antimatter33 Reviews

Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995)

Fun at first, then so NOT fun

[1/10 · 11 November 2023]

This is a gross film. There is nothing about it that has any redeeming virtue. It was remarkable only for how quickly it went downhill. You start to like the characters and the creepy vibe of the island - then it just turns into torture and screaming and stupidity and complete indifference to suffering. I turned it off.

It always amazes me how many of the peripheral films that involve say people who went to film school, have a certain degree of technical skill, know a little something about movie making, end up producing one absolutely wretched film after another. This movie has decent production values for a low-budget film. Its failures are all of intelligence and morality.

Can't give it 0 stars or I would. I hope these losers are long out of the film business. OTOH i hope they are spitting into my hamburger either.

When Trumpets Fade (1998 TV Movie)

One of the great WW-2 films - yes it is

[9/10 · 10 November 2023]

Some points

1) The Hurtgen Forest battle was a pointless slaughter that went on and on, to no point. At this stage of the war, the ranks were being filled by green conscripts with no battle experience. They were cannon fodder. That is accurately recorded in the film.

2) The division featured, the 28th Infantry, was known to the Germans as the "Bloody Bucket" Division due to the red keystones on their shoulder - they were a Pennsylvania National Guard division given national prominence. My uncle from rural Georgia was a conscript lieutenant in this division. After this nightmare they were given time in a quiet sector - the Ardennes. They were mauled in the Hurtgen Forest, and then mauled again in the Battle of the Bulge, when they were supposed to be resting and recuperating. My uncle was wounded, and missed the Bulge. His entire company was annihilated. He never got over it.

3) John Irvin is better known for "Hamburger Hill", a right-wing fantasy. Irvin was having none of that here. The script and action are tense, senseless, and dark. There is no grander purpose. The US was explicitly fighting a war of attrition against the Wehrmacht, knowing that they could afford losses the German defenders could not.

If you want to read a book about the life of a conscript lieutenant, try "Doing Battle" by Paul Fussell, who gives a first-person account of the experience.

This is a great movie.

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

BAD music, strange idea, OK flick

[7/10 · 17 October 2023]

I'm a HUGE fan of Jerry Goldsmith. His range is enormous. His musicality always comes through.. wait. That was true up until today when I saw this film. This is the only example I know of Goldsmith's work that made me want to plug up my ears. He just can't do Nazi I guess. The waltzes and the nods to Wagner and the like fell completely flat (haha) and leads me to this sharp (haha) criticism. Even a true genius of film music can strike out now and then.

As to the film - meh. It was sort of fun to see Peck and Olivier overact in a good way. Lili Palmer was fun as usual. The story is preposterous, but the "boys" are genuinely weird and creepy and, well you know, like That Guy when he was a lad.

This is the sort of movie you want to see when you are laid up and bored. It's not enough to require much though or strict attention, but it's enough to distract you and take your mind off your misery.

Arrival (II) (2016)

Horrible camera work that the story cannot redeem

[5/10 · 16 April 2023]

There are minimum standards for making a professional film. This one does not meet them. It is dark, dreary, features extremely irritating crawls, seems out of focus even when it is not because it is so dark, and in general leaves one wishing to pull out all his hair and yell at the screen "Learn to use a goddamned film camera!!!" So the story is completely irrelevant. This film would be better enjoyed on the radio. In fact I did just that, because 10 minutes in I ran completely out of patience. Yes, the story is interesting. No, this is not a good film. It is a radio play with visuals so dark and fuzzy you could watch it while star gazing. And oh yes - the sound is also awful. Maybe it is supposed to be cool to flaunt the simple rules of shot creation, but it sure comes out looking ugly. 5 stars for the story, none for the film making.

Mission to Mars (2000)

Hampered but worth it - barely

[7/10 · 13 June 2022]

OK the worst up front - the script is AWFUL. Filled with boilerplate and cliches and contrived circumstances - c'mon, a meteor storm? At this late date?

BUT - it has enough to pull through - excellent cast, likeable characters, a few magical sequences, some excellent effects and set designs - it's more like a Star Trek movie than a mission to Mars. But that's fine right? If you like sci-fi you will be entertained, and isn't that the whole point? And you may even be made to think.

