Reviews

There really aren't enough good things I can say about "C'era una volta il West" (aka Once Upon a Time in the West). The film seeks to be effective with unconventional techniques rather than using conventional techniques well.

In many typical movies, you could remove the background music entirely, or switch the music segments around in different scenes and the effect of the movie would not be any different. In fact, the background music in many movies seems like a contrived plan to make sure that all the top 40 hits appearing on the soundtrack CD get included somehow. The music in this film was so critical to the images of its characters and scenes that the effectiveness of the film would be greatly diminished without it.

In most movies, the acting is a combination of speech and personality. The irony of this film is that the best acting in it often occurs without a word being said. Long periods of silence occurred frequently, not just to build suspense, but to let the audience experience the emotions and personalities of the characters.

The film goes overboard in its disdain for the images portrayed on television during the 50's. While we can all laugh at the cheesiness of "Leave it to Beaver" and its 'golly gee whiz' look and feel, I don't feel that such shows deserve the scorn Pleasantville heaps upon them. In fact many shows from that era have a loyal following and continue to appear on rerun channels.

Thank goodness the bimbo Mary Sue Parker was able to go to bed with everyone and save Pleasantville from its goody-goody nature. Since no one ever did any hanky-panky in the 50s, it was fascinating to envision what that would have been like. The only redeeming moment for her was her change of attitude, her realization that this kind of life went nowhere.

The notion that movies or television have an obligation to address every one of society's ills is as narrow minded as many of the antagonist characters in Pleasantville. While there are lots of good films that do that, many successful films do not. Pleasantville exaggerated the flaws of its characters to the point of being overly unrealistic.

The film sure has an awfully arrogant premise. It's as if the film is saying "Look how enlightened we '90s people are and how politically and culturally deprived you '50s people are." The people in the 2030's are going to say the same things about the people of today. What else is new?

Pleasantville's message is nothing new. To be culturally enlightened you have to read "Catcher in the Rye" and like nude paintings and sculptures. Only 10 million literature professors have said the same thing.

When I saw the trailers about Pleasantville, I thought it was going to be a satirical look at the cheesiness of 1950s entertainment. This is an approach that could have been quite successful. I was looking forward to seeing this instead of being lectured for two hours.

As much as I laughed at this movie, I felt that it could have gotten its message across in about an hour or less. There was some very clever satire, but the excessive, repetitive use of vulgar language and overuse of musical scenes became tiresome. The scenes with Satan and Saddam Hussein did little for this movie.

I appreciated the satire regarding Brooke Shields, The Baldwin family, Liza Minelli et al. It was very cleverly done and expressed my feelings about overrated celebrities accurately.

While I agree with the message that parents should be ultimately responsible for policing their children, you have to keep that message in perspective. Parker and Stone would profit more if parents show the same lack of authority with their children who want to see this movie as the cartoon parents did when their kids wanted to see "Asses of Fire".

This movie like many others, fights for the first amendment and sends a message about the protection of free speech, even when the message is vulgar or sexually explicit. I have no problem with that, but I have doubts about the sincerity of the messenger. Do you think that Parker and Stone would fight just as hard (if at all) for freedom of speech if Christian books, tapes and CDs were being burned instead of ones laced with vulgar language and sexually explicit material?

Paul Sorvino does a decent job playing Joe Torre, but his performance cannot overcome the low budget look and feel the movie had.

The movie re-enacted a fight scene in a game that the Yankees played on the road in Seattle. Up until a week ago (6/27/99) the Mariners played their home games at the Kingdome, inside and on artificial turf. The fight scene in Seattle takes place outdoors with sunlight and on grass!

In scenes that took place during games, different filming techniques were used to make these scenes appear as though they were taken from televised footage. It looks like the intent was to seamlessly integrate that with actual game footage to give the appearance that the combination of the two came from the same broadcast. It wasn't effective; the end result being that the package was more "seamy" than it would have been otherwise.

The actors who depicted actual ballplayers were overall not very authentic. Only the actor who played Dwight Gooden and the actor who played Mariano Duncan were even halfway convincing. The actor playing David Cone looked like a person that had never played baseball who was trying to act like a baseball player.

Baseball fans are sticklers for details. To make a successful baseball movie, you have to take the time to make sure the details are right. Use authentic jerseys and at least try to duplicate the appearance of a game venue accurately if you can't use the actual venue itself. Get actors who know how to act and talk like baseball players.

I can remember the previews for LS in late 1997, early 1998. It was hyped up quite a bit six months before it came to the theatres. After hearing the preliminary reviews, I waited for video. It was the right decision.

I think that the opening scenes with the battle were some of the greatest effects I had seen. The rest of the movie delivers well in that area.

I did not like the finger wagging the movie took towards the male characters. Besides, much of it did not make sense. Maureen Robinson threatens to declare her husband and the major unfit for duty (for arguing) without regard to who's going to fly the ship or what effect it would have on her marriage. I thought it was curious for her to start a p****ing contest of her own on the premise that the two men were wrongfully engaging in one themselves.

