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Schindler's List - Collector's Widescreen Gift Set

Schindler's List - Collector's Widescreen Gift Set

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Film and Authenic History
Review: The real life story of a German industralist (Liam Neeson) who saved over a thousand lives from the Nazi death camps, by having them work in his factories is given a real historical treatment in this epic 1993 movie. Should take it's place beside Saving Private Ryan has one of the most accurate films ever done on World War II.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Its not that great
Review: Oh my, should someone dare say this is not a great film. Well its not. This film is too, I don't know, good and evil is too simplified. This movie looked too much like a movie.

I want to recommend another movie, that is lightyears above this one, its called Come and See. Spielberg ripped off this one big time. Come and See is more human, realistic, and horrifying than this overproduced drivel.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: ABYSMAL
Review: In which Steven Spielberg replicates Ophuls's "Sorrow and the Pity" with all the subtlety of "The Color Purple" or "1941." This film proved to be the signpost of the decade, in which technical superiority reigns over the film itself. Spielberg grabs the audience and forces emotion down it's collective throat. Vile, insincere, and a thin-veiled attempt at an Academy Award (albeit successful). Spielberg is saved by his ace cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, and a top-flight cast.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: When a name on a list was a life that was saved
Review: "He who saves a single life saves the world entire."

This was the Talmudic verse that Itzhak Stern, the bookishly serious accountant/friend/conscience of Oskar Schindler quoted to him in one of the movie's final scenes.

On the face of it, Oskar Schindler was the most unlikely hero one is ever likely to hear about. Lusty, earthy, and sensual, he was a reckless philanderer, a gambler, a member of the Nazi party and someone who saw the war as an opportunity to become wealthy. But to the Jews who were fortunate enough to encounter him, he was quite literally their saviour.

Spielberg succeeds with this film on two stupendous levels. Firstly it is with the documentation of the humanisation and conscience of a man who originally saw the war as a personal opportunity and who, at the end of the 6 years, had gone bankrupt in his mission to save "his" Jews. Secondly, and most disturbingly, it is with the graphic re-creation of some of the most horrific and barbaric acts ever committed by mankind, all in the name of prejudice and oppression. Such is the reality of these scenes that viewers will feel outraged, afraid, paralysed, and oppressed. Most of all, they will feel as if they too, had the supreme misfortune to be European Jews living under the dark cloud of prejudice and hatred that permeated the globe during the interminable period of the second world war. And it will leave us asking the one answerable question - "Why?"

Perhaps, as Oskar Schindler viewed these scenes firsthand, that is how he too felt. An odd dichotomy in his character enabled him to fraternise with high ranking Nazi officials, especially the demonic Amon Goeth, while, unlike Goeth and his peers, treating "his" Jews with the humanity and civility that was so scarce during this age of insanity, of loss, of suffering and death. Never before or since has ethnic cleansing succeeded so brutally in decimating the population of an entire race. We must pray that it never does again.

Schindler's story has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of this dark time. It is a story of hope, courage, and survival. But more than that it is the story of a man who chose good over evil, who chose love over hate, who chose understanding over prejudice. Is it any wonder that a tree on the Avenue of the Righteous bears his name?

There are a few names which have become branded in our psyche as being synonymous with the horrors of the Holocaust. Anne Frank, whose diary etched her life and death into the hearts of millions, Simon Wiesenthal, himself an Auschwitz survivor who lost over 80 family members in the death camps, and now of course, there is Oskar Schindler, a man who was far from saintly, but a man whose deeds guaranteed him a place in heaven. A man who "saved the world entire."

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 3/4
Review: Why, oh why, isn't this movie available on DVD? I do realize that it is filmed in grainy black and white and the visual advantage of DVD would be under-utilized, but such a powerful story needs bonus materials to satisfy and educate the viewers.

