Network

Rating:
Summary: One of the best films of the '70s - but was it portentous?
Review: So-called reality TV (actually very contrived TV but with non-professionals in front of the camera - some might add also behind the camera) is a very sad and uninspired entertainment cycle which relies upon the exploitation of all that is unpleasant and unattractive in humanity. The film "Series Seven" brilliantly captures this sadistic aspect of voyeurism, but in 1976 "Network" predicted it all.

This is truly one of the very best films of the 1970s. Every performance is flawless, the script is fascinating, the direction sure-footed enough to contain what could in lesser hands become a campy hysteria. Every character except Holden's and Finch's is ruthless to the point of inhumanity - especially the cold Dunaway (whose evil delivery of her final line in the film is one of the most shocking and even chilling moments in cinema history).

I've always believed that comedy - especially when it is this black - can provide the most cutting insight into human nature.

This is a perfect film.

Rating:
Summary: Roasting T.V. alive
Review: I can't see how any movie could top this one. Personally my favorite movie is The Godfather, but Network is a very close second. I can't figure out how could anybody consider it one of the 100 greatest, when it surely deserves to be among the 15 greatest films of all times. This entire movie is classy and elegant though it definately has a vulgar and disgusting feel to it, which mostly descends from the shameless world the characters live in. Is a world without decency and sadly enough it has become our world.
The strongest elements of this movie are the incredible performances by Dunaway, Straight, Finch, Holden and Beatty; the thought provoking monolgues delivered by Beatty, Straight and Finch (among many things, they talk about deshumanization, death of individualism, the influence of the social comunication mediums, etc.). All of these monologues are spectacular, they grab your attention and never let go until they're done, but Straight's speech is specially iluminating, it's an impressive showcase of a woman's dignity before the posibility that the man she's given her life to is going to spent his last years of vitality with another woman and the fact that he may come back only means he comes back to give her his "menopause" and senility, to spend the end of his live with the one woman who can truly supply safety for him in his last days ("Is that what i get?"). Of course the script is full of this wonderful details. The entire movie is plagued of outrageous dialogue that redefines over-the-top. It is everyday talking deformed to the extreme which only adds to the impact. You can only stand with your mouth open and your ears on disbelief of hearing what this people are saying or doing (which includes murder and terrorism, after all they are sponsoring a terrorist army). There are more bizarre moments you can manage to digest. Truly the dialogue is spectacular, cutting and raw in its twisted honesty. Sidney Lumet's direction holds all of these monstrously powerful elements together, with great pacing and care for detail. After all he is one of the greatest directors of all times (no academy awards is just crime). Serpico, 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, The Pawnbroker they all seem dwarfed when compared to this movie.
Network's only objective is to showcase the world of t.v., it never seems pretty but that's exactly the point. Truly one movie you don't want to miss. Its impact will only keep on growing. Twenty years ago it may have seemed a comedy, when all of the situations presented seemed like a far cry from reality, but nowadays it's a scary, apocalyptic look at our society. This movie strikes a mayor blow on our conception of reality.
Another interesting related movie would be The Insider which seems like the antithesis of Network. Al Pacino's righteous Lowell against Faye Dunaway's unscrupulous Diana, and while it's sad to admit, shameless, vicious and disgusting win the battle.
1976 must have been a fun year to live in specially during the Academy Awards when people found the raw, vulgar reality too much to appreciate and ended up changing channels and awarding Rocky (for christ's sake it's like choosing a deluxe bicycle over a bmw).
In my humble opinion few movies have surpassed Network and it's very unlike someone will ever create a masterpiece quite like this. It will propably be bested but it will never be duplicated.

Rating:
Summary: Great script, great acting!
Review: Wow! A movie with intelligent, original ideas and dialogue; fantastic acting by Finch and Holden, and a wid satire to boot. Peter Finch gives one of the greatest performances in film history as the newsman going through a psychotic breakdown. He gets the mad messiah character down perfectly - it is lunacy with enough truth in his message to make the rest of the film work around his hyper-energetic center. Great moviemaking!

