punkin_flats

I missed part of the start of Donnie and Maries career because I was overseas in the military in the mid Seventies. But this movie catches you up easily on parts you may have missed. I was always curious about how they lost their money in building the recording studio back in their home state. This movie cleared it up and more. I have read Donnie's autobiography and also Maries. Donnie did not give monetary statistics on how they came close to losing everything. Just that the family threw all their money into one hat and came up losing. This was really heartbreaking to me. The books were very eye opening and such good reading. It shows you how a close, large, and religious family achieved so much with sort of limited resources and a lot of pluck and talent. They would not be where they were today without the father being a guiding hand. Donnie told in his book how the family kept their morals while traveling around the world and in sometimes questionable surroundings (Las Vegas for example). Before anyone knocks this family or this movie they should read the books and examine their own life. The family reached the peak of entertainment success and preserved their families traditions at the same time. I say Bravo to the Osmonds and I wish there were more families that could entertain us all like this!

Let me start by saying this movie is not for everyone. But then, what movie is for everyone? The movie is not politically correct and pokes fun at every race and social class. You will find yourself laughing loudly when it is your social class for some warped reason. However if you like to laugh uproariously at stupid, crude, humor it is for you. I caught it one day on satellite when I was home alone. It was a movie I thought that I would never ever like from reading other reviews about it. But I was dead wrong. I was entranced by the fast pace and the whole thing got over with way too soon for my liking. I wish there would be a sequel made! I caught myself laughing way too loud since nobody was home to chastise me. It was the type of movie where a lot of stuff seamlessly came together. Some slapstick comedy, goofy badly spoken and accented English, and cultural misunderstandings are the mainstay of the script and they are brilliantly assembled by Cohen. It put me in the mind of the BBC TV show, Little Britain. I may secretly buy myself a DVD copy of this for Christmas.

It's funny how twenty-eight years can test the mettle of a movie. With America in a furor over the fifteen year old Miley Cyrus semi-nude photographs, we have all seemed to have forgotten what ensued when a fourteen year old Brook Shields seemed to bare all in this lost island flick of 1980. Now that I have satellite television, I am watching a lot of movies I have missed over the years. The Blue Lagoon was one of them. I don't remember why I never rented it, but I always wanted to watch it. I wasn't disappointed last week. I sort of half-expected a "Lolita meets Swiss Family Robinson" with giggles, but that wasn't what I walked away with. Instead I experienced the same sort of feelings of when I first read the book Flowers In the Attic, where young children are imprisoned against their will and grew up with very little adult supervision or normal guidance. They (like the children in the movie) were left to their own devices and budding intellect to figure things out. In truth, Blue Lagoon was a lot more like Robinson Crusoe in that they had very little material things to make do with. Just the simple little things left in a boat were all they had. The controversy over using under-age females for art purposes will always continue as they are very tender and beautiful and have an innocent glow to them.

I watched this movie and went to bed, trying to remember where I saw the identical ending. Then it came to me- it was Wild Hogs which I watched this summer! OK, I ran all these variables by my husband. First the characters. In Wild Hogs you had 4 guys J. Travolta, Wm. Macy, Tim Allen, and Martin Lawrence. They were all middle class or wealthy (wasn't Travola married to a super model?). They also could afford expensive bikes. In Delta, the main characters were 3 lower middle class, if that. They were in the Reserves probably to make some extra money. If you want to count their active duty sergeant, there were 4 guys. Like WH, DF characters were escaping from their nagging or bothersome wives. Second, they accidentally (or otherwise) destroyed their communication devices. I won't say because that would truly be a spoiler. By doing this (both movies) they could not communicate with the women folks back home. Third, they ended up in a bad town and had to 'rescue' it. They did this through a bunch of bumbling, etc. and goofy stuff. Ray Liotta was the bad guy in WH and Danny Trejo was the bad guy in DF. In both movies one of the guys (Macy and Larry Cable Guy) get the beautiful girl and solve a whole lot of problems. Fouth, there were almost identical 'gay' jokes dealing with sleeping out in the open. The scripts were very very similar, so somebody did a pretty good rip off. I laughed a lot through the movie and I wasn't expecting a top rate movie, but it was funny in parts. Stupid too, but it took my mind off my troubles. Another thing, which was a big purchasing point for my husband, was that he knew I LOVE Danny Trejo and flip out when I see him on screen in anything. Usually he has very tiny parts. But in DF, he has a HUGE role and I screamed every time he was on screen. So shoot me, but I will watch it again just to see Danny! Others mentioned Three Amigos so I will have to go read up on that. I have seen way worse movies that were rated big blockbusters and stunk. At least this was advertised as a comedy and I got some laughs off it.

