Rating: 
Summary: Most Memorable Movie
Review: I still remember watching this movie which was, if I am not mistaken, the first movie which was shown as a Saturday Night Movie on NBC. I distinctly remember watching it and it had a profound effect on my thinking about the world. I must admit however I loved "A Viewer's" 3 star review below. I would ask that if he or she found it so absurd why did she watch it the 10 times which would be necessary to write such a critical treatise? It was a good movie regardless of its important message.
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Summary: The Day the Earth Stood Still
Review: This is a must for anyone's Sci-fi dvd library. The plot is simple but believable. Spaceman comes to earth to either invade (the military view) or to bring some knowledge (the scientific view) yet unknown to mankind. The music with it's haunting
sound, sets the tone for doubt of the Alien being and his robot's intent. This film having it's premier at the height of the Cold War has an unusual take on global conflict but speaks to contemporary issues of today. I highly recommend this movie.
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Summary: Glad It's On DVD
Review: "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is one of the best all time classic sci-fi movies, if not the best. And in retrospect, that's why it's called a classic. Its release on DVD has been long over due.
I have only one bone to pick, but not about the movie. And its directed toward the reviewer who titled his/her/its review "The Day The Brain Stood Still." I noticed he/she/it began the review with, "This movie made me think." I have only one question and that is: if the movie made you think, then what were thinking when you gave it three, as in (3), stars? You obviously watched the movie enough to pick apart, and to the smallest detail, everything you could find to satisfy your obsessive compulsive disorder. So why the three stars?
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Summary: The Day The Brain Stood Still?
Review: I consider this movie to be one of the best science fiction movies ever made. I consider many of its themes to be topical today. The dialogue and acting are very good and the music and special effects are excellent (at least for the time it was made).Mainly I'm interested in responding to the review titled "The Day The Brain Stood Still". I went through his list of questions and found that with the exception (in my opinion) of only three or four of them they are all easily explainable. In fact many of the things that bother him actually make a great deal of sense when you think about them. For those of you who have not seen this movie do not base any disinterest in watching it based on that review. His questions for the most part make little sense and he avoids the strengths of the movie by focusing on trivialities. If I had five pages to work with I would go point by point through his questions and answer them but I'm not interested in wasting my time or yours. Please watch the movie. It is a classic and fully deserving of that status.
Rating:
Summary: Wayyyy ahead of it's time!
Review: Intelligent. Basic. Thought provoking. Simple, but great exploration of the human condition that runs deep. Excellent science fiction. I would LOVED to have been sitting in the theater watching this great piece in 1951. Audiences were probably in awe. For 1951, this movie was WAY ahead of it's time and watching it today, it feels current. This is science fiction with spirit and a brain! A must see for fans seeking quality science fiction. Hats off to the talented and sensitive Robert Wise!
Rating:
Summary: Stood Still Still Standing
Review: There isn't a single shred of scientific evidence that life exists anywhere in the universe except here on the good old planet Earth. So good science fiction is made primarily of parable, and that's certainly the case with Robert Wise's great film. Two visitors from space, Klaatu and Gort, are just shades of ourselves, and our sometimes conflicted instincts for compassion and order. You can't have one without the other. Compared to the overdone sci-fi of today it's all simply told. There's just a single spaceship mockup, a guy in a rubber robot suit and a few disintegration effects. The rest is carried by great writing and acting and the power of suggestion. Steven Spielberg or George Lucas should do it this well.
Rating:
Summary: We could do with this film again.
Review: There is one review on here which got me so wound up, I just had to write a review of my own to counter it. The other reviewer called his review "The Day the Brain Stood Still", without stopping to think that he might himself be the stupid one. He made so many 'points' that he thought (thought, good one) were relevant. They're not. This film is not perfect. None are. What it is, is one of the finest examples of a science fiction film using allegory to address a contemporary social/political issue. Remember when they used to do that? Somewhere along the way, entertainment lost its brains, not the other way around. I haven't seen this film for a few years, but I remember it very, very well, and it occured to me just now that given the state of the world at the moment, I think maybe we could do with this message being sent again. And that means directing it at Bush more than anyone else. Sure, you might say Bush is like Klaatu, trying to police the world and keep nuclear weapons under control. But what this film reminds me of is that it is the job of the UN, not W, to keep the world under control. And besides, I don't think Klaatu was more concerned in getting his hands on our oil. Besides the film's message, the fact that it has been referenced so many times in other movies that proves the lasting testament to what really is great cinema.
