That' right, a bloody soap opera, what the hell were they thinking? Let's do the check list of what they did right with this Galactica remake, I can count that on one hand. Better effects and cooler Cylons. That's it! What's with this Politically Correct B.S.? I'm all for having female pilots. But why make major changes on key characters, I mean Adama was Spanish, Starbuck wasn't a woman and Boomer was a African American Male, not a Asian American Female. That's one, two killing off Boomer for a Cylon replacement. Then she falls for a human and has a baby, how much of soap opera do you call that? Next, the Cylons were created by a race of alien reptiles which they turned on and made extinct. Like they want to do to us. Did want to be too sci-fi-ish? Did they watch the original show, it was a science fiction. It's suppose to be a science fiction! Now let's talk about the bullets. Lasers are sci-fi anymore, they actually exist! Plus, it's not sci-fi about laser battles in space, it's science fact that a bullet would not work in a area of non-gravity, like SPACE! So, having a space battle with bullets makes no sense what so ever. If you got hooked on this crapper then stop watching it. Go cold turkey and realize that the show is a turkey. I give it...THE NOOSE!


When they aren't fighting killer robots they fight themselves, but at least the writers showed nicely how people crack in a confined space after a disaster. As long as you try to not yell at the shaky camera you can still watch this.

I just finished watching the last episode and I was incredibly shocked: "That's it?!" Yes, a horrible drama with fantasies instead of science. Oh it started swell as Lost, but at the end of season 2 it got lamer and lamer. They should have had an idea how they would end it all from the start. The writers deserved none of the pay for what they scribbled for a script after the writers strike.

It rocketed awesomely of into deep space. A handful of ships with the last humans trying to find Earth while escaping killer robots. It was nice, it was intriguing, but then it went too far. Suddenly people started having visions how to find Earth and stuff. By the end fantasy magic overwhelmed science.

How do you find a killer android? Do you put a metal detector to its head and hear it go BING? No. You need blood samples that only one man can decode. So the androids aren't really androids, just humans with a wireless Internet connection who think they are robots.

In the end they took some lame stuff out of Star Trek. Lots of class M planets around. ENDLESS amount of fighters and bombers and like in Voyager they only build one from scratch. Same goes for troopers and pilots. I understand where you get volunteers, but where do you get the gear, guns, BULLETS and missiles?! Killer robots ALWAYS know where to find them. Stuff like this tends to come up often. I still can't believe they managed to cram 48000 people, a cat and a dog into that tiny fleet.

The drama mostly rotated around the elite of the fleet: admiral, president, friends and family. Neglecting saving the human race they were selfish to order suicide missions. They are so ignorant, selfish and dumb that I started hating them all so much I laughed when they found Earth to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland. What to do next? How about go looking for a neighboring habitable planet and settle down? No. We wait till a little girl gets stolen, and we send the last strike force to rescue her. More died in the process.

The end was baby sh**. Oh they eventually found the real Earth by randomly pushing buttons in a musical pattern. Ironically the planet was ONE jump away from a black hole and the main killer robot base. And Earth was inhabited by tribal humans who are our ancestors. And it turns out that all the pixies in Baltars and 6's heads were angels (or maybe demons). Starbuck was actually a ghost for an entire season. Boomer kept sabotaging stuff for 3 seasons but was redeemed in the end. And they sent all their ships into the sun for no sane reason. And the friendly killer robots who couldn't reproduce or think by themselves flew away to explore space. Yes, and I'm a toddler who likes these sort of stories.

Buy a tripod you maniacs! And never show this fantasy for a science again! I feel like I wasted several month of my life on this show. I never saw the original and I don't want to now.


The first thing that pops to mind when you start watching a Battlestar Galactica episode is "Why?" Why would anyone put such a bad show on the air? Why would anyone keep on paying to make such a bad show? Why would anyone want to make more after seeing the pilot? Why would anyone pay to make the pilot knowing that it would be awful and unwatchable.? Why keep the same producers on salary when they clearly don't know how to make a TV show? Why would SciFi keep hawking this dreadful show when it's clear it'll never have a big audience? Why would critics not be embarrassed to support a show that looks like it was shot with a camcorder? The questions keep popping up but they'll never be answered.

Battlestar Galactica is all about its marketing campaign, not about making a good show.

Just imagine if all that money had been spent trying to make a good show that all could be proud of....


The fans of this show, like to use the excuse that the negative reviews are only from un-reasoning fans of the original, who don't like the new version. So let's look at it objectively, regardless of the original.

What are the positives about the new Galactica? 1 - It's gritty, and feels realistic (atmospherically) 2 - The production quality is top-notch 3 - Imperfect characters with personal conflicts

And what are its failings? 1 - The gritty and realistic approach is so forced, as to negate its positive effects. Shaky camera work has its place, but this is one of those shows that tries so hard to use the technique, it makes NYPD look like it was shot with a tripod. Over compensation. It's as though the film makers are embarrassed to be making Science Fiction, and try their hardest to hide the fact. 2 - The production quality IS top-notch, but so were the new Star Wars films, and I think most people would agree, they weren't anywhere near what they could've been. 3 - The characters are SO imperfect, that they become unrealistic caricatures, and the viewer loses any sympathy whatsoever for the leads. Also, not ALL humans are selfish, self-absorbed nihilists. If this show wanted to be realistic, at least SOME of the characters WOULD be good people (Who can still make the odd mistake).

Many of the fans claim this is superior television, because "it isn't scifi, it's drama". They show a complete lack of knowledge for the genre they are criticising. Their view of SF is probably dictated by a few old Star Trek:TNG episodes they saw as youngsters. "It's all about bug-eyed monsters, and men with pointy ears". The truth is, most television Science Fiction is easily accessible, because it has to appeal to the masses, but all good science fiction is dramatic, thought provoking, challenging stuff that goes beyond our pre-conceptions. It makes us THINK.

Yet the new Galactica does its best never to challenge the viewer. You will never have a plot that couldn't be directly transplanted to a soap-opera, or political/military drama. In fact, it doesn't even try to disguise this, but simply lifts its plots from the latest headlines. (Why write something thought provoking and original, when you can appear daring and cutting edge, by just watching the news for your plots?)

They are right when they say this isn't science fiction, but what they don't understand, is that it isn't a good thing.


I primarily started to watch this to see who Cyd Charisse was. I heard a lot about her through the years, and know she passed away this year to much fanfare. So I wanted to check her out.

This movie was perhaps not the best movie to try to showcase her talents. Let me start by saying Im not a huge fan of the Musical genre to begin with. I often find their plots to be lacking and contrived. This one was no different.

Cyd was indeed very beautiful and a talented dancer. Her acting was so-so, however. I guess I just don't find loosely strung together numbers with no real plot to tie everything together a waste of time.


Why do I feel like I'm watching a long commercial for Las Vegas casinos and resorts?

Probably because the plot is terribly thin: an unlucky gambler discovers he can't lose as long as he's holding a dancer's hand - a frosty workaholic dancer who's never had time for love. Will she thaw? Will they get together? Will their love last if their winning streak doesn't?

You may wonder, how can a movie stretch out such a simple story over 112 minutes? By pausing frequently to allow then-current Vegas acts to strut their stuff! It feels like the filmmakers are saying, "Here's a preview of some spectacular shows you can see if you come on down to Las Vegas right now! Don't you want to see more? Y'know, we had to censor the girls' numbers for this movie...so come check them out in the flesh and you'll see a LOT more. Flesh, that is. Well anyway... COME TO VEGAS!"

Geez, there's even a lengthy montage of billboards at various nightclubs so we can see all the names flashing in lights and know exactly who's performing, and where. I wonder if these people paid for the plug? It would be like some studio making a movie today, set in Vegas, and showing a bit of Celine Dion's act to attract more business her way. It's just...tacky. But then, so is Vegas. And Celine. They're a perfect tacky match. A much more convincing match than Cyd & Dan are in this movie. (See how I got back on topic there?)

Anyway, I never had the desire to hit the casinos, and I'm even less interested in visiting the City of Sin now. The harder this film tries to convince me that you win more often than you lose, and everybody in Vegas is so gosh darn nice - the less I buy it.

The celebrity cameos are kinda fun (in a "oh, there's so-and-so, I'm surprised" way, not because they're actually *doing* anything amusing), but pointless (unless the point is to show us that these celebs endorse Vegas - ooh maybe we'll spot 'em there! Let's go!) Dan Dailey is a grinning fool. Agnes Moorehead is good, but wasted in a tiny part. Cyd Charisse has some funny moments, even if she is basically repeating the same kind of role she played in "Silk Stockings" - complete with comical tipsy scene. Once she was uptight. Now she's just tight and barely upright. Haw!

I guess this is considered a musical, but unlike the best musicals, the songs in "Meet Me In Las Vegas" are not integrated into the story (what story?) - They do not help propel the plot forward. Instead, the action simply stops for an unrelated musical number. The songs aren't particularly memorable, and the choreography is uninspired. Cyd gets her chance to dance, but I kept getting distracted by the fact that I'd seen all these moves before! Oh, there's the step she did in "Singin' In The Rain", and she did *that* in "The Bandwagon"...etc, etc.

Not the worst movie in the world - just insubstantial, blatantly commercial and mercenary. I prefer movies that at least *appear* to have a higher goal than just trying to sell me something. I also enjoy clever dialogue and deeper characterization. Am I asking too much? Okay, how about some catchy songs? No? Well, I took a chance on this movie, and I lost. Better luck next time!


After seeing writer-director Dylan McCormick's debut film, "Four Lane Highway" at the TriBeCa Film Festival, I can safely say that it quite possibly one of the worst movies that I have ever seen. It is in essence a schlocky romance film that pulls out every awful cliché in the book.

