omg are you serious?
Citizen Kane is the probably the best movie of all time
omg why are you all such morons?
My entire skins started to vomit after reading some of your review
I had to stop in order for myself to survive
I hate you and your family and anyones that even been in contact with you. Which probably includes me now but its worth it.

someonewhounderstandsgoodmovies on REVIEW: Citizen Kane…which sucked, by the way

I also think Evan, that was a great comment! And as to that ass “Flick Chart” what can you really expect from someone who spells Orson Welles’ influential masterpiece—”CITZEN CANE”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

What next:

Begone With the Wind?

The Six Commandments?

2003: A Space Odyssey?

No Country For Old Women?

Sam Juliano on REVIEW: Citizen Kane…which sucked, by the way

Mrs. Moviesetal and I collaborated on these. Shouldn’t Luke be playing too? What about Kristena?

Brunch at Tiffany’s

Hulu

Olivier!

The Wild Hunch

The Girth of a Nation

Run

Ed Would

Pattin’

Pleathers

The Mild One

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Whom?

Oceans 12…wait..Oceans 13…um…Dammit!

G on REVIEW: Citizen Kane…which sucked, by the way

I think the distinction that atheists such as myself would draw between Maher and Stein is the fundamental intellectual dishonesty we see in the latter’s arguments. Both films are polemics, and both rely on the smug style that drives the personality-driven documentary polemic lately. I think one can fairly take Maher to task for his attitude and Charles for his technique, but that’s different from saying that Maher relies disingenuous, spurious, or outright false claims, which is how I would characterize many of the pro-ID arguments advanced by Stein and his ilk. (Lest this erupt into talk.origins group of the twenty-first century, I suppose we can agree to disagree on such points.)

Andrew Wyatt on Religulous

The problem with the Zohan is that it’s not a truck we pushed, it’s a plance. It’s munitions plane that is filled with C-4, TNT and pipe bombs and the fuel tanks are full. So, instead of a funny cloud of smoke, the thing blew up. And Adam Sandler is gonna blow up as well if he doesn’t stop letting Rob Schnider book his films.

Back to Luke. He is not the movie police. Nor is he the Adam Sandler Police. He’s not even the Church Police. It’s not his responsibility to me or others to ensure that we only see quality films. He’s just a reviewer on a site for movies and he tries to do us all service by posting a review. While I am want to smack his head with a Zohan DVD case and then rub his nose in it like I would a puppy that whizzed onto the carpet, I will refrain and instead, thank him for being as honest as possible and trying to do what is right.

Maurice on You Don’t Mess with the Zohan

Oh, I’m sure their parents can. But how many are likely to take a stand on this issue?

“Yes little Johnny, the trailer for that movie has planted a song in your head so catchy that you are constantly possessed with an overpowering desire to see the movie. And all of your friends have seen it, and talk about it all day at preschool, and love their new Beverly Hills Chihuahua backpacks. But, as a cinephile, I have higher cinematic standards than you, and therefore deny you the right to see this movie, on the grounds that it is no good, even though you are too young to tell that. Just stay home with me and watch Criterion DVDs instead. You’ll love Persona!”

I’m sure that conversation would go great.

G on Theater Releases for October 3rd, 2008

It has been a bit on the slower the side the past week or so, but there have still been some great comments from our always excellent readers. A smattering of them are below. Note that the first two are simply selections (the actual comments are quite long) and worth reading in their entirety.

Interesting, wide-ranging discussion, but it’s cheapened severely by your subsequent proclamation that SIN CITY is “the best noir ever made.”

That’s just silly. It’s not even that great a film, never mind a great film noir. And I’m not even convinced it’s actually noir. Mostly it’s a bunch of expensive, visually stunning trickery using a series of noir (or noirish) tropes and peep show shots aimed at horny adolescents — an emotionally and narratively shallow exercise at best, lacking the dark existential angst that lies at the heart of all the best noir films.

