rate the last movie you saw

[Eric Paddon]

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) 5 of 10.

-The last time I saw this film was about 1986 on a cable recording which was my only previous viewing of it. Brother, does this film not hold up well at all. It reeks of the mid-1980s at all turns with the whole flying machine gimmick meant to copy the moment from E.T. and I have heard others talk about the obvious riffs from "Temple Of Doom" (which I've still never seen). The idea of reimagining Holmes and Watson this way isn't bad, but making it more Young Indiana Jones than a true Young Sherlock Holmes relying on intellect just doesn't work. You still have to get the spirit of Conan Doyle in a pastiche and this one misses the mark on all levels (ironically, the scene of Holmes hallucinating and discovering that he once discovered his father cheating on his mother is a direct steal from "The Seven Percent Solution" only there it was young Sherlock traumatized by seeing his mother cheating on his father whereupon his father murdered her). Rowe-Cox-Ward come off more like a Scooby-Doo team.

There's also some sloppy editing in the first scene where they infiltrate the temple where the latest sacrifice victim looks too much like Sophie Ward that for a minute I thought she'd been captured and I missed something!

[Eric Paddon]

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) 5 of 10.

-The last time I saw this film was about 1986 on a cable recording which was my only previous viewing of it. Brother, does this film not hold up well at all. It reeks of the mid-1980s at all turns with the whole flying machine gimmick meant to copy the moment from E.T. and I have heard others talk about the obvious riffs from "Temple Of Doom" (which I've still never seen). The idea of reimagining Holmes and Watson this way isn't bad, but making it more Young Indiana Jones than a true Young Sherlock Holmes relying on intellect just doesn't work. You still have to get the spirit of Conan Doyle in a pastiche and this one misses the mark on all levels (ironically, the scene of Holmes hallucinating and discovering that he once discovered his father cheating on his mother is a direct steal from "The Seven Percent Solution" only there it was young Sherlock traumatized by seeing his mother cheating on his father whereupon his father murdered her). Rowe-Cox-Ward come off more like a Scooby-Doo team.

There's also some sloppy editing in the first scene where they infiltrate the temple where the latest sacrifice victim looks too much like Sophie Ward that for a minute I thought she'd been captured and I missed something!

[Paul MacLean]

You still have to get the spirit of Conan Doyle in a pastiche and this one misses the mark on all levels

I loved the concept a of a movie about "Young Sherlock Holmes" but it's clear either the filmmakers were not sufficiently familiar with the style of Conan Doyle's stories, or the head office (and Spielberg, or both) insisted it follow the "Amblin" formula. I did think the hallucinations were at least visually interesting (especially Watson's!) but I hated that flying machine and the "Temple of Doom" re-tread.

Rowe-Cox-Ward come off more like a Scooby-Doo team

To me the most curious thing about Young Sherlock Holmes is how much it resembles the later Harry Potter stories. Obviously YSH scribe Chris Columbus wound-up directing the first two Potter films, but even J K Rowling's books concern three British kids -- two boys and one girl -- wandering around old gothic corridors and poking into ancient secrets and getting into all kinds of fantastic scrapes. Harry Potter's school nemesis, Draco Malfoy, is an arrogant, conniving, blonde-haired cheat just like Dudley.

[AndyDursin]

To me the most curious thing about Young Sherlock Holmes is how much it resembles the later Harry Potter stories.

Even the visual look of the film is similar.

The movie has its shortcomings for certain but it also has numerous rewarding elements that make it worthwhile for me (Broughton's fabulous score being one of them).

As far as the "scooby gang" character dynamic goes, I didn't have any issue with that. Not every film is aimed at "grown ups"...this was a movie aimed at kids, and particularly American kids...not Conan Doyle purists. I did have my own reservations about certain elements of the story, though.. in fact, this was my review from the '03 DVD, which was the last time I watched it.

Of chief interest to many Aisle Seat readers is the long-awaited DVD bow of YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES (***, 108 mins., PG-13), the handsomely mounted Steven Spielberg production that sadly became one of the big flops of 1985.

Spielberg was coming off the success of "Back to the Future" and recruited Chris Columbus ("The Goonies, "Gremlins") to write the project, which chronicled a young Watson's first meeting with a juvenile Sherlock Holmes at a London boarding school. Barry Levinson was tabbed to direct, while an impressive production crew -- cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt, production designer Norman Reynolds and composer Bruce Broughton -- was brought onboard to recreate Arthur Conan Doyle's world.

