harposkc's reviews

When his cider distillery is destroyed, a pioneer must learn to trap beaver to stay alive through the winter and win the love of the fur trader's daughter. This live action cartoon is the Looney Tunes love child of Jeremiah Johnson and Chaplin's The Gold Rush. It's ridiculously clever and inventive and the hilarious gags never stop flowing from beginning to end. Filmed in the snowy forests but heavily edited in After Effects, it has the rough-hewn quality of silent films that complements its setting and adds to its charm. Lead actor and co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews is terrific in a heavily physical role that's broadly comic without overplaying it. I laughed a lot and will be recommending this film to everyone.

From the director of the terrific "Japan's Longest Day", this is an ambitious documentary-styled recreation of the battle for Okinawa, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians were abandoned by the Japanese military in order to better protect the mainland. The soldiers fortified themselves in caves and fended of an overwhelming American attack over a period of several months. Unfortunately, the filmmaker's talents don't match their ambitions. "Japan's Longest Day" was a fascinating film written by Shinobu Hashimoto about a little known military revolt at the end of the war. Okinawa is dramatically inept with misplaced bits of humor, and the crowd scenes never number more than 50, making it seem far less epic than it purports to be. The photography is bland and the blood very fake. The desperation never seeps in like it should, but the film does a good job of showing what they went through. It also shows that when the going gets tough, the Japanese commit suicide - according to this film it must have been the leading cause of death. The events depicted are similar to "Sands of Iwo Jima" - so if you like that you might like this. Okinawa is still occupied by American forces. Script by Kaneto Shindo ("Onibaba").

Using the Nuremberg trials as source material, this film looks at how German businesses colluded with the Nazis and centers on the crisis of conscious from the scientist that developed of the poison gas used in the concentration camps. Great idea but it's propagandistic and tries very hard to atone for the sins of the Nazis. Lots of weak drama mixed in with real war and atrocity footage. Perhaps it played better in 1950? It makes no bones about the international industrial machine that fed Germany during the war, explaining how goods traveled from country to country to make their way into German hands, with Standard Oil being singled out as a major accomplice. It's just like buying American products in Iran today. War is good for business.

It's rare that a movie gets made from a book I've read, which might be one of the reasons for my disappointment. Too much of the movie felt like exposition - jumping from one point to the next. Of course, telling the epic life-long story of Soviet composer Shostakovich on a shoestring budget doesn't help. The director takes an arty approach that looks cool but doesn't go anywhere. He scales the movie up using footage from Eisenstein films, while at the same time denouncing Eisenstein (mainly because of his connection with Prokofiev). There's not much "story" to Shostakovich's life anyway - it's mainly an internal struggle with Stalin and his artist-killing regime. Will he be killed for writing his next symphony? Will he be killed if he doesn't write it? The real drama's in the music. Ben Kingsley is great as Shostakovich, but there's no narrative for him to follow, and the movie is hard to sit through. It might have been more interesting if it were Russian instead of British, or at least felt more authentic. All it really shows is how cinematic Shostakovich's music is.

A bright and peppy musical that's equally saccharine and cynical - a tough trick to pull off. The cast is all around excellent, but Adam Shankman, who is a choreographer by trade, is pretty lame as a director. There is no style and everything plays out by the numbers, but the film needs a little vision to make the numbers work. Once again, the dancing is chopped to bits with quick editing so that not only is it hard to follow the moves, but nobody comes across as a very good dancer. We just have to accept it by the reactions of others. (The editor has primarily cut action movies - and it shows). Even more problematic, the movie builds to a major false climax, after which the already shaky story never regains its feet. Still, people excited to see Hairspray the Musical won't care much about all of that, and the cast has enough spunk to make it more than watchable. I say wait and rent it.

A disappointment. It started with lots of promise, but then the ending just fizzled away. There are a million funnier, more meaningful turns for the ending.

"Waking Ned Devine" is very similar in spirit and theme to the 1959 Ealing Studios comedy "Whiskey Galore", which is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. However, "Whiskey Galore" actually shows the effects of greed on the village, where "Waking Ned Devine" merely uses it for cheap comedy. "Whiskey Galore" knew what it was about, but Waking Ned Devine doesn't have a clue - it's not about anything.

"Ned Divine" did offer some nice performances - and I was happy to not recognize a single face. A big star would have ruined it. If you can find "Whiskey Galore", you'll be doing yourself a lot better than watching this pointless rehash.

Hawkish John Wayne vies with Dovish William Holden, both masters of their trade, providing alternating viewpoints on war. Holden's intellectual surgeon is quite a match for Wayne, and Ford is wise enough to not take sides. Note how the final decide-all fist fight is interrupted by an enemy attack.

This film tries to show that no matter what your attitude regarding war, when push comes to shove you can put your differences aside and do your part. Both characters realize this in the end with overtones of the buddy film formula.

This is one of the few pro-Union Civil War films out there, and it presents a wide array of Confederate sterotypes, notably Constance Tower's southern belle. She pours it on a bit thick, but makes an annoying character watchable. And wow what a dress!