Reviews

I enjoyed this film, but cannot understand why this would be classified as a comedy. I saw it on TV and the announcer said it as a comedy, and on this site it is listed as a comedy, as well as under crime and drama. It is a crime drama, but not a heavy one. It is light and has its amusing moments, but I found that the scenery was also very interesting.

The chase scene was great, except it was a bit unbelievable, as the man with the suitcase running away from the crooks never seemed to get tired. He was like a super athlete.

Worth seeing, but do not expect a comedy. As a drama it works well.

This is another film in the Time Life series of Bible films, and in "Esther" we see the events of the book of Esther from the Old Testament played out in a convincing and realistic way. The film sticks closely to the Bible narrative, even using the script word for word from the Bible, at least from the New King James Version, which I read along with the film while watching. Acting is excellent, and Louise Lombard does well in the title role. F Murray Abraham, an excellent actor, plays the part of Mordecai very well, and Thomas Kretschmann, whom I had not previously heard of, does an excellent job as King Ahaseurus. Jürgen Prochnow does a good job of playing the evil Haman, and by the time Haman is executed, I was hating Haman for his evil crimes, and regarding Mordecai, Esther and Ahaseurus with great admiration. The film also uses other Biblical characters, not mentioned in the book of Esther, but whose books come before Esther in the Bible, i.e. Ezra and Nehemiah. I am not sure if they were contemporary with Esther, or shortly after her time, but the way they are used in the film fits in very well with the story. I had previously seen a 1950s film with Joan Collins about Esther, which was totally wrong and mostly made up, whereas this film is very true to the Bible and worth seeing. Even if you have never read the Bible or know the story of Esther, I would recommend this film as it is a great film in its own right, and very enjoyable and watchable.

Do we want a future like this?

A world where everyone has a job, everyone has a room mate who is perfectly matched and everyone is useful, with no real crime like violence, no disease...

Where we are controlled in every way, with drug usage to stop our natural urges to love, and to keep us sedated so we don't rebel? Where love is a crime, as is not taking drugs (the medication that everyone must take), and where life has no fun, no meaning and there is no love.

George Lucas gives us here a great vision of what the future would be like if we let is be so, if we forget who and what we are, and where we came from.

This is not just a science fiction film about people living in a world that is strange to us, but is, rather, what the world would be like without all the things we love so much today, the things which mean the most to us, such as family, marriage, love, romance, fun, outdoors, countryside, freedom. But in a world where the state has ultimate control and everything is run by computer, where you go see a psychiatrist which is nothing more than a photo of the great "leader" or founder of the society (whoever he was, in whose image we are told we are made, the image of a man), and the voice you hear in response to your concerns is just played from a tape in some hidden room.

Definite undertones of a world without God, a world where darkness rules but it pretends we are all in the light, hence everything is white. Where people bow down to worship a holographic image, and are told they are made in the image of man. Where economics and finance are the new religion, where everything has a budget, and if you exceed that budget you must terminate the project.

"Buy more, buy more now", the booth tells you as you leave. Not only was George Lucas a great visionary with Star Wars, but in THX 1138 we see another view of what is really a warning to mankind not to go the wrong way. A kind of call to repentance before it is too late, otherwise we create a world for ourselves in which we never see the true light. Only at the end, when THX 1138 left the city did he see the true light of the sun, rather than the artificial bright white lights underground.

All very symbolic of something greater and reminiscent of prophecies in the Bible.

Also, in regards to ideas in the movie, I see George Lucas using ideas that he later used in Star Wars, such as the holographic TV viewing, and the holographic man who was worshipped, who looked very much like Darth Sidius/Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars movies with his hooded cloak.

This is not too much like the Scooby Doo cartoons to be boring or silly, although the opening scene is.

Most of the film is set on Spooky Island, and the team try to unravel the mystery as to what is going on. Brilliant ending.

Some good deleted scenes on the extras section of this DVD which are worth watching too. Well made animation and acting, it has the feel of the original where the cartoon was good, but not the bad parts of the old cartoons.

This film is more science fiction/comedy than a kids cartoon-type story, and I would not recommend it for young children, it is more an adult version of Scooby Doo, (although nothing to get it an 18-rating). All innocent fun, but some scenes might be scary to children.

Spoilers: I like the way they dealt with the most awful cartoon character ever, Scrappy Doo, when they threw him out of the van, in a flashback. I thought, hooray, Scrappy Doo is gone for good! I hated him always, he ruined the cartoons when I used to watch it years ago as a kid. But then they brought him back as the evil bad guy at the end, which was kind of weird, to think that all along Scrappy Doo was evil and not so good or cute after all, as some have said he was. I knew he was bad, i.e. he ruined the cartoons, but did not expect him to turn out so evil in the film -- which made for a very interesting and surprising ending. Well done the film makers, for finally putting Scrappy Doo in the level of the poo where he belongs.

This was an interesting and pleasant film, although it was obviously a low-budget movie. As a potential film maker myself, I was mostly interested in those parts about making films.

The acting was variable, sometimes good, sometimes not so. The main actors who played David and Natalie were fairly good, as was Andre and Alan, but some of the minor characters were too amateur.

I liked the plot, and I liked the ending, where they get together, but it was a bit too easy how she went from Alan to David in the church so quickly. Also, what was the thing about Alan and Natalie getting married, but when David gets to the church, he finds a different couple getting married, but Alan and Natalie are there anyway? I noticed the groom was the man from the prison whom Natalie had talked into releasing his hostages. The guardian angel, Frank, was not so well acted or written.

