A Talking Picture
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Movie Reviews of A Talking Picture
Movie Review: Double-Talking Picture
Summary: 1 Stars
Fortunately, this movie is so boring --at times rather childish without childlike charm--that not many viewers will stick it out to it's ridiculous end.
It is NOT educational as some reviewers claim. Historical "facts" about some of the places visited are, in fact, half-truths or outright distortions of historical evidence. For example, while viewing the pyramids in Egypt, we are told that they were built by Jewish slaves. If we Google "who built the pyramids," we see the absurdity of this assertion. The mass immigration of Jews to Egypt did not occur until a thousand years after the pyramids were built. The identity of the actual builders is difficult to ascertain, but the historical evidence that exists suggests that the workers--many of them willing and dedicated--were certainly not foreign or necessarily enslaved.
Interestingly enough, the the most emotional misstatement of the film again casts a bad light on the people native to the Middle East, the Arabs--Irene Pappas makes a peculiarly overwrought and out of context statement blaming the Arabs for burning the library of Alexandria. In fact, historians have blamed Christians or Romans for this tragedy as well as possibly Moslems...it could be all three, no one knows for sure.
In the midst of a pseudo philosophical conversation at the ship's captain's table, one of the women veers completely off the "topic" to deliver a bumper sticker explanation of "what's wrong" with the arabs.
At the end of the movie, all this gratis arab/moslem smashing makes sense. The weird (vaguely perverted) captain whispers to the gals at his table that bombs placed by arab terrorists have been found on the boat and asks them to stay seated until the announcement is made,at which time they are to walk calmly and slowly to the lifeboats.
The mother and child find themselves stranded on the exploding ship because the child ran back to their cabin to retrieve a little arab doll she promises to protect. THE MESSAGE:Get it?! Arabs are bad and only cause disaster for anyone who likes them. This is propaganda not drama, and clumsy, bigoted propaganda at that.
Movie Review: Unbelievably horrible!
Summary: 1 Stars
This is the only film to which I've given a one star rating. I wish I could give it a zero.
I watched the first part with some interest as an attractive young Portugese woman and her pretty little girl take a cruise from Lisbon eastward. I did find it a little boring as the woman, a history teacher gave lectures to the girl about the sites. I kept expecting something interesting to happen. I wondered if this was some kind of travelogue?
Then there was the introduction of the "stars.' Whatever possessed John Malkevich and Catherine DeNeuve to appear in this film totally escapes me. However I thought that finally something interesting might happen. No...it was an unendurable, pretentious conversation of the worst type. I ended up fast-forwarding through it, missing Irene Pappas's song. Yuk! Malkovich, a brilliant actor was embarrasingly creepy here. I wonder if he ever watched it.
Then....oh gee I don't want to spoil the ending for those of you who are really going to buy this....Suffice it to say that it should have happened earlier on.
I cannot think of one good reason to see this film. There are many better travelogues and if you want to hear Portugese spoken, I'm sure there are far more interesting language tapes.
Movie Review: A terrible movie!
Summary: 1 Stars
Trying to figure out the meaning of this movie, assuming that there is a meaning . . . I have concluded that it is trying to say that civilizations come, and civilizations go, and the only things left are dead monuments. They can be monuments of stone, like the Pyramids or the Acropolis, or they can be people who have outlived their glory, like the three fading, aging celebrities on board the ship.
In any case, this is a disjointed, poorly produced movie. The acting is stiff, and the recurring scenes, such as incessantly watching the bow of the ship passing through water, or crowds waving from the docks, are contrived and repetitive. Even the constant questions posed by the little girl, and her seemingly patient mother, grates the nerves after a few minutes. And the conversation between the women and the Captain is nonsensical, with each one speaking in their own language but understood by all. That might be OK for French and Italian, but would hardly be the case for the Greek language (unless one were Greek). In any case, the conversation of these people, including the Captain, were so self-centered as to be obnoxious.
This is a terrible movie, and whatever it has to say, it doesn't do it very well, either artistically, or through a story line.
Movie Review: A Big Disappointment
Summary: 1 Stars
The movie starts off as a very SLOW tour of famous places around the Mediterranean. A mother gives her daughter lessons about history and architecture at each port their cruise ship stops at.
Then the focus changes to the ship captain's dining table, where he has invited a French woman, an Italian, and a Greek woman. Somehow, magically, they can all understand each other's languages. The captain seems to fancy himself quite the debonair ladies' man, but he is SO effeminate, that it's laughable. He was creepy, is what he was. This Malkovich is one LOUSY actor, or maybe it's just the stupid script lines he was given.
The topper was the unbelievable ending. Due to some kind of bomb threat, the captain orders everyone to abandon ship. The little girl runs back to her room to reclaim a doll, then when she and her mother return to the deck, OH NO, the lifeboats have left them behind! (Wait, isn't the captain supposed to stay behind and be the last one to deboard???)
So the "noble" captain stands up in the life boat and SLOWLY (did I say SLOWLY?) starts unbuttoning his jacket, making like he's gonna jump in the water to save them, all the while yelling at the two to JUMP, JUMP!
All in all, a mind-numbing waste of time...
Movie Review: Incredibly bad movie!
Summary: 1 Stars
This movie can hardly even be called a movie. Watching it is basically like following a very serious boring history teacher around as she explains random facts from ancient history to her daughter during their vacation. Other people join in with the boring facts, such as a priest who explains in detail what they will see inside a ruin they are about to enter, "There will be a column on the left, blah, blah, blah." The only cute thing about the movie is the little girl who is also boringly serious but has a sweet face. In the last five minutes of the movie, the director for some reason changes the movie from slowest-documentary-style-fiction-on-earth to low-budget-horror-film. The cruise ship starts to sink, the mom and daughter don't make it on time to the one escape boat (yes, suddenly there are only 12 people on the ship instead of the hundreds we saw before), and they are blown up. I wouldn't normally tell you the ending but this is such a ridiculous ending, and so mean after you've watched this mom and daughter for the whole movie, that it must be exposed before you bother to watch it.
You have to see this movie to believe how incredibly dumb it iS!