Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer: This film deals with the atrocity in Derry 30 years ago which is commonly known as Bloody Sunday.

The film is well researched, acted and directed. It is as close to the truth as we will get until the outcome of the Saville enquiry. The film puts the atrocity into context of the time. It also shows the savagery of the soldiers on the day of the atrocity. The disgraceful white-wash that was the Widgery Tribunal is also dealt with.

Overall, this is an excellent drama which is moving and shocking. When the Saville report comes out, watch this film again to see how close to the truth it is.

Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer: What Irving Thalberg did in making this film today would never be attempted again. Making a Chinese story with occidental players even if they are of the caliber of Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Charley Grapewin, and Walter Connolly among others.

Perhaps it's partly because the story was written by a westerner, Pearl Buck who got a Pulitzer Prize for her novel in 1932. Ms. Buck, daughter of Chinese missionaries, probably brought China closer to the consciousness of America than any other person. Not the political struggles of China, but the lives and toil of the every day people we find in The Good Earth. Unfortunately later on, Pearl Buck became an apologist for the Kuomintang China of Chiang Kai-Shek in all its virtues and excesses. The rest of her literary output never matched The Good Earth.

In The Sundowners there is a great description of comparing China to Australia by Peter Ustinov. When asked the difference, Ustinov said China was very big and very full and Australia was very big and very empty. That's what you see in The Good Earth, China very big and very full of people, more than she can deal with at times.

The Good Earth tells the story of Wang Lung (Paul Muni) as a young man who purchases a wife from a large house where she was a slave. The woman O-Lan (Luise Rainer) bears him two sons and sees him through all the good times and bad they have, drought, famine, revolution, and a climatic locust plague.

Luise Rainer won the second of two consecutive Oscars for portraying O-Lan. She may have set some kind of record in that it has to be the leading player Oscar performance with the least amount of dialog. Everything she does practically is done with facial expressions, her performance could have been on a silent film with very minimal subtitles. I think only John Mills in Ryan's Daughter had fewer words and he was playing a mentally retarded man.

Muni is not always appreciative of how supportive she is in that male dominated culture. Rainer helps in the field, bears and raises the kids, does the housework. When Muni becomes a man of property he takes a Chinese second trophy wife who causes him a lot of grief. Still Rainer stoically bears it all. Still Muni is not a bad man and it's a tribute to the film and his acting and Buck's writing that you don't hate him and the culture gap is bridged.

We've got a group of oriental players now who do more than just Kung Fu movies. I'm surprised The Good Earth of all films has not been remade at this point. I'll bet the Chinese government would even let some American company do it on an actual location.

Till then we've got this great classic to appreciate and enjoy.

Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer: This film was positively the worst film I have ever watched. I couldn't sit through the whole thing. I also think writer must have some weird fetish for women peeing puking and crapping... I mean what was that all about! I cant believe this was even made and am disgusted at have #ingwasted a 4 rental fee. The quality both picture and sound are terrible, the acting... well doesn't exist . It was a poor excuse for a film and the scenes of pee, crap and puke were reminiscent of 2 girls 1 cup. Urghh....... AVOID AT ALL COST! The girls looked like they had been picked off the street and only got the part cos they'd be willing to take their tops off... While these girls have nice bodies it certainly didn't make up for the fact their shrieking was awful unconvincing and a pain to my ears.

This was like (possibly worse) than an ammateur school production without any proper direction and hey there is no need for a set as it all seems to revolve around a car?!

Definatey not one to buy folks. Sorry if my first comment is terribly negative but I could not find anything positive to say and I would like to think I may save someone else wasting their money like I have.

Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer:
There's no shortage of bad dialogue in David and Bathsheba "I was quite a hand with a slingshot," "The King of all Israel out there in the darkness exposing himself to the enemy" (full marks to Dennis Hooey for delivering that one with a straight face), "Go and sit with the concubines." And somehow I doubt a bored David ever told the prophet Nathan "Whatever you say." He even tries the old "My kingdom doesn't understand me" routine on desperate housewife Bathsheba at one point. So it's probably a tribute to Henry King's direction that the film isn't at all bad despite the pitfalls much of the first third provide. Maybe it's the censor-baiting nature of the plot a married man kills a femme fatale's husband and gets away with it! but King brings out the growing moral and theological complexities in Phillip Dunne's script rather than upping the sin and sandals hokum. This is the conflicted David on the downhill slope, abandoned by a vengeful God he no longer understands, and the film doesn't back away from the awkward unanswerable questions about why a loving deity would choose to wreak vengeance on the innocent rather than the guilty. It even offers a genuinely surprising criticism of the sexual inequality of the law, where the failings of husbands result in the punishment of their wives.

Unlike King David, which sidelined the king in favour of the admittedly more interesting Saul, David is firmly at the centre of the drama and despite an interesting display of shoulder twitching and a frankly gormless overlong close-up when visiting the site of Saul and Jonathan's death, Gregory Peck's performance grows in stature as David shrinks. Susan Hayward is pure Hollywood pro, Raymond Massey is an appropriately theatrical prophet (why be naturalistic when you've got a voice that makes the very heavens quake?) and Kieron Moore's Uriah such an intransigent unreconstructed chauvinist that you can't exactly blame David for putting him in harm's way, but despite threatening to soft peddle the film doesn't allow David a moral get out of jail free card over his death. With surprisingly strong but subdued design and Technicolor photography this is definitely a cut above most 40s-50s Biblical epics.

Fox's new DVD is a good transfer, including an incredibly hokey 'candid' behind-the-scenes short and a trailer with brief shots deleted from the film's sole battle scene.