http://www.imdb.com/list/97zqTCX-Ddg/ Other 'brave' souls using IMDb, FaceBook, Twitter and so forth feel the same way that I do. I'm glad. No doubt, lots of intellectuals will wholeheartedly continue poring over these titles and find all kinds of meaning. I found most of them pretentious nonsense, even though I'm not at all blind to the obvious qualities of American Beauty, Holy Grail, City of God etc. Although I've watched a great many turkeys, I agree with Godard when he says that it's rather difficult to find a 100% abominable movie, i.e. without one or two scenes or some detail of interest. Anyway, this isn't about choosing the worst movies of all times, which would be impossible and impracticable (listing movies that NOBODY wasted time in seeing? or those which we se 'by mistake'? nonsense) Bottom line is: I chose them from among the most praised, the most famous, the most awarded, and the works of great directors, or mere fakes. Including, of course, a few turkeys that are memorable for the wrong reasons. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:59:10 GMT Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:38:33 GMT Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:59:43 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104121/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104121/ I did fail to see the forest from the trees. Mind you, Orson is perhaps my all-time favorite moviemaker. Most scenes and shots in this incomplete film go nowhere. This is far from the most cinematic or watchable version of Cervantes yet put to film. I don't doubt it would have been better if Welles had been able to finish editing it himself, though. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:04:14 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049602/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049602/ As far as Marcel Carné is concerned, &quot;Le Pays D'ou Je Viens&quot; should be reserved for Gilbert Bécaud's fans , and for them only. As Bécaud is a singer , Carné is compelled to bestow on the audience a song every fifteen minutes. As I'm not a particular fan of Becaud's (I only like his 'L'important c'est la rose'), the only palatable song is the title track. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:05:34 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017744/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017744/ A man in blackface lands in a spaceship and meets a girl who lives in some sort of shack with a monkey. He hooks her up with a telephone, and she teaches him how to Charleston. Then they fly off in the spaceship, leaving the monkey behind. Cringe-inducing blackface aside, this short film makes no sense at all. One can hardly believe that Jean Renoir directed it, years before &quot;Grand illusion,&quot; &quot;La chienne,&quot; &quot;La règle du jeu&quot; and so on and so forth. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:07:29 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043548/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043548/ Had Stanley Kubrick never gone on to become a genius, an early film like this would never have been sold on a DVD. It's a cheap short made by an eager, unknown director--hardly a work of art. It shows none of the director's expert touches--it's just a standard short film which I had the chance to watch thanks to a USIS-released newsreel in the 1950s. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:08:58 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021040/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021040/ 23 year old Barbara Stanwyck became a leading film star in 1930 with the release of this movie, after having starred in two flops in 1929. It's a very slender story of a good time girl who falls in love with a millionaire's son who basically is just interested in her as a model for a painting he wants to do. I didn't see it as an early talkie, I actually screened it in 1979, in my TV talk show entitled &quot;Cadernos de cinema.&quot; Absolutely dull and innocuous. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:11:51 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058888/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058888/ Kurosawa was a great artist and Toshiro Mifune a geat performer, but, either together or seperatly, anything they did was superior to this extremely long, and gelid Akahige. After half an hour of the tale of the socially-engaged doctor, I was thoroughly missing the comic strips of Rex Morgan, MD. It's 3-hour long, folks! Stick to House, MD or any other medical series. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:15:49 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058124/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058124/ Unbelievably directed by the same creator of scintillating comedies such as Smiles of a summer night, A lesson in love etc. The photography is really fantastic, though, thanks to Sven Nykvist. <br/>But it is hard to imagine why the Swedish film industry decided to fund such a humorless mess. Both Bergman and actor-collaborator-screenplayer Erland Josephson were definitely not in their best moments. Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:19:39 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004102/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004102/ In 1914 - long before founding United Artists, conceiving and producing masterpieces - Chaplin made over 30 shorts for Keystone, then became famous. This is his last - and maybe worst - Keystone endeavor. As a caveman, he fights tribe-leader Mack Swain in order to conquer the prettiest of Swain's 1000 women! Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:23:21 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059245/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059245/ since 1905, since Zecca & Nongent's Passion du Christ, movie artistry had not been thus ill-crucified. And it was precisely George Stevens, one of the best story tellers, who got the dubious honor of perpetrating such counterfeit feat, filled with stars in roles that make no sense. Not enough? The movie pathetically ignores the Gospels. For instance, Apostle John was the brother of Apostle James, not of Matthews, as the film shows. In this instance Hollywood really missed its homework. So, the best Lives of Christ are still in my opinion DeMille's King of Kings, Pasolini's Gospel and Duvivier's Golgotha. Mel Gibson's version was at least daigned, though graphically & mistakenly exacerbated. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 07:14:18 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079758/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079758/ Native Americans of Maine experience a high mortality rate. Animals are incredibly larger than they should be. A paper mill and these inhabitants have crossed swords to rid the area of the paper mill's influence and bring the land back to its original peoples. But fighting ensues, and the EPA gets involved by sending a doctor to help examine the problems of the area. What does he find? Some contaminants have caused the wildlife to mutate and create animal mutations that have become bloodthirsty, destructive, killing machines - in particular some huge bear-monster thing which we really never get a real close look at long enough to see just how bad the special effects really are. John Frankenheimer usually is able to capture a pervasive mood and create suspense, but not in Prophecy. Mutants are ridiculous, particularly the babies. Nor are they credible. Prophecy also suffers from bad miscasting, not to say bad acting. Prophecy is one of those horror films that wants you to believe that the message it has underscores all the lame special effects and other flaws. Sure, it has a message, but that does not excuse it (as BaronBl00d puts it) from being very bad. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 07:27:31 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084173/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084173/ This film was the last one of director Don Siegel, who started out back in the Studio System days. This was his only venture into black comedy, attempting to be a parody of Dirty Harry, but he just didn't have the touch required. Boring and out of key. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:15:08 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022913/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022913/ Paul Andrews was one of the few reviewers who dared denounce 'the King's clothes', as I see it: <br/>&quot;Freaks is set in a travelling circus which has a sideshow attraction of freaks consisting of joined Siamese twins, legless men, pinheads, bearded ladies & midgets including Hans (Harry Earles) who is in love with trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) but since she is 'normal' there is little hope of the relationship Hans wants ever coming to fruition. Cleopatra becomes involved with circus strong man Hercules (Henry Victor), when they learn that Hans has inherited a fortune Cleopatra & Hercules devise a plan where she will marry Hans & slowly poison him to death whereby they will be left with his money. Sounds simple, right? Well, the other freaks discover their plans & take a horrific revenge...<br/><br/>Produced & directed by one of the pioneers of horror Tod Browning this film has a pretty big reputation which when watched today it probably doesn't live up to. The script by Al Boasberg, Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon & Edgar Allen Woolf all of whom were uncredited was based on the short story 'Spurs' by Tod Robbins & one has to say what ended up on screen isn't what the makers intended, after a disastrous test screening MGM cut the film from 90 minutes to a mere 64 including totally altering the ending & you can't tell me cutting 25 minutes out didn't affect it. Anyway, what's done is done & what we are left with is a reasonable crime thriller, I'd struggle to call it an out-and-out horror except from the final few minutes & is basically a simple plot about killing someone off for a large inheritance & that's all there is to the film really. The big talking point is obviously the use of real freaks although I personally wasn't bothered by the notion, sure they look weird but that's not their fault is it? At a meagre 64 minutes in length I actually still found it a little slow & dull, not that much happens to be honest. The film preaches that the freaks featured are good people who just want to live normal lives but then turns this moral message on it's head & contradict itself by have them turn incredibly evil & vindictive at the end. Speaking of the ending it is also different depending on the version you watch, I saw the print TCM (Turner Classic Movies cable TV channel) play which has a happy ending tacked onto the end so that in itself may change the entire feel of the film compared to the version you might see which doesn't have that ending.<br/><br/>Director Browning does OK but Freaks sure does look dated, there's no music & the sound is very tinny & sometimes hard to make out what character's are saying particularly the high pitched Hans. There's nothing scary until the end & even then were talking a few minutes. The freaks themselves aren't disturbing at all, there's one guy without arms or legs though who has the amazing party trick ability to light a cigarette on his own & he resembles a fat Caterpillar with a human head! During the opening credits there's a long piece of text which makes several points some of which I don't necessarily agree with. Apparently Premier magazine voted Freaks as one of 'The 25 Most Dangerous Movies' whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.<br/><br/>According to the IMDb Freaks had an 'estimated' budget of $310,607 which seems a very specific number to just be an 'estimate'. The film is as well made as one can expect from a film of such vintage, it's OK but nothing special. The acting isn't great either, once again it's OK but most of the cast are very stiff. The two midgets Hans & Frieda were actually brother & sister in real life.<br/><br/>Freaks is regarded as an absolute classic by some, fine I have no problem with that because quite frankly I'm not the one who has to see it again. Didn't do much for me at all I'm afraid.&quot; Thank you, Paul Andrews. King Browning is now conspicuosly naked. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:38:05 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014109/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014109/ The bottom line is that this long-winded film is not very well made even according to 1924 standards, nor does it deserve attention unless you are definitely a big fan of silent cinema. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 09:43:45 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062352/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062352/ Moviewise, &quot;Terra em Transe&quot; was already dated in 1967, with an abstruse, delirious and preposterous screenplay. Not surprisingly, however, it is quite update in 2011 ,regarding current and chronic lack of ethics and amoral behavior of Latin American politicians. <br/>Glauber Rocha was as interesting personality, not a mook at all (meaning neither reactionary nor on KGB payroll) but I'm afraid he was not the genius his family and a number of self-called enthusiasts like to think he was. Yes, he was grandiose and iconoclastic, but could he ever properly express his inner self? This movie does touch themes like revolution, mass manipulation and coups d'état, but its political engagement was merely a fashion issue. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:07:15 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064256/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064256/ Back in 1969 I already thought this sequel to 'Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol' was extremely confusing and quite silly. To be sure, I did walk out of it when it showed at the late Bruni Copacabana theater in Rio. OK, I know: the 'acme' of 'cult' film backers and middle-of-the-road connoisseurs can tolerate almost anything. All I can say is: suit yourselves and très bon appétit! Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:16:55 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082912/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082912/ The plot and the intended social controversy quite speak for themselves.This depiction of childhood homeless and exploitation was accurate at the time, but the film was certainly exploitatious. <br/>I was as dissatisfied with it as I usually am with anything inspired on what may be called the &quot;Carandiru Aesthetics.&quot; <br/>The very lowest elements of society, degraded and humiliating human beings, that's what inspired Babenco here. Protagonists do not set any purpose or motivation in life (and FYI in real life, years later, the boy did die tragically, just like this picture sort of foresaw). Good acting by Marilia Pera and a passable neo-neo-realist technique do not save an otherwise mundane, exploitative if not sexploitative subject. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:50:03 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080855/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080855/ I fully agreed with JohnIL's review: &quot; Its basic story is good (based on fact), but it's a loooong haul in steerage. We've heard the stories regarding this movie...the bloated budget, (incidentally the 5 min scene on the yacht at the end supposedly cost 1 million to shoot???) the expensive set that was torn down because of an imperfection, it's infamous New York opening. But as far as the film itself... It's hard to imagine that a 3hr 40min movie could not generate any memorable characters, but that's what they've done here. There is no one to relate to, everybody seems to have had a lobotomy and is just mouthing their dialogue as if they could care less, which is odd because this film has great actors in it! The story takes forever to unfold. By the time it really gets going it seems too late. Literally nothing happens in the first 90 minutes! the film feels longer than it actually is and I've heard that originally it was meant to be released at over 5 hours. Another major problem... and I think Roger Ebert said it the best. &quot;This film is so foggy, so smoky, so unfocused and so brownish yellow, that you feel like you want to wipe windex on the screen.&quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 10:57:51 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061465/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061465/ Jason Olshefsky from NY said it all:<br/>&quot;You know when you let your mind drift--especially when under the influence of drugs or alcohol--and you think up some idea that sounds like it would be great? A typical non-genius would consider an idea like that later and think, &quot;well, this sounded like a good idea then but it's just stupid now?&quot; Thankfully, Warhol said to himself, &quot;no, I'm a genius and therefore that was a good idea.&quot; And what was this brilliant idea? Film a bunch of drug users and couples in various rooms of a hotel then project two films at a time side-by-side, shifting the audio to switch focus. You also get:<br/>- randomly twitchy camera work<br/>- quasi-purposeful film speed changes<br/>- having the camera's point-of-interest fail to follow the viewer's desires<br/>- racking the zoom<br/>- sluggish response to bad focus after changing camera positions<br/>- over- and under-exposure&quot;<br/>Doesn't all this sound amazing, fresh, cool, cute and from a genius at work? Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:05:32 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060107/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060107/ The only Tarkovskys I endorse are Solyaris and Stalker. His other ventures are but pseudo-moral tales of supposed spiritual depth. Furthermore, fans of this movie overlook the disgusting fact that Tarkovsky committed horrible, ghastly crimes in order to attain his &quot;righteous vision&quot;. He lit a cow on fire. He threw a horse down a flight of stairs. He had that horse speared to death. These were not special effects. These were genuine acts of depravity. Is it possible to applaud such moviemaker for his moralism? If you are a true Byzantine Art lover, save yourself the ordeal and skip this flick. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 11:16:03 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077138/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077138/ &quot;This movie has little to no plot, minimal character development (i.e. I didn't feel for any of the characters) and the title had nothing to do with the first 150 minutes! I'm an Italian Christian whose grandparents' stories about the old country are far better told than this movie. I know that in 1900 Italy there wasn't much to do but this movie doesn't capture enough to make it interesting. Overall too mundane.&quot; (author: celtic33 from lowell, ma) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:48:05 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113277/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113277/ &quot;A lot of people have made a lot of fuss over Heat. After seeing it for myself I really can't understand why. Aside from the presence of the two leads Heat is essentially a cops ‘n' robbers saga given a little extra dimension and a lot of extra gloss. I can't fault Michael Mann's style. His stark vision of Los Angeles is excellent. The opening shot with the elevated train coasting past the camera with the haunting synth score is truly memorable. However, when the first shot of a film is the best part, you're in trouble. Mann as writer fairs much worse. His script (actually based on his 1989 TV movie LA Takedown) is a mess; padded his unnecessary subplots and characters; it substitutes intrigue for confused plotting. The near 3-hour running time is sheer self-indulgence, when the concept behind this film is complete mouse of idea: that cops and robbers are very much alike. In reality this so-called character development that Mann has put at the front of his film is just a story of male bonding between two highly unlikeable and unsympathetic characters. Pacino as the cop and De Nero as the robber are both well-worn clichés that are slightly deeper than normal. Pacino as an angst ridden cop, on his third marriage and De Nero as the calculating psycho criminal who plans his life so that he can drop everything and leave at 30 seconds notice when the heat is on. Both these characters are as unlikeable as the other is and this blunts much of the tension. A brilliantly staged gun battle on the streets of LA is wasted because we don't care which character comes off the better. The two leads don't do anything for their roles either. Neither gives performances that equal their best and the film's main purpose is simply to bring them on screen together. They appear twice together. Once in a coffee shop to discuss their morals and at the film's ending, which more than resembles that of Bullit. Clearly Mann has attempted to say that police and criminal are indivisible, and this is probably why we don't sympathise with either of them. This is such an unoriginal concept that has been explored as far back as the 70s with The French Connection and Serpico. it's also is the reason why the film is overrated. Why should we spend 3 hours with two people we don't like? &quot;<br/>(author: Edward Turner from England) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 19:53:00 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070464/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070464/ &quot;So, we have another &quot;intelligent&quot; movie; so &quot;intelligent&quot; in fact, that itis smarter than its viewers. That's what makes me confused. I know for a fact that I'm intelligent, and yet I consider this movie to be little more than 2 hours of my life I'll never get back. I formed this theory a long time ago, that books and movies too weird to be understood are in many cases almost automatically deemed too great, too smart or too deep. After all, they have to be, because otherwise regular people would understand them, right? Critics spend ages on these movies trying to pick apart every insignificant little detail and blow them up to be something transcendental or at least deeply thought through. I highly suspect that this movie is one of those.&quot;<br/>(Author: Nyx_Selene from Sweden)<br/>My personal addendum is a quote from French writer Jules Renard: &quot;la clarté est la politesse de l'homme de lettres&quot; - which suits filmmakers as well. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:02:31 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074291/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074291/ &quot;While I will admit that I have really enjoyed some of Fellini's films, I can also honestly say that I can't stand some of them. I feel that the most overrated and annoying directors can be both Godard and Fellini. They both have delighted in the bizarre and often unwatchable and yet have received gobs of accolades from reviewers and the &quot;intelligensia&quot;, while the average person would never sit through some of their films. So, it's not surprising that their films are so often praised--it's like a cult! I am NOT saying a film can't be weird, but it must be watchable!<br/>Somehow, Fellini has managed to make a story about a sexually compulsive man completely boring and unsexy. This is no small task--it took a lot of work to make this so unwatchable. Instead of cheap sexual thrills, the sex acts are choreographed in a silly and annoying way while the character of Casanova is buried under so much makeup and prosthetics that Donald Sutherland looks like a ghoul. I know some of this must have been Fellini's intention, but many viewers will be left completely bored by this sterile performance.When the movie is not wrapped up in these boring sexual escapades, there really isn't anything else to watch. Don't say I didn't warn you!&quot;<br/>(by planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:08:35 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072417/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072417/ I frankly do not understand why Cassavetes is so revered. This is just a terrible film. i found it to be ridiculously fake, superficial and unbelievable. it feels like play acting with little or no consistency. I found myself constantly asking &quot;why am i to care about this? what is supposed to make me care about or connect with this person?&quot; &quot;it feels real?&quot; - it feels like I'm in the room with a bunch of amateurish actors working from a very bad script (if any) who have no common idea of any particular thread that is supposed to hold this together.<br/>I think that Cassavetes has been imitated many times in independent cinema to the point that his films look like a total joke where no one involved with the film was actually putting forth any effort. What is with all the unnecessary laughing at things that are not funny? Over-intensifying things that are not intense and then asking the viewer to perceive that as &quot;unbelievably real and believable&quot;? He is not a good director. He obviously improvises - badly - and he is inconsistent to te point of not making a good believable movie. Sorry i just don't' get this.&quot;<br/>(comment by byronnotbrian from NY, which I entirely subscribe to) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:15:51 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/ Viewed in retrospect, Coppola's ambitious, sprawling, statement on the Vietnam war has the appearance of a crack-smoker's nightmare. It certainly doesn't live up to the hype of yesteryear. The intro is surely one of the most boring in movie history, depicting what appears to be a dream sequence in the hero's head as the credits come and go. The core of the movie takes us through a fairly typical series of set-piece 'Nam clichés. Contempt for authority, loss of mission belief, disobedience, paranoia, psychosis, military blundering, slaughter of the innocents, disconnected officers; all the recurrent themes of the genre are addressed with a suitably heavy hand. If US forces really are so dysfunctional; it's hardly surprising that they lost. For much of the time Martin Sheen's voice narrates his thoughts about the mission, its renegade target, and the world about him. That also is the stuff of cliché.