Reviews

I almost gave up on this show about halfway through the first episode. I actually turned it off and started rewatching Game of Thrones on HBO Max. But tonight I decided to give it another shot and I am really glad that I did. The second half of episode 1 and all of episode 2 were really quite good. Now I am hooked and looking forward to seeing what's next.

I don't mind having to read subtitles for a portion of each episode, and I certainly couldn't care less about whether the Portuguese explorers and the Catholics from centuries ago are portrayed as the bad guys (at least so far).

Good character development and developing plot lines seem to be setting up for an interesting path forward. Despite what other people have said about this series, there has not been any nudity or sex scenes through the first two episodes.

Worth a watch for sure.

I can't figure out why this movie is receiving such harsh criticism and low votes at IMDb. I really liked this movie a lot. I thought the story and acting were both very good. The plot was similar to one that might have made for a two-part episode in the original TV show. The chemistry between Scully and Mulder was obvious, just like it always was in the TV show. The only theory that I can come up with is that many people were expecting a plot for this movie that had something to do with aliens, or alien abductions, or UFOs, or the Smoking Man. The original series did not deal with aliens and alien abductions in every episode either. I think you should ignore the negative hype regarding this fine movie and check it out for yourself.

The Wrong Man (1956) is one of a few Alfred Hitchcock films that has either not aged well, or was never very good to begin with. Vera Miles does the best she can with a shallow and poorly developed character. Henry Fonda is quite disappointing and delivers some of the most wooden dialogue that he uttered in his entire career as an actor. The movie starts off strong but gradually loses steam as nothing unpredictable or exciting ever develops or happens, (**possible minor spoiler**) unless you consider the wife's stunned disillusionment with the system to be exciting and surprising.

This dud also sports one of the corniest and most ridiculous scenes from any critically acclaimed film from the 1950's. The scene with Henry Fonda's character speaking to his oldest son about what is happening to him is just downright laughable. In fact both me and my Hitchcok loving movie viewing companion both totally cracked up during this overly corny and crazily smarmy scene.

Without question, this film ranks in the bottom five (5) of Hitchcock's career, and is possibly his second worst effort. It is worth watching just to see how such a brilliant director in his prime with proved actors and actresses, could deliver such a bomb.

There is no doubt that Alfred Hitchcock was a seriously talented director. Many of his films are undeniable classics that have stood the test of time and are highly watchable to this day. This list could include The 39 Steps, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Dial M for Murder, Vertigo, The Birds, Shadow of a Doubt, and a few other films.

However, "Suspicion" is not aging well at all and is really so unwatchable that it seems to me that it was probably a bad film even by 1941 standards. The list of scenes that work well could be listed on a matchbook with a crayon. The script is loose and ridiculous most of the time, but the acting seems so forced and wooden and borderline amateurish throughout, that it is almost unbelievable. Joan Fontaine tries to shore things up but she is on a slippery slope and Cary Grant doesn't provide much assistance. His acting is so bad at times that I have seen better performances in high school plays or college Theatre Experience classes where a Chemical Engineer is acting for the first time with no formal training.

After about 30 minutes of watching this film you may find yourself reaching for the DVD sleeve in the dark to see if you accidentally picked up some kind of special edition version that was cobbled together without any editing.

The subject matter is serious, yet the film has a silly and trite feel to it that just seems so out of place you become numb with perplexity.

"Suspicion" is basically unwatchable and another very very very overrated BAD movie.

I must admit that I rented Jeepers Creepers II for viewing during one of those trips to Blockbuster where I couldn't fin anything I really wanted to see. I enjoyed the first movie, but sequels are usually a big disappointment. However, I thoroughly enjoyed Jeepers Creepers II (and I), though I really think the sequel was better than the first film.

The character development is surprisingly solid for a horror film, and the creature is legitimately scary. I am very surprised by the low IMDb voter ratings for this film. When you watch a horror film with a monster or creature as the bad guy, you have to realize that the "monster" is not likely to be realistic. It is not intended to be plausible that a boogie-man exists, I mean it is a monster movie. You should put your disbelief aside and check out this film on a Friday night with a friend with all the lights turned off. It is very entertaining. Every one I know who has rented this film based on my recommendation has liked it.