We rented this movie this week. As soon as it started I recognized the plot. Hollywood isn't ashamed to recycle plots, believe me. It was a made-for-TV movie in 1973, co-written by Joan Rivers. TGMLT was brilliant and starred Stockard Channing as a friendly college girl who wants to be liked by the handsome frat boys and pretty sororiety sisters. She's a bit overweight and sort of average looking. It's almost a mirror plot. Homely girl ridiculed by the in crowd, and later on, she gets her revenge on everyone. Even TGMLT had Stockard getting revenge one by one, just like Tamara. Don't get me wrong, Tarama was modernized, sleek, and they even threw in black magic to spice things up. The plot was fast-paced and had good-looking young actors and actresses in it. But if you all want to see the original, ripped-off plot, get "The Girl Most Likely To." You can buy it on DVD. Go look at the postings for TGMLT and you will see where to buy it and other viewer comments. I guess they thought nobody would remember something 34 years old but I did.

This is not the type of movie we normally go see. But my daughter is a school teacher and majored in Elementary Education. So we went as a family because she wanted to see it. It was strange, the 3 of us all got widely different views of the movie. My husband hated it, he said it was 95% depressing and 5% happy. And he said there were no peaks or lows like most stories you see. It was just flat line depressing all the way. He said he wouldn't watch it again if it was free. I almost got up and went to the lobby at the last 20 minutes. The depression of the whole thing just weighed so heavily on my mind. I want to go to movies to enjoy escapism. I work in a large US city where there are many homeless people, so, yes, I see them 5 days a week. My daughter liked it and found it inspiring. It did open a line of dialogue between us that was fun. She didn't know I sold blood once for money while in the military. And she didn't know I had spent the night once in a homeless shelter in Chicago, also while in the military.

As I get older, I appreciate some of the smaller (in terms of promotion) films from the Sixties. I had never heard of this movie before my husband purchased it on DVD. I always liked Lee Marvin and his tough guy style of acting. This film really hit the Sixties head on. The clothing, interior design of the apartments, the cars was so much fun to watch. Angie Dickinson was H-O-T and so lovely when she was younger. I was amazed at her acting talent at such a young age and she was paired quite well with Marvin and held her own. Though it was dated 1967, it had no hippie trappings of the drug/counter culture of the time even though it was set in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Instead, it featured women's hairstyles, clothing, shoes, etc. that you would see on regular middle class and business type of women. One scene had a man getting ready to do a conference call with Lee Marvin in his presence and I didn't know what the heck the thing was that he was going to use. It looked like a big green Scotch tape dispenser. He dialed up the phone (rotary of course) and placed the handset in the cradle. Then they began their conference call. It seemed funny. I think the setting at this point of the movie (the house and grounds) was a setting from a soft porn movie. Anybody care to comment on this, but it was a certain house, high in the hills with a distinctive swimming pool with a metal bridge over it. The area surrounding the pool was something like flagstones instead of concrete.

