Sam Sloan

I Found a DVD of this movie at the library and by now I've seen most of the movies they have that I expect to be any good. I didn't expect to find anything worth watching when I found My Friend Dahmer. And I still didn't expect it would be as good as it turned out to be and began watching it still thinking that. I was probably half way though the movie before I realized that what I was watching was top quality in what you would expect a great movie to be. This wasn't just some low cost production movie with untalented nobodies. Except for Anne Heche, everyone in this movie may be unknown, but their acting talent was superb. Therefore, after I had watched it once, I had to watch it again from the beginning, more closely. Because by then I could take this movie more seriously.

The story really captivated me. I assumed Dahmer as a totally different person than what the movie revealed about him. He was weird, that is true, but weird in a way that actually made him quite popular and liked by many of his classmates, though many of the girls may have put off by his weirdness. The movie doesn't explore anything about when and how he murdered anyone because this only tells what he was like before he committed his first murder, though by this time he was into mutilating and torturing non-domesticated animals like squirrels and rodents. He is shown at one phase where he is in the woods with a knife to the throat of a very beautiful and trusting white dog about to cross that threshold when he breaks off from his intention and releases the dog and shoos him away. The scene made me cringe. We know that he will someday give in to his desires and go on to kill 17 people and we expect that to include many animals like that dog he had let go. But before he does, we find out what he was really like before he became so infamous. Infamous he became, but after you watch this, you may come away not hating him, but actually liking him for the .boy that he was.

I really recommend this movie very highly.

There are a lot of sitcoms out there and none of them as far as I am concerned are much worth watching. You have to go back many years to find really good sitcoms and this one set in the Roaring Twenties was one of them. I used to love watching it and only after two seasons, it was gone! I thought It might have been some mistake taking this show off the air. But it wasn't. I wish they would show this again as re-runs just to show how to make a good sitcom.

A few weeks ago, for some reason, I started thinking about this show and couldn't remember the name of it. Without the power of the internet, I wouldn't have found it. But now that I have, I want everyone to know what a great show it was. The show is too far in the past to ever bring back the original actors, some of whom have passed on, but maybe it would be possible to recreate the show from the formula of the original. Hopefully, the old shows are still around in some vault.

Yes, I cried and I could simply write another review saying I did what everyone else did who watched this movie but I want to add something else no one has mentioned. This was a true story of a dog that had lived and died in 1934 with the last ten years of its life spent at a train station waiting for his deceased owner to return who never can in this life, but only in the next. And that reunion will leave you in tears, not only for the happy and deserved reunion between Hachi and his owner, but anyone we have loved and lost and imagined and hoped awaited them.

But if the reunion in our next life only exists between humans, I for one would be sorely disappointed not to have my own pets I have loved and lost and awaiting me at a place some have called the rainbow bridge. But this reunion between Hachi and his owner takes place where he has loyally and patiently awaited for ten years through cold and warmth, rain and snow. At the end of the movie we learn the true Hachi was a dog named Hachiko that lived in Japan. A statue of the dog has been placed there in a pose sitting and waiting as he had been seen for the last ten long years of his life, living for no other purpose than to reunite with the person he loved.

I am often sent letters from animal rights groups asking me to help stop the dog meat trade in East Asia, Korea especially. I have been to Korea and and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could only stay away from the markets I knew where it was going on to shield my eyes from something I knew I couldn't change. The practice I've heard seems to be dying out as a new generation shows a greater affection for dogs and an inclination for fast food, though the practice still exists with an estimated three million dogs each year being killed and eaten. It is in such places this movie needs to be shown. It would be a wonderful legacy for Hachiko if his loyalty and devotion could be rewarded by helping to change how dogs are treated not only in East Asia but everywhere in the world.

The big big holes happened when the two divers found the gold and the drive shaft inside the derelict German submarine. Pulling and removing a drive shaft would have been a pretty big job if they had just had that to do, but they chose to deal with it by not bothering to show how they were supposed to do it and instead giving the impression it was such an easy job, it wasn't worth even showing it - hey, they found it and now they see it, now it's done! And the other big hole was all that gold they found within that submarine weighing two tons! Again, it would have been a pretty big job just moving all that gold to where they would be able to get it through the submarine beside the same place and way they got into the submarine to begin with - beside the pressure lock obviously. And there, they would have had to hand carry bars of gold into the pressure lock, fill it with seawater, carry the bars and then place them onto some cart which appears out of nowhere somewhere outside the submarine onto the seabed floor. It would have taken a whole lot of work, a lot of time, maybe a few days and a lot of trips with all those bars weighing a total of two tons! Where did they get all that oxygen? And then they would have - or rather the eighteen year old kid would have had a lot of work on his hands getting the gold into the salvage submarine, because the other guy was killed when he fell off the edge into a deep canyon. And the kid was not portrayed as much an expert diver to begin with. And where did that winch come from? If any of this was possible, before even attempting what they were planning to do, there would have been a scene where a few of them stand over a table making sketches and calculations about how they were going to even attempt a big job like this. But I suspect the makers of this movie nixed such a scene as that because of the impossibility of such a job to begin with and decided to just leave it up the viewers imagination which is the only way to do such a job as that - in one's imagination. But the movie was entertaining even though it lacked credibility.

