trescia-1

"What's the play about?" "Infinity. And I don't know what else."

If you didn't laugh at that joke, don't bother watching this movie. It's over your head. Give up now.

Really, I was amazed that this thing got made at all. It's WAY, WAY over the heads of "average" people and that's just that. I know it stings. Rub it and the pain'll go away.

Mostly, just keep on writing those wonderful one-star reviews on IMDB just remind me that I'm on the wrong planet.

Unless, there IS no "right" planet?

Experimental stuff like this used to show up all the time in the sixties... now it's "oh that was just drug use" and other smart-aleck remarks.

Go in peace, Brainiac... or should I say... BRIANIAC?

(God, I hate when some guy who THINKS he's so smart tries to make fun of dumb people. Just makes himself look dumb is all he does.)

I love this. This is the kind of film that I really like--now--in my dotage, as I grow more and more disgusted by the usual garbage that Hollywood tries to promote as "meaningful" or "important."

Balls.

Here is a film that puts you in a most unnatural and uncomfortable position-- inside the writer's head. But wait... isn't that where ALL movies take place? In reality? Huh?

Well, we live in a world where "movies" are supposed to be "real" in some dumb way, and (keyword "derp") we all "know" that movies are "fiction" but that's not a lie-- is it? I mean, it's not like they just made it all up.

Did they?

If you and a paper bag fight to a draw when the contest is thinking, then skip this baby, unless you just like a movie with good looking people who get naked from time to time....

Really, this is a movie for people who are too smart for their own good. God save us all....

If you know ANYTHING about living in the outdoors, you'll probably be better off not watching this historically important film -- just because the way these "rangers" operate is just completely crazy. The movies suffers, very seriously, from a lack of realism, and I'm not just being a "fussy" old history buff. It's one dumb thing after another.

Even if you're willing to accept the bizarre premise and the ugly racism, how can it be acceptable to begin an attempt to secretly drag boats up a mountain, under the noses of the enemy "while making the least noise possible"-- by setting off a barrel of gunpowder?? And crossing a raging river using a "human chain" is pretty stupid-- and this takes up WAY too much of this movie. The rangers rescue some "hostages" by firing a cannon into the room where they live at point blank range! Yow!

Much of the film revolves around the rangers' lack of food. Huh? I think any competent woodsman should have been able to find SOMETHING to eat. When the rangers finally DO "collect" some local animals, they just throw all the critters in a pot and boil them up, feathers and all.

Suuure they did.

Of course, when a man is shot in the gut with a musket, he can overcome that by being tough and walking it off.

Suuure he can.

Unfortunately, just about every scene in this epic features this kind of silliness. But then Spencer Tracy gives a speech and all is forgiven. Oh well... watch it if you're a student of film, Otherwise, pass... PASS!

(Added two stars for Tracy...would be four stars otherwise).

In France, Jerrry Lewis is a genius. In the USA, he was a lovable clown who managed to make some funny movies, but he was no genius. The cultural gap there is enormous. So when French science fiction is translated to a movie that will be shown to American audiences, something bad might happen.

In this case, it happened. It happened big time.

The protagonist represents a particular kind of "hero" that's big in France but virtually impossible in the USA-- the Goofy Hero. He's not an "idiot" but he's enough of a bungler to make it obvious that he wins because he's too goofy to be afraid and too lucky to fail when it counts. French audiences find this to be endlessly amusing. Inspector Clouseau was a British send-up of this French meme. Of course, all this just went over the heads of Americans and they rightfully ask "who cares?"

Well, if you want to know what went wrong in this movie, you need to care-- and to understand that the lead male actor needed to understand the "Goofy Hero" and PLAY THAT ROLE. It was obvious that he not only didn't understand it, he had never heard of it. Apparently Luc Besson was so very, very French that he didn't understand that this is a huge problem. He just shot the movie and assumed everyone would "get it"-- because, who doesn't enjoy a goofy hero?

Anybody who isn't French. That's who.

It's interesting the way that many of these Disney "live action" films simply "do not land." They are hard punches, thrown by professionals, but they miss on a regular basis. For every "Old Yeller" there is a "Follow Me, Boys" or two (or three) and Disney got a bad reputation for creating stuff the just fell flat.