An irritating Fred Weller plays Sean, the son of a famous writer who was so discouraged by his father that he is wasting his life as a bartender and construction worker in a small Maine college town. Sean was allegedly a great writer just like his dad, but decided to give it up after his dad gave told him that he lacked talent. After a hard day on the job (boo-hoo), Sean decides to go to New York to reclaim his one true love, Molly, played by Greer Goodman on autopilot. Enter Sean's drunken, tag-along buddy, Lyle (Reg Rogers), one of many completely pointless characters; his only function is to be an alcoholic and a source of unfunny comic relief. Unfortunately for him, Rogers turns in the best performance in the film as this useless and underwritten character. Lyle's jokes are the only ones in the film that might produce at least a slight snicker.

In New York, Sean finds Molly, apparently a successful painter, and does the whole "I Want You Back" song and dance. This is where yet another pointless character, Sasha (Elizabeth Rodriguez) is introduced. She has some sort of an undefined problem where it is obvious that she is depressed and sleeps around, yet it is never actually explained. Her story is one of many dropped subplots. Once Molly and Sean finally hook up, it somehow causes Sean to realize exactly what is wrong with his life, and you can pretty much guess where it goes from there. Their entire passionless love affair is told through a series of confusing flashbacks periodically through the movie.

In sum, "Four Lane Highway" is full of two things that should never be in movies: tons of clichés and tons of plot holes. It is confusing and boring. Moving at an incredibly sluggish pace it is the longest 109 minutes of your life. If this movie is lucky enough to get a distributor, which it does not deserve, do not waste your time and money seeing it.


Spoilers

SILENT SCREAM ain't much of a movie. I call it a micro-movie because the cast is populated by a few actors. There's only one setting. It takes place entirely inside a big but cramped house, and a lot of the action during the climax occurs in the attic. And the body count (aside from the killers' deaths) is only 2! Yep, 2. That has got to be the lowest body count for a slasher in horror movie history. To make things even more underwhelming, the murder scenes for those two aren't very good. What's really funny is as low as the body count is, the story boasts not 1, not 2 but 3 psychos/potential killers (the mother, the woman played by Barbara Steele and the "young" nerdy guy). The flashback is confusing and the film starts with, get this, the actual end of the movie, which basically shows us dead people lying on the floor. We don't know who's who on the first viewing but still, what a boring a lazy way to start a horror film. All in all, I have to say that this micro-movie was not worth watching.


Silent Scream starts with one of the most annoying opening sequences I've seen in a while. An entire scene involving police pulling up outside, going into, searching & making a gruesome discovery in the attic of a large Mansion is shown in highly irritating slow-motion & seems to go on forever. Not a good start, only a few minutes in & Silent Scream has already got on my nerves! Silent Scream then goes into flashback as the story which leads to this event is told. Student Scotty Parker (Rebecca Balding) has transfered to Santa Rey College at very short notice & once enrolled she sets about finding a room to stay in. After no luck searching Scotty comes across an old Victorian Mansion situated high on some cliffs above the sea & beach whose owners, Mrs. Engels (Yvonne De Carlo) & her geeky weird son Mason (Brad Rearden) rent their spare rooms out to students just like Scotty. Already living there are two more students named Doris Prichart (Juli Andelman) & Jack Towne (Steve Doubet). Scotty accepts one of two available rooms, the other is taken by another student named Peter Ransom (John Widelock) at the same time. That night the four new friends decide to go out to dinner. On their way back home a drunk Peter, after being a jerk, gets left behind & is murdered. His body is discovered the next morning, Lieutenant Sandy McGiver (Cameron Mitchell) & his partner Sergeant Manny Ruggin (Avery Schreiber) are on the case. They question Scotty, Doris & Jack but get nowhere, they then decide to investigate the Engels family to see if they can dig something up on them. Eventually they do but are they in time to save the students from a dark secret that has been hidden for years!

Executive produced, co-written & directed by Denny Harris I thought Silent Scream was a waste of time & throughly unimpressive. The script by Harris, Wallace C.Bennett, Jim Wheat & Ken Wheat is extremely slow, nothing significant happens for long stretches. It's over half an hour of tedium, poor character development & scene setting before anything that even resembles horror takes place. The body count is extremely low with just one death for over an hour! The ending was also a big disappointment with a dull so-called shocking revelation that really isn't anything like being shocking, surprising or interesting. In fact Silent Scream ends as you would expect it to, I honestly thought the filmmakers would have tried to come up with a twist ending & catch potential viewers out but no such luck unfortunately. Forget about any blood or gore, just a few red splashes on curtains, clothes & walls & while watching the end credits I noticed there wasn't any special effects credit listed which tells you everything you need to know! There is a sex scene but no explicit nudity. Technically Silent Scream isn't too bad, the house & locations used look OK even if the talentless Harris can't evoke any kind of atmosphere from them & generally speaking it's adequately made throughout although it ain't going to exactly knock your socks off. Acting is alright, there are some genre veterans in here including Yvonne De Carlo, Cameron Mitchell & Barbara Steele. Overall Silent Scream at best is merely watchable as there is nothing really wrong with it I suppose, but at worst it sucks because it's far too slow, uneventful & nothing of interest really happens for most of it's running time. Unfortunately for both me & Silent Scream the negative aspects of the film easily outweighed the positive, better luck next time chaps. The more I think about it the more I think Silent Scream would have worked a lot better as a half an hour Tales from the Crypt (1989 - 1996) episode. There are much better horror films available, watch one of those instead.


Young Jody (Christopher Ogden) is a pre-teen with military aspirations thanks to Uncle Sam's medal winning service in Kuwait before his death. Sam's coffin is delivered to Jody's home three years after the fact where Sam's widow and his sister-in-law plan to hold funeral services. Three stupid and obnoxious teens burn an American flag on Sam's funeral plot, which somehow makes him return to life as a ghoul (the make-up is actually pretty good) who offs non-patriotic people while dressed as the title character!

On July 4th at the Twin Rivers festival is where most of the carnage takes place. Death is caused by hanging, flag pole impalement, BBQ grill and fireworks explosion. After finding numerous dead bodies, the festival (and slaughter) idiotically continue. Why? "We wouldn't want to disappoint the children, now would we?"

Awful performances from a cast who should know better, lame attempts at comedy, a moronic script (by Larry Cohen!), a stupid full-contact potato sack race and unbelievable character actions (two adults leave a little kid alone in a house with the killer!?) are just a few of the problems with this gimmicky, subpar horror film.

Score: 2 out of 10


Just in time for The 4th of July we rented this stinker. Yet instead of fireworks we were left with a strip of soggy duds. I guess the producers of this movie didn't think we could make it to Halloween for another Michael Myers movie so they just spun this blatant rip-off. This movie was plagued with all kinds of errors, plot holes and unrealistic happenings.

Lets start from the beginning. First of all, did anyone think to question the fact that elementary school was still in session in the middle of July. Of course not, that is why this is a B-movie. What about when they ship Uncle Sam's body home to his sister's house. She proceeds to leave the coffin in the middle of the living room for days like its a damn Christmas tree, and had dinner parties without even acknowledging it. Now are we to understand that Sam only kills people that aren't patriotic? If this is the case then why does he kill everybody. Can you say plot holes in a paper thin plot! And what is with this town? How many murders have to happen before they stop their annual redneck dirt celebration!

One of the many whitetrash townies was a child thats in a wheelchair. This kid goes from being an extra in mid-movie to becoming a hero at the end. Probably the most unrealistic story of the movie was how this kid actual became crippled. The story is that he was hurt in some kind of freak firework accident. Now as hard as we try, we can't imagine what kind of firework would leave a kid blind, deformed, confined to a wheelchair with third degree burns...oh and don't forget that the accident left him with a "sixth sense." Did they strap an M80 to his bare spine or what? If this accident was so traumatizing, then why do his parents wait til the 4th of July to take him out. Do they want him to have flashbacks of his near death experience? Also did anybody notice how the other characters in the movie just leave this kid alone on the sidewalk like he's yesterdays trash? This happens quite often.

This picnic was just a real bust. The highlight was an extra long potato-sack race through the woods which was plagued with trippable objects and rusty cars (and probably rusty nails). This is a definite potato-sack no-no! One of the teenagers in the race will just do anything to win. He knocks over everybody from toddlers to elderly women just so he can detour off the trail and roll down a hill for what seems like 10 minutes.

Enough about the mistakes, lets talk about how the movie had several scenes that were in slow-motion just so they could stretch this piece of garbage into 90 minutes. In conclusion this movie stunk. It was just another recycled slasher movie. The only good part was after the credits when they show an out-take of an actor actually being injured, but you have to sit through a poem that sounds like it was written by a third grader. I'm sure someday Christopher Ogden (Jody) will meet up with Michael Stephenson (Joshua from Troll 2) in group therapy and have a good cry over the fact that they both committed career suicide before they hit puberty. This movie was so bad that afterwards we had to break into our 4th of July fireworks early just so we could blow it up.


This movie was good... about as good and tasty as a cow manure sandwich! Every now and then, I suffer through watching movies made by a group of severely UNartistic and UNtalented people. I like to see how NOT to make a movie. I'm just not a fan at all of these "campy" horror flicks. Sometimes they turn out to be more comedy than anything, laughing at how dumb the whole thing is... with Uncle Sam I mostly just rolled my eyes, lookin' forward to the ending credits.


This movie absolutely deserves a 4. The premise is great any anti American activity results in death. The movie sticks to that for a little while. The major downsides were that Uncle Sam doesn't really appear until forty minutes into the movie, and like an hour in he just starts killing everybody. The best part of the movie was at the end when they fire the cannon at Uncle Sam and you can see the string pulling him back through the house. God that was soo funny. I couldn't stop laughing at that. The acting was kinda bad, but expected. The best character is the blind kid in the wheelchair. Bottom line if u like cheesy movies especially horror see this.


Rented it purely b/c it says "He wants you...DEAD." Unbelievably bad movie, with sub par acting, so called "special" effects that weren't so special, and a story that didn't make sense to my drunk roommates. If there is a bright side to this story, and I doubt there is, it is when the family receives their dead brother home in a casket, only to place him in the living room like furniture. Son/Brother/Husband, died in battle, flown home, and his family puts him in the living room in his casket. Absolutely priceless film making.

