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Have a beer, tough guy, May 5, 2006
What makes a movie great? What are you looking for in a movie? The answers to those questions will determine your reaction to this movie.

There's a lot of realism here, though not in the boxing scenes. I haven't yet seen a realistic boxing scene in a movie. I've watched maybe hundreds of boxing matches, but I've never seen boxing done accurately in a movie, and it is nowhere near accurate here. It is laughable here, as usual. Overly dramatic, the punches way too noisy, the reactions of the fighters way too stupid and unrealistic, like LaMotta standing along the ropes with one hand on the ropes, neither hand even trying to protect his head, while Robinson pummels him. Yeah, right, whatever. No effing way. And that moment with Robinson raising one fist slowly. Spare me. That was just stupid, boxing for non-fans in a dream world. Maybe you think this bit of unrealism is artistic, but if you are a boxing fan you see it for what it is, overdramatic nonsense that doesn't look anywhere near real.

If you enjoy that scene because it shows how the hero ignored his own safety and opened himself up to pain, and you like identifying with that macho behavior, well go have a beer and picture yourself as this character. To me, it's just baloney. It's like that silly Rocky nonsense, completely unreal, a macho fantasy, a little kid thing.

But the rest of this movie, pseudo-boxing scenes aside, is too real. It is about a guy who makes a mess of his life. There's a lot of agita in this movie as the lead character behaves like a jealous and paranoid violent dictatorial jerk. That's not easy to watch and it's not enjoyable to watch either.

There was a Bogart film noir film like this one. Bogart played a jealous and violent guy who messes everything up. I didn't like that movie either. It was like cod liver oil. You watch it, you realize that the main character has a lot wrong with him that is painful to watch, you applaud it for being realistic because some people are that way, and when the movie is over you are glad it's over and you don't have to go through it anymore.

It's hard, as a reviewer, to realize that other people have other things they are looking for in a movie. Look at this site. So many people are calling Raging Bull one of the greatest movies ever made. I don't get it. Why? What are they looking for in a movie? To me, this was just a lot of agita with no payoff. This didn't deliver what I'm looking for in a movie. It just basically annoyed me from start to finish.

I didn't get the female character at all. I don't know what her game was. It wasn't fleshed out. She was a cardboard wife, pretty much. I didn't see a real person there. I think one weakness of Scorsese as a director is that he doesn't understand women on screen. They don't really matter either. They are just props. This isn't about them. They are just there to be the lover, the cheater, fill one role or other in the lives of the men.

So it seems to me that all the rave reviews on this site are kidding themselves. This movie really isn't Great with a capital G. No, it isn't. And since I didn't enjoy following this crazy man's messed up life, since I was happy when they started showing the credits and I could be free of this annoying and messed up man's problems, I can't even give it three stars.

LF wrote:The diagonals that are shown on screen, the triangles that are shown on screen, all further the plot, all show the greatness of Kurosawa. No they don't. It is all over-intellectualized nonsense. Diagonals and triangles do not make a great film. They just give lecturers something to flimflam their audiences with. I don't doubt that Kurosawa used these diagonals and triangles purposely. I don't care either. It's just a bunch of baloney. I'm not emotionally moved by a triangle, nor even by a diagonal. The subtlety of it is just a wee bit too subtle to make an impact on me.

toiletduck! wrote:

LF wrote:The diagonals that are shown on screen, the triangles that are shown on screen, all further the plot, all show the greatness of Kurosawa. No they don't. It is all over-intellectualized nonsense. Diagonals and triangles do not make a great film. They just give lecturers something to flimflam their audiences with. I don't doubt that Kurosawa used these diagonals and triangles purposely. I don't care either. It's just a bunch of baloney. I'm not emotionally moved by a triangle, nor even by a diagonal. The subtlety of it is just a wee bit too subtle to make an impact on me.

This reminds me of an old roommate who once told me (this was an English/Theatre double major on his way to getting an MFA, mind you) that he didn't think that Shakespeare actually intended to write in iambic pentameter -- it was just a conceit that scholars had placed on his work after the fact.

