Reviews

I have to admit that I don't think that I belong to the target audience of this Popcorn Flick. Nevertheless at the end I thought this movie wasn't that bad and at least I was entertained. At the beginning and more or less the first half I was afraid to see just another Michael Bay Ripp Off with a lot of CGI explosions and Good Guy's (and Girls) versus Bad Guys (Girls)fights . It is but interestingly the movie was getting better and more suspenseful for me in the second half. For me the movie starts with the chase in beautiful Paris. That's what I would call thrilling entertainment. I also enjoyed all the fights between the good Ninja in a black suit and the bad Ninja in a white suit. The action scenes are more violent as in Transformers 2 and there are several murder scenes.

Another positive point was that some the characters were connected through their past which can be seen in their flashbacks. So if people are saying there was no characterization in this movie it's just not true. The other highlight was Sienna Miller as a Villainess called Baroness. She clearly had the best role in this movie. Her performance had style and was remarkable. Don't know why everybody is talking in summer 2009 about Megan Fox Sienna Miller is the Popcorn Movie Queen of the Year. I'm a fan of the X-Men series and somehow the second half reminded me on these great flicks. The humor with Marlon Wayans as Ripcord was well paced but I wished there would have been some more.

I never played with the GI Joe Toys from Hasbro and I'm not into the created stories round the Toys. So I cannot judge if this movie was close to the stories or not but I can say that this flick was fun. Whereas at the end of Transformers 2 I wasn't quite interested in a sequel I cannot say the same about G.I.Joe: Rise of the Cobra. Oh yes I want to know what will happen next.

I watched this movie several years ago in cinema and recently I catched it again on TV. It reminded me to be one of the biggest disappointments I've ever seen on Screen. One of the reasons is that I really expected something from the story but the movie couldn't deliver it. The movie is getting better if you don't expect any historical accuracy cause there is none. Great movies like Gladiator also don't have any but at least their sets and furnishing are looking marvelous. This time I never lost the feeling to see a B-Movie. So what they have done with the entire Budget? Even the battle at the end hasn't been photographed well. It's obviously only a punch of people fighting there and you don't get the feeling of a violent mass scene. Where are all the blood and death bodies? Arthur seems to be all the time on something like a heroic suicide mission. One of the most stupid scenes I've ever seen is the scene on the icy sea. The Saxons are portrayed as something like ancient Nazis. In fact they weren't. In reality the Romans and Briton's brought them into their country to protect them against the Pict's. The filmmakers didn't like the name Pict they changed a name of a whole population it into woad's. How arrogant is that? King Arthur is more enjoyable if you see it more like a Popcorn Fantasy Action Movie without any relations to the famous saga. One of the Highlight is the gorgeous Keira Knightley. Unfortunately it needs some time before we see her. I cannot say anything bad about the actors. It's not their fault that they have to say silly lines. I'm sorry even the second time King Arthur didn't convinced me. Some people told me the Directors Cut should be much better with better battle scenes and include a longer love scene.

Lionheart offers some decent fights between Jean-Claude Van Damme and different opponents on different Locations. These are obviously the Highlights of Lionheart aka AWOL. The different Titles of this movie are kind of stupid. What exactly they had against the good French sounding Name Lyon? Unfortunately the plot isn't that good or interesting either. It started well with some atmospheric and violent scenes on the streets of L.A. and at a French Legionnaire Camp in Africa. Normally you would expect some kind of vengeance flick but you don't get one. Leon (Jean-Claude Van Damme) comes to the USA and become a Fighter in some Full Contact Fights organized by a High Society Lady. Again they are missing here the opportunity to show such fights as critical or make a statement about rich arrogant bricks. There is some but too less. The story round the fights is getting uninteresting more and more because the audience want to see Jean-Claude in Action and not talking to little girls. I understand every Action Fan who is skipping the cliché and kitschy ending with an awful piece of overwhelming melody. It's obviously Director Sydney Sheldon wanted to show more and give some emotions to the main characters but this completely failed. The bad supporting actors aren't very helpful. Never got any Buddy feeling between Leon and Joshua and I missed the humor. To sum it up: Entertaining cause of well choreographed fights on nice looking locations but skip the rest. Don't watch any crappy cut version of this film.

Just watched On her Majesty Secret Service. A great Movie with a good plot, great music, marvelous winter sport action and a fine cast. Only George Lazenby disturbs. He cannot act and you see (hear) it in most of his scenes that he has troubles. OMG what a masterpiece this would have been with Sean Connery. Roger Moore could have started with DAF which is more Moore like as a Movie for Connery.

Back to the Movie. The Introduction of the new Bond after Sean is with a nice Fight at the sea and with a great One Liner at the End: "This never happened to the other fella". The Skiing Chases are still terrific to watch. IMO only the scenes at the opening sequence of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME are coming close. I read some chapters of Ian Flemings Novel and the James Bond of the Book is more passive as the 007 of the Movie. In the Book James Bond doesn't know who Draco is in the Movie he knows everything (OK at least one thing not!) about him. It's fun to see the differences/similarities between the novel and the film.