You can't watch this movie without laughing. The casting of James Colburn, Dick Shawn, Aldo Ray was perfect for this probably the best comedy of WWII. Dick Shawn really showed his comedic skill where he begins as a dedicated officer, determined to make his mark in winning the war by taking a small Italian village and winds up as the love interest of an amorous German officer when disguised in drag. It was hilarious watching him as he tries to fight off the German's "advances." The plot seems to be about the Italian's unwillingness to surrender to the Americans led by Dick Shawn unless they could first have their festival which Dick Shawn is first unwilling to agree to until James Colburn convinces Shawn it would be a wise military decision to allow them to have it in exchange for their surrender. Somehow during the festival, the Americans lose their uniforms to the Italians and the Italians lose theirs to the Americans in a card game. This sets up the fun for some hilarious moments when Colonel Potts played by TV MASH actor Harry Morgan arrives there to inspect US troops and finds what he thinks are American troops but instead are the Italian soldiers dressed as Americans who can't speak a word of English. Before he can get wise that something isn't right, he is taken prisoner by Also Ray wearing an Italian uniform pressuring him to hurry along to a waiting jeep with basic Italian: "Presto! Presto!" These are just a few of the funny scenes you will be treated to! War has never been funnier!

Without the hype and big financial backing movies such at this one often go unnoticed. I didn't know what to expect when I began watching this movie, but it wasn't long before I was drawn into it and the movie did something I look for movies to do for me - it made me feel. We see a young girl named Heidi who begins by doing a foolish thing, kissing her mother's boyfriend and it goes a little too far just when her mother walks in on them. We don't know what happens to her mother's boyfriend, but Heidi is pretty much forced to leave her mother's home with barely the clothes on her back. What follows is fairly predictable. It doesn't take a genius to know that the world is a hostile place for someone who is without a place to live, money, friends, family and with her only assets being her youth and good looks. As I watched, my heart went out to her and I wondered would even I have taken advantage of her and her situation being so vulnerable and desirable, or would I have taken her under my wing and tried to help her as the child she really was and needed, though some might argue didn't deserve because of her naiveté and penchant for getting into jams. I imagine many men, especially would be wondering the same thing. I really liked this movie and the acting was first rate and that surprised me given all the actors were total unknowns. If you want to see another movie as good as this one and similar to this, try the French movie called Vagabond.

First off I didn't really like the movie much. There wasn't much story in it though the introduction piqued my interest and made me expect something much better. After seeing the ending I wondered if there might be a second part because it ended so abruptly and so poorly. But what really upset me was the story's historical ignorance and it was a huge one. Consider that the story begins in Florence, Italy in 1922. Are you OK with that? Ten years later she finds herself in Florence with an Italian man she met when the story first began - 1922. Near this last scene we see the man the woman in the story married lying dead on some battlefield which would have happened certainly after 1922 and before 1932. She even tells the Italian she lost her husband in the war. What war was England involved in between 1922 and 1932? By the looks of the battlefield, it looks like the trenches of WWI but that war ended in 1918, right? Perhaps in the editing phase of the movie, whoever entered the date 1922 meant to enter 1912 instead? 1922 it couldn't have been. The movie was pretty bad anyway, so I suppose it really doesn't matter.

It is a revelation to find movies like this one, a movie without the same old tired plot of stupid car chases and bad guys killing good people championed by guys in stupid white hats with big muscles and athletic moves. What we have here is a movie like none other with the possible exception of Sling Blade, where similarly we have one fine actor, who can perform a complete metamorphosis, transforming himself in mind, body and all appearances into a character we've never seen before. That actor who did this was Joaquin Phoenix. And let's not leave out John Philip Hoffman who was made to play the cult charlatan Dodd whose religions doctrines change with the wind. I had to watch this movie three times and I think I still haven't absorbed all the hidden nuances. This is not a movie that is at all predictable like so many movies that are out there are. It takes you on a journey, a journey not cast from the same old familiar molds. It is definitely unique. There can be no other movie like it. It is for me and people like me who maybe have seen too many movies are bored to tears with what is out there. I want more movies like this one, though I realize there can never again be another movie like it or not even a sequel. Every once in a while you find something rare and special. I hear the producer of this movie has done other films I have yet to see: Magnolia and there Will be Blood. I will check them out soon. But if you haven't seen The Master yet, be ready for something rare and special and above all excellent in every respect.