Most aspects of this movie have been well covered by other people writing some fine reviews here, but one aspect that everyone seems to overlook is the side story where Amon falls for a jewish girl and has conflicting thoughts. He can't understand his desire for her, when he has long accepted the treatment of the jews as animals. In a scene where Schindler is trying to buy her from him, Fiennes does a very good job of portraying his grief of dealing with his own changing views. Also in this scene, he makes Schindler realize that he is aware of what Schindler is doing, but will turn a blind eye to it anyway. So not only has Schindler been mellowed out by the racial environment, but it was obvious that it was starting to affect the monster that Fiennes portrays as well. If things had been allowed to progress as they were, perhaps Amon would have curved his own anti-semitic views under the influence of Schindler.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Mr.Blackwell eat your heart out.
Review: This movie is the most diturbing one in the last millenium. This movie has triumphal motion picture photography, I have half a brain , this movie is the product of that irresistable boy-wonder George Lucas, I am a mindless twit. On the contrary , I was particulary amused by schindler's scathing remarks regarding whoopi goldberg on his worst dressed list, oh you cat meow!However I thought Madonna wasn't that bad, come on she just had a baby, she has to wear baggy clothes, mr. schindler you are absolutely bad. Although I will agree with you on Sharon Stone's wardrobe, she nasty.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Terrific!
Review: I saw this movie first in 7th grade for social studies class years ago, and ever since, i have loved this movie! It was the first to have a real dramatic impact on me. The acting is unreal, the script is amazing, the camera, direction, and effect on your heart and soul are all phenomenal! This film is no joke, it is graphic and surreal and should be viewed by everyone to see the effects hatred can have on the world. One requirement for this movie is that you must be able to take alot of violence and carnage(especially in the part when they liquidate the jewish ghetto). This film is not ment to exploit, but to teach. Watch it, but be prepared, especially for thr overwhelming tear-jerking conclusion. A milestone for movies! 20 out of 10!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great, but with one reservation
Review: It would be silly of me to attempt to suggest that Schindler's List is anything but the most suprising masterpiece of Spielberg's career. And yet, one tiny detail always makes me pause. We're all familiar (or should be) with the magnificent D-Day scene from Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Only an ambitious filmmaker like Speilberg, always striving to out-do himself, could have conceived and executed such a superb seat-of-your-pants battle sequence. It is by now the standard against which we will measure all future battle scenes. And yet, it was maginificent precisely because it brought out the boy-wonder in Speilberg, the film-school student who knows every battle scene since The Birth of a Nation, and must find ways to surpass them. In Schindler's List, the boy-wonder emerges, discreetly, in the myriad displays of Nazi murder. "Squibs" are the tiny explosive devices attached to actors and scenery that simulate the impact of bullets. Spielberg uses squibs so often, and with such obsessive detail, that it becomes slightly distracting. Of course, a crucial part of Schindler's story is how he became humanized when faced with such Nazi brutalities. Yet, if you begin to count the number and variety of Spielberg's squibs - from the machine-gun scoring of walls to the often explosive execution of innumerable Jews - you begin to feel the intrusion of the boy-wonder filmmaker, creator of Jaws and Indiana Jones, finding far too much pleasure in such technicalities. Irresistibly, you begin to notice the actors with the lumpy scarves as the ones who will be shot in the head next. Or the ones with too much padding at the waist. It is a tiny complaint, I admit. But Schindler's List is generally so pure, so unswerving, that such obsessive details become distracting.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Shocking, Horrifying, A Must See
Review: Probably one of the most disturbing films of the last century, Schindler's List is a triumph of cinematography. It takes you into the world of Naziism at its horrible height. You'll see in graphic detail, the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people during Adolf Hitler's reign of terror. You'll understand why Naziism is so hated by most of the world today and you'll wonder at how cruel man can be towards another human being. Some could look at this movie in disbelief and say to themselves "this is hogwash, no human being could do such a thing to another person. No one is that cruel". But, oh my friend, let me assure you that such evils did occur on the Jewish people as well as on millions of other people who the Nazi's considered enemies of the Third Reich. Our own government has photographic proof of the atrocities of World War II, as well as first hand accounts by the millions of soldiers who charged into Nazi concentration camps and forever had their lives changed by what they saw. A good friend of mine who served in World War II, witnessed the horrors of a concentration camp when he and his comrades went in to free its prisoners. He died an alcoholic, and the reason why he became one was because of everything he had experienced while at the camp. His eyes took in the sight of bodies in mass graves, he smelled the stench of rotting corpses of men women and children. He told me that when he first arrived at the camp, he waded through blood up to his ankles. He also told me he never got over what he saw, and that many a nightmare have plagued his sleep. He was your typical "Joe", just a regular soldier from a small town in North Carolina, a normal red blooded American, but one scarred for life by the morbid reality of war, and the inhumanity caused by the Nazi Party. I don't find the scenes of terror portrayed in the movie, hard to believe. Just pick up the morning paper or watch the evening news and you can see for yourself how evil mankind can really be. The movie is about a industrialist named Oskar Schindler, who employed Jews to help them escape the horrors of the concentration camp, even going so far as to create new jobs for them at his factory. The courage he had and the intelligence he possessed is inspiring. With great risk to his own safety, Oskar Schindler helped over 1000 Jews escape the grasp of a Nazi regime. This movie is not recommended for those with weak stomachs or for viewers under age 13, as it contains graphic violence and nudity. But I do highly recommend it to anyone interested in studying the plight of Jews in World War II or who are wanting to study the history of Nazi Germany or for anyone who seeks supreme inspiration.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Stark & Troubling Look At The Realities Of The Holocaust!
Review: This is an extremely troubling, scrupulously accurate, and endlessly compelling screen adaptation of Thomas Keneally's non-fiction best seller depicting the events surrounding Oscar Schindler's acts in saving hundreds of Polish Jews from certain death in the concentration camps by employing them in manufacturing "essential materials" in war-time Poland. Steven Spielberg negotiates his way carefully through the potential minefield of controversy in his stunningly graphic and emotional portrayal of the plight of Polish Jews as the Germans began their preparations for what became the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question" in the occupied sectors of Poland in the early 1940s.

As a serious student of 20th century history, I am indeed impressed by the care with which Spielberg has faithfully recreated the details of the occupation, from Schindler's initial entrepreneurial preoccupation with exploiting Jewish investors and workers for his own profit to the moral indifference and cruelty of Christian Poles toward their Jewish countrymen. The scenes early in the movie depicting the Jews being forcibly ejected from their homes and the trail of local residents taunting and abusing them is among the powerful on film, as are the later episodes showing the barbarism of the Nazis both within the Jewish ghetto and in the streets, casually murdering Jews as simply as squashing a noisome mosquito. The story line provides the viewer with a profound opportunity to be an eyewitness to one of the most shameful and sorry periods in modern world history, as we witness just how base and cruel ordinary human beings can be.

The cast, of course, is absolutely terrific, from Liam Neeson to Ben Kingsley to Ralph Fiennes. In particular, Fiennes' brilliant portrayal of a Nazi officer capable of such casual violence as to nonchalantly order a Jewish engineer shot because she corrects an error made by incompetent German military engineers gives a glimpse into the maddening darkness and banality of evil. Once again, modern American film shows us why serious cinematic efforts like this must be actively sponsored and appreciated. If a photo is worth a thousand words, this breathtaking film is worth a library. It accurately illustrates in its short three or four hours duration more about the individual reality of what world war meant to each of the millions of noncombatants who perished at the hands of evil incarnate than any book may do. This is a movie I plan to use to teach European history to lethargic high-schoolers to wake them out of their self-absorption into an active interest in the world. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand what the Holocaust meant, and how it happened.


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