braggnull

In the first half of the film, we are introduced to a group of totally unappealing characters who insult and snipe at one another even though they are supposed to be good friends gathered to celebrate the first anniversary of one of the couples. There is a secret lesbian affair involving a guest and the married pregnant hostess that adds nothing to the plot. The second half of the film falls down a rabbit hole of plot incoherence and utter confusion for the viewer as the characters are killed off. It never occurs to anyone to flee the house and apparently there is no landline phone. The internet is conveniently down. A women is shown with an arrow wound but there is no scene of when, where or how she was shot. It should have been apparent to everyone who the killer was. The ending was among the most absurd I have ever seen. Avoid at all costs.

As someone who does not believe in "love at first sight," I find the whole premise of this film to be ludicrous and insulting to my intelligence. William Powell, a wanted murderer sentenced to hang, and Kay Francis, a terminally ill traveler, meet by chance at a Hong Kong bar and immediately are all goo-goo eyed and fall madly in love on the spot. After the Powell character is apprehended by an ill-bred cop and placed on a cruise ship bound for San Francisco (and the hangman's noose!) he manages to elude the cop in a highly improbable manner and is swimming to shore and freedom when he catches sight of Francis on the ship and with a joyous smile surrenders to the cop and rebords the vessel carrying him to his doom. Powell passes off on another guarantied escape in Honolulu when Francis falls ill, so of course he carries her back onto the ship and captivity. The romance between the two lacks any chemistry. Powell and Francis are all smiles and engage in love talk that no couple has engaged in ever.

The weakest Twilight Zone episodes were the ones written by Rod Serling containing his virtue signaling social messages. This film is another such contribution from Serling featuring Sterling Hayden as Mr. Drudge,a strong opponent of cultural exchanges with Communist nations in the Cold War and an advocate of an isolationist policy backed by a powerful military, with the full knowledge that the other side would no doubt follow suit, increasing the likelihood of war. On Christmas Eve, he is visited by three ghosts whose message to him is unclear other than that war is horrible and humankind may be doomed to a nuclear apocalypse. Why Drudge's isolationist stance and his desire to see the U. S. avoiding entering into wars is something that the three ghosts needed to correct by showing him the horrors of war is not clear. Also unclear is how Drudge's visitations ave changed him other than getting him to apologize to his pacifist nephew and have his morning coffee with the servants. Sterling Hayden's performance is wooden and unconvincing throughout the film. His character shows no emotion whatever when he finds himself on a troop transport ship and is confronted with the first Christmas ghost, played by a ridiculously miscast Steve Lawrence. I think Hayden was also miscast, as he was a "tough guy" actor who found expressing deep emotional conflict difficult, as was the case here.

This has to be one of the most overrated films of all time. I can not fathom all of the praise that has been heaped upon it. Negative ethnic and racial stereotypes abound and the audience is subjected to a loud and unrelenting soundtrack bellowing "Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!" However, "the powers that be" are never identified, as every character in the film is strictly working class and not in possession of much power. With few exceptions, none of the characters are likable or even believable. The incessant profanity is a major drawback as well. The overblown ending does not make a modicum of sense.

Here is the theme song for this show I recall from WPIX in NYC some 63 years ago:

Pow Woe, the Indian boy, loved all the animals in the wood. Pow ow, the Indian boy, loved all the animals in the wood Pow Wow was a friend of all the animals in the wood If there was any trouble he would them if he could If Pow Wow couldn't help them he would go to the medicine man And he would tell him stories just how it all began, al began

I really loved this show and it's reverence for nature and the animal kingdom as seen through the eyes of Pow Wow the Indian boy. This was back in a much more innocent age for kids to grow up in.

