monimm18's reviews

All these good actors and expenses just to come up with such a crock... Was the screenplay written for twelve year olds, or by by a twelve year old, or both? Cause my intellect feels a bit insulted by it. Here's two hours I'll never get back, damn it. I could've watch paint dry, or bathe the cat, or something enjoyable like that...

Oh, what a pity... This could've been a really good film, actually. I thought it had some intereting ingredients: an intriguing story about love and loss, coping with the consequences of the choices we make, the price people pay to follow their calling or achieve success, handling regret, all charmingly sprinkled with a touch of existential pondering. Also, a great match for the lead role and good supporting role actors.

I don't know what else was wrong about making this film besides apparently very little funding. Poor directing, editing, camera work? A dire need for more close-ups? Different camera lenses? A little bit of everything?

Also, it was disappointing to see the lead actors' potential squandered in a chaotic feature, on roles that could've been much better.

Needless to say that the final product turned out pretty mangled and felt a bit dull. Too bad...

A charming film. Kim Novak is truly spellbinding and a pleasure to watch, both because of her acting and her beauty. Every character was played by wonderful actors, but not every actor was meant for their role, in my opinion. I wish Jim Stewart's character were played by someone younger. The fact that he is twice Novak's age is ridiculously obvious in both his looks and his acting. His "fuddy daddy" style makes the romance unrealistic to the viewer (at least to me). Don't get me wrong, I love Jimmy Stewart, but I think he was really miscast. I can only imagine how amazing this film would've been with a better match, physically and style-wise, to Kim Novak.

The plots and subplots are great, the character development is great, the acting is great, the depiction of the periods are excellent, the social connotations spot on. Someone called this "a Swedish Downton Abbey". Pretty close. Totally worth the time. First season free with Amazon Prime. At the end of it I was more than willing to pay for a Sundance subscription just to keep watching, so beware :)

The story is ridiculous and contrived, and requires a lot of suspension of disbelief (lady goes blind and suddenly cannot recognize the voice of the man she loathes???). The acting is overly emphatic and melodramatic. Jane Wyman looks old, stiff and unemotional, and her character seems dumber than dirt. She's the only "girl" in the movie with the matronly looks and her hairdo, omygod!!! It looks positively hairspray matted grandma-style. She could be Rock Hudson's teacher or his stern mom. How are we to think a young playboy would fall madly in love with that dorky old stick-up-her ass, and carry a torch for her for years, I don't know. The whole movie is just a big load of unrealistic cheesy melodrama.

Good grief, not another comic strip/graphic novel based production. I am sick and tired of this proliferation of all these superhero/vigilante/saviors from the apocalypse movies. They used to invade the theaters and TV programming during the summer break, now they're everywhere all the time. It's the infantilization of America. All this talent and effort just to spice up an adolescent fantasy story, give it a grown up shine and shove it down the adults' throat. Grow up, people.

This movie is a hidden gem. The plot is great, with interesting twists, the acting is definitely great, it's thrilling and suspenseful without the use of any explosions or bloody scenes, it has a sex scene that manages to be spectacular without any loud sexual vocalizations or nudity display, and it ends up tugging at your heart quite a bit in the end. Also, I never thought Jean Dujardin to be sexy. Well, he is in this movie. There are some people claiming the plot is confusing, but I think it's the fact that there's a lot going on and the subtitles might make it hard to follow. You might have to rewind certain scenes or rewatch it to get some key details. Or maybe not. I learned enough French to be able to understand most of the dialogue and the subtitles helped too, so I didn't have any problems, but non-French speakers might. Either way, trust me, it's a very entertaining flick.

Then years ago I made the mistake of reading the negative comments from viewers and (some) critics and, adding my pigheaded aversion to musicals, I decided not to watch this film. I finally saw it today and ended up in awe of it. What a beautiful homage to Italian neorealism and the art of cinema! Every song, every frame carefully created, and the acting, oh my. It seemed like every actor and actress were at their peak performances. I credit that to the director's skill. This is definitely not a film for the prosaic minds or those who need a clear story to follow. Like the genre it celebrates, it holds subtleties and lyrical moments that might seem dull or pointless, but once you "get" them, they feel poignant and rewarding. I just wish I saw this brilliant film in its intented display - on the big screen in the movie theater.