The resulting feature is an atmospheric and nicely performed adventure, with excellent work turned in by Nicholas Rowe as Sherlock and Alan Cox (son of actor Brian Cox) as Watson. They're so good together -- and the first hour so entertaining -- that it's a shame Columbus' script turns off the Conan Doyle track and throws in shameless, "Temple Of Doom"-inspired antics involving an Egyptian cult and a series of murders plaguing London. The ILM effects were outstanding for their time and are still fun today, albeit somewhat jarring to see in a movie of this sort. Watching the movie again for the first time in a while, though, I nevertheless didn't have a big problem with the F/X, but rather with the derivative and needlessly downbeat aspects of the film's second half, which put a bit of a damper on the action. (And no matter what way you slice it, the "Temple of Doom"-inspired climax is awfully tired). That being said, the movie is still underrated and entertaining.

[AndyDursin]

A CHORUS LINE
5/10

Richard Attenborough single-handedly ruined Marvin Hamlisch's brilliant stage musical...watchable in spite of so many missteps it's impossible to count.

[AndyDursin]

KILLING FIELDS

10/10

One of producer David Puttnam’s finest features, “The Killing Fields” is a harrowing, extraordinary film, and one of the best from a terrific year at the movies.

Director Roland Joffe’s film tells the true story of New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston), stationed in Cambodia during the early ‘70s. The Vietnam conflict by this point had spread into the nation, spurring the revolutionary forces of the Khmer Rouge to take over the country piece by piece. At great personal risk, Schanberg decides to stay in Cambodia to chronicle the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, but eventually has to leave following the evacuation of the capital Phnom Penh. His friend and interpreter, Dith Pran (an Oscar winning performance by Haing S. Ngor), however, doesn’t make it out with him, and instead tries to survive in a country where some two million Cambodians were executed by the growing communist forces.

“The Killing Fields,” in a highly competitive year (“Amadeus,” “Places in the Heart,” and “A Passage to India” were just a few of the acclaimed pictures of 1984), earned Oscars for Ngor’s performance as well as film editing and Chris Menges’ cinematography. This is a fabulous film – horrific in depicting the horror of the Cambodian crisis, humane in its treatment of the impacted people, and suspenseful in its portrait of Pran’s survival. Joffe captures the movie with a realistic, almost documentary-like approach, and all of the performances are spot on, especially from the leads, while small roles are populated by familiar faces like John Malkovich, Julian Sands, and Craig T. Nelson. The movie gets a bit syrupy at the end with its use of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” but emotionally the picture gets away with it through the conviction of the filmmakers and Bruce Robinson’s fact-based screenplay. It’s one of the finest films of the ‘80s.

Warner’s Digibook Blu-Ray includes a clean 1080p AVC encoded transfer of the film. The 2.0 DTS MA stereo audio is effective, though there are sections of Mike Oldfield’s score that haven’t weathered the years well. Extras are limited to a trailer and Joffe’s commentary, along with a glossy booklet with production notes.

[Eric Paddon]

There's one reason why I can never give "Killing Fields" a 10. That's because it ultimately tries to divert attention from the fact that it was the Khmer Rogue's devotion to Communism that made them killers and instead tries to at one point push the line that it was American bombing of Cambodia that turned them into a bunch of savages which is an absurd and dishonest premise (that would be like saying Allied bombing runs of Germany were responsible for making the SS operators of the Deathcamps more barbaric). In addition, Sydney Schanberg, before the fall of Phenom Penhh in April 1975 had written an article titled, "Indochina Without America-For Most A Better Way Of Life" that showed how naïve he was about what was coming.

I give it credit for showing the horror of *what* happened but if we aren't given the proper lesson of *why* it happened, we're ultimately not doing history any credit.

[Eric Paddon]

Random Harvest (1942) 8.5 of 10.

-Powerful love story/drama from MGM's heyday with outstanding performances from Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. The film is structured perfectly by taking its time to credibly build-up the romance between the two and then, when Colman has his accident where his old life memory is recovered but the last three years are lost, it then takes time wisely giving us no scenes of Garson wondering what's happened to him and instead letting the viewer feel that sense of agony that we know Garson has to be feeling off-camera for ourselves as more than 20 minutes go by before Garson reappears and several years have passed.

