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Reviews
Sweet Lies (1987)
Ouch!
This film's failure to entertain rests in writer/director Nathalie Delon's choices. She assembled a cast of young and desirable female beauties which would make most any healthy male salivate like Pavlov's dog (Joanna Pacula, Julianne Phillips, Laura Mansky, Aïna Walle, Caroline Ducrocq and others), but then attempts to rely on her thin and totally unbelievable storyline and screenplay, sophomoric direction and pedestrian cinematography to attempt to eek-out a bona-fide hour and a half of entertainment. Ouch! This one was actually painful to watch.
Delon had all the necessary ingredients at her disposal for creating a good 'Erotic Light Drama' which would have run on late night cable for decades, but instead she tried for 'Romantic Comedy', and completely failed. All she needed to do was eliminate about 1/2 of the dialog, and remove 3/4 of the clothing.
She opted for having her delicious female characters talk, rather than having them cavorting and walking around 'nekkid'. Big mistake! This 93-minute film could have been salvaged with about 80 minutes of purely gratuitous sex and nudity, and about 13 minutes of plot and dialog to tie the nudity and sex scenes together. How sad. Such a waste of gorgeous, umm, ... 'talent'.
I score this one "1 star" (awful), for its wasted potential.
Movie Madness (1982)
Make it stop. Please God, make it stop!!!!
Richard Widmark, Diane Lane, Peter Riegert, Robert Culp, Olympia Dukakis, Christopher Lloyd, Henny Youngman, Rhea Perlman, ... all SHOULD NOT HAVE appeared in this movie! Watching an anthology film of these accomplished entertainers reading from the Hollywood telephone directory would be a vastly more enjoyable way for the viewer to spend 89 minutes, than attempting to sit through this awful waste of time and talent.
We have all experienced movies which compel us to just finish watching the film we have started, because surely there must be a payoff. We think "I'll just hang in there because, hey, it can't get any worse, right?" Well, this film will elicit such a feeling by about 30-minutes in; if not well before that. The viewer should be forewarned: Oh, it DOES get worse. It gets MUCH worse! In fact, of the three film shorts comprising this anthology movie, the final segment is almost unwatchable. Which seems a cynical and intentionally sadistic decision by the film's directors and editor to deal-out lingering punishment to those viewers who stick with it to the bitter end!
If one needed to build an argument for irrevocably destroying all record of a work of "art", this film would be exhibit number 1 of that argument. All copies of this movie, both electronic and physical media should be destroyed. And all of those associated with its creation should be provided humanitarian hypnotherapy, so that they too can erase all memory of their involvement in its creation, and end the terrible recurrent nightmares which undoubtedly haunt their lives.
In addition to leaving an indelible black mark of shame on the résumés of these, and a couple of dozen other actors/comedians who made the terrible career mistakes of appearing in it, this 1982 fiasco also ignominiously taints the National Lampoon franchise which produced such classics as 'Animal House' and 'Christmas Vacation'.
*** SPOILER ALERT *** Two things will be universal for those who make the serious error in judgment of sitting down to watch 'National Lampoon's Movie Madness':
1) You will be left with nagging regret for what you could otherwise have done with the hour and a half of your life that you wasted; and
2) By the time the third anthology segment begins -- a police story built around a running gag about a Rookie Cop who is shot, daily -- you will want someone to shoot YOU, or shoot yourself just to make it stop. Please, God, make it stop!!!
A couple of parting thoughts:
Richard Widmark lived another 10-years after the release of this film: Testaments to both his personal humility (for not spending those remaining years of his life as a recluse); and to his belief in the power of forgiveness (he didn't have his agent whacked!)
IMDb, you really do need to give reviewers the option of rating a movie "0 of 10". Being required to give this movie a "1" rating, in order to post a review, has made me feel like I need to shower.
Titanic (1997)
An OK film, ... up until then ...
"SPOILER ALERT!" OK, ready for it? Here it comes:
The ship sinks!
I know, bummer, right? :-( I think maybe James Cameron was up against a deadline and ran out of time to write and film a more believable ending. So he took the easy way out and just sank the ship. ( Oh, please. Hits an iceberg? Like THAT could really happen. Sheesh, give us a break! )
All in all an OK film, ... up until then. But the ending is a real downer (or is that 'drowner'?) Maybe the "Titanic 2" sequel will be better; or at least Cameron could release a "Director's Cut Edition" without the total buzz-kill ending.
It's a wonder that any movie studio considered this film 'commercial', given the near absence of explosions and car crashes? There are only a couple of explosions in the whole movie ( ship's boilers, yawn ...), and there are no car crashes at all. In fact, the closest thing to a car crash is an antique car in the ship's hold, with the two lead actors in a little steam-up-the-windows backseat action. Seriously, I'm not kidding! ( palm to forehead, shake head and groan "CLICHE' ALERT!" ) ... They LITERALLY "steam-up the windows". Good grief!
Fortunately there is some gratuitous nudity; although the actress exposing her 'lady-bits' clearly weighs-in at well over 100 pounds, ... and I think we all would agree that's just wrong!!! In the "Director's Cut Edition" Cameron should Photoshop a few pounds off the actress, and redo that scene in 3-D ( and maybe the 'nekkid' actress could be painted blue, and sport pointy ears and a tail! )
And it would be great if Cameron could add a parallel storyline that the lead character, "Jack", is actually the great-grandfather of John Connor, and at the last possible moment great-grandson Connor, hotly pursued by a homicidal cyborg Terminator, travels back in time through a wormhole, lands on the foredeck of Titanic and fires a couple of missiles and blows up the iceberg.
Small pieces of iceberg rain down all over the deck, and it's celebratory on-the-rocks cocktails for everyone! Cue the music, ... fade to black. Now THAT would make for a 'commercial' Hollywood film. :-)
Material Girls (2006)
A "stinker" among stinkers
SPOILER ALERT: This film runs its so-called "outtakes" and "bloopers" at the end of the film, during the credits. This is an 'age old' technique of filmmakers and movie studios to take one final shot at persuading the viewers of a downright awful, unfunny "comedy" (as they are about to leave the theater) that they are happy about having just wasted the last 90 to 120 minutes of their lives and can never get that, or their money back!
The outtakes and bloopers also somewhat effectively distract the viewer from paying any attention to the names rolling on the screen, which gives those who were involved in the disaster just viewed an opportunity to hopefully escape being associated with the train wreck.
------------------------- Now, on to the review:
Save your money, stay home and scrub the toilets. It's a much better use of your time. You're welcome.