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jmhaber
Reviews
Meatballs III: Summer Job (1986)
Fun Summer Camp B-Movie
I don't understand why Meatballs III ranks in the bottom 100. It isn't a Kubrick film nor is it Star Wars, but it never intended to be. Meatballs III is, very simply, a summer "camp" B-movie infused with a dose of teenage humor. I enjoy it and even own it on videotape because the film's premise is hilarious and it plays out well. (I didn't pay much for the used tape, though.) In fact, I think it is more entertaining than half of what makes it into the movie theaters from Hollywood.
The movie is entertaining because the premise is so outrageous you can't believe anyone made a film out of it. Also, I enjoy the antics of the outrageous, ogre-ish "Mean Gene" who owns the marina.
If you just want to relax with a few beers and don't mind drek if its done decently and doesn't pretend to be anything other than drek, then you might enjoy this movie.
I voted a 7 for it because it is pretty decent as far as B-movies go. I did not rank it on the same scale that I would use for a more serious movie or a big budget Hollywood film.
The Living Daylights (1987)
One of the Better Bond Films
I gave it an 8, which I think is a little generous using the criteria I use for most movies, but since I give this a 9 on the Bond scale, I can see giving it an 8.
I really liked Dalton as Bond in this movie. This Bond actually seems like a spy and less like a cartoon character. Also, Living Daylights has much a much better plot development than the other Bond films. Overall, it seems to have more of a mature feel to it.
Live and Let Die (1973)
One of the Worst
I gave Live and Let Die a score of 1. Even if I were only comparing it to other Bond films, I'd still give it a 1.
This movie has two problems--the plot is silly and it taints the bond series with mysticism in the form of voodoo. Magic, miracles, and mysticism are great for vampire films, but it doesn't belong in a spy movie. Even though the Bond genre is more of an action series than a spy series, it does have an element of spy-story thriller to it. Adding the mysticism is a statement that the Bond genre shouldn't be taken too seriously.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Satire of Modern Society's Criminal Policy
I enjoy A Clockwork Orange because it is very well done and the scenes brim with satire. Having read many reviews, I think people often miss the point of the film's satire, at least my interpretation of it.
The movie is a satire about how the mixture of politics and the ideology of `political correctness' fails to recognize the existence of and to understand the nature of evil and, as a result, fails to deal with it appropriately. The lesson is that evil exists and it must be dealt with forcefully and effectively. What is being satirized IS today's society.
The main character is an evil person and the government had the chance to lock him away forever (or to actually reform his psychology), but instead he only received a 14 year sentence. Then the government believed that evil criminals could be physically conditioned against violence and that the effects would be permanent. The movie's ending, `I was cured all right', suggests that a person's mindset will eventually triumph over conditioning. The main character got out of jail and he still had an evil mindset.
The end result is that the government invested energy in ineffective treatments (unproductive prison time, brainwashing) that it thought would be effective and ended up releasing a criminal onto the streets for political reasons, just like today's system. After all, the Clockwork Orange government needed space for political prisoners (today's consensual `criminals'-drug offenders, prostitutes, etc) and had to find a way to release the true criminals. In fact, the government went so far as to knowingly turn thugs into policemen. (Is that similar to giving criminals free tuition at colleges while their victims pay for it with tax dollars? This happened in Massachusetts.) If the movie isn't a satire of our modern system where child molesters are released from `correctional facilities' only to later rape and murder children, what is it? The politically correct view denies the existence of evil. It holds that criminals are victims of bad family situations and unfortunate upbringings. Since criminals cannot help themselves, political correctness holds that we shouldn't punish them too hard but should try to be more understanding and tolerant of them.
The movie is horrifying because that anyone could be so senselessly evil is horrifying. My reading of the satire's take home message is that society must uncompromisingly protect itself against evil and that reforming criminals requires the prisons to figure out how to convince them to sincerely choose to want to be moral.