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Reviews
Beyond the Rocks (1922)
A beautiful, but sad film
This movie astounded me. Something of this age should probably be tedious or dull, but not once did I feel bored -- quite the opposite in fact. It really touched me deeply and as someone who isn't such a huge fan of romance or silent films, that's saying something. Then again, my experience in silent films is limited mostly to Lassie, some western, and Fatty Arbuckle comedies. I suppose this is a sign that I should watch more.
Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino had such amazing chemistry. The tragic love between Theodora and Hector is so palpable. But it isn't just the young lovers who shine in their roles. Robert Bolder as Josiah Brown was deeply affecting in his acting. Originally, we are less than sympathetic to Josiah and that is how it's supposed to be! But Josiah is so much deeper than he first appears: a man we initially mistook for a villain of sorts is as sensitive and caring as the woman he loves. His sympathy towards the Egyptian girl shows us that he sees himself as we had seen first seen him and at the same time proves to us that he is not the man we had mistaken him for. It was an oddly noble part from what was believed to be a very ignoble character and that alone made the film all the more sweeter.
His death and his blessing for Theodora and Hector come in the same swift moment. It is a very powerful scene and even as we know he has died, we still sit on edge, hoping against hope and knowing it's not so. His death enables his beloved Theodora to find the happiness she had given up on. I don't mean to offend fans of contemporary film when I say this, but I haven't felt so touched by a character death in years.
The musical composition also lends its part into making this a masterpiece. The lilting, almost haunting tune that guides us through the events of this film sets a mood that is undeniably seductive to us all. It pulls you in and moves you to the edge of your seat with the suspense it evokes. It deepens the experience so much, despite the clashing setting of 1920s England.
Although I do not consider the sections of the film where it is so dissolved with age and tear to be bad, there are other things that make me hold back from the full ten stars. Gloria Swanson in particular is much too made up even when portraying a young girl. She is far more prettier than the heavily made-up portrayal of Theodora. I felt the attempt to make her look girlish was practically unbearable and her true beauty was dulled under a layer of the dark black. The shame! The text was also a bit of a mistake in my opinion. It felt far too modern and never fit in with the film itself. Times New Roman or another font would have suited better.
Still a great movie and even suitable for younger viewers.
The Scarlet Claw (1944)
Stuck in a bog!
I still can't totally understand why so many fans seem to like the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes. Don't get me wrong, Basil Rathbone is a good Sherlock Holmes. Nigel Bruce on the other hand is so absolutely awful that his portrayal of Dr. Watson far eclipses Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes! To be fair, I think that part of the problem is that the Nigel Bruce Watson was written poorly to begin with. The Watson of these series of movies is nothing more than an incompetent man of frightful stupidity and vivid imagination. He has been turned from a faithful narrator who has a narrow view on events to a gag character who only provides laughter or miss-steps at the right (cheesily, not actually right) moment.
This movie is probably something that would (or SHOULD, at least) have true fans of Sherlock Holmes cringing. Although the "original" title should give anyone a clue that this isn't an actual Doyle story, so this comes as no surprise. The writers seem to be singularly uninspired and unintelligent. Their story is like a hodge podge of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories with aspects here and there from this story or that (most notably the phosphorus!). Not only do they rip off previous stories and mash them together, but they also fail at it.
The story is just awful. I had to force myself to endure this movie in the hopes that the ending might provide a nice twist or something else. Too bad I was wrong. The movie was dreadfully boring and didn't truly inspire anything other than intense dislike (particularly for the bumbling fool they'd made of Watson - stuck in a bog! Twice! That's just not funny).
If you like bad jokes like that or if you don't particularly care for intellectual stimulation in your mystery movies I can't even understand why you bother watching the stuff! But if you do, then go ahead and watch this awful stuff. If you want a faithful representation of the Sherlock Holmes series, you're not getting it here. And you are definitely not getting it as long as Nigel Bruce plays Watson. This is just taking old favorites and ruining them. But that seems to be a dubious pleasure to some of you.