The question for film students is this: WHY does it fail? All of the elements seem to be there, but then something just goes wrong. It's the same problem with "In Search of the Castaways"-- another Disney movie that just sits there and, in the end, fails.

My opinion is that it's about The Missing Character. In these films, made during the final years of Walt Disney's life, there is a missing person-- one character that really moves the story along or provide entertainment. You need to have somebody in there who is genuinely capable of making the audience feel something. Like a really funny comedian. A really bad villain. A really amazing character who stands out.

Since Disney (apparently) saw this kind of character as maybe a bit too patronizing, these movies just don't work for me. I kept expecting Don Knotts or Tim Conway of somebody of that stature to appear. But no. So everything is "heartwarming" but the movie maker doesn't have the sense to calm down and give us a "slice of life." Instead, we get weird events that aren't funny and aren't real. So they flop. Too bad.

If you weren't alive in 1968, and old enough to watch the news and read the papers, then you can't imagine just how awful everything seemed to be. The world seemed to be ending. Nuclear war was on the horizon. The Vietnam War was really happening in real time and nobody could stop it and nobody could explain it. There were other problems. Smog. Hippies! But when the Reader's Digest published an article in which THIS film in particular was pointed out as a harbinger of the coming apocalypse, well then every teenager in America wanted to see it.

The article was called "G, M, R and X" and it was about rating movies by content, and "Night of the Living Dead" was used an an example of exactly WHY we needed the ratings system we have now. It was either that or the government would step in and censor movies.

In the end, the teenagers weren't allowed to see it. "Night of the Living Dead" is the movie that the "X" rating was invented for.

We all know how that turned out.

So now, after years of watching zombies eat brains (yawn) we still have ratings and we're all very bored. The world still seems on the edge of disaster-- but deep down inside we know that we survived 1968, and we survived "Night of the Living Dead"-- and so we'll survive this. The only question is: Will we be left with another rating system, or government censorship? Think about it, Barbara.

"Moby Dick" is not the kind of book that should be shoved down the throats of high school students. Unfortunately, along with such novels as "The Great Gatsby," it ends up being assigned to defenseless students by idiotic teachers of literature, and the result is that the students hate the book, they hate the teacher, and they hate anything even remotely related to the whole thing, all because they are too young.

You need some years on you to understand this story. The footsteps of approaching death. The bitterness of of a life that failed. The awful fear of falling into the abyss of hatred. The real danger of giving up and losing one's mind in the fruitless pursuit of vengeance.

All of this is front and center in John Huston's classic, and you either get it or you don't. If you do, this movie is a pretty grim and nasty story. Not uplifting. Not portraying the "character arc" of a lonely sea captain who finds love and learns to forgive.

What we have instead is the raw meat of a twisted life. A man who draws too near the wildness, and who is partially consumed and then, by that intimacy with the primitive, transformed into a monster himself.

This is about the heat of darkness and that's not something you usually watch while eating popcorn.

What teenager is going to get anything like that out of this? Not one. It's important to judge this film on its own merits, and on that basis it shines. It may seem stupid to condense the book so ruthlessly but most people have been ignoring "Moby Dick" completely for years and no harm has come of it.

The important thing is that this is the definitive version of one side of that tale. Ahab's speeches are not slow and pointless digressions. They're the story. If you turn up the volume on your iPod when he starts to speechify, you'll miss the whole thing.

Charlton Heston may have been born to play Moses, but Gregory Peck was born to play Ahab. The "casting mistakes" in this film were not mistakes, my friend. Look deeper.

Oh, c'mon! Yes, the cast is awesome and Orson Welles and all that... but really, this movie is a little bonkers and the problem is that the story is missing something. Like logic. Some things happen in order to make the plot work, and it's as obvious as the sun in the sky, and we're just supposed to accept that? I'm sorry, I can't do it. Not even for Orson. Other writers and other directors make movies that don't clang against the brain like this one, but all the style in Mexico won't cover up the lack of sensible plot development. It just don't make no sense. I can't reveal more without spoilers, but if you watch it you'll see what I mean. The question is, do you let Orson get away with it, or not?

I read some of the reviews here and it's like they're reviewing THE ACTUAL CASE and not the film. I mean--COME ON! What causes this kind of behavior? Popcorn overdose? I dunno. Anyhow, this is one rollicking good time if you can get past any strange prejudices you might be carrying around from the original newspaper coverage. Hey--this thing was over a million years ago. You should get over it. In the meantime, Jeremy Irons hits it out of the park. He's utterly uninvolved in his own life. It's charming and gruesome at the same time. Glenn Close provides us with a strange, inhibited performance that leads us onward--ever onward, downward, inward. Until finally we have a woman suspended in time and space. A coma. It's just one aspect of a movie that really works. Sorry if the "based on a true story" part messes with your head. Meanwhile, I'll have my own order of ginger prawns.

When you watch your team lose a close game, you feel something like anger. You see all that talent out there and you also enjoy watching the stars perform, but, in the end, they lose by one point. It's just so...so...disappointing.

Luxury Liner is everything you want in old-time slow-paced good for the elderly entertainment. It's also surprisingly good. Really. It's better than it should be. But it's "missed it by THIS much" on every front. It's ALMOST a comedy. It's ALMOST a musical. It's ALMOST a romance. But you get the feeling that it's the insane amount of talent in a kid named Jane Powell that makes this thing tick. Without her, it's flat aa a pancake. And that's a lot of responsibility for a teenager.

But Hollywood stills makes 'em like that, and we pay to see the result. If only they'd hired some real songwriters, or a team of real comedians (Abbot and Costello?) or invested in Cary Grant as the harassed ship captain. But instead we get Jane Powell, who looks like she weighs about eighty pounds, carrying this whole thing on her back for ninety minutes. Way to go, Jane.

Some of the very best actors in Hollywood were teamed up with the best special effects people, and what passed for an acceptable action story in those days (unacceptable to seals, though!) and the whole package was assigned to a guy who was better as a Hollywood icon than as a human being-- Raoul Walsh.

The result might have been worthwhile if it had been four hours long. Yeah, a story this convoluted would have worked out fine at around four hours. Like a modern TV series on Netflix or Amazon. But as it is, the story is told in an hour and a half! It grinds on for nearly an HOUR of fiddling about in a San Francisco Hotel-- with a bunch of drunken revelry taking the place of a plot.

Once everybody sobers-up and we FINALLY get to sea, the movie is more than half over and everything feels rushed and sorta dumb. I mean, you get seal hunting and ship racing and gun fights and Cossacks and plots to buy Alaska and court intrigue and Russian steam-punks with real steamers, and, and-- well the little kid in me is out of breath trying to tell it all.

The end result of all this hap-hazard direction is a bit of a mess. Was Raoul Walsh a great director-- or did he have the dirt on some studio bosses?? We'll never know for sure...

I'm just writing this review to explain how I would have changed the ending if I had gone back in time, been given the chance to re-write the script, and then had my version filmed.

But, of course, that didn't happen.

As far as we know.

Anyway, this movie has such an all-star cast, crew, composer, director-- where did it go wrong? The answer is the mediocre ending. Even if you LIKED the rest of it (as I did) the ending is a flop. It feels as if it were pasted-on in order to make it a "crime doesn't pay" moral lesson, tacked onto a film that in NO WAY should have such a sappy ending.

So what should it have been? Glad you asked!

The bad guy should get away with it. Every sane person in the audience knows that "The Fox" will ALWAYS triumph-- and includes stealing the gold back from the fat guy who steals it from HIM.

That's all. We don't even need to know how he did it. Just "cut to" a smoky cabaret and The Fox in disguise, and his gang appears to cry in their vino about the lost loot, and (surprise) the gold is right under their noses-- the cutlery and all the plates are not just "golden" they ARE gold. (Hence the need for the gorilla searching people on the way out).

Ah yes. If only.

"I didn't like this movie-- I feel like such an unsophisticated boob!"