PS, the movie puts the fiction before the science. If that bothers you, well, sorry :)

The Patriot (2000)

Reprehensible trash, typical of Mel Gibson

[1/10 · 11 June 2022]

This repugnant film joins Gibson's other historical travesties, Braveheart and Apocalypto. Apparently Gibson believes in "alternative history", the sort made up from "alternative facts". As an American I am particularly offended, and can only imagine what UK viewers must think to see themselves portrayed this way again and again by that stupid, violent man. Australia has produced some great film directors - Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, etc. Mel Gibson is a shameful impostor by comparison.

I apologize to the UK audience, on behalf of my fellow Americans. Avoid this miserable sham at all costs.

Falling Down (1993)

Missing the point - a great film, but not for the reasons seen here

[9/10 · 1 June 2022]

I'll add my voice to those who thoroughly admire this wonderful film - which is at once darkly humorous, and deadly serious. But I have a different take on the main character.

Douglas' nameless "D-FENS" character does represent the middle class - and not in the way they imagine. He IS the bad guy - and all the terrible things he bemoans are his own creations - the hollowed out inner city, the narcissism, the violence, the chaos of urban sprawl, the estranged families, the over-reliance on the military-industrial complex and the wars of choice that are its proving ground - he is a man brought down by the demons he and his own kind have created. His complaints are projections of his own intransigent nature onto the people and events around him - his actions are heedless and careless of the others who have just as much right to a slice of the American pie as he does. "I did everything they told me to do.." yes. He bought into the entire lie, and now he's "no longer economically viable". That is something near and dear to my own heart - Indian H1B imported labor, essentially a form of low-pay indentured servitude, took away most of my work a decade ago. But you won't find me crossing suburban Atlanta to terrorize my estranged family - because I am not the bad guy. D-FENS is a very bad guy. And that is why Robert Duvall, himself forced to retire by a hectoring wife and a stupid self-loving boss, is in the film - as someone who didn't fall down when things didn't go his way.

Again, a great film. Sort of in a league with "Pulp Fiction" - it might easily have been a work of Tarantino.

How to Become a Tyrant (2021)

Not good at all

[3/10 · 29 March 2022]

I do not object to the cheeky sarcastic approach. That might actually have worked very well to smooth over the atrocities common to all these monsters. But I very strenuously object to the near complete lack of historical context provided. What we have here is a series of disjointed vignettes that have no coherence. There isn't much more to say - a documentary that cannot even reliably transmit basic facts is not worth very much.

Also objectionable is no mention of Mao or Pol Pot or indeed anyone from Asia other than the North Korean crime family.

Finally there is no abstract discussion at all of what binds together authoritarian societies, including our own nascent fascists (NO, unlike what a previous reviewer so stupidly claimed, FDR was no fascist).

Avoid, avoid, and avoid.

Rush (I) (2013)

A story as old as Homer

[9/10 · 1 January 2022]

Although the world of this film is, one might say, rather trivial - racing serves very little purpose any more, other than diversion for fans and advertising for sponsors, this was absolutely not the case during the heyday of the sport, the 1960s through 1980s, when dramatic improvement in automotive technology emerged from racing and found its way into the family sedan. Many drivers paid for these improvements with their lives. So in a sense, the background of this film is not only serious, it is deadly serious.

But the real depth of the film comes from its exploration of the age-old polarity between the Dionysian (Hunt) and the Apollonian (Lauda), and the well-lived life to be found somewhere in the balance between the two. Hunt and Lauda together make up a complete person. Each was incomplete without the other. And it is a very fascinating exploration of this idea, because it does not call attention to itself.

I find this to be one of Ron Howard's very best efforts. I was glued to the screen and leaning on the rewind button. I was once a great fan of all racing - not so much today, in light of global warming and the necessity of retiring the internal combustion gasoline/diesel engine. It was pleasant to have my old hairs stand on end again. I think it makes a wonderful pair with "Ford vs. Ferrari", which has some of the same elements. Neither film can be compared to the classic, objective but melodramatic racing films, such as John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix". This film is not really about racing as a sport - it is about living a useful life. Both films in a sense end in tragedy for all the participants - the loss of a dear friend, the untimely death of a beloved figure, the battle scars which never really heal. Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.

The Missouri Breaks (1976)

Much better than you've heard!

