The made for TV film Primal Force begins with Frank Brodie (Ron Pearlman) waking up from a recurring nightmare about his mate being killed by some Baboons. There is a knock on Frank's door, he answers it & standing before him is a guy named Scott Davis (Mark Kiely) who has been told that he knows San Miguel Island better than anyone else & that he needs his help to lead a rescue mission as a plane recently crashed there. Eventually Brodie agrees, together with a female medic named Tara Matthews (Roxana Zal) a computer guy named Stan Kovacs (Julian Sedgwick) & Eddie Mendoza (Guillermo Rios) who carries a gun, gets in the way & does very little else, they set off for San Miguel Island. Meanwhile on the Island itself the three survivors, the pilot (Jimy Hefner), a real estate guy named Deutsch (Richard Fancy) & a pretty young girl named Kelsey Cunningham (Kimberlee Peterson) whose Father is interested in buying the Island, are deciding what to do when a group of vicious genetically altered Baboons kill the pilot. Kelsey & Deutsch just sort of run away. Our heavily armed group of rescuers, lead by Brodie, arrive on the Island via boat. Scott feels Brodie is withholding some information but they troop on regardless of all the human & animal skulls they find. They find Kelsey & Deutsch but they are all attacked by the genetic Baboons. The Baboons now know they're on the Island & will stop at nothing to kill the intruders as Brodie has to use his experience & firepower to keep everyone alive, with varying degrees of success. If that wasn't enough the guy (Bruno Danza) driving the boat has buggered off leaving them stranded & the Baboons have killed Kovacs & destroyed the radio equipment. As the survivors run low on ammo & morale they decide to fight back against the Baboons!

Directed by Nelson McCormick I thought Primal Force was an OK time waster but nothing that overly impressed me. The script by Micheal Thoma is about as clichéd as you expect of this sort of low budget TV production. First the characters, there's the moody, unshaven hero with personal demons to exorcise but turns out be be a throughly decent chap in the end, the clean cut hero, the computer whizz, the tough female character, the token nobody who is there to die & nothing else just so something happens & the character who has other more mysterious motives for being on the Island. The innocent plane crash victims aren't any better with the young pretty girl who screams a lot & the annoying selfish fat guy who doesn't care about anyone but himself. Then there's the story, a group becomes stranded in an isolated location & can't call for help, sound familiar? Group encounter living threat that wants to kill them all for no real reason at all, group run low on ammo even though they never actually run out & have to come up with other ways to defeat their enemy in a nail-biting (not) climax, been done yeah? Genetic experiments gone wrong. One character who gets abducted by the enemy & is not killed for some unexplained reason unlike everyone else who are killed on sight. You probably get the message. Having said all that for what it is I thought Primal Force was OK & rolled out the clichés with a certain degree of entertainment value. Ron Pearlman as the muscle bound, wise cracking Brodie is great & almost makes Primal Force worth watching on his own, everyone else is utterly forgettable. Unfortunately one area where Primal Force loses a couple of stars is in the violence department, basically it hasn't got any. This was obviously made with a fairly young teenage audience in mind as the blood, gore & nastiness is kept to an absolute minimum. The killer Baboons are just people in monkey suits, nothing particularly spectacular. Technically Primal Force is OK, it's very MTV in style with quick cuts, jerky hand held camera movements during the attacks, slow motion, bleached colours & every other flashy pointless trick you can think of. On the plus side the Mexican locations on occasion look stunning & a few nice shots here & there captures it well. Overall Primal Force isn't particularly good, but it ain't particularly bad either just sort of average & I think a decent helping of blood & gore would have helped no end to improve it!


A incredibly innovative film tackling those issues that the major studios are afraid to discuss. An amazingly low budget film, the fact that the guy from hellboy was in it was the only thing that kept me from reaching the remote. A poor decision.

This film is as painfully predictable as it is financially restricted, with the director apparently unsure as to whether to plunge all of his cash into buying quality monkey suits for his actors/stuntmen or hiring real monkeys from the zoo. There is literally no good dialogue whatsoever. Written, shot and edited like a bad episode of "goosebumps" this is a film whose studpidity is only equalled by the ineptiude of all those unfortunate/ignorant people involved in the production of this turgid piece of action/adventure fun.

So, to summarise:

Rookie Explorer: "How many (killer baboons) do you think are in there?"

Grizzled, been there- killed it- got the tshirt Veteran: "1 or 2 less than a million" (referring to a cave which looks to be big enough to hold maybe 10 crazed apes at the most)

Cut To Next Scene; the cave has somehow morphed into a sandy bunker populated by a strange mix of confused looking baboons and desperate for work actors. They are all then killed having failed to realise that attacking one at a time isn't a great long term strategy. etc....

This film is what "Lost" will hopefully turn into.


at first i thought 'nasaan ka man' might be one of those progressive new filipino films. as someone noted earlier, the movie does not look poorly made. it's clear that the directors used more expensive cameras to shoot, better angles, better sound equipment, good-looking actors, and nicer locations.

however, the improvements are all purely superficial. if it weren't for all the polish and expensive filters, 'nasaan ka man' would feel just like your typical, second-rate local movie - - hyperactive drama, predictable plot twists, "yeah right!" moments, crying, screaming, and characters you could care less about, all shoved down your throat.

a couple of things annoyed me about this movie. first of all, since when is it okay to have sex with adopted family? that not-blood-related argument does not make an ounce of difference. second, would a woman really not tell anyone for 40 years that she was raped, simply because the father told her to keep it secret? and, where the hell were the lights in this movie? i know the director tried to make things look super dramatic, but i was simply forced to turn up the brightness feature on my TV set.


As a CA resident, I'd like to see the jackholes who were shutting down the electricity plants to raise the prices get some jail time too.

I thought the movie was pretty good and has some very informative pieces. While they stuck to how Enron rose and crashed, I found it really interesting. However, when the movie focused on it's anti-Bush slant, it made me wonder if they were really being accurate.

It's fine to point out any connection the Republicans had to Enron, but the monster was created while Clinton was president. The CA energy crisis happened under Davis's watch. Both were in office during Enron's abuses, but neither are held accountable in any way. Rather, many minutes are spent on how Bush was friends with Lay. So what? Lay played golf with Clinton and spent the night in the Lincoln bedroom. Why are Democrats given such a free pass in this film? I think most politicians are a waste of our taxpayer money so I'm not partial to either party but I hate feeling like I'm subject to someone's political agenda when I watch a documentary. Yes, politicians deserve some blame, but I really doubt that the only guilty one's have Rs after their names. I found no value in portraying the Bush's as Kay-lovers when Democrats received just as much Enron campaign money as Republicans did. Like I said, it weakens the rest of the film for me because it makes me suspicious of the rest of the facts they lay out.


I learned little of significance from this film that I did not already know from CNN and The New York Times. (And I did not follow the Enron case obsessively as did some others.) The film did a very poor job of explaining what "business" Enron was in that might actually have been on the up-and-up before it started hiding its debts in the entities created by Andy Fastow. It also significantly underplayed the role played by Arthur Andersen and Vinson & Elkins in validating practices that were afterwards found to be illegal. Nor did it go as far as it might have in exploring what the "investors" -- all those prominent bankers -- thought they were doing. With the 24 hour a day cable networks, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, documentaries have proliferated. I've seen many in the past year that were better than this one.


This film had a lot of good things going for it. Based on Ray Bradbury's novel, with the equally talented Richard Matheson doing the screenplay. A top notch cast including Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowell and Darren McGavin.

So where did it go wrong. Well, first, the cheap special effects. I think they went with this because this was the post-Star Wars Science Fiction craze, but Star Wars had so raised the bar on special effects, that the tired models on wires method just wasn't going to satisfy anymore.

Second, Bradbury's novel is a collection of short stories strung together with a common thread. Some of the stories were published previously, and Bradbury included them in an overall book. Matheson decided to play up recurring characters in order to give the story more of a narrative, including Hudson's character.

Overall, it doesn't work. Bradbury's ornate writing doesn't translate well to the screen despite the best efforts of Matheson and the actors.


it's dated but a reasonably good plot. Particularly the first of the 3 episodes is dated and the SFXs are really not good. If you can see past it then it's OK.

The age is not the only excuse as 2001 Space Ody is older and better (re SFX).

the acting is generally not brilliant but passable.

I suppose i liked it a bit but having to watch it for so long spoilt the enjoyment.

It probably is debatable whether it is spending money to buy this!

It probably could be condensed into a great movie now


this is a horrible, horrible effort. but somehow it is also quite entertaining. there are two kinds of sci-fi: good and bad. this goes under the bad category - and how! - but it is, in a way, good/bad. the awful special effects are someone fun to see... or, should I say, witness. the acting is actually pretty decent, especially from Bernie Casey and Chris Connely and Nick Hammond. Darren McGavin is a bit over the top but does a decent job, and Rock Hudson isn't too bad. but the most boring, and unenjoyable parts are dealing with two monks who are searching for God on Mars. as for the overall picture, the script is tedius, and the scenes are very, very long. it is a mini-series and oh how it feels like one. even without commercials (on the DVD of course) you'll feel as if half your life is over when it's through. but you should have some fun watching it because as corny and horrible as THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES is, there is a feeling you will have, like when you're home sick: that at least you get to miss work or school. work and school, in this case, is reality. this movie takes you away from reality and that's not a bad thing.


Am I the only one who thinks this is poorly acted and cheesy for even 1979-80 standards? Why did the great Rock Hudson agree to do this 'space opera'? Ay yi yi! I know this was way before CG animation and special effects, but good lord, the effects on Star Trek TOS 10 years plus earlier looked better than this! The spaceships on martian Chronicles all look like models from the Hobby store!

No wonder this mini series was shelved for a year by the producers and network. What a crappy Melodrama!

I'd love to see a modern update film for this story. It's such a great Bradbury story.....

Ho Hum


Available now on MGM DVD, full TV mini-series. The writer Ray Bradbury, saw this catastrophe coming, even he was embarrassed when "Martian Chronicles" was released.

