at some point it gets very frustrating watching that gangsters entering and exiting through the door.
Also they are so amateur leaving a man who believe he stoled so much money untied with a lot of sharp object near him like meat hooks or a cutter.
It's just an ordinary kidnapped hostage money recovery type of movie but with an ending far more stupid.
Dylan McDermott delivers a tour-de-force performance in "Freezer," an imaginative, single-setting saga about an automobile mechanic imprisoned in an industrial freezer.
The ordeal that our hero, Robert Saunders, endures in a walk-in freezer where two grim Russians thugs have confined him is unrelenting from fade-in to fade-out.
They want to know where $ 8-million dollars is located.
McDermott grows increasingly colder as the action crosses the midway point, and the villains are treating him like a punching bag.
The ending comes as a surprise.
McDermott holds the entire movie together and you wonder if everything is a case of mistaken identity or if he really does know something about the missing eight million. |
tt0050870 | Pyaasa | Vijay (Guru Dutt) is an unsuccessful poet whose works are not taken seriously by publishers or his brothers (who sell his poems as waste paper). Unable to bear their taunting that he is a good-for-nothing, he stays away from home and is often out on the streets. He encounters a good-hearted prostitute named Gulabo (Waheeda Rehman), who is enamoured with his poetry and falls in love with him. He also encounters his ex-girlfriend Meena (Mala Sinha) from college and finds out that she has married a big publisher Mr. Ghosh (Rehman) for financial security. Ghosh hires him as a servant to find out more about him and Meena. A dead beggar to whom Vijay gave his coat and whom he tries to save unsuccessfully from the path of a running train is mistaken for Vijay. Gulabo goes to Ghosh and gets his poems published. Ghosh does so feeling he can exploit the poems and make a killing. The poems are very successful. However, Vijay is alive and in the hospital after the train mishap.
Ghosh and Shyam, Vijay's close friend, refuse to recognise him and he is committed to a mental asylum since he insists he is Vijay and is thought to be mad. Vijay's brothers too are bought off by Ghosh not to recognise him and a memorial is held for the dead poet. Vijay with the help of his friend Abdul Sattar (Johnny Walker) escapes from the mental asylum and reaches the memorial service where he denounces this corrupt and materialistic world. Seeing that Vijay is alive his friend and brothers take side with a rival publisher for more money and declare this is Vijay. At a function to honour him, Vijay becomes sick of all the hypocrisy in the world around him and declares he is not Vijay. He then leaves with Gulabo to start a new life. | cult, romantic, flashback | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0466460 | Khosla Ka Ghosla! | Kamal Kishore Khosla (Anupam Kher) is a middle-class man living in New Delhi. He is a simple man with simple tastes. The film begins with a dream sequence where Khosla sees his death, the irony being that nobody really cares about his demise; instead his children and neighbours are more occupied with banal small talk. Waking up from this nightmare, Khosla goes to visit a site where he has purchased a plot of land to build a house. He is accompanied by his family — wife, elder son Chirauonji Lal a.k.a. Cherry (Parvin Dabas) (who does not like his name and wishes to change it), younger son Balwant a.k.a. Bunty (Ranvir Shorey), and his daughter. Kamal Kishore has invested all of his savings (Rs.3 million) into buying the plot; Cherry is not too interested in his father's future plans of settling together in the new house. He is a software engineer and, although a source of pride for his father, he finds his current lifestyle too drab and has planned to shift to the US by taking up a job there. However, he has not let his family in on his plans. The only person Cherry discusses his plan with are Asif Iqbal (Vinay Pathak), the agent helping him with his passport and visa paperwork. Much later, he shares this with his close friend Meghna (Tara Sharma) — who has a very visible romantic interest in him (one which he does not seem to fully realise) — she, however, feels hurt and angered by his choice to desert her and his family.
Just when Cherry reveals his migration plans to his family, who are all disturbed by it, during a routine family visit to their land, they find the plot encroached upon by someone. Probing further reveals that the squatters are part of a property usurping nexus headed by the corrupt and powerful Kishan Khurana (Boman Irani). Upon being urged so by the property dealer who had facilitated the purchase of the plot, Kamal Kishore and Bunty visit Khurana. Khurana places before them, a demand for Rs.1.5 million to vacate the plot, an amount which Khosla neither has nor agrees to pay. Kamal Kishore appeals to authorities and agencies, including the police, lawyers, political parties, NGOs and social activists for help. None of them offers more than to get the amount demanded by Khurana reduced by a few lacs, in exchange for a hefty commission for mediating, of course.
Spurred by his father's helplessness, Bunty gets help from a gang of local strongmen (pahalwans) who demolish the boundary walls built by Khurana's men and take possession of the plot back by force. This success is short-lived as the corrupt Khurana has the police in his pocket and Kamal Kishore is arrested on trumped up charges of trespass. Released at Khurana's guileful behest after spending a day in the jail, Khosla's will is broken and pride battered. After the catastrophic event Khosla tells his family (especially Cherry) to avoid taking any further action as he is not capable of fighting back and wants Cherry to concentrate on the job that he's arranging abroad. Cherry discusses the grim situation with Asif Iqbal who is revealed to have been an old partner of Khurana's and who has been cheated by him, usurping Asif's own ancestral land. Asif offers to help the Khoslas with a group of Meghna's friends, and they set up a plan to deceive Khurana. They portray a land (owned by the fisheries department, but which has been vacant since decades) as their own, and seek help of Meghna's mentor, Bapu (Navin Nischol) to portray himself as the owner of the land, who is looking for a buyer. The deal is almost finalised, and Khurana requests to visit the land. With the help of the rest of the theatre group, they manage to create a situation which makes Khurana believe of the authenticity of the land and its owner. They successfully turn the tables on Khurana, and dupe him of Rs 3.5 million in cash. From that money, Kamal Kishore pays the ransom 1.2 million to Khurana and gets possession of his plot back, and the remaining cash is divided equally between Asif and the theatre group.
The turmoil suffered throughout by the family and the victory of their efforts stirs emotions that bring Cherry close to Meghna and his family. Cherry scraps his plans of migrating to the US, marries Meghna and settles with his family in their new abode built on their plot. As an additional favour, his father allows him to change his name from Chironji Lal to Chirag. As for Khurana, he is left looking bitter, having finally tasted his own medicine. | cult | train | wikipedia | The forte of this movie lies in its simplicity, sincerity and substance and much of that credit goes to the director Divakar Banerjee.At the crust of the movie are two of the finest actors in the country today; Anupam Kher as the ordinary middle class fifty six year old man (Khosla)in Delhi whose only drive in life is to build a new house for his family that has his wife (Kiran Juneja), his elder son Balwant(Ranveer Shourie), his second son Chirounjilal aka Cherry (Parvin Dabas) and his daughter.
Balwant is a jobless waster and Cherry works for an MNC but wants to leave the country for a better job in America.Navin Nishcol (Bapu) and Vinay Pathak (Asif Iqbal) are also assets to this movie.Boman Irani(Khurana) is a very wealthy and sly business man who captures the plot of land that Khosla had bought for building his dream house.
This movie is about how an ordinary middle class old man tries to reclaim his stolen (robbed) dream back from the powerful clasps of this crooked property dealer.The film looks real.
All along these years, we've been watching films that crawl without any story or soul...only effort going into them being a good make up in terms of ostentatious song and dance routines only to make it more sale-able.
Every character is sketched out so immaculately that for even a second you can't say that you don't know this person in real life.An absolutely brilliant background score makes this movie a thorough joyride with the highs and troughs dealt with extreme intelligence.As for the performances, we know what Anupam Kher is capable of and Boman Irani is definitely a class apart.
His chemistry with Vibnay Pathak in The Great Indian Comedy Show seems to have rubbed off onto KKG too and both give absolutely mesmerizing performances along with the rest of the cast.Every scene, every dialog...gives you a great sense of happiness...which you might not identify then and there itself in the theater, as in the case of Lageraho Munnabhai, but you'll definitely ponder over it and a smile will cross your face even after you've come out of the theater and it will stay with you for a long long time.Brilliant piece of Cinema...Go watch it!!!!Nine and a half on Ten!!!.
Khosla Ka Ghosla talks about a family in Delhi headed by Mr. Khosla (Anupam Kher) who invests all his life's savings to buy a plot on which he dreams of building his own bungalow.
An average audience can so much relate to the characters of the film since none of them play the conventional larger-than-life Bollywood hero but a common man.
The background score attributed to Boman Irani's character, every time he enters the scene, needs a special mention.Post Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Maara, this is Anupam Kher's best performance.
Now I really wanted to watch that movie when it was released but just didn't had the time to and right now, I wasn't in the mood for it but since nothing else on TV was worth a watch, I decided to see the film.After a while I realized that 40 minutes had gone by and not for one moment did I feel that KKG had a scene so far which was boring or unnecessary.
Khosla is a very innocent middle-class service man who gets a plot of land from Kishan Khurana (Boman Irani) out of his life-savings, a lump amount of 30 lacs but things get terrible when Khurana doesn't exactly let Khosla get the land until Khosla would pay Khurana another 10-15 lacs.As much as I would love to say that Khosla Ka Ghosla was a movie which belonged to Anupam Kher and Boman Irani, I cannot deny that it belonged to the other artists as well.
What I like so much about Khosla Ka Ghosla is that it does not star big mainstream artists in it except Boman Irani & Anupam Kher and if it did, maybe it would have lost its simplicity.
Although Khurana and his assistant reminded me of Lucky Singh & Kuku in Lage Raho Munnabhai bit, basically because of the role they played.Boman and Anupam of course do play the parts beautifully but one performance which I liked a lot was that was Bappu's (Navin Nischol).
The other tracks too offer great help in carrying the story forward.When Anupam Kher had said that this is a tribute to Hrishikesh Mukherjee's film-making style, I'm sure he truly meant it.
Such a movie which every Dilliwala (Delhi-ite) can relate to one way or the other.And the best part is authentic Dilli ki (Delhi's) language and amazing comic timing of each and every character.
A family as muddled and comic as most of our families are.The movie has awesome performances by two of the most versatile actors of the industry - Anupam Kher and Boman Irani, who lead the show.