[8/10 · 25 September 2021]

This is one of those curious 70s efforts that was unjustly neglected. It has a great deal going for it - of course, the fantastic battle of wills between Brando and Nicholson, but also - great scenery, in the best form of Arthur Penn. Great music by John Williams - this was really a surprise, as he tends to rely on emotional boilerplate and canned orchestration. Here, he might have been taken for Jerry Goldsmith, with very inventive use of percussion. An excellent, literate script, that reminded me of Larry McMurtry. The film might be seen as an early take on the theme explored in "No Country for Old Men", desperate men scrambling in a vast and hostile landscape. So why did it garner near universal contempt in 1976? Really hard to say. Film criticism was rather hit and miss in those days, and audiences were becoming accustomed to spectacles and "edgy" material - usually meaning gratuitous violence and sex. Those days saw such sophomoric dreck as "MASH" overshadow a masterpiece like Mike Nichols' "Catch-22". And here, the film did poorly next to a genuine and tiresome bore like "McCabe and Mrs. Miller". In any case, the absolutely malevolent and manic performance by Brando is worth it all by itself. Highly recommended!

The Captain (2019)

Despite some flaws, a gripping entertainment

[7/10 · 23 August 2021]

It's standard disaster fare, with a happy ending. Its main virtues are sharp editing and cinematography and excellent integration of CGI - although it often goes overboard with action movie tropes, like flying through vivid lightning and extreme maneuvering. The movie would have been right at home in 1950s America - with say Van Heflin and Ida Lupino as the veteran captain and chief attendant, shepherding their young and brash charges through the crisis while maintaining a stoic calm in the face of catastrophe. We might have seen Robert Wagner and Suzanne Pleshette as their younger counterparts.

And that brings us to the main interest of the film. Although China seems to be right on top of things technologically and thoroughly up to date, the society is projected through a lens of complete homogeneity - even that famous air disaster film cliche, the spoiled, entitled ass who makes life miserable for the crew, quickly comes to his senses and falls in line. There can be no doubt that this film is at least in part propaganda, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps with more intent. There seems to be little room in the PRC for, say, independent thought among women, or heaven forbid, political protest from Tibetans, who are all portrayed as willing accomplices to their subjugation to China. There are no realistic characters here - all are cliches, many taken from American cinema.

And yet - this incident really happened - some more depth in exploring the lives of the real people involved would have turned a good film into a great one. There is a little too much troweled on emotion and heroism and stoicism for the modern Western taste - we had our servings of this in past decades.

Still in all, I was for the most part much impressed by the deft handling of the action sequences - once in a while they went on a little too long, stretching the clock it seemed to fit a fixed budget of runtime. 20 minutes might easily have been left on the editing room floor (or I should say, the computer recycle bin). There is no real acting, just a lot of posturing, but it is effective in a B movie way. The overall emotional tone might be compared to a good Japanese crisis film, say, one of the better Godzilla films. I did have a nagging feeling of being manipulated. It made me curious about how Chinese audiences reacted.

One negative - the music is just awful. Michael Bay awful.

Well worth seeing!

Greenland (2020)

One star for Scott Glenn - none for the rest of this garbage

[1/10 · 15 August 2021]

He's the only thing in this turkey of any value.

It's just astoundingly bad - in every last way - bad editing, bad filming, bad plot, bad script, TERRIBLE acting (other than Glenn), just horrible! But among all this rot, the most awful thing is the utterly insufferable score.. My god, has a film ever had such an ear-splitting, spirit-crushing score? Without any doubt, the worst film music I have ever heard.

I actually watched to the end, just to see how bad it would get. It got worse, and worse, and worse by the minute.

I took one for the team. You don't have to. You have been warned :)

The Postman (1997)

David Brin gave it a thumbs up - haters can bite it

[9/10 · 9 August 2021]

Who, you ask, is David Brin? He is a renowned writer of science fiction who authored the book on which the film is based. Not only did he think the film was an excellent effort, he and Costner collaborated on the moral message the story was meant to convey, and Brin himself was "ecstatic" with Costner playing his hero. That's good enough for me.

But in fact, as a lover both of science fiction in general, and of those stories with a vast sweep involving the entire society, particularly apocalypse stories, I found the film outstanding in all ways, even deeply touching, at the first and all subsequent viewings. It creates its post-apocalypse world without exaggeration and assigns it a direct cause - not radioactivity or plague, but disconnectedness, lack of communication. The society fragments and falls into survival mode, not from political motives, but because it is simply impossible to organize on any scale without the means of communication offered by something as humble and basic as snail mail - delivered if necessary on foot and by horseback, just as was in fact done in the past.

