Q: Ernst Lubitsch's contribution to the American cinema is enormous. His legacy is an outstanding group of movies that will live forever, as is the case with "The Shop Around the Corner". This film has been remade into other less distinguished movies and a musical play, without the charm or elegance of Mr. Lubitsch's own, and definite version.

Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart worked in several films together. Their characters in this movie stand out as an example of how to be in a movie without almost appearing to be acting at all. Both stars are delightful as the pen pals that don't know of one another, but who fate had them working together in the same shop in Budapest.

The reason why these classic films worked so well is the amazing supporting casts the studios put together in picture after picture. In here, we have the wonderful Frank Morgan, playing the owner of the shop. Also, we see Joseph Schildkraut, Felix Bressart, William Tracy and Charles Smith, among others, doing impressive work in making us believe that yes, they are in Budapest.

That is why these films will live forever! OPTIONS:
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A: positive
Q: I saw this film first in the Soviet Union and many erotic scenes were simply edited out by the censorship committee. But then, in Poland in 2000, I watched it in a complete form. And so what? The plot is incredibly unwise - 2 men survive the genetic catastrophe and find themselves on the planet full of feminist strong, straight and fundamentally severe ladies. The men now try to fight it and then the whole bunch of extremely silly cliches follow - sex-drive, constant masculine desire for sex, feminists who are shown like complete idiots (you may agree with them or not, but idiots certainly they are not), and so on. The performance even of the stellar Jerzy Stuhr is here wooden and strangely bad - he just pulls unfunny faces and repeats on saying phrases like "I am in the elevator with a nude chick and I haven't done anything to her!". This was intended to be a comedy, instead, it turned out to be a vapid farce, full of predictable jokes and below-the-waist innuendos. Do not waste your time on it - this is just bad. OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: In Canadian director Kari Skogland's film adaptation of the Margaret Laurence novel The Stone Angel Ellen Burstyn is Hagar Shipley, a proud and cantankerous woman approaching her nineties who wishes to remain independent until the very end, stubbornly refusing to be placed in a nursing home by her well-meaning son Marvin. Filmed in Manitoba, Canada and set in the fictional town of Manawaka, The Stone Angel is a straightforward and conventional interpretation of the book that has been required reading in Canadian high school English classes for almost half a century.

The title of the film comes from the stone statue erected on Hagar's mother's grave which serves as a metaphor for Hagar's inability to express emotion during her tumultuous lifetime. Burstyn brings vulnerability and humor to the role but is a bit too likable to fully realize the ego-driven, self-defeating character who managed to alienate her wealthy father, her well-meaning but alcoholic husband, and both of her sons. As she nears the end of her days, she reflects that "pride was my wilderness and the demon that led me there was fear. I was alone, never anything else, and never free, for I carried my chains within me, and they spread out from me and shackled all I touched".

Confronting having to spend her last days in a nursing home, Hagar looks back at her life and looks at her failed relationships, her recollections shown in flashbacks without voice-over narration. The story begins with a dance that she attended as a young girl. Chaperoned by her Aunt Dolly, she meets her future husband, the previously married Bram Shipley (Cole/Wings Hauser), a poor farmer whose reputation in the town is sullied because of his association with the Native American population. The young Hagar is played by Christine Horne who is exceptional in her first feature role. Despite Hagar's pleading, her relationship with Bram is rejected by her cold and rigid father whose refusal to attend the wedding starts the marriage off on the wrong foot. This is exacerbated by his leaving all of his money to the town of Manawaka, condemning the young couple to a life of poverty.

Going through the motions of her marriage to Bram, Hagar withdraws from social activities to prevent being rejected by the town's upper classes. When she produces two sons, Marvin (Dylan Baker) and John (Kevin Zegers), she is unable to give them the love that they need. "Every joy I might have held in my man or any child of mine or even the plain light of morning", she reflects, "all were forced to a standstill by some break of proper appearancesWhen did I ever speak the heart's truth?" Like the biblical Hagar who fled to the desert because she could not tolerate further affronts to her pride, Hagar leaves Manawaka to live in Ontario but eventually returns to the Shipley farm.

As the scene shifts back to the present, Hagar runs away to an abandoned house near the ocean that she remembers from her childhood to escape from being placed in a nursing home by Marvin and his wife Doris (Sheila McCarthy), Here she meets a young man named Leo (Luke Kirby) who takes an interest in her and compels her to look at and take responsibility for the mistakes she made in her life. The Stone Angel pulls out all the emotional stops but never fully develops its characters to the point where I felt any stake in the story's outcome, although the spirited performance by Ellen Page as John's devoted but naive girlfriend and the moving final scenes bring a new energy to the film's second half. OPTIONS:
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A: positive
Q: This is by far one of the most boring and horribly acted accounts of the early days of Adolf Hitler that I have ever watched. Robert Carlyle is a wonderful actor, but to cast him as Hitler is just plain wrong. To cast Liev Schrieber as Hitler's longtime friend and aid, Haefengstal must have emitted cries of despair and anguish from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. A J-W playing a Nazi supporter, bad bad bad casting. This was not an enjoyable family film with a good historical background. This was Hollywood rubbish at its finest, cashing in on the strength of a strong (but sorely under utilized) supporting cast of actors whom seemed to have all but disappeared from the acting radar in the past 5 years.

The fake German accents (vee vill vin zis var) is insulting to German people everywhere. My mother is German and she sat fuming at the sound of the voices which kept switching from American/English/German all in the same sentence. The supporting cast make better cardboard cutouts at the local video store than they do on screen. Jenna Malone as the fated Geli Raubal, was splendid though, she captured the innocence and confusion of this tragic young woman who ultimately ended her own life to escape what her future would have been like in Hitler's shadow.

If you would like a tremendously fantastic and historically accurate account of Hitler's early years leading up to and including the war/holocaust, rent "Inside the Third Reich" 1983 starring Rutger Hauer as Albert Speer and Derek Jacobi as Hitler. It was good and made more sense then this baloney.

As a historical researcher of the Third Reich I can honestly tell you, this had me reaching for my books to confirm its myriad of inaccuracies. OPTIONS:
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A: negative