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FILM-REVIEWS:
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Naked gun, The
Name of the rose, The
Napoléon
Night moves
No highway in the sky
No retreat, no surrender
Nothing sacred
| Title: | NAKED GUN, THE |
| Year: | 1988 |
| Genre: | Comedy |
| Director: | David Zucker |
| The players: | Leslie
Nielsen
George Kennedy Priscilla Presley Ricardo Montalban O.J. Simpson |
| About the film: | Leslie Nielsen has a film career starting in the 50’s but it was with Airplane! that he started doing parody and with this film his career soared to new heights. It’s a spoof of the police and detective genre. Nielsen plays the clumsy lt Drebin from the TV-series Police squad. I really believe good spoof films are rare, this one’s better than most of them, it’s slap stick non stop. Much of it is plain silly but some of the jokes work alright. |
| Rating: |
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| Title: | NAME OF THE ROSE, THE |
| Year: | 1986 |
| Genre: | Thriller |
| Director: | Jean-Jacques Annaud |
| The players: | Sean
Connery
Christian Slater F. Murray Abraham Elya Baskin Feodor Chaliapin, Jr. |
| About the film: | Based on Umberto Eco’s novel which takes place during the 13th century. Sean Connery plays William of Baskerville, a Sherlock Holmes type of monk who’s sent to a monastery to find out about some strange deaths. Not Connery’s usual kind of character. One can see that something is wrong at the monastery by just looking at the monks who live there, many of the characters are misshapen, they look horrible. The atmosphere of the film is disagreeable. |
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| Title: | NAPOLÉON |
| Year: | 1955 |
| Genre: | Adventure |
| Director: | Sacha Guitry |
| The players: | Daniel
Gélin
Raymond Pellegrin Orson Welles Jean-Marc Anthony Erich von Stroheim |
| About the film: | Extremely dull account of the life of Napoléon Bonaparte, from a French point of view. The film spins over some 30 years of his life, starting when he was a kid and ending some years after the battle of Waterloo, which, typically, is not given much attention. Never before have I seen such impersonal and indifferent acting. |
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| Title: | NIGHT MOVES |
| Year: | 1975 |
| Genre: | Thriller |
| Director: | Arthur Penn |
| The players: | Gene
Hackman
Jennifer Warren Susan Clark James Woods Melanie Griffith |
| About the film: | Dull detective story with Hackman as a private-eye who takes on a difficult case. Should have been better, the plot is good. |
| Rating: |
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| Title: | NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY |
| Year: | 1951 |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Director: | Henry Koster |
| The players: | James
Stewart
Glynis Johns Marlene Dietrich Jack Hawkins Ronald Squire |
| About the film: | James Stewart plays Theodore Honey, a scientist who investigates wether airplane tails can brake due to fatigue, an idea no one had heard of. Honey calculated that the tail would break after a certain number of flying hours. He is an odd character who lives alone with his 11 year old daughter. Honey became very upset when travelling by an airplane he was told that the plane had flown close to the number of hours he had calculated. He tried his best to explain the danger to all on the plane but they thought he was crazy. Honey saw it as his responsibility to save them regardless of the personal consequences. What I definitely don’t like about this film is the stupid romance between Johns and Honey. Yes, she probably would be grateful to him but that she practically moves into his house with the intention to marry him?? And Dietrich’s character is not interesting at all, she doesn’t add much to the film. |
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| Title: | NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER |
| Year: | 1985 |
| Genre: | Action |
| Director: | Corey Youen |
| The players: | Kurt
McKinney
Timothy D. Baker J.W. Fails Kent Lipham Jean-Claude van Damme |
| About the film: | Some foul types try to force Jason’s father, a karatetrainer, to join their criminal business. He refuses and so has to leave town. He and his family move to Seattle where Jason soon gets into trouble with the guys at the local dojo. His father tries to teach him that fighting doesn’t solve any problems but it’s eventually Jason who proves his father wrong. Jason gets some welcome help from the ghost of the master himself, Bruce Lee. This is a b-movie. The acting is terrible and the characters shallow to say the least. Still there’s something appealing in the straight-forwardness and simplicity. The film is very predictable. Some of the fighting sequences are ok, the last for instance where Jason takes on a much bigger Russian (van Damme) reminds me of the last match in Rocky IV. |
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| Title: | NOTHING SACRED |
| Year: | 1937 |
| Genre: | Comedy |
| Director: | William Wellman |
| The players: | Fredric
March
Carole Lombard Walter Connolly Charles Winninger Sig Rumann |
| About the film: | Lombard is in top form in this satire as a woman who pretends to suffer from a fatal illness just to get a trip to New York. Little did she expect to be celebrated like a national heroine. March plays a newspaper man who gets the scoop and has the benefit of accompany her her "last" days. Filmed in technicolor. |
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