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Reviews
The Woman in White (1948)
Good, and very unlike the novel.
The Woman in White draws its inspiration from the Wilkie Collins novel of the same name (1860). The novel is one of the great classics of Victorian literature.
This movie is entertaining, and readers of Collins will recognize all of the characters. However, the ending is more than somewhat different from that of the novel.
Snake Eyes (1998)
Stylish and funny until the ending
This movie is highly entertaining. It is not particularly suspenseful, but it moves at a fast enough pace that this doesn't matter.
The deus ex machina ending to the main plotline is a little disappointing, but this is the sort of thing one expects from Hollywood these days.
As for the bit after the real ending, others have commented that the movie goes on about 10 minutes too long-- I disagree; I liked the segment at the end, but that may only be because I was born in Atlantic City and am familiar with the area.
I'm also not a big fan of Cage, but he does a good job in this particular part.
If you're expecting a mystery or a thriller, don't watch this film. Viewed as a comedy-drama, though, it works nicely.
Scott of the Antarctic (1948)
Fails as an epic due to wooden acting, but worth watching.
This film is epic in conception and features some excellent scenery. Antarctica is shown as fierce but beautiful. The score by Vaughan Williams imparts a tragic yet heroic feeling to the film; it was reused by Vaughan Williams in his "Sinfonia Antartica" later.
The trouble with "Scott of the Antartic" is, simply put, awful acting. All of the characters are wooden and emotionless. John Mills as Scott fails particularly painfully, expressing emotion only in one short scene in which he declares the obvious: namely, that he wants to be the first man to reach the South Pole.
It was perhaps intended to make Scott appear to be an obsessed man; however, this is overdone. On top of being wooden, his actions brand him as fundamentally unreliable, and he is not a sympathetic character.
The film also relies a great deal toward the end on narrated excerpts of Scott's diaries. These are powerful excerpts, but the effect of interposing a narrator at a moment of high drama is to trivialize the circumstances.
"Scott of the Antarctic" is not an entirely bad film, and the fine cinematography and music make it worth watching.