Reviews

I do not know if this documentary is available on video, or even DVD - not to mention outside Germany. But for those of us who are entirely thrilled by the Comedian Harmonists ("the German Revellers", as they were originally billed in the 1920s), the film is an indispensable experience.

When it was made in 1976, four of the original members of the group were still alive to tell their story: bass Robert Biberti, spending a well-off pensioner's life in Berlin; pianist Erwin Bootz, making his living as a musician for TV productions etc.; baritone Roman Cycowski, then a cantor at a San Francisco synagogue and the last member of the group to die (in the late 1990s); and tenor Ari Leschnikoff, living in poverty in a run-down tenement in his native Sofia, Bulgaria. They, as well as close relatives and friends of the groups other two members, founder Harry Frommermann and Erich A. Collin, give a first-hand account of the origin, the rise and the demise of the group, including the bickering, rivalries and jealousies - and the nasty post-war litigation - among them.

Viewers may find that though the restrictions put on the group by the Nazis (Frommermann, Collin and Cycowski were Jewish - though Collin only by Nazi definition) were certainly the main cause for their breakup, their clash of complex personalities (especially between genius arranger Frommermann and Biberti, who comes across as rather egocentric) might ultimately have led to the same result.

What's left of them is some of the finest popular music ever produced, music which can still cheer you up or make you sad today just like it could 70 years ago. Through this documentary, we learn more about the personalities behind the music than we may ever know about most of today's pop stars. Even if the Harmonists' music is not to your liking, the history lesson that is taught by their biographies is worth watching.

I had seen Patton on German TV before, of course dubbed in German, and I thought it was good, but nothing extraordinary. Now I finally had the chance to watch in on DVD in the original version, and it's quite another story.

A lot of my feelings about this film have been expressed in other comments before, but one thing must be said again and again: Scott's performance is probably the best kind of acting to be seen in any movie. Granted, the role offers endless opportunities to express the diverse (and sometimes twisted) character traits of the protagonist, and there may be other actors who would have been up to the job as well. They just didn't have a chance to do it, and Scott succeeds 100 %. The famous opening scene (though as such fictitious, with its speech spliced together from several of Patton's quotes) sends shivers down my spine whenever I watch and re-watch it.

Jerry Goldsmith's excellent (though somewhat repetitive) score does its own in transmitting the atmosphere of those days, and the movie would not be the same without it.

Two opinions from others I take issue with: I cannot join the praise for Karl Malden in this case. His Omar Bradley comes across one-dimensional, unemotional, and uninteresting, though this cannot come as a real surprise against the overwhelming, highly structured figure of Patton and may not be Malden's fault. The other thing is some people's idea that the movie was too long by one hour or so. For me, this film could have lasted for several days without ever getting boring.

A clear 10 out of 10, if there ever was one.

I just watched G3 for the first time ever after re-living parts I and II on DVD recently, and while I agree with most comments about (a) that it was worse than the others, (b) that Sofia problem (although she wasn't the moral equivalent of Jar Jar Binks as some people seem to think), (c) that Connie metamorphosis and (d) that Tom Hagen absence, I still think it was a decent movie. Pacino's performance was absolutely awesome, and it is hard to believe why someone as talentless as Kevin Costner was nominated for Best Actor that year, and Pacino wasn't. Andy Garcia was surprisingly good, and Diane Keaton unsurprisingly.

Unlike some others, I also like the idea of using the Vatican banking scandal as a story line, along with the rapid death of Pope John Paul I. The movie may have come too late for people to remember the events, but they are still definitely mysterious enough to form the stuff of hundreds of films. If anything, public knowledge about what happened barely scratched the surface, and why shouldn't an American Mafia family have been involved in the financial dealings? What spoiled it for me slightly is that I constantly kept asking myself why the movie is expressly set in 1979 - the actual events including the deaths of the popes were in 1978. If you interweave fictional and real events, there shouldn't be such an anachronism.

Still, in my opinion somewhere around 7.5/10.

OK, OK, it's good enough to satisfy the Cult factor. But where Tomorrow Never Dies does not claim to be more than an action movie (and, in my opinion, succeeds quite effectively), this one pretends it has a story (oh well...) and characters (does anybody believe Elektra's motives? Or the M-in-a-cage scene?). Christmas Jones? Oh well, I can accept her as a tongue-in-cheek caricature of Bond Girls that were, and acting was not why Denise Richards was hired. John Cleese was a disappointment for me. It's not his fault, but I do not think Q's successor (if any) should be portrayed as a bumbling idiot. Valentin Zukovsky was more believable in GoldenEye (still one of my favorite Bond movies, anyway). As others pointed out rightly, the action is simply misplaced in some cases, so the whole thing comes out too incoherent to make me really like it. Better than the worst Roger Moore entries, but worse than most other 007 films.