TheInvisibleCar Reviews

Squid Game: The Challenge (2023– )

A lot like "Survivor" shot in a Squid Game studio. Only faker.

[4/10 · 23 November 2023]

Well, initially, the first several episodes, it seemed to be irritatingly stupid yet at least still a bit more than just slightly enjoyable. It is watchable. It was written to seem like a reality survival type show, or I'm pretty sure it was, but if it's not fake it sure seems like it is. If it's not, and I will cite some reasons why I think it must be a fake reality show, but if it's not, well then they surely cast or rather "selected" some really stereotypical types, and the drama between the people, well there sure is a lot of cliche dialogue just as there are a lot of cliche characters. Even if it is a real-to-life game show then it certainly is an overly directed and narrowly edited one. And now a spoiler alert, so stop reading if you don't want to know about some of the action to come. One thing that seems scripted, is that contestants repeatedly, and too early on, seemed to be overly concerned with alliances, forming alliances, and even talking about who they would like to eliminate. But this is Squid Game, right, not "Survivor." If you buddy up with somebody too much you might end up playing a game of marbles against them, so, if you really want to eliminate your spouse, your mom or best friend, then sure, pair up with them and start making alliances. And since when in Squid Game were contestants, as teams, able to target and eliminate individuals, rather you just worry about your survival and mostly your own survival as there is little control over which other players will or will not be eliminated. Then, seemingly as if on que, the game controllers introduce chores and dorm games where contestants can in fact gain the power to select contestants to eliminate. Suddenly players acting like they are on "Survivor" starts to make sense. But how did they already know that this twist was going to be introduced, and that the game really was going to be more like "Survivor" featuring a "social game" with people backstabbing and plotting to vote people out or eliminate them? How did they just seem to know that this element of players being able to eliminate people was going to be introduced? Of course a contestant actually says "to expect the unexpected." How cliche, and where has that been heard before--wasn't that a line that was repeated over and over on the "Big Brother" TV show or the "Survivor" TV show? Another thing in particular seemed so glaringly off to me, something a small team of script writers could have easily overlooked or failed to think about, but not like 200 people. When it comes time to play the cookie game, four people at a time, representing one of four teams, go into a room to unanimously agree on which team will get to work with which cookie shape, either circle, triangle, star or umbrella. Of course nobody wants umbrella. I am basically already shouting at my TV, "Paper, Rock Scissors." Two players could stand back to back, with the other two looking on as umpires, one, two, three, both players now have one hand in front of them featuring one of the three, paper, rock or scissors. They then turn around to compare, if a tie they repeat, but if one is the winner then the winner stands aside to play in the winners round, and the other player stands aside to play in the losers round or "bracket." Then the other two players do the same thing. Then the two "winners" playoff, then the two "losers" playoff. A simple but pretty much fair and random way to determine who gets first choice, then second, third and fourth. Only they just bicker with each other and fail to agree on which teams gets which cookie shape within the allotted 2 minutes of time, so they are all eliminated. Now four more players have to enter the room. Out of all the players, like 200 people, they can talk about not giving in to somebody, to be tough and boss somebody else into choosing umbrella, they can talk about how many people they would like or not like to see eliminated as players, for however long they four by four at a time fail to agree on the shapes, but not one of these 100 or 200 people can think and shout out "Just do paper, rock, scissors." Well apparently not, as four more players go in, fail to come up with any philosophically logical reasons why one team should have last choice and be stuck with umbrella, and then quickly resort into trying to yell and boss somebody else into selecting umbrella. So, another 4 players are eliminated. At this point, as much as I believe the players are mostly or all American, I am embarrassed for America, as somehow among South Koreans I think they would have near instantly figured out they will have to use a system like playing "Paper, Rock, Scissors," or hidden from one player only, "how many fingers am I holding behind my back" or some form of drawing straws or coin tossing, in order to be fair. But no, nobody out of all of the contestants thinks of anything like this, not one of all of those people. At this point I am wondering if they are all just so stupid that they should all just be eliminated. Really, not one of them thought up anything along these lines? I find it hard to believe that not one out of all of those thought of anything along those lines. What I can believe is that a script writer, or two, or three, could be so caught up in their storyline, that they would fail to realize that in reality somebody among a group that size would be smart enough to just come up with something like that, near instantaneously. Only nobody did. Four more players are eliminated, for a total of eight. Then four more go in, and three of them are then basically able to boss and yell at one player to have to select the umbrella. At other times you can pretty much guess who is going to "Survive" and who is going to be eliminated. When a player as captain of his team talks about what he learned from his days of playing football, and to never give up, oh, that's America tough type talk, so you can pretty much guess that they are going to have a come from behind to win, which they in fact do, coming from behind in as narrow of a victory as they possibly could. When it comes time for five players to play Jack-in-the-Box, as one player starts to crank his handle I look at him and think "who are you, have I even seen you in this show yet? I don't think so, so I guess you are about to be eliminated." And of course then he is. Now what of a player who we are supposed to feel for? Well, we just heard from this one lesbian and self-proclaimed "strong women" whose partner had her child by her egg via artificial insemination. Come on, this is America, we know all about the mass media's love of girl power, the strong woman, the LGBTQ community, and a mother proclaiming that she is playing for her daughter, so no way can she die. She's the child-loving strong woman married to a woman who we are supposed to be rooting for, and so also, of course, she is perhaps not so coincidentally the last one left to crank her box open. She cranks her handle with lots of tension building anxiety, and even stopping then starting the cranking motion again and again several times as she seems to tearfully teeter on the edge of a complete emotional breakdown until up pops Jack, and no, of course she's not eliminated, in fact she ends up getting to eliminate three players. She eliminates three of the men, making things more "even" as she later explains, and then everybody talks about how she made power moves and was so strong. Either they were somehow miraculously and subconsciously totally in tune with her previous self-narrative in the private interview room about how much of a strong woman she was, or else everybody was reading from the same script. If the show isn't completely scripted and isn't a fake, then it certainly is so overly directed and so narrowly edited that it seems that way anyway. Things just seem so predictable, and so cliche, repeatedly. I should not be able to figure out who is going to win and who is going to lose even before the final rounds of a game is played, and especially if that game is based mostly or entirely on chance. And there is so much of this "social game" elimination that it hardly seems like any of the children's games matter much at all. The show just becomes more and more like "Survivor" and "Big Brother" than Squid Game, and as for believability, somehow the fictional South Korean Squid Game series actually seemed to be a lot more about real people and real life than this "Reality" game show seems to be.

