Reviews

I botched another chance to be with loved ones during this film, and so I'm done. The movie itself was the usual post 1990's over the top SFX stuff with a lot of plot and scenery.

Cruise plays the rogue intel officer who only does jobs he thinks are worth doing, and a rogue AI starts the film off with a disaster that tries to put fear into the audience.

The truth about AI is that it's only as smart as the hardware allows it. Ask any flying insect about where pollen is, and then ask it to explain its family history and you'll get a baffled look from the critter. The film assumes human like qualities from the electronic menace, which I suppose in theory is possible, but all programs require a power source and the hardware to support it. That's basic computer building 101.

Even so the film uses a lot of software references to push the plopt forward. In the old Connery era James Bond films the devices where there to give an ego boost to the Bond loving audience. See Bond outsmart the bad guys with his Aston Martin DB5 oil slick, or exploding briefcase. Here the software is both a helper and a menace, with some humans throwing in their two bits.

There's a lot of deceit and double backing and double and triple guessing on the part of the characters as to what to do. If there were a real AI that had "gone rogue", then like all bugged software you would see errors pop up. But we don't get that in this film. We get a lot of Cruise doing highly dynamic green screen work, a lot of martial arts from both men and women, and a good amount of gunplay and more than one car chase, all of which is capped off by a train sequence.

You know ... I came to dislike movies way back when I was a kid in the 70s, but could still enjoy them as mindless fun. This film kind of goes back to those James Bond, Man From Uncle, Mission Impossible, I Spy days of movie and TV yore. It's meant for a younger audience than myself, and designed to emotionally prepare said audience for the challenges of facing a possible nemesis that, again in theory, doesn't have any feelings but a sense of programmed purpose.

The film looks good, but with no linger cinematic moments. The sound was overly loud, the music was okay enough. And the tricks of the spy trade were fun and inventive.

If I had a criticism it was that the fight scenes are out of late night kung fu theatre from the 1980s and 1970s. During the 60s and 70s Taiwan a few other Asian nations film industries made lots of martial arts' films, and they got aired late at night on broadcast TV. All of the fights were perfectly choregraphed, and I felt like a teenager again with a slice of pizza and a can of coke watching the old tube TV at 1AM. But, it is a movie, and you can't take it too seriously.

I sat through the overly loud previews and Noovie promos before the actual movie, and figured that that was that. I really can't say too much more than what I stated in my opening paragraph. I really tried, but it was after all only a movie.

I've been extremely negative about films. The supermajority of them are simply psychiatric rehabilitation formulas. The main character is on the fringes of society, helps society meet a challenge initially for himself, but gets rewarded with the girl, town recognition and money at the end.

It's both very refreshing and somewhat disappointing that a film comes along that breaks that mold and tells an old fashioned war story. True, the main characters go through some psychological transformations, but the primary thrust of the story is the plot even though one character is radically altered at the end.

So in this regard it's still a character driven story. In screenwriting courses we used to get pounded into our skull "what the main character needs", and write that. Again, in this sense the main character is the focus, but he must bring the plot to a resolution, and it is for a moral imperative, at least in a war fighting context.

Technically this film really puts a lot of other war films to shame. For whatever reason todays' World War 1 films far surpass other war film offerings. The special effects are superior, the art direction with costumes, sets and props really outdo a lot of other violent movies. Go figure.

There're a few over the top and "oh come on" moments, but unlike a lot of films that try to include all demographics, this one doesn't play around with what's at steak and what values win wars and which ones get people killed.

A lot of WW1 films I've seen have shown the battlefields as brown chewed up stretches of mud, but here we get quite a bit of greenery as well as battle scarred tracks. But the empty artillery shells, the half buried bodies, the ashes the muck and everything else really show just how horrible mass slaughter really is.

I'm tempted to call it a heart felt film, but there are no tender warm moments here, or rather very few of them. And those very few tender moments show just how horrible it is when nations clash.

The film is designed to be one take, one cut, but if you pay attention you can see where some edits may have been made. And even though I called the film plot oriented, it is driven by a plot, but is really a story driven film and not so much character driven in spite of the character exposition.

A really good film about the first world war. Deep, gritty, not overly dramatic, a bit much at moments, but otherwise a really good watch. Check it out.

This film is designed to make you feel good with a false sense of being informed about what at the time was a contemporary topic or a "current affair".

The truth of the matter is that all films since the 1970s are designed, not created, to make you feel better about whatever topic is included in the film. From something like the Marathon Man or 2001 a Space Odyssey to Sex and the City, ro Star Wars, to this film. The idea is that you will identify with one or more of the characters and their circumstances, and be able to release pent up emotions that might otherwise gnaw at you to the point of being disruptive or anti-social.

And yet the United States is ostensibly the nation with the most shootings among the American public, along with a lot of social divides causing friction among social groups. Go figure.

Michael Moore makes a pretense or show of tracking the rise and fall of flint Michigan in its relationship with the auto industries rise and fall, and eventual leaving much of the United States, thanks to cheaper labor both south of the border and overseas.

The problem with this documentary is that it never really informs on the core root of the problem nor on any real solution, and thanks to the democratization of media, a response film was made showing mister Moore's sociologist's mindset. His aim with this film was to not entertain so much as make people laugh about a very serious topic.

The idea is that you will have felt informed and outraged, but not to the point of wanting to create political waves out on the street. Given the events of January 6th of 2022 at the nation's capitol, I would put to you, the reader, that films were controlled as a paranoia against social unrest. And yet unrest happened anyway regardless of whatever material was put on the movie screen.

And so Michael Moore the social psychologist pulls the wool over the movie going audience in 1989 when I was getting my own film career rolling. And neither I nor my fellow young film makers could understand the primary thrust of why Moore had made his film.

I do now. And I think it stinks. When I think of all of the sociologist media out there, everything from DC and Marvel comic books, to a Grisham or Mischner novel, not to mention the vast plethora of Star Trek and Star Wars' novels lining bookstore shelves, and then the tabloids of how some public figure is suffering from some condition (which they aren't), I think of Michael Moore. I think of the early days of when films were films, and how they went from being visualk entertainment to visual therapy sessions.

And that's all Roger & Me is. You see and hear the bad about Flint Michigan, how it got screwed over by General Motors who left to try and compete with Ford Aerospace for defense contracts, and all of the disenfranchised people of Flint and the plight they suffered. Except that there is no real solution offered by the film maker. He lets the people he interviews let their thoughts and feelings try to entertain by only showing the most extreme cases and editing them together to acheieve a certain effect.

Which would be okay if this were a feature film regarding some fictional story, but Moore is aiming his film at regular people so they don't get upset about their own circumstances and learn to be satisfied with what they have or even less.

And that ladies and gentlemen is what films have been about since the 1970s. They are used as devices to let you vent your feelings, and given some sociological instruction of how people can enter non-traditional roles.

