Reviews

Loved Azimov for 45 years. Couldn't BELIEVE how awful a movie could be made from the highest quality material. The worst issue: stunningly horrible acting from the whole ensemble, as if forced emotion and stilted delivery were contagious. I had to stop after ten minutes, tried again the next day, stopped after another ten minutes solely due to the acting. I have loved movies all my life and own 1475 movies. First impression is that this was the worst acting I ever saw in my life.

I'm sure there are other areas I could address, but I couldn't get interested enough to carry on. I also looked in this website to see if most people saw that same travesty I did. THEY did too.

This movie has the most tear-jerking moment I ever saw on a movie screen: "Reuben's mother isn't coming." You'd have to see it in context.

Later we find out why Reuben's mother (Gena Rowlands) won't come and she's right: it would be cruel to a retarded boy and we learn a real-life lesson in great parenthood.

I was in college in the '60s looking for anything to do besides study for an exam. I saw this movie listed and wouldn't have watched it if Burt Lancaster weren't in it. Then as the credits rolled the hits just kept on happening. I couldn't believe this many major people were involved including Stanley Kramer as producer and John Cassavetes directing. As a supporting actor, few people ever choose scripts better than Paul Stewart.

Gena Rowlands is one of the all-time people I'd love to meet. I have 1400 movies on tape and I show them in retirement homes. The first movie I show in all of them is "Lonely Are the Brave," Kirk Douglas's favorite thing he ever did, with Gena as support. Best line: "If it didn't take men to have babies I wouldn't have anything to do with any of you."

"Gloria" is the first movie I ever rented. In the retirement homes I show the scene where she suddenly shoots up a car to defend a child and the old people say "Good for her!"

Back to "A Child Is Waiting," maybe it's just my love of children, I don't know why this movie isn't more famous.

No, radio characters often don't lend themselves to a visual medium, and this no exception.

Bergen and McCarthy look ridiculous. Bergen was always an obvious ventriloquist who kept moving his head to distract people from seeing his lips move so obviously. And then the worst, acting as if Charlie McCarthy is able to sit by himself and even answer the phone. Waaaaay better on radio.

Gildersleeve probably comes off better on screen than on radio because he's such a buoyant character to behold.

Lucy at the time was eye candy, and later it became harder to view her as so feminine.

Nevertheless, the audience of the day got to see people they loved for years. It was probably well worth it in the day. They likely suspended all of the shortcomings and came away feeling warm.

When I first heard about the movie I thought, "What?", same feeling (not kidding) with "Ishtar" in 1987. This has been done. The Ira Hayes story was told in "The Outsider" in 1961, and his life is well known anyway.

The opening scene of an old man looking back was done in "Private Ryan." Gawdawful repetitious sequences of drunken Ira and bond selling. We get the idea....in fact 7-8 times we got the idea.

People are afraid not to like "noble" movies like this or "United 93," which was clearly done by a TV director and is likewise lame like TV movies.

I went to see it because Clint just doesn't make mistakes. Well, he made a big one here.

Still another in a long line of "noble" movies that people are afraid not to like. It used to be that all those awful old sword and sandal epics had to win awards. Now it's the docudramas that escape the TV screens for wide release. I suspected from the pulled-punches style that this just HAD to be made by a former TV director. Sure enough...check his credits! The action by the passengers is relatively bloodless, there is no shocking plane crash, and there is no aftermath of the carnage. You want to show horror? Show the horror, the massacre, don't try to be "tasteful." The names of the people who acted are known. Why not identify these heroes? The man who said "Let's go" was known to be on the phone or we wouldn't know he said it. Tell us who this honored hero was rather than make everyone anonymous.

Don't be afraid to admit this is lame.

I was expecting something very different. If you're going to tell this story, show the horror. First and foremost there should be the carnage, the horror, and the immediacy of it all. Instead of one man jumping to his death, show dozens raining down. Tell it!!! The air was PINK!!! All we see are a few reaction shots. We see minor injuries instead of a "Gone with the Wind" devastation of acres of screaming men, one of the highest impact shots in movie history. If you're going to tell the story of World Trade or Rwanda, you don't pull punches just so kids can see it.

There should also be dozens of heroes saying "I'm going in!" as a hundred others rush forward behind them. There should more than one or two comments about getting "them." When Kennedy was killed we were instantly ready to quit college and jobs to fix bayonets and get "them." There is merit in intermittently bringing the story very personally down to two lives and families, but this is way too narrow and calm. Micro instead of macro. Both can be done alternately, personal then broadly. Way too much down time, at least 30 minutes of conversation between two trapped men.

However, once again we're going to see "king's new clothes" reviews, people afraid not to like something noble.

In spite of it all I WAS in tears a number of times.

There are so many noble movies that are given way too much credit. It's the king's new clothes again and again.

I was repeatedly disappointed when there appeared to be the beginning of a really great plot development, only to see it go nowhere. 3-4 opportunities lost. What if he left the baby on the woman's doorstep, spent days watching her care for it, then somehow worked himself into her life? Now she loves the baby, and he tells her it has to go back to his real mom. Far more interesting, as would many other directions.

One and only one powerful moment: the ants crawling on the baby. Images of the neglected infant were the most compelling.

Not too far from the original novel, compares well with the '53 Geogre Pal version. Tripods are Wells, the shape of the spaceships are Pal. All it needs is one less overwrought character: Tim Robbins. When I taped it I edited out most of his part. He's just stuck in there like he's a friend of Spielberg in need of a buck. I also felt this way in Clint Eastwood's "The Unforgiven": edit out Richard Harris and you have an intact, faster moving flick.