All the Light We Cannot See (2023)

A very incongruous and illogical ending, but a lot of tugging at the heartstrings along the way.

[4/10 · 15 November 2023]

Spoiler alert: The father of a blind girl who loves her ham radio flees Paris with his daughter and a very large diamond that is a national treasure of France. After meeting her uncle, who is a radio operator, in Saint Malo, the girl becomes a clandestine radio operator working with the French resistance. After her father, her radio operating uncle, and others, all die to protect her and to keep this national treasure from the Nazis and protect it for France, and after the liberation of Saint Malo by American allied troops, this either totally disdainful or just extremely dull-witted blind girl throws the large diamond into the sea, and with that the national treasure of France is lost forever, just like the lives of her father, her uncle, and all the others who all apparently died in vain to both protect her and this national treasure for France.

Perhaps to her it is as if they all died only just to protect her, just because she was a pretty blind girl: That she herself is alive seems to be the only thing she cares about. That, and perhaps the fact that she just met a new boyfriend for life who she really connected to and relates with, because he also loves ham radios and an old radio show that they both used to listen to as children, a radio show that was broadcast by her uncle and featured him as "The Professor."

So, if you really want to have a lot of sympathy for a pretty blind girl and have your heartstrings repeatedly pulled for her concern and wellbeing, and won't mind that a potentially 250 million dollar diamond and national treasure of France will be disposed of, by her, at the very end of the movie, when it turns out she really didn't care so much about whatever else it might have been that her father, uncle and others were all fighting and died for, then this movie is for you.

Other than that and a few other inconsistent or totally illogical things, the movie should be very easy for common everyday English speakers to follow, because apparently virtually all early-to-mid 1940s German soldiers and everybody in France all spoke English, so the Germans and the French and everybody never have any problems at all understanding and talking with each other throughout the movie.

The point of the movie seems to be that a pretty blind girl survives in the end, and she's all that really mattered to herself anyway. If you like thrills, want to have some tear-jerking sympathy for a pretty blind girl, and you don't think too much or mind things that are totally illogical and just don't seem to add up right, then this movie is for you. If you want to feel and pull for her until the final and very selfish, disdainful and disappointing act by her, then go ahead and waste your time on this series.

