Reviews by SJMJ91

I was unsure about what I was going to make of The Others because it seemed quite a scary story but when I did see it I wasn't that scared by it at all to be honest. The reason for this is that I knew what I was going to expect from a film like this. I knew I was going to expect a very unpredictable twist that would leave me in great shock in which it did. This film is very similar to The Sixth Sense not because of the seeing of the dead people but because of the way it is filmed, the characters seem quite similar and also the story is rather similar as well. It was more of a tense thriller rather than a horror story. Yes, it does involve ghosts but you don't see ghosts throughout the whole film. However, there are ghosts involved within the story. I think the poster of The Others is definitely one of the best posters I think I've ever seen. It isn't because its of Nicole Kidman but because she's holding a light and the colourful effect it has on her and also the title as well and the colourful effect it had.


Nicole Kidman's performance as Grace was very heartfelt and was rather terrifying because it was hard to predict about what was going to happen, who the villains are and also how the events that occur affect the characters within the film. Grace is a young single mother who is raising her two young children after her husband and the children's father has in fact gone to fight in the war. She lives in a large mansion with her children and after three mysterious servants come along Grace begins to suspect that the house is haunted and possessed by ghosts. Nicole's performance was like Haley Joel Osment's performance in The Sixth Sense because both of their characters had tears coming out of their eyes most of the time and also because they are characters that I feel that the audience of the film would feel sorry for. Alejandro Amenábar's directing of The Others was just really good.


If The Others was directed by M. Night Shyamalan then it would be too similar to The Sixth Sense. Even without the same director they both have that very unique similarity. Because of this film's PG-13/12A rating this film probably received a few complaints saying it was too scary. I can understand that they would find it scary but I personally don't think it was a terrifying story. It was just a tense psychological thriller. It should be rated 15/R to reassure young teenagers or even children under 10 that it is a psychological horror/thriller film. Nicole Kidman has delivered two performances in the same year that have been very heartfelt and have been very emotional and have also been pretty tense characters and what the fate of each of the characters could be.


Her performance in The Others is sensational but I preferred her performances in films such as Moulin Rouge! and Eyes Wide Shut. The Others is a film that I would recommend to those people who either like or love The Sixth Sense because they are very similar. Also, if anyone is in the mood for a night in and wanting to watch something with suspense in it. If so, then The Others is a top choice for you. The Others is an absolutely fantastic film that isn't really a horror, it is more of a thriller. One of the best films of 2001. I think I prefer The Others to The Sixth Sense. It is a deeply enjoyable tense thrill ride that won't let go of your eyes until the ending credits roll.

What a beautiful, inspiring and very heart wrenching film this really is. It is beautiful because it shows what romance really is and how it can affect peopls lives. The romance between Allie and Noah was quite similar in my opinion to Jack and Roses romance in Titanic because Noah is a really poor man who makes his first-wrecked house into a complete mansion and he falls in love with a rich good girl like Allie which is what Rose really is apart from that she isnt a good girl (you know what I mean). It was very inspiring indeed because obviously of the romance but it was the relationships between the characters and the beautiful scenes which would fill your heart. The one scene that did make me feel really inspired by this film was the scene where Noah and Allie take a ride in a boat along a river feeding the ducks. That is a real romantic place which brings out a lot of beauty that some of us in this world dont seem to notice. It is really heart wrenching aswell as beautiful because they go separate ways when they decided to go different ways because Allies parents didnt accept Noah.


Ryan Gosling delivers a good performance as Noah. Ryan truly shows Noahs true colours after he made a bad impression at the start of when he met Allie. He looked like a typical tramp and a really nice attractive young man. His acting was very emotional but wasnt quite powerful enough I am afraid to say. Rachel McAdams delivers a better performance as Allie. She was a really torn young woman who couldnt decide who her true love really is between Noah and her new fiancé Lon. Rachels performance was both emotional and powerful but was different compared to Ryans performance. I would say that Rachels performance is more powerful than emotional which is probably the reason why I liked her performance more.


