I don’t think I’ve seen such a dysfunctional group of characters in all my life. There is Mortimer (played by Cary Grant) who is normal compared to the others, his two aunts who have the most strange and amusing attitude towards murder, his brother who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt and his other brother who is a murderer and has escaped from prison. The authoritative characters in this film are all borderline incompetent, also.

The plot is reminiscent of Hitchcock, except mostly played for laughs. Cary Grant is so great as Mortimer. He had this frenetic energy about him in this film that was great. He’s fast becoming one of my favourite actors. The actresses playing the two aunts were also wonderful. Oh, and of course the always excellent Peter Lorre has a fantastic part as Mortimer’s brothers sidekick.

This is a very funny movie. The situations are so ridiculous and unbelievable but it’s so fun to watch that it’s hard to care.

I understand that it’s a more understated and subtle take on slapstick comedy and maybe I’ll appreciate it more on reviewings, but this first viewing didn’t really get me excited to watch the film again.

I liked the post-modern architecture depicted in the film. Some of the crafty inventions shown in this film actually came to fruition – such as the vacuum cleaner that cleaned by itself. Another was a garage door that opened at the press of a button. Who’d have thought??

The dogs in this film were very well trained, especially the main one. They were lovely.

I don’t know if it was a problem with the DVD I watched or if it was part of the film, but the dialogue was mixed very low for me and it was sometimes difficult to hear it over the constant music. Of course, it’s not that much of an issue as I can’t understand what they’re saying without subtitles anyway but it did bother me a little bit.

Mr. Hulot reminded me quite a bit of Mr. Bean in some ways, I wonder if Bean was influenced by the Hulot films at all. That wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyways, I may try to watch this film again in the future and hopefully appreciate it more, but we’ll see.

This film is far too long, and poorly paced IMO. It runs for almost 2 and a half hours, in which there’s 3 actual fights and everything in between felt like filler. I’m not a boxing fan by any means, but I thought the fights were easily the highlights of the film. They were visceral and exciting.

Will Smith was a wonderful choice to play Ali. He completely inhabited the role and had the inflections and nuances down pat. Ali’s arrogance and bravado provided some of the more humorous moments of the film. That was fun to watch. All of the performances were very good, actually. It’s just a shame I didn’t really care.

The music was also really great and underscored some of the more memorable moments. I particularly liked the dance scene with Ali and.. whatsherface with this great song by a girl group (not sure who they were) underscoring it. A medley of Sam Cooke songs at the beginning of the film was also awesome.

I can’t say I liked this film all too much otherwise. I’m disappointed.

I am a Star Trek “noob”, in that I’ve never seen the original TV series, or the ten million spin-offs or any of the other films in the franchise. My knowledge was limited to references in pop culture. This is an excellent entry point into the franchise. It was made with a lot of love, and I assume there were many clever little nods to previous moments in the series.

The special effects were so so so so good. One of the most impressive visual displays I’ve seen in some time (keep in mind I’ve yet to see Avatar). The ending was especially climactic and for lack of a better word.. AWESOME. The closing monologue by Leonard Nimoy (I think it was him?) gave me chills. So epic.

The casting was also really great. Chris Pine looked like William Shatner, Zachary Quinto looked like Leonard Nimoy and so on and so forth. There’s not a lot that I didn’t like about the film really, if anything. This is an incredible update of the series and it makes me really want to check out the rest of the vast Star Trek universe.

The story is predictable and cliched to an extent but all of the characters are so endearing and likeable, that I wasn’t bothered by that too much. It helped also that I’m a big fan of the subject matter. Anh Do was quite good in the lead role, I thought. There were a couple of somewhat dodgy performances in the film but those were mostly by bit part actors, so it’s not a big deal.

The format of the tournament slightly confused me. I couldn’t tell if they were playing the final or the semi-final in the last game. I felt they maybe could’ve explained that better. Also, the prize for winning was kind of weird. A chance to be a model in a Lowes catalogue? I dunno, that’s odd. Also, they didn’t really explain what happened with Luc’s sister in the end but based on the photos shown in the credits I can assume that she wasn’t taken away from him.

Also, a lot of the characters are severely under-developed. They show us brief glimpses of the main characters’ family lives and such, but it seemed kind of pointless as we didn’t really learn anything.

This is obviously no masterpiece or anything of the sort but it’s a sweet, feel good film that will leave you with a smile on your face.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have an unexplainable beef with western films and unfortunately, this didn’t help change that. I mean, it was clearly a ‘great’ film but I don’t know, I just couldn’t get into it completely. It doesn’t help that the pace of the film was soooooooooooooooooo slooooooooooooooooooooooow. And it wasn’t until the 30 minute mark where the storyline actually seemed to start going somewhere.

There were two things about the film I loved though:

a) The camera work. This film is amazingly directed by Leone. There are so many wonderfully creative and unique shots in the film. I could probably watch this film again just for that.

b) The score. It’s incredible and epic. It’s one of the best scores I’ve ever heard, most likely. It kept my attention and even moved me to a certain extent, even if I wasn’t thrilled by the film itself.

I hope I can learn to appreciate this film and other westerns upon rewatches because I feel like I’m missing out, or something.

