Reviews

A friend gave me a copy of American Carol to watch recently. I had never heard of it, and after reading the official reviews from major reviewers, I see why. This is a Roger Moore bashing film, and no one deserves it more than him. Naturally, coming out of liberal Hollywood, this movie would never fly with the media and the people who work for them. The amazing thing to me is the amount of stars they managed to appear in the movie. Now you KNOW some or all (we dont really know) have to be left of center, and THEY knew their friends would see them. And yet they STILL appeared in this GREAT movie! You cant help but wonder what kinds of telephone calls they got once the film appeared in the theaters. But back to the movie: I dont care what they say, this movie is funny as hell, and no time is wasted for the laughs. Yes some of the jokes are juvenile, but most movies are in one way or another. If you're old enough to remember Soupy Sales when he was at the top of his game, then you will love American Carol, because the humor is very close to being the same.

To this day I simply don't understand why they made a second version of Rollerball, when the original could never be topped. I think there's a huge difference in people who saw this movie on the big screen as I did back in 75, and anyone who just saw it on TV. This was a BIG screen production, and to see it any other way is a loss for the viewer. I actually haven't see Rollerball since 1975, so I'm simply going on my memories of the movie. Rollerball came in two parts: The crazy off the wall game itself that had you jumping out of your seat, and the more low key almost boring parts. But even those were interesting in that this was the future, so you had to pay attention and not fall asleep. The best part of the movie was of course the game itself. Why? Because it wasnt an impossible CGI view of the game. In other words, the game could and CAN really be played! Change the ball from steel to rubber, get some lightweight motorcycles and skaters, and I'd pay so see that every week!

Pretty Face is ground breaking as far as comedy goes. While most of it is Green Screen done in a technologically A-Plus fashion, this episode is what you might see in a 300 million dollar movie. The skeletons are above amazing, especially when you consider that shows like this are typically lower budget. How they pulled off the realistic graphics on their budget is a real mystery. Pretty Face is far above most shows of its kind.

This is only the third or fourth Billy Bob Thorton movie that I've seen and it caught me off guard. Why? Because I REALLY like Billy Bob Thorton, but the opening of this movie made me uncomfortable. Billy Bob was SO unrealistic in the opening scenes. It was like someone just grabbed him off the street with no experience to play the lead. I almost laughed when Billy Bob was trying to act super tough in his opening scenes. For some reason that I cant explain, he just couldnt pull the tough guy off. As the movie progressed, he seemed to play the part a little better, but it was hard to get his opening scenes out of my mind. Otherwise, it was a pretty good movie. However, I still dont understand where the L. A. cops were all the time that the police chief was staking out the house waiting waiting for Billy Bob and his friend to show up.

Yes, confusing, but so odd that it haunted me to the point that I had to watch it again. There are many things that dont make a lick of sense in this movie. The plot for one thing. (What was the plot again?) A crazy man running full speed around Georgia simply because he's crazy? Any number of movies could be made from that idea, and like this one, few would make any sense. And what about the period that this movie was supposed to represent? It looked like a cross between the 1950s and 1980s. Some cars, and most houses looked like the 50s, while other cars and microwave towers were obviously the late 70s when the movie was made. And what about Brad Dourif, who's acting ability is about average and a joy to watch, except in this moves he only had one facial expression throughout? Teeth gritted, lower jaw out, and a nervousness that makes Barney Fife look calm. Yes, fun to watch, but I'm still trying to figure out why?

Who is writing these reviews... New York elitists who are trying to get a gig as a reviewers? I've seen shorter reviews for "Gone with the wind". This piece of crap is not worth a paragraph, but I'll let the Trivia section do the talking:

"David O. Russell was offered the film to direct but turned it down, deciding "that it was just not about anything but a guy who liked to f*ck girls and say that he shot people in the head".

And that's it folk in a nutshell. He stated the obvious in 3 lines. Don't waste your time on this dog of dogs.

Seems almost everyone likes this movie for some reason. My review will be short and sweet: This is the dumbest premise for a movie I've ever witnessed. This is "Full Metal Jacket" with drums. No one, and I mean NO ONE would put up with the abuse that this music teacher dishes out, unless they were in the Marine Corp. It's one thing to be a nasty music teacher, but quite another to be R. Lee Ermey as Gunny Sgt. Hartman. Every kid I know today would have pounced on Fletcher and beat him to a pulp if he acted this way towards them. I keep waiting for Andrew to turn into Pvt. Leonard 'Gomer Pyle' Lawrence with a rifle in his hand to blow the teacher away. No, this is beyond fantasy, this is just dumb.

