Reviews

Mistaking Olyphant for anything except a watered homage to early Clint Eastwood misses the point of his performance. The talk, the eyes, the walk, the delivery sweetly remind of us how well the classic Clint did his thing before emasculation and how difficult it now is to replicate. The Western saga belongs to powerful males and conniving ladies if we believe the script of Deadwood. The high quality of the writing as to fundamental human foibles, trials, and triumphs is the gem here. If you can forget that it's not Clint on the screen and don't have a quivering sensitivity to fun cuss words, it's one great show.

This new Blade Runner has a very simple story line, or "narrative". It lacks the complexity of the original story. The new story contains dumb assertions and clumsy plot turns even for science fiction. It is about an hour too long. The soundtrack is overbearing. The sets and locations are ridiculous. This is not a very good movie. I fell asleep in parts of it.

I give it a 4 for the production value. The movie was in color, the camera was held steady, the lighting was good, the sets were well-staged, and the sound was clear. I also give it a 4 for the poor quality of the script. Unfortunately the good production value and the good acting by the principals could not elevate the script beyond the level of a film school senior project. How that script got made into an actual movie by professionals is beyond me, unless it simply signals that professional filmmakers these days have little idea as to script quality. How can the script be described to someone who hasn't seen the movie? I can say that the laughable jokes were weak, few, and far between, the characters were written without any depth (requiring the audience to create them), the story line was much too complicated and hard to follow for a silly comedy, and I wanted to movie to end about half an hour before it did. I did admire Crowe's performance. He is one of those rare people who can become the character they are asked to play. However I think he needs to loose a bunch of that weight if he wants to be an old actor some day.

I saw the movie Wolf of Wall Street and I didn't think it was that great like everyone has been saying it is. I saw lots of parallels between that movie and the movie Goodfellas (1990) from the same director - Scorcese. The same kind of voice-over, the same kind of characters, plot movements, etc. Scorcese was copying himself, which I thought was really really weak from such a renowned director. Like no original ideas in this one, just a lot of naked women added to it. I think the naked women shocked American audiences and made the movie be more remarkable here, but it's really not that good of a movie. The crooked shenanigans that the traders were doing on Wall Street stock exchanges to make tons of money so fast were phony and faked-very unrealistic and exaggerated. DiCaprio's acting was over the top, which I liked a lot that he could do that. That was the best part of the movie for me, was watching him.

The movie The Road is horrible, because it is cold, depressing, sad, violent, grim, full of death. After seeing this film one feels alienated, alone and distraught, hoping to regain any sense of joy at all. This movie is one of those post-catastrophe-earth presentations but this one hangs in ones mind like a lifeless tumor. It has almost no plot or story, but instead it tranquilizes the mind with dirty and deathly imaginings of a destroyed Mother Earth and a nearly destroyed human race who have been reduced to minimal existence. I suppose the fine actors in this film accepted their roles for either artistic challenge or money. I also suppose that McCarthy, the original writer, is either a ghoul or only in it for the money himself. (I have heard that his other stories are similar.) The Road is no family fun film. Not a first date movie. If you want to feel like nearly all your spirit has been killed, go see The Road. If you want to feel that human history is probably doomed, likewise go see it. I certainly wish I had not seen it.

I give this film 2 stars for the fact that it gainfully employed some Hollywood people during its production, but that's it. In summary, the film itself is a feeble postwar attempt to capitalize on Bogart's drawing power of the 1940's without the benefit of any passionate artful polish in its making; it is a weak film with a few strong moments. Trying to provide some gravitas to the film's overall low quality, our antihero is forced to occasionally deliver lines and character traits with the muscle developed in prior films but they do not fit. Check out To Have and Have Not, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep for the original moves. Each of those films had a complete magic. In a Lonely Place should itself be relegated to a lonely place of its own, on an archive shelf. The film has horrible editing, poor character development, hackneyed script elements that mimic Bogart's earlier years, and worst of all the superstar's forced re-delivery of his strong and proved dramatic tricks from his toolbag of the past. Those bits do not belong in this film, because the film in its weakness fails to otherwise support them. They stand out like mountain peaks of talented acting in a desert of careless writing, directing, and performing. The film is weak, corny, and poorly executed, so when Bogart delivers a strong moment within it, he ends up delivering foie gras into a stale hamburger bun. Terrible. There's a reason why this is not a well-known Bogart film. It's lousy.

