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On the face of it, this should be a great film, a great cast, a plot with many possibilities and one of Hollywood's finest behind the camera for the first time.
However, its clear why it was another 8 years before spacey decided to try directing a movie again. This movie fails on so many levels. In a film where there is not much action and most of the scenes are shot in a couple of locations, it is imperative that suspense and continuity are provided by the director. Not so here, the great cast is horribly under-used, none more so than the great, late John Spencer, the plot is so run of the mill and nothing you haven't seen in a hundred other TV movies. There is so little character development you end up not caring for any of the protagonists. At least we know spacey has a lot of mates and clout in Hollywood studios to get away with a poor flick like this


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A trio of low-life criminals, led by Matt Dillon, botches a late-night burglary. They flee but quickly cross paths with the police who just happen to be in hot pursuit of a terrorist. Of course the police mistake the burglar gang for the terrorist, the real terrorist gets away, and the burglars are forced to take refuge in a small dive of a bar, taking hostages, unaware why the police are so intent on catching them. And guess who else has picked the bar as a sanctuary for the night?
Unbelievable? Absolutely. And it goes down hill from there. Spacey did acquire a good bit of acting talent; Matt Dillon, Faye Dunaway, Gary Sinise, Viggo Mortensen, and M. Emmett Walsh, but they're all wasted. Mostly because after all the characters get stuck in the bar, all they do for the remainder of the film is argue. Endlessly and aimlessly. Long before the conclusion of the film you've stopped giving a damn about what happens to them.


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Kevin Spacey is very talented, but unfortunately directing is not his forte. I had high expectations about the film before I rented it and maybe that is why I disliked it so much. I admire Spacey's attempt at making a film that takes place mostly in one small setting, but it's not the attempt that counts. I found the film dull, boring, and stretched out. The acting was nothing spectacular. Gary Sinise has done much better, especially since he is conscious in most of his other films. Skeet Ulrich was disappointing, but this was one of his first films (I did get a kick out of how young and chubby this Scream star looked). The only thing that impressed me about this film was the one shot of the car wreck from above. The center line of the road was perfectly centered and the camera moved on along the line and past the wreck. However, that shot was very "Usual Suspects"ish and my guess is Spacey got the idea from that earlier film of his (which is very good mind you). If you want to see a fabulous film that takes place in one small setting, watch Hitchcock's Lifeboat. Maybe Spacey should have watched it before filming this.


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Massacre is a film directed by Andrea Bianchi (Burial Ground) and produced by legendary Italian horror director Lucio Fulci. Now with this mix of great talent you would think this movie would have been a true gore fest. This could not be further from that. Massacre falls right on its face as being one of the most boring slasher films I have seen come out of Italian cinema. I was actually struggling to stay awake during the film and I have never had that problem with Italian horror films.
Massacre starts out with a hooker being slaughtered on the side of the road with an ax. This scene was used in Fulci's Nightmare Concert. This isn't a bad scene and it raises your expectations of the movie as being an ax wielding slaughter. Unfortuanitly, the next hour of the movie is SO boring. The movie goes on to a set of a horror film being filmed and there is a lot of character development during all these scenes but the characters in the movie are so dull and badly acted your interest starts to leak away. The last 30 minutes of the movie aren't so bad but still could have been much better. The gore in the movie was pathetic and since Fulci used most of the gore scenes in Nightmare Concert there was nothing new here. The end of the movie did leave a nice twist but there was still to much unanswered and the continuity falls right through the floor.
This wasn't a very good film but for a true Italian horror freak (like myself) this movie is a must have since it is very rare. 4/10 stars


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Prior to this film, I had only seen two films by director Andrea Bianchi: the trashy zombie flick Le Notti del Terrore (1981), famous amongst horror fans for its unforgettable performance from man-child Peter Bark, and the enjoyably sleazy giallo Strip Nude For Your Killer. Neither film was a particularly spectacular piece of cinema, but both were entertaining in their own special way (and the fact that they featured plenty of gore and nudity didn't hurt). Massacre, however, is dull, dull, dull, despite quite a bit of splatter and the odd spot of gratuitous bare flesh.
The story, about a series of murders in a hotel where the cast and crew of a horror film are residing during their shoot, is confusing and oh-so boring: when the blood isn't flowing and the skin isn't on show, the film is a real struggle to sit through (it took me four attempts to finish), with endless scenes of unlikeable characters bickering among themselves and doing very little of note.
The only point of interest about the film is that its producer, Lucio Fulci, used several of its death scenes to pad out his mega-gory movie Cat In The Brain (AKA Nightmare Concert). And if you've already seen that film, then there is very little reason to bother with Massacre.


