'Rediculous' Customer & Critic Reviews

[med]

I like Cities of the Plain, though it is definitely lesser McCarthy. Any ill-will I have toward it is largely due to the 20-page speech from the magical hobo at the book's end.

[Mr Sausage]

I like Cities of the Plain, though it is definitely lesser McCarthy. Any ill-will I have toward it is largely due to the 20-page speech from the magical hobo at the book's end.

Whereas that's the only part I really liked. I always enjoy McCarthy's vatic characters, my favourite probably being the blind man in The Crossing.

[oldsheperd]

Isn't Tom Sawyer originally based on that Rush song, Limelight?

Oh, BTW does anyone have the link to the site where the guy summarizes classic films like in one short sentence. I'm sorry I can't give more description but it's funny and it was on this thread somewhere. It's like post-modern eric or something like that.

[Markson]

Are you thinking of these?

[oldsheperd]

Yes that's the one. I wanted to see if there was an update. Apparently not.
One thing is for sure the summary of Alien is spot on.

ALIEN: Ship fails to deliver cargo, crew don’t get bonus

[Morbii]

Yes that's the one. I wanted to see if there was an update. Apparently not.
One thing is for sure the summary of Alien is spot on.

ALIEN: Ship fails to deliver cargo, crew don’t get bonus

I liked: BLADE RUNNER: Man with no apparent skill stumbles into escaped robots, fails to kill most, fucks one.

[domino harvey]

This has to be at least the third time I've praised it in this very thread, but Kill Bill's can never be topped for me:

KILL BILL: Irresponsible mother wants custody of her child.

[Markson]

The Online Film Critics Society selects the 100 best debut features with, uh, some awesomely 'rediculous' results.

[Alphonse Doinel]

At the very least, Zack Snyder is not on that list.

Not sure how Slacker and Drugstore Cowboy both made that list though. Are OFCS members really that clueless?

[Matt]

Are OFCS members really that clueless?

As a former member of the group, I can say with some authority that yes, many, but not all, are really that clueless. To be fair, though, I'm sure they had some clause in the voting about the film being the first widely-released feature or something.

[knives]

Outside of the whole 'not really first' thing I don't see anything awful about the list (though I haven't read the reasoning). It just seems really basic.

[domino harvey]

I was showing this film to my class today and glanced down at the cover, only to notice that the pullquote praising the director is attributed to... the director!

[aox]

Well, I would think the actual Director would be the best person to ask about his own film.

[Jeff]

That's hilarious. The review is just attributed to "Variety staff." It begins, "The Long, Hot Summer is a simmering story of life in the Deep South, steamy with sex and laced with violence and bawdy humor. Although the setting is Mississippi, race relations play no part; it is instead a kind of Peyton Place with the locale shifted from New England to the warmer climate and - apparently - hotter-blooded citizens. This picture is strikingly directed by Martin Ritt." Apparently whoever designed the cover saw the phrase "by Martin Ritt," and decided that was the author of the review.

[knives]

I've seen three movies from Francis Ford Coppola; Dracula, The Godfather, and Apocalypse Now, and I don't understand the values of them. Dracula was terrible though as it was not very well accurate to the Vampire mythology, and had too many sexual overtones.

For The Godfather, all it was was a character that's new to the Mafia group, and learning their culture, thus being the new Godfather. The problem I had with it though was that it was long as hell (and I mean three fucking hours!!), and it was very slow paced. And to be fair, I never did like mafia, or gangster films.

And Apocalypse Now was great looking, but the second half of the film became bizarre, confusing, and had little pay off at the end. Dennis Hopper's appearance however was nice to see as the he was the Photographer. But I still want to like this movie as I'm into war movies in general.

