The Long Riders

I had the ability to enjoy "The Long Riders" already as a child. I couldn’tunderstand the poetry of it than, but somehow I noticed it. Now I can boothunderstand and enjoy the great direction of "The Long Riders". I think it ismuch better now when I can understand the story. "The Long Riders" is madewith perfect skill. It uses slow-motion, interesting and advancedcamera-angels and movements together with fast but also various editingwithout getting pretentious. It is also a rather short feature witheffective story-telling. Here it is storytelling as it should be - in it’sown style.

The script can be claimed to be a bit flawed. Perhaps, but if you think so,see the movie as a piece of art or poetry instead and than you might realizewhy it is made in the way it is. This is one of the aspects why I like it somuch. No explanations is needed to make it work. Just all those magnificentimages made with high, expressive and uncompromised ambitions. You never geta chance to understand the characters, but that is not a flaw. They justappear, without explanation why they act as they do, just as if you werewatching them right now. No way this is an over-simplified movie. OrdinaryHollywood movies, even new ones, are often over-explicit, but this is not!

"The Long Riders" have taken much inspiration from "The Wild Bunch", but itis not a bad copy, even if "The Wild Bunch" will remain as the big classic.

Compared with another Western which I also like; "Tombstone", "The LongRiders" have the chance to survive a generation and later, perhaps in someyears or more, and get the credit it deserves. The question is if"Tombstone" will do that.

Rating: 8 of 10.

The use of sets of brothers acting the roles of brothers was inspired andreally makes this film better. The Carradine brothers carry the film, butthe Keach brothers are good as well. The use of the Quaid brothers (beforeeither of them really had made a name for themselves) is cool to see. Thesame could be said of the casting of Christopher Guest (way before SpinalTap!) and his brother Nicholas

In my opinion, The Northfield Minnesota ambush scene is probably one ofthebest and most dramatic shootouts ever filmed.

There are some awkward moments and some slow points but all in all areallygreat watch. I bought this on DVD recently and to be honest it wasn’t asgood on the small screen, but still effective and a nice characterstudy.

Rent it or Netflix it, you won’t regret it.

Nice backdrops and occasional dollops of historical authenticity cannot distract from what is otherwise a tribute to a band of killers.

The horrors of the Civil War and the deprivation of the Southafterwards are given as the sole reasons for the violent activities ofthe James-Younger gang, who rob and kill their way across the Mid West.

It's difficult to know where to start with a movie like this, becausethough there is much to applaud - pleasing cinematography, likableperformances (from some of the cast), and Hill's trademark, aclimactic, balletic gun-battle - the whole enterprise is morallyflawed. In any study of outlawry, it's necessary to show both sides ofthe argument, to present the main protagonists as being ordinary peopleas well. But when a movie shows its peace-officers as callous villains,and its crime-victims as people who somehow deserve to be humiliated,robbed and then, maybe, shot, it's loading the dice irresponsibly. Inany case, the main characters here are not fully developed. While theCarradine brothers give sympathetic performances as the Youngers,presenting them as rational men who perhaps could lead normal lives inanother time and place, the Quaids are boorish, brutal and unpleasantseemingly for the sake of it. As the James boys, Stacy Keach isunusually wooden as Frank, and though his brother James's depiction ofJesse as a lean, dead-eyed individual may hint at the emptiness of amurderer's soul, I suspect it is more to do with the lacklustre script.Either way, it's an ultimately unsatisfying package.

To be fair, this isn't the entire story. The film does briefly mentionthe fact that the gang are primarily terrorising those they're claimingto protect - i.e. poor southern farmers, while the betrayals andmistrust that lead to their eventual collapse are nicely characteristicof real-life thieves and hoodlums (their excuse-making is also exposed,to some extent). But overall, I find it worrying when any film aswell-made as this takes a distinctly 'understanding' perspective onmass slaughter.

Baddies and goodies may be an old-fashioned concept these days. Butbaddies presented as goodies? I think I prefer the former.

I’d seen a dozen pictures about Jesse James before , but this movie makesit easy to imagine Frank and Jesse just falling into their way of life afterfighting on the losing side of the war between the states. We see thepayroll trains as the brothers must have: imposing machines full of Yankeemoney, cutting a swath through the land they failed to defend in battle. Itseems clear that these blood-bound fighters just never surrendered, theircampaign spurred on by a growing thirst for vengeance. After this movie Ibegan to look for the good men stuck inside the bad men of our popularmythology.

This movie, directed by Walter Hill, is avery accurate depiction of a brief, butexciting, part of the James-Younger gang.The only problem I had with the film wasthe lack of emotion by many of the usuallygood actors. It was well portrayed, but Ithough the only actor to show much emotionwas Keith Carradine. Otherwise, this is avery good movie, with an excellentsoundtrack by Ry Cooder. A rating of 7 outof 10 was given.

I rented this movie about 5 years ago. I was looking for TheMagnificent Seven but the video store didn't have it and I ran acrossThe Long Riders. Yes, I was intrigued by the casting which made me rentit but which didn't "make" the film.

For me, it's an interesting slice of "Americana" because in all theWesterns that I've seen I had no idea until this film that the gangs ofWestern bandits were produced by the effects of The Civil War. Even theEarps, who were supposed to be "good" were a product of the post CivilWar era. That's information that wasn't taught in my schools. Thesepeople lost their homes and livelihoods because they were mostlyConfederates. Rather like Bonnie & Clyde who were products of the GreatDepression.

Brothers play brothers in the post-civil-war American West. Well, moreor less the West, actually mostly Missouri. Let's see. The Carradinesare the Younger brothers; the Keaches play the James brothers; theQuaids play the Miller brothers; and the Guests play the Ford brothers,the nameless cowards who shot Jesse James in the back.

None of these guys, nor the Pinkertons who track them, are heroes,happily. They shoot down men who aren't defending themselves. Theydon't rob from the rich in order to give to the poor. They just robfrom everybody and keep it. And they don't rightly get along none toowell, neither. The two James boys go aridin' off to safety, leaving thewounded and dying Youngers and the Miller boy behind to be captured.

Aside from the logistical trick of casting brothers-in-life andbrothers-on-film, there isn't too much that's innovative about thefilm. There are a couple of hold ups, a train robbery, a shoot out ortwo — the last is the oft-filmed Northfield, Minnesota, bank job whereall the boys wind up full of holes.

The ritualized fight between Cole Younger and the Indian, Sam Starr,over the tramp, Belle, gives us a picture not of history but ofHollywood's idea of what can be passed off as history. John Ford wouldhave treated it as a comic interlude as he did in &
quot;The Searchers," butthis is played for blood because blood, one must presume, is what thefilm makers believe the audience wants to see.

The audience gets to see plenty of it in the Northfield shoot out, butthat's not original either. The violence is all in slow motion, whichby this time had become a cliché. I don't blame Arthur Penn for that,or even Sam Pekinpagh, but Akira Kurasawa. The shoot out imitates thefirst similar massacre in Pekinpaugh's "The Wild Bunch," but outdoes itin tastelessness. Bodies fall from horses, porches, and rooftops inslow motion. That's to be expected. But the editing cuts so quicklyfrom shot to shot that at times there are several unidentifiable bodiesfalling at once. Not only that, but the SOUND is recorded in slowmotion. The horses' whinnies sound like a man with a hangover garglingat the bathroom sink. The bullets, too, whine in slow motion, sometimeswith a bizarre woo-woo-woo noise before the squib explodes, just tomake sure the audience doesn't miss the wounding.

All the acting is low in key. James Keach, as Jesse James, has anexpressionless face that resembles, aptly, Buster Keaton's. Nobodyseems to laugh or have a good time. Keith Carradine isn't bad, andneither are David Carradine or Dennis Quaid (in a dispensable part). Noone else has any particular magnetism and the entire effort lackspoetry of any kind.

Nice location shooting.

I don't care what people say about the casting. I don't care whatpeople say about the script. I don't care what facts may have beentoyed with. This film is amazing. All I have to say to any film buff,film student, or filmmaker, is this - watch the James/Younger gangescape from their failed heist in Northfield by smashing through theglass of another establishment - and all the while remember that thoseare real horses with real stunt men - that is amazing. Forget today'slong drawn out westerns and the silly CGI in other films - THE LONGRIDERS is Walter Hill's greatest film. Hands down.

I am amazed at almost all of the set pieces in this film. And DavidCarradine and James Keach carry the film perfectly cast! This film issadly overlooked and is not only a great western, this is one of thegreatest films ever made.

This is the best western I have ever seen!! Not onlydid the special effects blow me away but the acting wasphenomenal!!!!!! I loved seeing all the real life brothersplaying brothers. My hat is off to the Carradine’s,Keach’s & Quaids!!!!!! Thanks for a GREAT movie guys,this is my husbands favorite movie off ALL TIME!!

The script is a cliched mess, filled with lines that are forcedretro-mythological and obvious. Several of the performers appear tosleepwalk through their roles and yet this film by director Walter Hillsomehow works. The photography by Ric Waite is absolutely dreamlike in itsbeauty. The costume design is romantic without being frilly. The cutting istight. Hill’s framing is carefull and rich and most of all, Ry Cooder’smagnificent score all add up to make a flawed, but rich western film welldeserving of a bigger following. Personally, if I could walk out of reallife and into the imagined world of a film, this film, along with ButchCassidy and the Sundance Kid, A Hard Day’s Night, The Adventures of RobinHood and Lonesome Dove would be one that would be ideal. The technicalachievements of this film all work together to overcome its otherlimitations. It is a film that truly creates a unique atmosphere of a timeand place that really didn’t exist in history but rather folk tales andAmerican Legendary Dreams. My advice is to buy Ry Cooder’s soundtrack on CD,put the tape in the VCR, turn down the sound and enjoy. A 7 out of10.

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The Changeling

At age 34, I just watched this film for the first time in my life. Madprops out to HBO for a nice DVD transfer with the slammin’ audio mix.Allin all it was good popcorn experience. Even though the film is twentyyearsold it still managed to send a couple of chills down my spine. However Imust admit that some of the thrills have gone the way the film’s costumedesign, they’re both a bit dated.

It’s not so much the era that dates it as it is the style it was shot in.The cinematography and production design reminded me of an old episode ofColumbo. Both elements were relatively flat. The fact that it was shotinthe 80’s is no excuse since a films like "The Godfather" was made in 1974(some six years earlier) and "Blade Runner" was made in 1982 (only twoyearslater) . "The Changeling" was simply shot as if it were a televisionmovieof the week.

In all fairness it could have been due to relatively small budget, whichIMDB list at 7.6 million in Canadian dollars. Still,that’s a healthyamountof dough, especially for the 80’s. TV production value just should nothavebeen tolerated for this film and personally I had a hard time gettingaroundit. It distracted me.

The irony of it all is that the director, Peter Medak, went on to domassiveamounts of television including NBC’s "Homicide" and "Law & Order: SVU",twoof the most stylish shows to grace the airwaves. In that respect, it’s atestament to the director, who at age 63, hasn’t stopped growing as anartist. In a perfect world Medak would have a "do over" and create themasterpiece that he should have had twenty years ago with thisfilm.

There’s no doubt in my mind that if the film had executed with a bit moreform, as well as substance, it might have been considered one of thegreatest films ever made. As it is, like I said at the top, it’s a darngood popcorn movie.

Riddled with clichés, over-acting, and a heavy borrowing frompractically every ghost story you’ve ever heard, read, or watched, thisproduction is vastly overrated. That having been said, it is stillpossible to surrender yourself to this story and enjoy it, if you canstretch the "suspension of reality" ploy to its breaking point, anddon’t find yourself sleeping through half the movie.

Starring George C. Scott and a compelling (if not original) tale, justgrab a bowl of popcorn and enjoy this long, dark, atmospheric (ifsomewhat boring) flick. This production is far from what you wouldexpect with a star of the caliber as George C. Scott. While hisperformance is nothing less than brilliant, the production itselfsimply does not deserve his presence.

The story is decent, but solid and shaky at times. The dialog of thescreen play was trite, stiff and at times even lame. However, Scott’sperformance can do a lot in the way of redemption, and as the story(finally) moves along the tension builds and you do get a few jumpsfrom the effects at times.

