Reviews

He didn't think too much of the Hollywood "Memphis Belle". The B-17 movies he regarded the best are:

Memphis Belle (1944) 12 O'Clock High The War Lover

It's pretty sad that living memories of B-17 crews are gone now.

Some comments I can make based on long conversations with my dad about his combat experience:

1. The strain on the crews was terrible. They knew the odds against living through their tour were heavily against them. The airmen dealt with their fear in different ways, and it broke some of them. My dad just expected to die. The actors in MotA looked like they were having fun.

2. The odds of surviving the first 5 missions were about the same as surviving the rest of the tour, i.e. The crews learned. The series presented it as simply randomness in a shooting gallery. I'd like to have seen some bits about how the crews handled it and learned.

3. The show didn't really show much of any airmanship. Nor any of the variety of techniques the Luftwaffe used to penetrate their defenses. Such as the Luftwaffe pilots would aim for the B-17 cockpit. Nor anything about the aircrews fighting to bring home their damaged airplane and wounded crew.

4. Nothing much was said about how the crew coped with 60 degrees below zero and the lack of oxygen.

Some things are just lost knowledge. My dad would bring along two flak jackets. He didn't wear them, he put them on the floor and squatted on them. This is because the flak was designed to explode below the aircraft and shred it from below. I expect other crews did that, too, they weren't stupid.

He summed it up saying he wouldn't trade that experience for anything, and would not do it again for anything.

But still, the detail of the aircraft and beautiful photography made this a worthwhile series. Well recommended.

What makes Enzo Ferrari an interesting person? His singular focus on designing and building race cars, selecting the best drivers, his ability to inspire his factory team to build fast and beautiful cars, and his ability to inspire his drivers to win.

So what do we get with the Ferrari movie? We get mostly a soap opera about his dead son, his illegitimate son, his philandering, his frustrated mistress, his betrayed wife, and his mother who wished her other son was the one that survived. We even get a sermon from a priest.

I.e. A soap opera.

Nothing about that is of any interest, as probably half of your acquaintances have a similar story to tell, and a very large number of movies address the same topic.

Who would go to a movie about Enzo Ferrari to learn about his soapy personal life? Not me.

I want to know about the cars, the drivers, the technology, and how Enzo managed all this to make the finest, most beautiful cars in the world.

The good parts of the movie are the racing scenes, and the oh-so-beautiful cars and the thrilling song of their engines. "Ferrari" would be a better movie if it left all the soap on the cutting room floor, but sadly a much shorter movie.

Yes, I know, the special effects are cheap. So what.

What is so enjoyable about it is how effective those effects are. For example, the weird trail to the sand pit. The odd look of the house. The interior of the police station which looks like it came from the Twilight Zone. And, of course, the dramatic music whenever anyone fell into the pit - turning a perfectly ordinary scene into something amazing.

It's incredible how a good soundtrack can add to a picture.

Then there's the terror of the little boy when the rug of his life is abruptly pulled out from under him, and at the end he is running, running, running, and cannot get away from the nightmare.

I took off a star because the running around in the tunnels got a bit repetitive, and the story dragged a bit there.

Other than that, an awesome movie.

Loved the ending!

Almost Live is a sketch comedy series based in Seattle during the 1990s - after Microsoft made it big and before Amazon emerged from a Bellevue garage. Seattle still had its laid-back northwest charm, its peculiar communities, its grunge rock, its norwegian influence, its beautiful scenery, and its lack of pretentiousness.

Almost Live mercilessly mocked itself, Microsoft, Boeing, Kent, state and local government, grunge music, office commuters, rich nerds, etc. TV series Cops, Miami Vice, Bob Ross, West Side Story, etc., all were redone with Seattle humor.

This era ended with the World Trade Organization riots, and was replaced with the Progressive era of homelessness, ranched RVs, crime, eviscerated police, rampant drug use, and tent communities. Almost Live ended with that. The cast has moved on and gotten old.

The old shows remain as a nostalgic window on what it used to be.

