JerryP-2

We bought the DVD so that the grandkids would have something to watch when they came to visit. It turns out that Madagascar is more for adults that children. Like most animated features in recent times, this one likes to rip scenes from any number of films. The Great Escape, Planet of the Apes, Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone," and a few others (whose titles escape me at the moment) were represented. Amazingly, the animators went to great pains to accurately depict the kinds of animals that are endemic to Madagascar -- although the fossas behaved more like a pack of hyenas rather than the solitary beasts that they are. Even the rainforest background was pretty accurately depicted. All of that, however, was lost on a 7-year old and her 5-year old sibling. I thought the movie had some good lines, but that went way over the heads of the kids, and the action didn't suit them at all.

This is a feel good movie at a time when the Cold War was winding down (although most people didn't know it at the time). The acting is just awful, the characters are flat, and the plot already has been done (See "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0060921/). It has its James Bond moments, probably intended, but they do little or nothing to help get this turkey off the ground.

On the other hand, the first time around for this plot, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming", benefited from both a great cast and great writing. "Russkies" pales by comparison. I have to wonder why they bothered to make the film.

The Big Red One isn't so much a war movie as it is a message, sometimes obscure, of what war is really like. There is much symbolism in this movie, for example the human arm, with a wristwatch on it, washing in the bloody surf of Omaha Beach. If you want realistic detail of combat, watch Saving Private Ryan. If you want to the voice of experience, blurry from the passage of time, The Big Red One is a movie to see.

Keep in mind that this movie reflects the life experiences of some survivors of WWII. That Lee Marvin was cast as the grizzled sergeant is part of the symbolism: Marvin was a combat Marine who participated in the invasion of Saipan; he is cast as a survivor of WWI who is retracing part of the path he took during that conflict. I found some of the scenes from the movie barely believable, for example, the French insane asylum, but you must keep in mind that there is a message from the survivors of that war in each and every scene. How you take the message, apparently, is up to you.

In addition to being a drama, this film gives a rather nice account of the Czech struggle against both Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. Having read "The Big Show" by Pierre Clostermann, and having had an Polish acquaintance who escaped Poland after the Nazi onslaught and made it to England, I found the main story line to be reasonably in line historical fact. Thanks to a combination of computer imagery and some surviving Spitfires of the era, the flying scenes are very convincing. The detail in the Spitfire attack on the German train is consistent with real life events of the time.

The dramatic aspects of the story are entirely believable also. Lonely men far from home and facing death on a daily basis behave very much like the characters in this story. The turns of events also reflect a very believable story line. The directors do a creditable job of blending three different time periods so that there is enough continuity to make the drama of this story manageable.

This film held my interest from the start for several reasons: I'm a retired military flier; I'm a student of history, especially the history of WWII; I'm way past being tired of the trashy Hollywood versions of world events. This film is a top notch product in every respect.

I wasn't sure what I was going to see when I rented Secondhand Lions on DVD. My daughter recommended this movie, and often our tastes don't coincide; this time they did.

I didn't think that Michael Caine could pull off being a Texan, but he did a pretty good job of it. He comes off pretty well as Robert Duvall's more conservative brother. It didn't quite dawn on be as I watched that this story was really being told through the eyes of The Kid; that came out in the DVD because you have the benefit of the director's intentions and some of the scenes that didn't make it to the final in-theater film.

All in all, I thought the movie was great entertainment. Being of a certain age, I got a kick out of the vintage (for me) cars that were used in the production. That really does look like Texas, too. Duvall and Caine do an excellent job of being grouchy old uncles, but Duvall's uncle might be just a bit over the top. For the purposes of this movie, however, that works just fine.

What an improbable piece of crap. At least with the Indiana Jones and the James Bond series you knew it was a spoof. This masterpiece, apparently, wants to be taken somewhat seriously, but that is hard to do. Maybe it's just me, but this movie appeared to be doing high camp at the same time it trying to be serious. Jurgen Prochnow's part is short and sweet; he must have needed the money to do this bit. He's much more believable in just about anything else I've seen him do. As for the rest of the cast, they are just as credible as Harrison Ford in his GI Joe cum POTUS persona. I can believe that a President with a military background might be able to handle AF-1, if he had been a pilot, and that's the background of Ford's character. But this guy is also a Special Ops type -- and quite handy with just about any automatic weapon you'd like to name. I saw this one by accident, and that is the only way I would have seen it.