Rating:
Summary: Lumet & Finch Save Paddy's Bacon
Review: My apologies to this movie's many diehard fans, but I've always had a problem with Paddy Chayefsky's work. Nobody...and I mean NOBODY...actually talks like his characters, so the plaudits he routinely receives for his 'realism' are a mystery to me. If NETWORK is a triumph at all, it's due to Sidney Lumet and his cast, who pull off the dramatic equivalent of three innings of hitless relief to preserve a win for Paddy's usual shaky, walk-plagued start. Lumet keeps the heavyhanded black-comedy elements from wrecking the picture, and he's equally skillful at finding ways to keep the genteel bathetics of Holden and Straight's marital death-throes from bringing the movie to a glacial standstill. I assume that by this point in his career, Lumet was savvy enough to have known ahead of time the kind of longwinded, 'meaningful' pontificating a Paddy Chayefsky script was sure to be larded with, and devised his narrative escape hatches and short cuts ahead of time. To his credit, NETWORK is certainly watchable, and there are a number of satirical arrows that hit their mark - Finch's work as Howard Beale has achieved a kind of deserved immortality. But since when has television NOT proven an irresistible target for writers to attack? TV has always been the slowest, fattest, most easily-gored bull in the cultural corrada, and the idea that NETWORK is a work of prophetic genius because it foresees our Jerry Springer-dominated present is crazy, especially when you consider Newton Minow's famous definition of the boob-tube as a 'vast cultural wasteland' was already old news when he coined the term in the early 60s. At the time this was released, most of the talk generated by NETWORK had less to do with its satirical brilliance than with William Holden playing his role as a clearly visible middle-aged man, with all the facial lines and wattles intact and unadorned by cosmetic fakery; that people would find a 58-year-old man refusing to pretend he was still 35 startling and courageous was as scathing a comment on the tv culture as any of Faye Dunaway's 'television incarnate' horrorshow monologues. Where NETWORK - and the great majority of Chayefsky's work - stumbles, and stumbles badly, is his egotistical inability to rein in his characters from speaking the author's mind all the time, and as if they were being paid by the word with a bonus for the multisyllabic ones. These people are no more authentic than the two-dimensional cut-outs populating THE HOSPITAL or THE GODDESS or THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY. They simply never convince me that they actually might exist somewhere: their only purpose is to open their mouths and declaim Chayefsky's meat-cleaver philosophy and prejudices, endlessly and artificially (my favorite is the beautiful, icy career woman who's successful because she's incapable of feeling love. There are plenty of others.) Please don't take my word for it - click the "Memorable Quotes" link at the IMDb listing, and plunge into the purple thicket of dialogue for yourself and see. But pack a machete; you may need to do a lot of hacking to get back to daylight.

Rating:
Summary: On the 96 VHS reissue of the movie Max's wife is dubbed (?)
Review: What does she say, Max's wife, the movie is incredible and proving the disinterest the world has in itself over and over. From the start with Finch's character mentioning his initial intentions, to the reason for the multinational presence into culture, pop culture, without being TRULY popular in a good way, in a way, let's say, okay? But William Holden's Max Schumacher's wife says something to him during their argument that is dubbed over at a crucial part, if anyone knows what she says I'd appreciate knowing. Rent this, feel guilty, then contribute to the world positively through artful mentation. Buy, rent, download, or pay per bit, it's worth knowing about this film.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best movies of the 70's
Review: Hands down, this is one of the best black comedies I have ever seen. I can't even list all of the great things about because it would make this review way too long. All the acting is perfect. This is one of the top 15 movies of the 70's and that's saying a lot considering how many great films were released in that decade.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Film, So Why Did They Tinker With it?
Review: When all is said and done, I'd have to say my favorite film of all time is "Network," and I loved the VHS version of this film released in the early 1990s. However, in this packaging there are a couple of things that I really have to nitpick over. First of all, the MGM lion that roars at the beginning of this film, is not the one from the 1976 release. For whatever reason, the MGM logo of the present is used. (With a gold loop of film and the dubbed roar that's been used since the 1980's.) This takes nothing away from the film's content, but for a true film buff this is problematic since there is no reason that springs to mind as to why the logo would need to be changed.
Also, I've noticed since the early 1990s with their Widescreen VHS releases, that MGM wide-screen releases don't seem to be the real McCoy. The film is matted to fit the screen with the double-bars, but it still seems like there are portions of the actual film space that have been cropped here. I could be wrong, but I've noticed this in everyting from "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" to "The Manchurian Candidate." Don't call it Widescreen or Letterbox, if it's not the full picture.
And then finally, the trivia game that comes with this is extremely easy. Even if you've only seen this film once, which character do you suppose is going to be quoted the most?
I love "Network" but just wish I could love this DVD as much as I loved the VHS release from the 90s.

