Alive

Rating:
Summary: Inspiring movie!!!
Review: I absolutely love this movie!!! One of my all time favorites because it's based on a true story and because the cast did such a wonderful job with the characters!!! Most of the actors are little known, perhaps out of Canada...Ethan Hawke (Gattaca), Josh Hamilton (The '60s), Vincent Spano(???), Bruce Ramsay(Starstruck), David Kriegel (Speed), Christian Meoli (Bongwater), Jake Carpenter (???), Michael DeLorenzo (Resurrection Blvd)and tons of other good actors star as members of a rugby (a kind of football) team from Uruguay, South America. En route to Chile to play a game, their plane encounters rough weather and the pilots are unable to prevent a horrifying crash. The special effects are super!!! It's awful to admit, but I have fun watching this scene because of the effects. They crash in the Andes, some of the tallest, coldest and most forbidding mountains in the world, and they are immediately plunged into a survival oddesey in which they face the rage of the elements, bitter cold, endless snow and blizzards, starvation, and death. Many of the passengers died in the crash, others perished from cold, hunger, and loss of hope. It's interesting to see them at the beginning, clean shaven, handsome, innocent and watch hardship transform them into scruffy, wind burnt, chapped survivors who are determined to save themselves. I read a review by some woman who called this movie "One big bad idea" and proceeded to poke fun at the cannibalism and use tired punchlines about "fava beans and chianti". She along with many others, missed the whole meaning of the movie. I only hope she doesn't find herself in a situation such as this sometime in her life. This movie doesn't wallow in cannibalism and gore. It treats it with respect and sensitivity. There are those who thought the references to God were annoying and redundant. When you are in a situation where you just might die, you are lonely for God's presence. I say, if you don't want to see a movie where God and life and death are the themes, don't watch this. Otherwise, this movie will always be one of the greatest survival dramas of all time. I only wish they'd make a movie about the Donner Party, and no, Ravenous doesn't count!!!
Mari Weir

Rating:
Summary: Recently in Italy at rete 4
Review: I d'like having a sample of this video!!!!! Is it also avalable in German and PAL-Coded? It is a very great film!

Rating:
Summary: Great film...until you read the book!!
Review: I saw the film Alive a while before I read the book, and if you haven't done either I'd suggest you watch the film first. I thought it was a superb but harrowing movie and considered it one of my favourite films of all, but my girlfriend later bought me the book by Piers Paul Read and after reading that many times now I have to say I feel the film could have been so much better. Why?? (1) the subject of the consuming of human flesh in the film is restricted to not much more than the scenes where they discuss the morals of doing it and the initial eating when the flesh is cut from one of the casualties. In the book, Read details throughout his account the nausea-inducing levels to much the survivors went to use this food source, including making clothing from the skin, cooking layers of fat in the sun, eating rotten intestines just to have a new taste, cracking open skulls to consume the brains and keeping limbs in the plane to knaw on during the night. I don't think this should have been included in the film for the sake of gore or effect, but should in some way have been shown as to me it indicates how quickly the mindset of the survivors lurched from utter revulsion at eating the flesh to the systematic consumption or utilisation of the entire body without any hesitation. (2) the trek by Canessa and Parrado to find help was an epic on it's own, but the film dismisses most of it with an aerial shot showing a valley turning from snow to vegetation. (3) the film completely ignores the large portions of the book which deal with the efforts made by parents and friends to find the plane wreck. This is as engrossing as the story of the survivors themselves, especially as the reader knows at the same time which of the boys are alive and which are dead as their families search for them. (4) there is a major shock at the end of the book which turns the whole story on it's head (I won't spoil it for those who haven't read the book, but it regards a hotel!!) which could easily have been included in the film as a piece of onscreen text at the end, but again this is totally ignored when it could have added considerably to the story. In all, I guess really this is a review of the film against the book rather than of the film itself. I still love the film on it's own merits and watch it frequently. I just can't help thinking it could have been so much better.

Rating:
Summary: A journey to God!
Review: I too believe this is a great movie. But what touched me more about it is the fact that it is a "true" experience through which many people go, an experience that ends up as a major turning point in many people's lives. If there were anything significant about their experience, it would certainly be the revival of their Faith in God! Even the most arrogant of them, who "thought" that he is an "agnostic", he had no shelter but to submit to God, and pray to Him! I loved this movie cause it's very true. It reminds us of the real values that we almost forgot, or maybe deliberately choose to ignore, in our fast everyday lives, the value of life, and the value of Faith. I do not agree that there was any conflict in this story between the religion and the idea that they "had" to eat human flesh in order to survive. God is merciful and would not ask you to kill yourself when you have an option not to. Religion is applicable in all situations, and the rule of necessity says that when there are only two evil options to choose from, then you "should" choose the least of the 2 evils. I recommend this video to anyone who hasn't gone through a similar experience in his/her life, and i look forward to reading the book.

Rating:
Summary: .. alive ..
Review: It's a good story .. but the film doesn't do it the justice that I think it could have. Don't get me wrong, the movie IS great, but....

