Reviews

Too many to list, but I'll give it a go. I've spent almost 500 hours playing "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided," and I've still not gotten to the end of its replay value. Every time I do a run-through, I discover new dialogue, different routes to take, new people to talk to, and fresh ways to kill or maim the citizens of Prague, Golem City, or London. It's the ultimate stealth game.

Why play the first "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" or the follow-up "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided," you might ask? The main reason is to get to know Adam Jensen, a video game character who feels like a real person. Over the two games, we are thoroughly integrated into his life and his feelings about the world he inhabits. One of the reasons is the actor who does Adam's voice, Elias Toufexis. No other video game persona has such a warm, human, and real personality, and it's thanks to Toufexis' mega-talented performance and voicework, that I think of Jensen as a real human being when I play the game. I can't stress enough how important this is to the enjoyment I get out of the game. Play it for the fun of stealthily crawling your way through the vents in the complex environment, climbing to the top of a four story building to break into an apartment, or hack security bots remotely so you can open secure vaults and loot the contents, all the while marveling at the buildings and level design as you walk by. But, you also live Jensen's life along with him and you'll be hooked as you try to decide which way his conversations with all the people he interacts with should go. No other games have affected me like HR and MD have. They have truly changed my life and brought great joy to me along the way.

In a game world like this, excellence in all areas is the most important aspect. Another reason to play the game is to marvel at the stellar writing and astonishing game design. This is truly an immersive sim, and both writing and design are top of the class. The story and all it's branches are mesmerizing, and a standout is the Palisade Bank heist that Jensen attempts. Your choice of dialogue and path truly matters as to what happens in the game.

Other characters in the game feel just as real, and their voicework is impressive. My very favorite character after Jensen, is Vaclav Koller, the resident Aug specialist that Jensen has to turn to, now that the LIMB clinics are abandoned. We're introduced to Koller practically the minute the regular gameplay begins, after the intro mission, the credits, and the bombing of the Prague train station, which sets up the storyline for the rest of the game. Koller is a real trip; maniacally devoted to augmentation, he gets jazzed by all the Aug options Jensen has now. Koller's trying to live his augmented life as well as he can in Prague, now that augmented people are being quarantined in Golem City and ostracized by everyone who is not augmented. Koller's extremely funny, but as Jensen probes into Koller's private life more, in an attempt to help him, we find that Jensen "scares the **** out of him," and the same goes for the all-powerful head of the local mob, Radich Nicoladze. Koller is also Radich's Aug specialist, but Koller has to keep this a deep, dark secret because the mob doesn't accept augmented people. Koller's predicament and how Jensen can help him is classic stuff; helping the little guy by dealing with the powerful people that are terrorizing him. Keeping the characters believable and giving them true anxieties and terrors, makes them relatable. I would play an entire game about Koller, he was so enjoyable.

Jim Miller, Jensen's boss at TF29, is voiced by Vernon Wells, who played the ultimate bad guy in "The Road Warrior," and Wells gives a nuanced performance that is equal parts commanding and brusque until near the end, where he admits his failure with regret-tinged voice and dialogue. Miller's emotional turnaround makes the player just as emotional. Chikane, the helo pilot for TF29, the agency where Jensen works now, whose scenes are less than 30 minutes of game time, yet in that time he leaps off the screen as a real individual, with problems in the world of the game, and injuries that have affected his vocation. Voiced by Chimwemwe Miller, his prickly presence in the game is riveting; you remember him long after you're done with the last playthrough.

The only failure in the game is the female protagonist that is undercover in Prague for the Juggernaut Collective, Alex Vega. She is there to serve as a liaison between Jensen and Janus, leader of the Collective, but she just doesn't match up with the other voice actors, and her relationship with Jensen is not believable. I would much rather have had Faridah Malik, from HR, in that role. She and Jensen had a real friendship that you could believe in, which the voice actor, Paula Jean Hixon, made possible.

In fact, no one from the first game shows up in "Mankind Divided" during normal game play, except David Sarif, founder of Sarif Industries and Jensen's former employer. Unfortunately, the developers used another voice actor for him, and it just isn't the same. The original voice actor, Steven Shellen, brought Sarif to life in all his "I'm the boss" glory, and he's missed here.

