Cradle Will Rock

Rating:
Summary: one of the best films I've seen
Review: I love this movie. The acting is wonderful, I'm a big fan of almost everyone in it. Ruben Blades' portrayal of Rivera is right on, although Frida Khalo couldn't walk. (I figured that was part of the mostly true story) And at the very end, if you listen carefully you can hear Hank Azaria do the voice of Karl during the performance. All round fabulous film, the more you watch it, the more you appreciate it. My favorite line, Lenin, stays!

Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece!
Review: I can't believe that such as great movie didn't get the attention it deserved, it really recrerated depression-era New york so well i actually believed i was there. I think people didn'ty like either because they couldn' t understand it or they said "Another pro-leftist movie" or whatever, i don't believe it is leftist.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Flawed Masterpiece
Review: "Cradle Will Rock" is a flawed and brilliant masterpiece. I was hooked early on and honestly needed to see it a few times, each viewing increased my admiration for Robbins work. The movie sprawls a bit but has all the atmosphere of the period and everyone gives a rather memorable performance. I can't help but rate this film five stars, warts and all.

Rating:
Summary: Historically Inaccurate
Review: The terrible irony of this movie is that it presents and challenges a "victors write the history books" view of the bigots investigating the WPA and then perpetuates that same view in the way it callously messes around with one of the most dramatic events in theatre history and one of the greatest stories. What is the end result? They take a true moment of triumph and fabricate it into a manufactured climax, they take 21 year old Orson Welles and turn him into a 35 year old drunkard with John Houseman as his straight-man. Yes, there are some very touching moments in the movie and Bill Murray is great but it would have worked better if it had just been the truth.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent movie
Review: Very enjoyable - strong performances. For those that enjoy Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle" and "Grapes of Wrath," the subject matter will be of interest. For those not interested in labor struggles during the depression, the censorship, political oppression & witchhunts in the film should be enough to keep the viewer engaged. A very good film.

Rating:
Summary: The Beauty of Art...
Review: Who do you think you are? Do you believe just because America uses democracy it's the right system? And do you people actually believe that America (or any country in the world for that matter) applies democracy correctly? Do you believe the Soviets were actually Communists? No country in the past 100 years has ever used a system correctly, accoridng to the book. How can you critisize a system that you know by incorrect examples? You can't. Cradle Will Rock is NOT a left-wing movie. Neither is it right-wing. Do you know what left-wing is? During the trials in the french revolution trials, people who wanted a new system, where everybody is equal, sat on the left side of the halls. Cradle Will Rock is a movie about passion for art and how this love can overcome political idiotic errors. I admire Tim Robbins because he made a movie that most people (that count the movie as left-wing) would not understand, for tha sake of retelling a story telling how artistic freedom should not be limited by politics. All the actors in the movie are perfect, as is Robbin's wonderful screenplay. The directing is even better. Watch the first scene: there is not one cut in 15 minutes and everything is in perfect symphony. Robbins doesn't critisize Democracy or any political system. He critisizes a nation which opted to destroy masterpieces in art, for the sole reason of them being political. He adds insult to injury by telling us that America, which we all knew as the heros of the 2nd world war, actually fought their own steel, their own belongings in the war. America had given Italy and the Nazis the materials to become as strong as they became. ... A beautiful movie what can I say. Anybody intrested in arts should take pride while watching it.

Rating:
Summary: Hollyweird does Marx
Review: This is it folks! Proof positive that the Hollywood elite live in a fantasy land of political naiveté. Cradle Will Rock is so horrendously dull, so stupendously pretentious, so predictably and nauseatingly left-wing it took Herculean willpower to prevent the bile from rising to my throat as I watched it. Just short of the end I couldn't stand it anymore and turned it off. Why do wealthy entertainers like Tim Robbins and wifey Susan Susan Sarandon feel it is their birth-right and moral obligation to reeducate we unwashed masses in the glories of Marxism through the medium of film? More importantly what wealthy Capitalist looney would put up the money to make this garbage anyway? Tie-died yuppie Communist philosophy does not make good theater or good movies!