I finally got to see this overrated film after hearing about it for years. Anyone that claims that this is the greatest Vampire movie of all time has never seen another Vampire movie. The acting is pretty weak at times, especially from a young Bill Paxton. Even the often underrated Lance Henriksen is pretty bad in this dog. The story is reasonably interesting but the execution is uneven and stilted. There is a cheesy 1980's feel to the film and some of the scenes with Bill Paxton trying to act like a crazy vampire are downright laughable. I will admit that if you are 11 or 12 years old and having a slumber party, this movie is probably pretty cool. But if you are an adult who has seen a lot of good movies, this one will be a big disappointment. This is maybe the worst "liked" vampire film of all time. I gave this movie a 3 instead of a 1 because of the first 10 minutes, which is the only decent part of the movie.

I also watched this film for the first time yesterday. Jimmy Stewart gives another good performance as the small town lawyer, defending the husband of a hot local babe. The courtroom scenes were probably groundbreaking in 1959 but seem more than a bit ridiculous now. The duels between Stewart and prosecutor George C. Scott are often times forced and silly. Lee Remick gives a decent but slightly amateurish performance as the gorgeous and flirtatious wife of the accused husband Ben Gazzara. The film is directed by the legendary Otto Preminger and he did a good job of mingling the court room scenes into the rest of the story. However, the explanations of what "not guilty by reason of insanity" means, are so childish and illogical by modern legal interpretations, that the whole plot and story falls apart. In 1959 these elementary school level explanations about legal matters might have seemed adequate, but by modern standards it is just plain laughable. The ending comes a bit suddenly and this is definitely another weakness to throw onto the list. Really, this movie wastes some fine performances from the cast. The script is so bad at times and the court room scenes so silly and forced, that the movie just fails completely.

The Night of the Hunter is an amateurish production of a predictable story that is as bad as a critically acclaimed movie can possibly be. How can any student of motion pictures and film consider this a classic? From the wooden delivery of the dialogue to the contrived and silly story, you reach a state of extreme and deep perplexity at what all the fuss is about. Even my boy Robert Mitchum is just plain terrible in this picture. He was a very underrated actor, and starred in some fine films and has provided some complex performances with layered depth in his characters. However, he is just plain awful in this religious-themed waste of time. In the first 5 minutes of this film you begin to realize that you have been mislead by the IMDb voters. My own theory is that the religious themes in this film appeal to people who are obsessed with religion, thereby causing them to enjoy what is really a bad movie. There are literally hundreds of old movies that are much better than "The Night of the Hunter" and it is a shame that this film is ranked in the IMDb top 250.

Wow, this is one of the most overrated movies of all time by the IMDb voters. The acting is wooden. The story is choppy. The plot is ridiculous at times. The basic premise of the movie is a good one, but the execution is poor. The English version is really bad and the use of subtitles would have been better. The friends and family of the director or producer or the actors must be sandbagging the voting process at IMDb, or the IMDb users are suffering from collective brain-lock. Don't waste your time with this dog. It is highly overrated. The director fumbled the ball. The editor was asleep at the wheel. I am out!

I have seen this movie several times, since first viewing it when I was about 12 years old. It is on AMC tonight and I was just curious to see how it was rated by the IMDb crowd. I was a little shocked to see all the negative reviews. In fact many of the reviews are extremely harsh. While I must admit that this movie pales in comparison with Oliver Stone's classic 'Platoon' and other great war films, I disagree with the 4.9 average rating. While the movies has a few flaws, overall I find it to be worth viewing. David Jannsen was well cast and does a good job with his character. The Duke is the Duke. The parts with the little kid are a little over the top at times. But there are also some very powerful moments along the way. It is a little funny that this movie rates much lower than some really bad Hollywood films such as 'Look Who's Talking', 'Three Men and a baby', 'Child's Play', and 'Bride of Chucky' - to name a few examples.

Supposedly all that is left of this film is an eight-and-a-half minute fragment. I have never seen this short fragment, but wish that this entire film still existed. I do not know why this film is lost. It may have disintegrated in storage or been nearly completely destroyed in a fire or something, I just do not know. I believe that Emil Jannings won the Best Actor Award at the first Academy Awards in 1927. If you want to check out and early Emil Jannings film, The Lost Command still exists in its entirety and is definitely worth a look. New Yorker magazine has referred to Emil Jannings career as one that must be studied for any serious historian of early Hollywood films.