Tara Sharma is also quite well cast, though Koel Purie could have been a better choice.The things that strike you in the movie are the typical characters, the sarcastic humor, the realism and the wonderful Delhi feel that is hard to miss.
The characters themselves are typical of the kind of people you come across in real life, which adds humor to the whole story.Overall, the movie is really good fun to watch..
Very original and well made with great acting,Khosla ka Ghosla is really one of the better bollywood movies made at low cost.Boman Irani is just too good as a crooked property dealer,he delivers another masterpiece.Ranvir Shorey comes good again after Pyar ke Side Effects.I have never seen such a good Vj turned actor.
:)Anupam Kher,Parvin Dabbas,Tara Sharma,Vinay Pathak,Navin Nischol all of them are very good in their roles.The originality,simplicity of every character and script are strong points of the movie,and it struck right at time,when demolitions in Delhi are being carried out..
I don't say that the title is not apt for the movie but at first instance it gives a totally different impression of what the movie is going to be like than it actually is.Kamal Kishore Khosla (Anupam Kher) is just another head of a middle-class family who spends his entire life's earning to buy a plot in Delhi.
Chirounjilal works for an MNC and is trying hard to get out of the country and his elder brother Balwant is just another unemployed big-on-plans self-proclaimed genius.Boman Irani(Khurana) is a rich businessman who illegally takes possession of the plot of land that Khosla had bought for building his dream house.
I myself have heard about many such cases which were common when Gurgaon was not as developed as it is now.Getting back to the movie, the rest of it shows how The Khoslas try to get back possession of their plot leaving no stone unturned and turn out to be successful too.All the actors starting from Anupam Kher and Boman Irani to Navin Nishchol and Parvin Dabas have performed very well.
He creates sheer magic with his character (a meek, hardworking 50-something father of three) and nurtures it to what is befittingly a happy end.Khosla ka Ghosla is a quick witted, light hearted comedy/drama that has kept up to the potential of its star cast.
This reflects in the film being an honest to goodness story that fails to connect with the everyday 'junta'.Indian cinema is coming of age and this is yet another step in the right direction.7.5/10.
Is it so difficult to make a movie with a tight script, good character building and great acting.
No great locations (Yashraj style), no designer clothes (Johar style), no melodrama (Barjatya style), but still more than managed to hold the viewer's attention.But then what else do you expect from a movie with real 'actors' like Anupam Kher, Boman Irani and not to forget, Navin Nischol.
'Khosla Ka Ghosla' should be undoubtedly one of the best bollywood movies made in recent times.
Anupam Kher,Tara Sharma,Vinay Pathak,Ranvir,Parvin Dabas Boman Irani and others have done a fantastic job.They all justify their roles very honestly.Best part about this movie is everything is very simple and realistic.And my favourite no songs in between interupting the story and pace of the movie.
Every one who involved in making this film should be greatly appreciated, especially Director Dibakar, Anupam kher, Ranveer, Parveen Dhabas and every actor who just lived in their character all through the movie.
Mr. Khosla (Anupam Kher) sinks all his life savings into buying a plot of land in South Delhi.
The Khoslas' attempts to win back their land begin with the surreal "Jai Bajrang Bali" wrestler gang and end with a crafty scheme the execution of which is worth the cost of your ticket money.The movie begins as a sort of comedy but turns into a scathing commentary on the law and order and socio-political situation in the capital.
The acting is superb - Anupam Kher and Boman Irani vie for top acting honors with excellent performances, every one else is very good but I particularly liked Navin Nischol as Bapu - the superb actor but naive man.
This movie showcases middle-class Delhi beautifully, with all its good and bad points shown with a bucketful of humour.
Mr. Khosla (Anupam Kher) bought some land with his retirement money and found that he has been cheated by Khurana (Boman Irani) a powerful and rich builder.
While corruption is, unfortunately, found everywhere, the fact that the movies from India talk about it so much is a surprise to a westerner.When the film begins, Kamal (Anupam Kher) has a horrible dream that he's died and no one in particular is sad.
Khosla ka Ghonsla is a low-budget and simple yet admirable movie which is a realistic picture of the horrifying reality in Indian metros being faced by the middle class Indian people.Indian cities (and villages too) are the victims of many kinds of mafias, viz.
It's a deservingly much acclaimed movie directed by Dibakar Banerjee.The story belongs to a salaried person, Mr. Khosla (Anupam Kher) who buys a plot with his life-long savings to build his own house, spacious enough to accommodate his whole family involving his wife, daughter and sons.
How the Khosla family, with the help of some actors (Navin Nischal and Nitish Pandey) and Cherry's girlfriend, Meghna (Tara Sharma) are able to swindle Khurana for a hefty sum and get its plot released from him by paying him his own money, forms the remaining part of the story.The story is very impressive and except the final sequences of the Khoslas' swindling Khurana, is utterly realistic.
The emotions of a middle-class straightforward man, his simplicity and naiveness in dealing with the shrewd ones, his pain upon seeing his dreams shattered, the family bonds, the indifference of the young professional towards the feelings of his parents, everything is touchingly realistic and contributes in making this simple movie a winner all the way.Cinematic liberties have been taken for the sequences in the later part of the story.
The title of the movie is also apt because own house is as dear and as coveted a thing to a middle class Indian as nest is to a bird.The performances are just excellent.
Khosla Ka Ghosla is one movie you could watch over and over again, in good times, in bad times, and in times which can't be categorized under either.
Mr. Anupam Kher is mind blowing and was perfectly cast for the role of typical middle class Delhi family man and Boman Irani continues to impress me with his pure and perfect acting his mannerisms as real estate businessman were perfect.
On the whole great picture with flawless direction by Dibakar Banerjee and great dialogues by Jaideep Shahni the man who gave company and jungle under RGV.I don't have any hesitation to say that Khosla ka Ghosla is one of the best movies that I have seen in past few years.This movie is lot better than any of the big budget movies made in last year like Dhoom2 or Fanna My rating 7.5/10.
The actors are so damn good that it feels like you are among them and living a life in South Delhi.
The detailing in movie is very good like in the scene where Khosla meets khurana.
The execution of this film is brilliant on a very serious subject on a humorous platform.I am about to enter into real estate dealings and I don't know why due to the ongoing builder scams and news, every time I lookout to purchase a new property, the characters in this film keep haunting me and I get chills imagining myself in similar situation with my hard earned money.I specially want to say the acting by Mr. Kher and Khurana along with the person dealing as property agent was exceptional.
Khosla ka Ghosla strikes a cord with the urban middle class, with no bravado, no super human efforts this movie was way more realistic than the khan trashes which keep coming out these days.
Impeccable screenplay and near perfect dialogues .This movie has to be one the best coming from the pen of an Indian writer and out of the brains of an Indian Director.A cast of highly talented actors and equally wonderful performances Khosla Ka Ghosla is truly an amazing motion picture.The story focuses on a typical middle class family from Delhi- the Khoslas and the perils they get involved in courtesy the "WORLD FAMOUS PROPERTIES" Agent Vijender and the Flamboyant Crook Khurana.Boman Irani , Anupam Kher,Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shourie, Kiran Juneja, Naveen Nischol among others star in this film.Funny, entertaining and mischievously devious , the movie makes light of the pitiable situation of our society, where one has to swindle in order to lead an honest and clean life..
Bollywood has several slapstick comedies but there are even some situational comedies made mostly in 70's KHOSLA KA GHOSLA(2006) is one such film where you can identify with the characters and their problems appear realThe characters of the KHOSLA parivaar are damn identifiable and this is a big strength The problems faced appear naturalThere are many funny scenes none overdone The film also has emotional scenes which strike your heartTheir plans to overpower Boman may look unnatural but there are treated in a nice manner and till the climax the film holds your attentionDibakar does a g8 debut and does a g8 job Music is goodAmongst actors Anupam proves why he is one of the best actors, he plays Khosla brilliantly, he looks the characters and portrays it with such simplicity yet powerfully he makes you feel for him Ranveer excels with his Haryanvi Boman too excels in his role which has a hangover of LRMB but yet he excels(this film started before LRMB though) Parvan Dabbas is good too in his role Navin Nischol strikes a perfect comeback and is superb as Bapu Tara Sharma is okay Vinay Pathak too excels in a brief role.
The audience gapes, but this time to appreciate the content of the movie, apart from its comic feature.The movie depicts the story of a very middle-class family, with a very orthodox patriarch, played by Anupam Kher (Khosla).
Couldn't be as much as it looks on screen.From the beginning you realise that this movie has bad dubbing with all the voices having the same depth, and to add to that some really pathetic lighting, I've seen some really low budget movies even from the yesteryear's but even those have higher quality shooting, dubbing, lighting than this movie, even the editing is a bit jarry.That being said this movie is very good in almost all other aspects, the middle class Delhi family is very easy to identify with, the language is also very much like what I've heard people in Delhi speak.The story is simple and sweet, and I've been told land grabbing is really quite an issue in many parts of India.The acting is great all around, Kher is predictably good , Boman is much the same, the people who really stand out is the supporting cast who have really done a brilliant job, Ranvir, Vinay, Parvin Nitish Pandey and especially Navin Nischol did a splendid job, Tara Sharma voice was as annoying as ever and Khers daughter was an eye-sore and couldn't act either.One of the most brilliant things about this movie is that how menacing Boman comes across without seeming completely evil, you almost hate him but never quite really reach that point.The front half is low and bordered on boring for some of my friends who weren't the type to overly sympathise with independent films and do stuff like call it cinema and call anything independent brilliant much like many others do just to be with it, I too felt that the first half was considerably dry especially compared to the second half.The humour except for a couple of scenes will never really evoke anything more than a smile and that reduces a lot of points from this movie.
From frame one, the "action" begins and next two hours you just wont let anything disturb you watching it.Khosla (Anupam Kher) has saved every penny he earned in his life for building a dream home on a newly purchase plot at South Delhi.
Just as everything seems set for a ground breaking ceremony, a powerful builder, Khurana (Boman Irani) encroaches the plot and shatters all his dreams.How the motley crew of his family and their friends help Khosla finally realize his dreams, forms the rest of the story.