I liked the bits showing his movement across the country, with the map on the sphere, and the red line showing where he went, with appropriate sound effects.

I think I can learn from this movie about making movies, and hopefully one day I too will make a good film, hopefully better than this one -- learning from the mistakes of this.

But overall I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in making films.

This was a great film. The story is of a man (Julius Benedict, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) who grows up on a tropical island with a scientist, and knows nothing of modern society. Then one day he finds out he has a twin brother in L.A. He was also told that his mother died giving birth to him and his brother. When he gets to L.A. he finds his brother, who appears to be nothing like him, sort of an opposite person entirely, although they share some things in common. Julius is very pleasant, sensible, intelligent, Vincent, his brother, is a petty car thief and always getting into trouble. Julius goes looking for where their mother lived and finds she is gone. He finds one of his 6 fathers, but not his mother. He is given an address in New Mexico to find a scientist who was at his birth. (Julius was part of a secret govt experiment to produce a superhuman man). He goes with his brother Vincent to find the scientist, who tells them their mother is alive and well and living near Santa Fe. So they go off looking for her, find her but don't realise it, as she thinks they are tricking her. She was lied to as well, being told that her son was dead, and nothing about the twin son who was born 1 minute later.

Add to that some villains chasing the brothers as Vincent is driving a stolen car with a secret jet engine stored in the back, and some comedy along the way, and some magnificent scenery along the way.

I thought the relationship between the two twins was great, very well done, and believable. What they said about being a family was very moving. And at the end it all works out well.

An excellent film about relationships, family, and what is important in life, and about how to do the right thing, when at the end the twins do the right thing and get rewarded.

I recommend this film. If you view it as a violent movie about beating the criminals, it can work on that level, if you view it as a comedy it is quite good too, but as a film about family and relationships is where it really works best, view this with an open heart.

This is one of John Candy's best films, and with the beautiful Ally Sheedy playing his romantic interest, we have a story that is more about romance than comedy. The comedy is there, but at just the right level to not interfere with the romance.

The story is about a policeman who meets a young woman who works for her undertaker father. She makes the dead bodies look beautiful, and as she does not get out much, and does not get much conversation from her clients (as they are dead), she is very introverted, but Candy's character really brings out the best in her. Their first date looks like a disaster, but she says she really enjoyed herself, and certainly nothing was bad about it. Candy was talking all the time, she was listening and found it hard to open up, but she really enjoyed it, no doubt as she was happy to listen to someone talk instead of a bunch of dead people who say nothing. She was comfortable with him. So the relationship grew, but Candy's mother hates her, before even meeting her. The mother is Irish, and very hateful towards everyone she does not know, especially towards Sicilians, as Sheedy's character is half Sicilian. The comedy is at its best when the three of them are at dinner, and the mother attacks Sheedy viciously, but the way she does it makes for good comedy, a great piece of scriptwriting.

The main problem in their relationship is that Sheedy feels that Candy's life is ruled by his mother, and she won't commit to him until he puts his girlfriend before his wife. They get engaged and are about to get married, but she gets upset when he calls his mother to make sure she got home okay. I thought his actions were reasonable, given that she was offered a lift home by a very drunk Irish man, and Sheedy was very concerned that he was not putting her first. So neither of them turned up at their wedding the next day.

Eventually they get together and it works out, and has a happy ending. I enjoyed this film and would recommend it to anyone who wants a heartwarming romance or just to see how a relationship can turn out good when people make the right choices and put each other first.

This was an excellent film and even better than the first film. In this we see how the character of Peter Parker and Spiderman are developed and his relationships with those around him, and with a great ending. Special effects brilliant, although some of the fight scenes and other complicated scenes, although done well, were still noticeably computer generated rather than acted and filmed for real, such as the fight on the train, on the roof and the sides of it.

Spoiler: Well written and well acted, and I loved that at last Mary Jane knows who Spiderman is and they become a couple at the end. Of course we also see near the end the green goblin suit and the son, Harry, being tempted by the Dark Side/Satan, who masquerades as his dead father in the mirror. In the first film we saw Satan take over Norman Osborne, and the third film will undoubtedly see Harry being taken over too.

This is a great film, it gives us an idea of what is to come, according to the Bible (although I don't believe they got everything right in this film) and shows us how the Antichrist could set about deceiving the world and setting up an evil world system that wants to hunt down and destroy all true followers of Christ. I thought it was well-acted, well written and the directing, filming, etc., was very well done. One mistake they made: even though the film was made in or just before 1998, they had Prague as being in Czechoslovakia. That country ceased to exist in 1992, and from 1 Jan 1993 there are now two countries in its place, Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is a common mistake made by some Americans who don't bother to know what is going on in the world including the less important countries.

This is one of the best Biblical films I have ever seen. It is about prophecy, especially those prophecies in the Book of Revelation. Very well acted and written, I especially liked the ending.

I believe this is part of a series of films, but this is the first of them that I saw, and is very watchable without having seen the first film before this.

If you're not a Christian or a believer in the Bible, watch this film and see if it changes your mind. I was already a believer but this film really helps strengthen faith.

spoilers: I really like the way that Thorold started as unbeliever, but became a believer by the end of the film, even rejecting Satan completely when confronted by him. It showed that Satan is the father of lies and that we cannot trust him. Thorold saw Satan for what he is, and in the end he and the other believers were saved, which was very well done and reminiscent of Daniel's friends in the Bible.