I liked The Departed well enough, but L.A. Confidential is to The Departed as Chinatown is to Changeling

Breach

Definitely not your typical thriller, suspense is almost completely absent, except during a few key scenes, which rely more on the quick thinking of the characters to draw out suspense than, say the markers of more typical action films (explosions, car chases, fisticuffs). In retrospect, I wonder if one or two these were not drawn out more to up the ante, compared to what happened in real life. (oops I forgot to put the palm pilot back in the right pocket on his briefcase, the scene in the park where Cooper goes a little beserk) Does not work too well as a thriller actually (the ending is known) but as a character study, this has a lot going for it. Chris Cooper gives one of the best performances of his career, which alone makes this worth seeking out.

3 stars out of 4.
-Jeremy

My wife changed cable companies a while back. She opted for basic cable plus all the Spanish channels (we weren't doing well at the time). Only about a couple weeks ago did we finally upgrade our channels. Apparently it came with some promotional movie channels...anyways...

I DVR'd Blade Runner and got to watching it a couple days ago. Yeah...Harrison Ford was doing a lot of talking, so I suppose I got the bunk version you guys were talking about with the voiceover.

I'm trying to figure out what I thought of it. I liked it a bit, but there are lots of questions in my mind about the film...especially after I got to reading about it. I should probably watch the other versions, eh?

I think you can just skip to the most recent version, the Final Cut. The original cut of Blade Runner isn't a complete butchering of the material à la Terry Gilliam's Brazil, but there is still a fairly substantial difference in quality between the two.

Judging by the box office receipts I've seen quoted, very few people did.

A shame really. I can only guess that the quiet dignity of this film adaptation does not translate into box office success. And yet I prefer the Iron Giant to all the Toy Story films.....which themselves weren't bad.

Platoon 1986

It's been a while since I watched this and it some ways its actually better than I thought.

On the downside I still stand by my previous comments that the line between good and bad guys within the platoon is a bit heavy handed. But there are moments now that shock me more in my very early 30s than when I first watched it as a care-free 18 year old.

I don't know about other posters on here but I've become more sensitive to screen violence in my relative old age than I once was as a reckless early-20 something.

Defoe's performance is deserving of its acclaim. He adds character and humanity to the role. Overall, a very good film

8.5/10

Platoon is one of the few Oliver Stone movies where I don't feel like I'm being relentlessly beaten over the head with a MESSAGE. Still a bit heavy-handed with the directing, but not nearly as much as most of his other films.

In the words of my favorite professor in college, Platoon was made by Oliver Stone before he became Oliver Stone

Perhaps Platoon's success killed the last shreds of modesty he had left.

And James Kunz would know, he's seen FIFTEEN Oliver Stone movies! Fifteen!

God help me it's true! I've even seen Talk Radio. TALK RADIO FOR CHRISSAKE!

I think this is due primarily to the fact that Platoon was such a personal story for him. That and the fact that he was working with a limited budget may have had something to do with it.



I always considered Talk Radio to be his most underrated film. The most likely reason for it being underrated is because it was never promoted that well and it came out in between Wall Street and Born On The Fourth Of July.

Like I said elsewhere, Stone and Spike Lee have a lot in common and not just in terms of the fact that they're both controversy magnets. Both careers have followed similar patterns. Both broke through in the late 1980s and followed this approach:

Era defining films:
Stone: Platoon, JFK
Lee: Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X

Successful films that may not have reached the level of masterpiece. But are still good:
Stone: Wall Street, Born On The Fourth, Nixon and a few others
Lee: School Daze, Crooklyn, He Got Game and a few others

Successful commercial excursions:
Stone: World Trade Center
Lee: Inside Man

Misfires:
Stone: U Turn, Alexander, W.
Lee: Girl 6, She Hate Me, certain parts of Miracle At St Anna.

Ambitious films unfortunately written off as botches because they failed at the box office:
Stone: Talk Radio
Lee: Clockers

While I haven't been impressed by a lot of Stone's recent work, I will still go see it.

As far as Platoon goes, it's easily my favorite war movie of all time.

The main reason for Iron Giant's lack of success is because it was given very little advertising by Warner Bros., whose animation departmnet was reeling from the failure of Quest For Camelot, when that film flopped, they assumed 2D animation was dead(instead of you know the film not being very good).

I thought U-Turn was actually pretty good, for me World Trade Center was a big misfire.

U-Turn's a guilty pleasure for me.

25th Hour's another one of Spike Lee's really good films.

Any Given Sunday and Alexander showed that Stone has a hard time directing action scenes that make sense. That actually worked for him in Platoon where he effectively showed the confusion of jungle fighting in Vietnam.

The Proposition

Not much time to type, so I'll just say that this proves that anything involving Nick Cave is bound to be interesting. I'd give it three stars out of four.

Such an interesting movie. One of the most violent films I've ever seen. Love John Hurt's (too-short) turn as a bounty hunter. Ray Winstone is terrific as always. Direction's amazing. Great head-blowing-off-scene

Interesting you note the film's violence, since The Proposition isn't wall-to-wall violence. But the scenes that are violent are pretty violent.

It's not wall to wall action by any means, but the way the violence is presented (in an ugly manner) is what makes the movie truly violent.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) **

My plan to watch every Best Picture nominee ever (incidentally, a multi-year plan) has led to some excellent movies. Just last week I watched The Lion in Winter, which -- though undeniably a product of the 1960s' love of all things British royalty -- was terrific. However, it has also led to some real stinkers. Take, for instance, 1955's Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, about a romance between married American William Holden and single Eurasian Jennifer Jones. Until the end, where



absolutely nothing of interest happens to the characters. They run up many hills together, and coo a lot, and look at lots of butterflies, but they don't really do a whole lot and not a whole lot happens to them. I was bored stiff by the 2/3 mark, and can't believe it got a nomination, even in a weak year for films.