Reviews

4 Academy Awards, Come On?!?! I admit there was some good acting and good cinematography but the rest was a total disappointment. It was not a modern day Western as I was led to believe: it was a farce. Here are some things I found farcical: the deputy leaves the prisoner handcuffed with hands in from of him. Was there no cell to put him in? The hunter has a pang of conscience and returns to 'drug deal gone bad' scene with some water for one of dying dealers. There was no explanation of why the deal went wrong in the first place; obviously the two parties each brought their goods. Why didn't the hunter just call the police/sheriff from a payphone and say he saw a scene of carnage in the desert instead of taking a dying man water in a jug? After the deputy was killed, why wasn't there a manhunt out for the killer? The sheriff seemed to dwell on his retirement more than stopping the carnage. Where were the Texas Rangers in all of this? If the sheriff was overwhelmed, why didn't he call for help? Did no one in Texas carry a gun other than the killer? Well you get the picture: gross carnage, how many people can we kill in a 2 hour movie, etc. Glad I didn't pay to see it in a theater.

I enjoyed both the book and the 13-hr miniseries. In fact, the latter was one of the best things I have ever seen. I know you can't capture everything in 2 hours that you do in 13 hours but what I did see was a major disappointment. The 13-hr version was almost a verbatim enactment of the book. This version uses the same house (Castle Howard) and a similar plot line but that's it. So many elements are changed and I only remember a couple lines from the book. Everything else is de novo. e.g. bringing Julia to Venice so she and Charles could fall in love. In the other version, they did not fall in love until on the ship. With such a short movie, why did they feel they had to tell the tale in flashbacks like the original? And the original movie had a somewhat upbeat ending - not so with this version. While the actors in this movie were OK, they were NOT Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Clair Bloom, Sir Laurence Olivier, or John Gielgud. With the original, I bonded with all the characters and did not want the series to end: no problem with this one ending. My wife found it equally hard to follow and all of her questions were answered starting with, "In the original series..."

I saw this movie a long time ago with my Peruvian landlady and still have fond memories of it. The basic plot is simple: an elderly grandmother with a ravenous appetite is eating her family out of house and home both literally and figuratively. This is to be sure a black comedy, very funny but with a dark undercurrent... how does one deal with a person who eats anything she can get her hands on? At first the family tries to get rid of her by rather legitimate means culminating in actually getting her married off. After the marriage ends as quickly as the food supply, she is back at the family home. The family now decides to get rid of her via murder but all their plans backfire. They die one by one and she continues to survive. If you get a chance to see this movie, please do - it is cleverly written and the acting is superb - you won't be disappointed.

I saw the movie with my wife and interestingly while she is the comic book buff, I thought it was a great movie and she hated it. When I asked her why, she felt the movie Batman was not true to the character of the comic book Batman. Her example was in the simultaneous capture of the DA and girlfriend. The comic Batman would have managed to somehow save both of them but in the movie, one dies and perhaps the other should have died. I attributed that to perhaps a more true-to-life situation of not being able to save everyone, every time, but her comments did make me rethink some of the movie. The parts I found unbelievable is how the Joker could manage to surreptitiously plant a ton of explosives not only throughout a major medical center but also in two large ferries. And I am the only one who thinks Gotham City should be New York, not Chicago? The other irritating thing was - at least in my theater - the music drowned out the dialog. I had a very hard time hearing critical parts of what the characters were saying. So, in summary, while it was a great movie and I recommend it highly, I also wish there could have been less explosions and less background music.

I never saw this movie when it first came out and always longed to see it because it had one of my favorite actresses - Audrey Hepburn - and one of my favorite songs as its theme - Moon River. I also knew it had won and been nominated for several Academy Awards. Not too long ago, my curiosity about this movie was again piqued when I met Henry Mancini's daughter and saw a video tribute to her father using clips from the movie. After finally getting to see the movie, however, I was kind of disappointed.

Although the plot is fairly simple - two seemingly mismatched people fall in love - I had a hard time getting into the characters. George Peppard's character was believable - a good-looking writer with writer's block and a wealthy female patron, but his acting seemed stiff and uncomfortable. Miss Hepburn's acting was superb as the neurotic social-climbing, Holly Golightly, but the character was unbelievable. Why did she have to be a hick from Tulip, Texas? Does anyone really believe that intense French lessons could turn someone from a hick into a sophisticated socialite? Was Buddy Ebsen's brief appearance as her former husband a screen test for The Beverly Hillbillies a year later? Couldn't the same story been more realistic if Holly had been a smaller town New York girl and leave the hick past out? I also felt the ending was a little contrived...the rain, the abandoned cat, etc. The party scene also didn't make much sense - who were the attendees? There were no references to her having any friends. Mickey Rooney's portrayal of a Japanese person may have been funny then, but I think it would cause the movie to be boycotted today as racist. And what was the point of that character - comic relief? Wasn't it already supposed to be a romantic comedy? The 1960s gave us a lot of this genre of movie. Back then, love conquers all was an overriding theme in many of these movies. Looking back, however, I think other movies did a better job, such as The Pink Panther, Barefoot in the Park, to name a couple. Well, at least the movie still has one of the greatest theme songs.

This movie has all the makings of a grade B TV police show except for some exceptional actors in the form of Sean Connery, Meg Ryan, Mark Harmon and Jack Weston, who do an excellent job bringing some belief to their roles. In fact this is my number one complaint about the movie: unbelievability. I can accept the basic premise of two characters who dislike each other being forced to work together to solve a crime. That one of them has a beautiful daughter in the form of Meg Ryan starts the ball of disbelief rolling. Meg forces Mark Harmon to chase her in a classic Corvette convertible, driving like a maniac. Who would treat a classic car that way? When the men begin to work together, we hear such original lines as "you can ride along with me if you like" and "Why don't we stop for some coffee?" Yeah, right, two guys who really hate each other. (Was there a strike of the Writer's Guild during this movie?) But there's more: The officer who caused the falling out between the lead characters just happens to be a major suspect now and bad guy. The Medal of Honor character (Jack Weston) who is the best friend of Sean Connery turns out to be a bad guy, but finds his conscience in the end. Jay Austin (Mark Harmon) goes from MP to SFPD detective. (What a meteoric rise.) And he just happens to be uninvolved with any other female when he meets Meg Ryan. (Well, I guess this is San Francisco.) Even the underlying plot begs belief. The murder of the female MP was caused by the diamond smuggler leaving the diamonds at the Presidio's Officer Club, then breaking in at night to retrieve them. However, the water bottle that held the diamonds had a special holder. How could one be so careless? Did the MP really have to die in the first place?