JFK is entertaining and Costner and others do a fine job of acting. Oliver Stone did everything right here, except for the fact that the story and script are flawed. There have been countless conspiracy theories developed and presented about JFK's assassination over the last 40 years. A lot of these theories are interesting, but are not supported by facts or evidence. For instance, the theory that Lyndon Johnson invited Kennedy to Dallas so that he could have him killed and control the investigation and then assume power. This is an interesting idea, and seemed to gain some momentum due to the botched and covert autopsy of JFK. However, this theory is ludicrous. The theories put forth in this movie are not accurate or supportable by the facts either. The bottom line is that all of the evidence points to a lone gunman, and that lone gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald. His fingerprints were on the rifle found in the School Book Depository. The slugs removed from Kennedy and Connelly ballistically match the rifle found in the School Book Depository. The magic bullet theory is bogus. It has been proved that a single shot could have entered JFK through the base of his neck, exited, and then gone into Connelly's leg. This bullet did not have to take any magic turns or twists to do so, as the story in this movie suggests. Also, it has been proved that a high powered rifle bullet that enters a human head will cause the head/body to recoil towards the direction that the bullet came from. This was always my biggest hangup with the assassination. It appeared to me that the fatal head shot must have come from the front of JFK, as he recoiled backwards. This seemed to support the 2nd gunman on the grassy noll or in the storm sewer or wherever. Anyway, that is my 2 cents on the matter. This movie contains some good acting and scenery, but the story is just not accurate at all.

Being a movie buff, I have come to love the IMDb website. It is fascinating to review the careers of directors, actors, actresses and to find out about movies that you haven't seen that look interesting. The only bad thing I can say is that there is a strong tendency towards recent or new films being rated highly. This is inevitable as there is a disproportionate number of younger people using the internet who primarily watch only new movies. Even knowing this, it is still a little disgusting to see an average movie like 'Last Samurai' rated in the same company as some true classics and masterpieces from the last 100 years or so of film making. This movie is OK, but I was disappointed in many aspects of the film. I thought that a lot of the scenes that were supposed to be the emotional climaxes of the story were kind of ridiculous and almost laughable (I did laugh a few times when I wasn't supposed to be. Anyway, how can this movie be ranked up there with Hitchcock's classics such as vertigo, Rear Window, etc. and a whole laundry list of much better films? I just don't get it.

I really liked Blue velvet and Mulholland Drive and other David Lynch films. However, Wild at Heart is one of Lynch's weaker efforts. I just don't think any of the characters are believable and at no point in the film did I care what happened to any of them. Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern are both talented actors, but they don't have a lot to work with here. A lot of the scenes and dialog seems contrived and unreal and just plain odd. All in all not a very good film. By the time the last half hour rolled around I was hoping that some Aliens would suddenly appear from out of nowhere and annihilate the entire cast and crew. Don't waste your time on this one unless you're doing a 30-year stretch in Folsom Prison and this is the only flick they have available to rent.

I had never seen this movie in its entirety until last night. I was expecting something on par with say 'Boyz n the Hood (1991)'. I was very disappointed. I am a white boy from the Midwest, but I connected with the story and characters in 'Boyz n the Hood'. I just don't get what all the fuss is about with this movie. It wants to explore the complexities of racism and make some kind of statement about people needing to show some respect to each other, even if they are from different environments and backgrounds and cultures. But in the end, I didn't really connect with the story or the characters or the plot. I agree with other posters here who stated that in many scenes the characters seem to be just shouting back and forth and not really acting out roles. In the end this has got to be one of the most overrated movies that was loved by critics everywhere. Spike may be da man, but this was a swing and a miss IMHO.

This is a very good movie. I do not understand why so many of the comments here are negative. The plot is great with no holes. The characters are well developed and the acting is top notch. Maybe the lack of computer animation or computer generated special effects or car chases or machine guns blazing away turned some of you off. If you like dramas that are heavy on acting and character development, you will like this movie. The filming locations are very fascinating too. I am not sure where the boardwalk scenes are filmed (Asbury NJ or Yonkers NY) but it looks just like a formerly popular beach front local, that is now a ghost town. Very underrated by the IMDb voters.

This movie is entertaining, interesting, funny, and the characters are well developed. The only reason this movie has such a low IMDb rating is the apparent perception by many viewers that it condones recreational drug use. What these Christian Nazis fail to realize is that at times this movie does indeed portray recreational drug use as being fun and entertaining, while at other times it shows that recreational drug use can be a drag on your existence. I can see why an adult with teenage kids who watches this movie might freak out and take a couple of Zanex and then overreact and log on to IMDb and vote 1 based on some misguided fervor resulting from their being a Republican George Bush Junior Super Christian Nazi. But the movie is still entertaining and fun with good acting and good character development and an interesting story. Come on now people, lighten up a little bit. Just because you enjoy this movie doesn't mean your kids are going to become heroine addicts or crankheads.