The effects themselves were adequate, but at the time in which thisfilm was done, they could have been a lot more.

I won’t detail the plot, as I seldom feel the need to completely spoila movie, except to say that this is a good ghost story with a betterperformance from Scott than the director (or the screenplay)deserved…And while the ending was quite dramatic, climactic, and welldone, it (and Scott) were powerless to redeem this movie.

Sadly, the ending promises a sequel…thankfully, it has never come.

I’m being generous here with a 4.9/10 from…

the Fiend :.

This movie was recommended to me by Blockbuster Online. I am a majorhorror fan and I am always looking for one I have not seen. I had notever heard of "The Changeling". I looked up the reviews and all wereterrific. I decided to go ahead and just buy the movie. I found it fora cheap $6.99 so I figured why not. Now I'm wishing I didn't pay thatmuch for it. I can't understand what was so scary about this movie.Sure there are some parts that creep you out but a ball falling downsome steps just isn't that terrifying to me. Also I did not understandwhat significance of the wife and daughter getting killed in thebeginning had to do with any other part of the story. Stick to movieslike "The Exorcist, The Evil Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre" theydon't disappoint.

Well done chiller about a man (George C. Scott) losing both his wife anddaughter in an auto accident. Intent on getting away from it all, George C.Scott moves into an isolated mansion. The mansion is plagued by strangenoises and occurances linked to the previous owner. Film’s tension andsuspense is so great, it is unbearable. Scott is in top form in a commandingrole, but it could have used a bit more originality and surprises. RatedR.

It is a shame that when one is looking around for great scary movies,there are so many misleading reviews. The Changeling is not a horriblemovie. But it is not great, either, and it is rarely scary. If you have totry to let yourself be scared, that isn’t scary. Many of its adherents areundoubtedly pseudo-intellectuals, the type that hails the virtues of "TheInnocents." Be especially wary of that one, by the way. This one here ismerely mediocre. The Innocents is flat bad. I also have to say that many ofthese movies are apparently not as beloved by American audiences as they areby foreign ones. You might want to consider where you live before followinga review.

"The Changeling" is a moderately effective but too slow and dullfeature.

**SPOILERS**

Following his family's death, composer John Russell, (George C. Scott)rents out an old house to move on and continue his career. With helpfrom Claire Norman, (Trish Van Devere) who represents an organizationrun by Sen. Joseph Carmichael, (Melvyn Douglas) that owns the house, hesets about refurbishing the house while working on his music. Suddenlytortured with a constant, never-ending barrage of noises and freakoccurrences around the house, he takes it up with the members of theorganization, he is convinced that a ghostly spectre haunts the house,but even after a Parapsychologist, (Barry Morse) finds nothing, hestill isn't convinced. As he is prone to more attacks from the spirits,he finally learns the truth about the place and tries to right thewrong committed years ago.

The Good News: This one here only has a couple of good points to itthat gives the film it's only good points. The beginning stages of thehaunting here are incredibly well-done, using the time-tested method ofusing a genuinely creepy tactic, the constant banging of something loudand repetitious off in the distance at the weirdest moments and atgreat intervals to keep it from feeling really dull, at least duringthose moments. There's a lot of really great stuff through thosescenes, and when it gets a really inventive sequence, there's some goodparts to it. The infamous sequence where a ball, haven previously beendiscarded at a separate location returns back home to be thrown downthe stairs from up the top in the darkness. It is then repeated secondslater with the person throwing it back up and it's immediately thrownback. It's a truly incredible scene that works wonders, being intenselychilling and highly creative as well being a creative and really sellsthe film on virtue of it alone. It's a classy scare in a classy film,and is really nerve-wracking. These sequences are the film's best, asthey are really fun and are actually the best parts of the film. Eventhough the ending is fun in all it's fiery-blaze glory, and combinedwith the rather intriguing story, comprise the film's good points.

The Bad News: This one here has a couple of flaws that hold this onedown. This is mainly due to the fact that this is really slow-going anddoesn't have anything good to keep the pace going. There'
;s almostnothing in here that makes the film feel any more watchable as itreally does come along so slowly that it takes far too long foranything of value to happen, and those are just way too dull to keepthe film going. Having to listen to the repeated talks of the victimforced into giving the same speech over and over again about how theproceedings have affected them or how the odd noises coming from thehouse aren't supposed to be there at all to everyone within ear-shot,and it eventually just gets old. That leaves major portions of the filmfeeling very dull and boring due to it's relentless use of thesedialog-based scenes to move everything along that there's just anoverall boring feeling for the whole film. That makes it too long forit's own good as well, over-reaching it's stay due to it's length ofscenes that make the same point over and over. All these just stretchthe film out to a longer point than it should be, and in the event makethe film just way too long, which coupled with it's dearth of actionscenes due to the incessant talking, give this one a really longfeeling that just drags the film down as a whole. Otherwise, these hereare the main problems with the film.

The Final Verdict: A really long and dull film, with a few moments ofmention to give it something to shoot for, make this one a reallymoderate feeling. If that doesn't appeal to you, then probably heedcaution with it, but if this sounds like the slow-burn that you happento enjoy, give it a shot.

Rated R: Violence, Language and children in danger

Its a pretty good ghost story. It wasn’t the best piece of cinema I haveever seen, but it does build up pretty nicely to the end. It was not asscary or as suspenseful as I would have liked, but still worthrenting.

It must be 20 years or more since I last watched this movie and I waspleasantly surprised at how well it stands up today.It is basically ahaunted house story and although that is a premise that has been donemay times in the past,'The Changeling' is definitely one of the best ofthe genre.A good atmosphere is prominent throughout and it is nicelydirected by Peter Medak.I found the séance scene to be very well doneand pretty convincing,not over the top with just the right balance ofrealism and chills.This is a movie to be enjoyed and it should reallyhave a higher mark than it does at present.

The acting is pretty solid by everyone with George C. Scott giving hisusual excellent performance.Trish Van Devere and Melvyn Douglas offersolid support in a movie that isn't overlong and is very effective init's own way.It also goes to show that you don't have to have blood andgore on show in order to shock.

This is well worth a viewing and while it may be a bit tame for sometastes,it is a worthwhile and stylish chiller.Recommended.

********************** Major Spoilers ********************

This was sure one of the most difficult movies for me to rate, strengthpoints are up to the best cinematic pieces, and weak ones that wouldn’tfit even in the worst B slashers. Unfortunately those weak points aredeep into the structure of the movie that they sweep all the strengths!

This is of course an original film, you can see the influence it madeon such films as "The Others" (my all time favorite), "Stir of Echoes","The Ring" and "What Lies beneath".

It also is one of those "Realistic" movies, where when people find abody, they call the police, not just keep moving bodies around and killeach others as if they were on another planet!

Add the chilling scenes (wheelchair moving, the ball falling on stairsand the boy killing scene), and this would be all about it with "Ups"of this movie.

Downs, on the other hand start with one big question: What was the boytrying to do? Whether he was trying to get revenge by killing thoseinvolved in his murder, or trying to expose the reality about themurderer father and stain his name forever. It can’t be the first one,or he would have easily killed the senator the same way he killed thedirty -or the misled- cop! And it can’t also be the second, or he wouldhave tortured the musician until he forces him to go to police/presswith story and evidences! or at least if the guy fail him, he wouldn’thave just burned the house (crime scene) burning all the evidences andending his last hope that one day someone may help him expose thetruth!

Similar contradiction arises about whether the senator knew about thecrime or not. If he didn’t know, why pay the woman at the (whatever) totip him that a man and a woman are researching the past owners of thehouse? So he knows, but then how come he died of shock when he saw whathe already knew his -alleged- father did? I tried to excuse thiscontradiction by assuming that he knew that he was adopted and passedas the real son, but did not know that the father Killed the real son.But points like this shouldn’t be left for "assumptions", that’s why itwas another "Down" of the movie.

Also, what is the significance of choosing a guy that has lost hisdaughter to help him? Wouldn’t any one help exposing a murder unless hewas a father who’s lost a daughter? meaningless and unnecessaryaddition to an already weak story line.

So, its good as a Friday night pastime, but if you are looking formasterpieces of cinematic craftsmanship, this won’t be the answer foryou.

I fully expected to like this horror film, but I was left somewhatdisappointed. There were some very effective moments, and George C. Scottgives a great performance, but I found that the film dragged quite a bit.In fact, except for the accident at the start of the movie, I was fairlybored for about the first forty minutes of the film. Things really pickedup soon after, but then a mediocre ending made the bitter taste return tomymouth. All of the elements to make a great horror film were present, butthe final result fell short of my expectations.

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The Big Red One

When a WW II movie has Robert Carradine as a cigar-chomping badass Armyprivate who is also the narrator, you know something has gone horriblywrong. What sinks "The Big Red One" are not the bloodless battles, or theinsipidness of the dialogue, but the fact that none of the protagonists evergets wounded or killed. Everybody around the first squad falls like flies,but the Sarge, Skolnick, the Italian guy, the guy with the killer `riods,and Luke Skywalker walk away intact. This kills any believability, whichleads to the question: is this a straight war film (like "A Bridge Too Far"or "The Longest Day") or an essay about men at war (like the recent "ThinRed Line")? I don’t think that Fuller knows, so he switches from "realistic"back to "character study" whenever it suits him. So what was the point?Personally I think that "The Big Red One" was Fuller’s knowing satire of thebig war films of the 1950s, and a semi-satire of his own 1951 Korean Warfilm, "The Steel Helmet." Watch this for James Coburn, he gives a goodperformance as the WW I vet who leads the squad.

This was the absolute best WWII movie,until "Saving Private Ryan" camealong.Lee Marvin is at his finest in this movie,and even though theeffectsaren’t quite on par with Prvt Ryan,the story and the actingare.

ok, up front, i’ll admit i’m a mark hamill fan… but, i read the book b4isaw the movie. it is a relative true adaptation (of course sam fullerwrotethe book i think) this was a story that made me want to find out moreaboutthe actual battles. yes, it sent me to the history books! now THAT is arecommendation! something that makes you want to know more! so many warmovies are all heroics, this one is people, and the horror that warinflictsupon people. it’s sad, gruesome, scary, and funny in turns, just like reallife! if you are a ww2 buff, sam fuller fan, or lee marvin fan, go for it.if you’re a mark hamill (sw heroic type) fan, this one might bedisappointing. but he is very good in it. shoot, there isn’t a badperformance to be found!

This is not a story. This is not a very good movie. Americans fightingVichie / French and suddenly become friends. Sherman tanks driven bythe German forces. Lee marvin wearing native clothing like he isLawrence of Arabia. Lee getting french kissed by a grazy guy in thehospital. Strange fighting scenes with frenchmen on horse with nativefighters cutting ears of Germans. Perfect handgranade tossing intotrucks which explode perfect setting chain reactions. Germans talkingEnglish. Germans aiming MP40 on Lee and killing a little girl leavinglee unharmed. etc. etc….

This movie good not keep my attention.

Here you have a WWII film from the old guard. Probably the last film of itskind. The "PG" rated war film. It rides a great performance from LeeMarvin and nice soundtrack into the plus territory but overall it’s a bithollow.

It bounces from one set piece to another without a unifying theme exceptfor, "It’s in WWII." It employs the usual war film cliches, the ethnicslurs towards an Italian GI, the bloodless combat, the sharp-shooter whodevelops a conscience, the drunken party with French girls, the orphanboy.

The war scenes are low-budget and unrealistic. They don’t look filmed likea war vet, rather a war films vet. Not that I’m a vet and know better, butsome of the stuff was pretty unbelievable- particularly the Germans playingdead and the asylum scene. Many of the battle scenes show lots of smoke andgunfire (but little blood and no body parts), then fade into a shot of the 5leads sitting by a tree victorious. huh?

I’m frankly amazed by all the folks here who say it’s better than "SavingPrivate Ryan." The only way it’s better is that it’s war film the wholefamily can enjoy.

