Delaunay, Robert Movie Reviews

Why call it a Christmas movie?
The "Cristmas" part of this film is the least fun,the least interesting and the least memorable!
The best part of this movie is the first part,where brothers Ray(Schneider)and Pete(Wopat)fight eachother and their memories of a childhood where they were labeled the bad and the good guy respectively. There is some good stuff here,and at its best,the two brothers resemble Junior and Curly in "Junior Bonner",but at it`s worst,it`s just sadly sentimental.

Pete and Ray are brothers who are involved in a long standing feud which started when Ray married Pete's ex-girlfriend. Pete was already upset over his wife leaving and saw this as a double betrayal. Pete's son, Michael, was also hurt at his mother's exit and got into trouble with the police. Christmas provisions have to be delivered to Alaska which means Pete and Ray have to work together. On the way they have to stop to pick up Ray's estranged Wife who is pregnant. On the journey they have to learn to forgive each other because only by working together can they survive the journey. Tom Wopat and John Schneider are excellent as feuding brothers who love each other really. Kim Delaney is perfect as the alienated and pregnant wife. Zachary Ansley is great as the rebellious teenage son. Hoyt Axton is fantastic as their late father's business partner. If you like warm and fuzzy moments then you will love this film. A great film for all the family.

Pete and Ray are brothers. They have to transport christmas provisions to Alaska. Pete and Ray have been involved in a feud for a while. On the way Pete has to deal with a rebellious son,
a brother who is a magnet for trouble and his ex-girlfriend who is now his sister-in-law. Ray has to deal with an alienated and pregnant wife. Ray was afraid of the awesome responsibility of parenthood and he was also worried he wouldn't be as good a father as his brother was. Pete's son, Michael, was still hurt because his mother had left a year ago. This film is about people who have to learn to forgive each other for various things. Only by working together can they survive the journey!
Tom Wopat and John Schneider are excellent as feuding brothers.
Hoyt Axton is great as Pete and Ray's late father's business partner. Kim Delaney is perfect as the estranged and pregnant wife. Zachary Ansley is fantastic as the disrupted teenager.
If you like warm and fuzzy moments you will love this. With John
Schneider and Tom Wopat starring in it what more could you want in a film?

Well I am not going to delve into facts expressed more eloquently by all those that preceeded me. Suffice to say that the movie is fantastic, so much so that 25 years since I last saw it i had to hunt it down on DVD.

It is the DVD itself that was a bit surprising, it starts right into the movie and the menu button will give you a list of chapter/scenes that you can jump to, in a rather primative format.

That's why my review rates this as a 3 star product but in reality the movie itself is a nona-fide 5 star+ winner. Just would have liked to see more. I don't know if movies of that era showed closing credits because a lot from Britain had them at the start. Having said that the dvd ends with the words "the end".

So once again great movie, would have liked to have seen a bit more effort on the dvd, star bios, trailers, awards etc

Dean

ODD MAN OUT portrays life in an unnamed city in Northern Ireland via the unlikely narrative structure of the episodic fantasy--that is, in the tradition of ALICE IN WONDERLAND and THE WIZARD OF OZ; it is quite possible, in fact, that it influenced the Jim Jarmusch film DEAD MAN. James Mason plays Johnny McQueen, an Irish freedom fighter who is seriously wounded early in the film. As he wanders about the city in delirium, Johnny becomes a sort of talisman sought after by several eccentric characters for their own purposes, and he is reduced (or is it, elevated?) to the status of fatalistic symbol. The film presents us with an unlikely, outrageous, and irresistible portrait of an Ulster community, filmed by Carol Reed with delicious visual style. Every frame bursts with some brilliant image--the contrast of light and shadow, stunning camera angles, ingenious special effects, and snow in the night. In my opinion, the film rates slightly above Reeds THE THIRD MAN and slightly below his underappreciated THE FALLEN IDOL.

Belfast is a city of two faces. One city consists of bustling streets and energetic people with ready smiles. The other was that presented in this gripping film, that which the world media has focused on with increasing attention with the passage of time, the city of conflict where tensions accelerate to the boiling point and explode into violence.