Apart from great performances by veterans like Anupam Kher, Boman Irani and Navin Nischol, you will enjoy even the characters played by off-beat actors like Ranvir Shorey (Frankly I didn't knew he can act so well), Parvin Dabas, Nitish Pandey and Vinay Pathak.I would call it "A Superb Comic Thriller".
Set in a middle class family of Delhi the movie is a remarkable achievement as far as the defining of character goes.
Anupam Kher plays the tole of KK Khosla who is from a middle class family staying in Delhi. |
tt0099991 | The Last of the Finest | The film opens at Canyon Park where narcotics cop Frank Daly (Dennehy) is coaching his partners Wayne Gross (Pantoliano), Ricky Rodriguez (Fahey), and Howard Jones (Paxton) during a flag football game. After the game, Daly tells Captain Joe Torres (Darrow) that his team is working on a major bust. He asks Torres to help keep the DEA out of the operation.
Later that night, Daly and his team surveil a massive drug deal at a meat processing plant. However, when Daly radios Torres for backup, the Captain orders him to wait for the DEA to show up. Daly ignores the order. During the raid, Anthony Reece (Gwynne) and his main henchman torch the money earned during the deal, setting the whole plant on fire.
Reece and his henchman drive up to a diplomatic retreat in the mountains to inform their superior, R.J. Norringer (Boyd), about the fate of the money. Cpt. Torres suspends Daly and his team pending an investigation. The team use their free time during their suspension to make good on their promise to install a septic tank at Canyon Park. Through one of their informants, Fast Eddie (Berkeley), Daly arranges for a prostitute to meet with Reece and surveil him further. As Reece waits for the prostitute, Rodriguez witnesses him receive an envelope from someone who he later learns is a DEA agent.
Eddie calls Daly to tell him that Reece was a psycho, and he viciously beat the prostitute. Daly and the team heads to the motel where Eddie and the prostitute are hiding, but before they can get there, Reece's henchman kills them both. Jones chases the henchman, who lays a trap for Jones and kills him.
Daly is charged with violating the terms of his suspension, resulting in Jones' death. Daly resigns in disgust. Gross resigns in solidarity. Rodriguez initially does not want to resign, because being a cop is his whole identity, but he eventually agrees to resign and pursue the case as civilians with the rest of the team. They raise $25,000 for their operation by knocking over some local drug dealers.
The team trails Reece to an event for the Central American Relief Fund, where they witness Norringer give a speech advocating support for Central American rebel forces. On the roof of the building, they videotape Reece meeting with Norringer. They visit retired cop Tommy Grogan (Finnegan), who reads Reece and Norringer's lips to determine that there is a major deal going down the next night.
As the team investigates Norringer's harbor operation, Captain Torres visits Grogan with Reece's henchman to determine what he told Daly's team. At Norringer's warehouse, the team realizes that the drug sales are used to finance weapons purchases on behalf of Central American rebels. Norringer's men give chase, and the team escapes in one of the loaded trucks. After they crash it into an overpass, they find that it is loaded with over $22 million.
They hide the cash in the septic tank at the park. As they clean up afterward, they find Grogan's body in a locker. Realizing that their families are in danger, they gather all of their loved ones in an secluded spot and debate their next step. They agree to pursue the case, rather than run off with the money. Daly confronts Torres about Grogan, and he confesses to his involvement in the scheme, explaining that he just does not care anymore about right and wrong.
Daly sets up an exchange at the park, with Gross and Rodriguez hiding in sniper positions. They have also planted small charges around the field. When Torres and Norringer arrive, a gunfight ensues. The police arrive, because Torres had called them in a final act of contrition, and they help Daly and his team defend themselves. Norringer, Torres, and Reece are all killed in the firefight. The film closes with the rededication of Canyon Park in Jones' honor. Daly is back in uniform, and the camera lingers on a TV where the President denies involvement in the scheme while expressing support for the rebels. | suspenseful, murder, violence | train | wikipedia | null |
tt0065488 | The Boys in the Band | The film is set in an Upper East Side apartment in New York City in the late 1960s. Michael, a Roman Catholic sporadically employed writer and recovering alcoholic, is preparing to host a birthday party for his friend Harold. Another of his friends, Donald, a self-described underachiever who has moved from the city, arrives and helps Michael prepare. Alan, Michael's (presumably straight) old college roommate from Georgetown, calls with an urgent need to see Michael. Michael reluctantly agrees and invites him to come over.
One by one, the guests arrive. Emory is a stereotypical flamboyant interior decorator; Hank, a soon-to-be-divorced schoolteacher, and Larry, a fashion photographer, are a couple, albeit one with monogamy issues; and Bernard is an amiable black bookstore clerk. Alan calls again to inform Michael that he won't be coming after all, and the party continues in a festive manner. But, unexpectedly, Alan has decided to drop by after all, and his arrival throws the gathering into turmoil.
"Cowboy" — a hustler and Emory's "gift" to Harold — arrives. As tensions mount, Alan assaults Emory and in the ensuing chaos Harold finally makes his grand appearance. In the midst of the scuffle, Michael impulsively begins drinking again. As the guests become more and more intoxicated, hidden resentments begin to surface, and the party moves indoors from the patio due to a sudden downpour.
Michael, who believes Alan is a closeted homosexual, begins a telephone game in which the objective is for each guest to call the one person whom he truly believes he has loved. With each call, past scars and present anxieties are revealed. Bernard reluctantly attempts to call the son of his mother's employer, with whom he'd had a sexual encounter as a teenager, while Emory calls a dentist on whom he'd had a crush while in high school. Bernard and Emory immediately regret having made the phone calls. Hank and Larry attempt to call one another (via two phone lines in Michael's apartment). Michael's plan to "out" Alan with the game appears to backfire when Alan calls his wife, not the male college friend Justin Stewart whom Michael had presumed to be Alan's lover. As the party ends and the guests depart, Michael collapses into Donald's arms, sobbing. When he pulls himself together, it appears his life will remain very much the same. | romantic | train | wikipedia | Kenneth Nelson's performance as Michael doesn't help: it's like an acting class exercise, all shrieking and hysterics.While the ensemble as a whole is strong, Leonard Frey's brilliant, definitive Harold enables him to walk off with the film.
The straight Cliff Gorman does fine work as the flaming, ultimately touching Emory; Keith Prentice is very good as the one well-adjusted party goer, the happy sensualist Larry; and Reuben Greene and Frederick Combs make the best of underwritten characters (Combs get lots of chances to show his rear end to great advantage, including a gratuitous nude shot).Besides good acting, the film has other points to recommend it.
And Crowley shows courage in leaving the question of Alan's sexuality somewhat ambiguous, despite his affirming his wife as the person he truly loves, thereby rejecting Michael as a gay man and precipitating his collapse.The themes of love, truth, self-loathing, friendship and relationships speak to audiences gay & straight.
The movie version came out a year after.The stage play was a surprisingly huge hit and fearless playwright Mart Crowley had the know-how, the resources, and keen sense to keep his talented stage cast together when it transferred to film, knowing the importance of a tight ensemble.
The self-imposed pacifist with little drive and even less direction, Donald concerns himself with just making it through the day with as little pain as possible.The exceptionally handsome couple of Keith Prentice (Larry), the man who's feeling the chains of his relationship, and Laurence Luckinbill (Hank), who prefers a monogamous home life, gave me my first connection to what a mature but complex gay union could be like.
Despite their serious problems, I actually saw two, non-stereotyped gay men trying to make a go of it while dealing with the many pressures - one still craving an exciting night life of promiscuous sex and the other striving to overcome the guilt of leaving his wife and children.While Ruben Greene as the more centered but embittered Bernard puts a mild black perspective on the turbulent gay lifestyle, Cliff Gorman's Emory comes equipped with a ferocious swish and campy, razor-sharp quips to handle his hostility and self-loathing - sure to be the center of attention as a life-of-the-party diva.
You ain't got the facts STRAIGHT, ma'am.Unlike the gay comedies of today that are softened to appeal to a more mainstream audience (this is not a bad thing), `Boys in the Band' will be too bold in its observance to attract many outside the personal freedom fort.
I have met numerous "Michaels" who shrug responsibility, live off credit cards and (try to) drown their insecurity in endless parties; Walk into any bar in Chelsea and you'll see at least a dozen snide, contemptuous "Harolds" skulking around radiating disdain for everyone around them; and let's not get started on the legions of airhead pretty boy "Cowboys" out there!This is not to say that all the gay men I know are like this.
The whole tone of the movie, the suppressed anxiety the characters feel about themselves, and the bitterness they feel towards each other, the resentment the gay men feel for the (possibly) straight guy, and above all the need for the characters to bury their self-esteem problems by getting drunk and partying with abandon happens too often among people I know to dismiss as long ago and far away..
In some ways this movie does play like a gay version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", with it's host turning the unassuming party into a game of "get the guests" (to use a phrase from VW).
Cliff Gorman is wild as the flamboyant Emory...his is probably the most stereotyped character of the lot, but he plays it with a good degree of dimension and sincerity, different then some of the lispy one-dimensional gay stereotypes seen in films up to that time.
As a "Surprise Sneak Preview" we also got "The Boys in the Band." The next morning, after a Wisconsin style hearty breakfast in bed, I found that I could not remember a single scene or line from "Endless Summer," but to this day I remember nearly all of "The Boys in the Band." Caroll and I were not an item for too long, but several years later when I bumped into her strolling on Michigan Ave. with her new husband, she mentioned "The Boys in the Band" and how glad she was that we'd seen it.The reason that I liked it so much then, and even went to the trouble to hunt down a very hard to find copy for a weekend mini-film-festival that some friends and I held two years ago, is that it is a brilliant play about people.
Talk about dated!As far as filmed stage plays go, the production effort on "The Boys in the Band" is not really fabulous, but it isn't bad enough to detract from the story or it's impact.
But it's also a period piece, and the final legacy of a number of talented actors lost to the AIDS epidemic -- yes, I know they made other movies, but the gay community isn't going to remember Leonard Frey primarily as Motel Kamzoil.
The film follows what happens during a single evening when a group of nine gay men get together to celebrate a birthday and are infiltrated by a supposedly straight friend of the party's host.