This is such a great film. Woody Allen should be the definition of “Neuroticism” in the dictionary. Even if you are not familiar with Woody Allen prior to seeing this film, it’s easy to tell that his character in this is merely an extension and maybe slight exaggeration of his own self. I say slight exaggeration as I find it difficult to believe anyone could be as ..well.. crazy as his character is in this film. Even as a child he seemed borderline autistic, and obsessed with the universe ceasing to exist in a major cataclysmic event. It reminded me of myself in some (disturbing) ways but I don’t think I’m that insane.

I loved Diane Keaton in this. She was so pretty back in the day! At first I struggled to believe that Annie could be attracted to someone like Alvy, but I learned after not very long that she was about as nuts as he is. And that’s why that relationship was doomed to fail.

I also loved all the absurd expeditions into Alvy’s imagination, in which he discusses his relationship issues with random strangers who already know everything about it and trips to his childhood with Annie. It’s one of the wonderful things about this film that is so unique. I enjoyed when Alvy broke the fourth wall and talked directly to the audience, it almost felt like I was a voyeur to ongoing troubles of this highly dysfunctional relationship.

The dialogue is so fast at some points, I struggled to keep up a bit. This film requires multiple viewings, I’m sure of that. Even though in my opinion it’s not his most uproariously hilarious film, the story is fantastic, the leads are highly endearing and it’s a fun ride into the deep chasms of Woody Allen’s brain.

There is something about westerns that have always irked me somewhat. I’ve never gotten into the genre, and went into this film with trepidation. While I wasn’t completely sold by the film, I did enjoy it.

The opening credits were fantastic. They are very eye catching with black silhouettes against a red background (which incidentally is my favourite colour combination) which engage in duels and the colours flash and stuff which is really cool. The music is of course fantastic. The score was done by Ennio Morricone who is certainly most famous for his work on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and it adds a lot of the character to the film.

I loved Clint Eastwood in the role of the Stranger. His confidence and bravado was a joy to watch. He had no trouble taking down 4 armed men at a time, and was almost a James Bond of the wild wild west. There is not a lot of moral ambiguity in the film; it is essentially good vs evil, which I don’t have too much of a problem with. It reminded me of Star Wars in that aspect; as in the Rojo gang were the Imperials taking control of the galaxy and the Baxter’s were the Rebels who wanted to rid the galaxy of such evils. Hmm, I’m a nerd.

I found my mind wandering throughout parts of this film, due to my lack of complete interest in the western setting. I don’t know why this is, as it’s a great story that could probably be told in other time periods and locations but yeah. The locations though were stunning to look at. The cinematography was something to behold. I particularly enjoyed the horse riding sequences in which the camera followed alongside which I found rather exciting.

There was a moment or two which made me groan a bit. In one scene, a man is shooting all of these horsemen with what seemed like an old style machine gun, but for some reason the horses they were riding on didn’t even get hit once. That is highly implausible considering the amount of bullets that were fired in basically every direction.

I really must see the other two films in the Dollars trilogy as this one is supposedly the weakest.

This is a gritty unflinching look at Nazi concentration camps in WWII. It is incredibly gruesome at times. There is a particular moment where they showed dead bodies being thrown into a pit which was both eye opening and frightening. There is also a shot of prisoner’s severed heads in a basket. The idea that actual human beings were responsible for this atrocity is so unbelievably sickening. How did Nazis justify their crimes? If there is indeed a hell then I would like to believe they are there.

I was surprised to learn that one of the consultants on the film was Jean Cayrol, who himself was a prisoner in a concentration camp in WWII. It must take a lot of courage to want to relive such horrid experiences. I was still 40 years away from being born when it was all going on and I’m completely saddened and horrified.

This film has got to be one of the greatest documentaries ever made, as it was willing to delve into the most sickening aspects of the war. I am glad it is being shown in schools, because as confronting as it is, it is perhaps the best way of getting children to understand how awful the war was and how lucky they are today.

James Stewart is really good as lawyer Paul Biegler, even if it’s not one of his more memorable roles. George C. Scott almost stole the show as Paul’s quick talking adversary in the court room.

I really loved the opening credits. The music of Duke Ellington combined with the masterful graphical sequence created by Saul Bass was a great opener. Saul Bass has been responsible for many of my favourite opening credits, especially his work on Hitchcock’s films. Duke Ellington was an inspired choice to do the score for this film. The brass instruments used was a nice change from the usual string based orchestral music of the time. My only complaint is that it was only sparingly used in the second half of the film, which is a shame.

One thing that surprised me about this film was how provocative it was, considering it was made in a much more conservative era and before classification was introduced. There is direct references to rape, intercourse, sexual climax and violence against women, plus there is an image of a dead body briefly shown. Also, the lead female was not the archetype woman of 50s films, in that she was generally sexually suggestive, overtly flirtatious and in my opinion quite manipulative. I’d be interested to read the opinions expressed on this film at the time of its release.

My only problems with this film are that it’s maybe slightly too long and I’m not entirely sure if the ending was rewarding enough. But other than those tiny nitpicks, this is a great film.