bigsleepj's reviews

I'm afraid that the legendary "Sherlock Jnr" has left me cold. It just not as good as Keaton's other movies (Our Hospitality, Steamboat Bill Jnr, The General) which doesn't feel as forced as this one. It's not that I have anything against surrealism but from the beginning of the "surreal" part of the movie (i.e. when he enters the cinema) the movie just stops being good (not that the beginning was all that great as well).

Sure, there are great parts (like when he jumps into an old lady's stomach) but eventually they don't amount to much. I'm sorry, I really wanted to love this movie but it just does not stand on its own like most of Keaton's silent movies.

Bob the Tomato is trying to produce a play (co-written by Larry) only to find that their opening night competition is a small church play. So they plan to sabotage the their competition. Oh yes, and the opening night is Christmas Eve.

The Star of Christmas has everything you'd want and expect from Veggietales videos: Silly songs, obnoxious humor, French Peas and a Christian message. Even some of the setpieces are great like the rehearsals for the play, and Larry and Bob's attempts to escape from the "hands" of Moyer the Destroyer. Or, in fact, the usual lines like that ring with silly humor. The Star of Christmas delivers up to a point.

Then the producers attempted one final "comic chase scene" in a rocket powered motorcar. This unfortunately fails to be funny and seems rather desperate for laughs. In all honesty the movie could have done without; it adds very little to the story. In the scene there are great moments but they don't help.

Other than that, the Star of Christmas is great entertainment. 7/10

I struggle (always) to get through the shoddy, slightly boring and occasionally badly shot 30 minutes of this movie. I don't know why (entirely) I feel this way about it, but it's just not engaging. Is it shoddy film making or am I just an idiot? There are funny moments (like the trial - by - knocking - on - the - head) and brilliant moments (when Kambei shaves his head) but they are few. On the whole the first part of the story is just shoddy.

The rest, however (from them leaving for the village) is pure movie magic. I can't even describe how brilliant the rest of this movie is. It's pure movie magic. This is certainly on of the BEST MOVIES EVER MADE. It deserves all the acclaim it receives. There is barely an equal.

Kurosawa is definetely the greatest director ever born.

This is an underated classic, and some critics agree. Roger Ebert gave it Four Stars, which is the highest they'd give. Off course it's a flawed masterpiece, considering those idiotic singing gargoyles.

But the songs (except the one sung by the gargoyles) are brilliant (if you listen to the words), the score is brilliant, the animation WOW! And it has a spiritual side. True faith vs corrupted faith. Esmeralda, the gyspy, in her song "God Bless the Outcasts" attains a simple faith while Frollo (Frodo? hahaha) thinks himself perfect. The words of the afore mentioned song strikes upon one of the principle of Christianity; Christ was an outcast.

Despite the spiritual side, it goes more for a humanistic message that is in itself an important one.

But this is Disney at it's darkest so I don't think very young children should watch this. It might upset them.

I'm very angry at Disney for adding that dumb song "Morning Report" to the movie. It's just plain stupid. It is one of the worst songs ever to make it's way into a Disney musical. Next the Seven Dwarfs from "Snow White" is going to do an Eminem Song in a Special Edition of the Classic. Ugh! I just wish Disney would stop fidgeting George Lucas-like with their movies!

The Theatrical Release of The Lion King is an all time classic. It's hard to access on the DVD, but it's far better than the Special Edition. The Special Edition is an inferior version that makes me sick...

Boy, talk about a gratuitous documentary. Imagine the pre-production scene that happened!

Edison: "Hey, an elephant killed some people, LET'S ELECTROCUTE IT BEFORE CAMERA!"

"Really, Mr Edison, is it decent?"

"WHO CARES! ELECTRICITY! ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!"

Seriously, this is a very odd piece for PETA to use in their campaign for animal rights. I'm not a very PETA-person, but I'm with them on electrocuting elephants, which Edison surely should have been. This is a very disturbing piece of work, especially when you see that the shock did not kill the poor animal.

