Rating: Summary: WOW Review: I saw this movie just a few days after it was first released in theaters and when it was over I just sat in my seat and could not move. The emotional impact of this movie is greater than you could ever imagine. The fact that it is a real-life story helps to bring it home. Expect to be saddened and deep in thought once it is over. The tape is great, minus the inconvenience of having to get up halfway through the movie to switch tapes in your VCR....but this is a fault of VHS tapes, not the movie. This is a classic everyone must own.
Rating: Summary: Rewarding Tregedy Review: WWII was an experiment to find out if Germany had in fact lost the previous war because it had been 'stabbed in the back by the Jewish element'. At least this was the case in the crazed mind of Adolf Hitler for whom WWI was such a formative experience. The fact that the Germans again lost proved that it wasn't the fault of Germany's Jews, thereby proving another of Hitler's theories wrong. The reason they lost was simply their arrogance. This film calmly and clearly explores the dark mechanics of a flawed and evil state and its effects on humans, both the victims and their tormentors. Shot in black and white and full of controlled and understated performances, this is a film that needed to be made. Some might see it as an indictment of the Hollywood system that such an ambitious and difficult film could only get made by someone with the incredible block-busting track record of Spielberg. But the people really responsible for the kind of films being made are the film-going public who usually see going to a movie as a way of perking themselves up. A film like this has very little of that much-in-demand 'feel good' factor except at the end. But then, sometimes the most tragic art is ultimately the most rewarding as any reader of Dostoyevsky will know. Liam Neeson is masterly as the kind-hearted but cunning industrialist, Oscar Schindler, and Ralph Fiennes reprises his role as a spoilt, rich brat from 'Quiz Show' whilst mixing in an unhealthy dash of cold-blooded evil. Other actors deserve mention even down to the bit part actors playing short-lived scenes where they are the victims of Nazi atrocity. There is an uncomfortable realism about a lot of these scenes that make Schindler's List look a little like a snuff movie. We actually get a terrible vicarious pleasure watching these scenes that perhaps help us to understand not just the victims but also the executioners. A movie like this makes us look deeply into the mirror of our own soul. Are we really so different from the people committing such atrocities? Or do we merely benefit from different circumstances?
Rating: Summary: A movie that had to be made. Review: This movie is an extremely difficult movie to sit through. You almost have to build yourself up to watch it. It is a painful movie to watch. Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson play great parts. This movie makes the viewer really think about the holocaust and what could have been done stop it sooner. One of the best films ever made and everyone should see it.
Rating: Summary: Winner of 7 Oscars including Best Picture of 1993! Review: Stephen Spielberg's extraordinary epic retelling of German war profiteer Oskar Schindler, a superb Liam Neeson, risking all that he has to save over 1,000 Jews amidst the awful genocide of World War II. This is quite simply the most vivid, powerful, and unforgetable cinematic experience I had in 1993. Spielberg's labour of love is truely destined to be a classic, desevedly so, because by refusing to spare us the horrific pain and death of the Holocaust, Spielberg has made a film that will forever remind all who view it of the wonder and importance of Life.
Rating: Summary: unbeliveavle Review: Now this is a hard review to write for a number of reasons, 1. i liked this movie from a historical point of view and from a Christian point of view, but it extremley hard to sit through. This movie tells the story of a man named Schindler who was working for the Germans during the Holocaust. ...Schindler has a heart for the Jews and decides to help as manty Jews as he can escape from the Nazi concentration camps. In my personally opinion this movie struck me as bitter sweet, bitter in tht sometimes you had to leave the room from the scenes of death and the haunting music, and also the use of black and white to portray the movie. And sweet in that it tells the story of a man who decided to do the right thing and help people he didn't know , but he did know that what he was doing was inhumane, and against everything that he believed in.
Rating: Summary: Best Picture is RIGHT Review: Schindlers List is one of the most powerful movies I Have ever seen or bought. This is one movie that I can speak intelligently about. Steven Speilberg(Best Director) does an outstanding and profound job at directing this tale that talks about the manufacturer that saved thousands of lives. right after the big success of Jurassic Park Speilberg manages to put an outstanding cast together including Ralph Fienes and Ben Kingsley. Oskar Schindler(Liam Neeson) puts together a factory for the jews so that way they can work hard and maybe make money at the same time. Meanwhile Arizto (Fiennes) runs his concentration camp right across from Schindlers factory. He does an outstanding job as a mean German Nazi. Killing people from gas chamebers or by his own desire. Ben Kingsley plays Schindlers helper and counter does a profound job. How the General public will take to a three-hour,fifteen minute, black and white epic. This movie is in black and white. This epic anout the holacaust with no major stars is another matter.:George Perry said in his book. Catherine Goodall is Schinlders wife. This movie is a very powerful five star epic on its own. It shows what these people had to go through, but what it felt like people will never understand. An excellent picture. Director:Steven Speilberg Cast: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley
Rating: Summary: Not Impressed Review: It seems that the subject matter of this film entitles it to immediate praise and acclaim but Im going to do the unthinkable and write an unkind review. Firstly I think Speilberg is great but why are filmy people so pretentious. Jaws, ET, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park are all better films but Dinosaurs dont win you Oscars. Both Schindlers list and that other one ( the one set in a world war 2 without any British soldiers )have a similar method to them. Shock the viewer with horrible scenes of attrocites, then do it again and again, now we are all quardruple shocked about what happened in the past. We have all now learned our lessons about human nature, time to go home and mull over our new found lessons. If Speilberg wants to do this why doesn't he make a documetary to lecture at us. It just annoys me a little bit but what do I know, my favorite film is Starship Troopers.
