Reviews

Good T.V mini-series, but a confused story line that makes the early part of the movie, long convoluted and uninteresting. The characters are not fully developed and as such we dont really care about any of them, besides we already know what is going to happen. The battle sequences are O.K. but one does not get the feel of a large cast engaged in a large Cavalry battle. Most shots have only a few actors in them, and there are no large panoramic shots of a Cavalry Brigade in action. The previous week I had watched TARAS BULBA with Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis. The Cavalry sequences were broad, expansive shots which gave the feel of a Cavalry charge. Here probably due to budgetary concerns there is never a massive Cavalry charge or even feel of Cavalry combat. Perhaps if the film had adressed some of Custers early Civil War heroics this problem might have been cured. But it did not. Still the natural beauty of the Great Plains of the American West comes through. IT would be almost impossible to miss it in any film made there. Here we get the full affect. But the storyline, the plastic characters, the uninteresting battle sequences, and its pure length make this move a very difficult film to sit through at one sitting. AS such its a FIVE.

A Romeo and Juliet plot wherein Tony Curtis falls in love with a Polish princess on first sight. He later betrays father, brother, friends, and his homeland, because he had one date with the princess. Well, O.K. From the first moment that we see the princess we know exactly where we are going. Needless to say the most important thing in the fathers life is driving the Poles from 16th Century Ukraine. And here the son betrays all, and runs off with a polish princess. Yul Bryner is Taras Bulba , a pure warrior Cossack. He loves his Steppes, his sons, his friends, his horse, his sword, and his wife. In that order. Of course Yul overacts but given what he is supposed to be, well who can blame him. And after all who else could have played this part.But really,Tony Curtis as a 16th century Cossck. Well O.K.,but with the perfect hairdo, perfect teeth, and perfect blue eyes......it just doesnt seem as if Tony has spent much time mowing his front lawn, let alone invading, raping, and pillaging much of Eastern Europe. The battle scenes are wonderful, and we get the full effect of cavalry battles. They are really quite rousing. They however are the only things that save this film. As such I give this film a SEVEN.

Having recently seen Godzilla there is no doubt that Matthew Broderick should never again attempt an action film and should stick strictly with smaller works that center on characters. Here again he shows his subtle hand at understated comedy. He is just fine as the teacher who is drawn into a high school election, simply because he cannot stand to see the annoying, overacheiving,unopposed candidate for student body president win without a race. That candidate is played by Reese Witherspoon, who is totally believeable as the high school senior with one thing on her mind;WIN...WIN...WIN. THE injured bodies she leaves in her wake as she pushes through to her goal is what this movie is about. And in examing the price of success the movie examines much of what is wrong with a society that places its only value in success.Witherspoons impact on all those around her leaves them all damaged. If they challenger her they are beaten down, threatened, and forced to submit. After they are dispatched and she has moved on to the next contest, they are forgotten, irrelevant to the immediate goal. And they are left to repair whatever damage she has done. That is not to say the injured parties are not responsable. They are. Their own weakness causes their eventual downfall, not Witherspoon. But when a problem rises up to confront her it is the amoral singelness of her purpose that gets her through. The others fall because they have a morality.They have an occassional weakness of the flesh. She does not. This of course speaks volumes about our current politcal system. Dont we all feal that most of our leaders, those that have risen to the top are nothing but a bunch of amoral, issueless, pointless, driven, self-centered,attention seekers, whos opinions change with the latest public opinion poll, and who wouldnt take an unpopular moral stand on anything even if their lifes depended on it. This is Witherspoons character. Her whole being is one of connections, networking, and using people. If your own board great. Until you are no longer needed. If you oppose her she will try to crush you for no other reason than you stand in her way. A great social commentary on what I believe we all feal about our political leaders. There is not a real person in the bunch. Ironically her two opponents in the election eventually get exactly what they have always wanted. Thats because they were no real opposition to Witherspoon. They were just there as something of a joke. For Witherspoon its real, and she knows who the enemy is, and the enemy pays. And once the enemy is dispatched........well its on to the next contest. She never looks back. And cares nothing about the consequenses of her acts. Thats because there is no morality in her game. There is only one thing;WIN...WIN...WIN. Great charecters and a great script make this a good move.Not in the top 250 of all time...and I suspect as it ages it will disappear from the list. Still a good movie and worth an EIGHT......

