barnyard

I've seen this film now three times. I am not a football fan, but if any film would ever make into one, this would be it. I've read most of the other comments on "The Replacements" on IMDb, and the prevelant theme is "unoriginal". OK, I agree somewhat- the plot of "losers to winners" has been done before ad nauseum. It's a sports movie, not a documentry, and given it is a comedy, with a "feel good" theme, the plot has to be generic.

So what?

The plot merely exists to allow a series of gags to be set up. They are made that much more hilarious by the absolute charm of all the characters. Keanu Reeves is perfect, and I came away from this film with new respect for the skill with which he brings off his role. Shane Falco is a leader with heart, and to make the audience beleive that, the actor has to have heart too.

When I saw "The Replacements" for the first time in August (in a real theatre), I was struck by two things: first, how it delivers on every level on the same turf that "Any Given Sunday" failed, and second, why this film did not do well at the box office.

Professional sports should not be taken too seriously. It is, after all, a form of paid entertainment. "The Replacements" reminds us that if the players are not having fun, how can the fans? "Any Given Sunday" took itself as seriously as a Viet Nam War film. I wonder why?

I don't know why "The Replacements" failed at the box office. Keanu Reeves still, aparently, does not have the box office clout to carry a film. "The Matrix" succeeded because it was a classic and people recognised that. It was not a star vehicle. "The Replacements" is an ensemble film that, I think, should appeal to a more mature audience. Unfortunately, most film goers in the summer are kids. I suspect that marketing is the major reason why this film did not make the $200 million plus it richly deserved.

It is a very special film indeed that conveys the feeling that the actors had an absolute ball making it. I'd like to say "thank you" to Howard Deutch and his Gridiron Dirty Dozen. What a blast!

I wouldn't of thought that Russel Crowe could match his performance in the "Insider", but he does in stunning recreation of late 2nd Century Rome. This film has been called Ridley Scott's finest film since "Bladerunner". Wrong! It's his finest film, period. Mr. Scott has finally goven up trying to imitate his brother, Tony, and returned to more traditional story telling (forget G.I. Jane).

The story is compelling, with real meat to it (some of it cleaved!).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this film. Even the minor historical inaccuracies work (stirrups on the horses, for example). The supporting cast are all given wonderfully realized characters to play. Watch for Oliver Reed to get a posthumous Oscar nomination next spring. Production design,a fantastic score, photography- it's a real repeater.

Which is why I've seen it four times so far, with more viewings to come.

Congratulations, Mr. Scott.

Here in Toronto, U-571 has been compared to "Das Boot", Wolfgang Peterson's pacifist take on WW2 submarine warfare. There is no comparison, despite the presence of the latter film's art director. This is a made for North America Action/Adventure with very little originality. Too bad, because I was really looking forward to this film.

Detractors up here have also complained that Holywood has co-opted a partially Canadian story- the capture of a German Enigma coding machine. Heaven forbid that the US ever acknowledges that Canada has a contribution to world history! But I digress...

Editing problems also spoil the film: the marine major, Jon Bon Jovi's character, and all the captured German submariners disappear without any narrative acknowledgement within the film. We do know courtesy of Mr. Bon Jovi that his character's demise was edited out to preserve the PG-13 rating in US theatres. Presumably that is what happened to the rest as well. All in the name of cranking up the action quotient.

"Das Boot" spends considerable time dealving into the characters on the U-Boat. U-571 creates one superficial character arc for Matthew McConnahy, then devotes the rest of the film to one submarine cliche after another. I took the liberty of watching Tony Scott's "Crimson Tide" a few days ago: it too trots out the cliches, but because the film also layers character conflict and some social commentary, it actually succeeds.

Run superficial, run shallow, indeed!

Considering what sports films are usually like, testosterone circuses with gratuitous characters and situations, "Love and Basketball" comes as a welcome relief. At the risk of sounding pretentious, the film qualifies as art: it presents its characters in beleivable situations, a plausible plot arc, and with a great deal of emotional resonance.

I saw the film on Friday 21 April 2000, and was so impressed and moved, I saw it again last night, Saturday 22 April 2000.

Saana Lathan provides the best female performance of the year (yes, better than Julia Roberts in "Erin Brokovitch")matching her drive and ambition with Omar Epps. The direction and scriptwriting are very self-assurred. Technically, the photgraphy and editing are first rate. The supporting cast is great, providing many sub-plots which interact seemlessly with the central arc.

