Amadeus

Rating:
Summary: This great movie is a FLIPPER.
Review: I hope Warner Brothers get their act together and rerelease this movie in a dual layer format. The flipping over of the disc just kills the experience of this film.

Rating:
Summary: Growth curve
Review: Musician composes, performs, then dies poor. Visual and inspiring

Rating:
Summary: A highly entertaining film
Review: This film won best picture and was on AFI's top 100 list and for good cause. When I first watched it, I thought, Mozart, opera, blah, boring. But I was highly surprised. The movie is really entertaining and the music is great. It shows jealousy, mediocrity, and greatness. Everyone can relate to Antonio Salieri, we've all watched someone who is better than us at something and thought what he thought, but he gets his revenge. Also this the is the best way to get interested in classical music which isn't so bad after all.

Rating:
Summary: A great film
Review: Milos Forman brings together a great film about a Great Artist Mozart.the Humor&Music are as timeless as the film.I really enjoy this film alot.it never goes out of style just like the music.

Rating:
Summary: too bad the video transfer isn't as good as the movie
Review: Okay, we all know that this multiple Oscar-winning film is wonderful on all levels, but be forwarned: the video transfer to DVD pales in comparison to the laser disc collector's edition from several years ago. The sound is fine, and you certainly better have a good sound system to take full advantage, but the picture isn't as great as it should be. Granted, it is at LEAST as good as the best VHS copy you will ever watch, but it lacks the THX treatment the $150.00 laser disc edition got, and boy is THAT worth every cent! A great transfer, running commentary by Milos Forman and Peter Shaffer, hour-long documentary, and several deleted scenes. Until such a time as that version is released on DVD (and I hope it will be someday), your DVD copy of "Amadeus" will not be the best copy available. And the laser disc edition came with the soundtrack CD's in 24 karat bit somethingorother, which I believe is the best version commercially available. A treasure! So buy the DVD so you can have a good copy of this film, but keep your eyes peeled for the THX version, with bonus features, if it ever becomes available. Then buy that.

Rating:
Summary: Hollywood at its best
Review: I'm hardly one to agree with hollywood, but this is one of my all-time favorites. One of the best blends of humor, beautiful music, drama and romance that I have ever seen. Watch it with no expectations...don't expect a history lesson of Mozart's life, but expect to have whatever sketchy, tight-laced image you may have of him ripped to shreds. Be ready to see one of the Gods of music humanized, and brilliantly so. The scene to me which best epitomized his genius: Mozart bent over a billiard table in a disheveled house, rolling a billiard ball around on the table, jotting down notes on paper while the ball traverses its path. Decadent, funny, touching.

Rating:
Summary: ehahahahahahahheh!
Review: Amadeus was definitely one of the greatest films of the 80's and the best of 1983. F. Murray Abraham is delightful as Antonio Salieri, both young and old and crazy. The requiem composition scene is powerful and moving. Tom Hulce gives a hilarious, Oscar deserving performance as Mozart. He couldn't do it better, especially with that drunken, hideous cackle (ehahahahahhahahheh! ) I just watched it this morning. That is how good it is! It and Barry Lyndon can't be compared fairly either way, but the costumes would go to Lyndon, music and acting to Amadeus.

Rating:
Summary: a fine use for your DVD player...
Review: I wish I owned a Dolby 5.1 receiver, but even w/ just Dolby Pro Logic Amadeus is a pleasure to see and hear. So much talented collaboration collaboration from every field: Peter Shaffer, Milos Forman, Tom Hulce... all provide beautiful key elements that lift Amadeus to the highest shelf on my meager DVD rack.

The DVD features an interesting set of bonus materials, such as a music-only rendition, but the video quality to me seems not quite up to par with more recent DVD releases. The disc also uses only one layer, and must be flipped halfway through.

Despite these very minor setbacks, there are few better ways to put your home theater system to the task of delivering a thoroughly enjoyable yet somewhat disturbing suggestion of Mozart's life and death. Was it rheumatic fever, or was it the music itself? The answers are not here, but you will find a a screen full of fabulous costumes against a glorious soundtrack. The music-only mode provides well enough spirit to convey the film just as effectively as when the dialogue is included.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocrities Everywhere
Review: May I clarify a few things before speaking my mind?

I read "Peter Shaffer's Amadeus," and I put quotes around both author and title to emphasize that is certainly his "Amadeus." Shaffer wrote a wonderful play using historical characters, using both the life and music of Mozart as a springboard for his imagination.

Forman took Shaffer's text from the theatre to the opera house. People who know anything about Mozart and the people of his time will barely recognize any of the characters in the movie, except possibly for Baron van Swieten. He was truly a great patron and received many dedications from both Mozart and Beethoven.

As a work of entertainment, art, and historical fiction, "Amadeus" may be favorably compared to "Ivanhoe," easily one of the greatest historical romances of the English language. Or even to the "history" plays of the Bard hiimself. But "Amadeus" has an unfair advantage over all of them. It uses a visual and audible means of storytelling which, especially in the music, cannot be easily, if at all, rendered into words.

And what magnificent music! It is said that the angels play Bach for the Lord, Beethoven for men, and Mozart for themselves. His music at times seems to be the eavesdropping of mortals into the immortal. What becomes unbearable is the recognition of a spirit so pure, so otherworldly, yet so recognizably human, that in hearing Mozart, especially late Mozart, one feels that one has experienced beauty of a kind that transcends both body and death, yet retains echoes of both, leaving the listener both enraptured and desititute. It is a most exquisite pain.

Rating:
Summary: Good DVD transfer and brilliant performances.
Review: I saw this years ago on VHS, which is the worst medium to watch a film like this. We saw it again on DVD, and it made for a very entertaining two plus hours. The picture was very good for a movie that old, and the 5.1 soundtrack made the opera sequences a little easier to take. The performances, especially by F. Murray Abraham as the mediocrity, makes this a great film though. The scenes with him and Mozart (Tom Hulce) together, especially the last one, were worth the price of the rental by themselves.