Change Your Image
rivendell1
Reviews
Mail Order Wife (2004)
Great Movie
I was completely fooled by this. I really thought it was a Documentary. I must admit when Litchi started screaming she wanted a baby and the part where the co-director's father secreted her off to a hotel room I did wonder if it was all a put-on. Just brilliant in sustaining the illusion of reality storytelling. Knowing in advance it's all a mockumentary does ruin it a bit but not knowing makes this an amazing piece of film making to watch unfold. Apparently this was all scripted but it comes across as completely spontaneous. I'd certainly keep an eye on this film maker in the future. He has an edge to him that is lacking in a lot of more mainstream Hollywood directors.
Chinatown (1974)
Couple of interesting points
I once took a class in screen writing in Hollywood and there was general agreement that this was the best screenplay ever written. A couple of trivia points that may be of some interest. There was a great scene with the wonderful actor Royal Dano that for reasons never made clear Polanski edited out at the last minute. It happened just before Gittes goes in search of the Orange groves in the valley. That was a mistake by Polanski. There was a scene in the script in which Gittes is in an airplane flying to meet Noah Cross for the first time where the pilot actually tells Gittes that there was a rumor that Cross had an incestuous relationship with his daughter. BIG mistake by R. Towne to foreshadow like that and the right decision by Polanski to cut it out. Also, Polanski and Faye Dunaway absolutely despised each other on the set culminating in the now famous confrontation with Polanski actually dropping his pants and pissing on her script notes in front of her. Just a great movie all around!
This Is Not a Test (1962)
A must see...
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you what may be the worst movie of all time. If surviving an atomic blast means having to spend two weeks locked in a trailer truck with these crazed, dysfunctional and in at least one instance, mentally retarded, social misfits I'd prefer the radiation. A film so rambling and incoherent, so amazingly bad it may emerge as a cinematic classic. In the class of Plan 9 from Outer Space and Futz! and a definite contender for the greatest waste of film stock in Hollywood history, at least up to any Pauly Shore movie. Acting, directing and writing so horrendous that it almost cracked the screen on my television set. Get a load of Ralph Manza though in one of his first rolls. He must have been blackmailed and desperate to take on this whopper. A must see for all film students.