Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer: I have seen this movie many times and each time i watch it i can't help but be entertained by it. Gunga Din is one of those Classic movies made in Hollywoods Golden Years when the actors themselves had to draw the audience into a movie without relying on fantastic special effects and man made "monsters" to carry a scene. The onscreen charisma and comraderie demonstrated by Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is suberb and very entertaining to watch. The tongue and cheek attitude in which the three actors play their roles works beutifully and flawlessly. Some might consider it "corny" but i consider it "classic" filmaking and acting at its best. One must remember when watching this film that Europe was involved in a War with Germany and audiences went to the movies to escape from the horrors of war and to be entertained and taken away to a place where people were larger than life and did heroic deeds and good would always conquer over evil. Gunga Din accomplishes this perfectly by letting the audience laugh at and with the actors during their harrowing escapades. In short, its a classic film that doesnt take itself too seriously and doesnt want the audience to either.
An example of a movie review. negative (OPTIONS:
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- positive).

A: Fans of goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis should look elsewhere if they are picking up this film for his usual buckets of blood being sloshed about, for there is precious little in the way of bloodletting in this film. Instead, Lewis decides to try and tell the bizarre story, relying on bargain-basement special effects on a budget which could have probably been doubled if the cast had turned out their pockets for change one day. Oddly enough, while cheap and very poorly acted (especially by McCabe as Mitchell), the total outlandishness of the plot keeps attention throughout. Imagine what this film could have been like with a decent budget! Overall, it strains for champagne tastes on a beer budget.
Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: A neat 'race against time' premise - A murdered John Doe is found to have pneumonic plague, so while the health authority and NOPD battle everybody and each other trying to find his waterfront contacts, the murderers think the heat is because the victim's infected cousin is holding out on them.

This movie is freely available from the Internet Archive and it's well worth downloading. A lot (all?) of this movie was filmed in genuine New Orleans locations, which makes it interesting to look at for what is now period detail, though to me it does look under-exposed, even for noir - maybe mobile lighting rigs then weren't what they are. There is also a plenty of location background noise, which is slightly distracting - car horns in the love scene, anyone? There are a lot of non-professional supporting artists in crowd scenes, and this may explain why the pacing of the film is slightly saggy to begin with - not much chance for retakes or recasting, though the final chase is worth hanging on for. There's not much wrong with the lead actors either: Jack Palance is genuinely scary as a charismatic, intelligent psychopath - the later scene as he alternately comforts and threatens the sick cousin is terrific, while Widmark, as he often did, pitches the righteous anger of the man on a mission at a believable level - most of the time.

Somebody should remake this - no supernaturals, no mysticism, no special FX, just a good yarn full of character conflict, and a topical theme. Another reviewer mentioned the writer John Kennedy O'Toole, and that's spot on with the number of oddball New Orleans types peppering this dark, sleazy, against-the-clock drama. There's even a midget newspaper seller.

"Community? What community? D'you think you're living in the Middle Ages?"
Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Denzel is about the only thing that is right in this movie.

Maybe once in an early stage this was a better movie. Someone decided to cut some action and plot points into the beginning of the movie, giving away most of the story line in about the first 5 minutes. That and ruining whatever build up in pace and rhythm the movie might have had before.

So first it confuses you and then it puts you off. The dramatization pushes beyond suspension of disbelieve.

Of course there is that feeling of great injustice and anger that movies like this potentially manage to instill in viewers. Granted, it does that so if you are looking for that ... knock yourself out.
Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer: 'Baptists at Our Barbecue' is the best film ever made. Now, that I got your attention with that horribly inaccurate statement that should be a hanging offense if spoken, let me begin my short overview of this tacky, offensive, pretentious and boring hunk of junk I guess you could consider a movie. First of all, the low budget of this stinker is totally obvious based on the very poor and inexperienced direction of Christian Vuissa, and the tacky, overly preachy, whiny and stilted screenplay by F. Mathew Smith. I really despise the fact that it sends a very pro-Mormon, and sort of anti-every other religion message. Yes, the story is about a small town half full with Mormons and half full with Baptists. It shows all the main and role-model characters being Mormon, and being so nice and perfect, yet they are being picked on by the evil, conniving and very judgmental Baptists. It shows how beautiful Mormons are and how cold-hearted and ignorant Baptists are, instead of showing a little solidarity like would be appropriate and realistic. I'm a part of neither religion (I'm actually an atheist), but this offended me, along with another countless amount of Baptists most likely. It shows the Baptists as being very unopened and unwelcoming to the Mormons, and the Mormons being very accepting, when again, in reality there is a mutual like/dislike between them. Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on a rant.

