Reviews

GREAT movie, great acting, great music (Keely Smith!) - and I want to say that Kongrragnar wrote one of the all-time greatest reviews!

Very offbeat horror movie. And it has the touch of realism - so much so that when it first came out, people weren't sure if it was real. I see ots of people griping about it here. Maybe they prefer the slasher things that Hollywood churns out. Me, I hate modern Hollywood movies and modern Hollywood acting. This one is unusual...and terrific!

Enchanting! But beware of the silent version!

This film was made in a sound and a silent version, as there were some theaters at the time that were still not equipped for sound. Unfortunately, it is the silent version that is being widely sold. This version is vastly inferior. The sound version is a hauntingly beautiful film. I have a sound version, but it is of poor quality and many subtitles are difficult to read. This film should be remastered. There are superb quality short excerpts from the film in The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.

Leni Riefenstahl passed away yesterday at the age of 101. She died in her sleep. At the age of 100, she was still scuba diving!

She may have been the greatest motion picture director of all time, but she was forbidden from making motion pictures for over half a century, an incalculable loss to the art of film. I hope that they issue restored versions of her movies now, particularly my favorite, "The Blue Light", a fairy tale set in the Alps, a movie that she - a young girl then - wrote, directed, and starred in!

Note: I previously posted part of this commentary a couple of years ago (see below), but it was posted as "Anonymous" for some reason.

I agree with all the other comments. Beautiful movie with most excellent acting that has none of Hollywood's plastic staginess. Especially fine acting by the star,Julie Gholson - and why did she never appear in any other films?

Magnificent and unforgettable, stunningly atmospheric, and brilliantly acted by all.

I really cannot understand what sort of people are panning this masterpiece and giving the preponderance of votes as 8 (and nine ones!)

This, along with Grapes of Wrath, is John Ford's greatest movie. I would say that Long Voyage Home is next in line, though quite a way back.

Rating: 10. It deserves a 12.

I would not go to see this new version of Tuck Everlasting because the 1980 version, made in upstate New York, with an amateur cast is a PERFECT movie, a perfect ten! And it is out of print! Why? I have a copy on vcr that I made from television, and it is one of my very favorite films. They had no right to remake it. It was perfect the way it was, and it should have been a classic, but it was so little known, and now...

I really wanted to like it. It could have been great. It had good

acting, beautiful scenery, and no politically corrected racial and

sexual messages.

The problem was that it was way too Hollywoodized. Non-stop BS action- scenes, fight scenes, war scenes, stuff blowing up, doopy little

hobbits and dwarves beating up entire armies, one after the other,

taking no casualties, very predictable, very boring (the book had

some of these problems too).

The camera constantly moved very rapidly over complex overly immense

computer generated images, hard to focus on, hard on the eyes,

ultimately rather meaningless.

The charm of the book wasn't there, the hominess of Hobbiton, the

warmth of Bree, no Tom Bombadill, there was virtually no character

development.

Basically it was one predictable overly loud and melodramatic battle

after another.

Too high a decibel level - my complaint about most modern movies -

are constant movie goers all deaf by now? - especially the pre-film

coming attractions advertising the latest twisted Hollywood

propaganda monstrosities.

Yeah, it could have been really really good if they slowed it way

down and quieted it way down...

Love those elvish women!





P.S. *Bored of the Rings* is a hilarious parody of Tolkein's *The Hobbit*.

As in just about every boxing movie I've ever seen, the fight scenes are extremely unrealistic (constant punches landing, each one with a huge thud). The the big fight between Stacy Keach and the Mexican was the worst. With either Keach's or the Mexican's head lolling to the side, defenseless, it seemed that they were both on the verge of being bludgeoned to death.

The drunk scenes between Keach and Susan Tyrell, although superbly acted, went on too long.

Jeff Bridges looked a little too pretty, and "soft around the middle", as Keach remarked, for his role as up and coming boxer in dead end town.

The tragedy of the sick and over-the-hill former Mexican star, Ruben, was overplayed.

On the other hand, Keach, Tyrell, Cokes, and Rodriguez were terrific, as was the sad, dead-end atmosphere of the film. The supporting actors were also very good.

I saw this movie on television years ago and I have never forgotten it. It was a beautiful story of a man in Alaska and his love for wolves. I remember how "hunters", if you can call them that, flew over in airplanes shooting down the wolves. Unfortunately, this film seems to be unavailable at this time.

It is a wonderful and magical film, somewhat similar to one of my all-time favorites, "Portrait of Jennie". I might change a line or two, or a scene or two, but overall this is really something special. Very sad, but imbued with the truest of hope and happiness. Like "Portrait of Jennie", it is a truly religious film.

This is the very best movie for shots of the railroad scene circa 1930. Reportedly contains the only existing film of a dynamometer. Wonderful shots of steam engines. Amazing tug of war between steam locomotives at the Old Timers Picnic. Exciting 100 MPH race to Chicago. This is a must for railroad fans. The old-fashioned acting is quite different than that of effete modern Hollywood. Louis Wolheim is quite the antidote for your basic 20-year-old hermaphroditic hero!