"Around the World with Willy Fogg" is basically just Verne's "Around the World in 80 Days" anime-style with one or two characters added and Fog's named changed to something easier on the tongue.

This is one of my favourite childhood tv-series'.

Everybody (oh well, next to everybody) know the story, and if you find this series watch it. It's dated but despite the artistic licence with the story is true to Jules Verne's spirit of adventure. The English version even has a great song. You'd have to be very stuck-up not to like it.

Oh yes, everybody's animals too. So this is a nice little anthropomorphic spin on the tale.

Prizzi's Honor has won a lot of acclaim and I was really looking forward to watching it. I expected something relatively entertaining either as a Mob Drama or a dark comedy. A Mob Drama it was, but it was not entertaining and it certainly wasn't a dark comedy, even thought it marketed itself as one.

I'm sorry, but with a few exceptions ("Why didn't he catch the baby?") it was really just a very boring unfunny movie with a strange ending. I'm sorry, but I'm one of the few who just doesn't "get" Prizzi's Honor.

John Huston has made better movies. Far better movies. I'm certain most of his bad stuff is better than this...

After spending a decade (or so) in solitary confinement from the Japanese Film Industry Akira Kurosawa returns to make his semi-masterpiece "Kagemusha", which he called a dress-rehearsal for "Ran", made in 1985.

Kagemusha is, probably, the best example of cinematic overkill where nobody actually cares. Cinematic overkill is when someone constructs a complex multi-layered movie, stage epic-battles, introduce likeable and complex characters without having a very complicated message. The message of "Kagemusha" is simply this: If you pretend long enough to be something else you'll become it. Too simple, maybe, for what's delivered.

Not that "Kagemusha" is a bad movie. It's haunting, it's spectacular and it's just great. I keep thinking about it over and over. I can't get it out of my head. Simply put "Kagemusha" is a masterpiece, albeit one up for debate. Not all Kurosawa fans would like it, but that's they're business. Personally, this is one of the movies currently that I'd really like to see again.

PS: Thank goodness for George Lucas and Francis Ford Copolla who funded this movie.

This is the first time I consciously watched a movie by Miyazaki Hayou (I watched the butchered version of "Valley of the Winds" which doesn't count anyway) and I have to say it's brilliant. Although the story lags it never bores. It's confuses and confounds and you forgive it for that. Most movies you want some underlying logic. Outside of basic Shintoism there is no logic and maybe that's what makes the movie great. It's not bound to Medieval Japan or the Modern one but is sort of trapped in between.

My favourite part is the "Oh my, a paper-cut!" bit.

The only part I really disliked is Noh-Face's rampage. It seems to be the only thing that really doesn't fit. It's too eccentric and shifts the movie a bit out of place.

Other than that it's fine. But I guess some people won't buy Haku's real identity (which is a bit OUT THERE, I must admit). But I'd really like to own this movie on DVD, because it's a beautiful movie.

The first episode was tremendously boring. It's enough to make you fall asleep. Not so with the others. The deeper Palin goes into the Sahara, the more fascinating it gets.

Keep with it! It's a monstrously well-made series. And Micheal Palin is an added bonus.

The episode where he goes to Tunisia, Liberia and Algeria is the best one of all. He shows where he (and the Monty Python-gang) shot "Monty Python: Life of Brian" which is not really my favorite Python Movie, but seeing where they shot it is an education.

Enjoy the series!

I really like this movie, I really like Hithcock and I really liked Psycho. But unfortunately Psycho, thanks to pop-culture references and Time, had degraded over the years into nothing more than a museaum piece. Unlike Vertigo, which needed time to ferment before being accepted, Psycho is now, like "Beowolf" or "The Devine Comedy" something that not all would find appealing.

It deserves the name "Classic" but it doesn't deserve the place as "The No. 1 Most Suspensful Movie Ever Made."

Sorry.

The music, on the other hand, is timeless...

Sleeping Beauty is one of the all-time animation greats! There's no denying it. But some people dare to think of it as badly animated!