A true classic. Recently I had the ocassion to see the entire movie for the third time. The first time I loved it. It told a story of how a young gangster, jailed, beaten, betrayed, and inevitably grown old, could simple accept the fate that befalls him and find an inner peace from it all. I quickly realized this film was not really about criminals in America at all. It was about love lost, friendships betrayed, the hard reality of business and the even harder reality of "making it" in America. The second time I saw the film my wife fell asleep. You see the movie is not about murder, or gangsterism, or explosions. She could not allow the movie to evolve. She(like too many moviegoers) needed instant gratification. She needed a certain number of murders, deaths, and explosions in the first half hour to keep her attention. Leone does not give us that here. He gives a storyline that jumps back and forth in time over a period of about 30 years. This style needs time to unfold. By the time I finished watching the film for the third time I realized just what a complex, rich film Leone had made. I saw things I had not noticed before, and was left with the same questions as before. Life does not resolve all issues. Leone does not resolve them here. The characters are still left confused, at a loss, and unfullfilled even after 30 years and a four hour movie. Such is life, and not just for gangsters. The character played by DeNiro is the one who at the end seemingly has obtained the most peace, although he is also the one who has suffered the most. He's betrayed, banished, and lost his life's love. He appears to be impoverished. But he enacts no revenge. He does not come home and mow down everyone who has betrayed him. In fact he seems to not even acknowledge that his old loves are still alive. Or does he? His demeanor at the end....is that one of indifference or is he just following the old wisdom......"Revenge is a dish best served cold". We never find out. Although revenge is unquestionable handed out. Right? Or was that just another disappearing act by the Woods character? We never find out. And what has Noodles been doing for thirty years? And what happened to the million dollars? And did Max trick Noodles into the first betrayal, or was that simple something Max could do on his own? And most important of all...did the McGovern character really love Max all these years, as he loved her, or did she just play him, and then betray him..... In the end it does not matter..... Not all lifes questions are answered. No one here rides off into the sunset. The characters, with all their shortcomings just accept the fates, and attempt to derive some peace out of it all. DeNiro, Woods, McGovern, all play their parts perfectly. They age appropriately. The only negative I could find about this movie is the final 10 minutes. What happened? Did they write themselves into corner and had no way out? And why have DeNiro back in the opium den...........30 years younger again? It lent nothing to the movie. All in all however a wonderfull movie, which I will see a fourth time. With a slightly less convoluted script, and a better ending, this movie would have been a nine. As it is its an EIGHT AND ONE HALF.

This short animated adaptation of a Dr. Seuss book is on the back end of a video which contains The Grinch who stole Christmas as the feature. It is actually a better story than the Grinch. In fact the storyline deals with such complex metaphysical questions that it is probably a little above the average child. As a childs movie it is about an elephant named Horton who hears a tiny voice one day. After searching for quite a while he determines the voice he heard actually came from the head of a tiny dandelion. Horton discovers the voice is that of a tiny scientist who lives in the village of Whoville. Whoville is located on that dandelion, and is perpetually surrounded by clouds,preventing any contact between Whoville and the outside world.

The scientist has long believed that there was live outside of Whoville. Another words they were not alone. This of course is hearesy to the residents of Whoville, and the scientist has been deemed a quack. But now he has his proof, his conversation with Horton. This will prove once and for all that there is life beyond tiny Whoville. Meanwhile Horton has also been deemed a quack. The residents of his world similarly cannot believe that a whole world could exist on the head of a dandelion. The dandelion, and its contents, face peril after peril. Ironically the citizens of Whoville are totally unaware of there immenent doom. After all they are the sole occupants of creation and in there little world everything is just fine. Horton must save them. Not only for the pure goodness of saving all creatures no matter how small, but because it will exonerate him on his world and the scientist in Whoville. The solution: the two worlds just have to speak with each other. Proof to each other that the other exists. Herin lies the beauty of this movie. It works on so many levals. Many more for adults than children. It deals with the intrinsic dangers behind a society thinking that there way of live, there religion, there race, there way of live is the chosen one. Ironically that society,the Whos were a tiny microscopic dot that would have been destroyed had they not been saved by an outsider. It deals with free speach issues in that both Horton and the scientist are attacked for there radical believes. It deals with the strong helping the weak in that the largest land animal, the elephant, struggles mightily to save Whoville, for no other reason than it is the right thing to do. And finally, subtily, it points us to the best solution to all of life's problems and conflicts. Talk to each other!!! Come to think of it maybe this is a children's movie afterall. And since it works so well in teaching us a lesson I give it an EIGHT.

