Black Sunday

Black Sunday: Terrorists Playing at the Superbowl
John Frankenheimer is an excellent action director. In Black Sunday he directs a thrilling story of terrorists trying to blow up the Superbowl with a blimp full of lethal darts. Bruce Dern is great as the bitter blimp pilot who throws his lot with Martha Keller, a Palistinian, who just barely keeps Dern from cracking up. Robert Shaw is excellent as the Iraeli agent tracking down the villians, from the first roots in the Middle East, leading eventually to America, and terminating in a showdown at the Superbowl.The action is good and the actors are well directed by Frankenheimer, who of course did the immortal "Manchurian Candidate," and pilots this action film to a smashing climax. Even after first seeing this movie, I am still haunted by Dern's sad portrait of a broken man and the horrific experiment he performs on an unsuspecting man of his exploding darts that make hamburger out of the man posing for what he thinks is a strange camera. A good example of...

Black Sunday
Black Sunday is a prime example of great seventies movie making. Thomas Harris(Silence of the lambs, red dragon) gave John Frankenheimer a lot of meat Here, we are introduced to real characters. Who have real dilemmas. Bruce Dern is haunting as Lander -- a pilot who is pushed(some by his own doing) into insanity. Marthe Keller is wonderful as a terrorist who wants to see the "mission" through. And Robert Shaw. Robert Shaw. Boy do I miss him. Scenes where he is absolutely outstanding: questioning an importer, asking a favor from another terrorist, and of course the ending. Man I wish they would re-make this. But they would probably screw it up. The aerial photography is some of the best put on celluloid. And John Williams' score is awesome. See Black Sunday.

Prophetic Thriller Rides High
I remember after this film was first released in the Seventies speaking with someone who saw it, and though they liked it, found it unbelievable. "I just don't picture a bunch of terrorists being able to come over to the US and get away with anything" the person said. Time has shown us how right director John Frankenheimer's film "Black Sunday" was, and that we truly lived in a "sleeping America".

From the almost documentary-like opening title sequence, devoid of music and replete with the sounds of a foreign land, this suspense epic builds slowly and with unique conviction. The terrorists are all played realistically and no one goes overboard into the realm of ham. Shaw is gritty and and steel-eyed as he works against the clock to stop the plot.

Bruce Dern plays an ex-Vietnam helicopter vet hired by the terrorists to aid them in their plot to explode a uniquely devasting bomb at the Super Bowl. He is at his psychotic best, and one scene, late in the film, is particularly...

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Popeye

REBELLION!
I will go mad if I hear one more critic say that Popeye is a mess, or one more person laugh and look at me strange when I bring up this movie. This movie is a work of art. The songs are works of art. Shelley Duvall's Olive Oil is a work of art. The lines Robin Williams mumbles so you have to watch the movie ten times to hear them are a work of art. The set is, the plot is. Did I say the music is? You're going to tell me that Shelley Duval dancing about oddly on the deck singing he needs me, he needs me, isn't just absolutely perfect!? And that whole Fooey, fooey scene! I'm gonna do one of those twist up my arm punches to the next person that says this movie was a travesty for Williams or show boating by Altman or anything else! AUGHHHHH! thanks for listening.

Believe those who reviewed it here, NOT the critics.
I really do not know how this film flopped in the Box Office:

Just like every reviewer (not weird critics) who wrote here, I believe this is an extraordinary movie.

One of the critics wrote that it is boring? I really really really cannot see if the guy is talking about this movie or another. If you wanna see for yourself just skim the other reviews:

This is a movie that has been watched tens and hundreds of times by those who own it. Boring? I do not know of any other movie that can withstand repeated viewing like this one, nor that has been so reported by its most positive reviewers.

Our whole family has watched this film for hundreds of times, other reviewers also mention similar numbers.

Why?

1- The script is unbelievable: Popeye (Williams) is blabbering all the time (as well as other chartacters): Somebody is always saying something, and each time we watch the movie again, we find new jokes, and in good style.

We know those who produced the film did not rip-us off...