Though by today’s standards it might be considered tame, but then again,after Saving Private Ryan’s gorefest and the horrific sights ofShindler’sList, what movie wouldn’t be? This one, though, remains a good movie,withstandout performances all around. Despite the lack of blood and guts, youdoget into the horror of war, and the relative short lifespan of theseyoungmen who died so the world could be free from Hitler and his kind. Aterrificmovie all around.

In light of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Windtalkers", the special effectsarea little dated in the 1980 war flick, but it’s still one of the best warfilms made. Lee Marvin’s gravel-ridden performance is not to be missed asthe sergeant, and the other characters including Mark Hamill’s performanceas Griff round out the movie well. The movie is fast paced, almost toofast, but they had a lot of war to cover. Anyone who loves war movies willlike putting this movie in their collection to keep.

Only a couple of months ago this movie was released on DVD over hereand there was a lot of publicity about it. They even stated that thiswas probably the best World War II movie ever. I’m quite familiar withthat kind of movies and I’ve already seen a big part of them, classicsas well as new ones. The most impressive ones I already have in myprivate DVD collection (Saving Private Ryan, Patton, The Longest Day,The Bridge on the River Kwai, Cross of Iron,…), but I must say thatthese quotes really made me curious about this movie. On the other handI didn’t want to buy it before seeing it first, because I’m a marketeermyself and I’m all too familiar with good promo talk. They promise youheaven, but in the end you remain with your two feet on the groundwhile being very disappointed. Now that it was shown on television, Icould finally watch it for myself and make up my own opinion about it.

Even though "The Big Red One" is a WWII movie, it starts in thetrenches of WWI. It’s November 11 in 1918, just after 11 o’clock in themorning, when a German comes out of his trench and says to thesurprised American soldier that the war is over. Of course he doesn’tbelieve him and he immediately kills him. After taking the insigniawith a red one on it from the man’s uniform he returns to his owntrench, only to hear that the war is really over and that he hasmurdered a man (during a war it’s called killing, after and before oneit’s called murder). Almost 25 years later, he’s back as a soldier,this time in WWII. He made it to sergeant and now leads a rifle squadin the same division in which he served during WWI, the First Infantry.They get their first battle experience when they invade the by VichyFrance occupied Northern Africa. From there on they go to Sicily,France (Omaha Beach on D-Day), Belgium, Germany and Czechoslovakia. Asthey make their way through Africa and Europe, only five men, includingthe sergeant, seem to be able to survive. The others are replaced bynew, anonymous soldiers who the ‘veterans’ don’t want to know too muchabout because they will die soon anyway…

If you want to know what to expect from this movie, than I believe thatyou have to see it as some kind of combination of "Band of Brothers","Saving Private Ryan", "The Longest Day"… But don’t get me wrong. Iwouldn’t compare it to any of these movies and there are two reasonsfor that: first of all was it created with a much smaller budget thanthose other movies and the second reason is that I don’t think that anymovie deserves to be compared and analyzed with another movie in theback of your mind. I’m convinced that every movie deserves to be seenon its own. Now that you know this, I can give you my opinion about thepositive and negative sides of this movie.

There is only one thing that really bothered me in this movie. Theysometimes didn’t take the time to fully develop all the possibilities acertain part of the story offered. Too many times I had the feelingthat certain scenes had been cut in half, that they didn’t stay longenough
to fully tell the story about what happened in each country. Andyes, I saw the long, restored version of the movie, so that can’t bethe problem. Also somewhat difficult for me was the use of an AmericanSherman instead of a German tank, but I’m willing to see past that foronce because this wasn’t the most important and interesting part of themovie.

This movie deserves to be seen because it was one of the first warmovies that didn’t just rely on showing all the battle scenes and thatdidn’t stay on one location, but followed a group of soldiers on theirtour of duty while having big interest in the character of the manbehind the gun and not just in his capability to fight. This is one ofthe few classic war movies that has taken its time to fully develop itscharacters and I truly believe that the viewers should pay moreattention to that. What I also appreciated was that Sam Fuller, eventhough it’s obvious that he couldn’t make use of a big budget, wasstill able to make such a powerful movie out of it. The emotions arereal, the fact that the veterans didn’t pay much attention to thenew-comers because they didn’t want to lose another friend is the wayit really was, the quiet sergeant who has to ‘fight’ against the willof some of his soldiers,… It all works.

In the end this may not be the best WWII ever, many will bedisappointed by the small scale of the battle scenes for instance, butwhen it comes to character development Sam Fuller sure didn’t have tolearn a lesson. Also the fact that the scenery in the movies was prettyaccurate (Take for instance the part in the Ardennes in Belgium, wherethere were real pine trees, green hills,… instead of the olive treesand a sandy desert shown in "The Battle of the Bulge"), that theAmericans too got killed and weren’t some kind of supermen who couldkill an entire German battalion with only three men and two rifles,made this movie a lot better than some other ‘classics’. I really likedthis movie and I’m sure that I’ll buy it when I get the chance to findthe fully restored version (probably called the director’s cut orsomething like that).

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up, like a raisin in thesun? Or does it fester like a sore, and then run? Or…does it justbecome a feeble masterpiece of a film?

Sam Fuller wanted to make this film for years. The Big Red Onefunctions in virtually every one of his films through some points ofverbal and/or visual reference. And there is a character named Griff innearly each movie. All writing on Fuller speaks of his service in thisunit as the defining event in his life, and it is impossible to avoidthe traces of it in films as disparate as House of Bamboo and FortyGuns. I hate to sound like a dyed-in-the-wool auteurist (although Iclearly am one), but the proper comparisons in this film are not toBand of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan, but to other films ofFuller's. This is way more a Samuel Fuller movie than it is a World WarII movie. Talk of realism or exactitude is really irrelevant in termsof understanding what Fuller is up to here. He is after the decisivemoment, where a man is faced with death. Where a moment's hesitation isfatal, and where the animalistic survival instinct leads us to thechoices we make. There is a constant disquisition here on what it meansto be human. And all the talk about how "we don't murder, we kill" hasto do with the need to dehumanize the enemy in order to hunt him down.The rare scenes of sex or eating or any kind of pleasure are rushedthrough and are brusquely cut off, because these soldiers are concernedwith SURVIVAL, and LIVING is secondary. Nonetheless, the delivery of ababy is one of the key scenes here, because hope and a belief in aworld after and beyond the war motivates the soldiers, at least in thatplace where they believe that "they kill" because they are somehow morehuman. Is this fair? It really doesn't matter - this is point of viewfilm-making. And about that baby- delivering scene. A key Fullermoment, easily relatable to moments such as the shocking opening of TheNaked Kiss. Claustrophobic - shot in a tank. Jarring - an abrupt cut toa close-up of the woman's screaming face. Ironic - in the midst ofkilling hundreds, thousands, all this attention paid to one fragilelife. Humorous - the use of condoms as gloves, a cheese wrapper as amask, "Sarge, I'm getting horny", and of course the classic confusionbetween the words Poussez! and Pussy! Samuel Fuller always said thatfilm is a battlefield, and a scene like this one makes that clearerthan many of this film's battle scenes. Having said all this, I willalso say that the rhythm of this film is a little leisurely, reflectingFuller's age. It never reaches the paroxysms of Naked Kiss or Pickup onSouth Street. I don't long for the lost budget that others complainabout, but I do wish Fuller could have made this film while he was inhis prime. I am also not totally convinced by the work of the DP. Imiss the tabloid look of the greatest Fullers, and the texture of thefilm is a bit anonymous. But Lee Marvin is a perfect Fuller actor, andhis (rare) moments of sentimentality (the scene with the little boy inthe concentration camp) capture Fuller's hard-bitten tendernessperfectly (see the "Tending wounds" section in Nicholas Garnham'sexcellent book on Fuller).

I find it interesting that Fuller portrays himself so centrally as awriter, because the place of language in this film seems so aphoristicand minimal. Language is key, and Fuller's sensitivity to it isamazing. But it is used as a form of shorthand rather than as anautonomous form of expression. The classic Fuller form of irony (seenin all of his films) is found in sentences such as "You sonavabitch!You're gonna live if I have to blow your brains out!" (Marvin to theGerman he stabs after the war has ended - murder, not killing) and "DidI kill the guy who killed me?"( the soldier named Kaiser to Marvin, ina perfect analogy to the "Stop! I'm killed!" in the gunfight near theend of Forty Guns) and in the scene in the insane asylum where theinmate who has grabbed a machine gun and is strafing his fellowpatients, and anyone else for that matter, screams triumphantly "I amone of you! I'm sane!" OK, it's no great irony…but it IS Fuller-styleirony, 100 percent. I will say that this is NOT Fuller's greatest film,and that those who think it is are embarrassed by what Fuller really isand what he stands for. This film is the closest to the look of andtone of mainstream film-making, but I can foolishly hope that it willget some of you more interested in Underworld USA or Shock Corridor,both of which are more unadulteratedly Fuller at his best.

Probably ranks as one of the poorest war movies made. Not Lee Marvin athis best either. It presents a string of unconnected scenes with littlemore theme or story then the senselessness of war. Poor dialog, pooraction scenes, poor history.

Technically, there are just too many silly shortcuts with historicalequipment and battle scenes. See other posts regarding tanks etc. Manyposts give this movie a pass about this due to its date of production1980, stating that it should not be compared to the likes of SavingPrivate Ryan, but when you consider A Bridge Too Far was made in 1977there is no excuse.

Now for some sarcasm. I really loved the scene were they threw grenadesright into each others hand, in the dark from yards away. Really thathappened? And Lee Marvin shooting at Mark Hamill to get him up to theBangalore. What inspiration. We know that German squads had every manequipped with a radio. Well, there are too many of these things tomention.

This squad seemed to fight everywhere alone. Even on Omaha Beach thissquad was alone. And of course they singlehandedly opened up the beachand saved the invasion.

I could never feel connected or inspired by any of the action ortouching moments. The zealous Nazi reappearing to face this rifl
e squadseems to just be an insult to the audience.

If crude silly sex references offend you, then stay away. Almost everynon-combat scene contains some sexual innuendo, comedic and otherwise,most seem very juvenile. If you are over 14 you will not be amused.

Only rent it if you are a war movie junkie and just have to see everywar movie made. Please do not regard this as history.

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Raging Bull

Scorcese tries desperately hard to mimic the Italian masters heworshiped as a youth. Alas, he settles on Antonionio's L'Aventurra andsucceeds in making the most boring movie of the last 30 years.

Perhaps if any of the characters in this movie weren't so incrediblydespicable and obnoxious it might be possible to work up some feelingstowards them, but since they are all people I would never want to meetin real life I had a hard time working up any sympathy for them. I justwish that they had all suffered a lot more than they did.

I hope that Scorcese and DeNiro suffer for making this wretched pieceof crud.

Truly a waste of an evening. A terrible movie on every level.

What’s the fuzz? I know about Robert De Niro who trained his lounges out,and so forth and so on, but that just doesn’t really make it interesting.It’s just not movie-magic, but long and boring and something about somelegendary boxer, I don’t know squad about. I really don’t get it, but ifyou’re up for it Mr. Scorsese-fan, send a message my way.

6.