It's so sad they aren't re-run anymore, no DVDs were ever released for it, and there isn't a way to see it anymore.

I'm going to be contrary. The movie is about as preachy as you can get. The 12 jurors are all cartoonish stereotypes, locked into their predictable characters. The unlikeable characters, of course, all make vacuous, absurd arguments for there position, while yelling and gesticulating. The characters we're supposed to like all make calm, reasonable arguments.

The morality is laid out in stark black and white. No grey, no ambiguity, no difficult choices. Me, I like a movie with a dilemma, and some "lesser of two evils" choices. Each character should also be a mixture of good and bad and grey.

Don't you get tired of Hollywood clonking you over the head with a moral lesson? Especially when Hollywood isn't any better than the rest of us.

After finishing this film. Take, for example, the scene of the sergeant yelling gibberish. This goes on, and on, and on, and there's no discernible point to it. It's just irritating to see and hear. Then there's the scene of the 3 magicians dressed in red, wondering where the bus was. There's McCartney standing on a hill while "Fool on the Hill" plays. Lennon dresses like an egg. Harrison wears a hat that he uses to block his face from the camera. Ringo moves the needle up a star for a moment as he argues with his aunt.

One of the sequences plays out on what looks like an abandoned WW2 air base. I found myself looking at the dilapidated ops buildings instead of the action.

After the triumph of "A Hard Day's Night" this movie is agonizing to watch.

Yeah, we've all seen it many times before. Same old same old. Some points:

Although weeks go buy, none of our heroes ever thinks of arming themselves. Even a sharpened broomstick would make for an effective spear. They don't even think to pick up a tire iron, which makes for an effective weapon.

They never think of protecting themselves against bites with a heavy coat and gloves. Human teeth are a really lousy weapon.

It would be pretty easy to fortify a location against them. Jeez, they seem unable to even break through a glass window. Barbed wire would do nicely to entangle them making them easy to destroy.

They never think of using honeypots to attract them into a kill zone.

As for the zombies, they have the usual magical powers. The most obvious is the prodigious amounts of energy expended with no particular source of that energy. The human body isn't going to work without a working set of organs and blood, no matter how much the zombie plague tries to overcome that. The laws of physics still apply.

Watch only if you're bored.

This has been done to death. Made it about halfway through the first episode before I nearly expired from boredom. You've seen 10 zombie apocalypse, you've seen 'em all. It's always the same, the infection occurs and turns the poor sap into a homicidal maniac, who infects anyone hear him. Oh, and the zombies also let out the same hiss in every zombie movie.

Fast forward 20 years, and the survivors can't get along, and are all revolting and/or killing each other. Why they're all fighting each other doesn't make any sense.

And sorry, scriptwriters, car batteries won't last 20 years. Neither will gas.

You've already seen this movie.

... would have been a better plot for this movie. Instead we have the cast of Our Heroes, who spend the movie being Care Bears and running away from dinosaurs. Of course, we know that none of them will get eaten. That's reserved for the bad guys, like the Tim Cook lookalike running his evil empire. The dinosaurs are the most inept predators that ever evolved, as they signal they're stalking you by rumbling and gurgling. Then, before they bite, they always pause for a roar, allowing Our Heroes to escape. I kept falling asleep during this epic yawnfest.

In a desperate attempt to salvage this dino dump, they had to add in some giant grasshoppers. But, that failed to fix it.

The problem is, there's just nothing interesting happening. Wander around aimlessly, get stalked by dinos, run, dinos give chase, dinos corner them, dinos stop to roar, let heroes escape. Repeat again and again and again...

I didn't expect to like it, but it started off well and I was hooked. It features Sulu in an early role, and treats us with Miiko Taka from Sayonara. It's really too bad we don't see Taka in more movies. She lights up every scene she's in. We also see Patricia Owens from Sayonara.

Captain Pike, of course, plays the lead marine. Unfortunately, he looks a bit flabby and old to be a marine, and all the other marines are played by elderly actors.

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the movie. It was nice to see the Japanese characters speaking Japanese without subtitles.