I was despairing that we would get no real interaction with anyone from the first game. The first DLC (called Jensen's Stories in the game menu) was "Desperate Measures," a straightforward caper to find out why a bombing is being covered up. I had absolutely loved every single conversation between Jensen and Francis Pritchard, Sarif's IT head in "Human Revolution"; their back and forth bickering was a major source of comedy in the game. Thankfully, the second DLC released for MD, "System Rift," is all about Pritchard and his quest for Jensen's help to break into the most highly secure server system in the world. Their conversations were the highlight of the DLC, which was phenomenal in its own right. The third and last DLC, "A Criminal Past," is another great piece of game design and writing, where Jensen must try to contact a co-worker who is deep undercover in a federal Aug prison.

"Human Revolution" has just as much right to the title of ultimate stealth game, but the two games are a bit different. HR seems set in amber now...it's a jewel that never changes. I've spent over 600 hours playing HR, and have pretty much found every secret path, and each time I play it it's like visiting an old friend. "Mankind Divided" has a different feel, like I'll find something new at any point in the game. It's the design that makes it feel this fresh. You may turn a corner you've been down many times, and still not recognize the terrain. It's this quality that makes MD so special.

"Mankind Divided" at top graphic settings and on a 4K monitor, looks amazing. You can see every wrinkle in the characters faces, and the expressions mimic real human expressions. Locations look as good as some real photos, and it's just an amazing visual experience.

Gameplay is quite a bit more advanced from "Human Revolution." Many of the repeated bodily movements that were rather annoying in HR have been removed from MD, where people seem to move as real people should. The chaos of Golem City is masterfully realized, and there are dozens of places to try to get to in each area, with large maps that just beg to be explored. The new augs are fun, with Jensen being able to turn off TVs, drones, turrets, and any other electronic device remotely. In short, "Mankind Divided" sparkles in every way.

Finally, I would say to everyone, just buy the game and play it. It's a wonderful, immersive experience that keeps on giving through every single replay.

Really, that's all this is. With jazz. J. K. Simmons is great, as usual. There is no reason for this film to exist.

Love of music should not be about shouting and belittling a musician. I was in a band as a teenager, and I loved our conductor. We played as good as we could to please him. I would have been one of those who quit a program where you were humiliated and abused, with the idea it would make you a better musician. I suppose there are people out there who would benefit from a teaching experience like the one shown in this film, and they would stick with it. It's just too cruel of a film.

Let me say before I get into this review, that I am a staunch supporter of Cinerama and purchase these remasterings when they are released, regardless of what the film is. The format was abandoned just as the franchise found it's way out of the boring scripts and scenic travel films. If they had kept going, after "How the West was Won," and built on that film's success, we might have had many more wonderful widescreen films to watch.

Unfortunately, "The Golden Head" epitomizes the issues with the Cinerama films before "How the West Was Won." They were lovely to look at, but they were in essence a travelogue of exotic places with virtually no story, which doomed them to failure. This isn't even a true Cinerama film. It was begun in that format, then changed over to a Super Technirama 70 format.

It's meant to be a family film, but even kids want a story. There are long stretches of film with someone repeatedly saying, "Look at that," as we go past some landmark in Budapest, Hungary. If you took all of these scenes out, the film would be about 30 minutes long.

A prior reviewer mentioned "Emil and the Detectives," a better caper film than this. I'll mention Disney's 1963 film, "The Horse Without a Head," a "stolen loot hidden in an unlikely place" movie with an imaginative, well-written script and an interesting cast of both kids and adults, still memorable after 55 years. Both were superior to "Golden Head," and were made for a fraction of the cost. It was pointless to make this, yet they did, and here we are five decades later dealing with its myriad faults.

On to the cast. Buddy Hackett, who seemed to be a staple of Cinerama-class films, having shown up in three of them, including "Brothers Grimm," is in full annoyance mode here. He could be a wonderful actor, as he was in "The Love Bug," but the director apparently gave the actors no guidance. It's criminal to have George Sanders, one of the most suave, satiric actors in film, and not use him to his fullest potential. He smiles his way through the movie, and mostly sleepwalks through his part. Again, the script is the major culprit; the director just abets its failures.

There was also a change in directors; it was begun under one director, who then left and another took up the rest of the filming. Actors were also replaced, and that kind of chaos can have a bad effect on a film. However, without a good script nothing could have saved this.

There are a few moments of interest in the "Golden Head," but it's a hackneyed affair no matter how you look at it. It's worth a viewing simply to see the scenery, and for its historical value. It also has some valuable extras on the release, and you should buy it for those. They are worth the money of the disc

It's been reported that the true Cinerama film, "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm," hasn't been released on Bluray because the original negative is in such bad shape. Yet "Golden Head" survived, a travesty of justice. Note to the group that remasters these Cinerama films: The laserdisc release of "Brothers Grimm" looked amazing...can that be used along with whatever elements of the negative are in good shape, and used for a Bluray? With the technology today, I would hope something could be done. Bring that out and I'd buy it the minute it was for sale.

I've been a Richard Burton fan ever since seeing him in "The Taming of the Shrew," Franco Zeffirelli's glowing and exuberant take on the Shakespeare play. It was 1967 and I was 11; I have wonderful memories of seeing that film with my mother at the Astro theatre in Omaha, Nebraska.

However, I am not a fan of Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights," in any form. It was my grandmother's favorite book, and though I've tried to read it through many times it's not my kind of story. Emily's sister, Charlotte, wrote a book that is my kind, "Jane Eyre." I've loved that book since I first read it at age 12. I'm too optimistic in nature; doomed romances don't hold my interest, and I like a happy ending. After watching this teleplay I am still not a fan of WH, but it's importance lies in seeing an early Burton performance.

I would have been two when this live TV production of "Wuthering Heights" aired, and would have been oblivious to it at that time; I have no idea if my late mother watched it. She was a Burton fan as well, but this was too early for her to have known anything about him; I don't think she knew of him until the fan magazines began their endless stories of the Burton/Taylor years. That's too bad, since this Burton is satisfyingly savage, barbaric, and quintessentially Heathcliffian, in the role that every male actor yearns to interpret. As an adult today, I can savor his acting style and enjoy it without really enjoying the story.

Live television from the early days of the medium, seen in our 4k and UltraHD era, looks like a shadow play. The way those early live productions were filmed gives them a cardboard cutout appearance. The sets look like they're carved out of foam rubber, and then painted with hard black outlines. The actors/actresses appear smudgy, and the black and white looks like gray and beige. The farmhouse of Wuthering Heights looks spectacularly dirty and decrepit, the one good thing age gives to this production.

All that being said, somehow, Burton shines through the murk. He is larger than life and a force of nature; Rosemary Harris matches him in his power. The only adult still alive from the show as of the 2019 airing on TCM, Harris gives a bravura performance as Catherine; as her sanity slips away she's appropriately bizarre. Denholm Elliott is good as the shallow Linton, and seeing John Colicos as loathsome Hindley Earnshaw was amazing; did he ever get to play a nice character? Certainly everything I've seen him in has been as a bad guy. Cathleen Nesbit expertly holds the cast together as the one person who thinks kindly of all the people in her orbit, as the servant Nelly. Without her I fee; the show would have been much less successful.

Live TV in those days required a bit of over-acting because of the 12-inch screens but when seen on our widescreen TVs now, it looks as if the actors are shouting right in our faces; this has to be taken into account when watching "Wuthering Heights." Patty Duke mentioned that working with Burton, who had a true magnetic personality, made you want to continue working with him; he was fascinating in person. That magnetism comes through in this show, even with the shouting; Burton IS right in your face, and Heathcliff was that kind of character. He's the only one truly alive...confronting anyone that stood in his way, hating everyone, and not necessarily loving Catherine; obsessed with her, yes, but love doesn't seen to be in him as an adult. The young Heathcliff seemed to love her, but the cruelty inflicted on him negates any love he might have had for her.

The point of "Wuthering Heights" was that harsh environments create harsh people, that isolation can cause men and women to give free rein to their emotions, and those emotions can spiral out of control and spill over into the world outside of their isolation; the author is telling us that is what life should be like, not hidden away from all eyes. When Emily Bronte published the novel, many reviewers were repelled by the violent emotions it contained; polite society dictated that emotions be kept in check. Emily Bronte kept her emotions to herself her entire short life; she was the daughter of a minister and expected to be meek and subservient. Underneath that tightly bound demeanor a volcano of passion must have seethed. The only place she gave voice to her true self was in her one novel, and her poetry. If she had lived longer what might she have written?

"Wuthering Heights" was a production from first season of the "Dupont Show of the Month," sponsored by the DuPont Corporation; at the time, they were a research and development company, "making our lives easier." More on what they actually did, is below.

The finding of this long lost gem was miraculous; a TV historian who had spent decades collecting early TV productions died and left the collection to the Library of Congress. A research manager for the Paley Center for Media had been looking for it for 20 years, after Rosemary Harris asked her if she'd ever seen a print of it. That chance remark led to the discovery.