Rating: Summary: Lest we forget... Review: Steven Spielberg on the holocaust. Naturally the kids are cute even as they are diving into the excrement-filled waters of the latrine to hide from the Nazis... Schindler, played believably by big, handsome Liam Neeson is a sweet womanizer who exploits Jewish labor in his factories and then feels guilty about it and ends up saving the lives of eleven hundred people. Ben Kingsley plays Schindler's accountant with precision and his usual subdued intensity. We have again all the Nazi horror, in some ways worst than ever, and rightly so. Here we see a lot of the random shooting of people. The Nazis just use them for target practice or blow their brains out just to be doing something. The cattle cars are there and the gas ovens and the Nazi psychopaths and all the rest of it, although Spielberg adds some touches like Ralph Fiennes as the Nazi officer who kept a Jewish woman he was interested in but couldn't love or even rape, but could only beat. And among the guards who are herding the Jews along are a couple who smile at the kids, as though Spielberg is saying, "Here is this juxtaposition: the horror of the most degraded and inhuman acts known to humankind, but look even the monsters think the kids are cute." We humans ought to have our face rubbed in this at least once a decade. Still I think the actual concentration camp footage seen in, for example, Sophie's Choice (1982), to which Spielberg owes something, is as effective as anything could possibly be. When I see that footage, shot by the triumphant Allied forces, I am again reminded that just concluded was the most depraved and horrific era in human history. Nothing we have done was worse than the holocaust, although Stalin's purging of Russian society ranks a clear second. I think the fact that Spielberg filmed the whole thing in black and white and then turned it all to color with the filming of the actual Jews (now middle-aged) that Schindler had saved from the Nazis was an unconscious tribute to the power of those grainy, flickering shots of horror, part of the legacy of the twentieth century. Perhaps the sudden color was a bit stagy, in the usual Spielberg style; however I have to say showing that one little Jewish girl's red dress (the only bit of color in the movie until the end) was a striking touch: we see her in the red dress when she hides and then when they dig up the bodies we see the dress again and know her fate. This is, as they say, powerful film-making. And it is very important that we not forget...what we did...to ourselves; that we are, given the right circumstances, capable of being monsters again.
Rating: Summary: How do you keep a classroom full of teens quiet . . . Review: . . . for two weeks? Easy. Show them Schindler's List. Every day, we would race to English class, go immediately to our seats, and sit spellbound for 45 minutes until the bell rang. Watch the movie. Get the storyline down, and cry, cry, cry. Then watch it again. Keep an eye on character interaction this time. You want an idea of what kind of person Schindler was? Don't watch him with the other Nazis. Don't watch him with Goethe, or with Helen Hirsch, or with his endless parade of lovers, or with his wife. Watch him with Itzhak Stern. Watch the eye contact, watch the expressions on their faces. Watch their relationship evolve from mere tolerance to something above and beyond friendship. Watch, watch, watch. And as the last scene rolls around for the second time, keep your eye on Stern and Schindler, and if you don't cry, go to your doctor immediately, because I'm pretty sure you're no longer alive.
Rating: Summary: A lesson for us all. Review: The horror of what the Nazi's did during World War II leaves us wondering how any group of citizens could ally themselves with such attrocity. It makes us wonder what we would have done if we had been there. It shows up the darkest parts of human capability. That said, Schindler's List is NOT about the Holocaust. It's about a greedy, instinct-driven Nazi, who becomes a true human being, only after having the truth forced down his throat again and again to the point that he can no longer deny it. It's a simple, yet effective film, in which Speilberg mixes all his veteran cinematic skills, without being afraid to take independant risks (black & white, girl with the red coat, etc...). If you watched this film once, and were depressed by it, please watch it again. It's a triumph of humanity for anyone who is willing to wade through darkness to see the light. Granted, the Holocaust is an important part of the film, however in my opinion it's not the main theme, as evidenced by the fact that the hero is a Nazi and not a Jew (in film directed by Speilberg who is Jewish). The film is more of a lesson, then an attempt at depicting the absolute truth of what happend, and for this Speilberg has taken some undue criticism. Schindler's List is a wonderfully brave, and hopeful piece of cinema that should be appreciated by all.
|