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In case half of this film's footage looks strangely familiar, it means you watch way too much of this gory Italian cult-crap! For you see, the notorious demigod Lucio Fulci did not only produce this movie, he also took the liberty of re-using the most sadistic killing sequences in his own (and more easily traceable) "Cat in the Brain". The opening scene already, in which a prostitute is brutally decapitated with an axe, features in Fulci's later film and so do another handful of killings and sleaze moments. Andrea Bianchi's "Masssacre" fails miserably as a giallo, since the search for the sadistic killer among a movie-crew shooting a horror movie is all but compelling and suspenseful, but it's still good entertainment if you're into cheap 'n shlocky horror trash. The incoherent script introduces a whole bunch of repugnant characters who're all potential maniacs, but none of the red herrings Biachi comes up with are plausible and you can point out the killer almost immediately. Whatever remains to enjoy are the truly misogynous make-up effects and the hilariously awful acting performances of the ensemble cast. Whenever there isn't any bloodshed on screen, like between the first and second murder, "Massacre" is a slow and almost intolerable with its inane dialogs and thoroughly unexciting photography. Thankfully in the second half, there are women getting impaled on fences and males being stabbed repeatedly with rusty spikes. The music is crap and the use of filming locations is very unimaginative. My advise would be to skip this puppy and go straight for the aforementioned "Cat in the Brain". That one features ALL the great moments of "Massacre", and then some.


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Sorry Fulci fans, but I could not get through this one. The soundtrack was about as annoying as they come, the acting was puerile, the story has been done and done, and the direction was non-existent.
Massacre honestly looked like a children's film project. But I've seen some of those, and they actually look better than this did! It appears to have been so underfunded they couldn't afford ... ANYTHING! Not a DoP, not a director, no one who even remotely had a clue what acting was. It was a very poor cinematic experience; one of my worst.
This was about the worst suck-fest I've seen, next to Terror Toons which is second only to Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I've nothing else to say about it.
It rates a 0.1/10 from...
the Fiend :.


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Here again is yet another Diane Lane movie where she cheats on her husband. Is this the only role she knows how to play? This time it's set in 1969 and she cheats on her husband with the blouse man. I am so not surprised because that is so very predictable. Then her husband gets mad and throws the milk. I wouldn't be surprised if she slept with the milkman as well. I wouldn't be surprised if she slept with the ice cream man too because this is a very boring movie. Then after some milk throwing, she says sorry and sees the blouse man again. Duh. Then while she is making it with him, her son gets stung by wasps. My mom always told me not to throw rocks at a wasps nest. This kids mom didn't have time to tell him that, she was too busy with the blouse man.


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Why do people who do not know what a particular time in the past was like feel the need to try to define that time for others? Replace Woodstock with the Civil War and the Apollo moon-landing with the Titanic sinking and you've got as realistic a flick as this formulaic soap opera populated entirely by low-life trash. Is this what kids who were too young to be allowed to go to Woodstock and who failed grade school composition do? "I'll show those old meanies, I'll put out my own movie and prove that you don't have to know nuttin about your topic to still make money!" Yeah, we already know that. The one thing watching this film did for me was to give me a little insight into underclass thinking. The next time I see a slut in a bar who looks like Diane Lane, I'm running the other way. It's child abuse to let parents that worthless raise kids. It's audience abuse to simply stick Woodstock and the moonlanding into a flick as if that ipso facto means the film portrays 1969.


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Any movie that portrays the hard-working responsible husband as the person who has to change because of bored, cheating wife is an obvious result of 8 years of the Clinton era.
It's little wonder that this movie was written by a woman.