The direction was good but I think it tried to take a lot of direction reputation from Titanic which was directed by James Cameron. I thought this because I think it tries to make the physical emotions just like Titanic did but I found that it couldnt quite do that. The script is really good and is quite easy to adapt because The Notebook is a novel.


I havent seen Ryan Goslings Oscar nominated performance in Half Nelson and I havent seen his Golden Globe nominated performance in Lars And The Real Girl yet either which should be good. So basically this was the first film I have seen Ryan Gosling in before. It is almost the same for Rachel McAdams too but I have seenWedding Crashers and she was in that aswell as The Notebook. I have to say that this is a really loving romantic film that is almost like a teen dream romantic film. I know that it is for adults too but I do think that it is more of a teen romantic film. It almost reached my favourite romantic films list and is probably the second best romantic film of 2004 (first being Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind).

It really was an unusual film to begin with because of the extremely bizzare animation and also of the very creepy characters. Jack Skellington is a character that nobody has ever seen before. This film was really beautiful and was quite scary aswell because as I said it is very weird and unusual. When I first saw The Nightmare Before Christmas when I was a little kid, it scared me because is was a dark coloured film and also I had never seen any 3D animated film. This film was released before Toy Story so this film was the first ever 3D animated film. The character Oogie Boogie used to scare me a lot because he was like a ghost and was really evil. Also, I found a lot of the dead people quite creepy to start with because of the ugliness of the characters and also because of the way the characters body parts were missing and could see like Sallys arms and legs came apart, Jack could pull his own head off and Dr. Finkelstein could pick off bits of his own brain and can touch it too. After watching about 3 years after watching it first time, I absolutely loved it as I still do right now.


The voice acting was superb from Chris Sarandon because he made us all feel sorry for Jack and yet made us not feel sorry for Jack because he was wrecking a world tradition that everybody loves. Music composer Danny Elfmans singing voice for Jack was simply amazing. His voice is a really good talent for both music and for singing too. I liked Catherine O Hara in this film too because she made Sally in my opinion the most powerful character in the whole film. This film shows true colour of what is more important in this world: Halloween or Christmas.


This film was really well directed by Henry Selick but would have been even better if Tim Burton himself directed it. But Tim Burton did most of this film. He produced it, thought of the story and all the characters too but he didnt write this film. The screenplay was really good because there were a lot of lines that mixed between Halloween and Christmas which was really great and was the whole point of the story.


This film is my 4th favourite Tim Burton film after Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street and Big Fish but I do still love this film a lot. This is just a delight to watch around Halloween and around Christmas. It is a very unusual family film but it has the moving abilities to have its rightful place as a beautiful family film for everyone to enjoy. Masterpiece!! Without a doubt one of most fun and eventful animated films of all time.

First of all, this is the sort of film where I would obviously know what it's like. It is a real kick-ass action film but with a lame story that does remind me a lot of Taken and Shoot 'Em Up. To be perfectly honest, I was predicting this film to be a bit like Rambo IV because the outlooks of both of the posters look similar. The Mechanik is an absolutely ridiculous story but with the extremely intense and graphic action sequences that make it fun to watch. I would have rated this film a tiny bit higher but I personally think it has a lack of character development. I thought of Taken almost the same as The Mechanik. The blood was very realistic and with quite a lot of intense gore used as well. That is another reason why I was predicting this to be like Rambo IV.


I have never seen Dolph Lungdren in any film before until now. I find him the same as Sylvester Stallone: pretty lame actor but an actor with a load of fun entertainment. I prefer Stallone to Lungdren. I have actually become quite interested in watching some more Dolph Lungdren films including The Expendables in which both Stallone and Lungdren are appearing in together in 2010.


Dolph Lungdren directs this film almost precisely the same as Sylvester Stallone did in Rambo IV. Dolph makes his own character Nikolai Cherenko be like a modern times action hero which would make a decent franchise. The script was obviously lame like Rambo but, what the hell, it's fun. The Mechanik is a bad film but with good intense action so it's going to have to be middle rating. I mean, it has it's intense action but it is an extremely weak film that I recommend every ones skips.