Rating:
Summary: A MUST for theatre fans!
Review: Tim Robbins brilliantly combines history with entertainment in Cradle Will Rock. At the beginning it says "A [Mostly] True Story." While some people may become weary of that, rest assured Robbins did NOT change history. The only fictional part are the characters of Grey Mathers and his wife, Carlo, and Margharita Serfatti (BRILLIANTLY played by Susan Sarandon; who would think that Janet Weiss and Marmee could also be an Italian fascist?!). However, they are all loosely based on masses of people who existed during the Great Depression. The story is delightfully interweaved, balancing acting, writing and art as well as their counterparts, criticism and downfalls. I learned so much about The Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration and the rise of Fascist Italy and I honestly didn't realize it at first! It was not until I bought the book Cradle Will Rock: The Movie and the Moment that I learned 99% of that movie was true, including the ultimate performance of Cradle Will Rock, the dispute between Diego Rivera and Nelson Rockerfeller, and the Federal Theatre Project trial. There is an excellent script and score in Cradle Will Rock. I was also pleased with the acting, Hank Azaria plays a wonderful Marc Blitzstein, Emily Watson a wonderful Olive Stanton, and Angus MacFadden was a PHENOMENAL Orson Welles. I was completely enchanted by his character and he commanded the screen every time he entered. However the best part is that you gain so much appreciation for theatre today. The government doesn't censor shows like Rent or The Vagina Monologues and we take that for granted so many times. But shows as harmless as Revolt of the Beavers or Cradle Will Rock were censored and restricted, and the government even sent armed guards to prevent Cradle Will Rock from opening! Imagine if they did that now if some minute detail was found offensive, we would have practically no Broadway! Wonderful wit, fabulous actors, a great script, story, and score blend together to make a great movie not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie. Too bad it was completely overlooked.
Review: After seeing the reviews for Cradle Will Rock I just have to add my two cents. People seem to be far too concerned with Tim Robbins' alteration of the story in question. This is a movie, not a documentary. The themes of the movie are far more imprtant than any history lesson about the stage play in question. I don't claim to know what Mr. Robbins was thinking when he made this movie but I know this is part of it: during the last hundred years art, in all it's forms, has been bought, altered, censored, and exploited by big business and big governement. This has allowed more people to live and work as artists but it has also robbed them of their artistic vision and control, especially in Hollywood. Tim Robbins is making a statement. Look beyond the story to find it.

Rating:
Summary: a great story poorly filmed only makes for a poor movie
Review: I really had great hopes for this movie given its cast and the story of the Federal Theatre Project but the results are terribly thin both narratively and technically. Tim Robbins is obviously trying for Robert Altman's brand of ensemble magic here but he doesn't lend any kind of director's sensibility to the material and it sits there on the screen completely inert. (Robbins makes the mistake critics have always wrongly accused Altman of: relying exclusively on the actors for his effects). I kept watching the famous faces rushing around playing famous people and couldn't believe that the movie refused to develop much beyond one of those name-dropping Vanity Fair exposes of bygone Hollywood or Broadway; entertaining and diverting when you read them, completely forgotten when you're done. You admire the majority of the cast for who they are and for what they've done in the past, not for the slight performances the material forces on them here. What good is having dozens of famous actors play dozens of famous people if you present their histories without any depth or purpose? This is a view of 1930s New York in the same way that the musical "Annie" is a view of 1930s New York. The movie is lit by Jean-Yves Escoffier in a way that is totally wrong for the material and for the period; New York looks like it does in Vincente Minnelli musicals instead of a city suffering the effects of the Depression. This movie even manages to make Vanessa Redgrave tiresome; Robbins cuts to her beaming, approving, cheering face again and again when she's in the audience during the anticlimatic performance scenes and the message seems to be: if Vanessa Redgrave can stay awake for this, so can you. If there is a great story to be told about this particular artistic and political milieu, a failure like this will make it just that much harder for future filmmakers to have a go at it, a rather embarassing legacy for Robbins.