Boys in the band really hits the mark...even today in our modern 'civilized' times.I would classify it as a 'must watch' movie for everyone to see.It gets to the heart of humanity and how much we still must come yet to understanding each other.The drama and acting is incredible and intense.
Lines like Emory's lips being blue from rimming a snowman or the shrink/hairdresser who shrinks your head before combing you out are classic, and you feel like the straight folks watching the movie must feel like they are missing out on something.Several of the other commentators talked about the movie dating itself and/or portraying a negative stereotype of gay men who just don't exist anymore.
I gotta tell the truth and shame the devil, I didn't know if I WANTED to purchase the new DVD release of The Boys In The Band; all the self-loathing and bitchy camaraderie was just a little more than I could stand last time I viewed it (1998).
Perhaps time has mellowed me a little more compassionately to my fellow freaks (and I say that with love and respect to the characters) and I wasn't wincing at all, unlike the '98 viewing.Also lovely to look at were the mini-documentaries included on the disc: one for the original off-Broadway play; two, for the actual filming of this movie, and three; 40 years later, what happens in terms of the landmark this film has made.It also contains the commentary track by director William Freidkin, which I will soon see, but if the documentaries are any indication, I will warm more to him than I have in the past (see Cruising).My only bitch (CBS/Paramount, are you reading this?): once again, there's no informational insert card with the DVD.All-in-all, The Boys In The Band is still a magnificent train wreck, but now an enjoyable one, nevertheless, thanks to CBS/Paramount..
I don't mean *I'm* attracted to him, but I can see how any gay man, open or closeted, would fall for him.---One of the many things that "dates" the film is Emory's racial cracks against Bernard (African Queen, indeed!) But for all that, I can sense that Bernard feels much at home in this group.
As a straight WASP, it's almost impossible to say even very positive things about gays, African-Americans, or persons of other ethnic or religious heritages without others thinking it pretentious or patronizing.However, I thoroughly enjoyed this film when I first saw it, a number of years ago, and when I saw it again recently.As a movie which was released early in the 1970's, it was actually a 1960's story, and that was the period of the long-running stage presentation which preceded it.
And I recall a magazine article, featuring Cliff Gorman (the most overt, "swishiest" character in the film), showing him with a cigar, in a macho demeanor, and titled something like "The 'Man' in 'The Boys in the Band'." He obviously felt the need to try to avoid being subsequently typecast, and while he was never an "A-list" actor, his subsequent roles seemed to be especially concerned with a macho aspect.Laurence Luckinbill has been married to Lucy Arnaz for many years, and would be presumed "straight;" and Peter White has continued to appear on screen and t.v. in conventional parts, and having never been married (that alone not being always definitive), one could raise the question, as was done about his character in the story.
And, being curious, I checked various sources, and most, perhaps now all, of the others in this film and the play preceding, have died of the disease.I believe it was from Leonard Maltin that I read the description of this movie as "a filmed stage play," but even so (and with the few external shots at the beginning and one or two within) it captured the feel of New York City, and the Greenwich Village/gay community, excellently.The story remains poignant and intense today.
Sure, it's a landmark film, but the adaptation to the 1967 play lacks any real merit about homosexuality; in fact, it presents a very negative view on the subject of gay people and how they act.
In a sense a year after Stonewall, the film version of The Boys In The Band was already outdated.But what Mart Crowley has done is forever given us an indelible impression of what gay life was like from the male perspective before Stonewall.
And the film was nicely transferred to the cinema with the entire off Broadway cast in the eight roles.A quick look at Mart Crowley's biography and you'll readily see that he's written himself in as the host, Michael played by Kenneth Nelson, is throwing a a birthday party for Leonard Frey who is the last of the characters to make an entrance.
The anger and the powerful self hate that is still a factor in our lives, reinforced by society that exploded in the Stonewall Rebellion soon to come.What I think a straight audience might find most amazing is that of all the characters, the gay cowboy hustler that Cliff Gorman buys for Leonard Frey seems the most well adjusted, despite the fact the others just dump all over him intellectually.
It was an intelligent but controversial drama of gay life in New York City with a group of thirty-something men who throw a birthday party for one of their friends.The film version is directed by William Friedkin, who would go on to win a Best Director Oscar the following year for the hard boiled thriller, The French Connection and later get further acclaim for his film The Exorcist.Michael (Kenneth Nelson) is Catholic, he drinks too much, acerbic but can also be witty as well as waspish is preparing the birthday party for his friend Harold.
A seminal off-Broadway-turned-feature-film revolves around a group of gay men in NYC from playwright Mart Crowley, THE BOYS IN THE BAND is indisputably a trailblazer of American queen cinema reckoning with its time, it is directed by the future Oscar-winning director William Friedkin.
Also, extremely unusual for today's climate, the filmmakers recruit all the play's original cast, to reprise their roles in this film adaptation, despite that none of them are name actors, the truth is, it is a silver screen debut for most of them.After a passing montage briefly introduces all of the nine characters before their ultimate convergence in the birthday party (on a trivial note, Friedkin's previous directorial work is called THE BIRTHDAY PARTY in 1968, based on a Harold Pinter play), the setting almost exclusively locates inside an Upper East Side apartment of our protagonist Michael (Nelson), who is throwing a party to celebrate his friend Harold's (Frey) 32-year-old b-day with close friends.
In Crowley's incisive concoction, each of the characters has his token correspondence with certain stereotype of gay men: Donald (Combs), a simpatico blue-collar type and Bernard (Greene), a sentimental black bookworm; Emory (Gorman), the quintessential effeminate queen and his birthday gift to Harold, Cowboy Tex (La Tourneaux), a simple-minded rough trade jock; then, a couple, Larry (Prentice), a libertine who cannot endorse monogamy and his boyfriend-cum-roommate, Hank (Luckinbill), a closeted married schoolteacher, who is undergoing a divorce, also we have the heterosexual intruder Allen and Harold, the haughty narcissist, finally, what about Michael?
A recovering alcoholic with a Roman Catholic upbringing, who is afflicted by an inimical self-hatred of being what he is, which will soon ejaculate venom onto those near him when tensions mount after Alan gatecrashes their flamboyant party.The first half of the movie mostly dwells in the patio, where an exuberant stream of ceaseless banters and rejoinders tellingly contrives a unique phenomenon among the kind, apparent viciousness is actually an ironic expression of affection among the suppressed culture, it is refreshingly honest to represent such a taunting scenario (particularly through Emory's unbearable campiness and Harold's overbearing diva-stance) to perversely edify viewers that why equality matters, since it is all about to tolerate another human being even he/she ostensibly grates your temperament to the core, to accept his/her difference no matter how unpleasant that makes you feel, this is the only key to respect ourselves as a civilized species and therefore, there is a future for us.After a rambunctious kerfuffle between Emery and Alan, and a sudden downpour forces everyone retreat inside the apartment, which also inaugurate the second half, where Michael abetted by alcohol, proposes a cruel telephone game, to call someone you have been in love with and tell them on the phone if you dare.
There is a significant change of tone with Michael becoming increasingly embittered and presumptuous, jovial laughter is ebbing away, conflicts and confrontations emerge and subsequently evolve into psychological torture: nerves fray, wounds are exposed, misunderstandings are elucidated and hopes are dashed, the most egregious part is Michael's wanton racist sniping aiming to the amiable Bernard, heavy-handed it may seem, it shows Friedkin and Crawley have no scruples about revealing the basest trait of our unwholesome nature to corroborate their standpoint, a stinging thing is that it is still a hot button today after 46 years, and the maddening truth is, none of these arguments and disputes have completely lost their relevance yet.The ensemble does a commendable job (most of those gay actors would prematurely die of AIDS or AIDS related complications), Cliff Gorman is not gay in real life despite his Emory is incorrigible counter-heterosexual, an outstanding endeavor mixed with declamation and affectation.
I find the Boys in the Band to be a movie that does not hold up to the test of times in terms of its stereotyping of gay men, the self-loathing aspect of homosexuality and the intense drinking.
If The Boys In The Band (TBITB, for short) was really supposed to be an accurate depiction of what happens at a party consisting of only gay men, then it sure looked to me like these unhappy campers didn't know how to have a good time (sober or drunk) when they were in each other's company.
If these sorts of comments appeal to you, then, perhaps, TBITB will, indeed, entertain you to pieces - If not - Then you can always choose another movie to watch."There's nothing more boring than a queen doing a Judy Garland impersonation.""Who would want to be a flaming, little sissy like you?""Show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse.""Just the same, old, tired fairies.""You remind me of an old maid, school teacher."(Get the picture?)*Note* - This sort of chit-chat went on and on and on, non-stop, throughout the entire course of the story.Personally, I believe that if director William Friedkin (who 3 years later directed The Exorcist) had thrown a few lesbians into the mix at Harold's birthday party, then that, I'm sure, would've helped heaps to alleviate some of the brutal pettiness and irksome monotony that prevailed from TBITB's swishy beginning to its trite and tearful finale..
The story is simple; a group of several gay men in New York gather for a birthday party for their mutual friend, Harold (the late Leonard Frey), a self-described "32 yr old, ugly, pock-mocked Jew fairy." He forgets to mention his scathing wit and strong presence, as ALL of these characters seem to exhibit, except for "Cowboy" (Robert LaTurneaux), one of Harold's 'gifts'; a young, pathetic male prostitute who becomes an object of ridicule among the sophisticated, but bitchy group.
The fun comes to a screeching halt, however, like a turntable needle scratching a record, when Michael's old, straight college buddy, Alan MacCarthy (played by Peter White, in a deliberately ambiguous performance) crashes the party and becomes the catalyst for an evening of intense examination, acid-tongued humor and self-loathing within the group.
But even today, more than 40 years later, gay men can spot such like characters among their own associates, so the mock phrase, "A fugitive from Boys in the Band", can sometimes be real, ableit a bit shockingly cruel, but filled with truths when evidence points to the similarities.
