Rating: 
Summary: The Difference
Review: All I'll say about this movie is this, when I saw it in the theater in first release, it's the only movie I've ever seen where there was complete silence throughout the film and even after. Those walking out after the end were as quiet as funureal goers, looking as if they'd just been hit by a hammer.I've never seen a more powerful film.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible subject brought beautifully to film
Review: Wow. Just wow. That's all. Gripping, moving, tear jerking, uplifting, top notch acting, stunning photography, script line in synch with the book, true life ending, OMG. This is the story of Oskar Schindler who kept over 1,000 people alive during the Nazi reign. This is a movie (and book) you must watch (or read) to believe. I generally do not care for "war" movies, and although I love splatter films and gory fiction books, I despise real life violence. Having once been a victim of violent crime, I have a relationship with real life horror that I do not like to explore, but the heroism of this story so dramatically overwhelms the real horrors that it is a must see for anyone. Liam Neeson is phenomenal in his role as Schindler, and Ben Kingsley along with Ralph Finnes fills out the superb acting. Difficult to watch, impossible to forget, it is truly the story of heroism on its grandest scale.
The most poignant moment is the one, the only, faded splash of faint color in the little girls red coat; the rest of the movie is black and white, which only adds to the impact of the total emotion of this fantastic film.
Rating:
Summary: The Vary Best
Review: The best movie I have ever seen on the worries of war and of what man can do to one other.I last family in that war.I still wear people say that it did not happen."IT DID HAPPEN" "Do you have numbers on your arm?"A must see for true accounts.
Rating:
Summary: A Tale of True Bravery
Review: I've always been interested in the Holocaust. I don't know what it is, but it's a drive to know about it, to understand it. I just recently saw this movie for the first time. I expected it to be like most World War II movies, mostly action and political, but this movie amazed me. It was the most moving movie I've ever seen on the Holocaust and the cruelity of man-kind. Once you see this movie you'll always carry it around in the back of your mind. It was the best three hours and seventeen minutes of my life. (Thanks Steven!)
Rating:
Summary: The Rest Is Silence
Review: I saw this movie for the first time along with a group of seven other people, in a completely full theater. When the curtain went down and the lights came on, everyone got up and moved to the door, but no one said a word. Not one. It was dead quiet all the way out to the street. I've never experienced anything like that.I was raised knowing all about the six million we lost in the Holocaust, not to mention the five or six million others who died in the camps, but I didn't really get it until Spielberg silenced me and everyone else in the room. How did he do it? First of all, he chose the right protagonist. Oskar Schindler, the savior of a thousand Jews, was anything but an angel - he toadied up to those in power unashamedly, paid bribes with money he didn't have, took advantage of the unfortunate for his own ends, cheated endlessly on his wife, and kept his eye on his bottom line to the exclusion of everything else. He was flawed, vulnerable and human, like you and me, and through his reaction to what he sees we can feel the indescribable horror as we could not through the reactions of a saint. There's a scene in this movie where Schindler, out for a horseback ride with one of his girlfriends, happens upon a mountain of corpses being burned. A saint might look sad or angry at such a scene - Liam Neeson's expression is that of a man falling off a cliff he didn't know was there. Faced with such carnage, that's probably how I'd look, too. Spielberg's other smart move was filming "Schindler's List" in black and white. Siskel and Ebert have pointed out, rightly, that black and white makes images appear somehow eternal, like historical documents rather than mere pictures. That's certainly true here, but it works on many levels. Sometimes the black and white photography has a matte finish and takes on the character of news photography, showing how banal (and therefore how terrifying) an image is, such as those times when Ralph Fiennes Commandant Goeth shoots a few passing prisoners for breakfast. On the other hand, "Schindler's List" contains a great many images that look like they were etched on mirrors, such as the famous shot of a little boy hiding from the Nazis at the bottom of a latrine. At those moments, even when (as one character says) "all around lies the gulf," the pictures soak up a truly heavenly light, as though Someone were watching. The performers involved certainly behave as though Someone were watching, and they turn in the work of their lives, from the stars to the bit players. Neeson has just the right sort of big, craggy face that can show decadence one minute and agony the next, and he's got the talent to run the whole gamut in all the right places. Fiennes, in his first major role, resembles nothing so much as a sort of human hog, but a cunning and crazed one - he seems able to sweat on cue. Ben Kingsley as Schindler's factory manager, with almost no change in his facial expression, makes us see how he moves from suspicion to hope to love for this strange animal, his boss. And besides these monumental performances, there's the black marketeer who finagles his customers with one breath and loves his wife with the next; the engineer who sacrifices her life to the fact that concrete needs to be poured with care; the old hinge-maker who waits on his knees for a miracle involving a jammed gun; the pretty young woman who informs Schindler that he's running a haven rather than a factory; the kindly but finally gutless industrialist, and a many dozen others, all unforgettable. And then there's Spielberg's damping down his usual sentimentality, his choice of Yiddish music for the soundtrack, his placement of the camera at a quiet and unobtrusive angle for the worst of evils - I found all of this pretty nearly perfect, but there were those who complained about the movie's historical inaccuracy. In one scene, much noted for its supposed softening of the facts, Schindler's female "employees" find themselves in a big room with shower heads in the ceiling and actually get a shower instead of a flood of poison gas. It's true that most prisoners were not so fortunate, and that such scenes may play into the hands of the filth who claim that there was no cyanide in the camps, but I can't see that as an argument against this movie. If nothing else, the looks of tension on the women's faces before the water comes down is more than enough to tell us what they expect to get. After all, Spielberg is not a documentarian, he's a storyteller; this story could not have had a better servant. The meaning of the Holocaust is as plain as plain here, particularly at the end when Schindler realizes that he could have saved a few more human beings if he had just thought to sell his car or his gold Nazi pin. He crumples weeping to his knees, only to be lifted up by the men and women he has saved. A little later we learn that the descendants of Schindler's Jews living in Israel outnumber the entire current Jewish population of Poland. That silences all criticism, as the movie audience already knew. Hence the quiet after the final credits. Benshlomo says nothing.