<br/>None of the characters excite our particular sympathy. They are all largely 2-dimensional; their inclusion simply fits a predetermined scenario. And when they die, we don't really care. Eventually, after yet more set-piece - and frankly ridiculous phantasmagoria - we are face to face with Colonel Kurtz: Willard's nemesis. This character is 'played' by Marlon Brando, who was already a fast-fading legend. We only ever see him in half-light because he was, by now, and quite rightly, so self-conscious about his appearance that it was a condition of his involvement in the movie. He babbles slowly and incoherently as lunatics are apt to do. The encounter is such a darkly plodding and tedious experience that it's almost a book-end to the beginning. Eventually, the deed is done and it's time to go.<br/>The script is likewise below par. That so-oft-repeated 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning' is memorable for no other reason than being the only line worth quoting.<br/>If you're high on something at time of viewing then you may connect with the imagery and 'message', but by any sober evaluation, it's meandering, over-blown and pompous. Not recommended. (signed 'screenman,' from United Kingdom) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:20:56 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091670/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091670/ When people talk about pretentious and boring films that sophisticated people fawn over, this is the best example I can think of! This horrible film IS pretentious, boring and just about as much fun as eating broken glass. No,...wait,...I think I'd rather eat broken glass than watch this film again. if films must be depressing and bizarre there should be some reason for subjecting the viewer to this. The movie delights in long and emotionally disconnected camera work. Some may see this as artistic, but I just see it as dull and lifeless. Then, when it is combined with interminably long and self-exploratory monologues, it is a recipe for total boredom. The characters rarely interact--they talk at each other or just talk into space. And the surrealistic elements of the film may seem sophisticated to some, but to me they are a giant headache. For a similar effect, read several books by Albert Camus, a couple of existential philosophers and then rap yourself in the head with a mallet.<br/>(kudos to 'planktonrules' of Bradenton, Florida) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:32:59 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/ I could not agree more with 'hanfuzzy' from Barrie, Ontario, Canada:<br/>&quot;This movie goes on far too long without getting to a point (if it ever does, besides war is bad for everyone), and I've seen way too much of that anguished kid staring shocked and dismayed at the camera (about half the movie). There isn't much war going on, just tragedy, atrocity, or pointless wandering around the edge of war. Lack of dialogue and explanation means that much of the time you don't know who people are or where they're going or what they hope to accomplish when they get there.&quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:37:43 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084917/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084917/ As 'dwr246' from United States put it so well:<br/>&quot;The story centers around Garp (Robin Williams), &quot;the bastard son of Jenny Fields (Glenn Close),&quot; as he is referred to so often throughout the film that the viewer is as annoyed by the phrase as he is. Jenny, a sex-hating and man-hating woman, conceives Garp when she is an army nurse caring for a patient with a head wound who sports an enormous erection, of which Jenny takes advantage. &quot;Garp&quot; is apparently the only sound the poor man can make, and so she decides to name the baby that. In the opening scene of the film, Jenny tells her parents this in excruciating detail. Despite the fact that child is a boy, she does lavish a great deal of love on him, and he grows up to be a writer. His life path deals with love, infidelity, the loss of a child in perhaps the most bizarre accidents in film history - one that causes the castration of another character, and his own frustrations in being overshadowed by his mother, who becomes famous when she writes a book about her experiences. Jenny becomes the center of a movement of women who seem to have a capacity for hatred that exceeds even hers. Ultimately, this leads to her assassination, and a funeral from which her son is barred merely because he is male (never mind that he's actually family and grieving his own loss). An old childhood enemy recognizes him at the service, and blows him in. The same enemy shows up at the end of the movie and shoots him - pointless violence to end a pointless movie. I found the movie to be a disappointing waste of time. &quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:45:02 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038160/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038160/ To me it seems that 'TY' made his point quite well when he wrote that &quot;individual moments stand out, but the movie is a fragmented, episodic muddle. John Ford underplays everything to the point of exasperation - which is almost unbelievable, coming from one of the cinema's gratest masters. John Wayne, who managed not to serve in WW2, plays his character as an irritable jerk, probably in the hope he would look strong/patriotic and avoid charges of cowardice, or being a chicken-hawk. And as usual, Ford's ham-handed use of a few motifs parlays American standards (Anchors Aweigh, Over There, Red River Valley(!) into annoyance via clumsy, thoughtless repetition. 'They Were Expendable' is a seriously uptight movie. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:54:12 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402399/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0402399/ &quot;The New World, scripted and directed by Terrence Malick, basically stretches what would be about 40mins worth of screen time into 2.5 hrs. The plot revolves about John Smith and his love for a Native American girl (basically Pocahontas) This could be a premise for a promising historical epic were it not for some severe problems: the plot is incredibly thin for too long a movie, you get long, long scenes of them falling in love. But the film's biggest flaw is the editing. Four editors were unable to weave a cohesive, organized plot line. The film jumps from one scene to another, villages are burned without due explanation, ships come and go and the reasons as to what happens and why are never explored in detail. On top of that the editing style takes some getting used to to put it mildly. Some whimsical cuts would normally be regarded flat out as editing mistakes in the professional world. Unnecessary jump cuts, black &quot;drop outs&quot; etc are some of the tidbits that are not exactly conducive to the film's clarity. Even James Horner's score was lackluster, with a few self rip offs from Braveheart.&quot;<br/>(comment by hsvfxeditorial) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 20:59:17 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/ So did Theo Robertson from Isle Of Bute, Scotland describe it :<br/>&quot;the movie has no real narrative shape. characters and incidents happen as if they seemed good ideas at the relevant time, so by the end we have a chaotic embarrasing mess as troops, fire engines , policemen and SWAT teams chase after John Belushi and Dan Ayckroyd. In many ways THE BLUES BROTHERS is very similar to the Bond spoof CASINO ROYALE, with sometimes memorable musical interludes (eg Ray Charles) amidst self indulgent and oh so painfully self indulgent comedy set pieces. &quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:07:40 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084390/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084390/ &quot;This is an odd movie in which scenes of natural predation are pretentiously interspersed between innocuous, routine events, serving as thematic signposts that attempt to define and legitimize the director's morbid fascination with senseless brutality. <br/>The disheveled, unkempt, often filthy characters never gain our sympathy. Even those who come closest ultimately become immersed in the brutality of the story. The kindly grandmother casually tricks her youngest son's pregnant paramour into spending the night with a thieving family whom she knows are about to be executed by the murderous villagers. Her strong-willed son, the only person who briefly displays any palpable sentiment, participates in the execution with little concern even for the grandchild that will never be born. The victims aren't merely killed but captured in nets, thrown in a hole, and buried alive, a brutal twist to the supposed necessity of the horrible collective deed. Later, the healthy grandmother bashes her front teeth out so she'll look the part when it's her time to &quot;go to the mountain.&quot; <br/>All through the movie, this &quot;final journey&quot; is alluded to as if going off to die on a mountainside up in the clouds, a place of ethereal beauty, is somehow a sacrifice fraught with spiritual significance. Unfortunately, the place where the old people are carried is nothing more than a grotesque, stinking bone yard full of broken skeletons and decomposing bodies, serviced by a flock of fat, greedy crows that pick at the dead and impatiently await their next meal. After hauling his mom up the mountain on a pack-board, the strong son simply leaves her there because she insists once again that is how it must be. Before leaving, he sees his selfish neighbor dropping off his troublesome, disabled father, kicking the terrified old man over a cliff while yelling, &quot;Dad, go to the mountain!&quot; The poor, senile old man, trussed up in a net, goes tumbling down the rocks like a cartwheel, bashing his brains out on the way down. <br/>This depressing story is supposed to uplift us? This is &quot;beautiful? It's a real comment on the emptiness of our times that so many here would even begin to believe that. I'm skeptical of the notion that this film was based on fact. It comes off like an exercise in racist propaganda. I may be wrong but I think it doubtful that even primitive and isolated Japanese peasants were that uncaring and brutal.&quot;<br/>('writerasfilmcritic' from western US said it all, as I see it) Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:16:15 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093191/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093191/ (author: Glenn Walsh from Belfast)<br/>&quot;That's really what this film seems to be: one long exercise in camera and lighting technique. There is no plot as such, the acting doesn't exactly stretch any of the players and the script is juvenile and gets tiresome after about ten minutes. At best the film was making obvious points about life and at worst it was deliberately obscure and inaccessible. I get the impression that this piece has a touch of 'the emperor's new clothes' about it; that to say you think it's rubbish labels you as a philistine, but the truth is that it isn't very good and a classic example of style over content. This sort of exposition on life works well in print, but just isn't suited to cinema, so I've been generous and given the film three stars for the cinematography, but that really is about it. Others have said it before and they are right, this is the sort of film that gives art-house cinema a bad name. Better to watch 'Lola Rennt,' an accessible piece of German art cinema that manages to say something tangible and have a lot of fun at the same time.&quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:34:46 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/ 'Terminal Madness' of &lt;http://www.cinema-crazed.com&gt; wrote: &quot;Why are men the heroes and women the prostitutes, murderers, and hookers? They asked, well, this is just as guilty of such treason with such neo-feminist malarkey posing as a thriller. Here, the men are depicted as low-lives, perverts, rapists, abusers, boozers, murderers, robbers, and wussies while the women are heroes! Puh-lease. Thelma and Louise is an unrealistic melodramatic waste of time. They kill a man for unjustifiably and sadistically, rob a store for no reason, and taunt others, while we're supposed to root for them? Give me a break. In a modern age of feminists who want to depict women as heroes and men as simpering morons, this just takes the cake as a real waste of time. It's just ridiculous. Had this film even been remotely feminist as it aimed to, in the end they'd have taken their medicine with all their might instead of romanticizing suicide. What a waste!&quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:56:19 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363589/ (by daphreek from England)<br/>&quot;This film was directed with the objective of being artistic. As with most art the impression relies on the audience. Usually the impression is not what the artist (director) intended. The film is set in a school, where something bad is about to happen. Most of the time is spent developing the characters. The killers are two teenage boys, They watch Hitler on TV – this is either because they like the violence or it is there to strengthen their appearance as outcasts and people you shouldn't like.. One plays the piano. Very well in fact. Not sure why this is important, other than showing he is talented and there is probably more to him than meets the eye. Or maybe we are not supposed to understand him, creating a charactered few people will relate to, giving an air of mysteriousness.They play Violent video games. Looks to me like the director/writer is aiming to strengthen the urban legend that violent media makes you kill people.... ironically as this flick portrays a very violent situation with no explanation, meaning and few consequences. The twist.. they are gay.. or curious... and virgins. Where, oh where can school children mail order automatic weapons? (AK47 ?) And then proceed to fire them in the garage...<br/>The film portrays social outcasts as being weird. With no actual benefit to the 'story'. The teenage girls are bulimic. There is a very anti American overtone. We are shown people running around like sheep, nearly no one screaming or shouting. The principal begs for his life showing not a glimmer of control or assertiveness, which I find especially strange as his killer explains to him he's an ass hole <br/><br/>The loving couple. The American idols. We learn a little about these two, he is very popular, she may be pregnant, the other girls are envious. We (or maybe just the western society) are certainly are supposed to feel compassion for them. This is difficult however when the script is soooo bad.<br/>Another unusual technique was using extra extra long shots. Following characters around in long continuous shots. This was a risk that did in fact pay off, just, it made the film stand out, made the time shifting more obvious and added to the artistic flavour. Unfortunately the acting sucked, which spoiled it.<br/>There were times were i saw a glimmer of style, that was immediately spoiled by bad acting and even worse dialogue. <br/>The director is out of touch with reality. He has encouraged 'it sucked!' and 'what was that all about' reviews by explaining nothing and leaving all details open to discussion in true artistic fashion. A boring, yet tension building cinematic masturbation, ending with an anti climax, a waist of time designed to spawn discussion that i ironically felt compelled to write about.&quot; Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:04:02 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245574/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245574/ mikewilson762 from UK wrote:<br/>&quot;What a dirty vulgar filthy film! Is there any need to show such graphic sex scenes? Soon as the film starts we see a hard sex scene. It's porn! I don't care how artsy they dress it up.It's disgusting showing things like the two main actors masturbating and then their semen. and him pissing!!? I can't believe how low actors stoop to with there immorality. You can't relate to the main characters they were such filthy vulgar pervs including the girl asking the boys filthy questions about their manhoods!<br/>The story takes aages to take off. The narration is annoying and dull. Also, I think that actor Gael Bernal is ugly. He looks like a baby alligator/Dinosaur.<br/>I hate the two male protagonists, they are so dirty and vulgar. They portray a horrible hyper masculinity which seems to be so 'cool', in films.&quot;<br/>Enough said. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:23:35 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043084/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043084/ Years before Derek Jarman endeavored to glorify through film the gaiety of St. Sebastian, Wittgenstein and Caravaggio, Jean Genet had already joined the gallery of western mythic personalities engaged on behalf of homossexual identity. <br/>Also years ago Jean-Paul Sartre, in his book 'Saint Genet,' proposed homossexuality as the very 'mirror' against which the western world should look at itself: 'Homo art' was the derivative and reverse Saint-Sartrian world that generated a new conception of heterossexuality: after all, how could a hetero world exist without the assumption of a homo world? <br/>So much for St. Sartre's logics. I do love Caravaggio, Aeschyllus, Virgina Woolf, Oscar Wilde etc. not because they were gays. <br/>For the same reason I loathe Genet's Chant d'Amour. <br/>and so much for gay-sympahtizing scholars who insist in re-reading history, literature, art and cinema by way of a 'pervading' homo presence. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:41:03 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203009/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203009/ I totally agree with apteryx-1 from New Zealand: this is a dumbed-down `La Traviata' meeting a dumbed-down `Gold Diggers of 1933'. <br/>There are no survivors. <br/>No use trying to see it as a satire of Hollywood movies, puerile stories papered over with million-dollar production values. <br/>It's just a puerile story papered over with million-dollar production values. You can't call it a triumph of style over substance because there is hardly style and no triumph here. It is just an unsuccessful assault by style on substance. Bits of it - namely, the lovely song Nature Boy - would have made a good videoclip. Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:51:11 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171804/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171804/ the producers were dishonest in dramatizing this true story, however honest in portraying gender panic. <br/>Hilary Swank is fine, but her character Brandon is only a sort of martyr - a Tragic Transgendered Art-House Hero - and nothing more. We see him\her shunned, brutalized, ultimately suffering for the sins of 'gender fascists' everywhere. the story itself is very sad and moving, but it would only be meaningful as a piece of filmed journalism, which only the documentary genre provides. As fiction, this is boring and preposterous. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:11:30 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059503/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059503/ It's based on Heinrich Böll's novel &quot;Billiards At Half Past Eight,&quot; not that if you'd read the novel that'll help you, because whatever plot there is in the film is at best elided, and at most ignored. Straub is disdainful, if not contemptuous of &quot;enjoyment&quot; in narrative, he takes 'Brechtian' audience alienation techniques to such an extreme that he very well entirely alienates the audience, or looks for an audience of extraterrestials. For less than an hour we watch verbose conversations, difficult to follow. The scenes don't seem to follow any kind of order. I, for one, didn't understand a thing. Compositions resembling Puritan stocks, locking the un-actors in a Carl Dreyer hammergrip; wooden-faced line-readers, resembling Krupp Armaments executives and their wives, cannonading through dullish, classroom-style monologues; uber-Teutonic pauses for a stagy sip of coffee or stilted stare in the middle distance--staying awake through Straub's brush-clearing torment resembles (as an Internaut argued) the feeling of Hermann Goering falling on your head. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:11:53 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019760/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019760/ Take my word for it, jtdunlop from Melbourne, Australia is absolutely right as he wrote: &quot;This film was utterly pointless garbage. It didn't anticipate Koyaanisqatsi or whatever, it anticipated pointless garbage. [Dziga Vertov was] the moron who gratuitously filmed this absolute tripe. This film didn't invent the jump cut, it invented a reason for the jump cut to wish it had never ever been anticipated. Don't be a darling of the critics -- the critics to be honest don't know crap. These 65 minutes seem like 600000005 minutes of sheer boredom. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:15:56 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017376/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017376/ This relatively unseen silent classic propaganda documentary from the former Soviet Union in its first decade is a self-congratulatory paean to the &quot;wonders&quot; of socialism and Russian life. Once you understand that, it is easy to revel in the succession of spitfire montage showing a new nation in the frenzy of work and play. Much of the magnificently edited imagery deals with factory production and machines and &quot;the machines that make machines.&quot; From European Russia to the wilds of Siberia, it all finds a part here, and the call is to the presumably deprived workers of other nations of the world who need to take this Utopian dream as a model for their own futures. Papa Stalin is there too in a few images to provide his paternal incentive. The film is a perfect example of how movies can transcend their subjects, even if they are agit-prop, to win us over on a gut level. Films like this one of Dziga Vertov, are the leftist-Marxixt equivalent of the rightist-Nazi works of German propagandists, such as Riefenstahl's &quot;Triumph of the Will.&quot; All are worth seeing by open minds in historical perspective. Nevertheless, the Vertovs are definitely NOT worth seeing by film lovers like myself. Full stop. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:21:31 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050539/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050539/ Ifelt then and I still feel like 'dfle3' from Australia, who said:<br/>&quot;Perhaps this movie can be viewed as symptomatic of human anxiety in the age of the atomic bomb and the possibility of the annihilation of civilisation. In any case, the story begins with a married couple holidaying on boat, in some idyllic location. The husband is exposed to some weird mist. After the couple return home, the husband starts to diminish in size...alarmingly.<br/>This movie has some reasonable special effects for the time...ordinary insects assume dinosaur proportions and pose a thread to the life of the husband. Really, you wonder where the movie is heading...until the ending. Can't tell you how annoying that ending was...you sort of feel sucked in for having sat through it. The ending is symptomatic of a kind of American state of mind. As a non-American, I sort of felt violated for having been conned (so to speak) into watching this kind of movie. You see the ending and think: &quot;So THIS is what the movie was about, all along?&quot;. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:26:09 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067958/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067958/ I know why I kept watching it: (i) I hoped it would eventually get better; (ii) it came from a Warsaw Pact member-country, produced during Iron-Curtain days; putting forward Wilhelm Reich's rather than Marx's, Lenin's or Mao's ideas seemed a sort of spring breakthrough.. Instead, the picture can't find a raison-d'être for itself. It had no shooting script to start with, merely lots of poor quality film to splice together incoherently. The &quot;comedy&quot; is irrelevant, primal screaming, wailing, bogus techniques of healing all there to make you squirm. We see shock therapy, scream therapy, ice skating, Stalin (a mentally ill person banging his head against a wall), a plaster cast penis and a talking head without a body... Pretentious, amateurish, and trust me -- a complete waste of time. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:35:24 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104753/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104753/ It's fascinating that so many reviewers consider this a masterpiece. Director Davies did score a highly poetical quality film, 'Distant Voices, Still Lives.' But this is only a series of mood scenes. I want more. I look for story, rhythm, movement, meaning, none of which did I herein find. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:44:37 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099487/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099487/ Desperately trying to emulate the classic fable of the modern Prometheus, Tim Burton completely failed to convey emotion or brilliancy. The acting is poor, the characters clichéd and the subject overworn. Who does not know that corruption-shadowed society is unwilling to change? Who needs a miserably conceived movie to get that message? To be fair, the set design is nice, and Johnny Depp has been worse. But overall, a sad waste. Someone told me that if I had seen it when I was younger, I might have liked it more. Ah, to be old, stupid, and have no liberal standards! Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:56:00 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107822/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107822/ &quot;A mute girl is arranged to marry some guy who lives in the woods somewhere, wants nothing to do with him, is forced to teach his friend, George Baines the piano, who is a perverted sicko (Harvey Keitel); after numerous crude passes and sexual harassment by George, suddenly the feeling is mutual for her, her ‘husband' (Sam Neill) finds out about the affair, cuts off one of her fingers, then finally allows her to leave with George his former friend, who takes care of her. This is the ‘plot'. From here, now we're supposed to read into the ‘oh-so-subtle' images that the piano is her ‘voice' (pretty obvious) and, from reading other people's reviews, she's exploring; taking control of, if you will, her sexual qualities due to the suppression of them by society at this time (19th century). Well, I'm sorry, but I did not get that from the movie. I've seen a pattern with Jane Campion. She just throws things together and puts you in a place with no background or character/story development (we hardly know where they are), tries to make it artsy and throws a woman in there to try and make a point about her sexuality and sexual self-realization…..that's probably her own stance on the issue. If that's what The Piano was about, I shouldn't have to ASSUME it. That's the main problem with this movie; it doesn't give the audience anything to take in and appreciate. It doesn't present anything…..it only throws them into a situation, a weird & somewhat illogical one at that, and expects them to buy into it. I'm sorry. The fact that this was praised and rewarded as much as it was is a travesty, in my opinion. This was one big waste of time.&quot; (by lotus_chief from Brooklyn, NY) Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:09:04 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053146/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053146/ &quot;This film has a classic reputation, so I felt like I just didn't get it--why was it so highly regarded? Perhaps the reason it left me so cold was that Jean Cocteau's version of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was so much better--with amazing camera work and acting. On the other hand, &quot;Orfeu Negro&quot; just seemed to have one thing going for it--its intense Samba score. As for story, it sure seemed a lot superficial--they dance and dance and Orfeu falls for Eurydice so easily--the citizens of Rio all seem like mindless children--dancing their lives away--a rather patronizing view of the nation! &quot; (planktonrules' opinion, directly from Bradenton, Florida) Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:15:28 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021331/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021331/ rooprect from New York City wrote:<br/>&quot;First the good stuff: You'll see a lot of highly innovative techniques. In particular, you'll see Cocteau playing with magnificent illusions such as &quot;walking on the walls&quot; which he would perfect 20 years later (see ORPHEE). You'll see his obsession with mirrors and the symbolism they conjure (again, see ORPHEE). And finally you'll see some nice reverse-filming techniques which would become the trademark of his masterpiece (take a guess... ORPHEE). In fact, this film is almost like a reel of outtakes from ORPHEE.<br/>Now the bad stuff:<br/>you won't get much of literary value, which is ironic because Cocteau was such a great writer. What I mean is that you won't get any plot, any coherence, any cohesiveness, or anything you can say to someone who asks you &quot;what was the film about?&quot; This is the kind of film you might see playing in the background of some uber hip nightclub, because it certainly has a lot of mood. But as far as sitting on the couch and watching it... I dunno. I kinda wish I had the last 50 minutes of my life back.&quot;<br/>I'm entirely agreeable. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:27:51 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/ It should have been called &quot;Trash,&quot; said commentator ChelseaGirl98. She was truly amazed that anyone could like this film. (and she, like myself, likes David Cronenberg and J.G. Ballard): &quot;it has absolutely no point, the connection the film tries to make between car crashes and sexual passion is total BS (and if you've ever been in one, as I have, I'm sure you'll agree it ain't sexy), and it has no redeeming features whatsoever. It was tedious, disgusting, shallow...it's one of those films that act like they have some grand message to impart, but in reality are empty.&quot; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 17:44:36 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030241/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030241/ It's typical Philip Barry fluff and a little too much of that. Mind you, I am a Hepburn fan and a Grant fan, but what a disappointment Holiday is. It really lacks the energy of Bringing up Baby, Dinner at 8 and so many other comedies. The cinematography is flat and lifeless. There does not appear the chemistry between the stars. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 18:59:54 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062407/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062407/ Even adorable Audrey Hepburn and extraordinary Albert Finney can't save this picture from a terminal case of the cutes. This off-again, on-again, back and forth in time romance is cursed by one of Henry Mancini's worst elevator-music scores (constantly there when you least want it to be) always reminding us that despite an occasional display of the nasties these two mismatched humans really do love each other. Just jumps around from past to present to future, and really never explains much.The flashback & forward technique and the hodge-podge filming of the story was annoying. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:08:32 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030055/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030055/ deng43 from United States commented on the lack of propaganda; that caught my eye, too, because this is a Soviet film about Czarist Russia. Soviet cinema was surprisingly even-handed on this one. The only overtly political comment was when the police arrived at the house asking after a former boarder who was known to be against the czar. this does bring up an interesting point though, for the characters in the family are admittedly and obviously guilty of assaults, torture, murder and arson, but the only time the police appear is when seeking the anti-czarist boarder. it would appear that in this time just about anything went on and none were responsible for their acts, unless it was failing to feed oneself when the punishment was beggary. Very little in the way of human sympathy existed. A mean time, therefore. There isn't that much of a plot per se, just vignettes of Gorki's growing up, [anyway] it is fascinating to see a time like this preserved. The USSR in 1938 was actually materially very close to the czarist time it represented. The final shot seems the very essence of a Soviet statement: the child marches off, leaving his friends behind cheering him on, into a vast flat nothingness - mother Russia unending. He is confidence personified. If I may sound facetious, In the long run, history has proved Trotsky right: Stalinism was not a viable historically stable system! Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:20:06 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078754/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078754/ A semi-autobiographical musical that leaves the viewer feeling confused and disappointed, this movie was choppy. It starts off fairly well and I do like tales of sex, alcohol and drugs but it falls apart on many levels. Death, dying, smoking, hospitals, coughing, blood, open heart surgery and dancing troupes in costumes covered in veins definitely don't jazz me up. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:32:15 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/ There is no question that the TV Python was a landmark and that their influence is still being felt. However ven in 1975 I barely laughed and felt that this film had been overhyped. Having watched nearly every episode of sitcoms such as Fawlty Towers and Blackadder, I can see that these shows have built on the Pyhton style of comedy and are finer works. In this film I found the humour old fashioned, outdated and predictable. To people who claim that young people today do not get comedy such as this, I'd say that humour has indeed evolved and left dinosaurs such as this little more than a reference point in movie history. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:39:28 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059643/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059643/ Minimal narrative drive. No laughs. No tension. Dull, tiring, neither funny nor brilliant nor entertaining nor thought-provoking, this movie tried to combine the horror of apparitions and Dante's Inferno landscapes with the light comedy of foppish main characters and silly a-ladder-at-Madame's-bedroom-window scenes. If that wasn't bad enough, they kept branching off on long back-story lines, making it hard to keep track of characters. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:44:08 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068575/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068575/ ccthemovieman-1 from United States found it<br/>&quot;sleazy, profane, nasty people who are mostly losers and have no morals : in other words, another early 1970s scum-fest of a film and a critics' favorite, naturally. &quot;Gritty&quot; and &quot;hopeless&quot; stories seem to attract a lot of 'cult' followers who like this sort of thing. Apparently, they can relate to these people on screen. How sad.<br/>Hey, I like a good boxing story too. I've seen about all but a couple that were ever made, and enjoy 90 percent of them. However, soap operas with a mean edge that are depressing - which describes this film - are not appealing. Characters who can't have a relationship with anyone else, people miserable most of the time - is that entertainment? This is yet another depressing tale of someone who doesn't lift himself up, only goes to the bottle for solace.&quot;<br/>So did I, who by the way am also fond of boxing stories - The set up, Million dollar baby, The champion, Killer's kiss, The harder they fall, Somebody up there likes me, Christian Bale's The fighter, Richard Conte's The fighter you name it. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:54:36 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055184/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055184/ (by Neil Doyle from U.S.A.)<br/>It's obvious that Arthur Miller was trying to say something important here, but THE MISFITS is a strange vessel to convey anything other than bitterness, distrust, emptiness, anger and pity as expressed by showcasing the empty lives of a group of disparate people trying to eke out a living in the barren wastelands of Nevada. Just what this is all supposed to symbolize is hard to tell. It sure takes time to criss-cross the various characters who talk at length about what's bugging them and what they want from life, and then the same sort of scene takes place again but in different surroundings. It's a vicious merry-go-round of a sad state of affairs.<br/>Not even the wonderful THELMA RITTER can inject any of her usual levity into the gloomy proceedings with an occasional wisecrack. Pretentious from start to finish is the only verdict I can come up with and a difficult film to watch without losing patience. Unfortunately, its chief distinction today is that it was the last film of Gable and Monroe. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:58:28 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111845/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111845/ At the risk of sounding snobbish, I'd say that I do enjoy &quot;art films.&quot; It's a lot like saying 'white it is chicken put it.' <br/>I mean the really good &quot;art[sy] films.&quot; Even when they lack means, they have great ideas behind. <br/>This one, however, is poorly shot, has plenty of scenes where nothing happens, has no music, and then its last scene confirms that I have been rather cheated by an unskilled director who tried to turn flaws into virtues as well as by some very snobbish critics. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:21:08 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077975/ The plot is just a series of ill thought out strands strung together, the humour is non existent. The jokes are all clichéd and even when i heard them for the first time (in marginally better films) they weren't funny. To summarise: base, humourless, a low point in John Belushi's career. (according to Paul Crouch from United Kingdom and myself) Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:27:54 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104782/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104782/ &quot;I thought it was revolting. Who wants to watch a movie where a kid puts raw meat in the bathtub, then slides it into his underwear, and has an orgasm with it? Oh and then his family eats the meat for dinner. Okay, fine so it's a human interest story about a kid growing up in a highly dysfunctional family... but the narrator doesn't seem to be any less dysfunctional than his relatives. To make things even more interesting, Leolo's family believes that in order to avoid disease in their impoverished surroundings, one must *beep* all the time, so Leolo grows up taking daily laxative shock treatments. His parents even check to make sure he has had a good BM or they sit in the same room with him while he excretes.