My Favorite Movies

I've got 3 different versions of this movie to see: the short English version, the short French version and the full polyglot version running approx 3 hours and then some. I first saw this movie in the English version when I was living in the USA for a while in 1990 and it literally saved my life, because I was feeling quite DOWN at the time. That changed after I saw the movie. Luc Besson is an European director who has very few equals like him in his style. Made Jean Reno the actor he is today. While making this movie, he made a lot of underwater scenes of dolphins and other marine life that was never used in this movie, but found their place in a later movie, called Atlantis.

Saw this one the first time when I was still a kid and English was still Chinese to me. But ever since then, whenever this one is on the television, global warming just has to wait until the movie's done. Cramps from laughing, time on time again. Excellent!!!

Incredible movie. Artwork was imaginative, as if the whole crew was on acid or something... Peter Sellers was a blast. Orson Welles was a master at anything he did, be it acting or directing. There's no other hunkydory director like John Huston. And Joanna Pettet was the first woman in a movie I fell in love with as a kid. And Ursula, well, what can a boy say? Not to mention some of the others. Sir David Niven? Well, he certainly deserved his title. What a cast of people, what a movie indeed. Get actors like these in a contemporary Bond-movie and you've got a seller!!!

Five stars for a five-oscar movie.
Made by one of the few movie-directing visitors to Tinseltown who absolutely refused to bend over and got away with it too.
Producer here was Michael Douglas and most of the starring cast are 'members' of the same incrowd, who seem to have vowed always to do their utmost to make as good a movie as possible, be it even based on a novel by Ken Kesey.
It's the result that matters, you know?
To feel YOUR hands around Nurse Ratchett's neck...
Surely people have to have crossed the thin line that separates genius from insanity to make this movie what it still is today?
It's a monument.
Period.

Luc Besson goes haywire in Hollywood. French fashion galore. Yabbadabadu!!!

There are few movies you can have seen a 100 times, at least.
Well, this is one of those few.
This movie not only depicted a generation, it gave rise to a whole new one.
On my free time as a bartender in a youthhostel in 1988, I took many travellers to watch this movie at my crib.
None of them left my sofa untouched. They all left my house in higher spirits.
Liberated from definitions as to whom they thought they had been.

Psyche-movie!

Probably one of the best movies ever ever ever made in the USA. Orson Welles should have a statue in every city of every state of that country for what he has done to bring film to a higher level. Most Americans underestimate the power of Welles' imagination and creativity. Did you know that as a director he was the first to shoot from a low angle (i.e.: so you could see the ceiling), which baffled props, since most moviesets had no such thing as a ceiling, because that's where the lights were? I mean, the history of this movie is worth a movie unto itself. Give Orson a sigar for me if you meet him in the afterlife and tell him I said: Rosebud, Rosebud, Rosebud!

What a strange combination of actors: Marvin and Eastwood in one movie. The old movie-hero meets the new in a hilarious persiflage of the Goldrush. The kind of movie that makes you wish you were there... Sadly enough, history was nothing quite like it. Some people annoy themselves at the musical interludes in the movie, but I'm not one of them. "Do I know where hell is? Hell is in Hello!"
Most bladder-dangerous moment from laughter? That must be the one where the bull falls into the underground tunnels and wrecks the complete town.
"I was born under a wandering star!" I mean, who but Lee Marvin could have performed that kind of song?
If you haven't seen it, you haven't seen anything yet. Add it to your wish-list, folks!

No, contrary to popular movie-belief, this is not about a homocidal Japanese gay on the prowl. Then you haven't seen the movie, I guess.
What it IS, is a story of words beyond images. That is why so many fragments of the film are in fact merely written words brought as theatre.
I agree a lot of people can get confused by the 'plot' or the meaning of it all, but they are not the main people I think the makers were trying to reach.
You have to be aware of the existence and works of Mishima, the author, to be truly aware of this movie and that, I believe is the story Paul Shrader is trying to tell us. I think Philip Glass only tried to underscore that fact with his fabulous soundtrack to this film.
But one star is lacking on my rating: it's not for everyone...
Though be it a consolation: the writing is gorgeously beautiful.
Perhaps THAT is why he did what he did.