Change Your Image
aemilg
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
What high school was like for most of us!
Almost as good as the film are the one star reviews! My wife and I laughed our butts off reading the reviews written by people who haven't a clue! In our lives, we were Napoleon and Deb. Actually, both of us are a composite of all these very realistically portrayed high school kids. The jerks who mocked and bullied Napoleon, are the same jerks who write these one star reviews! This is such a real life depiction of what high school is like for the majority of us. It is a time of life when social acceptance is so important. We were never a part of the social scene at high school. We were the outcasts who were mocked and ridiculed and shunned. Neither of us had a date. We never went to a dance like Napoleon and Deb did because it was only a place where we would undergo more mockery, more bullying, more shaming and more ostracization. Seeing Napoleon and Deb at the dance is very romantic for us. We wish we could have had the opportunity to have met at that age. In reality, if a Napoleon and a Deb WERE to go to a dance at high school, they would be laughed out of the building. I don't know if the video that Netflix sends out has the extra features with the filmmakers commentary. If it does, watch the film while listening to the commentary. The film has many events from his life. Perhaps that is part of the reason why some people find the film silly and stupid and boring. They simply cannot identify with a lifestyle in a rural, mostly Mormon, mostly white, mostly conservative community where there are no strip clubs, no prostitutes walking the streets, no night life and no big city trappings whatsoever. Most of the people in this community are close knit families who teach their children morals and values and the kids, for the most part, are really good kids who really are quite different from their more sophisticated, streetwise, jaded counterparts from the big city. The kids do actually get in trouble, but it's for things like Napoleon does at the beginning of the film; dragging a He-Man Action Figure on a string behind the school bus, an actual event in the filmmakers life. If you understand more of where he's coming from, the film makes much more sense and you can appreciate it so much more. We love Napoleon. We identify with him. He's a good kid. Yes, he's awkward, has bad hair, is socially inept, is given to great flights of fancy and he doesn't quite fit in with his superior intelligence and his poor judgment in displaying that superior intellect around a bunch of idiots who look down on him.
I love his guts and his total lack of pretense. He is who he is and he has a few moments of glory as he wows the kids with a totally awesome dance routine in a campaign rally supporting his pal Pedro in his successful bid for Student Body President! This is part real life and part fantasy and 100% Ten Stars for a really good movie that is really relevant for a lot of good people who were not in the social elite as kids. And that means most of us.
The bad reviews? Go ahead and read them, especially if you love this film! It gives YOU a chance to laugh at the jackasses who laughed at you when you were a kid! It's really fun! They are showing how stupid they are and you can laugh at THEM! Enjoy! Seriously, you can understand the mindset of persons giving Napoleon Dynamite a bad review. It's the same mindset as the Beavis and Butthead types who would give Casablanca, Gone With The Wind or Citizen Kane a one star review! Totally laughable!
Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982)
THE authentic, authorized biography of Rosemary Clooney
Contrary to misstatements in another review, this film is absolutely cast perfectly. Rosemary Clooney collaborated and was the main consultant for the making of this film which was HER biography. She personally chose Sondra Locke to act as herself because of the striking resemblance Sondra Locke bore of the young Miss Clooney. Sondra Locke was coached and advised by Miss Clooney who was on set for the entire filming of HER biography! This collaboration was exactly the same type of collaboration that existed between Sissy Spacek and Loretta Lynn in the making of Miss Lynns 1980 biographical film, "Coal Miners Daughter". Like Loretta Lynn and Sissy Spacek, Sondra Locke and Rosemary Clooney became very dear and close friends as a result of their close, personal collaboration. According to Rosemary Clooney herself, she was very pleased with both the excellent portrayal of herself by Sondra Locke and the authentic representation of her life in the film.
So, this is the best film made about Rosemary Clooney, according to Rosemary Clooney, who is, without question, the only person qualified to make that assessment. Rosemary Clooney gives her biographical film a 10, and so do we!
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
A Ghastly remake of a Great Film
We were TERRIBLY disappointed in this awful remake of one of the best movies ever made. Its sole redeeming feature was the performance of Peter O'Toole as Chips. He deserved the Oscar (as much as Robert Donat did in the 1939 film), but even he could not feel bad about the nod going to John Wayne in True Grit. In fact, O'Toole's performance makes us want to look into more of his work. He was great in this film.
First, the G rating is way off. It should have been R for nudity and language. Why they ever thought that swearing and gratuitous nudity of young boys was worthy of inclusion in this wonderful story entirely escapes us. It is strange that the inclusion of nude children was acceptable in films of that time. It certainly would land filmmakers in prison today. This is child porn. Oddly, another film of that era which included the full frontal nudity of a young teenage girl also got a G rating. We won't mention the name of that film for we do not desire to promote child porn. Petula Clarke was a very strange choice of an "actress" to play Katherine. Audrey Hepburn would have been a natural in the role, but NOT in the rewritten part that was butchered in this dismal rewrite. Why they ever rewrote the part of Katherine as a floozy is also immensely puzzling. In the James Hilton book and in the 1939 film which was very true to the book, Katherine was EXACTLY the match for Chips, a perfect pairing. She was classy and elegant. She NEVER embarrassed Mr. Chips. He would NEVER be attracted to such a cockney, low class woman of loose morals as he was shown to do in this terribly rewritten piece of garbage. If you like good, clean movies, by all means, watch the original film from 30 years earlier. The 1969 movie really could have been great had the writers stuck to the book's story. With a script true to the book, a classy actress like Audrey Hepburn as Katherine, the totally unnecessary nudity and the horrible language removed, this film could have been a worthy remake that we could lovingly embrace as we do the 1939 film. We have come to the conclusion that we shall never watch a remake again. They are nearly always worse than the original. We do not wish to give the impression that we don't like Petula Clarke. We do like her. "Downtown" or "Don't Sleep in the Subway Darlin", THAT is vintage Pet Clarke. She is just not a convincing Katherine. Imagine Ethel Merman or Carol Channing as Maria instead of Julie Andrews in the great film, "The Sound of Music". It doesn't work, does it? Pet Clarke does not work as Katherine in "Good Bye Mr. Chips" either. This film is useful only as a study on Peter O' Toole. He was great, this film otherwise rates as a dismal stinker.