XO, Kitty (2023– )

Starts out good enough, then at first slowly, then rapidly, goes downhill.

[3/10 · 30 May 2023]

The main character decides to go to an overseas school, the Korean Independent School of Seoul, (KISS) located in Seoul, South Korea. She doesn't seem to go for any real academic reasons much at all, but rather with the ulterior motives of chasing down her boyfriend who is going there and to find out more about her deceased mother who went there. The first few episodes feature a good sampling of K-pop hits as background music and introduces us to other characters, including instructors, who also seem to have ulterior motives for going to KISS, reasons other than having any particular academic goals, like trying to find and connect with biological parents who put them up for adoption to Australia decades ago, and so on. Sure, there are a few twists, like the main character will discover her boyfriend is already set up with another girlfriend already, but mostly as the episodes start to increasingly drag towards the final episode it seems that almost every single featured character, if they haven't already realized it, slowly discovers and realizes that they are gay or lesbian--all except for maybe one instructor who found out his Korean biological parents don't care a bit about some baby they put up for adoption to Australia decades ago, and maybe that's just because we don't know about him. Anyway, this seems to the point of the movie, that people don't go to the Korean Independent School of Seoul for any academic reasons, but no matter what all their different reasons are, the one thing they will all learn is that they are gay. If your big career goal in life is to be a lesbian or gay, then you might want to find a school just like KISS, the Korean Independent School in Seoul. That's pretty much all of it, so now you don't need to waste your time watching the series, unless you are really interested in what it must be like, at least in some fantasy world, to go to an overseas school where nearly every kid learns, and all in the course of one single academic year, that they are all gay.

Somebody (2022– )

If you are a cinephile then maybe it's a great 8, but if you need car chases, explosions and action heroes, then probably not.

[8/10 · 18 December 2022]

I think it's an all-around very well-made production--good story, good music, well cast, some impressive cinematography, etc.--BUT I notice the distribution of ratings is almost the opposite of a bell curve. So, basically if you are the type of person who tends to like foreign films, cerebral films and such, then you are probably going to love this, a good 8 or 9 rating, but if are the type who knows who Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are, but are clueless as to who Stanley Kubrick, Alejandro Amenabar or Jean-Luc Godard are or were, then this is probably not a series for you. If you are they type who appreciates films for generally more sophisticated adults, then this is for you. Seriously, read the reviews and you can see there are a lot of very high ratings, but then not much in the middle, then a good number of low ratings by people who might rather prefer a good action movie with lots of car chases and explosions and such, along with one person who gave it a 1 because they object to the scene of a dying cat and another person who gave it a 1 because she thought the sex scenes were too much to comfortably watch with her husband. But, if you consider yourself a cinephile who loves great films, well then you are in luck. (And by the way, at least the sex scenes are not gratuitous and I seriously doubt they used a real cat in agony to film the roadkill scenes anymore than the actor portraying the serial killer was actually stabbing or choking real people to death.) If you're not a commoner then I advise you to watch it. It's excellent.

Les Misérables (2012)

Not done in the style of most musicals and an excellent movie.

[8/10 · 26 December 2012]

Just to warn people, there are two big criticisms you really shouldn't let bother you: 1.) It's not Broadway, because it's a movie. No matter what, it was never going to be the same thing as a good stage production of Les Miserables anyway. 2.) No movie should be expected to be completely faithful to a book. If somebody paints a painting about something, and later, somebody writes a song about the exact same thing, people don't expect the lyrics of the song to perfectly explain the painting, but this movie is fair and true enough to the original Victor Hugo novel and story. In the case of the original Les Miserables, Victor Hugo's novel from the 1800s is 1,900 pages long and it wasn't a musical anyway. You couldn't fit all of a book that size into 5 movies, but this movie is true enough to the original story. Plus it fits in almost all of the original Broadway production music.

That being said, I'm not really a big fan of musicals, in fact I tend to not like them, Oklahoma-boring, South Pacific-who cares. About the only musicals I ever really liked include Pink Floyd The Wall and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

But this movie is excellent, as in everybody-in-the-theater-claps-at-the-end excellent.