Robin Williams Makes Popeye A Reality
For Robin Williams first movie, he chose the Iconic character of Popeye The Sailor to portray. I rememer the hooflaw surrounding this flick when I was a kid (I was like 10 when this came out) and the success of Mork & Mindy had put Williams in the spotlight. The only problem was that Popeye is not as Iconic a character as the people who made this movie thought. He isn't Superman. He isn't Batman. He isn't Mickey Mouse. Popeye the cartoon character, though classic and kid-pleasing, just wasn't that popular with the chidren and the fact that they made it into a musical probably didn't help much either. Though the film was mildly-successful, it never hit as hard as people expected. The good thing, however, is that Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, Short Cuts) directed, so Popeye as a whole is visually masterful. The actors were perfect for their parts. Shelley Duvall's Olive Oyl is without a doubt one of the best acting casts in history! Bluto comes to life as does Wimpy and Popeye's...

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Regarding Henry

Sometimes the worst curse is your truest blessing
Despite being less well known, "Regarding Henry" is one of Harrison Ford's best works. The film demands a wide spectrum from this great actor and he delivers convincingly. For the most part, the other performers take their cue from Ford's "Henry" and render a near perfect glimpse of a life that could have been.

The tile character, Henry Turner, is introduced to us as a top-flight litigator for a large New York legal firm. He is well groomed, dressed in a designer suit and he is seen speaking sincerely to a jury about human desires and justice. Our opinion of him changes as soon as Henry leaves the court. He quickly makes a call to his interior designer to berate her for having the wrong table delivered to his palatial home. He is just another lawyer, after all.

It is hard to watch this movie at the start. Henry is one of those men we all love to hate. He is selfish, self centered, successful and confident. His daughter is frightened of him and his wife is a...

moving story proves anyone can have a change of heart
A prominent, but stony-hearted lawyer is an innocent standbyer in a liquor store hold up and gets shot in the head. The scene is unforgettable and will stay with you long after you've seen the film. He's stunned and doesn't quite realize he's been hit, then you see this little trail of blood trickling from his forehead... next scene, he's in the hospital suffering from amnesia.

Far from being a love-tap to the noggin, Henry must go through months of agonizing physical therapy to re-learn how to talk and think straight again. While his memory comes back in tiny little pieces, he mostly remembers nothing of his past life and is re-introduced to his wife and daughter, who ironically enough, were already strangers to him before he was shot.

Along with the good memories, the previous emotional baggage has been erased as well and Henry finds himself falling in love with his wife all over again, and falling in love with the daughter he never appreciated. He becomes fearless...

In case you missed this movie...
This isn't one of Harrison Ford's bigger hits, but it should be, at least within the dramatic genre. Sure, he's Indiana Jones, and he's Han Solo, but outside of those series, Ford's movie choices have occasionally left this fan, at least, scratching her head (Sabrina? What were you thinking!?).

"Regarding Henry" is a rare little gem of a story, a simple film about a man whose life changes, believe it or not, for the better when he's shot and nearly killed by dint of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ford's Henry Turner takes us through a life he doesn't remember, including a daughter and a wife played by an impossibly young and fresh-faced Annette Bening.

Sure, it's a little sentimental. But it's a pretty simple story with a positive feel. Filmed on location in New York City, the Manhattan scenery is rather delightful as well.

It's not film noir, it's not a tour de force of characterization, and no, it's not Academy Award winning screenwriting. But it is a...

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Stephen King's Graveyard Shift

IT'S NOT REALLY THAT BAD
Graveyard Shift is always high on the list of bad Stephen King films but I don't think it's all that bad. I have the advantage of never having read the story so I have no point of reference to compare it to, which helps I think. As most King movies do, this one is set in Maine, Gates Falls specifically. David Andrews is John Hall, a drifter who blows into town, looking for work. Well there's basically just one business to work at, and that's the old, decrepit textile mill that pretty much supports the town.

The mill is run by the hard-nosed, and sadistic Warwick (Stephen Macht) who hires Andrews to run a machine that can only be run at night due to the high summer heat. Andrews is alone in a dingy, dungeon of a room running his machine and encountering rats...lots of rats that even get inside the bags of cotton he's loading into the machine. Here he meets Tucker the exterminator, played by Brad Douriff with his usual flair for offbeat characters.

Soon...