It doesn't matter what the facts of Flint Michigan are. What's important is that you feel "satisfied" after leaving the movie theatre, because in theory that creates or keeps social harmony. The Watts riots not withstanding, the Rodney King riots not withstanding, the January 6th insurrection not withstanding. Flint Michigan served as an example for the nation of how things could be worse, and how you should feel good, educated and satisfied about a slice of the nation that was Flint Michigan as it stood in 1989.

And, as per recent reviews, that's just another reason of why I quit working on movies. A low budget director once told me when we were on location while shooting a film that would get bought and remade, he stated "Society needs an outlet, you know?" Meaning that his low budget feature about bike gangs going after valuable relics from the old west, shot on black and white, would let a segment of the public release pent up emotions and let people live their lives. Well, given biker gang violence, one is given the severe cause to severely question societies gate keepers.

The same goes for Michael Moore and his pursuit of Roger B. Smith. It's the primary plot, but the real objective is to manipulate the movie going audience. And again, that's what movies today are all about.

It was not always the case.

One wonders if Roger's film company can shut down and move from the neighborhood he lives in and cause a lot of economica and social havoc. One wonders if another film maker will go and pursue him and call his film "Michael & Me".

Avoid if you want to know what really happened to Flint Michigan. Read some well informed news articles if you want to know about the decline of America's auto industry, and specifically to find out what happened to Flint Michigan. Your brain will love you for it.

There's a "guardian angel" kind of thing in law enforcement and psychiatry that tries to help people with bad circumstances overcome their life's challenges, and to get back on track. It's either parents or wealthy family paying for the services, or law enforcement trying to correct a wrong in someone's life who has helped society.

Heavenly Kid is probably an allegory of such a subject, only it's dressed up as a father-son in a supernatural context. The son of a once teenage or early twenty-something street racer is told to help his son become a confident male to land the girl of his dreams. Only it's a case of "be careful of what you wish for".

It's an okay film that touches on sexual matters, and has a distinct mid 1980s feel. The fashions are 80s, but the music has that old fashioned rock and roll vibe that could be from either the 50s up to the 80s.

The father figure exercises some divine powers to help his son, which winds up with in Mick Jagger speak "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might just find, you get what you need." In sociologist speak the film teaches that getting what you want may not be what you want, and that there may be something better other than what you really want around the corner. Which is nonsense. A better film would have had a less apparent decision with a less obvious choice, and given the decision more pros and cons on both ends, instead of dictating to the character and audience what the son should want, desire and eventually pick.

In this vein the film is fairly predictable and condescending. That's not to say that the basic message is bad, but sociology dictates what films get made and how, and often the "moral message" of the film is pretty one-dimensional and trite. So it is with Heavenly Kid.

It lacks some polish, but is otherwise okay. It's basic film making that doesn't get very artsy and keeps both image and story functional, if again predictable and dismissive.

Maybe see it once.

Don't mistake my title for anything artistic and introspective. It's a simple statement of fact.

When I was growing up I used to see a lot of westerns on daytime TV, usually material recycled from the 30s to the 60s, a well as a lot of films that were oriented towards plot.

Butterflies are Free is a psychological drama that looks at one person who is disabled and another who is ostensibly a desirable female. The story revolves how they will navigate their emotions for one another.

If this intrigues and interests you, then by all means watch it. Such films were kept lighter in tone prior to the big psychological shift in character oriented feature films. But, it is in fact why I really hate contemporary, post 1960s movies, and quit working on films in the mid 90s to try for another career.

The two characters are not quite night and day, but they reside in the more urban part of San Francisco, though it's not really established where. In fact their mutual apartments look like something out of New York, and not anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, much less the city itself.

The story goes through motions of one of the character's parents examining the life being led. Another character challenging the male suitor. And the fecklessness of one of the characters who has a heart but is challenged by their inner instincts to find someone that more suits their basic needs.

The film shows a family therapy story of why people react with the emotions that they do. And unless you're talking about a Marvel or DC superhero movie, that's what most non-blockbuster movies are all about. And personally I hate it. And I hate this film.

I was raised by a lot of condescending sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists. And this film satisfies all their desires to a T. It looks at two different people,, it looks at their emotions, it looks at their relationship challenges, and looks at the wants and needs they express to culminate in a cathartic realization of what is presented as being needed by both.

Prior movies used plots to tease out conflicts with characters. You saw character conflicts, but they were not the focus of the film as such. That is even if the character conflict took precedence over the plot, and the plot acted as a functional framework for the film, it may not have been the focus of the film, but the character actions and interactions hung off the plot structure.

In butterflies are Free Goldie Hawn and Ed Albert's amotions and interaction are, in this sense, the "plot" and emphasis both. And the family therapy and other behavioral scientist sect probably applaud and cheer for films like this, thinking that this kind of media is the solution for all social ills.

I was steered into film by a well known figure at the behest of the United States Naval Intelligence. And I hated it when the more tawdry elements of the film industry came to the fore. So when I see a film like this, allegedly set in San Francisco, I look at it with a jaundiced eye.

Simply put it's not the film for me. But, by that definition most films are not the "films for me" simply because they don't look at moral imperatives anymore but emotional and psychological conflicts that require therapeutic examination. It's what situation comedies are all about. It's what nearly all of television and other mass media are all about. But again, that was not always the case. And it's been going on since the 1960s. Sixty-three years.

The idea behind films like Butterflies Are Free is that there will be some therapeutic insight into the characters that the audience can draw on and grow from. In theory it educates on someone with a disability, how two people with that disability might conflict with one another, be challenged by trying to relate to one another,, and eventually resolve their differences. The idea is to impact society with what is framed as a therapy session.

The problem with that thinking is that during the day and age of the western and detective film or serials is that the problems with violence we read and hear about today were all but unheard of. And the divorce rate was far lower. So, you tell me. Do, Hawn, Albert, his other and her director alter your perspective on life and society? Do you feel better for seeing this film?

I shouldn't single out Butterflies are Free, but it is a fit example of faux therapeutic film making from the sociologists and marketing psychologists who rule Hollywood with an Iron family-therapy fist, and have done so for over sixty years.

I could go on, but I'll stop there. In the end films don't make any kind of impact on anyone. But the people who act as gatekeepers think otherwise. It's why you don't have a plot about the play Hawn's character is staring in, nor some other plot regarding Albert's character, his mother, or the director of Hawn's play.

If you want to see a better film, one that's plot driven with Hawn in San Francsisco, then check out "Foul Play". Your brain might thank you.

I've written a few reviews on musicals, but I'm honestly not partial to the musical genre. Simply put musicals are really a female oriented genre. A lot of the dances and pageantry placates to female sensibilities, desires, and taste.

