The Harder They Fall [VHS]

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The Harder They Fall [VHS] Review

This is far from one of Bogart's best movies, but it is still well worth watching. In this film, he plays a washed-up sportswriter who has been hired as a PR man for gigantic South American boxer named Toro Morena. The problem is, Morena, despite his immense size, can't box at all. Bogart and Morena's crooked owner, magnificently played by Rod Steiger, manage to take him up the heavyweight ranks by fixing a string of fights. Of all the sports, none have inspired as many excellent films as boxing. In fact, there may be more first-rate boxing films than first rate films from all other sports combined. There are probably a good dozen very, very good fight films, and this belongs to their number.The tension in the film derives from the ultimate conflict between Bogart's inherent decency and Steiger's unmitigated exploitativeness. The two had great onscreen chemistry in their scenes together. They employed very different acting styles, Steiger being one of the first Method actors to enjoy success in the movies. Bogart was strictly old school, but he not only held his own, he dominated their scenes together.A couple of real life boxers played major roles in the film. Jersey Joe Alcott plays Toro Moreno's trainer. Toro Moreno himself was very loosely based on the career of Primo Canera (with the difference that Canera actually could box, the similarities being that he was a remarkably tall heavyweight who killed a man in the ring). Max Baer, former heavyweight champion and the father of Max Baer Jr. (Jethro on THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES), plays heavyweight champion Buddy Brannen. The irony in this is that Baer in real life became heavyweight champion by beating Primo Canera. The in-the-ring shots are among the finest that have ever been filmed in boxing pictures. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

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Putting Pants on Philip [VHS]

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Putting Pants on Philip [VHS] Review

This is one of the shorts most frequently cited as the first "real" L&H teaming, when they stopped being together in a film by more or less coincidence and began to be deliberately thrown together. However, they haven't quite ironed out their screen characters yet, aren't wearing the outfits we're used to seeing them in, and most of all aren't really on the same team, even though they're a pair. It's also one of my favorites of their silent shorts.

J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Ollie) is a millionaire who has come to the docks to greet his nephew Philip, whom he's never seen. At first Ollie is laughing it up with everyone when this strange little man unboards and draws a great deal of attention to himself by the way he's behaving during his medical exam, but is quite humiliated when it turns out that this is the fellow he's supposed to be greeting. He has been told that Philip is a good boy, but he has one weakness--women. Mumblethunder and Philip set off to go home, but their journey there is continually interrupted by Philip breaking into a little dance everytime he sees a woman, then chasing after the woman. Huge crowds gather each time this happens, not so much because he's chasing skirts, but because Philip himself is also wearing a skirt (a kilt). Finally Mumblethunder manages to drag Philip into a tailor's shop to be measured for a proper pair of pants, but Philip escapes from there as well to chase more skirts. There are lots of laughs all around. It's also nice to see a short like this because the boys aren't exactly the characters we know and love. Ollie is pretty much his usual character, but it's such a joy to see Stan acting so differently from his usual man-child character. It shows he wasn't a one-trick pony and excelled in other types of roles when he got the chance.

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Tipping the Velvet [VHS]

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Tipping the Velvet [VHS] Review

I loved Sarah Waters's novel, "Tipping the Velvet." Director Geoffrey Sax and screenwriter Andrew Davies have captured beautifully and vividly the novel's characters, storyline and the remarkable setting of a Victorian England that few have glimpsed. I say BRAVO! I am usually skeptical about movies made from books. This one is the exception to the rule.

Nancy Astley, (Rachael Stir), was born and raised in an English seaside resort, Whitstable, where her parents own an oyster restaurant, and Nan can shuck with the best of them. She seems perfectly content with her lot in life, loves her family and imagines that someday she will marry one of the neighborhood boys and have a family of her own. When the Astley family is invited to a perfomance at the town's music-hall, Passion, (with a capital "P"), enters Nan's life for the first time. She sees a beautiful male impersonator perform at the hall. Not just any male impersonator...but the ever so seductive Miss Kitty Butler, (Keeley Hawes). Nan is entranced and obsessed with Kitty. She longs to meet the object of her devotion and becomes first, Kitty's friend, then her employee/dresser. Her once normal life is turned topsy-turvy, filled with passionate fantasies. The Astley family is delighted with Kitty "the celebrity" friend. However, Alice, Nancy's sister, and until recently her best friend, is hostile and suspicious of the relationship between her sister and the performer.