"Pearl Harbor" was more a comic book than a serious movie. I ignored it when it was in the theaters; however, I finally broke down and wasted three hours to watch it on the Starz channel last night. This movie is so disjointed and wrong-headed it's hard to know where to start. First, the special effects were okay; you can do a lot with computer animation these days. The problem with the special effects was that they lent to the comic book atmosphere of the movie; all those planes crammed into such a small space. Then there was the plot itself. If you're going to do a movie about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, why do you start out with the Battle of Britain and the Eagle Squadron? In fact, how many movie goers actually know what the Eagle Squadron was? The Doolittle raid on Japan was as out of place as the Battle of Britain. A better opener would have been the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and then China proper. The story of the Chinese suffering under Japanese oppression would have been a far superior lead-in to the events that culminated with the Japanese launching their attack. Leaving the story at the aftermath of the attack would have been far superior to what the director cobbled together. The odd little bits, for example, the fiction of FDR (Jon Voight) pulling himself to a standing position, had no place in a real movie about Pearl Harbor. If they wanted detail they should have shown those radar operators having to walk to a pay phone to report what they had just detected on their system. From what I have read, that was authentic. The bomb's-eye-view of the plunge into the Arizona's forward magazine was plain stupid.

If anyone wants to learn about the attack on Pearl Harbor they should book a flight to Honolulu and go to the Arizona Memorial. The National Park Service can give you more detail and authenticity in twenty minutes than this movie does in three hours. The plane ride to Honolulu is a bit pricier than admission to a movie theater, but you would learn more, would have some fun, and wouldn't feel as if you had been cheated.

I took my daughter and her husband to see the real thing a couple of years ago. They were awe-struck. Then I took them a few miles south, down to Hickam Air Force Base, and showed them the pock-marked dormitories that still stand as a memorial to that day of infamy.

I'm not quite old enough to actually know what being on a U-boat was like, and I'm of the wrong nationality. However, I've seen the U-505 which is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Das Boot is flat amazing in the technical detail used to depict the lives of a U-boat crew.

I've read accounts of how they would provision those subs, how the men existed in such a cramped environment, and how they fought. From the last night of shore leave to the final scene, this is as close as it comes to "the real thing," regardless of nationality.

I recently watched the Starz airing of the movie -- all four hours and thirty-two minutes of it. I had seen the shorter version of it twice before. That version seemed choppy, and now I know why. The director takes great pains to show the detail of the lives of a U-boat crew. The shore leave scenes reminded me of some of my own experiences during war time. I have to wonder how they recreated the submarine pens from which the U-boats sortied. The U-boat interior shots are just plain credible; it appears that they were using hand-held cameras for many of the interior shots. The nitty-gritty, though, was the minute analysis of the characters on the crew. The war correspondent quickly discovers the fallacy of his preconceptions. The crew members are as lusty a lot of sailors as I've ever seen, except possibly, for one. In the long version, the director doesn't seem to focus his attention on the boat's skipper; rather, we get to see a sample of what the ordinary seamen were like. That's why it's four hours and thirty-two minutes long. By the way, there are no flash-backs or other devices in this film; it's all here and now.

If you've outgrown "action movies," or aren't interested in that genre in the first place, you're a possible candidate for this film. Like the war correspondent, your preconceptions will be dashed. You will also need a bit of stamina for the full-length version of Das Boot.

I have seen this little Pixar gem several times, and it always seemed as if I'd seen it before. Then it struck me: this is a very clever and entertaining redux of The Magnificant Seven.

The script is clever, the animation is pure Pixar, the action flows well, and the "out takes" are terrific.

I don't get into film stories very readily -- especially if they happen to be "horror" films. I find myself laughing at the action rather than finding it believable. Not so with this film; I found the some of the scenes to be hair raising. That means the director did a good job.

The story seemed vaguely familiar; both my wife and I guessed the punch line no more than ten minutes into the story. Still, it was a good story and well told. The story seemed familiar because it had some of the flavors of "Jacob's Ladder," "Heaven Can Wait," "Ghost," and maybe just a dash of "Beetlejuice."

The presentation of the story is clever and engaging, even though the director uses several traditional English manifestations to signal the presence of spirits: deathly silence and cold. The visual images are well done, and, as I already mentioned, it was convincing enough to be actually hair raising.

I'd see it again.

I suppose everyone has seen one or more film representations of The Holocaust, but this one is different. It focuses not on the horror of the events themselves, rather, it's main thrust is struggle to return from the nightmare.