I'm sorry to all who love this movie but i have to give it a 2 justbecause I've seen worse movies but in no way is this worthy of the top250. let me tell you why its boring as hell and slow. just becausemartin directed it doesn't mean its one of the best movies of our timejust like godfather or lord of the rings should not be at the top. justbecause one well spoken movie critic reviews it and likes it and youwatch it doesn't mean you are all of a sudden a movie avocado' (spelledwrong) and you have to agree what everybody else says so don't give ithigh rating just cause a bunch of other people like it. P.S. Taxidriver was terrible also along with gangs of new york but i did lovethe departed. And i like classics like Casablanca so don't think i hateold movies

wow, what a letdown.i had heard friends and critics say that ragingbull was a great movie,even a masterpiece.well,i finally decided towatch it.all i can say is…i don't think so.i found the entire movie acomplete bore and horribly depressing.the movie may have been based ona true story,and maybe Scorsese was going for reality,but i'm sorry,what a horrible human being Jake Lomatta is.how can anyone remotelysympathize with this wretch.he deserved everything he got.but this isthe one time Hollywood should have taken dramatic license and made thecharacter into a semblance of a human being.anyway, the film chroniclesthe rise and fall of boxer Jake Lomatta played by RobertDeniro.Scorsese filmed the movie in black and white,supposedly foreffect,but it was lost on me.a good movie needs a main character youcan relate to and/or sympathize with and this movie doesn't havethat.there are no redeeming qualities in this movie.i felt like iwanted to kill myself after watching it.simply put this movie is acolossal waste of time.i know many people totally disagree with thisview point and i can't for the life of me understand why,but that'slife. 0* out of 10

Oh my is this film terrible. I really wanted to like this film, honest;in fact, I bought it before actually seeing it. Seriously though, thisfilm is grossly pregnant; there is nothing there; it's fluff; get it?Forgebodit!! Boxing movies are stupid enough as is, next to footballflicks of course. However, I thought, "Well it's a Scorsese flick,he'll do something meaningful." Nope!!! Just a bunch of swearing,violent, irrational, testosterone-junkie wops walking around beatingtheir women saying forgebodit. Peachy, let me tell ya; in fact, I wantmy time back, dig. This film is boring, redundant, annoying, andmeaningless. The cinematography is somewhat sharp, but then again,somewhat sharp is just dull. One last thing, just because a film isblack/white does not make it art…K?…K.

Scorsese missed the target on a film which could have been GREAT! Hefilled it with petty, banal,trite palaver betwixt Deniro, Peschi andthe wife. This should have been inundated with boxing, boxing,andboxing. Family matters are not necessary in this film except for aminute portion. Scorsese should have seen this flaw in the rushes. Tome the film was just a crashing bore. Deniro and all were superb intheir roles. The excitement is in the boxing scenes. Jake LaMotta is aliving legend and his four fight with Sugar Ray Robinson arehistorical. They were not given enough attention as were his otherbouts.

This is an incredibly contrived effort, for sure. The black and whitephotography is accurate. The plot has no colour. No life. No vibrancy.It's all just very uninteresting for the viewer. Some boxer with aprosthetic nose has a few fights and goes fat. That's the thin excusefor a plot. The boxing scenes are very amateur in execution, none ofthem have the shocking realism of Rocky IV. The cast stand aroundbegging us to respect the movie instead of acting. In a couple ofscenes, De Niro can be seen sniffing the air: He's sniffing out anOscar(R) but for sure he will fail. Self conscious performances abound.There is not a hint of realism as in Rocky IV. Rocky movies make yousit up and take notice. They move you. Raging Bull moved me, too. Rightout of the cinema.

Raging BULL, indeed.

you cant say it is a good movie if you understand movies. a 1980 cheapmade crap, compare to Rocky (1976), the only words that i can use todescribe this movie are Boring, Cheap, Crap and it suck balls… ireally cant understand why so many people are saying it is finestboxing movie ever made or it is the best 1980s movie? it doesn’t have agood storyline like Rocky and the shooting techniques used in the moviemade me feel it is 1960s movie. the only thing good about the movie isthe main actor, i think he is really a pro.but any way i recommendeveryone don’t to watch it, you will never get your time back afterwatching a 2 hours long black and white crap…

I hate boxing pictures with a passion, but after seeing this biography ofJake LaMotta, played by Robert DeNiro, and Joey his brother, played by JoePesci, I found myself rivetted to the TV. It was on Channel 4FX Sat. March1st. The language is atrocious, but the direction is extremely well done byMartin Scorsces. It was a black and white film and some actual fight sceneswere in it. Although he was a winner, his life was full of crooks andfamily and a tragic ending

Basically, this film was a disappointment.

I probably expected too much from it, but hey, it is #57 on the IMDb listasof right now. Yes, Scorsese did some interesting things with this movie,but overall I just felt it was, well…not all that special. I did lovetheblack and white photography. That was a nice touch and you don’t seeenoughof it these days. The editing was pretty slick too. As for all thebrutalviolence, maybe it was daring in its day, but nowadays there are plenty ofmovies that are much more raw and unflinching.

The whole problem with Raging Bull for me was that I didn’t care whathappened in the movie. I had nothing invested in it. I didn’t care whatthe outcome was. The reason was because of the main character, Jake LaMotta. De Niro’s performance in the role was great; he did a really goodjob of being an a**hole. Because of that I had a really hard timesympathizing with the character and therefore didn’t really care whathappened to him–he had it coming. I think in most movies, a characterlikeLa Motta would be considered a "bad guy". I guess he probably is in thisone too, but in that case, who exactly is the protagonist?

Alright well now since I’ve reamed Raging Bull, I might as well say thistoo: not only is this movie overrated, but Scorsese himself is overratedtoo. A lot people will probably disagree with me on this, I know. Don’tget me wrong, I don’t think he’s bad or anything. I just hear so manypeople praise him all the
time, and I don’t quite feel the same way. I’veheard people call him "America’s Greatest Modern Director", and I thinkthatis a huge stretch. He’s good, not incredible though. There are plenty ofother directors out there who are just as good if not better. Anyway,enough about that for now.

My rating: 6/10

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Kagemusha

Best Akira Kurosawa out there, if you like Ran, you will like thistoo…

Five years after Dersu Uzala more hard times began tofall on Kurosawa. He couldn’t find funding fromanystudio and that’s when two of his greatest admirerscame to his aid. None other than George Lucas andFrancis Ford Coppola. The two helped him makeKagemusha.

Kagemusha is another beautiful epic film set in feudalJapan. Shingen Takeda (Tatsuya Nakadai) is apowerful warlord who has many doubles that he usesduring battles in order to give the opposing armiesasense that he is all powerful, always there watchingover his men. Suddenly the real Shingen is killedanda new double is sent in to replace him. Unfortunatelythis new double is nothing but a thief and knowsnothing about being a warlord. Soon more problemsarise around trying to conceal his identity andadecision must be made.

Kagemusha marked Kurosawa’s return to the genre offilm that he helped shape, the samurai film

I don’t speak Japanese so I’m commenting only on the subtitles. It appearedto me there was a sly subplot of the European influence in Japan. Thepriests giving the warriors their blessing, the European red wine, and theguns, which I assumed were provided by the Europeans to the winning side.Kurasowa was saying Japan, in Shingen, was lost to the Europeans when Japanleft the mountain, Japan, and engaged the European guns. Perhaps a play onPearl Harbor.

Few filmmakers can capture a moment as well as Kurosawa. Some of the richestscenes ever filmed are showcased in this very film, and to have a betterunderstanding of the flick I would recommend a short course in Japanesehistory. Don’t hesitate… Watch this masterpiece today!!!

A masterful and moving drama of the used, thosewho use and the circumstances under which people aremade to be useful puppets. Deft use of color and pageantryinfeudal Japan.

The first time I rented this movie, I didn’t quite understand it. I rentedit again and it blew me away. Akira Kurosawa is a masterful director whocancombine story, art, history, and emotions that can relate to present day.Very few directors can do that. The acting is superb, and so is thedialogue.The story is set in 18th century Japan, with the war between the threewarlords: Takeda, Tokugawa, and Oda. Takeda is shot and later dies. But hissoldiers found him a double, a kagemusha, who was about to be sent to deathfor stealing looks exactly like him. The kagemusha goes through heavy andpainful emotional training, forcing himself to have the same posture andvoice as the late lord. The story then leads into the war between thewarlords and finally, then end shot of the film has so much symbolism,imagery and thought-provoking ideas. the battle scenes are exquisitelyfilmed, but that’s not the main key here. Watch for the emotions. This is atrue masterpiece, but not as good as Kurosawa’s following epic, Ran.

Definitely not the greatest of Kurosawa’s movies, but one of the best. Itdoes not have the philosophical depth of Ran or the poetic touch ofRashomon, but as a movie that shows the principle of Samurai loyalty andhasa bit of a satirical note, I think it is one of the greatones.

A grand spectacle. Powerful plot. Memorable scenes. It doesn’t get anybetter than this.

I’ve seen this movie 3 times and it keeps getting better, eachtime.

I enjoyed this much more than Ran.

One of the truly finest grand operas of the silver screen and all of historyitself.

Spectacle is not reduced to simple violence. There is great emotion anddepth of purpose behind each battle. The battle is for survival, the humanspirit. How can a spear win over a gun?

Color, majesty, conflict, imagination, unmatched composition,genius.

The face of the imposter, no words spoken, is one of the greatestachievements in acting history. So very much said. Wordspale.

[One wish: One day they will invent SUBTITLES that are NOT superimposed onthe image, but placed somewhere directly below the frame. Maybe with theadvent of Wide Screen TVs, this might develop one day.

I say THIS because EACH FRAME of this movie, is a work of art, a masterpieceof cinema. We should not be subjected to have these works tainted by themere reason of own language differences.]

ALL THAT SAID: Thank you, Akira. For bringing us your genius and forrespecting the intelligence of your audiences.

Is there a score possible over a "10"?

This is a brilliant film about illusion, honor and faith. Thematically, Ithink this is a stronger film than Ran (Yes, I know Ran is based onShakespeare), and some scenes in it are so haunting and chilling theystickon your mind for a long time (particularly the dream sequence *shudder*).Also features one of the most powerful climaxes ever. Definitely one of mytop 30 films ever made. 10 out of 10.

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Nine to Five

Dabney Coleman’s sexist pig is the only thing worth watching in thisentire film. Although he’s a bigot and a liar, you love Coleman’scold-hearted character with every scene he sticks his nose into. Hisdelivery is damn near perfect. Colin Higgins’ direction is adequate. Thenagain, so’s the script.The female leads are odd: Tomlin was fine until that sillySnow White sequence. Who thought of that? Fonda is horribly miscast as anactress trying to be a comedienne. I don’t buy it, Jane. Only Parton grabscomic attention because of her pleasant personality and that oh-so cutesmile. Her belting out of the title song is also quite delightful. ElizabethWilson and Marian Mercer are also quite lovely in small roles.

I love this movie, it is witty and an instant classic. Does anyone besidesme see the connection to the Matrix. Dabney Coleman as agent, Lily Tomlin asMorpheus, Jane Fonda as Trinity and Dolly Parton as Neo. Breaking the bondsof slavery with a touch of S&M thrown in…

Comedies usually appeal to me about as much as falling into a snake pit.This one, however, was a little jewel. For my money, the boss made themovie….what a crud! While Dolly wasn’t as polished as the other players,all did a commendable job. Just too funny!!

Rated PG for Language and Drug Use.

I saw Nine to Five yesterday on Movie Pix.It wasn't a bad film and itwasn't a great film.It was an okay film you could watch on TV.Iwouldn't recommend renting or buying the film.It was an averagemediocre film.There were some small laughs but not overly hilarious.Theplot was sort of interesting.The film is about three stressed femaleworkers and their evil boss.One day one of the workers accidentallypour rat poison in her bosses coffee.Scared that she will go to prisonshe and the other two workers kidnaps her bosses body but its the wrongbody.The boss turns out not to be dead and comes to work.However one ofthe workers overhear them talking about the incident and tell the bossabout it.Fearing the boss will call the cops on them they kidnap himand make him stay in their room.While he is gone they turn the workplace around.Nine To Five is a mediocre film and if it comes on TV itsworth a look.

Runtime:110min

7/10

I just recently watched Nine to Five for the first time in years and Inoticed a flaw. In the scene where the girls are back in the office(the next morning after the hospital fiasco, and they realize Mr Hartdid not die) Violet has on the same clothes she did the night before (agray blouse with red trim and a long plaid skirt), but Doralee and Judyhave changed. Later in a scene from that same day, Violet's clotheshave changed and she now has on a red and white blouse and blackjacket. Incidentally, Violet wears that outfit a few more timesthru-out the movie, but at least they are all supposed to be differentdays.

