Reviews

................that runs throughout this one-of-a-kind film and pulls it together in all of its hard-edged, creepy, dark and riveting auteur driven brilliance is the camera work of the man who single-handedly invented/developed (out of the necessity to light other more forgettable films) the film noir genre - James Wong Howe. He is one of the few geniuses produced by the Industry and his influence dominates the movies to this day......especially through Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams and George Lucas. From the Silent Era right up to "Solo" the viewer can "feel" him in virtually every movie ever made, good or bad, since the mid-1920's. Don't believe it? Just look at his filmography! He was casually innovating ideas that other cinematographers took as their own "important" ideas years later. Case in point - Gregg Tolands' groundbreaking "deep focus" camera work on Citizen Kane can be directly traced to Howes' "Transatlantic" camera work 10 years before. All this said, "Sweet Smell........" is one of the 10 best movies ever made and worthy of seeing over and over.

I'm not entirely sure what got this film deep-sixed but ignore everything you've read about it and watch it! It's very good....great performances and cast, good script, Hawaii, Emma Stone and "Bumpy". It never drags and the story has a tidy little twist at the end that is very satisfying. Much, much better than the nay-sayers convoluted, misguided attempts to sound smart and politically correct at the expense of what's actually on the screen.

I'm not sure why Burnt didn't make it to theaters but it's much better than its reviews. I'm giving it a 10 because it doesn't lag, it tells the story and gets out! Good script, good acting and good camera work. It is a little frenetic at some points but that's how busy kitchens are anyway. And use the captions, it can be hard to hear and follow at times. Give it a chance, you might like it?

"Lacking in Nativity!!!, 6 January 2009 - 1/10 stars - Author: thirumurugan-k from United States - The language in which the characters speak is the soul of a movie. Cidade de Deus, Shichinin no samurai, Ladri di biciclette were made in native language and so the originality of the movie was intact even though I watched those movies with English subtitles. Slumdog millionaire is totally lacking on this aspect and it is definitely not a film to be rated in the top 250.

I understand that the movie is made for western audience. But, It would have been better if the movie was made in Hindi and was released with subtitles to the western audience (similar to Lagaan)." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Movies should be criticized as a whole - picking out one thing to criticize is just too shallow to be helpful! It's like criticizing the color of someone's clothes in a movie. You have to let the creators and director have some leeway in how they present the movie and what audience they are trying to reach. And such a criticism doesn't tell us much about why the reviewer thinks the movie should be poorly rated, it only tells us about his bias about one aspect of the film. If a reviewer can't approach a movie as a whole then what have they accomplished in their review? Only that they are reviewing a bias that their ego can't cope with. Give us a valid review or move on! Let's face it - it is pretty ridiculous (and superficial) to give a movie 1 star out of 10 based on how the soundtrack was presented language-wise.

I saw this movie tonight and liked it very much, I notice a lot of other people liked it as well - with good reason. I've seen many Bollywood movies now in the last few years and I keep comparing them to what I believe to be the best Bollywood film of its type in the last 10 years. It has everything "Bride and Prejudice" has and more, better musical productions, a more interesting story, better acting and along with all of the usual Bollywood components is added that of being a historical epic as well! It's "Lagaan", check it out, I'll be interested to hear what everybody thinks? I normally only talk about the movie being commented about on its specific IMDb site but I do think that those who liked "B&P" will also love "Lagaan". It is 3 1/2 hours long so stock up on snacks and enjoy yourselves. It was nominated for an Oscar in 2002 for Best Foreign Film.

This was a MUCH, MUCH better movie than I had been led to believe by the various professional critics. Even many of the posters to this board missed the boat. Spacey has approached the making of this movie in a much different way than what is usually expected of a biopic, even a music biopic! This was a fantasy Hollywood musical as seen through the mind of Bobby Darin. His life as he would have imagined it in the most fun of circumstances. BTW - I saw Darin in 1959 when I was 16. Even though he was less rock and roll and more American popster he still impressed me as an electric performer with the pipes, chops and stage charisma that had to be recognized and appreciated even if one was more oriented to Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee, Little Richard and the other flamboyant rockers of the day. Along with T-Bone Walker Chuck was the greatest stage performer who ever existed until Jimi took over that title in the 60's. In 1959 I saw Chuck live playing "Johnny B Goode" whilst wearing a bright, white suit, playing a white Gibson Byrdland in front of a 16 piece band dressed all in white playing behind white bandstands - all this while hanging upside down by his knees swinging on a white trapeze. No wonder all those scared white folks worked so hard to trump up BS to get rid of him! Take that all you rock and roll pretenders!

