Epinions Recent Reviews for samadhi

Softcore Porn posing as an art film

Thu, 6 Jun 2002 00:55:47 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - What a disappointment this film was! And after all the reviews I read praising it, it doesn't even rate half as good as the similarly overrated "Amorres Peros."

A couple of pathetically juvenile but oh-so-cute-&-cuddly rich kids with nothing...

Post-Solondz Angst-Ridden Poltergeist Phenomena

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 00:55:43 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - A good flick. Not mediocre, which is all it takes these days to get a thumb up in the friggin air from Ebert. Not exactly threateningly original stuff like Solondz either, but quite good, as in ‘good for you to consume,’ relatively healthy soul-food, an...

Mediocre film from scion of a famous name equals 'popularity.'

Sun, 1 Jul 2001 02:50:55 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - What the hell is the problem with these girls anyway? Don't they know how to rebel like all the other teenagers stuck with boring, pain in the shorts parents? They just off themselves when their parents ground them?! Jump off the second story when a...

Vintage '70s Classic Finally Getting Some Well-deserved Attention

Mon, 4 Jun 2001 20:52:09 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - I was driving down the freeway at night listening to KCRW's "Chocolate City," and a tune came on that at first sounded like Carlos Santana at his mellowest jamming psychedelically with the Greatful Drug-Fiends plus Branford Marsalis (the second part of...

Don't bring your usual expectations and experience a hell of a film

Sun, 1 Apr 2001 03:30:28 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a more charmingly unusual, off-beat, well-acted (that’s right, and who cares if Gere’s Texas accent isn’t authentic; how many non-Texans DO get a friggin' Texas accent right anyway?! He’s perfect for the role in...

A Great '70s film; much underrated for no valid reason

Fri, 30 Mar 2001 20:26:24 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - This is one of the most important and yet consistently underrated films of the ‘70s. I’ve noticed that quite a few complacent people of today get very uncomfortable watching any of the more philosophical erotic films of the late ‘60s and the ‘70s, as if...

One of the best films of the '90s

Fri, 30 Mar 2001 20:06:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Reese and Kiefer’s long ‘freeway’ conversation is the centerpiece of the film. This conversation is key to the success of everything else. Its realism sets everything else up. It is the least “over the top” scene of the entire film--only...

Underrated Masterpiece from the great Luis Bunuel

Tue, 27 Mar 2001 23:28:36 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - I love most of Bunuel's films but "Death In the Garden" is definitely my absolute favorite, ahead of "Los Olvidados," and even "Viridiana." This film is as close to perfection as you can get, even though some critics like to call it a 'flawed' film. The...

The Existentialist Wrath of Chad

Tue, 27 Mar 2001 23:17:05 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Why is Chad so frightening? Because Society is full of Chads. Around every corner there is some version of Chad: a cruel, unscrupulous, good-looking, highly intelligent person along his lines, who will not only NOT get what's coming to him, but through...

Redneck meets Yuppie cautionary NOIR

Tue, 27 Mar 2001 22:58:02 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Pay attention to this one, it's got a lot to say. It's film noir and social criticism mixed in one. In fact, this film was probably the (unacknowledged) inspiration for the entire "X-Files" TV series (which I can't stand, isn't as good as "the...

Serge on the Verge

Tue, 27 Mar 2001 22:49:20 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Gainsbourg was an incomparable French composer of high-quality, sophisticated pop tunes of all kinds. He sounds like a much more upbeat, hipper, peevish version of Leonard Cohen. In fact, if you don't understand two words of French, Serge's music sounds...

Master Guitar Gypsy Jazz

Tue, 27 Mar 2001 22:44:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Years ago, when my blase ears first encountered Szabo's 'Sorcerer,' it immediately became a favorite; I couldn't tell why and that was precisely one of its fascinations.

Hungarian ex-patriate and former Chico Hamilton bandmate Szabo seemed to...

