Don_Mac

This cartoon -- directed by the great Bob Clampett -- is one of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons ever (IMO). In the "Western" storyline, our favorite hare is the Masked Marauder, stealing carrots from Victory Gardens (they had those in the Wild Wild West?!??) and being pursued by the not-so-bright Red Hot Rider (his horse is smarter than he is!). Bugs, as he does with Elmer, then proceeds to have fun tripping up this adversary. This classic cartoon dates from Clampett's -- and Warner's -- golden age of the 1940's, a time in which the wildly hilarious "Warner Style" reached it's peak. This one is a must for any Bugs Bunny fan.

A lot of the comments here are full of exaggerated praise for this film. And most of those comments are coming from people who are fans of the singer Bjork. But if, like me, you think Bjork is completely weird and her music is awful, then read the rest of this review, because this will be your fair warning about the film "Dancer in the Dark".

"Dancer in the Dark" is from Danish director Lars von Trier and may be the most unwatchable film of the past few years. It stars Bjork in an over-praised performance, because she really doesn't have a screen presence at all and is overshadowed by any one of her co-stars (i.e. people who actually can act) in any scenes in which they are together. Bjork plays a character who may be the most pathetic character in film history and who's foolishness leads to her fate in a depressing plot, which is both ludicrous and manipulative as it leads to an unrealistic outcome that only a sadistic screenwriter and director could force-feed to an audience. As for filmmaking, the movie is shot in a shaky-camera style reminiscent of bad home movies and absolutely guaranteed to promote nausea. This shaky-camera look that dominates the movie, though, is occasionally broken up by colorful fantasy musical numbers, which have two major flaws: (1) they are not staged very well, and (2) they contain Bjork's music (which, as I said earlier, is pretty awful).

Some claim this movie broke new ground. If having a completely pathetic lead character, bad musical numbers, a ridiculously contrived and depressing plot, nausea-inducing camera work, and lacking any entertainment value whatsoever is new ground, then yes, this movie does break new ground. It's also completely unwatchable, but there are a lot of unwatchable movies, so it wasn't breaking any new ground in that regard.

** You have been WARNED. Now watch, if you must, at your own risk **

This is one stupid movie! I wasn't expecting great art or anything, just a fun summer movie. But this movie is nothing but loud -- yet excitement-free -- car races and a lot of people posing. The plot is a note-for-note rehash of the Keanu Reeves movie "Point Break (1991)" although with cars instead of surfboards & parachutes, and much more ineptly done. (And Keanu, as bad an actor as he is, could act rings around the awful lead of this flick.) This does have Vin Diesel -- but as good as he is in anything, it's not enough to elevate this mess. With this, someone has achieved the unimaginable: they've actually made a movie that's dumber, more abrasive and more annoying than the Jerry Bruckheimer version of "Gone in 60 Seconds". This is easily one of the worst studio films of the past year.

This movie was pretty disappointing. Although Kevin Spacey gives yet another fine performance, the story is too touchy-feely in that sickeningly cutesy style as seen in movies like "Awakenings" and "Patch Adams". And the movie tries desperately to evoke "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in it's ending, but the earlier cutesy scenes completely undermine this attempt.

Final Verdict: Wait until it's on cable (if you see it at all)

In this half-hour long special, the Robots of Mystery Science Theater 3000 preview the Oscars for the film year 1994. They review the movies in a light-hearted fashion and become completely obsessed with Robert Redford, the director of 1994 Best Picture nominee Quiz Show. This is an amusing little special that effectively spoofs the more glitzy Oscar previews that pop-up every March.

Ok, I liked "Barney Miller" back in the '70s (its pretty dated now though). And the character Fish was an amusing grumpy old man, played by Abe Vigoda. But this spinoff may be the WORST SITCOM EVER! Imagine a '70s era sitcom with all bad clothing, lame jokes and canned laughter and just add in five extremely annoying smart-aleck kids: you get this show. If you ever do see it on TV (although I don't know if any station would broadcast reruns of this show), you are bound to be amazed that such an awful train-wreck of a sitcom not only made it on the air, but lasted for over a year! Avoid unless morbid curiosity draws you to it - in that case just be amazed.

I saw the MST3K version of this film and it is a bad movie - but its not nearly as bad as its low IMDB rating (currently 1.8 out of 10). At least the movie has a few production values and it apparently had a competent editor (unlike the movies that truly are awful). The primary problem with this movie is that it had no appealing characters whatsoever. The main character, Marv, is so pathetically morose, that he practically asks for all the bad stuff that happens to him. And he isn't very smart either, or he would have figured out to stay away from the conniving girl Betty. And even more pathetic than Marv is his father, who is nothing but a drunken loser. The highlight of the film is the heist sequence at the end but even that is so weakly executed, any excitement it might have added to the film is completely missing. At least this movie made for a very funny MST3K episode, as Mike and the 'Bots do a great job making fun of it.

