Reviews

I wonder why it is that I was so unmoved by this film? Given the subject matter and the undoubted expertise of the director and cast, I was surprised by my reaction. Maybe the real-life events are so fresh in our memories. There is no shortage of extant newsreel footage. We`ve all seen the real archive shots of the concentration camps and been moved to tears by them. SCHINDLER`S LIST, beautifully shot in glossy monochrome, is a million miles away from the coarse-grained newsreels. It looks like an expensive Hollywood movie, and that`s part of the problem. If Spielberg chose monochrome for its realism, why then did he resort to the trickery of pinpointing the girl in red? Either you want realism or not. Most people I have spoken to thought the treatment of the little girl in red was wonderful.But it annoyed me intensely for its manipulation of the audience. I also felt that some of the performances where not as they should be. Liam Neeson failed to convince, especially in his final breakdown scene.Ralph Fiennes just about got away with a one-dimensional "nast nazi". Only Ben Kingsley gave a totally believable and absorbing performance. If all the other performances had been of this high level we may have had a truer and therefore better movie. The only time I felt any real emotion was in the final section, when we saw the real survivors and relatives.Who needs glossy Hollywood biopics when reality is so available. The staged fictions of SCHINDLER`S LIST will always be insignificant when measured against the newsreels Can anyone ever make a convincing Holocaust movie? Probably not.

I don`t think that I`ve enjoyed a movie so much for years. The film is beautifully shot ( the opening pan over a snow laden New York skyline is breathtaking). The acting is uniformly excellent (Jennifer Jason Lee gives one of the best female comedy performances of the last decade. She`s outstanding!) and the film is directed in that warm but sharp-eyed manner of previous US social comedy directors such as Frank Capra and Preston Sturgess. I first saw the film in the cinema. I`ve since seen it again on television, and the photography doesn`t impress so much on the small screen.

If you haven`t already seen it, try to see it on a big screen. Sadly the movie got a very small release in the UK and is almost unknown over here.I am so very glad I caught it. It`s terrific.

This is my favourite Marx Brothers film, and that is saying a lot! It is the only major MB movie without a piano bit from Chico and a harp solo from Harpo.Although most people don`t like these bits, I do. But there is no doubt that the movie is a lot tighter without them.

Apart from carrying a serious anti-war message, it has the greatest comedy routine in the history of the cinema. Often copied but never, never bettered, the mirror sequence with bedgown bedecked Harpo pretending to be Groucho`s reflection, is so beautifully performed that it reduces me to water every time I see it.

The climactic battle scene is truly inspired. Anarchic and surrealistic, it is pure Monty Python 30 years before Monty Python!