Reviews

Five stars, all of them for William Holden and the only decent performance in the whole film. It felt like he belonged in a different movie... Like somebody took the serious parts of the Great Escape, and then took the Three Stooges go to Sobibor...and shuffled the pages together.

Slapstick, slapstick, slapstick and then more slapstick. Every second scene is these two idiot goofs impeding the storyline with badly written, badly delivered 'humor.' The acting in this movie is brutal almost across-the-board, even for the era. I've tried to be forgiving given the period during which this was made...but this movie simply does not hold up well.

Jakob the Liar got roasted for its 'excessive' humor but at least most of that humor was semi-realistic and flowed from the characters or situation. Jakob the Liar was not a great movie but Stalag 17 takes the sins of that film and puts them into overdrive.

The humor works in Life is Beautiful because it flows from the situation and has a purpose in the main character's goals during the story. Here it is just forced in between scenes that advance the story. And the characters on both sides are mostly idiots.

When this film was among the Top 250 of all time based on IMDb ratings, my expectations were high. However, now I have to wonder if most of IMDb is high on crack...

Among the pre-1960 classics, this is one of the films that decays the most over time...

Animal and his buddy are like the prototype for Jar Jar Binks or those Ebonics-bots from Transformers 2. Meesa didn't like the goof-off POWs in this film.

This film is sort of worth it if you can suffer through the crap and just focus on Holden's performance and storyline. Maybe somebody should do one of those fan-edits that takes out all the slapstick-scenes. The movie would flow better and be better...

...like the rest of IMDb with this average rating.

How? Everyone is railing about how it is Carpenter's commentary on consumerism and capitalism, etc, etc...

Please.

The imagery and symbolism of his "commentary" are literally as blunt and insulting as the "imagery" in Boxing Helena.

Add to this that the movie must be pulled along by a professional wrestler...and that the script is written with dialogue about as natural as...Boxing Helena...and I feel charitable giving this one a 4.

It is not boring. It just isn't too bright and it is pretty cheap looking the whole way through. I guess it is successful in its campiness.

I don't really recommend against watching it. Go ahead, it's kind of fun. But don't go in expecting anything deep or even anything particularly competent like the COUPLE of good movies Carpenter has done.

...but at least it was better than Dune.

So in that one regard, and that one regard alone, the daughter of David Lynch has surpassed her father's work.

The worst performance of Bill Paxton's career.

Nobody in this film elicits any sympathy or even interest...other than a glancing "that guy is okay" for Art Garfunkel.

I guess Kurtwood Smith did okay as well, given the absurdity of his lines and the situation his character was placed in - and the ridiculous reaction that was written for him.

This thing really is a turd. Not even interesting for the sex or the horror aspect.

Me neither, and that's why I didn't care much for this film. It followed a number of aristocrats around a relatively uneventful run-up to World War 2. In such a politically charged and tense time, you'd think even aristocrats would find a way to be interesting.

The acting wasn't bad...put pretty much everyone under 40 was boring and/or unlikable... So I found myself just waiting for the next all-too-brief appearance of Bill Nighy or Julie Christie - who added small but needed infusions of character and/or warmth to the dullness of this film.

It was literally 50 minutes before the plot moved away from dinner table and living room upper class blathering and tea-talk to any notable landmark event in the storyline.

By then I was clinging to consciousness...

I had high hopes for this when I saw the cast, but it didn't really come close. It got slightly interesting with about 20 minutes left. 20 minutes out of 120 doesn't really cut it...

But I really don't know how the rating for this one has topped 6...

Two stars for Nighy, one for Christie and one for being fairly well shot...

This movie doesn't really make a lot of sense...

But Jeff Bridges and Sally Field still give it their all and act pretty well with a silly story.

It's also fun to see a bunch of people (Robert Englund, Arnold, Ed Begley etc) who went on to decent and/or great things.

Plus Sally Field looks pretty hot in the film...

All in all, it is weird but it manages to stay together until the end.

Most of its value is as a super-early Schwarzenegger film and a bit of a glimpse into 70s bodybuilding culture.

And yeah, Sally Field doesn't wear much...

I made a point of checking this one out primarily because the average rating was so high when I was going through Oliver Reed's work...

I think it's currently at 6.9 or something... Unreal.