The entire original stage cast is here, and the only thing missing is part of a monologue by Michael (Kenneth Nelson) at the beginning of the film that would have rendered the scene something of an anachronism in light of the Stonewall riots of 1969 (the play opened in 1968).The cut is a small one, however, and what Crowley and stage director Robert Moore gave us in 1968 is pretty much what Friedkin gives us here.I think by now most people know the bare bones of the plot: eight gay men gather for a birthday party at the Greenwich Village apartment of one of them.
Like Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, director William Friedkin brought another controversial adaptation to the screen with Mart Crowley's seething gay drama: The Boys In The Band. |
tt0034389 | Whistling in the Dark | Wally Benton (Red Skelton) is the star of a mystery series on radio, The Fox, which he writes himself, inventing for each episode a crime that has "only one loophole" so the criminal can be caught. He is about to elope with Carol Lambert (Ann Rutherford), but his agent (Eve Arden) tells him he must go out with the sponsor's daughter, Fran Post (Virginia Grey), or risk his show being canceled.
Outside the city, at a mansion called Silver Haven, Joseph Jones (Conrad Veidt) runs a cult that promises serenity and contact with the dead, but is really just a scam to collect donations. He learns that a member has died and bequeathed a life interest in $1,000,000 to her nephew Harvey Upshaw (Lloyd Corrigan), with the principal going to Silver Haven on Upshaw's death. Jones, angry that she did not leave the money directly to his cult, determines to have Upshaw killed at once, but he must avoid suspicion. Some of Jones's henchmen are fans of The Fox and admire Benton's plots, so he gets the idea to kidnap Benton and make him invent a real crime with no loopholes. Learning that two different women are expecting to meet Benton that night and one is his fiancée, he has Lambert and Post kidnapped as well.
Benton tries to protect the women, but is out of his depth. After a bumbling escape attempt through a secret passage fails, he decides he needs to come up with a plot as Jones demands. He has the idea to substitute poison for the tooth powder that Upshaw will undoubtedly take along as he flies overnight to meet his aunt's lawyer. The women are aghast at Benton's cooperation, but when the poison is brought to Benton, he puts it in a packet but then substitutes another harmless one. However, this gets lost and another packet is made up with real poison: Upshaw is in real danger. And so are Benton, Lambert, and Post, as Jones will have no reason to let them live once the plot succeeds.
Benton finds a hidden telephone, but before he can reach the police, he is seen and the phone is ripped from the wires. Jones leaves and Benton is locked in with the women in the same room. He touches the telephone wires together to simulate dialing 0, but cannot talk to the operator without a telephone. But, noticing a radio in the room, he uses his knowledge of radio to improvise a way to use it as a phone: the loudspeaker will double as a microphone if they swap the right wires back and forth each time he starts or finishes talking.
He reaches the telephone operator and tries to get a message sent to Upshaw's flight, but Jones's man on the flight finds a way to disable the aircraft radio, and contact is lost. Benton then has the operator contact his radio station, where it is almost time for The Fox. They patch his phone call through to the transmitter and he begins telling all his listeners what has been happening.
But they have to speak loudly, and the one dim-witted guard who was left outside the door bursts in. They save themselves by convincing him they are just passing the time by pretending to do a radio show. He finds the idea fun and even participates, adding useful information such as the mansion's address. Unfortunately, the local police assume it is fiction, like the recent War of the Worlds broadcast, so the three hostages are not saved until Benton's friends from the radio station arrive with city police.
Meanwhile, on the flight, Upshaw learns of the plot thanks to a small boy who enjoys The Fox and listens to it by an ordinary radio on board. Warned not to brush his teeth, he remarks, "I won't even take them out". | romantic, cult, murder | train | wikipedia | A great comedy mystery film!.
While many pass this off as a B movie it is, indeed, a first class comedy that is well-written and acted.
Red Skelton is great as Wally Benton better known to radio fans as The Fox.
Ann Rutherford is perfect as Wally's fiance Carol Lambert.
Conrad Veidt leads a very well cast gang of criminals.
I read one account of this movie which states that Vincente Minelli directed this film, not unless he changed his name to S.
Sylvan Simon, who directed all three of the Fox movies.
This was also Red's first starring role.
Red Skelton (in his first starring role) plays Wally Benton who plays 'The Fox' on a radio show.
He writes the murder mysteries and as 'The Fox' solves them.
Joseph Jones (Conrad Veidt) is trying to figure out how to perform the perfect murder on someone.
He kidnaps Benton, his girlfriend (Ann Rutherford) and another girlfriend (Virginia Grey).
He tells Benton to write out the perfect murder...or his girlfriends get it...Very funny and enjoyable movie.
Fast-moving (it's only 77 minutes), a good script and perfect casting really puts this across.
Skelton is very good in his first starring role--very funny, fast, handsome and intelligent.
Rutherford and Grey are lots of fun as Skelton's girlfriends.
Also fun to see Eve Arden in a small role.Well worth your time..
Red Skelton plays a radio detective known as "The Fox" in "Whistling in the Dark," also starring Ann Rutherford, Conrad Veidt, Eve Arden, Virgina Grey and Rags Ragland.
Wally Benton, aka "The Fox" finds his plans to marry his fiancé Carol (Rutherford) thwarted when he's kidnapped by a the leader of a sham cult (Veidt).
Joseph Jones (Veidt) has just learned that his cult, The Silver Haven, is not getting a promised inheritance because of the existence of the old woman's nephew, who is going to be living off of the interest.
He wants Wally to devise a perfect murder plot so the man can be killed on the airplane en route to meet with his attorney.
For backup, and because he's not sure which one is Wally's fiancé, Jones kidnaps Carol and also the radio sponsor's daughter (Grey).This, to me anyway, is a superior film to the second entry in this series, "Whistling in Dixie." The plot is better, the cast is better, there is less slapstick and fewer corny jokes.
Skelton, when he's not making faces and rolling his eyes, is quite amiable, and Rutherford is very good.
Veidt always played these evil men to perfection.
Eve Arden is Wally's agent, who arranges a date for him and Grey to make sure his contract is renewed.
I had only seen Grey in films from the 1950s onward.
This is a fun film with a neat cast..
This film was the second done by Vincent Minelli in his movie directing career.
Like the first one I DOOD IT he was directing Red Skelton.
Skelton was shown to good advantage (in most of his comedies Skelton usually gave good performances) as a radio personality, "THE FOX" who knows all you need to know about crime to solve cases.
He is kidnapped with his girl friend by Conrad Veidt's gang.
Veidt is a cult leader, who learns he is a prospective heir to one of his rich followers, provided her direct heir (Lloyd Corrigan)predeceases her.
Veidt needs a perfect crime, and "The Fox" is just the man to give it to him.It is a wonderful comedy.
Besides Skelton's comic abilities, Veidt too shows a funny side rarely apparent in his dramatic (and villainous) roles - imagine Major Strasser telling Capt.
At the start of the film, having just given his stooge followers his typical guru speech on control and peace and love, Veidt learns about the existance of Corrigan as a threat to his plans for wealth.
He starts acting like another notable German of the 1940s, screaming and ranting, and yelling at his followers how can he teach the world of love and peace when this impediment is in his way!
Later, when part of the live audience listening to Skelton's "Fox" radio program, he learns that the villain in the program was an imposter that Skelton recognized, because he was wearing a turban the wrong way (it was tied on the left instead of the right, or something like that).
A surprised Veidt (who could very well wear a turban among his followers) tells his side-kick, "I didn't know that!" as though anyone is interested.
The lines go fast and furious in this film, up to a surprise at the end of the film from Corrigan, that actually makes much of the frantic antics of the forced "perfect crime" plot seem hopeless from the start.
Wally "The Fox" Benton (Red Skelton) is the star of a popular radio mystery program who is kidnapped by criminals.
They plan to kill somebody and want Wally to plan the perfect murder.
As added incentive for him to do as they want, they also kidnap Wally's fiancée (Ann Rutherford) and another girl who likes him (Virginia Grey).Fast-paced enjoyable Red Skelton comedy hits on all cylinders.
Skelton is wonderful in his first starring role.
Virginia Grey is the other girl who wants Red and she's fiery and spunky and lots of fun as well.
Conrad Veidt is excellent as the heavy, as are all of his henchman.
There's more support from the likes of the great Eve Arden, Lloyd Corrigan, and Henry O'Neill.
It's really a first-rate cast in a very fun and funny movie..
Red plays radio sleuth Wally Benton, aka The Fox who gets wrangled into solving real life crimes along with his fiance played by your typical wartime girl next door looker, Ann Rutherford.
Red Skelton has a surprisingly strong screen presence, surprising I say because I grew up with a much older version of the man who's charm really didnt play well in my formidable years.
Wartime is funny that way I guess, and so then again are these movies.
Red Skelton, achingly young but as engaging and comically flexible as ever, is ideally-cast as Wally Benton, a radio personality and fictional sleuth nicknamed "The Fox", who is kidnapped for real by a nefarious cult leader eager to get his hands on an inheritance--which means implicating Benton in a murder.
Adaptation of the play by Laurence Gross and Edward Childs Carpenter is pure fun, with an exceptionally strong supporting cast running high on adrenaline.
Conrad Veidt, that great eternal-villain, is the amusingly icy con-man who robs the rich and keeps for himself, while Ann Rutherford is charming as Skelton's girlfriend.
She and Red were quickly re-teamed for two more "Whistling" comedies.
On His Way Up. It's Red's first starring role and he plays it fairly straight only sometimes mugging it up in ways that would become his comedic trademark.
Grey's character "Fran" seems unnecessary to the comedy set-ups and the storyline, so perhaps there's an inside story on this odd bit of doubling-up.In my little book, the movie's only fitfully funny, mainly because the two comedy set-ups (the secret room and the radio trick) go on too long and lack the intensity of Red's better comedies.
All in all, this first of the "Whistling" series is not the best, but it does present a chance to catch one show-biz's brightest comedy acts developing his way up the Hollywood ladder..
If WARNER/MGM had their way (of which they DO!)....we will NOT LIKELY ever see these 3 Classic RED SKELTON "Whistling" series comedies on DVD!
RED SKELTON stars as Wally Benton, THE FOX ("OOOOOOO!"), a Radio star detective in WHISTLING IN THE DARK, WHISTLING IN DIXIE and WHISTLING IN BRROKLYN.