-My one quibble was that at one point when Garson takes Colman back to the hotel where he had been staying, hoping that would jog his memory, they still have his unclaimed suitcase after 12 years. It would have been more believable if they'd still had the old register and they could have compared handwriting! But then again of course we wouldn't have had the poignant revelation at the end which worked just fine.

[AndyDursin]

There's one reason why I can never give "Killing Fields" a 10. That's because it ultimately tries to divert attention from the fact that it was the Khmer Rogue's devotion to Communism that made them killers and instead tries to at one point push the line that it was American bombing of Cambodia that turned them into a bunch of savages which is an absurd and dishonest premise (that would be like saying Allied bombing runs of Germany were responsible for making the SS operators of the Deathcamps more barbaric). In addition, Sydney Schanberg, before the fall of Phenom Penhh in April 1975 had written an article titled, "Indochina Without America-For Most A Better Way Of Life" that showed how naïve he was about what was coming.

I give it credit for showing the horror of *what* happened but if we aren't given the proper lesson of *why* it happened, we're ultimately not doing history any credit.

I understand where you are coming from but that didn't bother me a whole lot. Does every film about the Nazis divulge their development and ideology? Mostly they're just "bad" without any backstory. That's kind of how I viewed the Khmer Rouge in this movie. As it is, I read a lot on the subject after I watched the movie, so I think it would generate historical interest on the part of viewers who needed to have the gaps filled in (like me, because I never had a class on it and I was born while it was happening).

The "American bombing of Cambodia that turned them into savages" aspect -- I didn't get that out of it necessarily, just that it was one component related to the problems the country was facing. There does seem to be some evidence that the Khmer Rouge -- peripherally -- used the U.S. bombings as a recruitment opportunity to carry out the horror they were inflicting, especially by appealing to peasants whose villages were hit...so what was implied in the film wasn't far off from what I can tell. Maybe it could've been better detailed but I didn't get that the U.S. was the main bad guy in the film by any means, or that it was the sole cause of the Khmer Rouge's activities.

Either way, it's a fantastic piece of filmmaking.

[Paul MacLean]

My only real criticisms of The Killing Fields were musical. I didn't care for the use of "Imagine" either (which even by the 80s had become a nostalgic cliche). Mike Oldfield's score was effective for the most part (and I really like the "Pran" theme), but the cue for the helicopter evacuation was utterly goofy, while the clanging synths and percussion when the Khmer Rouge invade Phenom Penhh was less than subtle.

I'm curious, is the Blu-ray the original theatrical cut or the expanded cut shown on TV in the late 80s? The longer cut included a more scenes of the North Vietnamese invasion -- which if nothing else, clarified why Pran and the others had suddenly changed out of their black "Pol Pot" attire and into street clothes.

[AndyDursin]

BLUE JASMINE
7/10

Woody Allen’s latest is a captivating, if downbeat character study of Jasmine, a New York socialite (one of Cate Blanchett’s finest performances) whose philandering financial hustler husband (Alec Baldwin) loses everything – including the fortune of her less fortunate sister (Sally Hawkins) and husband (a shockingly good turn from Andrew Dice Clay).

Allen’s script switches back and forth between Jasmine’s posh lifestyle in the past and the harsh reality of her present, where she attempts to put her life back together by moving in with her now-divorced sister...yet finds the process impossible, with her own personal hang-ups manifested in front of everyone.

“Blue Jasmine” does have several very funny moments but it’s a tart and sad profile of a woman who’s lost everything and can’t entirely divorce herself from the lifestyle she once lead. Blanchett is just great in the film, and the movie is one of Allen’s stronger features in some time, even if a romantic subplot involving Jasmine and a San Francisco widower (Peter Sarsgaard) doesn’t feel entirely believable.

Sony’s Blu-Ray edition of “Blue Jasmine” includes a 1080p transfer of Javier Aguirresarobe’s terrific cinematography – this is one of the few Allen films ever shot in 2.35 and both he and Aguirresarobe do an excellent job taking advantage of the format, placing actors on all sides of the image. The 5.1 DTS MA audio is fine, and extras include “Notes from the Red Carpet” and a cast press conference.

