Reviews

This is the best mini-series I have ever seen. I watched the 5 episodes and rewatched and rewatched. Everything is perfect: the acting, the writing, everything. It is part historical drama, part horror. Gives an excellent insiders view of the USSR at the time of the disaster. I'll never forget the images of the men in the hospital dying of severe radiation exposure. For those who don't like the Russians speaking with British accents, this is not a documentary. There is something called artistic licence. Great show. Highly recommended.

Wonderful adaptation of the classic Anne of Green Gables. The heart of the shows success has to be the actress playing Anne. She is perfect. Around her is an excellent supporting cast. The cinematography is beautiful, and the direction and writing are top notch. The only problem I have wth this excellent show is sometimes I find it a bit slow. But I truly enjoy this series. It will be hard for someone in the future to top this adaptation. We may be very well watching the standard adaption of this classic tale.

I binged watched all 3 seasons of this excellent show. What can one say? All shots hit the bullseye: acting, cinematography, direction, and most importantly, the writing. If this show can keep up the high standards, I hope it runs for 10 seasons. Probably the best thing Kevin Costner has ever done. 10/10.

A difficult film to fully appreciate the first time around because of its poor editing, it nevertheless deserves multiple viewings. The story has two unique elements that alone make it worth watching: a handsome Muslim hero, and a cast of historically accurate Aryan warriors as his friends. These two things of course being an extreme rarity in that the concept of either Muslim or Aryan warriors as good-guy heroes seems to go against the dictums of Hollywood. The film's best attribute however, is that if you search beneath the surface it actually has some interesting things to say about the power of language and especially the written word as it relates to the remembrance of greatness. Thereby, in a clever way, also making a commentary on the film medium itself as scripts are chosen or rejected by Hollywood, not for quality, but for what perspectives of greatness are deemed worthy of remembrance (and exploitation) and what perspectives should be censored and forgotten.

Why some people like this silly film about a boy and his alien, I will never know. Spielberg has a talent of sacrificing intelligence for pure sentimentality. This film does this with gusto, and of course, there is the ubiquitous Williams score to guide us on our sensitive little journey. These types of Hollywood fables are best left to the Disney animation studios. Or better yet, ask a true film artist like surrealist Jan Svankmajer to redo E. T. so that intelligent people can watch it without gagging on the sickly-sweet Spielberg/Williams "It feels so good to cry" formula.

Harsh and beautiful analysis of existentionalism. All the Sartrean trappings along with an element of Camus are presented in this film better than any other I know. The realization that life is absurd leads the main character to venture towards trying to make meaning out of what is essentially meaninglessness. The intersubjective relationship between man and woman is examined both erotically and violently while the villagers play the crucial role of the everpresent Other. Disturbing ending only underlies the overpowering presence of the sand dunes. The sand being the strongest metaphor in the film, illustrating the belief that life is nothing but a giant and endless egg-timer flowing sand down upon us. Highly recommended.

Part Beuwolf and part lesson in Islam, this film kicks ass. Thank God there is at least one film made where it is cool to be a Muslim. It's hard to believe that Jewish controlled Disney Productions and Hollywood would break from their usual ploy of stereotyping Muslims as terrorists. Lets hope they make more films like this. La illa ha illallah, Mohammedeur rasseleul Allah.

Well acted and written film. However, it follows in a long tradition in Western culture of romanticizing white-trash. The recipe is usually the same. Take a working class loser, make him very handsome, brave, charming, and extremely intelligent, then contrast him against well educated people who are shown to be sexually frustrated, neurotic, and otherwise unhappy, and you create a white-trash hero. "Good Will Hunting" plays this game very effectively. By the end of the film it has you believing the classic lie that education is unnecessary and all that matters in life is that you get the girl. Still, a good film at what it tries to do. However, one should watch an episode of Jerry Springer after seeing this film to remember what uneducated white-trash are really like.

What more can be said of this film than already has been? Albert Dieudonné's unforgettable presence, combined with Abel Gance's genius makes this a timeless masterpiece. Although it only traces Napoléon's early rise from childhood to the dawn of his first step into immortality, it is still perhaps the greatest biography ever done on film.

Svankmager`s little known masterpiece is a refreshing take on the extremely influential Alice in Wonderland story. Almost staying literally within Carroll`s tale, Svankmager does not reinvent Alice so much as give us another dimension to the story. Gone is the sickly sweet Disney-like telling of the story, and in its place the rather creepy dimension of Carroll`s genius. We are reminded just how dark a story this is. A girl goes into a hole in the ground and faces unsympathetic animal-like creatures, does hallucinogenic mushrooms (which Svankmager changes to rather repulsive looking cookies), and faces judgement from a cruelly violent inquisitor.

Somehow Svankmager is able to bring all this inherent creepyness back to the surface where it has been mostly hidden from view. The result is a much more interesting story.

