Change Your Image
ashleetl
Reviews
The 300 Spartans (1962)
An A Grade B movie
I love this movie. I saw it back in the 1960's on TV as a kid. After seeing this movie my brothers and I took our snow discs and turned them into Spartan shields by making an upside down V (the Greek letter - lamda - which stands for King Lykurgos the Lawgiver and founder of Spartan society) on them with masking tape.
The last time I saw it was about 12 years ago. It came on TV again for the first time that I'd seen it in 20 years. It's a real mix of history - for those of us that love history and a mushy love story for the rest.
I had a big fight with my housemate's girl friend who hated history movies. 'He' was away and 'she' wasn't going to let me watch this movie - despite the fact that there was nothing she really wanted to watch on TV that afternoon - but it was her boyfriend's TV after all! She wouldn't even let me tape it on her boyfriend's VCR while she watched a different channel!!
But I finally talked her into watching the first 15 minutes and she was hooked - she loved it. (thank the Greek gods for tacked on mushy Hollywood love stories - they really do work wonders on airheads).
Much of the story comes from the Greek writer Herodotus's book 'The Histories' (said to be the first history book). Some of the lines in the movie come out of this book like; `today we fight in the shade'. etc.
One line sounds like it was ad-libbed by the actor, it's a classic. It's said by one of King Xerxes's commanders after he gets his Persian butt kicked by the Spartans, it goes something like. `These Spartans, they're unstoppable, they fight light machines.'
I wonder what type of machines they had back in 450 BC? (not that it matters, I'm sure my old housemate's ex-girlfriend wouldn't let me use it anyway). Overlooking that one faux pas "300 Spartans" is a great movie
1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Like watching a classic oil painting for two hours
This is a really good looking movie, but a really poorly made movie. Director Ridley Scott is more of a visual director then a story person. He's very hit a miss. When he hits - he hits well, but when he misses you get 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
This movie is dripping money all the ships and costumes etc, however there is little attention paid to the acting and story. Christopher Columbus the Italian sailor that worked for the Spanish is played by a Frenchman the doesn't really speak English. However in this movie for some reason Columbus's brothers speak perfect English with an upper class accents (they must have had different nannies)
Before leaving on his first voyage Columbus has a scene on a Spanish turkey farm. Ridley Scott being English may not know that turkeys are native to North America (or was it a symbolic statement about the true merit of the movie). This scene is like having Captain Cook visiting a kangaroo petting zoo before going to Australia for the first time.
Columbus is considered to be one of histories best salesmen, for talking Queen Isabel into selling her jewels to finance his voyage. Gerard Depardieu's language skills (in real life Columbus would have been spoke Spanish, Portuguese, Latin & Italian) are so bad that at the beginning of the movie he has a hard time explaining to his own son that an orange is round.(I understand the dubbed versions are much better - all you have to do is learn another language).
Sigourney Weaver played Queen Isabel and, in my opinion, is the only person worth watching in the movie. She turns in a confident performance and does a good job of being a queen. Weaver's Isabel is kind yet dignified with an air of aloof European nobility, which is ironic as she one of the few American's in the picture.
There were some excellent opportunities for great drama and political debate - such as a point about the upper class's right not to take part in manual labor. A subject that cost one character his life, yet the impact and the meaning of this scene is completely lost because of bad casting, poor performances and poor direction of Ridley Scott. Oh yah but there are some really cool shots of boats and the music's good, etc
The main draw back of this movie is the political correctness. Christopher Columbus is portrayed sympathetically, to make the movie commercial, yet boring so as to punish him for the exploitation of the New World. Yet even making Columbus a little more cruel or self-serving would have made the movie more interesting.
Why did they put so much boring stuff in, and why did the spend so much time showing the boring bits in slow motion. There are so many interesting things they left out of this movie. Such as Columbus's crew were on the verge of mutiny when they finally discovered land. The crewmen - would-be mutineers - even had agreements as to how Columbus's belongings -including his blue silk cloak -were going to be divided up between themselves after the mutiny. This was left out - the bell hanging scene was left in?
Riding the Rails (1997)
A very touching documentary
Riding the Rails is the story of the children the either ran away or were forced to leave home during the depression. In most movies the hobos riding the rails are shown as grown men and as bums. This movie debunks that myth and shows that most of the rail riders were teenage runaways.
The story is told very effectively in a series of interviews with the survivors from this era and shows footage from old movies and newsreel. Most of survivors are now in their late 70's or 80's but were as young as 13 when they first ran away. These are very personal stories about children who had no hope of a better life and how they hopped boxcars hoping to find something better.
I've seen this documentary a number of times now and it never fails to move me. I remember the first time it came on TV it was late at night, I had to work the next day but I couldn't stop watching it. The whole next week I couldn't get these people out of my mind. It all happened over 60 years ago when the world was a very different place and yet their stories are still very moving today. This documentary really captures the desperateness of the depression and shows the sincerity of the people that grew up in that time.
The film does have a happy ending but it may not be everyone's cup of tea. This is not a movie five star yuppies will enjoy, however if you have ever been a backpacker, a hitchhiker or a traveller you may find this is a documentary you can relate to.