Reviews
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
An attempt to more political correctness, but disappointing
Undoubtedly, the success of this movie in terms of awards and nominations stems from the cliches of the "let's make everyone aware of the horror of the war", etc. Although this may be a very altruistic objective, it does not imply that the movie has a good story or that the script is artistic or even clever.
The story line would have been more suitable for a TV show like Combat or MASH rather than for a full-blown three-hour movie. It seems that the whole objective of the movie was to depict with extreme realism the Omaha Beach situation and to do so the movie makers had to find some movie plot, regardless of what it might be. In fact, despite of the absolutely incredible vividness of Omaha Beach, I started to get really bored - Mr Spielberg seemed to exploit that ad infinitum. Same could be said of the bridge battle.
Following the same political correctness track, the way that Germans are depicted is unfair, at least. There was a clear intention in the movie to show the soldiers are traitors and sanguinary (e.g., the knife scene), where the Americans where all nice and warm (e.g., the kid, who was a translator, full of love and care).
Overall, I was quite disappointed by this movie. After watching it, it really made me wonder on what basis Globe/Academy awards are given - may be on the "technical" quality of the movie and their PC bent but certainly not on the grounds of its cleverly designed script and plot.
This movie falls miles behind other realistic movies about the war such as Apocalypse Now.
Seduced by Evil (1994)
A movie could have never been worse
This is a movie that will certainly score in the bottom 100 of IMDB. Beautiful Suzanne Somers has participated in such a terrible script.
The character, a very respectable working mother, gets seduced through the spell of a male New Mexico witch, into getting entangled in a sexual affair. The story evolves through a series of childish weird events, all caused by the supposed power of the witch.
The best part of the movie is a two-second scene of the actress in very sexy underwear. However, this is not enough to compensate for the other 90 minutes or so of pathetic story and acting.