Rating: 
Summary: Swinging 60s still life
Review: If you let yourself believe this movie is a thriller (well there's a murder, a corpse, a witness, almost a car chase...) then you may easily describe it as the most boring action movie ever done. The plot could be told in one sentence, and yet it takes forever to unfold. If you watch this movie in unappropriate circumstances, say after a hard day's work, under the influence of hot milk and herbal tea, you may quite easily be forgiven for falling asleep before the first photo session is over. But of course there's more to the movie than the impatient viewer might think. There's a whole life and a whole lifestyle coming back to life (some say it never existed and Antonioni actually created the image later generations have of London's swinging 60s...) and quite an interesting one. You wake up fashionably late, fashionably hungover, jump in the old Rolls convertible for a "tour of the boutiques of London town" (as Ray Davies put it), buying WWI plane propellers in antique shops, you go for a stroll in the park, everything's grey and damp, you get your Leica and start shooting, cause that's your job, you're a fashionable photographer; you go back to the loft and a bevie of models (including a teenage Jane Birkin!) is waiting for you to shoot at (yeah, baby ,yeah, you've probably seen it in Austin Powers II) with the old Leica. By the way, when you do find out there was a murder taking place in that park where you were earlier, you feel a mild tinge of aesthetic excitation, because that's the only thing you can feel, you don't really care 'cause you're beyond good and evil, life's a nonsensical party (my interpretation of the pretty nonsensical final scene). Well I need another G&T, I'm spent!
Rating: 
Summary: DVD Please
Review: I saw this movie when it came out and while the video is nice I really hope whoever owns the rights makes a DVD out of it. Please! A volatile who-done-it back to the swinging 60s in London. Who could resist the young David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave caught in the intrigue and excitement of this incredible film. Michelangelo Antonioni is a master. The magic of the technology allowing the blowing-up a photograph to discover a murder. Of course, to us guitar freaks, the real treat is the inclusion of the Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page(before Led Zeppelin) and Jeff Beck trading licks in the club scene with "A Train Kept a Rollin." A period piece, the music and a murder. Wow! END
Rating:
Summary: When, oh when will it be released on DVD?
Review: Right now, "Red Desert" is the only Michelangelo Antonioni film available on DVD and that is a crime. MGM, a major company, released "Blow-Up" on VHS a long time ago, but they (or whoever now owns the distribution rights) refuse to release this masterpiece of color and sound (and silence) on the superior format that it deserves. Hack films are released every week and I am still waiting for this English-language masterpiece from Antonioni. PLEASE RELEASE "BLOW-UP" ON DVD!
Rating:
Summary: Makes you think
Review: At first when I watched this movie I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but now after researching and discussing it I love it. It really makes you think about your own perceptions and your own truth. It's packed with so many symbols and thoughts. It's a a movie about yearning for the natural and reality. It proves your prejudices wrong and it's color and technique can only be praised.
Rating:
Summary: meet you at the Riki Tik
Review: I was a college freshman in '66 when I saw Blow Up, so I didn't agonize over whether it was art -- I immediately got a 35 mm camera and white jeans a la David Hemmings. The movie portrays the intrusion of grim reality (a murder) into the chic cocoon of Carnaby-era swinging London. "Something is happening and you don't know what it is..." could be applied to the confused hip protagonist as well as to the square "Mr. Jones" of Dylan's song. In this country, war, riots, assassinations, and Altamont were about to intrude on the equally self-referential and escapist world of the "Woodstock nation," leaving Blow Up as a beautiful memento of a more naive and innocent (if no less deluded) time and place.
Rating: 
Summary: Part reality, mostly illusion
Review: This movie is supposedly about reality and illusion. The illusion is that it's a classic movie. Reality enters it only in the scene when the photographer cavorts with the two naked dolly birds. Imaginary tennis balls? Give me a break.
Rating:
Summary: Michelangelo Antonioni's film class term paper titan!
