jlarkin5

Kenneth Branagh was all wrong for this adaptation. Branagh brings so much micromanagement there is no element of surprise whatsoever.

Fortnuately, Michael Caine and Jude Law are interesting to watch. They attack the challenge of a two man film with gusto. But since Branagh offers no surprises and such a sterile environment, it starts to feel like a bad play. Don't expect a lot of movement or innovation. It plays like afternoon, English tea time.

Think of what David Fincher could have done with this modern day update of the 1972 classic. There would be that sense of uneasiness this piece requires. A complete bore.

In 1988, Paperhouse was hailed as a "thinking man's horror film." Wow, you might say, sign me up. This thing is a mess. It features a one time young actress who has a range of like 1 to 2. G. Headley with a bad British (dubbed) accent, and a story with no chills, thrills or spills.

It isn't even interesting psycho-babble. One will only laugh at its cheap effects and long for a showing of Leprechaun 5.

The story involves a girl with glandular fever who escapes in her dreams. WHat you get isn't good horror, art house or even a decent after-school special. I found myself after the two hour point saying..where did my two hours go.

The direction is uninspired and I wished it could even be pretentious...something interesting..it seems like the producers were on lithium.

Even in the dream world things are boring.

A short no on this one.

Rivals "To Sir, With Love" (released around the same time) as the best teacher film of all time. The difference: Sandy Dennis.

Dennis was one of those actors they don't make anymore (or at least don't showcase in Hollywood in 2007). She was strange, quirky, not conventionally pretty and she had that quality a lot of new female teachers have-that deer in the headlights look that makes the viewer root for her to make it "work" with those tough students.

The story is strong with some good subplots with the troubled students. It is dated but I would say the same issues facing Dennis here face contemporary teachers.

I take Dennis to Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society" anyday.

I teach high school English. Fahrenheit 451 is a staple of the curriculum in my school. My strong sense is the talented Truffaut felt overwhelmed by the sci-fi genre in general. F451 is a soft, science-fiction narrative and Truffaut takes out some of the more challenging symbols and characterizations (where is the mechanical hound?). He seems weighed down by the futuristic vision and the film loses a lot of its impact for true sci-fi buffs.

My feeling is you need to partner the "message" of the piece with a spot on art direction and set design. (it truly looks like an old episode of "Get Smart").

Look to "A Clockwork Orange" to get a futuristic vision "right" without the help of the advanced technology of today.

Oscar Werner's take on Montag is difficult too. He is a curious actor with a strange moody quality. While he gets gives the character a strange flatness that sort of works, he doesn't hint at the inner passion of Montag. Truffaut and Werner's relationship dissolved during the filming, as Truffaut claimed Werner had gone "cold" as an actor. Again, Werner's take just doesn't feel authentic. You'd think the strain of his relationship with the director would fuel his performance-it doesn't.

Julie Christie is fine in a duel performance. Truffaut gets the ending right. But overall, the movie is a strange mishmash. It feels like a school play gone wrong. Here's looking to the new film version.

Danny Boyle.

You first think Trainspotting. I prefer this previous film that seems to defy ROGER EBERT's belief that characters should be warm and cuddly and it makes no sense to root for characters who are thoroughly unlikable.

The best part of this film is the fact that the characters ARE unlikable and this makes their motives/actions more plausible (and chilling). They could be the neighbors next door.

Boyle nails the tone early on and you find yourself really feeling like you are there in that house (as the fifth..er, fourth roommate).

Performances are first rate. THANK GOD this wasn't done in the US with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Steve Zahn and sisqo. You really get the sense you are a voyeur in these characters private moments.

A triumph.

Convoluted, infuriating and implausible, Fay Grim is hard to sit through but Parker Posey is really the only actress who could take this story and run with it. She's at once touching,funny, cunning. The supporting actors commit to it as well.

I wont even try to tell you the plot.. It involves characters from Hartley's Henry Fool and attempts a tale of international espionage.

The film works well if you continue along with it-understanding it is. in a sense, completely ridiculous. It becomes more and more ridiculous as you plod along. (I resisted the temptation to turn off the DVD twice).

Fay Grim requires an adventurous film-goer willing to tackle something that isn't cookie-cutter. In the end, it offers something that defies description.

To experience Head you really need to understand where the Monkees were when they filmed it.

This was as their series was coming to a close and the group was near break up. Their inventive and comedic series (sort of an American Idol of their day) took four unknown actors and formed a manufactured supergroup around them.

This is their take on their "manufactured image" and status as the 2nd tier Beatles. They always felt they were in a box, trapped, and unable to find credibility despite their talents.

It is also a hell of a musical-trippy, inventive (I have the soundtrack) and full of surprises.