I purchased the VHS copies of these great films quite a few years back (before DVD's) ~ they are definitely 'keepers'!
Skelton makes promising debut as star but flat one-liners don't help....
You have to be awfully patient to sit through a film with one-liners so flat and unfunny that you wonder what all the fuss was about when WHISTLING IN THE DARK opened to such an enthusiastic greeting from audiences in the 1940s.On top of some weak one-liners and ordinary sight gags, the plot is as far-fetched as the tales The Fox (Red Skelton) tells his radio audience.
You have to wonder why anyone would think he could come up with a real-life solution on how to commit the perfect crime and get away with it.
But then, that's how unrealistic the comedy is.But--if you're a true Red Skelton fan and enjoy a look back at how comedies were made in the '40s--you can at least enjoy the amiable cast supporting him.
Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey do nicely as his love interest and Conrad Veidt, as always, makes an interesting villain.
One of his more amusing moments is his reaction to Skelton explaining the mysteries of wearing turbans.
Not always easy for a discriminating viewer as many of them simply fall flat, the way many comedies of this era do because the novelty of the sight gags and one-liners has simply worn off..
If you're not amused, watch Red Skelton say it.
Otherwise, Whistling in the Dark is a good bet, even for family..
Like the Road To Singapore which was the debut and yet the weakest of the Road films for Crosby and Hope, Whistling In The Dark which was Red Skelton's starring debut was overall rather weak, but definitely shows Red Skelton's zany comedy style.
He did two more films as radio detective Wally Benton aka the Fox, Whistling In Dixie and Whistling In Brooklyn that were better than this one.The fact that smooth and clever villain Conrad Veidt who runs a spiritualist racket would need help from Red Skelton to construct a perfect murder is dopey on the face of it.
Still Skelton is kidnapped by Veidt and along with him are two women that he's been seeing, Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey, and he's got to come up with a foolproof method of homicide.
Nobody notices that in addition to being a performer and writer, Skelton is also something of a fool.But that's what makes the weak premised film provide a lot of laughs with Grey, Rutherford, and even Veidt joining in on the general hilarity.
And I do love the way Red apparently has a knowledge of electronics and makes the villain's radio receiver set a broadcast method.
Can't be a complete fool to devise that.Though the succeeding Fox films were better, Whistling In The Dark will provide a great introduction to the comedy stylings of Red Skelton..
While the 1941 version of "Whistling in the Dark" is by far the most famous version, back in the 1930s there was a previous version and I enjoyed it very much.
Now, less than a decade later, MGM is back with a new version--this time starring Red Skelton.
Of course the original was more famous but it also didn't try so hard to be funny and was more subtle and likable.When the film begins, some evil scumbags are scamming lots of gullible ladies with their cult.
Their latest atrocity needs to be the perfect murder and instead of the boss (Conrad Veidt) planning it, he decides to force a radio program writer and performer, Wally Benton (Red Skelton) to plan this perfect killing.
And, to provide Wally with an incentive to cooperate, they also kidnap his two lady friends along with him.
How can Wally possibly escape or warn the authorities about the pending murder?This film is interesting and mildly funny--only mildly.
This is because many of the laughs are a bit forced and Skelton's almost constant one-liners are almost never funny.
I MUCH preferred Skelton's later roles, as his character was much sweeter and likable.
As for me, I really thought the original film was far better...and is the version to see if you get a chance.
However, the remake isn't bad...good enough at the time, that it spurred on two sequels--"Whistling in Dixie" (1942) and Whistling in Brooklyn (1943)..
I had never seen a Red Skelton film until now.
But he is also backed up here by a wonderful supporting cast: having to choose between Ann Rutherford and Virginia Grey would be any man's dream dilemma, and Conrad Veidt is perfectly cast as the bogus cult leader.
The Fox doesn't whistle, he howls!
While they are from competing studios, there are a few references to "Kane" here, including a couple notes about the famous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast.The setup is pretty delicious.
Red Skelton is a radio star, who plays a detective called the Fox. This by itself is a joke because the man's humor is all in his face.
He is famous (in this movie) for writing complex mysteries, not for performing them.Superficially, the story has him kidnapped by the bad guys and forced to come up with a foolproof murder idea.
But look at how this is done.The bad guys operate a fake spiritualist cult that sells a "radio" service to the departed.
So the deal is fake radio versus real, and cleverly solved mystery versus cleverly concealed mystery.As a sort of mirror, Red's character has two women in love with him, and they are kidnapped with him.
The payoff is in how Red's character foils his own plot.
He literally — I am not making this up — figures out a way to talk backwards into a radio receiver.
(Red's radio show is sponsored by a soft drink.
She's referring to the two women chasing after radio mystery host Red Skelton, engaged to Ann Rutherford, but desired by Virginia Grey.
Somehow Skelton is desired by cult leader Conrad Veidt who fleeces vulnerable widowed society matrons out of their money by promising them peace in another world, wanted to figure out the perfect way to kill the co-heir to a fortune he coveted himself, split between him and the surviving nephew (Lloyd Corrigan).Skelton is fooled into going off with Veidt and his merry gang of fleecers, later held hostage with both Rutherford and Grey in an effort to prove that the poisoned mouthwash he's suggested actually works.
not in brain), Skelton comes up with a unique way of turning a radio into a telephone in an effort to warn Corrigan about his possible fate aboard a flight where one of Veidt's men intends to use the poisoned mouthwash to do his dirty deed.
It's a race to the finish, giving Corrigan a very funny exit line, and a comedy thriller that will have you both in stitches as well as your hands glued to your arm rests.Having made a few minor supporting appearances in a few films, this would be Skelton's very first lead, and he is indeed quite amusing.
Rutherford and Grey play great rivals for Skelton's affections, although it is obvious whom he prefers.
Ragland as usual plays a hysterically funny dumbbell, not overusing the malapropisms, but making each one hysterical.
This remake of a 1933 film spawned a brief series for Skelton that didn't overstay its welcome..
Red's first starring vehicle.
This was really the first film in which Red Skelton was the star, rather than a supporting character.
And while it was a B movie, it was a good one that received a fair amount of acclaim for Skelton.
The general shtick is a good, but common one in that era -- a sort of twist between gangsters and spooks.Here, Red plays Wally Benton, the star of a radio mystery series; he's "The Fox", an expert criminologist (and accidentally a goofball).
He plans to elope with his girlfriend Ann Rutherford, but his agent urges him to also date the sponsor's daughter to assure that his show is not canceled.
Meanwhile, Conrad Veidt runs a religious cult that preys on the wills of oldsters, mostly women.
Veidt is determined to have Upshaw murdered so that the money will come straight to the cult.
Members of the cult develop a plan to have "The Fox" develop a fool proof murder.
Can "The Fox" save the women and prevent the murder?
How he does it is rather clever.Red Skelton, in his first starring vehicle, is very good here, although he got even better in the two sequels.
This is a good role for Conrad Veidt as the head of the phony religion; must have been a nice change not playing a Nazi in the World War II era!
Ann Rutherford was a good romantic interest for Red.
"Rags" Ragland, who later played Red's pal, in this film was one of the reprobates, but did so nicely.
Venerable character actor Henry O'Neill is along as the sponsor of Red's radio program.
Eve Arden is here as Red's manager, but has little to do, and that's a shame...but she was a known scene stealer.If there's a criticism here it's that about two-thirds of the way through the film it lags a bit, but then comes on stronger at the end.
Recommended, particularly to see the young Red Skelton..
With the exception of the last 15 minutes or so, this was a pretty awful film.Red Skelton, as Walter Benton, radio show star of a crime show who along with his boss's daughter and fiancée is kidnapped by a sinister cult leader, Conrad Veidt, who wants Skelton to come up with a perfect murder so that he can kill the heir of a fortune left by one of his devotees.The film just plods along with ridiculous lines by Skelton and Crew.
Eve Arden is given very little to do as Skelton's agent, her wise-cracking is sorely missed here by the writers.
Ironically, Skelton is Walter Benton in this film; years later, we had the character of Walter Denton in Arden's hit television series "Our Miss Brooks." Richard Crenna played Denton.The film picks up in pace and comedy when the radio is able to be connected and everyone finds out about the plight of Skelton and the two women. |
tt0091836 | Reform School Girls | The film is a satire of the women in prison film genre and deliberately implements many of the tropes commonly found in such films. Such scenes include nude shower scenes, fight scenes, and a suggested romantic relationship between one of the inmates and an administrator. The overall plot involves a new influx of girls coming to the school. They are immediately confronted with Charlie Chambliss (Williams), who is the de facto leader of the school and has an exceedingly close relationship with the head of the ward, Edna (Ast). Charlie and her circle are given special privileges by Edna and it is suggested that Charlie and Edna enjoy a more intimate relationship. Charlie runs a secret society of girls who are loyal to her and to whom she offers protection. The two main new girls break several of Edna's rules and are punished decisively for their infractions.
Jenny (Carol) comes to the school after becoming mixed up in a shoot out. When she and another group of girls arrive, they are forced to strip in front of the prison nurse and then take a shower, while being informed that they will be "inspected inside and out." Afterwards, they are forced to stand naked along a wall while the nurse sprays them with DDT delousing fluid. At one point while being deloused, the nurse tells the girls to "bend over…spread them wide", suggesting that the girls will be given their cavity checks.
Jenny tries to break out after befriending a male driver with whom she has a romantic encounter in the back of his truck. She makes arrangements that he will drive her off the premises but is discovered by a guard and after a scuffle she is apprehended and immediately cast into isolation, where Edna forces her to strip naked before using a firehose to spray her with cold water. Lisa (Stoner) is a runaway who is captured and placed in the reform school. She suffers several losses while at the school including her stuffed bunny and a cat she tends to which was originally found while the girls were out performing hard labor. The cat is discovered by Edna in the dorms and she chases it until finally stomping it to death. Lisa is punished with isolation. After the death of her cat, Lisa attempts to climb to the top of the tower, followed closely by Edna. When she reaches the top she stumbles backward as Edna confronts her, breaks through the barriers and falls to her death. This causes Jenny to smash through a window, which starts a riot which is only quelled when Warden Sutter (Danning) shoots a shotgun into the ceiling.
