wbrighenti

This is McQueen's greatest movie. "The Great Escape" is fictional; Papillon is not. The movie is based on the autobiography of Henri "Papillon" Charriere, who is sentence to life on the French penal colony, Devil's Island.

The most powerful scene is when Papillon dreams of confronting a jury, pleading that he did not kill the pimp for which he has been falsely accused of doing, resulting in his prison sentence. However, this jury does not charge him for killing the pimp; rather it charges Papillon for living a wasted life, to which he honestly pleads guilty.

This movie is sad, even depressing. But the scene culminating in Papillon pleading guilty to a wasted life alone makes this movie worth watching. How many of you can plead "not guilty" to the charge of living a wasted life? In all honesty, I cannot, and that's why this movie haunts me with its powerful personal charge. Undoubtedly it deserves a 10 rating.

I found this to be a very funny film, especially the first part of the film, where Allan Martin, played by Saul Rubinek, is seeking his dream girl.

If you remember the disco years and the early years of being single in a metropolitan city, then you may recall how promiscuous singles were. The rub here is that Allan is looking for real love and marriage, not one night stands, which come his way everyday!

Although Christine Baranski has a very funny scene early in the movie, Andrea Martin nearly steals the movie when, as the Concord Seductress, she rapes Allan, giving him blow by blow instructions on how to have sex with her. That scene had me rolling on the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter, and it alone was enough to drive me in search of this movie, which was not easy to find.

I think Saul Rubinek, Christine Baranski, and Andrea Martin are very talented actors and actresses, and I love their performances in several other movies.

The best part of the movie for me is up to his meeting Maria Giannini, played by Marcia Strassman. Nevertheless, because the first part of the movie is side-splitting and hilarious, I had to give the movie a 10 rating.

If you thought George Santos took liberties with his resume, wait till you watch this supposedly biographical movie. LOL. I'm surpised that the ending of the movie didn't show Pope Pious the XII canonizing Cole Porter, and Congress bestowing upon him the Congressional Medal of Honor. LOL.

And for Cary Grant to accept this role truly is disappointing. In my opinion, this is Grant's worst performance. I would have shoveled cow manure all day before accepting this role. Ugh.

I pity anyone who loves this movie. Yes, the music is beautiful but you don't have to watch this Hollywood BS to listen to Porter's music.

The audience is hustled. Who cares about Eddie? The film fails to have a plot. If you get off watching guys sweat and hit balls on a pool table, I pity you. I can't believe that others gave this movie a favorable rating. I fell asleep at the drive-in when I first paid to see this movie in the early 1960s. And I always fall asleep when this movie is shown. If you suffer from insomnia, this movie was made for you.

Ignore all the negative reviews unless you were a Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest, Knots Landing junkie and/or unless you watch Saturday Night Live stoned and have an IQ below 100.

This movie is hilarious. It has a great premise for a plot; it consists of great comic characters like John Candy, Rene Taylor, and Jerry Orbach; it has a funny script with dialogue (how refreshing); and it has a great director in Tom Mankiewicz, who keeps the pace racing, a requirement for all good comedies.

Despite what other reviewers write here, Mariel Hemingway is very pretty as a love interest, while Emma Samms is smoking hot as a femme fatale character.

I love satires, especially satires of the junk that permeated top TV ratings for decades. If you have an IQ above 100, you'll love this movie.

Nothing could possibly lie beneath this because it is at the bottom of the pile.

Thriller? Really? I lapsed into a coma trying to watch this. Where's the plot? Where's the dialogue? Where's the suspense? There's suppose to be eery music and slow camera pans and zooms.

You couldn't pay me to sit through this movie. And I didn't find Harrison Ford or Michelle Pfeiffer attractive or exciting in appearance or compelling as performers.

Unless you're a nutcase addicted to supernatural films, skip this film.

Tennessee Williams's females characters are really males in drag. If you understand this, then you understand Tennessee Williams' plays.

Since when have you met women like Carol Cutrere., Mrs. Stone, Blanche DuBois? In a gay bar on Halloween?