It's pretty obvious that an enormous amount of work went into making this film (just considering how looooong it is and how many well made-up life stages its title character covers). However, Art is not judged by quantity, but by quality. To me, this film felt dull and pointless. OK, so Benjamin ages in reverse with all the complications such a phenomenon would generate, and travels a lot. So? What exactly is the film supposed to tell us besides this particular thing? There's a lot of attention to detail, but it feels so minutious that the film appears rigid and uptight, like a soft fabric stitched too tight. It seems to me this film was supposed to bee a bit deeper, maybe a bit whimsical with a touch of wonder, or SOMETHING that would make it more than a pointless story, and would get us ponder for a while afterward. Maybe if Mr. Fincher would have remembered this was not a "who done it" movie and it requires a softer touch and a more relaxed approach, and mostly, more freedom in its creation, the film would've had that airy quality that makes us smile with our hearts and truly remember it for a while.

They say the best way to make people care about an issue is not reporting it in the news, but, sadly, by making a movie about it, with big name stars. However, I found this film a bit too slick and entertaining for its apparent noble intentions. In the end, I couldn't figure if the purpose was to make a film about conflict diamonds in war torn African countries and the plight of the people caught in the middle, in order to raise awareness about the issue, or an entertaining action flick that happens to use the subject of conflict diamonds to seem original and pretend it has a higher standard.

The plot was good and the acting was too (mostly Di Caprio's, who was excellent as the white African rogue mercenary, accent and all, and he sure managed the physical presence necessary for his role - first time I perceived him as a man and not a boy), but the film felt very formulaic and preachy - some of Jennifer Connely's morally superior lines, however true, were mere stereotypes and delivered with such self-righteousness that they sounded downright arrogant.

The characters seemed developed by using "by the book" methods that almost destroyed the viewer's chance to bond with them and give a damn about them and their circumstances, had it not been for some really good acting moments. The film was riddled with obvious CGI imagery, mostly in the scenes of violent attacks, which took away from the sense of true drama - the film went for quantity instead of quality, IMO, by cheapening the dramatic artistry into mere dramatic kitsch and ruining the emotional charge of the scene. I think it would have been more effective to resort to less grandiose images of violence, brutal death and destruction, and opt for a smaller scale depiction, by using real acting instead of CGI.

I'd say the intention was good, maybe the director and the screenwriters had a better film in mind, but somewhere, possibly in the producers' offices, someone screwed up what could have been an important film and a good cinematic feature, by turning it into a half-baked schizoid mix between a complex socio-political statement and the typical money-making Hollywood feature. Apparently, Hollywood gives a damn as long as it means making a profit.

After seeing Daniel Craig in other films I figured he has enough talent to pull a very credible and cool Bond, but I didn't expect this type of film. So far, most of the Bond films focused on the superficial: outlandish plots and gadgets, and objectifying women (some border lining the misogynous), at the film's expense of having any character depth, or a meaningful story. OK, that isn't necessarily a problem, since none of the Bond the films ever claimed to be more than what they were, so if you didn't like the genre you knew to avoid it. Anyway, the 2006 "Casino Royale" seems to have turned around the fate of a character and a franchise that were on their way to becoming irrelevant due to increasingly anachronistic characters and outlandish story lines, and too many clichés. It's not just a reboot of the series, it's a total transfusion that completely revives the Bond concept of the series. It's smart, gritty, with a sharper and more profound main character than any other Bond film I've seen. In my opinion, this film, although not perfect, is the best Bond film made to date. It has what most Bond films seemed to lack: class, depth and a touch of subtlety, thanks to a less shallow screenplay, good direction, and Daniel Craig's skills to depict a very believable character, not just with talent, but a smoking physique too, and whoa! finally, a Bond actor fit enough to do a lot of his stunts, some of which are quite spectacular. For once we see a Bond film where the main male character is, among other things, the eye candy, and the main female character, although beautiful, charms us with class instead of mindlessly sexed up skin. In my opinion, Daniel Craig is the next Bond, maybe the best one yet, and his presence and involvement raised the level of the film. I hope we get to see him as 007 in many more films of this caliber.