Because you ARE one. You. You are an unsophisticated boob. But so what? That is what you are. Do you want to be an unsophisticated boob? Then embrace your boobishness. Find pride and meaning in a life as a boob. Take pride in your identity and press on. You do not owe it to anyone to be anything other than what you are.

Now stop yer cryin' me dear lad, and give your uncle a kiss.

Speaking as somebody who has actually lived in an "off the grid" experiment as a child, I can say that this movie hit a few raw nerves in me but also allowed me to see more clearly what my old man was trying to do.

Too bad we children weren't the kind of mini-marines exhibited here to complete the picture and "stick it to the man." I loved that this film dares to explore regions of the mind and heart where few dare tread-- and it probably does it as well as anybody can do it-- BUT this is a FANTASY and it IN NO WAY resembles reality. Unfortunately, I can see some crazy guy grabbin' the kids and heading for the back country, inspired by this thing.

Is it wrong? No. I agree with a lot of what is being promoted in this film. But here's the thing-- the real American Family Robinson (my family) was more Libertarian than Maoist and surely that indicates something. When you get that far from true North you wonder that else may be skewed.

I used to have nightmare about being a member of the family from the TV show "Lost in Space." That's the commentary I can provide about this deep and haunting film (to me).

This movie reminded me of Taxi Driver. You get inside the head of somebody who's going crazy and then you move in and buy furniture. It's cool-- as long as you remember where you left your car.

I think it can be agreed-upon that Walt Disney had no sense of humor. I mean, he thought that Donald Duck was funny. This may be why so much early Disney stuff is badly un-funny. Even things that should have been hilarious end up being slightly somber. But this is usually "camouflaged" by the fact that Disney's films (way back when) were so "different" that the lack of comic flair was just not noticed. The special effects, songs and acting talent tending to overwhelm the senses. The glare of Disney Magic made it difficult to see that what was missing here was a good laugh.

I saw this film as an eight-year-old and thought it was daft. As an old man, I can see what's wrong with it. It's as if the Disney studio simply had no one who could make a funny film-- and Disney's lack of a sense of humor probably contributed to that situation. It's sad, really, The cast of this film could have, and should have, been able to pull of some real hilarity-- but the guy who made this seems to have been unaware of the nature of comedy.

"In Search of the Castaways" is like a case-study on how NOT to do comedy. I mean, all the ingredients of a rollicking, ethnically targeted laugh-fest are there-- pompous Englishman? Check. Goofy Frenchman? Check. Naive little kids? Check. Silly young fellow with more courage than brains? WOOF! Now put that all together with a script that features unthinkable adventures, unimaginable stupidities, unholy stereotypes and unwavering optimism and you should have it all.

But it's as flat as a pancake. No juice. It may be funny now, to modern audiences, but that's for the wrong reasons. It should have been funny then, and it would have been if somebody with some comic talent had been in charge.

This movie should be studied in film school to demonstrate how comedy works by looking at the opposite. The timing is WAY off. The gags don't land because they are "way too soon" or "way too late." Serious-- even somber-- concepts are plunked down right before the laugh should appear. Way to blow it, Einstein!

No, this movie is a classic, but it's more of a cautionary tale than anything else. It could be a test to see if a director can do comedy. Show this, then ask how they would fix it. If they don't know-- you've got your answer.

I just watched this thing and I'm still laughing. The problem is that it's not supposed to be a comedy. I'm pretty sure of that. All I can really say, without revealing the super-spooky spoilers, is that, if I had invested in this film, I would have been weeping by the end of it. It looks as if somebody took a reasonably good script and then "sprayed" bunch of gore/sex/action onto it in a really, really silly way. I actually laughed out loud, and laughed hard, several times. Not during silly scenes. During the scenes that are supposed to be horrifying or intense.

Really. This film has destroyed by opinion of Ridley Scott and maybe western civilization. Four stars for groovy images. Otherwise, it's garbage.