The movie is beautifully animated! It's supposed to look like a medieval Gothic painting (which it does) and most of Disney's subsequent movies up till "The Little Mermaid" failed to look even half as good! The animation is fluent, the expressions real, each character is realistic.

Knock the story (a great one if not a bit too sweet), knock the voice-acting (you would be liar if you did!), knock the occasionally annoying soundtrack, but the animation is perfect!

ONE MAJOR PROBLEM:

Sleeping Beauty was in production for six years. Why? Because they spend days on the medieval back-grounds because the were filming it in 70mm! 70mm film! If it is filmed in that ratio, then why are most DVDs issued in full-screen with no option for full-screen?

Oh, how it pains the mind!

But other than that; enjoy!

Another one of the good shows that didn't make it.

GOOD & EVIL was a hillarious spoof-show of soap-operas and was basically about a good sister, a scientist, and her evil sister, a femme fatale-wannabe, fighting each other.

The good sister has a scientist friend, who has a crush on her, who happens to be blind (and keeps knocking stuff over) and a daughter who doesn't want to talk.

And to make thing sillier the evil sister has an ex-husband (played by South African "gods must be crazy" actor Marius Weyers) chasing her whom she pushed off Mount Everest and has been frozen for two years in the Himalayas.

Meanwhile their mother is having a new lover over who is obviously after her money and somewhere their mother's evil twin comes in.

Fun if you can catch it somewhere...

Remember that small hit (if it was one) in 1998 with Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington about New York being attacked by an terrorist force. I was disappointed in that movie because the 'force' laying 'siege' to New York was just a bunch of crazy loonies with TNT strapped to their chests running around and blowing stuff up. Boom!

With a title like "the Siege" I expected an invasion force rolling off at NY harbour and starts running through buildings, people running in panic and entire buildings being toppled. Then the US army would come in, try to take control of the situation and run around, trying to chase the invasion force out of New York after much have been destroyed. But I didn't get that. The closest I came, that year, to that sorely missed movie experience was GODZILLA!

Then, out of nowhere came Black Hawk Down to rid me of a movie I had wanted to see back then! Not that it had toppling buildings, demolishing tanks, and Mogadishu remained as intact as what it was before the battle depicted in the movie. But instead of the US army chasing around the invades it turned out the US army was the invaders and the Mogadishins were trying to chase them out and that was good enough for me!

On a more serious note BLACK HAWK DOWN wasn't as much as an anti-war movie (which it is) as a warning to America that said "keep your noses out of nonsense that did not involve you!". After September 11th this idea, which was indirectly caused by operations such as this one.

All the acting is superb, the location was excellent and breathtaking and looks like a warzone. The action is grizzly, the pain is practically real. It will make you laugh, it would make some cry, but it is definetly the best war movie of the new mellenium and all others, especially those in a modern setting, would have to be compared to Black Hawk Down.

And if Black Hawk Down doesn't take your fancy as a warmovie you could always view it as a comedy of errors.

And it failed to scare me in the least. Even the most idiot horror movies (except maybe Jaws movies) scared me senseless, but his movie fails in that way.

Interesting twist, yes! But other than that it misses the mark completely! And it's not even a very good twist, come to think of it.

Anybody who likes this movie must consider giving up on movies altogether.

Hey, say what you like, but since a child of five I've always loved RETURN TO OZ. And do not judge it harshly because of the Original, which is a good movie also. But the problem with The Wizard of Oz (1939) is that it lacks some sense of dread and danger. Sure the Wicked Witch of the West is scary, but not terrifying. This story can, off course, scare little children. But for those with far-fetched imagination, this story will certainly entertain endlessly.

Some of the scary scenes are those of the Headless witch Momby and her exchanging heads, the Wheelers and the Nome King and his Nomes, who are nothing more but talking rocks.

The movie plays like a dream and has an auteristic touch. But it starts out rather bizarre and depressing. Not to mention dark.