I had high expectations for this film because it is a film from Martin Scorsese and it is one of the few Scorsese films that is a non-crime film and has drama within it. This film disappointed me quite a bit. The best things about this film were that it did show how horrifying Jesus' crucifixion really was to endure and to witness. The disappointments for me were that it dragged on a bit and went a bit boring. Also, I know the story of Jesus but i got a bit confused at times because there were an awful lot of events that occurred at around the same time. I was confused on the scene where Jesus was crucified and then his guardian angel came to him and she took him off the cross and he was alive but in the Bible he never came off the cross alive but the screen flashed to Jesus on the cross and he died at the end of it which was a bit weird. I will give this film credit for being underrated because i think most people choose to watch Mel Gibson's Passion Of The Christ over this one.


I have mixed feelings about Willem Dafoe as Jesus because he was powerful enough for the character but I could see him unfortunately as the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn. In this film he was very heroic and it showed how good Willem can be as a hero as well as a villain. If not Jesus in a biblical story then i think that he would have made a good Moses. I did still like him as Jesus though. Harvey Keitel was pretty crap as Judas because he didn't completely show how powerful Judas really was with Jesus and how badly he betrayed Jesus.


As I said, this is one of the few if not the only non-crime film that Martin Scorsese has directed. Scorsese goes drama just like he went comedy in King Of Comedy and like he went epic in Gangs Of New York. He directed this film really well which surprised me a lot. I was blown away by how Scorsese directed Jesus crucifixion. The script was adapted from the Bible which must have been really hard because the Bible is written in Latin which is like the old British language. It was still really good for that.


This is the underrated Scorsese film but it is my least favourite film from him not because it is the weakest but because it is a film that isn't typical Scorsese. There were some scenes within the film that were very confusing and was a bit too much in your face so to speak. Apart from that, a good film to watch. November

Despite that this film is a comedy from the master of gangster/crime films Martin Scorsese, I knew I was going to like this one it is a collaboration with Scorsese and De Niro. Also, Scorsese would have at least made a clever comedy. This film does have that rebel/crime within it because Rupert Pupkin is a stand up comedian and a bit of a criminal too. The King Of Comedy is actually the nickname of Jerry Lewis himself. This film was quite tense in other angles because Jerry Langford is kidnapped by Rupert Pupkin and Masha which makes it tense of what Jerry's face is going to be.


Robert De Niro's performance as Rupert Pupkin was hilarious which is rare of Robert De Niro because he hasn't been in many comedies. What I love about Robert De Niro is that whatever type of character he portrays, he always has a bit of that bad ass personality within him. Jerry Lewis was really good as Jerry Langford too because he brings that celebrity, masterful and boss sort of side to him. I liked Sandra Bernhard in this film as Masha too. She is a bit of a psychopath who is very bizarre and very sturbborn. She is wacky, crazy and clumsy which is really good with Rupert Pupkin.


Scorsese's brightest films to date but Scorsese does bring that criminal and the crime genre itself into this film which is typical of Scorsese. This is in my opinion the underrated Scorsese-De Niro film where most people would go for either GoodFellas, Taxi Driver or Raging Bull. For the first and only time Scorsese has directed a film with an original plot and script but with a different type of script, it seemed to work really well.


This is an underrated Scorsese film with a good cast and phenomenal director. This is my sixth favourite Scorsese film after Taxi Driver, The Departed, Raging Bull, Cape Fear and Gangs Of New York. One of De Niro's best films but not best comedy performance. I liked him more in Meet The Parents and Fockers. One of cleverest comedies ever!

The Killing is a film that has a very dark story and is a story with a very slow dialogue. It starts off really slowly within the first 30 minutes at least and then it just suddenly starts all over again. To be perfectly honest, I thought this film was rather thrilling and was quite impactful but I don't really refer it as a classic crime film as I don't as a classic Kubrick film.