The film culminates in a protest scene after Dr. Norton (McGinnis), a psychiatrist, forces a meeting of administrators over the conditions and treatment of inmates at the school. She intended to have Jenny testify but a doctor determines, despite all evidence to the contrary, that she is ill and will not be able to attend. Therefore, four other inmates are chosen and none of them has any complaints. During the meeting Jenny knocks out a guard and steals her keys, which allows all the girls to march out into the main open area and voice their grudges. Edna, however, gets a hold of a gun and opens fire on them. Edna shoots Charlie and climbs up the tower from which Sutter has broadcast religious-oriented messages as the girls are going to sleep. Charlie climbs a fence and commandeers a school bus, which she drives toward the tower with Edna standing at the top. Just before impact, Charlie leaps from the bus and it explodes as it hits the tower. The scorched body of Edna tumbles to the ground and many of the girls cheer. Charlie crawls and before she dies shouts out, "See you in hell!" to Edna. The final scene shows Jenny released and getting into a cab. She waves at Dr. Norton, who is implied to be in charge of the new, more benevolent order at the school, and three other girls who are still incarcerated. | violence, cult, cruelty, sadist | train | wikipedia | "Reform School Girls" is a deliciously exaggerated entry in the Women In Prison genre.
Linda Carol plays Jenny, a newcomer to a reform school named Pridemore Juvenile Facility, who mixes it up with both the overbearing head matron Edna (corpulent, big haired Pat Ast, who's an absolute riot) and swaggering top dog convict Charlie (punk rocker Wendy O.
Mind you, there are some scenes like that, but nothing more than you would expect in a woman-in-prison movie.
The actors play it straight, rarely acting like they're in a B-movie, as they seem to take their roles pretty seriously.
Set in a correctional facility for young female offenders, Reform School Girls is technically a Women in Prison movie, but don't expect anything too sleazy ala the films of Jess Franco—as far as the genre goes, this mid 80s effort from seasoned trash director Tom DeSimone is one of the lighter examples, designed to be fun rather than offensive.While it does deliver most of the standard WIP ingredients—cat-fights, communal shower scenes, bull dykes, fragile first-timers, and physical abuse—it's all done in knowingly camp fashion with tongue firmly in cheek.
The big-breasted women saunter round their dorm in sexy lingerie, the nastier inmates and members of staff are grotesque caricatures, the dialogue is deliberately tasteless ('I thought I smelled fish'), and the plot is about as cheesy as it could get.Let's face it, any film which sees a scantily clad Wendy O.
Williams, lead singer of punk/rock group The Plasmatics, stood atop a speeding bus on a collision course with a sadistic, overweight, shotgun toting head matron called Edna (a memorable performance from Pat Ast) was never intended to be taken all that seriously..
Even Pat Ast exhibits some sexuality in this move...but not Sybil.Finally, I was prepared for a little more skin than the movie actually showed.
In reality, though the "girls" are pretty skimpily clad throughout the movie, the actual nude scenes are quite brief.
A young woman gets sent to a reform school/youth prison after a botched bank robbery, and tangles with the corrupt warden and head matron, as well as a gang of vicious girls.
In anticipation of our favorite heiress going to jail next month, I wanted something that she might watch to give her an idea of what to expect, I found this movie with some bizarre characters like Wendy Williams, lead singer for the infamous 80s punk rock band, 'The Plasmatics,' who committed suicide a few years ago.
She was absolutely beyond belief as she paraded the entire movie in leather or panties, and even a thong at the end.Of course there was Sybil Danning, from the Grindhouse segment Werewolf Women of the SS as the bible-spouting Warden, who looked the part of an SS She-Wolf.Pat Ast was the 350-lb matron who burned a bunny, stomped on a kitten and got justice for her evil laugh.There were two shower scenes and one Rambo-type fire hose scene that was way more cool that Rambo: First Blood.Food fights, girl fights, riots, and bra and panties for most of the movie.
"Reform School Girls" (1986) is a highly entertaining, completely over the top, necessarily derivative contribution to the Women In Prison (WIP) subgenre.
Williams (despite the fact that Wendy was 37 when she essayed this teenage role, and looked exactly the same as when she fronted for the Plasmatics), as well as Warhol veteran Pat Ast, the story here nevertheless centers around Linda Carol's Jennifer, who is sent to the "graybar hotel" after abetting her boyfriend in an armed robbery attempt.
She immediately runs afoul of Wendy's Charlie Chambliss, the toughest chick in the "school" (the place really seems more like a prison than a school, it must be said), as well as Pat's grotesque head matron, Edna Dawson.
The film dishes out all the familiar WIP set pieces, such as shower scenes, catfights, a prison break, several riots, and a very uptight warden, here portrayed by cult actress Sybil Danning, underutilized in this particular role.
Entertaining as this whole spoof is, and despite the often very funny lines, I couldn't help thinking that the film that "Reform School Girls" seems to be mainly patterned after, the 1950 Eleanor Parker vehicle "Caged," is infinitely preferable in every department.
The monstrous matron played by Hope Emerson in that earlier film makes even Edna's rants of "complete control" seem tame in comparison, and good as Linda Carol is, she's no Eleanor Parker!
A lot of the violence was pretty brutal for the sort of movie it was and many of the scenes are quite realistic, with realistic, emotional performances from some of the key actors, which is quite at odds with that "women in Prison" titillation theme, especially when you have inmates incongruously wearing high heels, thigh high stockings and g-strings to bed!It seemed almost like a bizarre mash-up of two different films that'd been crudely rammed together: You have Wendy O Williams and her gang of ultra-sexy, violent, tough girls, and the huge lumpy, hilariously sadistic and over the top Pat Ast as "Eddie" doing their very best to make it a sort of Rocky Horror Show ridiculous soft core romp (which would have been marvellous), VS this other theme with the sympathetic characters Jenny, Lisa and Dr Norton where it's a serious look at abuse of power and the horrible toll abuse takes on its victims- almost as it they're going for Cool Hand Luke or Full Metal Jacket sort of stuff...That made a weird mix that didn't really fit together well at all.
It's got loads of nudity, some very sick wardens (the awesome Sybil Danning), and Wendy O.
It's a fun and cheesy movie that gives you exactly what you'd want from a women-in-prison flick.
Doesn't Know What it Wants to Be. I had heard that this film was a parody of women-in-prison films, so when I rented it I was expecting to laugh, as well as see the usual exploitation elements--hopefully lampooned--but they weren't.
This isn't a parody, though it tries for laughs in some places (who can forget the stomping-of-the-cat scene?), which makes it essentially just another women-in-prison flick.Here we have misunderstood blonde Linda Carol taken to a reform school run by Sybil Danning and her obese henchwoman Pat Ast. Linda takes mousy Sherri Stoner under her wing, but when she runs afoul of butch reform school veteran--and Pat Ast's main squeeze--she puts a target on her back that remains there throughout the film.
Sybil Danning fans will be disappointed because she has little to do here, other than issue midnight scripture readings over the PA system).NUDITY: $$$$ (Like most WIP films, there is plenty of it to go around.
Rough-looking Wendy O.Williams is topless in the shower, as is about every other woman in this film.
Neither a serious WIP drama, like director Tom De Simone's earlier "The Concrete Jungle", nor an outright spoof of the genre in the style of "Naked Gun", "Reform School Girls" is a film that suffers from identity crisis.
Williams (who also sings on the soundtrack) has an incredible, ROCKING 37-year-old body which she proudly displays throughout (RIP Wendy), and there is some nice girl vs.
Reform School girls is an over the top woman in prison cult classic that is FUN FUN FUN to watch.
Wendy O Williams is completely mesmerizing to watch, although her acting is pretty bad to say the least.
Pat Ast and Wendy O Williams make this movie what it is, and why Sybil Danning got the DVD cover I'll never know (she's barely in the film).Pat and Wendy (both who have since passed) make great villains though, and are thoroughly enjoyable to watch over and over again.
If you like low budget, entertaining prison films with lots of women, violence & nudity, then you will love Reform School Girls.
Well-intentioned spoof of women's prison films is a real disappointment....
Title: REFORM SCHOOL GIRLSRating: ** (out of 4)Review: The one small film genre I've never dived into yet are Women Prison Movies.
Linda Carol (who made her film debut a year earlier in the grade-Z high school comedy SCHOOL SPIRIT) stars as Jenny, a young teenage girl who finds herself going to reform school, and having to deal with a overweight monster of a warden (Pat Ast), as well as lesbian punkette and her gang, whose wardrobes seem to be limited to G-strings and a bra (Wendy O.
Sherri Stoner plays her best friend Lisa, who is been affected more by Ast and Williams, and former Playboy playmate Sybil Danning plays the Head Warden.
As an exaggerated guilty pleasure, the film is OK, with cheesy dialogue and mediocre acting (even by Williams!); overall, though, REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS is just plain forgettable.
First, I'm not a huge fan of Women in Prison films (W.I.P.), but like every men, i love beautiful women in underwear and thongs so this kind of movies always deliver in that department, at least.
Reform School Girls is more like a parody of the genre, or at least a not-that serious movie.
Williams is here performing a bad girl and she is always in thong, just like every other chick in this movie.Well, except for the obese wicked warden, thanks god she keeps her clothes on.
Thats a letdown for this kind of movies but overall, its entertaining and it features very good rock n roll music.
not to be taken too seriously as the many actors camp it up in this girl in prison plot line especially pat ast's character so aptly named Edna...who so happens to rule her little prison with iron and fist.
my favourite character had to be portrayed by none other than Wendy o.williams who is far from the age of a teenage delinquent as she prances around the prison yard like she owns the place.
REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS is the only movie I was carded for when I was a kid.
(This tape has served me well over the past decade or so, but I'm still hanging on to it since I don't see the other movies on it coming out on DVD anytime soon - someone let me know when SCREAM FOR HELP and CHOPPING MALL have been upgraded so I can use this beat-up tape to record MST3K eps.)Anyway, REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS is trashy, ridiculous, and endlessly entertaining.
