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Reviews
Hawaii Five-O: Cocoon (1968)
Great Pilot, Not what the show turned out to be
I remember as a kid looking forward each fall to the cool shows that would be premiering. This episode was amazing and was basically a James Bond Thriller. I thought it would be more secret agent. What a surprise and disappointment that the show was just a cop drama? What?? Bait and switch. But I still watched the show and it grew on me. Love McGarrett. It was the longest running show on TV at that point.
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Classic film, yet flawed
It's almost sacrilegious to find fault with a classic film, one on most top 10 lists of great all-time films, but I continue to wonder about the dream sequence. Enough has been said about all of great scenes and song and dance numbers, but what about the Gene Kelly / Cyd Charisse scene? I never liked the piece and thought it totally stopped the pace of the film. The scene itself seems to have nothing to do with the picture and just drags on and on. I left the movie for many years and in watching it again my opinion of that scene only gets worse. I turned on many people to the film over the years, including my family. The first thing they said when the movie was over was, "what was with that dream scene? Is just dragged on and on!" I can only guess the director, Stanley Donnen either thought that somehow presented another view of the toughness of making it in Hollywood, or Gene Kelly used his star power to make sure that number stayed in the film as an ego trip. I would have much rather seen the deleted number with Debbie Reynolds singing to the billboard. Oh well, it's still a great movie. Though it meant something different to audiences who saw this picture only 20-30 years after the advent of talking pictures and who heard these songs in other movies, it still is good family entertainment.
Man on Fire (2004)
Great script, Great Actors, Terrible Director
Oh what this movie could have been in the hands of a competent director. It is just difficult to watch such heavy handed directing and distracting cinematography. I realize that a director wants to convey pacing and mood with they style of the lighting and the movement of the camera, but the style used in this movie comes across as a bad music video and an attempt to be art-house hip.
Can't we just watch an interesting story without overbearing technique? Do we really need low-key lighting, heavy grain, jump cuts, white flash frames, and the stupid and distracting jerky-cam? This movie succeeds if the director wanted us to feel nauseous and have a headache for 2 hours.
The movie is shot in a gritty, grainy, depressing style with camera work that looks like they just gave an 8mm home movie camera to a 4 year old and let it be edited by his younger sister using band-aids and a glue stick. I have a real problem with this "style" and can't say enough bad things about this kind of cinematography. It's annoying and apparently panders to 13 y/o Playstation and MTV addicts with ADD. Maybe director's of photography think that if they use a blue/green transfer, or skip the bleach step on a print or do whatever nonsense digitally to make the image look completely artificial, they will win a technical achievement award.
When will they realize that part of the glamor of Hollywood is the beautiful wide-screen images? It doesn't always have to be Technicolor type color, after all the X-Files is different than Oklahoma!, but if I wanted to experience what Tony Scott has given us with this movie, I would take LSD. Save this kind of experimental film-making for the 10 minute student shorts at USC. It's the story, stupid. When technique overshadows the story you've forgotten what it is to be a filmmaker.