Reviews written by registered user
|6 reviews in total|
If I can sit through a whole movie (and not look at my watch) it must
have some redeeming value.
This is by no means a very good movie, however, it does have enough things going for it to make it worth a sit through. The dialogue is generally pretty good and it feels honest.
The nice thing about the movie is that it feels honest and personal. It isn't too egotistical, etc. You get some sense of the person who made it. I get the feeling that Sublett's art is a better on paper than on film.
In comparison to most of the horrendous garbage I see coming from first time filmmakers, this is definitely not bad at all. It should be released on YouTube for FREE so more people can see it. Perhaps as a short film, it might've been better as a tends to meander a bit. So a good re-edit to make a shorted version to put online would probably be very well received.
Editing is perhaps the best part of the movie. REALLY good. I decided to take a look at the credits and saw that one Jay Boekelheide did the work. This is probably what saved the movie, a great editing job. It feels professional.
Overall: release the movie for FREE! It's not going to make money. But it might find an audience online. The future of independent cinema is online. It may not have the benefit of the big screen, but better a small screen than fading into obscurity!
(this is a bit of a strech, but look at the success of Charlie the Unicorn. It's silly rubbish, but it's well written and free online. It became so popular, people became willing to buy it on DVD from the official website. THIS is how the future of independent cinema will be! Put it up for free, and if people dig it, they will give you $$$ to make more!)
This "movie" sucks. It's almost surrealistically horrible. On the one
hand, you have hypnotically horrible films like those of Ed Wood's
filmography. Films that are so horrible, you can't help but to keep
watching it. However, with this film, it's so horrible you can't help
but stop watching it before even finishing an hour of the film.
What sucks about this movie? Hmm, the editing, the writing, the directing, the acting. The ineptitude of this movie is amazing. There's a ridiculous of amount of stupid and pointless flashbacks, slow-motion, rapid camera movements, etc. It feels like we're watching a music video at some points. And don't get me started on the story. It's easily the worst part of the movie. There are enough red herrings to fill an entire forest. After the 50th time we see a Al Pacino POV shot suspiciously looking at somebody, I wanted to scream at the screen.
The acting is bad too. I've seen better acting in high school productions. Even Pacino gives an unusually bland and crappy performance. All he does is mumble, scream and run around like a constipated wiener dog! Do yourself a favor, and stay away from this awful, vomit-inducing, steaming pile of goat turds. I've had more fun playing the video game 'Pong'. And 'Pong' is just two lines and a ball. It makes no ****ing sense!
Before he made the Bob Le Flambeur, the "Grandfather of the New Wave"
made this film in collaboration with Cocteau. The cinematography in
this film is pretty good, and Melville does a good job at replicating
the feel of a Cocteau film. This is perhaps Melville's most
"Un-Melville" film. There's no hardened men or bank robbers to be had
here. The portrait of a sister/brother relationship is well-done and
believable, and easily holds your attention the entire film.
The imagery is great, particularly towards the ending and the shot of the dead mother. It's almost dream-like! With this film, and Bob, it's easy to see why Melville was such and inspiration to future New Wave directors such as Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, etc. Highly recommended, especially to Cocteau/Melville fans!
My family rented this film and I was not particularly looking forward to it, what with the negative comments on IMDb. While it's not as bad as declaring 'worst film of the year', it's still pretty lousy. You don't really care much for the characters at all. There doesn't seem to be any sense of direction for this movie, it's just a boring and generally uneventful. And anything that does happen is often ludicrous, especially a particularly stupid sequence with 50 Cent going crazy and holding hostages in a fast food restaurant and then getting shot by a police sniper. It sounds like a bad joke, but it's not. Avoid this one, and go watch 'Best Years of Our Lives' for a compassionate study of what it's like to come home from a war. Winkler should be slapped.
This is perhaps one of Godard's more accessible films and yet it's
certainly not for everybody. The fact most people wouldn't "get" this
film is further proof that what the film warned about in the first
place has come true. That film as an art form is pretty much dead and
has become saturated with commercialism. It's all about box office
numbers now. Jack Palance plays an American producer Prokosch, who
exemplifies all the worst qualities of how Hollywood worked back then
and works especially today.
To make a film adaptation of the Odyssey more commercial, Prokosch hires screenwriter Paul Javal. (played by Michel Piccoli) Javal becomes greatly conflicted throughout the film about what to do with his writing career and feels conflicted knowing he's writing just for the money.
There's also the conflict of Javal and his wife Camille (played by Brigette Bardot). There's a really amazing sequence in their apartment that almost feels like real-time and goes on for around 25 minutes. I really can't think of any other films that so illustrate the breaking down of a marriage, except for perhaps Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From A Marriage" and a few others.
Interestingly, there's also Fritz Lang (who directed the great "M") playing the director of the Odyssey adaptation in this film. He acts as a commentator to what's going around him and his comments often go over the head of the dumb, uncultured producer Palance.
Godard makes a really nice use of CinemaScope along with his cinematographer Raoul Coutard. There's an interesting use of the colors red, white, and blue, drawing parallels between the French flag and the American flags. (Keep an eye out for Godard's cameo towards the end of the film telling everyone to be quiet on a film set) Overall, one of Godard's best works I've seen. Highly recommended to anyone who liked his previous work, but not so to those who despise Godard.
For those MST3K fans out there, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" is
undoubtedly a movie you've heard of. For those not so familiar, the
basic plot is Martians kidnap Santa to bring happiness to Mars. Sounds
pretty bad doesn't it? While it isn't the worst movie ever made, it's
easily the worst holiday movie ever made. I simply can't believe how
bad it is.
The worst example of the vomit inducing dialogue includes a scene where Santa forgets the name of his reindeer and calls one of them "Nixon". Are you cringing yet? This movie also has some of the worst special effects I've seen, which brings to mind "Plan 9 from Outer Space". This movie has a crappy robot and a crappy polar bear. I'm truly scared of these moments not because of their effectiveness, but because of the utter incompetence of the costume department in the film.
Still, despite it's horridness, it's still worth watching. It's in the public domain, so a quick look on Google, Yahoo, etc. will easily result in a few places to download the movie. I must say, Edward Wood would be proud of this film.