Utter crap. Good for a laugh thats about it. Check out the fact that his son actually likes to hang out with his dead dad that has half his face blown off and tells him to go around killing people like his mom. Absolutely amazing really.


Uncle Sam represents the only non-Maniac Cop collaboration between Larry Cohen and William Lustig, which is a shame. Aside from just making a derivative psycho killer film, it seems obvious that writer Larry Cohen wanted Uncle Sam to have some brains too, which is shown by the attempt to inject a message into the proceedings. Larry Cohen is definitely a huge talent when it comes to entertaining horror movies - films like The Stuff, It's Alive and, of course, Maniac Cop are camp classics if you ask me; but he really should stick to entertainment, as this screenplay is a mess and the 'message' is so jumbled up that I have little idea what exactly it's preaching. The plot follows a young boy who believes that his uncle, who is coincidentally called Sam, is a hero. Uncle Sam was a patriotic, lunatic soldier killed by friendly fire whilst fighting for his country. His body is brought to his sister's place, coincidentally around the time of the Fourth of July celebrations. It's not long before his fellow Americans are abusing their privileges, and Uncle Sam decides to get up and do something about it.

It's hard to take a movie about a war veteran zombie seriously, and this is something that Cohen should have taken into account when putting pen to paper. The clear message on show is that war is bad, and there appears to be a backhanded comment about the way America handles people who don't submit to their 'way of life'. However, American politicians can rest easy because the central figure here is murdering people pretty much at random; which saps any weight out of the theme. In my opinion, Cohen should have decided what it is he wanted to write; a slasher, or a film with substance. However, even as a horror film, Uncle Sam falls short. We've got some nice gore scenes on display, but much of the running time is spent on building up the plot with the kid and his admiration for Uncle Sam, and to say the least; it isn't very interesting. The film is very slow to start, with practically nothing happening in the first half of the film. Good sequences are few and far between, but I've got to say I liked the one that saw a stilt-wearing pervert prying into a girl's bedroom and the one that saw someone falling down a hill in a sack race. Neither of those grab you? This film won't either. Uncle Sam fails on every level.


The director of "Maniac" teams up (again) with Larry Cohen, the infamous writer of "It's Alive", "The Ambulance", "The Stuff", "Q - The Winged Serpent", "Bestseller" and a s***load of other genre pics, The result is... rubbish. How could Bill Lustig go so wrong" A dead war vet returns to America, rises from the dead, and goes on a hacking spree. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, the film has no style, no class, no good murders, and it's as funny as AIDS. It is sad to see the man who brought us "Maniac Cop", "Vigilante" and "Relentless" drowning in mediocrity of his own making. The ad art promised a dark, smart horror pic. The movie delivered a cinematically challenged pile of vapidity.


Sam Harper was a marine who was killed by friendly fire in the war of Kuwait. His body is brought back home around the time of the July 4th celebrations to be buried along with his parents. To his nephew Jody, he is somewhat of a hero and we wants to grow up to be just like him. But he's really the only one who sees him as a hero, as his mum, aunty and friends where afraid of him. But not too long somehow a burned flag landing in his grave has Sam suddenly rising from of his coffin. Where he decides to knock off someone that's dressed up as Uncle Sam and borrow the costume. Then he goes on a murderous rampage killing those who are unpatriotic and that try to stop him.

Strange! Yeah, 'Uncle Sam' is rather peculiar to say the least. Being a fan of Larry Cohen and enjoying everything he has been involved in. From be it, writer to director or both, I've yet to see a flick I haven't liked of his. Well, that's me pretty much me being a one-eyed fan. Cohen teams up again with his buddy director William Lustig, who both brought us the terrific 'Maniac Cop' films that are a real blast, but here I couldn't hide that I was slightly disappointed about this project. I had an okay time with this ham, but the horror element felt mishandled and unsure. The weird thing is the horror moments come across as something of a second thought. I wouldn't be surprised if you're thinking that you're watching an anti-add campaign for the army to begin with. It takes an eternity for anything to happen and Cohen's script takes pot shots on the Desert storm war, Army and Government officials, and the shameless glory about it and how the word hero is loosely used in a very heavy manner. It shows the fixation of these topics perfectly. The last point is a good one, as we don't really know these people we supposedly call heroes. It also shows us how kids can easily be influenced in what they think is right. Damn that marketing ploy by the army in using toy soldiers in getting kids interested ;) Hell, I was a nut for plastic soldier figurines and creating battles when I was young.

Cohen's thoughtful (though not perfect) screenplay is packed with many tearing satirical comments with a tongue-in-cheek approach, but the direction would've been bettered suited if it didn't come to be so hard pressed in delivering these scenes. There's nothing subtle about it. That's pretty much the first half of the story too and it does come across like a political drama, though at times it did feel and look like a TV soapy. The odd second half is when the 4th July parade starts and exploitation comes to boot with the killer being resurrected and knocking off victims who disrespected the American way of life and not supporting the troops. It picks up the pace here and strings some neat and inventive deaths. Damn it's particularly spiteful stuff, though not terribly gory, but it had its fair share of bloody moments. But still it feels like that they felt "Oh no, we got to add some bloody mayhem" and so they packed it all in the latter half. Sure it's nonsensical, right-o, but the wit we come expect from a Cohen script seemed absent. So it takes itself rather seriously by flinging about inspirational speeches and critical symbols and messages that are hard to overlook and since the actual context is absurd, it needed a bit more humour to soften it. The fun factor felt rather short. I just couldn't shake the feeling it was more interested in preaching than frightening. Actually trickles of it worked, but more often it passed me by. You could call the plot a slasher with a political opinion or just trash that will rot your teeth.

I'll move onto another subject and talk about the quality the production. Low budget for sure, but actually the makeup and costume design for the killer is very well done. The bloodier moments are definitely up to scratch. The camera-work too was a bright light in the feeble mix. By adding enough showy angles that makes certain scenes stand out. Though sadly that's where the buck falls short. The atmosphere is non-existent and the same for the score. The b-cast is more then decent when you see the names involved. With the likes Issac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Robert Forster, David Fralick, Timothy Bottoms and P.J. Soles. But even with these reliable names they all seem to be on cruise control and give rather soporific performances. The leading kid is a real doofus and the kid in the wheelchair seems to know so much about what's going on, even though he doesn't appear until later in the story. How does that work out? That's one of a few confusing things that crop up in the story that make you go "Huh?" The second rate direction by Lustig is rather tosh in patches and kind of restrained. The pacing is awfully uneven and torrid to begin with and the petering tension doesn't cause an ounce of excitement. I would've preferred to see Cohen behind the camera instead. There's a visible blooper that's plain abysmal towards the films' climax, which is very hard to miss.

I didn't get much fun out of it liked I hoped I would, though I didn't think it was a total mess and it's something a bit different. But then again this is a Larry Cohen fan speaking here. I give it another try in the future, but I'll make sure next time I'm intoxicated.

Side-note: There's also a blooper played at the end of the credits, nothing that great but worth a gander.


And I can see why. I just rented this on a whim, expecting it to be some funny cheese horror and it wasn't even that. What you have here is a stupid concept at an attempt at a goofy horror movie that doesn't even make one laugh.

Uncle Sam Harper comes back from the dead (and we don't even know how) and starts killing a few town locals in his attempt to come back for his nephew Jody.

Very stupid movie, effects suck, killings are pretty much ripoffs from other movies (hedgeclippers, Friday the 13th) burying alive, many others) anyway stay away from this piece of crap, the best thing about this movie is the holographic cover that the video comes in. I can only give it a 2 for one good butt shot, as a peeping tom on stilts stares into a window

2/10


Warning: Some spoilers for those who wish to see this garbage.

The worst film ever! I have seen many films in all my days, but this was particulary horrible. It was unprofessionaly done, it had no glamour in any of the scenes, it seems like no one wants to care whatever they making a movie or just reading their lines. The beheading of the boy jumping around in a sack is so obviously faked. For god sake, the head looks like a pice of painted plastic! I hope this will never be remade, none trying to copy!


Absolutely abysmal production proves that Lustig can use a camera, but Cohen can't write worth a darn. Ridiculous story, solid B cast flounders under the weight of one lousy script. Thank goodness there does not seem to be a sequel on the horizon, or else I'll move to Canada. Sign me up for a 1.


The funny thing about this movie is how dumb it is. It's stupid plot line is what makes it funny. You have to see this when you get drunk though, because it will be a whole night full of laughs. The deal with the credits rolling at the end with the voice over is enough to make you laugh for weeks. Not only that, just how dumb "Sam" or "Uncle Sam" really is when it comes to killing.


We picked up this movie at the video rental store thinking that this would give us a good laugh, and that's exactly what happened, although the laughter was really just mocking what a lame movie Uncle Sam is. There were so many things TO laugh at: the plot was completely lame, the dialogue unrealistic, the acting terrible, yet I still think that for as bad as it was, it should have been funnier. There have been many "horror movies" that have been as low budget and bad as this one, like Jack Frost for instance, but something about this one was just not as funny. Maybe it was almost TOO bad to be funny. This movie is completely pathetic, but oh well- it was a cheap low budget film, what else can be expected?


"Hopeless" is the best way to describe this timewaster directed by William Lustig ("Maniac", "Maniac Cop 1, 2, 3"). It's a story about a soldier named Sam, shot down & presumed killed during the Desert Storm Conflict. Some years later, his body & those of his comrades are discovered in wreckage previously buried in a sandstorm. Funny thing is, Sam's not dead, or he's dead but not really dead (although he sure looks it); maybe he's undead! Who cares!

As a vengeful zombie of sorts, Sam shambles around just enough over the course of the next 90 minutes to kill his fair share of the cast.