Heather Graham does not add much in her role as a doctor. I can think of two actresses (Jeri Ryan, Linda Fiorentino) who could have done better and there are probably dozens who could have done equally as well.

The two youngest Robinsons were good in their roles. The inhibited teenage daughter was well done by Lacey Chabert and Jack Johnson played the young scientist convincingly.

Jonathan Pryce would have made a better intellectual villain as Dr. Smith, but Matt LeBlanc and William Hurt were OK in their roles as the Major and Professor Robinson respectively.

All in all, I'd give it a 6 out of 10.

Pushing Tin gives us a glance at the less than glamorous job of being an air traffic controller, but it's more about ego battles and human weakness than anything else.

The human traits highlighted in the film could have been played by doctors, lawyers or corporate executives, but we've all been there before. A show about air traffic controllers was a fresh concept.

I liked the way the movie illustrated the concept of group depravity: how the supporting characters took bets on other co-workers, the gossiping and the cat-calling when a controller struggled.

I took away points for some scenes that I thought weren't realistic and added nothing to the movie. For example, the scene with the 747 flying over the people on the runway is fake. The turbulence behind such a large plane could slam another jetliner on the ground. What do you think it would do to two people? In real life, the extensive conversations and singing on the radio while the area is loaded with air traffic would not be tolerated.

However, the battle of egos between the two main characters makes up for whatever faults the movie has. In all fairness to the writers, real life air traffic controllers are probably a pretty dry bunch and would not be entertaining if shown as is.

This is just another variation of the Naked Gun humor which has gotten old. Furthermore, the characters are not authentic enough to make this a good spoof. Lloyd Bridges is not the first person I would cast as a mafia don. Christina Applegate isn't even 30 yet and she's playing the role of a president?

To indicate how much I did not enjoy this movie: I was often stopping the tape to check in on live TV to see how my favorite baseball team was doing. They were getting clobbered, yet I was more interested in that game than I was in this movie.

This is a better movie than the average score might suggest. The characters in this movie were interesting and convincing. Burt Lancaster portrayed the role of the airport manager married to his job so well. The lack of time with his family, his sense of obligation to keep the airport running and his clashes with the city councilman were realistic. George Kennedy, one of the best supporting actors of all time, was a great cowboy mechanic. Helen Hayes was appropriately awarded a best supporting actress award for her role as an elderly woman who exploits her senior citizen status and the gullibility of airline workers to get free flights.

One of my biggest pet peeves in movies is a blatant ignorance of anything technical. Among many things, I was pleased to see that radio protocol between the pilots and air traffic controllers was consistent with what you would experience at a real airport. There was none of the "Roger Wilco, over and out" rubbish that you often hear in other movies where radios are used.

Taxi Driver has some definite strengths, but scenes that did not fit into the plot and an ending that seemed unrealistic hurt what could have been an excellent movie.

I thought that Robert DeNiro was solid in playing the role of Travis, a loner who becomes a cab driver. After incessant exposure to crime and sleaze in New York City, Travis decides it's his job to clean up the streets. The knee-jerk anger, the obsessiveness and delusions that Travis experience were convincing and done well by DeNiro.

The problem I had was with some scenes that did not make sense. There is no way in real life anyone could get away with the vigilante tactics shown in this movie, especially in New York City, unless no one discovered who the vigilante was. The movie started to paint a picture of a man who could not get over being rejected by a woman, but failed to follow through on this idea as the plot suddenly focused on other topics.

This movie illustrates the atrocity of war better than any war movie I have seen. With its excellent cinematography and use of horrifying background music, Apocalypse Now gives a heavy dose of the living hell that often was the Vietnam War.

One of the points this movie makes is that no one survives war. Many people died from gunfire and other weapons that cause a physical death, but the ones who survive the physical attacks die a different sort of death: A loss of innocence, a loss of a sense of purpose and a loss of sanity. It's a very sobering movie, one that will place your own personal struggles in perspective.

You have to wonder if the contemporary movies we enjoy today would not be so enjoyable if they did not have any special effects. Not that such movies are bad in and of themselves, but lately the trend seems to be to err on the side of dazzling high tech illusions rather than on the side of good acting. Twelve Angry Men shows that there is no substitute for good acting.

As viewers, we're not being asked to solve a murder case here. The focus is on the jurors, their personalities, prejudices and conflicts with each other while they deliberate. The actors were so convincing in their roles I often associated some of the characters with people I have known.

When the hitchhiker bailed out of the convertible early on, I wondered if it wasn't so much to get away from the two doped-out characters or to escape the agony of watching this movie for another hour and forty minutes.

I really could not see what the point of this movie was. It looks like it was to see how stoned the main characters could get on various controlled substances, how stupid they could act and how much property damage they could inflict in the process.

I would have liked to see the two main characters be sober for part of the movie to compare and contrast their thoughts, feelings, and behavior between when they were high and when they were sober.