Because of the low rating of 5.5 I nearly decided not to watch this movie. I would have missed a good movie had I paid too much attention to ratings and not given this movie a chance. It reminded me of the part in Lonesome Dove where one of the characters in that movie honors his promise to carry and deliver Gus's body in a wooden coffin a thousand miles to be buried back in his home in Texas. In this movie, we have a wife and mother who lived out her life to die naturally and the ordeal that a poor Mississippi family endures in getting her body back to where it is supposed to be buried. I found the actors to be well cast in their roles and I highly recommend this movie.

It had that kind of ending you would have expected from Rod Serling. If you were a fan of the Twilight Zone, you would have loved seeing this.

For a while as I watched this movie, I wondered if perhaps the story might be of a woman whose life had been ruined by having made a selfish decision in not measuring up to the devotion and willingness to have given her life for her friend as her friend had shown that willingness for her. This movie goes to the heart of the saying that "no greater love for another is the giving of one's life so that others might live." But along with that: what happens to us when we for whatever reason can't live up to that great ideal, that maybe the guilt ridden life we live after might not be worth living. We see all that in this movie. It was a beautiful movie, one that will stay with me.

Don't get me wrong: I do like musicals. But I only like musicals that have real music in them with songs that have something to do them. Musicals I do like for example are The Sound of Music, Oklahoma and West Side Story. They all have something this movie didn't - good songs. In this movie, the music was so terrible it ruined the movie. It would have been a half way decent movie if they eliminated the songs altogether and the actors just delivered their dialog without the singing the dialog to what I can only describe as droning the words. The lesson is this: If you don't have good songs and people like Rogers and Hammerstein with the wonderful ability to write good songs, don't even try to make a musical. I turned it off after a half hour. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is a wonderful story. Too bad they chose to ruin it.

Except for those places in the movie where I shouldn't have. But even that Euriah Heep so wonderfully played, I couldn't help but grin at his perfectly played phony ways and duplicity. WC Fields was the perfect Mr Mccawber. And Edna May Oliver was so terrific playing the kind but abrasive no nonsense spinster Aunt Betsy. If you want to see the most perfectly cast of any film ever made, this is the movie to see. It would have been a crime to have found the wrong people to play the parts of this one of the greatest works of Dickens and indeed of all literature, but that didn't happen here. It doesn't get any better than this. There is nothing to fault in this film and so in the words of WC Fields, "In short, I have to give it a 10."

I didn't think there existed such a movie, but I was wrong, though earlier versions of this same story, Key Largo and To Have and Have Not also were pretty good. Nothing else Hemingway wrote really translated well to the big screen, not The Snows of Kilamanjaro, not For Whom the Bell Tolls, not The Old Man and the Sea, not The Sun Also Rises nor A Farewell to Arms. All movies from those novels are terrible bores in my opinion and if you look them up here in the IMDb, the ratings these movies got bear me out. But this movie with John Garfield playing luckless boat captain Harry Morgan with the two female leads played by Patricia Neal as the likable, attractive, world wise, cynical whore and Phylis Thaxter as his loving but insecure plain wife who loves him more than as she says she could love any other man on this earth were both terrific. So you want to see a really good movie with a story written by Ernest Hemingway and like me, you think no such thing exists? See this movie!

You won't find anything better on TV or the silver screen, I guarantee it. We know about the gangsters of New York and Chicago of the 1920's and 1930's, but we never were told of the gangsters of Atlantic City run by Nuchy Thompson who we also never heard of - until now. Not only do we learn of him and his gang, but it's in Atlantic City where they all came together, the gangsters of Atlantic City, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia in stories that will rivet your attention. I call them stories, not story, because each episode is like a feature movie in and of itself and each character portrayed warrants a spin off movie in and of itself. But special praise has to go to Steve Buscemi who really runs away with it for a 100 yard touch down. But I don't want to take anything away from the other cast members who must have special pride in their work and in their part played in this. I'd like to list them all separately who I especially enjoyed watching, especially the actor playing Al Capone and New York gangster Rothstein and Luciano, or Margaret Shroeder or Jimmy Darmody, or . . . You see, I wouldn't be able to stop. This production was perfect in every way and no one, not one actor didn't pull his weight to perfection. I also want to mention Martin Scorcese whose prior experience in making movies of this genre like Good Fellas and Casino served him well in making this gem. He's got the template down pat. All I can say is watch this!

