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Isobelk
Reviews
Tomorrow, the World! (1944)
A great movie about of how fascism can spread and how brainwashing works
Yeah, I read other reviews that pointed out that this movie has holes and is dated. But it is also current in how easily fascism can find your soft spots and manipulate your thinking by mouthing slogans you want to hear. That evil will masquerade in order to reach its selfish ends. I kept wondering when the kid would get beat up by his peers. I also wondered how mistreated he must have been by the Nazis for his father's crimes against fascism. In reality I think he might have been beaten sooner. There are some great revelations at the end when adults realize they've been had by their hope for themselves and the brat. Unfortunately the movie continues and gives the audience a neatly wrapped propaganda message. Still it also points out that torture and mistreatment can screw up the brain and maybe with treatment that can be fixed. To me the movie pointed out that, as my father, a WWII vet said, "Maybe the fascists actually won the war after all."
In Harm's Way (1965)
Sexist and racist
Couldn't stop watching this train wreck because I invested so much time in it. Soooo racist. And the sexism was insane. There was all this coded language about sex and rape that Was very confusing. I watched it with someone who was a young adult in 1965 and kept asking what the script meant. Geeze, they couldn't even say the word rape. And oils a nurse really have killed herself after being raped? And btw most women don't fight because their brains shut down and off so they can separate. Just a bad movie nominated for a non existent Oscar now. Spent a lot of the movie trying to figure out who had lung cancer from smoking and looking at the symptoms.
The music was excellent so it gets one star.
Ishtar (1987)
Great funny movie
I think this might gphave been a remake of Two Arabian Knights, another great comedy classic.
Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938)
Great Jazz music and jazz talk
I loved this movie. My father was a jazz drummer and he talked just like these cats. There is a great jazz drummer/tap dancer in it and the opening number is also great. Made me miss my father. Btw, I am not black nor a man nor a western fan. I wanted to give this movie a ten (10) but decided not to because I mostly listened to it and watched the musical bits. Though I did like the plot of unjustly framing a black guy who has to leave the range run and hide I. Harlem. Production values are about equal to that "Witch" movie made on a cell phone.
Shampoo (1975)
One of the best movies ever made
This is a great movie depicting life in the late 60s early 70s. It's brilliant. Times are changing. Women are having sex. George loves women. There's legal birth control and all VD has a cure. Nixon and Agnew get re elected and we all know Spiro go s to jail and Tricky Dick narrowly escapes the same fate. But none of the characters in the movie knows that.
Medici (2016)
Soap opera pretending to be about I Medici
I give this show 3 stars because it is an okay soap opera with handsome actors and the pictures of art and Florence are beautiful. I'd rate it about the same as "All My Children" or "Dallas". But as someone who has actually read the history of the Medici and Florence, this show is terrible. Italian words are constantly mispronounced. Too much time is spent on trivialities instead of real historical facts that are much more interesting. There is too much jumping in time that can confuse people. Also, historical fact is faked and people are misled by depictions that are lies. I'm only on the 3d or 4th episode so I'm figuring there will be more annoying lies as the show goes on. And the lies don't help the plot. In fact, they detract and being closer to the truth would have been more exciting.
They should have hired more or better historians familiar with the subject or should have listened to the ones they hired.
SPOILERS: For example, when Florence is fighting the Sforza in Lucca, instead of showing some action and battle scenes, we are stuck in Florence watching some stupid junk about how Cosimo and his wife get along.
SPOILERS: For example, the plague looks nothing like what is shown here. Why not use your makeup artists and make it look real? It would've been much gorier and more interesting. The plague in this year made the people who got it look like horrible monsters. Why not show that?
SPOILER: For example, the cathedral (should firstly be called the cathedral and NOT the duomo since duomo means "dome" and it isn't built yet) was not decorated by marble facing before the dome was built.
There's more, but why bother. This show could've been as good as or better than The Borgias or Versailles or even Downton Abbey. But it is far worse. It's very sad because it's about a republic and the inventors of banking.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Confusing, boring, piece of junk with crappy editing
I couldn't figure out what this movie was supposed to be about. The editing was terrible. There were lots of close ups that didn't seem needed, lots of special effects. Very little story line. What story there was was difficult to follow. There were lots of dream sequences, flash backs, etc. that just lost me because in between was just dull, dull dull. Couldn't care about any character. Got some gratuitous shots of Ben Affleck's body double doing chin ups that got my attention, otherwise, just slept and read while it showed on the screen. Many annoying characters that just made me want to look away. Tried watching it twice thinking I would understand it better the second time, nope, it just stinks.
Rock Rock Rock! (1956)
Historically fun film
This is like watching Reefer Madness. It's an old drive-in movie with great original music that got the nickname: Rock-n-roll. Gotta watch. The math is hysterical, literally which is historically hysterically sexist. Really, gotta watch. And it's amazing that Tuesday Weld is 13. My husband graduated high school in 1962. Can't wait to watch it again with him. I can only vaguely remember the itchy scratchy of those crinoline slips. The music and dancing is great! Drive-in movies were not supposed to be watched closely. Most people "fooled around" during the talking and only started paying attention when the music started when they probably got out of their cars and danced. Enjoy this pure entertainment with good cinematography of the dancing and music. And Connie Francis dubbed in for Tuesday Weld is hilarious. I mean, did you know that Rock-n-roll "is the river of music?"