You know the ending of the movie 10 minutes into the movie. The foreshawdowing is too obvious. You even know how it is going to end.

So why bother listening to all the vacuous dialogue? Sorry, it put everyone to sleep in my household.

If you like this movie, you have to be an English major. I pity you.

If you are a dirty old man, you will love this movie. It's one provocative, sexy pole-dancer scene after another.

Who cares that Dale Robertson talks like a cowboy? Or who cares that I can't remember anything about the plot? The only thing I care about is where can I acquire a harem like that of Howard Hughes?

My wife loved the movie because of the dance scenes, and the movie is one dance scene after another. My only regret is that I didn't get a lap dance while watching this movie.

Yes, the plot is trite: a young girl wanting to become a star, and this girl, a virtual unknown, suddenly becomes a star but dies before her starring film's release. So why the 10 rating?

Simple: Valli. She is beautiful. MacMurray and every straight guy in the audience is mesmerized by her face, falling in love with her. And you can't help but wonder why MacMurray never kisses her in the movie?

Sure, the ending is touching, people honoring this local girl upon her death. And the realistic opening rings true about the insensitivity of everyday life in capitalistic America. But it is the spell that Valli casts upon MacMurray and every male viewer that makes this film memorable.

Martin's grandfather arrived in America in 1901. My grandfather arrived in 1888, during the Great Blizzard. Martin's father recalls how Italians were treated by the Irish. During the Columbus Day parades, the Irish would make fun of the Italians, ending in a huge fist fight.

Like his father's family, my parents grew up in poverty. There were large families living in small living places. My ancestors came to America to work for a $1 a day. As a hod carrier, my grandfather carried bricks and mortar up and down ladders all day, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Even when he was dying from prostate cancer, he had to work, pissing blood, to support the family.

Life was not a bowl of cherries, yet my parents believed in the American Dream and worked hard, saving their pennies, to provide their children with a decent life.

If you are an Italian American baby boomer, you will relate to this film.

My wife and I can't stand this film.

First of all, this film sugar-coats the deplorable condition of children in Dickens times. Unless one was from the upper classes in England, children suffered in England at this time. They certainly didn't go around singing and dancing!

Secondly, the music all sounds the same and is truly forgettable. No Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harry Warren, Rogers and Hart, Leonard Bernstein, Alan Jay Lerners wrote this score.

Thirdly, the entire cast is awful. One cannot identify, relate, or feel for any of the characters they portray.

Anyone who enjoyed this film must be deaf, blind, or mindless.

Albert Einstein said that "Soapdish" was the greatest comedy he ever wrote, and was the inspiration for his e=mc2.

Give a great comic script to Kevin Kline, Sally Field, Whoopi Goldberg, Gary Marshall, Robert Downey, Jr., Kathy Najimy, and Carrie Fisher, and you have a great comedy, a masterpiece written and conceived by Robert Harling.

I howled whenever Gary Marshall, playing the producer of the television's soap opera program, met and spoke to his staff about what was needed to make a soap opera successful: his tennis pal called the show "The Sun Also Sucks"; he disliked depressing and expensive but liked peppy and cheap.

Kline is superb in his comic mannerisms; and the interaction of Field and Goldberg is perfection.

It is truly one of the best comedies of the 1990s.

I have seen very few movies as moving and inspiring as "Meet John Doe." I rank it up there with "Spartacus" as inspirational to the common person.

The first speech, and the final speech by Stanwyck are compelling, especially in a world that was witnessing the deaths of 80 million people in World War II. If injustice and atrocities are to be overcome and averted, one needs to absorb the message so powerfully presented in this movie: that the common men and women need to unite to struggle against the evils in our society, including greed, absolute power in the hands of a few, violence, discrimination, injustice, inequality, and crimes against humanity.

Watch and share this movie and its message with your children, family, and friends. If we fail to adopt the philosophy of the John Doe Society, soon we all may be doomed to a world of totalitarianism, if not destruction.

My dad and I used to watch this television series in the 1950s. And I remember my dad always asking, "why doesn't this guy show up at our front door?"

