Are you a critic?  Was the movie worth not being able to afford to eat
for the rest of the month, or was it so good you're going to forget
to eat the rest of the month.

Important questions and problems here in 1997 for us to take into account.

So what did you think of it?  No spoilers please.

267 responses total.

Against the better judgement of my Meijer co-workers, I went to see Batcrap
& Faggot (read "Batman & Robin") at United Artists Theatre at Briarwood Mall
immediately after my shift ended.  In all actuality, their pleas for me to
wait for it on video went unheeded, and probably for the better.  Besides,
when I have the chance to see I friend I don't usually get to see because I
only know where he works, and don't feel like trying to reach him/her at home,
where would I go?  Anyway, I guess I'd give this movie about a B+ . . . I
expected our new people to show up a little earlier, and it had the feel of
a 2 hour episode of Rocky & Bullwinkle.

The first TOP movie is tonight.  It's Toy Story.

"Breaking the Waves" is an extraordinary film.  It simply
blew me away and it should have gotten the Oscar for best
picture last year. *****

  I didn't see B&R but evil1 did, and she said it sucked and blew chunks.
She also told me that it was a 2 hour ad for Taco Bell. 

  another $7 saved ;)

re #2
        Is not, it's caddyshack

We were just about to go see that movie...It sucked that bad huh? I don't
have much of a choice...I really hope it's not that bad, S  If it's anything
like when I saw "The Pat Movie"...I'm going to have me a nice nap...

quit

I don't recall seeing anything for Taco Bell in the B&R film.  It was bad,
obviously, but it could have been a lot, lot worse.  Still, its the worst of
the series of movies so far, featuring some of the worst casting I've ever
seen.  George Clooney can't do Batman, Arnold can't do Freeze, and I don't
even know what Elle Mcpherson was doing in there.  Somehow, the whole sensory
overload that the movie loads on you manages to keep you thinking that its
tolerable.  See it at the Fox and wait for Spawn to come out.

 (Scott jumps on the bandwagon)

I'm glad to see that my trailer-formed opinion about that movie (Batman 
& Robin) has proven correct.  Arnold looked totally out of place, and so 
did everybody else.  Except maybe Umma, whose character looked 
interesting enough to be a decent villain.

Poison Ivy was interesting enough to be a decent villain, but was given
a back seat to the boring Mr. Freeze. (He's big and has an ice gun. How...
fascinating.) I could have done without batboy and batgirl.

This item is now linked to the cinema conference from agora.

re 5:
Oops, I was looking at the wrong week.  Caddy Shack was good.

  Caddyshack is a all time cult favorite. My favorite part was the yacht
scene.

Once again, as with Batman Forever (though I actually thought it was decent)
I was left with the feeling, "Why?"  What point did this movie have in
existing?  What was the point behind the movie.  I find that "to make money"
doens't really give it enough reason.  A movie's not *supposed* to look like
its just there to make money.

During B&R promotion, I noticed that, universally, everybody involved in
it--talk show hosts, cast members, director--refused to admit that there were
any problems with the film.  Jay Leno managed to get stars of the film on
three striaght nights, and all the time he lied about how good hte movie was,
how it was the best in the trilogy.  The first piece of evidence he gave to
back it up? "The colors are just magnificent" or something to that effect.
It's like entertainment industry collusion.

  Now that the mega-corporations that own the movie studios also own the
  television networks don't expect to hear anything bad about a film on
  any of the big publicity circuit shows..

re #3:  I have to strongly disagree with Mary's five-star
recommendation for "Breaking the Waves".  I'll try to finish
watching it tomorrow night before I have to return it to the
video store but tonight I turned it off after an hour of 
excruciatingly slowly-paced character development and plot
setup (and I'm only giving it the benefit of the doubt and
assuming that that hour was character development and plot
setup because I figure that something extraordinary must
happen before the end of the movie for Mary to give it such
a glowing review.  There's simply no hint of that 50-some
minutes into the movie..)

Even if the plot starts moving and the second hour of the
movie totally fascinates me I'd still have to penalize the
movie for the *extremely* annoying camera work.  For the life
of me I can't fathom why the director chose to have the movie
shot as if it was being filmed by a camcorder-holding man with
a bad case of palsy..

I'd guess you won't like this film much, Mike, because
I was already fascinated by the characters and theme
within that first hour.  (I think it runs close to
three hours in length.)  But do watch the rest - the
ending is amazing.  Or at least I thought so.

Mary often likes movies I don't like. The example that immediately comes to
mind is "Being Human". My friends and I thought "Being Human" was one of the
worst movies we had ever seen. It was boring beyond belief and it was long.
I respect Mary's posts but let's just say that I don't rush out to watch
movies that she recommends. :-)

Does anybody know why TOP doesn't show movies on weekends anymore? 
Personally, it's fine with me to go during the week, cause I'm on break, but
what about other people?

I think movies during weekends were presenting problems with 
rowdy crowds, though I am not sure about that.

I would think it has to do with the weekend crowds and their sheer size,
you get less people when the next night is a weekday.