I liked the cast with Telly Savalas as Blofeld, Diana Rigg as Tracy and Gabriele Ferzetti as Draco. Don't understand any complaints about them. Of course Donald Pleasance was remarkable as Blofeld but I always liked Savalas Blofeld more than the Blofeld in DAF. Poor 007 he has a lot to do with all these gorgeous women in the clinic in the Swiss Alps.

OHMSS has everything what I would call A JAMES BOND 007 Movie!

Before I start I have to state that I like and enjoy the work and art of John Ford. But for some reasons I disliked his last western. In the following I'll explain what my reasons to like it are and what didn't fit to me. I have to excuse the spoilers in the following lines so if you haven't seen the movie so far please don't read any further.

The main positive aspect was of course the photography and the pictures of the beautiful landscapes. That's what we all want to see in a John Ford Movie. The Monument Valley, the frontier, the prairie looks as colorful as in all of his movies. It's obvious that Mr. John Ford wanted to do one last great Western. Donovan's Reef was more a Holiday, The Man who shot Liberty Valance and Two rode together are looking like B-Pictures. He chooses the story of the tragic Cheyenne trail in 1878. He wanted to do an epic a monumental movie and showing the Indians the other way around. IMO this idea was really good and it would have been a strong sign at the end of a great career. Broken Arrow was one the first movies in Hollywood in which Indians are not shown as faceless enemies but humans anymore. The Actors did all a good job. Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Ricardo Montalban, Sal Mineo, Carroll Baker, Dolores del Rio, Gilbert Roland and Edward G. Robinson. These people are a great cast and they all are doing nice performances of their roles. You cannot make them responsible for the lines they have to say in this movie. It's sad but it was common in these days that in main roles the cast weren't from native tribes. In those days Europeans made also western with people from France, Yugoslavia or other countries playing Indians. The Indians in Cheyenne Autumn looks more realistic than in other western. You cannot really complain about that but in a way John Ford missed a chance to break this rule. Unfortunately it weren't Cheyenne to play Cheyenne. I think an average Cinema Goer wouldn't recognize it. I found an interesting aspect in this movie. The role of Karl Malden was to play an Officer who came from Prussia (Germany!). I don't know if John Ford wanted to point out a connection between the terrible Concentration Camps during World War 2 and the camp where the Cheyenne were imprisoned. If this John Ford wanted to say then it would have been a strong Point of View against mass murderer. One of the Cavalry Soldier is from Poland and he pointed he feels like a Cossack who is massacring the polish. Poland was one of the countries which suffered most of the German occupation in World War 2. Also I enjoyed that he was criticizing the press with all the horror stories about the Cheyenne.

Unfortunately there are some aspects I just disliked. The main reason is the part in the middle. This idea reminds me on a later Monthy Python Comedy where somebody said "Welcome to the middle of the film". Suddenly Jimmy Stewart and Arthur Kennedy are appearing as goofy Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. They are funny and I had to laugh through their scene but it doesn't fit in any way to the rest of the tragic story. If John Ford wanted to make a parody on western why he didn't direct (or produced) any? No wonder that in some releases the Wyatt Earp Scenery is edited. Later there is a background footage scene with Edward G. Robinson, Richard Widmark and one the Cheyenne Chiefs. This footage scene is so terrible it's unbelievable that somebody like John Ford would put something like this in his movie. I had the feeling to see a drama on a stage and not a movie anymore. See the soldiers in the fur caps? Interestingly you don't see any of these people before or later. It would be OK for a B-Picture but not for an Epic like that. John Ford had also troubles with the language of the Cheyenne. It would have been so easy. With the so called Palefaces they speak this strange broken English with the Cheyenne their speak Cheyenne. I just don't understand why he didn't choose that way (or the way in Broken Arrow). Sometimes the Cheyenne speak together in English and then suddenly in the camp nobody (only the mysterious Spanish Lady) can speak English. In a way some scenes with Montalban, Mineo and Roland were unintentional laughable. This just didn't work. I also disliked the ending. First the fight between Montalban and Mineo isn't any dramatic or caught the attention of the audience. Then like a fairy tale "And they lived happily until the end of their days". These words aren't said but more or the less the pictures of the village at the end states this. Everybody who knows a bit about native history in the U.S. knows that this is such a lie. It's so surreal like a dream of a Cheyenne but I don't have the feeling that John Ford wanted to include such a fantasy sequence in his movie.

If somebody would ask me is Cheyenne Autumn a good example for the work of John Ford I would say No. Watch My Darling Clementine, The Searchers, Stagecoach, Grapes of Wrath or any other movie instead. It is worth to watch? Yes because of some aspects of the story, the main idea, and the actors. Other reasons to watch it are of course the beautiful photography and pictures John Ford made of the West. The goofy (but funny) scene in the middle destroys the tragic aspect of the movie.Then you see some examples for bad directing and it looked like if a bad pupil of John Ford made some scenes. Cheyenne Autumn is better than the average but not as good looking and courageous as it should be.