"Odd Man Out" is a 1947 release which represents Carol Reed's first of three successively acclaimed international masterpieces. It was followed by "The Fallen Idol" with Ralph Richardson and Michelle Morgan and "The Third Man" with Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and the moving appearance in the last thirty minutes by Orson Welles. James Mason was also greatly assisted career-wise in his sensitive role as a young Nationalist underground leader living the last day of his life in a state of excruciating pain. Mason had earlier come to prominence in the 1945 release "The Seventh Veil" with Ann Todd. This role completed his momentum swing into the top ranks of international cinema stardom.

"Odd Man Out" and "The Third Man" have been selected as representative of British film noir at its finest. Reed uses shadows to compelling effect, while Robert Krasker, who would win an Oscar for Cinematography in "The Third Man," handled the camera with equally consummate skill in "Odd Man Out." The Reed-Krasker team present compelling silhouettes of characters who cross the path of Mason, whose face reveals the requisite painful sensitivity as underground gang leader Johnny McQueen.

The film begins with the clock in the main square striking noon and ends at the ring of midnight. Mason, despite the urgings of his faithful girlfriend Kathleen Ryan and members of his gang, decides to participate in the holdup of a mill, from which the underground group hopes to obtain funds to live and continue pursuing political objectives.

Ryan knows Mason's condition well. Since his escape from prison he has been confined to the same residence for six months, prompting her to intercede in an effort to let subordinates carry out the job without him, but Mason remains stubbornly in charge. The robbery is a directive from the very top of the organization and he intends to personally direct it, he emphatically tells a subordinate.

On the ride to the mill a haziness is visible, a clever camera ploy indicating that Mason is subject to blurred vision and potential fainting spells. The robbery is staged in silence, after which, on the way out, Mason becomes groggy. While his subordinates wait in the car for him, Mason's delay costs him as a guard surfaces from the street. In the ensuing confrontation Mason kills his adversary, but is shot in the arm in turn by the dying guard.

The group is able to pull Mason back into their car, but as it negotiates a rapid turn at a nearby corner he falls out. From that point, to the end of the film, Mason is reduced to wandering. He walks in rain and snow. His future is subject to potential barter by local dealmaker Cyril Cusack, who tries to obtain money from the poor parish priest, Father Tom, played by W.G. Fay, in exchange with providing information on Mason's whereabouts.

At one point Mason is taken inside a residence and ministered to by two women. When the husband of one of the women comes home and learns that they have Mason, then wanted for murder, in their midst, he demands that he be put out into the street. When he sees the emaciated Mason with his sensitive expression, however, he weakens to the point of giving him a generous shot of whiskey before the dying man staggers back onto the street.

One of the dramatic high points of the film is the stirring performance rendered by Robert Newton, who plays a crazed painter. When a badly weakened Mason arrives at the local pub the proprietor uses Newton to dispose of the underground political leader wanted for murder. He knows that if word gets around that he threw Mason back onto the street that he is in for trouble from Mason's loyal followers. Since the wild Newton had previously caused damage in the pub, the proprietor informs him that he will call the police if he will not get rid of the dying man. Newton takes him to his flat, where he delightfully begins painting him, longing to create an enduring work of a man in the final throes of death.

Before the film ends the loving Ryan, who does not want to continue her existence on earth without Mason, figures out a way to end his misery and hers at the same time. When the police, with the omnipresent Cusack and the local priest trailing along, finally reach Mason, Ryan fires a shot, provoking the police to fire back. Ryan and Mason are both killed instantly.

This is a film that presents struggle and conflict in a city plagued by religious strife through the prism of one man and his last painful day on earth as he interacts with those around him. These are the shadowy sketches of people reacting to conflict in their quest to endure. The novel by F.L. Green was brought to the screen with full force fidelity by the novelist and R.C. Sherriff. It is a film whose message has only broadened with the passage of time and the ongoing efforts to achieve peace in Northern Ireland. The suffering of Belfastians in their strife was vividly presented with laudable good taste, with the minimum of violence, and the maximum of stirring passion. It represents a jewel from one of the cinema's true geniuses, Carol Reed, operating at the top of his form.