<br/>Can I just say that I don't understand why ANYONE would want to watch this movie?&quot; <br/>Anyway, the only reason why DanKIT21 from United States watched it is that his dad had rented it and said it was &quot;about a boy growing up.&quot; <br/>Sounded harmless, right? No further comments. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:32:39 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/ Boy meets bird. Boy loses bird. Er, that's it. Really.<br/>Little northern lad can't cope wi' bein' a little northern lad and like some big southern jessie dreams of being a bird sweeping and soaring free in the sky. Too sensitive to follow his Ma and Da' in t' mill, factory or t'pit, he wants to break away and sweep and soar and be free etc etc etc.<br/>Don't &quot;proud to be working class&quot;, or worse still, patronising middle class directors see that by glorifying their lone hero/heroine kicking against the pricks they are ipso facto declaring that the rest of the canny northerners/chirpy cockneys in the cast are made to look like acquiescent retards? Never mind, perhaps t'little lad will grow up to be a film director and produce something tangible and useful to society, don'y you think?&quot; (by ianlouisiana from United Kingdom) Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:39:14 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074486/ &quot;Watching Eraserhead was...unfortunately one of the most unforgettable experience of my life. Yea, there was some strange imagery that left you questioning, but it was either dragged on wayyyy too long, or it was impossible to concentrate because of the ear-piercing noises in the background that make you lose focus. During this film I wanted to spoon out my eyeballs, put them in a flame resistant bowl, pour gasoline on them and light them on fire. I know it sounds like I'm being way over dramatic and I'm exaggerating...but seriously, go out and rent this movie. I am not responsible for what may happen to your mental or physical state...it's all on David lynch for making this 'cult classic'.<br/>(signed xfirstandfinalx from United States) Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:42:59 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073076/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073076/ harsh, but true words by reviewer Aristides-2 :<br/>&quot;A low point in human interaction was reached by the Maysles Brothers with this film. Do remember, you who used words like &quot;masterpiece&quot;when reviewing this film, that they didn't just happen to drive to the Hamptons and happen to shoot film on some eccentric people. No, when they found these two poor pathetic people they then had to finance their project (and imagine what they told the money people to sell the project). Then they befriended the two extremely vulnerable women. No meeting of minds here or real consensual participation. They smiled, kissed ass, did whatever they had to to get the Beales to cooperate and then exploited them as viciously as has ever been done. An exploitation film.&quot; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 20:52:07 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099763/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099763/ Having watched this through, I was sickened. Regretfully curiosity got the better of me and I watched this perverse, cruel, ghastly, revolting film which stays with you for all the worst reasons. There is hardly anything good to say about it. I'm quite a hardened horror fan, but this is too much for me. The only message seems to be &quot;sociopath is beautiful.&quot; Therefore I dread to think what sort of audience it is aimed for, not one in a civilised society, that is for sure. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:05:24 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/ Echoping frjenny92's comment, I'd argue that, yes, nowadays the so-called silent majority does consider a movie to be phenomenal as long as it shows tragical poverty and violence: this is so distant from their lives that they unconsciously feel &quot;educated&quot; by seeing the film; praising the film therefore becomes a way of self-elevation. <br/>Cidade de Deus' fanciful but unnecessary stylization offends serious audiences, in my opinion. This is rather showcase than artistic honesty. There should be a stopping point by which these kinds of product become a sham too pretentious to be appreciated. <br/>A 10 year-old running around killing everyone and then enjoys himself a couple of evil laughs (that are made to echo to achieve &quot;epic&quot; cinematic effects)? <br/>&quot;Cliche&quot; would be an understatement. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:14:20 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/ C-17 from Maplewood, NJ had some harsh words for &quot;this piece of sitcommy, cliche-ridden claptrap, just smart enough on its surface for the middlebrow Academy to pimp it for a Best Picture Oscar. But anyone with half a brain will see through this tired male fantasy pretty soon. Mendes shows us a Edward Scissorhands-type of suburbia: perfect lawns, identical homes, etc... We are expected to know (since we've seen ES, Ice Storm, Happiness, Serial Mom, etc.) that these people must lead shallow, empty lives - look where they live! And... they do! This is just the first of many obvious themes that we have seen so many times before. Director Sam Mendes does nothing but condescend to his characters, his setting, and above all, the audience. Pretentious *beep* Wow! Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:20:26 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074102/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074102/ theconservativeliberal (nwatts@gmail.com) from Sydney, Australia felt compelled to write a comment in response to the stupid amount of &quot;this is not porn it is beautiful art, if you don't like it you're just prudish&quot; comments which Oshima's movie inspired throughout the world: &quot;This is not beautiful,&quot; he wrote, &quot;it is not art. It looked cheap and nasty. It looked as if it had the production values of an amateur porn session, lit by whatever broken desk lamps found in your average erotic dungeon. The fake snow looked like fake snow. The kids throwing snow at the old man's exposed privates made me want to punch the director for trying to make the rest of the movie anything but a comedy. To top its woeful aesthetics off, the absolute drivel that came out of these character's mouths was nauseating. Every single time they'd have sex, which would be 85% of the film, the woman would say the same banal, generic &quot;you inside me is beyond words&quot; without fail. <br/>There are some movies that are so bad that they become entertaining. This was not entertaining. It was mind-numbingly boring. If you thought this was any good, I recommend you to re-evaluate your life because something is very wrong.&quot; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:26:12 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/ final words from Matthew Jordan of Houston, TX:<br/>&quot;Four fascists in WWII Italy abduct 16 youths and subject them to dehumanizing rape, humiliation and torture. Many viewers think that this movie is powerful and everyone should see it because it gives you access to true feelings of disgust and guilt about man's inhumanity to man, especially during times of anarchistic, despotic, or fascist rule. <br/>If you need this movie to understand how terrible the crimes visited on people by the fascists, Nazi and otherwise, during WWII were, then Pasolini's only success is that he has demonstrated just how sick and desensitized our global society has become.<br/>Stark brutality has its value as a tool for demonstrating the full force of certain horrible events. This tool was used effectively in other WWII films around the same subject, &quot;Schindler's List&quot; comes to mind. The problem with this film is that this tool has to be accompanied by real emotion and demonstration of the effect of that brutality. The only emotion (other than pure physical pain) demonstrated by the adolescents in this movie is during one scene where a young abductee cries at being reminded of the death of her mother. Aside from that, the victims walk through this movie like zombies as various disgusting acts are perpetrated upon them. There is no emotion, and frankly, the movie is an extremely boring series of repetitive acts of violence and humiliation that are reputedly designed to demonstrate the horror of unchecked power. The truth is, this is a dull expose on the acts of several bored, wealthy, powerful members of society who can no longer find stimulation in the banal trappings of every day life, just like the book it is based on. The truth is, this movie has NOTHING to do with the horrors of fascism, it just happens that Pasolini chose a setting he knew well. There is no reason that this same exact movie could not be shot in a palace in the Middle East, a castle in Austria, a Villa in Latin America or a mansion in the USA and be just as realistic. It is nothing more than a dull comment on the depravity of the rich and bored. Don't be drawn in by the mystery and the hushed tones that people use when they speak of this so-called &quot;Masterpiece&quot;. And don't be fooled by this banal piece of Anti-Intellectual trash.&quot; Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:31:11 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061132/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061132/ This is a silly, cheesy movie from the silliest, cheesiest of modern times, the 1960s decade. Sure, the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (in this case, with Domenico Modugno singing) is fine and the idea of the crow telling stories of Franciscan friars is kinda fun. The rest isn't fun, though. Boring as hell, the movie appears to be longer than 85min. Pasolini apparently considered it to be his favorite flm. On that I can definitely comment, as I have entire knowledge on his filmography: stick to The Gospel According to Matthews, Teorema and La Ricotta. Avoid the rest. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:40:30 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073817/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073817/ I had read J.M. Barrie's play &quot;The Admiral Crichton,&quot; so I could see wherefrom writer/director Lina Wertmuller got her 'inspiration.' Clearly this feminist fable was a re-working of that earlier story, though, unlike Lina Wertmüller's secular-humanist/communist leanings, the Victorian play was preachy and even religious. And of course, as far as talent is concerned, the Scottish writer beat Ms Wertmuller in a landslide victory. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:52:05 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086022/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086022/ Brian from Maine commented:<br/>Are people too in love with Tarkvosky to recognize this is a bad movie? Bad storytelling? It &quot;invents&quot; nothing. The acting is misdirected. Great actors who have nothing interesting to say and walk around just speaking words. Tarkovsky's &quot;sculpting in time&quot; theory has not been closely followed for good reason: it makes for tedious, dull, and repetitive movies. His movies won't last. [if it weren't for Solyaris, may I add] Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:02:24 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073869/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073869/ L. Denis Brown (from Saskatchewan, Canada) summarized very well this movie's historical background: &quot;The death of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress in 1889, was a fundamental link in the chain of events which led to the start of the war of 1914-18, and subsequently to the development of World War II. At the time, these deaths were officially attributed by the Hapsburg government to a suicide pact which followed their recognition that the couple would never be able to marry; but right from the start many commentators (both nationally and internationally) suggested that foul play was a more probable explanation. The full story was exceedingly complex and had more twists than most detective novels, but there can be no doubt that the Hapsburg authorities attempted to conceal many of these facts, adding fuel to speculations that the Emperor himself may have been involved in some sort of plot designed to end Rudolf's illicit liaison with his mistress, Baroness Maria Vetsera.