Still, I can enjoy a good one if it's decent enough. Grease 2, as the name implies, is a follow up to the original film released in the late 70s. To my senses it feels on par with the original. Both plot and story are different, but share the same general feel from the first film with Travolta and John.

Seeing people in their mid thirties play high school students isn't a big deal, but it takes away from any vestige of reality the film is supposed to portray. The scope and scale of the production is on par with the original film, but is ever so slightly different to keep it new.

Typically major feature films have a sociological point to them. That is they usually have a behavioral science agenda and psychological impact on the movie going public, with the idea that that'll spread on the general public. But I really can't find one here.

Either way it's okay for an afternoon's viewing. Check it out.

If you take De'Vere's "12th Night" and smash it together with Norm Jewison's Fiddler, you'd get something like this.

Streisand plays the prodigal female who is denied a higher education due to her sex. And so she rips a page out of many a made for TV movie and the Shakespeare portfolio, and does the "woman dressed up as a man" thing to blend in with masculine society.

Personally I think this is a female fantasy for a certain type of female that really doesn't have much merit. The reason is that females just act differently than males, and the bodyh size is typically smaller, as well a just the basic way of how females move. So, on that level, for me at least, it doesn't wash, and has never really worked in any film or play. It's the kind of thing you can sell in a comic book story, or maybe a novel, but not much beyond that.

So, does it work in this film? Eh, like a lot of fiction you have to suspend your disbelief in order for it to register with your imagination. If you can do that, then this film should entertain.

Yentl goes through the rigors of a traditional Hebrew school education, exchanging thoughts and opinions on the morals, moral lessons and general morality and philosophy that the Torah and related writings have to offer the faithful Jewish person. Interspersed in the drama and occasional comedic mishap are Streisand belting out songs in the midst of a softly shot period piece.

Just as I had a hard time buying into Streisand's trans-gender escapade, so too I found the overall story hard to buy into. I mean the film looks great, and it's well directed and edited, but like all movies you really have to buy into the story premise in order to fully enjoy the fantasy presented, and I guess I fail on that note.

But, that's not to say that it's a bad film as such, it just comes across to me as being every so idealized, and in that vein pretty saccharine, and just not my kind of a movie. I think the sappy quality and lack of some realism injected into the plot held back what might have been a better film.

As I've stated in other reviews I really don't like movies anymore, and am trying to get as many reviews out as I can before a lose a drive and taste for doing so. What you don't see in these films are the ego clashes on set, the theft that takes place usually from extras or some of the crew who are looking for free tools to add to their collection, or hangers on in the form of money people contributing money to the effort to get an associate producer credit. Some film projects are law enforcement stings to tease out people who got their money illegally, or to help law enforcement vette other malefactors in society. You don't hear the BS or lies that cast and crew tell one another on the set, nor see the drug use, nor other scoff lawing that goes on behind the scenes. In spte of the sumptuous cinematography and idealized Czarist Russia that Streisand puts on the screen, you are seeing one woman's version of an idealized story.

Should you see it? Maybe once. Like I say, it's not a bad film, but it is a hyper-fantasy about a very dark time in European and Russian history. Maybe see it once and see what you think.

Big productions, at one time, were seen as important social events, like plays where you had to dress up to go to a major big production that had been shot on 65mm film. Films, at that time, still showed you how to behave. They didn't show trashy behavior on the part of the protagonists.

Fiddler On the Roof tells the story of turn of the century Czarist Russia, and the Jewish community living in Anatevka. We're witness to Tevye's dramas as he nurses his injured animal and tries to make ends meet with five daughters and a wife who tries to push him to be a better man with negative reinforcement psychology.

Tevye imagines what it would be like if his social status or financial fortunes were more favorable, and amidst the everyday life of a traditional Jewish community comes a young man with new ideas. And so we see the change in Tevye's life and the hamlet of Anatevka.

Films like this are meant to draw out our empathy, and show us a slice of life that we normally don't get to see. And since musicals were all the rage at the time Fiddler was made (originally a stage play) it was of course a musical, with a lot of song and dance numbers that are fairly impressive and on par for the time.

The one aspect on the DVD's special features is seeing Norm Jewison work on location. And seeing him double talk to his actors, saying one thing and then saying something else that's essentially contradictory as he tries to direct the squabble between Lazar Wolf and Tevye. It reminds me of all the lies and other deceit I personally experienced on sets from cast and crew, and all done for the sake of keeping creative juices flowing.

But, the end result is a well crafted photoplay replete with a lot of musical and dance flares and crescendos.

When I saw the stage play it had been years since I saw Jewison's film. And I have to say that I remember the play getting lots of laughs, and where Jewison tried to keep the comedy in his film version, it just didn't have the same comedic timing, and I don't recall anyone laughing when I saw the film on TV.

Jewison's film gives you the visuals and the dialogue, but you don't get the intimacy and familiarity you would with a stage play. And that's where the humor simply doesn't translate from play to screen. And that's typica with nearly all stage plays put up on the big screen; whether it's The Music Man or Camelot or some other project, part of the humor is being there with the cast live in front of you on stage.

The payoff however is that you get richer visuals. You get animals, sets that represent the entire town of Anatevka, and just the overall spaces both inside and out that represent the community, and then some. And, you are spared the exorbitant cost of a theatre ticket and the cost of dressing up in your finest suit or slacks and tie to show that it is an occasion that requires a degree of formality.

In the end Fiddler tells a tale of no matter how much tradition a community has, that geopolitical forces will come in and ruin your day, but that you will carry a portion of your traditions with you as you migrate from one area to another in an ever changing world. It happened to victims of the Roman Empire, Celtic Tribes, the natives in Japan, Africa, the Native Americans and others. In this sense Tevye's story is everyone's story who has suffered from forces beyond their control.

Is it a good film> Sure, but it's not a good representation of the play simply because you don't get that live audience experience. And again you get the music, the humor, the total gist and feel from what the play intended, but that simply doesn't translate to the big screen. In the film you get a shortened version of the play that is very attractive to look at, retains the visual drama, and gives the gist of the lighter moments from the play, but not the full play experience.

Like I told a friend recently, one of the happiest days of my life was when I quit working on feature films and tried for an engineering degree. Seeing Norm Jewison work on the DVD extras, specifically on the "Norm Jewison Filmmaker" documentary that came with the special edition, and seeing him double talk his actors and go through his manic directing style, to me, reminded me of all the ulcers I suffered as well as the lack of sleep from waking up at 4AM or 5AM so I could go to a shoot, then to school, then back for more work in the evening before coming home at ten at night. I never want to go back to that. I tried briefly a few years back, but this film and the accompanying documentary remind me of why I quit thirty some odd years ago.

Still, for all that, if you want to see a hyper-reality of a fictional Czarist Russian town, then this is the film for you. If you want to see a people get forced to move after a lot of personal drama, with some song and dance numbers to celebrate the lighter moments, then this film should satisfy.

