MLP-SEMO/CSR_datasets · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Genius.
But like the man said: "Rock and roll is dead - long live rock and roll."
Not this flick, though.
No stars for "Down on Us."
And that's the movie audience describing the film, by the way....
what ends up killing this movie is its self-consciousness, among other things.
here's a short list: 1.
irreverent behavior.
when the beatles came over and injected their brand of "quirky, irreverent" behavior/humor, it was greeted as fresh.
that was over 4 decades ago.
get over it.
false sophistication.
spewing out base, quasi-socio-political-isms is hard ground to make work comically.
ask woody allen.
the post-modern "i'm hard on this phony world and yes, i recognize it in myself" snake eating itself - used as illustration with another animal in the film itself!
- is such a retread.
smarmy, smug drollness.
amateurish writing, acting, direction...
ever seen student films?
a victim of itself, about the only thing i can say positive is that it at least has a sense of itself, and sheesh, now i'm getting caught up in the self-reflexive thing that it posits as worthwhile, of value.
but towards...
what?
ultimately, it just rings as hollow as any other pretentious piece - hey, ever see woody allen's take on bergman, ie: "Interiors"???
well, this just does it more amateurishly.
Not to be confused with the Madonna film "The Next Best Thing", "The Last Big Thing" is a silly, campy, off-the-wall comedy about a man who yearns to start a magazine called "The Next Big Thing" which reviews a variety of up and coming artists.
This low budget indie makes "Chuck and Buck" look like a masterpiece.
Fraught with lousy acting, poor sets and costuming, etc.
, ."..
Thing" has earned some awful reviews and to date has only been nominated for one fringe award.
Pass on this one.
After reading the book, I loved the story.
Watching the movie I was disappointed that so many changes were made.
It is understandable that books and movies differ but it was two different stories, only the names and some of the book's story remained.
Read the book and you'll have a better understanding of the movie.
The book gives you a better development of the characters.
These characters are extremely interesting and make you care about them.
The locations were indeed in line with the book's descriptions.
Some characters not included.
Television has microwaved so many great books and stories, this is a perfect example of that.
Input from the author doesn't always insure a good movie but it can help sometimes.
I read the book and really enjoyed it from beginning to end.
However, when I saw the movie I was very disappointed.
First of all, no disrespect to Deborah Raffin but she was too mature to play a woman of 24/25.
The late Christopher Reeve was also miscast-same reason.
Will, according to the book,was around 30.
I would have love to see a little more exploration of his military life, his friend Red, Elly's trip to see him as that was an important part of the characters' storyline development.
Also Miss Beasley was miscast as the book mentioned her being a Plus Size lady.
I know the movie didn't have the budget of the "Bridges Of Madison County" which I believe was released around the same time.
But to me this was a very poorly made, low budget, miscast movie.
As someone mentioned, I wish that Miss Spenser would come out of retirement and write screenplays for her books as they ought to be.
She knows her characters better than anyone, I hope that she would consider doing the casting too.
The movie let me down!
I've seen my fair share of badly thought-out endings and final twists to films, but I don't recall any film that committed outright suicide like this one did.
The film makers were clearly hoping that the great twist would 'surprise' us all....
and it did, but perhaps not in the way the directors had hoped.
I was left feeling surprised that Connery, Harris, Fishburn and Capshaw had anything to do with this turkey, individually or collectively.
The film up until the final thirty minutes was rather engaging and I like the way the story was unfolding and the nature of the film overall.
But once the twist was revealed, the plot holes and inconsistencies were remarkable, the underlying motive for revenge was ill-conceived and the ways things so neatly worked out for Bobby Earl was ridiculously far-fetched.
What's worse is that, once the twist was revealed, the remainder of the film became excruciatingly predictable.
Harris gave a terrific performance and Connery is like Morgan Freeman in that he never gives a bad performance, even if the movie ain't that great!
So all in all, it starts well and the unfolding keeps the viewer interested.
The last 30 minutes is one of the most memorable nose dives in the history of cinema.