&quot;<br/>The story line followed in this film suggests that Rudolf was attempting to force Franz Joseph to abdicate by gaining the support of the Austrian society of the time for a more liberal social order; and that Franz Joseph either planned or condoned the assassination of the couple in order to avoid their licentious activities continuing to embarrass the Imperial Court. <br/>I believe it is utterly unlikely that Franz-Joseph would ever contemplate the assassination of his son, the heir to the Hapsburg throne, however acutely he had been embarrassed by his behaviour. <br/>Let's go back to Mr. Brown: &quot;After more than six centuries of continuous rule by the same family, the Hapsburg dynasty was almost unique; and throughout Franz Joseph's long life devotion to the continuation of this dynasty had been the major driving force for most of his activities. He had little respect for his brother's son, through whom the succession would pass, and it is recorded that he never once spoke to the great nephew who was his eventual successor during the remaining 27 years of his rule. He must have been aware that his death would constitute a major crisis which the empire itself might not survive; and it is hard to believe that, whatever the provocation, he would deliberately have done anything to create such a crisis. There are at least two other more credible explanations for the assassination of Crown Prince Rudolf. Over the centuries the Hapsburg empire had expanded, more by marriage than by conquest, until it incorporated a vast array of diverse ethnic groups which became difficult to hold together after the Napoleonic wars released their tide of libertarianism and nationalism. One revolt in Hungary was suppressed, but the Empress persuaded her husband to make a very conciliatory settlement with the Hungarians in 1867 which effectively created what became known as the joint Austro-Hungarian Empire. Rudolf was also strongly supportive of Hungarian aspirations, and this antagonised many members of the Imperial old school. Some of them may well have decided to take steps to ensure that Rudolf would never succeed Franz-Joseph as Emperor. An alternative explanation for his death is supported by near deathbed testimony from Countess Zita, the wife of Emperor Karl, Franz Joseph's eventual successor who inherited the imperial throne in 1916, following the assassination of his uncle in Sarajevo in 1914 and the death of the old Emperor during the resulting world war. Empress Zita lived to the age of almost 90, dying in 1989 fourteen years after this film was produced. Before her death she recorded accounts of Hapsburg family conversations which suggested that Rudolf's death followed an approach from French authorities seeking to gain his support for an attempt to persuade Franz Joseph to abdicate so that Rudolph could introduce a more liberal regime which internationally would support the French rather than Germany. Rudolf had indignantly rejected this proposition and reported it to his father. His assassination at Meyerling followed - presumably by French agents or their Austrian sympathisers. Her account was largely ignored at the time it was first published, but three years after her death it was supported by late autopsies of the bodies of the two victims which showed that, contrary to the official accounts, Baroness Vetsera had not been shot but had been battered to death, and that Rudolf had fired six shots from his revolver before he died.&quot;<br/>We are now never likely to know what actually happened; but if you, like myself, do not believe Franz Joseph was directly responsible for the death of his son, you'll agree that this is cinematic revisionism at its most revolting and slandering. <br/>Usually described as an 'erotic work dressed up in the trappings of a historical drama,' this film portrays events that nevertheless had a major influence on the lives of nearly everybody.<br/>I definitely cannot endorse the 'message' that the old order (i.e. monarchy, democracy, pre-communism) will eventually have to yield to the pressures created by younger generations and help to impose socialism. <br/>It is a dreadful film which shows the Prince Rudolf just as a libertine, a sort of caricature.<br/>The historical Crown Prince appears to have been a well travelled, cultivated individual with remarkably progressive views who was highly regarded by whoever had nothing to do with him. <br/>This is certainly a strong contestant for the worst film ever made. Misleading deceptive propaganda at its worst. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:40:16 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102494/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102494/ a fine review by Michael Neumann from United States summarizes it well:<br/>A narcoleptic hustler and his 'degenerate' (to his father) pal travel the Pacific Northwest in search of…what? Freedom? Affection? Adventure? Gus Van Sant's follow up to 'Drugstore Cowboy' is full of odd stylistic tics and transparent social commentary, all of it adding up to a merely pretentious film even more aimless and unmotivated than its two primary characters. Viewers might be forgiven for wondering where the story is going after the brief detour into Idaho itself when the scene shifts abruptly, and for no good reason, to sunny Rome (yes, in Italy). The gorgeous imagery hides a shortage of real ideas, and Van Sant's mock Shakespearean dialogue is an annoying conceit (the Bard is acknowledged in the credits!), and the brief documentary appearance of actual teenage hustlers discussing their 'dates' shows what the film could have aspired to. Sat, 30 Apr 2011 22:52:01 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158766/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0158766/ A man in his 30s, living with his parents in a middle-class apartment in Rio, coldly stabs them to death for no apparent reason. Then he goes to a cinema and watches &quot;As Amantes&quot; (&quot;Women in Love&quot;), a film about two girls who spend a weekend at the countryside and fall in love with each other. <br/>Other parallel narratives &quot;invading&quot; the film include a man being tortured by the police and flashbacks of the girls, leading to a foreseeable tragic conclusion.<br/>Julio Bressane shot this indie in just 12 days and his 'style' was already (admittedly) recognizable: unconventional, fragmented, full of longueurs, much improvised, experimental minded, abrupt editing, hand-held shots, high impact vs &quot;nothing happens&quot; scenes, home-movie-like cinematography etc. <br/>&quot;Matou a Família...&quot; was enough to establish him as an underground overfake. Through mockery, amateurism and pedestrian symbolism, he had a go at the &quot;carnavalization&quot; of culture. But, as it often happens with Kitsch, &quot;Matou a Família...&quot; is boring, pretentious and silly. <br/>Yet it recently ranked as a landmark at an issue of the Venice Festival, which screened it. I really don't care for such 'metalinguistic' approaches, 'iconoclast spirits,' 'pop flavors' and nonsensical sense of humor. Watch it if you're into bad-taste Kitsch or lesbianism. Don't watch it if you're allergic to fake experimentalism, or simply to any Brazilian nuts. Sun, 01 May 2011 20:21:02 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086969/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086969/ This movie is good only for psych classes. It focuses on one disturbed person and does nothing to portray him in any other light and plods along from one scene to the next. There was nothing here that grabbed my attention. The only other interesting scenes were when Birdy is in the asylum (good for a few laughs) and the &quot;twist&quot; ending. Sun, 01 May 2011 20:34:18 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084422/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084422/ That Nazi occupiers no matter how beastly, would corral an entire village of civilians, including women, bishop and children; at their basilica and summarily blow them to bits inside, makes absolutely no sense. One has to wonder if this pair of Italian writers were blowing cocaine as they developed their silly plot. Furthermore, they WOULD have to reach for scenes like Tuscan ragazzi spying on a urinating lady and masturbating like toy monkeys, to add gravity to the situation. Later they have some oaf eating busted watermelon off a woman's teat? Give us a break! (with thanks to loschavez for valuable comment) Sun, 01 May 2011 21:04:42 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069369/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069369/ Themroc is would-be avant-garde contenting itself with recycling the most dated clichés of post May 68 era: down with the bosses power to the people, kill (and eat) the cops, this is a brand new life, opportunity knocks, make love not war, we are the good guys, the others are the villains, please get out of the new road if you can't lend a hand, and so on. Spitting on the cops was so à la mode that Themroc could not be wrong as it spoke to the 'intellectual' post-68 elite : humble people are actually demeaned in his film. How to attract people's attention? With a formless product, filmed haphazardly with a &quot;surrealistic &quot; touch. People who like this -and they seem to be quite a lot- should remember John Lennon's phrase: &quot;Avant-garde?Isn't it the French word for c...?&quot;<br/>(with thanks to dbdumonteil for his enlightening comment) Sun, 01 May 2011 21:14:35 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303408/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303408/ dreadful and pointless, wrote rickyr83 from Maryland:<br/>looking at the film festival awards it won, I thought I'd made a good choice. Boy, did I turn out to be wrong. This film is an unorganized, dysfunctional, fruitless mess. The story of two men hiring a hit-man to take out their partner and then that hit-man turning around and forcing himself into their business could've been played in a comedic way, or it could've been played in a threatening and frightening way. Instead, the movie tries a little of both and succeeds at neither. At times the movie presents the title character as someone who we should fear, other times he's seen as a joke, heckling the construction company's workers and bringing rappers into the office. Sun, 01 May 2011 21:21:17 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107302/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107302/ Believe It Or Not:<br/>The Montréal World Film Festival awarded its FIPRESCI Prize for 'Best Artistic Contribution' to the director of this movie. <br/>Not enough? Again, Believe It Or Not:<br/>The Thessaloniki Film Festival awarded a Best Screenplay prize to the very same crap. Sun, 01 May 2011 21:26:58 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179964/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0179964/ The São Paulo Association of Art Critics awarded no less than 5 (five) Trophies to this pseudo-surrealist bizarreness. Allow me to quote one of my favourite poets, : 'I'm losing my taste for everything, including even my taste for finding everything tasteless.' The bad news is: Paulistan critics lost their taste for anything remotely associated with 'art;' The good news is: now they can find anything, including crap, tasteful! Sun, 01 May 2011 21:44:48 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064660/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064660/ this is a genuine testimony of one of those typical moods inherent to the 'gay' 1960's: <br/>there's newly 'conquered' sexual freedom, group sex, mockery upon bourgeoisie values, attack on both the institution of marriage and the conception of the couple, and so forth. For five characters in search not of an author but of sexual romps, the only solution seems to be the triangled threesome, the brand 'new' form of social institution that ought to substitute for the more regular, academic married couple. <br/>The film sucks throughout its Jurassic style based on primary colours, heavy make-ups and aged travellings. The characters, just like Sade's characters, for example, come from a cardboard box. The subtended message is clear: long live sarchasm, acidness, and sado-masochism! down with the hypocritical middle classes! by the way, as far as I know, Mr Paroni Griffi was a fake in Milanese theatre as well. His version of John Ford's 'Tis a pity she's a whore' wasn't so bad, but lacked a brilliant score by Ennio Morricone (actually the odd man out herein). Sun, 01 May 2011 22:20:19 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/ Sin City features 'edgy' story material, anti-heroes, and gratuitous amounts of attractive female flesh. The problem is simply that the insanely high level of sadism is far less shocking on the page than it is on the screen. Sin City plays like a two hour seminar in violence desensitization; every single imaginable physical cruelty – from eye-gouging to castration, from severed limbs to bullwhipping, to a lot, lot more – is played out in stark black and white. What makes it even worse is that the film revels in the violence. In the comics, when these lunks go off to commit their mayhem, while they throw themselves into it, there's always an undertow of regret to it, of resignation, of knowing what they do damns them. But here, the committing of acts of unspeakable violence somehow seem to justify and redeem the characters; the more disgusting things you do in the name of revenge, the greater a hero you are. I cannot think of a single message more repugnant or reprehensible to send. To me Sin City, while perhaps an interesting visual exercise (though honestly I wasn't that captivated), is little more than an excuse to show blood and boobs for two hours. Sin City is two hours of repetitive, relentless sadism, wrapped up in an artsy package. With all that talent, with all the effort and work (and it's there), it's a shame they managed to miss the underlying message in all of Miller's comics – that the descent into this lifestyle can only end one way, and it's not good. The very heart, as it were, of Miller's message in the books, is completely missing from the film.