Shabutie's Film Reviews

I took a minute to look at some other review pages from MovieForums.com and have based my movie pages off of them but I changed some stuff around.

I might edit and re-arrange things until I'm happy with my review pages.

Page 1
Once Upon a Time in the West -
Meet the Spartans -

Apocalypse Now -
Once Upon a Time in America -

Once Upon a Time in the West
Sergio Leone, 1969




It's true, Sergio Leone is the greatest movie director that has ever lived. He outdoes Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese by a mile, because their films don't feature an unforgettable score, extended emotions, or cinematic excellence in its greatest form. It is one of the greatest films existing, and has been preserved by many movie institutes for future generations as an example of a good movie.

Once Upon a Time in the West is the tragic and unforgettable story of the average McBain family during the western era who are murdered and gun-downed in cold blood. We never fully understand exactly why this takes place until later on in the film, when we are introduced to a lone gunman known simply as 'The Man' or 'Harmonica' as some fans of the movie call him. He is on a trek to kill an evil assassin-like character named Frank (Henry Fonda) who carries out dirty work for a railroad owner, played by Gabriele Ferzetti. We are shown that Frank and his gang killed the McBain family for their land so that the railroad could go through their property. The murdered man's wife (Claudia Cardinale) discovers that her husband was planning to create an entire town with the property, however Frank is hunting her down to kill her, so he can gain the property. Meanwhile, The Man (Charles Bronson) is on the trail of Frank and discovers the woman, and makes it his mission to protect her and finish the job he started: Killing Frank. But, for what reason does The Man want to kill Frank so bad? We are revealed this during the epic final shootout between The Man and Frank, one of the greatest scenes in movie history. In the film we also get many side stories, like the journey of a runaway bandit named Cheyenne (Jason Robards), as well as the emotional and personal life of the railroad owner (Gabriele Ferzetti).

The score to this film is incredible. It's haunting, surprising, and catchy. It was conducted by none other than Ennio Morricone, one of the greatest film composers in history, and in this film he stood next to John Williams, which is quite an achievement. This film did not get nominated or win any Oscars, which has always surprised me. This is an epic and dangerous film, it's an antique and needs to be treated as such.

Sergio Leone's films are magnificent, they never fail to surprise the audience. He was the greatest film director of all time, and he deserves that title for being so faithful to the western genre. One of the most memorable things involving his directing, is the fact that he is realistic. When he makes a scene of two people walking towards each other, they don't stare at each others' eyes, one person usually does while the other one will now and then look to his right and look back. He's realistic, and I honor that, it's just something that sticks out if you pay close attention to those type of scenes. Another reason I love Leone so much is he can make a thirteen minute scene of three guys sitting in a room one of the greatest scenes in history. The room's quiet, they look at each other, close-ups of their faces, as they stare into each others' eyes. It's just so cinematic.

If you haven't seen Once Upon a Time in the West, I recommend you watch it right away. You will have the classic Morricone score stuck in your head all week. It's truly an epic masterpiece.

Interesting reviews!!

Please continue

Meet the Spartans
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, 2008



I am getting tired of this. These parody films contain flat humor, illogical laughs, and are unreasonably terrible. Thanks to Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, we can suffer through some more unintentionally funny humor, in Meet the Spartans, one of the worst films ever made.

This lousy untalented shipwreck begins with the history of the Spartans, stealing even the plot from 300. King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is brought up after getting abused and beaten to become a strong-held warrior. At one point in the film, he even fights a penguin after eating a Subway sandwich. Returning to Spartan territory a man, he marries the beautiful Queen Margo (Carmen Electra) who constantly cheats on him. When Persians arrive at the Spartan gates requesting power towards Xerxes (Ken Davitian), Leonidas refuses and kicks the Persian messengers down into the Pit of Death. Deciding to prevent war, Leonidas and his thirteen lousy warriors set out to take down the Persian immortals, as well as the other administrating command of Persia. Attempting to do so, ultimately puts them in a spot of danger when a hunchbacked Paris Hilton (Nicole Parker) informs the Persians of what Leonidas and his warriors are planning to do. Thus begins the legionary battle for freedom, as the thirteen stand united to fight the man-god Xerxes and his powerful armies.

