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jreichbart
Reviews
Baby Snakes (1979)
Simply incredible.
Nearly all aspects of Zappa creativity are reflected here: Several really long guitar solos, the classic "goofy" crowd pleasing songs, amazing playing by the band (Black Page 2 and many others), funny monologues, on-stage audience participation bits as well as some amazing conducting on some free-form pieces. It's also interesting to compare this to "Does Humor..." which I also love. It's true that in "Does Humor..." the video quality is cleaner, but I actually like that slightly fuzzy older look. But more importantly, in BBSNX Zappa is much, much more energetic, and in addition, the individual talents of the band members really shine here: Tommy Mars has a truly amazing keyboard solo and Terry Bozzio is utilized to the max, including performing, possibly, the best drum solo I've seen on video. I also liked the fact that the audio/video sync is pretty much 99.9% right on. No overdubs, no nothing - what you hear is what you see ("The Song Remains The Same" comes to mind as an unfortunate example of the opposite). I read some complaints about the back stage antics and the claymation stuff (which I liked). keep in mind though, this DVD is so long that even if you skip those things you still get two full hours of first rate concert footage. Enjoy!
How I miss Frank... Can you imagine what he may have had to say today about the state of music, politics and everything in between?
The End (1978)
Terrible
Burt Reynold is not without some talents. He's not a bad actor and he certainly has a certain screen presence. However, it is movies like this, I believe, as well as "Gator" (also directed by him) that diluted whatever wide appeal he had and put him in the "has been" category for a long time. I am glad, BTW, that he has found some good parts in recent years to showcase his talent.
"The End" is just not funny. It's tedious and silly. The dialog is dumb. I was hoping for a redeeming quality in the form of a supposedly stellar cast. What a disappointment.
Skip it.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Pretty awful.
Judged on its own merits, this movie is as forgettable as a thousand other forgettable action flicks: They come, stick around for a few weeks and they're gone. Who cares. However, judged in relation to T1 and T2, this movie is especially bad.
Here are a few of the things that bugged me: Whereas the earlier movies were thought provoking, this was just action for the sake of action. Even as such it wasn't all that good. T1 and T2 had elements of real heroism in them. Here we have no one to look up to. It amazes me that even though this movie was made much more recently, aided by the latest digital technology, it just didn't look as good as either of the previous two: They had a certain realism about them (keeping in mind that these are fantasy movies) whereas T3, at times, had more of a comic book movie look, reminding me at certain points of Batman or Darkman. The early fight scene outside the animal clinic looked particularly bad, as if it were done on a soundstage (probably was). The acting wasn't very good. I felt kind of bad for Claire Danes whom otherwise I like. I agree with some of the other reviews, John Connor was rather irritatingly wimpy. Arnold looked a little too old and the sunglasses gag was wrong for the movie. TX did nothing for me. The design detail was not nearly as good as T2.
And so on. 2/10.
Pale Rider (1985)
So So... A few spoilers ahead
I have recently held a little bit of a private "Clint Eastwood Festival", renting many of his classic movies one after the other. Having watched this movie after some of the great Italian as well as American westerns from the 60's and 70's, I was quite disappointed.
The story was quite weak, which in itself would not have been such a huge deal if there was some kind of depth and history to the "preacher's" character in relation to his old nemesis the marshal and his deputies (having them all standing in line wearing the same type and color trench coat looked rather comical). The only reference to the past were some scars Clint had, showing six gunshots he had somehow survived (Yeah, right) then, in turn, shooting the marshal in the same gunshot pattern with one additional shot to the head. So we know they were enemies in the past. That's all we know. How did Clint become a gunfighter? How did he become a preacher? What was the feud about?
The romance side plot was rather silly, I guess when you direct and produce a movie in which you are the star, you can have a beautiful 15 year old girl and her mom both fall in love with you.
Many other small details bugged me as well: The "Kung Fu" like scene at the beginning, in which Clint kicks all these guys' asses, didn't look very good; the final showdown scene was full of overstated clichés: the hat on the ground, the oil lamp dangling in the wind, telling the restaurant owners to take a walk, etc. In addition, the way he took out the six deputies and the marshal was just too easy. Overall, the dialog was weak. The scene where the girl stood at the edge of town calling "Goodbye" and "I love you" with those dreadful echoes was embarrassing. What did Richard Kiel add to the movie? I also thought Clint didn't look too good in this movie, it almost seemed like he just had some dental work done and he was in pain. And so on.
Was there anything to like? A little: the scenery was nice; the camera work was good although nothing radical was demanded of it; a small part for Chris Penn. That's about it
The best I can say about this movie is that it probably won't really hurt you if you watched it on some rainy afternoon with nothing else to do.
5 out of 10.