davidadamczyk/imdb-100 huggingface dataset:
Can a mentally challenged black youth be a catalyst to unite people in a South Carolina town? The answer appears to be that in spite of his handicap, James Kennedy, understood much more than what he was given credit for and went to become a fixture in the sports scene. Also, the film is saying how many of us overlook people with problems that can be helped if only we have the patience Coach Jones showed to the young man because of his own guilt in his heart.
"Radio", directed by Michael Tolllin, is a formula film inspired on a true story. Yet, the movie is not a complete failure because of the inspired performances the director was able to get from his wonderful cast.
Coach Jones is instrumental in getting the young man, who is called Radio because his passion for collecting them, involved in sports, a passion he discovers in this retarded man who has had only hard knocks in his young life. Coming from a poor background, Radio, lives with his mother who is protective of him and questions the coach's intentions. Radio is seen by the school kids as a mascot, at first, then, his sunny disposition wins him the acceptance of everyone because he is a good person without an ounce of malice in his body.
The film owes a lot to Ed Harris and Cuba Gooding Jr. who make a great pair as the coach and Radio. Mr. Harris, one of the best actors of our times is never boring in anything he graces with his presence. He gets the essence of the principled coach who sees the possibility to make amends for something that bothers him from his past. Cuba Gooding Jr. is also at his best portraying the mentally challenged young man.
The supporting cast is excellent. S. Ephata Merkerson, one of the best actresses of her generation, does interesting work as the mother of Radio. Alfre Woodard, another good actress plays the high school principle with style. Debra Winger, only has a few scenes in the film.
"Radio", while being sentimental, will warm anyone's heart because it shows how we tend to see some people are in our society that we know nothing about and how quick we are to judge them. Michael Tollin puts a lot of ideas in the proper perspective for us.

Sentiment: positive
Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur is not one of his best-regarded films; made between two vastly more popular and critically praised pictures, Suspicion and Shadow Of a Doubt, it's generally regarded as a lesser effort. I agree that the later film is groundbreaking, drawing Hitchcock wholly into the American mainstream for the first time, but Saboteur is in its way at least as lively as Suspicion; its chief flaw being its less than charismatic star players, Bob Cummings and Priscilla Lane.
In Saboteur we find Hitchcock feeling his way around America, literally, as its lead character travels from California to New York in search of an arsonist for whose crime he was accused. Cummings is very youthful here, and quite engaging. His boyishness (but not immaturity) perfectly suits the character he is portraying, and seems appropriate, as the director, though middle-aged, was in the process of reinventing himself, and an older, more established star might have thrown things off. Priscilla Lane's spunky heroine, which not a typical type for the director, was very much a common type in American films at the time; and she and Cummings provide an openness and a youth the director needed both in his life and work at this time. I cannot imagine older, more solid types,--Cooper and Stanwyck for instance--doing any better, as they would have, between them, carried, well, too much baggage.
As is the norm in Hitchcock's films, nothing is as it appears. Where Saboteur differs from his better known films is that the audience is let in on the game early. Though Cummings is an accused arsonist, we know that he is innocent. The villains become apparent fairly soon; and the movie hinges more on its plot than its ironies. What pleasures there are are incidental, and here the Master does not disappoint. There is an interesting, Tod Browningish interlude with some circus freaks, who help Cummings elude capture. In another scene, reminiscent of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Cummings spends some time in the cottage of a blind man, who, as it turns out, is Lane's uncle. Was the director perhaps studying key American films of the previous decade? Whatever the case, these and other offbeat and discursive aspects of the movie give it a playfulness and variety, which, when one adds the factor of quite youthful leads, makes the picture seem like the work of a younger man, still learning his craft.
The film's later scenes, in New York, are more suspenseful and typical of the director, as the picture gradually becomes more Hitchockian as it moves along. In the end I find it a satisfying work; and as neither Cummings nor Lane has a dark side as an actor, neither does the movie have one. It is deliberately lightweight, and I suspect semi-experimental; an attempt by Hitchcock to see if he could pull off, in an American setting, the sort of story he had done so well in England. He succeeded admirably. The next logical step: Shadow Of a Doubt, a film in which the main character travels east to west, and with a wholly different set of values and plans.