No matter how many times you watch Meet the Spartans, and no matter how many times you re-consider it, this piece of trash deserves no recognition. The plot outline is a rip-off of the film 300, the characters are just jokes of the ones found in the movie as well, and it constantly insults pop culture with gag-less jokes that almost sound thought up at the moment. The performances are laughable, and the score is too. The worst thing about Meet the Spartans however, is the God-awful script. No memorable quotes necessarily exist in the film, and the ones that people do remember, are usually jokes with five words. Meet the Spartans does have some amount of positive humor but, a very limited supply of laughs.

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are ruining Hollywood as we speak. The only thing Meet the Spartans provides, is one big joke stretched into an hour and a half. Frame after frame shows somebody falling into something, poop jokes, sex jokes, or racism. That's all there is in their films, and it nearly is laughable due to the fact they will not stop. Twentieth Century Fox constantly allows them to make these horrible sketches that are understated and absolutely dumb. And yet every year, these films are number one at the box office, despite their low reviews by critics and moviegoers worldwide. Meet the Spartans currently rests at number one-hundred on IMDb's Bottom 100 feature list. The only performance that is close to notable, is Travis Van Winkle's. He recently starred in Transformers as Megan Fox's boyfriend in the park who only lasts for about twenty seconds on the screen before Fox catches a ride with Shia LaBeouf. Plus, he starred in the Friday the 13th remake which was also terrible.

Any way you look at it, Meet the Spartans is a heep of trouble. I admit the first half hour of the film was quite funny, yet after that I guess they ran out of ideas, which proves my point to which this should have been an SNL skit rather than a full-length movie. And I'm sure Jack Black would have done great, if it would have been on the show. Now, it lies at the bottom of the food chain, failing to impress anyone overall. It's not entertaining, and it's not boring, it's actually painful.

Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola, 1979



This is one of the best films ever made. I've only seen the Redux version of Apocalypse Now, but I consider that version the complete vision and practical same movie. The film is long, which is a good thing, it helps bring out more than it would if it was shorter. It's creative, persuasive, and dark. This is one not to be missed.

Apocalypse Now is the story of Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen), a soldier on duty in the Vietnam War. Waiting for a mission in Saigon, his hopes are answered when two military soldiers arrive at his door and take him to a Vietnam War headquarters where he meets Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford) and General Corman (G.D. Spradlin). They inform Willard of an American colonel named Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who abandoned the American military while on duty, and stranded himself on an island, causing genocide to hundreds of innocent people. He has practically become an American Hitler, and Willard is given the assignment to kill him. Willard travels on a military-owned boat with some newly recruited soldiers, including Lance (Sam Bottoms), Clean (Laurence Fishburne), Chef (Fredrick Forrest), and Chief (Albert Hall). With only five people on the boat, the group routinely goofs-off, at times causing them trouble when enemy fire is targeted towards the ship in a narrow wooded area. Along the way, we are introduced to a character, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who escorts them upriver in their helicopters over a war zone so the five of them don't get fired at, as a helicopter attaches the boat to its pick-up carrier. Having the rest of the way to go in the boat, the five enjoy themselves. On the way to terminate Kurtz, they run into a many number of things, involving a mansion of French communists, a number of nearly dis-functional Army posts, and many spells of enemy fire taken upon the boat. More and more events take place, until the mind-bending approach to Kurtz takes place. Upon arriving on the island, we are introduced to a National Geographic reporter (Dennis Hopper) who had stumbled onto the island of Kurtz by accident. He strongly believes Kurtz is sane, and it appears that another soldier just like Willard had went up to terminate Kurtz, only to stay on the island with a number of fifteen thousand Indian children and tribe members who practically worship Kurtz for his anti-War wisdom and Hitler-like genocide.