I wanted to know more about the Emperor of Mexico, Maximillion, for some reason as it had been on my mind. I knew there was one and he reigned for only a few years before he was put before a firing squad. I wanted to know the character of the man, whether he was a fool or wise, good or evil and a movie if it was true to the actual story as this movie turned out to be, I would be better served. I got more than I bargained for as this movie was very entertaining as well, both by a great script and great acting by Hollywood legends, all of whom are now gone. This was a story worth telling: Maximillion was not a fool, he was quite wise and enlightened with little differences between himself and his arch nemesis the revolutionary Juarez who actually respected and liked each other, though one or the other was committed to a fight to the death, which in the end Juarez ironically imposes upon Maximillion. I referred to a history book on this subject following seeing the movie and I found the history was right on the money and by seeing the movie first, I feel it helped me in understanding this much better.

Of particular interest in this movie is the conversation between Jaurez's General Diaz, played by John Garfield, who is being held prisoner and Msximillion who visits him to offer a truce and the Prime Ministership to Jaurez if he will give up the revolution and swear his allegiance to the crown. The two debate the differences between a monarchy for Mexico or a democracy and which one would be better. Maximillion pointed out the flaws that exist in a democracy whereby politicians owe their allegiance first to their political parties and not to the country and that monarchs who have everything are not vulnerable to the corruption that politicians are. I found this argument valid in seeing what our own country is now experiencing, particularly with the Republican Party, where party is placed far above country. There are of course flaws with monarchs as well as some of the worst tyrants have been monarchs. It seems that the quest to find a fool proof form of government has always been with us and there may be no perfect answer. Look for this conversation between Diaz and Maximillion as this alone is well worth watching the movie. The movie left me thinking. Also, you will enjoy the touching and romantic scene between Maximillion and Carlota played by Bette Davis as they stand together in the moon light listening to a woman singing La Paloma. It's a wonderful movie and not one to be missed.

The story is told to us through the sullen and hauntingly beautiful voice of Jeanne Mareau from the pages of novelist Margureite Duras' own book. The movie begins as we follow a young and beautiful French high school girl in 1929 French colonial Viet Nam when she begins her journey on an uncomfortably packed native bus to begin her school year in Saigon. It is on a small ferry carrying her and her bus across the Mekong River where we see her now standing along the side of the ferry staring out with her right foot casually resting on the ferry's bottom rung of a rope safety cordon. But also on this same ferry, watching her is a rich, handsome and well dressed Chinaman sitting in his chauffeur driven car, a car that must be one of the most luxurious cars of its day. He leaves the comfort of his automobile to join this very young girl and nervously and awkwardly attempts to make conversation with her. She seems disinterested in him and says little to him in reply, but pressing forward anyway, he then offers her a ride to the city. We now watch them riding together as the car drives along the dusty dirt road to Saigon with the only sounds we hear are those of the chauffeur honking the horn through the Vietnamese countryside passing rubber plantations and rice fields, weaving and dodging people and animals on the way to their destination in Saigon. He notices now her small hand resting on the seat between them and we see him now attempt to go beyond small conversation to make his first physical contact with her. He brushes against the side of her hand with his own and she doesn't draw her hand away from his but instead seems to relish his touch as we watch their two hands now become one, his hand over hers, their fingers eagerly and tightly interlocking in sexual intensity and energy.

The Chinaman wastes little time in Saigon before taking her in his car from a break in school to a seedy part of Saigon in the Chinese district of Cholon. We watch them walk the last of the way through Cholon which she describes Cholon vividly as "smelling of Jasmine, minced meats, charcoal and soup, busy with the commotion of the mid day meal." In that room what follows is probably some of the most erotic scenes ever to be shown in a movie such as this and we almost aren't prepared for it, It isn't just what we see happening between them that holds our interest, but that room itself with sunlight piercing through the narrow slats of the room's window shutters, casting enough light on old used furniture, that bed and the writhing bodies of the lovers lying upon it to creating an unforgettable almost surreal dream-like state. We hear a cacophony of sounds just outside those walls produced by a motley variety of people, shoppers, vendors of every sort from stalls and along the street, diners, street peddlers calling out, a child (probably) practicing lessons on a piano and animals of every sort too. Together these sounds merge and drone on like that of locusts, somehow adding to the intensity of the sexual pleasures being engaged within the privacy of that room as if an island refuge from it all. This relationship as we expect is eventually doomed for various and obvious reasons and the time comes when they must part. Their parting and last sight of each other is poignant and from afar as we see Duras standing aboard the French liner, the Alexander Dumas as it begins leaving Saigon harbor. She is standing in the same manner she did the same day they first met aboard the small ferry, her left foot resting casually yet purposely on a bottom rope of the ship's safety cordon, as if a signal, looking intently outward for him where ever he may be on that dock yard. Finally, she sees his car, parked beside an old warehouse and almost hidden behind a pallet of unloaded piled high cargo with him watching her from the same seat in that same car where they had once sat together. They stare out at each other until they can see each other no more. She is not to hear of her Chinese lover again for many years later as we see her now an old woman at the movie's end sitting alone working at her desk in a dingy office in Paris with snow falling in the gloom of early evening outside her window. Her phone rings and he tells her in a voice that has lost his Westerness, regaining the dialect of his native China, she explains, that he loves her now as much as he loved her then and will always love her until the day he dies. Her emotion touches us as we ask why did it have to end? And as we ask that question, we are reminded of the impossible set of circumstances of race and age that by the standards of that day and this doomed any future for them. But still . . .