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Recently, I had opportunity to view a working print in Kansas City (Olathe, KS.) of this title. It is difficult for me, being a lover of the art as I am, to report the following, but, the truth sometimes hurts, and quite frankly after sitting through this tripe (I'm using the slang definition here - worthless statements or writing) for an hour and a half, I feel obligated to share (WARN) any interested parties. Let's begin at the beginning, a good place to start as always. The first 15 minutes are not really that bad, a couple of laughs, and decent development, but then it is downhill from there. This is the story of a woman, in her mid thirties, that (as the writer would like for you to believe) is dissatisfied with her life and unfulfilled. The first major difficulty occurs when if you don't know that fact going into the movie, you won't know it when she suddenly risks it all for, in my opinion, a very unkempt and unlikely fling with a local salesman. There is little development (drastically insufficient development) to justify her actions for the affair she has, and when it occurs, one feels, as I did, that she is just of low moral character. The word "slut" comes to mind, hopefully, they'll let that pass the review and post the comment. This, in my opinion, is the first fatal flaw of the film. If you're married or have ever been in love, irregardless of whether you are male or female, its going to turn you off. Quite frankly, I feel that it would have made a much better "blue movie" - that's the level in my opinion of which the screenplay is deserving. The second fatal flaw is the casting, Diane Lane just didn't work for me here, and Viggo Mortensen is not the right man for the job, believe me. The only saving grace to the entire film is Anna Paquin, the depth of her ability as a fine actress shines in places, conveying a subtle yet very blunt (I apologize for the dichotomy but it is accurate) portrayal of an emerging teen. Bravo, well done. I'm not going to give the ending away, but I was disappointed, being billed as a slice of life romance is one thing... but an ending like that.... Well, if that teased you enough to see this picture, don't say I didn't warn you, but you better look fast - if this celluloid is released, I doubt it goes four weeks before bursting into flames. I'd say wait for the video, but the free sex education tapes at most video rental outlets have more entertainment value. Hmmm, Dustin Hoffman produced this, you think he'd learn after Ishtar. This film once carried the working title "Blouse Man" and should have been left on the rack. If you've never in your life wanted to walk out on a film, give this one 35-40 minutes, the only thing worth staying for is Anna Paquin, if you can stomach the fact that you'll find your mind drifting to whether or not you took out the garbage before you left home, which is probably where you should have stayed in the first place if you're off to the movies to see this one. That's my two cents, for what it is worth.


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Seeing as the world snooker championship final finished in a premature and disappointing manner with Ronnie O`Sullivan defeating Greame Dott by 18 frames to 8 BBC 2 found a gap in their schedule and so decided to broadcast A WALK ON THE MOON a movie I had absolutely no knowledge off
I missed a few seconds of the title credits so had no idea Viggo Mortensen starred in it and thought possibly it might be a cheap TVM , certainly the opening with the mawkish Pearl and Marty taking their kids to a Summer camp has that sort of made for TV feel though the brightly lit ( Too brightly lit ) cinematography seemed to suggest this was a cinematic film and it wasn`t until the appearence of Viggo Mortensen as hippy guy Walker that I realised this was a cinema release , after all someone of Mortensen`s stature wouldn`t star in a TVM , I mean that`s like a legend like Robert DeNiro appearing in a straight to video film . Wait a minute , didn`t Bob .... ?
Some people on this site have mentioned that Pearl and Marty are an unconvincing on-screen couple and I agree . I can understand why Pearl would be attracted to exciting hippy guy but have no idea why Walker would be attracted to plain house wife Pearl . The sixties was before my time but surely if you`ve got the choice between hippy chicks and bored house wives it`s not really a choice at all . Mind you a lot of people took LSD in those days so I guess that explains it
I feel the major problem of A WALK ON THE MOON comes down to the fact it`s a romantic drama at heart ( Just like you`d expect in a TVM ) with several cloying coming of age scenes so why include a fairly explicit sex scene ? It jars with the rest of the movie and is possibly off putting to the menopuasal women who were 20 something in 1969 . I say possibly because the movie also seems to aim at a teeenage market with the coming of age scenes and those teenagers will probably be bored with the historical and social context of man walking on the moon and Woodstock . In other words A WALK ON THE MOON tries to attract many types of audience but will probably appeal to none of them


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Tony Goldwyn is a good actor who evidently is trying his hand at directing. "A Walk on the Moon" appears to have borrowed from other, better made films. The present story takes place in the late sixties at a summer resort for working class Jews not far from Woodstock. The screen treatment by Pamela Gray doesn't have much going for it, so it's a puzzle why Mr. Goldwyn decided to tackle this film as his first attempt at direction.
The Kantrowitz family is spending some time at the resort. We see them arrive at the small bungalow that is going to be their temporary home. Marty, the father, comes only for the week-end; he works in what appears to be a family small appliance business repairing television sets, mostly. In a few days the first man will walk in space, so the excitement is evident.
The Kantrowitz women are left behind. Pearl, Marty's wife and her mother-in-law, Lilian, spend idle days in the place until the "blouse salesman" arrives. Pearl goes browsing and she finds much more than a shmatte; she gets the salesman as well. It appears that Pearl and Marty have no sexual life at all. After two children, Pearl, who appears to be sexy and with a high libido is ready for some extra marital fun.
That is the basic premise for the film, which becomes a soap opera when the young daughter, Alison, decides to play hooky and go to the Woodstock festival nearby where, horror of horrors, she witnesses her own mom making out with the blouse salesman! What's a girl to do? Well, stay tuned for the grand finale when all the parties are happily reunited by the little son's bedside when he is stung by wasps and the salesman comes to apply some home remedy, and daddy is called from the city, after knowing about Pearl's betrayal with the younger stud.
Poor Diane Lane, she went to make "Unfaithful" later on, which is the upscale version of this dud. Viggo Mortensen is the salesman who caters to his lonely female customers whispering little somethings in their ears! Liev Schreiber as Marty, the cuckolded husband, doesn't have much to do. Anna Paquin plays the rebellious Alison and Tovah Feldshuh is the unhappy Nana, who would like to have stayed in the city watching her soap operas instead of witnessing first hand one that is playing in her own backyard!
Watch it at your risk, or pop the DVD in the telly when you have a fun crowd at home and you really want to have a laugh, or two dishing the film.


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In what could have been an otherwise run of the mill, mediocre film about infidelity in the sixties (the subtle "free-love" period), the creators of this film pile on ridiculous scenario after ridiculous scenario and top it all off with a trite little cherry on top, happily ever after ending. At no time did I ever feel sympathy for Diane Lane or Anna Paquin in their troublesome middle-class care free life, nor did I feel for the emasculated Liev Shrieber. The story line plods along slowly to its predictable, pathetic conclusion and the only thing interesting and watchable about this film is the stunning Diane Lane topless. Here's a hint, it occurs about 30 minutes into the film. Fast forward to that part and skip the rest.


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In 1972, after his wife left to go her own way, Elvis Presley began dating Linda Thompson. Miss Thompson, a good-humored, long haired, lovely, statuesque beauty queen, is charted to fill a void in Elvis' life. When Elvis' divorce became final, Linda was already in place as the legendary performer's live-in girlfriend and travel companion until 1976.
This is a gaudy look at their love affair and companionship. Linda whole-heartedly tending to her lover's needs and desires. And even putting up with his swallowing medications by the handful and introducing her to her own love affair with valium. At times this movie is harsh and dark of heart; a very unattractive look at the 'King' and his queen.
Don Johnson is absolutely awful as Elvis. Over acting to the hilt is not attractive. Stephanie Zimbalist lacks the classiness of Linda, but does the job pretty well. Supporting cast includes: John Crawford, Ruta Lee, and Rick Lenz. Watching this twice is more than enough for me, but don't let this review stop you from checking it out. For most Elvis fans that I have conferred with, this is not a favored presentation.


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You may say to yourself, "Don Johnson as Elvis? Can that work? Is it possible? Seems like an terrible choice to me, but perhaps I should have an open mind. Maybe I'll be surprised. Maybe he can pull it off."
NOT!
Don Johnson is not a bad actor. But he is an awful Elvis. He's too short, too weak-voiced, too sharply featured ... well you've already imagined how bad he would be. Add to that a hokey black wig and heavy-handed eye-liner and mascara and it's a big fat embarrassing mess.
The best I can say is that since Johnson's acting is decent and since his impersonation is so far off, after a while you don't even think of him as Elvis anymore. You see him as some other crazed pop star instead. Then, on that level, the movie becomes watchable.
Stephanie Zimbalist is also not ideally cast as the tall, beauty queen, Linda Thompson. But she is attractive in her own right and plays the part with the honesty, elegance and intelligence we've come to expect from all her roles. There may be too much intelligence in her performance. You have to be kind of a dope to stick with a dope abusing dope.
There's nothing new to this story; we've heard it many times before. If you've looking for new info or insight, you won't find it. It's told as a love story - an unrequited one: Linda for Elvis and Elvis for drugs.


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I'm a Don Johnson fan, but this is undoubtedly the WORST movie, done by anybody, that I've ever seen. The acting was bad, as was the cinematography. Don should stick to doing action, because as The King, he just didn't cut it.