It's truly amazing this show lasted for nine seasons. Practically every episode followed the same format, with Mason's client being arrested (for most years by an elderly Ray Collins) in what appears to be an open and shot case of murder. Then Mason sends private detective Paul Drake out to dig up dirt on the real killer, which we know will never be the defendant. Drake will barge into the courtroom with new evidence. Mason will then angrily confront several witnesses, with prosecutor Burger raising futile objections, until Mason finally reveals what he already knew. Then the murderer would openly admit to capital murder (Don't you see? I had to kill him!") either on the witness stand or springing up among the spectators, very often on purely circumstantial evidence. This of course negates any chance fir a plea bargain deal saving the killer from the gas chamber. How prosecutor Hamilton Burger managed to keep his job given his dismal record against Mason is one of the mysteries of this series. Another mystery is the apparent absence of any family or social life for Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake. They seem to be available around the clock for any contingency. Many office meetings take place at night.

Serling's final remarks were hardly necessary. As a ten year old kid back in 1961, it was clear to me that the Peter Falk character Clemente was supposed to represent Fidel "The Bearded Bum" Castro and to suggest his tyrannical rule would be quite transitory despite the fact that he had already been in power about three years when this episode first aired. Wishful thinking on the part of Rod Serling, for Castro would live on as Cuba's leader for another 55 years and would be succeeded by his brother. Indeed, Castro was 90 when he died, while Serling died at age 50 decades before Fidel. This is yet another preachy TZ episode whose conclusion was telegraphed to the audience early on. BTW, the review which claimed that only Western Marxists panned this episode due to their love of Castro takes the cake for complete idiocy.

This seven part series contains a ludicrous plot stressing the male sex in general are stupid, incompetent and dangerous while the members of the male sex in law enforcement in the city of Melbourne, Australia are in need of psychiatrist Jane Halifax's superior intelligence and insights to bring a deranged male serial killer to justice. There are numerous plot holes and the overall acting is sub-par. The background music with vocals serve only to distract from what is being depicted and is extremely annoying to say the least. A sub-plot involving Halifax's personal life does not contribute anything of substance to the series,

What an insulting portrayal of women this film is! The lives of every one dimensional character revolves around men. They have no other interests or concerns, except perhaps for fashion, which of course is a means to attract and keep men. The Norma Shearer character was profoundly annoying, tearfully all-forgiving and hopelessly devoted to her philandering husband. All that was missing was a halo around her head. Even after her reluctant divorce and nearly two years after her cheating ex-husband had married the tramp that had seduced him, her love for "her man" was undying and she was elated to learn that his sleazy wife was cheating on him, so there was now a chance to win him back! Her face was all aglow with joy! What a prize this two-timing cheat must have been! The best part of the film was the cat fight between Joan Crawford and a leggy, shorts clad Paulette Goddard. It was all too brief.

What can I say? Appalling acting, ridiculous dialogue, plot holes galore, numerous anachronisms (were Army nurses all gorgeous nymphomaniacs who didn't wear hose?) and insulting revisionist history make this one of the worst films of all time. The rehashing of cartoonish CGI effects involving aerial combat used prior to the film (and used in many films subsequently) abound in the sequences of the actual attack. Two hotdogging American pilots and a black cook (Dory Miller) personally account for about half of the 29 Japanese planes shot down in the raid. What total garbage. The Japanese planes are shown strayfing anything that moved on the ground along with helpless sailors struggling in the water. Greatly exaggerated. Their priority was the destruction of the ships at Pearl Harbor and the planes liked up at the air fields, not machine gunning military personnel and civilians. My father, a sergeant in the U. S. Army Air Corps, was stationed at Wheeler Field the morning of the attack and he said it soon became apparent that the Japanese were focused on their sorties targeting the planes on the ground. People stood aside at a safe distance and watched the runs, as there were no weapons handy to resist. They were locked away and no one had a key to the arsenal. If you want to see a good film about the Pearl Harbor attack, stick to Tora, Tora, Tora, a truly great film.

