AnnieP

Gimmicks are not plot. Confused, repetitious images are not keen character development, and certainly not genius. All the techno-crap and time-jumping were really unnecessary,and the heavy-handed clues throughout were tiresome. This pic could have stood more editing - by about fifteen minutes.

But I digress: Tom Cruise is my subject, and the reason I went to see the picture. (And how they sold it. This is a STAR VEHICLE, get it?)

Now:is there anyone who likes Tom Cruise unreservedly? Or is that guy working all the angles behind that golden smile visible to everyone?

Until "Vanilla Sky" I liked Tom Cruise - but with provisos. Now I must admit: he CAN act (though his range is small) and (to his credit)he was willing to take a chance of losing his audience by hiding that fabulous Star-Face for so much of this unhappy story.

The audience filed out as if unconscious before the credits started to roll, and I admit I suffered the same malaise. It was nothing so clear as "I don't like it."

The uneasy feeling stayed with me. In fact, it took me several hours to realize that I simply don't LIKE seeing Tom Cruise as a loser. Life is complicated enough. I was to see a jaunty happy hero, the place wherein all his attraction lies. (And I'm not a kid; the heroes of my twenties have been dying off for about five years from natural causes.)

When I go to see Tom Cruise I want him to be the Tom Cruise climbing the sheer rock face at the beginning of "Mission Impossible 2".

He doesn't need to show me he can act.

He doesn't have to.

He can just smile and win. I won't mind at all.

Are the Coens the new fashion? (Do we believe the Emperor is wearing clothes even if we don't see them?)

Without exception (and I have seen "Blood Simple," "Fargo","Hudsucker Proxy," "O Brother Where Art Thou?," "Miller's Crossing" and tried 3 times to sit through "The Big Lebowski")I have been left cold by each story, telling myself (except for Hudsucker,which just stank, plain and simple)that they were evolving. I thought "Fargo" was funny in places (thought Margie was divine)but it went on too long. I tried "Miller's Crossing" because I like Gabriel Byrne and Mellissa Gay Harden. There were redeeming moments, but not many.

Then too, I'm not particularly amused by seeing the same supporting characters over and over again. In fact, I find it distracting. These familiar faces never become lost in the character. It's simply Jon Polito, for example, playing another fat sleaze. I have tried to see a pattern in their films. I tried to find extenuating circumstances for the lack of entertainment value in a series of films which have obviously been painfully constructed. Problem is, all you see is how painstaking it is.

I don't want to see the zipper in the back of the monster's suit. I want to be entertained. In a literate fashion, if possible, which this one strove to be, but not necessarily. I like silly stuff well enough -Loved, for example, "Beautician and the Beast," the new "Mummy" and its sequel. Even the Di Caprio "Man in the Iron Mask." I loved Billy Bob or Bille Ray or whoever he is, in "Primary Colors." He had a character there and he developed it. In this one, I KNOW he's the man of the title, but who gave a d---? Sure, he disappeared. Sure, he was supposed to. I GET it, but you know what? I think he was bored.

I know I was.

I think somebody decided the Coens were cool, or hip, or chic, and word of mouth has solemnly carried them along.

The popcorn was great - just the right amount of butter - but the movie was really boring.

Have you seen "The Others?" Incredible! Classy AND entertaining.

According to a very good biography written by his grandson, near the end of his career, John Ford sought to make his own reparation to the Indian nation.

This is a thoughtful, sympathetic treatment of the Indian that runs a little too long in my estimation. The picture would have benefited by eliminating the entire "Wyatt Earp/Doc Holiday-with-the-sidebar-of- lovely ladies of a certain occupation", which was staged and played just this side of a pratfall. It made me impatient to get back to the Indians, but might have been intended as comic relief. Somebody made a bad call.

Several members of the John Ford ensemble company are present, including Harry Carey Jr, Patrick Wayne and Ben Johnson. Mike Mazurki plays a comic turn that does not jar.