The cast includes Robert Forster (who probably wishes this dud wasn't on his resume after his success in "Jackie Brown") & Bo Hopkins, who both phone in their pointless cameo roles. Co-stars Isaac Hayes.

Screenwriter Larry Cohen has written & directed some rather inventive films in the past but you'd never guess that given his lackluster effort here. This kind of junk is what has driven horror films to their lowest ebb in decades.

Avoid at all costs!


FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio)

Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Techniscope)

Sound format: Mono

A rock drummer (Michael Brandon) is terrorized by a masked stranger who possesses incriminating photographs of an incident in which Brandon accidentally killed a man. Blackmail and murder ensue...

A step up from the convoluted machinations of THE CAT O'NINE TAILS (1970), FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET is little more than a dress rehearsal for the visual flourishes that would distinguish director Dario Argento's later work. The restless camera and flashy editing techniques which lift "Flies" out of its genre rut are mere indicators of the chaotic splendor to come, though here it's largely wasted on a flimsy narrative stretched almost to breaking point. Though reportedly unhappy with Brandon's casting (a role offered to any number of disparate actors, including Tony Musante, Terence Stamp, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Michael York and James Taylor!), Argento draws an effective performance from his leading man as the innocent protagonist caught up in events beyond his control, as a masked figure emerges from the shadows to eliminate anyone who stumbles on his/her identity. The resolution is ripe with Freudian excess, and concludes with a spectacular demise for the psychopathic villain, using state-of-the-art camera-work in typical Argento fashion.

As in his first two films, Argento includes a variety of eccentric supporting characters, often to distracting comic effect (eg. a running gag with Brandon's postman, culminating in what amounts to a criminal assault - played for laughs!), and while the horror set-pieces are often vividly realized - most notably, the scene in which Brandon's blackmailing maid (Marisa Fabbri) finds herself trapped in a lonely park with the killer, a sequence which refers backward to a similar scenario in Jacques Tourneur's THE LEOPARD MAN (1943) and forward to John Saxon's final sequence in Argento's TENEBRAE (1982) - the pace is labored and dull, especially during expository dialogue scenes.

Mimsy Farmer makes a fair impression as Brandon's nervous wife, while popular Italian character actor Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli) plays Brandon's closest friend, a bad-tempered fisherman who helps him solve the unfolding mystery. Jean-Pierre Marielle camps it up as a gay private detective with a poor track record of catching criminals, a role which borders on caricature and ends ignobly (in a public lavatory, no less!). All in all, a minor entry in the director's filmography, elevated to mythic status by legal problems which have prevented its appearance on home video, and while the film exercises a gamut of stylistic concerns (Argento followed it with an unlikely detour into historical comedy, FIVE DAYS OF MILAN, before cutting loose with his giallo masterpiece DEEP RED), it amounts to little more than a footnote in horror history.

(English version)


The beginning is OK, the end is OK. But the remaining 100 minutes are boring. The story is pretty slow and talkative. There are characters who are supposed to be funny and who are just dull.(Except Jean-Pierre Marielle as the gay detective who was great. Not interesting. It was time for Argento to leave thriller for fantastic. 4/10 (and i feel like a nice person)


Long lost in a prolonged rights battle and unseen for years, Dario Argento's Four Flies On Grey Velvet may come from his most consistently inspired period but it's still such thin and often tedious stuff you'd half suspect he was keeping it hidden himself out of embarrassment until you realise that he's happy enough for the far worse Phantom of the Opera and The Card Player to still be out there.

The chief problem is the disjointed and unconvincing plotting, but Michael Brandon's insipid performance as the passive unlikeable and uninterestingly passive musician being blackmailed after accidentally killing someone shows up just how rickety this one is without a charismatic or proactive figure to hold it together. It's not without its compensations and a couple of striking pieces of imagery  a recurring sequence of a Saudi execution and an ultra-slow motion car crash  although Argento seems to be expending far more energy and visual flair into purely expositionary shots like letters being delivered or phone calls being made than the surprisingly few setpieces. Too often he relies on cheap gimmickry, be it Jean-Pierre Marielle's gay private eye who has never solved a case or the old 'image caught on dead person's retina' plot device, while the main character treads water. The less said about the clumsy comedy (much of which comes from brutally beating an Arab postman), the better.

There's an appealing performance from Francine Racette that partially offsets Mimsy Farmer's hysterical overacting and a cameo from Bud Spencer that briefly threatens to liven things up but it's far more forgettable than it has any right to be in that unwelcome I-think-I'm-dropping-off-to-sleep kind of way.


Dario Argento tries to use the camera inventively and playfully, but even all the gimmicks in the world couldn't have saved this excruciatingly dull thriller. The uninteresting plot moves slowly and gets increasingly ridiculous, reaching a real low point when the murdered is revealed and explains his/her motives (they are just as unconvincing as their delivery). The film has a stunning final sequence, but until it gets there you may have already lost your patience. (*1/2)


The story starts off at the Battle of Dunkerque as a German Unit infiltrates British lines and joins the evacuation to England for the purpose of conducting covert operations. As the Battle of Britain commences the Germans focus on disabling the new British Radar stations.

As an old Italian movie it was filmed without sound and voice-overs were added later just like a Spaghetti Western. Filmed as a wide-screen movie the pan and scan job to fit a TV screen is poorly done. But that is not the worst of it. There are several split screen periods in the movie with up to four different pictures at once and to refit for a 4:3 aspect ratio the editors just cut out the edges of the film, essentially cutting some of the multiple views in half. Very sloppy.

The acting and directing is dull if serviceable but the script and editing (not just the editing for TV) is weak. The casting deserves special mention as laughable. I like Van Johnson, but a British Air Marshall? And the very Mediterranean looking Germans are a hoot!

For World War Two history buffs you may enjoy the scenes of the beaches of Dunkerque as I can't recall ever seeing it represented in a movie before. Unfortunately, the scenes of the air battles later in the movie will make you cringe.

This movie may have some curiosity value for those of us who love war movies but others will probably be disappointed. I gave it 4 out of 10.

Bob


*Really awful war movie! So why didn't I just turn it off when Van Johnston turned up as a British air marshall. I mean, John Wayne would have been much better. Some of the Dunquerque scenes are pretty good. And a lot of things --- and people --- get blown up. But it's a parade of cliche characters and predictable plot turns. Indeed it's such a bomb that if the Luftwaffe had had a few prints of it and had dropped them on London, they might have won the Battle of Britain. But I wouldn't wish that on the British people. I gave it a three and that only because I was in an exceptionally generous frame of mind.


If you have absolutely nothing to do, or you need to critique a film as an academic exercise, try this one. I saw the USA version, with English dubbed in, out of sync with the lip-movements.

One can't help but notice the style of cinematography, music, editing and direction so much like the Clint Eastwood "spaghetti-westerns", or Hercules movies of the 1950's.

If you want to see a movie about the Battle of Britain, there are others that are better (e.g. "The Battle of Britain").


while i didn't mind the original The Shaggy Dog(1959),i thought this sequel was not too good.i found it way too silly and absurd,and not realistic.by that,i'm not talking about the premise,a man transforms into a dog.that i can accept as being within the confines of the movie.what i found unrealistic was how most of the characters acted and or reacted.too say there was some overacting going on would be a massive understatement.i also didn't find the characters endearing.i did however find them annoying.and the acting in general was unimpressive.and i found the ending abrupt with no real resolution.i'd say this would be a good family movie,a family comprised of only 3 year olds.maybe they ran out of money or time.whatever.this film had none of the fun or charm of the original.for me,The Shaggy D.A.is a weak 3/10


When his house is repeatedly robbed, Dean Jones (as Wilby) receives no assistance from the local authorities; so, he decides to run for District Attorney. Complicating his run is the reemergence of a magical ring from his teenage years - which turns him into an on again/off again shaggy dog.

This movie is the first sequel to Walt Disney's "The Shaggy Dog" (1959). Wilby Daniels, the teenager from the first film (Tommy Kirk), has grown up, and has a family of his own: Suzanne Pleshette (as wife Betty) and Shane Sinutko (as son Brian). None of the original film's leading actors appear in either flashback or cameo. "The Shaggy D.A." attempts to explain more about the reasons for the change, raising more questions than it answers.

This movie has a few funny moments, helped immensely by Tim Conway - there are a lot of other 1970s TV performers to pick out, which can be fun. But the film is a dog, compared to the original. The "special effects" from the first Shaggy progress surprisingly little, and look worse in color. The charming interacting performances of Mr. Kirk and the original's young characters is gone.

*** The Shaggy D.A. (1976) Robert Stevenson ~ Dean Jones, Tim Conway, Suzanne Pleshette


Seems as though the director got stuck watching Bend it Like Beckham too many times as this movie created too many instances of deja vu. A stale screenplay that never attempts to rise above itself coupled with stumbling dialogue dooms the movie long before the viewers try to grasp a plot that's really not existent.

While it's not difficult to associate with some of the problems that flash on screen they never really stick into your mind long enough to leave a lasting impact.

The acting laurels rests firmly on the husband and wife and it is through them that some of the warmer and emotional moments are enjoyed. The kids are pretty useless- ignorant, petulant, spoiled and unappreciative they elicit no sympathy whatsoever, especially after the turning point of the movie. If the director wanted the younger cross cultured audience to empathize and associate with the three kids then he got it horribly wrong.

In one scene Raj responds to his wife's query of not adding cream to the Indian food that they're making by stating "We don't Americanize our Indian food, darling." By Americanizing this movie far too much the director lost sight of the vision he started out with and ended up with a confusing, stumbling movie that might have been interesting with the presence of a decent plot. But we shall sadly never know...


I agree with the other posters that the husband and wife played their roles well. Other than that this movie was rubbish. It tried to be something interesting and provocative, but instead suffered from a lack of any meaningful plot, characters which one has a hard time sympathizing with, unrealistic Decalogue (give me a break, some of the conversations the characters have is so unnatural and ridiculous), and seemingly pointless side action. I can't believe someone said that this movie was better than American Desi. That movie was a lot better than this by leaps and bounds and portrayed the Indian-American experience somewhat more realistically, at least as per the reality that I have experienced. If you want a movie about the Indian American Experience try American Chai, American Desi, The Namesake, or Leela, but this is on the level of Fillum Star, Banana Brothers, and other similar movies long since forgotten.