Very strange
This movie is made rather half-heartedly, but it wallows so deep in the strange and disgusting that a fan of the horror genre can't help but be intrigued. It is based very loosely on Stephen King's story out of Night Shift. Its about a drifter who gets a job at an old mill where a bizarre death has just occured. The foreman is a sleazy adulterer who sleeps with his lady employees. The drifter falls for one of them and they become good friends. When one of the secretaries finds out she was put on cleanup, she trashes the foreman's car. Drifter stops the foreman from hitting the woman and the foreman asigns him to cleanup to take her place. That is when the party really gets started. The movie is by all means horrible, but it is still incredibly entertaining. It has no logic and the story is par at best, but you feel so compelled to watch it because it does hook you. Wich is why this is still one of my favorite horror movies. Look out for Brad Douriff as the exterminator.

Okay little b-movie.
Bachman (get it?) Mills has a rat problem. A really BIG rat problem. Get it?

Stephen King's Graveyard Shift is one of those movies some people think Stephen King had something to do with. Kind of like John Carpenter had something to do with John Carpenter's Halloween. But Maine's #1 Horror Writer (oh, excuse me, "American Novelist") had nothing whatsoever to do with this movie, outside of demanding that it be shot in Maine, so his home state could get a little extra income. The meaning of the title is not dissimilar to Bram Stoker's Dracula or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The movie does draw a commendable amount from the source story (there's a crappy boss named Warwick, a fire hose is used to squirt rats to oblivion, and there's a giant monster rat, and a mill), so King had no legal ground to have his name removed, as he has done with the movie Stephen King's [NOT] The Lawnmower Man. Not that he wanted to, as it is Graveyard Shift is a dopy piece of b-movie...

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Once Upon A Time In The West

"It doesn't get any better than this"
My title is a cliche but in this case it's the only phrase to use. The version of this movie available now, with its extra disc full of great bonus material, is an example of how to bring DVD format to its highest potential. First of course there's the movie, and its director Sergio Leone. Every Leone movie I've seen--Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good Bad and Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America--is wonderful, but this tops them all. Imagine the year 1969: what a great time to be a western film lover. You had this, and Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch in the same year. Incredible. Anyway, it's impossible to list all the great scenes, so I'll stick with the first. If you love the credit sequence you'll love the movie; it's not for everybody, however. So those credits, mostly silent except for a windmill creaking, which Leone somehow makes sinister, and one of the minimal details he uses to establish authentic mood, are the litmus test. You'll either love the movie...

Leone's masterpiece
After having established himself as the Master of the Spaghetti Western, Italian director Sergio Leone set out to make a western epic of very stylish proportions. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST was the result. Like Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH, which was also released in 1969, O-U-A-T-I-T-W did not receive a particularly warm welcome from either the critics or the audiences. But like Peckinpah's film, it has now come to be seen as a masterpiece among the rise and eventual fall of the West (and maybe the way Hollywood thought of the West).

Claudia Cardinale is the widow of a businessman whose land is being sought out by a ruthless railroad magnate (Gabrielle Ferzetti). The land is well sought because it is the only known place in the desert within a 50-mile radius where there is any water. Defending Cardinale are a cold, calculating gunslinger (Charles Bronson) and an amiable outlaw (Jason Robards). But standing in their way is a ruthless hired gunman named Frank, played by...

One of the very finest Westerns ever made
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST is arguably Sergio Leone's greatest Western, although Clint Eastwood's three films with him remain among my favorites. Actually, Leone had hoped to have Eastwood in this film as Harmonica, but they were unable to work things out. As it is, I think having Charles Bronson in the role is more effective. It was central to Eastwood's persona in those three films that he be both a man with no name and with no past, but Harmonica's character is entirely driven by the past and his need for revenge.

The beginning of this film are among my favorite in the history of film. Leone is arguably the most patient director in the history of film, and is willing to take fifteen minutes for something another director would be loathe to take two. The two great instances of Leone's patience are the scene in the uncut version of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, where he allows a phone to ring thirty or forty times, and here at the beginning, where he takes fourteen minutes to...