It's basically not done in song and dance style. Characters are moving around and in action the whole time. There is some spoken dialogue, but it is done very much in the style of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a movie in which 100% of the dialogue is sung. These are basically the only two musicals of this type of style or technique. In The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, you quickly don't notice they are singing at all anymore, and you go through the whole movie as if you are just listening to people talking or arguing, but in this Les Miserables, sometimes you don't notice that they are singing, while other times, well, they are definitely belting it out, but still within the flow of dialogue, and the action of the movie keeps going. They don't interrupt the action to stop and do a big tap dance and singing number or anything like that. In fact, you don't even notice when they are going from straight spoken dialogue and back to singing, sometimes even mid-sentence, and sometimes a character is replying to singing with spoken dialogue, as the two get mixed right in together perfectly.

It you just want the Les Miserables story in a movie but without the music, then watch the 1997 version directed by Bille August, as that is a really good movie. (And includes stars Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, Claire Danes and Geoffrey Rush.)

But remember, the musical Les Miserables has been more to the stage than what movies like The Godfather or even Casablanca ever were to the silver screen. It's number one, with more people having seen a stage production of Les Miserables than Annie, Cats, South Pacific, The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Rent, Miss Saigon, Evita, or anything else, and there is a reason for that and that reason is basically the music. Along with the story of course, but its music is really just that powerful.

You could just watch a recording of some NYC or London stage production of Les Miserables on DVD. There are plenty of those, including ones that are hardly even stage productions but rather more so just opera singers on stage taking turns singing the music. But you aren't going to get a movie type story experience out of those. Just the same, no matter how well done, a good Broadway quality stage performance of Les Miserables is going to be 5 times better than even a perfect Les Miserables musical movie.

This movie is produced like a movie and not as the filming of a stage production.

A movie movie, as we expect it, sets its scenes wherever they need to be. When a character is hiking over the top of a mountain, they are actually there filming on the top of a mountain. That is how this movie usually is. When they are out on the streets of Paris, they are out on the streets of Paris. It's a movie. And it's the story well told. And it's the music. All in one.

Putting all of those things together in one Les Miserables movie, well it's hard to imagine anybody doing it much better or even trying to. A few imperfections or weaknesses are there, but not enough for anybody to try to outdo it anytime soon. Some of the outdoor scenes could have been shot on a location in some French city or town, rather than having buildings or skylines look so much like stage sets or computer generated images. Next to none of the waterfront scenes looked like they were just shot on an actual location, with all sorts of ships and things looking like stage sets or computer generations. Some of the actors could have cut their cockney stage accents for just straight modern English occasionally touched with French accents or pronunciations as needed. (After all, they already weren't shooting in French, so why bother with any fake old timey stage accents that only make characters that much harder to understand?) They could have taken a page from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and seriously stuck to realism and naturalism, rather than appearing as stage performers performing on a stage so much. There were some mighty wobbly cameras in a few scenes.

Even if you are not big fan of Victor Hugo or of musicals, this should still be enough of an action and adventure movie to keep you well entertained. It's long, but that was something unavoidable in order to fit in both enough of the story and the music.

Overall, it's excellent. A rare 9 out of 10 stars for me.

Kariera Nikosia Dyzmy (2002)

A comedy that well meets its mark.

[8/10 · 30 April 2012]

Warning, this reviewer's spoiler comes right up front here, although it isn't really revealing anything that previews, trailers and reviews didn't let onto to begin with, to just note that this movie is in many ways comparable to being a post-Soviet version of 1979's BEING THERE, staring Peter Sellers, just being a bit more modern and a lot more hilarious with its own post-Soviet twists. Comedies, particularly the zanier ones, just can't be compared with the same standards as one might use to judge a drama, but as far as comedies go, this one well hits it mark. It's entertaining, light hearted and funny and with some frolicking nudity, including that of Anna Przybylska, that certainly doesn't hurt it at all. It's not very long, short compared to most movies, keeps moving right along and entertaining, and this movie watcher would think most anybody would enjoy it. This movie watcher gives it 8/10 and would gladly watch it again someday.

Mirror (1975)

Slow, tedious, very little pay off.