Where did they get the kids from in this movie? I live in LA and all of those fake wannabe black kids would get laughed at acting the way they did in the movie. Even the "cool" black guy was a caricature and every line he had was cringe-worthy.

If you are going to make a movie taking place in America at least get real Americans to play the part or at the very least people willing to act like real people in America.

The disappointing part is that the movie had potential because of the acting of the mother and father and the overall story was a good one. The script was so poorly written that it made the movie unwatchable and the acting was terrible.

And seriously, the main character in the movie is a British black guy who comes to LA to tap dance? You gotta be kidding me.


This version of the film, which gets about everything from the novel wrong in spite of a competent cast and some good location shots, is one that all of its participants -- all who are still living, that is -- seem never to mention. Michael York in particular goes through the whole thing with an ironic smugness that suggests no one was really taking Stevenson seriously. That's a pity, because it could have been a good old-fashioned action flick in the manner of its predecessors, but with an added cachet of great color and wide Scottish vistas. Truly a disappointment.


I am shocked by all the good reviews on the cover of this movie and on IMDb. It belongs in the $2 bin at your local video store. To say that this is a B movie is extremely generous.

Besides lacking a single redeemable character, only slightly better than average acting, and an ugly 80's style picture quality, the script for this film is dull and lifeless. This film is not only boring--it is pathetic. (Admittedly, there is occasionally some mildly interesting chemistry between the two main characters.) Even the final plot twist--rather, the only plot twist--does not save this film.

Rent "Diamond Men" if you must, but do not hesitate to turn it off once you become appraised of its worthlessness. 2 out of 10.


The great about Tarkovskij films is the poetry in the pictures, the melancholic beauty which is almost too hard to bear. A lot of it is in this one: the water, the garbage, strange, haunting sounds in the background, the dogs, the empty rooms with metal beds and rotten walls, the rain, the warmth of pure, shy love, the static, photography-like pictures (sometimes even filmed pictures), the poems, the philosophical discussions.

The failure of "Nostalghia" shows the fragility by which these ingredients are held together in films like "Solaris" or "Stalker". The thin plot line is torn apart, there is no connection between the plots of exile (what a great plot for Tarkovskij this could have been!) and the plot of saving the world by sacrifying yourself. Domenico the lunatic is just not fascinating. You feel that Andrej cannot understand Eugenia, just as Andrej the director can't. The dialogues are awfully pseudo-intellectual, the fixation on Christian faith just penetrant (compare "Stalker" which is all about faith, but without the churches) - even God himself speaks. The story of carrying a burning candle through a pool and thereby saving the world can hardly be told without exposing it to ridiculousness. Andrej's death is hardly prepared, as young and healthy as he looks this just feels like a deus ex machina. In a word, "Nostalghia" is boring and self-indulgent. Maybe it is not a good idea to name your protagonist like yourself (although there was no problem in "Andrej Rubljow") and letting him read your brother's poems. What could have been great scenes in great films look here like mere self-plagiarisms. And there are scenes where Tarkovskij's genius rises: drinking wodka in the bath arches and talking to a child (one of the few scenes where Andrej comes to life); the final scene with the candle; the scene in Domenico's house. If you have never seen a film by Tarkovskij before, don't watch this - it might keep you from seeing his masterpieces. Three stars for a blundered film in respect of the artist.


There's a reason most people don't know about this movie and that's because it's for film students and those who consider themselves in the hierarchy of the film community. Are people too in love with Tarkvosky to recognize this is a bad movie? Bad storytelling? It "invents" nothing. There are virtuous aspects; no doubt. We all know that they're technical. The acting, however, is misdirected. Great actors who have nothing interesting to say and walk around just speaking words. THey mean nothing. Tarkovsky's "sculpting in time" theory has not been closely followed for good reason: it makes for tedious, dull, and repetitive movies. His movies won't last.


First of all, please use this link: http:// www.criterionforum.org/forum/ viewtopic.php?p=142178&highlight=&sid= dd58cd36ffe474e7bd315c810cb708e6. It will lead you to a hilarious forum "discussion" about this very comment! I'll also use this opportunity to say "thanks" to Cold Bishop and the other morons for taking my texts so seriously - and making me laugh very loudly!

Secondly, let me explain the high 7.9 rating on IMDb. Only around 2,000+ people voted, and they're mostly film students who FORCE themselves to like movies like this, and other pretentious boredom-seekers who find thrills in watching grass grow. "Nostalghia" is the IDEAL film to fall asleep to. I speak from experience.

I absolutely loved "Solaris" and "Stalker", two brilliant, intelligent sci-fi dramas. On the other side of the Tarkovsky spectrum, I was utterly confused by "The Mirror" - which had zero story to tell (though occasionally visually very nice), I was mostly bored to tears by "Andrey Rublev" (nearly 4 hours!), but thought "The Sacrifice", his last movie, was okay (in spite of being in Swedish, an unpleasant language).

Tarkovsky's two sci-fi films are based on (good) novels, and this may be the crucial point. It seems that he is pretty much lost when doing his own material. He gets bogged down in his dull poetry and philosophy, not bothering to inter-connect various parts of the two in a cohesive manner, failing to focus on the essentials. Hence all his other (non-sci-fi) movies are not much better than all the other pretentious European crap from various Godards, Bunuels, Bergmans, Triers, and other overrated, lazy "geniuses".

"Nostalghia" is an overly pretentious non-story that is far too self-indulgent even for a European director. If you make movies just for your own "artistic" pleasure then why even bother releasing them? This two-hour snooze-fest could have been EASILY cut down to half that length - and it would still not be fascinating. Watching the main character walk around endlessly without saying or doing anything is just GARBAGE film-making. Lazy, and made/written by someone who overestimated himself a tad.

The positive side to this movie - apart from the fact that it made me fall asleep - are some visually stunning scenes. Especially the long shots of water, which are pleasant, if a little sleep-inducing because they may be TOO pleasant. Tarkovsky seemed to have some kind of an almost-fetish for "aqua", because he filmed it in all its visual and audio glory in nearly ever movie he made.

My advice to those who consider this a masterpiece is to stop lying to yourselves about your own intelligence, hence to quit being in denial about how you TRULY, honestly, perceive certain movies. Writing about a movie such as this being a "stroke of genius" is just one of many ways some people deal with an inferiority complex.

Erland Josephson, as uncharismatic as he has been in all his Bergman movies, is a poor choice for the insane man. Besides, what was the point Tarkovsky was trying to make? That he is sane and the rest of us are the insane ones? What a cliché idea! So trite. And how about that last scene (a 250-minute scene, it seemed) of the Russian character carrying the candle for the insane man? Was this symbolic of something? Trying to save the world? The world needs saving from very pretentious, boring movies.

Erland's character locked up his family for seven years. Hence he is not only insane, but should be put away for life. End of story. What can we possibly learn from Erland? His impassioned, idiotic left-wing "back-to-the-caves" speech was just dumb. It's something a 17 year-old manic-depressive idealist would write.

Besides some nicely photographed scenes, there was a pleasant scene where the blonde actress bares one of her breasts.

Tarkovsky portrays Italy as a gloomy, dark, depressing place. I have no idea why. If Italy looks like this, what should he do with Russia or Finnland??

(Sick and tired of Euro-trash "classics", i.e. bad, overrated dramas? E-mail me if you want to read my totally altered subtitles of Ingmar Bergman's "Autumn Sonata", "Cries & Whispers", or "Passion Of Anne", but also the non-Bergman "Der Untergang".)


I have just watched this film and found it completely boring. The only reason I watched it in the first place was the fairly high rating and good reviews. After reading a little about the director and his previous films, I can understand the attraction that other viewers may of felt and the respect for the director (based on his previous films) that gave rise to the high rating and good reviews, but this is my first (and possibly last!) Tarkovsky film and as such I can only rate it on the past two hours - It was very, very boring! In my opinion the director had no regard whatsoever for the idea of an audience, the people who want to be entertained, and had made this film with only himself in mind. It should of stayed that way - a home movie for Tarkovskys use only!


A bunch of never-weres from the fifties dug back up to make a boring, poorly-written show in the seventies. The leader had a dog's name. They were obviously on a sound stage. They were nowhere near as funny as they thought they were. Its dumbness was only comparable to the "Brady Bunch Hour." It was very adolescent. I tried to avoid it, but my little brothers had to have it on sometimes.


The makers of "Disturbing Behavior" proudly call this a horror film, but anyone who has the slightest bit of experience with this (usually) wonderful genre will only label it as childish, pitiful nonsense. The plot is obviously stolen from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", only it's severely simplified so that fans of dud high-school shows like "Beverly Hills 90210" can get some thrills out of it. The evil school psychiatrist (!) of Cradle Bay island plants computer chips into the brains of mediocre students and, overnight, they mutate into grade-A model adolescents. New arrival Steve Clark teams up with pothead Gavin and hottie Rachel to prevent this from happening to them. Not a single storyline in the script is adequately explained (the reason behind Steve's brother's suicide, the flaws of the 'good behavior'-program, the connection with rodents, etc...) and whenever the film threatens to become too incoherent, the camera quickly zooms in on Katie Holmes sexy belly in order to distract your attention. The attempts to create suspense and mystery are laughable, the use of clichés and stereotypes is dreadful and many lines are vaguely offensive. The climax is hilarious, though. Good actors, like William Sadler and Steve Railsback, make fools out of themselves in the supportive cast. High-school horror was inexplicably popular near the end of the 1990, but this film is the absolute low point of them all. Better watch "The Faculty"...or even "I Know What You Did Last Summer".