You Can't Take It with You (1938)
Not for all tastes
I've seen a lot of praise for this movie and assumed it would be good; after all, I love James Stewart, I love romantic comedies, everyone else seems to love it, so how can it possibly go wrong? It can. It did. I had to force myself to sit through the entire movie, hoping it would get better. The message of the story is something akin to the more commonly known "A Christmas Carol". Unfortunately, where "A Christmas Carol" was an easily enjoyable read with a moral to it, this movie was a moral forced into the form of a romantic comedy. What it lacked in subtlety must have been made up for in something, but I can't exactly imagine it was the comedy or the romance.
Where I should have loathed Kirby parents, I found myself feeling pity for the most part. The story at parts was so blatantly one-sided... even though Alice Sycamore's entire family enjoyed themselves and did only what they wanted (to a such a degree that was even illegal), there was no real consequence and no real lesson on their part learned. They may have been, in part, in the wrong, but they're still not in the wrong. This makes no sense, but whatever. It's not meant to make sense, it's comedy - so goes the excuse. The house should have burnt down when the fireworks in the basement went off, there should have been a more extreme fine and the revolutionary pamphlets were completely forgotten about after the single mention.
Kirby Sr. eventually does make a bit of a change because of the ordeal he goes through (and in my opinion it was an ordeal. For me if not for him!), but there is no real change to Alice's family (whom I spent most of the movie wishing would end up in jail if not for their illegal activities, then for their unwarranted obnoxiousness). It was good to see the older Kirbys end up in jail, but the whole manner of it and the way things went made me feel very sorry for Mr. Kirby even as the moral of the story was repeatedly being thrown about by the dialog. Okay, we get it... rich, selfish, stuck up banker will die friendless and alone if he doesn't change - got it, can we move on yet? Apparently not.
The comedic parts were more obnoxious than humorous, or was of such a humor I couldn't enjoy it even for the romantic parts, which I actually felt were decent.
Overall, the sense of humor wasn't great, the "villains" weren't anything to be awed about (honestly, even in comedy I don't want to be caught dead feeling sorry for a villain), and there was a lack of reality that even comedy can't cure. As a comedy, it might fly for a lot of people, but to me it's a near total failure.
Recommended for: people who can ignore reality and absolutely hate rich bankers so much they willingly side with eccentric old men who refuse point-blank to pay taxes. If you can get past those things, which I could not and shouldn't be forced to, then go ahead, by all means... maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did. Maybe.
Rating: 3 out of 10 because that's about as much enjoyment as I got out of it (though that's me being generous, I'm afraid, it was more like a 2 out of 10, but the popcorn was good...).
Terror by Night (1946)
Why, Watson, why?!
In general, this is an extremely overrated movie. The one thing I could not understand was how could anyone willingly subject themselves to this miserable piece of screen-writing when Watson has been reduced to a bumbling old fool? Anyone with any sense of the Sherlock Holmes stories knows that Watson, while intelligent in his field, fails to properly use the skills of observation and deduction that his friend Sherlock Holmes masterfully wields. However, he has never been overbearing, nor has he been quite this incredibly foolish and simple-minded.
Regardless of how good the acting was as regards to most of the other cast, the movie loses its appeal with Watson's singular lack of any logic whatsoever. This completely inaccurate portrayal of Watson goes beyond humorous to downright pathetic. This alone makes the story enough of a failure to warrant a 4. It is depressing to see a well-liked character become excessively and uncharacteristically inept due to poor writing.
Sherlock Holmes The Secret Weapon is much better in its presentation, story, and its Watson. It's only too bad this one couldn't have toned down the bumbling Watson a bit more and allowed Lestrade to take the place (as seems to me the more likely and apt description of what could have happened).
I recommend the much later TV series instead. I prefer a less exaggerated Watson, thank-you-very-much!
Kairo (2001)
Not Worth It!
I'm actually surprised how highly rated this movie is on here considering all the other, much better Asian horror films on the market. I went into this with mediocre expectations at the least and was completely let down. The plot summary seemed like a great idea and could have probably made a good movie.
It started out well enough. It seemed as if it was gearing up for a creepy climax with the first suicide and the appearance of the ghost site on the internet. However, this disjointed and hole-riddled plot disgorged something far worse than terror - boredom and confusion.
*************************************** ************SPOILER WARNING************ ***************************************
It all starts with a "forbidden room" that everyone seems to somehow know about, but doesn't exactly explain how some of the characters know about it or why. They just do. For plot's sake. The room, like many other rooms throughout this movie, is sealed in red (always red) tape. Apparently, it's to keep the ghosts sealed in the room. Why? Well, naturally you'd think it's because the ghosts want to kill the living, but if you thought that you'd be wrong.