How refreshing to see a film that could have been about race, have nothing to do with it! Hopefully, the universal emotional appeal of the film will transcend all bounds in the U.S.

Good choice of release dates: right on the heals of the beginning of the NBA Playoffs.

Note to Spike Lee: stick to producing...this is a great film.

9 out of 10 stars.

Unfortunately, this film is no longer on the big screen. For that matter, I don't ever remember it being in Toronto during it's initial run. Too bad.

I had to watch this film on video, which I think detracted from the dramatic impact. It was very considerable, though, so I can only imagine what viewing the film in a theatre would be like.

I kept thinking while watching "Endurance" how it compares with "Chariots of Fire" and "Without Limits", two dramatised running films of note. Quite honestly, it is the best of the three.

I was in Ethiopia last spring (1999): seeing what I saw on the screen, as well as knowing first hand what the people of Ethiia have had to overcome to just stay alive, makes Mr. Sallassie's achievement more remarkable.

In addition to chronicalling Mr. Sallassie's achievements at the Atlanta Games, "Endurance" also highlights the qualities of Ethiopia: it beauty, the gentleness of the people, and the deep history of the culture.

Beautifully shot, and scored, this film elevates documentaries over the paucity of ideas and emotional depth of fictionalized films. Well worth seeing...take your children.

"Mission to Mars" fits right in with 2001, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and The Abyss. After all, they are all basically the same movie!

That's not to imply that Brian DePalma, et al., are plagarists. Rather, the theme that Kubrick set up, space travel as a mode of transcendence for the human species, is explored again in this movie. And very well.

Space flight is portrayed as the dangerous, and adventurous, endeavour that astronauts and cosmonauts have known for forty years. The presence of astronaut Storey ("Space is my calling") Musgrave on screen indicates the blessing of those who have been there. Not to mention the co-operation of NASA through the entire pre- and production process.

For those who know astronautics, there are a few minor technical flaws to the film, more continuity problems than anything: spacesuits (just like the 2001 variety), having air hoses extend from the PLSS to the helmits, suddenly not there when four astronauts enter the alien sanctuary, those same pesky PLSS's stapped to the astronauts backs while they are in the control cockpit, as well as a ship as sophisticated as the MARS II not having a warning light indicating that a fuel manifold had been punctured by a micrometeorite minutes before the "candle" was "lit". When the production designer and director strive so hard for authenticity, these little bloopers can detract from the film....but not much.

The depictions of Mars, and the hardware that is used to get people there is wonderful to watch. The sets (exteriors courtesy of British Columbia) are certainly light years ahead of Classic Trek (think "The Apple"). Sojourner should have been given a consultant's credit.

DePalma attempts to create interesting characters for the film, but what emerges is the likability of the actors portraying them. Astronauts in real life are such successful, type A types, that when combined with their training, their perfection becomes boring. Perhaps that was the intention: give the audience a sense of what astronauts are really like. I guess it worked.

Note to Gary Sinese: you are getting yourself typecast as a space film performer. Why do you think you were offered this film? Remember Apollo 13? Some casting director thinks you have the "Right Stuff". Please don't do a remake of "Enemy Mine"!

At times, this film suffers from editing that is too fast- paced. I understand the mechanics of spaceflight- many of the audience will not. Therefore, without sufficient grounding in the subject, many of the audience will find some of the plot transitions difficult to understand.

Or maybe it will kindle their interst in real spaceflight, so that NASA can fly more than 25 year old spaceships to orbiting tin cans in the sky.

Well worth seeing several times.

I've seen the film twice now, and, thanks to the Official Site, I've read the full Vanity Fair article.

There's also a film programme in Toronto which spent half an hour on "The Insider" this afternoon, featuring interviews with Michael Mann and Al Pachino.

I don't think I can say enough good things about this film. It works so well on a number of levels: social conscience, acting, direction, script, music- all are in place to deliver one of the best films of the year.

The programme I cited above had a four-shot of Pachino and Russel Crowe with the real Lowell Bergman and Jeff Wygand. Wow! Crowe reportedly put on 50 pounds for the role. The resemblance to the real Wygand is incredible. Crowe's performance, in fact, is the best thing about the film. He allows the viewer to feel all the emotions the character feels as his life unravels. He is conflicted, motivated by both a desire for revenge and for an idealism which he thought he had lost. He is seeking to redeem himself in his own eyes, and the eyes of others.

