Reviews

As I child, I found that movie very scarry and mysterious, and in the last few years, I watched this movie twice and still, it is to me one of the most intelligent thrillers ever seen, along with the superbe "Don't Look Now" and with "Carrie". It's mysterious, powerfull, intelligent - and with a message. "Find the man who has the power to provoke catastrophies" (I translate from the german version), these are the last words to be heard, when in the movie the nuclear power plant "Windscale" is imminent to explode, even when the protagonist's (i.e. Morlars/Burtons) disastrous brain should be dead. So it's obvious that not (only) Morlar, but human mankind is to blame to have "the power to provoke catastrophies". And this is as haunting as it is true.

This is the 300 minutes version of the best TV-adaption ever made of "Pinocchio", a co-production of several European public TV-networks. Directed by Luigi Comencini, with Nino Manfredi as Gepetto, Andrea Balestri as Pinocchio and Gina Lollobridgida as the fairy. Great actors and a subtle poetry make this adaption a real masterwork of Italian television. The mini series consists of 6 episodes, each about 55 minutes long. See also "Avventure di Pinocchio, Le" (1972), there you have the very much edited one part-movie version, which in Italy (for example via internet) is available on VHS and DVD.

This is a wonderful adaption of Harvey Fierstein's Tony Award-winning play about the life and loves of the drag queen Arnold, played by the magnificent Fierstein himself. Despite of all the tragedy (for instance the violent death of Arnolds gay lover Alan), this movie is full of warm and uplifting humor. At the end, the movie presents a honorable portrayal of a fully functional patchwork family: Arnold and his bisexual friend and former lover Ed, who take care of the adopted son David (Eddie Castrodad).

The actors (Fierstein, Matthew Broderick, Brian Kerwin and the great Anne Bancroft as Arnolds harsh mother) do a very good job. It's a solid 9 out of 10 gay film.

This is a wonderful adaption of Harvey Fierstein's Tony Award-winning play about the life and loves of the drag queen Arnold, played by the magnificent Fierstein himself. Dispite of all the tragedy (for instance the violent death of Arnolds gay lover Alan), this movie is full of warm and uplifting humor. At the end, the movie presents a honorable portrayal of a fully functional patchwork family: Arnold and his bisexual friend and former lover Ed, who take care of the adopted son David (Eddie Castrodad).

The actors (Fierstein, Matthew Broderick, Brian Kerwin and the great Anne Bancroft as Arnolds harsh morher) do a very good job. It's a solid 9 out of 10 gay film.

I've tried to watch this so-called comedy, but it's very hard to bear. This is a bad, narrow-minded, cliché-ridden movie. Definitively not funny, but very much boring and annoying, indeed. Bad script, bad acting. It's a complete waste of time - and there remains nothing more to say, I'm afraid.

1 out of 10 points.

This movie is a real disaster: insulting, with awfully stereotypical acting and an incredibly poor script that one wonders why this movie has been made for.

If I had seen that movie as a closeted gay teen, I would have been shocked and ashamed. Fortunately I have seen it first as a (by then openly gay) movie-addict in my twenties, so I could dismiss it as only an embarrassingly bad film. Either you just forget about this miserable movie or you take it as a source for filmhistory, namely how bad, how ridiculous, how homophobic so-called comedies sometimes could be in the sixties (alas, there are not that many of this kind...). I'm afraid there's nothing more to say about it.

For me it's one of the most touching movies I've ever seen. A melodrama at its best. The two protagonists fall in love with each other, but their fear from the consequences prevents them from realizing their love. Without courage, sometimes there's no love and - well - happiness. It's a movie with a strong gay subtext (writer & producer Noel Coward was gay himself): it's not a same-gender love, but the love between two orderly married people that is considered impossible - the movie is set in 1945. Everybody who has seen this movie will never forget it. And as a consequence Rachmaninov's Piano Concert No. 2 (the movie's leitmotiv) will always remind him/her of this marvellous picture.