WOSRT PIECE OF NONSENSE


I'VE JUST WATCHED THIS MOVIE AND I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT IN SUCH NONSENSE (I'M THINKING IN OTHER MORE SPECIFIC OFFENSIVE ADJECTIVES BUT LET'S BE RESPECTFUL TO ALL THOSE WHO LIKE THE MOVIE) METRES OF CELULLOID HAVE BEEN WASTED.
I'M REALLY SHOCKED, THE FIRS HALF OF THE MOVIE IT'S A HAL HARTLEY WANNABE, BUT THE REST IT'S JUST CRAP. I CAN'T STOP THINKIN' WHY A MAN OF SO MUCH TALENT AS ALAN ARKIN EMBARKED IN SUCH A DISASTER.

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Hey everybody is entitled to their opinion. I think it's a great film. And by the way what's with the large caps? Lighten up it's only a MOVIE!

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[deleted]

WOSRT SPELLING TOO?

This movie had me rolling on the floor. Feiffer's screenplay, Arkin's direction AND acting, Gardenia, the whole cast. This movie proves that films can be funny without being stupid. The sitcom crowd just isn't gonna get it.
This movie will not be funny to:
people with no sense of humor
people with no sense
people with no

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Marcia Rodd = terrible and annoying. Everyone thing else = pretty damned good.

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[deleted]

How could this be a Hal Hartley wanna-be when it was made when Mr. Hartley was twelve? This just undermines what little credibility there is in your all-caps rant. Make me definitely want to see this.

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The movie caught the mood of New York City between the latter days of Mayor Robert Wagner (succeeded by John Lindsay in 1965) and the coming of Saviour Rudi Guiliani in the early 1990s. New York City was a festering s---hole. a horrible place to live unless you were rich (I know -- I lived there in 1983-84, near the now-gentrified Lower East Side, which was about as much as the movie described NY, with a little leeway for hyperbole.

New York, one of the richest cities on earth, went bankrupt in the mid-70s. It was crippled by crime, violence, corrupt cops (who were in cahoots with the crooks), hack politicians bent on stealing from the public treasury, etc. etc. When I lived in New Yor City, the tabloids used to have a "watch" on when the first cop would be killed, after the New Year. In 1984, they went almost a month before the day two cops were killed on different beats brought things back to "normal."

At the 1976 world heavyweight championship fight at Yankee Stadium between Muhammad Ali & Ken Norton (in which Norton was robbed of the title by bad scoring), the cops that were there to provide security were on "strike" de factor (as they could not strike legally). Some dudes attacked and mauled a white woman in the parking lot of Yankee Stadium in front ofthe cops, and the media, and the cops did nothing (as they were on strike, in fact).

That was New York City. It culminated in 1983, when Bernie Goetz shot those kids on the NY Subway. It was a city held hostage by criminals and a hideous police force on the take, who would rather be digesting their Bavarian Cream donuts back in their cop car on safe sidestreet than fight crime.


The movie is spot on about a generation of New York life that is gone, but not forgotten.

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No Message

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New York City was a festering s---hole. a horrible place to live unless you were rich (I know -- I lived there in 1983-84, near the now-gentrified Lower East Side, which was about as much as the movie described NY, with a little leeway for hyperbole.
Seriously, you, my friend, had true grit. The Lower East Side, as well as many other neighborhoods, were Sh*tholes during that time frame, so you speak the truth.

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...then come back and confess that you are an idiot.

Procrastination fools you into thinking you succeed merely by not failing.

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You are just soooooooo WRONG!!! Stick to action/adventure films, dude. "WOSRT?"

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Because something wasn't being blown up every two minutes with a blaring, annoying soundtrack?

Love this film, quirkiness at it's best, so funny - but obviously not for the "Where's My Car Dude?" crowd.

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it's so funny. yep.



A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

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Interesting.

The OP is entitled to his opinion but is taken to task for an obvious typo. There are typos (and worse) in some of the responses here, but pointing them out is childish, in my opinion.

Also, he gets the usual IMDB-snob response - "get back to your sitcoms", "Dude, Where's My Car", "explosions", "you just don't GET it, you're not as bright as me!"

Well, my memory of this movie - I saw it once on TV, about 30 years ago, then never since - is that it was very "of its time". In that period, I was a serious cineaste, frowningly watching all kinds of nonsense in the belief that it was "good for me". Some of it WAS, but a lot of it, and here the otherwise wonderful Seventies have to take their share of the blame, was unadulterated tosh. Pretentious, full of non-sequiturs that you didn't dare admit to not understanding for fear of looking stupid for not "getting" it (see above) and also played out by actors on a coke-fuelled ego trip who believed their every giggle and mumble was Oscar-bait (hello, Mr Sutherland).

I remember this movie possibly falling into some of those categories - I remember an extremely ennervating turn by Sutherland, and Arkin setting my teeth on edge during his time on screen - but without seeing it again I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

So basically I can see why the OP would feel that way and I really think - caps lock and all - he or she deserved a more considered response than he got.




No Guru, No Method, No Teacher.

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That's based on your 30-year-old recollection of the film?

I have one question. Do you often feel the need to intervene in situations that you are unqualified to referee? For example, is there the least bit of evidence anywhere to suggest that the "actors [were] on a coke-fuelled ego trip [and] believed their every giggle and mumble was Oscar-bait"? Are you confusing 1971 with 1981? Are you confusing Donald Sutherland with someone else, George Segal maybe? Has there EVER been the slightest hint that Donald Sutherland had a cocaine problem? Can you offer an example of the non-sequiturs that troubled you so?

Your attempt to sound authoritative about a film of which you seem to have very little actual memory is truly remarkable. But at least you came rushing to the defense of the most callow and artless comment in the thread, so at least you have that.

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Well, this is basedon my 30 MINUTE old recollection of the film: (The first third, anyway, as I couldn't take any more.)


The OP is pretty much spot-on.

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