This thing is a mess from start to finish. The only person who does even passable acting is Reed, and it's hardly his finest work. He successfully comes across as crazy, which is kind of required because the script is so jumpy, illogical and disjointed.

The script seems like two unrelated short stories stapled together and the whole opening third of the movie just seems like a vehicle to get that lousy "Black Leather" song in there.

Did the producer's nephew record it and they wanted it to be a hit single or something? The gang of hoods wasn't the least bit scary. I don't imagine they would have been intimidating even in the early 60s. They would have probably got beaten up at Woodstock.

I understand that some people might want to recognize this movie as some sort of prototype for government conspiracy films... But really it is kind of like studying extensively all the old rationales for why the world must be flat. Filmmaking and writing have moved way beyond The Damned. It is of marginal value even as a historical footnote.

I only suffered through to the end because the rating was so high and several reviewers on here had suggested I would be left thinking and pondering after the movie's conclusion.

I am pondering...but I am only pondering why I bothered.

One star for Oliver Reed, one star for decent cinematography, one star because the final 30 minutes is better than the first 60. But why did we have to sit through all that crap to get there? Imagine if they had condensed the Wizard of Oz to 30 minutes and then added 60 minutes at the start of Dorothy and Toto getting harassed in Kansas by a barber shop quartet for no reason.

Alternatively, I could give this movie 10 stars and just deduct one for every decade of age difference between the male and female leads. Also gives us 3/10.

Oh, whatever. One more star out of charity. If you watch it, just start at the 45 minute mark. You'll get more out of what the movie wanted to and should have been.

I want to give this a 3.5 but it isn't an option.

Jackie Earle Haley is a good actor, so when I heard he was Freddy for the remake, I figured this could be a good reimagining of the franchise.

While there were LOTS of problems with this movie - nowhere near as good as the Halloween remake when the original Halloween wasn't as good as the original Nightmare - I found that one of the main problems arose with Jackie Earle's choices (or direction) when it came to playing Freddy.

Haley's Freddy comes across as a guy TRYING TO BE SCARY. In the first couple Nightmare movies, Robert Englund's Freddy just plain WAS scary.

And a guy TRYING to be scary is like a guy TRYING to be funny. It just doesn't work.

Haley just recycles his voice from Rorschach and while the make-up looks like legitimate burn scars...it just isn't scary to look at. Maybe Englund's prominent nose made his appearance scarier. I don't know... But this Freddy just came across as one of those bullies that would whimper away if actually punched.

The plot is full of holes and illogical. Everyone's actions are poorly motivated if motivated at all.

If there was a plot twist or suspense, I suppose it was meant to revolve around the issue of whether Freddy actually was a child molester during his earthbound day. Hmmmmm, what do you think? Will you be on the edge of your seat waiting for the big reveal here?

Just rewatch the original from 1980 or so. It is superior on pretty much every level...

This is probably Sylvester Stallone's best performance that wasn't in Copland or a Rocky / Rambo film.

While the muscle dudes of the 80s did a lot of character-free action, this one is an action film with some character and drama.

I was surprised that the average rating was only 5.8. I would rank it among the best action films of Stallone's resume and also among the best action films of the 80s.

The supporting performances are quite good all around. Donald Sutherland is solid as always, and you get easily the best performance of Sonny Landham's career and Tom Sizemore showing why he became a bigger star about 5 years down the road.

This is the only big movie where Larry Romano got more than a few lines and he does a good job as "First Base." I was a little surprised he didn't go much further and generally only appeared in the future when the casting director needed someone to "look and sound Italian." I recommend this one even if you aren't a big Stallone fan. If any lesser known film will change your mind about him, it's probably either Copland or this one.

This putrid offering doesn't deserve a review of any substantial length.

Usually I would say a sequel to any memorable film is worth a viewing just to see where it went or even how bad it was...

Not in this case. This one is the absolute bottom of the barrel and goes below "so bad it's good" into "so bad I wish I was dead." The glowing reviews floating around must seriously be some kind of campaign by people who profit somehow from DVD sales and rentals.

Other than maybe Highlander 2, I have never seen another sequel that so completely lost every single aspect of what was good about the original. The gore in this is laughable. The jokes are not. The murderous family isn't the least bit scary PLUS they now have Gallagher's sense of humor. The acting is rancid from start to finish.

Screw this crap. I'm out.