This was a very very entertaining movie that kept you on the edge of your seat during many parts. After we were about half-way into it, I said it was an almost identical plot to "Schultze Gets The Blues." (2003). I guess you would call this a "Quest Movie." Both men (Burt Munroe and Schultze) are "foreigners" (New Zealand and Germany) going to the United States to chase a dream (motorcycle racing and Cajun music). Munroe does have to travel a greater distance than Schultze does. Both men are older and unmarried. They have spent much time thinking about taking their passions to America. Their neighbors/friends like them and overlook their obsessions and quirks because they are generally mild mannered men and good hard working people. They (the neighbors and friends) realize that these men won't be happy until their Quest is over. So they rally around them (literally and figuratively speaking) and send them off because with the men being rather seasoned in age, they might only get one chance at doing this. Both Munroe and Schultze have language difficulties, Schulze obviously having the greatest since he speaks only German. But Munroe has his own, even though he speaks English. I won't say any more than this, but if you watch the two movies you will see the striking similarities. While I am on the subject, I can't think of any female "Quest" movies like this, since women in society aren't usually encouraged to traipse across the continent, and the oceans in search of themselves. Would welcome any comments.

A long time ago, my husband said he thought Casper V.D. was one of the most handsome young male actors he'd ever seen. His role in Starship Troopers seemed to point the way to bigger and better movies. So what happened? Why is he in "C" grade movies that a young wannabe would be glad to be in? Anyway, back to the subject, this movie was a study in dreck. I only watched it to see how it ended. And I kept watching to see why the scary dude kept riding two different horses all through the movie. What was that about? Did one horse have an accident and he had to be replaced half-way through the filming? Did his contract specify only so many hours screen time? It was even two completely different breeds of horse, for crying out loud, not to mention two completely different colors. I thought maybe it would be explained by the end of the movie, but it wasn't. Costuming must have had a $50 budget and there wasn't enough money left over for the scary dude to have a good cape. His flowing cape looked like it was made out of Hefty garbage bags. When he walked around it fluttered around him like billowing plastic. And the rest of the cast- I didn't get why they were such a mis-matched bunch. The men were super macho, who kept grunting warlike sayings and posturing around like middle aged G.I. Joes. The Rambo-ettes (girls) looked like a bunch of sorority sisters, not trained military. Everybody's backpacks looked like L.L. Bean, which made them look more like weekend hikers than a skilled killing squad. The leader at one time had memories of himself in some battle which I thought perhaps was Vietnam. My husband said maybe it was memories of Kosovo. I don't know. The whole mess was an unappetizing stew. Movies like this help you enjoy "A" grade movies better. Every once in a while you need to see one so you enjoy quality film-making. Which this obviously was not. I would put in a negative rating if I could. Viewer beware! This doesn't really have spoilers in it, I just checked this to be careful.

I went into watching "Two For The Money" cold- had not read anything about. I enjoyed it! Pacino had some hilarious dialogue. I kept on laughing throughout the movie at his witticisms. I read some other postings, yes, Russo was towering over Pacino as his wife. I would take this that Pacino was secure in his life and could handle having a tall woman walk with him. We all know Russo was a fashion model in real life. Many short, powerful men want a woman like that. As to another posting, yes Matt M. was a light-weight, but boy did he give beefcake appeal! I liked his shirtless scenes. Who cares if the boy can act?? Then shock of shocks, one of my 70's favorite actors popped up- -Armand Assante! I was so happy to see him! I wish he had more screen time. Seeing three of the four actors/actresses as big names, I was happy overall with the movie. The running time flew by for me.

awful movie....If you want to see a good drug movie, rent "Scarface." Or if you want a wet T-shirt movie, rent "The Deep" with Jacqueline Bissett. I sat and watched this because my husband rented it. I could see after 20-30 minutes it was not going to get any better. However, he loved it. He loved the beach stuff, the beautiful water, the clouds, the diving stuff. But to me that is fluff. Who cares? Why would I want to sit 2 hours and look at blue water? At least "The Beach" had a good plot AND beautiful setting AND the good acting of Leo DeCaprio. Scott Caan seems to try to be a tough guy actor like his dad and fails. He has a long way to go, I feel for him. He's never going to be leading man quality. Stupid acting is not sexy to me. The other guy was good, the one who ran the dive expeditions. (forgive me, I don't have his name in front of me, but my husband said he was in the Fast and Furious). Now this guy can act. The girls in the movie? Fuggahdaboutit....the cameraman seemed to try his best to get shots of Alba's bikini-clad bottom every chance he could get. Or shots of her cleavage. I'm sorry but that's not acting, that is voyeurism. The blonde? Bimbo-esquire with black roots. The whole thing was a waste of film and time in my opinion. My husband? Oh yeah he wants to buy his own copy. Enough said.

