The Paper Chase
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.45 You Save: $6.53 (65%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.44 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Paper Chase
Movie Review: An original and stimulating film
Summary: 5 Stars
This film, which centers around the first year in a class of contract law at Harvard, is one of the very few I know which makes you want to study, whatever subject it is that you are studying, and to be like the main character, James Hart, played superbly by Timothy Bottoms. The suspense in The Paper Chase is whether or not he and the members of his group of study will manage to pass under the overpowering rule of professor Charles Kingsfield, which is a truly unforgettable character and made the actor John Houseman win an Oscar for Best Supporting Role. Believe me, you have to see him to believe him, there are no accurate descriptions adequate enough to tell you how good he is. I also very much like the fact that being this a film about the study of law, it doesn't deal with criminal law, which any one might have think was the more interesting subject of that career. Instead, it deals with Contract Law, which I, before seeing this picture, would have thought was a very boring subject. This shows that you can make something good out of any subject. Credit for that the director James Bridges (The China Sindrome, Urban Cowboy), and the intelligent script by John Jay Osborne and James Bridges.Movie Review: socratic inquiry
Summary: 5 Stars
Professor Kingsfield's use of the socratic method is actually a combination of the traditional socratic approach with the case study method.This approach is still common in many law schools. One of my dear history profs. in college taught socratically, but the approach made demands on the students. Socratic Method is still great for some other disciplines like religious studies, philosophy, and literature. However, the method presupposes an active student, not merely a student has is committed to doing only the minimum required for an A or B.
In the movie, the great John Houseman plays Dr. Kingsfield, the world's leading scholar of contract law. His use of the Socratic method is sadistic and terrifying, but Kingsfield is nothing compared to a real-life showboat judge or irascible judge. Students must survive Kingsfield if they are to make it in the real world of the courtroom. The plotline of the movie follows the first year of student James Hart, who idolizes Kingsfield. Hart's dedication to law is tested when he gets a girlfriend, and then discovers her secret, all while trying to keep up in a frighteningly competitive environment.
Movie Review: Character driven drama among the best of the 70s
Summary: 5 Stars
If you don't/didn't like this movie, you're either too young, too used to continuous action/violence/nudity, or simply unable to appreciate that rarest of species, an intellectual film. Listen to Robert C. Thompson's commentary. It's the best commentary I've heard yet for a movie on DVD. He tells you all you need to know-from the movie studio balking at making "a movie about a bunch of lawyers" to Lindsay Wagner's affectless performance. The key to liking this movie depends completely on 2 things: 1)Can you transport yourself to the early 70s enviroment of Harvard Law School without letting the 'time travel' affect your opinion of the movie, and, 2)Can you get into the characters and their relationships with one another enough to appreciate great performances all around (minus Wagner's)? I love 70s movies myself. They're 'brown' and don't rely on constant cutaways to interest the viewer. Whether you were there or not, 70s movies made an indelible mark on cinema. Whether you like 'The Paper Chase' or not doesn't matter. It still stands as one of those movies. People will still be discussing it in 20 years, and beyond.Movie Review: Pre-Paper Mill
Summary: 5 Stars
Not having attended an Eastern preppie school, this film resonates long after seeing the movie. It represents the ideal college experience, before racial quotas and forced equality spread mediocrity to academia. Tim Bottoms plays the Horatio Alger figure, rising on his own efforts. John Houseman, depicts the hard-nosed Establishment professor to perfection. The lovely, appealing Lindsey Wagner as Prof. Kingsfield's daughter, plays a sort of siren of a girlfriend, always beckoning Bottoms closer to self-destruction or freedom.The study group was comprised of various grades of intelligence and cunning with a common goal, with edges of "Animal House" lurking. This adaption of John Jay Osborn's novel will stand for that period when achievement was earned according to one's merit or effort, not artificial, arbitrary quotas. Sure, it's a bygone, innocent time, but no one leaves this film without a few lessons about education and learning.Movie Review: Amusing, All-Encompassing, and Rewarding
Summary: 5 Stars
When you first enter law school, you hear the inside jokes surrounding this movie. Your friends joke about how your Contracts professor (or any professor) is imitating Kingsfield. You wonder why anyone would be so asinine to hide a book in a law library. You scoff and worry about the advice not to date anyone in your section, your law school, or your immediate vicinity period. If anyone told me that this movie would answer some of those questions and worries so poignantly, and do it in a way that would prove entertaining -- even to those wise/foolish enough to avoid pursuing a J.D. -- I would not have believed it. This movie has everything and then some for a curious 1L or for anyone wanting a more sobering film about law school that's not Legally Blonde I/II. Watching The Paper Chase is a rite of passage for any J.D. candidate in the United States.