Not only Costner, but the entire cast, are outstanding, and the rise of authoritarians on the right in the USA and abroad shows just how sinister is the idea of a copier salesman with delusions of grandeur. The film can be said to have anticipated the rise of the Tea Party and other usurpers of cooperation and compromise, who seek to break our civilized norms down in order to recreate the society in their own authoritarian image. And just as in the film, our best defense is solid communication and joint action by those who are the real defenders of family values and individual rights.

A superb film in all ways. Don't believe the haters.

March or Die (1977)

A potpourri of homage

[8/10 · 25 July 2021]

This is a superb entertainment - full of cliches, references to past films, utterly improbable, and yet irresistible. Why?

Well, movies are supposed to be fun. This was damn good fun. It has melodrama, great characters, outstanding actors, a good script, stirring scenes, magnificent set design, tight editing.. Only Maurice Jarre was a little off form, and even he rose to the occasion now and then.

Gene Hackman would be compelling in a toilet paper commercial. He's absolutely outstanding here. What a great actor! And he's matched with an equally great actor - well two - in Max von Sydow and Ian Holm. Wow! That's entertainment!

But the real acting center of this film is Terence Hill. Yes, that guy - Trinity. He reminded me of Errol Flynn without the tumbler of gin and the kinky habits. That's a compliment to Errol Flynn.

I guess some people think that this fell short of the epic it wanted to be. Not me! This was supposed to be entertaining, and it was damned entertaining. Highly recommended!

M*A*S*H (1970)

I'll add my little voice to the chorus of haters

[1/10 · 26 April 2021]

It is good to see how critical evaluation of this grotesque monster continues to decline. When I bashed it years ago I was practically shouted down by Altman fanbois. I will not repeat the comments about its narcissism, misogyny, racism, self-indulgence, and just plain meanness.

Instead, I will point out that there exist perfectly excellent black comedies that take the dehumanization of war as their universe - two in fact from the very year 1970 which provided this catastrophe - Mike Nichols' "Catch-22" and Brian G. Hutton's "Kelly's Heroes". The former is an unsung masterpiece that hews closely to the spirit of Joseph Heller's legendary book. The latter (also starring Sutherland) is more of a straightforward entertainment, with dark overtones but done in an absolutely hilarious manner. Both only get better as the years go by. MASH is so dated at this time that it hardly needs to be mentioned in the same breath with its two betters. That sort of crap just isn't done any more. It has this in common with various other immensely uncool potboilers from the 1960s that have been justly forgotten.

I will extend my distaste to almost all of Altman's work. He was a hack from TV with no discipline and an outsized sense of his own importance. He made a deliberate effort, as he says in his own words, to "avoid stories". Altman apparently did not consider story-telling to be a valid approach for a filmmaker. He should probably take that up with Scorcese, Lean, Lumet etc. When they are having drinks at the Pearly Gate Tavern. There is certainly room in cinema for experimentation, but the backbone of it is and always will be good, tight, well thought out story-telling. When one combines Altman's disdain for technique and narrative with his blatantly traditional (in the worst sense) moral values, you get a movie like MASH.

I would give this movie a zero but it's not possible. So subtract one from my review in your head.

Dillinger (1973)

Macho posturing, kinda dumb, but entertaining

[6/10 · 1 April 2021]

This is typical John Milius - lots of cartoon violence and posturing. The shootouts are tiresome and loud, and remind me of a cheap TV show. But the countryside of Oklahoma where the film was made had changed little since the 1930s, and the period mise en scene is very well done. Warren Oates could make a detergent commercial and it would be interesting. Richard Dreyfus gets one of his first film roles after a long early career in episodic TV. Harry Dean Stanton is his usual laconic self. Michelle Phillips does a good job. And Ben Johnson plays G-man Purvis, who is made out to be just as violent and narcissistic as his prey. Plenty of good actors to see. But ultimately the film is done in by Milius' irritating, adolescent worldview. "Public Enemies" of recent years is a far superior treatment.

Newman (I) (2015)

This is a meta review of reviews for this fascinating film

[9/10 · 27 February 2021]

What people say in the reviews is that there is no science in the film. That is true. But that's not the point. The point is that no one it seems will give him a straight answer - that he has an electric motor and has failed to account for energy balance - but on the other hand, Mr. Newman would surely have never accepted a straight answer. The film is a strange macabre dance between Newman and bureaucracy and lawyers in which everyone comes off badly, and in a sense, so do we all.

PS, I am a physicist, and there is nothing to the machine that cannot be found in an electric shaver.

