Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer: I have screened this movie several times here at college, and every time I show it, the number of people watching with me grows exponentially... in addition to the virgins, anyone I've already shown it to NEEDS to see it again! It takes a little while to get into it, but by the end the whole room is screaming, shouting, yelling, rewinding scenes repeatedly, repeating dialogue, and just totally and completely engrossed in the moviegoing experience that is Pia Zadora in "The Lonely Lady"! Scene after scene after scene of the most ineptly filmed, poorly written, horribly acted TRASH is thrown at you in an all-out assault that ranks as the campiest thing I own (no small statement, friends). For me nothing compares 2 U, Pia... and I don't suppose I'm the only one who's ever felt this way!

Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer: Overall the film is OK. I think it's better than Sepet and much better than Gubra in term of its story, its sentimental value.

There are a few scenes that makes me touched. Yes I agree that the boy (Mukhsin) did his acting very good. Brilliant. I can say that his acting is almost natural.

However, the song 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' by Nina Simone really "'menaikkan' my 'bulu' 'roma' ".

I love the song. Both the song. "Ne Me Quitte Pas" and "Hujan". I just downloaded the song. Beautiful.

And salute to Yasmin. The movie's ending credit makes me touched again. We can see how Yasmin really appreciated her parents in an unique way.

I think the movie deserves that Grand Prix Of International Jury at Berlin Film Festival.

I give 8.5 out of 1o stars.

Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer: Men of Honor has many great aspects to it. Good action sequences, plenty of "feel good" scenes, a good musical score, but the part that really makes the movie is the great acting. Mostly by Robert Deniro. The story of Men of Honor is focused about Carl Brashear played by Cuba Gooding Jr. who wants to be the first African American deep sea diver in the navy. It chronicles his rough struggle from being a poor farmer to getting into diving school and even further. It is a good story, but it seems like it has been done many times before. A person, against all of the odds, won't give up until they accomplish their goals that they set for some sentimental reason many years ago. It could happen, but a lot of the struggles the Brashear faces in the movie are questionable including the C.O. of the diving school tampering with his final test. However, all of that is made up for the scene when Robert Deniro finally enters the movie. Deniro plays Mater Chief Sunday who is the teacher at the diving school Brashear is attending. As soon as Deniro come in he omits this vibe of extreme arrogance that you can't hate unless you have incredible wilpower. Before the movie ends, Deniro gives off multiple speeches that would have you laughing at how cool he is but you are too stunned at the way he punches them out. In the end you must doubt some of the aspects of the film, but admit it, if it was all the truth, it would have you snoozing it your seat by the first twenty minutes.

Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer:
Ahh, yes, the all-star blockbuster. Take a so-so concept, stuff it into a script and load it down with every single freakin' special effect that the Wizards of Hollyweird can conjure up, then round up the usual suspects: hot up-and-comers, has-beens, wanna-be's and never-wuzzes, and stick 'em all in ensemble roles of various sizes in front of the unforgiving eye of the cameras. And hope to gawd that some of them aren't too old to remember their lines.

Leave it to the bishops of Box Office to apply the concept to horror films at last, as was the case with the post-EXORCIST thriller THE SENTINEL. Novelist Jeffrey Konvitz decided to try and one-up Ira Levin's ROSEMARY'S BABY scenario of creepy (and ultimately satanic) neighbors in a New York brownstone. The result was a controversial best-seller that some claimed bordered on the plagiaristic, and an equally controversial, top-heavy/star-laden vehicle co-written and directed by DEATH WISH's Michael Winner, but for many unsettlingly different reasons.

Cristina Raines (NASHVILLE) plays successful model Alison Parker, who is pretty much over- stressed and over-worked, (I won't add "overpaid." I mean she IS a model, so that would be redundant), not just by her 24/7 schedule, by also by her insistent , 'wanna-get-married- right-NOW' boyfriend Michael (Chris Sarandon of DOG DAY AFTERNOON and the classic SOB.I.G. movie LIPSTICK). One of the ways she decides to try to get away from it all is to move into her own place; a big, beautiful brownstone in Manhattan which she's able to get dirt-cheap, (that should've been the BIG red flag - cheap real estate in New York!), from the mysteriously accommodating broker Miss Logan (Golden Age screen vet Ava Gardner, fresh from the storm drain in EARTHQUAKE.)

Things seem fine at first, but ah, yes...then comes the noises and the loud pounding from the apartment upstairs at night. And what about the REALLY strange neighbors like Gerde (Sylvia Miles) and Sandra (a VERY early Beverly D'Angelo), the nice "single friends" (read: lesbians) living together, and kindly old Mr. Charles Chazen (a nicely creepy Burgess Meredith), who seems maybe a little too concerned with Alison's welfare? And that's not to mention other assorted squirrelly cohabitants (You'll never hear the phrase "Black and white cat, black and white cake" again without wanting to laugh milk through your nose and possibly vomit simultaneously.) Especially the old blind priest living in the penthouse...

Things really start to go downhill when an apparition-laden nightmare of Alison's morphs into a grisly murder, (in one of the movie's most underwear-staining scares), and both Alison and Michael, with some assistance from Alison's BFF, Jennifer (Deborah Raffin), begin to piece together the puzzle that reveals the brownstone's dark origins, as well as the murderous agenda of its other-worldly inhabitants, not to mention Alison's connection to them, which as it turns out is anything but coincidental.

Although there's nothing controversial about the overstuffed cast, which seems to feature every actor of diverse genres looking for work at the time, (Arthur Kennedy, Jose Ferrer, Martin Balsam, Eli Wallach, John Carradine, and even early appearances by Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum and Nana Visitor!) Winner and company went back to bombastic basics and pulled a "Tod Browning"...by enlisting real-life physically-challenged actors to appear in THE SENTINEL'S climactic everything-and-everybody-goes-to-Hell sequence, which I guess any ballsy director would do, finding himself unable to access Linda Blair and a case of green-pea soup. It does definitely leave you with arctic fingers playing your spinal cord like a zither, knowing this juicy little tidbit of info as you watch. And it does feature a technique to which filmmakers have only begun to return very recently: live on-set makeup and special effects that don't involve CGI, (which was pretty much non-existent back then.)

THE SENTINEL has that kitschy, late-Seventies cheese factor, but does manage to distinguish itself from time to time with some gasp-inducing moments like the one mentioned above, not to mention that queasy feeling of dread that horror writers find it easy to play upon, of isolation and things that go bump-and-shriek in the night. After all, what living-single-in- the-big-city person hasn't lain in bed in the dark, and listened intently to the sounds of what they HOPE is "the building settling?"

Konvitz followed up THE SENTINEL with an inevitable sequel, THE GUARDIAN (not to be confused with the William Friedkin supernatural thriller namesake), that was never adapted for the screen. =sigh of relief=