[4/10 · 17 April 2012]

Okay, so a lot of old Russian movies seem to want you to experience the poetry blowing through the trees of the Siberian countryside or drag along a good bit to permit you to get in touch with this spirit of the Russian countryside or some various other patriotic connections with the essence of Russianism and such, but this movie is no Siberiade or Russian Ark even. If I personally had grown up in the Russian countryside and if this movie's reputed dreamy, poetic, non-linear recollections were those of my own grandfather, I'm afraid I still would have found this movie to be on the slow, boring and underwhelming side of things. I'm really confused as to how it has scored such a high rating, seriously. If this movie is an 8, then Siberiade, and Come and See, should be about a 16, and even Dr. Zhivago would have to be about a 14. I don't usually post negative comments, and probably wouldn't have bothered if this movie's IMDb average rating was a 6 or maybe even a 7, but as it was an 8 when I decided to watch this movie, well, I just can't figure how that is possible, unless there is some committee appointed by the Russian communist party politburo that is charged with just logging onto IMDb and voting for this movie. I just don't see how it possibly ever got a rating so high. I'll give it a 4, just because there were a few spliced in documentary clips that were interesting, but there were no extraordinary scenes of the countryside, the narrative poetry was not overwhelmingly great, no particular plot, no drama, wow, nothing really, but a slow, tedious movie without any real payoff, unless you can really just thrive on music, Purcell and such, that occasionally breaks the monotony, but then again, hopefully your refrigerator will make some entertaining noises while you are slogging through this movie.

Another Earth (2011)

The big thing a lot of viewers didn't figure out...

[9/10 · 17 January 2012]

Spoiler Alert!!!

This comment is for those who have already seen the movie, as my comments mainly pertain to the last scene.

It would seem that most viewers didn't get something I just automatically figured out during the course of the movie...and this thing has to do with the broken synchronicity. Earth 1 and Earth 2 didn't just automatically start to become different, something had to break synchronicity, and those differences would only occur with the two planets interaction and then have to domino or butterfly effect from there. When she was driving in her car, looking up to see the blue dot in the sky, her double was doing the same thing. But, the other planet was not a mirror image, it was a duplicate, so unlike in a mirror, where when you raise your right hand you see your reflection raising its left hand, what she saw was more like looking into a rorrim, which is a type of mirror where things are not reversed, so you actually see things as others would be looking at you and seeing things...the print of a book you are holding up to a rorrim isn't reversed and you can still easily read it, and so on. When the blue dot was first noticed and the disc jockey was announcing it she looked up into the sky and her body double was also looking up, but exactly where that blue dot was in the sky was different for the two of them. So, given her body double's different positioning of her head, her different angle of viewing, she noticed the other car in time to brake or swerve and miss it. Similarly, when Dr. Joan Tallis was on live TV making live radio contact, at first she thought she was getting feedback, because in reply to anything she said, she was hearing the other Joan Tallis who was broadcasting the exact same radio message to her. This was a frustration for her, until something different about the radio waves traveling through space meant that one of them would hear something differently, and respond differently, so that instead of just saying the same thing to each other at the same time, back and forth, one of them somehow responded differently, "Hello? Hello?" as they undoubtedly had heard something different, or failed to hear something because it was blocked by interference. Then their synchronicity was broken enough in that small way for the two of them to actually have a conversation, and undoubtedly, television viewers on Earth 2 might have experienced a small break in synchronicity, as their Joan Tallis was answering the question about what she bought at the space store in Cape Canaveral, so the viewers on Earth 2 didn't have their Joan Tallis holding up the words "space strawberries," on her yellow pad to possibly provoke the obvious reaction that Rhonda's brother on Earth 1 was having. (And obviously, Rhonda 2's brother didn't have a sister who went to prison, so very likely in that family's life, along with Rhonda 2's friends at MIT, quite a bit of synchronicity had been broken by then.) So, the Rhonda 2 didn't crash, did go to MIT, did study astronomy or astrophysics, which was her area of interest, and won the contest for other reasons, probably just for being a motivated MIT graduate student specializing in space and astronomy. She had nobody to consider giving up her space flight to, since she didn't kill anybody's family. John Burroughs undoubtedly joined his family, now having two fathers, only one being slightly banged up and with minor head injury issues. This was already a question in my mind and in other viewers' minds, whether by looking up at the sky at different angles the two Rhondas had broken synchronicity enough to where one of them had swerved and missed hitting the other car. The final scene didn't raise any questions at all, rather, it quickly and refreshingly answered the really biggest question that viewers who got it were already asking themselves and wondering about. For me, that final scene was a magical and beautiful moment, but not wonderful at all, as it replied to all the wonder by answering every question and tying-up all the loose ends of the story very well, at least as far as the story line was dealing with. (Of course to follow the story one had to at least suspend belief enough to not stray from the story, wondering about things like whether the two planets would be experiencing tsunami tides because of their gravitational pulls and such, etc.)