This is a great movie, made all the better by Jane March and Tony Leung. March most ably portrays the innocent child school girl with the sexual awakening of the eager young vixen that lies beneath and erupts to the surface. March was made for the role and it is hard to imagine anyone else who could have played it any better. And Tony Leung had his role down just perfectly as well, bringing out the inner torment of the man he plays, evoking our sense of empathy for him in spite of the line he crosses in what many would call the sexual exploitation of a minor. I never tire of this movie and I watch it again and again and again. I know I am not alone.

I began watching the main characters played by Sir Lawrence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy and figured it was just one of those old English movies (but made in the Hollywood) and black and white at that but I decided to watch it anyway. And I am glad I did!

SPOILER:

I was hooked after only a few moments of the beginning, attracted as I always am to stories of lovers each with their own character flaws that dooms any chance in life for them. Cathy wanted the good things in life, things that Olivier as a simple stable boy, whom she loved more than she could ever love anyone else was unable to give her, not to say that the man to whom she ultimately marries, Linton, played by David Niven was too bad a chap himself. And Heathcliff, tormented by Cathy's rejection and his lowly status flees to America to make his fortune which he does and returns seeking revenge. He begins by buying up the debts of his former master and placing himself now as the lord of the manor, the very things Heathcliff needed for Cathy to have accepted him once as her husband. But he doesn't stop with that. To torment Cathy further, he marries the sister of Cathy's husband who he doesn't love and ruins this poor innocent woman's life in the bargain. But Heathcliff doesn't care, not as long as he inflicts his payback on Cathy. Cathy indeed is tormented by all this and whether it contributes to her failing health and ultimate demise one can only speculate. The title, Wuthering Heights, a towering mountain of granite overlooking the moors, comes from the place where Heathcliff and Cathy once found their greatest happiness, ironically so as its splendor is absent of all the glitter and pretentiousness that Cathy foolishly craved and Heathcliff was initially unable to provide for her. Heathcliff, upon hearing Cathy is dying, hurries to her bedside, where they alone together exchange dialog that tears at your heart. In her last moments Cathy asks to be carried to the doorway of the bedroom where she dies in his arms as they both stare out to the place where they once found their greatest happiness, the Wuthering Heights. It is there in his arms where others find them, and from now where Heathcliff carries her, placing her body on the bed and prays over her. Some may think the last scene is a bit schmaltzy, but those old movies really were unsurpassed in their knack to tap into one's emotions, as this last scene certainly did to me. Years pass and we can only guess at Heathcliff's unhappiness, but the doctor tells others gathered around him of the fate of Heatcliff when he happened to be passing by the Wuthering Heights and tells the others that he was certain he saw both Heathcliff and a woman who everyone silently speculates as Cathy together again. When he climbed to that place in the heights where he saw them, he tells of finding only Heathcliff's dead body and only his footprints alone in the snow. As the movie ends, we watch the ghostly figures of Heathcliff and Cathy, floating off together arm in arm into the Wuthering Heights. Keep your Kleenex box beside you. You are going to need it with this one! Definitely, see this one!

The acting is great and flawless as you would expect with a cast of this re known caliber. The musical score too is superb.

I imagine something like this could happen very easily . . . I didn't catch it from the beginning so I don't know if it begins with a last one to jump into the water is a rotten egg or exactly what happened, but everyone except for a baby is left alone but safely, for now at least since no one is obviously aboard to feed her, goes for a swim beside a luxury yacht with no way of getting back aboard. Nobody thought of first lowering the ladder so they could climb back aboard after the swim. A cabin cruiser comes speeding by them, but all that comes out of that are friendly enthusiastic waving from the cruiser and frantic waving from those bobbing beside the yacht that for all the world look like the same friendly waving. This movie had me literally climbing the walls watching them try to climb up the sides of that yacht, and when that baby began crying, I felt the anguish that the parents must have felt. It would be bad enough knowing you were likely to perish, but at the same time you are hearing your own child cry out for you. This was a good movie, in spite of the low rating it received. But I can not give this a perfect rating for one flaw that bothered me. They did come up with a way to save themselves, one I thought of as I watched this and which they did try - but only once! I won't tell you what they did, but it almost worked! Who knows if it would have worked trying it for the second time, but why not try? They had nothing to lose and they had all the time in the world!