After his family moves into town, Steve starts to notice that there are some bizarre kids at school - pretty much always friendly and smiling... unless they are in a blind fit of blood thirsty rage... When one of his stoner friends, who said that the group is evil, joins it seemingly out of the blue, Steve suspects foul play. Soon, a secret that is only mildly disturbing is uncovered.

This film would have fared much better if it were a TV episode and seeing that a TV director is responsible for this film we can see it is so mediocre. The decent premise, perfect for an X-Files episode, is stretched out over an hour and twenty minutes (pretty short for a movie) and the good moments are far in between if apparent at all. The highlight of the film would have to be the admittedly intriguing premise, but the way it is presented is just poor. The DVD has 11 deleted scenes and the director could really have cut more off to make a tighter and story, which like mentioned before, could have fared well on the X-Files. Even the atmosphere and cinematography resembles the hit show.

Also the film lacks the element of visceral metaphor (thriller director David Croneberg's specialty) and the conclusion to it all is just laughable and contrived. 2/10

Rated R for grim and violent content


Even while trying to recover an extremely poor script with above average actors, this movie is a bomb. What started out as enticing, quickly became boring and relatively unbelievable. James Marsden (X-Men, Sugar and Spice) is a high school student who is forced to transfer to a new school in a small town after living the big city life in Chicago. Shortly after arrival, he learns of a community plot to surgically brain wash all the teens into perfection. After deciding to be the hero, he is overshadowed by a moronic janitor played by William Sadler (Project X, Demon Knight, Shawshank Redemption) who saves the day with an El Camino filled with high pitch whistling rat traps. With numerous plot holes and unexplained story lines, this movie is not much above a quick cure for insomnia.


I saw this movie because it seemed like a good plot, I'm a horror fan, and I always take time to watch the movies of Dawson's Creek stars. It was a good idea to make a film about teens being brain-washed but I guess the producers assumed that since Katie Holmes was in the movie there was no need to actually put some work into the script.

The actors, leaving out Nick Stahl, were lacking. James Marsden could have done better but it could have just been that the dialogue was poorly written. Who knows. Katie Holmes' bad girl act made her just seem like a bratty little tag-along.

And of course they had to add some nudity to the flick just to make it "perfect". The showing of the girl's chest wasn't at all necessary.

All in all, it was just a typical teen horror flick that was sloppily made. All pretty much done was taking a spookie urban legend, throw in some nudity, some running around into nowhere, an extremely popular star, and making a happy ending with a little corny twist at the end... BOOM... you just got yourself a poorly done teen flick. Rent The Faculty instead unless you are partial to Katie Holmes. I give this movie a 3/10 stars.


The only thing that I could tolerate in this movie was Gavin. After he was converted I stopped caring. I didn't really care about "steve". I will not forget his name since every character said it about 20 times. The worst part was the use of the soundtrack. It would blare out of nowhere and then abruptly stop. By the end I was hoping to see the two get converted. Then they had to go break free and then get saved by the "retarded janitor"?? Poor science and poor fiction make for hollywood grist in the MST3K mill. 2/10


This film was so derivative, the only pleasure we got watching it was trying to identify which movie a particular scene was most directly stolen from. The result is a formless mishmash with no character of its own.

At every turn, there was something that didn't make sense - such as the two main characters entering and wandering around freely in an insane asylum (which was itself as clichéd as anything in the movie.) What, no security, no locked doors to keep the inmates in or intruders out?

Rating: skip this one.


I liked the idea of the movie. The action and actors were good, however the movie was not put together well. They spent too much time on the action and not enough time on the script. Things were not fully explained and they jumped back and forth between points. They should've gotten the point across earlier in the movie, to keep the viewers attention.


Thank God this movie only lasted 84 minutes, because it was pure torture, the first half was just your average bad teen movie (what I expected) but in the second half it turned into a real nightmare, It make Police Academy films look good. If you want to try to see the worst movie of the last couple of years see this one.


Probably the only reason why I seen this film was because of its co-star Katie Holmes (of the popular Dawson's Creek show). She has a lot of talent, but I still don't understand what drove her to make this movie. Cradle Bay is a wonderful place to live, and everything seems perfect -- maybe a little too perfect, especially the teenagers. I thought the plot seemed OK, which is another reason for seeing the movie, but later on it just got dumb and boring. When Steve Clark (James Marsden) moves into town and tries to fit in with the local kids, he finds something unnatural about the small town's perfection. If the filmmakers wanted to make this film scary, which I know they probably did, they should've made it more on-the-edge-of-your-seat terrifying. I sat through the whole movie awaiting for something such as this to happen, but it didn't. The film does have some good moments, but I still think that they should've made it a whole lot better, which I know they could've. It's probably pretty popular with other teens, but as one, it just didn't cut it for me. That's my opinion and how I came to the conclusion of giving "Disturbing Behavior" a 4 out of 10 stars.


Yet another dull "stepford wife" riff. This movie moved along at the speed of molasses on a cold day. The acting wasn't too bad, but the story was lame. Don't waste your time with this one.


I probably haven't seen such a bad movie since Kull the Conqueror.

This movie is an offense even to the teenage genre, it's about a mind controlling chip that is installed to the small town high school rebel students, turning them into "A" students, football jocks and cheerleaders in a scheme for world domination, so, see it a your own risk.


I, like many teenagers, was sucked into seeing Disturbing Behavior by the teasers on TV which despite being backed by Harvey Danger songs seemed to speak volumes: the preppies are evil, they get away with murder and they want you for their new recruit.

Besides my total waste of $5 just so Hollywood could try to stretch enough to reach my angsty punk teenage soul, Disturbing Behavior is ridiculously condescending. It's almost like they were looking directly into my eyes and seeing how they could use me to make money. Ooh the Dawson's Creek girl has NOFX and Alternative Tentacles stickers... on the back of her pickup truck!! What followed the initial amusement was 90 minutes of boring hell as I debated whether or not to go over to the next theater and see what was playing there... Titanic sounded preferable at times.

Anyway, I'm calling out to all of you now who want to know if Disturbing Behavior spills the honest truth about high school cliques and preppy crimes: the preppies aren't out to get you, my black-clad, boot-wearing, spikey-haired brothers and sisters, it's the big corporate producers of Hollywood teenage movies.


Pretentious drivel is about all one can say. Pity because moving Hardy west is an appealing idea but the performers, mood and conceits of the movie are anything but western. Comparisons with Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller are interesting but mostly serve to demonstrate that this is (sorry but it is the best description) still pretentious drivel. Perhaps some enterprising auteur can try this again with a different cast and director but again premised on the Mayor of Casterbridge doing his time in the nineteenth century west but this time without the European music and, one more time, pretentious drivel. I would have noted spoiler and mentioned the end but I could not make it through. Paging Julie Christie.


Frank Cottrell Boyce is dismissive of screen writing books, but on the evidence of this disjointed, incoherent outing he may want to take a trip to the library. Bearing a superficial resemblance to The Mayor of Casterbridge, this film lacks dramatic tension, dramatic irony, humour, characters who we can love or loathe, and most essentially a plot that resolves itself on the basis of the choices the characters make. Hardy's novel traces the rise, fall, then rise again of a powerful, cantankerous individual. The novel's tragic irony is that the 'daughter' the Mayor sacrifices everything for is not, in fact, his biological daughter. This plot line is inexplicably discarded by Boyce. It robs the climax of any dramatic power, Winterbottom looking to compensate for the lack of emotional payoff with a show of pyrotechnics.

Like Boyce, Winterbottom fails to do justice to the story. Daniel gives up all for his daughter, but the emotional impact is never relayed to the audience. Elena tells Daniel that to embrace Hope as a daughter he must tell her the truth. That conversation takes place with the camera behind Daniel and Elena, their faces masked in silhouette. Why cast actors of the caliber of Kinski and Mullan if you won't let the audience see them act in their most dramatic moments? The only father-daughter interaction between Daniel marrying Elena and the crucial scene where he tells her the truth, is a dance at the wedding relayed in a prosaic, underwhelming longshot. When Daniel comes to tell her of his past misdeed he does so matter-of-factly, she runs away, and the inner turmoil this must have caused for both individuals is never examined. It is symptomatic of the failure to manage any emotional arcs or beats in this film. Winterbottom does not seem to follow the basic rules of action-re-action. When Hope first reveals herself to Daniel with the rosary beads, there is shock - then nothing. A reflective moment, with Daniel fingering the beads, is called for but never offered up. Dalglish loves Hope, sleeps with someone else, blames it on his job, and is forgiven. A sub-plot involving a railroad engineer and a prostitute takes up more screen time than the Hope-Dalglish romance. At two points people are shot dead but we cut to life going on as normal, with no sign of grief or consequences for the community.

The film looks like an amalgam of Winterbottom's Wonderland (the fireworks scene is recycled set-up for set-up) and Miller and Mrs. McCabe. However, it has neither the keenly felt human longing of the former or the frailty and mystery of Altman's latter.

Perhaps in reaction to the less-than-inspiring efforts of his collaborators, Michael Nyman seems not to have bothered too much with this one. He re-jigs a few notes on his Wonderland score and layers it over The Claim. All the music did was take me out of the film and make me think how sad it is to see a genius plagiarizing his own work.

The Claim looks nice in places, though the snow-covered pioneer town invites comparisons with Altman's masterpiece and once again falls short. There are some nice moments, most notably when Jovovich sings about Portugal. But it is all very bitty, ill-disciplined and under-realised. It looks like a work in progress rather than a finished film. Boyce, Winterbottom and Nyman have all done better in the past, and need to do so again.


This movie should have been titled "Trudging through Snow," because that's all I remember from it. Thank goodness I saw it on video because I was able to fast-forward through many of the "trudging through snow" scenes. Sometimes people were trudging, sometimes horses, sometimes horses and people--but trudging, trudging, trudging. When any character went from one scene to another, the audience was forced to watch the entire walk through the snow from building to building--even if the buildings were miles apart. Hey, I got it, there's lots of snow there--all right, give us a break! It seemed to me that the movie wanted to prove to people that California is not just the beautiful, sunny, beachy place people think of, so it showed us a comparison with the northern Canadian Rockies.