Here is all you need to know about the idiotic plot of this anti-capitalism piece of drek. At one point, the hostage taker with a gun and a bomb detonator accompanies his willing hostage (an awful George Clooney), who has the bomb wrapped around his chest on a vest, through the crowded streets of the Wall Street area, all the while accompanied by the NYPD with guns drawn who stand by and fail to shoot the hostage taker even when he shoots a guy who spooks him. As they walk through the streets, mobs of New Yorkers crowd the sidewalks making moronic gestures and shout encouragement to the hostage taker standing a few feet away from them with a gun and bomb detonator and right next to the hostage with the bomb wrapped around him. As if! Then we are supposed to believe that a corrupt CEO would agree, with NYPD acquiescence, to meet with the hostage taker in the lobby of his corporate headquarters and be held at gunpoint a few feet away from the George Clooney character (with his bomb vest) while he explains why the stock price in his company collapsed, wiping out the hostage taker's money. All the while a bunch of cops stand close by with guns drawn and do nothing even as the hostage taker explodes in anger and holds the gun to the CEO'S head! If the bomb (which is a fake, but only the Clooney character and the gunman know this) is detonated, everyone in the lobby would be blown to bits, but that does not seem to matter to the NYPD, who are willing to put themselves and the CEO in mortal danger, either from the "bomb" or through gunfire. Avoid this farce at all costs.

David Koresh, like so many End Time Cult leaders, was a deranged serial rapist of underage girls and a polygamist. It is well documented that children were sexually, pyschologically and physically abused at the Branch Davidian compound. Koresh and his followers were stashing large numbers of assault weapons in anticipation of a Holy war against the U. S. government. Yet Koresh and his followers are depicted as God-fearing American patriots dealing with a brutal AFT and FBI who violated their Constitutional rights. The iniitial confrontation between the AFT police squad and the Branch Davidians as well as the final conflagration in which 76 members died are completely distorted to create the impression of a tyrannical government oblivious to the safety of the people inside the compound. Aerial footage of the tear gas attack shows that the fire inside the compound broke out before the first tank turret penetrated the building, and men inside the compound were seen throwing gasoline out of canisters by survivors before the tear gas arrived inside. The fire started at one extreme end of the building, giving everyone inside plenty of time to evacuate, as some did. Yet the film shows the tanks basically wrecking the entire building and blocking off all escape options before the fires began. To call this egregious revisionism would be an understatement. The major role Attorney General Janet Reno played in ordering the initial AFT raid and in the siege is completely glossed over. Koresh and his followers had over seven weeks to give up and most refused. The cult adults were responsible for the deaths of the children, and no one else.

German Colonel Hauptmann is an ardent anti-Nazi who is working with Hogan to assist the allies. However, he is arrested by the Gestapo when his pretty secretary, Fraulein Hibbler, learns of his treason. Hauptmann is court-martialed in Stalag 13 and now that the inept Colonel Klink is appointed as his defense officer he faces almost certain conviction for treason and execution by firing squad. However, Hogan and his resourceful men will come to Hauptmann's rescue by doctoring the incriminating tapes that Fraulein Hibbler has recorded to make it seem that she in fact was "Sally Holmes," a British agent who is the real spy and who was trying to frame Hauptmann. Fraulein Hibbler is arrested despite her protestations of innocence and is led away by guards. It will be she, and not Hauptmann, who will be executed for treason. She would prove to be only the latest innocent pro-Nazi blonde who found herself being led away by the Gestapo to face a firing squad after being framed by Hogan and his men as spies or traitors. There were quite a few other unlucky damsels that met the same fate over the long course of the series.

I watched this show for half a season when it first aired, but I stopped viewing after realizing it was nothing more than a crude caricaturing of working class people, andat the time I resided in a working class area and considered myself working class. None of the people I knew were like Archie and Edith. Archie was uneducated, boorish and bigoted against just about everybody, while Edith was a shrill and frivolous housewife who had appeared to have no idea what was going on in the outside world and appeared perfectly content to share her life with a total loser. Archie and Edith embodied every negative stereotype of the American working class. Maybe that's why this show has been so popular over the years.