SPOILER ALERT!

A lot of people mentioned the end being too ambiguous and I thought so too, but there are some extenuating circumstance for this. I wasn't sure if all had died except for the baby as it seemed to end that way before it switched gears, now showing at the very end, one definitely or as many as two adults possibly still alive. I think the director of the film wanted to show two endings, much preferring the first, but adding the second because it was more plausible. The first ending provides one of those greatly desired ghost ship stories the world loves talking about, where people speculate on such explanations as alien abductions. But the director realizes as do we, the mother of the child had already managed to get back aboard where she could be back with her child and she wouldn't have gone back into the water to commit suicide with that child of hers still needing her. She had already tearfully apologized to her baby for leaving her alone and vowed to never do that again. But she does go back into the water to look for the other survivor, one she had issues with for his behavior during the ordeal. She wouldn't have gone back into the water to drown or kill him, only to rescue him. And that other person, for whom she went back into the water after wouldn't have killed her as he was too disgusted with himself for not measuring up during the ordeal. He wouldn't have killed her. The director played with the idea that she would leave him to drown so we see him laying face down on the deck of the yacht at the very end, probably dead, but maybe not. But if he was drowned, what would be the point of bringing his body back aboard? So was he still alive too? But we do get two endings here, one the director would have preferred and the other, the one we see last, the one he had to go with, each with their own ambiguities.

But I definitely enjoyed it, though I don't know if enjoyed is the right word. My stomach was tied up in knots!

And then it went downhill real fast. What was James Woods thinking when he made this film? But it doesn't seem to matter because I am definitely in the minority and most people seem to think the film was great. I can understand Deborah Harry making this film though as she at the time of making this film was probably hoping to branch out from a very successful run in her musical career. I have nothing bad to say about Deborah Harry though. She acted so well and looked so great, I wondered why she didn't take Hollywood by storm, given I don't recall her in more movies since this one. And she looked great as a brunette also, though I didn't recognize her at first. Maybe it was because of her that I liked the first ten minutes where she was shown the most. Killing her off early hurt the film, I think. But James Woods didn't have to make this film as he had already established himself as an up and coming actor and his choice of being in this one thankfully didn't derail his career. I think he is a terrific actor and I've liked him in everything he has done but this one.

My recommendation is to skip this one except for the first ten minutes with Deborah Harry. But to each his own.

That's how it started out - a less than cool guy meets another guy much more cooler than him and that much cooler guy takes him beyond the boring, dull humdrum life he is fated to live without that chance encounter. With Fight Club, I didn't know what was going to happen next, but this one did when it took me to where it eventually did, I knew. I didn't want to watch any more. A lot of people are calling this movie boring, but none of them probably thought it was boring into the first thirty minutes or so. But this turned out to be a bummer, using what started out as another Fight Club, degenerating into a plot to pull off a bank heist using computers because this less than cool guy had the passwords. That's when I turned it off. It's a shame the writers of this story couldn't have used the sex angle like the writers of Fight Club used guys beating each others' brains out to make a better point than this one did. They need to try again and this time find a better angle for that sex thing. It was an intriguing idea, but they hit a dead end with a plot to rob a bank or whatever it was he was going to rob. Go back again and keep the first thirty minutes or so and come up with a better idea for the last hour and they might have something here.

As I sat watching TCM at the beginning of a movie, I did something I rarely do, I read the credits rolling across the screen. There, for this movie Plan 9 From Outer Space, came up the name Edward Wood Jr as the producer, director and writer. I had seen the movie Ed Wood a few years back and remembered it as the story about some guy with a tiny budget and little talent for making movies who was a genius at scrounging up money to make them, finding washed up movie actors and somehow getting theaters to show them. I didn't know this guy was real. He was real! In the movie Ed Wood finds Bella Ligosi as his one star he needs to lend credibility to his productions he makes. Bella Ligosi shuffles about in despair, realizing his career is over. And when you see Plan 9 From Outer Space, you can see why. Plan 9 From Outer Space is one of those movies Ed Wood made! It would have been much more meaningful for me to have seen Plan 9 From Outer Space before seeing the movie Ed Wood. But now that I've seen Plan 9 From Outer Space it all makes more sense to me now. Both movies belong together as a set. Plan 9 From Outer Space captures the true cheesiness, the desperation and results of shoe string budgets, the lack of movie making skills and how those things all contributed to the basis of the plot upon which the movie Ed Wood was based. I think you will actually enjoy the movie Plan 9 From Outer Space. It is so bad, it's good! And I know it will make you enjoy the movie Ed Wood even more.