Rating: 
Summary: The Day the Brain Stood Still
Review: While this movie has its heart in the right place, its brain is sadly missing. Its fans, blinded by the simpleminded moral, are blind to its plot holes, and when informed of them, turn defensive. No one with an active intellect need watch this more than twice to notice its many flaws. Why send only one emissary and only to Washington? For an urgent message concerning all of Earth, why not send an emissary to each capital? Why the need to see every leader? In 1950, there were only two nuclear powers, the USA and USSR. Two emissaries would have sufficed and the lesser powers would have fallen in line. Gort begins disintegrating weapons yet not a single soldier returns fire. Klaatu was felled by a single bullet. For all they knew, Gort might shatter like glass. The MP at the hospital bursts in as if he knew Klaatu was gone, then leaves without searching the room thoroughly. Klaatu is in the hospital for two days, where they run the full gamut of tests, yet in that time, nobody takes a single photograph that could be released to help the public find him. Klaatu knows how to tie a necktie but nothing about Abraham Lincoln or World War II. How does one learn knots or mathematical symbology via radio broadcasts? Klaatu's people use round Brilliant cut diamonds as currency. They never invented debit cards or electronic transfers? How do they make change--here's two emeralds and a ruby? Why did he bring diamonds along? Would you take gold coins along if you were going to buy things on a strange planet? Didn't our broadcasts ever mention dollars, pounds, rubles, etc.? He had no cash even to go to the movies, so how was he paying for room and board at the house? Why didn't Klaatu have a radio to Gort? The army took his radio but missed the diamonds? Klaatu can escape undetected from a heavily guarded military hospital, but is easily tailed by a young boy. The guards at the site are too dumb to call for help when Gort is escaping. Why only two guards when two others had already been rendered unconscious earlier? Why did Helen run, scream and fall, then calmly say "Klaatu barada nikto"? There's no transition, no sense of her panicked mind racing to recall the words. Why didn't Klaatu prearrange his resurrection with Gort when he returned to the ship? Hoping an intermediary can get to Gort in time and remember the words is an unreliable way to return from the dead and save the Earth from destruction. He couldn't anticipate that he might be killed or maybe Helen might be caught and arrested? He's lucky they didn't do a dissection and remove his internal organs for study. Why did he leave the ship after returning? He had nothing important to do in the city between his return and the gathering of the scientists, and the ship would surely be surrounded by guards after the blackout. Why still only a scientists' meeting after such a show of irresistible force? He should have remained inside the ship and demanded the presence of world leaders afterward. Compliance would have been swift. Why did the scientists attend? The government should already have reassured the public that they had managed to hunt down and kill the spaceman. How ironic that the film beats us over the head with the greatness of Lincoln, yet ignores his beliefs. Lincoln said, "With malice toward none; with charity for all." Where is Klaatu's charity for the powerless and the innocent, who would be exterminated along with the wicked in Gort's indiscriminate, genocidal retribution? They consider the murder of billions to be preferable to a war that might only kill millions. A nonviolent alternative like long-term de-electrification of Earth isn't even considered. Even worse is the oft-mentioned Christ allegory, which the screenwriter admitted was intentional. While simple elements of Jesus' story are included, Klaatu's parting threat is decidedly un-Christian. It's as if Jesus, rather than saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," instead said, "Father, smite all that lives for these Romans' actions." The depths of the film's misanthropy are revealed in Gort. Gort was made to deter all the known worlds, not just Earth. In other words, even the advanced, starfaring civilizations need to be coerced into nonaggression. Such a dim view of human/extraterrestrial nature and completely contrary to what knowledgeable SETI scientists predict for any interstellar civilization. 17th century Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza wrote, "Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice." This cannot be accomplished by overwhelming force of arms or threat of annihilation. Comparisons of Klaatu to the United Nations betray near total ignorance of the UN. The UN would never say, "If you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth [nation] of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder," to quote Klaatu. The UN uses mediation, negotiation, sanctions and, as a last resort, peacekeeping forces to separate combatants, and even then only with the local government's consent. Klaatu says, "It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet." They offer no aid, no advice, merely threats to protect themselves--again unlike the UN. Finally, we are hardly a plausible threat. Even today's best rockets would take months to reach Mars and millennia to reach extrasolar planets. Plenty of time for their patrol ships to effortlessly dispose of the "danger" with their disintegrator beams, assuming they didn't simply neutralize a few electronic guidance systems. Toothpicks against elephants. Mr. Klaatu and Mr. Gort, I regret to inform you that you are charged with war crimes relating to your threats against Earth, a violation of the 1948 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Please remand yourselves into the custody of the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
Rating:
Summary: One of the greatest of the 1950s sci fi films
Review: Of all the great sci fi classics from the 1950s, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL might be the most remarkable. While many of the other films viewed alien arrivals as menacing threats to be responded to with force or as political parables on the threat of communism (both THE THING FROM OUTER SPACE of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS are examples), this film instead imagined an alien visitor as morally superior and more peaceful than human beings. Some have suggested, in fact, that Klaatu, played marvelously by Michael Rennie, was a Christ figure. In the film, he dies and is shockingly resurrected, and the name he adopts incognito is Mr. Carpenter. Furthermore, the message he brings is one of peace and the necessity of controlling our civilization's tendency towards militaristic aggression. None of these were widely expressed themes in 1951, when the film came out. The film is also remarkable for one of the great screen robots, Gort, played by 7'7 Lock Martin. I still remember as a child the awful terror of seeing his visor gradually open near the end as Patricia Neal strives to get the words "Klaatu barada nikto" out of her mouth, and the relief of seeing the visor gradually close. Unlike many other 1950s sci fi films, most of which barely came up to the level of B pictures, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL features a first rate cast. Very few films of the decade features any actresses remotely in Patricia Neal's class as a performer. Most were merely attractive manikins. Neal gives the film a strong female presence almost completely lacking in all other films of the 1950s, perhaps matched only by Dana Wynter in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Michael Rennie never had the kind of career that his talent would seem to have generated, but he imbued his performance as Klaatu with a deep and profound dignity. And the always memorable Sam Jaffe is a delight as the scientist Klaatu asks to act as an intermediary to the world's scientific community. A great movie, with a remarkable message that is still relevant event today.
Rating:
Summary: Best Movie Ever
Review: I've been waiting for this to come out on DVD since I first saw it. It's the best movie ever. It was made forever ago, it's in black and white, and the fx are simple. The characters are classic, the acting is wonderful, the story is clear and well told, and the whole thing is absolutely perfect. I can't really say any more about it... either you'll watch it or not. Most people reading these have probably seen it already and know how awesome it is... If you havn't seen it, you should (I hate it when people tell me that). But maybe you think it's gonna be boring or something, I dunno. Fans of Army of Darkness, if you've never seen this you need to. You'll get a kick, I promise.
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