Vastly over-rated film about four 12-year-old boys, Gordie (a future writer), Chris the under-rated troubled one, Teddy and Vern, who travel into the wilderness to find the body of a boy, Ray Brower, who was lost. Set in Castle Rock, Oregon. Gordie is the stand-in for King, and the other boys inevitably encourage him to write, because he's good at making up stories. The adult Gordie reflects in their adventure and on the bittersweet life stories of the four as they transitioned to adulthood. Contrived and slack-- one does not get much sense of any particular scenes having been lived by anyone involved in the film. The essential problem is that the story is bloodless and the boys are projections based on nostalgia, not real memory or real insight into 12-year-old boys.
Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, Casey Siemaszko, Gary Riley, Bradley Gregg, Bruce Kirby, Richard Dreyfuss, John Cusack
A promising film unevenly marred by deep compromises. There's something to the premise that is touching and compelling: seven college friends, just graduated, trying to sort out their lives and relationships as they grapple with the unstructured, undetermined future. They have affairs with each other, get engaged, break up, support each other in times of crisis. It all meanders aimlessly at times, but Schumacher generally used real young people in the film (to the studio's consternation) and it generally works on one level. A studio executive also thought the characters were shallow and self-centered and he was not wrong. The problem is the characters often look like cookie-cutter costume department renditions of what they think 80's young people look like, and how they dress. The reference to music (Billy Joel, The Police, Michael Jackson) is tickling but none of their music is played-- which is real deprivation, I think. None of the majors can really act, either, but they are are all cute. The 80's deserves something that takes this idea and produces something more serious and substantial with it.
A promising film unevenly marred by deep compromises. There's something to the premise that is touching and compelling: seven college friends, just graduated, trying to sort out their lives and relationships as they grapple with the unstructured, undetermined future. They have affairs with each other, get engaged, break up, support each other in times of crisis. It all meanders aimlessly at times, but Schumacher generally used real young people in the film (to the studio's consternation) and it generally works on one level. A studio executive also thought the characters were shallow and self- centered and he was not wrong. The problem is the characters often look like cookie-cutter costume department renditions of what they think 80's young people look like, and how they dress. The reference to music (Billy Joel, The Police, Michael Jackson) is tickling but none of their music is played-- which is real deprivation, I think. None of the majors can really act, either, but they are are all cute. The 80's deserves something that takes this idea and produces something more serious and substantial with it.
We saw this when it first came out and completely forgot about it by the time I noticed this in TV guide. Vaguely moving-- Julie Andrews plays woman who thinks she has cancer; Lemmon a man confronting age 60. The older I get, however, the less fresh Blake Edwards seems, and the more often he seems inclined to use cheap slapstick when he he should be shooting for poetry in motion.
Bizarre, sometimes astonishing storey about mother-son relationship, sometimes ranging into incestuousness. Startling, surprising, unforgettable.
About a girl who dresses as a guy in order to be treated fairly. Not as cloying as one would suspect.
Disappointing film. Suffers by unappealing performance by Bale, over-bearing music. Another one of of Speilberg's deliberate "B" movies, nicely filmed, but ultimately pointless. [2013-08] Really strange: superb cinematic values-- large crowd scenes, convincing machinery and buildings, and some moral complexity, severely marred by the strange idea of Bale's Mary Poppins like performance, exulting and dancing and screaming, and generally presenting himself as an obnoxious brat. There's no soulfulness in this character, and his despair at the end-- failing to recognize his own parents-- seems contrived. He's been putting so much of a show for so long that it's hard to take it seriously. And it's hard to figure out if Spielberg wants to show you how war can be an adventure for a young boy, or that war is awful because the people around the boy suffer, while he's having an adventure. And so, in the end, he comes off like a martyred Julie Andrews, who just can't have any fun anymore because the adults around her keep taking the fun things away. Incidentally, can't be very close to Ballard's actual experiences in Lunghua Civilian Assembly Center, where he actually remained with his parents and attended school during the war.
Brilliant evocation of sisters, love, and New York City. All actors are excellent. Woody is hypochondriac, tries to become Jewish, whatever. Michael Caine falls in love with his wife's sister. Warmth of family scenes contrasts-- and complements-- scenes of neurotic self-questioning and insecurities. A rich, fascinating pastiche of modern sensibilities and emotional frustrations.
Mainly memorable for Fawcett's surprisingly good performance, and the social issue. Otherwise, not exactly mind-numbingly brilliant. You can't seriously regard this as a hopeful drama, that points the way to dealing with victimization; nor is it particularly enlightening about the issue.
Very powerful drama about Jesuit missionaries trying to save aboriginals from exploitation by Spanish overseers. Screenplay by Robert Bolt.
We saw this in Penetang, I believe, the summer we shared a cottage with Ann, Al, Karin, Jun, Don & Alice. Mildly amusing.
Nice try, but uneven, rhythmically erratic film.
Touching story about a pair of highschool misfits. Makepeace is appealling.
Technically brilliant dramatically inept and thoughtless remake of classic SF thriller. Worthless.
Draws an explicit connection between the loss of confidence in science and politics and loss of fidelity in sexual relationships. Does it finish the point? I don t know. I suppose there is a parallel drawn between the diminishment of political and economic power and the diminishment of sexual satisfaction and fidelity. If that sounds like a stretch, it probably is. A group of college professors and their wives and lovers meet at a cottage for a weekend of relaxation, good meals, and conversation. The women discuss men and the men discuss the women. During the course of the weekend, one woman becomes irritated with another's insistence that her husband is different, and that he would never cheat on her. It's not true, and when she spitefully lets the naive wife in on the fact, the wife is crushed with despair. Literate and interesting.
Of course.
Brilliant, luscious film, centred on Salieri's frustration at his failures when young fop Mozart just coasts through one brilliant melody after another while he, having even foresworn sex for music, produces nothing but mediocrities. Abrams is superb, as is Jones as Emperor Joseph. About the fundamental mystery of genius-- on whom do the gods bestow their gifts and why? Has the wonderful audacity to make Salieri the only person in Mozart's life who really does appreciate his genuis. Even the other musicians are too obsessed with personal status to notice.
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