Re #17: For the record, Maltin's Movie & Video Guide is in the
middle, giving "Being Human" 2.5 stars -- not great, but not bad
either. (I can't comment, not having seen the film.)

Re 19 & 20:
        Yes, I suppose that makes sense.  There isn't very much room there at
all... but it's still too bad that some people can't come if they have to work
the next day.  :(

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OH! So that is what that cloud of stuff was!  I was walking to my car from
the Michigan Theatre and wondered if that was from possibly fryers or
something, now i know better!  The Smokers!

I'm looking forward to seeing both "Mothra" and "Plan 9" at Top.
There was not a single ticketed show that tempted me this year.

I'm looking forward to those also -- "Mothra" is one of the best
of the Godzilla-spawn, and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is perhaps
the finest bad movie of all time. (One of these years I'd like
to see TOP put on "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped
Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies", which is less known than
"Plan 9" but definitely in the same league.)

In past years TOP ran a few classics like "Mr Smith Goes to
Washington" or Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals. None of that
this time around, alas.

I may actually appear at TOP tomorrow and/or Friday, considering that I'm
getting my Wisdom teeth (left) pulled tomorrow, and spending one full day
recovery on Friday, and consequently don't work either of those days.

TOP stopped showing movies to make more time for live music.  Apparently the
music crowds buy a lot more concessions than the movie crowds.  But the adults
that make up the bulk of the music crowd will only stay late on weekends.

My problem with public showings of "Plan 9" in the modern era 
is that, with the encouragement of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000,"
too many audience members want to yell allegedly witty things at the 
screen, drowning out the finer points of Mr. Wood's dialogue.
 
Other than that, yes, "Plan 9" is one of those bad movies which 
is quite entertaining.
 
There is one classic on the TOP schedule, CASABLANCA.

Well, should it still be playing, I am going to see "The Fifth Element" soon
. . .

oooh, that was a *good* movie...
i also saw the wedding banquet the other night... a great movie, about half
of it was subtitled, and half was in english... about a gay chinese man, that
stages a wedding to please his parents from taiwan

now for my comments on B&R:
taco bell advertisement... nope... didnt see a single taco... maybe you have
lost your mind and refer to Demolition Man.
Batman: why the hell did they put clooney in the cape in cowl!?!?! that had
to have been the stupidist casting mistake of the whole line up of crappy
casting!

Robin: robin was good. i liked his new costume and bike. O'donnel makes a good
robin.

Batgirl: PLEASE! she was so pathetic!first of all... batgirl is Commisioner
Gordans daughter not alfreds neice. secind whee did they come up with that
costume... no batears!?!?!? it was just a female version of robins getup! also
why and i say again WHY?!?!?!? did they cast silverstone!?!? not even the
molded suit thats sposed to make anybody look sexy helped her! kinda sad
really... downgraded Batgirl all together!

Poison Ivy: my personal favorite. Thurman did a great job as far as i'm
concerned. 

Mr. Freeze: first of all... he didnt need those STUPID hencemen! second Arnold
is NOT mr freeze! patrick stewart would have been excelent, but ofcourse they
got arnold. the only reason anyone (my gf) liked him was because they pitied
him. "oh poor freeze... his wife is gone to him forever!" ya... i was in
tears! hehehehe... not with it being arnold.

Bane: what was this!? i cant believe it! Bane isnt some mindless beast! he
broke batmans back in the books for petes sake! i was really dissapointed.
i would have loved to have seen the bat get snapped in half. which would have
left it wide open for the next movie to include azreal.

overall the movie wasnt as bad as i thought it'd be... i was a lil' shocked
at how stinking long it was though.

They wanted to mantain Batgirl's face with the minimum of accompanyment, exar.
I agree with you that the casting is bad, though.  And Bane was deserving of
his own (non-Shumacher) movie until this abominations showed up.

I certainly agree about exar's feelings of how Batgirl's background was
seriously f--ed over.

This response has been erased.

Uma Thurman did a lot of stereotyped villaness expressions, gestures,
tones of voice, but she did them quite well.  Alicia Silverstone is
adorably cute (never has been sexy), which the movimakers could've
played off of more than they did.  George Cloony looked stunned by
it all.  He's a very very understated actor, to put it kindly.
I agree, Robin should be killed off in the next one.  Arnold did
his best acting ever in this movie.  He gets to cry and everything.
Very soulful.  Now he can revert to type when James Cameron makes
T3, which I understand the studio is making him do as punishment for
Titanic.

Hmm . . . here I thought I had something to say and am so stunned by what I
see now that I have absolutely nothing to add.  That's beautiful.

And I object to you objecting to their objections!  :-)  Let 'em object.
You can still ask why...

Well, I personally think Arnold's best acting *is* the terminator type that
everybody knows and loves.  This wasn't all that convincing.  

Robin could very plausibly be killed off in the next film, as one of the comic
book Robins was killed by Joker long ago.  (Too bad they already killed
joker.. he was by far the best villain).

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss