Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: I've just returned from a showing of "My Left Foot" at our public library. What an emotional experience -- I feel drained and uplifted.

It's the story of Christy Brown, Irish writer and painter, and based on the author's autobiographical "My Left Foot." Christy was born with a form of cerebral palsy such that the only limb he had good control of was his left foot. Doctors advised his parents he was hopelessly mentally retarded but his mother didn't give up on him and, somewhat as Annie Sullivan had done with Helen Keller, helped him achieve a breakthrough in which he learned the alphabet and then to read, write, and paint.

This film won Academy Awards for Daniel Day-Lewis (best actor) as well as best supporting actress for the actress playing his mother; it also received Oscar nominations for best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay.

As a retired clinical psychologist and family therapist, while many films may entertain me, many also often leave me having to overlook gross fictions or improbabilities in realistic psychological reactions.

Not this film--it was absolutely "spot on" in portraying typical Irish parental roles & behaviors (see, e.g., see typical Irish families in McGoldrick's "Ethnicity & Family Therapy") as well Christy Brown's uneven emotional maturation--some immature personality reactions that were even further amplified by his picking up traits of his father.

The film presents the greater truth while changing certain sequences in his development (painting & writing) and condensing several important people into one person, for the sake of telling a coherent, believable story, not burdened by small, distracting, less important actualities. (See Christy Brown in Wikipedia for more accuracy.) The DVD version we were shown had some English subtitles that were a great help in understanding Christy's speech (& some of the Irish speech); the initial release of the film may have lacked this. (If you see this on DVD, enable that option.)

The performance by Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest, believable acting jobs I've ever seen. Truly magnificent, outstanding, superlative.

"My Left Foot" bears more than some similarity to a more recent film, "The Diving Bell & the Butterfly," in that each portrays the life of a real person successfully surmounting the imprisonment and isolation of an extremely severe physical handicap.

And in doing so, it resonates with William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" which begins: "Out of the night that covers me,//Black as the Pit from pole to pole,//I thank whatever gods may be//For my unconquerable soul."
Problem: OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive negative
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Answer: Though not a fan of Sam Rockwell, I was surprised when I saw his name in the credits in the opening of 'Joshua.' Heck, I wasn't even aware he was in 'Joshua' until I started the movie. So it goes without saying, I was watching the movie on the basis of the movie, not the leads. A sort of 'Rosemary's Baby,' 'The Omen' or any other demonic kid movie 'Joshua' was billed. Unfortunately, it fell flat. Slow, incredibly slow, and flat. Yet, I continued on to see how this would all resolve, hoping beyond belief, the ending climax would shed some light on the subject. Okay, I admit, it did (a wee bit) but what a stale closing. And what a low-low budget movie, or at least that's how they designed it. A person falls you don't see the drop, you see someone lying down in what appears to be blood. A person gets hit by a cab you don't see it, you see someone complaining, holding a bike up. I'm not sure if this is called "style" or laziness or simply, lack of funds for special effects. We have a "rich" family with a crazy mom, a workaholic father attempting to balance everything, a kid Joshua, who may/may not be the antichrist and a new born baby girl who cries a lot. She cries as much as we see how many days she's alive and what was that about? Are there rats above or is it Joshua? Is his mother nuts? Is Joshua crazy? Is he merely jealous of the newcomer to the family? Is he going to grow up to be Michael Myers? Or does he drive his family to the brink? I don't think so. They were nuts prior, and no "so-called" acting could make me believe otherwise. Unfortunately, barely any questions were answered, barely any open doors shut. I'm sure that might have been the idea, but for Pete's sake, give me something. Anything. There are plenty better kid-gone-wild movies to explore. Joshua's more like the Mini-Me of the antichrist.
An example of a movie review. positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: The movie actually has a fairly good story, but gets bogged down in several key places. It's almost as if the director threw the movie together without taking the time to make some essential cuts in the film. Dennis Quaid does a fairly decent job in his role... but something is clearly missing from several key scenes.

This 2.5 hour movie could have been reduced to about a 2 hour movie. And probably would have been a much better film had it not had the feel as if it was thrown together.

Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: what ends up killing this movie is its self-consciousness, among other things. here's a short list: 1. irreverent behavior. when the beatles came over and injected their brand of "quirky, irreverent" behavior/humor, it was greeted as fresh. that was over 4 decades ago. get over it.

2. false sophistication. spewing out base, quasi-socio-political-isms is hard ground to make work comically. ask woody allen.

3. the post-modern "i'm hard on this phony world and yes, i recognize it in myself" snake eating itself - used as illustration with another animal in the film itself! - is such a retread.

4. smarmy, smug drollness.

5. amateurish writing, acting, direction... ever seen student films? a victim of itself, about the only thing i can say positive is that it at least has a sense of itself, and sheesh, now i'm getting caught up in the self-reflexive thing that it posits as worthwhile, of value.

but towards... what? ultimately, it just rings as hollow as any other pretentious piece - hey, ever see woody allen's take on bergman, ie: "Interiors"??? well, this just does it more amateurishly.
Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: I saw this back in '94 when it was finally released. Apparently because Orion pictures was in bankruptcy, I think, the movie had not been released a couple of years earlier.

I have problem remembering details partly because I haven't seen it in a long time, but I do remember it as a very dull movie. I kept debating whether to walk out of it. The store was not at all interesting or engaging. Was a 3rd rate America Graffiti imitation.

None of the performances make it worth watching either. One of the biggest disappointments since a local newspaper reviewer gave it a high rating.
Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer:
From start to finish, I laughed real hard throughout the whole movie. It's amazing that "The Groove Tube" is possibly the granddaddy, yet raunchiest, of all comedic skit movies.This is the way I enjoy watching TV without being bored at flipping channels only to suffer from insomnia! For 73 minutes, the weird, strange humor never stops! Just think of how all this nonsense laughing can help you enjoy life easier! It's way, WAY better than Comedy Central or any prime time show! Do yourself a favor and trash all those soft, lame romantic comedy movies into the wastebasket! Better yet, tell your box office manager you want "The Groove Tube" back on the big screen!