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Charlotte's Web 2

Not bad, but not up to the original
We bought this DVD as an Easter present for our kids. My wife and I both have very fond memories of the original, and I was curious to see how this one stacked up. I really didn't think it was a bad movie at all. It concerns the continuing adventures of Wilbur the pig, Templeton the rat, and the rest of the barnyard critters of the original, including Charlotte's three children that we met at the end. There's a new baby lamb on the farm, Cardigan, who is ostracized from the other sheep because of his black fur. Wilbur, a pig who definitely knows the value of friendship, takes the lamb under his wing (so to speak). When a trip to the good old county fair results in Cardigan being sold to a neighboring farmer, Wilbur's concerns for his friend leads him, Templeton, and Charlotte's daughters on an adventure to find their friend.

The animation of the movie is very well done, much better than most direct-to-video releases, and the background paintings and such were also well done...

Heartless sacrilege.
It's hard to follow up a beloved movie like Charlotte's Web. However, the writers of this sequel seem to invite antagonism by botching everything that made the original Charlotte's Web so magical. This is always true of sequels made decades after the original. I gave this movie the benefit of the doubt because I always want to believe that the things I liked as a child have some kind of Midas Touch (i.e. Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake). But Charlotte's Web 2 goes out of its way to assert its inferiority to the original. Also, this sequel is just creepy. For example, by the time that this movie takes place, Wilbur has somehow grown sideburns. Ew! And Wilbur's dignity is all but gone. Sure, he's a pig, but in the original movie we never saw him sticking his nose in a pile of dung and enjoying it. What's in the next one - will he actually be eating it too? Another disturbing aspect of this sequel is the change in Fern Arable. The once spirited girl who fought to save Wilbur's life is...

Charlotte's web 2: Wilbur's worst adventure!
This can't be better than the original, no matter what other people think...The characters from the old movie changed looks and personalities.

Wilbur: The kind-of serieous but loveable pig turned into a poop-eating freak with blush.

Joy, Ariania, and Nellie: Those cute runts became bossy and stupid things that look more like daddy-long-legs.

Fern: The smart, brave girl that saved Wilbur from getting shot, became this weirdo that sings to food.

WHAT'S BETTER...OLD OR NEW???!!!!!! U DECIDE!

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Like A Virgin

Off track until the Dawson/Joey/Pacey triangle explodes
The first episode I ever saw of "Dawson's Creek" was when the gang graduated from Cape Side High School, at which point I learned that Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) was still a virgin, which certainly took a lot of the suspense out of "The Complete Third Season." This is the season that convinces us that Pacey (Joshua Jackson) is serious competition for Dawson in the Joey (Katie Holmes) sweepstakes, not only because Dawson and Joey run hot and cold for each other on alternate timetables but also because Pacey can be awfully darn cute when he wants to be. Consequently his earnest pursuit of the clueless Joey remains the bright spot in a series where most of the characters get seriously sidetracked.

Season Three begins with a series of oblique turns in the first episode, "Like a Virgin." Joey is interested in Dawson, which should be a good thing, but he is fascinated by the mysterious Eve, a new bad girl in town and end up crashing his dad's...

Dawson's Creek Season 3
If you only are able to buy one season of Dawson's Creek, this should be it. The show really grew up and it took risks. It was nice to see the show truly go beyond the Dawson/Joey relationship and for the first time explore the possibility that they may be happy with other people. The Pacey/Joey relationship is magical just like Dawson/Joey. Deep down you knew there was a reason those two were fight constantly. I really love the Jack/Jen relationship too. They become better friends and Jen gets a boyfriend from almost out of nowhere. Still it's a really sweet love story. Jack deals with a lot this season and he will always be one of my favorites. So, I highly recommend this DVD. It's a must for the Creek fan.

Best Season Ever !!!
Okay, here it is! The season that redefined Dawson's Creek and truly made it must-see-TV.

There has never been more heartbreaking angst and pure emotional drama packed into a single story on this show than the relationship of Pacey and Joey, and this is where it all begins. From the tentative first realization of feelings to one of the all-time greatest season finales ever, THIS is the season you MUST own.

The Pacey and Joey pairing had every element of a truly great love story, and I have to believe there is a reason those in charge of the show decided to wait a few seasons to let these two characters explore the sparks that were always under the surface between them. The chemistry between these two actors is amazing - truly electric - and undeniable as it carries over onto the screen. There's a little bit of influence from modern day romances like "When Harry Met Sally..." or "Say Anything..." thrown into this story, as well as that wonderful sort of humorous banter that you...

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