Well shot, well directed, excellent art direction,, some good music, maybe see it once to get an international perspective on life.

I've stated in other reviews when I was growing up films used to be about showing people how to behave. They then went to showing how not to behave, or how a certain uncivilized person behaves for the sake of laughter to educating on what to look out for.

So, I'm not sure what the purpose of this film is. You either like someone or you don't. An aging single man in San Francisco meets a single woman who is perhaps a few years younger than him, and grates on his nerves.

There aren't any flatulence jokes, but there's a few crude sex scenes which seem just out of place. There's a few other gags that just really seem off. It's the kind of film that reflects a sort of Neuvo riche that lacks or has lost a lot of their home grown values their parents passed onto them. The kind of person that thinks that because they're out of earshot of family and social peers that it's okay to flaunt rules and convention. To the point where bad decisions are made due to a lack of good parental guidance, or perhaps parental misguidance.

I couldn't take watching the first half of this film, and so I had to spread it out over three sessions. And even then I had a hard time sticking with it.

I may regret saying this, but it is my opinion that people tend to be attracted to people who are like themselves on a number of levels. And where Stiller's character seems okay and on the up and up at first sight and as we follow him around, he in fact is deeply flawed and "gets what he deserves" so to speak.

This film, in my opinion, is about a lack of guidance for good decision making, and the ramifications of that. I think a cleaner and farther reaching film could have been made, but we are in the day and age of online sexual material, so I imagine Stiller believed he had to compete with that, and the film we get is something that's not just tawdry but genuinely hard to watch at times.

A good premise executed with a lot of technical competence, it's just too bad it's a tasteless film.

There's a kind of woman who likes to test their romantic prospects by putting them through one rigorous test after another. By not just seeing how far their prospect is willing to go, but to see how much punishment they'll take. That's what this film feels like.

As a pre-teen in 81 I didn't think much of this thing. It usually played on HBO late at night, presumably for the intimacy scene which, by today's standards, is pretty tame. The film was long, dialogue based, had a lot of angsty moments that, to be honest, even for a romance, could have been trimmed.

Infidelity, commitment and passions are tested in this two-tiered parallel storied film about actors of a film coming to terms with the parallels between themselves and the characters of the film they're portraying. I remember back in the day when this film was all the rage in artistic and romantic circles, and as usual the hype designed and formulated for the movie's reputation washed out any real merit to its content. And seeing it after all these years I'm glad I leaned towards watching Sean Connery James Bond films and Star Trek, verse romantic intrigue that could have been cut by an hour or more.

The one thing that angers me about this film is what I mentioned, the hype. Presumably this film was to try and vette infidelity or potential infidelity among married or would be married couples. And maybe to tantalize the overly emotional among both men and women in the feature film audience. One of the intents and operations of film is to let the image of the illusion allow assumptions in a person's mind to be seen as fact. And once can't help but think that this film was intended as a homewrecker for law enforcement purposes.

Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but a lot of film, nearly all professional feature films are about presenting or reconstructing criminal scenarios, and this doesn't feel any different to me. You don't see much of the emotional impact of the story, so much as the build up and execution of it. So, make of that what you will.

Is it a good film? Technically I suppose, but a smarter film would have had some of the other characters being a little more pro-active and challenge the story and main characters more. Personally I don't find the film all that intriguing nor fascinating. I find it a yet another example of law enforcement trying to ferret out would be marital malefactors in society. It does not come across s a reflection of society so much as a reconstruction of a criminal act.

And ultimately that's why I quit film, and why I didn't much like this film.

If you were or are really in love with someone, you would not let your more primitive instincts destroy your better judgement. I think nearly everyone knows that.

Long, well shot, decently acted, a predictable plot and story, I'm not sure there was every much here worth examining.

Old school Kirk and Spock era Star Trek, if you follow the plots, are essentially police stories codified or dressed up as aliens, monsters and spaceships. The stories you are seeing are essentially law enforcement, security and the occasional health story of how police and other first responders encounter and deal with psychopaths, megalomaniacs, psychotics, or regular people who were smarter than average criminals and flaunted social convention.

You are essentially seeing police tactics and psychiatric regimes of how to tackle and sometimes treat people who have a leg up on everyone else, and are going to cheat, steal, or even kill their way to the top to get what they want.

So, when I watch this documentary and listen to the contradictory opinions and stories of who Gene Roddenberry was, what was happening, and who did what with what impact, I shrug my shoulders. When I worked on films and video one of the habits from everyone was to tell a story regardless of how truthful or dishonest it was. And that's the vibe I get off of this documentary.

Pretty much most of film and TV are like that, but with science fiction the idea is to inspire the smarter and more imaginative audience members to consider careers in law enforcement, military, medicine, or even intelligence services.

Original Trek was created in the wake of the end of the second world war and during the Cold War. And the Enterprise was the police cruiser that went around administering justice and law with some health overtones. Star Trek the Next Generation was essentially a giant therapeutic wing of a hospital where there were no problems, and that the audience was essentially the patient. My take is that once a fan had seen an episode that reflected their issues, they would leave and no longer be a fan. The pot served the subplots which became the focus.

What does this all mean? It means that this documentary, from my perspective, and what I've written here, was and is all smoke and mirrors trying to mask a mass hospital agenda that the production had for the audience. If you ever visited a private mental hospital everything is antiseptic and "perfect", where there are no problems and where there are no conflicts to facilitate the patients. And that's what the Enterprise-D was and is.

Ergo all of the stories about infighting, to me, are just more fodder fed to what fans this show has left, to mask the true agenda.

You know, I'm really just all Trekked out. This fictional property will never get back to the great writing it had in the 1960s. How anyone can watch Star Trek the Next Generation and be a fan of it, is just beyond me. But, all those sociologists and psychiatrists must know what they're doing, because apparently people like turning off their brains for TV and absorbing anything that gets presented to them.

So, remember, old Trek was a police show. New Trek in 89 was a primer for a younger and broader audience as a preparatory measure for the net connecting the world socially. Anything that tries to explain both flavors of Trek is just garbage, an effort at smoke and mirrors to obscure the true objective of the show.

Seeing Shatner interview people about so-called back stage dramas, again it comes across disingenuous. Part of undercover police work is to be able to act and tell a good yarn to get witnesses and perpetrators to reveal what they know. And that's kind of what film and TV are all about.

As a former wide eyed fan of the show, some of the happiest times I ever had were as a boy and young film major watching reruns of old Trek, and trying to come to terms with the new show in 89. After two writers' strikes, the first of which is mentioned in this documentary, and having seen personality conflicts and dramas for a TV show or two that were shot locally in San Francisco, the happiest day of my life was when I left a world of deception for the sake of it, a lot of which was to keep out anyone who had any ideas of misusing media for personal agendas.