[matrixschmatrix]

I too am offended by unrealistic and sexualized vampire movies

[HerrSchreck]

For those of you looking to hone their understanding of french cinema to a sharp knife-edge, I uh strongly recommend you school yourself with the wisdom and deep knowledge of The Best French Films dotcom, which has cleared up some major klunkers I've been carrying around in my head for a long time. First of, the Nazi's occupied France during WW1--NOT, as was once thought, WW2-- because, as the aforementioned site informs us, Carne's Les enfants was filmed during WW1... and was difficult to make owing to the Nazi Occupation.

Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) was filmed during the First World WarI and released in 1945. The three-hour film was difficult to make due to the Nazi occupation. Set in Paris in 1828, it was voted Best French Film of the Century in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in the late 1990s.

In the magazine Cahiers du cinéma founded by André Bazin, critics and lovers of film would discuss film and why it worked. Modern film theory was born there. Additionally, Cahiers critics such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rohmer went on to make films themselves, creating what was to become known as the French New Wave. Some of the first films of this new genre were Godard's Les Quatre Cent Coups (Breathless) in 1960, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Truffaut's À Bout de Souffle (Breathless) in 1959 starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. From 1959 until 1979, Truffaut followed Léaud's character Antoine Doinel, who falls in love with Christine Darbon in Baisers volés ( Stolen Kisses) marries her in Domicile Conjugal (Bed & Board 1970) and separates from her in the last post-New Wave movie L'amour en fuite (Love on the Run).

We can see that we then jump to that classic film by Godard, called Les Quatre Cent Coups--which as we all NOW know translates to Breathless. And Les Quatre Cents Coups starred Belmondo. And of course Truffaut's great throwing of the hat into the cinematic ring was constituted by the classic film À Bout de Souffle, which also--owing to the extreme flexibility of the French language-- translates as Breathless... which starred Jean-Pierre Léaud.

It's a wonderful site, filled with kernels of the most robust kind of wisdom and insight, and I encourage all those who are NOT considering suicide to peruse it at their nearest convenience.

What.. you didn't know that Bazin & Co. at Cahiers sat around to "discuss film and why it worked. Modern film theory was born there." ??? Where you been?

[matrixschmatrix]

the First World WarI

you just don't even want to know about the second World War I, it was nasty.

[domino harvey]

the last post-New Wave movie

With that great identifier, wouldn't this be every movie made since?

[Murdoch]

What's even more strange is how they rate 8 Women as one of the best French films ever made

[domino harvey]

This old guy has some great Netflix reviews

[zitherstrings]

I enjoy how he calls 99.9% of great films "slow and mind-numbing" but then praises The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as being a film for thinking adults.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Well, at least he's right about Erroll Morris

[matrixschmatrix]

I feel like a broken record; I have this same reaction to so many films. Who is this guy? What does he want? Why am I supposed to care?

[Markson]

His 3-star Bad Timing review is incredible:

"I don’t like Art Garfunkel as an actor. He’s stiff and shows no emotion ever in this movie. At the most emotional moments, his face is like a plastic mask. But I love Theresa Russell. What a bombshell. She does wonderful acting here, with great emotion and enigmatic depth. (SPOILER ALERT.) The character she plays in this movie is the kind of woman I am usually attracted to, a total nightmare—too beautiful to resist, too crazy to love. This portrait is accurate, I think. What a piece of work is this woman, to paraphrase Shakespeare. I almost turned this movie off at first, because several things didn’t make any sense to me. Why is Art Garfunkel smiling as he is taking his lady love to the hospital with a drug overdose? It doesn’t seem like a happy occasion. And the last sequence—Harvey Keitel as the cop and Garfunkel as the shrink in the woman’s room, and the cop is trying to get the shrink to confess to ravishing her. None of that works for me, especially the cop getting all weird. But the vast middle of the film, the majority, worked quite well for me. I was fascinated by the chaos this woman could bring to these men, who love her because of her beauty and because she entices them and seduces them and gives them what shrinks call intermittent reinforcement. What a madhouse she makes of their lives. In their place, I would probably do the same kinds of things. Indeed I have, sorry to say. The title could have been 'In Love With A Madwoman.'"