...But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get. "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masque…
"A Clockwork Orange" commits another, perhaps even more unforgivable, artistic sin. It is just plain talky and boring. You know there's something wrong with a movie when the last third feels…
The story builds up to a blinding revelation, which shifts the nature of all that has gone before, and the surprise filled me not with delight but with the feeling that the writer, Christopher McQuarr…
A foolish choice in art direction casts a pall over Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" that no swordplay can cut through. The film looks muddy, fuzzy and indistinct. Its colors are mud tones at the …
Here's a suggestion for thrillermakers: You can't go wrong if all of the characters in your movie are at least as intelligent as most of the characters in your audience.
"Dead Poets Society" is not the worst of the countless recent movies about good kids and hidebound, authoritatian older people. It may, however, be the most shameless in its attempt to pande…
I kept asking myself what the film was really trying to say about the human condition as reflected by John Merrick, and I kept drawing blanks. The film's philosophy is this shallow: (1)Wow, the Elepha…
Although Hitchcock tried to choreograph his 10-minute takes so that the camera would be where the drama demanded it, there are moments when it seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And tha…
The movie is very hard to follow. I have seen it twice, and am still not sure exactly who all the characters are, or how they fit.
Perhaps it is not supposed to be clear; perhaps the movie's air of co…
"Blue Velvet" is like the guy who drives you nuts by hinting at horrifying news and then saying, "Never mind." There's another thing. Rossellini is asked to do things in this film …
“Papillon” is a movie like that: an expensive, exhaustive, 150-minute odyssey that doesn’t so much conclude as cross the finish line and collapse. It has been outfitted with expensive stars and a glos…
A great-looking movie with a plot you can’t care much about. All of the big moments in the movie are pounded home with ear-shattering sound effects and a jackhammer cutting style, but that just serves…
If this summary seems truncated, it's because an accurate description of this movie dialogue might read like the missing chapters from Finnegans Wake. Because the actors have cartoon faces, the action…
The plot is lame, but that doesn't matter, because "Dumb and Dumber" is essentially pitched at the level of an "Airplane!"-style movie, with rapid-fire sight gags. Some of them wor…
The conclusion is so lame it's disheartening. Surely anyone clever enough to dream up Edward Scissorhands should be swift enough to think of a payoff that involves our imagination.
"Dogville" can be defended and even praised on pure ideological grounds, but most moviegoers, even those who are sophisticated and have open minds, are going to find it a very dry and unsati…
"Erin Brockovich" has a screenplay with the depth and insight of a cable-TV docudrama, and that won't do for a 126-minute "major production." Maybe it's not that the necklines are …
The movie goes on and on, repeating the same setup and the same payoff: Duke and Gonzo take drugs, stagger into new situations, blunder, fall about, wreak havoc, and retreat to their hotel suite. The …
And so what we get, finally, is a movie of attitudes. Harold is death, Maude life, and they manage to make the two seem so similar that life's hardly worth the extra bother. The visual style makes eve…
The most offensive thing about the movie is its hypocrisy; it is totally committed to the pornography of violence, but lays on the moral outrage with a shovel.
Which of these films featuring slavery is your favorite? After voting, you may discuss the poll here. Please Note: Films rated at least 6/10 stars on IMDb with over 5,000 votes are included on this po…
These movies have some of the most famous and memorable theme songs of all-time. This list only contains original themes from English language films but does not include musicals and sequels. Which of…
After so many polls, the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Moroccan independence and now that the Festival of Marrakech made Morocco the capital of World Cinema for a few days, I figured it w…
(and here comes the 14th edition) Funny, witty, ominous or inspirational, these lines have two things in common: they're famous (many are classic) and they all consist of fourteen words (contractions …
IMDb has more than 72 million users but only 18 films have been rated by 1 million users. Which film rated by 1 million users is your favorite? Note - Films have been listed from most voted to least …
I'm not sure whether having a one-word title brings good luck to movies in terms of Award-winning, but numbers never lie: more than 25% of Best Picture Oscar winners have only one word in the title. …
What was the "best of the best" Best Picture of this decade? Discuss this poll at http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000088/flat/218608624?d=218608624#218608624
I'm always glad when blockbuster, visual effects spectacles also happen to be great films in their own right.
Which of these films, that won Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Visual Effect…
Here are the top-ranked trivia items by user votes from the IMDb pages of each of the Best Picture Oscar winners from the 2000s and 2010s. Which piece of trivia is your favorite? Discuss here after vo…
Which of these select movies banned during a past or present authoritarian regime or dictatorship* is your favorite forbidden film? Sources: Wikipedia, The Economist *Democracy Index Scale 0-4 After v…
These films had high expectations, either through intense publicity or promotion, and they somehow lived up to all of the hype surrounding them. Maybe it was the beginning of an anticipated franchise …
Plenty of films take place in desert country, but which ones in the IMDb Top 250 stand out as the most severe? Where would you rather not wind up? So long as a significant part of the film is set in a…
With Prisoners capturing the box office since it's release, and remakes of Carrie and Oldboy and the sequel to Machete about to come out, revenge films are more popular than ever. Which of these is yo…
There are those movies that we all love so dearly that we inevitably are compelled by some unknown force that uncontrollably makes us watch them over and over. Some are from our childhoods. Some we wa…