billybob-8

Howdy boy. I happened to read yer li'l comments on the movie and discovered something interesting...you didn't actually talk about the movie! Call me old fashioned (real old-fashioned in some ways, like, before the dawn of time) but I know when me or any of the boys read a film review, we actually like it to talk about the film at some point! But you jest go on and on and on about how much you and other "dudes" want to get jiggy with robots so you can avoid having to deal with women.

Ain't that the sweetest? Maybe you oughta put some moves on your toaster. (You know, I think I may have pinpointed the reason you are "between girlfriends".)

In the future, please include some actual comment on the movie and leave the sad little "girls scare me" fantasy scenario in your head, where I'm sure it is thriving.

Oh, and by the way, real good movie. Me and the boys give it a big howdy!

Is it possible to make a movie about the fascinating history of passionate artistic geniuses, fill it with talented actors, and still have it all go wrong, horribly wrong? You say "no"? I say CRADLE WILL ROCK!

I appreciate Tim Robbins liberal leanings and his pro-artist stance. Rich white guys and the actor's union are both cast as bad guys here. Hooray for that. But that does not, in and of itself, make a good movie. Here, in fact, it makes an bad one. A shamefully bad one.

First off, the movie has no heart, no center. There's lots of stories, but little actual character development. You never get to know these people as people. What you get is lots of wooden dialogue where everyone reveals their political leanings. You get some potentially interesting stuff-John Turturro, Emily Watson, and John Cusack provide some humanity-but its lost in lots of clunky overbaked drama. For instance, poor Hank Azaria plays the guy who writes the title play, and all you see of him is a few scenes of him interacting with the ghosts of his past. You never get to know him beyond these scenes. These ghosts are a lady in a bride's dress and a European Kurt Weill-type fellow. You have to see these scenes to understand. They're staged in a goofy theatrical way, but that kind of hammy experimental theatre that makes you hate all theatre people. They made me giggle and feel shame. Deep shame. Which brings up another point:

The movie turns into a bad European film all the time. I'm not slamming European films as a whole. I have seen many a fine moving film from the Continent. Europeans in these wonderful films seem to have a deeper emotional capacity Americans are unfamiliar with, like the rules of soccer. I'm talking about the kind of cold, weird, artsy, stylized, whimsical, clown-filled European films that steer most of America towards Bruce Willis movies. This film takes on that tone over and over. I mean, you have a scene approaching some level of actual emotion, and wham! Clowns! Whimsy! Overacting! The last sequence of the movie is a procession of vaudeville performers-its dirty with clowns, I tell you!-bearing a coffin of a ventriloquist dummy through the streets! Merde! Shame!

Let me talk about the performances. We have a lot of good actors in the movie. Some of them do well. Some do not. Most of the performances here are irritating. Vanessa Redgrave acts like Lovey from Gilligan's Island for most of the movie, then gets caught up in the cause at the end and gets so full of the joy of life, I wanted to bludgeon her. Paul Giamatti is actually annoying, no small feat for this wonderful actor. But, I don't blame these actors. They were directed to be over the top and cartoony. Two exceptions. Angus MacFayden as Orson Welles and Cary Elwes as John Houseman. Orson Welles was a serious, intense, charming visionary, not an overblown buffoonish chimp. Cary Elwes- how do you get work? Seriously. Deep shame!

Finally-as I have worked myself into a froth-I blame Tim Robbins. He wrote and directed this sucker. Wrote the bad dialogue. Directed the horribly executed scenes. And his wife sings over the ending credits. The movie was obviously his pet project. That's always a scary prospect. Good directors can go bad really fast with pet projects. Steven Spielberg with ALWAYS and HOOK. John Boorman with WHERE THE HEART IS. Kevin Costner with THE POSTMAN(he sings over the end credits!). And now Tim Robbins, a terrific actor, the wonderful director of DEAD MAN WALKING, has gone to that dark well of shame with this pompous dud.

Tim-please come back soon! We're waiting for you...

Having just seen THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, I am reminded of this scary no-budget film. BWP is great, but this is even better.The black and white cinematography. The silence. The pallid masks of evil. The sense of utter helplessness. Its a true nightmare. All the garbage inspired by SCREAM pales in comparison to this masterpiece. Its time to end the era of cute TV stars spouting ironic one-liners, and get back to the scary.

