Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Great acting on the part of Gretchen Mol. This film is one of the best biopics to hit the screen in some time. While it does cover the majority of Bettie's young life, it also manages to stay on a mostly focused path which is something most biographical films seem to lack. There is some lovely and alarmingly funny subtext in the dialogue and acting. This film is an excellent break from the Dir. of "American Psycho," and I think this will show through as her best work to date. Oh, and as a cinematography buff, I give this film 100% in the cine dept. It was amazing how well they pulled off a 50s look with modern film stocks. Accolades to the D.O.P. All around very enjoyable. I recommend any interested to see it: 8/10.
+++++++++
A: positive

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:

Entrails of a Virgin is so bizarre and incomprehensible that it allows the viewer to interpret it subjectively, applying whatever meaning he wishes to its inexplicable excesses of sex and violence. If this was an intentional characteristic of the film, it would be a work of postmodern brilliance-but of course it isn't.

Without getting too much into plot summary, let's take a quick walking tour of the events. At a secluded cabin, an orgy is in progress, which includes topless wrestling and diaper p***ing. A vanload of latecomers joins the orgy in progress, but they have unwittingly been followed by a monster I like to call "the muddy ninja." This monster precedes to slay orgy participants one by one, except the proverbial virgin (if you don't count oral sex) who receives his seed and consequently becomes so passionate with desire that she masturbates with someone's severed hand.

Finally she has her guts pulled out, and then there's a scene which seems to imply that she's pregnant with a baby muddy ninja. Got all that? If you're going to rent this movie, it's best if you don't speak Japanese and don't have any subtitles. In a season populated by boring Hollywood flicks, putting this in your VCR might be the cinematic equivalent of shock therapy. It will certainly be something different.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Aldolpho (Steve Buscemi), an aspiring film maker, lives in a battered NYC apartment and relies on his mother to help make the rent. He has a beautiful neighbor named Angelica (Jennifer Beals)who may or may not be married but who Aldolpho would love to star in his movie. When Al unexpectedly gets a financial promise of funding for his film from a strange man named Joe, he thinks he's got it made. That is, until Joe takes Al along on an adventure to steal a Porsche for part of the financial backing. Will the film be made before Aldolpho is completely without a moral backbone? And, will Angelica star in the film? This is, in this viewer's opinion, an awful movie. The script is abysmal, with a plot that wanders willy nilly. Beals practically snarls all of her lines and Buscemi, though likable, is nondescript. There is a good deal of distasteful material and unsavory characters to boot. Finally, the production values are very poor, too, making the film look second rate at all times. If you have time on your hands, it is still a good idea not to take a chance with this movie. But, if you are the proverbial glutton for punishment, go ahead and watch the darn thing. Beals does look beautiful, after all.
+++++++++
A: negative

Problem: This review is like what?

Review:Although it was released way back in 1967, IN COLD BLOOD still remains the benchmark by which all true-crime films are matched. Veteran writer/director Richard Brooks (ELMER GANTRY) adapted Truman Capote's non-fiction book into a chilling docudrama that retains a disturbing power even today, thirty-five years later.

Robert Blake and Scott Wilson portray Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, two ex-cons who, on a tip from Hicock's old cellmate Floyd Wells, broke into the Holcomb, Kansas home of Herbert Clutter, looking for a wall safe supposedly containing $10,000. But no safe was ever found, and the two men instead wound up killing Mr. Clutter, his wife, and their two children, getting away with only a radio, a pair of binoculars, and a lousy forty dollars. Two months on the run, including an aimless "vacation" in northern Mexico, ended in Las Vegas when cops caught them in a stolen car. But it eventually comes out, after merciless grilling by Kansas law enforcement officials, that these two men committed that heinous crime in Holcomb. Tried and convicted on four counts of murder, they stew in jail over a five-year period of appeals and denials until both are hanged to death on April 14, 1965.

Blake and Smith are absolutely chilling as the two dispassionate killers who show no remorse for what they've done but are concerned about getting caught. John Forsythe also does a good turn as Alvin Dewey, the chief detective investigating the crime, as does Gerald S. O'Laughlin as his assistant. In a tactic that is both faithful to Capote's book and a good artistic gambit all around, Brooks does not show the murders at the beginning; instead, he shows the two killers pulling up to the Clutter house as the last light goes out, then cuts to the next morning and the horrifying discovery of the bodies. Only during the ride back to Kansas, when Blake is questioned by Forsythe and narrates the story, do we see the true horror of what happened that night. We don't see that much blood being spilled in these scenes, but we don't need to. The shotgun blasts and the horrified look on the Clutters' faces as they know they are about to die are more than disturbing enough, so there is no need to resort to explicitly bloody slasher-film violence.

Brooks wisely filmed IN COLD BLOOD in stark black-and-white, and the results are excellent thanks to Conrad Hall's expertise. The chilling jazz score by Quincy Jones is the capper. The end result is one of the most unsettling films of any kind ever made, devastating in its own low-key fashion. It is a 134-minute study of a crime that shook an entire state and indeed an entire nation, and should be seen, though viewer discretion is advised; the 'R' rating is there for a reason.
+++++++++
A:
positive