I've known of this documentary for a while now and even tried to see it before the last presidential election. It is indeed scary. It brings together disparate stories and facts of the last 25 years tying them together in a coherent pattern that is downright ugly! I was especially impressed by the filmmakers focus on one of the biggest unreported stories of the last quarter of the 20th Century - that being how the Reagan cabal manipulated the 1980 election in order to win it and then paid off one of the members of the nascent "axis of evil" for their cooperation. This all culminated in the Iran/Contra scandal for which only one person took the fall, too bad he didn't (and still doesn't) have the honor and integrity to expose this treasonous story. Find this movie and show it to your friends.

Although I'm usually only mildly appalled reading through user comments on movies on imdb.com some of the comments made here about this classic movie exhibit a true nadir of ignorance of history in general and movies in particular. E.g.;

1 - I'm particularly struck by the comment - "This movie is shot on location in California because shooting in India would have been too expensive." Prior to the 1950's Hollywood movies were rarely (and I mean rarely) shot on the original location sites. The problem was not expense (although the moguls certainly were pinching the pennies), the problem was transportation! Transporting a movie production company halfway around the world would have been nearly impossible to accomplish (let alone how long it would have taken and then they would have been shooting under impossible conditions in India anyway) not to mention that WWII was on the verge of breaking out! The biggest movie of that year was shot on a set in Culver City, CA where they could easily manipulate the filming. Even if they had sent the production company to Atlanta they couldn't very well burn down Atlanta for authenticity' sake now could they? They would have had to have built a set(s) in Atlanta - why would they go all the way across the country to do that when they could do it Culver City?

2 - Several people lament that Gunga Din was not shot in color. A little movie history context here - first of all, the first full length feature film shot in color had only been done 4 years earlier, secondly three-strip technicolor was outrageously expensive in 1939 (only one other movie was shot that year in technicolor and it didn't start making back its costs until the late 1960's) and the few features shot prior to that year in color had failed miserably to make back their production costs. And finally, the studios had no faith in color (just as they had resisted "talkies" a decade earlier) - they were in business to make money, not experiment with an innovation that had not yet been accepted and proven to bring in a bigger audience. Also, there was a comment about the graininess of the B&W cinematography of GD - that's because 99% of the present day viewers are seeing multi-generation copies that have been played to death! Get a fresh, first generation copy to see the B&W shading in its true brightness, focus and clarity and that objection will go away. BTW - the colorized version of GD is abysmal - faded coloring effects and indistinct edges make it look like a sloppy water color painting!

3 - Labelling anything from the past as not being PC only shows the lack of historical context knowledge so rampant in the present day. First of all this movie was loosely based on a poem that was already 47 years old when this movie was released. If you change the politics to match the present day conception of "correctness" then you really don't have the original concept do you? Not to mention that America was a far different place racially (and socially) in 1939. There are movies being released in 2003 that will catch hell 50 years from now for their "politics" - just chalk it up to the ignorance of future generations to not recognize what the history of the times were. I do like the analysis by one writer though that far from being a reactionary screed the movie went further than the poem in emphasizing that Gunga Din was far better off in his position than he would have been otherwise. After all, he was an "untouchable", a social postion that was abused, exploited and terrorized by their fellow Indians for thousands of years. Whatever one might think of his treatment by the British it was a high step up from what he would have endured out in his own society! Which brings me to.........

4 - ..........the ridiculously misguided (and just plain wrong) observations about the Thuggees of India being "freedom fighters", this couldn't be more wrong. Several of the commentators really need to read up on Indian history - the Thuggees had been ritualistic murderers and thieves for thousands of years in India before the British ever arrived! If they had any support from various rulers of parts of India it was because those rulers either feared for their own positions or they could get the Thuggees to do their dirty work for them - for a high price of course. The Thuggees reputation for brutality, unabated crimes of the worst kind and general, overall lack of human attributes make most other singlemindedly evil groups throughout history (even in the present day) look like amateurs! The reason they fought the British so vociferously was that the British recognized this and fought to suppress them - I seriously doubt that many Indians lamented that suppression. And to the person who equated the Thuggees with French Resistance fighters killing "collaborators" - where did you get such a preposterous idea? Do you know anything at all about the history of the Indian sub-continent?

Let me also point out here that it is the British who are the infidels not the "natives", just another example of how mixed up one can be about who is who and understanding what history and meaning really are.

I especially love the reviewers who spend their time comparing this to another movie that they like better in order to dis this one - so they review the other movie instead. Why bother, movies stand on their own, you either like them or you don't, go watch the other one you like instead.

5 - Now, everyone is entitled to their opinion, which I certainly support, as to whether this is a "good" or a "bad" movie (opinions are like.......well, you know) but fergawdsakes base that opinion on an informed knowledge of the times, the historical context of the work and the realization that movies are just movies - they aren't "real" and they certainly make up whatever "truth" and "facts" they see fit!

My opinion? This is one of the great "entertainment" movies ever made - the reason to go to the movies I thought? It has everything - a good script, a good story, epic sweep, fantastic acting, inter-character chemistry, charisma, pacing and coherency. How many movies can you say that about? And kudos to those who see this movie for what it is, not what they want it to be!