Kevin Burton Smith on Rain, Guns & Cigarettes – Noir’s Past and Present

“Sin City.” My word, what an experience that was. To actually see the pages of a comic filmed for the first time was a real kick. Is it noir? Sure. Is it great noir? Mebbeso. Was it at the time the best film adaptation of a literary work ever filmed? Absolutely and it still is to this day. I am going to state my reasons but first want to point out that Marv is a buddy of mine and I cry every time I watch or read the ending to his story. Marv is the, without a doubt, the greatest anti-hero ever conceived. His demise is both a relief and a heartbreak that brings a tear to the eye while the mind says “I’ll sleep better at night from now on.”

“Sin City” is the perfect film adaptation of Fran Miller’s graphic novel. Here are the two best reasons why:

1. Every single word that Miller wrote is the script.
2. The film contains every single panel that Miller drew.

Maurice on Rain, Guns & Cigarettes – Noir’s Past and Present

Speed Racer was a cartoon I loved as a child. I wanted to be Speed, own the Mach 5, and race against Racer X. I had elaborate fantasies of Hot Wheels that could fly, emit whirring saw blades, or pogo out of harms’ way. I finally got to see the cartoon again sometime in my 20’s when it resurfaced on MTV and I was sorta shocked by how surreal and abstract it all was. I didn’t enjoy the cartoon much as an adult and the Speed Racer trailer really turned me off, so I skipped the theatrical release.

Fast forward to the DVD/Blu-ray release and I was kicking myself all weekend for not seeing this on a big screen when I had a chance. Wow, fun times. A good solid two hours of deja vu and childhood nostalgia ensued, something you captured quite accurately in your review (even though you had no nostalgia for the cartoon to pine for).

Joel on Speed Racer

Nice review, Phillip. I think your observation about the slightly staged quality to the film’s sharpest emotional moments is a fair one. I liked the film immensely, but this element also bothered me a little. I knew the film was a documentary when I bought my ticket, but sometimes I felt as though I was watching naturalistic fiction. Were all the conversations featuring “Cindy’s” family truly captured in the spontaneous moment, or were they performed? It’s an insightful, moving film, but at the same time I couldn’t shake the sensation of tidy theater for the viewer’s benefit that suffuses some scenes.

Andrew Wyatt on Up the Yangtze

It’s that time again where we feature the most informative and entertaining comments of the week. The first one is a bit of a doozy, and I even truncated it some, but it’s just so dang good that you owe it to yourself to read the entire thing. As always, our readership is 100% solid gold bling-bling.

The real feel of noir is not merely in the “down these dark streets a man must go” mentality. In actual fact, noir is more than merely a mood, it is a reflection, not merely of a director’s vision but of a society. The increased pessimism of American audiences in the early forties as they entered the war mirrored rather the very same sort of cynicism that had affected Europe in the years prior to the war. Noir as most people know it evolved out of French Poetic Realism, and out of the worlds created by Jacques Prévert, Marcel Carné and Julien Duvivier in such seminal works as Le Quai des Brumes, Pépé le Moko and Le Jour se Lève. Just as those films reflected the growing depression surrounding Europe post the early thirties depression and realising that another war was around the corner, so noir represented the same to French audiences. When the French critics finally came to see the Hollywood wartime output, they noticed a cynicism and bleakness about the film quite beside from the stylistic shadows – which were as much a part of keeping production costs down in the reduced climate of wartime as any conscious artistic movement. They were comparing the films to those seen from Hollywood pre-Vichy, and thus to the likes of the Capra pieces of the late thirties, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and the like. Just as those French films of the late thirties influenced Hollywood – indeed several were remade there – so the Hollywood style reflected back on the French cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville through Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos and La Samourai in particular.