Had I known now what Trek was really all about, in both of its iterations, I would have never had "stars in my eyes" about making my own Star Trek like show with a different setting, different technology, and just a different fiction altogether. But, I can watch this show without the acid flowing in my gut that I used to experience everyday I worked.

I didn't like Star Trek the Next Generation when it aired, hated it all these years, and now I understand why, and it took someone like Shatner to present to me the deceptive truth of how modern Trek was formulated with a bunch of fictional accounts of personality clashes. Oh well.

Should you watch it? Only if you're a die hard fan and think that this documentary will enhance your knowledge and pleasure of the fiction. As for me, well, knowing my parents [probably met mister Roddenberry, and helped contribute to the show's genesis, I can safely wave goodbye to the fiction.

P.s. The mysterious figure who didn't know how to write scripts but kept screwing with everyone's work, was probably a child psychologist and psychiatrist. Because that's all TV shows are all about.

As a former die hard classic "old school" Star Trek fan, I put off watching Galaxy Quest because of all the jabs it allegedly took at fans, the show, and just the whole atmosphere, era and world of science fiction fandom.

But I took a chance on it one night grabbing the DVD from what used to be the local Blockbuster, and found myself laughing at the cliches for both the fictional Star Trek knock off show and the equally fictional fans who followed it.

Watching this documentary, to me, is borderline much because Galaxy Quest never existed as a real TV show, and yet there are legions dedicated to the movie as a comical riff on all of Star Trek.

This film isn't just a quick five or ten minute look at behind the scenes while the film was being shot, but an in depth reflection on the film and the participants, minus the late Alan Rickman. You get more than just anecdotes in this film, but reflections, thoughts and ideas of what was happening, what could have happened, what ultimately did happen, and its emotional impact on cast, crew, the studio that backed it, and the audience that watched it.

It's both fun and informative, and doesn't get too teary eyed or otherwise emotional over the particulars of the film. It is after all a riff on another famous science fiction property, and there's only so much you can do with that.

One of the treats is that everyone involved deliberately states that comparison to Stara Trek, and why they went in their direction as opposed to copying and mocking the old TV show they're parodying. Because that was the film's objective.

I like Galaxy Quest as a stand alone property, and enjoyed it very much, but I can't say that I'm a fan, but I still really enjoyed the look back that this documentary provided.

Check it out.

This Baltimore based black & white shaky cam version really doesn't have a whole lot of energy to carry it. It uses more language than a lot of other versions I've seen, minus the live performances I've attended over the years.

It just lags. It's got the whole nebula time period of 80s Yuppie to post Gen-Xers turned professional thing going on, but Shakespeare is supposed to be about the energy put into the performances, and how the performances carry the language of De'Vere's play. This really feels like it was shot by second tier actors who were either understudies for local plays or maybe second or third choices for larger film productions out of New York.

I mean it's got heart, but not that much heart. It really felt or came across as if the cast were reciting sides from a few pages of sample script as opposed to reading the original play and putting their own emotional interpretation on the language. It really lacked both substance and style, and came across almost like a high school production of something meant very much for adults.

The spaces and scenes are confined to the estate of a luxuriant home, which is appropriate, but large estates in the Renaissance and Middle Ages were something short of palaces; a kind of mix of fortress and luxury home. Here we're confined to an upper class home in the Baltimore Area that's supposed to be what I just described, but is more or less just home that's perhaps a couple bedrooms shy of being a Bonafide mansion.

This is the kind of film made by a first time director trying to break into the industry to show that can get a project done. I haven't looked at the director's record, so I don't know how true that is, but it feels like a "I can do this" kind of film.

Whatever. It's something I might have done during my "guerilla film making" days around San Francisco, so I don't personally fault it too much for other than what I've mentioned.

The film could have been shot in color with high contrast film and lighting, and allowed for some night shots as opposed to the very bland day sequences we see throughout the film.

Look, there are better versions out there. If you're looking for something different, then this might suffice, but don't expect much of it. It really does feel like local talent trying to put on a show and getting just enough money to make a low budget feature film out of the effort.

If you're looking for something more serious and vetted, then check out Brannash's 93 production.

So, I did stay up on weekends and sometimes week nights to watch late night movies or TV shows. Bob Wilkins, Night Flight, Friday Night Videos and so forth. But the one show I never really took a shining to was Tales from the Crypt.

It was just too creepy and wacky with all of the monsters and blood and gore. That's not my thing and never has been. But, I did see this episode once upon a time, and re-watched it again the other night on Showtime via an Amazon stream, and it's about as gruesome and adventuresome as I remember it.

A house of ill-reputation is disguised as a church mortuary, and lures young men to their blood fates. A young woman working for an evangelical takes issue and goes off to find a family member, but is confronted with the awful truthful prospect from a private investigator who appears to be on the fringes of legal operation.

From there he discovers the town secret, and adventure ensues.

Eh, it's not really something I recommend. Dressing up potential sex into morbid and murderous exercises as is the hallmark of Vampire films, just seems really odd to me. To this end I've never understood the allure of the Vampire genre of horror films ... I mean, there isn't going to be any intimacy with said vampire characters, just death, so why get worked up by it? I don't know. But I guess some people like that sort of thing.

Personally I thought the nudity was unneccesary, but it is or was a show for late night HBO male audience members, and I guess at one time I was one of those people way back in the 1990s, so ... I watched the thing, and one or two other episodes, but never really understood the draw of the show, nor the horror genre as a whole.

There's high adventure, some fire fights, the supernatural being pitted against the best good god-faring mankind has to offer, and things work out only in the way that this show can present.

Seriously, the opening scenes are pretty gross, and I had to power myself through them. It's all special effects, and you know that, but you buy into the fantasy of the film and try not to let the images bother you too much. Even so I found this episode to be particularly disgusting in spite of the fireworks towards the end to let good have a chance at vanquishing evil, so to speak.

Like I say, I used to see this, The Hitchhiker, Bob Wilkins Creature Features, Night Flight, Kung Fu Theatre and a few others on weekend nights, but Tales of the Crypt never really grabbed my attention because it was a horror based or themed TV show on HBO. But hey, if you like a lot of gore and sexuality on your TV screen, then this episode may be for you. Personally I think there are better late night offerings out there, but that's just me.

A Faustian look at television from a family perspective.

My biological mother used to complain that I spent too much time with other hobbies, and that it interfered with my studies. The truth of the matter is that someone in Hollywood wanted me to go into film and TV to make a political and social statement. TV ate into my grades to the point where I had no choice but to choose it as a career, and I hated it with a passion.

But, even so, there's still some good material that comes out of "the dream factory", and I can still enjoy certain films and TV regardless of my experimental experience thanks to United States Naval Intelligence. And other than Lucas's Star Wars' films and Roddenberry's Star Trek films, an occasional gem comes up, like this one.