Pachino is the idealist, working within an organization which is making increasingly too many compromises to its journalistic integrity. As Bergman, relating to Wygand, both men seem to derive moral sustantence from the other.

And.....the viewer forgets he is wathcing actors playing parts. The actors become those parts as whole cloth.

The film contains a disclaimer that "certain facts have been altered for dramatic effect", or words to that extent. Major reshaping of history would have been the norm with a Hollywood film. Not this one: the Vanity Fair article demontrates that only minor changes have been made to sequence. The spirit of the truth is in place.

I think it is fitting that a film about integrity, about two men of integrity, is in turn directed by a Mann (a bad pun, I know) of integrity.

A must see. Crowe for Best Actor.

On many levels, Fight Club defies description. It appears to carry on a trend in 1999 film-making which emphasizes the surreal, and the alienated life of the average prole. Think "Matrix" or "American Beauty". There are commonalities here.

The film starts off emphatically within the narrator's head: we not only hear his words as he thinks them, but we see his visualization of the world as he sees it. Just how far does this go? I'm not telling......

Fight Club does not extol or glorify violence in any form. In fact, at the end of the film, there is a body count of exactly one, and this was a sort-of accidental death. The film's central point is: how do individuals, particularly male individuals, socialized into a set of expectations regarding how they fit into society(and how society is supposed to reward them), deal with the crushing disappointment of their own insignificance and metaphoric imasculation? It is a question one still asks coming out of the theatre.

This is a great addition to David Fincher's resume. I don't think the film is as tight script-wise as "Seven", but the film has more to say than anything else Fincher has done in the past. It is a dystopic vision. But then, we have a dystopic world.

Enjoy!

Pierce Brosnan will probably be the only thing familiar in Richard Attenborough's new biopic. The rest is new to international audiences: Canadian history and First Nations Culture.

"Grey Owl" is a light examination of how an man came to be adopted into the Ojibway of Northern Ontario, learning and preaching environmentalism decades before it became politically correct to do so. The film contains a love story, a moral message, and a man tortured by his past. That torture, though, is not always brought to life with the dramatic impact that it might.

Nevertheless, it is a film which holds its audience without any violence. It pays deep respect to Canada's First Nations, and presents them in a dignified and non-stereotypical manner. Brosnan's performance is somewhat stiff, but I suspect that's just how Lord Attenborough wanted him.

Thanks from a proud Canadian.

I originally read "Eaters of the Dead" 22 years ago when the novel first came out. As a 17 year old, having read "Lord of the Rings", I remember thinking that the novel was far too short, with not enough sword and sorcery to suit my tastes.

Well, my tastes have changed: given the choice between fantasy and reality, I'll take the latter. "The 13th Warrior" is the latter.

The film is a simple tale: it is a basic quest-myth. The film's strenghts lie in a simple retelling of a story which may have a basis in historical fact. The historicity of the story gives way very often in the film to the sort of action and bloodletting last seen in Braveheart. It is here, and in basic characterization, where the film stumbles.

The use of a Muslim-Arab protagonist is a very welcome development in American cinema. The almost total lack of development of the secondary characters detract from the film. This is surprising, since McTernan did such a great job of bringing secondary characters to life in "Die Hard" and "Hunt for Red October". Those two films were much better because of these characterizations. So was "Braveheart" for that matter.

Bandaras gives a good perfomance as ibn Fadlan, the Arab ambassador recruited by the Vikings to assist in ridding the more civilized "Northmen" of a cannibalistic scourge.

Unfortunatley, it is the action which takes up most of the film, and most of its staging is unmemorable. The set design, music and technical details make the film very compelling. British Columbia has never looked better!!!!

I'm re-reading the book, and will see the film a second time just to see if I am out to lunch in the opinions expressed above. The reader would be encouraged to go see it if only to do the same......

6.9 out of 10 points for me, at the present time!

I've always shied away from Disney animated films. Racist stereotypes, puerile plots, inane musical numbers, and useless animal sidekicks. What a revelation "The Iron Giant" is! Forget E.T. This is BETTER! There is nothing gratuitous or forced about this film. All of the characters are fully realized. Especially the relationship dynamic between Hogarth and the Giant. The story never misses a beat, and the characters are real people. Including the Giant. Adults will get as much out of this film as younger film goers.

Foget the Warner Brothers' shareholders: this film deserves to be supported by the public for the pure cinematic experience that it is. See you all at the tenth viewing!