When Kitty is offered a prime London music-hall gig through her manager, Mr. Bliss, she takes Nan with her. The two live together, sharing a room, a bed, love and sex, and eventually the stage, as Nan is successfully incorporated into Kitty's act - as another male impersonator. Our heroine loses her innocence in the big city, in more ways than one. Adventure, disillusionment and major heartbreak loom on the horizon for our Nan - until she finds herself reaching rock bottom. If you don't know what "rock bottom," sometimes called "the pits," is in Victorian England, you may want to reread Dickens.

It takes years for Nancy to climb out of the pit she fell into, (or was she pushed?), and fashion a life for herself. Her attempts to earn a living wage are outrageous, fascinating and ingenious. The folks she meets along the way are absolute originals. The take on London's local color, sexual and socialist politics, and social and sexual mores are delicious.

This is one of the best BBC mini-series that I have seen. The characters are extremely well cast, really three-dimensional. The acting is superb. The lesbian love scenes are extremely erotic and tasteful. But don't shy away from this series, or be drawn to it, because of the lesbian content. This film is much more than a story about women who prefer women. I can't recommend it highly enough. And be sure to read the book too! ENJOY!!

JANA

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Men in Black II

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Men in Black II Review

With tongue planted so firmly in cheek as to be in danger of serious injury, Barry Sonnenfeld set out to surpass his own 5 year old triumph with Men in Black II. He didn't quite clear the mark set by MiB, but he came much closer than I ever thought he could. Clearly, the goal of the MiB2 cast and crew was to expand the best elements of the first movie and lose those bits which didn't work so well. They had a great idea and implemented it well, but I think that they may have gone just a tad too far in paring the story and script down. MiB2 is a great ride, from the first frame to the last, and rarely have I seen 90 minutes go by so quickly. A little too quickly, as it turned out.This flick is even more densely packed with one-liners, droll humor, visual puns and delightfully cynical satire than the first. It opens with a segment from a no-budget TV series on strange and unexplained phenomena (hosted by Peter Graves, of course) describing how the Earth narrowly escaped destruction in 1978 when we were caught between Serleena, a powerful and evil alien, and the object of her desire, a mysterious force known as the Light of Zartha. At that critical juncture 25 years ago, a super-secret government agency (which licenses and polices alien activity on Earth) kept us out of the line of fire by refusing the Zarthans' request to hide the Light on Earth.Cut to the present day and Serleena's back. Naturally. She's still looking for the Light of Zartha and she's severely POed that she hasn't found it yet. Arriving on Earth undetected, her first problem is the same faced by the galactic cockroach in MiB: find a disguise that will pass among the primitve humans. As a shape shifting nest of snake-like apendages, though, she had an easier time of it than the 20 foot Bug. Almost immediately, she comes accros a magazine open to a full page Victoria's Secret ad and before you can say "brand new Edgar suit", she's taken the form of Lara Flynn Boyle . . . in nothing more than Victoria's best black lingerie. This is one dangerous alien.Actually, Boyle does a good job of filling Vincent D'Onofrio's shoes. She's a smarter (if less ghastly) villain than the Bug and before long has put J and K at a serious disadvantage by completely taking over MiB headquarters.Ah yes, Jay and Kay. Let's face it: the real key to the success of Men in Black was the hillarious juxtaposition of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Well, Kay is back and the chemistry has lost very little zing in the 5 years it was on the shelf. it turns out that the erstwhile Agent K is the only human being who might possibly know how to find the Light of Zartha. Unfortunatly, he's still got a 35 year gap in his memory and is working as the Postmaster of a small town in Maine. Zed dispatches J to bring him back and get him de-neuralized, post haste.I won't give away any more of the plot than this; it's thin enough as it stands and I wouldn't want to spoil what few surprises there are. Fortunatly, the movie isn't really about the plot, now is it? it's about the gags, the special effects and watching Smith and Jones have *way* too much fun. Several other characters from the first flick also return, including Tony Shalhoub as the occaisionaly headless pawnbroker Jeebs, the four ungrateful worm guys and the wisecracking, karaoke singing pug, Frank.Go see it, it's a hoot. The humor is a bit more juvenile than in the first movie, perhaps, but it really doesn't suffer much for all of that. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you?�Yes No Report abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