See it with an open mind.

To give Julia Stiles a job? Sure it's nice to see Mia Farrow working but this offers nothing to improve upon the classic original.

It does the following: Gives a music video director work before the next alt music video Supports the producers view that any horror remake is a good financial move Employs Pete Postelwaite Makes the "committee of producers directing this trash happy they might make some coin Offers nothing new, innovative, subversive HELL the story is about the spawn of Satan have a little fun This is a cynical attempt to make money off stupid people who never heard of Lee Remick.

Shame Shame Shame. Everyone looks bad here.

Why not at least adapt the script you lazy ______

These actors belong in a B movie.

Not one of them rises above this dung. You almost feel bad for them-ALMOST. You almost pray one of them would have the talent or the moxie to just try to make something of their latest failure.

It isn't like some Hollywood producer staying up late watching the SCI-FI channel suddenly said hmm, that Soliel Moon Frye really is riveting in this.

Starts off kind of goofy and fun but once the bad special effects kick in you'll feel like YOU'RE in a bad school play about..I don't know what it is about. The actors (that is being very generous) seem to act like it all makes a lot of sense.

All the blame shouldn't be pointed at the actors who are clearly not ready for their next pilot that doesn't get picked up on the CW. The direction is pedestrian and the editing just silly.

Did this win any razzies? How about worst ensemble.

Funny, none of these actors BROKE OUT since this made a splash in 1994.

Look, I am a HUGE DePalma fan. Carrie is nothing short of brilliant.

Dressed to Kill out Hitchcock's Hitchcock.

Body Bouble, however, is an ill advised attempt at some sort of self satire or a bizarre message to his critics.

Watch DePalma have fun with the now patented EVERYTHING from his femme fatale, cool blond, voyeurism, standard chase scene, any clique in the book of erotic thrillers is here and used. The problem is the audience isn't having any fun..just memories of better made thrillers by the same director.

DePalma once said that he doesn't copy Hitchcock. He's just using the film language or "palate" Hitchcock presented to filmmakers. Sure DePalma is all style but here it is ALL stylistic re-treads-not very interesting.

Nothing, nothing, nothing is fresh and the satire doesn't ring true.

We get Craig Wasson looking glum for two hours.

It just looks like someone doing a bad DePalma imitation-only its DePalma. The fact that this was made in 1984 (MID CAREER for the man) is sad too when the director should have been experimenting with new techniques and a new variation on the thriller formula.

I'll take it a step further and say the real feeling you have is what it's like watching a third rate Hitchcock film. Or listening to Stone Temple Pilots instead of Pearl Jam instead of Led Zepplelin..but I digress.

The performances: here DePalma's staging handcuffs all the actors with the one exception of a very charming Melanie Griffith in her breakthrough role of Holly Body. Usually DePalma can get GREAT performances out of everyone. Here, it looks like a bad SNL sketch about his movies. Everyone looks so bored or afraid to hit their mark or wondering what's at the Kraft's food table today.

So is it a little fun? No. Watching Brian DePalma doing DePalma doing Hitchcock is just sad. Where are the discoveries in that? It hits all the wrong notes.

This movie allows you to look in on the challenges and small triumphs of four female office temps as they struggle to just get through the day. Yes, that doesn't sound very titillating BUT IT IS! I promise.

Strong performances from the entire cast but Toni Collette and Parker Posey really shine.

The strength of the film is how it somehow reveals the corporate world for what it is: completely de-humanizing. There are great scenes of comic satire and poignant moments anyone who has been on the lower rung of the business hierarchy will be able to recognize.

Forget "Office Space" "Clockwatchers" is the definitive office world flick.

I remember when 'The King of Comedy" came out when I was a kid and it was almost universally panned by critics who just didn't get it. Most of them expected a generic comedy and were surprised (disappointed perhaps) to get a black comedy about our celebrity obsessed culture.

This film does resonate more now with the democratization of fame in full swing with Paris Hilton, "American Idol," and the whole reality-celeb phenomenon. It really doesn't matter if you have the gifts..just the desire for fame.

This is my favorite of Scorcese's films because it brings together the odd stew of DeNiro, Bernhard (in here definitive role) and, of course, Jerry Lewis. It works so incredibly well. You can see Jerry Lewis visibly uncomfortable as an actor and Scorcese's process and it is perfect for the role and it is just too REAL. Deniro has never been better. Reveals his range here from tough guy Italian to..well, be sure to see his original characterization.

One of my favorite movies of all time.

See it for Maggie Smith who was much deserving of her Best Actress Oscar in 1969. I'd rank this performance among the best ever preserved on film. Her character is unlike any you've ever seen and ranks up there with Sandy Dennis in "Up the Down Staircase" and Sidney Poitier in "To Sir, With Love" as one of the most memorable teachers on screen.

