input: To be fair, I expected car chases in this film. There was only really one, but apart from that, 'Freeway' was a great movie which I am glad to own on DVD. The only really big names in the cast are HOMICIDE's Richard Belzer as the radio psychiatrist and B-Movie villain par-excellance Billy Drago as the Revelation-quoting Freeway Killer. But the rest of the cast generally give good performances. I especially liked how Darlanne Fluegel gave her character, Sunny, a bit of guts. She could have been a helpless victim character but she is fully rounded as she seeks out Drago with the help of bounty hunter James Russo.

Russo, I'm afraid, comes across as rather wooden, but then again, the character he plays, Frank, isn't very well fleshed out save for a back story Sunny is given by his former commanding officer. The tone of menace is kept up superbly throughout the film and the atmosphere of the lonely LA freeway at night with the killer prowling its' length in his sinister grey sedan is an excellent way of building tension, and the music used to underscore the film is suitably composed. I don't know why there are some people who hate this movie so. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. But I absolutely enjoyed 'Freeway' and I can strongly recommend it.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: This was a crappy movie, with a whole lotta non-sense and too many loose-ends to count. I only watched this movie because one of my favorite actors (Ron Livingston) made a cameo in it, and I continued watching it because as a girl, I love any movie that includes male nudity for a change. Later, I found myself wondering just how much more ridiculous the storyline could get, and each time it got...more... ridiculous.

Sean Crawley (good-looking Chris L. McKenna, whom I've never seen before - but LOVED his little nude scene)is making ends meet as a painter, when he meets electrician Duke Wayne (George Wendt from "Cheers"). Thinking he's getting more work from Duke, Sean agrees to meet contractor Ray Matthews (Daniel Baldwin, playing a stereotypically evil guy). Ray is being investigated by a City Hall accountant (Ron Livingston in a cameo, who I've been in love with from "Office Space" up to "Sex & the City"). Ray end up offering the apparently desperate-for- cash Sean $13k to kill the accountant, and Sean accepts the job. Sean stalks out the accountant, whose wife (Kari Wuhrer) he finds himself attracted to, completes the hit, and leaves - taking the file of information against Ray with him. Sean quickly learns he was being used, that Ray never intended to pay him, and Sean uses the file as leverage to get his money.

Up to this point, it's a descent flick...generally worth watching. But as soon as Ray, Duke and their crew kidnap Sean to muscle the information about the file out of him, it just got dumber and dumber (and still DUMBER...), until finally it seemed like the film's writer, Charlie Higson, had snapped out of a 10-day writing hangover and realized he needed to desperately figure out how to wrap up the series of implausible messes he created before a deadline or something. Without simply detailing the movie, let's just say that in every-single-scene you watch after the kidnapping, you find yourself gasping "what the f**K!," baffled by the ongoing nonsense as Sean follows a fairly graphic and gross path towards redemption. In the end, so many loose-ends are left in the movie, that you begin to regret that you even watched it.

This is a movie that you should only watch after it hits cable, and you should have enough beer and friends around to mock the film to it's full value. It's supposed to be a psychological thriller, and McKenna is a decent actor, but it's hard to give yourself to the movie when you have "Norm" from "Cheers" and a Baldwin brother doing the dirty work, and a kidnapping strategy that really makes no damned sense. Guys will love the violence, blood and guts scenes, and the absolutely unnecessary sex scenes and boob shots. Girls will enjoy handsome Sean's gratuitous crotch shot in a mainstream movie, when its almost always the girls that get stripped down in a movie. Personally, I hate that the only actor worth watching for more than his looks (Ron Livingston) is only in the first one-third of the movie.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: A lot of the comments people have made strike me as (sorry) missing the point. Kasdan wants to present life, simply, ordinary life. The conventionally structured story, where characters have insights that change their lives, and then fade out, music up, and the film is over, is absorbed into this much larger canvas. Several characters in this movie have just such illuminations, and then they move on. Sometimes they can hold onto their insights, sometimes they can't, and that's the way life really is. In other words, Kasdan jettisons conventional dramatic structure in favor of an exploration of the the ongoingness of life there is no happy ending, only an eventual ending; and everything before that is still in process, still always up for grabs and, if you absolutely insist on a theme, an exploration of the role of the miraculous in our lives. What is a miracle? Well, life itself, for a start. Then add in all the random incidents and cross-connections that make up a life, or several interconnected lives, and you have miracles by the bucketful. Kasdan underscores this theme lightly, rather than insisting on it, and bolsters it in various ways, most memorably by the device, right in the center of the film, of having Mac and his wife, lying in bed, each dreaming their own dreams, but as well showing, later on in the film, how those dreams have the power, within the film, to shape reality. This is not a film with an easy or obvious message. You just have to let it play out in front of you, and then let it sit in your mind for a few days, a month, a few years, and see what it has wrought there. This is, without a doubt, Kasdan's best film, his most mature, his most humane. A major meditation on life from one of our most gifted writers and directors. The tragedy is, of course, that he has not been allowed to work for a number of years now, mostly due to studio constraints around "Dreamcatcher." Hopefully we haven't heard the last from Larry Kasdan. A great film from a great artist. Keep in mind that art does not have to rationalize itself completely in order to succeed.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: This movie was featured on a very early episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but when I see this film, I don't think about that wonderful TV series. I believe this was a surprisingly good early 40's horror flick, with very surprisingly good sound and picture for a 67 year old public domain horror movie. I actually enjoyed watching Bela Lugosi and his bizarre staff, including his wife who requires fluid from the glands of young would-be brides, an old hag, and her two bizarre sons, one a giant idiot, the other a comical dwarf(Angelo Rossitto from 1932's Freaks). I also enjoyed the plucky young female reporter, who is kind of a stereotype, but still fun to watch. My only problem with this otherwise decent film is it's plot, even ridiculous and unbelievable for a movie. I don't want to spoil any of this film, so go out and rent it, or, better yet, buy it for a couple of bucks.

Is the sentiment of this review positive or negative?

pos/neg ans:
positive