The decision of TCM to leave in the DuPont commercials is a unique confluence with this precise moment in history. The new Todd Haynes film, "Dark Water," about the legal fight that went on for almost 20 years against the same DuPont Corp. that sponsored this show, for poisoning the world's water supplies with PFOA from their Teflon product, premiered just two weeks before TCM aired the show. Watching those commercials, with the horror of what DuPont has done in your mind, and with the knowledge that they had been lying for decades about PFOA, gives the production up-to-the-minute relevance. This is how corporations have gotten by with committing crimes...by lying as long as they could possibly get by with an litigating until the victims are broke or dead.

Amazing that television can give us that context, and also give us a rare second look at an explosive Burton performance. He won't be soon forgotten.

I'm a fan of Cinerama, and while this isn't Cinerama, it's a rare 70MM film put out in 4K by Flicker Alley, a company trying to give the fans rarities that haven't seen the light of day in decades.

I'd never seen this film; it had been on my radar for several years. It was too expensive when it came out, but on a Black Friday sale I bought it. I fully stand behind all of these specialty films being restored, and supporting that means buying them when they've been restored, no matter the subject matter. The restoration of "Mediterranean Holiday" is virtually flawless. Watching the comparisons with the old faded and pink negative, and the restoration, is amazing. You should buy it simply to see how wonderful it looks in 4K.

The extras are amazing, and you should also pick this up to revel in the information imparted in them. They are mostly in German and Swedish, but are subtitled. They discuss the making of the film and the restoration extensively.

However, the film itself is extremely dated and 150 minutes long. You feel every one of those 150 minutes; the scenery is the only good thing about it. Since this is a 1964 film, it's mostly filled with men and you only see a few women; that includes a belly dancer in Egypt, and Princess Grace, who is seen for a few seconds in Monaco, officiating at the Gran Prix. It is woefully lacking in any kind of a script, the musical score is almost laughable, and the egregious animal rights violations that happen in the film are startling. I realize this is from another era, but even in 1964 some of this should have been verboten. If you watch this, be prepared. I fast-forwarded through several of the animal scenes.

Taking the whole release into consideration, this is a 4K Bluray anyone interested in 70MM and film history should purchase. You take the good with the bad on releases of this kind, and in the end they balance out.

I saw this at the drive-in in 1978, and loved it. It's one of the best rock and roll movies ever. Another reviewer mentions that this film makes you feel what that era was like, and it's the truth. All the period details are correct, and you can feel the energy of the live performances. It's a wonderful, evocative experience of a film and was criminally neglected when it was released.

Tim McIntire, while not looking much like Freed, inhabited the character so completely he made you believe he was Alan Freed. McIntire never got the respect he deserved in his acting career, and his loss in 1986 was a tremendous blow to the acting profession. I still miss him.

Some of the baddies are broadly caricatured, with no purpose other than to be ridiculous. However, they are completely obliterated by all the real performers, and the actors portraying versions of musical groups from the 1950s/1960s. This is where "American Hot Wax" shines. Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and others perform their own hits, and it's paradise to watch and listen to their performances.

This film needs to be on Bluray/DVD. Whatever musical rights that are stopping it from getting to the fans need to be ironed out. It's been forty years...the film is waiting to be discovered by new fans, and rediscovered by current fans. I'd pay a lot of money for a deluxe Bluray edition; with commentary, extras, the works. Please, get this film out today.

I'm upset I spent money to see this repugnant, repellent junk. If this had been just a drama, it would have been great; a family seemingly under a curse, careening out of control like a family in an ancient Greek play, such as "Orestia". In that, Clytemnestra kills her returning husband, Agamemnon, in revenge for his ritual killing of their daughter, Iphigenia, which kicked off the voyage of the Greeks to rescue Helen, at the start of Trojan War.

The addition of the witchcraft angle was unnecessary. It ruined the bones of a good movie, and it was telegraphed far too early and they filmmakers showed far too much. A mother, rotten to the core, who ruined her daughter's life and that of her kids, doesn't need the witchcraft to be scary.

Toni Collette was wonderful, as was Alex Wolff, but their performances were stuck in a noisome film. There were no scares, there was no nuance, in this film; the theatre I saw it in was silent through the entire running time, and no one was scared. They had Gabriel Byrne, an actor that can rip apart the mesh of a movie at the drop of a hat and make it better, and had him play a man who had no emotions. Horrible film, and horrible use of the actors.

"Personal Shopper" is a miraculous film that in its quiet way wreaks havoc with the viewer's perception. You can never be too sure of what exactly is going on, and more than one viewing is mandatory. If you look away you miss important plot points. A reflective mood is essential for taking in what the movie shows us.

Kristen Stewart is a surviving twin in this story; at the beginning of the film we hear that her brother has died from the congenital heart ailment they both suffer from. In her upper-20's, she's now alone and grieving in Paris; her boyfriend works in IT and is off in Dubai setting up a mega-company's security protocols for an unspecified timeframe. She works as a personal assistant/shopper for a celebrity of some kind; we hear her say she's not happy with the job or her employer, but it's apparently all she could find. Even then, she has to hound her employer to get the money owed to her, and the employer treats her like she's barely visible.

With her entire life on such queasy ground, Stewart is also trying to contact her late brother's spirit. It seems they both had psychic powers and functioned as mediums. They had a pact to try and contact each other, if one of them were to die. She's staying overnight at her brother's house in a rural area outside of Paris, attempting to communicate with him. She comes into contact with an entity in the house, which attacks her with malevolent fury. It is not her brother, though, and she's too scared to go back.

It's at this point that the story seems to veer in another direction, but does it? That is the heart of the movie. As viewers, we are never sure exactly what we are seeing. Events begin to happen quickly, and as I said if you miss a scene it may alter your view of the film. Stewart's character misses many important points in her own story; her inattention to the happenings in her own life affect events in the movie. She may be psychic but she also seems to have a wicked short attention span. Spirits may show themselves, but she's either misinterpreting the signals or missing them alltogether.

I loved this movie; I purchased the Criterion release but didn't see it in the theatre, and I wish I had. As I said it's slow moving and quiet, but momentous things happen. Stewart is absolutely right for the part. She has a knack for looking like she's caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, forever uncertain of what's going on and surprised by it; she's never ahead of the script but always catching up, belatedly reactive. Always running away from her job, Paris, London, and the events that happen to her, she's constantly either arriving or departing. It's the kind of film you have to watch, to know if you like it or not.

"Lou Grant" was one of the best series ever made. Most of the episodes are a wonderful example of just how good television can be. "Ghosts" is not the best episode of the series, but it's close.

Billie is investigating the death of a woman, supposedly murdered by her estranged husband by being pushed over an upstairs balcony. The death occurred in their now empty house, which they were trying to sell. The husband is jailed for the murder, but he says he's innocent. Billie then hears that the house is possibly haunted, and the husband says it was an entity in the house that killed his wife.

Billie meets the dead woman's sister at the funeral, who truly believes that there is something going on in that house. Billie goes to the house to do some investigating, and scares away a group of kids in an upstairs room using a Quija board to contact the spirit. Billie tracks them down to ask them about the night of the murder. They don't say much but tell her about one of their female companions who was hurt in almost the same way as the dead woman, in the house. Billie interviews the girl, who says she was pushed from behind while on the stairs of the empty house, which broke her leg. There was no one behind her.

A seance is planned when Billie consults with a psychotherapist who investigates hauntings, which Billie attends. The dead woman's sister attends as well. The seance breaks up when "something" happens. Billie is no longer sure that there is no such thing as a ghost.

Animal goes to the house to take some photos, and is visibly uneasy while taking the photos; he hears noises and rustlings when there is no one about.

The dead woman's sister is doing a tarot reading in the empty house, all by herself, and calls Billie to tell her she's in contact with the spirit and asks her to come to the house. I won't spoil the ending, but it's a good one, with three different reveals. The very last shot in the episode is why I love ghost stories.

This episode is a must if you're interested in ghosts and hauntings, and also "Lou Grant." It's one of the most unusual ghost stories I've seen, and holds it's own with the best of them. Don't miss it. "Lou Grant" is being released on DVD by Shout!, and I highly applaud them for it. Get all five seasons, because there is nary a bad episode in the bunch.

Here is the perfect example of a film that is gorgeous to look at but completely empty. Far less experienced filmmakers have created simple, inexpensive films that develop the characters and allow the viewers to create a bond with them, thanks to a good script which is the cornerstone of a great movie. How I wish Brad Bird had put more of the money spent on this film toward a better script to help us care about his characters and their flashy CGI surroundings.

Every bit of the budget is on the screen in this film, and it's virtually hollow emotionally. I had not one second of concern that anyone would be in any danger, and no character made me want to root for them. I can't even express how little this movie affected me. It was 130 minutes of boredom. I was yawning 20 minutes in and never really stopped, and I never fall asleep in a theatre.