Sentiment: positive
The creature? Yeah, it and the movie it stars in. Hell would seem infinitely more frightening if the damned were forced to watch this for all eternity. Six college students shack up in a condemned hospital to save money and end up victims of an ancient monster who must claim five victims before it returns to "the shadowy world from which it came!" Other than having major logic and coherence problems (plus the fact it appears to be unfinished), this disaster is terribly acted, written, edited (by J.R. Bookwalter) and directed, and the make-up FX are almost nonexistent. It's also significantly shorter than it claims (at only 80 minutes), but I'm not complaining. It's the worst movie I've seen from executive producer Charles Band's Full Moon productions and boy is that BAD!
To note, I almost didn't bother with a review, but this has gotten inexplicably good reviews on here and I figured a varying opinion was in order. Proceed with caution!

Sentiment: negative
I read ashew's comment and thought they must have been watching an entirely different picture!
I just watched the film this morning and was quite surprised.
To address ashew's comments:
Trail Street is a very well done western.
And Randolph Scott was in it quite a bit!
Gabby Hayes was funnier than I've ever seen him!
The bad guys had very good comeuppances as far as I was concerned.
Plus:
It was interesting to see Robert Ryan as a straight-laced good guy - he's usually so slimy.
In all, a good western, very well acted and written.
I liked the background story of Kansas and the "winter wheat" that supposedly helped it become a state, too.
I thought the girl who played Susan was lovely - can't think why she didn't become a bigger star!

Sentiment: positive
It is difficult, today and in the US, to understand this movie. We have nothing, really, to compare it with. Here is an attempt at comparison: It is as if during the last years of Saddam's rule, a filmmaker in Iraq were somehow able to make a film, which, for the first time ever, showed life as it really was lived in that country. The life of ordinary young girl, with all the terror and the repression full blown. Then the film was exhibited freely in Iraq. If you could imagine that unlikely event, then you might have an idea of what went on with this film in the last few years of the Soviet Union. Prior to this film, Soviet cinema was highly censored. Soviet movies would only show an ideal life in the worker's paradise. Then suddenly this. The alcoholism, the random sex, the ugly wasteland that was the Soviet city, the choking pollution, the proletariat victimizing each other and themselves, the utter hopelessness - it is all there. People were stunned. Soviet women would often weep during the showings. Many would say that this is the story of their lives. It was a cultural earthquake the like of which filmmakers only dream of accomplishing. It undoubtedly hastened the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Reading the reviews here, I can see that few understand this film. One says it was groundbreaking because it contained real sex. To the Soviet viewers at the time, the sex was a minor event compared to fact that it portrayed reality for the first time in Soviet cinema.
Others compare it to current films such as "As Good as it Gets" Might as well compare Homer's Illiad to the latest John Grissam novel. They simply do not compare. This is not just a film, this is was a social document, and a transforming social force. It needs to be viewed that way or you will not understand the film.
Other reviewers see it as a film about a dysfunctional Russian family. One even says that it is difficult to feel sorry for Vera because she keeps coming back to her family. The point is that Vera and her family are symbols for all of Soviet life. There was nowhere else to go, because the family down the block and in the next town were the same. This was life in the Soviet Union for most people.
This is a film that can be viewed on many levels: as a drama it traces the landscape of despair, as a social document it shows the living conditions of the time, as a political document it shows the attitude of the people and many of the reasons for the break-up of the Soviet Union, and as a moral document it shows the evils of a dictatorship that is out of control, and the cruelties that victims will practice on each other.
Little Vera clearly shows the human toll that Socialism eventually takes on its victims, despite any good intentions that system may have. In doing so it helped end the Soviet regime thus contributing to one of the major changes in modern history. This film achieves what only a few films have ever accomplished. It is not only an stunning representation of history but it also become a force in that shaped history.