There was no moral difference between the two Rhondas, it's not that one of them decided to go the party and drink while the other didn't, they were the same person, they were the same drunk, just one was a drunk trying to look at a blue dot in the sky over here, while the other was a drunk trying to look at a blue dot in the sky over there. Face to face, they should realize that were the same person until then, only one, like most drunk drivers, just didn't end up in an accident by mere chance, just dumb luck and nothing else.

I just thought it was a wonderful movie and the final scene answered that wonderful with a terrific happy ending. The two Rhonda's certainly have a lot of catching up to do, and undoubtedly, John and Rhonda are the only people who ended up on the same planet as their other selves, and the other shuttle passengers certainly arrived to notice little or no difference with the planet they left, probably feeling more like returning astronauts than true space explorers. The Rhonda 1 and John 1 switch proved to be an additional but major break in synchronicity for the two Earths.

Emma's Shadow (1988)

Oh, it's a very choice, unique, touching story...

[9/10 · 14 December 2007]

Okay, not really any spoilers per se, but since I might just allude ever so slightly to content of the character of the movie, rather than any specifics, I thought a spoiler alert only fair.

I did read one critic, somewhere, who thought this movie was unrealistic, asking what planet this story must be from to even be possible. But wait, during my college days, wasn't the country this very film is from one of those countries where murders and handgun killing numbers were being compared to the American numbers, like in 1978 in the U.S., 15,000 were killed, in Sweden, 6, France 9, yes, Finland, like 2 or something, so yes, these planets do exist, right here on earth, even today, although increasingly rare. There still exist even cities that house relatively peaceful cultures were this story could just as well be based on a true story. The movie is set in one of those foreign cities where people could actually memorize the names of everybody murdered in their country last year, because the list is just that short! I seem to remember a time in the mid 1960's when places in the US were still this peaceful and trusting, people leaving their house doors unlocked all day, nobody knowing where the kids were at until they came home at sundown, and so on. This movie is just set in one of those sorts of cities, a planet, or world rather, right here on earth, that does exist. One of a few such cities were this story would be very possible, just exactly as it is. So, why not just enjoy the beautiful story for just what it is, rather than doubting it even possible, and assuming it just can't be possible, because there no way that we can stop being suspicious of certain classes of people enough to just believe that people, even young people, could form a connection of trust and friendship with them. Seems to me when I was a young child, most of us tikes had our favorite old people we actually liked and enjoyed seeing. I just believe this movie, and I love it.

I just want to know, am I going to have to keep my VHS player, just because they won't put it on DVD for me?

Private School (1983)

It's just got the greatest soundtrack...

[6/10 · 14 December 2007]

I'm giving it a seven, which I will admit would be high if my enjoyment had anything to do with just dialogue or story content. But honestly, I'm about to buy the DVD, because there is no CD of the soundtrack available, if there ever even was one, but it's why I used to watch the movie again and again whenever it came on the tube. I have seen something about some CD, but with only 5 of the movie's songs on it, and not available for sale!!! But, if everybody burned out on that Big Chill soundtrack, hopefully everybody by now if not ten years ago already, then this is it, the best movie soundtrack there is! Only, you can't buy the soundtrack, so, you have to just watch the movie! Not a great movie, nothing to study with the lights off or even make popcorn for, but if you like music, for that reason, you might enjoy watching this, perhaps just some weekend afternoon when you are just moping about the house and would have been flipping channels with the remote if you weren't watching the movie, under those conditions, if you like music, you might also like the movie, and perhaps wonder why they don't sell a complete soundtrack to the movie! (Okay, The Big Chill soundtrack album/CD didn't include The Rolling Stone's "You can't always get what you want," but it had the rest.) I've searched the web repeatedly, no soundtrack release for this movie ever seems to have existed. And yet, it's an absolutely great one! So, for the music, and the fact I'm even going to buy the DVD, just to hear all the music again, I'm giving it a 7. So there!

