Epinions Recent Reviews for trovis

Brigadoon - pleasant film adaptation, but lacking its Broadway magic

Mon, 9 May 2005 14:18:27 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Two American bachelor buddies (Gene Kelly and Van Johnson) are on a grouse-shooting holiday in Scotland. They get lost in the hills, and in the morning they stumble on a picturesque village right out of the 18th century which is not on their map. At...

Middling Astaire-Rogers still better than most!

Mon, 7 Jun 2004 15:54:05 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - There's no more iconic a couple in Hollywood history than Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; between 1933 and 1940 they appeared in eight pictures together (they were actually billed as "supporting players" in two, *Flying Down to Rio* (1933) and *Roberta*...

Powell and Dunne outstanding in this fine adaptation of Clarence Day's family memoirs

Mon, 1 Mar 2004 18:35:59 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Clarence Day Jr., named after his NYC stockbroker father, was born in 1874. After Yale he joined his father's brokerage firm, but after a short stint in the US Navy he was struck by severe arthritis, which crippled him for the rest of his life - tragic...

40's Film Noir - with a twist!

Sun, 5 Jan 2003 13:25:23 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Robert Montgomery's *The Lady in the Lake* (1947) is not a great film, but it deserves a review as the only Hollywood studio movie filmed entirely with the "subjective camera" - that is, we the audience see the action through the eyes of the protagonist!...

Nothing outdated about this wonderful adaptation of Jules Verne's classic

Thu, 2 Jan 2003 16:12:04 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - I have always wondered why the French cinema has been so reluctant to tackle the novels of one of the world's most popular French authors, 19th-century science-fiction writer Jules Verne. Rather than try their hand at such a potentially rich vein of...

Stylish adaptation of science fiction classic

Wed, 18 Dec 2002 17:59:59 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Science fiction seldom ages well, because science itself moves so fast these days. There are two exceptions:

(1) if the fiction imagined by the author is in fact so close to subsequent discoveries that his tale still has resonance for later...

Pleasant romp through R.L. Stevenson's pirate classic

Fri, 6 Dec 2002 17:44:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - When Disney studios first put their hands to making a PURE live-action feature film in 1950 (they had already made several mixed animation/live action films such as *Song of the South* and *The Three Caballeros*), their reasons for doing so were not...

Fun for kids, nostalgia for adults

Mon, 10 Jun 2002 15:28:58 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Before sitting down to write this review, I had a quick look at the IMDB to check on other versions of J.M. Barrie's inimitable "Peter Pan" - and I suddenly realized just how many there are! Apart from Disney's animated version of 1953 and the 2000...

Gripping evocation of Dicken's novel

Thu, 6 Jun 2002 16:26:32 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - When we think of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" on film, we usually think of the classic 1968 musical *Oliver!* And a glorious film it is. But you don't have to be a professor of English literature to suspect that there's a bit of a jump between the...

THIS Farmer's Daughter is No Joke, but it is a Charmer

Sun, 28 Apr 2002 13:20:51 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - 1947 seems to have been a bit of an off year in Hollywood; its best remembered film is *Miracle on 34th Street*. Even so, the way in which *The Farmer's Daughter*, which won Loretta Young an Oscar for Best Actress, has been neglected is ridiculously...

Best Sherlock Holmes flick of all time

Fri, 19 Apr 2002 15:41:10 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - According to a recent study, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal Sherlock Holmes remains the most media-adapted literary character in the world. And it's pretty hard for even the most casual fan of the cinema to dodge one or another of the dozens of film...

Cold War Belly Laughs? Strange but True!

Wed, 17 Apr 2002 13:02:40 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - The mid- to late 1960's seem centuries away from those of us now living in the early 21st century. Certainly the Hollywood landscape has changed beyond recognition, not least with regard to the political atmosphere. The 1960's was the decade in which...

British sci-fi classic

Tue, 9 Apr 2002 17:14:17 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Much 1950's science fiction, literary and cinematic, posed the question, "how would the world look after a nuclear holocaust?" Most of these treatments now look laughably naive, but one which offers more food for thought is John Wyndham's 1951 novel...

Swashbuckling, WWII style

Sat, 2 Mar 2002 18:53:38 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - There are lots of ways to put down Warner Brothers' 1940 pirate epic *The Sea Hawk*. You can compare it invidiously to 1938's *Adventures of Robin Hood* which not only features many of the same actors (Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, Alan Hale) and music...

Interesting predecessor of Ben-Hur

Thu, 21 Feb 2002 16:48:00 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - When you think of Hollywood epics of the 50's and 60's, films such as *Ben-Hur*, *Spartacus*, *Cleopatra* spring to mind. Largely forgotten is *Quo Vadis*, the 1951 film which blazed the trail for later big-budget recreations of the Roman Empire, usually...

Beautiful family film

Thu, 17 Jan 2002 16:14:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - This U.S.-Canadian television adaptation of "Anne of Green Gables" was an unexpected hit when it premiered on PBS (in the US) and on the CBC (in Canada) in 1985. As I remember, the take on its success in the two countries was quite different. Relatively...

One of the best cinematic adaptations of Greek myth

Thu, 10 Jan 2002 15:46:12 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Ray Harryhausen today is rightly remembered as a brilliant practitioner of cinematic special effects in the 1960's and 70's. If nothing else, his work provides a vital link between the true pioneers ("King Kong" and his imitators) and the very different...

Irresistible Spanish bedroom farce

Wed, 1 Aug 2001 12:48:03 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Feather-light comedies such as "Belle Epoque" shouldn't win Oscars - as this one did for best foreign film in 1993 - but that takes nothing away from this irresistibly naughty little jewel from director Fernando Trueba. One can see what the Oscar judges...

Still the best film version of Homer's epic tale

Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:27:55 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Greek mythology has attracted the cinema's attention since film's earliest history, and indeed the movies would seem to have vast potential for realizing the sweep and wonder of the ancient sagas. Yet, cinematic achievement in this field is disappointing...

Good fun in Peter Seller's first multi-role extravaganza

Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:08:07 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - The role for which Peter Sellers will always be remembered by film historians is not Inspector Clouseau (sorry, fans) but Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic. In that film, Sellers played 3 different roles, all with distinction...

50's British farce with sharp edge

Wed, 18 Jul 2001 14:38:47 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Ealing Studios are the best known producers of British comic films in the late 1940's and 50's (and many are gems - "Kind Hearts and Coronets", "The Lavender Hill Mob", "The Ladykillers", etc.), but they were not the only such studio active in Britain at...

WWII period piece worth a look

Thu, 12 Jul 2001 12:59:19 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - On any 4th of July you can bet that some TV station in your viewing area will dust off Warner Bros.' 1943 release "Air Force" for reasons which have more to do with knee-jerk flag-waving (and the flick's cheap availability) than any artistic merit. But...

magnificent machines, excellent movie

Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:35:01 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author trovis - Having seen this flick around 30 years ago, I saw it again on video recently and was reminded how much fun it was. This film belongs to a genre now pretty well extinct - the colorful round-the-world jaunt with lots of exotic locations and cameo...