Paul Armstrong is a liberal, Scottish-born, professor of law at Harvard, known for his passionate opposition to the death penalty, who is hired to take on the case of Bobby Earl, a young black man from Florida who has been convicted of the rape and murder of Joanie Shriver, an eleven year old white girl.
Earl claims that his confession to the crime was obtained under duress by a sadistic police officer and that the real murderer is Blair Sullivan, a serial killer already under sentence of death for several other murders.
Armstrong visits Sullivan in his cell on death row, hoping to persuade him to confess to Joanie's murder, thereby saving Earl from the electric chair.
At first all goes well.
Sullivan confesses and Earl is released from prison when the appeal court quashes his conviction.
As this development takes place only a little after halfway through the film, it is at this point that alarm bells will start ringing in the mind of the viewer.
"Warning!
Major plot twist ahead!"
And so it proves.
The anticipated twist soon materialises.
Earl, it transpires, is actually guilty of the crime of which he has just been acquitted, and probably of several others as well, but hatched a diabolical plan together with Sullivan in order to secure his freedom;
Sullivan will confess to Joanie's murder if Earl will murder his parents.
(Just why Sullivan wanted his parents dead is never precisely explained).
Armstrong now finds that he is himself in danger from the man whose life he has just saved;
Earl has a grudge against Armstrong's wife, herself a lawyer, who acted as Counsel for the prosecution in an earlier case when Earl was accused of rape.
"Just Cause" is an example of the auto-cannibalism in which Hollywood sometimes likes to indulge, cobbling together one film by recycling themes and plot devices from a number of others.
The first half owes an obvious debt to films like "Intruder in the Dust" and "To Kill a Mockingbird";
about the only difference is that the Sheriff who beats a confession out of Bobby Earl is himself black, whereas in earlier films he would have been white.
(Police brutality is now an equal opportunities activity).
The central twist in the plot was borrowed from Costa-Gavras's "Music Box", although in that film the revelation does not occur until the very end.
The finale, in which a lawyer, his wife and their young daughter are in danger from a former client, is an obvious plagiarism of the two versions of "Cape Fear", which also take place in the swamplands of the American South.
Ed Harris' characterisation of Sullivan as a Bible-quoting religious maniac is a direct imitation of Robert de Niro's character in the Scorsese version of "Cape Fear", made four years before "Just Cause."
(There is a postscript.
Just as "Just Cause" borrowed heavily from several other movies, seven years later its central plot twist was, in its turn, to be blatantly plagiarised in the Ashley Judd vehicle "High Crimes").
The trouble with this style of film-making-by-numbers is that the resulting films are generally much less distinguished than those which inspired them.
The whole is normally very much less than the sum of the parts, and "Just Cause" is a much lesser film than any of those which were cannibalised to make it.
Harris is normally a gifted actor but this is one of his weakest performances, largely because he is not so much playing a character as playing de Niro playing Max Cady.
Blair Underwood is OK as Bobby Earl the (supposedly) innocent young man of the early scenes, but unconvincing as Bobby Earl the murderous psychopath of the later ones.
Sean Connery as Armstrong and Laurence Fishburne as the black Sheriff are rather better, but neither is good enough to save the film.
(Connery and Harris were to act together in another, better, film, "The Rock", the following year).
There is another problem with "Just Cause."
The first half of the film looks like a standard liberal "issue" movie, anti-death penalty, anti-racist and critical of heavy-handed policing.
The second half looks more like the work of a die-hard reactionary, preaching the message that all criminals are evil bastards, that the only way to deal with them is to fry them in the chair, that liberal lawyers are the useful idiots of the criminal fraternity and that police officers who beat up suspects are to be commended as heroes.
The filmmakers seem to have been blissfully unaware that the plot twist casually introduced into the middle of their film had the (presumably unwanted) effect of reversing its political stance, or if they were aware of the problem they ignored it.
A suitably convoluted plot was obviously thought to be more important than political consistency.
4/10
JUST CAUSE showcases Sean Connery as a Harvard law prof, Kate Capshaw (does she still get work?) as his wife (slight age difference) and Lawrence Fishburne as a racist southern cop (!) and Ed Harris in a totally over the top rendition of a fundamentalist southern serial killer.
Weird casting, but the movie plays serious mindf** with the audience.

