Reviews

If only 1) Barbra Streisand hadn't directed and starred, 2) the story had been more concerned with the Wingo family than the "therapy" provided by Lowenstein, 3) the really horrible scenes (such as the awful dinner party at the Lowenstein home) and dialogue had been left on the cutting room floor, 4) the suicidal sister been allowed to have a character, and 5) the score had been dumped (it's so sickly it should come with a warning from the dental association) THEN this movie might be palatable! We're supposed to believe that Lowenstein can change the lives of the poor damaged Wingo children? She hasn't even got the wits to get rid of her philandering, peripatetic, arrogant, insensitive husband!!

I have seen "The Changeling" at least a dozen times since its release, and it never fails to frighten me. The story is wonderful, the plot is tightly constructed, the performances are excellent, and, best of all, the film never descends into the ridiculous gore typical of horror films. This film is not comparable to "Poltergeist" or the dreadful "Amityville Horror" -- it is far superior to them, and to the earlier "The Haunting". "The Changeling" is so good, so effective, that I wouldn't classify it as a horror movie at all.

Based on Paul Quarrington's award-winning novel, which in turn is loosely based on the life of Brian Wilson, "Whale Music" should be a much better film than it is. Maury Chaykin is so well cast as Des you'd think Quarrington wrote the character with him in mind, and the whale music itself (composed by Canada's greatest band, Rheostatics) is terrific, but the movie is a disappointment. The novel is a wonderfully entertaining read, however, and the story is much better developed in print; another commentator has mistakenly written that the flashbacks concern Des's son when they feature his brother, Danny (or Dennis Wilson).

Bad script, with a plot patched together from the earlier Titanic films. Bad performances. Special effects unimpressive. Sets no better than the ones in the far superior "A Night to Remember". A theme song capable of stripping the enamel off your teeth. This movie sucks. One can only conclude that anyone who really loves films will hate it.

As a child I absolutely loved this film and all of Roald (NOT Raoul!) Dahl's books, and I never found the sinister elements frightening. Anybody who finds the various punishments meted out to the children clearly wasn't paying attention to how they had behaved, and entirely missed Dahl's point (repeated in much of his work) that children are not necessarily cute little cherubs. Every time I have to listen to some brat pitching a fit in a store or a restaurant I wish for a Dahl-style ironic punishment for them!

I used to watch this film every year and I never got tired of it, which is hardly surprising since the screenplay was co-written by my favourite children's author, Roald Dahl. I still know all the songs! I'm not sure why anybody would complain about Dick Van Dyke's English accent (I don't think he does one, does he?). What about the excruciating "Cockney" thing he did in "Mary Poppins"?

This dull film, adapted from a novel notable only for its extremely uninteresting and unimaginative revision of Stevenson's sophisticated and complex novella, well deserved its poor critical reception. Julia Roberts' unpredictable Irish accent does nothing to make her believable as a Victorian housemaid. Anyone interested in a feminist revision of the Jekyll and Hyde tale would be better off reading Emma Tennant's far superior story "Two Women of London" than watching this film or reading Valerie Martin's novel.

The text on the back of the videobox when I rented this dirge implied that Heaven's Gate is notorious as one of the worst films ever made because the cruel studio took a masterpiece and slashed and burned it, and the critics never got to see the original, which (oh hooray!) is now available for home viewing. Actually, the critics saw the original, hated it, and then the studio tried to edit it into something watchable, which of course was impossible because the problem was not only that the film was far too long, but much of the dialogue was unintelligible, the characters were undeveloped, and the plot was tedious. Why anybody would waste any tears mourning the fate of this dreadful film and Cimino's wounded feelings is beyond my comprehension.

I make a point of watching the recipients of the Razzie award for worst movie, but 'Striptease' was impossible to sit through. Unlike its predecessor, 'Showgirls', 'Striptease' is not so fabulously bad that you enjoy watching it. Not only did EVERYBODY in this movie turn in a spectacularly lame performance, but I think somebody forgot to tell Demi that it was supposed to be funny. The whole thing came across as unfocused and disorganized, and the stripping scenes were just bad, particularly Demi's 'rehearsal' at home. I gather, from what friends who have read the novel have told me, that the book is quite funny. Too bad the Coen brothers didn't decide to adapt it.

Even if you could get past the idea that these boring characters personally witnessed every Significant Moment of the 1960s (ok, so Katie didn't join the Manson Family, and nobody died at Altamont), this movie was still unbelievably awful. I got the impression that the "writers" just locked themselves in a room and watched "Forrest Gump," "The Wonder Years," and Oliver Stone's 60s films over and over again and called it research. A Canadian television critic called the conclusion of the first episode "head spinning". He was right.

At some point in the next century, the last of the baby boomers will die and the rest of the world will no longer have to suffer from their bizarre notion that the 1960s was the most important decade in Western history, or films like "The Return of the Secaucus 7". The film focuses on a group of sixties-activist college friends who gather together for a weekend (at least I think it was a weekend, this film seemed to drag on for months) to talk about themselves. Too bad they're such uninteresting, one-dimensional people. See the women lean against fences, crouch next to streams and play board games while they talk about their interpersonal relationships! Watch the men play basketball, skinny dip and chop firewood! Laugh as the characters trash Lacey's wooden performance in bad summer stock, uttering criticisms equally applicable to this film and their own clumsy, mannered acting! Cringe at the lengthy bar scene, where bad songs are sung badly, and Maura and Jeff have the kind of fight that usually only happens in amateur theatre! Wonder at what may be the only bad performance by David Strathairn captured on film! Weep with relief when no one accepts Katie's offer to extend their stay even longer!

*quote from script