Utterly stupid dialog, childish plot and one dollar budget, how wrong can you go? Camp value, yes?. And those little plastic miniatures and chunky matte-paintings, talking about sore eyes! Slow, serious (unintentionally funny) and boring story, with some massive scientific mistakes. This makes the old Galactica series look waaaay better!!!

I found this crap so ridiculously lame, that I just had to watch it. Don't expect it to be a mind blowing saga, but a low profile TV-series for idiots.

See it only for fun, and if you're a sci-fi fan.

Disappointed, yes, for buying the DVD.

The martian contact lenses were nice!!!


This film is too bad to be even be considered 'schlock'. The main storyline shows promise and originality but is severely corrupted by long, boring and irrelevant sub-plots. Granted that this was the late '70's, but the special effects are childish at best - and keep in mind that this decade also produced Star Wars. The only saving grace is the 'message' - but sadly, its impact is overshadowed by a bad production. At the end of this film you will be at one of two opinions; "must buy the book because the plot is so original and they just ruined it by a bad film" -or- "I never did really understand the '70's!" Enjoy the very, very few good parts and forget the rest.


There are a few movies out there that are so over-hyped that I've always hesitated viewing them for fear of being disappointed - "Raging Bull", "Blade Runner", "The Lord Of The Rings" films, and "Eight Heads In A Duffel Bag" all come to mind. Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" always had a special lure to me since I am very interested in planetary astronomy and have always enjoyed a writers interpretation of what our future in space may hold. I've never read the books, but I saw the videos available and bought them last week. And sure enough, these films are totally TERRIBLE! The Martian Chronicle series (the written series, anyway) is usually thought of as a "classic". But the films!! I can't honestly think of anything in the films that I thought were well-done, or even fairly well-done. The words that come to mind here are: Boring, Illogical, and Cheap. The special effects and models used in the films are cheap garbage and look almost as bad as those in "Plan 9 From Outer Space". The acting is not even acting - the actors appear as if they are reading off of cue cards. The writing is terrible and at times not even logical. The directing is non-existent, the many times the actors appear to be walking over to an "X" on the floor to deliver their lines to each other. The story is illogical and the sequence of events would never happen in ANY Universe. I am barely through the second tape of the series (there are three tapes in the set). The second looks like it will be even worse than the first. I doubt I will be willing to even sit through the third. What I find amazing is that these films were produced at the same time the original "Star Wars" Trilogy was filmed, and the difference between the two series is dumbfounding. Where the Star Wars films were exciting and dramatic, the Martian Chronicles are the exact opposite - each little story line is only marginally interesting, and each is filmed in almost a dreamlike sequence. I can go on and on and pick apart almost every scene in the Martian Chronicles films, but I think I've made my point. This has to rate as one of the bottom 5 films I've ever sat through. And if anyone can disagree with this I would appreciate hearing from them.


What should have been the gimmick for a 30 second restaurant commercial (in which the cooks are conjoined twins) is instead two hours of pure hell. I have often felt that if I a critic says a movie is good, people believe it , no matter how bad it actually is, and this is one of those cases.

The direction? Well there was none. I think the only six shots in the entire movie were shot-counter shots, even when both characters were the conjoined twins. I looked away to see if when I looked back, I could imagine what the screen would look like in my mind, purely based upon the sound. I was right, the camera in the same place.

Acting? Matt Damon played the part of someone who knew he could act but wanted a beach house so did a stupid movie well. Greg Kinnear, is blond.

Cinematography. I think I saw some shadows somewhere but maybe not. That is perhaps good for a comedy where you want things to be bright, but I wouldn't have known any better if they let a monkey do the lighting. Even a stupid monkey.

Writing? The only good joke, which I won't ruin, is in the trailer anyway. And its not that funny. Otherwise, I didn't laugh during the whole thing. I was expecting a bad gross-out comedy and I just got a bad movie.

Even if you like this movie, you have to admit that there are plenty of talented writers and directors out there that could make a better movie, but I guess the American audience is too dumb to know talent when they see it and instead liked this movie.


Different types of comedy is always good. There should always be gross-out, satire, farce, and subtle comedy available. However, Stuck on You, the newest offering by the Farrelly Brothers, is none of those, for it tries to be offensive without being too offensive, because then some people would be offended. It seems here like the Farrellys, who are known for their bad taste, wanted to make fun of conjoined twins, but felt like it may upset some people, so instead they cast them in a loving light, but don't know what to do with it. Nice comedy does not work for the Farrellys.

Bob (Matt Damon) and Walt (Greg Kinnear) have been stuck together for all of their lives. They have simple lives owning and being short-order cooks at the Quickee Burger. Walt is an aspiring actor and dreams of being an actor in Hollywood. Bob agrees to go with him (obviously) to Hollywood, because Bob's internet friend May (Wen Yann Shih) lives there, also. Almost immediately, Cher gives Walt a job, but their relationship is soon tested as they continue to live in L.A.

As I said earlier, the Farrellys don't know what to do with all of their material that isn't offensive, and since the essence of them is in their ability to offend people, they don't have anything up their sleeves to show us. They could have gone deeper into the relationship between Bob and Walt, but they barely go into that, and when they do, it isn't funny (except for the `We're Off to See the Wizard' thing). Humor is subjective, but I think most agree with me in that most of the movie wasn't funny.

Being the movie geek that I am, I eat up anything related to Hollywood, so I was excited for when Bob and Walt were going there, hoping to hear some good Hollywood jokes. Unfortunately, about the most of it is Cher yelling at someone. If that makes you laugh, then more power to you, but I think most people require more. I will admit, though, that Cher's new boyfriend did make me laugh. For the most part, once the scene changes, the laughs don't.

The effect to make Damon and Kinnear look conjoined looked so fake it looked real. It just looked like some skin attached between the two, and oftentimes it looked like it moved around some. Also, how did they get separate clothes on? It's a small detail, but it bothered me. Back to the Farrellys for a minute, more jokes could have been made not at the expense of conjoined twins but just with them, something like in Airplane 2: The Sequel.

I don't understand why everyone makes fun of Damon's acting, he's a solid actor, and he wasn't half bad here, but Kinnear was his better half. The two played off each well, and, amazingly enough, Mendes wasn't too bad either, but it seemed like everything Shih tried to do was fake. Overall, if you do see Stuck on You, don't.

My rating: 4/10

Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, and some language.


You might think a movie about conjoined twins would be wacky or even funny, but somehow the Farrelly brothers knew how to suck every bit of comedy out of a potentially hillarious film and leave the viewer with nothing more than a few sparse chuckles. Stuck on You could just as easily have been titled "Any other movie about small town brothers" because it makes no attempts to serperate itself from any other movie about brothers who have been together for most of their lives. Nothing new, nothing funnier, nothing inventive. I might have thought that the Farrelly brothers could have interviewed a few conjoined twins to get a little more perspective on their lives. I'm sure there are many aspects of their lives that the average person would find funny, just as there are funny moments in anyone's life that, if revealed, would get a good belly laugh from a crowd. My problem is that this movie is just like all of the others. Go see Bad Santa if you want to laugh this holiday season. 4/10


Someone said this is the best Farrelly's movie since "There's Something About Mary". Fact is the Farrelly's haven't done much since ".. About Mary" except for "Shallow Hal" which at least had a decent story and good acting. And while "Shallow Hal" won't go down as a classic, it was certainly better than "Stuck On You" - which, quite simply, it shouldn't have been. "Stuck on You" had the POTENTIAL to be an above average comedy, with an original hook (siamese twins) and two excellent actors in Damon and Kinnear. And while there are glimpses of excellent comedy writing, it seems obvious the writer couldn't come up with enough of them to fill out a movie and reverted to standard, cliché'd comedy bits to fill the rest. What a shame. So much promise lost in mediocrity.

This movie isn't worth seeing.


I had high hopes for this film. Having rented it I watched it this weekend, popcorn at the ready, waiting for a stupidly funny laugh-riot. How wrong was I? Id read on here that many people hadn't found it funny at all - I was actually quite encouraged thinking maybe it was just too silly or in bad taste that they weren't amused. I'm no prude, I don't think that conjoined twins are funny in general, but there certainly was a lot of potential for original jokes, after all its not a situation you come across everyday or in many movies. I can hand on heart honestly say that I didn't laugh once during the entire film, not because I found it in bad taste but because the attempted jokes were just not funny. I'm sure Matt Damon wishes he could sever all ties to this film, certainly a low point for him I believe. After some good performances and some quality films I was surprised to see his name attached to this project.


This sort of comedy is either something you expect to enjoy as light entertainment or else you are wasting your time analyzing. Although I don't like "dumb" humor I'm glad I stumbled into this one while channel surfing. The finale seems to be removed from the plot, but If you came this far you weren't worried about a spoiler. It is truly one of the greatest movie musical performances in history. Greg Kinnear fronts a mighty tight rendition of "Summertime" that stands above its eminent fore-bearers. I don't know how to engage your interest any further. My opinion of the movie would be lukewarm and shallow (the opinion, that is; OK the movie is no continental chasm.) It's too bad the target fan for this couldn't possibly be suited for this somewhat traditional and historical piece of music.


I thought that the Farlley Brothers were suppose to churn out comedies? Stuck On You is a one joke movie, and the joke isn't funny. The brothers are conjoined. HA! They do everything together. HA! Walt (Greg Kinnear) has dreams of being a Hollywood actor, but doesn't seem to be able to recognize the obstacle that awaits him. HA! Bob, (Matt Damon) has stage fright and experiences panic attacks. HA!

If you take a look at the Farlley Brother filmographies, they only have one funny movie. The rest could be considered witty or clever, but by no means funny. We all can hope that they will one day produce another 'Something About Mary,' but with this latest entry, all were getting is something.