This total wreck of an episode insults the viewers with blatant Cold War jingoistic propaganda laden with racist overtones and a totally ludicrous plot. The noble blonde Aryan "Yangs" have been the victims of the evil Asiatic "Comms" (get it?) and Kirk and company must defy the Prime Directive to ensure that "good triumphs over evil." As usual, the viewers are presented with a "microcosm as the world" scenario in which a limited number of primitives constitute the entire population of an alien planet. The Yangs in centuries past had created a USA, complete with the 50 star U. S. flag and a copy of the Constitution! These are revered documents whose meaning has been forgotten. The evil Asiatic Comms regard the Yangs as savages. The episode failed to mention if they had revered copies of The Communist Manifesto and Mao's Red Book. We know which side must prevail. Truly the very worst of all the Star Trek episodes.

After a promising start, with very impressive cinematography and an appealing and attractive actress, this film quickly descended into an apparently allegorical abyss of such incomprehensible pretentiousness and over the top gore that I was left speechless. The extended conclusion of the film was bizarre and disgusting and utterly failed to resolve earlier plot holes, which abounded. It is the latest example of the so-called "artsy" horror film in which the director seeks to leave his audience bewildered and annoyed. The director of this film certainly succeeded with me! Avoid watching at all costs.

Derek knows he has veins in his brain that can burst and kill him. So of course he and his buddy Clif go off to Europe, and one of their first activities is to go hang-gliding, making a bumpy landing. Smart! Then Derek gets deathly ill, going into violent convulsions, puking out gallons in a fancy restaurant, breaking out in hideous boils, bleeding profusely, and making weird howling noises while rolling around, while Clif inanely keeps asking "Derek. Are you OK?" Derk rejects Clif's advice to check into a hospital, yet Clif stands by his buddy, and thinks it super-cool when Derek develops superhuman strength, filming him even as Derek does impossible feats and attacks people. Then Derek starts morphing into a vampire in need of human blood and it never occurs to Clif that it might be a good idea to head back home without Derek, even as Derek clearly shows signs of desperation after unsuccessful efforts to drink animal blood and steal from blood banks, all of course filmed by Clif, who will not abandon Derek. No need to guess what happens to brain-dead Clif!

I knew right from the start that the oh so adorable pooch would survive, as dogs always do in disaster and monster films of this type. The giant alligators kill or attack every human in sight but have no appetite for the barking dog? Yeah, right. Every plot hole conceivable is contained in this piece of drek. The two main characters, a father and his "estranged" daughter, behave like idiots throughout the film and are repeatedly mauled and bloodied by giant alligators with no effect on their ability to fight back and escape with no sign of serious injury. Speaking of which, Florida gators are nowhere near as huge as the ones depicted in this farce, which are more like huge crocodiles. When a police officer arrives at the stairway to the basement the duo are trapped in, the father yells that there are two gators down there. He does not bother to tell the officer that the gators are about four times the size of a typical Florida gator. Of course, the cop and his colleague are promptly torn apart by the giant gators.

I could not believe how appallingly dishonest this film was, both for what it included and for what it omitted. Incredibly, Stone once again resurrects the entirely debunked "Magic Bullet" theory, even showing a diagram of the presidential limousine depicting Governor Connelly siting directly in front of JFK instead of to his front left, a fact which negated the entire false premise of the "Magic Bullet' trajectory. He presents the years after the fact testimony of three women employees of the School Depository Building that they did not see Oswald on the staircase leading down from the sixth floor to the second floor after they went down it from the fourth floor after viewing the assassination. Stone actually claims this is proof that Oswald was not on the sixth floor and could not have been the assassin! Oswald was an ex-Marine in his early 20's who could easily have run down floor flights of stairs in about 20 seconds after firing the three shots, while the three women employees certainly would have watched the aftermath of the shooting with cars whizzing by and people running around for at least a brief period of time, before heading down the stairs, giving Oswald plenty of time to go down ahead of them. Later in the film, Stone alleges that the CIA placed Oswald in the Depository building because it was on the presidential parade route, ignoring the fact that Oswald was hired long before JFK's visit to Dallas was ever announced and the parade route made public. Stone seems oblivious that this claim contradicts his earlier claim that Oswald could not have been the assassin.