Ronald Neame does a nice job of moving the film along so the adapted play doesn't seem stagy. The focus is the wonderful adapted screenplay and the great cast.

The triumph of "Jean Brodie" is the final confrontation scene with Smith and young actress Pamela Franklin.

Don't miss it.

Reading the reviews back when this was released, it is fair to say that Hardcore is anything but.

Poor George C. Scott. he's a Middle America, quiet family values man who loses daughter and finds out she has been lured into the underworld of adult porn.

So, George goes under cover in seedy urban areas to find his child. Even when he loses the mid America look and wears the loud "I'm a pervert" shirt, he still looks and feels like Patton. There is no transformation. It becomes comical when he adds the fake mustache and wig.

The on-set tension between Schrader and Scott is palpable. I can just picture George C. Scott screaming " I look like an idiot!!" Scott looks as though he would rather have joined a typing pool for three months than have made this poor excuse for a movie.

Couldn't Schrader have casted someone in 1979 who could make the plausible shift to urban low life? Why does every low life in this movie feel comfortable offering Scott any and all information on where to find his daughter??? He looks like a cop and always looks out of place.

The script is laughable. You never get a sense of either Scott's hometown values or the underbelly of porn. Everything just scratches the surface and the characters are all two dimensional.

Horrible. Schrader's biggest embarrassment.

Not much to like about this Gertrude Lawrence musical biopic. The late 60s/early 70s marked the demise of the big budget musical but this is worse than "Mame." Julie Andrews tries for a tour de force but she is held hostage by one of the worst screenplays ever. We walk through Gertrude Lawrence's actress life and wish it was as interesting as the film thinks it is..it isn't.

The musical numbers are one word: dreary. Everything rings adequate. No top tappers here no great love songs, no vaudeville show stoppers. Everything that made the Robert Wise and Julie Andrews combination in "Sound of Music" moving and epic is completely unwatchable here.

The score is bland, she wears a few bad wigs. The choreography is limited by Andrews lack of dancing skill and the poor staging. Wise's direction is flat and uninspired.

You keep waiting for it to get better and it just gets worse..and worse.

The premise was intriguing and I think I thought it was a documentary but unfortunately it wasn't.

What if gay men had the medical intervention, through an anti-depressant like pill to change their orientation from gay to straight? Would it be a morally acceptable choice? Is it realistic to think a lot of gay men feel isolated and disconnected from the mainstream gay culture and its limited offerings? The thing followed this "every gay" man through the emptiness of the gay male lifestyle and asks the question is it, or should it, be a viable choice (if it ever exists). It is interesting how it sets up this average to plain guy who just says "i don't fit into this gay framework" so screw it.

Think about it: If you aren't white, hot,musclebound, hiv-neg, well off, popular, trendy where exactly do you fit in the gay male org chart? The problem is once the gay guy changes to "str8," the actor (which is stretching it more like the gay guy they hired) is not credible as a straight guy. There is no believable transformation, emotional shift-nothing. He is just the same.

The movie can't move past his interesting premise and looks like it was cast with the directors old friends from hs drama club. No story or background and it seems all the characters conveniently work together..this is not a b movie its not even public access cable ready.

The acting is beyond horrible..

When the guy truns str8 he inexplicably starts kissing his grossly overweight fag hag friend. A poor choice dramatically and aesthetically-its basically a choice a gay man would make to have some sense of normalcy.

This is when I shut off the DVD. SO sad that such a promising concept could be so poorly executed.

I rented this after finding the title on a lot of top horror lists on the web. Let's face it, it isn't easy to find an original, truly scary horror film that doesn't star some rapper and isn't a retread of the same, tired formula.

My feeling is "Let's Scare Jessica to Death" is one of the best in the horror genre. The focus is on mood, character and psychology. The acting is not first rate but naturalistic (in a early 70s way). If you looking for gore and cheap thrills look elsewhere. Some excellent camera work here and it always keeps one guessing.

The film is just eerie and its low budget, 70s style only adds to your unease.

Sheila McCarthy shines in this exploration of the imagination, the artist and the self.

It is one of my top ten films of all time because of its originality and ,of course, McCarthy's offbeat and touching performance. She creates something truly original that has not been matched in a female comedic performance since.

Direction is crisp, unexpected and magical. One can see why it was given a standing ovation at Cannes.

It is one of the few films that can me on a pure emotional level..appealing to the misunderstood individual.

Anyone who has felt like they don't fit in will love this movie. Be sure to watch the closing credits to the end.

Now On DVD with Rozema's commentary.