The only other time I heard my father ask a similar question, was back in the 1980s, after Ronald Reagan was elected President and had promised a tax break for working Americans, when my father asked me after I had prepared his tax return: "Where's the 10% tax break Ronald Reagan promised us?"

The moral of my review is simply this: don't believe anything said on television or by those in Washington D.C. It's all fiction, folks!

The premise is perfect for a hilarious comedy: produce a play praising Hitler in order to have a flop and make a million dollars; except that the actor playing Hitler turns the play into a farce about Hitler, causing it to be the biggest hit on Broadway.

But the comedy would not have reached the limits of outer space of hilarity without the casting of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as the producer and finance guru, respectively, along with Kenneth Mars as the Nazi writer of the play. Mostel and Wilder give performances that were the best of their entire careers, with Wilder periodically screaming for his blue blanket, and Mostel yelling "flaunt it". And who can forget Mars arguing that Hitler was a better dancer than Churchill, as well as a great artistic painter, able to give two coats of paint to an apartment in one afternoon.

There is only one component of the film that could have been improved upon: Dick Shawn's character as LSD. Although an essential character of the play, it misses the bull's eye of perfection like the other characters and performances, particularly with his introduction and singing of the song, "Love Power": it doesn't measure up to the humor of the other songs in the movie. Sorry, Mel.

I read that many were offended by this film because it was deemed anti-Semitic by them. I did not see that at all while watching the film. Quite the contrary: how can a satire on Hitler, making him and the whole ideology of a master race appear ridiculous, be anything but anti-Naziism, rather than anti-Semitic?

My favorite scene, although there were many, is the first act of the Broadway play. The showgirls dressed as stormtroopers singing "Springtime in Germany", with the sound of machine guns in the background, and all on stage ducking bullets, had me rolling on the floor in convulsions of laughter. Folks, it doesn't get funnier than that scene.

This is certainly the BEST film that Mel Brooks ever made. In fact, I would have to agree with that comic genius, Peter Sellers, who stated that "This is the funniest and the best picture ever made." It is indeed. I'd give it more than 10 stars if I could.

How can a film fail with nine great actors and actresses! Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Paul Ford, Charles Bickford, Burgess Meredith, Kevin McCarthy, Robert Middleton, John Qualen; and there are other fine, if not great, performances by other actors and actresses in the movie as well.

My personal favorite performances in this movie are rendered by Jason Robards, Paul Ford, Burgess Meredith, and Kevin McCarthy. I loved the scene when Robards returns home and offers his future son- in-law an hilarious choice. But there are little touches that are unforgettable: when Burgess Meredith blows a kiss to the sensuous curvaceous entertainer, played by Marilyn Powell, while singing seductively and enticingly, "My Little Poesy", to banjo music, no less. It doesn't get any better than this!

"How many good women have you met in your life?" Only McCarthy dares to answer Circe's riddle: "one."

I ranked this film very high for several reasons:

1. I enjoyed the acrobatics in the film of Burt Lancaster and his former circus partner,Nick Cravat. They bounce and swing as if on trampolines and parallel bars throughout the movie.

2. I especially loved the scene where Lancaster and Cravat are chased by the soldiers: it is choreographed so amusingly.

3. I would watch any film in which Eva Bartok appeared. She is beautiful and enchanting.

4. How refreshing it is to watch a pirate movie where the sets are not so fake looking in appearance. And the quality of the cinematography is superb for 1952.

5. Stellar cast. Besides Lancaster, Cravat, Bartok, add Torin Thatcher and Christopher Lee.

6. It's fun: a comedy. It satirizes pirate films while retaining the action and romance of the genre.

Add some popcorn and you have an evening's entertainment.

The Milagro Beanfield War is a work of art. It has a premise upon which the story flows so engagingly for the viewer.

Unlike all of the action adventure films of today, relying on superfluous violence and car crash scenes, the film develops the intricacies of characters, including poor migrant workers, old men, small town people, ex-hippies, et al.

Everything works: theme, music, plot, characters, setting, photography, actors. Redford shows he is a highly competent director meshing all into an engaging and enjoyable experience.