The viewer never has a clear picture of what the film is trying to say, and I don't think the filmmakers did either. They must have lost control of this film early in the process or never really had a clear story plot line, unless the studio interfered post-production. The first 2/3rds of the movie all we see is the main female character running around the country until she finds George Clooney. I am a Clooney fan, and when he comes into the picture there is a little more action, but really, there is too much larking about and not enough story development. The problems are not due to the acting. That is fairly decent, but actors can't compensate for a bad script.

The Romper Room-inspired idea of sending robots out to coyly invite the "new idea" people to Tomorrowland is laughingly simplistic and done with all the solemnity of a graduation ceremony. During this scene (while I tried not to hoot in derision at the screen) I was reminded of some of the 1950s sci-fi films where the self-appointed best and brightest blasted off from a doomed planet to start life elsewhere, and leave the vulgar rabble back on Earth to die. The bone-headed writers were implying that only a select few could have an idea that might save mankind, when in reality some of the most truly innovative ideas can come from that "vulgar rabble."

Another reviewer mentions the huge wind turbines that are shown through a portal near the end; the way the film presents this suggests fans are the answer to everything. The reviewer discusses the thousands of birds that get chewed up in them each year; my thoughts exactly as I watched. It's far too trite of a scene to be in a film predicated to be futuristic and worried about life on Earth. A film about Tomorrowland should be thinking beyond wind turbines. It should be cutting edge. The film just parrots the green technology of today without coming up with any new ideas.

It's inexcusable the way the potential this film had was squandered. Thank I can't even summon up enough interest in the film to do a decent review, and it doesn't deserve it. Don't waste your money on it...I wish I could get mine back.

The only other review on the IMDb for "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story", gave this documentary a bad review. That review is wrong. While this might not have been the best documentary I've ever seen it is a must-see film for its content, which is brutal and eye opening.

In 1965 Frank de Felitta, who made films for NBC, went to Greenwood, MS to see if the Civil Rights movement had had any impact on the deep South. In the original film Booker Wright is shown discussing how he makes it through his day, and how he had hope for his children but not for himself. It was broadcast once or twice in 1965, then never shown again. The granddaughter of Booker Wright, Yvette Johnson, went looking for the original film, and some answers on her grandfather and his activism. Raymond de Felitta, Frank's son, contacted her. They worked on this documentary to bring Booker's story to a wider audience.

A lot of that original film makes its way into this new documentary. The footage of KKK members talking to crowds of whites in Greenwood in the early 1960s, all about how they're being subjugated and put down by all the other races, are disgusting and disturbing. The footage of Greenwood, MS town leaders, and of course they're all white, talking about how much they love their black people and are not racist, is chilling. Every one of the guys around the table, including the mayor, look like they just came from the KKK rally, and act like it. They all have dead eyes with no feeling in them.

What this film does is show how hard it was to be a black person in Mississippi after slavery was abolished and keep your dignity and your life. It showed in a lot of ways black people were still kept in slavery. And, that while things have changed a bit, they didn't change nearly enough in the South and elsewhere. Black men here talk about their lives being of value, yet there is no evidence that the whites in the town, beyond a few, thought that. This is is still a problem 50 years later in the US.

The man of the title, Booker Wright, was a hero who lived his life under this regime. He was a successful business owner who went on- camera for the 1965 NBC film to talk about his life and how he lived it. He was targeted for that, harassed, pistol-whipped, and eventually murdered in a shady fashion by another black who might have been ordered to kill Booker by local police.

What you get at the end is that to the whites of Greenwood, MS, and probably in a lot of other towns, black life had no value to them unless they could control it. Again, a lot of things haven't changed. We must all work to get them changed. Demand transparency from your local police department; organize a peaceful protest of any act of brutality by them and keep protesting until you're successful in changing their actions. And watch this documentary.

I'd spent a few weeks reading the reviews of "Under the Skin." When it finally came to our one independent art theatre, Filmstreams, I had already decided to see it. We have far too few unique films and I have long been tired of the formulaic Hollywood films, so that was factored into my decision.

I urge everyone to see "Under the Skin," because it's definitely unique. I've not read the book, so I knew only what had been in the reviews. The viewer is constantly unsure of what is going on until the very end, where you even then can't be sure.

Scarlett Johannsen is appropriately bizarre, sweet, vulnerable, calculating, terrified, seductive, and zombie-like, depending on any given moment. She comes alive to trap the men she meets, then goes back into her trance-like state to go out and trap another one. The men she finds are all fairly awful-looking, but the inside joke of the film seems to be that they all think they have a chance with such a beautiful woman and are all lured to their doom (which shows the over-sized ego of the men), except for the one man she deliberately lets get away. He is wary of her because he's wary of everyone, after years of being taunted about his disease. She finds this interesting, you feel, and the viewer sees a flicker of humanity growing. Her scene in front of the damaged mirror is riveting. She seems to have really seen her reflection for the first time here, which haunts and amazes her.

