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sbertolino
Reviews
Xiao ba wang (1973)
Absolutley Ridiculous
If you like to laugh at poor dubbing, having one person do five different voices in a movie, hear riduculous lines ("That fellow's Kung Fu is pretty good!"), and like old Kung Fu movies then this movie is for you. For someone that tries to take movies seriously, this will be the absoulute worst movie they have ever seen. If you enjoy laughing at horribly done movies with atrocious acting, see this. I have watched a million Kung Fu movies and this one has got to be the worst (and therefore the funniest). It is so damn funny how bad it is. It is truly one movie you must see to see how bad it is. I like dumb humour and find stuff like this funny but many people do not. Even the Kung Fu is not very good. But it's just so damn funny to watch these guys talk and act so poorly. Even the music is preposterous. I like how the camera zooms in really fast to a person's face when they have an over-acted expression on their face. The sound effect are over the top exagerated. The dubbing is so bad and to hear a voice-over person try to change their voice to do more than one character is hilarious. This is the classic Kung Fu movie that you will instantly recognize as the template for all those comedians that make fun of Kung Fu movies. See this for a good laugh. It's just so damn dumb that it's funny. My five year old son and I watched it last night.
The Pledge (2001)
Boring- Don't Waste Your Time
If you like to watch Jack Nicholson driving around in a truck not saying anything, watch this movie. This movie is boring. Nothing happens for most of the movie. This movie could have been shrunk down to a half-hour TV show with nothing missed - except for scenes where Jack Nicholson is driving around in his truck by himself not saying anything. To me the attempt to build drama is successful only in making one wonder - when is SOMETHING going to happen. I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my life watching this movie. This movie is similar to the equally uninteresting AFFLICTION starring Nick Nolte. If you liked that movie you'll like THE PLEDGE. Bottom Line - Don't Bother.
What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983)
An Excellent Title to a Seldom Seen Movie
This interesting short movie (24 minutes) won a Peabody Award for excellence. In today's cynical, apathetic society where people are not really interested in the sacrifices that were necessary to conquer evil, it's not surprising that this movie is not shown more.
As far as the movie goes, any plot is clearly secondary to the point of the movie which is to educate youngsters about the Allied invasion of France and to a lesser extent the World War I events at Ypres and Flanders. The film is most successful in this respect with, (as usual) Linus as the champion. The images shown during his descriptions of the D-Day invasion are powerful and interestingly very atypical of the usual Peanuts animation style. Actual combat photography is used, although it is transformed into two-tone color images. The use of the red imagery is powerful in the battle scenes (it seems odd discussing battle scenes in a review of a Charlie Brown movie).The film does a solid job of educating and instilling awe, sorrow and compassion for the men who fought the battles discussed.
Seriousness aside, the other parts of the film are typical Peanuts fare: Charlie Brown gets hurt a lot, Snoopy is in charge and gets into trouble, Linus is the scholar, etc. These parts made my 4-year old son laugh. But more important, it made him start asking questions about what the gang was doing, who the bad guys were and if any good guys got killed. These questions mark the beginning of an understanding of magnitude of the effects of World War II and the lives forever altered and ended by that conflict. In this respect, the movie is a resounding success and deserves the ten stars I gave it.