I had high expectations with this movie which may be part of the reason I was so disappointed by it. Thinking that it was going to be another "There's Something About Mary", I was excited to see it. It is about two conjoined twins who own a burger place in a small community where it seems like everybody knows everybody. However, one of the brothers wants to become an actor in Hollywood. So, they go to Hollywood so he can live his dream. Unfortuantely, perhaps the best part of the movie is that Cher is in it...yeah,it IS that bad. It is just like any other comedy movie. One star a guy nobody has ever heard of and a plot that is pretty much an excuse to tell jokes. This all works out fine for most comedy movies, but the problem with this one is that it just isn't funny. The jokes are boring, and just downright not funny. This movie did not make me laugh out loud at one single part of the movie which takes away the comedy aspect of a comedy movie leaving pretty much nothing. Rent it if you really want it but you will be regretting it if you buy this movie without seeing it first. 3/10


The high rating @IMDB made me watch that movie - and I am *very* disappointed. It is shallow, plain and predictable! While one must assume that this was intended to be that way, the movie still turned the corner towards "cheesy" way too hard. Really... waaaaaayyyy too hard. Actually, my brain felt violated and offended.

However, there are two person I enjoyed somehow: Old Joe (Andy Griffith) and Shelly herself (as "Dawn", especially when she confessed about her new boyfriend). "Earl" was another character more interesting (I like Jeremy Sisto).

Résumé : maybe one should be a woman to enjoy that movie?


I thought I was going to have to start scratching my eyes out during this movie to make the time pass. There were no "up's and down's" in this flick. It was completely monotone. I could have watched the first 5 minutes of this movie, then left and come back for the last 3 minutes and not missed a thing. So boring. It reminded me of a low budget soap opera. The acting was okay. But the storyline really didn't go anywhere. I felt ripped off seeing this movie at the theater. It's definitely one I could have waited for to come out on TELEVISION. I saw that it received 8 out of 10 stars and that's why I went to see it. I'm not quite sure what everyone enjoyed about this flick unless it was their great popcorn or they received free tickets to the flick.


Have you ever noticed how, if a review praises a movie, any movie, the, "helpful", votes pile up? If a review is critical in any way, forget your percentages. It will be, "3 helpful out of 1209 total", especially if you dare go against a popular trend, one that should have died long ago, that of hating men. This was one of the most enabling movies ever made. Sure, if a wife finds herself married to that brute, she should do whatever it takes to get out of the marriage. The Doctor was, however, just as abusive, dismissive, selfish and manipulative, not helping her, but in a different way, being maybe worse, since appearing to be what she wanted in a man. The harm in this movie rests in the fact that, in general, everyone feels, at one time or another, picked on, under-appreciated and taken advantage of by others. If a woman is sensitized , and looking for sources, other than herself, sensitized to look for it in signs in her husband, then he takes the brunt of the hate which is in most cases conjured up in the minds of everyone, occasionally, man or women. The net result of the mother and daughter walking off alone, being perfectly happy to be without a man, now that, my friends, is misleading and completely detrimental to those women who might otherwise try to work things out with their real-life husbands. Not with husbands like he was in the movie, but with the average husband who only occasionally is a jerk and, I might add, not too many more times than the average wife is to her husband, in real life. Man-hating movies get a pass by the general public. During the feminist movement, men were, "put in their place," regularly and some of that actually needed to occur. It has gone too far, past being equal, rebounding now to hating men and leading many women to trying to live without them, a really, really stupid outcome of the entire feminist movement. You would think there were no worthy men out there, if you listen to these movies, (and another of my favorite worst movies called, "This Boy's Life.") Very few men are misogynists. Most men are well worth living with. Women are NOT better off without them altogether. What The Waitress does is take a case, where dumping the jerk IS more than appropriate, and causes lingering anticipatory angst in a woman's mind, seeing similar things in the men she lives around, stretching now to find them, when, in fact, those things looked for so hard are not even close to really being part of what the men around those women will do or are being, in degree nor goal, even being capable of mimicking. Women and men, both, tend to blame the wrong person, the easy one to blame, the man, in this movie, when it is many times their own sadness they cannot deal with. Are women really this helpless in general? These kinds of victim movies are an indictment of the powerlessness of women, a lack of power that most men do not see or perceive. Most men would never come close to treating their wife in that manner, yet he might just inordinately get his head bit off if he even approaches what might look like the impending doom of emerging expected bad behavior, as was truly seen by the husband in the movie. "Running away." as she said many times, will be too often a result for many women after seeing that movie, when that is the stupidest thing they could do, not warranted and not beneficial, thinking life is better without men altogether. The three girls as waitresses were three of the biggest losers imaginable. You are telling me that fact was entirely the fault of the men around them? The only acceptable boyfriend was the sister-like wimp in which one of them saw little enough of a threat that he was OK! That's the kind of a man women want? The only "acceptable" man, now, can't be one? Some reviewers I read thought this was just a great comedy. Folks, if you have a clue, if you discern anything about anything, you must know there is not a single funny thing in or about this movie.


While I hesitate to be a party-pooper, I must call a spade a spade and say that (IMHO) this film would probably NOT have gained general release had it not been for the tragic circumstances of the writer/director's demise.

The acting is fine, 'tho a bit amateurish, the editing is crisp, and the cinematography is acceptable. The major faults lie in the story and direction. There's hardly any substance here. It's doesn't work as comedy - not even light-grey (certainly not "dark") comedy... characters are poorly developed (except for what other chrs have to say about them -- sure, Earl is a jerk, but not all that bad a jerk, and - for that matter, so is the sexually exploitative and wholly unethical Dr. P, and Becky and Dawn tell us that Joe is insufferable and Cal a mean-spirited slave-driver). The only chr I could see with any clarity was Ogie (sp?), and that's because there wasn't much there to begin with. No one's motives were any more than hearsay by other chrs.

Was this a morality tale? A comedy? A spoof? (Of what?) A love story? (certainly not! How could one see the frantic necking and sex between Dr. P and Jenna as being in any way serious?) It could be called a "chick flick," but only if the definition of chick-flick insists that every male chr be a self-interested, sex-seeking arschloch. Were the chrs stereotypes? Clichés? WHAT WAS THE POINT?

To be sure, this was an earnest effort at film-making/storytelling, but it falls far short of just about everything except "cute."


I don't know the background of the writer, director, etc., but if they were man-hating lesbians, this movie would be the logical result. OK, Earl the husband is slime, fine. The doctor is slime, but in a slightly more nuanced way--it takes Keri Russell a little longer to figure that out, and of course discard him like a used tissue without a trace of regret or feeling. The goofy boyfriend of the other waitress is slime--a jerk, whose only quality is persistence. The doctors that Keri interviews in her search for a doctor--all male--are slime for a variety of reasons. The chef at the restaurant is slime--cheating on his wife for no good reason and just being a miserable human being. The Andy Griffith character is allowed a good moment or two, but Keri is the only one who can stand him.

To sum up, there is not one male character in the movie worthy of respect, or even a neutral feeling. The women on the other hand are all sisters-under-the-skin and reluctant to hurt each other, just happy-go-lucky gals out for a good time.

They key scene is at the end, where Keri has her baby (a girl, of course), and realizes that she doesn't need men at all! What a great lesson for women everywhere. Blah.


The film had everything going for it except writing talent. Actors were fine (especially Andy Griffith), camera was in focus, sets were marvelous. But it was a grand "so what?" at the end. Mom has baby, ditches controlling husband, gets a big fat legacy, ends her dead-end affair, and lives happily ever after. Sort of an afterschool special for the WTV set. I did love the pie pieces throughout the film, but the characters were waaayyy too stereotypical. The very real, claustrophobic, relationship of the main character was just dropped at the end with no unpleasant traces to show for it all as if the filmmaker ran out of time and was tired of the story. Not recommended...


I'm fairly surprised at the relatively hight ratings of this movie. I came away feeling cheated, primarily because the script created such cardboard characters.

Jenna is a waitress with a genius for pie recipes in a Southern town that should have been named Misogynyville. All the waitresses in the diner where Jenna works commiserate in a support network of lowered expectations concerning the male sex. Every man is either goofy, grumpy or just plain obnoxious, as in the case of Jenna's husband, Earl. Just how bright and charming Jenna happened to marry a Neanderthal like Earl is never fully explained, except for a reference to the fact that he "changed" after he married her. This would imply that Earl was clever enough to hide his true nature during courtship, which I truly doubt.

Jenna becomes pregnant after an ill-advised bout of drunken lovemaking with Earl, which sidetracks her plans of becoming independent. She finds that her doctor has semi-retired, and a new, attractive (albeit nervous) doctor is taking over her practice. He is a nice man, therefore from out of town. Wonder what happens next? Anyway the plot twists which are not predictable are baffling, as characters exhibit behavior that serves the plot but not their persona. The principle actors give nice performances, and there is a decent bit from Andy Griffith at the town's gruff but lovable old man, but not enough to save a script that needed some re-writes.


This was one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen, and even now I am amazed that I watched it the whole way through. I kept waiting for it to get better, but it never did. From the start to the end, it was one big cliché, extremely predictable with not one surprise in the entire film. From the over the top ridiculous boyfriend of Dawn and the wedding in the pie shop, the wife of the doctor being in the delivery room. I even found the scene where the husband finds the money and wants her to tell him it's for a present for him to be offensive to the many women who live with abusive husbands, as it made him more of a joke than the cruel character that an abusive husband is.

And the main character lacked any depth.

And the obvious flaws, like the doctor saying he was going to do an epidural when she was obviously way past the time when one is possible. The delivery had no sense of realism.

This movie was just plain lousy.


I can't believe this movie is so highly rated. All I can see is a badly written, badly acted mess. It tries to be heartfelt and bittersweet but it ends up just being creepy.

The main character is a miserable, angry woman who is being abused and slapped around by her evil, dim-witted husband. She plots her escape while having an affair with a married doctor. To make everything worse, she's pregnant but does not want the baby.

The writer/director wants to make a light, sweet comedy out of this grim stuff. It does not work at all. It's as if someone took the script of "Medea" and tried to make a rom-com.