Of course, John Malkovich .. he's the man.. so how can you _really_ go wrong there? :)

Rating:
Summary: The Funniest Movie ever
Review: Now some people say this is the greatest story of survival ever told, but honestly, I dont share that opinion. I laughed harder while watching this movie than any comedy ever. This movie is the greatest comedy ever. I laughed from start to finish. The best line, "Pass the co-pilot." I still crack up at that. Sometimes when I have had a bad day, I pop this DVD in, and it cheers me up. Kudos to the man who directed this movie, you have mad a comic gem for later generations.

Rating:
Summary: Good stuff, but no where near the power of the book.
Review: Solid movie. For fans of the book however, this picture does not come close to evoking the emotions felt in type. A much better job could have been done, not by the actors, but by the director, in capturing the sheer weight of the undertaking, and especially the expedition. I did not have the overwhelming feeling of accomplishment at the end that I did when reading.
The ending is true to the text, but glossy and rushed.

Uplifting, to be sure, but yet another example of missed opportunity in turning an incredible book into a so-so film.
Three stars.

Rating:
Summary: Tragic And True
Review: The grievously underrated 1993 docudrama ALIVE is based on a tragic but true story involving survival at its most basic in the inhumane and cold wastes of the Andes.

On October 13, 1972, a Uruguayan air force plane carrying forty passengers (most of them members of a rugby squad) and a crew of five crashed 11,000 feet high in the Andes. Twenty-one died either instantly in the plane crash or from injuries they suffered for weeks after. Eight others were killed when a nighttime avalanche all but buried what was left of the fuselage. Sixteen survived after two of their own breached the Andes; all were freed from their ordeal by Christmas Eve. But part of their survival over a ten week period of sub-zero cold and death lay in their having to eat the bodies of the dead.

Like IN COLD BLOOD, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, and (later) APOLLO 13, ALIVE stays true to the well-known facts of this tragic ordeal. Director Frank Marshall shares with his mentor Steven Spielberg a gift for putting the viewer in the shoes of the film's protagonists. Each aspect of the story is explored, including the undeniable fact that cannibalism played a part in it. But unlike the gory 1976 Mexican exploitation flick SURVIVE!, ALIVE does not dwell on that gruesome aspect for too long. The film is excellent on all technical levels (including the plane crash sequence, one of the most horrifying ever depicted on screen), and the cast, including Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton, accurately portray the participants in this story.

For those who appreciate films based on real-life events, ALIVE is a definite must-see, despite its unavoidably gruesome subtext.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: The plane carrying the Uruguayan rugby team crashes in the Andes, and the survivors have to turn to cannibalism to continue to survive.

I'm going to begin by saying, if you want to see cannibalism, get Night of the Living Dead, or Motel Hell. This is not a film about cannibalism. The few scenes that explore this part of the group's survival, focus on the moral dilemma of cannibalism vs. starvation and death. The film doesn't gloss over this portion of the story, but handles it forthrightly and with dignity.

The rest of the film is beautiful. It could have easily descended into a made-for-TV maudlin tale of brave survivors fighting the odds, but it doesn't. It is a story about bravery, perseverance, and teamwork, and it addresses these things so eloquently, that I'm left feeling no one should make another film about "the human spirit," because this film says it all, and does it so well. In fact, I'd like to erase all the cloying films about personal triumph, and make this film the sole bearer of that theme.

Part of the film's brilliance is the cinematography. The camera takes an active part in telling the story, with inspired shots and angles.

The ensemble cast gets credit for the rest of it. Films with ensemble casts often sink under the weight of all the actors, but this film does not. This is one of the best films that doesn't have a star, but relies on the totality of talent available. With so many characters, you might think you'll need a scorecard to keep track, but you don't. Each of the more than 20 actors here plays a fully developed character.

This is one of those movies that seems to step off the screen. The viewer feels like one of the castaways. The tension and drama are that real.

And it made me cry. Few films can accomplish that.

Rating:
Summary: Good movie - great story
Review: The plot has been described in other reviews. Well acted and directed, this movie recounts a great survival story, comparable to Captain Bligh leading all but one of his crew to safety after about 3500 or so miles in a small open boat (book "Men Against The Sea"), or Richard Byrd surviving the Antarctic while seriously sick and injured (book "Alone").

The fact that anyone even made it through the initial crash, then tobogganing at about 200 MPH down a mountain in a portion of airplane fuselage is unbelievable by itself. Add the fact that many people, prepared about as well as you or I in our living rooms, lived for 70 days way up on a frozen mountainside, makes it even more fantastic.

To top it off, after weeks of planning and preparation, two of the fittest members hike around and down a 13,500 ft mountain, then trek 50 or 60 miles in 10 days through utter exhaustion, to finally reach help.

It is difficult to really imagine the hardship they went through, even though it is essentially laid out on screen. The days or weeks of planning seemingly small events, and meeting with disaster on most accounts (finding the tail portion with the radio batteries, then having to go back to get the radio because the batteries were too heavy to carry, then not being able to fix the radio, etc.) is bad enough. I can not think of anything worse than having to eat your dead friends, for 50 days in a row, to just get through another day.

I'm going to finish the last 20 pages of the book tonight. It has a few more grisly details than the movie, and some failed search-and-rescue details, and maybe a bit more character depth as well, but this is one instance where the movie is nearly as good as the book.

If you think YOU have it bad, watch this movie or read the book. Even athiests will thank God it never happened to them.