Review: When BLOW-UP made "the scene" in 1966,it became cause celebre of "art films" and college film classes. It was term paper topic-of-choice for students because it made overt explorations in themes of reality/illusion and responsibility/indifference seem profound. David Hemmings is superb as a thrill seeking photographer/narcissist with artistic pretensions. Vanessa Redgrave engages as not-so-mysterious Mystery Woman. The pacing is good; as is off-color photography (so nothing is quite "clear"...get it?). Jazz music of Herbie Hancock is great. The Yardbirds put in an appearance, and have a good time smashing guitars and amps to smithereens a la The Who. This avant-garde monument distinctly displays its age in our era of DECONSTRUCTION where even the most harmless statement or observation may lend itself to dismissal or portentious rebuke. "I am!" declares a defiant Hemmings to a doped-out friend who disparages him for concern about a possible PHOTO of murder and scorns him for bothering( "I'm not a photographer")...not about murder...about a rather mundane, bourgeois picture of one. Antonioni's "epic" in water-bed nihilism still views well because it's a well-made MOVIE with interesting soundtrack. It is not a profound film...that sleight-of-hand was the director's greatest illusion. Like Hamlet used to say: the film's the thing wherein I catch the conscience of...the king; the queen; or anyone else who can't see a filmdom Emperor...at least in BLOW-UP...has no clothes.
Rating:
Summary: I hate "art" films...this is an exception
Review: Brilliant film. Deals with the concept of what real and what not real. Even if you don't read into the premise, you'll find the breezy frantic quality of the film to be enjoyable to watch.
Rating:
Summary: Very stylistic and avant-garde, but still makes sense. Great
Review: Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film adaptation of Julio Cortazar's "Blow-Up," perhaps Antonioni's best known work, represents a truly great adaptation of a short story, though the film on its own still stands as a great artistic acheivement. It is a remarkable example of an international work (an Italian director working with a British cast), a project which can easily go awry. David Hemings and Vanessa Redgrave both give excellent performances, but most important, it is a highly stylized somewhat avant-garde work, but in the end, the story has direct meaning and still makes perfectly clear sense- a true rarity. "Blow-Up's" value as a literary adaptation is only one virtue the film possesses, but this virtue includes several positive aspects. "Blow-Up" centers around a photographer named Robert, who, while walkng through the park one afternoon, photographs two lovers from a distance. The woman furiously demands that Robert hand over the negatives. Instead, he returns to hs studio to develop them. After studyng the photographs carefully, Robert discovers that the woman, working with a third firgure situated behind the hedge, is murdering the young man. As he studies the photos, Robert is watching an actual murder take place, but he is powerless to stop it, because it is only taking place in the photographs. Here, the line separating reality and imagination has become completely blurred. As events unfold, the photographer comes to realize that the entire sequence may have only taken place in his head. The recurring theme of both the short story and the film is that people ultimately construct their own reality. Cortazar helped establsh this theme from the beginning by writing his story alternately in first person and in third person, sometimes in singular, sometimes in plural, the implication being that the narrator himself isn't even certain whether or not any of this actually took place. In his film adaptation, Antonioni took what was represented as a few short scenes in the short story, and integrated his own material, bringing the film to a reasonable running time. The impressive part of this is that the integrated material, while completely fabricated by the filmmaker, still manages to make itself relevant by being in compliance with the story's main theme. The mime troupe is the most interesting of these additions. They appear in the beginning, their only apparent purpose to create havoc in the city. Though in the end, it is the mime troupe who make the film's theme most apparent. While playing a mock game of tennis, the mimes knock the "ball" out of the court. Robert goes to retrieve it for them. He bends over, picks up an imaginary ball, and throws it back on the court. The camera stays on Robert as he watches them play, and slowly, we begin to hear the sound of a tennis ball being bounced back and forth. Once again, Robert has immersed himself in the reality of his imagination, so to speak. Antonioni, an absolute master of sound control, pulls this effect off as no other director could have. The short story's theme of imagination and reality could so easily have been lost on film, since film is by its nature a third person limited storytelling medium. Antonioni's uses of sound, as in all of his movies, is truly astounding, and he uses this medium very effectively to enter Robert's personal reality. This is perhaps the greatest genius of the film adaptation.
Rating:
Summary: Holds up.
Review: A successful free spirit of a photographer, who today would be called a yuppie or worse, realizes that he's accidentally and by chance captured evidence of a murder taking place. He gets obsessed with what he begins to understand that he's found. He traces things back to the scene and finds the body. Then he doesn't know what to do. All the while the furniture of the 60's hammers, throbs and snuggles him. Good movie.
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