Nathan Fillion is actually quite good. The rest is best forgotten.


This movie is really really awful. It's as bad as Zombie 90 well maybe not that bad but pretty close. If your a fan of the Italian horror movies then you might like this movie. I thought that it was dam near unwatchable of course I'm not a fan of the Italian movies. The only Italian movie that was OK was Jungle holocaust. Which is one overrated movie. This film is way overrated. But let's get started with how horrible this film really is shall we. The acting is goofy and horrible. The effects suck. No plot with this movie. Little gore which is the only good thing in the film isn't showed nearly enough to be worth watching this wreck. The zombies are very fake looking. It looks like it's a bunch of dudes wearing cheap dollar store masks. Please avoid this film at all costs.


Possibly one of the worst but also one of the funniest horrors I have ever seen and believe me I have seen allot. It starts off derivative and ends atrociously but I was hysterical all the way through. there is no motive for the awakening of these "zombies", there is no plot to speak of, it is tacky and crude but, shamefully hilarious. The dubbing is terrible as is the acting ( "OH ................. ......................................God!!!!") there is not much blood to speak of either although the version I watched is probably the cut one. The incest sub-plot is nasty but strangely amusing the list of complaints could go on and on I did not even speak of the zombies themselves! This is an extremely bad film. If you like that kind of thing (as I do) you should watch it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I nearly stopped watching this horrible movie several times while watching it. I now wish i had quit watching. This movie had horrible dubbing, horrible acting, and a horrible script. The story was stupid! The effects were just... bad. I don't see what people could like in this movie. I noticed it trying to rip off ideas from other zombie movies, too. It's pretty blatant at times. Only watch this movie if you've got time to waste and you're not paying for it.


(Someone needs to say it)

Possibly the worst, most depressingly dreary and poorly lit movie ever made, I find it unbelievable that anyone could find any merit in this turd. Bad, bad, bad... even the gore is bad. I usually am a big fan of the red stuff, but here is was just cheesy and nasty. They didn't even try. Far too long and boring to be funny either. Barely 6 people die in the course of the movie, the zombies look terrible (Gino De Rossi went overboard on the maggots), the kid was an obnoxious freak, and the music caused my ears to bleed! Only see this if you are on the brink of suicide and need just a little push to go all the way through with it. It'll make you feel ashamed of being a fan of Italian movies or Horror flicks. Burn this movie.


The thing that fascinates me in films like "Burial Ground" is the teeth. Do human teeth really grow that large? The masks in this film (and yes, they are very obviously masks) make the foremost pair of teeth in the human mouth out to be about three inches long by two inches wide.

The minimal plot is as follows: a group of utter morons who wind up trapped at a countryside manor by some zombies that have been conjured up through some kind of occult experimentation. In a series of sequences I found to be really boring, they are systematically cornered and killed by the shambling corpses, who get around fairly well for crumbling bodies that have crawled out of the ground.

I suppose the praise for this film comes from those who like their horror to be mindless, but personally this was a little too devoid of substance for me. Not only was there very little story here, it's also full of characters who do things that are so illogical that you wonder if they are alive. One lady gets a spike through one of her hands and she doesn't even try to pull it out with her other free hand. Another lady with a wounded ankle hears zombies hacking away at the door she's standing next to, so she sends her companion to "go get her husband", leaving her all alone. Why wouldn't she leave, too?

The gore was quite aggressive, but not realistic enough to be of interest, and there were too many scenes that drag on. The director shows us lots of slow moving shadows, trails of blood that go on and on before the source is discovered, and slow-moving zombies that wander for so long that you wonder how they could trap anybody.

Where the movie really fails is in its lack of appealing characters. "Burial Ground" features so many morons that I was rooting for the zombies. My favorite character (and apparently everyone's favorite character) was the one that was supposed to be a young boy but was obviously an adult actor portraying a child. Ironically, it wasn't even a child who dubbed the voice. I was less than impressed by the zombies, some of whom had obviously healthy eyeballs staring out from the bones of their exposed skulls. One sequence showing zombie heads being smashed and shot has them all break open just like clay pots, because that's basically what they are.

The most obvious debt that the makers of "Burial Ground" owe is to Amando DeOssorio, creator of the "Blind Dead" series, which this movie bears more than just a passing resemblance to. Admittedly, there was one brilliant moment of absurdity: a notorious sequence where the little boy, now a zombie, rips his mother's breast off with his teeth. It's the age-old zombie cliché where a dead loved one is somehow mistaken for living. "Burial Ground" gets points for taking it to such ludicrous....heights?


Made in the eighties so I was expecting a lot of this so called cult fav. Boy, was I disappointed after watching it. The effects are way below zero. When a face is pulled through a window you could notice that it is a latex face and the zombies are only zombie on their face and hands. The storyline is simple, I will give it straight away, a professor unwittingly unseals a cursed underground crypt, what happens next is that zombies are coming above the burial ground trying to eat those who are on the burial ground, end of script. So it appears on screen that we see the professor waking the dead and being killed himself. After wards the movie is simple, we see zombies arriving, following a victim, victim is killed, zombie is killed, zombies arrive, victim killed and so on and on. The only thing that is so called offensive is the freakish incestuous son. That part isn't for me offensive, we see him reaching for mothers skirt and underwear. Nothing more nothing less. Only at the end he's able to pull out mothers breast and suck it. Maybe the T&A in the beginning is the best part, filthy me.


The greatest thing about this movie is that on the back of the DVD case, it states that it will go down as a cult classic rivaling the fame of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I stumbled upon this movie when a friend was going to throw out an electric guitar of his and decided to give it to me. I didn't feel right just taking it without giving him anything in return, so, being the modest person that he was, he told me simply to buy this movie for him as he had noticed it at Suncoast a few days earlier. Being a fan of zombie movies I, of course, was compelled by my own curiosity to watch it. I now see why he wanted to own it.

Every line of dubbed dialogue is the most unintentionally humorous thing you will ever hear. The zombies wore masks, instead of makeup, that were covered in maggots that strangely made them look even worse than the zombies in Zombie Lake and a bit like Tusken Raiders. As if that weren't enough, they were also skilled in the art of using gardening utensils as weapons. They even have a scene where one zombie hands out said utensils to the other zombies, a la every ancient war movie you've ever seen. Lastly, who could forget the stunning man-boy with a Norman Bates complex?

Do yourself a favor, and at least rent this movie. It deserves to be seen by everyone at least once in their lifetime.


'Burial Ground' is one of those movies we horror buffs used to pass by when going through the horror section at the video store. It has one of those artworks on the sleeve that you never forget. For years in the U.S. it was only available on VHS in a poor quality print. The worst of it being night scenes so dark you almost couldn't see what was happening. Now that it's finally available in a high quality print we can see it the way it was meant to be seen. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to the viewer.

Pros: An absolutely breathtaking location. Some really awful...I mean awfully funny dialogue like, "You look just like a little whore. I like that in a girl." Lots of cheese with a dash of camp. Some of the zombie make-up isn't bad. The more subtle parts of the score aren't bad and help make some scenes creepier. A good amount of blood and gore. Zips right along. The zombies make for some pretty creepy monsters. The actors, though below average at best, at least seem into it and not embarrassed. Some things have to be seen to be believed. An appropriate ending.

Cons: Threadbare story and cardboard characters. Plot holes and lapses in logic galore. Some overacting. Some of the zombie make-up is really poor. Most of the score feels out of place, especially the jazz.

Final thoughts: Though not quite on the same level as other great "so-bad-it's-good" Italian zombie movies like Bruno Mattei's 'Hell of the Living Dead,' you can't deny it's charm. It's one of those special bad movies that has to be seen at least once.

My rating: 3.5/5 (So-bad-it's-good rating) 1.5/5 (Serious rating)


This film starts off promising with a very dark creepy opening sequence. It seemed to have a different tone from the beginning and indeed it managed to keep the same feel through most of the film. The dubbing is atrocious and the score is almost unbearable.

 There is a very very wierd sub-plot between two very close family members. (I won't spoil it for you guys who have not seen it.)

 While this little films is far from being great, I really can't put it into the TERRIBLE zombie film wastebasket with such attempts at filmmaking as Zombie Lake or Barn of the Naked Dead and other films of the likes, but I cannot put it on the same shelf with Romero's Dead trilogy or some of Fulci's Zombie flicks. Any hadrcore Zombie fan will probably enjoy it, but for you Romero and Fulci fans, don't expect too much.

** stars


Dinner guests for a professor/archaeologist find out they're on the menu instead when the undead, from a crypt unearthed by their host, come a calling.

While this might appeal to zombie fans(..and, from what I hear, this flick has quite a following), I thought it was rather poor with no real explanation as to why the dead would rise and behave in the fashion of George Romero's zombies eating flesh and innards. Bizarre angle where a "young boy" Michael(Peter Bark who actually looks older than the actress portraying his mother)lusts after his mommy Evelyn(Mariangela Giordano, who really loves to widen her eyes)groping her sexually in one scene.

The zombies are often merely extras wearing Halloween masks..that's how effective some of them aren't. There are scenes of gut-munching and neck ripping for the fans who desire this sort of thing when they watch their zombie movies. Some nudity and sex. There's no plot to speak of other than one dimensional characters in search of an exit off the grounds of their host's castle with slow zombies lumbering after them.

An eerie electronic score(think "Forbidden Planet")does add ambiance where the film often fails to deliver.


I bought this movie uncut because I love gory movies. Everyone had hyped this movie so much and talked about how gory it was. The only death scenes I saw were a few long, drawn out gut-munching scenes, very repetitive and boring. I can only watch a few zombie hands reaching into a cadaver and pulling out pig intestines and fake blood so many times before it gets really old. Not to mention the few other scenes where people died were equally mundane. A woman gets her face pulled through some jagged glass in a scene that pathetically attempts to re-create the eye-piercing scene from Fulci's Zombie. Someone gets decapitated and...aw who cares. Even the guy who has the first confrontation with the zombies looks like he is maybe going to have something cool happen, the zombie has his hands wrapped around the guy's face, does he crush his head, gouge his eyes, try to eat his brain? No! He lets him go! What the he!!? The plot was terrible, the gore was redundant and the special effects were sub-par. How dare anyone try to compare this with the other Italian zombie films at the time.


