IN: Review: This esteemed production has it's fans. But to paraphrase the classic bad review of 'Mary Reilly,' Moby Dick is like a painting, only slower.

This is because the philosophical grounds for a movie "production" are never to make a great film, rather it's to substitute the lack of a strong guiding idea (in this case for a books transference to film) with a list of hopelessly atomized, undynamic but dazzling conceits in an effort to trick viewers into thinking they've seen greatness. As viewers & critics are apt to fall for this, Oscars follow, feeding the whole dumb equation.

I don't share in the pleasure all these reviewers found. Moby Dick is stunningly uninvolving. Actors dutifully recite essays about Jonah, Moby Dick, the ocean, Moby Dick, Moby Dick... all things that can't respond, and not one of which is absorbing in the slightest. It's dramatically inert. It doesn't build. In narrative terms Moby Dick (as a movie) is little more than a foregone conclusion in search of an actual story. After half an hour I was muttering "Oh terrific... another oath ...another 4 minute soliloquy!"

In the failed effort to involve you, it's a pretty campy overacting showcase. A lot of grey hair here. Starbuck is supposed to be a golden god. (!)

One knows one is looking at a great director when he makes the medium his own rather than trying to replicate the feel of someone else's paintings & palette, or reverently embalming a classic as Huston does here. Paintings and books are nice but they're a different mediums. A movie like this fails to grasp that an honestly enjoyable piece of crap (Village of the Damned) is better in most respects than an insufferable piece of culture. This is the Eat Your Vegetables school of film-making.

One appreciates the work that must have been done to make the movie, but not the narrative. Only a few segments reflecting maritime research are interesting; the recording of shanties as a means of structuring work & various sea efforts; and the technology of whaling. And that doesn't call for a two-plus hour movie.
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: Another day stuck indoors, another film to watch. Having finally completed my Christmas shopping yesterday on a cold and foggy afternoon, I had nowhere else to go to escape "The Land That Time Forgot". Or rather, I had nothing else to watch.

Doug McClure, that bastion of leading-man actors, leads a handful of Allied sailors sunk by a U-Boat somewhere in the Atlantic in 1916. Capturing the U-Boat (in a scene that defies logic and reason), they eventually find themselves on a strange island, apparently untouched by human hands. Together, they explore the land and discover dinosaurs and Neanderthals! Can they escape before becoming a permanent resident of the land that Time forgot?

Despite being made few years before "Star Wars", these films are light-years apart in terms of special effects. The model shots are little better than anything you would expect to see in an episode of Gerry Anderson's "Stingray" and the creatures aren't much better either. When the T-Rex (I'm assuming that's what it was) was killed, it fell in the same way that zombies do when you kill them - frozen in mid-walk and collapsing, arms and legs held out like a sleeping cow that's been pushed over. Granted, the sets aren't too bad but the lousy acting and endless explosion noises (which all sound the same) do their best to ruin credibility and your enjoyment of the picture as a whole. Characters are neither believable or worthy of your sympathy as they fire their guns at seemingly anything that moves. In the end, I just didn't care if they got off the island or not and by the time the end came, I was more relieved than entertained.

Costumes are authentic enough until the cavemen arrive and it is bear-skin bikinis and loin cloths all round. And although it was fairly obvious from their actions, you wouldn't have known that some characters were German from their accents. The whole thing just lacked some polish and cohesion, leaving the viewer confused in places and nonplussed in others. Overall, this film barely registers a ripple of excitement these days although you can find some small amusement in trying to work out where Colin Farrell is. I spotted his name in the credits and half expected a baby to appear with an Irish accent and suspect facial hair. Oh well. Nothing particularly great here to see then, but just about OK if you're eating your lunch and the weather is preventing further activity.
What is this review like?
OUT: negative

IN: Review: Dripping with symbolism and filled with marvelous cinematography, Extase is so much more than the erotic drama we've all come to expect. This is almost a silent film, with what dialogue there is in German, and highly simplified German at that. Perhaps the filmmakers intended the film to reach the widest possible European audience, as anyone with even a little high school level Deutsch can easily dispense with the subtitles. The story is of little importance anyway, with the film succeeding on a cinematic level, not a narrative one. Symbols of fecundity and the power of nature overwhelm the human characters--there are even scenes where flowers obscure the face of supposed star Hedy Lamarr--and there are moments here that will remind viewers of the works of Dreyer, Vertov, and Riefenstahl. If the film has any message to convey, I think it's a political one: bourgeois man is timid and impotent; working class man is a happy, productive creature; and woman is the creator, destined to be unfulfilled until she has borne a child. This blend of Soviet socialist realism and National Socialist dogma doesn't overwhelm the film by any means--it's a beauty to watch from beginning to end--but it does place it in a very distinct artistic era. And, oh yeah, Hedy does get her kit off.
What is this review like?
OUT:
positive