Reviews

By that I mean that the actors are pros, the cinematography is superior, the music is excellent, the opening scene under the credits is neat, the underlying idea is very good - and this mess is like watching someone trying to paint a landscape on a bucking horse. Jamming the mysterioso together with a domestic spat can be heavenly if done right - and I had just watched THE THIN MAN. After watching that film, and then this dog's dinner was painful. And I so wanted it to work!! But how can a film go off in three directions in 96 minutes and still bore us?

To think that the screenwriters were blacklisted because they were Reds almost begs the idea that they ought to have been blacklisted for stirring up this junk.

Unrelenting propaganda piece, excellently photographed and narrated. Was Robert Altman laughing, though, when he had his narrator speak the words "murder" and "death" about a hundred times, all to hammer home the idea that we need highway construction? The guys at Caterpillar, who sponsored this, must have swooned. Maybe side roads really WERE awful, but by the end of this, you want to shout "I get it!" I get it!" (The faked images of dead children are disturbing.) Anyway, an interesting artifact from the Eisenhower years. Some fun can be had by identifying cars. And as with all such glimpses, I always wonder where and when the sections were filmed.

NOT for the children! Good vocal mimickry add to this admittedly lewd, gross and vulgar film that I have watched about twenty times. I'm a VIEWER, not a doctor, Jim. But I can say that the perils of the Enterprise as it nears destruction in the gaseous crack of Uranus is a nine-minute blast. Ahem. Oh, and the Ken-doll substitute for Chekov, with its for-legal-reasons-of-course blanked eyes was a stroke of genius. The stardate, by the way, is a list of L.A. highways. Inspired!

The action in this charming (yes) Cold War comedy centers around the brilliant, extraordinary son of Mills - a son who is never seen, but who has become a school hero, then a national, and finally, an international hero! At turns moving and hilarious, this film is how a highly civilised people react to the dread of atomic war - I refer to the writers. The enemy is hardly the West, of course, but amongst the freest of humanity, complacency and lassitude reign. But in this wonderful tale, one boy ignites (almost literally - you will know what I mean) the minds of young Britons.

The kind of thriller that a sniggering 13-year old might find entertaining and amusing. A great cast and a fine soundtrack (although James Horner quotes himself over and over, so his music sounds awfully familiar now), but achingly adolescent throughout. Skip it and watch THE FORBIN PROJECT.

McGiver was great and Gautier was a riot. I recall the humour to be sharper than the NICE show. I feel lucky to have been a kid during the F TROOP and CAMP RUNAMUCK era. Such, such were the joys.

I saw this when I was sixteen, and was struck by how intelligent it was. Ford is superb: smart, baffled, hurt, edgy, terrified. Geer is wonderful. Much like life in a police state, you never know if your friends can be trusted; everytime I saw Smithers on screen, I was waiting for them to ruin it by making him the baddie, but no! I remember how disheartened I was to read a Harlan Ellison essay in which he shrugged it off, and the "so-so" novel on which it was based. Well, I still think that this was one of the best television films ever made. Tnank you, Paul Wendkos!!

This clunker makes THE MUNSTERS look brilliant. I remember seeing it in the theater and so desperately trying to find it funny. I failed.

My brother and I are still wondering if the idiotically bad lack of continuity was deliberate. When you see the wires that hold up the bad guy whom Arnold is "holding", your heart sinks.

As everyone says, the WORST special effects and stunts! And a final fight scene about as lame as old dishwater. BUT - an excellent cast that does its best with rubbish. Meenvile, Arnoldt must find hiss daughter Chenny!

I can see that I am not alone in thinking that this was a superior story, handled very well (except for the very last shot!). The same spooked atmosphere of THE PRISONER pervades; I recommend FRAGMENT OF FEAR for the same what-is-reality take. Anyway, just wonderful. That scene on the yacht! Film noir lives!!

Like all King mini-series, this is stretched, yet unfilled. I could not care less about the idiotic characters/caricatures. To think that poor Dukes died making this crap.

You see, that homeless loon puking all over himself is just a misunderstood, hidden genius. AND he can teach you all about love. Of Four Roses. The positive reviews of this stupid film are either written by the same person over and over, or there is just an awfully big supply of saps out there.

Mary McCarthy, penniless but under threat of a lawsuit by Hellman for daring to suggest that this story was just that, proved the case, digging down to minutiae like railroad timetables. Hellman's career, which just happened to begin back when her husband Dashiell Hammett's stopped, was put into permanent eclipse. Still, the film as film is excellent. Just remember that it is self-serving hogwash from Hellman.

I was lucky enough at 13 in 1968 to catch every episode as a summer replacement series in the US, and even my parents were hooked. The literature on the show is vast, and there are many clubs and websites devoted to it. Interesting how often the visuals prefigure much of the UFO tales: abduction, men in black, helicopters, even the domed head of the Supervisor, along with bizarre medical procedures. The music was brilliant. I still hum its variations on POP GOES THE WEASEL! A stupendous achievement, still thrilling.

My guess is that people who love this film laugh at comedies because they know that they are supposed to be funny. It has its moments, but lacks. DeNiro is about as scary as a bag of bunnies. Why Stiller outappeals Wilson is unexplained. Why Stiller hangs around DeNiro after suffering the worst insults is sitcom crud writing, dragging out the story. An obvious attempt to ride on SOMETHING ABOUT MARY's coattails.

Excruciatingly cute slapstick mixed with some ham-handed satire, not to mention the sitcom idiocy of Grant's obliviousness to Loren's beauty. Then he notices. This is after he and his kids are almost killed and his property and clothes are destroyed by Guardino, who needs a sledgehammer in the hat for it all. Pure formula junk.

I thought that this was a brilliant thriller. Hemmings's character is the perfect foil, an admitted addict. He is like a mute who cannot scream at the horror enveloping him. Paranoia and fecklessness bounce off a genuine conspiracy. The tension is almost unbearable.

Watch this gem along with KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. This is the kind of film which nourishes a starving mind. It never makes me laugh, rather the way that Python did not, when I watched them debut in the 70s here: I just sat there, mouth agape, at the intelligence.

Whitmore's excellent narration, the dramatic camera work, the music - and the chaos and terror of war, false bravado, camaraderie across the lines... There might have been chaos in the production, but this is one of the most moving and honest war films ever.

Stevens is excellent as the P.I.; long before Jas. Garner's "Rockford", a capable gumshoe who could also look sick to his stomach when the odds were stacked against him. The bad guys spare no one and make no pretty speeches. The good guys get mussed hard; even Ball has to wash blood from a murder weapon. An exciting flick.