<br/>(and thank you, oshram@aol.com, for your impeccable comment) Sun, 01 May 2011 22:27:20 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031919/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031919/ An earthy, epic historical drama set during World War I and the Russian Civil War, Shchors is a biographical portrait of the partisan leader and communist Nikolai Shchors, one of the few indisputable Bolshevik icons of Ukrainian origin. The work was commissioned by Stalin himself, who asked Dovzhenko to &quot;give us a Ukrainian Chapayev&quot; - a reference to the popular (though mediocre) 1934 film by Sergei and Georgi Vasiliev depicting the heroic exploits of a folksy Russian Red Army commander. The prolonged production of Shchors proved a nightmare for Dovzhenko, who was forced to submit every creative decision and every episode for high-level political approval, and who found himself accused of Ukrainian nationalism by Stalin's increasingly paranoid henchmen. There is one remarkable, picturesque sequence of burial. Nothing else. Shchors represents the glory of socialist-realist restrictions imposed upon an artist, the ultimate product of Zhdanovist canons. Nothing left of Dovzhenko's dynamic energy and fervent poetry featured in his best picture, 'Earth.' Sun, 01 May 2011 22:32:48 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108355/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108355/ this minor example of the work of one of the few directors from the Franco era (Berlanga) to make any impression abroad incredibly got the top award of the Spanish cinema, the Goya Prize. <br/>Its battery of bad taste and political gags, however, is muted : <br/>(i) Sazatornil Saza showing up at the reconciliation diner held in La Modele jail only to get the payment on his public loo installations approved, getting caught up in the action, <br/>(ii) the Fascist too arthritic to give the raised arm salute, <br/>(iii) the cook who pisses in the soup because it cuts the grease (only the governor's transvestite lover can produce a decent meal in the jail kitchen). (comment by Mozjoukine@yahoo.com.au from Australia) Mon, 02 May 2011 16:01:07 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139760/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139760/ The official image of guerrilla combats during the 1960s\1970s in Brazil opposes, in a reiterated and obsessive way, &quot;young revolutionaries&quot; to &quot;old generals.&quot; Or, romantic, enthusiastic adolescents against hardened, sullen & senile seniority . <br/>This abominable stereotype was set up by this minisseries (translation of the title: “Rebellious Years ”) (TV Globo, 1992).<br/>Through 2011 such clichéd slogan returns compulsorily in a number of movies, novelas, stories, soap operas and news reports, to the point of settling down in the popular imaginary like a stony tenet of historical truth, like the infallible base of everything a 'thinking' person should feel about that historical period. <br/>The built-in symbolism is self-obvious: youth represents innocence at its best, idealism, hope, a rosy vision of a world without dreadful capitalism; while old age personifies cynical realism, accomodation to evil, a mean attachment to an unfair and broken-down social order.<br/>However, it should be obvious (i.e. to a 'thinking person') that nothing of this corresponds to facts. Sheer and lousy propaganda at its worst. Mon, 02 May 2011 16:15:59 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296689/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296689/ &quot;Jango&quot; is a Brazilian documentary about Jango, Brazilian president from 1961 thru 1964. It makes some use of available contemporary news footage - even shots of Goulart in the USSR.<br/>Milton Nascimento's music is obviously used to manipulate your emotions. So beware: this is basically cheap sentimentality. But that's the good news. Now to the bad news: as to its political content, Goulart was a wealthy landowner and a communist or socialist sympathizer, not an activist - he was a left-wing populist political boss in Latin American Caudilho tradition. <br/>As Goulart took over, he assumed a weakened presidency, managed to get his full powers back after a plebiscite, and after a very turbulent year of 1963, with high inflation, increasingly acid political argument from all sides, in 1964 he started to speak in favor of sweeping &quot;basic reforms,&quot; including land reform without compensation for landowners, nationalization of private oil refineries, and even of calling a new constituent assembly to write a more &quot;workers-friendly&quot; constitution. <br/>In one phrase, why not renegate lousy capitalism and embrace communism?<br/>After giving his support to strikes by sailors and army sergeants, the military - with the help of most major Brazilian politicians - toppled Goulart, who fled Brazil without fighting and exiled himself in his Uruguyan hacienda.<br/>Thus military dictatorship in Brazil started, to end only in 1985. (Goulart died in exile in Uruguay in 1976.) For many people, including the producers of this movie, Goulart remains a symbol of &quot;what-might-have-been&quot; - that is, a communist Brazil.<br/>In fact, the only politically-correct way of discussing Goulart is to show him under a positive light because anything else may be interpreted as reactionary.<br/>But then... Some of the very people who were interviewed for this movie make disparaging remarks about Goulart : how &quot;he loved power, but hated governing&quot;, how his &quot;basic reforms&quot; were mainly show, how he sabotaged his own Planning Minister's attempts to bring the economy into control, how his main concern was to preempt political enemies.<br/>Personally I also condemn not the 1964 counter-revolutionary coup d'etat, but the 21 years that followed. Personally, I think Goulart was never a hero. A populist Caudilho? Yes.<br/>This movie has fallen into deserved obscurity, but it wasn't any good in 1984. It's biased, unconsequential and manipulative. Mon, 02 May 2011 17:34:09 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078239/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078239/ Hokey, corny & horrible. This movie made 'Magical Mystery Tour' look like... magical. It's one freak show after another. Just when you think it's bad, George Burns gets up and sings &quot;Fixing a Hole&quot;. A better use of this movie would be as a public service to keep kids off of drugs. The sets are unexceedingly cheesy. Mon, 02 May 2011 17:49:44 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076009/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076009/ This turkey is full of gems for fans of incoherent messes. It consists of long boring hypnosis scenes and equally mind-numbing African shots. But there is still a feast of bad acting to enjoy. The script is ludicrous and the cheesy theme music that wafts through the film would not be out of place in any soft-core porn movie. After a couple of hours with nothing even remotely suspenseful or scary happening, we are treated to a 'what the hell was that all about' ending. One of the best bad movies ever. Take reviewer Ali Mac's word for it. Mon, 02 May 2011 18:17:32 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084021/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084021/ The oddest thing is, Patricia Birch, choreographer of the original 'Grease' show, directed - and choreographed it. How come? This is an evil sequel, misled, unbelievable, full of bad songs and low production values. Someone bet the food on the set tasted poorly. This is no excuse, though! Mon, 02 May 2011 18:25:00 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093756/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093756/ The most laughable aspect of this pitiful, putrid smear of celluloid woe (as another reviwer put it) is the fact it was ever made. Noted feminist Sharon Stone humiliates herself in an early non-role as a reporter. She is the sex interest for head clown Mahoney's latest lechery. It also features a humourless chase sequence, the elongated nature of which can only be explained by a chronic lack of gag materials. <br/>Somewhat oddly, though, Brian Wilson participated in the soundtrack with a brand new song - not one of his best, still... Mon, 02 May 2011 18:31:50 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106613/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106613/ Birt Reynolds deservedly received a Razzie Award for his role in this pathetically unfunny, obvious and predictable so-called comedy that has a kid witnessing a murder and not giving up the information... Unless he can be a cop and a half for a day! <br/>The premise is of course dumb, but it could have been carried off with less embarrassing banter and guff. Mon, 02 May 2011 18:37:30 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107978/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107978/ Before GloboCop, yes, there was RoboPlop! So, if you've been for a plop, then just plop it on your own! Mon, 02 May 2011 18:42:20 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110725/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110725/ Steve deservedly got a Worst Actor Razzie Award for his role in this monstrosity about evil Texas oil Aegis company polluting Alaska. <br/>With no prior experience in directing, he stampeded his way with as much subtlety and inspiration as Julio Bressane usually throws in onto his 'arty' movies. Mon, 02 May 2011 18:47:36 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120757/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120757/ Being a fan of the series, I thought, how bad can the movie be? Well, some movies should never be made at all. The only similarity with the predecessors is the fact that there are three main characters. Wow! Mon, 02 May 2011 18:50:38 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432291/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432291/ No one who craves for healthy (?) entertainment needs to be insulted, so beware: this borderline, low-I.Q. movie is NEITHER a gem NOR high cinematics Mon, 02 May 2011 19:13:16 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057251/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057251/ reviewer Vishal Agrawal from Mumbai did not exaggerate at all:<br/>&quot;The best part of the film is that its just 91 minutes long and the worst part is that it is still very long. Characters are not convincing, story is almost nil and message is very hazy. Mother Superior looks more of a mime artist as she keep making faces throughout the film. Sydney Poitier is good as always and sings 'Amen' perfectly. Rest of the film mostly drags. Lots of things are unexplained like why Poitier wanted to build the chapel alone and most of all why did he stop back. It's very unconvincing. Comedy also is very childish. Once he start building the church nothing really happens. &quot; Mon, 02 May 2011 19:15:25 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188159/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188159/ In English it was entitled PRETTY BUT WICKED. Overall, this is a melodramatic soap opera where most female characters are raped and/or become prostitutes, and all the male characters are rapists or sleazes of one sort or another. <br/>Although based on Nelson Rodrigues, Brazil's #1 playwright, it had been rather interesting on stage, but the film is none but improvised, mediocre and unpleasant taedium vitae. Mon, 02 May 2011 19:22:44 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062984/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062984/ &quot;Fome de Amor&quot; is a pseudo-metaphoric, pseudo-allegoric dated movie with characters such as:<br/>(i) Felipe represents the alienated middle class without political aspiration, aiming to make money and ending like a jester. <br/>(ii) Mariana represents the bourgeois intellectual class, defending the revolution out of time through the teaching of MaoDez Dong. (iii) The masses are symbolized by the children in the harbor, waiving any participation in the revolutionary process. <br/>(iv) Alfredo is the revolutionary leader who ends with a pocketful of dough.<br/>The screenplay isconfused and hermetic and there are unintelligible scenes, for example : are the deaths of Mariana and Alfredo only the death wish of Felipe and Ulla? or are they realistically shown ? <br/>Director Dos Santos simply slaughtered Guilherme Figueiredo's original novel. Mon, 02 May 2011 19:38:35 GMT http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051990/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051990/ Mickey Rooney's career was sputtering when he made this movie. Here, teamed with Tom Ewell, they play a pair of sad sacks who rob a couple of banks to finance a racing stable. Rooney tries to act with his usual high energy level, but Ewell plays things at his usual slow pace, and the result is annoying. Mickey Shaughnessey plays his usual Runyonesque role, but, unfortunately, screenwriter Sydney Boehm did not write a Runyonesque vehicle. Nothing quite works in this movie, alas. (by boblipton of NY)