It’s not a coincidence of course. Mention film noir to everyone and it conjures up images of detectives, hard-boiled femmes fatale, mysteries and shadows, with characters spitting back fatalistic nuggets of dialogue to each other. It’s a fallacy. That’s like saying that Renaissance art is all about naked figures; they merely make up the depiction, not the overall style. Noir literally means black, and thus it can be seen to correspond to the psyche of the nation that produced such output. And Lang was in the perfect position to understand that all too well. He had been a leading light of the German Expressionist’s movement of the early 1920s with his Mabuse films and Spione. Like Caligari before them, they reflected the state of mind of a defeated, cynical nation, whose overhanging oppressive designs and distorted camera angles spoke volumes about a nation in turmoil. To all intents and purposes, those German films were films noir every bit as much as the Hollywood films of the 1940s that are too often incorrectly credited with purpotrating the soubriquet. Not just in Germany either. World War I saw a malaise that affected much of the western world, and there can even be traces of the noir style found in American silent films. Take Cecil B.de Mille’s The Whispering Chorus for one, with its morality play balanced in a dark world of shadows, rough and poetic justice and psychological turmoil. People are all to quick to look for neo-noirs amongst the digital colour of the modern era, and cherish films as broad-ranging as Chinatown, LA Confidential and The Grifters. They recognise a similarity in mood, but refuse in looking ahead to find noir’s descendants to find their antecedents.

Allan Fish on The Woman In the Window

Is it just me or does the image titled “Ashoka and Anakin…I love these guys.” look distinctly like a still from an old Thunderbirds movie? Which leads me to wonder what would have happened had Matt Stone and Trey Parker written and directed this film?

“TA-TOO-INE – F*CK YEAH!”

Joel on Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Well, as long as I’ve already disclosed so much, I might as well tell you that I also have EVAN and LUKE tattooed across my knuckles instead of LOVE and HATE.

What city do you live in again Evan????

(phew… at least I didn’t reveal to these guys what the middle name of my first child will be.)

Fox on 300th Post Giveaway – UPDATE!

OSCAR WILDE said (at least I THINK it was him): There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. THE OTHER IS GETTING IT.

It also reminds me of an old JESSICA LANGE interview that I dug out on the net. (I’ve always adored her. She’s a very cool woman.)

She had married young and that hadn’t worked out. Went to Paris. Modelled. Studied mime. Got involved with BOB FOSSE and then was in the middle of a tempestous relationship with MIKHAIL BARYSHNIKOV. (They never married but they have a daughter.) She took up with SAM SHEPARD permanently after this interview was published. They’re still together and she has a couple of kids with him.

The interviewer was discussing relationships with her. JESSICA said she felt a lot of pressure being in the public eye. Especially being involved with another famous person. He also had his own career and his own life. So it was tough.

She mentioned that she didn’t want to have to work at it. She didn’t expect it to flow like rivers of honey but she said she was paid to do a job (acting) and she didn’t want to have to make that many sacrifices in her personal life to keep it on an even keel. She wanted to have a stable romantic life. But she didn’t want to give up everything for it.

So the interviewer’s take was, “If a good looking, desirable, talented woman like yourself can’t get a grip on this mess where does that leave the rest of us?”

JESSICA laughed uproariously. “F*CKED,” she said.

Yeah…I think she’s right.

Miranda on Vicky Cristina Barcelona

1. After completing Thieves’ Highway, according to an article by Sandra Berg in 2002(?):

“‘Everyone heard that subpoenas were being handed out,’ says actor-producer Norman Lloyd, remembering one fateful night in 1949. ‘Dassin lived on Bronson, and there was a knock on Jules’ front door. Julie answered to find Darryl Zanuck [head of 20th Century Fox], who said, “You better get out of town.” He gave him the assignment to direct Night and the City in London. It was unheard of to have a studio executive come in person like that and try to help.’

