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You Can't take it With You, a review by Rich

Academy Award Best Picture winner 1938

You Can't take it With You





A film where everything comes in small doses, at times funny, slightly uplifting, a touch moralistic, touching and vaguely inspirational.
I'd hoped for a great performance by James Stewart in this, but as the young stick thin drawling fiance, I was pretty underwhelmed with his performance. Fortunately it was bolstered by Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold and of course Lionel Barrymore.
Overall I found it a little bit disappointing, the so-called liberated characters came across as annoying, it is way too over sentimental, and I could not swallow the fact that big business and corporate greed can be beaten by sitting down playing a harmonica!
 

(From Riches Random Reviews on February 10th, 2009)

A Matter of Life and Death, a review by Antares

A Matter of Life and Death (1946) 3.5/5 - I was going to start out this review by telling verbALs to stop scratching his head, because I finally watched the film, but I think that after he reads the score I rated this film, he may just keep on scratching away. I liked the film, but when Raymond Massey's character comes forward, I thought it threw a money wrench into the flow of the screenplay. Bringing an anti-British rant from an American just seemed to me, a little disengenous. This was only one year removed from the end of the Second World War and it just came across as a rather condescending way to take a swipe at the Americans who were still over in England awaiting their return to the States. I saw it as a brave move by Pressburger to do it, but also it appeared as he was left-handedly saying... These Americans, what petulant little children. I could be reading it wrong, but that's how it came across to me.

It reminded me of something I read in a New York Times archived newspaper one day when I was perusing the microfilm collection at a library. I had been reading war reports from France from the D-Day invasion until the Battle of the Bulge. I was surprised to read a small piece about French citizens complaining about the American soldiers in the aftermath of the liberation of Paris. They were actually complaining about the soldiers who had just liberated them from over 4 years of Nazi occupational tyranny.

(From Antares' Short Summations on March 11th, 2014)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Marathon , a review by Critter

1.01
Welcome to the Hellmouth

Plot: Buffy arrives in Sunnydale and is not happy to meet her new Watcher, Rupert Giles. A mysterious "friend" offers guidance, but Buffy resists her destiny until Willow and Jesse are abducted. Buffy saves Willow from an ordinary vampire, but loses track of Jesse in a confrontation with Luke, the Master's vampire vessel.

My Thoughts: As far as pilots go this one has never been up there with my favourites. It's a solid start to the series but I have always felt Buffy starts to shine the most as a show around halfway through season 1. This episode is a great improvment to the 'Unaired Pilot' which I once saw and does interestingly leave the episode on a cliffhanger, which means the pilot is almost shown over two episodes instead of one. Not many shows I have watched end a pilot episode on such a cliffhanger but I think it works well here. I found myself laughing at quite a few of the lines in this one. The show may be outdated by quite a lot now, and we know that the way teenagers speak changes over the years but that quirky way that characters seem to speak in Whedon shows never seems to get old. Like I said, this is a solid start to the show but compared to some of the Buffy episodes to come it is certainly not one of the stronger ones.

Rating: 3/5

(From Buffy The Vampire Slayer Marathon on May 17th, 2010)