I agree this is an awesome and overpowering film. A total immersion into a different civilization - different, yet in many ways not unfamiliar. A view into the back streets and underworld of Bombay. The characters are indeed unforgettable. How can I forget "Sweet Sixteen" who never even said one word. The crowd scene at the end reminded me of the crowd scene at the end of "Children of Paradise", the greatest movie ever made, in my opinion.

Another movie about India that I love is Renoir's 1951 film, "The River".

The 1956 sociological study of the serious, but rarely spoken about, problem of armed robbery of gas stations perpetrated by affluent young women in tight sweaters during the mid 1950's is one that should surely receive further serious study. The footage of the "criminal attack" on the innocent young man on lovers lane by the beautiful, but depraved, bandits is one that I found highly disturbing. The expose became even more shocking as the pulchritudinous quartet were enlisted into the service of a foreign power, and during a particularly nefarious mission to overturn chairs and tables and knock over books in a classroom, they almost succeeded in doing something terrible to our flag. Also, during the latter mission, policemen, guards, and members of the evil gang were shot during a ferocious gunfight. At the end, the leader of the gang is finally sentenced to the state penitentiary where she gives birth to an out-of-wedlock baby. She dies and the baby is rightfully made to serve out the remainder of her sentence. Meanwhile, the affluent, but self-absorbed, parents of the wayward gangster are given several severe talkings to by the same judge who sentenced their daughter, and they are told to attend church more frequently in the future. This shocking expose was written by Mr. Edward D. Wood, Jr. I for one definitely intend to give a great deal of thought to the problem of bad girls in tight sweaters.

10 stars...or zero stars...? I don't know how to rate Ed Wood's anti-masterpieces. They're so bad that they go all the way around the dial and become great! Hilariously greatly bad. Not as hilariously greatly bad as Plan 9, but then what is?

Pan-10

Has an other-worldly effect. With Val Lewton's help, subtlety, some haunting music, his awesome lighting effects, this could have been absolutely perfect. As others have mentioned, the special effects badly mar this still-outstanding film. The irritating special effects being the very noisy and very obnoxious human to wolf transformation scenes. I think that it still could be greatly improved by editing out those scenes. 8 stars. 9 or 9 1/2 if it was edited. Stick in a Val Lewton-street musician or two and edit it and I'll give it a ten!

This was the birth of modern cinema. The film was absolutely unprecedented. It was especially shown in the White House and to huge crowds accross the country. It makes me sick to read the smug and shallow derogatory "reviews" here by people who want ever so much to be as politically correct as Bill and Hillary and their t.v. heroes. There was a popular uprising in the south to resist the brutal northern occupation of their country. This populist uprising was called the Ku Klux Klan!

This is a good one! It has realistic acting and a very interesting view of crime in Montreal. It's a film on the order of Friends of Eddie Coyle. It is a heck of a lot better than Hollywood's phoney crime flicks - and it has a surprise ending!

It's a wonderful film with a stupid title that was imposed by the Hollywood bosses. It is the gentle fantasy of a little girl in her imaginary world, but an imaginary world that is touched by magic. It is not clear where the imagination leaves off and the magic starts and vise versa, just as it is in the world!

It is the dream of Paris, Romance, and Life! Garance glows! No other film even comes close!

An ultra-realistic, unforgettable, and magnificent epic! A vision back into time!

To compare Black Robe with the infantile politically correct cartoon called Dances with Wolves is a joke.

I know of no other film that so captures the fantastic magic!

Ordinary village folk escape from medieval Europe, ravaged by the plague, to modern New Zealand - and then back to home! A one-of-a-kind classic! Inspired!

This film was made in a sound and a silent version, as there were some theaters at the time that were still not equipped for sound. Unfortunately, it is the silent version that is being widely sold. This version is vastly inferior. The sound version is a hauntingly beautiful film. I have a sound version, but it is of poor quality and many subtitles are difficult to read. This film should be remastered. There are superb quality short excerpts from the film in The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.

There was never anything like this film, and probably never will be anything like it again. It is totally original and unforgettable and hilarious from beginning to end.("Care for a piece of gum, Mr Buxton?)

This is a great film and should be much better known. It features all amateur actors who are excellent in their roles and generally superior in every way to professional actors. The movie, filmed in upstate New York, is low-key, gentle, and magical.

The special affects were awesome! The acting and script were a disgrace. Sort of a juvenile Stalinist propoganda piece. Watch "A Night To Remember",1958, to see a GREAT movie about the Titanic, a movie suitable for those older than age twelve.

Betty Hutton is wonderful, so is William Demarest. Sometimes Eddie Bracken overdoes it, but basically the whole cast is superb and the movie is a gem!