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Sherlock Holmes {The Sign of Four (#2.15)} [VHS]

Sherlock Holmes ___noise___ 1000 [VHS]

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Sherlock Holmes ___noise___ 1000 [VHS] Review

The late Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes is so real, so vital, and so thoroughly mesmerizing that I can never imagine another actor playing the part. The man literally oozes charisma, and his aristocratic, finely chiselled looks perfectly match the Holmes I've always envisioned. Brett also captures the nuances that make Holmes such a memorable creation: the moodiness, the nervous bursts of energy, the unexpected moments of humour, and all his other maddening (but wonderful) eccentricities. Brett also has the perfect speaking voice for Holmes - a perfectly enunciated, slightly fruity, upper class Etonian accent. The death of Jeremy Brett in 1995 robbed us of Holmes' finest interpreter and a fascinating actor.Happily, however, Brett has left us with a large legacy of performances as the great detective. The British Granada television series, filmed between 1984 and 1994, is now available on video (and occasionally on DVD) and includes many stand-out episodes. The present video is one of several feature-length episodes filmed for the series, and was made in 1987. This was around the period in which Brett's health started to decline (he suffered from a combination of heart disease and depression), but personally I have always felt that he transcended the effects of his illness, and in some ways his performances as Holmes were even more compelling because of it. At times he would have to husband his vocal resources as breath control became a problem, but his portrayal remained compelling right up until the end. Here he looks fine for the most part, and if anything, his slightly red-rimmed eyes and sallow complexion suit the character of Holmes, who was hardly the picture of robust good health himself. Brett is ably supported by Edward Hardwicke as a sympathetic and intelligent Watson. This is the confidante whom Conan Doyle always envisioned, not the bumbling twit that one remembers from the Nigel Bruce caricature of the 1930s and 1940s.The rest of the cast is uniformly good, with John Thaw excellent as the nominal villain, Jonathan Small, and Ronald Lacey hilarious in the dual roles of the eccentric (and appallingly hair-styled!) Sholto brothers.As always in this ten-year series, the direction is top-notch, and the period atmosphere is beautifully evoked. There is also some clever use of shadow and mirrors that add a touch of class to the visual effects.With great performances and direction to match, why, then, have I not given this adaptation five stars? My reservations lie with the story itself. The Sign of Four lacks the suspense of say, The Hound of the Baskervilles or the darkly compelling Dying Detective. To be sure, it is a very interesting story with all the usual Conan Doyle flourishes (exotic background, eccentric personalities and a hint of romance), but it all comes to a conclusion much too soon with the anti-climactic narrative from Jonathan Small that occupies the last ten minutes or so of the episode. Nevertheless, there is still much to enjoy along the way in this witty evocation of Doyle's novel. In short, I recommend this episode with the proviso that dedicated Sherlockians also check out many of the other programmes in the series. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews� Was this review helpful to you?�Yes No Report abuse | PermalinkComment�Comment

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Savages

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Price: $580.53   

Savages Review

Merchant and Ivory go on a psychedelic bender in this mad indictment of capitalist culture and hubris. The accidental discovery by the mud people of a perfect sphere induces them to abort their planned human sacrifice and follow the bouncing ball. This leads them to an abandoned Long Island mansion, where, literally overnight, they blunder their way into the formation of a perfect 1930's dinner-party society. There are an industrialist, a poet, male and female cross-dressers, a fallen woman, a slave girl, and the hard-boiled hostess with the mostest, Carlotta. All have their roles to play in the rise and fall of "progress". As various power struggles play out, unresolved tensions force a dissolution of the social structure and the characters devolve into the "savages" that they were at the beginning of the film.

Still one of the most amusing parables available regarding the excesses of Western -- and specifically American -- culture, "Savages" is as loony as a mushroom trip and as symbol-laden as a classic fairy tale.

I'd have given it five stars, except that there a couple of scenes toward the end that just don't seem as tight as the rest of the film -- but maybe that's just me.

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