“Dassin has never forgotten that experience: ‘Zanuck said, “You’re going to England. Get a fucking script done, begin shooting, start with the most expensive scenes and they won’t fire you, because it’s probably going to be the last picture you’re ever going to make.” I liked Darryl Zanuck! While I was working on the script, Zanuck called me and said, “I want you to write in a part for Gene Tierney. She’s going through hell, and she’s a good kid. Save her.” So I wrote her a part. She was at the end of her career. This was a side to Zanuck that people didn’t know.’”

films noir on Night and the City

It’s time to once again salute you, the wonderful readers of MovieZeal and your colorful opinions. It’s a pleasure to troll through our comment logs and see just how intelligent, thoughtful, and humorous all of you are (I realize the picture above somewhat contradicts that last statement, but I just thought it was funny. Don’t go reading into it too much). Go ahead, get yourself that tall glass of ice-cold pink lemonade. You deserve it,

Movie Zeal’s look at movies where no one gives a damn, and gats often go blam-blam, blam-blam

For the whole hot month, the theme is great old noir, and each day makes us all want more

If that weren’t enough, they turned to a man they don’t really understand, whose name is Sam

Evan’s long-awaited review leaves people stunned on the floor, truly to be a thing of Internet lore

Alexander Coleman on Commentary Track – The Week in Comments

You guys are embarrassing me. Thank you, Miranda. You’re very kind. And Evan- don’t lie. You married me for my mad good looks, and you know it.

Julia and I should start a column entitled “Redheaded Wives of Movie Zealots Metaphorically Bring It, Yo.”

Kristena on The Dark Knight

Yeah. Why a woman (as a character in a film or as an actual living breathing person) would want a man who implied that she was a whore – repeatedly – escapes me.

Of course, the function of that particular word has changed over the decades. In the 40s, morality was such that if a woman had a sexual relationship outside of marriage (with practically anyone) she could be considered a whore by many. However, no one back then – from what I understand – seemed terribly concerned about mens’ social behavior regarding females.

And of course there is a type of man that attaches that term to every woman that refuses to show him a good time. Irony is everywhere, is it not?

Oddly enough, I don’t have any real problems with women being judged. It’s not like all females are sweetness and light. (Believe me.)

But I do have a great deal of difficulty with any society where men and women are held to entirely different standards. If a woman is a bad person or she’s doing something that’s terrible, that’s fine. But if a man does EXACTLY the same thing, then that should be socially unacceptable as well. For EXACTLY the same reasons.

It reminds me of that ridiculous argument that CANDICE BERGEN and JACQUELINE BISSET had at the end of the movie RICH & FAMOUS. Candy played this uptight Southern belle and Jacqueline was this hard drinking, fast living English writer.

By the time the end arrives it’s late 70s/early 80s and the women are around 40. If I’m not mistaken (it’s been a while since I saw it), the big wicked fight was precipitated by the fact that Candy’s husband had always been in love with Jacqueline’s character. He was finally divorcing her.

So Candy’s furious (even though her spouse ISN’T leaving her for Jacqueline) and she starts this holy war. She starts talking about old yellow dogs that hang out in the yard looking for anything they can jump on. “They’d hump a snake.” Then she says, “Just how many men have you had?”

Jacqueline refuses to answer.

“Well, I know why you won’t tell me. There were TOO MANY, weren’t there? I’m willing to bet that you’re a slut.”

Jacqueline’s gorgeous translucent blue eyes turn to ice. “How many men before you’re a slut?”

Candy stares her down with a level gaze. “Three.”

“Then kick me out of the yard.”

AMEN, baby….

Miranda Wilding on Notorious

But one question: how is it not cinematic? Many of the greats (see Kurosawa after he went widescreen) shot primarily in medium and wide shots, and if you want to hear bad sound design, look no further than one Federico Fellini. And Ozu shot with a stationary camera from a single low angle, and used the most static establishing shots you’ve ever seen. So, what is cinematic?

Rick Olson on Beer For My Horses

MovieZeal: 2. Kingsley: 0.