Well, the big, star-studded finale to the Halloween epic has arrived and...it's good and it sucks. First the sucks. A SCREAM clone, which in turn cloned other horror films, something many of you seem to forget. Uneven pacing. It is slow then too fast. It kills its own suspense, like the way they rush the moment when Jamie Lee steals the ambulance. It just sorta happens in a blink. The kids. I'm sorry, but Michelle Williams is cute, but what a bore. Maybe it's not her fault. The kids were sorely underwritten. I guess Williamson felt it was a genre requirement to stick some horny goofy kids in there to be pureed later, but it was a truly lame part of the film. Now the good. Jamie Lee was great. A meaty role for her, an icon of horror films taking back the night. Cool. Very Sigourney Weaver.(Which I'm sure is what she wanted.) The rest stop scene. The opening. The Loomis narration in the beginning(I miss Donald Pleasance!). And the very end. What a great final shot. The music kicks in, and she's standing there, the conquering hero.

Add it all together, and you get a good, but unfortunately not great film. Hey, it beats any crap with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

And, by the way, if you thought parts 4-6 were good, you are a screwball.

This is a gem. On par with ALIENS for chills and thrills. The effects are excellent for the time, and the movie really exploits its concept in a smart way. James Arness, James Whitmore, and Edmund Gwenn are great. And the ant noises will creep you out.

Don't let the fact that this is a 50's black and white movie scare you off. It has a terrific and efficient screenplay, great effects-they're somehow less fake looking than the digital stuff that has overtaken most films these days-solid acting, and an actual heart and soul. The plight of the wee guy is heartbreaking, and the ending gets very deep indeed. This joins THEM, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and THE THING as one of the great post-atomic scare movies.

As I watched the face of the Star Child move across my TV screen earlier today I was overcome with emotion. Not just because of the loss of a great and singular talent, but just feeling this huge thing wash over me. Kubrick filled that last shot with this "this is greater than all of us" feeling that is overwhelming and awesome. And he spent the previous two and a half hours slowly building to that moment. A truly transcendental movie. And no, I was not stoned. God bless you, Mr. Kubrick.

Hey people come on! Give TWISTER another chance! Films, even action films, don't HAVE to have "an inventive plot" or "decent performances" or "a script that wasn't written by a machine" to be "good." All I need is light, noise, and lotsa 'splosions! Take those elements and paste over a thin layer of worn-out story borrowed from 10 or twelve other movies and you got a winner, thank you! Throw in some great acting-Bill Paxton's "staring at the dirt" moment alone FLOORS me. And ever notice how Helen Hunt is constantly bustling about with her head down whenever she's not scrunching her face into her patented "I'm sad and cute" look (Hello Oscar!)-that's ACTING! And Jamie Gertz! Welcome back to the cinema! I haven't seen you since LISTEN TO ME! And don't even get me started on the lovable ragamuffins known as the "storm chasers"! The way they're thrown at us like we'll immediately love them! The way you're not sure how many of them there are! (And the fat red-hared "dude"! That's what they mean by COOL! I mean COOL-AGE!) And Cary Elwes! What a great villian! He's in it for the money!(Hsss!) At first I wasn't sure what accent he was doing, since it changed every scene, but then I realized he was doing all of them! And the F/X! WOWWW!!! This movie follows the rule "We got a computer, who needs a script?". I love how the characters "find" the big tornado in the end-on a perfectly sunny day, no less-and drive right up to it with no damage done! I can't wait to try that myself! (I just hope I have lots of cans of delicious refreshing Pepsi-Cola(TM)!!!)

To sum up, this is a rollercoaster wrapped inside a thrillride of a movie and I implore you to give a second chance! Please don't get hung up on this notion that a big budget action film could actually be daring and original and even a little smart. All we need are CGIs and THX sound and films made by the marketing department of the studios to keep us happy! Give me more! I'm waiting!

I thought it was an endlessly original, daring, dark, intelligent, fun, funny twisted masterpiece. Kudos from me and the boys on getting the animals to talk. The fact that it bombed and that crap like THE WATERBOY are hits says something truly disturbing about the tastes of our country. But all that will be a-changin' oh-so-soon.. .

OK, short and sweet, SCREAM is a great film, but it's now created a genre whereby the ironic awareness of, and emotional distance from, the scary stuff is heightened (along with the gore and cheap shocks), and the plot, character, and atmosphere is lessened. ROSEMARY'S BABY maintains a growing paranoid creepiness that builds to a horrifying climax, with no tongue-in-cheek hipness, MTV soundtrack, or digital effects. You never even has to show you the devil baby, just Mia Farrow's reaction. Gee, what was Polanski thinking? Please-more films like this, less like I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU BLAH BLAH BLAH.