This film proved two things: Johnny Depp can act, and Christian Bale can't. We all know Depp is a natural, who succeeds in any role. Now we also know for sure that Bale (who throws tantrums on the set while people are trying to work) is also a natural--at being stiff and grim in any role he gets. So that is pretty much what you have in this film. The rest of it -- the story, the style, the schtick, are all Mann and I do love it so. He's a director whose cinema style I appreciate because it pulls at my soul. No I don't know why but I love the moral intensity that just oozes from the visuals he creates. It's like having a good French dinner. I want to stay in it forever and let it love me.

Too bad, tch tch tch. They had something great to make a film about, but instead they overdid the effort and created a bit of a mess. To wit: individually the performances are good, but the dialogue and direction want for lack of finesse. Take for example the two chicks, Sam and Joe, who together (in character) do not a faux Meg Ryan make, despite all their attempts. This is the director's fault, who should have let Ms. Ryan's type go and tried for something historically correct and original . And the cut is wrong, because there is no tension or build-up along the way, as we are led through irrelevant adolescent-like romances, annoyingly. We want a film about wine, not whine. Plus the film fails to make us believe it's 1976; the dialogue style is much too current, the music too long-forgotten. The little gimmick of run-down cars in Napa is very overdone -- one VW Bug example is enough. Such a disappointment when the fun parts are in the ending credits where they let us in on the actual people's lives. The rest of the film is, well, just a sad little mess, casting a bright light on the author's, director's, and editor's ambitions or pretensions.

This movie is too long by about 30 minutes. I was happy when the screen finally went dark. A filmmaker should be able to get his point across in under 2 hours or before the collective audience ass starts hurting.

It's a comic book and the effects and makeup are really great, but still, some of it is too inexplicable and so beyond the possible that it undermines the characters. The Joker is deliciously strange and evil but if he can arrange those events that are so very complex, he starts to look more like a circus ringleader whose dancing dogs and fireworks are the real characters.

The story was very hard for me to follow. I don't appreciate having to try so hard to figure out what and why things happen in a movie. I am still not sure why Mr. "Two Face" went sour and frankly I didn't care that he did.

There is a very heavy thematic effort here; much of film is trying to clearly define good vs. evil and the shifting ambiguity of that, to end with Batman becoming rather dark and isolated. I applaud this kind of effort in an action film, but here the authors take just too long to get there. I was itching to get out of my seat and had to force myself to sit through to the very end, and that's not good for any movie.

Gary Sinese wears a transistor radio (well don't they all?), gets sucked up into a plastic tube and learns to breath under water. We are all Martians. Our space suits were ripped off from Stanley Kubrick. What's not to love? Ghastly would-be (two-star) epic of a flop, this one. A last resort on modern-day cable if you really have lost your remote and can't change the channel by getting up to push a button on the TV itself. The countdown to escape just started but somehow I have an odd desire to just stay here and get blown to pieces! My dear, I just don't give a damn. Three measly late-night cable TV stars, but watching Internet porn is better.

Truly a wonderful movie. Bruce Willis gives his always-outstanding comedic-romantic acting power to this message-movie and the movie brings hope to the losers many of us know we are. A gift to everyone of middle age whose spent time seems both full and yet empty: there is more around the next bend and it can be great, enriching, and romantic. Leave the recent past and return to the lessons of the distant past, and then take off on a favorite flight to your better future. If we could re-live our youthful experiences, if we could really remember the events that shaped us, wouldn't we find a special kind of freedom? See the movie, open the gift.

