IN: Review: Sandler is amazing again... I have already become a Sandler fan. This movie is the saddest Sandler story. Its expression is fantastic. I cried more watching Click but there are some similar points. To consider the value of the family before losing it and to be able to say 'I love you' are a few of the most impressive truths in life... It is tough, it is real... and actually there is a real owner of this success, Binder. I don't think another director could give these emotions in such a way.

Cheadle and Burrows are also amazing... Cheadle is one of my favorites since Crash. Don't expect laughing or much positive atmosphere... If you are ready to face the realities of life, don't miss this movie.
What is this review like?
OUT: positive

IN: Review: This was the first movie that Joan Crawford and Clark Gable made together and they would go on to make several more. Crawford stars a young rich girl who's father is wiped out in the stock market crash and there is nothing left for her and her brother. They have never worked before and the brother, William Bakewell, gets a job with Gable, who is a gangster and Bakewell thinks it will be an easy job but gets in over his head pretty quick. Crawford becomes a reporter at a newspaper but wants to work on the big stories but is given worthless stuff to work on. Their is a massacre in which several of Gable's men are killed and Crawford was a witness to the whole thing. It's a good movie but not one of their best.
What is this review like?
OUT: positive

IN: Review: For some reason, this film has never turned up in its original language in my neck of the woods (despite owning the TCM UK Cable channel, which broadcasts scores of MGM titles week in week out). More disappointingly, it's still M.I.A. on DVD even from Warners' recently-announced "Western Classics Collection" Box Set (which does include 3 other Robert Taylor genre efforts); maybe, they're saving it for an eventual "Signature Collection" devoted to this stalwart of MGM, which may be coming next year in time for the 40th anniversary of his passing

I say this because the film allows him a rare villainous role as a selfish Westerner with a fanatical hatred of Indians and who opts to exploit his expert marksmanship by making some easy money hunting buffaloes; an opening statement offers the alarming statistic that the population of this species was reduced from 60,000,000 to 3,000 in the space of just 30 years! As an associate, Taylor picks on former professional of the trade Stewart Granger who rallies alcoholic, peg-legged Lloyd Nolan (who continually taunts the irascible and vindictive Taylor) and teenage half-breed Russ Tamblyn to this end. As expected, the company's relationship is a shaky one reminiscent of that at the centre of Anthony Mann's THE NAKED SPUR (1953), another bleak open-air MGM Western. The film, in fact, ably approximates the flavor and toughness of Mann's work in this field (despite being writer/director Brooks' first of just a handful of such outings but which, cumulatively, exhibited a remarkable diversity); here, too, the narrative throws in a female presence (Debra Paget, also a half-breed) to be contended between the two rugged leads and Granger, like the James Stewart of THE NAKED SPUR, returns to his job only grudgingly (his remorse at having to kill buffaloes for mere sport and profit is effectively realized).

The latter also suffers in seeing Taylor take Paget for himself she bravely but coldly endures his approaches, while secretly craving for Granger and lets out his frustration on the locals at a bar while drunk! Taylor, himself, doesn't come out unscathed from the deal: like the protagonist of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948), he becomes diffident and jealous of his associates, especially with respect to a rare and, therefore, precious hide of a white buffalo they've caught; he even goes buffalo-crazy at one point (as Nolan had predicted), becoming deluded into taking the rumble of thunder for the hooves of an approaching mass of the species! The hunting scenes themselves are impressive buffaloes stampeding, tumbling to the ground when hit, the endless line-up of the day's catch, and the carcasses which subsequently infest the meadows. The film's atypical but memorable denouement, then, is justly famous: with Winter in full swing, a now-paranoid Taylor out for Granger's blood lies in wait outside a cave (in which the latter and Paget have taken refuge) to shoot him; when Granger emerges the next morning, he discovers Taylor in a hunched position frozen to death!

Incidentally, my father owns a copy of the hefty source novel of this (by Milton Lott) from the time of the film's original release: actually, he has collected a vast number of such editions it is, after all, a practice still in vogue where a book is re-issued to promote its cinematic adaptation. Likewise for the record, Taylor and Granger who work very well off each other here had already been teamed (as sibling whale hunters!) in the seafaring adventure ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT (1953)which, curiously enough, is just as difficult to see (in fact, even more so, considering that it's not even been shown on Italian TV for what seems like ages)!!
What is this review like?
OUT: positive

IN: Review: You ever sit through a movie and after it's all over it's like one big "wtf!?".

Welcome to Decoy.

Another straight to video action fodder flick you can immediately forget about having watched or better yet don't watch it at all. Peter Weller and Robert Patrick star and are quickly wasted in this going nowheres fast mercenaries-for-hire action dud where the story is pretty darn bad and the action sucks and what's the point of watching an action flick if the action blows? Robert Patrick in particular hits a new low in an action sequence that has him firing a machine gun while standing on the hood of a moving school bus. Co-stars the ambient Charlotte Lewis and Canada's own Scott Hylands (of TV's Night Heat fame).
What is this review like?
OUT:
negative