Casablanca (1942)

Still the greatest movie of all time!!!

[10/10 · 21 June 2007]

Casablanca is still the greatest movie of all time! Its stars shine, there are memorable lines, quite a few which have been repeated elsewhere or even become the titles of movies themselves, there is superbly artistic and notable cinematography, heartfelt romance, inspiring and touching music, heroes, swelling feelings of sentiment and patriotism, and it is in no way too long, too weird or different. Just an all around great movie, and even for the few of those who can't agree that Casablanca is the all-around greatest movie of all time, they perhaps would at least agree that it has all the elements and plenty enough of what it takes to be putting up an honorable fight to claim that top spot, and most definitely should be on any critic's short list of greatest movies, if they expect to really be taken seriously. .

Time seems to date some movies badly, while it has worked greatly in favor of some movies, like Casablanca. It was made in the day when color was rare, yet, used black in white so well that it seems to be a great example of a movie that should have been filmed in black and white, even if doing such were to have cost more than color. The false looking backgrounds in its Paris automobile scenes in particular, although perhaps not so intended, has actually been used as a purposeful technique of dreamy recollection and such, in a few more modern day films. And again, even though perhaps not intended at the time, and even though the entire movie was made in studio, the fact that the Paris scenes are the ones that look so particularly fake is appropriate, since, at that very time, those scenes had to be fake, as Paris wasn't available, because it was under German occupation. There is no understating that this movie was a part of the arsenal of democracy itself, its story, themes and passion are set in the very center of what was then the raging battle for the world in what would become the single most defining event of the 20th Century, World War II. Every actor in the film, the director, the producer, and anybody and everybody working on the film or in any way involved with its making, were, in fact, at war with Nazi Germany.

There is no need for a learned critic or professor to explain this or anything about the movie, anything about its producers having used some new technique, some new technology, or any particularly notable new style of cinematography to just enjoy Casablanca. It's very touching in its story of human relationships and it is so noted for its black and white cinematography that some of its most ardent fans consider any colorizations of it sacrilege, even among those of us not generally opposed to the idea of colorization. And, it is the story of its times. Its depiction of challenged French patriotism brings tears the eyes of many a repeat viewer time and time again, when The Marseilles is sung. There are lines that people repeat, songs that even today people sing and whistle. In terms of just all around sheer entertainment, the movie is petty much as good as it gets. It is not only difficult to come up with a suggestion of what movies of the 20th century could be considered as good, it's impossible to find any movie that has anywhere near as many people thinking of it as the greatest movie of the 20th century. It's as if a clear majority think it the greatest movie of all time, and as for what other movie is even a contender to Casablanca's claim to the title, well, there is no clear single contender. I doubt fans of Casablanca could even form a majority as to what the second greatest movie of all time is. Even if all those who have another movie in mind could have a run-off to determine their party's candidate, it wouldn't matter, as Casablanca already has 65% of the general electorate locked-up. Although all-time is far from over, it's safe to say that Casablanca is now the for-all-time greatest movie of the 20th Century. Its as if Indiana Jones was involved in some battle, in the middle of some war, that we were actually passionately involved in at the time, with our entire economy geared towards the goal of winning that war, against actual Nazis soldiers, rather than the theatrical Nazi-ish soldiers that Indiana Jones was having problems with. Except Casablanca's actors are legendary movie icons. The dialogue is superior. The musical score is among the best of movies, as memorable as even the best of musicals, only Casablanca isn't a musical. Just as the main song of the movie is about a fight for love and glory, exactly what the entire free western and allied world was engaged in at that time, so the viewer feels where they stand in their heart of hearts. The viewer relates to the characters, and anybody familiar with history who believes in freedom and democracy isn't just cheering for our characters in the end, we truly feel as if we are on their side! Had the allied battle been lost, Casablanca may very well have quickly become a controlled, discarded and forgotten piece of illicit war propaganda. But as things turned out, it's Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, along with Dooley Wilson, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and many others, starring in the greatest roles of their careers in what clearly still seems to be the greatest movie of all time. Casablanca's being part of the patriotic effort itself, is perhaps one of its greatest advantages in cementing its claim as the greatest movie of all time, and this is a concrete advantage that will only continue to strengthen and harden, "As Time Goes By."