I watched the whole thing because of the link with Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge." Both Hardy and the movie portrayed a dark, negative story, but Hardy's seemed more beautiful and more real to me. I know it's wrong to compare the two, but if the filmmakers intend to make money using someone else's material, then they should expect the comparisons.

Kinski, Mullan and Jovovich did a decent job of acting. Pollan played the usual innocent looking young teenager she always plays--boring. Bentley seemed a bit miscast. Bentley played the role analogous to Donald Farfrae from the novel. Farfrae had extreme charisma which arose from his good looks and his magical singing of old ballads. Bentley couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Bentley had none of Farfrae's charisma, which disappointed me, even though I know that the movie didn't have to copy the book.

The greasy hair and minimal makeup on the characters gave the movie more realism, but I kept feeling the urge to throw all the actors into a bathtub and give the women bobby pins with the order to either wear their hair down or pin it up all the way. The half-pinned-up-half straggly hairstyle that they all wore was annoying.

Instead of spending so much effort on creating realistic stark scenes, the filmmakers should have put more effort into creating memorable characters. I didn't feel any empathy for any of the characters, with the possible exceptions of the Kinski character, and Mullan's character toward the end of the movie. Jovovich decently portrayed a Hardyesque "survivor," though I felt that the director might have used her talents a bit better.

By the way, the reviewer who posted the plot summary at this site stated that Jovovich was the daughter, when it was actually Pollan.


The vast majority of movies either sink or swim, depending upon what is up on the screen. For those kinds of films, it makes no difference what is their literary legacy because they presuppose no antecedent, unlike a sequel or a film based upon a tv series. "The Claim" begins with the brownish look of some of the earlier Clint Eastwood westerns and seems to almost attempt to emulate some of that feeling. Naming a town, Kingdom Come, almost immediately brings to mind Pale Rider with "The Claim" lacking the austerity of that film. No one can fault the backdrop of this movie - the Sierra Nevada's. There is hope that this will be more than a decent film with an adequate budget and good actors because it is associated with the BBC. It certainly has a look to it that strives for authenticity. So how does it turn out?

The British underpinning of this movie can either take one of two forms: tally ho and away we go or the stiff British lip that one finds in sound bites from its parliament with those "here, here." Well, the 'here, here" gets the nod here. Even with its nudity, the film is too conservative, indicating a misunderstanding of the feel of the old American west. Whoever wrote the script should have studied the early Clint Eastwood movies (such as "The Outlaw Josey Wales") more thoroughly. It is just too genteel and lacks rawness.

Nastassja Kinski receives third billing in this film. Her role is the glue that holds this movie together. Very early on, for those looking for her, she is seen in 1/8th profile for less than a second and then holding on for dear life as an open ended wagon bounces along the dirt road with her and her daughter in the back. At best, this role is two dimensional and clearly lacks depth because none was called for in the portrayal of a dying woman. As soon as she is shown coughing up blood, it is obviously curtains for her with the hope that she can make something out of the role like Clint Eastwood in "Honkytonk Man" - she can't. She does what she has to with a convincing cough.

The other actors, with more defined and difficult roles, are simply not up to the task to pull them off in a convincing manner. They fail to rise to the occasion. Wes Bentley, as Dalglish, is not credible. He would appear to be more comfortable waiting on tables in between acting jobs at Campanile, a restaurant in Los Angeles. He doesn't appear to possess the mental grit to cold heartedly kill someone, much less spearhead the laying out of a railroad in the wild west. Milla Jovovich as Lucia is passable. There is no electricity in her performance even with her prosthetic gold tooth. Peter Mullan as Daniel Dillon is way too conservative. The role calls for more emotional espression or at least the hint of it. Sarah Polley being a young actress of 20 or so at the time, must have been thrilled to get the role and isn't pushed very hard on the performance scale.

"The Claim" is a movie that is very much like a full cup of water in its beginning, but by the end of the movie one realizes that there is a hole at the bottom of the cup because everything has dribbled away. Simply put, it lacks passion and emotional content.


It may be harsh to say that Michael Winterbottom is one of the most consistently bad directors working today, but his emphasis on often counterproductive technique at the expense of story or character has resulted in an almost unbroken run of poor films from promising material  which in many ways is far worse than making bad films out of videogames. Ever the alchemist, once again he manages to turn gold into base metal with The Claim, a fairly lavish version of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge relocated to the California mountains during the Gold Rush. While the basic story transposes rather well  a down on his luck prospector who sold his wife and child for a gold claim and rose to rule the town that grew up around it finds himself on the road to destruction when they reappear and he attempts to make amends  it's little more than an underdeveloped skeletal outline that never grips, feeling less an attempt at subtlety, more underwritten.

While it throws out the complexity of the source material, there's enough left here that could have made a good adult Western drama in other hands, especially in the neat turn around from genre tradition that sees Peter Mullan's all-powerful Mayor of Kingdom Come trying to persuade Wes Bentley's surveyor to drive the railroad through his town to ensure its growth. Yet it never gets to the heart of the story, playing the big scenes for less than they're worth (hard to believe any director could botch a scene of Mullan harnessing the whole town to manhaul his marital home across the snow and into the heart of town, but Winterbottom manages it) and constantly pushing characters and story into the background without ever placing anything in the foreground to compensate. Worse, no present-day action in the film has any real consequence, which is fairly disastrous for a morality play about consequences. It's the kind of film where people get killed and their death makes no impression on the emotions or actions of anyone around them leaving a dreary, inconsequential film with no drive.

Rather than story or character, Winterbottom seems interested in recreating the world of McCabe and Mrs Miller, but he's taken all the worst of Altman without any of the best. There may be an occasional improvised feel, but it's rarely harnessed to the film's benefit, feeling like undisciplined self-indulgence and all too symptomatic of the way that far too much of the film is played out of focus, both metaphorically and literally. Indeed, it often feels like a film whose few strengths have little to do with the director. Peter Mullan is superb as the Mayor, convincingly essaying the kind of man who can rule an entire town by sheer force of will alone, but while you understand his emptiness, the film never allows you to feel for it, leaving the finale a rather empty spectacle rather than genuine tragedy. If anything, the film's tragedy is that Mullan didn't get a film worthy of his performance. Unfortunately the supporting performances are rather dull and characterless: Nastassja Kinski has little to do but waste away, Sarah Polley isn't able to do much with her cardboard good girl, Milla Jovovich lacks the moxie her saloon manger cries out for while Wes Bentley tries to coast on charisma without ever having enough to do the trick. Instead they're outshone by production designer Mark Tildesley's superbly recreated snowy mountain town and a surprisingly powerful and heartfelt Michael Nyman score that abandons his usual mathematical masturbation for something more grandiose and passionate. And you know what they say about shows where you come out humming the scenery


My town is a small one and we can only have the chance to see the big Hollywood productions.I had to wait for months to see this movie and I found it at Blockbusters yesterday.The cast is a dream cast for me I always liked Peter Mullan after My name is Joe.Milla Jovovich is an actress which I really find passionate.When the film was over I could not believe how bad it was.Meaningless details,bad picture quality and unbelievably bad story. I am so sorry for the cast and the director.


This is one of the worst Manuel Summers films, a title that it was made for his son, David Summers and the Hombres G. It is very difficult to make a great movie without good actors, but it is impossible make a movie without any actor. The plot is absolutely ridiculous, without a logical sense. For example, the love affair between David Summers and his girlfriend, Marta, or the boxing scenes in the concert... I don't recommend this film to anyone...


I decided to add my voice because this film is highly rated and I have never found myself at such odds with the majority of the IMDb audience.

Spoiler at end.

I read enough to see that I have nothing to add concerning its technical achievement, obviously well done.

I am an avid science fiction fan (books and film) so I agree with those who find this story weak. I went because I wanted to know why this film was so highly rated across all the demographic areas although I had my doubts based on the preview.

Apparently many do not agree with me but I would like to caution others that if you look forward to thought provoking ideas and having your preconceived notions challenged you will be disappointed. Even younger audiences may become bored after 1/2 hour although the visual stimulation may be sufficient.

My background includes special effects in film and computer program development so I naturally appreciate the films technical prowess. But I also know well almost all the science fiction films made to date including those with serious as well as comic presentations and WALL-E does not rate well for me when compared to them.

WALL_E missed being sufficiently provocative or amusing so I found it bland. The film, however, was much better portraying the emotional connections between the two main characters which is quite an achievement considering WALL-E was a garbage disposal unit who apparently developed over a long period of time a more than human heart (think of your feelings for roaches).

Spoiler follows: The ideas of planet ruin via garbage and humans becoming fat, technologically catered to, isolated in space, and thus unmotivated beings after 700 years is interesting but each of these is not original and I, at this time, cannot clearly describe why the film failed to engage me. Perhaps with such a future there should be more angst.


Having won the PR war, there is now no means by which a viewer can allow himself to judge a Pixar product as wanting or in this case, horrid. A movie so underscripted (and over messaged) that if you wasted five words describing the plot you'd give everything away. Audiences still don't know when they're being narratively cheated, or when a slightly promising idea has gone off the rails, or become a bloated, maddening mess. I never ever imagined when I rented this that I would be swearing at the screen as the unbearable latter two thirds of this movie wore out their welcome.

So here we are (AGAIN) with the unpromising clichés of a robot who wants to feel love, a ships computer issuing a self-destruct countdown, a crowd that requires one person to save them.

Wall-e himself makes sad eyes over and over. The movie milks this in every scene - Put "robot" and "love" into the big Hollywood script writing machine and you always get something like this. The movie becomes bloated with surface activity whose conception calls for dragging out tired computer animation, and the familiar set of unnecessary/lookalike obstacles to be overcome. It devolves into the usual thought (and time) wasters. In the end, things have reached the same frantic, overproduced excess that execs have been pushing for 50 years. Wall-E is exactly as bloated as Hello Dolly was in 1969. (& I challenge you to sit through that forgotten dud.)

