Movie review time…

The Virgin Suicides: Five daughters in an affluent neighborhood commit suicide because their mom doesn’t let them socialize. Not bad. I wouldn’t have missed anything if I’d never seen it, but as an enjoyable a way to pass two hours as any. Nicely and sometimes cleverly filmed. Plenty of slow, sleepy pathos; and the girls are pretty when they aren’t trying to off themselves.

Fail Safe: The worst pretentious artsy crap. Filmed in glorious B&W contrast-O-visiontm. So burdened by it’s Weighty Message that it can’t be bothered to be remotely believable; thus rendering said message absurd. Utterly fails through hamfisted preachiness where Dr. Strangelove succeeded via black comedy. I also nominate this film for worst ever misuse of stock footage.

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3 Comments

  1. I have a more favorable opinion of “Fail Safe”. It has been quite a while since I’ve seen it, though. The original “Godzilla” was not quite as good as I hoped it would be.

    You don’t say which version you’re reviewing, the original 1963 version or the remake. (The remake left me cold.)

    You say that it can’t be believable. But when it was made (the original) it was believable. Times have changed.

    1. I linked to the IMDB page for the version I viewed. If you had clicked through you would have seen it was the original.

      I believe if I had been around to see it I would have laughed just as hard as I do at goofy modern disaster flics. You can make only a certain number errors, technical and story-wise, before my suspension of disbelief is permanently wrecked. Technically, it was awful, in ways that would have been just as obvious to an astute moviegoer of the 60s as today. In addition story was unbelievable; even assuming such a unfortunate chain of events could have occurred (stranger things have happened), it is completely absurd to suggest that an ostensibly sane president (and the movie asks us to believe that Henry Fonda’s president is not only sane, but that his decision is harsh but wise) would ever sacrifice New York, even in an attempt to avert WW3. I’m sorry, it won’t fly.

      But even assuming those gaping holes hadn’t been there, the film’s unrelentingly pompous tone, and it’s charicatured roles, would have reduced me to fits of derisive laughter long before the end. I have limited patience for that sort of thing.

    2. I apologize for the snippiness of the preceding comment, it really wasn’t called for.

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