Sat through this film, just, but only to keep watching the strange man/boy actor Peter Bark. Apparently he's supposed to be about 17 or so, but he looks and moves around like a 50 yr old. Also bizarrely, Bark never speaks on-screen, IE you never see his lips move, and his voice is always heard from the reverse angle. The scene where Bark tries to seduce his mother is also a classic of sorts. Three cheers for Freak Man-Boy BARK! Apart from this, Zombie Dead has little plot and atmosphere, though there are some relatively Gory scenes to make up for this. The pace is also very slow, with Zombies moving really slowly towards there victims.


Substandard zombie flick offers little means of distinguishing itself other than an incestuous child played by a 26 year old midget. Some nice gory special effects in places, but the storyline, acting, dubbing, and zombie makeup are all either average or below average in comparison to other European zombie films of the time. Zombie film buffs may enjoy it, but for others, there are much better ways to spend an hour and a half.


Most infamous for a scene involving a child biting off his mother's

nipple, this loser Italian zombie film has a high gross out factor,

and little else.

In the opening, a bearded Professor Ayres (Renato Barbieri,

looking like Rasputin) discovers a "secret" that looses zombies on

the countryside, getting himself killed in the process. We never find

out how he awakened the dead...

Cut to three horny couples arriving at an Italian villa. They are

guests of the late professor, and let themselves in. None of the

couples are differentiated from each other. George (Roberto

Caporali) and Evelyn (Maria Angela Giordano) bring along Evelyn's

weird son Michael (Peter Bark, an obvious little person badly

posing as a young boy). James (Simone Mattioli) and Leslie

(Antonella Antinori) are here, keep track of them because Leslie is

cute. Mark (Gian Luigi Chirizzi) and Janet (Karin Well) stand out

only because Mark looks like Michael Keaton and Janet has

psychic feelings that something awful is going to happen, and this

subplot is never elaborated on. Nicholas (Claudio Zucchet) and

Kathleen (Anna Valente) are the house servants who always do

everything they are told, even in the heat of the zombie attacks.

There is really not much of a plot here. The zombies stumble upon

Mark and Janet, and James and Leslie, while they are all getting it

on in the gardens. George and Evelyn and Michael are cornered in

the professor's office and George is the first to die as he martyrs

himself for his family. From here on out, if a cast member wanders

off by themselves, consider them dead. Out in the yard, Janet

steps in a bear trap (!), and hobbles around for the rest of the film.

The survivors board themselves up in the villa, and wait to die.

Hilariously, Kathleen finds time to serve everyone drinks from a

tray before getting beheaded by a sickle when told to go check a

window. Later, Leslie goes to find whiny Janet some bandages

and gets her head mashed into a pieces of a broken window. Little

freaky Michael tries to make out with his mother, is rejected, and

partially eaten by a newly zombified Leslie. Poor Nicholas is sent

on a fool's errand and killed by the absent professor.

That Mark, he is always thinking. As the zombies use assorted

tools to break into the villa, Mark decides they should let them in.

He is under the mistaken impression that they are after something

other than human flesh, plus they move slowly, so the remaining

people should be able to out run the dead. Tell that to the five

people just killed. Evelyn, Mark, Janet, and James run to a quiet

monastery, where James is promptly devoured by some zombie

monks. The remaining group makes it to yet another house, where

the film's most infamous scene occurs.

Evelyn sees Michael, and offers her left breast to comfort her

obviously zombied son. Michael begins to suckle, then takes a big

ol' bite. This is the only murder to occur in front of other cast

members (Mark and Janet), and is really gross. The zombies

overcome the remaining living, and the film ends.

I love Italian zombie films as much as the next guy, but this film is

so monotonous that boredom soon sets in. The gore is effective,

local butcher shops must have run low on innards, but director

Bianchi must deal with a terrible script. Bianchi pads the film with

endless closeups of the maggot covered zombies. As I mentioned, the killings are telegraphed by the default of a victim

being alone. Until the actual bloody act, this results in some very

boring stalking scenes. Obviously some of the cast has seen a

Romero film, only a couple of them know to aim any violence

toward the heads of the zombies in order to kill them.

"Burial Ground" is a very gory and very violent film, helped by some

pretty good special effects. It is also very boring and very badly

acted, not helped by some pretty bad scripting. I cannot

recommend it, even to fans of this subgenre.

This is unrated, and contains strong physical violence, strong gun

violence, very strong gore, mild profanity, female nudity, sexual

content, and adult situations.


Also a.k.a SOLDIERS of CHANGE. Black is black and white is white. Randy Barrignton(Heath Freeman) is a young man that finds himself in the midst of the 1960's riots and revolution. Being part of the front lines of the struggle for civil rights; he is summoned into the Viet Nam War. Randy's most heroic struggle though is with his wealthy father(Charles Shaughnessy), when he falls in love with Hallie(Stacey Dash). Hallie is black and her family too is divided over her choice of endearment. It is after all the 60's and the world is hardly easing into change of attitude toward war, personal rights, personal freedoms and the mixing of the races. Other notable cast members include: Clifton Davis, Ben Vereen and William R. Moses.


I *have* to see plausibility in a film. even sci-fi stuff with half-man half-beast stuff has some plausibility what with DNA tampering possible.

but this cliché laden namby pamby cutesy thing is the first time I give a NEGATIVE number on the plausibility meter.

rich white guys from the south don't marry their servant's black daughters no matter how good looking they sound and look. and they don't get shipped off to Vietnam and get shot rescuing an orphan. if they're in Vietnam, THEY'RE the one barking the orders having graduated from ROTC.

and rich southern gentry don't will their vast art collection to former black employees either.

I just couldn't get past all this ridiculousness to see any poignancy in the film. way too much hooey to see any 'message'.


Marla English was a pretty starlet who looked very similar to Elizabeth Taylor. She started off in uncredited parts in prestigious movies ("About Mrs. Leslie" (1954), "Rear Window" (1954)) and then landed leads in a few good "bad" films ("The She Creature" (1956), "Runaway Daughters" (1956)) - and then no more. She made her last appearance in "Voodoo Woman" in 1957. She did marry around this time and retired to raise a family (she had 4 sons). "A Strange Adventure" was directed by William Witney, the first of a few J.D. films he did, ("The Young and the Wild", "The Cool and the Crazy") just before he retired. This was also one of Republic Pictures last releases.

Hal (Ben Cooper) is a keen hot rodder who falls under the spell of Lynn Novak (Marla English), a night club singer and also part of a gang of robbers (Nick Adams plays Phil, the one with the cold). They plan to rob an armoured car and Lyn goes to work, using her charms on the driver. She then reads that "Woody", her old boyfriend, has escaped from jail in Omaha and realises that Al, the hardened boss, probably double crossed him. They have to move fast with the robbery as Lynn finds out that Hal has contacted Woody and he is now in town.

The movie then changes entirely and Woody is not heard of again (very weird, as that seemed to be where the film was heading!!!) In trying to evade the police they turn off at a forest and end up taking a snow fall observer and his teenage sister hostage. Holed up in the cabin, everyone starts to realise how crazy Al is. Hal is working on his own escape plan which involves Terry and her brother. A gun battle ensues and Phil (who is the real brains) has been "squirreling" the money away in a log in the woods, and replacing it with rocks!!!! It sort of ends with Hal driving away with his two new friends and a police broadcast proclaiming that since neither Phil nor Al seem to know where the money is they are both going to jail for a long time.

Joan Evans, whose mother was Katharine Albert, a journalist for "Photoplay" magazine, plays Terry.

Not recommended.


"A young man with a passion for hot rods and pretty girls finds himself in trouble when he gets mixed-up with some criminals. A pretty border at his mother's motel talks our hero into a drive that ends up as a part of her gang's armored car robbery. Forced to drive them to a remote cabin to hide from the police, our hero must think of a way to save he and his fellow hostages, and foil the plans of the bank robbers," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

A dullish 1950s "rebellious youth" film. Ben Cooper (as Harold Norton) is the passionate hot rod man. Marla English (as Lynn Novak) is the beautifully built gangster's "Doll", who lures innocent Mr. Cooper into the fold. She alternates between Cooper and gang leader boyfriend Jan Merlin (as Al Kutner). Later on, the sweet sister and brother team of Joan Evans and Peter Miller (as Terry and Luther Dolgin) are taken hostage by Mr. Merlin. Nick Adams (as Phil Davis) fights off a cold, and assists Merlin.

**** A Strange Adventure (1956) William Witney ~ Ben Cooper, Marla English, Jan Merlin


Sometimes it's as if we can forgive the most trying stretches of believability, just because a film was made in an era like the 50's with a shoestring budget. I don't like that. Good, believable films were made at this time as well as clinkers. This has some things going for it, but the way these nasty characters behave is beyond imagination. They wave their guns around, threaten, but don't seem to want to act. Hostages are left to wander all over the place. There is tension among the thieves, but it is dealt with in such a silly, haphazard way, it doesn't work. A slip up of any kind, and their whole project is down the chute. If we are to believe the whole business about being locked up in the woods in the winter, it seems at some point, someone would begin to make realistic plans to get on their way. Are they already murderers? I don't know, but they could have certainly done a better job of getting on with their plot. Then there is the ending (I'm not going to do any spoilers). This is the most ho-hum, contrived mess I've ever seen. It's as if they ran out of time and just decided to create this ending. Judge for yourself. The bottom line is, people just don't act this way--they just don't.