The acting was good from Sterling Hayden as Johnny Clay. Johnny Clay is a veteran criminal planning one last heist before settling down and marrying Fay. His plan is to rob the money-counting room of a racetrack of two million dollars during a featured race, and to do this he assembles a team consisting of a corrupt cop; George Peatty, a betting window teller at the track to give access to the backroom; a sharpshooter to shoot the favorite horse during the race, distracting the crowd; a wrestler to provide another distraction by provoking a fight at the track bar, and the bartender.


I wouldn't call The Killing Kubrick's classic debut film to start with. I do still think Paths Of Glory takes that place. That is a better film than The Killing. Kubrick directs this one in a slight way how Scorsese directed GoodFellas. I will give Kubrick's work on The Killing credit that it is extremely underrated and wasn't taken into consideration by Hollywood until he made his later works most notably Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and The Shining.


This isn't one of Kubrick's best works and it isn't Kubrick's worst film either but it is as I said one of his most underrated works along side Paths Of Glory and Lolita. I think if I give Barry Lyndon a re-watch in the future then The Killing could be but for the moment it isn't. This is a good film but it was too slow and it was well put together again until it actually got the hang of the storyline. The Killing should be watched if anyone is a fan of Kubrick's films. I wouldn't recommend just anybody to watch it, just a fan of Kubrick. The Killing is a classic crime film that sends through a crook's adventure into a robbery. Good film but wouldn't watch again.

This is definately the most serious film from Charles Chaplin of the ones that I have seen so far from him. This film is very serious obviously because it is a war film. It was a rather serious film too because of how the story was written especially when it was made. It was funny that Chaplin was ripping off Adolf Hitler with all the speeches, walks, impressions etc. It was probably scary aswell because Hitler was alive at the time and was a dark time because it was almost like the start of the Holocaust. Apparently, Hitler really admired Chaplin after The Great Dictator. There have been alot of piss-takes of Hitler but this one tops them all.


Charlie Chaplin's acting in this film as both Adenoid Hynkel who is the Dictator Of Tomania and who takes the piss out of Hitler with this character. His acting was funny as the Jewish Barber aswell but was funnier as his other character. As far as Adenoid Hynkel is concerned, Chaplin shows the comedy side to who is probably the coldest and most evil person that ever lived. Chaplin was a man who could always see through the comedy side of things no matter what happens which is what I love about him. His performance as the Jewish Barber was like another piss-take with Hitler aswell because how Hitler or any of his men would treat a Jew. It was funny because he was mocking Hitler but wasn't funny because it really happened. Chaplin's most serious performance and because of this, he did deserve his first and only acting Oscar nomination.


The direction from Chaplin was almost the same as the films that he has done before The Great Dictator with very similar selections of camera angles, very similar sorts of characters and also the way it was filmed as far as things like music is concerned. The screenplay was very original which isn't what most war films are like. They are either true stories or books. Chaplin just thought of how he was going to write it. One thing that slightly disappointed me about The Great Dictator was that the two characters Chaplin was portraying were switching really quickly. It took quite a long while for it to get into both characters and their storylines.


It is the first non-silent Chaplin film that I have seen so far. It is my third favourite Chaplin film of the ones I have seen. I liked The Gold Rush and especially Modern Times more. The Great Dictator is the masterpiece of comedy-war films and of a masterful piss-take of the cold-blooded human that was Adolf Hitler.

I would probably say that The Graduate probably is the most famous romantic-comedy of all time and it deserves to be. I have seen a few things that have ripped off a few bits from this film especially the relationship between Finch and Stifler?s mum in the American Pie trilogy. The Graduate is filled with a lot of hilarious comedy, drama and romance. I think that most romantic comedies have drama in it as well as romance and comedy. Even though this film was made in 1967, I was quite surprised that a film like this hadnt been made before then. This film was nominated for Best Picture of the year but it didnt win. It is rare of a romantic comedy to earn Best Picture nominations of even wins.