Richard Widmark is a divine leading man and Carroll Baker does her job well too. It's a shame the casting is so obviously non-American-Indian, but this too is in the light of my recently acquired PC consciousness. Who do you cast as the noble savage? You know if you're over a certain age - Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Sal Mineo, Victor Jory. They all did a good job, but one of the things I liked about "Dances with Wolves" was the native casting (and the great hair!)

I'd recommend this one to all John Ford fans. I am, but this particular flick is not his memorial. Perhaps "The Searchers" is.

I think so.

I thought it was a kick - but then I've been watching movies that date from 1917 and know a little about the pictures. This romp combined cameos and bits by folks from Hollywood's good years (which I define as when they used people instead of digital simulation) as well as familiar faces from TV and pictures from the 50's and 60's.

It's a GO for my money (but then I wasn't in high school when I bought it). Don't see it unless you love pictures!

First of all, let's get this straight - the story takes place in 1953, not the '40's. Now - you've got these four guys riding around in a convertible in bad L.A. There's a comic aspect to this little ritual, kind of Abbott and Costello times 2, but it's hard to know who's the straight man.

The plot is not a new one, but the violence has (at least) the merit of being real person-to-person violence (as differentiated from being acted in front of a blue screen and digitally augmented). There are too many "name" actors here, and (I'll grant) not much character development, but it's a chance to watch Nick Nolte and Bruce Dern do their signature performances - Nick, impassive and looming large, has played this role many times before, and always to good effect. He was better doing it in "Q&A", but that was TOO real, and a much too scary. Bruce Dern's overacting is almost reassuring and one of the few animated performances in the picture.

Melanie is subdued, being the window dressing, and they have her wearing shoulder pads, which wasn't a fifties thing, but she gives a good performance without any of the lip-licking she usually resorts to. The photography is good, the desert ominous, and watching evil Treat Williams get thrown out of the plane most entertaining.

It's not Chekov, it's not anything wonderful at all, but it reeks of ambience. I'd recommend it as an evening's entertanment. Much better, certainly, than the stuff that passes as entertainment on the big screen most of the time.

Sure wish they'd given Michael Madsen more screen time - what if they'd pushed Chaz Palmintieri out of the plane early on and beefed Mike's role? Whadya say?

Well - when the cameo appearance of Jason Miller (looking even more eroded than he did in Exorcist IV) is the high point of a picture, what've you got?

It's a little bit country, a little bit rock n' roll: mix two drunks with money who drag their kid all over the place with a bog-dried mummy (have you figured that one out yet - DRIED in a bog?) in the basement, Christopher Walken with a bad dye job, and a little girl who might have been an interesting character if they'd developed her.

I understand - sort of - that they're going back to visit her relatives. After that....

Problem: There are several interesting flashbacks to what I must assume is her mother being killed in a car bombing (I think). This is never connected to anything.

Problem: What do we need the grandmother for? Now, the grandmother could be interesting. She speaks Gaelic, or Celtic, or something. Maybe you can make something of her. The best they can do is that she 's got a tobacco habit. That's all.

Problem: They cast a real shifty character as the husband. Is he type-cast (will he sell his wife to the devil? Maybe he can look forward to the trust fund he manages for her)or is he cast against type (after all, he has a good haircut and nice clothes)? He drinks, he hesitates. He's not a bad guy. Not a good one. But dislikable. Why didn't they DO something with him?

No problem: an old boyfriend shows up. The husband knocks him down. He comes back to knock down the husband. (It gets pretty stupid, but at least THAT character has motivation.)

NOW - she's an alcoholic, he's an alcoholic; he might only have married her for her money. The grandmother is locked in the bedroom. The blind uncle takes our heroine to the basement to show her the mummy of a witch (are you following this?) who may come to life. In fact, you KNOW she'll come to life, the music swells. A little girl lives in the house, takes tea to the grandmother (unlocks the door to do so) and provides granny with cigarettes. Periodically, granny gets out. But nothing happens.

Husband and wife lose the kid in the house, subsequently lose their bedroom. Uncle gets his throat cut in the basement. The leading lady has nose-bleeds. The husband drinks. They both drink. In the face of all of this, the awful truth alluded to in the first over-voice is - omigod - an abortion when the leading lady was twelve years old.