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I've been working my way through a collection of Lugosi films recently, and having just been blown away a couple of days ago by the combination of Lugosi and Boris Karloff in "The Black Cat" I was really looking forward to seeing their collaboration in "The Raven." Alas, it just didn't work for me, and by the end of the film I was quite disappointed.
For the first three quarters of this movie or so I thought the story lacked any real suspense. Lugosi was doing a pretty good job of holding things together as the somewhat mad Dr. Vollins, some sort of surgical genius who falls in love with a young woman (Irene Ware) he treats after a car accident but who can't have her - partly because she's already engaged, and partly because her father (Samuel S. Hinds) disapproves. To deal with that situation, he enlists the aid of Edmond Bateman (Boris Karloff) - a horribly ugly man who wants Vollins to make him look more acceptable. Aside from Lugosi's performance, though, I found little to hold my interest. Then, suddenly, in the last fifteen or twenty minutes, the movie shifts around completely. Suddenly it becomes quite suspenseful, but I thought Lugosi's performance fell apart, largely because the movie tried to shift him from mad to insane - and there's a difference. He plays the "mad" role very well - controlled and in control but evil. "Insane" is a more out of control evil, and I didn't think Lugosi pulled that off well. At one point, he offers some maniacal laughter which just comes across as fake. In the meantime, Karloff was a huge disappointment. He never grabbed me at all. As an aside, it must have grated on Lugosi that - in movies in which they co-star - Karloff gets the top billing, even though in "The Raven" it's clearly Lugosi who is the lead actor. This surely gives a hint as to how Universal ranked their two great horror stars - inexplicably, I would add, because I've always thought of Lugosi as the better actor of the two.
In any event, there's no real connection here to Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Raven" - except that Vollins is a Poe fanatic, who tries to recreate some of the torture techniques from Poe's stories. Overall, a disappointment. 4/10.


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The strange people living in a town go about their lives. There's the licker a guy who licks everything, a dumpster diver that finds a body which he takes home to live with him, a crazy girl with a doll dressed like her, a guy who wants to cleanse girls of their wicked ways...offbeat in the extreme, this shot in black and white movie is better with out the color. The monochrome takes the edge off the two steps up from home movie feel. Like a Troma movie, this movie is fun in fits and starts but mostly its weird for weirds sake and soon becomes a crashing bore since one you see the set ups you can kind of guess where its going a lot of the time-not always- but enough for it not to be fun.(Though I didn't see the cleansing coming). Worth a shot if you've nothing else to watch and you're waiting for the next set of Golden Girls to come from Netflix.


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Townies is the laziest movie I have ever seen, and I saw the Blair Witch movies (parts one and two). It seems confused in what it wants to be. It's not funny enough for comedy, it's not tragic enough for drama, it's not bloody enough for horror, and it's not good enough for watching. It has scenes of a man doing "slapstick/bloody" karate so I think, oh this movie will be in the vein of Toxic Avenger and Street Trash. Then it leaps without warning into a drama about a missing girl, a retarded (mentally handicap) woman and a trusting mother. Then it slaps itself into the ONLY good part in the movie which seems to be set up like a sitcom without the laugh tracks. The part I'm speaking of is a lonely TOWNIE who is so lonely he finds comfort in a rotting corpse. That was the ONLY part of the movie that gave me ANY feeling. The rest was a waist of my life. Then, just to show how CRUEL Wayne is there is a kind of DOCUMENTARY at the end of the film of Wayne (the Director) making fun of Toby (the star) in public. It made me sick. Even though Killer Nerd and Bride of Killer Nerd (two other movies by Wayne) aren't the best, they at least are thought out enough were you can stay entertained until the ending credits. I even like Killer Nerd a bit, it had some great lines I still use to this day.
If you like underground films, if you like overground films, and if you like to watch your feet, just resting were they are, you will not like TOWNIES!
*1/2 (out of ****)



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I can't believe I wasted my time with this movie. I couldn't even call it a movie. It was so bad with nothing to recommend it.
I like low budget movies and weird flicks but this one had me bored to death. Badly made and bad acting ruined it from being curious. You have to wonder what these people were thinking when they spent money to produce this movie. I wonder what I was thinking watching it to the end. I recommend this movie to no one. How did they release this? Was there an audience who likes this kind of movie? There must be because you can find this at almost any video store. But why?
Deserves to be forgotten.
If you like bad movies then this is for you.