Most of the reviews here are from men, but this film has a distinctly feminine viewpoint once the main character begins to interact with the men she comes across. The man who takes her home from the bus admirably distances himself from her in the beginning. She stands in the bedroom after he leaves, looking just like the alien she is; you have the feeling that she's never had to sleep or felt the need to, or ever really been inside a room for longer than it takes to walk through it. Her sexual awakening is confirmed with her long perusal of her naked body in the mirror.

In the first half of the film she drew men into her van playing at sexuality, with no idea of what that entailed. In the second half she seems to yearn for it, radiating this so strongly that the man is drawn to her, kissing her and then trying to go further. It is at this moment that we see the alien become aware of what sex really is. Her violent reaction is surely something felt by many women, and when she grabs the lamp to examine herself, this is also surely something done by many women. We don't know the real reason for that until the end, but it's a striking scene that says so much with so very little effort. She learns terror at that moment and the feeling never really leaves her as the movie winds to its end, and I venture to say that most women feel this way when confronted by men at many points in their lives.

This isn't a film for everyone, but for those open to a new experience it is visually and emotionally rewarding, despite the fact that in reality, it's a slow, methodical film that doesn't give any answer to the questions it raises. It's the anti-blockbuster.

I'd put off seeing "Against All Odds" for almost 30 years, though I'd loved Phil Collins video, and the title song, since it debuted on MTV. Turns out that the video is the better of the two and I should have just watched that. I finally rented the film, and it stinks. I can't believe Taylor Hackford made this confusing mess of a film. I also can't believe the 9-10 star reviews of the film on this site.

I adore Jeff Bridges, Rachel Ward, and most of the other actors in the film, but not one of them does a credible job, which I don't think was their fault. Emotions range from spoiled tween to dementia-riddled senior on tranquilizers. One minute Rachel is crying, the next she's stomping off in a huff, then she runs away and jumps on a plane. Bridges recites his lines as if from a teleprompter, when just two years before, in "Tron," he is delightfully droll and playful as Flynn. Same with Ward; she was amazing two years earlier as Juliette in "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid." Alex Karras is completely wasted here. He has about three minutes tops of screen time, where he's just used as a plot point.

Another reviewer mentioned that Bridges was in the best shape of his life at this time, and it's true that both he and Ward look fantastic. That doesn't quite make up for the dearth of good acting. The viewer has 128 minutes of story to sit through and in a film of that length they need something more than beautiful people to keep their attention.

When you have the superlative Richard Widmark in your film as the main baddie and even his performance is comatose, something is dreadfully wrong. Widmark is more like an insurance agent discussing options on your policy than the crime kingpin he is supposed to be; no one can do evil expressions like Widmark, yet his face seems to have turned to stone here. James Woods, who can be counted on to go over the top if he is allowed to, remains about floor level with his emotions and his acting. When he threatens Bridges it sounds like your kid brother trying to impress you; there is no menace behind his threats. Because of all this I feel the blame for the nearly universal bad performances in this film has to fall on the director. This group of actors had given many wonderful performances before they made this film...they were capable of much more if only the director had asked it of them.

The horrendous score and incidental music also deserve to be called out. The jagged electronic score was completely wrong. Hackford should have had Phil Collins do that as well; it cried out for something more lushly melodious and symphonic. The score bears a good deal of the blame in my reasons for hating the film.

Hackford must have been distracted throughout the filming. He'd done a good job on "An Officer and a Gentleman," which had some great performances, but this film is just a complete dud. The only reason to watch it is for the beautiful scenery of coastal Mexico, and even that is muted on the DVD release. I'm upset that I can't get back the two hours I wasted on this movie.

Nova is an excellent series no matter what they do, but this episode deserves to be at the top of their "best" list. Discovered in the sunken hold of an ancient Roman galleon in about 1900, the Antikythera mechanism has baffled and intrigued anyone who read about it over the past century. I've been reading about it since I was small, and always wondered exactly what it was made to do, and who made it.

These are questions that you would think couldn't be answered today, but the Nova special gives us many answers about the mechanism, and it is a fascinating 60 minutes. I could say the mechanism has become an obsession of mine, and throughout this documentary we meet people who are also obsessed with it. Their observations on the mechanism are fascinating, and show why PBS and Nova are important to our lives. They bring our history and our world into sharper focus, and without public television the world would be much less than it currently is.