In spite of all these dangling-thread ingredients, nobody managed to get a story on the screen. No bridge between situations, no graduation from mild disturbance to awful horror, just long slow scenes that go nowhere.;nbody, really, to care about - and they had places to go with that aspect - the innocent kid in the charge of drunks,the grandmother who might be locked up because she's a monster, but no, her worst fault is smoking. She's got great hair, good makeup.

In short, no plot. Just a little random (predictable)violence in a dark library, with the rain gushing in, and the sound track cuing us in. You need more than a few drunks and Christopher Walken to make a movie.

The production values were good. Oh. Nice scenery, good wardrobe. The cameraman, at least, knew what he was doing.

I bought it. Poor me.

I, too, love Audrey Hepburn. Even in "How to Steal a Million." And William Holden? My god - remember "Picnic". Think "S.O.B." and "The Counterfeit Traitor" and "Stalag 17."

There are moments - just moments - when you get a glimpse of real chemistry, but the heavy-handed script kills it all. Worse, makes what could be a delightful reunion of the two from "Sabrina" (the good one)a cynical, tasteless in-joke.

It didn't tickle this movie lover at all. For shame!

Gosh. Golly. What is it?

Take the sets from the Batman movie, let a comic book be your guide for dialogue, and cast Tim Robbins (what's not to like?) as your naive leading man; let Jennifer Jason Leigh do an imitation of young Kate Hepburn while using the body language of the young Barbara Stanwyck. What could be wrong with that? Oh, and add a very short Paul Newman (they should never let him stand next to Tim Robbins), "Yes, yes," he says, and flicks his major cigar, doing a passable Groucho.

Look, I loved the movies of the thirties and forties with Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper playing the honest (if simple) common man who wants to make good. It's a familiar plot -bring him to Town from Hicksville, pit him against the most cynical business world possible (this is sometimes a political scenario). Meet him up with the sharp-as-a-whip Career Woman (usually an undercover reporter out to get the Scoop). He realizes, too late,that he has told her his hopes and dreams with an open heart, and all the while she has been sticking the knife to him. She realizes, nearly too late, that she is in love; it rolls downhill, with delicious suspense, sometimes a full five minutes of conflict that seem like forever before the clinch and the closing credits roll.

It could have worked (it's worked before), but nobody here cared about the characters. The writer, the director - one assumes they conspired, the brothers Coen, as they have in the past. Who to blame? No matter. We are left with caricatures, badly presented and badly treated. The Tim Robbins character IS an imbecile; he has no original likability for us to return to; we do not know him and so we do not root for him. Tim Robbins' natural charm is inclined to buffoonery, and so he needs a script,and some (dare I say it?) direction). He can act, you just need to give him some clues. When one moment of true feeling, of human contact, occurs, it is because Jennifer Jason Leigh makes it happen, working against bad dialogue and somebody's misconceived Bryn Mawr accent. I like her, she keeps trying new things, but unfortunately, curiosity value does not a movie make.

I pay my dollar, I expect to be entertained. If this is a comedy, it isn't funny. If it is a return to "Mr. Deeds," there's no resemblance. You can't count on the audience's collective consciousness to provide EVERYTHING.

I liked "Fargo". I liked "Saving Arizona."

WHAT HAPPENED?

If you're into vampires, this plays havoc with the legend, but if you're into visuals, it's perfectly wonderful. The plague scenes in the courtyard/city square with pigs and banquets and folks going happily mad on their way to the Reaper are worth the price of admission all by themselves. And the rats - I kept wondering how they got them back in their cages after each take.

Poor Bruno Ganz, who doesn't get the girl; poor Doctor Von Helsing, who walks around like a zombie, but never gets bitten; poor Lucy, whose noble act is thwarted.