Snowden (2016)

Blue states and good trouble won't save us - great film, another triumph for Oliver Stone

[10/10 · 9 November 2020]

It's good to know Stone still has it. Regardless of content, this is an extremely well made, fast moving, taut, visually gripping film. I'll leave it to the cineastes to explain all that. It gets a 10 there.

But for casting a light on what goes on in the shadows, it deserves a 20.

Consider for a moment - the entire digital economy is built on a ramshackle that was designed to be insecure. In fact, it was designed purposely to have no security at all. TCP/IP networks were invented to have a flexible communication infrastructure that could not be disabled by nuking the phone switches. Every large city has a couple of absolutely hideous buildings, monolithic concrete structures that look like immense cinder blocks, which house the phone switches. In the very recent past, the most high-tech thing in anyone's house was the telephone. To make a call, you must have a direct connection between the two endpoints. To achieve this, a vast set of relay banks was created, partly electronic and partly physical, which interpret the dialed number and route the call from city to city by informing the downstream switch to tell the next one in line - you might have 3 or more middle-points involved. Nuke one of these switches and the call cannot be made. Nuke enough of them - and it's just a handful - and all distant telephone communication would be impossible. So the eggheads sat down to develop a new comm system that would be instantly reconfigurable on the fly. Nuke KC? I'll go through St. Louis. Nuke St. Louis? Peoria. Etc. Security was not the point - quick reconfiguration on the fly was. And we're still conducting all the world's commerce and intelligence over this ramshackle system. By now, many layers of security afterthought have been added, but in the end, it's still the same thing it was in the beginning - an infinitely malleable way to route messages from anywhere to anywhere else that is not dependent of fixed nodes. There is simply no way to secure that in a meaningful way. That is why we have hacking, cybercrime, and cyberterrorism - and it is also why we can dispatch a drone from Hawaii and have it land on a funeral procession in Afghanistan.

The government created a vast infrastructure of spying that was based on a chimera - that simply doing brute force exhaustive data collection, ignoring all rights to privacy by anyone, anywhere - would produce actionable intelligence. But in fact it simply plays into the hands of the bad guys. What can be hacked in one direction, can also be hacked in the other.

Digital privacy rights and getting out from under the threat of a networking system that is inherently without a proper way to secure it, is by far the greatest human rights issue faced by those of us in the western democracies, who still have a shot at ending this madness and waste. True intelligence professionals will always tell you that good intelligence is targeted intelligence - gathered on the ground, with specific goals in mind. What Edward Snowden really showed us was how absolutely incompetent on the most basic level are all the pointy heads playing the the toys.

A great film. Wow.

The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)

Not funny. Not touching. Jack Lemmon at his worst.

[5/10 · 2 November 2020]

He's just not likeable. I've dealt with age-based unemployment - since my 50s - in IT. I never whined like this. And I didn't have a great wife to support me. So he's not someone I can care for in this film. I just don't like him. His brother is cool, his wife is cool, his secretary is cool, but he's not cool.

Oddly there are good parts for a bad movie. The filming and editing is perfect. Gene Saks is his usual lovable New York mensch. Anne Bancroft is just beautiful, strong, and perfect, as usual. The script might be better than it seems.

One expects more from Lemmon. It is hard to understand what was so difficult for him to capture in this role. Maybe he didn't want to repeat "The Out-of-Towners". He had a third take on a struggling middle-aged man in "Glengarry Glen Ross". Only in this film did he fail to engage us.

For All Mankind (1989)

A unique perspective

[9/10 · 28 September 2020]

There are no talking heads in this wonderful film - the only narrators are the astronauts themselves. Essentially, it is as if your uncle had gone on a trip to the Moon and was now showing the tourist films he made. The comments are not overly filled with cosmic pondering, although there is enough of that mind candy to satisfy. Instead, they are simple statements like "You're in your work clothes! Ready to go to work!" The only downside is the music of Brian Eno, which calls so much attention to itself that on repeated viewings it becomes tiresome. Otherwise a perfect 10. The transfer of 16mm color film to video is particularly good - rich colors with wonderful contrast.

Back to the Future (1985)

Perfect in every way

[10/10 · 23 September 2020]

Movies are, lets face it, supposed to be fun now and then. And this movie is, from start to end, fun, fun in all its forms, stupid fun, silly fun, love fun, fight fun, woo fun, it is just damned fun. You get a smile about a minute into it and it never leaves your face.

