Rating: 
Summary: But if you've made your peace, the devils are really angels.
Review: The 'surprise' ending to this movie is, to anyone who has read Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, visible coming a mile off. But that's okay, because the real surprises in this film, the terrors and mysteries and jewels of meaning, go far beyond simply determing the time of a character's death. Like 'Barton Fink', this is a movie that you can watch over and over, extracting layer after layer of meaning. Indeed, it really needs to be watched at least twice, in order to put some events near the beginning in of the film in their proper context.Some thoughts to ponder: Why does the movie change its opinion about Sarah's love for Jacob? What separates one of the children's names from the other? And why does Jezzie not like Biblical names? Why is the bike that causes Jacob to call out Gabriel's name adult-sized? Why does the chemist who supposedly created 'The Ladder' save only Jacob? Why does he look like Jacob - but not exactly? And if the devils are really angels, what are the angels, really?
Rating:
Summary: NOT a complete waste of time
Review: I thought this was a very good movie. The story was excellent and the cinematography was outstanding. I can pretty much guarantee that "A viewer from Paris, France" never even saw the "passe'" movie. First of all the movie was made in 1990, not 1969. Tim Robbins looked a little older than 9 years old, he was born in 1958. Talking about war with someone from France is like well, never mind.
Rating: 
Summary: A Complete Waste of Time
Review: A 2 star rating for this movie is quite generous. This 1969 production is passé. It is long and boring. I sat for 2 hours waiting for the movie to take some sort of direction. It lead nowhere. Don't waste your time and money renting this poor excuse for a film let alone buying it. DVD picture quality was sub par as well.
Rating:
Summary: NOT EVEN ATTEMPTING TO PORTRAY POST-VIETNAM AS A REALITY
Review: Tim Robbins plays a handsome, but troubled, Vietnam veteran - named Jacob - who is losing his hold on reality. Elizabeth Peña (La Bamba) gives a fantastic and sexy performance as his girlfriend. Eriq LaSalle (ER) and Macaulay Culkin (Home Alone) are also in the cast. Jacob is a postman living in a surrealistically squalid New York City. War images in the film arrive as his own disjointed flashbacks. As his world becomes filled with mystery and horror, Jacob gains an insalubrious historical introspection that nearly drives him to madness. The final scenes of the film reveal the true source of his demons. Jacob's Ladder is a spiraling psychological thriller. It is a film not to be missed, and it gets better with repeated viewings.
Rating:
Summary: Profoundly moving journey to enlightenment
Review: I wonder if this movie could be made today - after all, it doesn't have any computer-generated special effects, it demands the viewer's complete attention, and really needs to be seen more than once to appreciate fully the meaning of all of the scenes. Incredible too is that the writer (Bruce Joel Rubin) was working on the filming of this and his more popular movie "Ghost" at the same time. Director Adrian Lynne wisely avoided some of the more sacharrine touches that Rubin had in the original script (such as the view of "Heaven") and added many subtle disturbing elements of his own. The final result is a film that you will think about long after you see it, a man's journey through the bardo state to his final enlightenment. In a way, this is the cinematic equivalent of a Pettersson symphony - an emotional catharsis after the long, dark night of the soul. I'm not ashamed to say that I cry like a baby every time I watch it. Comparisons with Bierce's "Occurrance at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Carnival of Souls" are inevitable and not out of place, but "Jacob's Ladder" has more layers than either of those and ambitiously takes on the psychological layers of one man's life, the tension between the comforts of home, wife and family and the unfufilled desires he harbors. There are some violent scenes and very disturbing imagery throughout the movie; after all, it *is* about war, fear, and death. However, none of it is gratuitous, and the use of strobe lighting, quick cuts, and odd camera angles keep the viewer from being able to see anything definite. But don't say you weren't warned.... The DVD's documentary and deleted scenes, along with the director's commentary, will enable the first-time viewer to get a more complete idea of what is happening. I've watched this film at least a dozen times, and never fail to see something new in it each time. Sound and image quality are excellent. This one isn't for casual viewing; it is *certainly* not a Saturday-night time killer, nor is it a "horror" movie in the standard sense of the term. Still, absolutley my highest recommendation.
Rating: 
Summary: Who'd've ever imagined Danny Aiello quoting Meister Eckhart?
