Listmstr Reviews

Manhunter (1986)

Story as good as Silence of the Lambs, but the film was not as well done.

[8/10 · 30 August 1999]

This movie has a story that's every bit as good as Silence of the Lambs; but you don't have Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. Brian Cox does a reasonably good job, but he does not project the aura of pure evilness that Hopkins did. Although William L. Peterson's Detective Graham is more human than Jodi Foster's Starling, he was not as interesting as an actor. And the music felt a little manipulative; as if the story weren't scary enough, you needed eerie and ominous music.

But the story was scary enough that you didn't need the ominous music. The characters in this one, with the exception of Lecter, seemed more human than they were in Silence of the Lambs. With SOTL, one could not relate to the bad guy; he was just a really really sick individual. But with Manhunter's Dolarhyde you could see how he had become that way. "There but for the grace of God go I" is a phrase that comes to mind. "You know how you caught me" Lecter says to detective Graham "Because we're alike, you and I."

By the way, the subtitle "The Pursuit of Hannibal Lecter" is misleading; Lecter is already in jail when the film starts, and he stays there.

The Beatles Anthology (1995–1996)

The Center of the Music Universe, 1962-1970

[14 August 1999]

The Beatles were the center of the Pop Music universe for the eight years they were actively recording, an anchor from which all other 60's music radiates. If you are interested in how the best 14 albums ever made came to be, you have to see the whole thing.

The story is told in the words of the Beatles themselves, and a couple others like George Martin and Neil Aspinall (their chief roadie). Along with footage from concerts and their movies, it's several interviews editted together, but you never hear the interviewers, you only hear Paul or George or Ringo or John's response to the question, and it comes together into a seamless history of the greatest band Rock and Roll ever knew.

David Frost Presents: How to Irritate People (1969) Season Unknown, Episode Unknown

Monty Python - The Early Years

[7/10 · 25 July 1999]

The core of the group was there: Cleese, Palin, and Chapman.

It's a series of sketches designed as an instructional programme in which Cleese brings the audience through Beginning Irritating People Techniques (interrupting someone's television watching to find out what they want for dinner. And do they want peas or lima beans with that. And what do they want to drink with that. Oh, so sorry, we're out of that, we have (list of beverages with explanations about quality of said beverages)), followed by Intermediate Irritating People Techniques (telling someone who's just brought his car for the fourth time in for repair that everything is fine and refusing to look at it to make sure) and Advanced Irritating People Techniques (hinting around endlessly about how one is without transportation instead actually asking for what one wants in the first place, a ride home).

It's funny. It's very funny. Because you see other people using Advanced Irritating People Techniques and you just have to laugh because they don't even realize that they're using an Advanced Irritating People Technique. Almost all the way through the video you're thinking about people that you know personally who are experts at the Irritating People Technique being illustrated. And then you might realize that you yourself might do some of these things...

The Fifth Element (1997)

Delicious Eye Candy

[10/10 · 7 July 1999]

When I saw this movie the first time, on a big screen, in the summer of 1997, I said this was as big a leap forward in visual effects as Star Wars was in 1977. New York in the 24th Century is seen as layers of air car traffic. Phlotsom Paradise hovers above a blue planet and it looks so real.

Unfortunately, it did not make the transition to video very well. This is very much a big-screen movie. On video it looks like a comic book with actors. But even so, there are scenes, like the diva's song, where I rewind it and watch it twice or three times before I continue with the movie.

The Court Jester (1955)

The art of dialogue perfected.

[10/10 · 6 July 1999]

Let me say to the producers of this movie, wherever they are: I would pay money for a copy of the screenplay. The dialogue is, in a word, delicious. I'd give examples but where do I start? The Black Fox's song, which rhymes "daring-do" with "that herring do", the love scene with Angela Lansbury "I live for a sigh, I die for a laugh, ha ha!", the chatter with the King, which in rapid fire tells the story of the Duke with the dagger and the duchess with the doge and the doge with the dirk. The famous Vessel With the Pestle scene is just the tip of the iceberg. All this delicious dialogue goes along with sight gags that are just as funny.

Damn Yankees (1958)

The music grabs you, the story hooks you. Lola comes in third.

[9/10 · 30 June 1999]

For me there are two kinds of musicals: ones where the music grabs me, and ones where the music doesn't grab me. The music for this one grabbed me from the very big inning. (get it?)

Most musicals have a story like Boy Meets Girl, Girl Doesn't Like Boy for some Reason, and Everybody Sings About It. The musicals I tend to like best are the ones like Fiddler on the Roof, Oliver!, or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, that don't have so much of a love-story type plotline.

Damn Yankees contains a love story, but the real Love Story of this movie is Joe's love for the Washington Senators, which then conflicts with his love for Home and Hearth. Lola comes in a distant third.

The Caine Mutiny (1954)

If you liked "Crimson Tide", see "The Caine Mutiny"

[8/10 · 26 June 1999]

When there is a conflict on a ship there is nowhere to go and no higher authority than the Captain. What if the captain is wrong? What if he is so wrong that he jeopardizes the ship? What if he is so wrong that he jeopardizes the world, as we saw in "Crimson Tide"? This is the dramatic question of these movies.

Captain Queeg, played flawlessly by Humphrey Bogart, is only slightly mentally ill, but it's just enough to provoke a mutiny of good upstanding Naval Officers in the middle of World War II, almost all of whom would never dream of mutiny in a thousand years.

Unlike Denzel Washington in "Crimson Tide", there is no real "good guy" in this one. You come away from the movie convinced that a. Everyone was wrong, and b. Everyone did the best they knew how. Tough moral choices are made, and, as I said, there's no where to go for help and no one to appeal to.

Fred MacMurray portrays one of the more interesting characters I've seen in movies, and Van Johnson is the career Navy First Officer who slowly becomes convinced that his captain is paranoid. One tiny complaint, though. The love story seemed tacked on and irrelevant. If you don't care, you can fast forward through it and you don't miss anything.

Tarzan (1999)

Three-dimensional animation

[10/10 · 24 June 1999]

As the state of the art in animation, the standards get higher and the full length movies get better. "Tarzan" is another leap forward. I've never seen such three-dimensional animation. With every scene you're looking *into* the jungle. The scenes where Tarzan is flying, swinging, or surfing through the jungle look as if you can peer into it for ever.

The characters are exciting and fun to watch, as is usual for Disney animated features, but seldom in those features do you see such growth and such *depth* in a character as you do with Tarzan's struggle to win his place in his troop. You come to understand Kerchak over the course of the movie. Only the villain seems flat and one-dimensional.

See this one on the big screen, if you can.

College (1927)

I'm not a silent movie fan, but I got pulled in.

[7/10 · 24 June 1999]

There I was surfing channels. There on American Movie Classics they were showing this guy who was running around an athletic field trying to do something. He'd try to do the high jump, and he'd knock the bar off. He'd try to put the bar back on and it would not stay on, and he'd try again and he'd hit the coach with it, and it just got funnier and funnier.