I happened to catch this the other night when it ran from 11:00 to 3:00AM in the morning. I didn't intend to stay up as late as I did, but I had to watch it to the end no matter how tired I was. Part of the reason,was because the story was true and when I saw those cowboys hang that woman it shocked me especially because I knew it was true. So many great actors in this really showed their stuff, Burt Reyonolds one of them along with the always good Tom Berringer. A way to measure how good a movie is, is whether it motivates you to research and look up the facts behind them. Movies when they are really good, that's what I usually do. I find myself researching the facts behind the story as I want to learn more. One thing I learned that I found upsetting is that at the end of the movie, the bad guys you think get their due, at least so we think. The whole lot of them deserve to be hanged and I wanted to know if they were. If they had, it would have been the largest mass hanging in this country's history. But there was no mass hanging, not even a single hanging. In fact, they let them all go because even more shocking, the US Government ran up a bill for their incarceration which the homesteaders couldn't reimburse the government, so the government just let them go! But the movie ended with a feeling of satisfaction where we sure they got what was coming to them. Better to have left it that way. I hope I didn't ruin it for you as I'm sure you are going to be disappointed to know when you watch the end that they weren't all hanged. But watch it anyway. Definitely one of the best.

I read the book many years ago and it has remained one of my favorite novels. For many years since I read the book, whenever the film was shown on television, it was always the 1934 version with Bette Davis. Don't get me wrong, Bette Davis was a great actress, but for me she failed to come across as the writer Somerset Maugham had intended Mildred to be. The first time I caught the Davis version, I could only watch a few minutes of it before I gave up and could watch no longer, lest it ruin the impression of Mildred the book provided for me. Finally after many years of waiting, I caught the 1964 version and I wasn't disappointed. Someone on the message board mentioned that Somerset Maugham was most pleased with the way Kim Novak played the role and I could understand why. Immediately when I began watching Kim Novak, I was transfixed by her and felt that I had at last found Mildred as the writer intended her to be - not some shrill shrew, but an emotionally damaged beauty, still a child that had somehow made it to adulthood. It was easy to see how Philip, played perfectly by Laurence Harvey could have fallen in love with her - vulnerable, lovable, innocent, unsophisticated, always forgiving yet at the same time mean, selfish hateful, irresponsible, helpless, ignorant and vindictive. Aren't those the same characteristics we find in children? Some might question describing Mildred as innocent. Because of her promiscuous flirtatious nature, some might understandably dismiss her as a whore as Philip's best friend Griffiss continually tries to remind him. But this film is set in England of the Victorian era and some allowances can be made for that. And with Novak's great acting skills we see that Mildred was very complicated and we can't easily condemn her on the basis of her sexual misbehavior. This is what makes Novak's adaptation so appealing, that she can take this role and actually make us empathize with Mildred, if not actually see ourselves, like Philip, falling into the abyss by falling in love with her ourselves. This is what Kim Novak succeeded in doing and Bette Davis never even attempted. Bette Davis never developed the character to the degree that Novak did where we could see if she could pull it off. We could never feel much for the character Davis portrayed, but we could with Novak's - in spite of those same flaws that each of the actresses had to work with in the character of Mildred. Philip did in this saga come across other women with the best of qualities, and without those flaws found in Mildred though certainly not her beauty. But it was Mildred that would always be his great love -whether it destroyed him, as it nearly does, or finally her, as it does in the end. Only by her death could he ever escape the hold she had upon him. Kim Novak captured Mildred perfectly. Don't be put off by the IMDb's low rating for this movie relative to the Davis version. Read the book and you'll see right away that this was Mildred as the writer intended.

This film was set in Victorian England and it was perfectly suited for black and white format. It would have made as much sense to have made this movie in color as to have made the movie The Elephant Man in color. By using black and white, the film had the look and quality of that same movie, also set in Victorian England. Indeed, the story lines were similar in a sense - one of a good and gentle man trapped in a hideously deformed body that ultimately kills him. And in this, we have a cripple, and as Mildred herself often refers to him, a gentleman, who is also trapped, but unlike John Merek of the Elephant Man, in a relationship from hell that nearly destroys him as well. Philip as he confides to a friend when asked to describe his relationship with the now dead Mildred: "It is like a disease has burned through me. But not like one that one can see." Some might see parallels between the Elephant Man and Philip Carey. They are there.