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What is most striking about this semi-musical set in 1920s Berlin is the marvelous cinematography and editing. It's top of the line from First National in these departments. The story is mildly engaging and similar to the plots of Miller's other two films (SUNNY, SALLY) where working girl is romanced by rich boy with family disapproval, complications and final clinch. All the four musical numbers are bunched at the beginning of the film and we go for a long stretch without any further musical buoyancy. Miller sings parts of I THINK OF BABY and reprises BECAUSE OF YOU. There are also DON'T EVER BE BLUE and THOUGH YOU'RE NOT THE FIRST ONE.
Miller here is very engaging and delightful, quite reminiscent of Irene Dunne in manner and delivery. Sad she does not dance as that is her forte. SALLY remains her finest film, with this trailing as second and the rather poor SUNNY a vastly inferior runner up. Her life was tragically cut short by a sinus infection before the days when hospitals and antibiotics made such tragedies preventable. It's worth visiting these films though to see Ziegfeld's top star of the twenties.


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John Boorman's 1998 The General was hailed as a major comeback, though it's hard to see why on the evidence of the film itself. One of three films made that year about famed Northern Irish criminal Martin Cahill (alongside Ordinary Decent Criminal and Vicious Circles), it has an abundance of incident and style (the film was shot in colour but released in b&w Scope in some territories) but makes absolutely no impact and just goes on forever. With a main character who threatens witnesses, car bombs doctors, causes a hundred people to lose their jobs, tries to buy off the sexually abused daughter of one of his gang to keep out of jail and nails one of his own to a snooker table yet still remains a popular local legend an attractive enough personality for his wife to not only approve but actually suggest a ménage a trios with her sister, it needs a charismatic central performance to sell the character and the film. It doesn't get it. Instead, it's lumbered with what may well be Brendan Gleeson's worst and most disinterested performance: he delivers his lines and stands in the right place but there's nothing to suggest either a local hero or the inner workings of a complex character. On the plus side, this helps not to overglamorize a character who is nothing more than an egotistical thug, but it's at odds with a script that seems to be expecting us to love him and his antics.
There's a minor section that picks up interest when the IRA whips up a local hate campaign against the 'General' and his men, painting them as 'anti-social' drug dealers purely because Cahill won't share his loot from a robbery with them, but its temporary resolution is so vaguely shot - something to do with Cahill donning a balaclava and joining the protesters which we're expected to find lovably cheeky - that it's just thrown away. Things are more successful in the last third as the pressure mounts and his army falls apart, but by then it's too late to really care. Adrian Dunbar, Maria Doyle Kennedy and the gorgeous Angeline Ball do good work in adoring supporting roles, but Jon Voight's hammy Garda beat cop seems to be there more for American sales than moral balance, overcompensating for Gleeson's comatose non-involvement in what feels like a total misfire. Come back Zardoz, all is forgiven.


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Just had to write that one liner, but it really is. I love the gangster genre and this is the weakest entry I've seen in recent years . I have praises for everyone involved in most aspects except the most important one, the script . It is a weak story about a petty criminal. No amount of fine acting or black and white film styling can make up for a total lack of substance. I love Kevin Spacey and I hear he's gonna do another film about the general. My advice is don't waste your time.


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A craven, cowardly film. Director Boorman shows Cahill burglarizing rich houses, but the male occupant is shown being unfaithful with the nanny, thats all right then. The forensic scientist investigating Cahill is blown up in his car, but he is rat faced sourpuss, and doesn't look like a nice man, so thats all right too. The Beits, owner of Russborrough House, made their money by exploiting 'darkies' digging up diamonds, so it's okay to rob priceless art from them and hide it in a bunker in the Wicklow mountains. The Garda kill his ferrets and are implicated in his murder. The moral equivalencing is sickening, Boorman looks for a hit film, but doesn't have the guts to stand against the criminality of the generals gang, who terrorized the neighbourhood, and unleashed another wave of scumbags upon Dublin. He even liaised with the Generals son while making it. Disgusting. Shame on him for his cowardice.


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This was a disappointing film. The people seem to have no substance, the lead protagonist Martin Cahil has zero redemptive values, in fact everyone in it including Jon Voight epitomizes sleeze. I would not recommend this film to anyone. The violence is distasteful, though artfully done. The filming is to black, at least the print i saw fit this category. A disappointment.