The thing about this film is that it's shot like your standard mid budget teenage comedy, but is pretty clever and appears to use actual teenagers to play the roles of the kids and their friends, while mom and dad (played by John Ritter and Pam Dawber) navigate the adventures and misadventures of television. From film noire to westerns to cartoons to gameshows, this movie puts and pits the parents in one adversarial position with the content presented a TV from the underworld to the next.

It wasn't uproariously funny, but it was really clever and humorous making this viewer laugh quietly and smile at the gags. What's great here is that dad (Ritter) is not the bumbling bafoon that we see so often in modern iterations of television and commercials, but the loving father who is capable of figuring out things and defending his wife and children. And the very pretty Pam Dawber playing the mother gets angsty with her husband's weakness for TV and the situation he puts them in, but doesn't overly condescend nor show how mom knows more than dad, but acts as dad's partner in fighting off the evils that TV-Faust has to offer.

And dad doesn't drop the ball at the end, nor does mom come in and save them all while putting dad in his place, but both partner up with help from the kids to win out over television and all that television has to offer.

Truly I cannot stand TV. I saw the premier of Three's Company, Ritter's big claim to fame, smirked at it here and there, but never watched it regularly. And where I thought Pam Dawber was a decent straight-"woman" in Mork and Mindy, and laughed at the premier episode, I really didn't want to see Mork from Ork Nanooing is way across the TV set. Books truly are better than television, and I'm sorry this film didn't plug that last angle.

But, any film that shows a family coming together to beat the evils of television gets my vote, even if it uses well known film and TV stars and light the thing like a teen sex-romp minus the sex and nudity that you might otherwise see in a film aimed at late teens. This film really is a treat, and, not to get too technical-geeky here, but today's TV's resolutions beat what is mentioned in the film about the TV presented to Ritter's character by the lord of the underworld. So, science and tech win out anyway.

A really good family film that looks, feels and even sounds a bit dated here and there, but is still a fun watch all the same. Check it out!

I didn't mean to give my review of this film a pun title, but there's a lot of effort gone into this film to show how a one-night stand can change the lives of not just the parents but the people around them.

It just felt like a lot of movie for something that couldn't have been cut down in both the screenwriting and editing. It's not a bad film, it gets mildly raunchy with the language and coitus scenes, but it's one of those films that grows on you, and makes you appreciate humanity as a whole.

Like I say, it's a lot of movie. And this is probably the first Katherine Heigel movie that I've been able to sit all the way through.

A professional news caster hooks up with an unemployed loser who is building a sort of adult website, and sparks flare to create something that's more than magic. Then other sparks fly when conflicts arise.

Do down and out pot heads really hook up with blonde professional hotties? Well, if you've lived in the SF Bay Area, then you already know the answer to that question, but typically professional people find other professional people. That's kind of what makes this film somewhat endearing; i.e. Do opposites really attract? Short answer; no. Not ever, or rarely.

I had a friend recommend this film to me, but the night this thing was playing in the theater I went and saw a different movie. It didn't bother me since I'm not a big Heigel fan, but I may have missed the boat there in more than one way.

It's a long film with a lot of relationship material wrapped up in it. And for all of the more tawdry elements in it, it does feel like an honest film about two people from despairingly different backgrounds coming to terms with having a child.

I have to admit that I had a hard time sticking with it. I typically don't like drug humor, don't like explicit sex humor, didn't really see the need for more than one coitus scene, and thought some of the character development could have been trimmed. But, I watched it, and all in all even though it's not the kind of thing I normally watch, I thought it was an okay film.

It gets a lot of technical marks, but it wasn't very tasteful, and could have been while still keeping all the sex and other references intact, though perhaps scaled back for brevity and concision.

Fils today are technically much better, and also more artful in the technical department, but the material is a bit more open and on that note potentially tasteless, which this film somewhat is. But, again, it's an honest look at pregnancy involving two very different people who succumbed to their inner passions.

If you're planning on having a child, or even if you aren't and find yourself with one on the way, then maybe scope out this movie one time.

So, when I was growing up corporations were taking over major studios, and the formulation of film and TV went from showing how to behave, to showing how mental health was the cause of all problems, to hos not to behave, to how domestication was the solution for everything.

It's why soap operas are all but gone It's why original 1960s Star Trek and other TV shows and films had stronger stories. It's why there's so much junk produced today.

That includes this show. Huge production values but another complete trashing of what had been established in the form of a kind of reboot, but with a lot of female domestication flourishes to make the thing watchable by couples and even some single females. There're a lot of emotional flourishes here that really have absolutely nothing to do with the story.

I shouldn't get too upset. Film and TV are all about visual deception to tell a story, and so you get producers who keep thinking that if you dump more money and art direction into a project that that'll sell a show to a veteran and newer audience both. Make it look pretty and all will be forgiven. Make it sound good too and they'll love you.

In shows like Time Tunnel, I dream of Jeannie, Adam 12, The Rockford Files and so forth, the story took precedence over character. Men did not speak in hushed tones in a mock attempt to seduce the ladies, they spoke in clear tones. People who had issues either held it together for the sake of other characters or just let it out to further the actual plot and story, they didn't have their own dramatic moments to accentuate anything that might be afflicting the audience members.

And that's the difference not just between the old Star Trek TV show I loved in reruns in the 1970s and early 1980s, but the huge shift in media emphasis or story focus. In Strange New Worlds we have a female officer in the ship's luxuriant galley that looks like something out of Architectural Digest issue commenting on how delicious a slice of cake is, and talks to the captain in between mouthfuls. And again the plot is secondary. It's the personal issues of individual characters and their relationships that is the focus.

Oh sure, the uniforms look better, the actual ship has all kinds of detail touchups, but it's just mental health TV when original Star Trek was about addressing problems and plots that were the actual story, and any character issues were derived from that, they were not their own thing and given their moment in the spot light so that individual audience members with similar issues could feel momentarily important, nor so that older fans who stuck with this garbage could feel that their show was important; i.e. An ego-boost from a rebooted good looking show that was just the same old trash re-invented by sociologists.

And the reason I keep trashing more iterations of what used to be my favorite media property is because Star Trek was an adventure show whose emphasis was on solving plots, and presented what people thought a practical future might look like, not a future that people would like to see, complete with commentary on slices of chocolate cake made in the galley.

To me "Strange New Worlds" is just more therapy TV. Older TV shows showed people who had personal issues as part of the story, not as a tapestry of interpersonal interactions where every character had their moment for attention, and not the focus for a plot driven show.

Why on Earth these people just can't go back and make a simple adventure show with the old story format I'll never know. A good part of it is to cater to demographics, especially now since females have taken up what in my time would be called non-traditional roles; i.e. There're more female police, soldiers, even fire fighters and construction workers. But if a producer feels the need to alter an adventure show's format to make it more open to emotional interpretation, then maybe that show isn't worth making in the first place.

