input: Moonwalker is absolutely incredible !!!!!!! What else can I say !? Michael Jackson is the true King of pop, rock and soul !!! Moonwalker has everything ! Great story line, fantastic music, great visual effects, and of course it has Michael Jackson !!!!!!

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: Another in a long line of flicks made by people who think that knowing how to operate a camera is the same as telling a story. Within 15 minutes, the entire premise is laid out in just a few lines, so there is absolutely no mystery, which eliminates a whole facet of the suspense. The only half-way competent actor is killed 10 minutes into the film, so we're left with stupid characters running around doing stupid things. Low budget films can't afford expensive special effects, so the CGI portions are unsurprisingly unimpressive, but were at least a valid attempt. The creature suit is terrible, as seen when it falls to the sidewalk, and the director keeps emphasizing the eyes, which aren't even the red color shown in mirror shots. The dialogue is clumsy and uninspired, with some lines reminiscent of Aliens or Terminator. The last action sequence takes place in a police station, also a rip-off from Terminator, with everyone hiding in the one glass lined office that the Darkwolf doesn't smash into. In the end, the girl calls the hero "a good Protector", but he gets both his partners, the original Protector, and at least three other civilians, not to mention a dozen cops, all killed without getting a decent shot off, in spite of an arsenal of silver bullets and a submachine gun. But here's the real clincher for bad writing: They could have killed the beast right after the beginning credits when it was holding the stripper while flashing its red eyes. Instead, they took it into custody?!?

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: A 14 year old girl develops her first serious crush on the 17 year old boy that lives near by, while simultaneously trying to overcome her feelings of inadequacy in comparison to her older sister. That is the simple premise of this beautiful, poetic coming of age film from Director Robert Mulligan. Mulligan is famous for previously directing Summer of '42 in 1971 and To Kill A Mockingbird in 1962, two giants of the coming of age genre. Here he directs newcomers in the principal roles: Reese Witherspoon, in her film debut, as the 14 year old girl; Emily Warfield, as the older sister; Jason London, as Court, the 17 year old boy. Reese Witherspoon is astonishingly good in her film debut, displaying every emotion that a 14 year old girl feels in experiencing young love and hurt, never striking a false note. Warfield and London are both equally good as well. The film accurately depicts each adolescent's thoughts or feelings in regard to love with heartfelt sensitivity, never crossing over into maudlin excess even once. Kudos to the autobiographical screenplay from Jenny Wingfield; this is one of the very few films about young love that is honest and consistent in tone without being emotionally dishonest or sensationalist. The music is wonderfully simple, accentuating the tone and mood from scene to scene, but never becoming intrusive. The beautiful cinematography is by famed horror director Freddie Francis, who was in his 70's when this was shot. Tess Harper and Sam Waterston play the girls' parents with dead aim accuracy for 1957, caring, strict, and emotionally simple. Gail Strickland is good also as the boy's mother. There are feelings to sort out, lessons to learn, and truths to face in this sweet-natured film that packs an emotional wallop. To date, this is Robert Mulligan's last film. This is one of the very best films of 1991. **** of 4 stars.

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: Michael Williams, who works for BBC, finds a somehow impressive Italian picture which gets mixed in the material of his ongoing task titled DIABOLICAL ART: A DOCUMENTARY. But since his wife's mysterious death her daughter, Emily, has been emotionally disturbed, so he goes Spoleto, where the problematic picture is, with her and her nanny, Jill. And there is a Countess, who is also a psychic, and she informs him that the picture was somehow made at the night that a young witch named Emilia was executed. Michael doesn't believe her story, but after that Emily has hysterical spasm and Jill is killed... This Italian film is, of course, almost innocently influenced by THE EXORCIST, but this one is much cheaper, much simpler,and in a sense, much dirtier. First of all, it should be said this film is full of confusion. For instance, the story shows Emily is a reincarnation of Emilia. But when Emily sees her in the flashbacks, she perceives her exclusively from a third-person's point of view. But if she is the reincarnation of Emilia, she should and must see the past from nothing but Emilia's point of view. Confusions of this kind, which the film has many, are almost exclusively based upon a problematic fact that the film is too cowardly, rather than ambivalent, to specify its own quasi-Freudian theme, namely, pre-adolescent girl's one-way incestuous wish. To make matters worse, this film also has characteristic problem (if not confusion); every character is too naive and helpless to be realistic and/or believable living human. Regarding Emily (or Emilia), she is after all a child, and one can say it is difficult to blame her mainly for her naiveness and helplessness. (And according to the Freudian theory, every girl wants to have her father's child(ren) in her own way. In this sense, Emily is not exclusively pathological; only her way of excluding other women from her father's love is problematically pathological. But, as I already mentioned, this film per se is too cowardly to be Freudian.) The problem is that adult characters are as childish and naive and helpless as Emily is. And because of this characteristic weakness even the psychic who can see almost everything cannot do anything down-to-earth, and because of the same weakness the very story of the film is ended in a badly escapist way. In addition, special effects of this film are incredibly cheap and laughable. Although Stelvio Cipriani's music is noteworthily beautiful (indeed this one is so good that it seems to be worth having it alone), the film as a whole is nothing but a cheap B-film which can disappoint even the 1970s'-Italian- horror-film-lovers.

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pos/neg ans:
negative