The Ladies Man (2000)
Modern Marx Bros Movie
I give this 8 stars because it's like a modern day Marx Brothers' movie or Myra Breckenridge. Everyone's in it, there are silly musical numbers, the story's negligible, but it's just pure enjoyment and a snap shot in history. I heartily recommend it for mindless watching which is a whole genre of movies. Caveat, the cinematography during the big musical number is lacking. But it's just laugh out loud funny!!! I won't say more because it's terrible to spoil jokes. Still, there's a lot of Chicago-isms as well as pub-related humor. If you like to go to bars and have ever had casual sex with a stranger, you will find this hilarious. Plus! It has Billy Dee Williams in it, and if you ask me, any movie with him in it is a 10 star film.
Nana (1934)
Forget Zola and Garbo. Think proto-feminist film by 1st female director starring prettier actress with a light accent.
Fascinating period piece both in terms of the Setting of the film and when it was made. It's a rather early "talky" made by the only female director of the time. The original director began his career as a French art director and was fired and replaced by Arzner. Maybe he is responsible for the grand production values. Dorothy Arzner had been a film editor and even a cinematographer before becoming the first female member of the Film Directors Guild. She uses some great camera movements and segues that were very innovative for the era.
The music is very good. There is a great use of drums to create and build tension.
I didn't even think of Zola's Nana so it's loose connection didn't bother me. Anna Sten is gorgeous. There are some references to homosexuality between the women. But it's very subtle to modern viewers as required in 1930s when it might have been unheard of to the majority of viewers.
This Nana is quite a feminist for the 1930s. She's gay in the original meaning of the word and refuses to exist in her preordained social class. She is an independent woman who has affairs with different men throughout the picture without necessarily loving them. She gets drunk. She works hard. She parties. What woman today hasn't done that? But in the 1930s? Scandalous! And the men all blame her for their bad choices because she doesn't fall in with them or obey them. One of Nana's lovers forbids her to drink more alcohol and she says, "You what!!??" He has to soft pedal it.
She constantly takes insults and keeps going. The old men in the picture want to ruin her for loving outside her class. She gives it right back to them. She tells one old fart, "You made me? Well I paid you!" Meaning she paid him with her youth, beauty, and sex. And his price was expensive, the wrinkly old dick.
It is a much more sympathetic view of Nana than the self righteous and sexist Zola could have dreamed of. So many men just can't believe that a woman might just enjoy life outside of marrying and having children. Arzner knew a woman could.
I think Sten's accent and acting was criticized heavily when the film first came out because the acting in the silent era was so different and critics weren't used to the new style in talkies. Also, foreign accents were initially not well received. Garbo had been a silent film star and was accepted as a transitional star. Sten didn't have that to carry her into the new medium. Viewed without any bias over Garbo, Sten is very good and in some ways seems to have a more modern style comparable more to Olivia de Haviland. Her eyes are super sexy.
Da Vinci's Demons (2013)
Do writers really think we are this stupid?
This show is ridiculous. I just can't get beyond the anachronisms which start in the first scene when I'm supposed to think that da Vinci took drugs. And that they were mixed with tobacco which didn't event get to Europe until da Vinci well into the 1500s.
Has no one else in America ever learned anything about da Vinci besides me? This show leads me to believe that my fellow Americans must be philistines if they can find anything redeeming about this show. And all the crap about secret societies is just superfluous. The real story is much more interesting than this crap.
Furthermore, the drawings glimpsed are poor. Why not just use copies of da Vinci's drawings?
I was hoping for something more like the Borgias. This subject matter has potential. But using da Vinci's name for this series is misleading and disappointing.
The cartoons and illustrations are poor. The hairstyles are anachronistic. The clothes show lack of research. The soldiers' hats are more Napoleonic than renaissance. Da Vinci's show of his chest (and other cast members) is too unrealistic.
The Debt (2010)
Awful ridiculous boring
The worst Cold War movie I can remember. The parts that were supposed to be suspenseful we're so drawn out I forgot I was watching a movie. Facts were wrong, anachronisms abounded so I couldn't focus. The idea that a woman in 1965 would walk around an apartment in her towel with two guys and then hang around in a robe while they were fully dressed was so ridiculous as to make any sexual tension unbelievable. Maybe I am just too old and can remember how radical it was when I did similar things in the late 1970s. The guys in 1965 would have been afraid of this woman.
The sappy sentimentality of Mossad agents sympathizing with a Nazi butcher was also too boring and unbelievable to me. This movie seemed made for children of the 2000s or maybe the 1990s. This is not a four star movie which implies that it is a classic. There is no way this movie should outlast The Terminator.