Should have been filmed in color. C'mon, this was 1960. No excuse.

While the story is ok, something went terribly wrong with the cinematography. The color palette is orange and blue. Subtracting from this is the backgrounds, even indoors, are greyed out by fog. The contrast is poor throughout.

I tried adjusting the color on my TV, to no avail. There was no fixing it. I thought there was something wrong with the TV, but other shows look fine.

In short, the show is difficult to see. Eye candy it ain't. They clearly spent a lot of time on the art, costumes, sets, and cgi, but it's mostly for naught because the cinematographer made sure you can hardly see much of it.

How can one make a zillion dollar show, and nobody involved has the guts to say "blue and orange sucks. Where's the red and green?" It's as ugly as the long-forgotten 2 strip technicolor from the early 1930s. It's long-forgotten for a reason.

The absurdity of the film is the notion that 4 men can live contentedly in the same household while in love with Reese Witherspoon in that house. Never gonna happen. Oh, and the men are all great father figures for the two daughters. Witherspoon bestows the favor of a smile on whoever pleases her the most on the moment. The daughters speak adult lines, making one wonder how an adult got trapped in a kid's body. Candace Bergen is the perfect grandma.

If you can get past the absurdity, the cast is all Beautiful People, living in a Beautiful House, in Sunny California where it never rains. A movie to watch when your Netflix queue is without inspiration.

With 70s hairstyles, 70s tightly tailored pants, 70s California in the background. The plots are juvenile, and if the actors were 14 years old their behavior would be more credible.

5 stars for the Corsairs, though! It's wonderful seeing those glorious aircraft flying and at their best!

I saw this when it was released. The music was awesome, and I liked the movie so much I saw it a couple more times. (Except for the bean scene, which I hated.) Fast forward nearly 50 years, and I watched it again.

The music is still great, but the movie is laughable. It hits you over the head with its hamfisted message. Not a trace of subtlety anywhere. Clapton and Nicholson turn in stone-faced performances. Tina Turner is way, way over the top with the quivering. I can almost hear the director yelling "do it again, but with more quivering!" Ann-Margaret should get an Oscar for overacting and over-emoting. The worst part of the movie is her scene with the beans. It's degrading, and so awful she's lucky it didn't end her career. Roger Daltrey delivers a very engaging performance.

But the music is great.

I enjoy Mario Lanza's singing a lot, one of my favorite albums is his Christmas Carol one. So I check out his movies.

This one is a typical 1950s B movie, not terribly interesting. Lanza's singing, however, is great. But I couldn't take my eyes off of that dead squirrel stapled to the top of his head.

I'm a sucker for mushy romantic movies, and Sayonara is at the top of my list. I watch it again every few years, and still tear up.

Some reviewers like to judge from today's moral perspective, but that's a little unfair. Just take it for what it is, and enjoy it.

It's a fine story (better than the book), beautifully photographed with lovely sets. It makes you long to visit Japan. The two couples each have the perfect romance - of course it's unrealistic, but isn't perfection what you like to see in a romance?

Let's not overlook James Garner, playing the perfect sidekick any person wants to have.

Watch it with your favorite special person, and bring a box of kleenex.

P. S. The soundtrack album is hard to find, but is charming as well.

Imagine a movie where all the leads are ugly, overweight, and old, and the bit players (Bronson) are the handsome ones. No need to imagine anymore! I especially enjoyed Crawford, who could school Clint Eastwood in how to be a man.

Great fun.

I saw this when it debuted, it was the B movie part of a double feature at the theater. I remember this one, and totally forgot what the headliner movie was. The soundtrack was unusually good, the kids all acted naturally and convincingly.

Today I enjoy watching it again as a period piece, with the clothing and styles and music and the way kids talked when I was that age. Notice the little touch of the kids having an oversize comb in the back pocket. I remember that fashion, although it is completely forgotten today.

Other reviewers impute deep meaning into the story, but there's nothing deep about it. Just watch it and enjoy. As everyone else mentions, Matt Dillon steals the movie. I was never remotely that cool :-)