Reviews

With a top set of stars plus a very experienced director and and a massive budget, this should have been a huge success. Sadly it wasn't. It is obvious that this was meant to be another Gone with The Wind. - only this time two women in love with one man. The differences are clear. Johnny Appleseed is simply not interesting enough. He is placid - as played by Montgomery Cliff , and the two women are such opposites. One bland and one extreme. Somehow The American Civil War somehow gets involved but Unlike GWTW it does not show how the war affects the characters after it socially. And What on earth is The character played by Nigel Patrick doing with an unexplained perfect English accent!!!! Was he meant to be English and if so how did he get to be there. It was a totally unbelievable character - eccentric yes but simply did not ring true. And through out the story all these characters just turn up together without any explanation again and again. So the story is so far fetched that you do not care about these people as played out by these stars. Elizabeth does her best and shows her real potential as a good actress who is not only just beautiful to look at. But the story is very contrived and does not ring true. The saving grace for this picture is how stunningly beautifully shot it is. Every composition is breathtaking. Johnny Green's musical score is stunning . Green was so disappointed that he lost winning the Oscar to The Bridge On The River Kwai which consisted of Colonel Bogey. Which was not originally written for the film. A true great injustice.

I was lucky to have purchased my copy of this film on Laser disc which contains both the overture and entracte music. It is also in true stereo and in the original cinema 66 CinemaScope ratio ( which sadly the dvd issues are not). It is not a great film as intended by MGM .the story is simply bland and not interesting enough. But if you have Three hours to kill give it a try. Apparently Turner found another fifteen minutes. But if you can find the original laser copy that's the one to see as of this writing, - in order to experience the director's real intentions. Until a Proper copy is issued on DVD with all the trimmings.

So Dumbo can fly! Big deal. But that is not what the story is about This should be a simple touching fable of a little elephant finding himself over all odds. This has now been lost Loads of character actors hamming it up, obliterating everything around it including little Dumbo Over produced. and overlong ( The original was just over sixty minutes No heart; no tears;. No film What a shame!

This is the fourth version - with each remake more years further from the previous version - Gaynor version 1937, Garland version 1954 ( 11 years apart), Streisand version 1974 (20 years apart) and now Lady Gaga 40 years apart

The start of the story is touching. I enjoyed the first twenty minutes. Then when little 'miss nobody' suddenly graduates from singing a Piaf song indifferently in a bar - to performing in a huge auditorium. without any nerves disappointments or hardship and no nerves either..!!!! beggers belief And so the film starts to unravel

Life ain't like that... Careers do not happen over night - certainly not to this magnitude- without a huge learning curve and hard work.

I enjoyed watching the early Gaga looking 'normal'. But once she was discovered it became unreal

Bradley Cooper role is fine but I did not care about him. We know nothing about his background. Was he married divorced gay straight??? Never let an actor director himself. It rarely works

The scenes between him and Lady Gaga were fair - especially the very touching last minutes in the film which nails it in one

The choice of songs Too many ballads Not showing her versatility

The audience at the screening were under thirty years old and enjoyed it. The story was 'new'to them and were unaware of the previous versions.

It goes to show the story still works for each new generation.

By the way: What ever happened to the frozen peas that wrapped her swolen hand which miraculously disappeared.in teh next scene?? And the home made engagement ring that suddenly disappeared and became a diamond ring???/

I was so looking forward to this remake.. Kenneth Branagh is so very talented. His live action Cinderella was delightful, But this remake looks beautiful but is so wordy and boring. For the first ten minutes we are shown how clever Poirot is and after a lot unnecessary padding eventually we get on to the train . With all its glory. Great photography. But there was virtually no character development; and the sound was so poor ( even At The Odeon Leicester Square) that I did not have a clue what was going on.(which is partially why there are no spoilers.)In fact it was so dull I nodded off and woke up when the murder had been committed . So I did not have a clue who was dead.( so no spoiler! An hour had passed and the rest of the film trundled along like a slow goods train, whilst Branagh did his stuff. I think he thought he was playing in Shakespeare's Henry the fifth. For at the denouement, he just went on and on and on with speech after speech, in that phoney French accent which was like a bad imitation of Maurice Chevalier. In fact had it been a musical, I was waiting for him to burst into song! Mercifully this travesty ended and we left. Incredibly disappointed.

The original1974 version and the Richard RODNEY Bennett score was such fun which captured the light Agatha Christie feel. This was like a very heavy plum pudding. Branagh alluded to Murder on thrnNile. Please NO Kenneth . Go back to Disney

It is corny , cheesy and yet it works. For the first time since I can remember, The City Of London is shot so beautifully. It really makes you want to visit this great city either at dawn, dusk and of course day. The story is charmingly simply and reminiscent of any putting on show film since the year dot but this time about street dance! And I loved every moment of it.

The support cast of Charlotte Rampling, Eleanor Bron playing Russian ballet mistress with the foreign accent makes the young performers really move up a notch in the acting department.

But of course the high spot is the dance and my goodness there is lots of it. beautifully shot and edited in such a way that you can actually see what is going on without the awful 3 second cutting of pop videos and even some major feature films. The directors of this film trusted their material and knew they could keep their audience interest without a succession of short jump cuts ( a la Moulin Rouge and Nine).

Summing up: this a really good feel good movie. Corny but entertaining and you coming out smiling which surly is what filmaking is all about. Donlt expect Bafta/Oscar stuff , just enjoy 95 minutes of innocent feel good fun