As a person closer to this story than I care to divulge, I can say that this movie is hardly a true story. Ed Amos did kill 4 people (at least) and is serving a life sentence. However, the movie itself makes a mockery of the real people involved and it makes me sick to my stomach that the producers of this movie would claim it to be based on a true story. Not because it is not "based" on a true story, but because by labeling it as such, every single person who watches this movie and does not have access to the real story will assume every moment of it to have actually taken place. The reality is that it is a nearly entirely fictional film that uses the names of actual people. Not a single interview was conducted before production . That said, I do not know what else I could have expected from the Lifetime network. Families of the deceased deserved better.


I went to high school with Ed Amos. I worked at the same General Motors plant as Ed. I knew all three wives. This movie only scrapes the surface of the lives of the people involved. As was said before in another comment: no body in Anderson was interviewed, Ed did not run for Mayor, he had filed in the primary and then Saundra was found dead and he withdrew. Why did the movie leave out his college love interest died falling from a balcony, his parents house mysteriously burnt to the ground after being for sale after he inherited it. His sister's husband had a mysterious stroke while jogging and Ed studied Pharmacy in College. I wish someone would really investigate all the things surrounding Ed and then write a book. What a mystery!!!!!!!!!


The real question is this: If a director infamous for making bad films finally makes one that's sorta OK, does he deserve rich praise? My answer is no. Possession was meant to be two movies, which it is. Unfortunately director Neil LaBute managed to only make only one of those movies worth watching. Set in the present with flashbacks to the 19th century, the film is about two literary experts with a love of Victorian poetry who discover a shocking secret about a revered 19th century poet. The "period" portion of the film is excellent, mainly due to some uncharacteristically good directing by LaBute and excellent acting by Jennifer Ehle and the always great Jeremy Northham (if there was any justice this guy would be a major star).

Sadly the modern day characters are not played by actors of such caliber. Gwyneth Paltrow I suppose should be given credit for being occasionally OK, but Neil LaBute cohort Aaron Eckhart was a positively disastrous choice to play the lead. He clearly had no insight into a character who is supposed to be this sophisticated, and instead played him as a stereotypically cartoonish American male slob who inexplicably loves English poetry (and is a scholar to boot!) Add in some truly bad writing, dialogue and a screenplay that suffers from logic gaps and you've got a frustrating movie that might have been good but ultimately isn't. You'll be laughing at all the wrong parts.


Stories that center on relationships (such as romances or character studies) must be developed carefully and delicately. Done right, they can be fascinating to watch. Done poorly, they can quickly become boring. Unfortunately, despite it's acclaimed art-house director and cast of well-known actors, "Posession" falls firmly into the latter category.

A graduate student of Victorian-era poetry named Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) has stumbled onto a potentially fascinating discovery: two famous poets, Howard Ash (Jeremy Northam) and Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) may actually have been lovers. Now Roland, along with another expert, Dr. Maude Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) are on their trail. Along the way, they are developing a romance between themselves.

"Posession" does more things wrong than it does right. The biggest problem is the underlying story. I haven't read the novel by A.S. Byatt, but judging by the film, there isn't much story to begin with, certainly not enough for a 102 minute film (and it's not especially interesting). Either that, or the screenplay is worse than it already is. Plot holes abound, subplots are started and left unfinished, and more importantly, there's no balance between the dual tales.

The performances by the actors don't help much. Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart are the biggest names in the cast, but unfortunately they're the ones we have to spend the most time with. Both are good actors (Paltrow won an Oscar, though undeservedly, and judging by Eckhart's climb to fame and versatility, it's only a matter of time before he gets a statue), but they have no chemistry. At least Eckhart, a Neil LaBute regular, makes a game try. That's more than can be said for his co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow. I've never been a big fan of Paltrow; she's always a little whiny and seems off. She can muster a decent British accent, but that's only the surface. As Maude, she's pretty boring, and for someone whose sudden romance is the unofficial beating heart of the film, she has no chemistry with Eckhart. The 1850's lovers, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, aren't exactly better, but they have chemistry, which makes them more appealing.

The film isn't a total loss; it looks great, and I always have a special place in my heart for historical mysteries (even poorly done ones). But honestly, "Posession" isn't worth your time.


-yup, a gutted, or more accurately, lobotomised version of the book. So many compromises have been made to get this richly textured novel onto the screen that where the book interwove the stories in a fascinating counterpoint, convincing in voice and detail, the film is simply a bog-standard romance between good-looking actors with some pretty victorian stuff tacked on.

You have wonder about the wisdom of even attempting to convert a book which is powerful tribute to the power of words and language and turning into a would-be powerful tribute to Gwyneth Paltrow. To paraphrase the famous quote, making a movie about words and language is something like a dancing about architecture.

The second largest flaw is that Aaron Eckhart is woefully miscast, leaving a character floundering in a story where he no longer makes any sense. I'm not sure if he normally delivers his lines in such a clunkingly flat way, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm not against adding American elements to a story to make it work commercial - it worked very well in High Fidelity, for example, but Roland's transatlantic transposition leaves all the other characters constantly having to react to his incongruous American-ness - he simply doesn't fit into the character in the novel.

In addition, several *important* characters have been removed, leaving gaps in the narrative - obvious ones - Roland's previous girlfriend for example. Roland explains his singledom as he is simply "off relationships", but never gives any kind of convincing back story to the motivation for this. Strange gaps like this make the main characters seem one-dimensional and adrift in a plot that has to rattle through events which are barely explained by what we see on the screen.

I have to admit, I was bored rigid and couldn't wait for the film to finish. I can't see how anyone could take much out of such an obviously compromised film, unless they're a Merchant-Ivory fanatic and love any old nonsense with Victorian frills.


Words cannot capture the sadness I feel that this film has robbed me of two hours of my life.

It is almost impossible to say which part of the film is the worst, since screenplay, direction, and performances are all so reprehensibly bad. There are so many laughable plot turns that I'm not sure if this screenplay was even proofread by someone with any distance. The catalyst for the film's intrigue, a couple of stolen letters that one of our protagonists pilfers from a rare books library, is only the first of many weak moments that in the transition from text to screen lose any plausibility. Someone should have bothered to go into a manuscript and rare book archive to see what stealing from one of these institutions would really be like.

I'm actually quite a fan of A.S. Byatt, whose novel is the original source material for this drivel. Possession as a novel is fun, but seriously flawed--When transferred to the screen by an underwhelming cast and crew, though, those flaws become insurmountable obstacles. Any subtleties in the novel's juxtaposition of the two relationships disappear, replaced by the lumbering cliches that permeate the dialogue.

David Henry Hwang is a fine writer for the stage, but forays into film have more often than not proven that he has not quite mastered the celluloid--it just isn't his medium. Rather than transferring the novel's richness to the screen, he has attached himself religiously to it's rickety frame, certainly not its most successful characteristic. Gwyneth Paltrow's British accent is, as usual, just shy of being believable. Both Paltrow's Maude and Aaron Eckhart's Roland are barely cardboard cutouts rather than characters, and the actors do little to flesh them out. Poor Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, two fine actors, are squandered in the Victorian scenes where they barely have enough material to establish mood.

As for the representation of academic life, it's more than a little absurd, which is actually fine with me since academic life is even more absurd than this film could hope to capture.

Overall, I was terribly disappointed, since I was hoping this would be good candy for the academic set.


Jennifer Ehle was sparkling in "Pride and Prejudice." Jeremy Northam was simply wonderful in "The Winslow Boy." With actors of this caliber, this film had to have a lot going for it. Even those who were critical of the movie spoke of the wonderful sequences involving these two. I was eager to see it.

It is with bitter disappointment, however, that I must report that this flick is a piece of trash. The scenes between Ehle and Northam had no depth or tenderness or real passion; they consisted of hackneyed and unsubtle latter-day cinematic lust--voracious open-mouthed kissing and soft-porn humping. Lust can be entertaining if it's done with originality; this was tasteless and awful.

Ehle and Northam have sullied their craft; they should be ashamed.

As for the modern part of the romance, I was unnerved by the effeminate appearance of the male lead. Aren't there any masculine men left in Hollywood?

The plot was kind of interesting; with a better script and a more imaginative director, it might have worked.

1/10


The movie drags on and the two poetry researchers somehow seem to stumble upon new clues and evidence that paint the lives of little known poets much better than I could tell you about myself. All of this is gathered from love letters that were kept by each. You really have to see how they jump to conclusions and somehow come up with these clues pretty much when they snap their fingers. The main guy in this was pretty good in Erin Brokovich, but I think he was a little lost in this. Paltrow was broody, cold, and overall not a very likeable woman. Somehow, within 2 days these two wind up in bed together and commiserate in their sins while the audience thinks about how they wish they hadn't canceled that root canal they had scheduled. Overall, just not a good story to draw from.


I'd seen the page for this movie on IMDb almost 2 years before I finally got to see it. I loved the cast members...Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Northam, and Gwyneth Paltrow, so I figured it was going to be good. But it was only so-so. It was very disappointing. I liked the love story between the two from the 19th century (Ehle and Northam), but the modern story wasn't all that interesting. I am sorry to say that this one is only mediocre. See it if you must, but I've seen all the leads in better roles.


This film failed for me on several levels and only entertained me just enough to keep me from heading for the exit.

Just as when Action/Adventure films cover up a weak story with expensive CGI or Hi-Tech action sequences; this fiasco does the same with eloquent dialogue and the grace and beauty of the 'period' part of the story.

Why does the lead (present day) male character have such a passionate aversion to relationships? What triggers the sudden change? She is a rude, frigid 'lady', who also uncharacteristically falls in love with him, an American slob. None of this is explained to my satisfaction.

In the story of the past; why did the female lead have to be a lesbian. It neither mirrors nor compliments the main plot. A myriad of near misses and plot twists make the rest of this tale completely unbelievable. The worst for me was the ultra-weak nonsense of the dialogue regarding Ms. Paltrow's character's brooch. Spare me, that was simply nonsense.

The only redeeming feature of this Romance/Mystery/Adventure (?) was the mystery involved in gathering the evidence. I think that despite the grandiose vernacular (hey!) and the beauty of the scenes and decor in the 'past', this stinker was just another emperor who wasn't really wearing any clothes.