It had to happen: for two-thirds of its length, "Nine to Five" is asharp, satirical, recognizable put-down of work-a-day life "at theoffice", but in its later stages it becomes a silly revenge comedy, andthen a message piece. The messagey last act is the real bummer, withthree secretaries taking over their work-place and transforming it intoa politically correct nightmare. Jane Fonda is Judy, a just-divorcedwoman new to office work, and her starchy appearance and nervous manneraren’t really all that funny (she’s immediately cold to secretary DollyParton on the basis of office gossip alone); her character’s big flubin the Xerox room is an example of director Colin Higgins’ use ofsilliness–and it’s not even to make a point (the machine goescartoonishly haywire and Judy just looks like a ninny). Lily Tomlin ismuch better as Violet, a 12-year team player who keeps getting passedover for promotions–but why she would even want to be promoted into aden of thieves and liars is never really made clear. Dolly Parton isdazed but not frazzled–she’s just pleasantly zonked as Dora Lee, whomeveryone thinks is sleeping with the boss (Dabney Coleman–who onlyshines in the fantasy sequences; his Mr. Hart is a tiresome tyrant who,of course, is not just a show-off and a cheat but an embezzler aswell!). Terrible-looking movie with an excruciating background scoremanages to get laughs with some canny writing (in the first hour or so)and because of Tomlin’s dead-on impersonation of a working widow withkids who just wants her dignity. But the plot-twists in the second-halftake the picture off-track, leading to a storybook ending that iscommercially driven–and not even in keeping with the cynical,satirical tone of the early part of the film. **1/2 from ****

I know it’s a ‘chick-flick’ but I can’t help but like this 1980 Comedyabout 3 women played by Jane Fonda,Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton (whoalso sang the titlesong) who work as secretary’s for amean,horrible,sexist pig (a tailor made role for Dabney Coleman) whodecide enough is enough and so plan their revenge.

I’ve heard of this movie for quite sometime, but didn’t watch itbecause I didn’t think it was my cup of tea, How wrong I was, Ithoroughly enjoyed this movie from start to finish

The movie is quite dated (all the ladies use typewriters-which havesince been turned into antiques by the onset of Computers.

It’s well Directed by Colin Higgins who had previously Written andDirected the equally enjoyable Chevy Chase-Goldie Hawn Crime Comedy’Foul Play’.

Followed By not one but TWO TV series based on the film 1982-1983 and1986-1988 without the Stars and probably suffers as a result

all in all a very enjoyable 1980’s Comedy that was a major hit on it’soriginal release 24 years ago.

My Rating ***1/2 out of ***** or 7/10

Three secretaries (Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda) work for asexist pig of a boss (Dabney Coleman). One day Tomlin accidentallypoisons his coffee with rat poison…and then things go barreling outof control.

I saw this back in a theatre in 1980. I thought it was hilarious andvery well done. Seen now it’s VERY dated (typewriters are used andTomlin has to wait a MONTH to get invoices!) but it’s still very funny.The script is well-written and well-directed by Colin Higgins(especially during the fantasy sequences). The casting is also letterperfect–Parton is terrific in her screen debut and Tomlin matches herword for word. Fonda isn’t that good but her role is pretty blandanyway. Coleman is also wonderful as the sleazy boss. And the openingsequence with Dolly Parton’s Academy Award-nominated title song is justgreat!

Times have changed since this was made. Coleman’s character wouldn’tget away with any of the things he pulls in this movie nowadays(thankfully). And it does get more than a little silly and unrealisticat the end…but the three stars keep it on track till the end.

Worth catching–I give it an 8.

I have always loved this movie. My favorite thing about it is the way thewomen become friends and band together to make their world a better place(through VERY unorthodox means). A cavalier viewer could say the endsjustified them–I’ll leave that up to the conscience of the individual. Thebeginning is great: the relentless and hopeless drudgery of the office issimultaneously shocking and familiar. I found the "fantasy section" a bitsilly and overindulgent, but as it set up the following section, it wasworth including. And the last part, where the three reform their office andmake everyone happy, is well up there in a list of fulfilling endings. Ionly have two little problems with the film. I hate to undermine such afulfilling ending, but the increased productivity obtained by theirinnovations would likely have been short-lived. Not that they were wrong tomake the changes: the atmosphere in the office had been unacceptable andcounterproductive. But any huge improvement in work quality is extremelydifficult to susta
in over time. Employees would grow inured to the changes,with few left to make in the future. They’ve "shot their wad," so to speak. The other quibble is a small one: in the pursuit of cheap laughs at theend of the film, they undermine the situation they’ve set up by telling ushow the three women leave their jobs. It’s as if at the end of "PrettyWoman" a title card had told us "They broke up 6 weeks later and Julia wentback to prostitution." I felt ever so slightly betrayed.

With as much ’strict critic’ approach as you may try, this is nonethelessahillarious movie!

Winning in all aspects, with Dolly Parton, in one of the best debutperformances ever given on screen, is excellent!

Movie about 3 hard working office women being used and over worked by acruel boss, in which without planned they get even with… in the mostunusualest of fashions.

Pumps a good theme song, charecters which hold their own, and a brilliantcomedy story.

Easy to like and unforgettable.Tell me again why they don’t make more movies with this kind of winninghumor?…. hmmmm now that’s something to think about…

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Le dernier métro

Although Truffaut had another two films in him, in many ways The LastMetro looks as if it was planned as his last movie, even down tofilming a deleted scene (included on the old Tartan UK DVD) where adying director tries to convince Catherine Deneuve's heroine to star inhis last film. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it sums up his life andwork so much as it feels as if the somewhat half-hearted screenplay hasbeen rushed into production without being entirely thought through. Notthat its bad – indeed parts of it are quite enjoyable – more that ittends to drift by like exactly the kind of 'well-made play' that heonce attacked, with the romance barely developed and much of theinterest coming from characters on the sidelines, such as Jean-LouisRichard's critic, collaborator and anti-Semitic propagandist. At it'sbest it comes over like a theatrical variation on Day For Night setagainst the German occupation (indeed, Richard was DFN's co-writer),without ever quite matching that film's emotional roller-coaster ride.

It is a strange feeling to read that many critics do not consider "LeDernier Métro" as one of Truffaut's best films.This is absurd asMonsieur Truffaut was a cinéaste who considered all his films asequal.One is not sure as to how some harsh critics have considered thisfilm as one of Truffaut's commercial projects.The truth of the matteris that Truffaut had always wanted to make a film about Nazism as hehad experienced this vicious phenomenon as a young boy.It must be madeclear that Truffaut did not make "Le Dernier Métro" in order to pleasecritics,well wishers and admirers.As we talk of this film,it must bestated that "Le Dernier Metro" is an equivocal title for a Truffautfilm.It is a title which denotes danger,uncertainty and utterchaos.This is because if one misses the last metro train there would benothing but unpredictable hopelessness.For denizens of Paris duringNazi occupation time there were good chances that the last metro couldbe missed by many people who stayed out late nights for theatricalperformances.Although this is a film about an artistic "ménage àtrois",Le Dernier Métro deals with hidden sexualities of its differentcharacters. It also talks of a restrained love affair which is dwarfeddue to two lovers' arrogance. German occupation of Paris is shown in alight tone as there are no scenes of atrocities perpetrated by Germansoldiers. In this film we get an idea of how artists (cinema andtheater) behave in a given set up.It also depicts cold critics who areable of destroy not only somebody's career but also an entire theaterproduction house.Among the actors Andréa Ferréol is at her sensualbest.Jean Poiret looks sleek too. The best thing about this film isGerman actor Heinz Bennent's performance as Lucas Steiner,a theaterdirector who is fed up of his isolation.His character is similar tothat of Marnie,a role played by Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock's film"Marnie".

An almost banal story about normal people which by its naturalness attains atruly remarkable human greatness.Against the background of nazi occupation of Paris with its whole train oftreasons, pusillanimities, courage, resistance, collusions and collaborationwith the enemy, indignities and oppression, a theatrical company stagedunderground by its director who is secretly hidden because he’s Jewish, putson the stage a play about love also repressed, a play however which resoundsas a freedom although smothered shout in the darkness enveloping France andEurope by then.The acting performance of Depardieu and Deneuve is brilliant as usualalthough very simple and natural. Besides that, Deneuve is indeed one of themost beautiful movie stars we have ever seen.This movie is also a hymn to the theatre as free expression since ancientGreece, living through the love of those who devote themselves to it, veryoften with abnegation and in adverse conditions. It must by all means beseen because, in spite of all, it makes us believe in human virtues whichkeep pace here with the theatrical actors’ talent.

Le Dernier Metro is the portrait of a woman. An ageing, beautiful,authoritative, successful and famous actress caught in her own personalquagmire, and that of a strange historical era.

It's 1942 and Paris screams under the German occupation. A quietscream, at least as portrayed by Truffaut, where Parisiens go on livingtheir everyday lives as close to normal as they can. The German elementis of course ubiquitous, always lurking in the shadow of normality likean undiagnosed disease. The black market, the Jewish persecution, thecurfew, the collaboration and the resistance, all are accepted as justanother fact of life.

The real threat though is the unknown. What will the war bring? Howlonger will it last? And yet, decency and normality go on being thebourgeois lifestyle of choice, simply because most don't know how toreally survive without the city, without its theaters and fashioncircles. Without this superficial normality.

In the middle of this strangeness stands a woman disillusioned by herlife. Deep inside, this poignantly beautiful, famous, smart and strongwoman is empty. Torn between her professional and artistic duties thathave increased dramatically since her Jew husband and theater chef fledto save his life, and her ageing femininity and her devoid of passionlife, she revolves around the sole remaining centrepiece of her life,acting. Only acting proves to be just another lifeless remain of herprevious life.

Should she stay faithful to a husband that she stopped loving a longtime ago? Do they both cling on to their failing relationship just forthe sake of normality, to survive this strangeness of an era? Willtomorrow ever come, and if it comes will she be too old to enjoy it?Deneuve is perfection. The script has most probably been written withher in mind and it shows. Nowhere in the film is she caught relaxing,even in the most ambiguous moments her eyes are crisp clear on herintentions.

Depardieu is solid but lacks the internal flame his character shouldpossess, probably due to him being influenced by Deneuve's coldness.

Poiret and Bennent are sublime in secondary but very important roles.Richard underplays his character's potential as a threat. The rest ofthe cast are adequate and in control of their roles.

Truffaut delivers a quiet film with claustrophobic cinematography,low-budget sets, fabulous costumes and minimal music. Just like a realtheatre show. The director's brilliance drives through the sharpness ofthe second World War with a fine comb and picks only what's relevant tothe story, and nothing more. A film to admire, but not to be inspiredfrom. And there lies probably the only fault of the film. The nouvellevague has matured and settled down with a sigh.

Watch this film just to experience the ferociously magnetic beauty andstrength of Catherine Deneuve. Or if you really love theatre. Or both.

This is a very well made movie. In particular, acting, writing anddirection are superb and it just goes to show you that you don’t needcar chases and explosions to make a good film.

The movie is set in a theater in occupied France. The main concernthrough most of the movie is that they will come to take the Jewishhusband of Catherine Deneuve who is hiding in the basement.

Gerard Depardieu provides excellent support as well and his decision atthe end of the movie caught me a little off guard.

So, for those NOT familiar with the work of Truffault, it is an easy towatch starter–easier to take than some of his earlier work for theuninitiated.

Truffaut does a better job of drawing the torn loyalties of a woman inlove than any other film-maker I know, including women. Both "Jules etJim" feature love triangles between a wo
man and two men. WhileCatherine in the more famous earlier work is a wildly bewitching girl,Deneuve's Marion is a beautifully mature stoic, even when her Jewishhusband Lucas, hiding out in the cellar, vents his understandablespleen about his isolation on her, driving her into the arms ofBernard, her young leading actor. I cannot understand what anothercommentator said about the movie not letting the viewer in. It does -and how much more than anything from Hollywood! It's just that it's afilm made for audiences with a modicum of experience in life and love.But for those, it's got it all. A plot that literally kept me on theedge of my seat for the last half-hour; splendid performances not onlyfrom Deneuve and young Depardieu but also from the craggily handsomeGerman actor Heinz Bennent as Lucas, and the supporting cast;laugh-out-loud funny moments, gooily romantic moments, spine-chillingmoments of fright. A declaration of love to women and the theatre. Igive it a ten.

