Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: I imagine Victorian literature slowly sinking into the mire of the increasingly distant past, pulled down by the weight of its under-skirts. Along comes television: at its best, it has a redemptive power, and with dramatisations like those the BBC produce so finely, Victorian literature gets a new stab at life. The religious themes, the moral overtones, may be increasingly ill at ease in a world no longer easily shocked, and acquainted with cohabitation, affairs and domestic violence. But those old, well-told stories have enduring power, and this is one's a hidden gem.

It's hard to gauge today just how forceful, feminist and extraordinary Ann Bronte's masterpiece, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", actually was. Emerging from the primeval slime of restrictive corsets bodily, mental, societal her heroine, Helen Huntingdon, escapes a miserable marriage, flees brutality and alcoholism, braves not only her abusive husband's fury, but society's pinched intolerance and malicious gossip, to wreak change in her life. She pays a price; but retains her self-respect; she falls in love along the way; she emerges battered but victorious, and strong. I just love watching women like these on screen.

The actors are superb the best Brits have to offer. The love story is beautifully handled, with real passion and feeling by well-matched actors. Tara Fitzgerald inhabits every aspect of the complicated heroine, and as has been said here by other reviewers, no less sharply defined and beautiful a face could survive that petrifying hairstyle. Toby Stephens, striking sparks off her, contributes just the right combination of headstrong, handsome youth and passionate, yearning vulnerability. Rupert Graves (one of my favourite British actors ever) enjoys himself as the charismatic villain (so much so that you're almost with him at the end. No one's perfect). The supporting cast ably create a world into which you sink without feeling that coarse compromises have been made to modern tastes, and without having felt preached to. Another BBC classic, highly recommended: this is how romantic literature should be dramatised.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: Laid up and drugged out, as a kidney stone wended its merry way through my scarred urinary tract, with absolutely nothing better to do than let the painkillers swoon me into semi-oblivion, I happened to catch this movie on cable. I wouldn't want anyone to think that I paid to view it in a cinema, or rented it, or heaven forfend! that I watched it STRAIGHT.

Having played this sensationally gruesome video game and avidly trod the doomed rooms and dread passageways of The House, battling Chariot (Type 27), The Hanged Man (Type 041), and other impossible sentinels, my curiosity was piqued as to how the game would transfer to the movie screen.

It doesn't.

The banal plot revolves around a group of "crazy kids" a la Scooby Doo attending a remote island for a world-shaking "rave" whatever that is. (You kids today with your hula-hoops and your mini-skirts and your Pat Boone) After bribing a boat captain thousands in cash to ferry them there (a stupidity which begs its own network of rhetoric), they find the "rave" deserted.

Passing mention is made of a "house" presumably the titular House Of The Dead but most of the action takes place on fake outdoor sets and other locales divorced from any semblance of haunted residence.

A fallen video camera acts as flashback filler, showing the island in the throes of a party?! Is that it? Oh, so this "rave" thingy is just a "party"? In the grand tradition of re-euphemizing "used cars" as "pre-owned", or "shell shock" as "post-traumatic stress disorder", the word "party" is now too square for you drug-addled, silicone-implanted, metrosexual jagoffs?

It is learned that the party was broken up by rampaging zombies. Intelligent thought stops here

I don't think the pinheads who call themselves screenwriters and directors understand the mythos behind zombie re-animation. Zombies can't die they're already UN-DEAD. They do not bleed, they know no pain. Unless their bodies are completely annihilated, they will continue being animated. At least, that's what my Jamaican witch priestess tells me.

Which means that a .45 shot into their "hearts" is not going to stop them, nor will a machete to the torso. And a shotgun blast to the chest will certainly NOT bring forth gouts of blood. At least in the video game's logic, the shooter pumps so many rounds into each monster that it is completely decimated, leaving a fetid mush that cannot re-animate itself.

Yet each actor-slash-model gets their Matrix-circular-camera moment, slaying zombies on all fronts with single bullets and karate chops to the sternum. Seriously, these zombies are more ineffective than the Stormtroopers from "Return Of The Jedi", who get knocked out when Ewoks trip them.

I suppose the film's writer, Mark Altman, having penned the not-too-shabby "Free Enterprise", felt compelled to insert a Captain Kirk reference, in the character of Jurgen Prochnow, who must have needed milk money desperately to have succumbed to appearing in this aromatic dung-swill. There is also a reference to Prochnow's primo role in the magnificent "Das Boot", when one of the untrained B-actors mentions that he "looks like a U-Boat Captain". ". I wonder how many of this movie's target audience of square-eyed swine picked up on ANY of the snide references to other films, as when Prochnow declares, "Say hello to my little friend", presaging his machine gun moment.

Aimed at a demographic who have not the wherewithal to comprehend the Sisyphean futility of the video-game concept (i.e. the game ends when you die you cannot win), this is merely a slasher film for the mindless and mindless at heart. Accordingly, everyone dies in due course, except for a heterosexual pair of Attractive White People.

A better use for this film's scant yet misused budget might have been to send the cast through Acting School, although Ona Grauer's left breast did a good job, as did her right breast and those slomo running scenes: priceless! I especially liked the final scene with Ona trying to act like she's been stabbed, but looking like she's just eaten ice cream too fast.

Attempting to do something more constructive with my time, I pulled out my Digitally-Restored, 35th Anniversary, Special Edition, Widescreen Anamorphic DVD of "Manos: The Hands Of Fate." Ah, yes! the drugs were suitably brain-numbing - now HERE was some quality film-making

(Movie Maniacs, visit: www.poffysmoviemania.com)

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here:
To anyone who might think this show isn't for them, please give it a try. Network television has degenerated into shows that are clones of clones or are reality based shows featuring some often unreal people. This show is a return to family oriented TV where the emphasis is on learning some life lessons, learning what real friends and family are about, and maybe even learning a little bit about our national pastime. Jeremy Sumpter is one of the most appealing young actors in show business today, and he is perfectly cast as the young, slightly naive new batboy for the fictional New York Empires (great name!). Dean Cain, Christopher Lloyd, Mare Winningham, and Kirsten Storms round out the main cast, and they are all exceptional. This show deserves a chance to catch on and be seen. Hopefully it will stick around for a few seasons and we can watch Pete Young (Sumpter's character) learn and grow.