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Bill Maher's Religulous is not an attack on organized religion. It's an attack on Christianity and Islam. Apart from ridiculing a bunch of Rabbis inventing warped machines to get around Sabbath regulations, he really doesn't attack Judaism and seems enraged when a Rabbi actually challenges the existence of the State of Israel. If Bill Maher followed his hypothesis to its logical conclusion, he would realize that the very creation of Israel in the Palestinian Territories is based on the so called 'holy books' of organized religion. This is evidence of his complete and utter lack of objectivity or focus in the creation of this film.
I find it really hard to believe that the man is atheist or even all that intelligent. Anyone can go up to a religious person and laugh at them and call them stupid for their beliefs but what do you have to offer them in return? Nowhere does he actually tell them why he thinks they're stupid. What makes him the "rational" person in the room? In a way it reflects how he really isn't and in the process ends up looking just as stupid as those people.
If you want to watch a good movie/documentary about the actual evils of religion and how religion can actually be detrimental to the human civilization, watch Richard Dawkins' 'Root of All Evil?'. It is a brilliantly researched documentary, clearly outlining what it hopes to achieve and how.
Bill Maher's Religulous is not funny, poses no interesting questions nor does it provide any insight on so controversial a topic. It seems to be the rantings and ravings of an old man disgruntled with his Catholic upbringing. I almost feel sorry for him.


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Some funny bits, but come Bill! A film? Quoting Zeitgeist? Keep the TV Show and the interviews, but a film? I'm probably overreacting but what a unnecessary provoking film... I don't know. I laughed, disagreed, agreed... this film is very confusing and inconsistent.
Bill's a funny guy... but also very cocky... Bill's rhetoric is similar to Bill Hicks, a brilliant comedian. But like many comedians, the borderline between comedy and preaching can be annoying. I think that the major problem in this film is his lack of sensibility. This might be just a personal taste, but comedy that constantly demeans somebody cannot be taken as truth. Bill is obviously emotionally reactive to religious fundamentalism. I agree with Bill that religious fanaticism is not sensible, but the response to it cannot be sensible. It will create unnecessary turmoil. We can do better than just react to fundamentalism. His conclusion is that "we don't know" and he fervently tries to convince the spectator that nobody knows anything, to the point that the agnostic community has been concerned with his lack of serious research in comparative religion. His humility that he only knows that he doesn't, is a contradiction as he tries to insist that all religious thought is non-sense.
I had great trouble seeing bits of Zeitgeist, the movie in Bill's film. All the astrotheology-influenced non-sense that simplifies all religions as the same is simply disappointing. Zeitgeist has provoked a lot of controversy and has messed up the validity of so much of the valuable Religion Studies scholarship. It is very sad how wrong facts have been tossed around with no reliable scholarly sources. Astro-mystic sources that reduce everything to "the stars say it all" seem to be from the Middle Ages. This film is a confusing statement from a confused "agnostic". Agnosticism is far more complex and philosophically academic than defending every single issue as "we don't know".
This film is an obvious proof of how postmodernism has been able to oversimplify and generalize major issues in human history.
Watch the film (it has hilarious interviews and bits) but PLEASE do not behave like Bill. You cannot expect anybody to have a mature conversation if you are making sardonic comments in every other line. His arguing techniques are demeaning and insulting, provoking emotional reactions rather than rational and logical argumentation.. There needs to be a more mature way of dealing with these issues.


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This film is really ONLY Bill Maher's interpretation of religion. There are several funny moments, and some interesting points, but don't go into this expecting an even-handed discussion of religion. This is what I consider to be the worst kind of documentary - Everything is arranged ahead of time and in editing to provide you with the opinion of the director, rather than letting you make your own decision.
EDITING - It's very chopped up, inter-spliced with clips from pop culture and the media to reinforce the point. The interviewee barely has a chance to finish a sentence before he is interrupted by the editing. The only people given a fair chance to speak their mind are those who say what Bill Maher wants them to say. Once someone deviates from the gospel according to Maher, they get edited.
INTERVIEWEES - They are meant to represent the absolute MOST extremist religions. From the TV evangelical to the ultimate Jewish stereotype, to a TRUCK STOP chapel (Seriously. A TRUCK STOP CHAPEL). He's picked the worst money-grabbers, the heavy extremists, and those who don't have the budget to say no to pick on. And when he does get a good person to interview, he edits the hell out of them.
STEREOTYPING - All religions are portrayed as stereotypes. Especially hard hit are the Muslims. During the Muslim segment, he barely gives anyone the chance to speak before interrupting them either himself, or through editing in pieces with suicide bombers. ALL Muslims are portrayed as gun-toting extremists through the editing, and none of the people interviewed is edited fairly.
ENDING - The message at the end is INCREDIBLY heavy-handed, and while it is an interesting idea, it's not presented with fairness to the countless people who are not religious extremists. Bill Maher explains himself while clips of destruction play in the foreground. This literally gives the message that religion is stupid and dangerous, and that it will destroy the world. He also states that everyone involved in religion is stupid.
With the faults to the film, it has some good points, and the humor, while very unfair, is actually funny. But know going in, it is a very one-sided view, Bill Maher's view, of religion. He's not discovering anything. He's telling you what he thinks.
4/10 - Some good moments, but heavy-handed with an extremely irresponsible documentary style.