Particularly sad to watch was the end of this movie. People sometimes note movies for their tear jerker quality - movies like Madam X, Imitation of Life, The Elephant Man and others. But this movie, because of the ending especially should be rated up there with any of those. In this movie, trains and train stations figured prominently in the most happiest of times in the relationship between Philip and Mildred. The final scene where Mildred is being lowered into her grave, a train passes, on a berm above this sad scene, probably the same train they had once ridden together happily in life and in love. The train seems to be saying good bye to her as we hear the rumble of train across the tracks and the mournful cry of the train's whistle. This happens as Philip turns his back on her for the last time to walk from her and to his new love waiting just outside the wrought iron gate of the cemetery. We can't but wonder if this new love he has found can ever release him from the grip that Mildred, if only her memory must still have upon him. This scene can't help but be emotionally emotionally wrenching for anyone who sees it. This is a great movie and a great credit to a great novel by Somerset Maugham and a great actress, Kim Novak who made it come alive for me. This film belongs way up there among the IMDb's 250 best movies of all time.

In the history of comedy television, as I recall there were only three great shows with the format of a media setting, one a radio station and the other two television – WKRP in Cincinnati for radio and the other two for television, the Mary Tyler Moore Show and this, The Buffalo Bill Show. All for the same reasons, worked – great settings conducive to funny situations, great well-developed interesting characters, great writing, great funny story lines, and willingness to push the envelope on social issues. Fortunately, The Mary Tyler Moore Show caught on immediately and lasted many years providing us with many shows to watch today in syndicated reruns. WKRP in Cincinnati caught on, but unfortunately for that show a little too late also as there was still a lot of mileage left in it. An attempt to bring it back failed when after a few years it had been canceled with only a few of the original characters as many of the others had already moved on to other projects. The old magic, however was gone and the second version just didn't have what the old one had. It's the first version of WKRP in Cincinnati with Johnny Fever and the rest of the original characters that people remember and love, not the second. So why you might ask do I write so much about the Mary Tyler Moore Show and WKRP in Cincinnati and so little about the Buffalo Bill Show? Because the Buffalo Bill Show, is in the same league with those two others. And if you loved those two shows, no doubt about it, you'll love Buffalo Bill, too, that's why. I guarantee it. Maybe because it lasted less than one season, it is least remembered. Unfortunately it failed to catch on in time, depriving us of the treasures Mary Tyler Show provides us with today and WRRP could have provided us with. Even today, few people are aware of this gem. Mention The Buffalo Bill Show with The Mary Tyler Moore Show or WRKP and most people never even heard of it. And such a same it is, too!

Lost to the collective memories of the public is one show I'll never forget where Dabney Coleman, the always self promoter tries to land himself a part in a movie being filmed in Buffalo and is asked to take a screen test. He shows up at some apartment where he reads a romantic scene with an extremely obese woman. It has to be watched to be fully appreciated, though some people might take offense to making light of overweight people. But that was the Buffalo Bill Show, never afraid to go where other shows wouldn't. Or the show where Buffalo Bill's young daughter from Fresno who he hadn't seen in years comes to Buffalo and moves in with his black make-up artist with whom he has less than perfect rapport. But it was all in good fun and provided some side-splitting laughs.

There is good news. Fortunately, this just came out on DVD. Somebody beside me apparently realized how great this show was and recognized there is a market for it. Unfortunately, there are only 24 episodes to watch. But 24 are better than nothing. Watch them if you can beg, buy, borrow or steal a copy of this. If you haven't seen this show before, find out what we missed.

This is really a great movie! Until now, I've never thought much of Brad Pitt as an actor, but as Tyler Durden, in this movie he shows what he can do. So did Edward Norton as some Average Joe with no life, Bonham Carter as Marla Singer who've I've seen before in Howard's End, another movie I like and I recall she performed very well.

But now about this movie . . . It was pure brilliance. Imagine yourself living a dull boring life as a nobody, feeling life is passing you by as many of us have at some time. Be careful, you might do as this Average Joe and find through a most peculiar way an alter ego that is everything that you are not, but something you cannot control and something that can become more powerful and more dangerous than anything you could have ever imagined. Be careful! I won't go further with this! There is not much more that I can say without depriving you of this experience of losing yourself in the mazes that this movie took me. This movie will overtake you, it will exceed your ability to outwit and figure out where it is taking you and how it is taking you it is taking you there and why. It will take you as it does this sorry nobody. So I won't go further. Just see this movie and discover a nightmare, though so amusing at times you will roll on the floor laughing, as this movie is not without thought provoking and most profound of humor. Unlike comedies, this movie doesn't struggle or aim for laughs, the situations render themselves fertile grounds for them.

This movie has no equals. It is a one of a kind. It's unlikely they'll make another one like it. Enjoy it. The best! My rating 10/10.