Rating:
Summary: Too damn sad.
Review: The title says it all. I mean, if you want to be depressed, watch this movie. It has a good story and all and Faye Dunaway is hot, but it doesn't do much for me in the viewing catagory. But, I gave it 3 stars for "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore."

Rating:
Summary: You're Television Diana....You're Madness!
Review: The last of the 3 great movies Paddy Chayefsky wrote in the 60's and 70's, starting with The Americanization of Emily, through The Hospital, and finally ending with Network about the dilemma and struggles of the individual within the great and powerful institutions of our times is simply brilliant.

I don't have to say anything more than what looked like outrageous satire in 1976 turned out to be Chayefsky reading tea leaves and telling us exactly where the convergence of corporate power, entertainment, and television news was taking us. It is screamingly funny as well.

As in all 3 of these great films, Chayefsky's center is an individual within the institution cracking-up and his breakdown is the catalyst that upsets the order of things and allows Chayefsky to rant his heart out at the madness he sees around him. Chayefsky was a mature man, and he wrote about the guilts and stresses and longings of mature men of accomplishment like no one else.

Here! we have two, the madman Howard Beale (Peter Finch)"I'm mad as hell...etc." and William Holden's Max, the Edward R. Murrow era newsman being forced to knuckle under to the new corporate bosses played superbly by a weasly, cut-throat Robert Duvall, and a heartless, steely cold Faye Dunaway. That Holden in his confusion and despair has a hopeless affair with Dunaway gives Chayefsky an opportunity to comment on the sad withering toll taken in some long marriages and what he perceived as the hollow heart of the sexual revolution.

As always, Chayefesky's scripts are complex and have many sub currents and comments about the social scene of the time. He has absolutely nailed the corporate culture here, and has a great deal of fun with radicalism, which becomes a mirror image of hypocrisy. And Chayefsky was more than prescient when he saw that the worst thing you can be in America is "lousy on television" (nod to Dennis Miller).

As noted, the cast is superb, giving just! due in all departments to Chayefsky's beautiful script and language. Of special note, is the cameo by Ned Beatty as the Board Chairman of the gigantic multinational that owns the Network "they say I can sell anything Mr. Beale" thundering away at poor crazy Howard like a wrathful Jehovah. Wonderful.

This is a great American film. Its message is more true today than when it was written. That makes it timeless. A Classic.

Rating:
Summary: Godzilla vs Noam Chomsky
Review: Back in 1976, we sat in dark theatres, feeling superior to the people at home watching "Rhoda", smugly chortling at "Network"'s outlandish scenario of a major American television network "striking the motherlode" with reality based programming. Now, twenty-five years later, we can't be distracted to look up from our Darla Conger worship page long enough to watch the ten-second promo for "Boot Camp" blaring out of the TV. Paddy Cheyevsky's visionary screenplay works on so many levels...from savage socio-political-sexual satire to a cannily Orwellian knack for predicting trends like the giant media mergers of the 90's and the general "dumbing down" of American culture since the release of "Jaws" (Future anthropologists will never believe that "Newtork" and "Jaws" were in theatres at the same time...guess which trend has become the norm). There are too many great performances to itemize; a dream ensemble includes William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall and Ned Beatty. The film's credibility as a true "insider" view of TV network corporate culture is bolstered by the fact that both screewriter Cheyevsky and director Sidney Lumet got thier start working on programs like "Playhouse 90" during American TV's much vaunted "Golden Age". Required viewing...don't touch that dial!