Totally ignored in the film: Oswald bringing the rifle that killed Kennedy to work that morning in a long box that he claimed contained non-existent curtain rods, the fact that he was the only employee to flee the building, which is why the police were looking for him, the fact that he shot and killed officer Tippet in broad daylight in front of witnesses and then ran into a movie theater without paying, resisting arrest when the police came in. Sure, I guess as per Oliver Stone that is further proof that Oswald was innocent!

This film from start to finish was a total travesty of cherry picking, omissions, misinformation and discredited conspiracy claims. Moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the highest order.

If Oswald was truly a CIA agent involved in the assassination, he never would have been taken into custody. He would have been whisked away in a waiting car as soon as he left the Depository Building.

Some years after SNF was released, the British author of the popular, supposedly fact based and researched article on which the film was based admitted he fabricated the entire tale and never even set foot in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where the film is set. That the story had no basis in reality was apparent to me when I saw the film at the time of its release, as I was a resident of Tony's neighborhood. Except for the dancing and music, everything about this film is repulsive, with the most appalling ethnic stereotypes imaginable. Almost none of the characters were remotely likable or sympathetic, and the plot is ridiculous.

The only way I could make any sense of this mess of a film was to assume that "Katie," Elle's mysterious "pen pal," was actually the creepy looking night clerk of the motel, who somehow knew that "Katie" was not present in the room adjacent to Elle. What actually happens to Ellie after she opens the door to her room at the end is not shown, but we must assume she was done in by "Katie," who then goes on to contact other naive girls via e-mail. Presumably, they will all wind up at the same motel late at night to be told the same thing by the night manager. None of the characters in the film were likable save for the Gay brother and his lover.

I could not understand the point of this film. Little of it made any sense. We are told the main character, Jenny, a young woman, was one of triplets and had two brothers, one of whom, Victor, has been killed in a traffic accident. She has strange dreams about the other one, Andrew, who apparently committed suicide or was shot accidentally by Jenny with the gun she uses to kill the driver of the car her brother died in, even though the driver was Victor's best friend and the crash was clearly shown to have been an accident in a flashback, one of many that only add to the confusion. This film was a complete waste and an insult to the viewer's intelligence.

This film openly serves Robert Redford's progressive political agenda. It depicts Mary Suratt as an innocent devout woman who is essentially framed by a corrupt military court to hang in place of her fugitive son, John, for his participation in the plot to assassinate Lincoln, his vice president and his Secretary of State. In fact, most Civil War historians have little or no doubt that Mary Suratt, an openly pro-Confederate sympathizer and a defender of slavery, was guilty as sin and deserved to be hanged. The sole actual injustice depicted in the film was the fact that her son John Suratt was not convicted by a jury which included Southerners after his capture for his certain involvement in the conspiracy and hanged. The film clearly leaves the impression that the failure to convict him meant he was probably innocent of any crime and by implication his mother as well.

From the mournful theme music to the many historical inaccuracies, this series presents a sanitized and in many ways a revisionist version of an epic event and is not recommended for anyone wanting to learn about the war. It reeks of the milquetoast sensitivities that Ken Burns has displayed in his various other series. That maudlin letter from a doomed Union officer to his wife that was read in the first episode took up more time than Burns devoted to the bloody Peninsula and Overland Campaigns in Virginia combined! So much of the war and the people involved were overlooked or barely mentioned despite the extensive length of the series. When David McCullough actually said that Lee's losses at the December 1862 battle of Fredericksburg included men who were sent home on leave for the holidays, I knew something was seriously amiss. At least that battle was mentioned; many others were not, including Stones River, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. Yet every few minutes it seemed we were looking at the face of that black women professor talking about the slaves, while leaving so much out, like GAeneral Ben Butler's contribution to the Emancipation Proclamation via his treatment of runaway slaves as contrabands of war.

I you want to lean about the war, read James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom" or the books on the war by Bruce Catton, Alan Nevis and Shelby Foote,

This film depicts rural Swedes in the same manner as "The Wicker Man" depicted rural Scots, i.e., as murderous psychos, but that film was far superior to this unholy mess. Every single character is unlikable and unconvincing, especially Dani, the profoundly annoying blonde and main character.