It's some time since "The Wizard of Oz" (a few months) and Dorothy Gale is sent to a psychiatrist with evil intentions. He works with electricity and calls it a miracle. So he's going to give Dorothy shock therapy. After a storm knocks out the power Dorothy and another girl run into the storm and fall into a flooding river. So Dorothy find herself back once again in Oz.

But the Munchkin Village is gone (the house is there) and the Yellowbrick road half-destroyed. Soon she finds that the Emerald City has been conquered by the Nome King and is now under the rule of his servant Mombi who calls herself queen. Soon, with the help of Jack Pumpkinhead and Tic-Toc, a mechanical soldier, she sets out to the Nome King's mountain across the Deadly Desert to rescue Oz from his evil.

This is an atmospheric and fascinating movie (if you ignore the existance of the first one). But it has problems to which I shall now turn.

What infuriates me about this movie (and infuriated me about all other Oz movies) is that it makes the Land of Oz a dreamland, like Wonderland. It sets out to make it all look more dreamlike (and succeeds). But in the books it all seemed less Freudian.

Also it's terribly Freudian. The lunchpale trees' 'fruit' (another problem) looks like her lunchpale, only more natural. The Wheelers look like the Hospital Orderly and who's beds squeak like their wheels do in Oz. The Evil Nurse is obviously Mombi and the Doctor is the Nome King. Jack Pumpkin head is obvious as the Jack o'Lantern in Dorothy's room. And Tic-Toc the doctor's machine. It's so Freudian it's terrible.

The afore-mentioned lunchpale tree is too fantastic to take seriously.

Other than that I like this movie, although I should admit it's not everyone's cup of tea. It is sort of like Philip Pullman's take on Oz.

I've watched Top Gun five of six times and no matter what I just can't remember this movie! It's not that it's bad. It's not that it's boring. It's just plain forgettable.

Somewhere there flies a plain, somewhere there's Tom Berenger, Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, a guy with no hair, a bar scene and somewhere someone dies. That's all I remember. Nothing worth telling about.

Watch Hot Shots instead. The spoof is better than the proof of the pudding. This movie is a time-passer. Something to do when you're bored. There are better Tom Cruise movies out there!

An Errol Morris Film

Starring Fred A Leuchter, Jr.

"FOOLS ON PARADE".

That's basically what this documentary is about! A bunch of generally smart people acting like FOOLS telling us that there was no holocaust, and then have their 'findings' refuted by people who obviously know more of what went on in World War II than they actually did.

Holocaust deniers are on the same level as people who still think Elvis Presley is living in a trailer outside Memphis. They don't want to accept that a great nation like Germany, or in fact the human race as whole, can commit an atrocity such as the holocaust.

And the center fool is Fred Leuchter, who is an intersting character. Shakespearian to say the least. At his heart he is a philantrophist. He tries to make Death Machines work better by killing the victim in the most humane way possible. But then, obviously because he has such a large ego and with a limited knowledge of science and history, sides with Nazis saying that the Holocaust was a sham. And in the process destroys his career.

Mr Leuchter is not, I think, an anti-Semite, despite what one of the holocaust experts say. He is just a silly little man who is acting the goat because all he wants is attention. I can't help but feel sorry for him, even though he deserves all the bad things that happened to him.

I could also not help that the filmmaker ridiculed him a bit too much. But basically Morris suggests he is trapped in his own universe or trapped by his own ego. Recommended to all who likes a good documentary.

I just feel Morris could have added more scientific data refuting Leuchter's findings.

Sunset Blvd is certainly one of the best movies I've seen, and I enjoyed it immensely. The mother of all Anti-Hollywood movies is still the best.

It is unusually abstract for a 1950s movie (even for a modern movie) and any arthouse lover would enjoy this it.

But what I did not like about it is that it is a very cruel movie. But I guess it's part of the movie's theme: Hollywood is cruel and don't have anything to do with it.

It works on the same concept of the Coen Brother's "Barton Fink" that says warns you that "if you want to win in Hollywood you'll have to be willing to loose your soul."

Scary though.

But still I can't wait for the DVD of Sunset Blvd.