colin_finch

There's no question that this is a skillfully made and evocative film. It beautifully captures the teenaged-fledgling duality of wanting to leave the nest but being uncertain of their ability to master flight, although this was clearly not the film's message. In the preamble the narrator reveals that, years after the event, he still doesn't know why the Lisbon girls killed themselves - that makes two of us. There seems to be little attempt to explain it.

We are presented with a slightly dysfunctional family going through some of the usual traumas of adolescents. The parents are more strict than most, but are not ogres; they display no violence or aggression; they show themselves willing to compromise and their love for their daughters is evident. They rather overreact when the sexually precocious Lux stays out all night with her boyfriend and the girls are kept at home - no locks or chains, just a very severe grounding. The girls become engaged in a bizarre musical dialogue with the local boys (why not just talk?) who ultimately arrange to visit, or perhaps rescue, them. It is at this, apparently hopeful, moment that the girls all kill themselves.

So why? Despair? Punishment for their parents? Punishment for their would-be-rescuers? Teenaged petulance? How could we know? Lux is the only sister whose character gets any examination, and she seems about as deep as a puddle. I guess we are just being invited to share the bewilderment of the narrator and his friends. Not exactly a feel-good movie, but it's exactly what it says on the tin.

Remake a classic film scene by scene using modern film techniques and proven actors; can't fail can it? Wrong! This film is an object lesson to directors that a film is more than simply cinematography and dialogue. Somehow, the original Hitchcock Psycho is brilliant and this modern clone isn't.

I regret to have to say that the problem here is seems to be casting and performances. Antony Perkins' Norman Bates was shy, vulnerable, amiable and seemingly harmless. Vince Vaughn's version, on the other hand, is sinister, charmless and would have induced any streetwise female guest to jam a chair under her door handle. The problem with Anne Heche isn't so easy to pin down but,for some reason, she just doesn't seem to attain the right mix of vulnerable-female-but-also-scheming-embezzler.

Having said all of that, it's worth watching and, as an academic exercise, I'm glad that it was made. It really gives you a whole new appreciation of the subtlety of Alfred Hitchcock's original.

This was British TV's original police series. I'm not old enough to remember the early days of this show, but I grew up with it in the sixties and seventies. At the time, Dixon of Dock Green already seemed old fashioned compared with Z-cars or US shows like Ironside. It was a cozy and faintly sentimental representation of policing. Despite this, it retained a certain authenticity that other shows lacked. The police officers that I had met had more in common with Dixon than any other TV character. Jack Warner's perennial character George Dixon oozed calm authority and respectable self-assurance. Each programme was introduced by the whistled theme tune after which George Dixon would always begin a spoken introduction direct to camera with the words "Evening all". He would make dry observations about "villains" and the frailties of human nature. The episode's drama would then be played out. By the seventies Dixon himself rarely played a huge part in the story; he was pretty old. The programme would end with Dixon again; this time proposing a moral for the story. He invariably signed off with the words "'Night all". They don't make shows like this any more. Pity.

The Poseidon Adventure was among my favourite films when I was a kid. Along with "Airport" it was one of the early seventies disaster films that defined the formula for many more. Many of the themes have been reheated and used in a hundred other films and consequently it now looks incredibly corny. The fact that other themes were already past their sell by date doesn't help.

It *was* an important film for the development of it's genre, so film buffs may find it interesting; the over thirties may enjoy it for it's nostalgia value; otherwise it will probably seem pretty weird and clunky. Why, for example, is Pamela Sue Martin wearing shorts under her evening dress? The dialogue often sounds like the cinematic equivalent of gears grinding. "I'm a renegade" says Gene Hackman's character in what must be the most unsubtle piece of exposition ever.

I now find it more amusing than exciting but I still like it. It was of it's time; comparing it with Titanic is as meaningless as comparing Gone With The Wind with The Matrix.

I saw this when it was released and I remember thinking that the stop motion dinosaurs were breathtakingly realistic. (I was ten, in case you're wondering) Well, they were! They were state of the art! Yes, really! Anyway, if you've watched this recently, you will know how hilariously awful they are by todays standards. Frankly, Rex from Toy Story makes a more convincing dinosaur!

The story itself is your standard "Ripping Yarn". All the ingredients are there. A U-boat full of Germans, a square jawed American hero, a simpering (but ultimately feisty) English girl, an aged egghead to theorise upon their predicament; all pretty corny, but none the worse for it. All in all, it's a good drop of nostalgia for a bloke of my age. Anyone younger will require a well developed sense of irony to enjoy it.

I won't say it's the best film ever, but The Shawshank Redemption is certainly the best film *I've* ever seen. There are no big stunts, no state-of-the-art special effects, no naked women.... In fact there are none of the things that are normally "required" to make a film commercial. (Perhaps this accounts for its modest showing at the box office.) What it *has* got is humanity, subtlety and a great story with a brilliant payoff! One of the first DVDs I ever bought and by far the most played.