IN: Review: Ah, noir. My favourite genre. Otto Preminger's follow-up to "Laura" is a film noir set in a postwar New York, where corruption and violence run rampant. It stars Dana Andrews as Sergeant Mark Dixon, a detective whose brutal tactics have landed him in hot water with his superiors.

When he accidentally kills a murder suspect, Dixon tries to pin the blame on crime boss Tommy Scalese. Dixon is close to achieving his goal when he becomes involved with the dead man's wife, the beautiful Morgan Taylor. Of course, in typical noir fashion, things quickly go down hill.

While the film does nothing interesting camera or narrative wise, it does have a constant tone of dread and gloom. Like most great noirs, it is also wonderfully paced, sucking the viewer in right from the start.

Still, like most of Preminger's workmanlike films, it's not something I'd watch again. It lacks the verbal wit of Wilder, the visual flamboyance of Hitchcock or the spatial experimentation of Welles. Like Lang's later work, "Sidewalk" feels very much a "clone" of what a noir should be, instead of something really artistically genuine.

Thematically the film is nothing special. It's about a cop who finds himself slowly becoming a criminal. In one scene Dixon explains that his father himself was a small time crook, the film flirting with the notion of predestination, but this one scene is as far as Otto goes, or dares to take his ideas.

The camera work is likewise disappointing. There's no intelligence in Otto's camera. No effort is made to assign the camera to anything. It doesn't play with space or architecture or empahsise the step-by-step police procedural. It's just tripod set ups with the occasional dolly in and out. Meaningless, though most people don't care about these things.

There is, however, one good shot where our hero is trapped in a car full of gangsters (noir cage) which itself enters a vehicle-lift (another cage) and is taken up into the chief gangster's lair. Like Lynch's "Blue Velvet", Otto retopologizes the film, constantly likens "upstairs" to hell. This works well, but the set design fails to reinforce it.

7/10 - Otto seems content to follow the Hawksian mould of what a noir is, rather than toy with the possibilities of where noir can go. Like "Detour", "Night in the City", "Scarlet Street", "In A Lonely Place", "Act of Violence", "Bomberang" and "Johnny Eager", "Where the Sidewalk Ends" is one of those well made second tier film noirs. It's competent and engaging, but lacks that extra special magic.
What is this review like?
OUT: positive

IN: Review: I just saw this movie, and I have to say that it was a big waste of time. The girl who played Eva (Ellen Fjaestad) can't act at all. She read her lines very un-naturally, and she had a very un-natural facial expression through the entire movie. Rosanna Munter who played Petra on the other hand, is a natural. She played her part with great perfection.

SPOILERS! The story was simple - we've seen it many, many times before. She breaks up, he finds another, she get jealous, he breaks up with the other girl and they end up back together in the end. There were no surprises at all, one knew that Eva would break up, and that Adam would "hook up" with Petra. The only thing that nobody saw coming was that Petra told Adam to go after Eva at the party. She became all serious, which is a side of Petra the viewers hadn't seen earlier in the movie, and told him to win Eva's heart back, which was really cute.

Besides Rosanna Munter, there isn't a single actor who gives a memorable performance.

This is a mediocre movie with mediocre actors, so I don't recommend it!
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: I cannot vote on this because I wouldn't watch garbage from these people. They got my money with another movie (Mr. Jingles) and I swore it would never happen again. I feel it's my civic duty to help people stay away from this trash. Go to the forums on this film and read where cast members try to act like they are seeing the movie for the first time. One guy even responds to himself ...using the same name! There are shills in the forum that say it's as good as Shawshank Redemption and Citizen Kane...Not even close (by no means). If this is the company's 2nd movie, it should be better than the first. That means the 3rd movie should be a lot better. Not so, I've seen it. All I want to know is how you distribute this trash using the same names all the time. Having fun with friends and making a movie over the weekend is fine...but don't try to market that trash!
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: The season finale sent mix messages, I felt feelings of joy, and also feelings of being lied to and deceived. Roseanne tells all her viewers that the entire season nine was a lie because her husband, Dan, had died. She also admits the family never won the lottery, and what season 9 was a lie just being how she wished or wanted it to be. I'm still confused about when she said Becky ended up with David, and Darlene with Mark because Becky and Mark admit to being pregnant. So I believe that is just how she wanted it to be, but it wasn't. So the season finale was good, but sent mixed feelings. I will always be a fan of the show. :)
What is this review like?
OUT:
positive