I liked the film for its apparent accuracy in location and the detail of what it was like for some of the Jews liberated from Auschwitz to find their way back to their homelands. Virtually helpless, the Jews in Primo Levi's autobiography embark on an odyssey that eventually gets them back to their homes -- at least some of them. All the more surprising is that Stalin's Soviet Union is their main benefactor throughout all of this. While this is supposed to be an autobiography, I have to wonder at some of the scenes, for example, when the train load of Jews arrives at the Munich main rail station, a former Werhmacht soldier kneels before them. In another, a Jew with barely enough food for himself, gives some bread to German POWs in Russia so that he can watch them fight over it. The irony is unmistakable.

Overall, I liked the film. It's one you have to see more than once because of all the detail. It's a bit difficult to follow the dialog in part, because much of it is in the language of the people who are represented: Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, French, Germans, Italians. Not only that, but the English dialog is accented and somewhat difficult to follow.

I intend to see it at least one or two more times in order to get the full effect of this very well done story.

This one is priceless. While it is done definitely tongue-in-cheek, this is based on actual events during the Second World War. The Nazis were successful in creating counterfeit British currency, and with it they intended to destroy the British economic monetary systems. Unfortunately, they counted too heavily on Private Schultz.

Ian Richardson does a wonderfully evil SS officer -- and the rest of the cast isn't bad either. You have to see this one for yourself.

I must admit that I've never read "Dune," so I'm taking it on faith that Smithee is being reasonably true to Frank Herbert's tale. The film takes the three predominant religions of our times, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and combines them in a way that needs some 8200 years into the future (if, indeed, the year 10,191 is based on the Christian calendar) to pull it off. Since we don't know how humans eight millenia hence might behave, the producer was free to have them do whatever he wished. They certainly have all the weaknesses and strengths of contemporary humans, so, apparently, nothing has changed much -- except that technology and some mind-expanding material, Melange, enable humans to "travel without moving."

This film has numerous plots and sub-plots, so it takes some time to develop them in a way that makes sense. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" moved along in a similarly slow and careful fashion. As for the acting, some of it seemed a bit melodramatic, but again, we have to accept that humans some 8200 years hence can be whatever the director wants them to be.

While the 137 minute US version is just barely enough to make some sense of the story, the full-length version, which provides an explanation for some of the seemingly disjointed action, is more than most people will sit through voluntarily. On the other hand, if I hadn't read Arthur Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey," before I saw Kubrick's movie I wouldn't have understood some of the strictly visual scenes that occur at the end of the film.

I liked the film for the way in which it mixes religion and human nature.

I'm told that this was Burt Lancaster's last film. I happen to like his acting, but the script for this effort could have been better. There are the adults, who are rather shallow caricatures of real people with problems. The kids who play grandpa's grandchildren, however, make the best part of this opus. I could almost see myself in their places so many years ago. Of course, my siblings and I wouldn't have done some of the things these grandkids end up doing. The last 10 minutes of the film make up for some rather boring parts spent on the adult characters.

Sure, Stanley Kubrick directed it, but Anthony Burgess wrote the original. Once you get past the violence and some of the improbable "science," this is an exquisite rendition of Burgess' commentary on the social tinkering and resultant disintegration of British culture and its likely outcome. Probably the best scene is the demonstration of the "socially acceptable" version of Alex DeLarge and the (presumably) C of E cleric's objection that "we've taken away his free will." The alternatives of dealing with the sociopathic Alex are left unsaid.

This film has meaning and content far beyond mere entertainment.

I saw this movie during its initial release; I was impressed with it then, and it remains much more impressive than any contemporary attempt at the genre. The movie "Scream" comes to mind as a contemporary attempt at being a thriller.

This movie includes convincing performances by just about all appearing in it; Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin top the list. Arkin does a really chilling psychopathic killer, and Hepburn is vulnerable -- but not too vulnerable. Probably the most memorable scene for me is nearing the climax when Hepburn's apartment is completely dark -- except for one small light. The woman sitting directly behind me stood up and screamed as if it was she who was being attacked by Arkin. Very convincing.

A terrific little fantasy that, not surprisingly, has flavors of Monty Python. My children and I first saw it in the early '80s on a night ferry from Harwich to Zeebrugge. I've seen it a few times since, and marvel at the creativity that went into the film. God's "employees" trying to use a map of the universe to track down treasure is the theme; running around through time trying to find the treasure is the game. The cameos by Cleese, Connery and the rest are some amusing highlights, but the Time Bandits themselves really make the story. The climactic scenes with the Evil Genius made me think more than a little of the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I think it is a well done bit of fantasy for older children and adults; it helps to know a bit of history going into it. I wouldn't let my six-year old granddaughter see it -- at least not yet -- but she and her sister probably will love the adventure in a few years.