The main reason Apocalypse Now is one of the greatest movies of all time, is the fact we hear all these Satanic, dark, mysterious, and interesting things about Colonel Kurtz before we meet him. Along the boat ride, a voice-over narration from Sheen's character describes Kurtz's past, his history, his wrong and right decisions, the good things he accomplished, the bad, and ultimately the evil and why he chose to make them. Tension builds before we see Kurtz near the end of the film. We wonder what he will look like, how he will sound, and what he will do to Willard and the other four boat passengers. Will he be pure evil? Or will he make a point that war is pointless, and that violence is idiotic, and that Willard does indeed deserve to die for his taking of the mission? Kurtz's mind is so mysterious and complex, it's almost like getting every word in the dictionary and cramming it into one sentence. But, that's the fine idea of Apocalypse Now. Your nervous system will literally explode when we are about to be shown Kurtz for the first time, because he's the infamous man we've heard all about, and we are finally meeting him.

Apocalypse Now was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and the film has a bizarre and interesting history. The scene at the beginning of the film with Martin Sheen going insane, was real in a matter of speaking. Sheen told the cameras to just shoot him and he would make it up the rest of the way, in fact the scene was entirely unscripted. Sheen was actually drunk, and punched the glass mirror, which was real. In anger, Sheen tried to attack director Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola told the cameramen to keep shooting, and that is was good stuff. Plus, Coppola also tried to commit suicide on the set twice. Not to mention that the movie itself was originally 200 hours long, which is unheard of. Coppola had to cut the film down to a three hour length, and the film took nearly years to cut down in fear he would cut out something he would have wanted left in there, even though every bit of the footage was important.

The film features grand performances from its cast, including Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen. Plus, Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper really shined in Apocalypse Now as well. The movie is a whopping epic war film that stretches all across Vietnam in search of an American Colonel who has been targeted for assassination due to his genocidal techniques and abandonment towards American duty, technically making him an outlaw for joining a neutral enemy that doesn't even exist. It's very interesting what takes place on screen, and the score to the film is amazingly beautiful.

If you haven't seen Apocalypse Now, there's no denying that you need to see this right away. It is not my favorite film of all time, but it sure is close and is number six on my top one hundred favorite films list. See this movie right now. I guarantee you, Apocalypse Now will move you in some dark inside way or positively upbeat one.

Meet the Spartans > Once Upon a Time in the West

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Joking any?

As you appear to be someone who likes to watch good films, why would you even bother with Meet The Spartans? I'm guessing that you knew what you were getting into.

Somewhat. I expected it to be flat-out terrible. I try to watch every movie at least once. Honestly, I was actually tempted to watch Meet the Spartans because one of my friends implied the first half hour or so was hilarious. Which it was. Only the first half hour.

Once Upon a Time in America
Sergio Leone, 1984




Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America was originally ten hours long. Wanting to turn the movie into a series of three films, the distributing company denied his request, and so Leone had to make it into one single movie. It took years for Leone to re-edit the film, afraid of losing valuable moments of the movie. Apart from this, Once Upon a Time in America's stars were so into the film, De Niro even requested a private meeting with an actual mobster crime boss, which was denied.

Once Upon a Time in America is the unforgettable journey of Noodles (Robert De Niro) and his struggles as a kid on in the Jewish ghettos of downtown Brooklyn in the early 1920's. Him and his friends, Max (James Woods), Patsy (James Hayden), Cockeye (William Forsythe), and Dominic (Noah Mozelli). These mischievous youngsters do ultimately unforgettable things, both good and bad, such as losing their virginity at the age of fifteen, and trusting each other dearly with their lives. They attempt to make their own mafia/mobster gang, by doing crimes for other people, only to scam them. Another local mafia gang run by the adulthood leader Bugsy (James Russo), competes with them. Trying to murder Noodles and his crew to eliminate the competition, tragic events take place, which ultimately leaves Noodles in prison for eleven years. After these life-changing events, the film progresses into a cinematic masterpiece with numerous major and side plots such as a mysterious man who claims he isn't who he is, a destroyed relationship, and other bizarre occurrences. These events span the 40 year time line that stretches across Once Upon a Time in America. The film really has no plot, and instead contains dozens of small side ones.