Another aspect of 'Baptists at Our Barbecue' I didn't much care for, was the acting. The performances are very amateurish and unnatural, especially from the female lead Heather Beers. Miss Beers stumbles her way through her part without any passion or feeling for her role, and I wasn't too much impressed with Dan Merkley, who's the main character in this lackluster of a motion picture, but I have to say he's way more talented or shows more talent in this film then Heather Beers. Whoever played the town sheriff was awful also. Although there is maybe a tiny laugh deep within the film, it is full of cliches. For example, the main character, Tartan (Merkley), finds solace with a Native American who always gives him the best advice on things relating to a tribal way of life - how cliche is that? To make the situation even more of a pathetic cliche, Tartan buys the poor, lonely heathen a puppy dog. Ugghhh!

If you want my advice, stay as far away from 'Baptists at Our Barbecue' as you can. I saw it on the shelf and thought it would be a cute and interesting little indie about religion. All I got was a, well, piece of crap. Grade: D-

my ratings guide - A+ (absolutley flawless); A (a masterpiece, near-perfect); A- (excellent); B+ (great); B (very good); B- (good); C+ (a mixed bag); C (average); C- (disappointing); D+ (bad); D (very bad); D- (absolutley horrendous); F (not one redeeming quality in this hunk of Hollywood feces).
Problem: OPTIONS:
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Answer:
The legend of Andrei Konchalovsky's towering 4 and a half hour poem to Siberia is not to begin at once, because it must hold back for space, because it takes its time in roundabout explorations of half-remembered childhood memories in a turn-of-the-century backwoods village, yet the movie goes on picking up steam building in emotional resonance as though even the sounds and images which compose it become imbued by sheer association with their subject matter with that quality of fierce tireless quiet dignity that characterizes the Soviet working spirit. Konchalovsky celebrates Soviet collectivity but in an almost revisionist way to paeans like Soy Cuba and Invincible the mood turns somber and reflective. News of the revolution reach the secluded Siberian village through the grapevine. The fruits of its labor reach it only when a world war calls for the young men to enlist. Through all this, Konchalovksy zeroes in on the individual, with care and affection to examine the bitter longing and regret of the woman who waited 6 years after the war for a fiance who never came back, waited long enough to go out and become a barmaid in a ship with velvet couches and which she quit years later to come back to her village to care for an aging uncle who killed the fiance's father with an axe, the irreverent folly of the fiance who came back from the war a hero 20 years too late, came back not for the sake of the girl he left behind but to drill oil for the motherland, the despair and resignation of the middle-aged Regional Party Leader who comes back to his small Siberian village with the sole purpose of blotting it out of the map to build a power plant. The movie segues from decade to decade from the 10's to the 80's with amazing newsreel footage trailing Soviet history from the revolution to war famine and the titanic technological achievements of an empire (terrific visuals here! all kinetic violence and skewed angles and flickering cramped shots of crowds and faces) but the actual movie focuses on the individual, on triumphs and follies small and big. By the second half a sense of bittersweet fatalism creeps in; of broken lives that never reached fulfillment choking with regret and yearning. "It can't matter", seems like the world is saying, to which Konchalovksy answers "it must matter" because the protagonists keep on trying for redemption.

Yet behind this saga of 'man against landscape' something seems to hover, shadowy, almost substanceless, like the Eternal Old Man hermit who appears in every segment to guide or repudiate the protagonists, sometimes a mere spectactor, sometimes the enigmatic sage; a little behind and above all the other straightforward and logical incomprehensible ultimatums challenges and affirmations of the human characters, something invisible seems to lurk. Ghosts of the fathers appearing in sepia dreams, repeated shots of a star gleaming in the nightsky, a curious bear, indeed the Eternal Old Man himself; Konchalovksy calls for awe and reverence before a mystical land of some other order. In its treatment of a small backwoods community struggling against nature progress and time and in the ways it learns to deal with them, often funny bizarre and tragic at the same time, and in how the director never allows cynicism to override his humanism, it reminds me of Shohei Imamura's The Profound Desires of the Gods. When, in a dream scene, Alexei tears through the planks of a door on which is plastered a propaganda poster of Stalin to reach out at his (dead) father as he vanishes in the fog, the movie hints at the betrayal of the Soviet Dream, or better yet, at all the things lost in the revolution, this betrayal made more explicit in the film's fiery denouement. The amazing visuals, elegiac and somber with a raw naturalist edge, help seal the deal. By the end of it, an oil derric erupts in flames and the movie erupts in a wild explosion of pure cinema.