One often sees the criticism of Francois Truffaut"s "Le Dernier Metro"( "The Last Metro") that he had turned to making films in the traditionof the films that he had scorned as a young critic in the 1950s. Ofcourse, most of these writers are not familiar with the films that hehad scorned. I would say "yes" he was working in a tradition. He couldalmosthave titles the film "Si Paris occupeé nous était conté". SachaGuitrywas one of his heroes. But he did call the film "Le DernierMetro" and that title points to the tradition of the film and explainsits style.It is true that the early scene where Bernard tries to pickup Arlette bears some resemblance to the scene at the beginning of "LesEnfants des Paradis" in which Frederick attempts to pick up Garance. Itmust be remembered though that the young critics of the 50s had no axto grind with the Prevert-Carne films of the late 30s and the firsthalf of the 40s. Anyone who watches the clip of Godard from 1963 on the"Bande a Part" will hear him praise the Carne of "Quai des Brumes"before deprecating the Carne of "Les Tricheurs". Even their criticismof Carne that merely photograph his screenwriters scenario, that he wasmore a "metteur en image" than a "metteur en scene", had started in themid-40s by Henri Jeanson, Carne's one-time collaborator. But gettingback to my point that scene occurring in the midst of the crowd on theBoulevard des Crime in the Carne film explains its title andtheme.Carne's film is about theater-goers, even his fourtheatricalprotagonists all attend plays. Truffaut's film though is notso muchabout the audience as it is about the theater world and henceits title" Le Dernier Metro". Before I get back to my point I believe Ishould note here that "Le Dernier Metro" was meant to be one panel in atrilogy on the entertainment world. "La Nuit Americaine" ("Day forNight") was of course the film panel. And "L'Agence Magique" a filmabout Music Hall was never made. In the late 70s Truffaut had ascreenplay for this film ready to shoot and had begun pre-productionbut the failure of "The Green Room" caused him to alter his plans andto film "L'Amour en Fuite".

The voice-over prologue describes an occupied Paris where night workershave to scurry to make the last metro in order to beat the curfew. Whatis left to our imaginations is to realize that many of these workersare theater people. Jean Marais whose real-life thrashing of the JeSuis Partout drama critic Alain Laubreaux provided the inspiration forone of the key scenes in the film described the last metro thusly inhis autobiography "Histoires de ma Vie" (page 159)

"The last metro was marvelous. As packed as the others. It carried allof the theater world of Paris. Everyone knew everyone else. We spoke ofthe latest concert, of the ballet, of the theater. Outside, it was theblackout, the militias, German patrols, hostages if one was out pastcurfew." NOTE: "Tout-Paris" usually means " Paris high society" butMarais in the book frequently uses in a narrower sense of "the theaterworld".

In other words "Les Films de Carosse" had produced a film thatrepresented "the last metro" as the golden coach of occupied Paris.Some quarter of a century earlier before Truffaut made "Le DernierMetro" he with Jacques Rivette had interviewed Jean Renoir and Renoirtold them that in order to do his film on the world of theater "TheGolden Coach" he had found it necessary to subordinate his style to atheatrical style. Could it be that there is one explanation of thestyle of the film? So now Truffaut was returning to the style of "TheGolden Coach".

Some other ideas gleaned from Nestor Almendros' "A Man With A Camera".Remember the scene from the beginning of the film that I spoke aboutearlier, the one were Bernard accosts Arlette. I can still remember thefeeling of claustrophobia that I felt the first time I saw "Le DernierMetro". And of course I was going to soon discover that one of the maincharacters in the film was hiding in a small room in the basement ofhis theater. Almendros speaks of using the camera to create a feelingof claustrophobia in this film. He also reveals that it was normal forTruffaut to keep his windows open. But in this film because of itstheme and its time period, windows remained shut. Also, he and Truffautwanted the look of early Agfacolor of films like "Munchhaussen" and"Die Goldene Stadt". A look that was gentler and softer than the vividTechnicolor films of the same period. Thus the set designer were askedfor ocher-colored sets and the props and costumes were chosen insubdued colors. Also they changed their film stock to Fuji because itwas closer to this look they were cultivating. As long as we arediscussing Almendros I think it might be appropriate to end with aquote from his chapter on the film "The Green Room".

"As expected, "The Green Room" was not very well received. The theme ofdeath rarely attracts crowds. This is almost an axiom in the cinema,and by producing so difficult and personal a work, risking almostcertain economic failure, Truffaut showed once again that after sixteenfilms he was still the uncompromising artist he was as a young man."Nestor Almendros, "A Man With A Camera" page 220.

this film is excellent. it’s a quiet film where the plot moves slowly,butit doesn’t matter. it takes place during the occupation of france ofworldwar II. i don’t know how truffaut can do this, he makes films that onpapersound melodramatic and silly, but are feel truly real and sincere withoutbeing overly depressing. and this is one of them. i don’t know a lotaboutthe german occupation of france during WWII, but its presence is certainlyin the film you marion buying an expensive ham under the black market,theblackouts, the talks of hiding in subways and the oppressive and communualpresence of the germans. but it’s not the focal point of the film. it’sabout people trying to live normally under stressful situations. theirlivesare not centered around the war, but around surviving with what they value(their theatre) intact.

it’s thoughtful enough to not type-cast its characters based on how theyfeel about the war and their political positions. a lot of the charactersare pragmatic about their situation, such as the director of the play(jean-loup is his name i think) who opposes the germans, but is willing toconsider selling the theatre to Daxiat (a powerful pro-germanjournalist)tosave it. all of the crew dislike Daxiat, but treat him with relativerespect so that they can keep their theatre running. Daxiat isn’t paintedas a completely horrible enemy, but was a man who really looked out forthebest interests of the theatre company despite the fact that his politi
calviews were opposite of those he admired in the theatre company. thepeoplein this film felt real, cuz ideally, we’d all like to think that whenfacedwith oppression from an outside force, we’d be kicking and screaming allthe way until we’re free of oppression. but in reality, most of us wouldprobably make compromises and do things against our principles to keepwhatis most important to us (in this case, it’s the theatre and its companyforthe characters here)

in a way, the film reminded me of wong kar wai’s in the mood for love interms of what it does with its characters. it progresses steadily withoutalot of major plot points, and it lets you get to know the characters andletthem be real, so you never feel bored at how slow things progress. thecharacters are well written and well acted so that you care deeply aboutthem.

*comments on the ending up ahead*

there is very little that feels staged and over dramatic, and the outcomeseems to progress beautifully and quietly. and i don’t know what it isabout the ending, but i felt strangely uplifted when the credits rolled.

In 1942, in a Paris occupied by the Nazis, Marion Steiner (CatherineDeneuve) is a former cinema and presently theater actress, who has also tomanage the Montmartre Theater and its company. Her Jewish husband LucasSteiner (Heinz Bennent), the writer, director and owner of the theater, hasofficially moved to South America, escaping from the Germans. Indeed he ishidden in the basement of the building. Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu)is a promising actor hired to act with Marion in a new play. The survival ofthe theater depends on the success of this play. Marion falls in love withBernard, but hides her feelings due to her respect for her husband. Althoughhaving a very simple story, this movie is marvelous. The story is a greathomage to theatrics, where not only the persons wants to survive, but alsodesire to save what they love: the theater. I recalled the movie `Il Viaggiodi Capitan Fracassa’, where theatrics is also honored. It is a love story intimes of war. It is a human story, where citizens are presented trying tohave a normal life, even having to share their sovereignty and culture withthe invaders. It is not corny in any moment. The direction is from one of myfavorites directors, François Truffault, who was born in 1932, therefore, hewas a ten years old boy when this story begins. Certainly he has had a greatexperience of life in an occupied country and how life goes on. The beautyand the performance of Catherine Deneuve are astonishing. Gérard Depardieuis in an excellent shape and has also a wonderful performance. Althoughhaving 133 min. running time, the film is not long, since the story hooksthe attention of the viewer. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): `O Último Metrô’ (`The Last Subway Train’)

Francois Truffaut follows in the tradition of Jean-Pierre Melville byadapting a popular genre as a serious allegory for the darkest period inFrench history: the Nazi Occupation. Just as Melville used the gangsterfilm to examine notions of legality, legitimacy, authority and criminalityin a period when the Resistance were outlaws and the police rounding up Jewsfor the death camps, so Truffaut takes the beloved putting-on-a-showwarhorse, and uses it as a metaphor for the conditions of life in OccupiedFrance: the need to act, adapt and continually discard roles. WhenDepardieu’s character leaves to fight for the Resistance, he puns aboutexchanging his make-up (maquillage) for the maquis.

What Truffaut is most interested in, as in all his films, is the effectthis need for constant dissembling has on individual identity andrelationships. This wonderful romantic comedy plays like a mature update of’Casablanca’, richly stylised, bravely open-ended, with Truffaut’s movingcamera wrenching spirit from the claustrophobic confines.

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Heaven’s Gate

I saw Heaven’s Gate, and I remember hating it. It is actually the firsttimethat a movie was SO bad, people went back and re-examined their opinion ofan earlier effort by the director (Deerhunter) and DOWNGRADED IT. (I neverliked Deerhunter either.)

I had never seen Heaven’s Gate. But a few weeks ago in a used video storeIfound the original uncut version. Since it was Lent and I felt that Ishould do something in penance for my sins, I bought it, went home, andwatched it in one sitting with no breaks, snacks, or soda pop to sustainme.My sins have now been atoned for.

Well finally I get a chance to watch a film I have read a lot about andhave been intrigued to see. The film that almost ruined UA AND MichaelCimino. Having watched and loved Cimino's 'The Deer Hunter' could thisfilm really be as bad as some people have made out; I was intrigued tofind out, where my fears from the directors commentary about Ciminobeing a strange egg going to be confirmed? Well on a recent night whenI was having trouble sleeping I stumbled across the so called superior219 minute version of the movie on television. Well first impressionswhere quite good the grainy pictures lent a nice earthy feel to themovie and it was clear the director is going for an epic with the largesweeping camera shots. Then we had an interesting opening scene duringthe graduation of key characters Kris Krisstoferson and John Hurt fromtheir college of very well to do gentlemen in the 1800's in the newAmerica. Then we flash forward some years to the frontier country withHurt and Krisstoferson part of a gentlemen's organisation that own thecattle and most of the land who are aggrieved that the extremely poorimmigrants are stealing their live stock. The film has decentsentiments showing that great American tradition of the rich mankeeping the poor man down (okay mow they do not do it with bullets, buthurricane Katrina anyone?) but the film is also a rambling mess oflittle to no pace. Now I am not opposed to long films. It is just thatI feel the length of a film can multiply the effects of a film, whetherthat be negative or positive, and I am afraid in this case it is mostdefinitely a negative. I rarely had any empathy with any of thecharacters on either side of the conflict apart from a dislike of themain land owner, Krossoferson left me cold as a hero and Hurt andChristopher Walken seem to be wasted and there are so many immigrantcharacters that none of them apart from the equally wasted Jeff Bridgesget much screen time which leads to no empathy for any of them. We havethe sub plot of the Walken, Krisstoferson, Isabella Huppert lovetriangle but for me nothing really moves me. We have long ramblingscenes with dialogue so lost in the mix it is at times virtuallyinaudible. So we come to the conclusion and yes it bloody and brutalbut in the end completely unsatisfactory. Not one I will be watchingagain.

The operative rule in the making of this film seems to have been "nevermake a 1 minute scene when you can make it a 10 minute scene." This wasa principle set right from the start with an interminably longportrayal of the graduation of the Harvard class of 1870. The point ofthat scene, I suppose, was to introduce some of the primary figures inthe story and give a bit of their background - which is somewhateffective when comparing the idealism of the Harvard graduationceremony to the realism of life in Johnson County, Wyoming, but it justkeeps going and going, and that sets the stage for a film that featuresrepeated stretches of mind-numbing nothingness, made even worse by thefact that I found a significant amount of the dialogue to be almostincoherent. In the end, I couldn't even watch this in one sitting. Igot through about half of it and had to set it aside for a couple ofdays before I could drag myself back to see how it turned out.