Genius.

But like the man said: "Rock and roll is dead - long live rock and roll."

Not this flick, though.

No stars for "Down on Us."

And that's the movie audience describing the film, by the way....

what ends up killing this movie is its self-consciousness, among other things.

here's a short list: 1.

irreverent behavior.

when the beatles came over and injected their brand of "quirky, irreverent" behavior/humor, it was greeted as fresh.

that was over 4 decades ago.

get over it.

false sophistication.

spewing out base, quasi-socio-political-isms is hard ground to make work comically.

ask woody allen.

the post-modern "i'm hard on this phony world and yes, i recognize it in myself" snake eating itself - used as illustration with another animal in the film itself!

- is such a retread.

smarmy, smug drollness.

amateurish writing, acting, direction...

ever seen student films?

a victim of itself, about the only thing i can say positive is that it at least has a sense of itself, and sheesh, now i'm getting caught up in the self-reflexive thing that it posits as worthwhile, of value.

but towards...

what?

ultimately, it just rings as hollow as any other pretentious piece - hey, ever see woody allen's take on bergman, ie: "Interiors"???

well, this just does it more amateurishly.

Not to be confused with the Madonna film "The Next Best Thing", "The Last Big Thing" is a silly, campy, off-the-wall comedy about a man who yearns to start a magazine called "The Next Big Thing" which reviews a variety of up and coming artists.

This low budget indie makes "Chuck and Buck" look like a masterpiece.

Fraught with lousy acting, poor sets and costuming, etc.

, ."..

Thing" has earned some awful reviews and to date has only been nominated for one fringe award.

Pass on this one.

After reading the book, I loved the story.

Watching the movie I was disappointed that so many changes were made.

It is understandable that books and movies differ but it was two different stories, only the names and some of the book's story remained.

Read the book and you'll have a better understanding of the movie.

The book gives you a better development of the characters.

These characters are extremely interesting and make you care about them.

The locations were indeed in line with the book's descriptions.

Some characters not included.

Television has microwaved so many great books and stories, this is a perfect example of that.

Input from the author doesn't always insure a good movie but it can help sometimes.

I read the book and really enjoyed it from beginning to end.

However, when I saw the movie I was very disappointed.

First of all, no disrespect to Deborah Raffin but she was too mature to play a woman of 24/25.

The late Christopher Reeve was also miscast-same reason.

Will, according to the book,was around 30.

I would have love to see a little more exploration of his military life, his friend Red, Elly's trip to see him as that was an important part of the characters' storyline development.

Also Miss Beasley was miscast as the book mentioned her being a Plus Size lady.

I know the movie didn't have the budget of the "Bridges Of Madison County" which I believe was released around the same time.

But to me this was a very poorly made, low budget, miscast movie.

As someone mentioned, I wish that Miss Spenser would come out of retirement and write screenplays for her books as they ought to be.

She knows her characters better than anyone, I hope that she would consider doing the casting too.

The movie let me down!

I've seen my fair share of badly thought-out endings and final twists to films, but I don't recall any film that committed outright suicide like this one did.

The film makers were clearly hoping that the great twist would 'surprise' us all....

and it did, but perhaps not in the way the directors had hoped.

I was left feeling surprised that Connery, Harris, Fishburn and Capshaw had anything to do with this turkey, individually or collectively.

The film up until the final thirty minutes was rather engaging and I like the way the story was unfolding and the nature of the film overall.

But once the twist was revealed, the plot holes and inconsistencies were remarkable, the underlying motive for revenge was ill-conceived and the ways things so neatly worked out for Bobby Earl was ridiculously far-fetched.

What's worse is that, once the twist was revealed, the remainder of the film became excruciatingly predictable.

Harris gave a terrific performance and Connery is like Morgan Freeman in that he never gives a bad performance, even if the movie ain't that great!

So all in all, it starts well and the unfolding keeps the viewer interested.

The last 30 minutes is one of the most memorable nose dives in the history of cinema.

Paul Armstrong is a liberal, Scottish-born, professor of law at Harvard, known for his passionate opposition to the death penalty, who is hired to take on the case of Bobby Earl, a young black man from Florida who has been convicted of the rape and murder of Joanie Shriver, an eleven year old white girl.

