Reviews

The plot is totally predictable, for example what do mafia bosses have swimming pools for if not to catch flying corpses during a shootout? Is America really full of abandoned warehouses where criminals can run riot with firearms? By the way where are the cops in this film, were they on strike, or did they wisely decide to keep a low profile and let the mafiosi get on with blasting each other to bits? The baddies were just too thick to be credible! But this does provide some of the few laughs in this film. The quality of the acting is hardly worth commenting on and Tonya Harding should have stuck to ice skating.

What is that helicopter doing flying about in the middle of the Second World War. If there had been helicopters like that about, warfare would have been very different! We all know that there is a lack of German military vehicles for film use apart from Kubelwagens and Opel trucks ,so we are well used to seeing American tanks and halftracks with iron crosses painted on them, but a HELICOPTER is a bit much! The whole plot is absurd, how on earth can six blokes just walk in to a heavily guarded nazi stronghold perched on top of a mountain without any of the apparently half slept Germans noticing. This bit of Hollywood garbage is an insult for anybody that fought and or died on both sides during the war. On a lighter note what about the girls hair styles, not exactly from the 40s...did the production crowd not realise that the war was not fought in the late 60s! And if Richard Burton is posing as a German officer why did they not cut his hair to fit the role?

Typical Italian police movie of the Seventies. The baddies (and sometimes the goodies) meet a violent death. Bandits, hostages, police shooting at anything and anybody, hand grenades fly through the air.... Entertaining car chases in the Milan of the period, particularly if you like spotting old cars! Sound-track unmistakably Seventies!

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of my family's favourite books so we were keen to see the film version. Whatever happened to Mr Bucket? Charlie's Dad worked in a toothpaste factory, screwing the caps on the tubes. Was this form of employment considered so menial that he was written out of the story? And Charlie's mother was not a washerwoman! As regards her singing, this could have been omitted... The kids, instead, are just as we imagined them: thoroughly disgusting, except hero Charlie of course. Gene Wilder is the perfect Mr Willy Wonka. The Oompah-Loompahs are maybe not quite what we imagined, but they were very effective. Their songs are far more memorable than Mrs Bucket's sloppy effort.

From start to finish, the most boring film imaginable. You keep waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever does. Michele leads a very boring life, he is the kind of person I would never wish to make the acquaintance of. The film is a typical product of a certain left-wing so-called culture rampant in Italy in the Seventies, of which Nanni Moretti is a leading exponent. One thing puzzles me: why does Moretti so often cast himself as a person named Michele? Take a look at the list of his films! There must be a Michele in his past who left a lasting impression on him, After all, there is no lack of male first names in Italian; why not Mario, Alberto or even Dante?

At home we never tire of this, perhaps the best of the Don Camillo series. The characters are so perfectly drawn and the black and white photography is much more dramatic than colour! It gives a very true-to-life picture of the social and political scene in post-war Italy, with just enough exaggeration to have the spectators rolling in the aisles.

My kids love this film. I have tried to watch it 3 times and I find it so boring I fall asleep during the car chase in the shopping mall. I never get any farther. It starts off well, especially when they go to see the nun, but then it gets involved in the music. I thought the scene in the church with James Brown was far too long. I can't judge the other singers because I fall asleep before I get that far. I suppose if you want big names like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, etc. in a film like this, you have to give them quite a fair bit of the action. I may try to watch it next time it comes on TV, but maybe I'd better stay standing!

We see all the Terence Hill / Bud Spencer movies frequently on TV here in Italy. Though "spaghetti westerns" may not be everyone's favourites, there is one thing makes them more true to life than the genuine article: the cowboys are really a dirty bunch! Too often, in US westerns, they are just too clean to be true, considering the conditions they lived in. And do you ever see John Wayne's horse dropping anything as it gallops across the prairie? I'm sure, if it did, they made him reshoot!