This is the movie for you if you like scantily clad "juvenile delinquents" roaming around snarling with big 80's hair & makeup, nude shower scenes, & audio that leaves a lot to be desired.
This greatest trailer ever also perfectly captures the tone of the film, as it's a demented tongue-in-cheek bad girls penitentiary exploitation flick that definitely shouldn't be taken too seriously.
My best guess would be that writer/director Tom DeSimone is a pleasantly deranged and sleaze-obsessed guy that single-handedly wanted to bring homage to all "Women in Prison" movies at once.
The lead warden (played by no one less than Sybil Danning) looks an awful lot like Dyanne Thorne when she gave image to Ilsa, the She Wolf of the SS and several of the other supportive characters appear to be pure stereotypes as well.
This movie along with the 1983 film Chained Heat are the 2 best of these cult women in prison films.
The legendary punk rock goddess Wendy O Williams is the character Charlie the way too old for this film " teenager" villianess lesbo who is the queen of her cellblock.The young 16year old actress (at the time of this movie being filmed) Linda Carol is the heroine of the film as the character Jenny who when she speaks out against the horrors of the prison system and it's mistreatment of the young juveniles, is then terroized by the head prison matron Edna played by the great late actress Pat Ast. And to top off this wonderful b-movie cast is former Playboy Playmate of the Year 1972 Sybil Danning, who plays a dominatrix-like prison warden who nightly loves to torment these twisted juvenile deliquents with passages from the Bible being read over a loudspeaker system.It has a scene that is copied straight from the 1st ever woman in prison film the 1950 film Caged, where the prison girls decide to take in a pet kitty and when the mean fat prison matron finds the kitty let's say it's a very disturbing scene.
This was supposed to be a spoof of the women in prison movies, but it comes across as just boring, even with lots of girls in the buff or tiny underwear.
I'm not sure what makes them all so interesting, but maybe it triggers a sense of "What would you do in this situation?" kind of interesting.But in all honesty, the only real reason I sat down to see reform school girls was Sherri Stoner, who played Lisa.
As a big animaniacs fan, it's kind of sad to see Sherri's serious dramatic talent wasted on this film, considering she wrote some of the funniest Animaniacs bits.The movie begins in a back alley where main character Jenny (Linda Carol) gets caught up in a shoot-out against her will.
The 2 of them are subjected to numerous inhumanities during their time in reform school, which is run more like a prison by it's Warden (Sybil Danning) the notorious Edna (Pat Ast) who in turn controls the meanest of the girls, Charlie (Wendy.
O. Williams) If you're going to see this movie, be prepared for a lot of cheese.
Not all the girls are as good as the others when it comes to acting, at times it feels like a softcore porn flick over a prison film.
it's aim is to be a parody of the WIP (Women in Prison) films that were made before it.If you've got nothing to do for 90 minutes, it's worth a view..
Even Danning was more convincing in her supportive role as prison warden.The most laughable I considered was matron Edna's posterior "complete control".
Don't waste your time like I did.Jenny is sent to a women's reform school.
Very much modeled on 1950's seminal wip film Caged, this one stars Linda Carol as a good girl who gets caught up in her boyfriend's crime and gets sent to jail for it where she must deal with a violent lesbian gang (led by punk star Wendy O.
Williams), a domineering warden (Sybil Danning) and a sadistic headmistress (Pat Ast).
This film is a absolutely fun resurrection/send up of the classic New World women in prison movies of the seventies.
This reform school seems to be made up almost exclusively of hot looking women in their 20's except for star Wendy O' Williams who was mid-thirties when this epic was made.
Evil Prison Matron- This is role Pat Ast was born to play and it is obvious that she is having the time of her life.
Sweet Innocent- This is where Reform School girls earns bonus points not just for casting an actress who is good in the film (Sherri Stoner) but someone who achieved celebrity years later as a figure model for Disney thus attracting a new audience to the film of people who want to see the little mermaid naked.
Prisoner who runs things- Many people have complained about Wendy O Williams in the film but I thought she was a lot of fun.
Bad people get their due ending-Fun ending which features gun fire and an exploding bus caps the film off in style with an added bonus of a killer song sung by Wendy O Williams played over the end credits.
Although many people were put off by the nudity and occasional violence I think anyone old enough to remember Caged Heat will have a great time with this film as long as they have a high tolerance for kitten stomping..
This movie is a lot of fun especially if your into WiP flicks.
Of course the plot and dialogue is kind of weak and at times I wondered why am I watching this movie, but there's just something about girls wearing lingerie in prison and those big eighties hair do's.
Surprisingly Jenny, played by the sexy Linda Carol, was only sixteen years old when this movie was made but looked like she was about twenty to me.
The plots pretty basic, Jenny the star, rails against the oppressiveness of the schools authoritarians played by Sutter and Edna, the warden and henchwoman.
This movie could have been a whole lot better but its still pretty entertaining..
They've taken the old "women's prison" cliché and essentially perfected it with this parody-homage hybrid.Linda Carol plays Jenny, a hot teen shipped off by the state to a deteriorating (is there any other kind?) reform school, headed by Ilsa-like Warden Sutter (Sybil Danning) and watched over by the hilariously evil and over-the-top matron, Edna (Pat Ast), who does a terrific job making you absolutely despise her.
Not to mention the fact that, although she looks great, she's well past reform school age (don't suffer the delusion that this wasn't intentional).Also, Sherri Stoner creates a very sympathetic character as 'Lisa', a sweet, innocent, naive, but also traumatized and neurotic girl who's been shipped from place to place and suffers the most abuse from Edna.
Actually it's not really a prison but a reform school.
How this woman, who looks like she's pushing 45, is still in a reform school is not explained.
Sitting on her hands is not the usual M.O. for a warden in a woman's prison flick.Anyway, the rest of the movie can't save the Danning disaster.
"Reform School Girls" didn't have its heart in the right place.
A mildly scuzzy women-in-prison movie of the 1980s, REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS is far too cheesy to be a successful movie. |
tt0112408 | Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold | The three finalists for Plaything Magazine's "Centerfold of the Year" are Inga (Raelyn Saalman), Betty (Tammy Parks) and Angel Grace (J. J. North). During a photoshoot, Betty makes some rather scathing remarks regarding Angel's appearance. Angel becomes self-conscious, and goes to Dr. Lindstrom (John LaZar) at his clinic. Angel had taken beauty enhancing treatments previously, but now wants to get back on the program. Though Lindstrom warns her that any additional doses could be fatal, Angel still pleads to be put back on the program. Dr. Lindstrom gives her a case with several vials, cautioning her to only take one a day. That night, Angel takes her first vial. The result of it causes her breasts to increase in size.
Shortly thereafter, Angel, Betty and Inga go to the Plaything Mansion, and meet Bob Gordon (Jay Richardson), the founder of Plaything Magazine. The night before the photoshoot with all the girls, the shoot's photographer Mark (Tim Abell) tries to sleep with each of the girls. Though Betty and Inga shoot him down, Angel gives into his sweet talk.
Angel accidentally oversleeps and misses the beginning of the photoshoot. As she checks herself in the mirror, she realizes that she didn't take a vial the previous day, and wrinkles are settling in. In an act of desperation, she takes 3–5 vials. The overdose causes her to pass out for just a moment. When she reawakens, she has grown easily 1–2 feet taller than normal. Angel is oblivious, even though her high heels and bikini seem smaller.
Making her way to the photoshoot, Angel and the girls begin posing for Mark, before Angel suddenly faints. While Mark, Betty and Inga go to alert Gordon, Mark's assistant Wilson (Ted Monte) stays behind.
When the group returns, Wilson and Angel are gone. Wilson emerges from behind a nearby cliff, followed by Angel, now over 60 feet tall.
Sometime afterward, a circus tent is set up for Angel, who is still upset at her sudden growth spurt. Back at the Plaything Mansion, Mark and Gordon plot to use Angel's size as a major selling point for the magazine, and then turn her over to the government for experimentation. Wilson overhears the conversation, and confronts Mark about the plan; Mark shrugs off Wilson's concerns.
Over the next couple days, Mark tries to win over Angel's embarrassment at being a giantess, in hopes that they can conduct her '60-foot photoshoot'. He explains that Gordon has arranged for a specialist to come in and help her, and that they have tried to call Dr. Lindstrom for her, but haven't been able to reach him.
Wilson one night sneaks into Angel's tent, and explains what he overheard. It is here that Wilson finally confesses his love for Angel, and his concern over Mark and Gordon's plan.
After the conversation, Angel wanders out into the nearby desert to think.
The next day, Wilson manages to get a hold of Dr. Lindstrom, who agrees to come up to the Mansion to see Angel. As he finishes the conversation, Mark finds a rough-copy of the next issue of Plaything, with a 3–6 page spread, promising Plaything's 'Biggest Centerfold Yet.' Betty finds the issue and grows angry that Angel appears to have trumped her.
Some distance away from the Mansion, Mark has finally convinced Angel to do the photoshoot, taking pictures of her as she bathes in a wooden watertower.
Betty, hellbent on revenge, tries to recruit Inga to her cause, but gets no sympathy. Sneaking into Angel's room, Betty finds Angel's case from the Lindstrom clinic, and takes some of the vials.
Angel meanwhile, has finished her shoot in the watertank and is snuggling with Mark, when Gordon and Wilson meet up with her. Gordon continues his lie about a specialist coming, when Wilson finally exposes them as liars in front of Angel. Angel grows upset at being lied to, but the mood is shattered when Betty appears, having grown to 60 ft. Angel and Betty begin fighting, just as Dr. Lindstrom arrives. Lindstrom tries to administer a tranquilizer dart on Angel, but it instead ends up striking Betty, who pulls it out and throws it at Gordon. Angel and Betty then continue their fight which eventually leads them to downtown Los Angeles.
As Lindstrom, Mark and Wilson arrive, the girls have sent a myriad of people running down the darkened streets. Wilson uses Lindstrom's special antidote, which shrinks Angel and Betty back to normal. Angel happily decks Betty, whom Mark runs to. Wilson goes to Angel's side, and the two embrace. Mark meanwhile, forcibly tries to kiss Betty, who explodes, due to an instability with the antidote. | cult, adult comedy | train | wikipedia | null |
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