Any episode of the original Twilight Zone is better than this piece of pretentious Hollywood confuso-maniac trash. Brad Pitt needs to stick to running around casinos with Andy Garcia and George Clooney. Wait, will a Japanese nude help it along? No? How about a Mexican fruit fly dancing at a wedding? Or a Red Cross helicopter saving the poor yuppie American dame with the tortured soul? Oh, I do get it actually, it's like if George W, Bush allowed a big American company to make and sell a rifle to a Japanese man and that made him invade a Moroccan family and that made them shoot that big American gun, nailing some very sensitive American woman who deserves only to be understood by her lousy overly-entitled Caucasian husband! Get outta here! It all makes sense now! I am so dumb I didn't get it at first. Must be deep, deep, deeper than the average bear. You have to be pretty bored or pretty impressed with yourself to go out and actually put this kind of gibberish on film. Where's my remote?

Amidst a bevy of beauties, one question is clearly answered: who in the Family has the Jewels? And the answer...Alec! Alec can ACT. He is the heavy in this melange of others, including the amazing William H. Macy and the girl. All of them are constrained by the required limits of Hollywood "storytelling" in this eroded age, but yet they all go beyond and shine. Who is right in this deranged story, and who is wrong, but who cares? I have the girl, you have the muscle, all are beside the point in this amazing and yet flawed chronicle of Vegas tradition and Vegas today. Let there be Money, and let there be Loyalty and also Love. Thanks God, let there be Alec Baldwin!

John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Humphry Bogart, James Coburn, Lee Marvin, Sean Connery, Harrison Ford -- well maybe not Harrison Ford -- created unique male personas on film and Burt Reynolds joins them. Cat Dancing is a 70's road film on horseback and Reynolds' performance shines with personal subtlety among other luminaries including Jack Warden, George Hamilton, Lee J. Cobb, and Jay Silverheels (AKA Tonto). The story line is not predictable and angst threads through the script. True love, what is it? The answer rolls down from the screen in Cat Dancing while Burt bites the dust and recovers. The Western by the 1970's was fading, but Cat Dancing proves the genre can be fresh in any decade.

Oh puh-leeze! This film is about as good as "Hook" was. Overly Spielberged, and under-written. Ford talks with cotton in his jowls. Whatsername is too wrinkled. Well, I'm sorry but it's twoo it's twoo. And the kid on the motorbike -- isn't that a midget Sal Mineo or somebody, without a cause or a clue? Jees- the plot is TOLD to us in one quick malt shop scene, and the rest of the film tries to fill in the spaces. Isn't that just an amateurish gimmick for any production, be it film, stage, or TV? Who was it who said good movies are a visual, not a spoken, medium? How many menacing, deeply rumbling stones can slide into position in one movie? Snakes, ants, Russians, cliffs, whatever, yawn. And where did they get that plastic skull prop with the Christmas tinsel and a couple of LEDs inside it? Didn't the actors feel DUMB pretending that thing was in any way important? Next, we will get the amusement park theme ride and the rest of the junk, God help us. Did anyone really want to make this movie? Save your money.

This movie has grit, tension, and passion. It's much better than the roly-poly "Rocky" we were given not long ago. I love how nothing is sanitized regarding the effects of heavy gunfire on the human body. I love how the story is based around the actual situation in Burma, and it is a public service to expose that in America, to audiences that may want to refocus their aim away from Iraq for a moment and onto areas like Burma that need more attention from the West. The photography, sound, editing, and direction are all excellent. Way, way superior to the lame "Indiana Jones" and the plastic skull whatever. Thanks, Stallone, it's great. Thanks.

