Reviews

Milos Forman directs this 1970s classic movie with Jack Nicholson & Louis Fletcher about ugly experiences in a mental institution. Nicholson plays a war veteran who plays crazy to get out of jail for having sex with a very underage girl & sent to this mental hospital run by cold, one may call them 'heartless' depends how some will view it & tyrannical staff members. Louis Fletcher, known for her roles in early tv Westerns like Maverick, Bat Masterson & other tv shows] plays a tough US Army nurse, Nurse Ratchet, who don't tolerate patients going against her. There is coldness, strict rules, patients are not allow to do everything they want & are controlled constantly. Many fans of this picture tend to view Nicholson's role as some 'hero' & Nurse Ratcher as some 'bad girl' or villain. Scenes I hated was practicing lobotomy to unruly patients which I know today is totally banned. And while I criticize Nurse Radner's response to what happened to one of her patients [won't say what he did to prevent a spoiler] & also criticizing Nicholson's attitude after ward, today in many of these institutions there are channels to send complains of staff wrong doings. And while so many viewers expressed hatred toward the nurse, I seem to understand her. Nursing is tough & people should know they don't have it easy.

PS: A friend of mine has a daughter working as a nurse in a mental institution & prefer the night's shifts. Because most patients are sleeping. Daylight hours they are moving around.

Three old engineers facing a lonely Christmas do a trick of sending wallets each with $10.00 dollars to the snow & see who will pick it up. One engineer is a cheerful sixty something man, the second an old British Army engineer who longs for his son who died battling Germans in WW1 & the third, a more cynical guy, who thinks nothing will come out, his old girlfriend picked up the wallet & gave it as a tip to his Black chauffer. The result is they meet a young cowboy from Texas, & a young lady teacher. The couple gets in love but then the old three guys are killed in a plane crash, & come back as ghosts. And tried to protect the couple from an evil girlfriend of the most cynical of the three gentlemen trying to subvert the cowboy who later became a popular singer. Hard to say if is a religious or philosophical movie but the moral lessons are there to watch. While is implicit showing 'after life spirits' one can see anybody, even unbelievers, can watch this classic. Hard to see why it has been forgotten, & knowing the 1930s to early 1950s was the 'Golden Age' in Hollywood's movies that gave us such classics like 'Gone with the Wing', 'Wizard of Oz', 'Citizen Kane', 'Casablanca', 'Is a Wonderful Life' & 'Third Man', is harder to explain why it has been forgotten. Highly recommended!

Actor Adam West & Burt Ward plays comic book superheroes Batman & Robin for three seasons. And actress Yvonne Craig joined them in the third season as Batgirl. Assorted great actors like Burges Meredith, who can't forget him as a wimpy bookworm in one episode of 'The Twilight Zone'?, Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Julie Newmar, Victor Buono, Vincent Price & others play assorted villains like the Penguin, the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman & King Tut. Why I say idiotic & silly? It was just made for laugh & nothing is not serious despite Adam West & Yvonne Craig showing a straight face in the ridiculous situations in every episodes. Some good, like the one Barbara Rush, who we remember in the classic science fiction 'When Worlds Collide', plays a feminist activist who made Commissioner Gordon fired to take over the city. Or Roddy McDowal playing the Bookworm & uses literary comments to announce his crimes. Yet despite sillyness & ridicule, there are good scriptwriting with assorted subjects. One can see this tv show a satire parody of USA society. Many will hate it, but others who see the humor will love it.

A Spanish version of Charlie Chan 'Charlie Chan Carries on' survives. Made for the Latin American & Spain's audiences while the English version seem lost but who knows if it can be found. A group of American tourists travelling around the world & one of them is murdered & the suspect is among those tourists. Arbo, from Spain, is no Werner Oland but plays the hero detective quite convincing. Is good to mention the actress who plays the gangster's wife, one of the suspects, was from Puerto Rico & gives a sweet performance. But wonder who played Chan's wife, Japanese but for me an unknown actress.

...is so depressing one doesn't know if is a tragedy or a comedy. Anthony Quinn plays a no good husband & father, Shirley Booth plays a suffering wife who 'thinks' everything is 'all right'. And Quinn gets involved with a young hussy of a woman &...you guys watch it. Nice to see a young Shirley Maclaine before the 1960s classics 'The Apartment', 'The Geisha' & 'Sweet Charity'. Anthony Quinn was a great actor but I prefer him in historical films like 'Barabass' & 'Zorba the Greek', or war movies like 'Guns of Navarone'. I think he had more trouble with his wife & kids than the Nazi Germans. OK.

What was Carl Rainer thinking when he wrote the script? A suburban couple, played by Doris Day & James Garner, ends up with problems when she finds work promoting soaps products in tv, & her husband doctor doesn't like the idea. And NO company will build a free swimming pool in her home without her permission. And the idea of a middle age woman, past her menopause, getting pregnant is absurd. Doris Day has done better pictures like 'Touch of Mink', & William Garner has done better Westerns, his specialty. Nice appearance of Zazoo Pitts in one of her last roles before going to her eternal reward. I love her. Watch her playing Army nurses in the 1940-1950s classics 'Caught in the Draft' of 1941 with Bob Hope & Dorothy Lamour, & 'Francis Join the WACS' of 1955.

A mixture of the story 'Dr Jekyil & Mr Hyde' by British writer Robert Louis Stevenson, & the classic novel by German writer Thomas Mann, but leaving the intellectual stuff out, 'Dr Faustus', a frustrated music teacher sells his soul to the devil to be 'the greatest pianist of the world'. He gets it but the price he pays is turning into a hideous 'Mr Hyde' Samuel Magno, the name of the music teacher & composer, murdering women pianists. And, the disgusting scenes of the mummified body of a woman pianist he kept hidden plus the murder of a 11 years old girl. Maybe Baledon's daughter playing a role, can leave a few of us disgusted. But not entirely bad. But not an outstanding movie. At least Stevenson & Thomas Mann didn't lower themselves in such morbid scenes.

And coming from a guy 'protecting' young teenage girls from sex predators got me thinking: isn't this the same guy, Charles Bronson, playing an abusive cop [ok, the criminals were low lifes], who also played a sick sex writer who seduced & abused a British teenage girl in the 1960s classic 'Lola'? Amazing!

Bad acting, ridiculous story telling, bad dialogue & unexpected changes of scenes! Is King Arthur that idiot & he can't see Lancelot getting too chummy with Guinevere? The characters couldn't see how rotten was Moldred? Stay away. Better watch Godzilla smashing Tokyo once more.

PS: There is NOTHING to be changed. A bad movie for eternity.

I think the characters 'never' grow old. At least Mr Potter, already old in 1919 when he went to the Bailey & Loan to inquire about his investments, would had been almost a hundred when the movie was ending by 1945. Also I think losing $8,000 bucks by Uncle Billy was an unforgiving mistake. A real case our hero, George Bailey, would had demanded action like firing him from the job permanently even if he was saved by his neighbors with donations. Mr Potter was right calling him an idiot & a loser at the beginning. About the existence of God & angels, I leave the public to decide. Very religious people will see a 'miracle" & more skeptical ones will see the story as some allegory, or that George Bailey was sleeping on the bridge dreaming.