Mr. and Mrs Smith- how many ways can you spell b-o-r-i-n-g? This movie has one major flaw. It should have been made "R" instead of "PG-13". Why they watered it down, I'll never understand. By the movie poster (yes, I fell for the poster like millions of other American males) I thought the movie would be sexy, sophisticated and sublime, perhaps in the line of Bourne Identity or James Bond. Instead it was watered, bland, and silly. I don't want to see Pitt and Jolie in comedy, OK? I want lust, bullets, action. I liked both of them in other movies and thought their pairing would be dynamite. Alas, it was like weak tea. And why do movies where the co-stars fall in love with one another tend to fail? It's a shame. Save your money unless you just want to stare at Angelina Jolie.

I enjoyed this movie immensely and I'm a woman! Usually a WW2 war movie bores me, but this had such amazing twists, turns, and odd things that happened! I loved the huge cast, there was no one leading person to take over the majority of the scenes. I definitely will get the Cornelius Ryan book and read it. The movie seemed to be very long, I haven't checked the run time yet. I only took one break from the room and my husband stopped the DVD player so I didn't miss anything. I just sat entranced watching the action. Actually, I am glad it was a very long movie, I would hate to see an edited (shortened) version, as every scene that was included seemed to be important.

Fantastic! Chrystal put me in the mindset of Deliverance, one of my all-time favorite moves. It was spooky, darkly sexy, and moody. The casting was fantastic. It was so good to actually see Southern actors and actresses playing Southern roles which required the use of their distinctive accent. The frightening scenes made my blood run cold. I loved the low rolling mountain area that they filmed in and around. It was beautiful and it contrasted well with the very poor life some of the characters had. The weird stuff going on the movie kept your interest. Billy Bob had his usual understated acting style. He kept me riveted to the movie when he was on, just to see how he would react in the different scenes.

Horrible, upsetting movie. I wish my husband had never brought home this rental piece of junk. It was full of racism, violence, carjackings, and death. No thank you. All it did was fill my head with ugliness and scenes of violence. I would tell any woman not to rent this movie or ever watch it - - it is very very upsetting. This was not entertainment, it was like being on jury duty (which I had 2 summers ago). It was more like a police report for a week's activity in Los Angeles. All it did was show the dirty side of life. If you like gritty, upsetting movies, by all means, watch this. If you want light hearted entertainment, watch something else. All this will do is give you nightmares.

A girlfriend told me about this movie and I asked my husband to rent it. You would have thought I would have watched it when it first came out since I actually live in Alabama. I really didn't know much about it, just 2 or 3 sentences the friend said. I was thinking it was a humorous movie, and my husband did also. We were very surprised when we watched it. The subplot (racism in the small town) was as interesting as the main plot (Melanie Griffith wanting a glamorous life). Sometimes I think Griffith is a bunch of fluff in real life, then she gets in front of the cameras and wows me time and again. She is a great actress. While watching the movie, as it inched towards the middle, my opinion of it was dropping fast. I think the pace slowed too much. I was planning on giving it a B-. Then the action picked up about 40 minutes near the end. I was riveted to the TV at this point. Actually I left the room for a short break and could still hear the dialogue. I raced back down the hall quickly! Warning! Don't leave the room as the film nears this point! You need to be watching and appreciate what is going on! The film starts to come together and you need to hear and see it! Lucas Black is top rate as usual. I was in tears at the end and my husband was getting misty-eyed also. When they were announcing filming of this movie and doing location checks, everybody in Alabama (where I live) was so excited! Oh boy, Banderas and Griffith are coming here to film! Then he changed his mind and decided to film in Mississippi. Everyone was sad. How could Banderas say that Mississippi "looked" more like Alabama? Other than that, this movie was great.