Any film on Muhammad Ali is going to be entertaining. But when you have such a magnificent subject to profile and you make a film that's this shallow, well, you are doing him a disservice. This documentary misses the point on so many levels, it's just not very good. Ali was a showman of superb talent but the filmmakers here just don't get it. They deliberately portray his clowning as sincere when most of it was just a way to sell tickets and any adult could see it then and can certainly see it now. Why? How would it hurt his legacy to admit that he hyped his fights by putting on an act? There's no danger that anyone will assume that the fights were "acts" too. Ali was a great athlete trapped in a gruesome and evil game. He and Joe Frazier were not such great enemies. Why should they have been? They were great competitors. Can black men make the ultimate sacrifice for honor alone-- or is that reserved for lighter skinned people while the "darker" ones are always assumed to be fighting from rage or instinct. This film gets away with a lot because it addresses "hot" topics like race and religion. But the filmmakers need to go back to school and learn what "hot" topics really are. Ali triumphed despite boxing, not because of it. Now THAT would make a good film!

What can I say about a show that died? If you're old enough to know that reference you're old enough to hate the changes that have taken one of the best things on television and made it into yet another swamp of celebrity gossip and CBS/Simon and Schuster selling books, movies, music and anything else they can sell. I'm not a huge Jane Pauley fan, but her personable and plastic personality fits in with what this show used to be like combining the running of the bulls with a children's birthday party.

If that sounds good to you, you might like Sunday Morning.

You have to be a bit tone-deaf to miss the obvious here -- this film is an historical artifact of the first order. It suffers from a lack of "modernity" but IS THAT A BAD THING? Are we such nitwits that we always crave the comforting drone of familiarity? This old film comes to us straight out of The West. Not OF The West. IN IT. Every aspect is as "real" as it gets, for a movie. Modern, half-baked quasi-history looks pale and stupid by comparison to anybody who isn't pale and stupid themselves.

The wagons are real. The animals pulling them are MULES, not horses. The Western shirts are torn and greasy. The language is hard to understand and it's tough luck if you have trouble interpreting a thick "accent." THIS IS REAL STUFF. The whole thing was shot on location. Real snow in the real Sierra Nevadas. Real redwood forests. Amazing. Just amazing.

...and the "pre-code" sensibility is there in fine detail. The language is not course but the sentiments often are... the situations are strangely "adult" while the stunts and special effects look weird and "off" to our eyes. Look, dear, it's just your eyes haven't adjusted to the lower lighting. Try it now.

When you see a film like this, with its strange mix of "silent era" ideas and "talkie" reality you see the living, beating heart of Hollywood history and you SHOULD see into your own prejudice and lack of awareness. How could anybody just sit there like Mr. Magoo and fail to see? Will you kindly just SEE?

Let's see... let's see...

What does a bored young hipster do to while away an afternoon? Why write an "ironic" review of a weird old disaster of a movie, and give it nine-- no-- TEN stars and declare it to be a misunderstood masterpiece! That's it! What could be more amusing than up-ending the time-honored construct that has arose around "The Great American Flop." What more needs to be said? C'mon, boys! Let's give this old remnant of boomer idiocy a nice fat "TEN." A "ten" for racism unrecognized or unreported. A "ten" for sexism that never faltered. A "ten" for every lonely child that whiled away the hours longing for understanding but finding none. A ten for every victim of victimhood....

...and a "ten" for every stupid, pointless, unbearable old John Wayne film, or episode of yet another awful sitcom, or dear old Walter Cronkite, sniffling his last goodbyes to the philandering president of some smelly old country called America.

Let's leave a bogus review of a film that embarrassed an entire generation. A movie that was like your drunken sister pouring the punchbowl over herself and revealing her lack of underwear. The cocaine that drifted over this film set was so thick that the Cattlemen's Association had to intervene (again) so that motorists could see the road and get home from work. The drugs on the set of this awful monument to self-indulgence piled up so high and fast that Michael Cimino must have had to become a producer of "Baywatch" just to get rescued.

Yes, boomers were stupid. They did drugs. They wanted to save the world, and failed. We get it. Ha ha.

Hear me out.

The Charm of Making is used here, so The Grail is referenced, so the ultimate prize should, in some way, be the realization that all is one. Thou art that. It's basic stuff.

But the idea that all is one is fumbled on the goal line and we get "reality is the only thing that's real."