This movie is at a slow pace for the first half hour, even with car chases that are monotonous. In order for Vanishing Point to work as a good time passer, I would recommend skipping the first half hour if you've already seen it before, because it's the rest of the movie that puts the pedal to the metal, and is pretty fun. Also, if you've recently caught a music video on T.V. by a group called Audioslave, for their latest single, "Show Me How to Live," it is basically a shot for shot remake of Vanishing Point, narrowed down to the songs running time.

Drewski311 the seller is honest and sent video in a timely manner.Hope to do business with him again.

What more could you want from a movie?? Car chases! Explosions! Nudity! Oh My!! Kowalski (Barry Neuman) is the ultimate anti-hero in this tale of rebellion for no apparent reason. The blind, mysterious "Super Soul (The Late-Great Cleavon Little)" is Kowalski's guiding light and biggest fan. Roaring through the desert on speed (in that car, that beautiful car), Kowalski becomes public enemy number one to hordes of cops, while becoming a folk hero to the outcasts who embrace him. No movie has better chase scenes! No movie has a weirder, more apocolyptic ending! You'll be rootin' for the "bad guys". A must see for all adrenaline freaks like me...

(My comments refer to the version aired on television.) I had read Caroline Alexander's book when I watched this. I was looking forward to it but found myself very disappointed -- Kenneth Branagh (ick), [bad] dialogue, the portrayal of Tom Crean as some kind of quaint Irish sidekick rather than as the indispensable and experienced leader he proved to be....
Maybe it's just not possible to do a good "dramatization" of this story -- it's so dramatic and visceral on its own terms that anything else feels phony and watered-down.

When I first read of the incredible story of Shackleton's Endurance expedition--almost two years stranded in the Antarctic and yet all men lived to tell the tale--I thought it would make a wonderful film but couldn't imagine how a filmed version would live up to what was in my mind's eye.

I was gratified to find "Shackleton" (the movie) to be one of the greatest adventure movies I'd ever seen. Kenneth Branagh is perfectly cast as Sir Ernest Shackleton, the slightly full-of-himself but heroic leader of the expedition. The entire thing was filmed, quite realistically, in Greenland, which looks stunning.

I was particularly impressed at how closely the cinematography matches the well-known photographs taken by the actual expedition photographer, Frank Hurley. Some shots in the film are essentially identical to Hurley's photos, adding to the film's realism. (If you'd like a good look at the original photos, I recommend Caroline Alexander's "Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antartic Expedition," which contains great reproductions of them.) It's true that it takes the entire first half of the film for the expedition to get underway and then stranded, but even this lengthy non-Antarctic segment is reasonably well done.

On top of the inherent drama in the story and the excellent production, the DVD carries an entire volume of worthy extras: a 2-hour history of the Antartic, a segment from A&E "biography" on Shackleton, and a "making of" video as well.

Enough to keep exploration fans--or anyone interested in great adventures--happy for hours and hours!

The set of three DVDs provides good insight into exploration of the continent and history of exploration. I consider this as excellent addition to printed materials. If you have looked into the subject and have red about the events, this will probably will not reveal anything new but as the addition to literature it is excellent and serves as good material to make people interested in subject if they have not looked into it. This is good quality product, reccomended not only as entertainment but can serve as the additional informative material. Would like to see more of these devoted to polar exploration.

Need another Eighties' film to reminisce about? Well, don't forget Menahem Golan's "The Delta Force." At first glance, this film might just appear to be another one of those assembly-line, action-adventure productions released by Cannon Films, but closer inspection reveals that this genre entry actually has some fascinating insights into the political landscape of the period and story elements that eerily resonate with events in the modern day.

After an airliner is hijacked by terrorists, Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) is summoned and told to assemble his Delta Force team to deal with the situation. Just before leaving their home base, former member Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) rejoins the team for the crucial mission. After an initial attempt to take the plane fails, the Delta Force is forced to play a waiting game before embarking on their second attempt. Finally, the terrorists are found and dealt with thanks to information provided by an informant. Eventually all of the remaining passengers who had not been previously released with the women and children are found and liberated.

"The Delta Force" was inspired by the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner and many of the scenes in the film were lifted from events that actually happened in the real world. While the fictional rescue of the passengers unfold in the best Hollywood wish-fulfillment manner, the film deserves special recognition for the authentic feeling of dread it produces in recreating the hijacking. You can almost taste the terror of the passengers as they are abducted and faced with the possibility of death. While Marvin, Norris, and Robert Forster as the lead terrorist, are all outstanding, the supporting cast of George Kennedy, Shelley Winters, Martin Balsam, Joey Bishop, Lainie Kazan, and Hanna Schygulla all perform admirably as the frightened hostages. In light of recent events, "The Delta Force" is as relevant as it was when it first came out. Watch it with a distinguishing eye and be surprised at just how insightful and enlightening it is.

The Delta Force starring Chuck Norris is a great movie but the DVD lacks one crucial thing and that is thing is subtitles thorughout the film, whether they are translations for the bad guys or to let the audience know where they are, date and time.

The VHS version has them so why does the DVD lack something so important as to just what the hell the baddies are talking about, I honestly hope that MGM decides to fix this problem by re-releasing The Delta Force again on DVD with the missing subtitles and maybe even in widescreen.

"Delta Force" is a classic of the Action/Adventure genre. Karate champ Chuck Norris has been in some pretty cool movies, like "Lone Wolf McQuaid" and "Missing in Action," but this is probably his best one. He's also been in some really crummy ones - the other day I watched a Chuck Norris movie called "Firewalker," and boy was it lame! Anyway, back to "Delta Force." As I was saying, it's a really cool movie. The plot is nothig creative: Norris plays a commando on the trail of a group of Palestinian terorrists who have hijacked a plane. What makes the story so great is that it is grounded in reality. For example, in the beginning of the movie we find Chuck and his Delta Force buddies trying to escape from Iran after a botched attempt to rescue the Ameriocan hostages bveing held there. As you probably know, this episode actually happened in real life (minus Mr. Norris, of course). Another thing that makes it great is the way it shows Middle Eastern terrorists as cruel, Jew-hating cowards, which they in fact are. These days, movies have to be politically correct when they are dealing with Middle Easterners. Actually, I haven't seen a movie since 9/11 that even deals with Middle Eastern terrorists. Bad guys in action movies nowadays have to be white boys so that Middle Easterners will not be offended. In Tom Clancy's book "The Sum of all Fears," the terrorists were Arabs, but when they made the movie they changed them into neo-Nazis. Fortunately, "Delta Force" was made long before all this PC stuff materialized.
As for the action scenes, I think that they can be summed up with the two words "Totally Awesome." "Delta Force" has not only action, buts lots of drama. The acting is very good - alright, so it's nothing that should have been nominated for an Oscar, but it's much better that you would expect. The actors and actersses manage to create scenes that are chilling, adrenaline pumping, and heartbreaking. Chuck Norris plays the hero really well, the dudes that play the terrorists do that really well, but I must say that the hostages steal the show.
So, that's what I think of "Delta Force," and I don't care if anyone tells me that it is corny or overly-patriotic. It's great to see Delta force kicking the butts of the wimpy terrorists, especially after 9/11. Thank you to Amazon.com for offering "Delta Force," thank you to Chuck Norris for doing a cool movie, and thank you to the real-life members of Delta Force for defending the USA.

Having viewed the Australian releases of "Loyalty" and "Duty" twice in the last two months, I can say that all the non-Australian fans without region-free players will find their wait has ended on a good note.

Great casting, superior location shooting, and some unique special effects will make these DVDs can't miss for Hornblower fans. Old friends are back, and old foes, along with new enemies to deal with, and new allies as well. Look for plot twists galore, some excellent ship battles, and a very unique climactic battle in the midst of snow at sea.

Very close to being my favorites of the episodes, these are so well done as to rank very highly indeed. Four stars, since Horatio fans know, Hornblower is held to a higher standard!

I can't explain why the reviews for Star Trek keep coming up, but this a movie based on an S.E. Hinton novel. A very good novel that I'm afraid wasn't adapted well to the big screen. The parts of the book that were followed were good, but there was entirely way too much foul language that was NOT in the novel, plus I was disappointed that the music and setting were strictly 80's. The book took place in late 60's early 70's. If you've never read the novel, you'll be mislead. If you've read the novel???? Well, Emilio Estevez is in it. That helps.

Given the very cheap look and budgets that the Rick berman Star Trek movies have had, it's amazing that Paramount has not already pulled the plug on the freature movies when it seems that they have still so much to tell. The era of the TOS movies have seen the fair share of comparsions to how Harve Bennet, Ralph Winter, Nick Meyer, and the various production teams that they worked with, starting with Star Trek III and continueing to Star Trek VI, how they approached each movie and how they pulled it off given the budgets and time that they were allowed for. These new special DVDs have been very informative in how the movies were made, and showed what happened with they were treated as films (and not big budget TV episodes that Berman has foolishly done). Case in point is Star Trek V. An actually pretty good movie that made some valid points about friendship and loyality. In that way, it had more substance to it then most other big budget sci-fi movies had to offer (or not.) This movie was certainly better then Generations, First Contact, and Inserection. And I still stand by that.

Since when does Star Trek Reviews end up on a review page for "That Was Then... This Is Now" staring Emeilio Estevez, Craig Schaifer, and Kim Delany? I Think Amazon.com has finally gotten to big to manage their own content!!!

However, this movie is one of the best movies that Emelio Estevez has acted in. We all know that [Estevez] had better rolls and was a more passionate actor during the earlier part of his career, that [this movie] demonstrates his acting ability.

The story is simple: two boys grow up together and feel like they are brothers. One of the boys [Estevez] gets caught up in the wrong crowd and ends up in jail. The other boy played by Schaifer tries to help [Estevez] stay on the straight and narrow.

Good story by the auther of the "The Outsiders", S.E. Hinton.

This has to be one of the worst sci-fi movie to have been released in the last decade. The story line is absurd and the script is weak. No good actor could have saved this film from being the trash that it is. The good special effects don't help either: this movie is just plain stupid and not even worthy of one star!

Many feedback I see from others are concentrated on the script. For those people who underrated this film, I suggest you study space exploration first, and then rate this movie !!
I would say that this movie is scientifically accurate, the effects(especially the computer graphics), the story, the plot, the casting, the soundtrack are all very good. I would say that in order to accurately rate this movie, these criterias must be taken into consideration before giving it a "single star".

The idea of humans originating from Mars may not be acceptable to some but that's exactly the whole point of this movie...to inspire the viewers about human exploration to Mars. It is true that the tests performed by Viking landers show no sign of life on Mars, but there is no evidence yet that there have never been any form of life on Mars. We would only know that when we send humans to Mars.
As we know, we already have the technological capability to actually send people to Mars. The only reason this is not being done is because of political reasons. This movie appeals for human exploration to Mars.

Imagine how this movie visualized many of the the intriguing questions in a very entertaining way!!
Artificial Gravity (in order for humans not to sustain brain/bone damage due to low-gravity during long-range travel exposure), the huge long crater found on Mars that's about the size of United States, the face found in Cedonia-Mars (which is very very true - see NASA homepage for more details), the sudden explosion of life on earth!!
The only thing that would have perfected this movie was accurately visualizing low gravity on Mars.
This is good entertainment for both amateur and professional astronomers. I would enjoy watching this movie rather than Star Wars Episode 2!!!

This is my most beloved movie. I have watched it over at the least 125 times. It is the most interesting movie ever! It's like everytime you watch it, you catch on to something new in the story line.

Personally, I don't see why alot of the people on here are dissing it. When it comes to movies, it's very hard to please me. If you are going to take someones word, take mine, BUY IT! If not at the least rent it a the video rental store and see the movie for yourself.