The first several minutes of an old school Star Trek TV show you knew the threat or dilemma Kirk and Crew were facing, even if it involved Captain Pike on some level. With this show I couldn't tell what the story was about until a full ten minutes into the thing, and by that time my eyes were heavy and I wanted to fall asleep.

Again, why people continually give praise to gloss is beyond me. The truth of the matter is that I understand that they are taken in by the costumes, the nebula in the space ships shots (which I made popular by fan fic I posted on the net), the sets, the delivery of dialogue ... but that's still not strong nor solid story material. It's gloss meant for all of the aforementioned reasons I put in this commentary.

Well, I've had enough of trying to give this media property second chances. I guess I'm all Trekked out. One of the many reasons I quit film and TV was because I did not understand the continued deception for formulating story material. As it turns out all of film and TV are mental health exercises. And where that's sort of always been kind of the case, prior to the corporate takeover in the 1970s emphasis was on story, not aggrandizing personal emotions and relationships. You took care of the problem first, and then relaxed with your favorite people afterwards.

In short, I can't take this junk anymore. At least it's not shot a-la Shaky-cam style to give it a faux documentary feel, that would have had me putting my foot through my TV.

A heart felt romantic comedy about a creative individual falling for an inanimate object; a mannequin. The dialogue and action is different from the 1950's black and white film starring Robert Walker, but the basic story is there, only instead of Greek gods and goddesses the producers and writers swapped them out for the ancient Egyptian mythos.

Allegorically this is what some law enforcement does to people who got wrapped up in plots. It's what you see at the end of something like a detective episode or film where the innocent guy gets the girl or a job, both, or something other to put him on the right path. This film is essentially a giant effort for that, and follows your standard psychiatric formula to rehab an individual that suffered some bad breaks. Again the idea is to put said individual on the right path.

It's an endearing film that looks at a single man's fetish with a kind of sympathetic and humorous lens. We are let in on the joke that the woman in question is real and not merely some "object of his affection" ... to coin a phrase. The mythological figure follows a set guideline of rules for real world interaction, and we also follow a plot and subplot regarding the management and ownership of the store in which our hero works and resides.

It's an endearing little film that's harmless, touches on sexuality in the way that only the 1980s can, and has "light hearted 80s movie" written all over it.

It has heart, and conveys a good message of not to be too judgmental, and gives a Hollywood ending, which in the real world doesn't actually take place, but something, hopefully better, is substituted by the parties trying to get the subject involved back on track to where they wanted to be or were striving for.

Personally I never paid much attention to mannequins. Department stores seemed to be never ending buildings with endless supplies of sofas, TVs, silverware and dishes. Clothes were for ladies, sometimes men and boys, but mostly for ladies, and this film plays off of that idea.

Again it's harmless fun, means well, and is aimed at those wanting to put people back on track before they got caught up in something that was none of their doing.

Check it out.

The IJN Yamato took somewhere of a dozen torpedoes and over two dozen bombs to sink. She rarely, if never, engaged other ship's in a classic BB on BB battle, much less exchanging or getting hit by a US Navy CA, CL nor DD. But she did suffer a torpedo attack some days before she was sunk at Leyte Gulf.

In Harm's Way tells the personal stories of the men and women who were in the Pacific Theatre leading up to the legendary PT Boat attack run on her task force, and is historically accurate with the smoke screen.

The film has what would turn out to be an all star cast lead by the legendary John Wayne and Henry Fonda, followed on byh the likes of Carrol O'Conner, Kirk Douglas, Barbara Bouchet, and even Slim Pickens and a host of others.

I had heard of the film many times, and had seen one or two other black and white WW2 films regarding the sinking or attempted sinking of the Yamato, the massive battleship with nine eighteen-inch guns. But I hadn't seen it in its entirety until I had it on the background this very day.

Well acted, well scripted, this film is not plot driven but a character examination in the personal events that led to the attack that was the prelude to the Yamato's ultimate fate. Only the Yamato is not the focus of the film, but a plot point, and later on an objective.

The nurses, the weak psychology of some of the characters, the inner strength of others, those who are dutifully minded and who do their job in spite of the tragedy of battle befalling them and raging around them. It is all here.

Therre are some Hollywood attempts to try to redeem some unforgiveable acts by some of the characters, and more Hollywood varnish as the IJN Yamato takes a few hits from the US Navy task force assigned to cripple her screen.

But again the film focuses on the American service personnel and their personal dramas, and not the Imperial Japanese navy and the war machine they represent. We look at Wayne and his personal suffering, Douglas's character's extreme shortcomings, the tragedy of two extremely alluring young women, one the fate of battle, the other the fate of man's weakness and anger. The stalwart psychology of marines and their Aussie guide, and the knowing brow of the higher ups led by Henry Fonda.

I'll be honest, I don't like movies much anymore. Come the mid to late 1980s film and TV went from being examples of how to behave to trash TV of how not to behave. "In Harm's Way" takes no sides on the matter, but shows men and women for who they are, good and bad, and perhaps that's why this film has gotten so much attention, mention and praise over the years. Like I say it still has Hollywood moments ... plenty of them, but the character examinations tend to be honest in spite of the gloss added to both characters and film.

I can't say that it's a film that I would add to my collection. Like I say, after having worked for a short number of years in the film industry, and realizing the shift that occurred in the mid to late 1980s, and how that effected me and my outlook, and those of the people I knew, I can appreciate this film as a more honest look at people compared to some overly dramatized films like Fonda's "Mister Roberts" or Wayne's "The Longest Day". But, it's still a hyper-realization of a historic event.

Still, it's worth seeing once. The SFX are comparatively primitive compared to what can be done today, but the drama is real as are the characters; their strengths and tragic weaknesses.

Check it out.

A sequel of sorts to the Sheriff installment that came out two years before, Garner's Latigo Smith jumps train to avoid marriage to a "woman of negotiable virtue" with "lots of blonde hair" to land in the little mining town of "Purgatory".

Unlike the wandering do-gooder of the previous film Latigo Smith has more than once vice, notably a weakness for taking chances which is a running theme throughout the film.

The very talented Suzanne Pleshette plays the tomboyish "Sidewinder", otherwise known as Patience Barton, who, as pre Easy from "Man's Favorite Sport" expresses her love impulse in the form of an act of aggression with a Winchester.

The plot revolves around the dispute over mining rights, and the subplot revolves around potential heart palpitations between Garner and Pleshette, with a love triangle created by the woman jilted at the very beginning.

Jack Elam makes an appearance as Garner's adopted protégé for nefarious if allegedly altruistic purposes. Chuck Conners comes onto the scene, and in the end Harry Morgan shouts the title of my review, with Elam reflecting on the outcome of the characters.

Sight gags, a few funny performances, some jokes, and a humorous if implausible if amusing story all get wrapped up. It's a good hour and a half well spent.