Two stars off and a ten-yard penalty. First down.

Let's see... what's the word... what's the word?

Sucks. That's it. It's the word SUCKS.

Honestly, I've never seen such a steaming pile of sexist, racist, dark, dark, stupid dumb nasty awful stupid in one place. I watched it until the end to please my companion but it wasn't easy. Not recommended. The original film may have been cheesy, but it was fun. This wasn't fun. It stank of Hollywood executive flop sweat.

I have a book entitled "Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction" by James Gunn published in 1975. It describes the culture of science fiction B.S.W. -- Before Star Wars-- and what a world it was!

It was one of God's blessings on his nerdy children that science fiction existed then, and each and every geek and dweeb who endured the hazing from assorted dimwits could crawl into Asimov or Heinlein and find a sanctuary, floating on a dream of distant places and times in a far-off future where people weren't cruel. petty, greedy and vile.

In the science fiction world, big ideas were okay. It was perfectly fine to be smarter than most people. It was okay to be different. Science fiction was the one place where an outcast could find some peace and understanding. And it was fun. Hell yes it was FUN. Nothing, absolutely nothing on this particular planet could come close the amazing high energy jolt of pure exhilaration that came out of something like "Citizen of the Galaxy" or "A Canticle for Leibowitz" or "1984." By God, something great lived there.

Then some skinny guy named George Lucas, who had an uncanny way of reading pop culture and exploiting it, opened the taps of the imagination and gave all the straights, the stupids, the averages and the ordinaries a glimpse into that wild and strange and amazing place.

I never thought I'd see it happen in my lifetime. I can still hardly believe it.

And...wow. The "masses" just LOVED this stuff just as much as the geeks. Sure, "true" science fiction was "deeper" and more "technical"--but the real heart of what the geeky minority found so appealing was the very heart of the human race itself-- the ancient mythos of Western Civilization.

Who knew that SO MANY people all over the world would dig it so much?

But seriously, folks-- lighting doesn't strike twice. Lucas and Fox made a lot of money but they found that once they'd tasted the honeypot they could not put down the crack pipe (sorry). They had to keep on squeezing that chicken until the last sweet, sweet drops of life had been removed from the dead corpse of lost ideas, and now, so many years later, we find the unholy mess that is the "Star Wars Franchise" having died and been reanimated by Disney-- an undead thing prancing about as the rest of it try to figure out how to kill it once and for all.

But there was a time....

...there was as time, boys. When young Skywalker wanted to be a Jedi Knight like his father. When an evil demon in a black killed for fun, and a crusade of children could save the galaxy. A simpler time

Like a lot of other reviewers, I saw this in a big old movie palace when I was a youngster. It stank up that vast and airy auditorium. Totally stank. I think I developed a life-long antipathy towards anything that happened in this film, including auto racing.

I wish it were otherwise but from the oddball music to the flat and lifeless acting this movie deserves a pass. But I'm boosting the score a little for the few great scenes and clever editing. Otherwise... a bust.

The snappy-sappy dialogue and the upside-down sympathies I'm feeling for the characters in this movie left me a little disappointed. I tracked down and actually bought the DVD on eBay in order to see this film after seeing "Broken Lance" and reading that this was a superior version of the same story.

But Edward G. Robinson just doesn't exude the kind of menace that radiates from a real bully. Then again, I never could buy him as a tough guy. Then comes the insufferable performances by Richard Conte and Susan Hayward-- who rat-ta-tat their lines at each other in 1930's-speak making me cringe every time he says "period" (even though I know it's supposed to be a gag).

The whole issue of the "legal trouble" that powers the story is vague. Way too vague. It should be explained a bit better, but then that would "break the spell" that exists in this foggy netherworld of "noir" New York. The problem is that this isn't really a "noir" film but it kinda acts like it wants to be. Really, that's what's wrong with it. It wants Conte's character to be a hard-boiled private dick and Hayward is a rich dame who blows into his office...

I guess the director really wanted to make A DIFFERENT MOVIE about a private eye and a doll but they had to make it using this script. A shame. If they'd paid attention to the original story... coulda' been a contender.