A mystery in two eras? Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes I couldn't give damn what happened. The premise -- an 19th century author who is a mysogenist and also writes about love and dedication (say what?) might be revealed to have had a secret lover. Just say it isn't so! No, that would be just incredible. What's the big deal? It's not like it was the search for the Pope's secret lover, just some poet. If that ridiculous plot doesn't intrigue you, neither will the ridiculous, unbelievable lines that are uttered throughout this boring movie as they move to a predictable ending. Really, you wont care. The "love story" of the modern day is predictable and has no chemistry. The love story of generations is ridiculous. The "clues" that are discovered in various places are preposterous. This is a movie that overstates its importance every minute and ends up as the farce that it is, which might explain why it was out of theaters almost instantly.


This is honestly the worst movie I have ever paid money to see. Throughout the entire movie, I could not figure out why we were supposed to care on little bit about either the exploits of the two writers or the two historians. I truly cannot think of a more contrived, boring, inane use of film. I am one of Gwynneth's biggest fan, however this film was simply horrid on every level.


Coming attractions are part of the movie going experience. Their purpose is to excite interest in the upcoming film, thus "possessing" you to spend $10 to go see it. I'm okay with this concept! BUT, I expect my reaction of the preview to at least somewhat resemble my reaction to the movie. "Possession's" preview describes an amazing journey into the depths of love, transcending time, making Shakespeare look like the writer of "Not Another Teen Movie", and uses Enya to further add atmosphere to the scene, with her chilling emotional sound, filling your stomach with a mixture of magic, desire, and most importantly a NEED to see the movie. So I did, and what I got was a plot as riveting as dust, with a love (for lack of a better word) story as romantic as a date with the pope. Not even the acting was able to redeem the nightmare! Which made me ask the question, "HOW IN THE WORLD DID THEY GET THESE AMAZING ACTOR's TO SIGN ON?" And then it hit me, they must have shown them the preview first.


This film fails a number of levels but the biggest failure is that it lacks any drama. Thanks to the foolish way the story is plotted we already know what happened in the first 5 minutes of the film! Because the story is told both in the year 2000 and in the year 1850 (approx) we know that the "famous poet" has no lasting relationship to the other poet. And we also know (because its a film) that the two Victorian poets HAVE a relationship because otherwise the movie wouldn't have been made. I blame the writer and the director for failing to see that you can't have a drama without giving the audience some reason to care about the characters.

I surely didn't care about the two Victorian poets. I also didn't care for either of the two modern scholars. All the characters in the movie were paper thin with nothing but affectations instead of actual personality.

If you are going to do an historical film then you have to make the audience care by giving meaning to the lives of the people you are filming. In this film all meaning and drama that was possible in the lives of the Victorians was removed by the constant intercutting of the modern-day scenes. Never, never do this! The constant intercutting of the modern world kept reminding the viewer that the past is dead and the actions by these dead people ultimately made no difference to anybody living today (because if it had, the modern day scholars would know about it).

Bottom line: if you are looking for entertainment there is nothing good to say about this film and no reason to watch it. If you are film school student then this should serve as a great example of how NOT to make an historical drama.

Lessons: Do not intercut the present with the past. Do not give away the story at the begining of the film.


Wes Stern plays nerdy college student Colin Slade who loses his scholarship. He blames college president Larry Hagman, and Stern sets out to ruin Hagman's life by seducing his daughter, his wife and his girlfriend..all in that order.

Hagman is running for a Senate seat on a platform of decency and righteous living. He doesn't tell the voters that he has a mistress or has a wife who is a bit on the strange side. Mrs. Camber is played by Joan Collins who always finds these odd movies to play the seductress of younger men.

Hagman is wonderfully campy in this movie, and his attitude and mannerisms remind you of his Dallas days. "Do as I say and not as I do" mentality. The scenes of a nude film of his on-screen daughter being substituted for "The Sound of Music" was hilarious, If you want a campy movie to watch on a cold Friday night, this is the one. However, don't expect to exercise your brain with trying to figure out any plot twists. There aren't any!


I lost some serious IQ points watching this. the acting was bad. the plot was non existent. Yes, it had a quirky '70s porn feel to it, and was, as I said, quirky. I guess if you are drunk or high on some heavy drugs, it might have some redeeming value, but overall, oh my god! I love bad movies, but this one...as the subject line says, OUCH! I watched this because it was reference in a similar film, "One Eyed Monster, but have to agree with the poster there, that was a far superior film, and that is not saying much. OK, the claymation penis was humorous, but that was about the only thing this movie had going for it, other than an abundance of gratuitous boob shoots.


There were all types of sexploitation films, and they had many different underlying themes and aims. Russ Meyer's aim seemed to be to glorify the female as a fully voluptuous, fully powerful, and fully remarkable creature. The female to Meyer is "more" than the male. The sheer joy he takes in her physicality proves this, plus her mythic strength and power over the male. This movie, PERVERT, is exactly the opposite. The women are completely subordinate to the men. Their sexuality is seen from the outside, and has no real power. The women are viciously slaughtered. Even the gooniest, most degenerate, oldest, or stupidest males are stronger and smarter than the females. This is cheap sex comedy a hundred times removed from adult sexual issues. The attitude towards the women is like that of teen males who hate women because the sexiest women aren't available to them, and because a woman's sexuality is totally abstract to them. It's actually quite Victorian in that sense. It's full of a type of fear and curiosity of the female that emerges in times of great repression. SPOILER ALERT: Worse still, the "killer" that is terrorizing the females (the detached penis of the protagonist), is never related psychologically to its owner, so that an opportunity for discussing male violence or a split between the civilized and savage parts of male desire, is missed. Indeed, the claymation penis is the only character that is given a personality. It has rage, humility, bashfulness, shame, makes cutesy faces, etc. This is all of course a cheap joke. Especially as this killer penis rapes women, destroys their insides, and comes out through their mouths, behaving like a knife, eviscerating them and making them explode with blood, then scuttles across the desert like a cowboy hero out for revenge. Ha ha. Other jokes draw on racism, homophobia, ageism, etc. As an attempt to make fun of redneck values it doesn't work, as the film doesn't offer an alternate point of view, so it seems to condone the values it's sending up. Therefore, as satire it fails miserably. The filmmakers seem to revel in the bad values, almost nostalgic for them, and to be making this film as a way of re-entrenching them through humor. As a female, I find as much humor in this travesty as a black person might find in a comic send-up of a KKK lynching, all of course from the point of view of the racists. Humor is always based on the audience sharing values with the jokes being made, and so all of the people loving this film might want to take a look at themselves and why they think it's funny.


'Pervert!' is a mildly amusing 'sexploitation' film that delivers on it's premise fully, creating a film that will probably be hated by anyone who's not a complete heterosexual male pervert. Well, that's not exactly true because even though the film initially had me rolling my eyes over and over, by the end I was actually quite enjoying the movie, as shallow as it may be.

On a technical level, 'Pervert!' is a complete catastrophe. The acting ranges from terrible (Mary Carey) to mediocre (Sandeen), the photography and effects are cringe worthy and nothing worth mentioning at all. However, the plot itself isn't too bad, it's just a little thin for an already short movie. I feel the whole thing could have been better suited to a 20-30 minute short piece, with all the filler (random topless women just spliced into the film for no reason whatsoever) cut and trimmed down into what was really funny and integral to the story.

As I mentioned above, 'Pervert!' may not be anywhere near being a 'good' film, but it delivers on its shallow premise of gore and sex at least. The film wasn't as funny as it took itself, but I'd rather it was laughing at itself more than it took itself seriously. As a whole, the film is obviously pretty bad -seeing as it revolves around tits- but it at least acknowledges the fact. So in the end I don't really recommend this film in any circumstance except that you may just be looking for mindless filler for 80 minutes. Oh, and of course, it will probably help if you like breasts.


"God help the fuzz that flashes a badge on...THE DIRT GANG", yelled the ad mat, which depicted a motorcycle gang member on a motocross bike roaring over the screaming head of a highway patrolman. Unfortunately, the "fuzz" who flashed a badge at this gang would probably have a good laugh.

This is not a good movie, despite the fact that there is reasonably graphic rape of local lasses and actresses, and a film set gets trashed bad by these overacting delinquents.

"They take you where 'Hells Angels' fear to tread," the advertising continued, creating audience expectations this crap could never meet. In its favor, the gang members are pretty reprehensible and their attitude towards women is more than slightly nasty.

Not worth crossing mountains and streams to track down, but a good late night bet with pizza and a beer.


I agree that this flick barely warrants removing it from the reel canister, but nowadays we have videotape and DVDs. I picked this one up to add to my collection of "biker" films and it fits the bill. The main focus of the movie is motorcycle riding rebels who just want to tear up the town (or in this case, movie set). The interesting thing is that they aren't riding the typical choppers and wearing cut-off denim jackets. No, it's dirt bikes, helmets and leather pants for these guys. Typical plot, typical amateur acting and typical 70's cinematography. But, a film that biker film addicts will enjoy. Watch for the two character actors you have seen a hundred times before.


This movie tells the story about a motorcycle gang who terrorizes a filmcrew. They take the crew hostage and perform various disgusting things with them.

If you're very interested in the old Hells Angels (pre 60's) and think that smelling bad, looking bad, drinking and driving at the same time is cool then this film is most certainly for you. If not, then you just might as well pass this one by as most other people thankfully will.

I think the average grade that this movie(1.0 at this time) has reflects well how good this movie is.


Yes, Bogart's performance is classic, and Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are terrific -- they usually are. But the film suffers from the production code of the day; Hammett's novel holds up, and the sexual politics of it wasn't allowed to be transferred to the screen (although it could have with better writing -- Casablanca has a lot of dark sex jokes).