Review: I don't think very many people realize how incredibly difficult it is to convincingly and successfully pull off pure allegory in our time. We know all too smugly that everything stands for something else and nothing else and everything else EXCEPT itself simultaneously, we know the inherent limits of language and meaning and representation, we strain their fault-lines and resources the same way we gobble up the environment, and our linguistic/literary sh*t is equally toxic as what we dump into the rivers. That said, we come from a long tradition of allegory -- it's half of how we learn as children, our moral and religious and social codes are steeped in it, and on those rare occasions when it manages to fool our jaded know-it-all post-post-modern sensibilities for long enough to work, it's powerful stuff. And that's where Jacob's Ladder is so incredible. I don't want to argue about what it's an allegory for -- I've heard divinity students deconstruct it down to a heaped alphabet of Judeo-Christian symbolism. I'm neither a Jew nor a Christian myself, and to me the allegory seemed to be not incredibly far off, in essence, from Albert Camus' novel "A Happy Death" -- that is, it's about the fight to die well -- to die properly by one's own standards -- we all die, sooner or later -- but Jacob's journey always seemed like one of exhausting all the possibilities of self and will and memory, all the conflicting attachments and desires and forces and fears within himself, especially as manifested in women (Sarah is what he has, Jezebel is what he lusts after, what he feels the lack of) and in father/son relationships, distilling this down to a place/persona of pure light or goodness or whatever you want to call it, from which he can leave in a form/manner/direction appropriate to his own soul. The seamless narrative non-linear GnipGnop of time-slices is what makes it all possible. Camera work and editing are exquisite as well. Tim Robbins looks uncannily like the young Warren Zevon throughout much of the film. Only the hospital basement sequence turned me off -- the paranoid camera angles, focusing on the helplessly spinning dolly wheels squelching over ruined tiles and moist gobbets of human flesh, only barely redeem a sequence more in keeping with the schlocky self-indulgence of Pink Floyd's "the Wall." The DVD is well worth getting for the little "Making Of..." documentary at the end and all the unused footage. Interesting to watch back-to-back with "The Fisher King."
Rating:
Summary: No mystery
Review: The plot of Jacob's ladder is no mystery. He is bayonetted by one of his own men and dies on the field operating table. The rest of the movie is his fight to live, his effort to discover why he is dying, and his reconciliation with death. At the end, after his death, the surgeon remarks that he put up a terrific fight to live. That fight consisted of willing himself to an elaborately detailed future at home after the war. That future includes physical shocks (the ice water treatment)which represent the physical shocks he suffers during surgery, communication with his buddies, also all dead, in an effort to discover what really happened, and nightmares which call him back to deal with what is really happening to him. His future life keeps going wrong, because it cannot happen; he died in Viet Nam. Finally (see the literature he is scouring for answers)he finds psychopomps in the Danny Aiello character and in his son. Psychopomps were charged with conducting souls from life to death in kinder, gentler cultures in which friends are important. Danny Aiello explains to Jacob that hell is simply losing one's life when one wants desperately to live. Finally, his dead son welcomes him lovingly to death and whatever lies beyond. A very moving film that reminds us of the common experience we will share with every human who has ever lived.
Rating:
Summary: Superb psychological study
Review: Severely underrated by the critics! If you are looking for a simple-minded horror/action flick, you'll be confused and annoyed - skip it. However, if you are looking for a thought-provoking intellectual challenge, you'll love it. The film is complex and disturbing on many levels. Even after several viewings you won't be able to separate reality from nightmare from flashback, nor should you. That's the point. Tim Robbins performance is perfect and the writing, directing and editing combine to produce one of the best films ever made.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Psychological Drama
Review: Excellent film about a man's decent into separate realities, about coming to terms with life and death, opportunities and choices. Tim Robbins, in rare form as the tormented Jacob, is convincingly real to the viewer. Ms. Pena plays a perfect Jezebel and 6 year old Macauly Culkin steals your heart as little Gabe. This is not a film to see just once and expect to capture everything within it. There are messages throughout and a lot is missed the first time around. I also recommend viewing it with others, then exchanging each of your interpretations. What is real, what is wishful thinking, what is a nightmare? These are all questions you will ponder. But what are the real answers? When this film played in theatres a decade ago, moviegoers debated the content for hours if not days afterwards. See for yourself what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: A Ladder of Emption
Review: I can't emphasize enough how beautiful this story is. The cast is excellent, the cineamatography is outstanding and the story is unbeliveable. If you are reluctant to see the film because it's classified as horror, see it anyway. The horror classification really isn't true. There really aren't many scary scenes. Tim Robbins perfomance is wonderful, he makes you smile and cry. By the end, you can actually feel his desperation and pain. Elizabeth Pena is great as Jezzie, his girlfriend. There is so much to say about this movie, that I couldn't do it in under 1,000 words. My interpetation of the movie is that in order to go where you want to go, you have to be satisfied with yourself first. The first time you see it, you're confused, and when you think you figured it all out, you find something else to contradict your first theory. If your up to thought provoking and a good cry along with a show of great acting then this is for you. It came out a decade ago but still remains a favorite among many fans. If have not yet seen this beautiful story, see it now.
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