There was publicity that Gene Barry from the '53 version has a no-line appearance at the very end as Grandpa. Alongside him was Ann Robinson, the female interest in '53.

Little thing: Ann is the sister of Jay Robinson, the evil Roman emperor in "The Robe."

I've been waiting months to see this because I couldn't believe it would work. Does it ever! The highlight is clearly as everyone agrees: the obnoxious (to most) Gilbert Gottfried steals the show with his telling a few days after 911. People weren't sure if was time to laugh yet. Gottfried took the audience totally away from the day and the Hefner roast. Total distraction with an irrelevant 70 y.o. joke that everyone knew, a joke that only comedians tell each other to see who's best. Gottfried defused the tension by bonding people who laugh together when they were they afraid of being PC. It's not that he told funniest the version ever, but under the conditions it was.

The punchline is meaningless compared to the outrageous telling. Maybe Penn Jillette put in too many people who fell flat, but he wanted 100 of them. It's tedious when any comedian isn't inventive. One woman (whose name I don't know) got a huge laugh by telling a tame version, then exploding with a sudden unexpected punchline, the ONLY punchline in the movies.

Then there was George Carlin, a partial telling by Gottfried, and an astonishingly clever telling by a man with a deck of cards, delivered at breakneck speed.

Stop what you're doing, grab everyone you know, and run to see this unprecedented masterpiece, a film uniquely without peer at what it tries to do and does.

"The joke ain't funny if you try to explain it." Oh yes it is.

What in the world could John Huston have been thinking of. It appears he had full rein in Italy and they let him do what he wanted with no editing or studio interference.

He casts himself as God, narrator, and Noah, giving him about an hour of face/voice time.

The Noah sequence is lengthy since he's the star, and the Abrahman sequence goes on forever with George C. Scott being oh-so-noble without break. Ava Gardner could have phoned in her part as Abraham's wife.

A little less Noah and Abraham and there might have been time to MENTION David and one or ten other people we seem to have heard of.

A retelling of Jean-Paul Sartre's 1943 prize winner "No Exit" about lusty people in hell, stuck forever in a room with someone totally sexuality incompatible.

In the play a playboy, a manish lesbian, and a flaky young woman find out they are all dead. The man and the lesbian vie for the young woman, who keeps changing her mind. Then they realize this is hell, and "hell is other people."

"Miss Jones" finishes her last 24 hours sinning without break break just for the experience since she's going to hell anyway. She is then marooned in a room with a madman who is more concerned with flies than her naked body.

It could be worse. What if they were insurance salesmen?

We're talking king's new clothes for people who claim to like this thing. Imagine a pretentious couple having a drink after seeing Japon, each feigning excitement so the other will think they have a brain. Japon doesn't go anywhere and doesn't do anything.

I have 1400 movies on tape and my favorite is Kurosawa's Rashomon, so it's not like I don't have a clue what quality is. Japon looks like some auteur is thumbing his nose at us and daring us to laugh at his "work." Laughter would be an emotion, something Japon won't get from any rational intelligent being.

Why not find Andy Warhol's "Empire," where he has a camera at the foot of the Empire State building and points it at the sky for a day. It must be art because Warhol did it?

This is a great story with great acting and great dialog. Vivien Leigh was never more beautiful. The dying words of Lord Nelson are historically accurate; he really did speak repeatedly of Emma Hamilton, his lover in spite of being married.

In 1964 Time did an article about the influx of great foreign movies, and a scene from this was on the cover. The cover shot was the boy and the woman about to kiss for the first time. I was very young, pure, and Catholic, and this kiss looked very sensual in those days. When I saw the movie I had never seen such a perfect kiss, and there had probably never been one like it on American screens. I look at it now and it's no big deal, but then it affected me deeply. I saw it alone and a few days later had a date with girl who didn't really care for me. It all changed when I kissed her goodnight....and she asked me to stay a while. So for me, this is the movie that taught me how to kiss a woman. That was almost 40 years ago and the memory warms me.

Comedy is very personal, but how could anyone not be ROFL over this one. It was panned by most critics and yet I don't know anyone who doesn't love it. Many big laughs. Performances alternately understated and overstated. Not only is comedy personal, but the appeal of various comics changes over time (Bob Hope isn't popular with people under 40, Laurel and Hardy endure). This comedy may have long legs. Note that many IMDB comments are current as people give it another look 15 years later.

This movie was tied up for years due to royalty rights since 11 cowboy stars of the late '50s appear in cameos helping Bob Hope in the final shootout. Note that Gene Autry and James Garner do not appear in the current product, though they were in the original.

Then there is an owl-eyed kid named Harry Truman playing the piano. Bob clubs a gila monster ("The mice sure grow big around here"), then realizes he used a rattlesnake.

I've shown this tape to many people, and all agree it's the best Bob Hope movie and one of the funniest movies they've ever seen.

What movie did the critics see? Are they afraid NOT to like something independent and "noble"?

When I got home after seeing this I tried to find critics who saw the same movie I did. Only two of them said: (1) The dialog is unintelligible and needs subtitles. (2) The entire film is shot with a jerky handheld camera and gave me a headache. (3) Why are there several black frames inserted between scenes?

This is one of the few movies in my life I ever walked out on, as did many others in the university neighborhood showing the film.