Q: Kazan's early film noir won an Oscar. Some of the reviews here go into extraordinary detail and length about the film and its symbolism, and rate it very highly. I can almost see where they are coming from. But I prefer to take a more toned-down approach to a long-forgotten film that appears to have been shot on practically no budget and in quasi-documentary fashion. Pneumonic plague is loose in the streets of New Orleans, and it is up to a military doctor (Widmark) and a city detective (Douglas) to apprehend the main carrier (Palance). The film is moody, shot in stark black and white, and makes very good use of locations. Widmark is wonderful as usual. Forget the symbolism (crime equals disease, and disease equals crime) and just enjoy the chase. It is not always easy watching a film like this now that we are well into this new century, as it is of a particular style that was very short-lived (post WWII through the early 1950s) and will unlikely be of interest to the casual film watcher. For those who will be watching this for the first time, sit tight for the big chase at the end. It is something else, and frankly I don't know how they filmed some of it. I can say it probably took as long to film the finale as it did the first 90 percent of the movie. OPTIONS:
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A: positive
Q: This movie was so terrible it was almost good... almost. We love musicals, but not this one. Even with the terrible sound quality, poor cinematography, and many actors who can't sing or dance, Anthony Rapp actually managed to give a good performance (especially toward the end). The character Marjorie, a drunk lady, was enjoyable to watch, too.

The plot is very unexpected and could have been funny without terrible singing and cheezy piano music. Admittadly, some of the songs (fantabulous) are pretty catchy (but not in a good way).

Open House is a funny movie to watch simply because it is awful! We think it might be a good stage musical (with excellent actors). OPTIONS:
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A: negative
Q: The saddest thing about this film is that only 8 people cared to leave a review of it and NO-ONE felt it worthwhile leaving a comment on the message boards.

Made the same year as Philadelphia...the Tom Hanks Oscar-winner... this is the film that people REALLY should have seen and given awards to. There is more humanity, life, love, tenderness and beauty in these two people than in just about any other gay film I have seen... and it is all true.

In order for this to be printed I need to leave a few more lines of text: suffice it to say that anyone who REALLY wants to know what it was like to be gay in the 60's and 70's, and to understand just what AIDS was like before the modern drug "cocktails" allowed people to breathe a little easier... this is the film to see.

Oh, and I will add a personal comment about AIDS. Despite everything, there actually has been a silver lining to all the horror. When AIDS first arrived, it was called the "gay cancer", and governments preferred to "let them die" rather than spend a red cent on research to help save a bunch of fags. Then it became clear that AIDS would also be a heterosexual disease. But the government wasn't ready for that; So when straight people began getting ill too, the only organizations and associations that were available to them were those which had been set up by gays themselves (examples: The Names Project: the quilt memorializing all those who died of AIDS; Act Up etc) The result is that people who probably would never have come in contact with gays in their ordinary lives suddenly found themselves counting on them and needing them, because no other organizations existed. This close contact, in my estimation, is what finally broke down the barriers of prejudice and allowed the straight world to finally accept gays as equals. When AIDS first came on the scene, many of us thought that the straight world would use it as a way to come down even harder on us... and that probably would have been true if straights didn't suddenly become ill too; nevertheless, the strides that have been made in gay liberation - to the point that, as I write this, there are at least 5 countries in the world that accept gay marriage - these gains would probably have taken a lot longer without AIDS to bring us together. It is sad to think that all those people - both straight and gay - had to die before our common humanity became more obvious - but if what I am writing here is true, and I think it is - then there is a bit of comfort to be taken in realizing that all those people did not die in vain. OPTIONS:
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A: positive
Q: My complaints here concern the movie's pacing and the material at hand. While using archival film and letters lends the film a fresh and interesting perspective, too often the material selected to highlight simply isn't very interesting (such as when Goebbels complains about this or that ailment, &tc., or the ad nauseam footage of his small German hometown). Also, the movie crawls along in covering c. 1920-1939 and then steams through the war years. In sum, the film is little better than a History Channel documentary, with the exception that the filmmaker has a slightly greater sensibility than your average History Channel documentary editor and thus can more artfully arrange the details of Goebbels' life. Still, I found it wanting. OPTIONS:
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A: negative