Reviews

I saw "De La Calle" (aka, "Streeters) at the Chicago International Film Festival, where it had been touted as a remarkable film with chilling insights into the lives of street kids in Mexico City. It was an engaging enough film, with fairly sympathetic characters and reasonable excitement, but the director's inexperience showed. His plot sometimes dragged, his character were not fully developed, and most of all, he his metaphors hit the viewer over the head. Also, he often moved his camera inexplicably -- it's as if he wanted to make bold statements, as a good director would, but didn't understand how to make those statements. All told, it's an adequate movie, worth a few bucks, but not what it might have been.

I had never seen a Buster Keaton movie before this one; now, I only wish I hadn't missed so much of the local Keaton film fest. This film was unlike anything I'd ever seen before -- a jaw-dropping of hilarity and acrobatic skill. You want to sit there, stunned at the stunts Buster pulls, but it's so hilarious, you absolutely can't stop laughing. It's simply a good movie for about 45 minutes; then, the last 15 are incomparable.

This movie is the epitome of brilliantly dramatic character study: It's so phenomenal, watching it is excruciating. Cassavetes takes us deep inside the lives of a bored, shallow upper-middle-class couple, and as his skilled actors improvise remarkably realistic scenes, down to the smallest mannerism of their characters, Cassavetes forces us to watch every knife-twisting second. It's difficult: Rather than watching an unpleasant situation, then getting pulled away by an editor's cut, we have to sit through all 20 or 25 minutes of a scene that makes us squirm, whether it's a middle-aged man making an ass of himself to impress a young prostitute or his wife feigning laughter to make a young man think she's having fun with him. While not the best movie I've ever seen, it's unique: A great work to whose style nothing else compares.

"Showgirls" is far and away the worst movie I've ever seen. Granted, I wasn't dumb enough to pay for a ticket to "Battlefield Earth," but I can't imagine anything being more mindless than "Showgirls."

It combined the worst acting, worst directing, and worst writing I've ever witnessed, all in one movie. One of my friends said it best: "This is the first time I've seen a t*tty movie where I didn't want to see any more t*ts."

Not even in community theater have I seen such a bad acting job as the one Keanu Reeves turns in here. This is it: the single worst performance humanity can offer. Poor general technique aside, he alternates between having a horrendous southern accent and having no accent at all. Perhaps the director instructed him midway through shooting not to use the accent anymore.

Whatever the answer, Keanu's performance -- as well as the movie -- is a joke.

"Showgirls" is the worst movie I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them. I couldn't believe that any film could so seamlessly combine bad acting, bad directing, bad writing, and bad production, but "Showgirls" did it. I think that one of my friends said it best: "This is the first time I've ever seen a t*tty movie where I didn't want to see any more t*ts."

If I could, I'd give it an 11.

Thank You, Rob Reiner

I'm not breaking any new ground by saying that this one doesn't compare with the others. Taken on its own, it's an entertaining movie that, while not that well done, kept me engrossed enough to sit through nearly three hours.

Still, neither the acting, the directing, nor the writing matches up with Godfather I or II. There's no need to go into detailed complaints, but all told, this movie is fun but nothing special.

There's no dead time, no filler, in this one. It's a classic -- the movie that convinced me to start watching other '50s films noirs.

From start to finish, you're on the edge of your seat -- and while certain characters are more sympathetic than others, there's no clear-cut hero or villain.

Whatever you do, make sure you watch until the end. The final shot (OK, maybe it's the second- or third-to-last shot) is one of the strongest you'll ever see.

How Woody Allen ever came up with all of the jokes in "Bananas," I'll never understand. The movie's first 20 minutes are so hilarious, it's painful. I can't remember the last time I watched it and didn't cry from laughing so hard. And Fielding Mellish? When have we seen a better title character?