Anyone familiar with the work of Arthur C. Clarke knows that his trademark is the intersection of science fiction and religious allegory. Nothing shows this more than in "2001: A Space Odyssey". Actually, this film is not really science fiction at all but more entrenched in religious themes, especially those of the Middle-East (Judeao-Christianity and Islam). This may in fact be the most religious film ever made. If anything, it is essentially a scientific (or SF) exploration of Creation through to Revelation. The symbols throughout the film are hard not to miss. There is Dave the space pilot (king David, or possibly the Son of David, as Jesus is described in the New Testament). There is HAL as the polite but super intelligent evil force that wants to prevent the final chapter of humanity's journey. Indeed the film's main theme is shared with the theme of religion: birth, death and rebirth. There is an unmistakable emphasis on birth and death in the film. (A warning for those who have yet to experience the film for I am going to talk about some of the important scenes.) Birthday's are mentioned at least three times officially and implied at other times. We witness the birth (or Dawn) of humans, the birth of consciousness, the birth of technology. In the scene with Haywood Floyd's daughter the talk is about missing her birthday party. Frank calls home from the ship and his parents sing him happy birthday. We even hear HAL talk about his "birthday" at the computer manufacturer on earth. Along with all these mentions of birth are the ones of death. HAL's death, Frank's death, the early man's (Cain and Abel?) death at the beginning of the film. There are so many religious references they can't all be mentioned. Thus, this is not a science fiction film and certainly not an action film. It will bore the "Star Wars" crowd. Instead it is a beautifully filmed intellectual excursion into humanity's past and their proposed destiny. The film's final conclusion on its theme is left up to the viewer. It is infamously opaque at giving up its answers. After all, it is religious allegory yet with the famous Also Sprache Zarathustra score. Thus, it is God and Nietzsche put together, neither one being known for their clarity. Yet, it is in this way, that the film most mirrors the religious themes it analyzes. We don't really know why we're here or what existence is about. We have religion, philosophy, and science as resources, yet in the end, its all a big wonderful mystery that forces us to wait and see how it finishes. "2001" asks us to take this patient and thought-filled journey to see how it might end. However, it can never tell us the why, only the possibility of how we will get there.

Watching this film, one feels as if they are moving through a Spanish art gallery, each warm painting beckoning us to not only enter its world but to judge it with our own. This is really the main theme in "The Spirit of the Beehive". What is the world and humanity really like? We are asked to compare our world with the dreamlike state of film, the insect world of the beehive, and most importantly, the innocence of childhood. Against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, the film starts with the children of a small village going to see Whale's incomparable retelling of Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein". For those of us who have read the book, we know that it is not really a story about monsters made from dead bodies. It is a story about human nature. A being, not asking to be born, (Shelly's very human-like man whose name in the book is Adam) finds himself thrown into a hostile world. A violent world of fear and ignorance where the only crime he seems to have violated is that he is different. Yet, "Frankenstein" is only a horror movie, right? Or is the monster, as little Ana's sister teases her, real? Ana decides to find out. Her journey forces us to not only see how the world is, but ask why. This is what separates this film from many others that have tried to tell the story of a child eventually learning the hard truths about life. We can explain how, but can we really explain why the world is the way it is? Can we explain this to a small child let alone to ourselves? For those who have not seen the film, a warning for I feel I must say something about how it ends. Perhaps the most haunting and memorable scene is at the end where little Ana looks out into the night of war-torn Spain and we feel as if she has found the answer to her quest. Almost ghost-like in the darkness, she slowly turns to face the camera as if asking for us to now deny or confirm. We have nothing to say.

The first thing that strikes you when you see "The Black Stallion" is its cinematography. However the vivid colours are only the doorway into the film. It is important to remember that the title is not "The Stallion" but "The Black Stallion". It is the title's first announcement of bold colour and the connotations of power in "Stallion" that introduce a richness of dichotomies. There is the black horse and the white boy (would the film really have been the same with the ubiquitous white horse?). There is the contrast between the horse's power and the boy's frailty. The scenes on the island and the scenes in the city. Indeed, the film's running time is almost split down the middle between this last contrast. There is also the contrast between the boy and the old man he befriends, and many others. But most importantly, there is the contrast between solitude and companionship. There are a lot of lonely characters in this film. Everyone from the horse to the boy, to the trainer to the boy's mother seem to be trying to struggle through life on their own. It is this quest to deal with loneliness that is the film's most profound achievement. It is not so much a condemnation of solitude as an analysis between its benefits compared to the benefits of companionship. Whether or not "The Black Stallion" answers these questions is something the viewer will have to decide for themselves. I believe the film asks more questions than it answers. Although some may find the film's ending a bit too predictable and sacharine tasting, the overall effect of the film's beauty and its questions concerning solitude and survival, erase any minor faults the movie may contain. Part "Androcles and the Lion" and part "National Velvet", "The Black Stallion" is more than a childrens' movie. It brings together the "blackness" (as in the black void of space) of loneliness with the stallion's individual power to show how all of us are alone in a fundamental way but that we also have an ability within us to not only survive but draw great things from it. We can fulfill through our particular skills and abilities the necessary requirement of helping each other without losing the strength we receive from our individual independence and uniqueness.