For some reason I avoided watching this film for many years. When I finally decided to see it I understood why my instincts kept me from it. It chronicles the story of people who are factory slaves, whose entire existence is bound up and controlled by a mining company that cares as much for them as Pharaoh cared for the Hebrew slaves. Their whole lives are spent in dreary toil for this all-powerful autocratic machine for a few pence. Any higher ambition, any dreams of the human spirit are squelched by this miserable existence. They live like worker ants existing solely for benefit of the colony. This is The Ten Commandments without Moses. I also thought the title to be inappropriate. There was very little greenery in this black and white dirge.
Reviews
6 Reviews
Harrison Ford, despite handicaps, carries it across the finish line
28 January 2017
Karen Allen is in this one. Karen Allen was in the first Indiana Jones movie as well. Allen's movie career went absolutely nowhere after she was miscast in the first Indiana Jones movie. The original choice for the female lead in that one was Maureen McCormick, but she flubbed her audition when she arrived on the set under the influence of cocaine and having not slept for three days. Allen was the second choice and a bad one, but Harrison Ford's charisma and Spielberg's direction saved that movie and made it a hit. In this fourth installment we have, along with Harrison Ford and Allen (reprising her role from the original movie) Shia LaBeouf, which is another bad choice. LaBeouf lacks the charisma (likability) necessary for an actor to have a successful career, at least as a leading man, and he comes across in his public life as an obnoxious, self obsessed, emotionally unstable little twerp. I hope for his sake that he grows up someday. He could be a marvelous character actor or supporting actor if he were offered those roles. Let him be a villain, or the leading man's nerdy side kick, and I guarantee audiences will love him. There could be an Oscar in his future, but in a character role, not as a leading man. He would do well to finish his education too. He may need that to fall back on someday. Despite these handicaps this movie just manages to lumber across the finish line with the talents of that old workhorse Harrison Ford, who with excellent direction and special effects manages to carry this movie to success.
We know what's best for you; obey us or you die!
19 January 2017
Warning: Spoilers
We come to you in peace. Unless you do exactly what you are told WE WILL WIPE OUT ALL LIFE ON THIS PLANET! We will KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES, including whales, mountain gorillas, hummingbirds, puppies, kittens, butterflies, seal pups, grandmothers and little babies. We are doing this because you are a violent people. Nobody seems to spot the irony here. This intergalactic playground bully shows up on planet earth with his all powerful robot and threatens to blow us away unless we renounce war. Well, suppose that there is another even more powerful civilization than Klaatu's that is watching all of this unfold and they tell Klaatu that if he wipes out all life on earth then they will wipe HIM out for being violent. The sheer hypocrisy of Klaatu's whole mission is so glaringly ridiculous it's almost parody.
Respire
(2010)
Well made sci-fi horror flick
10 January 2017
Just watched this on Amazon Prime. I have to say I've been very disappointed with most of the Amazon Prime horror movies. This was a very pleasant surprise. Excellent cast; good plot development; dialogue, sound, camera angle and action all very good. The characters were all believable and interesting and intelligent. A lot of horror and sci-fi movies on Amazon suffer from dull characters, predictable and boring plots, bad camera and lighting, awful dialogue and lousy scripts. This movie was a combination of mystery, horror, suspense and sci-fi. Ms. Teague led the cast in a fine performance and I look forward to seeing her in more films. There were a few sub plots and more than a few plot twists. Not a lot of mindless gore. It reminded me at one point of "Needful Things". I don't want to spoil it for you by saying anything more so I'll just finish by saying that this movie is a winner.
A Farewell to Arms
(1932)
Highly over rated soap opera
22 November 2014
Warning: Spoilers
It's time to explode a few myths here. Like the so-called ideal marriage between the Kennedy's that was propped up by the media for years and was finally shown to have been wrought with serial infidelities by both parties, so in the world of movie land we have some sacred cows that have to be taken out to the slaughterhouse and be ground up into decent hamburger. A Farewell to Arms is one such sacred cow. Gary Cooper struts through the movie like a tall, lanky, slow-talking, goofy string bean with an amoral attitude towards women, the army and life in general. He chooses to desert his comrades - so much for Semper Fidelis - to run back to a woman he impregnated in a night of passion. Helen Hayes is the love interest, whose acting resembled nothing so much as a cut-out paper doll in a puppet show; her cardboard expression and lifeless lines were so two dimensional it was painful to watch - Olive Oil in the Popeye cartoons had more sex appeal. There was no chemistry between her and Cooper, how could there be, he was over six feet tall and she was so short he had to hold her up in order not to stoop to kiss her in one scene. IMDb can cut this next comment out if it is not permissible to talk about other review sites, but those fawning idiots over at Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a 90% rating in true Rotten Tomatoes lock step fashion, while giving a truly great movie, The Mission, with standout performances by Robert Di Nero, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn, and that won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography and whose musical score by Italian composer Ennio Morricone, ranked 1st on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Classic 100 Music in the Movies, well Rotten Tomatoes only gave THAT movie a 65% rating. That's why I take Rotten Tomatoes with a pound of salt and always go to IMDb to see if any movie is any good.
Awakened
(2013)
One of the dullest, worst movies I have ever seen.
3 November 2014
Warning: Spoilers
I feel duty bound to add my review to those of others who have reviewed this film. For the life of me I cannot understand why those others have given this film such high ratings. My hope is that someone else will read this review and save themselves nearly two wasted hours of their lives watching this movie. I just watched it, and felt by the first five minutes that it was going to be a bomb, so I came here to read reviews while the movie was paused to see what they said. How in the world did this movie get such a high rating? It is dull, boring, predictable with a bunch of (sorry) washed up older actors and a musical score that sounds like, well, it's terrible. The movie just drags on and on and on and on. It is very slow paced. In addition to that, there are gaps in the movie plot that make no sense at all, for instance, 3/4 of the way through the movie they are having a funeral for the town's mayor. They didn't say how she died, or why, her death was entirely unrelated to the plodding story, and she didn't have any kind of role in the movie while she was alive - none at all! The ending was uninspired, the characters were uninteresting, the whole thing was just horrible; it didn't even have the campy spirit of movies like "Plan Nine From Outer Space". Do not waste your time with this bomb.
Tell Your Friends