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THE BIG WHEEL (1949): 5/10
Fairly minor Mickey Rooney motor-racing drama. Apparently these little buggies were called "midgets". There's a funny bit when you see a newspaper headline that mentions "midget drivers" - I thought it was talking about Rooney! Anyway, Rooney is good in the part, and there is a surprisingly graphic (for its time) scene of someone getting burned alive after a racetrack accident (plus the thrills and spills of some intercut newsreel footage). Despite all that, it is rather low-voltage. Just about passable. So a 5.
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THE OTHERS (2001): 10/10
Sorry to go overboard. You know I'm a grumpy old git, so you'll be surprised to learn that I think Amenábar's haunted house film is a modern classic, and one of the greatest of the entire genre. Time will tell, but I think it's as great as all those old black and white ones. Scary AND emotionally resonant. Brilliant. So a 10.
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Posted: |
Oct 18, 2009 - 10:54 AM
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By: |
Cryogenix
(Member)
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Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment - I don't watch any reality TV, but I love stories about survival in the wild. It's a Discovery Channel program that has nine regular people (an eclectic mix of a housewife, gay horse trainer, male cop, Asian female lawyer, old man, old woman, etc) who are thrown into the Alaskan wilderness where their goal is to get back to civilization while living off the land during the harsh winter months. At any time, if a person can't hack it, he/she can activate a GPS device and get choppered out. This is no Survivor or Outback show. It didn't feel like the people were being intentionally showy or dramatic or hamming it up for the camera. This was dramatic, interesting, funny, sad and very real-feeling. The animal kills are real and graphic - and sometimes very disturbing since some of these people are young and lack common sense and start gutting animals while they're still alive. My only beef was that in two shots, you can see a member of the production crew in the background, scrambling to get out of the shot. Naturally, we know there's SOMEONE there running the camera, but to see one of the crew made everything feel less dire. But things quickly returned to normal - 10
Other survival films:
Into the Wild - 7.5
Alive - 8.5
The Endurance (2003 w/Liam Neesan) - 10
The Mosquito Coast - 10
Shackleton: The Greatest Survival Story of All Time - 8.5
Alaska: Into the Wildnerness (2009) - 9
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Out of the Past (1947) - 7/10
The Stepfather (1987) - 8/10
I Love You, Man (2008) - 2/10
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ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER (1946): 3/10
Annoyingly hard-boiled wiseguy goes to Hell and meets a very annoyingly smug and rather camp Devil.
Apparently (I know this coz I just looked on the imdb) a lot of people like this film. I thought it was terrible. It had everything going for it, I mean it's old and in black and white, but I was bored to tears. I actually used the fast-forward button more than once. The best bit is the start, with the vision of Hell. Then it's all downhill at a very s-l--o---w pace.
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