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I saw it, I agree with him 100%, but I didn't care for his delivery. He just came off as an asshole in a poorly edited, contrived juvenile smear campaign. Edit cuts galore, etc... The camera would be focused on him, and you'd see 2 or 3 edit cuts just over the course of a minute or two of dialog. Add in the constant boom mikes in the camera shot, which is a film no-no.
This documentary hits a topic with so many angles, so many interesting stories, that the movie is just so easily done. Picking on religious fanatics is like picking on the retarded kid. It is so easy it is just wrong. I mean how hard is it to make these people look like nut bags? To make them contradict themselves, you just let them recite more then a verse or two. I do like when he jumped back in forth between people of the same religion and showed them completely contradicting themselves.
I just think he could have done something a little more creative. The part with the neurologist talking about brain activity was never fleshed out. It could have been interesting to show brain scans of people during religious fits compared to drugs, or sex, or ???? He could have played more on the women all rejoicing over the Passion play that looked more like a snuff scene in a new Rob Zombie movie. More could have gone into the history of John Smith, the Mormon founder who had quite the colorful past. Delve into science v.s. religion. One is a very methodical, very strict process for increasing the confidence in theories. It builds on itself from a solid bottom up, a new layer on top of a more proved layer. An enormous burden of proof is required each step of the way. The other starts at the top and comes down with unchallengeable claims. It is so, because well I said so.
Done right I'd say turn it into an HBO original series hit a different religion every week.
It was an eye opener about one thing. I must have been blind. Good ole G.W.Bush... no wonder he got elected. He had the religious majority. And well... now that is the blind leading the blind.
Bill Moyer.. Well.. what can I expect from a guy who hands out at Sutra in Newport beach?


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Now don't get me wrong. If you need an insightful summary of everything that been wrong with the history of human civilization as well as a flawless path to brighter future for mankind, who better to turn to than a comedian and practitioner of pop culture? If you need a healthy dose of all the solid, sound reasons why religion has outlived it's usefulness then turn to Sagan or Dawkins, not BILL MAHER for God's(?) sake! That's a good point in and of itself. Maher dismisses our religious past as a neurological disorder conveniently ignoring how his entire society, art and science is rooted in it.
In this film, he relies heavily on his keenly-honed skill set of irony and cynicism to make his point while attempting to appear erudite and wise. Unfortunately, his intellect isn't up to the task.
Maher makes us laugh but is clearly not the brightest bulb in the box. As an example, he responds to an interviewee's (and I use the term loosely as they were clearly all "ambushees") assertion that the existence of Jesus is historical fact with a deadpan "No, it's not" followed by a long stare meant to convey contempt at the subject's naivety (a device nauseatingly overused in this film). The problem is that the person was correct and Maher dead wrong in his assertion that Jesus is mentioned only in what he considers to be the historically- suspect gospels. I guess Mr. Maher has never read the contemporary historian Josephus.
But the masses will flock to this pseudo-documentary as they do the fictional works of other intellectual giants like Michael Moore, and they will loudly bray and guffaw (they certainly did at my showing).
It's doubly telling, however, that the loudest and most mule-like braying occurred during the approximately 70% of the running time that the film devoted to it's anti-Christian tirade while the audience was wholly mute during the token 10% devoted to criticizing the self-described Religion of Peace. Hmmm. Either criticism of Islam is off-limits to the hip and liberal target audience or they were just afraid to laugh. Very telling, either way..


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I wasn't really hoping for much when I went to see this. After Mst3king the heck out of JasonX with some friends though, I was hoping for a similar experience here.
Unfortunately the movie took itself way too seriously. Do I care about Jason's problems? I'm sorry no. There are a legion Ft13th movies that cover that anyway. At at then end of the day, he's an undead serial killer, I'm just not going to get that sympathetic.
Freddy was by far the most interesting aspect of the movie with the hallucinations and what not, but unfortunately they were few and far between and by the end of the movie, it had degenerated into a bad episode of celebrity deathmatch...only not funny.



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A movie has rarely left me as cold as this one. There is not a bit of tension, not a second of fear, not a moment we jump, even a little bit. The girl is cute, yeah. That's it. Was that worth a movie ? I knew it wasn't supposed to be a great movie, but I was at least expecting one.


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