Klaus Kinski's face is a visual match for the silent Nosferatu, but bodily is mistakenly cast; indeed, he seems too frail to be toting those coffins in and out of hiding places. I hate to nitpick; you either buy it all or none of it, but I've got to ask: why does he cringe (after depositing the first coffin) at the sight of a mere cross (not even a crucifix), when the building he enters is bedecked with them? Oh well...

Makes no difference. If you're looking for realism, well, you wouldn't be watching this. Isabelle Adjani is beautiful, as usual; Bruno Ganz is just window dressing, Klaus Kinski is angst-ridden: he wants to be loved, he wants to grow old.

I bought the video under false pretenses - this is no masterpiece, but it is surely worth renting. Give me the Frank Langella Drac any day!

Although the issues are dated, and the dialogue (especially Noah/Cary's) so lofty it would be more easily swallowed in a novel than spoken language, I found the movie delightful.

Not a Cary Grant fan, I usually find him (although very gorgeous)a man who mugs his way through his roles. Not so here - he was very close to real (too good to be true, but a person). There was none of the eye-rolling, the drop-shouldered double takes - he interacted - stepping back for Miss Crain, Mr. Slezak and Finlay Currey, a treasure of a character named Shunderson, in all their respective scenes together. He listened. He gave them the moment when it should have been theirs. I wonder, was this a particularly good time in Cary Grant's life (and did he reflect it?) or was he really a very good actor after all?

I can't remember a performance of his that touched me so.

I fell in love with Noah Praetorius too - who could resist? Just watch him conduct "Gaudeamus" in the final scene. His face was never more expressive, his whole mien says this is a man who has gotten to know himself, and finds the moment, and the lifetime, quite wonderful.

He is never more star-like than in this unheralded picture. Three cheers, Mr. Grant!

I remembered this one from TV a hundred years ago. Paulette Goddard has the title role, and she is quite beautiful and completely convincing. Real-er than Eliza Doolittle, she slips in and out'a Houndsditch slang, but she is never comic or plays it broad. She is a lady long before she marries into royalty.

Her persistent love of Hugh (played at his caddish-sexy best by Ray Milland) is the engine that drives the story. Plenty of good supporting roles, including Sara Algood, Cecil Kallaway (playing Gainsborough),Eric Blore, and that divinely handsome eternal man-who-loses-the-girl, Patric Knowles.

I loved it - and though I am not a great Ray Milland fan, I find he can be very convincing as a lover. His only better example of it is "Golden Earrings" with Miss Marlene Dietrich. And as for Miss Goddard, we never saw enough of her to type-cast her - feisty, spirited, yes, but a little unexpected in the depth of her performance, and a very lovely lady to boot.

This is what movies used to be - good characters (somebody to root for), an intelligent story, and Glamour. I recommend this picture highly!

I liked it. Better and better. At first I found the lady cold and not at all like the Meggie I had grown used to from watching the series over and over, but she was farther along in her story now - she'd borne Ralph's child and raised him to the age of thirteen. The world was at war. She was lonely and becoming a pragmatist. She didn't expect to see him again. (We didn't either.) THAT is the gift here - more time with the lovers.

Before commenting on the consistently good performances, which were (for the most part) written and played true to the characters lined in the book and performed in the original mini, I must protest the unsympathetic, growling characterization of Vittorio, Father Ralph's mentor at the Vatican. The writer was dead wrong in having him threaten Ralph with his love for Meggie. "Get over it!" he says, essentially. "Get on with your life!" Vittorio would never have acted so. Maximillian Schell was serious miscasting, but he didn't write his own lines. The same judgments apply regarding the casting and meddling attitude of Meggie's mother- too sensational, too cruel. And out of character.

The confrontation between Ralph and Vittorio comes so early in the story that one is tempted to judge the entire production by it, but it is important to keep watching. Eventually the characters fit in to the almost sacred memories we have of the earlier version and stand as logical segues to the time-line that they must fit into. The son Dane, by the way, is a real goody-goody. I didn't like him as an adult and I didn't like him as a kid, but he was true to character.