I loved this film. I saw a trailer on a rental DVD and knew I just had to watch it. I read some other comments on the Board about it, and realize that you have to be a certain age to appreciate this movie. It's like the Jack Nicholson/Cathy Bates movie, "About Schmidt." When you young reviewers get a certain age, watch both of these movies (Schmidt and Schultze) again and see if they doesn't affect you deeply. Yes, you might think it slow moving, but it is building to a climax. Just like life. Life does not move fast either. You sit and enjoy it, like a slow moving river. I am American born, Grandparents were German immigrants. Mother was a immigrant from Europe also. So I grew up in a German culture. Now I live in the South and we are going to have thousands of Louisiana evacuees coming into our area. This will be a big, big culture mix. This movie really hit home on this. And it compares how 2 different cultures can get along and find many similarities. Music is always a thing every culture enjoys. Schultze will stay in my mind forever.

How many ways can you spell b-a-d? Just watch this movie. It was like watching a very bad high school play where they couldn't round anybody up to play the parts. Acting = Bad. Script = Bad. The whole problem, I believe, was people who watch the great cult classic "The Evil Dead" and think they can duplicate it on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, they get a piece of drek like Ancient Evil 2. Sorry, I don't mean to knock anybody but this was a really bad piece of film work. Save your money folks. I am giving it the lowest possible rating to warn away others. I believe they even mention "The Book Of The Dead" which was a title that Sam Raimie and Bruce Campbell originally thought to name the Evil Dead. But they were talked out of it.

Indiana Jones get a library card. Seriously, this movie was pretty good. I had not heard any comments on it or read about it beforehand on the IMDb. About all I read was the rental box from Blockbuster 10 minutes before it started. I enjoyed it. I would call it good clean family entertainment. A lot was plainly ripped off Indiana Jones, but hey, a lot of other people ripped that off also!! The characters and plot were lighthearted and fun to watch. You could sort of tell what would happen ahead of time, but it was still fun to watch how it all played out. Bob Newheart was as usual, understated and brilliant in his dry humor. Go Bob. Also, he was really stylish in his role I thought. All in all, a pretty good family movie you could let the kids and your mom safely watch.

OK, everybody- I know this was not Barbershop. But it was told from a woman's viewpoint and like another posting said, was more like "Chick-Lit"- lighthearted and don't take it too serious. I laughed a lot all the way through it. My husband laughed a lot also. There were a lot of African-American jokes that certainly went over my head, but like anybody who is in a setting where everybody but you seems to get the joke, you laugh along anyway and have a good time. Latifah seems so natural in the movie, you can imagine her really running a beauty shop and having to deal with difficult personalities of the staff, the moods of the regular customers, plus funny people on the street who just drop in or plain interrupt daily business. I liked it a lot and it left me with a good feeling when the credits rolled.

I am giving this movie Vampire Assassins a "2" rating mainly because it had no sex or nudity. Other than that, I am not sure why it was ever made. It was more like a training exercise in how to make a movie with a very limited budget. The characters Derek and Slovak were the best actors. They were followed closely by the "biker-Dude" with the Pleather pants and silver belt. He was OK too. Most of the movie was filmed in some kind of distribution warehouse. If you got tired of watching the kung-fu kick boxing stunts, you can check out the packages of Scott tissue, Windex and other cleaning products. You will have a lot of time to do this, trust me. I almost started to make a list. The dialogue and kung-fu stunts were extremely slow. They talked slow, fought slow, etc. I don't know why. At least with the extra-slow delivery of the actors lines, you could hear everything very distinctly. I am trying hard to find good stuff to say about this movie. We watched it all the way to the end to see if got any better, but it didn't. We never could decide if the actors really knew martial arts or were just acting like they knew martial arts. You can watch yourself and decide. My favorite line was something like (vampire speaking:) "what are you looking at?" other man responding: "your bad dental work."