Instead of being a general overview of the history and development of Pro Wrestling - this is, instead, a personal look at today's Pro Wrestling by director Barry Blaustein. In the home video version, Blaustein frames the movie in a re-enacted view of himself as a young boy, when he first began to watch wrestling and was shocked to discover that these big, scary men actually had families outside the ring, and then he focuses the documentary on three wrestlers in particular: Terry Funk, Mick Foley, and Jake "the Snake" Roberts. Terry Funk represents the old guard: aging wrestlers who continue to wrestle, retire, and then wrestle again despite their deteriorating bodies (his knees are so bad, he can hardly walk); Mick Foley represents the current young wrestling star, and he is shown as he tries to spend as much time as possible with his beloved family against the demands of his WWF career; and finally, wrestler Jake "the Snake" Roberts shows how the constantly on-the-road lifestyle of being a celebrity wrestler can gradually seduce and destroy a man, as he is now a drug addict who is permanently estranged from his own family. Although I would've liked a short intro at the beginning of the film on how professional wrestling developed from its early days into the campy spectacle we're familiar with today, this is still a very engaging film that will humanize these men who play act with pain. As for the DVD version, all of the additional commentary tracks are very interesting, particularly the director's, and they all expand a great deal on the content of the film.

A must for Stravinsky fans. This is a great animated adaptation of Stravinsky's short piece "A Soldier's Tale" ("L'Histoire du Soldat"). The basic plot is about a battle between the soldier and the devil (taken from Russian folk tales). Its very creatively drawn and the music is, of course, excellent.

A young man, named Danny, has run away from home and meets a drifter, named Bix, who agrees to tag along with Danny and watch out for him... and his money. They end up in a small town where they meet Carrie - a shy, naive girl working in her father's diner. Bix starts seeing Carrie but he plans on leaving soon (because he's a drifter, see? He's no good! Understand?). Meanwhile, the town creep, Jesse (played by a perfectly casted Jack Elam), keeps showing up at the diner and bothering Carrie. Danny keeps inadvertently picking up whores left and right (because he's loaded with money – he has almost a hundred dollars!) whom Bix has to constantly chase away (there are a lot of ambiguously gay overtones between Danny and Bix in this flick). Eventually, Bix and Danny decide to leave town but trouble is a-brewing, due to Jesse the creep.

My review of the movie itself: a terrible, dated "Troubled Youth" flick from the '50s.

My review of the MST3K version of the movie: I've got to say that this is one of the best episodes of MST3K ever. The riffing is dead-on, all the time. Except for the somewhat downbeat ending, this movie is easy material for Joel and the Bots, especially Danny's constant screw-ups that Bix has to rescue him from. The host segments are pretty good too, especially the segment with the `Train Song.' Hopefully, Rhino releases this episode to home video one day.

This film got very mixed reviews when it was released - I saw some critics give it the highest marks while others trashed it as, in their opinions, one of the worst films of the year. I personally agree with the critics who liked this film and think its the best movie ever made about the Vikings (although there, unfortunately, aren't many other Viking films for comparison) and I think it will grow in popularity over time like other unique films that initially failed with critics and at the box office (like "Blade Runner"). This is a pure testosterone movie that tells, through the eyes of an Arabian poet, the story of Vikings fighting against a mysterious and cannibalistic tribe. Based on an older Michael Crichton novel called "The Eaters of the Dead," this movie takes itself seriously - no wisecracking sidekicks or other dumb movie cliches are to be found here (which, inexplicably, was something the critics who hated the movie complained about - I guess they prefer every action/adventure movie to be campy and tongue-in-cheek like "Congo" or "The Mummy"). And, by taking itself seriously, the nobility of the Vikings and their code of honor comes through strongly by the end of the film. If I had to criticize anything in the film, its that the battle scenes are too dark and hard-to-see. While I greatly admire naturally-lit films, and these scenes do capture what a fight in the dark of night without artificial lighting would be like, I think they should have bend a bit towards standard movie convention and used more lighting in these scenes. Still, despite that complaint, this is the best action film of 1999 and it is definitely worth a look (8/10 stars).

Some four years, I saw the original "Toy Story" and thought it was one of the best movies of 1995 with groundbreaking computer animation and a story that was just as entertaining to adult as it was to kids. But last year, when Pixar's second film, "A Bug's Life," was somewhat disappointing due to its pandering a bit too much to kids and word was out that the sequel to "Toy Story" would be a lowly direct-to-video release, I did not have much hope that this sequel would be any good - even when they announced that it would be released theatrically instead of direct-to-video. But, boy, was this movie a surprise - it expands and deepens the original and seems even more clever than anything Pixar has created so far (which, given the high quality of their output, is saying a lot). The fantastic computer animation, which almost makes the original look primitive in comparison, is really just more icing on the cake. This film, like the original, is watchable again and again (and if you're under six, again and again and again every day).