Problem: This review is like what?

Review:So I flipped on the digital subscriber channels one night a couple of years ago and thought I'd pass a half hour watching "Girlfight" while waiting for "Hart's War" to start. With a title like that I figured it was some exploitation 'B' flic about inner city girl gangs.

Much to my surprise it wasn't about that at all. Instead it is a well acted, well scripted story about a young woman who almost accidentally gets into female boxing. She is responsible for taking her younger brother to his practice sessions and get interested while observing his bouts. As he doesn't really want to be a boxer (only following through on their father's wishes) she convinces his coach to take her on in his stead.

The story unfolds in an intelligent and believable way as she goes through various trials on her quest. For starters, her brother's coach doesn't want to take on a female boxer. After grudgingly doing so there is the problem of lining up matches for her. Then the confrontation with her father when he finds out what is going on. Yes, a love interest develops but it serves to enhance the plot, coming across more of an interesting inter-human reaction with its own fight related consequences.

All in all this is a great little sleeper movie that few seem to have heard of. Some time later when I saw the much advertised and acclaimed "Million Dollar Baby" I thought "wait a minute, this seems kind of familiar". Needless to say, I didn't watch "Hart's War" that night.
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:This movie has the most beautiful opening sequence ever made. I've seen this movie for the first time a week ago, since then every day I see the opening and every time I feel as thrilled as I felt the first time I heard David Niven uttering the immortal words from Sir Walter Raleigh's The Pilgrimage:

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage; And thus I'll take my pilgrimage ()

Do you know why it would be a truism to say Michael Powell's and Emeric Pressuburger's lives are thoroughly justified for having crafted such a wonderful opening? Because they had been already admitted in the Paradise of Poets long before they made this movie.

I imagine both of them facing trial during Doomsday and saying nonchalantly to an irate God: I beg your pardon, Sir. So, do You want to know what have we done during our lifetime? Well, well you'll see: We've written directed and produced: I know Where I'm Going, Colonel Blimp, Red Shoes do you think that enough Sir? It is rather obvious that these two great artists had already fulfilled their duty with God, Nature the Muse or Whatever you may call It when they shot A Matter of Life and Death. The fact that other people's lives would be justified for their deeds could be not apparent to everybody, notwithstanding I feel my life would have a meaning had I never done anything else that to see this movie.

Of course old-timers will be tempted to say: They don't do movies like this one any more. They'll be partially mistaken; they didn't make movies like this in the past times either.

I've have already quoted Keats here, but I'll repeat his words: A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Late one night on a desolate road, in an empty saloon Martin Sheen spins a yarn for Robert Carradine of Hopalong Cassidy and friends tracking a group of murderous cattle rustlers, who've killed a few men and kidnapped Cassidy's girl.

Writer/director Christopher Coppola May have incurred the wrath of William Boyd purists by daring to make a modern low budget film featuring their beloved Hoppy, but I'm glad he did it! No character should be so tied to an an actor that no one else ever be allowed to play him or her again!

I thought it was good fun and an interesting updating of the classic programmers of the thirties and forties. Though guilty of some bad acting, this is earnest enough and unpretentious, making it hard for me to dislike.

The whole production is a bit odd though, but I really enjoyed the scenes between Sheen and Carridine. The fact that we're watching a story within a story makes the oddness and exaggerations more palatable.
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:First of all, I liked very much the central idea of locating the '' intruders'', Others in the fragile Self, on various levels - mainly subconscious but sometimes more allegorical. In fact the intruders are omnipresent throughout the film : in the Swiss-French border where the pretagonist leads secluded life; in the his recurring daydream and nightmare; inside his ailing body after heart transplantation.... In the last half of the film, he becomes intruder himself, returning in ancient french colony in the hope of atoning for the past.

The overall tone is bitter rather than pathetic, full of regrets and guilts, sense of failure being more or less dominant. This is a quite grim picture of an old age, ostensibly self-dependent but hopelessly void and lonely inside. The directer composes the images more to convey passing sensations of anxiety and desire than any explicit meanings. Some of them are mesmerizing, not devoid of humor though, kind of absurdist play only somnambulist can visualize.
+++++++++
A:
positive