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silveryjessica
Reviews
The Owl and the Pussycat (1970)
There are reviews here by people who are clueless
First of all, this film was not hated by critics. It was adored by critics, and it was a huge hit.
Second, it is not a rip-off of anything else. It isn't derivative of anything else. It was a book. Then it was a play, starring Diana Sands and Alan Alda. Then it became this movie, with some significant changes, the main one being the elimination of the interracial pairing that had existed in the play.
Third, George Segal has been working in comedies for his entire career.
Fourth, this is a seriocomedy, with easily as much pathos as comedy. The comedy is broad and rapid-fire, and the pathos is very intense. There are moments of intense pain along with some really hearty laughs.
Fifth, this is a time capsule. New York was a violent, dirty, impoverished, scary place in 1970, and never did people on the fringes struggle more. This is a time where you could be thrown out of your apartment in the middle of the night for making too much noise, before ATMs and when people had recordings of vicious dogs next to their front doors to deter all-too-common burglars. This is a time of a seedy 42nd Street, where you could go to one of 40 porn houses and watch full- length dirty movies all night, surrounded by drunks and bums and perverts. This is a movie of a place and time that doesn't exist any more, and these were the people who tried not to lose themselves while trying to make their dreary lives a little more than the reality they were trapped in.
When people take themselves and this site too seriously, and run off at the mouth about movies they don't understand in language that is imprecise and improperly used, it makes me annoyed.
Watch this film. It is unlike others. You will find things to love in it.
Reform School Girls (1986)
I absolutely, positively love this movie
It's quite entertaining. I first discovered it in college, and my gay roommate and I found Pat Ast to be one of the most undiscovered comedic gems of the decade in it. The fantastic lines in this film come one after the other, and almost twenty years later, I still quote it. The usual B-movie WiP tropes abound, with Wendy O. Williams adding just the right amount of wrong. Nothing is terribly salacious, frankly, so if you're looking for a lot of naked women in lingerie giving each other sponge baths, you're not going to find it here, although there is plenty of just plain naked, but if you want some genuine action scenes, a lot of cursing, and some acting that will entertain you, along with some of the cleverest dialogue you will hear in a crappy movie, you will not be disappointed. You can enjoy this film with a clear conscience. It certainly delivers entertainment. PS--TINY SPOILER--there is one scene where a kitten meets an unfortunate end but you don't see anything on camera. It definitely has impact.
The Andromeda Strain (1971)
Yawn. You've seen this movie.
I wanted to like this film. I've heard it mentioned for decades, and I thought I would enjoy it, but I was bored out of my mind. Literally nothing happens. There are scenes upon scenes of people looking into microscopes and screening petri dishes of various substances. The cast is solid, and I don't even have much of a problem with the (dated) script, because you can see how it was possibly ahead of its time in terms of the casting of black and female actors in positions of authority. I read a lot of the reviews here before writing this one and clearly I am in the minority. I am not going to say that other people don't know what they are talking about, because I suppose a certain kind of hardcore sci-fi fiction reader would love this movie. The script hews very close to the book--which I also read and was bored by--and portions of the dialogue sound like they were lifted verbatim from Crichton's pages. It isn't a terrible movie, but I found it pretty dull. I felt there were a lot of opportunities for more heightened suspense. I am definitely a fan of dated 1970s sci-fi, the worse the better, with "Logan's Run" being a particularly guilty pleasure, and "The Demon Seed" a close second. I found this movie too cerebral to be interesting, too intelligent to be silly and not nearly cheesy enough to be campy fun. The biggest issue I have with it is that I don't feel it is suspenseful. There is one entire twenty minute section where the scientists proceed through a progressively more sterile decontamination process as they descend into a subterranean lab, and you literally watch them get decontaminated and x-rayed and bathed for twenty minutes Twenty. If you are heavily fascinated by scientific accuracy or the history of computers you will probably enjoy it. You will have to use your best judgment as to whether or not to spend two+ hours on this film.