My reaction to this movie in many ways is a shame, because there arepositives here. The performances are generally of a high calibre,especially from Kris Kristofersson as Averill, Christopher Walken asChampion and Isabelle Huppert as Ella. The basic story - interspersedas it is around that ever-present mind-numbing nothingness - ispotentially interesting, focusing on the efforts of immigrants toestablish themselves in Johnson County and a local cattle company'sefforts to stop them by killing a number of them in collaboration withthe government and the military. There's also some absolutelybreathtaking scenery shots. Having said that, the whole thing couldfrankly have been done in half the time - and should have been. In theend, all those potential positives are washed out by - again - themind-numbing nothingness that the movie seems to revolve around.Seriously - 2/10.

I really wanted to be one of the few who defend HEAVEN'S GATE. I wantedto be able to stand up and defend the film to the film's overwhelminglegions of detractors. So I watched it… I'm sad to say that I won'tbe a defender of Cimino's disastrous attempt at an American epic.

The acting veers from impressive to poor. Walken is dynamite, as arethe bulk of the supporting performers, but Kristofferson never hits theright note, which is a shame because he's the lead actor! He also looksremarkably thin, to the point of looking sickly. That's distracting,and it only serves to call attention to his dull performance.

My biggest complaint about HEAVEN'S GATE is that it's excruciatinglyboring. I'm not opposed to a film with an oppressive length, if it hasthe ingredients necessary to justify it, but Cimino's film didn'tsustain it's running time. There are numerous scenes that could'veeasily been omitted and it would've helped the flow of the narrativeimmeasurably.

The movie looks great, with Vilmos Zsigmond's photography (which waslargely trashed for looking too soft and/or dusty) a major asset. Theframing and editing are also first rate. That script, however, is adifferent story. It's so lumbering, and it never pays off.

I highly recommend HEAVEN'S GATE to anyone interested in thefilm-making process. It's the perfect example of how a movie's dramaticpower can lose out to it's aesthetic when the artists at the helm aretoo invested in the look of the piece rather than the feel of it. It'saimless and flat. What a crime.

I watched this last nite with an open mind. Sorry to say it is stillbad. first, the movie is too noisey and you can't hear what people aresaying. The accents are bad especially Richard Masur. What is theFrench chick doing in this film ??? Miscasting at its worst. Walken'smakeup is strange. The Harvard scene is useless and not needed.Kristoferson's character is unlikeable and I wanted him to get killedand go away. Meanwhile, the Walken character gets killed too early andeasily ( despite the makeup). The settlers are all stupid. GETORGANIZED you bunch of hicks, people are coming to kill you !!!!! JohnHurts character provides some humor buts thats all.

I have nothing good to say about this excessive piece of crap. The onlygood thing is it ruined the director's career and killed UnitedArtists.

Still Crap after all these years.

I saw the restored version which was released theatrically in Australiain 2004.

Many reviewers have panned this film, but apart from the poor sound andvision that sometimes makes the dialog inaudible and the screen darkand "smoky", there is little to criticize if you compare this withother films of the period.

Because of its Marxist take on the sacred cow of American history, thisfilm has been unfairly criticized. The film has been lambasted as being"historically inaccurate", but I find it more accurate than manywesterns of the 40’s and 50’s. The true facts of the Johnson county warwere suppressed at the time they happened, and well into the 1940’s bythe
cattleman’s interests. The bare bones of the plot are basicallycorrect, and Nate Champions stand against the "invaders" one of themost heroic and poignant moments in the cruel and bloody history of theAmerican west.

Heaven's Gate *1/2

Now Heaven's Gate disguises itself as an American Film. Yes it is anAmerican Film, but an American Film that America wants to forget. Now Iam not the kind of person who judges films until after they are over.But Heaven's Gate is the first film where I knew it was in troubleafter seeing the first thirty minutes, unfortunately I still had overthree hours to look forward to. Now a lot of people blame MichaelCimino, (who also made The Deer Hunter), for this disaster and evenCimino himself says he's to blame, but United Artist has to take someresponsibility for giving Cimino the money for making this "movie".Maybe if they'd read the script, they might have reconsidered.

Michael Cimino’s attempt to do for the Western what his earlier popularepic, "The Deer Hunter", had done for the war movie, went wildly over budgetand is reputed to have brought down United Artists, who withdrew the 219minute version after hostile reviews, and released it at 149 minutes toempty theatres. It is also said to have brought an end to the period whenHollywood auteurs prevailed over producers and to have killed off theWestern (when Kevin Costner’s "Dances With Wolves" went over budget in 1990it was dubbed "Kevin’s Gate"). The film is in fact, for all its vaguenessof characterization, one of the great radical Westerns, dealing in a complexmanner with the contradictions of American life and taking the conflicts inthe East Coast industrial cities out into the West. Visually rich, it is acarefully patterned movie, most especially in the way it handles theso-called class traitors Jim Averill and Nate Champion. Like LuchinoVisconti’s "The Leopard", Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Godfather", SergioLeone’s "Once Upon a Time in the West", Bernardo Bertolucci’s "1900", andCimino’s own "The Deer Hunter", it eschews carefully paced narrative infavour of powerfully animated, operatic set-pieces that are often extendedbeyond what puritanical temperments think proper.

I have just recently seen Heaven’s Gate. After i watched this 3 hr 40 minepic western that’s not a western, i read the book by Steven Bach. Afterconsidering all events and the movie itself, i still think this movie is acomplete waste of time. I believe that when someone tells you to watchit,they are, in fact, trying to bore you to death. If for some reason youcanenjoy this self indulgent over thought truely bad movie, i have to askwhy.Though this isn’t a reason to hate it, it is historically way off. Itpretends to be about a situation that happened in Wyoming called theJohnsonCounty War. Simply, the cattle barrons of the time wanted to kill allcattle thieves and claimed they were all immagrants. You find that yousimply do not care about these people and hope they all get killed becauseat least then, something would happen. Everybody in the movie talks aboutthings that happen, and it is never shown. After you sit though thisgiantwaste of time you wonder how someone could actually make a 4 hr epic inwhich nothing happens. Oh and by the way the Johnson County war was not awar, it never happened. The Johnson County war, in fact, was called thatbecause it almost happened, in actual fact, 2 people died. I can’t warnyouenough off this movie. However, if you’re like me the, the idea ofwatchinga movie that ruined careers and put United Artists on the "for sale" lot,sounds like an interesting case to study, then by all means, watch thisterrible, narsisistic, movie with no sub-text, and a lot ofphotography.(which is lovely sometimes)

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Fame

Irene Cara and a gaggle of unknown actors and actresses are students in NewYork’s High School for the Performing Arts. They learn dance, music, drama,and the required academic classes. We follow a group of students who allhave their own troubles.

While the majority of comments on this film at the IMDB are positive, I haveto admit I was expecting a bit more from this film. The soundtrack is superbstuff, and earned a well-deserved Oscar for both the complete score and thetheme song "Fame". Irene Cara, Gene Anthony Ray, and Anne Meara turn inmemorable performances (the other actors could actually be real-lifestruggling P.A. students, they are so unsure of themselves in their dramaticscenes).

But the plausibility of the entire film is at stake here: one would thinkthe school’s standards are much higher. And if so, then how could untalentedpeople like Doris Finsecker, Lisa Monroe, and Ralph Garci get in? There aretoo many subplots left incomplete by the big final musical number: how didCoco deal with her little smut film? Did Coco ever hook up with Bruno? DidLeroy make ammends with his English teacher and pass? What happened toHilary after her abortion? It all comes to a close so fast that I amconvinced there was some post-production editing flaws involved. As anotherreviewer put it, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another 30 minutes outthere somewhere in a film vault collecting dust actually tying all the looseends together, but as FAME exists now, it feels incomplete and ultimatelyunsatisfying. Not to be condescending, but I expect all the positive reviewsare from people who actually want (or wanted) fame just as bad, but haven’t(or didn’t) tasted it yet and the film gives them hope. That’s fine, butjudging the film as a piece of cinema, it does not deliver thegoods.

When I say I feel sorry for people here I’m not talking about the teacherswho have to put up with the same kids year after year, or even the studentswho have to go through such horrible c**p to get in (they made there bed,now they lie in it). Truthfully, I feel sorry for the people in the carswho have to wait in heavy NY traffic not because of an car accident or apothole, because the dance kids have to break out into a impromptu dancenumber.

I’m not saying this film doesn’t have a good premise, but the way it isexecuted almost makes me want to execute the guy agreed to make this(whichis ironic considering I like Parker’s The Wall and Angela’s Ashes and almostfeel pity he was put here to direct). The plot follows a group of teens whoget accepted into the NY school of performing arts and shows how tough it istoo get in and how tough it is to stay in. There are some moments ofinsight and even some good performances. But the overall corniness andhorrible quality bring this film to a halt. Blah. D

New York is the setting for this tale of success and failure in the worldofupcoming stars. I liked this movie in a very few things: its theme isoriginal, and few movies have succeeded to approach like this. But timeworeout this picture, and what it remains is a story of how much you sweat andfight to be someone at show business. Director Alan Parker shows here histypical eye for the struggle themes, and made "The Commitments" with muchbetter results. A medium movie, to see sometimes, not always. Recommendedtoeveryone who seeks a place to shine.

This film was so bad! I hated every minute of it! Why didn’t we actuallySEEIrene Cara singing Fame? We only heard it in the background! What kind ofamusical is this? I’ll answer that for you, a very poor one! Why were thereso many plot holes left at the end? You’re supposed to tie up the looseends, not leave them like the director of this crap obviously likes to do!Watch if you want to be seriously depressed! Or at least if you want adarkmusical try multi-Oscar winning "Cabaret"! It’s brilliant!

If you ever try to make a film, view this one. "Fame (1980)" has manystarting points and one culminating point. It all comes together in the"Body Electric" song. The denouement is left open for individualreflection. This film is not, to my mind, about the characters on thescreen. It is about us - ordinary everyday people -who wish to succeed.It is about opportunities, realising who you really are, and chancesmissed.

Question: "Are we all cut out to be "stars"? "Well are you?" How do youmeasure up against the competition? Not in your mind - but in reality?

Today, "Fame", may seem a little dated in style. But it is neverthelessrelevant in more ways than many other films of this genre are today;perhaps in more ways than most imagine.

Merely consider: Ethnic, religious and other cultural groupings - inall their variations. How many similar films featured similarcomparisons in the same way in 1980?

This film is beautifully edited with a well-mixed sound track. Thereare, however, some aspects of the edit and mix I would have donedifferently. But this is 25 years later!

To the people who pan de Palma’s work, especially "Fame" I say: Try todo it yourself!

John CTIFS RSA

This tells me that I have a problem with the sort of storytelling thatAlan Parker was drawn to early on. Vocations happen for the reason thatthey happen, but I have an incompatibility. Still, I have only seenthree, so far.

*

Evita, that I do not feel incompatible with at all. The first time Isaw it, it felt too cold and bleak, I wanted to switch off. However Ifound that it grew on me. A long story about someone who grew up in thecold, needing to get out of the cold, not so fussy about how that wasdone, it gets so that one cannot be as fussy as a person needs to be.Someone who climbed to the top, but without the in-tune-ness that wouldmake that other than a pr victory.

Evita, an opera already developed for the stage. I found that it grewon me and echoed a lot that I could feel to have reality, but I did notfind it too painful or threatening, etc. I can afford to consider it tobe a masterwork.

*

Bugsy Malone, I should consider this as a masterwork too. Except thatget to know it better it seems to be rooted in the belief system thathas been dominant over the past twenty five years. To me it is acelebration of worldviews that create the dispossessed classes and asone of those who did not do so well the past twenty five years this isway too painful stuff. Except that the music and dance is so brilliant,maybe just seeing it occasionally it can regain the grandeur of thefirst few times that I saw it.

*

It is early days with my getting to know Fame.

The commentary mentioning how come they could not film at the 46thAvenue school. Yes. So far I find the music and dance to echo thespirit of those other two that I have on DVD. Just there is a tensionwith the rough parts of the story that blows the thing. Hot Lunch. WhenParker was inspired to notice that other film, I assume thatinspiration was saying something but that I am likely to misunderstandwhat Inspiration meant and what Parker really understood.

I experience the film to be in chains. The single take steadycam sceneis an example of what shows me that it is also inspired.