In my review, I will not get into the acting, production values or plot. You can babble on all day about that in ANY movie. No, Candy deserves more than just the typical cold review. Candy, for many of us was a point in time that both baffled us and left a lot of questions and memories.

I am rating Candy a 10 as the WORST wonderful movie ever made. I saw Candy 3 times when it appeared in my little town back upon release. When you're 17, and love the Byrds, Steppenwolf and later Dave Grusin, and the music pushes the movie no matter HOW bad it is, you've got a winner to a 17 year old. Don't forget, this was the Hippie era, and the psychedelic counterculture was all the rage, and this movie had it in spades! Now, flash forward 50 years and watch it again. Oh my God! It's SO bad that I bought a rare collectors DVD for a lot of money! Look, MANY movies are bad. There are more bad movies than good, and there many ways to judge what is a bad movie, like bad acting, bad production values etc. There's one other way also: Name the worst movie of all time with the most amount of Hollywood Stars. Think about it. Any ONE of the stars in Candy (except Candy herself) could and did make good movies. So you'd think that with ALL those stars, the movie couldn't fail right? WRONG. The movie was criticized so badly that it was pulled for over 20 years, and by that time, we had become adults and knew what a good vs bad movie really was. But I STILL love Candy. Why? Think of it this way: Did you love the Ford Mustang when it first came out? Wouldn't you love an original one today? We forget that the Mustang was nothing more than a new body on a cheap frame and had no power at all when it first came out. It was in fact, compared to today's cars a real dog. This doesn't matter to us in the least NOW, because that car reminds us of our childhood or teenage years. It takes us back, and for me anyway, so does the movie Candy. Yes it was bad.. the WORST considering the Stars in it, but I still love it.

I'll make this short: I've seen better actors in high school plays. They were embarrassingly bad in every way. I know that back in the day, the directors wanted the actors to face the camera a bit, but this entire movie had them facing the camera instead of each other. Just a bad all around movie. And that one line spoken by the maid... how did it go? "Once you love a Spade, you'll never go back"? Really bad dialog. I don't understand who would produce (pay for) a movie like this because everyone knows that only Black people went to see these movies, and all this would do is upset the Black community. Anyway, I know there were good Black actors in those days and why he didn't use them is beyond me. Don't waste your time with this one. There are plenty of good Black movies out there.

Yes, he took on the case and yes he won. But everything else about him was arrogant, rude, know-it-all. He only suspicioned that there was more to the story after the Nephew dug up the body. The lawyer did even give Lucas a chance to talk at first. Then, at the very end, he was still an arrogant, rude, know-it-all. The was absolutely nothing to like in this character. This in itself is very unusual for a story line like this, and made me feel uneasy about the lawyers future in dealing with clients. As far as the rest of the cast, they were right for their parts and story line. Most did a pretty good job. But I also felt that I was watching a WWII propaganda film in respect with all the dialog concerning "people" and how they should act VS how they do act.

I thought I had seen all of the famous old films in my lifetime, but somehow I missed The Third Man. Today I watched it, with complete disgust due to that horrible (and stupid) Spanish guitar throughout the film. The music, if you can call it that was horrible. The guitar sounded out of tune half the time and it never went with the scene that it was supposed to enhance. Sometimes, the guitar player sounded like he was free forming the music and often lost his way. Yes, I know a very famous song came from this soundtrack but even THAT didn't go along with any scene or the plot in general. The entire soundtrack should have been in an Italian Comedy film where some stud is trying to impress a beautiful woman on the beach.

I enjoyed Hatfields & McCoys except for one thing: The audio in the first segment was horrible. So bad in fact that most of my friends turned it off after 30 minutes because they couldn't understand what the actors were saying. The plot, especially in the beginning was very important to the rest of the story, and there were so many characters involved that if you didn't know what they said, you were lost. The biggest issue was the mumbling of the actors, combined with what appeared to be lousy sound pick-up. Further along into part one, the audio seemed to clear up and the actors stopped mumbling for the most part. The second and third parts of the series were much better, audio wise.

Be aware that I am from southern WV, and while it may be hard for people outside this area to understand the dialect, it isn't for me. The early mumbling and audio was just bad.

Now, as far as the rest of the movie: I give it a 7, which is high for me. I'm glad to see the fact that these people weren't portrayed as stupid barefoot hillbillies. Check the history of Devil Anse on the Net and you'll find out that he was smart, wealthy, and the family turned out doctors and lawyers and governors. All in all, I like the show.