Look - Richard Chamberlain is the best. The love story stands. It was the main reason we watched the first one - that and the wonderful performances by the major stars - Kiley, Stanwyck, Simmons. Those folks aren't there; two of them we will never see again, and we will miss them, but we have Richard Chamberlain here again, and he was, after all, the heart of the story.

Look - try thinking of it as a road company performance with a star turn. It's worth seeing. Take another look and see if you don't agree- it's available on tape.

I cried.

This is a story that combines a Houdini-like hero (Gilbert), his blonde leading lady for the third pic in a row (Leila Hyams) and an able cast supporting. It's a case of two lovers separated by the evil dealings of a Marques bent on keeping his fiancee's money, never mind the fiancee. To keep himself in dough, he kills her father, frames her lover and finally dies of the flu.

Everybody does well, but all are wasted - and to give a guy who looks like John Gilbert does plastic surgery half-way through the picture is a really bad idea.

Mr. Gilbert is good (as always), Miss Hyams is good at what she

does (and the two of them not only look good together, they play well as lovers); the bad guy (Ian Keith) and his blonde amour (Moorehead) are appropriately sleazy. Everybody looks great in evening clothes.

Somebody give them some character development! The actors do what they can, professionals all, but there's no spark. Nobody to blame but the writers!

They made a lot of movies together, and this one is no "Big Parade", but it's worth seeing. The scenery is gorgeous, the wardrobes are great, the humour is as fresh today as it was when they all put on those big fur hats and saddled up.

It's the story of one Cossack leader's son who will not go to war. Lukashka, (Gilbert)loves simply to live - he finds delight in the small things that surround him. He is taunted by his father,and humiliated by the other young men in the village, who (naturally) view war as a rite of passage, and simply the Thing That A Man Does, or he is no man. His childhood sweetheart, Mariana (Adoree)loves him, but being a simple girl, would like it better if he were like the rest.

Taunted beyond bearing, Lukashka wins his scar when men from the neighboring town steal horses under cover of night. Thereafter, the men laud him, the woman make over him, and Mariana, who had her chance, is ignored, but so pointedly that we know he still loves her madly. There is an amusing scene where she runs after him on horseback, echoing the fabulous troop truck scene in "Parade" when she falls in the dust, clutching his shoe.

In the course of the misunderstanding, she is betrothed to an aristocrat; Lukashka comes to find her, but it is too late: she has given her word. A beautiful love scene, making titles unnecessary, ensues, but nothing can change. It is too late. She has given her word, though we can see her heart is breaking.

Terrible things happen before they can be together again. The torture scene is brutal, too realistic for me when I saw it. It seemed his hands WERE burning! It is the vogue to be facile now about silent film, to see the stories as hackneyed because now, after 70 years, we think we have invented sophistication. Pay attention to this story. There is a subtlety that many stories made today miss completely.

This is a good story - it's entertainment, and that was always the point. It's also a chance to see John Gilbert play opposite his most sympathetic leading lady, Renee Adoree, a lovely, wide-hipped girl with magic, at least when she played against him.

So much has been written about this picture that it is impossible not to see Von Stroheim's strange genius in it. I, for one, was brought up too conventionally to appreciate the recurring shots of feet - dancing, jumping, caressing, kicking - but it didn't get in the way of the story. It all takes place in their eyes - Mae Murray and the wonderful John Gilbert, so beautifully paired. The sparks fly, the seduction scene with the two blindfolded musicians sets the scene, and when he would seduce her...she cries, and he falls in love.

The responsibility of royalty and the greed of nations come between the lovers, but they come together again, and in the dance all is resurrected. A war of wills, of mistaken feelings and misunderstanding is what they talk about while their bodies move as one. I can hear the music still, see them, his incredible dark eyes riveted on her in all moods:successively amused, then tittilated, finally adoring, hungry; bereft, angry, and finally - consumed and satisfied.

It's a lovely film, even with the feet, and John Gilbert gives a wonderful performance. Mae Murray, who could cry for her own purposes and succumb when every woman in the audience was hoping for their union, was his match.

It's more than big, glorious MGM - it's a good story with strong characters. See it - on the big screen if you can, but see it in any case.!