Wonderful thought-provoking large scale epic. I had very little knowledge of Alexander, I just watched the movie for pure enjoyment. I was not disappointed. I tell friends, just sit back, get a tray full of snacks, popcorn, and coffee and enjoy! The movie was about 65% battle scenes, campground discussion, battle preparation, and moving speeches to the troops. The rest of the movie gave background story, Angelie Jolie's behind-the-scenes encouragements, evil doings of the family, etc. The battle scenes were awesome, I have never seen anything like this in my life. You could see how the Greeks fought hand to hand with sometimes no more than a spear and a shield. Hardly anybody was on horseback except the leaders. It was rough and violent to the max. The soldiers were so brave and actually some of them were very old. It really makes you think about modern warfare when you see this type of fighting. It was different than Troy with Brad Pitt.

My husband rented this DVD and said usually Asylum put out pretty good, low-budge campy movies. I said, "ok, let's watch it." You know, it was pretty good! It was no big epic, movie classic or anything, but for a "B" grade movie I enjoyed it. The casting seemed good, the young actors seemed to fit their parts well. The acting by everyone seemed good (again) and believable. The plot was something different, I would have called the Jolly Roger a serial killer but strangely nobody used that term. He really cut a swath through the town. There was plenty of murder/attacks/scary scenes etc. pretty much evenly distributed through the movie to keep your attention. It had a good flow to it. Like the other reviewer, I agree that the bar scene was a hoot, just trashy enough to be believable and humorous also. I had to laugh out loud at many of the bar scenes. You probably will too. I liked the town where the movie was set, it was kind of gloomy and rainy and dreary for some good pirate atmosphere. All in all it was enjoyable and I actually wouldn't mind watching it at a future date.

I watched this movie again this weekend. I had seen it a few years back and had forgotten most of it, so this is like a fresh review. I don't get Owen Wilson I guess. No offense, but he is like somebody who wants to date your sister and you don't want him to because you know what he's after. Then Jackie Chan is like the guy you WANT to marry your sister, you can imagine sitting with him at the Thanksgiving dinner table and enjoying a good time. I agree with the other review, Wilson/Chan did not seem to gel for some reason. Didn't Chan knock Wilson after release of this movie, saying he whined too much on aches and pains after doing stunts? Sounds like a bad match to me from the start. Loved the stunt horse, I was in stitches watching him. Actually he (the horse) and Jackie made for better stunts and humor then Wilson/Chan. Some scenes were making fun of old cowboy movies and that was sort of fun to watch, but a little rehashed I guess for a Baby Boomer like me. Chan's stunts were hot and well timed as usual. You can tell he's a true professional at everything. Guess what I want to say is he makes it look easy. Overall I would call it a good family movie- full of mild humor and sight gags, which Chan is great at.

This movie was depressing to both me and my husband. It left us in a bummer mood. I never thought about DeNiro being too old to be Dakota's dad, it's not unusual to see an older man with a young child. Actually nowadays it's very common with marriages/remarriages. I would rather see that matchup then the leading man being 65 and the leading lady 25 if you know what I mean. Or a sexy young woman who is a nuclear fusion/fission genius or museum curator. But Hide and Seek had the usual "rich people fleeing life" twist- when an awful thing happens in your house, you must move somewhere else and start life anew. But why would you move someplace so out in the country, away from the bustling city? Seems like the kid would be even more depressed leaving all her old friends, school, life, etc. behind. Then DeNiro had the physician syndrome, "even though I am licensed professional, I cannot help my own child." Fanning was OK, but I have seen her in better roles. (and yes, I have recently seen War of the Worlds and thought she was great and believable). I can't fault the kid, she probably was taking directions from off camera. I found her constant freezing up and shuddering weird and odd. It reminded me of Wednesday Addams, but Christini Ricci did it much better and much colder years ago. I love DeNiro in his other roles, perhaps he was trying a new slant. After all, now he's doing comedy! I never want to see this again, it depressed me badly. I like to see a movie for entertainment, not a black cloud feeling. Sorry, but this is the best I can do. I do try to write a fair review and like DeNiro/Fanning in other roles. Love the IMDb, it gives great background on movies and opinions.