So Im sitting where with my three year old and she is demanding that we rent a video for the night. "A new one." Well she already owns every Disney production ever. And she has most of the new releases. So Ill check IMDb. I know they will list a childrens movie she hasn't seen and I haven't thought of. And they do. The Grinch. And to top it off its a Christmas movie here in this holday season. And although I have seen the movie, and didn't particularly like it, well I must have missed something, because here it is the second best childrens movie of all time! Better than Snow White or Cindrella or Lion King or An American Tale! Its the fifth best movie of the sixties! Better than 2001, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy, West Side Story, Midnight Cowboy and Bonnie and Clyde! It's the 141 best movie of all time! Better than Raging Bull and Chinatown and American History X!

Well I must be the Grinch! Because I still do not see what the other voters saw. A cute movie. Yes. Would I recomend it for a child? Yes. Did I enjoy it? It was O. K. But an original classic? Not close. Going by the reaction my three year old had I doubt the movie will ever come into this house again. Not because of anything that would be considered inappropriate for a three year old, but because she just had no interest in it. She liked the book better. Why? Because thats an original classic. Here the songs are O.K. but does anyone rememeber what they are. compare that to the Disney classics. Those films contain classic music that lasts for generations. And as for the charecters. Well do you think the kids really care about the Who's? I didn't. And the Grinch? Well it's a Christmas movie. Does anyone really think that the Grinch is not going to have a change of heart? I dont' really think there is much question about it. Since there is no question, there is no drama. Whoville and the drawing are certainly originals. But not to this movie. That genius lies in Dr. Seuss. He is the one who created the Grinch, The Whos and Whoville. But not for this movie. For the book. Thats why this movie is an good animated telling of the childrens book. But a classic? The second best childrens movie of all time? The fifth best movie of the sixties, and the 141 best movie of all time? I dont think so. In fact the second animated short " Horton Hears a Who " on the same video is actually better. Like I said I may be the Grinch but this movie rates a seven.

When I first saw this movie it was in its initial release in 1976. It came on the heels of a true classic in horror; The Exorcist. It dealt with many of the same themes. The eternal combat between good and evil, the place the Catholic Church has in all of that, and the possability that the human beings are nothing more than just chess pieces in this eternal struggle. The Exorcist was a classic; but the Omen was truly a very scary movie. I saw the movie again recently, with my wife who had not previously seen it. I realized why the movie had scared me so many years ago. The same scenes that had such an effect on me scared my wife. The cemetery, the dogs, two strange priests and of course the rolling head. Some cutting edge horror for it's time. And of course the film deals with the eternal battle with the only son of a powerful American ambassador as the ultimate weapon of evil, now incarnate here amongst us. Gregory Peck and Lee Remick are well.....Gregory Peck and Lee Remick: strong, handsome, gracious, wealthy, perfect. Exactly what you would want a first family to be. How ironic just a few years before the release of this movie we had a first family that fit this image so perfectly. And they too left behind the perfect, handsome, well connected, gracious prince. Here of course it falls apart because by all accounts he truly was a good,gracious, righteous prince. But the irony cannot be missed given the release date of this film. I found however that the film now worked on me on a level that it had not back in 1976. As a parent of three the concept that I might be asked to kill one of my children is now a far more terrifing concept than the dogs in a cemetery. To convince me that one of those children was the antichrist would be inconcievable. That is why the final scene is now the scariest for me. Dragging the child through the holy confines of the church to impale him on the alter is beyond comprehension for any parent. And that is the main weakness in the film. We know early that the child is pure evil. If the script had kept us guessing, along with his parents it might have worked better.Not all of us might have been hoping Greory Peck saved the world. Some of us might have been saying" For God's sake your wrong. The boy is just a little strange. Leave him alone". Maybe it would have been better to be left with the question " Is the boy the antichrist and deserves to die, or are the parents just paranoid and committing murder?" It probably would have made for a better sequel. Even so a very scary movie that deserves an EIGHT.

Great special effects, with a great plot concept. Moss stands out as a potential major star. Opening scene proves she can be a robust, powerful, sexual, female screen presence. And as the plot works we get to see a softer more committed side to her character although it is difficult to concieve that such a hard-core warrior could so commit to the Reeves character so instantly.

The rest of the cast also works, but the transformation in Reeves character occurs way to fast. He adapts to his new found reality almost instantly. A reality that is almost too difficult to imagine, let alone adapt to in a short time.

This of course leads to the problems with the plot. Too many illogical inconsistent things occur. Had it been spaced over the period of time, and had Reeves been given time to evolve into his character it might have worked better.

However given the plot concept, the great special effects, and the prescence of Moss, it's an eight.