Q: The only other film besides Soylent Green that has such an air of hopelessness is On the Beach. Both films deal with the consequences for the species and the planet from man made cataclysms. On the Beach with nuclear war and Soylent Green with the environmental poisoning of the planet.

Maybe there's cause for some optimism because as of 2007 we haven't reached either of the worlds described in those films and we were supposed to by now. New York City still has about 8 million people not the 22 million by the turn of the millenia as described in Soylent Green. Environmentalists always hail this film as showing the consequence of global warming. For myself it also shows the Right to Life ethic run amuck. Obviously there's no family planning in this world either.

Charlton Heston is an NYPD detective who lives with room mate Edward G. Robinson who's old enough to remember the Earth before catastrophe struck. There's been a murder committed, Joseph Cotten an executive with the Soylent Corporation, a multi-national concern that has come up with a food product, some kind of wafer in many colors to feed the world's population. It's latest product is Soylent Green.

The investigation finds Charlton Heston getting his man, but also it leads to some horrifying truths about the Soylent Corporation and the future of mankind. As Heston shouts in the end that Soylent Green is made of people, that we've become a race of cannibals, the horrifying thing is that there is no alternative. We've exhausted the planet and we have to eat our dead to survive.

This was the farewell performance of Edward G. Robinson and in his memoirs Heston spoke movingly of Robinson even though they had differing political views. A few weeks after Robinson wrapped that final scene of his screen demise by consented euthanasia, he passed away in real life. Not many did, but Heston knew that Robinson was terminally and there was no acting involved in that final death scene between the two of them.

Though the timetable was off, it doesn't mean that the world envisioned by Soylent Green may not come to pass. Hopefully we'll have not just the intelligence, but the sense of shared responsibility to keep that from happening.
A: positive
Q: A very refreshing story, the life of a parrot with an intellect higher than an average human's. Shows humans from a bird's point of view. Especially liked the portrayal of different types of characters that the bird spends time with. Not all birds are bird-brained...
A: positive
Q: RKO studios decided to borrow both William Powell from MGM and Jean Arthur from Columbia, for one of their more big budget efforts to cash in on the popularity of The Thin Man. They succeeded to some degree.

A lot of folks forget that in addition to and earlier than Nick Charles, Bill Powell also played in a few Philo Vance films in the title role. So by this time he was pretty well set in the role. Doctor Bradford is not doing as many liquid lunches as Nick Charles, but the basic blase Nick is still there. One difference is that while Nick Charles married an heiress, Doctor Bradford works for a living as a physician. That helps in his avocation of detective and in fact it does in this film.

He's got two murders to solve. A jockey falls off a horse coming into the homestretch of a big race and dies for no apparent reason. The trainer suspects something afoot, but he's bumped off by the more conventional method of a bullet. This is after he comes to Bill Powell for help.

Myrna Loy was a more steadying influence on Bill Powell than Jean Arthur was. Arthur plays it as more of a dizzy dame than Loy did. But it works here and she and Powell have good chemistry.

The ever dependable James Gleason is the police inspector in the Sam Levene/Nat Pendleton role. All they needed here was Asta and possibly Eric Blore as Powell's butler was essaying that part.

If Powell and Arthur were signed at this studio we might have seen a whole slew of Bradford films.
A: positive
Q: Violence whether real or not always has an impact. In this film the violence is about as crass as you could ask for. In the Great Ecstacy the director has successfully demonstrated what extremes of violence people are capable of. But what was the point? The violence looks like a mix of Noe's 'Irreversible, and ' Kubrick's 'Clockwork Orange'...both of which are remarkable films. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to screen violence at all and I've seen some nasty stuff in my film-going years, but this film as a whole is totally juvenile. The story is never developed enough to offer any reason for the extreme violence, the rizla paper thin reason we are give for Robert's demise is his introduction to drugs. Danny Dyer plays the character who is partly responsible for Robert's drug fuelled demise, however he is on screen for less than 5 minutes. Lesley Manville is Robert's unable to cope mum, I am not sure what either of these actors is doing in a film of this low caliber. The acting is wooden, the scene in the kitchen with the TV-cook and his wife for instance is as painful to watch if not more so than the shocking finale- who wrote those dialogues?! Some of the comments the boys make...'looks like she's enjoying it' are so trite as to tempt one to laugh if it were not for Clay's ardent desire to bombard us with harrowing images of mutilated female genitals. Why we need to be shown such detail possibly down to the director's adolescent obsession with sadistic pornographic imagery...one can only wonder at this young man's psychology.

The 'political meaning' of the film was repeatedly brought to our attention due to the amount of scenes; in the bar, outside the TV-cook's house, war in Iraq reports, was perhaps too obvious in my opinion. Yes, war is violent, social determinism causes frustration, we're all prone to horrifingly violent acts whether you're in politics or on the street popping E. Juxtaposing all these things as part of the same underlying issue is evading the actual issue which is the meaning of violence in man. This issue is one that we still haven't managed to grasp and certainly not in this film.

My opinion: derivative, badly-made and pointless.
A: negative