Rating:
Summary: We Must Add Our Own Stones
Review: Curious about the etymology of "holocaust," I again consulted John Ayto's ever-reliable Dictionary of Word Origins and learned that the word has classical origins (as do most other words) and was first used in English by John Milton in reference to "complete destruction by fire." Related meanings include "a complete burning" (from "burnt offering") and "a sacrifice completely consumed by fire." In our own time we capitalize the word when referring to the process of systematic elimination by the Third Reich of everyone perceived to be an enemy. Most were Jews but hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish gypsies, clergy, artists, journalists, and political opponents were also among the victims. I am unqualified to comment on this film's authenticity. However, I believe that to the extent possible and appropriate, Spielberg and his screen writers Steven Zaillian and Allan Starski were faithful as well as respectful to the historical material first provided to Thomas Keneally by "Schindlerjuden" ("Schindler's Jews"). The film is based on his book, Schindler's Ark (1982), later retitled Schindler's List. In 1993, the film as well as Spielberg and Zaillian and Starski were among the recipients of Academy Awards. The basic situation is that Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) is a German industrialist in Poland whose company manufactures household items. After the Jews in the Krakow ghetto are transported to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp in 1942, and Schindler's company is required to manufacture munitions for the German war effort, he seizes the opportunity to have Jews work for him as unpaid laborers. He maintains cordial relations with German officers with bribes and lavish entertainment and even enlists Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) as his negotiator to obtain concessions (for a price) from Goeth's superior. The war continues. Over time, for reasons revealed in the film, Schindler develops a benevolent and then paternalistic attitude toward his Jewish workers, all of whose names are carefully recorded on a list compiled by the company's secretary/treasurer, Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). Schindler exhausts his funds trying to protect them from reassignment to concentration camps. Eventually his efforts save approximately 1,100 Jews but by the film's conclusion, he is a bankrupt and broken man. His own life has also become "a sacrifice completely consumed by fire." Important films are not necessarily great films. Schindler's List is both. For obvious reasons, it portrays experiences of unique importance to Jews but to a Gentile such as I, it also has much of great value to say about what it means to be a human being worthy of the name. From accounts provided by the "Schindlerjuden," Spielberg and his associates created great cinematic art without even once allowing even the subtlest suggestion of melodrama or sentimentality to compromise the humanity of Oskar Schindler or, more importantly, the integrity of those on his list.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good film.
Review: Spielberg did a pretty good job on this movie, from Poland during the war to the girl in the red dress. The characters were believable, the cinematography was great, and everything fit together well. I was upset with only one thing though. In the movie, the Jews were quicker to forgive the Germans than they were to forgive the Poles. My opinion may be a little skewed, but its true. While the Poles sat defeated, and were unable to help the Jews in any way, the Germans were shooting them left and right. But when the war is over, the Jews are best friends with the Germans, but hate the Polish for not helping them. Had they realized that the Polish had been DEFEATED, they would know that there was no way they could have legally helped. Many Poles, my family included, hid the Jews from the Germans during World War II, but all that is forgotten. Because so many Jews were killed in Poland, lets all assume its the fault of the Poles. Anyway, I still gave this film four stars. Other than that one problem I had with it, I thought it was alright.
Rating:
Summary: In an insane place in time..one with compassion gives life
Review: What is there to say, except thank you Mr. Spielberg. You have brought to life, the story of a point in the history of our world that we should forget. Unfortunately, we can not nor should we. This undeniable masterpiece has been given to us as a reminder to the past that we should always embrace. Embrace not the horror but the lives of those lost. I have lost relatives in the camps, relatives I never would get to know. Still, I weep for them and try to live my life for them. I can only hope, that by some small miracle, they get to live on through me. I watch this film at least twice a month, as a way to try to understand why and what it was like. Also to remind myself, that when times get bad, there is always a spark of hope somewhere. Again, a thank you goes out to you Mr. Spielberg. HE WHO SAVES ONE LIFE, SAVES THE WORLD ENTIRE. If you enjoyed this film, please, if I may....You should also see Life Is Beautiful...Roberto Benigni...same type of movie...with the same type of passion and overwhelming story telling as Schindler's.
Rating: 
Summary: Hollywood Europe
Review: I read that Dancer in the Dark Danish director Lars von Trier was blamed by American critics for setting his movie in the US while he'd never set a foot there. Well, this is pretty much the feeling a European gets when watching this live reconstitution of WW2 in Germany for CNN. All these German officers speaking English and acting SO American... Like "John Wayne vs Hitler"...
I must admit I'm a little unfair: Mr Spielberg did make an effort here. He's trying to recreate some of Visconti's magic (see "the Damned"), and to set aside much of his Hollywoodness. The result is not quite convincing to me. Don't misunderstand me: this is not an anti-American charge at all: American cinema has been and still is one of the best in the world, and I'm a great consumer of it; but an American movie is never better than when it's set in the US...
I also agree with the reviewer below who stressed how 'inappropriate' it is to produce such conventionnal emotional effects with such tragic historical events...
Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable Tale of Hope and Tragedy
Review: This is one movie that I think everyone at some point must see. In the peak of the second world war, Oskar Schindler believes he can use a war that takes away millions of lives and a Nazi regime that murders millions of innocents, to make a profit. He soon begins to see the atrocities for what they really are. Slowly he begins a list, a list that will save many.
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