This is a documentary that should be seen by all. It shows just how the ancient Greeks, and in particular one ancient Greek genius, tried to make sense of the sky and earth around them. Archaeologists, astronomers, mathematicians, mechanical engineers, and historians all have a part in the story of the Antikythera device, and this Nova production brings them all together to tell us the wonderful trail of events that led up to their eventual understanding of what the mechanism was, and how it worked. Great stuff that is not to be missed.

"The Flat" is a great documentary that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which is as it should be. There are really no good answers for what unfolds over the next 97 minutes. Through the course of the film director Arnon Goldfinger tries to find out his family's recent past, in both Germany and Palestine, something that had never been discussed until after his grandmother died. The documentary confronts the messy business of life, and how people deal with family scandal and buried secrets. A war generation, both German and Jewish, forgets their past on purpose, the next generation is not encouraged to question their elders about it, and the third generation wonders why the two that went before could so conveniently ignore their own, and their parents, history. Goldfinger does a good job of laying out how all the participants in this documentary handle, or don't handle, their part in the story. It's a quiet film that is shadowed by immense subjects. As the viewer, we are left to wonder just how much we understand of our own family and its history, and if we have denied parts of our own past just as conveniently as some of the participants in this documentary have.

It's a human story, in the end. Humans do terrible things and justify them in ways those of us who come after might find callous and chilling. Goldfinger cannot interview any of the original participants in this story, since they are all dead; some of natural causes, some in the Holocaust. The final scenes are just as void of answers as the rest of the film. Goldfinger and his mother look for her grandfather's grave in Berlin, in an old Jewish cemetery, during a driving rainstorm. They look in vain for any sign of their family member in this overgrown graveyard, but can find none. Both say they were not prepared for not finding the grave, as if it now suddenly is of the utmost importance that they find some link with their past, after so many years of silence on the subject. That's a good sign, because it might mean they will continue to confront the hard answers and keep up the search for their history, but as the viewer you weep, just the same, for all the love and knowledge that has been lost to time and death. We don't ever get that back.

Yet I'm going to try. The script was a complete mess; I would think Ridley Scott would have been embarrassed to release a film with so many plot holes. Who writes major scripts like this and worse, who would green-light such a disjointed piece of garbage? I literally felt like every other scene had been removed or thrown out, because of the way the story jumped ahead with no coherence.

I found nothing to care about in any character in the film; they had no compelling dialog and were not presented to us as real people. They were stock characters put in place to build the story around, what there was of it. You could have gotten rid of 99% of them and still had the same film.

What the characters did do made no sense. Seasoned space travelers freak out at the site of a decapitated body, yet they wander around inside a completely unknown space for hours. They find an unknown life form and practically pick it up and cuddle it. People seem to teem in the background, yet we have no idea of their character or motivation and are given no idea of their place in the story.

Noomi Rapace has zero charisma, as did her fiancé, whomever he was. Anyone could have played Guy Pearce's role, since he wasn't allowed to act behind all that makeup. I suspect someone fell in love with the idea of a robot fascinated by Lawrence of Arabia, because there was no other reason to include it in the script; it was a completely extraneous bit of business. Michael Fassbender is a great actor but even he can't carry an entire film, though it might have been better if he had tried. Charlize Theron hardly had more than seven or eight lines.

The effects were good, but without a story to support them it was all smoke and mirrors. I was upset that I'd wasted 2+ hours that I'll never get back. I certainly didn't think that after "Alien" or "Gladiator." I think if Scott is going to make a sequel to this, he'd better focus on the script first and worry about the effects later, because I'm not wasting more money or time if this is the best he can do today. I definitely don't recommend anyone see this film.

I have to say that I was prepared to really like this film, since it was shot in Omaha by a native Omahan, and it's true the actors were wonderful. The story, however, is more in M. Night Shyamalan's territory. Through the whole film you're watching one story, and then at the end you're switched to a completely different direction that renders what you've watched nonsense. While this type of setup was extremely effective in "The Sixth Sense," it is not meant for this kind of film. Sweet and tender it is not.

I felt disgust by what was done to Martin Landau's character, and couldn't believe a wife would perpetrate this on a husband she supposedly loves. I was fully expecting a haunting of some kind from the choppy earlier part of the film, and it had a creepy feeling through most of it, so the end came as a double shock. Definitely not for everyone.