A valuable film ruined by a couple of idiotic and completely implausible plot turns

Mon, 26 Mar 2001 21:20:59 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Toback was mentioned by Football great Jim Brown in his book "Out of Bounds" as a Harvard educated man who could seduce any woman anywhere, the consummate 'Pick-up artist' as it were. Yet he seems to have a weird and quite complicated white man's complex...

Attitude Classic road movie

Sun, 25 Mar 2001 23:19:12 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - I wasn't expecting much from this film but I was very pleasantly surprised. No wonder the Wachowski brothers mention this film as a favorite in their commentary for "Bound," in which they cast Richard Sarafian, the director of "Vanishing Point," (who is...

As good as it gets

Sun, 25 Mar 2001 22:45:25 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Holland is the greatest living jazz bassist: a superb musician and all around cool dude whose name has been synonymous with the highest quality jazz for some 25 years now. What other bass player (or any instrumentalist for that matter) can release two...

Make your own tacos and IT ROCKS! Otherwise forget it.

Sun, 25 Mar 2001 22:25:06 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - I've come to like this place a lot more since they introduced all their new salsas at the open bar and especially the little plastic bagged Jalapeno sauce they now have. Dry chicken with the one type of salsa they had before wasn't very appetizing, but...

Don't bring your usual expectations

Sun, 25 Mar 2001 21:30:49 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - What’s so provocative about this movie? Why did Robert Downey Jr. lie to the two girls? Here’s my take on it. Not because he couldn’t ‘bag’ (if you’re offended by that word you shouldn’t go anywhere near a Toback movie) both of them without lying:...

Avoid this mediocrity

Fri, 23 Mar 2001 21:27:46 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - I was finally pulled in to see this movie by Curtis Hansen (whose previous film L.A. Confidential was very entertaining but thoroughly overrated)by all the laudatory things I kept reading about its 'being a small gem' left and right. I have a lot of...

One of Rohmer's funniest films

Fri, 23 Mar 2001 21:03:53 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - I read in a critique of Rohmer once the perfect sentence to describe his work and how to approach it: "It is when we let Rohmer’s irony (the incongruence of his characters) be a seed of self-reflection within ourselves that his films take on a...

Sexy, Surreal, Hilarious

Fri, 23 Mar 2001 20:20:52 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Anyone who can laugh at and perversely admire the absurd spectacle of his or her own grotesquely bizzare and fragile (how small a step to go from ecstatic fulfillment to abuse, and gradual dissipation) sexuality, while actually having sex, can be...

Summary: Feminist manifesto or Fascist parable? You be the judge

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 21:01:15 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Here are some thoughts about and inspired by a film that is not only frightening, subversive on hidden as well as surface levels, self-contemplating, knowingly hypocritical and proud of it, but also a feminist manifesto of sorts and the best comedy...

Mind Blowing

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:48:27 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - "Ada" is an unconventional, sci-fi fantasy (no rockets and spaceships here, don't worry) firmly rooted in the late 19th and early 20th century Russia of Nabokov's birth, that takes place on a planet called Antiterra 'parallel' to 'our Earth' which is...

An Awful mess

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:35:53 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - Too bad we won't be spared this awful mess, and Truffaut's much less awful but still reeking "Just Another Pretty Kid Like Me" on DVD. Now sane people will have to witness yet again the ridiculous spectacle of pretentious morons trying to put some...

Great new record from Jazz-Rock Legend

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:27:25 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - The record kicks off with the truly beautiful and sublime (yet, of course, odd metered) opening melody of "Seven Sisters" which serves the double function of setting a trap for mentally challenged listeners by letting them imagine they're in some...

A great, painfully enlightening American film

Thu, 22 Mar 2001 20:22:04 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author samadhi - This film was the motion picture debuts of Martin Sheen (who had only acted in soaps previously), Tony Musante (later of TV's Toma, and Dario Argento films) and Donna Mills (later of Knots Landing). It's one of the classic American films of the late '60s...