Sentiment: positive
What exactly is the point of pretending to "con" people out of things like ski passes and pizza? I fail to see a point. I'd not clever or original and it strikes me as being extremely pointless.
Skyler Stone doesn't seem to be a very down-to-earth or even a nice guy. He has very little charisma and just about anyone could do what he does in this show.
The worse thing about this piece of crap, is the fact that a lot of the phone calls are reenacted, so not only are they apparently conning the poor people on the other end of the phone, but they are also conning the audience who don't have enough time to read the "disclaimed" that flickers across the screen for about half a second at the beginning at the end of the show!
Not only that but he also claims this is how he lives his whole life. What an lie. No one could live their lives like this and the fact he says this is not only yet another con to get his show watched, but it's also one of the most fabricated, blatant pieces of bull$hit I've ever heard. This guy is an @$$!
What makes them think that going to all the trouble of, for example, write and record a song, get someone to pain a HUGE picture of you and two mates, get dance lessons and actually travel to a ski resort is actually worth only getting free ski passes and some food for free? What is the point of that? It's an awful lot of trouble to go to just for a few ski passes and a bit of snow.
As far as "comedy" goes, this is bottom of the barrel stuff.

Sentiment: negative
Who won the best actress Oscar for 1933? It should have been Laura Hope Crewes for her magnificent portrayal of the most monstrous mother ever. She truly is one of the great character actresses of all time. She played the frivolous Prudence Duvernoy in "Camille" (1936) and her best remembered role is Aunt Pittypat in "Gone With the Wind".
Irene Dunne was the "official" star of the film but her scenes with Laura Hope Crewes were dynamite.
David (Joel McCrea) is in Heidelberg when he is offered a job in New York. His wife, Christine (Irene Dunne) can continue her studies at the Rockafellar Centre. Their first stop in America is a visit to David's mother, Mrs. Phelps. To say that Laura Hope Crewes dominates every scene is an under-statement. From her first entrance - in a frantic burst of effort to greet her "big boy" - all attention is on her. Even sitting around the tea table, when she forgets Hester's existence, even forgetting how she takes her tea, you know something is not quite right.(Hester has been living there for a while.)
Frances Dee is completely sweet and so right in her role as the adorable Hester. Her performance in this film, especially the scene where she has hysterics and the aftermath proves how under-rated as an actress she was.
All the young cast are excellent. Eric Linden is superb as Robert, the younger son who comes to the realization that his mother is horrible but can do nothing about escaping from his mother's spell. Joel McCrea, at one point says "painting roses on bathtubs - that's more your style". There is a very subtle suggestion in the film of Robert's sexuality.
Irene Dunne is excellent in whatever film or genre she tried.

Sentiment: positive
Ex-reporter Jacob Asch (Eric Roberts) is hired by an acquaintance (Raymond J. Barry) to find his ex-wife and son. Asch heads to Palm Springs and quickly locates the ex Laine (Beverly D'Angelo) with someone he believes to be the son (a young Johnny Depp). But things turn out to be a bit more complicated as Asch discovers former white trash Laine has definitely married up in the form of millionaire Simon Fleischer (Dan Hedaya) and her first son is nowhere to be seen.
Director/writer Matthew Chapman is channeling BODY HEAT here and this mid-80s neo-noir is watchable enough thanks to an all-star cast and nice locations. D'Angelo was still looking good around this time, so she makes for a good femme fatale and isn't afraid to show some skin. However, the mystery isn't very compelling in the end. Co-starring Dennis Lipscomb, Emily Longstreth and Henry Gibson. Chapman made several thrillers in the 80s, but his "biggest" career achievement was co-authoring the screenplay for the infamous COLOR OF NIGHT.

Sentiment: positive