Adam on Elegy

Philip Roth is one of the most overrated novelists in the United States and I’m not surprised that another one of his books has bombed on the silver screen. Portnoy’s Complaint may have been very funny for we over fifty crowd in the early seventies because of the subject matter (jerking off), but it’s no wonder the film bombed. Imagine filming a scene in which the main character ejaculates into his family’s dinner (a big piece of liver) or in which a black female hooker squats on a glass table and takes a shit on it while the “Monkey’s” rich husband lies underneath beating off while the former eats a banana on the sofa.
I wonder how much Roth has degenerated since the early seventies…ask Claire Bloom.

Andrew S. on Elegy

We’re debuting a new feature this week (what with all the ‘new’ things of late – new retrospectives, new writers, etc. – I hope y’all don’t burn out on us) where we highlight the eloquence, brilliance, and wit of you, our loyal readers and commenters. Quite frankly, you guys rock, and the site would not function without all of you tossing your opinions into the mix. Seriously. We would likely just give up if we thought no one cared.

So each week we’re going to feature some of the best, brightest, funniest, and oddest comments that you guys have left on the pages of MovieZeal. I fully realize that no one can read everything that pops up here, so hopefully this will give many of you a chance to see some of the highlights you may have missed.

So without further ado…

The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies and Huston is one of my favorite filmmakers. I love the lean, precise, unforgiving disciplined nature of the film. People tend to underacknowledge how daring of an actor Humphrey Bogart was, he would try anything and would monkey with his image in any way that was appropriate to serve the part at hand. Nice review Evan, but I will argue one point, Spade is doomed, just not in the traditional sense.

Chuck Bowen on The Maltese Falcon

While Spade is the quintessential noir protagonist, a loner on the edge of polite society, sorely tempted to transgress but declines and is neither saved nor redeemed, he is more complex than you allow.

For Sam and Brigid are truly lovers. He loves Brigid and this is abundantly clear at the end, and Brigid loves him. She will never make up the years she will lose in prison, and Sam will never recover from the necessary betrayal of their love. Sam was not seduced. Brigid is not a femme-fatale: she manipulates Sam, but never seeks to have him act as her surrogate.

Together they discover the desperate emptiness of their lives. She true to her nature can’t comprehend how he can send her down if he loves her, and he can’t fathom her lying while knowing she loves him.

The famous ad-lib by Bogart on the leaden black bird at the end says it all … “the stuff that dreams are made of”.

films noir on The Maltese Falcon

Hey Evan, guess u ticked off my friend, but u dont seem to know much about trackbacks firstly. Secondly, u have a “Trackback this Post” link on every post, so obviously people will trackback. Thridly, Wordpress won’t have this oldest feature if it were spam which apparently is not. Its being widely used by all bloggers on the net. Here is what Trackback actually means….

Trackback is used to tell the other blog that you link in your post, basically it just said “Hey your post is useful and put it on my blog“

So you know Ignorance is Bliss, so we are assuming that u have no clue about it, so thats that….Best thing is to remove the Trackback this post link on every post.

Why so serious? Without knowing anything without any reason accusing a reputable professional site of spamming. Now thats being really cheap.

Rahul on Tell No One

So what gets a 5? I’ve seen about 20 of these films, and I’d probably hand out 7 or 8 fives. Which is not to say that I’m an easy reviewer, but you’ve got the very best examples of the second greatest genre/movement/style ever produced in American film.

I guess I’m calling out Evan and Phillip here, or at least asking for clarification: What gets a 5? How many of these films would you give 5s to, if you were rating all of them?

I was surprised that Falcon didn’t get a 5, but I personally agree with that selection, and I certainly don’t think This Gun for Hire deserves a 5. But here we’ve got arguably the greatest film by arguably the greatest director of all time (I’m pretty sure you could make a good case for anyone in the top 20 or 30 on this list: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_top100directors.htm)

So I guess my question is: Phillip and Evan: Is the 5/5 some near unobtainable ideal for you (reserved for Citizen Kane and maybe The Searchers, if you’re in a good mood) or do you just not hold Falcon and Indemnity up where others do?