Check it out.

I used to see this every so often on the weekends in Sacramento and Modesto. As a kid I didn't much understand much of it, but as an adult I get a lot of the romantic humor nowadays, inclyding some of the dated race based humor regarding Native Americans, and an attempt to bridge romantic divides between the suggestion of coupling between white settlers and the native girls.

Films are designed to inspire and bridge social gaps, and this film, for its time, does what it can, including educate on past social ills.

Westerns are, not peculiar, but unique i that when Hollywood was cranking them out regularly, we the audience were able to see various periods of the old west, including the height of the expansion west and the ramifications thereof. This film tries to educate, inspire and humor the audience by showing the humanitarian in all parties, and unlike a lot of other westerns, particularly some of the earlier westerns showing Cowboys and Indians at violent odds with one another, the interaction here is benign though perhaps not "peaceable", to borrow from the lingo of the time.

John Wayne is till tough, but in a kind of "the big man on campus that everyone likes" as opposed to the head of the in-crowd who throws his weight around regardless of the consequences.

There's a few fight scenes, what gunplay there is is purely for demonstration purposes and not for enacting violence on one's fellow human being. And there's the famous "pit fight" so often referenced when this film is brought up in film circles.

It's a film that means well, teaches some life lessons to both sexes, and is a reminder of what's important, even in the violent throws of the old west post the American Civil War and prior to the coming of the automobile. Men and women of all ethnicities may not have loved one another but they did get along after a fashion when things were good, and could even take interest in one another if things were even better. And for those that opposed such interaction, well it wasn't their business to begin with.

McLintock is about good times and making the best of bad times, and standing up for what you want, love, and what you think is right. You may win the physical struggle, but that doesn't make you right. At the same time it helps to know when to be a gentleman and quit.

Both men and women, young and old, all get their comeuppance in the end, and a good time is had mostly by all (a few exceptions). It's not a fast paced film, but nor will it bore you. A good hearted movie that looks into another time with some timeless messages.

Check it out.

John Cryer plays a young photographer who's older brother is intent on making him a man when Cryer's affections lay elsewhere.

Shot around San Francisco's more popular areas (there are no apartments on the aging SF docks, and never were) with some fictional locations, the film, to me, feels like a budget version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Cryer even feels and looks a little like Mathew Broderick, only the film with Broderick came out two years after this one.

The truth is it's a nice little film with some token nudity for the young male audience, and in spite of that it has charm, notably with the taxi add sequence.

For the geeky young photographers, gamers, science club and chess club types, this film is for us. It's designed to encourage the young shy types with solo shy oriented hobbies and pass to, as a fellow SF Studios intern once told me, "don't ever deny yourself to anyone..." I wish I had followed that advice thirty years ago, ah, but the Saudis and Turks had different plans, but I digress.

Anyway, it's a good hearted film that some of the more conservative might find ever so slightly offensive, but again the film means well.

Check it out on a weekend night if you have nothing better to do. If nothing else it'll remind you of how San Francisco used to be at one time.

I used to see this on weekday movie programs, particularly during the hot summer months inside air conditioned homes. It would air in the late mornings or afternoons, and was fun to see.

The film skews towards the mature grade schooler and pre-teen, but can be watched by all ages. It's basic structure is the maturity of a pirate captain who goes from hanging out with his fringe riff raff in the form of pirates, to being domesticated in the end, much to the chagrin of his first mate.

Around that structure we get the adventures and misadventures and other hijinks of pirates, his first mate and crew as they ditch piracy for gun running. Captain Vallow and Ojo try deceit, thievery, but succumb to values and the help of knowledge and science as well as the love of a woman.

The action is kept mostly G-rated. There's no bloodshed, but a lot of noggins get knocked, and quite a bit of musket fire, as well as general pirate mayhem when pirates and the forces of law and order are involved.

It's pretty silly stuff at times but fun as well. You can't take it seriously in the least. And remember, believe only half of what you see.

As a boy I was told that this movie was based on a real incident on a real submarine. A lie, but I survived. According to online sources several real incidents are rolled into this screenplay.

Cary Grant plays lieutenant commander Sherman, CO of the U. S. S. Sea Tiger. He deals with a number of near worse case maladies that afflict his sub and crew, including taking on female nurses and civilians.

It's a fun film if you're of the age to understand the more adult humor, and by adult I don't mean crass nor tasteless sexually oriented gags and humor but incidents that are kept in a tantalizing vein when it comes to romance without the full indulgence in said romance.

Boys will be boys and girls will be girls. And having been on a World War Two era submarine a few times, and seeing how cramped things are, the cinematography captures the sense and feeling of the cramped conditions on said vessel.

But, it is a film from the 1950s, so some liberties are taken with the lighting and other visuals. That and there's one or two special effects shots that are pretty primitive by today's standards and back then, but they get the point across.

It's an interesting and harmless film about some violent times. Don't expect any great social commentaries, nor any kind of real historical accuracy, but watch it all the same and enjoy the voyage.

Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Gavin McLeod, Marion Ross, and more. A great cast for a good little film when they use to make films that were a bit leaner and had both adventure and romance.

I don't have too much to say about this film. I liked it. It touched on an event that got some but not a lot of news on TV news media when it occurred.

I didn't see it in the theatre and waited until it hit HBO to watch it. More specifically I saw it with a bunch of friends who all had military experience, and they laughed and nodded in approval a lot of the portrayals in the film.

Eastwood plays Gunny Highway who whips a ne'er do well platoon that like to do things their own way. They're on the fringes of military society, and it's Gunnery Seargent Highway's responsibility to get them to straighten up and fly right.

But the platoon isn't Eastwood's character's only challenge, as an old flame who resented his love of the corps over her makes her voice and opposition known to a man who is trying to change for her sake, the woman he loves more than anything else in the world.

And topping Gunny's challenge is his commanding officer who'd rather gain glory than objectives. How does it all end? You'll have to see the movie to find out.

Movies are there to inspire us, educate us emotionally, and to help us let go of fantasies both good and bad. In all honestly i's why I don't like them and why I quit the film industry. But even though Hearbreak Ridge follows all those rules it tells a decent story of a man who saw his share of history and tries to be a better man after he realizes what's important to him. For all the combat he's been through, both with the marines on the battlefield and mano-a-mano in hand to hand encounters, the one battle he needs to win depends on his ability to change, but also the ability of the object of his affection to realize who he is and accept whatever improvement he can make to himself.

And like a lot of other films Heartbreak Ridge tells a parable about a man who seeks to change for the betterment of not only himself, but to the benefit of all. There's a lot of USMC bravado, some cliche moments among both officers and enlisted, as well as some gunplay and action. There's introspection, there're tender moments, and even some drama.

All in all a decent film that looks at a slice of the US opposing communist expansion. Check it out.