In the 1968 movie Oliver, at an emotional bottom, the title moppet sings a song called "Where is love?" Lionel Bart was criticized for writing a song with sentiments too developed for a child to voice. While a child may seek the love a missing parent, they don't seek love in general as a disembodied ideal. Likewise for Wall-e. Here, barely three minutes after Wall-E is introduced, he's dreary little headcase pining for love, which is a limp idea dramatically for a kids film, and forces half the problems that ensue. The other half come from the wearying agenda, and this is coming from someone who is relieved we are finally in the green era.

Vain, high-concept viewers have taken pride in their ignorance of a device here, which is old news; large stretches of silence are novel only to audiences who are unfamiliar with Jaques Tati, the 28 silent minutes that open 2001, enormous silent stretches of the ingenious Blow-Up (& countless other examples) and who can't fathom the silent era.

The movie asks two tiny things of an audience; to nod in agreement with its simpleton moral pronouncements, and to pass the time distracted by a bunch of surface activity. Right in the middle, between those two things, is where any good movies soul resides, what the movie ask you to cogitate over; ideas! Sorry no ideas here, just an abundance of messages: Towers of garbage taller than the skyscrapers we built (check, message delivered) An indictment of bignesss and Wal-mart (check, message delivered) Headed by a craven CEO (check, message delivered) A single remaining plant (check, messaged delivered) A space-ark filled with helpless fatties (check, message delivered) etc. etc. etc. etc. (message delivered).

A glimpse into the future has never been so hopelessly stuck in the narrative past, and never looked so much like Victorian corn. The movie just cannot rest until a parade of morals has been pounded home. There is little sense of wonder in it. It ain't surprising that it was directed by the guy who made Little Nemo.

The movie becomes exactly as dreary, tiring and preachy as the premise of a largely wordless movie about ecology sounds. It does not overcome its major decisions. Regardless of it's popularity now, no one will be watching this in ten years because no one will be able to trudge through it. It is grotesquely unsubtle hideously preachy.

Wall-E is is as insufferable as a dinner guest who explains the correct moral stance on every topic that comes up. Message delivered.


...just some trivia...

There are several scenes from Denmark (scene 35) is from a small drive-by coffee-stand on their way from Copenhagen to Elsinore, a sign saying "Stop o g tag en k o p" (Stop and have a cup)- the joke is on Dylan, because k o p is not a cop.

You then see a beautiful crosscut from somewhere in England, where Robbie and Dylan goes into a labyrinth of tunnels to - (scene 51) being from the castle Kronborg (of Shakespeare's Hamlet fame) in Elsinore, Denmark.

We see some people standing along a road, when D.A.Pennebaker makes a fast pan, cutting to another fast pan to Dylan and Manuel, climbing the fortress of Kronborg, while a dog is barking. There is a boy and his girlfriend, sitting on a bench on the ramparts, whom Dylan and Manuel addresses (trying to buy some service from her, actually)- behind them you see Kronborg Castle...


Absolutely for fans only, this is a documentary of a Dylan tour made by a camera held in a very shaky hand. Eat the Document would make a good, but probably unwatchable, triple feature with Neil Young's Journey Through the Past and The Stones' Cocksucker Blues, a sixties triptych painted on broken windowpanes after a night of very bad drugs. Dylan's attempt at deconstructing or subverting or whatever he was trying to do to his own myth here says a lot about the era and leaves the artist as enigmatic as he ever has been, with the usual alternation between sublime poetry and clunking misfires. Still, there are some fine moments -- the droning duet with Johnny Cash, as two generations of bad boys create an otherworldly disharmony, the glimpses of the Band at the peak of their magic, the faces of the young Brits waiting in line for the shows, desperate to be at a scene they were determined not to dig. The tape I saw was followed by a harrowing ten minute outtake of Dylan and John Lennon riding in the back of a limo, the camera focused unflinching (and often unfocused) on them as they mumble their way through a thick purple haze -- sure proof that no one is as clever as he thinks he is on drugs.


I consider myself a fan of Bob Dylan within moderation, and I thoroughly enjoyed the previous documentary about his earlier European tour, DON'T LOOK BACK. I'd always heard (don't know if it's true or not) that Dylan himself did not want EAT THE DOCUMENT released, and after finally getting to suffer through the entire thing, it's not hard for me to understand why. Smart move there Zimmy - much smarter than anything you put across in the film itself. There is practically no point to watching this film, as it's a mind-melting mishmash of sounds and images that never come together to allow the viewer to get a grip on them. We want to hear what Dylan is saying in his arrogant press conferences, and we'd like to be able to enjoy his song lyrics. But the inane editing of this mess (supposedly by Bob Dylan himself - no wonder -) leaves you completely disillusioned and unsatisfied. It's a distorted trip into the scattered brain of a drugged out poet/rock star, and although some try to rationalize that this in itself is some sort of achievement, it's a journey I could easily have done without.

The focal point of the film, as I've tried to surmise through all the dense fog, is Bob's disastrous 1966 tour of Europe, the one where he "went electric" and offended all the folk purists. In between all the haze we get to see a few angry faces in the crowds calling Dylan a "traitor", and those are only a few of the more coherent snippets scattered amongst all the debris. Songs are continually cut off midway, and even as early as now it seems Zimmy had begun altering the arrangement of some of them, thus making them too unlike their album counterparts to really get into.

Dylan makes a fool of himself throughout this film, and it's a good picture of how fame, money and a little power can go to someone's head and be wasted on them. Nowhere is this more in evidence than during a 15 minute "outtake" that's usually tagged onto some copies of EAT THE DOCUMENT... it features two great legends, Dylan and then-Beatle John Lennon, riding in the back of a limousine. A terrific opportunity, right? Wrong. Because Mr. Dylan seems more interested in getting smashed out of his skull on something or other while Lennon - no stranger to drugs himself though much more composed on this occasion - comes across as cool, while his co-passenger Mr. Dylan is slurring his words, making little sense, and gradually becoming so ill to the point of needing to vomit into the camera. Through all of this, John Lennon attempts a little humor to snap Dylan out of it, but it's no use; Bob is just too zoned out to focus. A real shame. Here are two great legends together for the camera, but Dylan doesn't seem to be interested in putting this historic meeting to good use. THIS is drugs, kids -- this is your brain on drugs. This nauseated "limo ride" is not actually part of the "finished" film (it only includes several seconds of it), and that's too bad, as it's certainly the most fascinating thing shot, though for all the wrong reasons.


This has to be one of the most overrated movies of all time. I don't know what it is, but it may have to do with how old you were when you first saw it. I'm guessing that when the movie was first released, a lot of guys took their dates to see it  women typically love romantic themes, even when done badly  and got laid that night or something, hence they remember it fondly. Or it's possible that even younger audiences were fans of TV's "The Wonder Years" and loved Fred Savage or something. But for anyone who wasn't younger than 25 at the time of its release, this movie's popularity is an enigma: As a comedy, it's not very funny. As a fantasy, it's just bad. It has some qualities as an action adventure, though it comes off as a cheap imitation of a cross between the Robin Hood story and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a silly movie that works, at least for most guys, in a way that the Three Stooges do not); shame on Peter Cook. Overall, the story is childish, the dialog is juvenile ("She is alive, or was an hour ago. If she is otherwise when I find her I shall be very put out". Come on!) and repetitive, the sets are pathetic, the acting is abysmal (Andre the Giant and that annoying little dweeb, please), and the special effects (rodents of unusual size)  ugh!


Good lord this film was terrible. I went through a burst of nostalgia, bought a copy off eBay and then actually received/viewed/listed it back on eBay within two days.

My childhood, rose-tinted memories had told me that there were - somewhere - scenes that were good. Yet, somehow, those eluded me. As does the comparison (generally unflattering, but still...) with Star Wars. Both had people. And, um, special effects. But that's about it.

The Princess Bride did have a really cool name. And a Star Warsy opening sequence with 'something big moving in space', but that's it.

In fact, that opening sequence might be the only part of the movie that wasn't a thinly-concealed plothole. People meet. They fall in love instantly. Bad things happen because they have to. Then it turns into a scavenger hunt, as they just slip, snakes-and-ladders style, through an infinite series of plot holes, until they eventually reach the empowering conclusion.

The special effects were horrid, but, given the era, that might be the only forgivable thing about the movie. The writing and acting, on the other hand, well - no excuse. People have been doing those things for thousands of years. The sluggish pacing is fatal. Money has been spent, but the story just refuses to get moving. There's absolutely no reason to pay attention and no payoff for doing so. It only shows a certain kind of naff humor, so as not to sully the virtue of the bland hero and heroine; the kind of "humor" that only dorks who like the fantasy genre find funny. And it stays dramatically vague for its entire length, convinced that specificity will derail it as "the greatest fantasy epic ever filmed." The Star Wars, mythology, and the Arthur legend are pilfered liberally.

My Grade: D DVD Extras: Commentary by Director Rob Stein, Editor Lord Lovejoy, Actor Anthony Marshall and Actress Lysette Simmons; Cinefantastique magazine article text Commentary; Vintage Journey to The Princess Bride featurette; Marvel Comics Video Adaptation; 4 Photo Galleries; Filmographies; Theatrical trailer; and Trailers for "Jason and the Argonauts" & "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger"

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne


This is just an absolutely terrible movie. It dragged for the most part. Dialogue was juvenile. Jokes weren't funny at all. Acting was very bad. Rating is probably as high as it is as kids remember it fondly. Can't understand how anyone who is 25 years or older could possible have liked this movie. For me I always liked Andre the Giant and was happy to see him in this film but the rest of the characters were not believable and it actually looked like they were acting. It was as if they were auditioning for a part but weren't. The only part I liked was the line "You killed my father, prepare to die. Overall it wasn't very entertaining at all.