Featuring another amazing and classical Morricone score, Once Upon a Time in America's soundtrack is almost baffling, nearly overthrowing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, and Once Upon a Time in the West's musical scores. The theme song for the film is definitely odd, which adds the story, since it is also intentionally laughable at the end.

At the same time, we get a masterpiece that is somewhat definitive yet insanely thought out as well. Why? Well there are multiple reasons actually. Once Upon a Time in the West begins in 60's, flashbacks to the early 20's, moves over to the 60's time and time again, then to the mixed 30's, and eventually to 1933. Leone proved his point. Definitely. Because, it doesn't take a genius to discover why he did this. The plot is more interesting, we keep scratching our heads until we learn of an event in a flashback and we realize what has happened or is happening. Remember, Leone is the greatest director that has ever lived, and his films mostly feature a cinematical dramatic tone that follows the score of the moments on screen. James Woods thanked Leone after the movie was made, claiming that the movie changed his filmography and career forever. If it wasn't for Leone, Woods would probably be little known.

A 200-page plot summary written by Sergio Leone himself of Once Upon a Time in America was given to the Stanley Kaminsky. Leone asked Stanley to fill in the dialogue that would take place between the film's events. Kaminsky later on revised and added what was asked of him, resulting in a 400-page script-like essay or informational document. When Leone received it, he read it aloud right in front of Kaminsky, beginning to end. This shows Leone's commitment to the film industry, and what he believes he can accomplish, will eventually be done.

Once Upon a Time in America isn't for the squeamish. The movie is a three hour and forty-nine minute film with pervasive violence throughout. We see multiple rape scenes, bloody head shots, and in the opening scene a man is nearly beat to death by a group of mobsters looking for Noodles. It truly is violent, yet the film's premise and deftly complex narrative storyline scripts what is known as the original American dream, in terms of crime, lust, and power.

Once Upon a Time in America isn't the best Leone film, but it isn't the worst. Leone old school filmmaking style for the movie really did cost him, as the motion picture took so long that Morricone was almost finished with the score when the movie was halfway finished. It's amazing how much history goes into making this film. Once Upon a Time in America is unlike any other film known to history in many ways. It took an extremely long time, and Leone constantly struggled to get the rights for the book The Hoods in which the film was based off of, rights which he tried to receive since 1976, and the film was released in 1984. There is no actual "legendary Leone standoff" in Once Upon a Time in America, yet moviegoers already familiar with the film should hint that there is a somewhat confrontation in the end of the film.

Epic, cinematic, episodic, and true to the film's surroundings, Once Upon a Time in America reminds you of a western, the plot, characters, and script won't, yet its darkened deserted tone will remind you of an empty desert with someone riding in on a pale horse.

I was going to post another review of one of my favorites. Instead, I'll continue this thread after I make a top 50 or 100 list, which I'm working on now.

Hi, nice to see another person putting some thought into reviews. That's what makes this site so great

Re Apocalypse Now, you say:

I agree with the fact that it's one of the best films ever made, but I'd really like to see what you think about the non-redux version. Next time you feel like watching it, have a go with the other version. I like it more. I think it benefits from having the whole plantation scene removed.

Yeah, I understand. Here is a complete list of the differences.

Must have missed where that was chiseled in stone at...

...but thanks for reminding me!

Fine review, Shabutie. I see no criticisms except "it's not Leone's best" (I agree), but you shave off HALF A STAR! How is this not a perfect 10?!?! Some of the transitions between times are so moving and wonderfully done ("wow" moments so to speak) more than makes up for any technical flaws... if there are any.

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

How many 10/10s do you give?

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I think that's insinuating that I think a lot of films are perfect, but that's not true.

I see no flaws in this film.

I wasn't insinuating. I was asking a legt question.

I think that's insinuating that I'm a prick, but that's not true.

I'm a pretty nice guy in real life.

The reason I didn't give it a full rating is in my book there is no such thing as a perfect movie, and never will be. I will never give a movie a full rating for the record.