Matt Damon goes around with no expression wearing his dad's hat and overcoat, occasionally banging a woman. DeSneero directed the movie so that the character he plays in it is the BiggaBossa, Brando in Godfather. History is explained in one sentence lines here and there, so don't go out for pizza or you'll miss them. The movie moves so slowly that I thought I was asleep and dreaming in slow motion. There were 6 people in the theater. I was hoping for an intermission with a color cartoon. When it was over I was glad to get out of there. My date broke up with me. The old news clips of JFK was the best part of the whole thing. Do you have to be in a union to get work in films like this? The camera was set for Stink-O-Vision not Panavision. It would have been better if Jolie had a nude scene, but nooooo. I passed the time counting the kernels in my popcorn for something to do. I did fall asleep for a while, woke up, and was still looking at the same close-up.

I guess I think of movies as bad, or some variant of great. This one is just bad. There's something wrong with the writing or the editing or both. The pacing is way off, there is no rhythm. I don't care what the actors are doing because I don't know why they are doing it. The plot has parts that repeat themselves for no reason. The sets are a little too colorful for this subject, being a distraction. And, many of Williams' jokes are YEARS old. But it's not totally a disaster. The acting is good. The female lead is especially good. The directing is good. You might be expecting a comedy when you go in, but this movie is about the American system of electing presidents, which it criticizes roundly and often: the money, the mass-media, electronic voting devices, the lack of candidness by candidates, etc. All that's there. But for me at least the movie's failures blunted those messages. Too bad.

Gangs of New York is a very powerful historical drama done on a grand scale. It chronicles a little-known period of deep violent social disturbance during the mid 19th century in New York City, a disturbing time that is usually treated in American history education as a footnote overshadowed by stories of the American Civil War. But the gangs and anti-draft riots of New York are real history, and this film forces it into our face and makes us see, hear, and feel the time. It also illustrates the relation between microcosmic problems (of everyday life) and the larger problems of American society and the American state, in much the same way that the novel King Rat did years ago. It is a remarkable film, a great one, a gift to Americans about their past. It must have been a lot of work to make, and all those involved deserve congratulations.

I thought the documentary about the making of this movie was as interesting as the feature itself: Bob Guccione bravely saying that the film was very important amd would be a "must see" for every man and woman. I would like to know if the movie made boffo bucks. I think that would be interesting as a way to evaluate how it did. But as to the movie itself: it made me smile the way Guccione was taking it so seriously. Despite all that intention, it has the most amazing combination of clashing elements: top-name actors (surprise surprise), curiously amateurish sets (caves colored with spray paint, backdrops that look like an abandoned theatre stage), penises and poontang, hooters for all (including urination to make it complete), and murder any old time of the day (clean up that bloody mess will you please). It is way over the top, as it tries to create a new genre of dramatic cinema with real sex, and Guccione hoped it was going to be something serious in the cinematic world, like Vince McMahan thinking the XFL would create a revolution in American football. Well, they tried. Like the Xtreme Football League tried. Had they succeeded in establishing a new genre, we'd have uncut sex in more movies. More like real life, with a bit of the gritty bits of the old in-and-out included. Not a bad idea: Jack Nicholson's johnson for example, in widescreen, poking away. Definitely would add flavor to the screen. Can you imagine the makeup needed. But in Caligula, the main actors were professionals, except that the designers, directors, and the rest were goofy without realizing it. Had Guccione tried again with a few more films, polishing the product till the concept was smooth, he might've succeeded in carving out the genre he wanted, and we'd all be flushed in our seats. Well no one said movie making was easy, never mind re-invention. Caligula's interesting, worth a look (get the uncut version for the full effect), and a brave effort. Keep a barf bag handy.

Moulin Rouge. I wanted it to go on for another two hours. I Wanted to have been to the Moulin Rouge. That's Entertainment!

This movie has heart. A story of Love, Freedom, Beauty, Truth, yes without being corny. Those themes, the most powerful in humanistic tradition, come alive in Moulin Rouge. Thank you!

It has music, not just music in the usual sense but music from our era put into the period of the movie, circa 1890 and it was made to work wonderfully. Imagine Nirvana, in Gay Paree! The new music fit in the old setting because their themes are the same: dancing, sex, exuberance, gettin' it on!