Earl claims that his confession to the crime was obtained under duress by a sadistic police officer and that the real murderer is Blair Sullivan, a serial killer already under sentence of death for several other murders.

Armstrong visits Sullivan in his cell on death row, hoping to persuade him to confess to Joanie's murder, thereby saving Earl from the electric chair.

At first all goes well.

Sullivan confesses and Earl is released from prison when the appeal court quashes his conviction.

As this development takes place only a little after halfway through the film, it is at this point that alarm bells will start ringing in the mind of the viewer.

"Warning!

Major plot twist ahead!"

And so it proves.

The anticipated twist soon materialises.

Earl, it transpires, is actually guilty of the crime of which he has just been acquitted, and probably of several others as well, but hatched a diabolical plan together with Sullivan in order to secure his freedom;

Sullivan will confess to Joanie's murder if Earl will murder his parents.

(Just why Sullivan wanted his parents dead is never precisely explained).

Armstrong now finds that he is himself in danger from the man whose life he has just saved;

Earl has a grudge against Armstrong's wife, herself a lawyer, who acted as Counsel for the prosecution in an earlier case when Earl was accused of rape.

"Just Cause" is an example of the auto-cannibalism in which Hollywood sometimes likes to indulge, cobbling together one film by recycling themes and plot devices from a number of others.

The first half owes an obvious debt to films like "Intruder in the Dust" and "To Kill a Mockingbird";

about the only difference is that the Sheriff who beats a confession out of Bobby Earl is himself black, whereas in earlier films he would have been white.

(Police brutality is now an equal opportunities activity).

The central twist in the plot was borrowed from Costa-Gavras's "Music Box", although in that film the revelation does not occur until the very end.

The finale, in which a lawyer, his wife and their young daughter are in danger from a former client, is an obvious plagiarism of the two versions of "Cape Fear", which also take place in the swamplands of the American South.

Ed Harris' characterisation of Sullivan as a Bible-quoting religious maniac is a direct imitation of Robert de Niro's character in the Scorsese version of "Cape Fear", made four years before "Just Cause."

(There is a postscript.

Just as "Just Cause" borrowed heavily from several other movies, seven years later its central plot twist was, in its turn, to be blatantly plagiarised in the Ashley Judd vehicle "High Crimes").

The trouble with this style of film-making-by-numbers is that the resulting films are generally much less distinguished than those which inspired them.

The whole is normally very much less than the sum of the parts, and "Just Cause" is a much lesser film than any of those which were cannibalised to make it.

Harris is normally a gifted actor but this is one of his weakest performances, largely because he is not so much playing a character as playing de Niro playing Max Cady.

Blair Underwood is OK as Bobby Earl the (supposedly) innocent young man of the early scenes, but unconvincing as Bobby Earl the murderous psychopath of the later ones.

Sean Connery as Armstrong and Laurence Fishburne as the black Sheriff are rather better, but neither is good enough to save the film.

(Connery and Harris were to act together in another, better, film, "The Rock", the following year).

There is another problem with "Just Cause."

The first half of the film looks like a standard liberal "issue" movie, anti-death penalty, anti-racist and critical of heavy-handed policing.

The second half looks more like the work of a die-hard reactionary, preaching the message that all criminals are evil bastards, that the only way to deal with them is to fry them in the chair, that liberal lawyers are the useful idiots of the criminal fraternity and that police officers who beat up suspects are to be commended as heroes.

The filmmakers seem to have been blissfully unaware that the plot twist casually introduced into the middle of their film had the (presumably unwanted) effect of reversing its political stance, or if they were aware of the problem they ignored it.

A suitably convoluted plot was obviously thought to be more important than political consistency.

4/10

JUST CAUSE showcases Sean Connery as a Harvard law prof, Kate Capshaw (does she still get work?) as his wife (slight age difference) and Lawrence Fishburne as a racist southern cop (!) and Ed Harris in a totally over the top rendition of a fundamentalist southern serial killer.

Weird casting, but the movie plays serious mindf** with the audience.