Rating: 
Summary: Mesmerizing, beautiful, a DVD is sorely needed
Review: This film and the soundtrack that graces it are absolutely essential pieces for anyone's collection. BUT the video is neither widescreen nor all that great of a transfer. It is, though, full length, or at least closer to the original than I've seen in some cable TV broadcasts. Oh to have a widescreen DVD of this great film....mmm, someday....
Rating:
Summary: ONCE? how can some one watch this just ONCE??
Review: this is the best mob movie i've seen...so far, it may be an extremely long movie but its worth watching! the characters are unbelievable and the story really reaches out tears out your heart and stomps all over it... its craz like that.... if you like mafia/mob movies you gota see this one. even if you dont like those movies this is a movie that will really get to you.i also reccommend: donnie brasco, mickey blue eyes, the godfather pt1 and 2, the goodfellas,(not realted to mobs: fight club, mary shelley's frakenstein), mafia, sleepers, analyze this, (most robert de niro movies are mob related and good) and also al pacino's movies.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece!!!!
Review: Visually stunning, superb art direction & set design, best instances of character development I've ever seen. Slow, at times, but immersive nonetheless. Makeup and costume design were also exceptional. The long version is, at least 2 stars better than the short version however I know that some people have difficulty focusing on a 3 hour & 47 minute movie. Unfortunately, the theatrical release had over one hour cut which definately takes away from the immersiveness and the sensibility of the movie. Cast selection, direction and attention to detail made this one of the best movies ever.
Rating:
Summary: Once upon a time in America...Beautiful!
Review: Two years ago a friend lent me a copy of this movie to watch. Being a Jewish immigrant himself around the same time the movie's earlier setting, he felt that he could relate to it. It took me a long time to finally getting around to watching the movie (being as long as it is) and was MESMERIZED by the different settings, the music (Ahhh...the music!) the story itself and of course, Robert DeNiro! After viewing the film, my friend had a difficult time trying to get it back from me! Sergio Leone has the art of focusing on such important and unimportant details of the settings. I particularly loved the scenes of Deborah dancing among the vegatables in the dusty room. I also thought the first scene of the Chinese theatre was beautiful with the elderly woman's face keeping an eye out for Noodle's safety. And the music fit every scene perfectly. All in all, I have to to say that this is one of my all time favorite films. A true work of Art! Enjoy it when you can.
Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to like this movie...
Review: Ah where to begin? Here we have a film that people are regarding as one of the best gangster films of all times. Such a statement in laughable! You see, while everyone regards Sergio Leone as a brilliant director, all he did with this movie is drag out every scene and make it extremely "artsy". Another reviewer already pointed out the example in which the movie spends 5 minutes showing a boy eating desert. Here we have a brilliant scene that shows the inner struggle of a young boy as he decides between having a sexual experience with the local young prostitute, who gets paid in deserts, or eating the desert himself. He finally decides to eat the desert, as he is too young to truly enjoy the sexual experience anyway. Wow that was so touching...sob! The scene had no significance on the plot but that's ok because neither did most scenes in this movie -- 30-second zoom-ins on every scene, 15 minutes of a young girl dancing, etc. That's why there are two tapes. It's like he couldn't part with a single frame in the movie! This director feels that the audience is so stupid that we need to be spoon-fed everything. Rather than simply implying things like a clever director, this guy crams them in your face. This is actually a contrast because, for the first 30 minutes or so, up until the boyhood scenes, there is very little dialog and you can't even tell what's going on! You are begging for some narration. Since I have seen far to many movies like this one, I chose not to put in the second tape. In short this movie is 90% character development for 4 hours. It's laughable that they couldn't even do a good job editing this movie for the shorter theater version. I don't think they cut anything off of the 4-hour version that I watched, and I certainly could have edited this movie down to 90 minutes for the theater and it would still have made sense -- something that Sergio Leone couldn't do.
Rating:
Summary: "America" the Beautiful
Review: This is not your average film. Though some viewers might be put off by its length, graphic violence, and absence of likable characters, Sergio Leone's final film is also a cinematic masterpiece. Spanning four decades, the film tells the story of David "Noodles" Aaronson (Robert De Niro) and his ... pals, chronicling their childhoods on New York's Lower East Side in the 1920s, through their gangster careers in the 1930s, and culminating in Noodles' 1968 return to New York from self-imposed exile, at which time he learns the truth about the fate of his friends and again confronts the nightmare of his past. The acting, the re-creation of the time period, the cinematography, and the music are all superb. However, even more important is Leone's ability to make the film work on so many different levels: it's both a criticism of gangster-film mythology and a continuation of the director's exploration of the issues of time and history. Strange as it may seem, the violence and gore in the first half of the film turn into a sad elegy about wasted lives and lost love. The film's strengths emerge only in its full 227-minute version -- the 139-minute and other edited versions don't make nearly the same impact. As I said to start off this is not your average film so some viewers may not grasp it and handle it. I read that it you have this film on LD and watch it in slow mo that you can see some kind of spirit floating around in the dance. (The Jennifer Connelly one.) I have the Lazier Disc and I have watched it in slow mo and I have not seen any thing. And just one last thing. That is not Jennifer in that undressing shoot that comes after that. She said that they had to get is someone older (because she was only 14 at the time). Some one told me that they say the spirit on the LD and that is why WB is not putting it out on DVD. I do not think that is true. Look into this film if you have never seen it before. It is a true classic!
Rating:
Summary: Europe needs this film too
Review: Once upon a time is one of the greatest films ever! So dear producers don't forget to offer this film for European Encoding too!
Rating:
Summary: greater than life
Review: By far the most compelling proof that in movies emotions bear so much more power than intellect. The film is an Olimpus of cinematic excellence, where acting, cinematography, sound, production design, and editing converge, ultimatelly, to award the viewer with a cathartic experience that leaves us drained. The story is a tragedy of epic proportions, rarely achieved since the time of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschilus. Simply, the most powerful story ever projected on a screen
Rating: 
Summary: The Dark side of America
Review: Sergio Leone showed us the dark side of living in America in this Robert De Niro/James Woods staring in the film as Jewish Gangsters fight for and for a short time head the underworld in a big American city only to see it come crashing in blood and bulliets. Very violent, but the actor's performances are outstanding.
Rating:
Summary: An underrated masterpiece
Review: This is one of my all-time favourite gangster films. It's so mesmerizing and poetic that it's hard to believe that it remains a relatively forgotten film. Of course, we all know that's because it was released in a botched edition, but watching the 227-minute edition is essential. I know that there are rumours of a 250-minute or some substantially longer version, but alas, we continue to wait. I have stumbled upon a good book about the film (sorry, can't remember the writer) but it mentions that there is a cut scene with Oscar winner Louise Fletcher, and apparently the rape sequence between Elizabeth McGovern and Robert DeNiro is longer (the European edition already features a longer version of this scene although the American version is hard enough to watch that we really don't need to see more). My hope is that there may be some scenes between Max and Deborah when they are much older because we never do see them together in the final scenes (they are supposed to be lovers at this point). Also, the scene between Tuesday Weld and Robert DeNiro in the nursing home is so short that it would only be natural that there would be more to this scene. Bring on the DVD!
|