But behind the fun is a deeper realm. Roger Ebert made the deep observation that this film is very much in the mold of Frank Capra, and in fact is very comparable to "It's a Wonderful Life", in which a life is reconsidered after magical intervention. In that film, although it is never quite stated, the main character is a rather faithless actor, and prone to self-pity and self-indulgence. Only by being shown his lesser side is he redeemed. That's a very Puritan message. At then end, one feels a little chagrined after a few viewings, to realize that there is this subtext of the role of will and the nature of sin. I didn't quite believe that George Bailey would not backslide into his dreamer self, and make life miserable again for his family. And in BTTF, Marty McFly and his formerly interesting family members are converted into 80s consumer drones, which also leaves one with a feeling of uncertainty about what has just been experienced.

Oh - sorry about that - I was just thinking out loud. The script is great, the editing is great, the acting is great, the attitude is great, it's just perfect, a perfect movie, in tune with its time and slyly observant of 80s culture (well, suburban culture). Like all great films, you can see it again and again just for the fun of enjoying the craftwork.

Midway (2019)

Astoundingly bad

[1/10 · 23 September 2020]

It is impossible to fail more than this film does. It fails on every single level. It is above all, absolutely boring. There is no coherent story, there is nothing of interest, the special effects are so unbelievable than suspension of disbelief, an option usually reserved for science fiction, is not even possible. Indeed, this is an attempt to turn WW-2 into Star Wars, only with unlikable assholes behind the controls instead of righteous rebels. There is no way to list in a short review all the ways in which this film fails, but the most essential one is that is is just filled with the most insufferable pouting, smirking jerks imaginable. You actually root for the Japanese to win. It is not even worth going into all the ways the actual battle was not even touched. Forget history. Forget flying. Forget naval strategy. All that is missing is Darth Vader-San, looming over the Japanese flagship and barking Japanese commands, with portentous music throbbing in the background. The movie would have been more interesting that way, maybe with say a Japanese-American flyer who has some telepathic connection with Admiral Vader-San. Ruke - I am your father! Astounding how such trash gets financed and made.

The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

Heartwrenching - Audie Murphy

[9/10 · 25 May 2020]

Not much to add to the reviews but this - there is an authenticity in Audie Murphy (Henry Fleming, "The Youth") which comes from real life, and we see in his performance what must surely be a confession of his own experience of battle as a member of the 3rd Infantry Division during World War 2 - and that gives pause. Murphy ended the war as the most decorated soldier in American history. But he must surely have started it in fear and trepidation, just as The Youth did. And he must have overcome that fear when seeing his own friends die and be maimed brought out of his physically unimposing self an animal rage to get back at the enemy. And although this is a fine thing to have on the battlefield, it leaves lasting scars in life. Murphy never quite got over his post-traumatic stress of having endured years of continuous close battle in some of the war's worst theaters - the slugging matches against the entrenched German defenders in Italy, and the war of attrition in Southern France fought mostly by conscripts with no experience of war. The scars of that experience are chiseled in Murphy's body language and facial expressions. This is a performance straight from life, and whatever else may be said about the film, Murphy's performance puts it in the first rank of military films. A wonderful effort from Huston, despite its flaws. Also to be mentioned - Bill Mauldin, who himself was all too familiar with the horrors of war, which he distilled into his "Willie and Joe" cartoons.

Executive Action (1973)

A bad, bad film

[1/10 · 23 April 2020]

Not only is the conspiracy laughable, the film-making is absolutely catastrophically bad. The script is TERRIBLE. The acting is TERRIBLE. The set-up of shots is TERRIBLE. One can only conclude that everyone who worked on this film would have rather been anywhere else, doing anything else.

As for the conspiracy? This sort of rot is the worst sort of immorality in film. The vilest pornography is cleaner. Only one other film sinks to this one's bottom-dwelling level - The China Syndrome, which destroyed the nuclear power industry, and so assured us a future of catastrophic global warming from coal burning. Anyone who would believe this garbage probably deserves to be trapped in paranoia and confusion.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

"The Hustler on the Waterfront in a Streetcar Named Melba"

[8/10 · 24 March 2020]

Sure, this movie borrows liberally from more original works - but so what? A spectacular cast, a fast-moving story, great direction and music - it's a top notch entertainment! Not much to say other than highly recommended - it's actually like a huge-scale episode of a TV show. And there's nothing wrong with that!