Without the old men in this film, it would have failed. They symbolize all that we have lost of our ancestors: simple values; simple lives; honor; social consciousness; enjoyment of life; appreciation of just being alive.

Great cast,great film. I watch it every time it comes on the air, mesmerized by the world into which it lulls you with its other worldly music.

Thank you, Robert Redford, for making this film. Please do some more like it.

Most modern day Christmas stories are too hygienic, with perfect homes, perfect looking children, perfect looking parents, too neatly constructed plots, ending up with something too sugar coated to allow the viewer to suspend disbelief while watching it. For instance, the remake of "Miracle on 34th Street" should have been named, "The Yuppies Get the 5,000 Square Foot House for a Family of Three". What trash.

But not so with the movie, "Prancer". Jessica is not too pretty, but quite ordinary looking. Her father looks like a real working class individual who has lost his job and is down on his luck, not like a hedge fund manager living in Fairfield, Connecticut.

But what makes this story so very special is a cute story, realistically set, with great performances by Sam Eliot, Abe Vigoda, Cloris Leahman, Michael Constantine, but especially by Rebecca Harrell Tickell as the main character! Rebecca portrays Jessica with the right touch of innocence, and willfulness. I could not imagine anyone else playing Jessica so perfectly.

I love this movie. I love Rebecca Harrell Tickell's performance as Jessica. My favorite scenes are those involving Abe Vigoda and Rebecca Harrell Tickell, and Rebecca in Church. They are side-splitting.

This movie ranks up there with "A Christmas Carol" and "It's a Wonderful Life." Christmas is not Christmas without "Prancer" for my family. If you have not seen it, get it.

Charles Coburn steals the show in this movie. He had me in stitches throughout the entire movie. Charles Coburn was one of the greatest comic actors of Hollywood.

But when you also include comedians like Jean Arthur and Spring Byington, along with Bob Cummings (of "Love that Bob"), Edmund Gwenn (Kris Kringle as Scrooge here), and S. Z. Sakall (better known to classic movie lovers as "Cuddles" or "Whoosh"), hilarity upon hilarity follow. What fun! The film is filled with side-splitting scenes. My favorite is when Spring Byington expresses concern about the parakeets not being fed over the weekend, being reduced to tears for being called an idiot.

But the old goat, Charles Coburn, is the center of the comedy, whether he is bantering with Jean Arthur or Spring Byington or Cuddles or Gwenn. And if you do not know who Charles Coburn is, you don't know movies.

After watching this film, if you wish to watch more great films featuring Charles Coburn, then watch "The Lady Eve", "The More the Merrier", and "Monkey Business". Character actors--like Charles Coburn, William Demarest, Thelma Ritter, Spring Byington, Akim Tamiroff, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, Billie Burke, Edward Everett Horton, Cuddles, Billy Gilbert, et al--made the movies even though they rarely received top billing.

There were far too many great comic character actors to name and include here, but if you want to know who they were, just start watching the films of Preston Sturges and those of the late 1930s and early 1940s to see them. The Studio System of Hollywood then recruited and employed them full time under contract.

What a great era of comedy and film making that time period was. And how sad that after World War II we lost that era of Hollywood, its greatest and most productive period.

Colman was not only good looking, suave, sophisticated, and dashing, but he had a lyrical voice, an absolute necessity for a great actor. Recall the speech and voices of Peter O'Toole, James Mason, Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier: when they spoke, it was not mere prose but verse. So who better to play the poet, Francois Villon, than Ronald Colman, who possessed the voice of a poet.

Ronald Colman is my favorite actor of all time. I loved his performance in this film as well as his performances in "Random Harvest", "The Prisoner of Zenda", "The Lost Horizon", and "The Talk of the Town".

There were other great performances in this film besides that of Ronald Colman. Basil Rathbone's performance as King Louis XI is perhaps one of his finest, and deserving of an Academy Award as best supporting actor, while Frances Dee's performance as Villon's beloved is mesmerizing, the images to relive forever in one's dreams: the perfection of beauty and femininity. And Ellen Drew's portrayal of Huguette is touching without being maudlin.

Great film, great performances. Hollywood at its very best.