I experience the DVD commentary as underlining that. Quality, butchilling. Used to be I apologised for everything, but recently I ammore the opposite and this example from a non-underclass makes aninteresting case study.

I am not at the stage of considering Fame to be a masterwork, despitethe power of the dance and song. The dominant mood for me is the stripdone for the camera. I note that there is a remake due in 2008 and thatthis has shown the potential of this theme. Just here the potentialworks in opposing directions. A crushing day to day reality.

For me, this is chilling. As with Evita, it echoes real problems that Ihave faced, but in different wa
ys. This reminds me of the trouble thatI have had from the arts worlds, UK especially, as a blatant gargoyletype. The gargoyle phenomena is real and a strong factor in myexperience of the arts. Would that all arts products were like thisFame, reality would be easier to pigeon hole.

One side of our local main road has switched to continental style openair cafés. I used to consider the pre-café road as a local Tel Aviv, aplace to develop basic girl skills in 'noticing' people, including cuteones. The new look allows big mouths a comfortable seat for hasslingsuch as passers by who are obviously transgendered. Hassling does notappear to be considered as evil but as good and moral. The other sidenow has a community arts facility being built on two thirds to threequarter of the land previously fully occupied by a church that neededcash for renovations and they doubtless look with respect to the arts,not to the gargoyle making side. How does a gargoyle face this? Irecently discovered Uncle Buck of 1989 and now I have this Fame.

*

I am leaving this as a temporary comment, a first reaction. I doubtthat I will get around to updating it or looking at Fame again, but thememory of it could give me fresh insights into my problem re BugsyMalone.

This links with my comments on All American Girl of 1994 and HarryPotter 2.

My wife and I both remembered this film being a lot better than it is. Whenwe rented it last weekend, we wondered if we were watching the same moviewehad seen 22 years or so ago. We both agreed that we were probablyremembering the TV series, which, in its one-hour segments, was compelledtoactually wrap up plot lines. This movie leaves many loose threads, as hasbeen mentioned by others here… basically every main character’s storylineis left unresolved.

Gotta like the title song, though.

Fame is a brilliant and very musical movie. The cast are superb and themusic is amazing. (The soundtrack is great too.) The film focuses on thelives off the kids at a New York Performing Arts School, where you see thethere ups and downs and share the laughter and tears. If only they wouldcarry on making movies like this. Fame is brilliant. 10/10

Well, okay so that quote isn’t from the movie, it’s from the stage musical,which is WAY better!

Having read all the reviews on this movie and found them all to be positive,I have to wonder if I saw the same film! The one I saw only had one majorsong, that being the awesome title number (which, don’t get me wrong, Ilove!) and nothing else really of interest. The characters were flat and thestory line totally predictable. Some films don’t age well, and this onedoesn’t.

If you really want to see this kind of story brought to life see if you canget a chance to see a good (notice I say good, the bad productions can bevery painful) version of the stage musical. It can be awesome. It’s setafter the movie, has way more and way better music, more believablecharacters and a (if only slightly) better storyline (lines like "If you’vecome here expecting your going to live forever, or envision dancing on topof cars down 42nd street, you’re humming the wrong tune!). That being said,amongst the theatre crowd at the university I go to, you’ve suffered theultimate shame if you’ve performed in Fame…still it is a fun show to doand can be a blast to see…this movie on the other hand, while legendary isa flat outdate yawn that doesn’t at all live up to it’sreputation.

I cant believe this film only got a 6.3. I just finished watching it forthe first time, and I was very impressed. This is one of the last real andserious coming of age movies, I know I am probubly biased because I amstudying acting myself, and I could really relate to all of thosecharacters. This is also a great example of director AlanParker’s(Mississippi Burning, Angel Heart, Midnight Express, and yuck!!"Evita) work. A truly great film that really shows what its like to bestudying to have a career in performing arts, and also reminds us of thattime period. Once again, I am amazed at that low 6.3 rating, I think itdeserves at least like a 7.2. I’ll give it an 8/10, though.

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Friday the 13th

This film is boring. That’s it. It’s boring. The acting is corny,definitely not believable and the music is just as corny. This filmtries to make the film exciting by putting 8,000,000 tons of blood intoevery death but fails miserably. You can tell when someone is going todie and every death happens directly after one and other. This film haseverything you could expect in a slasher flick, gore, violence,profanity, and sex (very graphic).

This film is rated R and anybody under the age of 16 should definitelynot be allowed to watch. This film contains extreme violence and gore,a graphic sex scene, and tons of profanity. Anyway, this film is okayto watch with your friends at midnight, definitely not scary though.Just pointless, gory, and graphic. ** out of *****.

And it failed to scare me in the least. Even the most idiot horror movies(except maybe Jaws movies) scared me senseless, but his movie fails in thatway.

Interesting twist, yes! But other than that it misses the mark completely!And it’s not even a very good twist, come to think of it.

Anybody who likes this movie must consider giving up on moviesaltogether.

as a fan of horror movies I must say that "Friday The 13th" isoverrated. It's so absurd,boring,not frightening or interesting in anyway. The acting is bad,very bad,the plot is stupid and the murders sopredictable and lame that I almost laugh instead scare.It begins verynice but its get boring after a few minutes .I thought that this onewill be a huge movie because it is so popular In the genre of horrormovies, but I was really disappointed. I'll give you advice: STAY AWAYFROM THIS ONE!,if you want REAL horror movie you must watch THEEXORCIST. it's much better than this crap. Or if you want a slashermovie you can try "A Nightmare On Elm Street" or "Halloween".

This was a good horror movie in 1980 but in 2003, it’s slow anddefinitelynot scary. Watched this for the first time with my teenage nieces and wewere bored and disappointed. We’re fairly new to the genre so we’re noexperts, however, I do not recommend it for anyone looking for a scare.Weenjoyed Nightmare on Elm St. more. Maybe one of the more recent Jasonmovies will be entertaining…

This really should score a zero. Have a flashback scene, a summer campin the 1950’s, some people get killed. Have a graphic saying presentday (1 saying it was 1980 might have helped?) A guy is trying to get anold summer kids camp started up. his various staff get killed one byone, starting with the cook. We get down to 1 girl left and this isnearly 2 hours into the movie then the plot is finally explained. "Oh,I’m Mrs Voorhees. Jason’s mum. Jason died by drowning because campattendants weren’t paying attention. In the 1950’s" and this has WHATto do with a bunch of people starting up the same camp 30 yrs later,exactly? They didn’t kill him! Mrs. Voorhees tries to kill the lastgirl alive & generally shows she’s a mental psycho bitch. Then the girlmanages to cut the woman’s head off. Fake ending with crap andpredictable scare. Real ending with girl going on about dead boythinking he’s alive.

Now how did they get 1 sequel out of that ending?

The film is utter garbage. Possibly the busiest person in the crew wasthe sound man. Every time their in an interior and moving stuff thesound is SO loud! Kevin Bacon in a forgettable role, nice death scenebut how did he & the girl he was screwing miss a dead man 4ft abovetheir heads?

This film gets a zero.

So bad it’s worse than "Best Defense" & "Ishtar" - AVOID!

How did this movie ever get the reputation as a horror classic? I’vebeen re-watching the "Friday the 13th" series recently and have beenstruck by how awfully incompetent they are as films. This firstinstallment I guess has the advantage of being novel, though notreally, since it doesn’t use any formula conventions that "Halloween"didn’t use two years earlier. And the actual film making technique in"Halloween" makes it seem like "Lawrence of Arabia" compared to this.

Still, there is something nostalgically satisfying about these movies.Seeing dopey teenagers get axed in the face and knifed through thethroat brings a little glow to my heart. This was made at a time whenslasher movies had a kind of innocence that horror movies now havelost. These films were nasty at the time, but they’re absolutely quaintwhen compared to the nasty cinema coming out now in the same genre, asad testament to just how jaded we’ve become.

As far as rating this particular movie, not all of the movies in theseries are as bad as this one, but I can’t bring myself to give theoriginal anything other than a big fat F.

Grade: F

Most of the Halloween imitators (including the other Halloween movies)onlyfocused on the superficial details of what made Halloween so scary. Fridaythe 13th, the first in what must be the worst series in movie history, isanexample of this. A bunch of stupid, annoying kids set up for a summercamp’sfirst season since a boy drowned in the lake years before. Are any oftheseguys as nearly as sympathetic as Jamie Lee Curtis (or as good looking, forthat matter)? There are long stretches in voyeuristic boredom that areoccasionally broken up by the occasional murder. The identity of thekillerand the reason behind the killings are not only ridiculous but just plaininsignificant; the movie is just not interested in the plot. Unlike otherviolent cult-horror classics that came before this like Halloween andNightof the Living Dead, the film isn’t with the victims. It’s with the killer,and the whole point is for the audience to anticipate the next slaughter.The young cast members are not seen as people, just vehicles for cheapthrills. First maybe with a little nudity and then bloodshed. This"Friday"isn’t the worst in the series (I saw all of them before I was 13!) butit’sprobably the most depressing. At least the later films had much moreelaborate violence and gore for even greater cheap thrills. * out of****

This movie in my opinion 90% good, to 10% awful, but unfortunately the 10%overules.The good part is that for a horror film it does manage to build up a goodamount of tension and you are struggling to think who the killer could be.The way the murder scenes get more and more graphic also impressedme.Now then the killer is revealed as an old woman, just how scary is that.Not very is the answer and when she makes those stupid voices it just gotridiculous. Even worse was the way that this old woman kept gettingsmackedon the head with blows which would knock a full grown man out, never mindanelderly woman and just keeps getting straight back up and continues toautomatically find the girl. And why couldnt a young lady over power anoldwoman?Terrible terrible film.

Many people hail this as a "cult classic". I am a fan of horror andcult movies like this, but personally, I recommend you skip this one. Ihave not not seen the others in the series, but if they are like thismovie, I will not see it.

This is the supposed plot: A group of teenage J.Cs at a mysterious campsite called "Camp Crystal Lake" are terrorized by an unknown killer(NOT Jason) who doesn’t show his/her (I’ll avoid spoilers, as if anyoneshould see it) face until the last ten minutes of the movie.

But here’s the more accurate plot: A group of horny kids sit around anda vague omen pops up here and there. This goes on for two thirds of themovie, and needless to say, it gets pretty boring. Suddenly, it’s theend, and a killer with horrible acting runs in and a chase scenebegins. The final battle isn’t much too look out for, either. Itbasically consists of this: hero hits killer, killer is stunned, heroruns, killer jumps from behind a bush. Repeat.

I’ll give the movi
e this: the ending gives a complete feeling butleaves plenty of room for suspense.

However, even if you are looking for a cheesy movie with unintentionallaughs, I recommend you look somewhere else. This movie isn’t so much"funny cheesy" as it is "boring cheesy". And "boring cheesy" isn’tentertaining.

I only recommend this movie if you are a total die-hard to the Jasonseries. But even then, you might not want to see it, because Jason onlymakes the briefest appearance at the end.

Ah, "Halloween" - a movie chock full of suspense, drama, honest-to-goodnessshocks and more intensity than any of its ripoffs.

Which brings us to "Friday the 13th".

Even though they say they were making a movie that had its own agenda andoriginality, let’s help them face the truth: it’s a cash-in that was laterturned into a cash cow for Paramount Pictures that lasted considerablylonger than anyone ever imagined (and far longer than many movie-loverswanted).

Do you even want to know about the plot? It’s the same as any other moviewith "Friday" and "13th" in the title. A group of kids go to camp, maniacslices, cuts and juliennes them until one fights back and blah, blah,blah….

And that’s about it. No imagination, no intelligence, no style. Just chop,chop, chop. Though this one is better than any of its far-lesser sequels,it’s still nothing when compared to the real classics of this type offilm.

You want a GOOD mad killer movie? There’s the aforementioned "Halloween"(the original ONLY, please) as well as "Psycho" (again, the original), bothof which have twelve truckloads more panache than "Friday" canmuster.

Just one more reason to consider that day unlucky.

Two stars. Kevin Bacon gets killed off early on - thus saving himself formore worthy projects (way to go, Kev), and Palmer demonstrates the only realacting in this one. Oh well, that’s life….or as close as "Friday the 13th" comes to it.

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