Customer Reviews

Halliwell's Film and Video Guide 1998 (Serial)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Halliwell's Film Guide has some wonderful stuff in it, some great ideas (the sampling of reviews from other critics, for example). But the book is incredibly stuffy and does not give respect to horror films (Evil Dead, Braindead) or the films of David Lynch. A much less stuffy and more fun film guide is Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever.

This is a great reference for film-lovers. Especially if you enjoy viewing less main-stream films.

I'v just cheked out for THE DROWNING POOL ; again no star , and again ,the reasons why I appreciate STUART ROSENBERG are remarkable the same .(Has he a past, something like that?) Just that he couldn't pass two stars sounds kind of unfair. I will add something , yet : his sensitive aproaching of some kind , makes his movies that LIGHT , so any oter films appears heavy , incoherent or unclear. (inspite of their artistical values , of course )

I think there are two movies wrong evaluated; one of them is Pocket Money,wich has got no star at all, and,the second one is Good Morning Babylon wich earned a star.Here are my reasons: Pocket Money is a poetical film, in wich the characters are chosed very carefuly;fine and raphinate point of view of the director makes an easy-going atmosphere;it is not the subject that matters but the particular situations wich spread a special parfum; it's about good taste only, I think;compare Lee Marvin's character with Kid Sheleen and you'll see no difference; compare the typical western atmosphere but somehow not that typical, with the poor methaphorical scene from the forest in Good Morning Babylon; compare Paul Newman's character,so vital and real, with the two brothers or with their vulgar wifes who show their breasts "to shock the children"-as Eleanor Of Aquitainie would say-(Lion in Winter).So my evaluation would be at least two stars for Pocket Money;of course if it counts.

Gensu2000 seems to think Halliwell's is "as stuffy as a film book can be" and comments on their horrifying undergrading of such groundbreaking cinematic productions as "Evil Dead" and "Braindead". Why surely these great films should be given four stars and placed on marble pedestals! Face it, most horror films are the paramount of lowbrow entertainment. And seemingly lowbrow people like Gensu2000 will enjoy them, as they are intended for that audience. And it's good that they have made a film review book for that type of person, such as the VideoHound book, but Gensu does not have to go around expressing his idiotic opinion. Laymen term the intelligentsia as "stuffy" because they have no understanding of what it is like to be intelligent. Keep quiet, Gensu, and go on watching your primitive ape movies, and reading their glowing reviews in your primitive ape film guide.