Dustin Hoffmans proper on-screen debut was absolutely phenomenal! Dustin was only 29-30 years old at the time of this film. Hoffman as The Graduate caught not only the Academys attention but all film fans as well because he was then and still is one of the best actors of all time. He is very famous for this film but I believe that he is more famous in his two Oscar winning performances in Kramer Vs. Kramer and particularly Rain Man. What I think is so perfect about Dustin playing Benjamin is that he seems really innocent when with Mrs. Robinson. He feels like he is controlled by her and like she bullies him into sleeping with her because he is so shy. Benjamin is in love with Mrs. Robinsons daughter and Mrs. Robinson tries to seperate them. Anne Bancroft was amazing as Mrs. Robinson. Yes, Anne was hot as Mrs. Robinson but Mrs. Robinson is an absolute bitch to do this to Benjamin. Then again Benjamin should have the sense to not go through it because of how irresistable he finds her. Mrs. Robinson realises that this affair could effect Benjamins life but she doesnt care. I dont know what Mrs. Robinson true intention was with Benjamin. I?m unsure whether it was out of boredom, wanting control or to cheat on her husband purposely.


Mike Nichols amazing direction of The Graduate won him an Academy Award for Best Director. The camera angles in the romantic scenes with Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson were awesome especially the angle of the poster where you see Mrs. Robinsons leg and Benjamin standing there staring. This film was brilliantly written. The plot is very original but the way the layout of the script showed that it was thought-up very hard.


Overall, The Graduate is an absolutely fantastic and unforgettable classic that is an absolute masterpiece which makes it one of the best romantic comedies as well as one of the best classics ever!

The Godfather: Part III doesn't quite match up to the previous two Godfather films but it is still a very good film to watch. It's minorly disappointing but I still really enjoyed it. The Godfather: Part III is the conclusion to one of the most famous trilogies of all time. It is filmed in almost the same way as the previous two films but the stories or performances quite sum up to it. It tells the story of Michael and him in his older days when he begins to go downfall and he begins to regret all of his crimes in the past such as the murder of his brother Fredo at the end of The Godfather: Part II and the divorce with Kay. There aren't many threequals that are classics but I have to say that this is a really good one but not the best one though. The best is The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King. The third installment of the trilogy comes after 18 years of The Godfather: Part II and I had a prediction that I the third film wouldn't be favourites of mine like the first two films are.


Al Pacino proves once again that he is the perfect actor for Michael Corleone. Michael doesn't seem to be a very powerful leader in this one as much as second one because he is aging as is the family drug business. Michael is just a beaten down old man in this one and rightly so because Michael gets everything he deserves in this film for what he did in the past. Diane Keaton was really good as Kay Corleone. Seeing Pacino and Keaton reprise their roles after 16 years was awesome obviously but quite weird because they look almost 20 years older in this one but playing the same characters. Andy Garcia's performance as Vincent Mancini was absolutely awesome which made this film even better than it already is. Sofia Coppola didn't impress at all. Her performance as Mary Corleone (daughter of Michael Corleone) was absolutely appauling which did become a minor disgrace to The Godfather trilogy.


Francis Ford Coppola is a fine filmmaker indeed. He didn't flaw at all in this one despite how disappointing some people find it. I think Coppola felt a bit under pressure with this one because I think he needed to make it just as good as the previous two films. The time of when it was made didn't really help very much because Coppola was working on other projects and I think that some people might have thought he'd lost his taste for making another acceptional Godfather film. No, this isn't a masterpiece compared to the first and second film but it is a brilliant conclusion to such a masterful trilogy.


The Godfather: Part III is the worst of the trilogy but is still a really good film that I really enjoyed. It doesn't quite live up to the previous two films but it isn't that far off. This would have seriously been bad if Coppola wasn't the director. The Godfather Parts I and II and Apocalypse Now are Coppola's best works but this third Godfather film is another fine achievement to his legendary career. The Godfather is one of the two trilogies to have all three films nominated for Best Picture and rightly so. The Godfather: Part III is a fantastic conclusion to one of the best trilogies of all time.