Reviews

I was just after watching Mission Impossible 2 for the umpteenth time, was curious as to its IMDb rating, and was shocked when I noticed that WOTW is rated higher - how can seemingly-rational people rate this POS higher then MI2??? Some reviewers here actually rated this at 8-stars - which is frankly absurd!

As a huge fan of Jeff Wayne's WOTW musical (which I bought on cassette-tapes way back then) I was curious to see how Spielberg would portray the simplistic WOTW premise to a 21'th century audience. He failed - HUGE!!! This is a real turkey of a film, pure and simple! If there were ever Spielberg-sycophants that thought his 'genius' could do no wrong, well, this movie disproves that notion.

Yet, it's rated higher than MI2 - go figure! I have a theory though - these absurdly-high ratings for mediocre films are generally from people, who after watching it at a movie theater, feel compelled to justify to themselves the admission-fee by awarding it a high-rating. Nothing else makes sense.

Apart from the special-effects, this movie is awful.

I have always been somewhat skeptical of the IMDb ratings, and have watched many 5-6 star IMDb-rated movies that have proved excellent. So I was doubtful that WOI was really as bad as the 2.5 stars suggested - boy, was I wrong! This really is a stinker, the worst movie I have ever seen in fact. The people that are bitching about the cheesy CGI really need to focus on what matters - the best special-effects in the world count for nothing if the film has a plot, script and actors not worth a damn! The script is so bad that I'm wondering if this is not some kind of inside-joke as others have suggested. Having watched the entire thing, I could pull the script apart line-by-line, but for what - suffice it to say that whoever was responsible seems to have suffered from attention-deficit-disorder.

This movie is so bad, it's in fact a gem of sorts - more people should have done themselves a favor and watched it in it's entirety - after all, without being familiar with what's truly bad, you fail to appreciate the really great films to the fullest extent.

Having just watched this, I thought it was an incredible series. Burt Lancaster did a great job narrating throughout. The Soviet producers could have been a little more forthcoming regarding casualty-statistics I thought - for instance, we are always given a figure of what the German casualties were after each major battle, but hardly ever one for their Soviet counterpart. Understandable, but a little frustrating if you are a bean-counter like me! I thought the musical-score to be merely adequate. What I really liked were the 2 music-tracks that are triggered by the DVD menus, superb!

What struck me though as a 'Westerner' was how little I knew about this titanic struggle to begin with. The pro-western school systems certainly seem to have done a great job marginalizing the Soviet's role in World War II, where in reality, they practically destroyed the entire Nazi war-machine single-handedly - as one commenter mentioned, they were responsible for 88% of all Nazi-casualties during the war - but at an incredible cost! The "World At War" series also seems to just gloss over these facts as well, much to it's shame - which is why I suppose most of the 'great-unwashed' (not just Americans) believe that the USA had a much bigger hand in the European war than they actually did. Another reviewer's comment here about a recent American Poll revealing that a considerable number of Americans though that the US fought WITH the Germans AGAINST the Soviets had me LOL'ing though - if that's true, well, the mind boggles...

I was however amazed and bemused by some of the reviewer's comments here. Most that are critical appear to be using the word "Propaganda" completely out of context - there is almost no evangelizing of Communist Ideals anywhere in the entire series!!! But then the 'anti-propagandists' reveal their hand - the real problem is that it doesn't contain material that THEY almost insist, should have been included - mainly involving Stalin and his purges! This is about the Great Patriotic War, not an overview of Soviet History in the 20th century. Yes, Stalin was a monster, but as the documentary clearly states, Stalin was not a military man so gave his generals free reign in running the war, and as a result is barely seen in the whole series. More to the point, most of the world at the time in question (1941-1945) had no inklings of any of this, so why include it - again, this documentary was about the USSR's GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR!

So overall, very well made and well worth watching.

I have got to admit that I am constantly bemused by the way people rate movies.

Toy Story 3 is without doubt technically brilliant, has a good storyline and leaves the viewer with an adequate 'feel-good' factor having watched it. But come-on, after spending 200,000,000 on it, isn't this kind of expected?

For me, the most important contributing factor to how a movie should be rated has to do with its 're-watch-ability' - you do think you will re-watch a particular movie any time soon, and if so, what about more than once?

This is where Toy Story 3 bombs with me.

Having watched Toy Story 1 & 2 a single time, I can honestly say that I will also not be watching Toy Story 3 anytime soon.

Yet this movie rates higher, often much higher, than all of the following movies, all of which I have watched multiple times already and would readily re-watch again. So, off the top of my head, and with the 'best' first;

Terminator 1,2. Avatar. Matrix 1. Fight Club. Oh Brother Where Art Thou. Back To The Future 1,2,3. Blade Runner. The Fifth Element. As Good As It Gets. Moon. Inception. Zoolander.

That's a few that in my opinion are far better movies that Toy Story 3, yet the official IMDb stats here in no way reflect this.