No special effects, July 23, 2000
A Kid's Review
no special effects at all. This movie could learn some tricks from the recent movie "The haunting".

Movies don't get better with age., August 11, 2004
Reviewer: Sean "Dragon Ninja" - See all my reviews
I finally bought this movie after reading so many good reviews, but i was again mislead. After the dissapointment called Ran, i thought Kurosawa was a pretty bad director that being one of his newer movies. But after reading so many good things about this movie i couldn't resist. I sat through this 3 and a half hour long movie this morning, and when it was over i was still waiting for the so called breathtaking battle in the rain. Anyone looking for good samurai action DO NOT BUY THIS. All of the action is terribly choreographed, all of the action sequences involve people running around like crazy people, and then maybe one or 2 bandits get stabbed or shot with a bow or gun. The last battle was the biggest dissapointment, it was supposed to be one of the best sequences ever captured on tape, what? It sucks, maybe 50 years ago it was considered an exciting action scene, but by todays standards it doesnt even compare to an animated disney movie in terms of action, really its that bad. The rest of the movie is taken over by man butts and bad acting, the performances are comical, not funny, ridiculously stupid. There is no drama at all, when one of the samurai dies I found myself relieved that i wouldn't see that terrible actor again, none of them could even fight or move the sword, not once do you hear the clang of a sword or see any blood, thats right whoever considers this movie violent probably cant handle bambi. To list all this films flaws i would need more paitence but i will tell you that the action sucks, there is no heart wrenching drama, no humor, not a single good performance, no real samurai fighting like i said you never see someone block a sword or do any kind of move not involving just sticking there arm out and hoping they hit something, the rescue of the kinapped child is 2 seconds long and all the guy does is run in and get the kid, the theft of an enemy gun is short and simple, thats right they run out and grab it you guessed it, the story is even poorly done, how could anybody mess up a 1 line story, well Kurosawa does, i would not recommend any of his movies he is a terrible director, anybody looking for entertainment can go anywhere else because it has got to be better then this piece of crapola. In short the last samurai is much better way truer to the way of the smaurai, if you dont think so read bushido, this movie couldn't be more wrong to the way of the samurai, this movie makes them out to be savages and only like to kill and rape women, totally wrong, this movie may have been good a long time ago but anybody younger then 50 will not like this movie, -100000000 out of a 10, i gave it the Negative rating for not contributing anything, no entertainment, esspecially no action because action doesnt get more pathetic then this. The Last Samurai would kick all Seven of these samurai's asses, but they all died of old age.

Books Suck., July 27, 2004
The reviewer of this movie said people complain about books being better, well thats just stupid. Books suck, books dont make you laugh, cry, think, fear, or give you action. Movies will always be better then books, no matter what, because books are words, movies are fun. This movie is the best drama ever, it made me cry and im a dude, nuff said. Great performances, great story, great drama, great movie, forget books, incase you haven't noticed the academy doesn't give the books the oscar for screenplay, movies are based on books, they arent made from books, anyone who doesnt like a movie because it wasnt like the book is a MORON, movies are not books, movies are entertainment, not punishment.

Don't believe the blurb by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Their interest in this movie is purely technical. I just finished watching it for pure entertainment value and it is BORING! Unless you are a ballet enthusiast, or a mincing nancy-boy who likes to look at men in tights, you will be bored to the back teeth. I have been enjoying British movies for the past few weeks and most have been brilliant. Genevieve, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Great Expectations, Blithe Spirit, A Matter of Life and Death, Passport To Pimlico, The Lavender Hill Mob, Brief Encounter... I've watched and enjoyed them ALL. THIS one, however, is a DEAD BORE! I gave it every chance I could but the verdict is "Stinksville, USA!" Now all I can give it is ONE star. If you like this movie, then you're a GOOSE!