No, unfortunately, the answer to the problem is something much dumber than poltergeist haunting. The ghosts basically make human beings suffer depression because of loneliness (it never quite explains how this happens with couples or families since the focus is pretty much on the main characters and the rest of the world simply dies somehow), and because they can't resist the depression they kill themselves and/or get so depressed they turn into blackened stains on the wall or floor (depending on how they died), unable to move or escape their misery, yet somehow able to call their friends and call for help, although how they expect their friends to save them, I have no idea... I guess they don't know either.
So here we are with ghosts depressing people so badly that they turn into lonely little stains calling for help. This is pretty bad. And it only gets worse from there. There just isn't much logic or common sense present in this movie. The plot, although it does tie the whole thing together in the end, still has severe plot holes, bad dialog that doesn't make sense to anyone but the writers and perhaps the depressed characters themselves (and is being said because they are depressed so depressed they simply aren't thinking straight), and pretty much no frightening scenes to speak of.
The ghosts look like people you can see through and not even remotely scary or frightening people at that. They look like normal people. The reactions of the characters that see the ghosts range from absolute mind-numbing terror (where they blatantly can't think straight) to outright denial. The terror is the worst part because it simply looks like a normal person is standing over them while they freak out for no reason at all. It looks cheap and the ghosts simply aren't terrifying. What happens to the characters that all die simply doesn't evoke fear or horror at all. It lacks a lot.
Go watch something better. You're not likely to really miss much here.
Joyonghan gajok (1998)
Not a Bad Movie...
Well, I just finished watching this film and my feelings toward it are a little mixed. I had been told to expect dark humor and I wasn't let down. There is a lot of dark humor in this movie about a dysfunctional family trying to make a living in an old inn out on a not-so-well-traversed mountain where a major road is expected to be built. Of course, this family ends up going from mishap to mishap, and throughout most of it, the two daughters are quite oblivious of what the rest of their family is doing.
The first sense of foreboding comes from a blabbering old woman the youngest daughter and uncle assume to be crazy. Then after that, things start to happen, starting with a possible suicide in one of the rooms that leads into more mishaps, misunderstandings, and murder. But throughout all this, the comedy is definitely there.
However, my main problem with it was the youngest daughter and her strange attitude throughout the movie. She seemed completely disconnected throughout most of the film, and while for some parts this may have been funny, for others it was just downright awful. I suppose that's why she was considered to be weird (well, the whole family is very weird!).
Not the best comedy ever, but certainly good to watch.
Kakashi (2001)
Worse than the typical horror film?
Kakashi, like quite a few other Japanese horror films, had an unresolved ending and an eskewed sense of logic.
Considering a horror film about "kakashi"/scarecrows of all things makes one wonder what the film is like. How do they make scarecrows scary? That is what I thought when I got this film.
However, the answer, in this case at least, is they can't. The scarecrows were easy to push away and tear apart even for the heroine, Kaoru, and they never once did anything that really showed any power to fear. In short, the monsters of the show were very weak. Excessively so.
The main villain, a psychotically obsessive woman who killed herself, is mostly an evil spirit who can make Kaoru have nightmares, taunts her inside the house, and who later becomes re-born as a scarecrow and dies in a blaze of laughing mania. A possible high point of the story, and the scene that reveals that Izumi was dead and why she died, ends up less than scary and more or less creepy. The woman was pathetically obsessed and completely manic in her childish flaunts of over-dramatic and emo-tistic emotion. This woman has problems, obviously.
In fact, it's safe to say that all of the characters involved in this story had some sort of problem. Kaoru had her incessant and obvious brother complex, Sally and Izumi's parents were obsessed with using scarecrows, and Izumi was... insane. Tsuyoshi was probably the least "humanized" of all the characters. Between Izumi and Kaoru, he seemed more of an object to be taken. Poor guy.
All in all, this movie wasn't frightening even in the nightmare, diary, and scarecrow/escape sequences like it possibly could have been. It was unbelievable in both story and in how poorly it was done. If you're looking for a good horror to give you a scare or even challenge your mind, this is not it.