[AndyDursin]

My only real criticisms of The Killing Fields were musical. I didn't care for the use of "Imagine" either (which even by the 80s had become a nostalgic cliche). Mike Oldfield's score was effective for the most part (and I really like the "Pran" theme), but the cue for the helicopter evacuation was utterly goofy, while the clanging synths and percussion when the Khmer Rouge invade Phenom Penhh was less than subtle.

I'm curious, is the Blu-ray the original theatrical cut or the expanded cut shown on TV in the late 80s? The longer cut included a more scenes of the North Vietnamese invasion -- which if nothing else, clarified why Pran and the others had suddenly changed out of their black "Pol Pot" attire and into street clothes.

The score certainly had some terrible moments -- especially during the scenes you mention Paul. The synths are almost comically funny. Later on, as it becomes more orchestral, it's OK, but the use of "Imagine" would basically be laughed off the screen today and back in the '80s didn't come off well either I'd (no pun intended) imagine.

I don't know if there are other edits of "The Killing Fields" but it runs the full 141 minutes and it shows them in street clothes (and the young boy changing) after they look at the map to try and get out of the area while the North Vietnamese invade. Was this cut down in another version?

[Jedbu]

[quote="AndyDursin"]A CHORUS LINE
5/10

Richard Attenborough single-handedly ruined Marvin Hamlisch's brilliant stage musical...watchable in spite of so many missteps it's impossible to count.[/quote]

I remember when this movie came out-there was a morning screening of the film at the (now demolished) Plitt Theater in Century City, California for the dancers from the LA production of CATS that was being put on across the plaza at the (now demolished) Shubert Theater. A friend was the assistant manager at the Plitt and got me in to see it (it was still playing there exclusive) and I probably liked it more than the cast members, many of whom booed and catcalled certain things that-I was told later by some of them-were changed, and not for the better. I just remember feeling extremely let down at the way the song "What I Did For Love" was treated as a throwaway, and considering it was the "hit" song from the show, in a way this was the equivalent of having "Make Believe" from SHOWBOAT sung in the background while we watched the workers on the levee and the townsfolk walking around in the foreground-it ticked me off to the point where I nearly threw my popcorn box at the screen in frustration. It was like they had shot the whole film and previewed it and they got the cards back that all asked where the song was, shouted "Oops" in unison and they got the actress back, did a quick pre-record and then shot it with a hastily thrown together set and stuck it in there in a day.

I also remember watching this and feeling that Michael Douglas' casting was so distracting, especially the scene where he says to them "I would love to hire you all..." turning to my friend and muttering "but I have run out of cliches and have no original thoughts to impart in this debacle." This was the second stage-to-screen screwup of a musical in the 80's by a director who should have been the last person to take the helm-the other being ANNIE with John Huston, usually a brilliant director (and who still managed to give us PRIZZI'S HONOR and THE DEAD after this) but was so wrong for a musical, as was having Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks. There were two good movie musicals that decade-YENTL (although I still cannot believe Babs could not find time for Mandy Patinkin to have one number of his own or have a duet with her) and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, and the musical numbers in THE BLUES BROTHERS were a lot of fun, even if John Landis did commit the cardinal sin of cutting away from (and shortening) Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" in the general release version.

Oh, well-at least Audrey Landers was worth drooling over, and she did a pretty good job in her number.

[Paul MacLean]

I don't know if there are other edits of "The Killing Fields" but it runs the full 141 minutes and it shows them in street clothes (and the young boy changing) after they look at the map to try and get out of the area while the North Vietnamese invade. Was this cut down in another version?

When I saw it on TV, there was some extra footage (ala Star Trek II). I remember a scene where a North Vietnamese tank arrives at the hut where Pran was living with the man and his son, and a soldier opens the hatch and smiles at the boy. There were also one or two scenes after that, which better clarified why everyone started dressing differently (inferring that the North Vietnamese didn't demand everyone wear black like the Khmer Rouge did). The murder of the man who had given Pran shelter also made a little more sense, when we were shown more footage depicting the regime change.

I know in real life, the North Vietnamese appointed Pran chief of that village, but he fled for Thailand anyway for fear they might discover his ties to the US (but I can't recall if any of this was addressed in the additional footage).

I think this film still works well without this footage, but those brief scenes did clarify things a bit.

[AndyDursin]

Fascinating! None of that is on there...Would've been interesting to see.