I watched 'Il Conformista' for the first time in many many years last night.

I was too young to know what I was viewing the first time around. I must say that on several levels, this is a good movie. The scenery is great, the subject matter is fascinating, and the characters are mostly interesting. However, I feel this movie suffers from a lack of believability. It is one of those movies that takes a serious dramatic subject matter and reduces it to some kind of bizarre artistic drivel. The whole time you are watching it, you seem to be realize it is just actors acting. You never really connect with the characters or the plot. The whole thing just comes across like a bizarre joke. If you take the same subject matter and plot and make it more dramatic and realistic, you would have really had something. IMHO, way way way overrated and not really worth the money spent making it. Rated 5 or 6 out of 10 at best.

Howdy folks, this is your olde buddy Shorty Medlocke. I'd like to tell you about an old bunch of fox hounds I got, but instead I am going to comment on this film. I read many of the comments posted here and most are positive regarding Grosse Pointe Blank. I normally like John Cusack. He was great in 'The Grifters' and 'High Fidelity' and 'Runaway Jury' and in other films. However, I just didn't think Grosse Pointe Blank was as funny as a lot of you did. If you don't think a comedy is funny, then the movie usually sucks for you. I didn't think this film was 'all that' funny, though it was entertaining at times. I don't think a hitman going to his high school reunion is a 'funny concept'. Are you posters all Republicans? WTF is going on around here? John, I love you though bro. You da man!

if you watch this film on its own merits and don't try to compare it to 2001 A Space Odyssey, it is a pretty good film. I disagree with the anti-Roy Scheider posts. I thought he did a good job in his role in this film. As other posters here have stated, the science based plot is pretty tight and believable. The special effects are quite good, especially the visuals of the planets and moons and also of the two spacecraft. The scenes where the spacecraft is slowing down in the moon's atmosphere is really well done and seems very plausible based on what we know about space craft entering into the atmospheres around planets. Unfortunately, I thought the ending was really kind of ridiculous and was a big letdown compared to the rest of the movie. If you take this film and add a more interesting ending I would have rated it higher than 6/7 out of 10. It is definitely worth watching though and shouldn't be dismissed as a bad sequel to 2001 A Space Odyssey.

I think this movie has the lowest IMDB user vote rating of any movie that I like. It is really an entertaining movie and I am not sure why it is getting such poor ratings here. It is not perfect and may have a few plot holes, but it is definitely worth seeing. There must be an anti-Caruso IMDB splinter cell operating in cyberspace and conspiring to drop the IMDB user rating for all his movies about 2 to 3 points. Check it out and see what you think. Linda Fiorentino is truly hot and well cast as the steamy babe. Caruso's performance is very believable. Richard Crenna is underrated and good here too. Angie Everhart and Donna Murphy are pleasing to look at and also give good performances in smaller roles. Ignore the anti-Caruso crowd, who must be a band of closet NYPD Blue freaks that are still upset that he left that show to make films.

The Birds is no doubt a very good Hitchcock film that has stood the test of time pretty well. Some of the Special Effects are a bit amateurish by modern standards, but get the point across well enough in my opinion. I have to strongly disagree with many of the comments here regarding Tippi Hedren. I think her performance was quite good, especially for a first major role. She was just absolutely stunning to look at, especially in the opening scenes of the film in the Bird Shop. The basic premise of her character (i.e. the outwardly cool and confident female beauty possessing a core of vulnerability) was not new or groundbreaking. Grace Kelly made a brief and meteoric movie career playing this type of character, well before Tippi was discovered by Hitchcock. But Tippi was a beautiful and classy woman who gave a fine and appropriate performance in my opinion. Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette are great too. I was not real impressed with Rod Taylor's performance, but his character was possibly stiff and measured intentionally, as opposed to being poorly played. Great movie, a must see for all movie buffs and fans of classy old movie stars like Tippi Hedren.

There is no doubt that this is an entertaining movie with a very good and well-disguised plot twist at the end. Apparently, voting IMDB users are so enthralled by the last 2 minutes of this film and the presentation of the plot twist, that this movie ranks 17th all-time and ahead of many classic films from the last 75 years. The IMDB Top 250 is an interesting list to study. Lots of great movies are in that list, and more than a few overrated and perplexing selections too. And 'The Usual Suspects' certainly jumps out as one movie that gets more credit than it deserves, though it is a good movie.