G on Double Indemnity

The classic films of the noir series and 1930’s and 40’s cinema in general showcase the greatest American films ever made in the perceptions of all serious scholarly film critics and historians. If we can’t give supreme cinematic masterpieces like DOUBLE INDEMNITY or THE MALTESE FALCON or several others here the top rating then we can’t rightfully give a film like MAN ON WIRE or WALL-E five nor any of the seven or eight a year that nearly all critics award. At a stingy rate of only five 5 star ratings a year through movie history we would have maybe 450 five-star ratings after 90 years of American film heritage. And again, that’s being stingy. THE MALTESE FALCON, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, OUT OF THE PAST and several others here including LAURA rank among the greatest films ever made in the USA, a fact that is recognized in Europe and all through the world by legions and legions of art lovers and film fans. You simply cannot find any publication anywhere that would lower the ratings of these indisputable and unanimous masterpieces neither in volumes or blog sites. Kael, Kauffmann, Agee, Sarris, Simon, MacDonald, Tyler, Bazin, Truffaut, Sadoul, Powell, Malcolm, and endless legions of today’s critics have all consistantly called these film’s top-flight cinematic masterpieces in an iconic framework. To me it would rival hearing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and saying “it doen’t quite measure up” or that Michaelangelo’s “The Last Supper” is an overated painting, or that Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” doesn’t quite deserve the highest rating, or that Joyce’s ULYSSES isn’t quite intellectually challenging enough. For me it is artistic blasphemy to write a review of a quintessential masterpiece of world cinema like DOUBLE INDEMNITY or THE MALTESE FALCON and then to post a star rating on top that is less than the highest rating. What it does is it completely invalidates and undermines star ratings completely as the minute you try and issue a five-star rating for ANYTHING modern, it becomes more than problematic in a comparative sense.

Sam Juliano on Laura

So are we comparing Sam to the Devil? Or just saying that we have Sympathy for him?

Luke Harrington on “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”

Hard to imagine how you could make MovieZeal better, but I think you just did. Welcome to Blogsylvania, Sam! (sorry, I’ve sworn I’d never use the word that rhymes with ’shmogosphere’ so one must invent alternatives.)

Craig Kennedy on “Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…”

Clearly, he is insane and that is what drives his machine. Did you notice how he sucked at his cheeks or (worse) constantly had his tongue on his lips? Why? Because he likes how it feels to touch his scars. They are the anchor that his tugboat of madness is tied to. Maybe there’s a happy thought that creeps in or, in a moment, he might feel good about himself. All he need do is flick his taster on what drives his insanity to quell it. Better yet, do it out of habit and that will keep positive feelings at bay. Genius.

Maurice on The Dark Knight

And I think you may be frontin’ a bit, [Luke], cuz Evan and Coosa Creek Rick told me you cried in the first one when that little girl dies of Leukemia.

Fox on Theater Releases for August 6th, 2008

May I congratulate the staff writers of MovieZeal on adding my erstwhile friend Sam Juliano to your list of movie writers. His reviews are always passionate, erudite and opinionated enough to leave one either applauding or baying for blood, a sure sign of an involving writer.

However, I do ask that you do my friend the service of rectifying the somewhat embarrassing first of having his first review be that of such a piece of Popcorn fodder as Mamma Mia (the ciritcs equivalent of Orson Welles being remembered for his whisky commercials), an exclamation not entirely inappropriate, under the circumstances.

If he hasn’t told you, he has a passion for anything cinematic, worships the water Ingmar Bergman once walked on until he lost that inevitable game of chess and will watch just about anything – and believe me, I have put that theory to the test.

You could do no better than him, and coming from me, that’s a compliment.

Allan Fish on Mamma Mia!