This film did something no Bond film ever did so far: earned my respect for the character and the franchise. It's very entertaining, yet intelligent enough to make us feel it values the viewers' intellect and not just their pockets.

When I saw this pilot episode of what was supposed to be a TV series, I was quite excited about it. The story was daring and original, considering the usual high-tech kitsch that usually air on broadcast TV ("24", "CSI" and the likes). This show felt different - in a way it felt real, like it had meat on its bones. It was more than just stories of people and the outlandish things that happen to them - it dealt with ideas and got one thinking. War Stories talked about the grittiest, truest and maybe noblest side of journalism: war correspondents. This was a show that seemed to chose story lines mirroring reality, even if that reality felt a bit uncomfortable to acknowledge. Finally, I thought, a series that tries to be more than pointless thrills and suspense. The series was even mentioned by Newsweek magazine for its originality and provocative subject. Unfortunately, by next week the show was cancelled. I guess, since the show was too daring, didn't fit a "format", and mostly considering the political climate and the attitude towards war at the time, someone threw their weight around, and instead of more episodes of War Stories we got more mind-numbing sitcoms, reality shows, and cheesy thrillers. Heaven forbid we see something controversial that expresses a different point of view, or gets us thinking. Still, I am hoping the producers haven't given up on this one yet...

I saw this film in 2004, but after re-watching it the other day, I felt compelled to add my two-cents on IMDb, because it saddened me to see how many people bashed this film for not being what they expected from a Bill Murray performance. I blame the trailer for the misinformation - it makes the film seem like some crowd-pleaser comedy.

I say, kudos to Bill Murray for his performance in such a subtle film.

A friend asked me what this movie was about and, as I tried to tell her I realized how dull it might appear. This movie is very contemplative, it relies a lot on the spectator bonding with the characters and on creating a specific mood, things that take time to achieve. It was a good thing I saw it for the first time in the theatre, as opposed to DVD/VHS; some parts might tempt one to hit fast-forward. Don't. They are as essential as any other part in this movie; they create the mood and help the viewer relate to the characters on an emotional level; and all that makes the film so incredibly rewarding in the end. I would say that as the two characters develop their bond, so does the viewer's with them and ultimately with the film; in the end you might find yourself completely enamored with it.

I think this is a movie about many things: interpersonal communication, the feeling of alienation or the need to belong, the relativity of an individual's perceived value according to the circumstances. Had the characters met in LA, maybe none would have paid attention to the other, but their loneliness in Tokio, a culture so different from their own, brought them closer, made them enjoy each other's company as mere human contact, and value each other as people.

In my opinion, "Lost in Translation" analyzes the most precious type of relationship: simple human affection based on honest communication, no other instincts, biases or interests attached. The story is told in the most delicate, subtle way, the precious style of true cinema.

What a shallow copy of the '72 blockbuster... The new "Poseidon" has less meaningful dialogue, poorer character development and definition, less believable stunts than the original (although much more outlandish and numerous), and lottsa formulaic plot themes (presented in elementary school level manner): lonely guy finds love, perfect hero father saves his offspring and the day, disillusioned man ready to give up on life finds new meaning to live, grotesquely bad guy is punished for his lack of character - usually by dying right after he said/did something despicable, so his death would feel gratifying and wouldn't spoil the entertainment. The human aspect of the story is so sketchy and superficially presented that I found it impossible to give a damn about the characters and root for them; that would have made the film a bit more compelling and exciting to watch. We might as well watch a bunch of mice finding their way through a maze (although I think even that might have been more compelling). The only decent (not great) things in this film are the special effects and the attention to technical detail. Also, what's up with the music? I could swear it was a version of the score of "The Day after Tomorrow" - another brilliantly formulaic Hollywood burp. At least that one had a message and some spectacular special effects...