Moulin Rouge has the mose beautiful, luscious woman in Nicole Kidman; my God what a photogenic set of eyes: hypnotic, teasing, deep, flirtatious. She was deep in Eyes Wide Shut too. This girl has it down to her heels: passion and knowledge. She made a believer out of me, I'll tell you.

This movie has color, presented by a most talented cinematographer and lighting director; it's perfect. It jumps off the screen at you. It caresses you, pulls you through the film like an opiate, increasing your pleasure with each frame. More!

I was so happy I saw Moulin Rouge! I love Moulin Rouge!

Snow Dogs is the kind of movie that makes you glad they invented Happy Endings. This movie has a happy ending for just about everybody, including the cute little doggies, and that's a Good Thing.

Usually when I go to a movie and the theatre is filled with children, I get a small identity crisis. Not this time. I went right along with all the squeals and awwwws as Snow Dogs put us through our emotional paces. Is there feeling in this film? Yes there is, especially if you like dogs. Seeing Leutenant Uhura from Star Trek in a nice role didn't hurt either. Mostly this is Cuba Gooding's movie, but I kept focusing on James Coburn, my old fav, with his lumpy fingers. Gotta love him.

Anyway this movie's message is, Be True To Yourself, and Take Up The Challenge. It's a good theme, especially for a movie aimed at kids.

I also really liked the editing, and pacing especially in the beginning of the film. Everything happens to our hero the dentist, and we want to see what will happen to him next. We aren't disappointed either.

Snow Dogs portends of more good films to come from whoever made it; there's talent and especially a strong respect for the medium at work here. You can't always say that about films like this, which is why I was so impressed by Snow Dogs.

I like to think every movie has a message. The message of Swordfish is, Live Each Day As If It Were Your Last, and Everything You Need To Know To Succeed Is Already In Your Head, So Go Do It. And where does this message abide within the cells of Swordfish? Why, in the bad guy, John Travolta's character. His bad guy goes around doing everything cooly and calmly no mattrer how risky or dangerous, reciting movie plots as food for thought, and just comes out on top so thoroughly it's hard to argue with the man. I love a character who recites movie plots as if they are real life with lessons for us all. I mean, how often does it occur to you that your life is like a movie, or IS a movie, or would be better off it it actually was a movie? Be honest. Me, about five times a day.

This movie Swordfish has enough great action to rival the Action Masters Arnold and James Cameron in, say, True Lies or Bruce Willis in the first Die Hard. The airborne sequences are great and the car chase definitely rumbles. Holly Berry gives us all a great shot of her boobs (thank YOU) and at the end of the movie I only wished there was such a bad guy as this running around taking care of certain kinds of business, especially these days after Sept. 11.

As I recall, this movie did not get very good reviews when it was released. If that was the case, Jeez Louise why not? This movie succeeds at everything it tries, it gives us some very interesting characters and for the ladies there's even Hugh Jackman to look at, so I give it high marks. Everyone did a good job, it's action with flavor, explosions with a twist of lime (not lemon) so let's get behind Swordfish and admit that we really wouldn't mind living that movie ourselves a little bit.

I saw The Dana Carvey Show on TV and I knew immediatly it would be cancelled. It was too pointed and it was going to offend too many people to be on TV. I thought the show was extremely funny, and I also thought it was totally unleashed, unrestrained, in its point of view. It was very sharp, gritty, no-nonsense stuff, with plenty of sharp barbs and dead-on observations. It reminded me of the straight, uncensored political and social humor of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Don Rickles, and even the vulgar physical humor of Charley Callas, when those guys were really at the top of their form. I was so sorry that TV cannot put this kind of great humor on and keep it on. That says a lot about our TV and its limitations, and proves that our TV has not lived up to its potential. The Dana Carvey Show was not tolerable; and we are not as free a people as we think we are.

Dana Carvey is one of our best comics and his shows should not be muted. He is very insightful, and his humor can shake us to the core. Where is an open forum where he can let loose? Long gone, on Chestnut Street.