The biggest problem with the film is Mary Astor. I don't find her attractive and her performance is mannered and oft putting -- which is a disaster for a femme fatale. In the novel, the character comes across as much prettier and smarter, and the sexual relationship with Spade makes her much more devious; it also makes the love talk at the end and Spade's rejection of Brigid logical. In the film, when this conversation starts, one is left wondering, "What?" These two have barely been on screen together and now there's talk of true love?

One part near the end illustrates the problem with the story as filmed: In the book, when Gutman claims a thousand dollar bill is missing, Spade makes Brigid get naked in the bathroom as he inspects her and her clothes to see if she took it. Brigid protests, but is not modest, and Gutman is surprised that Spade would do this. This scene reinforces Spade's cold demeanor, the sexual relationship between Brigid and Spade, and impresses Gutman with Spade's icy thoroughness. As filmed, Brigid just makes a silent, knowing nod of No, and that's that. The Hayes Code eradicated a key scene, and the writing didn't attempt to find a way to make up for this loss.

If Brigid had been played by a smarter, more seductive actress and the sexual relationship between her and Spade been alluded to, then the dark motivations of the story and Spade's character would be fully realized. As it is, it's a well cast movie (but nearly destroyed by one casting flub, Astor) and influential in terms of character, pace, and camera choices. It may have been the first noir, but that alone doesn't make it a classic. As it is, watching it is more history than enjoyment, while the novel still holds up as well written detective fiction.


Anybody can have an off-day, but it's hard to believe that the man responsible for such classic comedies of manners as *Broadcast News* and (to a somewhat lesser extent) *As Good as It Gets* would go on to make *Spanglish*. James L. Brooks' latest film is not so much a comedy of manners as it is a situation comedy for TV, stretched out to faux-epic proportions for the big screen. The characters are TV caricatures, not real people. Adam Sandler plays an L.A.-area haute-cuisine chef whom one critic dubs "the greatest chef in America"; Tea Leone as his wife is a neurotic spastic, incessantly shooting her mouth off, incessantly jogging, etc. (in other words, the clichéd version of the southern Californian well-to-do hausfrau); Cloris Leachman plays Leone's mildly alcoholic mother, a former jazz singer and one of those "quirky" people who exist only in movies and middle-brow fiction with literary pretensions; and newcomer Paz Vega plays the beautiful and saintly Mexican maid with an equally beautiful and saintly daughter.

One might add the qualifying adjective "improbably" to beautiful and saintly. The movie is a dreary exercise in White Guilt: the wealthy and white Clasky family owns the monopoly on petty neuroses, here. Even their kids are screwed up: the pubescent daughter is slightly overweight, which wouldn't be half the problem it is if her own mother would stop reminding her of it; the younger son is apparently plagued with nightmares, but we're not sure exactly why, and in any case the movie sort of forgets about the little bugger for long stretches. Meanwhile, no one in the house seems to resent the perfection of the live-in maid Flor, with her grounded family values, her eye-popping beauty (Vega is a ringer for Penelope Cruz, but without that actress' supermodel hard edges), and her sweet temper, all of which is contrasted against Leone's bratty, self-centered, adulterous, and physically unlovely character. (Brooks makes the poor woman drip snot from her nose for the last twenty minutes of the film, while the heavenly, marmoreal Vega consummates a sweetly platonic love affair with Sandler.) Even the movie's framing device, the Longest Admissions Essay In History that Flor's daughter writes to Princeton, seems like a stacked deck. Since, at film's end, Vega removes her kid from the tony private school that Leone puts her in, we may assume that the girl achieved singular, unparalleled academic brilliance in the gritty public schools of the barrio. How heartwarming!

Counterintuitively, the movie dances around, rather than engages head-on, the issues of class and race in American society. For instance, the Claskys pay Flor $650 a week, if I heard correctly. What a load. $650 every TWO weeks is a more realistic going-rate for undocumented housekeepers in the wealthier enclaves of southern California, and THAT figure is probably still too high. Oh, but that's right, Flor and her daughter are apparently LEGAL immigrants -- presumably, Leone cuts her maid checks which are deposited in a bank somewhere, instead of handing her cash under the table. As a lifelong southern Californian, forgive my skepticism. (If the movie informed us that Flor was undocumented, I must've missed it when I went to the kitchen to get some coffee, and I'll stand corrected if that's the case.) Clearly, insisting that the film honestly depict the uneasy relationships between rich white people and the Hispanic "hired help" may be asking too much.

Which leaves only the various character studies. I've already talked about the women, but I can't finish the review without mentioning the inadequacy of Adam Sandler. Mr. Sandler is not ready for Prime Time. Tentative, hiding behind mannerisms, clearly not directed by Brooks (what -- would YOU tell Sandler, one of the most powerful celebrities in Hollywood, how to act?), he is the person in the film who doesn't know how to speak English. He strangles his dialog with unnecessary dramatic pauses, open-mouthed staring, and a lot of casting hopelessly about in general. Vega Paz is more clearly understood, and she doesn't speak a word of English for the first half of the movie. If Sandler wants to emulate the Saturday Night Live alumni of yore with extending his range as an actor, he'd be well served by doing some Ibsen and the like for a few years with an acting troupe. Since he lacks the depth of natural talent that a Bill Murray or a Steve Martin was blessed with, a lot of hard work -- practice, practice, practice -- is required in order for him to attain the credibility of his predecessors in terms of dramatic roles. When, for instance, Leone informs him of her adultery, Sandler's reaction is cringe-worthy -- he clearly has no idea how to perform the scene. These comments are not as unkind as they might seem. Sandler may be a decent actor someday, but he's not remotely there yet, and someone needs to tell him that -- otherwise, he'll continue to waste his time and our money.

2 stars out of 10. One of the big disappointments of 2004.


When it was shot, the tie up this film made with 'the Arsenal'- using their stadium and some of their players- must have seemed a good idea. Now, sadly, the main selling point that gives the movie is the unintentional humour of the short brilliantined hair and big baggy football shorts.

The less said about the plot and the cinematography, the better!

Leslie Banks as Inspector Slade is, however, another matter. He plays a curious character who we meet rehearsing policemen in full uniform AND tutus for some sort of theatrical performance! Further, he has a large selection of different hats that he self-consciously picks from every time he has to go and perform some task; when he has to delegate an arrest to his sergeant, he even delegates the appropriate (fishing) hat to him also! Altogether, the character played is fascinating and odd: an English eccentric or a (coded- it is 1939!) gay characterization? Either way, it is Leslie Banks' playing that makes this film at all worth watching...


I wasn't interested in the story, mainly because I didn't see the point. Sophie Marceau is the only bright sight in the movie.


it is a tired excuse for film making when directors, writers, actors and actresses come together and make a 'harrowing', 'powerful', 'grim' movie about drugs, sex and whatever else they care to throw at the screen. Other movies that come to mind are the recent precious and the ribald Monster's Ball. They pretend to loath the ugliness of the reality they present but in actual fact revel in it. This movie is just such an example of worthy bourgeois film making passing itself off as insightful and profound. If anyone care to watch a film by sensitive film makers involved in telling real stories about real people with real problems, without the unnecessary dressage of actresses and their inflated personalities, check out anything by the wonderful Ken Loach (British) or the Dardenne brothers (Belgian).


I decided to rent the movie based on the fact that IMDb's ratings for the movie was 7.1 out of ten and also on the fact that Nick Nolte also appears in the film.

The movie is basically about a washed up band member: Emily who is a heroin addict and the child she has abandoned who lives with her boyfriends parents.

Nick Nolte plays the boy's guardian. After her boyfriend overdoses on heroin Emily spends the rest of the movie trying to get "clean" so she can try to reunite with her young son.

The movie moves aimlessly between scenes of Emily trying to reconnect to her son's life in the states and her more recent life and struggle with addiction and past relationships in Paris. I found the movie to be tedious and drawn out.In the end the movie leaves the audience feeling disappointed and unsatisfied. To me, it was a complete waste of time.

Felix!


I saw this film on the International FilmFestival Rotterdam. Perhaps it was due to all the great films I already saw, but i did not like this film one bit. It was full of clichés and I didn't see anything original. This story has been told a thousand times and can - in Holland - be seen every week in the "true stories" movie-series. Furthermore I thought that the acting by Maggie Cheung was - to say the least - not very convincing. Especially as a sensitive rock 'n roll junkie. Assayas has tried to show how well he can combine the feeling of a rock 'n roll movie with a humane drama in three languages and an international setting. I wish he had focused more on the plot and less on the so-called cosmopolitan setting and hadn't cast his ex-wife in this film. She's better at roles as a 'femme fatale' ("Irma Vep") or stunning 'girl next door' ("In the Mood for Love")


Why this film won the Cannes Award is not surprising, all political. French cinema is stale and dead. In tune with the Year of China in France, forced globalization makes them pick a Hong Kong legend to revive their cinema.

But the film is a piece of nightmare. The script is bad, the scenery is bland. The editing is so slow it seems to be edited by my 93 year old grandma. The continuity is sketchy and the f-stops were not even measured right for some scenes.

The only wonderful moments were when Maggie Cheung onto screen. The screen began to light up, be filled with presence even without speech dialogue or anything. It shows that perhaps Olivier Assayas was in love or at least infatuated with this Asian star.

But a film, like a marriage, needs continuity, it needs communication. The level of communication in this film is low and there is no character progress. The great part of the film is when Maggie works in a Chinese restaurant and quits and she speaks something spontaneous in Cantonese, which was very authentic. And the scene where she looked for her son was heart-breaking in its sensitivity as a lost mother.

But the editing, soundtrack and in general the film making techniques just sucked so so baaaad....feels like a home movie..


OVA 1 fails to incorporate the qualities of the original anime series that made it such a success. The story lacked both coherence and consistency, jumping around from one idea to another without much development. The entire premise was absurd, almost trivializing the events of the series. Perhaps the writers also forgot that dead people stay that way, as they brought several of them back to take part in the battle. Viewers are left questioning how and why the events occurred, a sign of a poorly made production. I certainly don't recommend seeing this 3 part OVA, even to die-hard, curious FY fans.