Robert de la Cheyniest wrote:Here's a nice review I found of The Red Shoes by "Tupac Q. Liebowicz" from a mysterious town called "Hooterville, USA"

Don't believe the blurb by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. Their interest in this movie is purely technical. I just finished watching it for pure entertainment value and it is BORING! Unless you are a ballet enthusiast, or a mincing nancy-boy who likes to look at men in tights, you will be bored to the back teeth. I have been enjoying British movies for the past few weeks and most have been brilliant. Genevieve, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Great Expectations, Blithe Spirit, A Matter of Life and Death, Passport To Pimlico, The Lavender Hill Mob, Brief Encounter... I've watched and enjoyed them ALL. THIS one, however, is a DEAD BORE! I gave it every chance I could but the verdict is "Stinksville, USA!" Now all I can give it is ONE star. If you like this movie, then you're a GOOSE!

ahh yes, Stinksville, USA indeed.

arsonfilms wrote:I really enjoyed the line that said you have to be a mincing nancy-boy to enjoy the film. A very small step up in wit from the line "that movie was so gay."

You know, some of the movies discussed in these astoundingly horrible reviews aren't my favorites either, but I guess it may be asking a lot for the masses to be as respectful of "important" work as we tend to be. Case in point: my parents are taking my little brother to Italy soon, so I offered to loan them my copies of La Dolce Vita and The Bicycle Thieves to get a sense of Italian cinema before they went. I figured those two flicks were some of the easiest to handle, but my family was only able to get about a half an hour into each before turning them off. To me, those two films are mesmerizing, but even I had trouble getting through something like L'Eclisse for the first time (but here lies the issue of respect for the important, and willingness to cultivate new tastes). It seems to be the same for any art form; nobody would question the reluctance of the uninitiated to see an opera or symphony - so I can certainly see why someone who loved The Last Samurai would hate Seven Samurai, or that someone who loved Child's Play would hate Psycho. For my part, I've never seen The Last Samurai OR Child's Play, and would probably turn both off a lot faster than my parents turned off La Dolce Vita.

Mr_sausage wrote:Which of course reminds me of a quote from a Russian writer, whose name escapes me at the moment:

"if a book flies through the air and strikes a critic in the head, and there is a hollow sound, is it always the book's fault?"

I realize that Kurosawa was not the only director [in Japan], but he certainly was the trailblazer and set the bar for the genre for decades to come. His peers were putting out material, it was just fairly primitive. (It is easy to forget that not every country's film industry was as opulent as America's)

On rare occasions, the picture will very slightly shiver in its sprocket, but how much can you expect from such an old, foreign film?

arsonfilms wrote:Just because Kurosawa reinvented the way films were made with Rashomon hardly means that other films being made at the time were "primitive." Then again, compared to Rashomon, anything is going to look primitive (the year Rashomon won the Golden Lion at Venice, Ace in the Hole and Streetcar Named Desire were the other big winners)

domino harvey wrote:Everyone knows there weren't even movie cameras in Japan before Kurosawa built his from scratch in his workshop and shot his first film, Seven Samurai.

Real dross is Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger, a stunningly dull 1975 exercise in boredom and inaccessibility that Jack Nicholson somehow found himself convinced to star in. He plays a film journalist who seizes an opportunity to switch identities with a dead man who turns out to have been an arms dealer. The film turns into a game of hide and seek in North Africa and Southern Europe as Nicholson tries to flee from both his new identity's past as well as people related to his own real past. Maria Schneider plays a young woman who travels along with him, but one who may be more than she appears on the surface. Is she the passenger of the film's title or is it Nicholson who's a passenger in the life of the man whose identity he's assumed? The film drags along for over two hours to a bizarrely filmed conclusion and it's a good thing that Sony (Columbia) added audio commentaries by Nicholson and by screenwriter Mark Peploe or else we wouldn't know what the hell is going on. Mind you, Sony rarely graces its catalogue offerings with any thought when it comes to supplements. It's ironic then that they managed to do so on a film that doesn't merit the attention. The disc's anamorphic transfer looks soft at times and has modest debris.

MichaelB wrote:Would the person who retitled this thread care to take another look at what it's currently called? If only to avoid redicule?