Rating: 
Summary: Well...
Review: Slaughterhouse-Five is the kind of film that could only have been made in the '70's. It's atmospheric, quirky, and really holds true to it's idiosyncratic vision - it gets under your skin. One of my favorites once upon a time, but wildly uneven upon repeated viewings. The WWII scenes are achingly poignant, and are really the heart of the film. Edited into a film alone it would have been a classic. The slapstick and bile of the rest of the film, intended to be satiric and failing miserably(especially in its virulent misogyny), are the undoing of an otherwise masterpiece. The empty vessel Billy Pilgrim turns out to be makes him an utterly unsympathetic character for whom one can feel no sympathy. You want to distance yourself from him - not because he puts the truth in your face, but because he is ultimately a one dimensional and selfish character. A short-sighted take on the breath-taking panorama of life, death, and the twentieth century.
Rating: 
Summary: So it goes
Review: Successfully adapting a Vonneget book is one of the hardest things to achieve in the art of film adaptation. This is why five other attempts were considered failures or were met with bad reviews. Stephen Geller's Slaughterhouse-Five is a different story. Slaughterhouse-five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man unstuck in time. Billy is constantly drifting from the war in Dresden to his unpleasant life in the suburbs, and his life with a cute girl on the planet Tralfamadore. This film manages to do Kurt Vonnegut's novel justice, mostly due to the great transitions that lay down a sort of pattern to Billy's time travel. Michael Sacks plays Billy Pilgrim in the exact fashion in which the character was conceived but I think the other characters come out quite different than the book. I feel that Slaughterhouse-Five is an over all great achievement. Five stars to director George Hill,screenwriter Stephen Geller and producer Paul Monash, cast and crew.
Rating:
Summary: Unique & special film experience; not to be missed
Review: The mark of a truly great film is when you see it numerous times and, with each viewing, you take something new and fresh away from the experience. SH5 is one of those rare films. Billy Pilgrim's picaresque (look it up) and occasionally bizarre & horrifying encounter with the past and future overwhelm the nobility and heroism of his understated character. This movie is the real thing, you cannot experience it and walk away unmoved.
Rating:
Summary: And So It Goes......
Review: The movie sticks pretty close to the book and captures the essence of Billy Pilgrim's plight in being unstuck in time. Time tripping between events of his life juxtaposed with the evens of WWII were done well.My only wish is that someoen would produce other works of Vonnegut like Cat's Craddel, Sirens of Titen and God Bless your Mr Rosewater.
Rating: 
Summary: Slaughterhouse-Five has yet to be properly adapted
Review: The only thing that keeps this oversimplified adaptation of one of the essential novels of the twentieth century from falling flat on the bottom of the barrel is the filmmakers' decision to include a few fresh ideas that capture surprisingly well the nature of the book in the cinematic context. The lyrical music performed by Glenn Gould perfectly matches the mood of the story. The personality of the main character comes through relatively well as portrayed by Michael Sacks; the same goes for his wife, who somehow manages to be both weak and naïve without looking offensive. The director's decision to superimpose the burning of the bodies in Dresden with the Tralfamadorian message about the end of the world is a surprisingly effective piece of symbolism; and the insanity of Billy's rival who shoots him right after his final speech is a nice variation of the plot that works well in its own right. However, looking beyond these few points, the film is a total disaster. The pace of the action alters from extremely slow to breakneck fast, sometimes going over the same concept over and over, and sometimes skipping the essential parts of the plot in a way that makes it extremely easy for anyone who hasn't read the book in advance to lose their way and never get back on track. While Billy's death scene is orchestrated majestically enough, his preceding speech is a miserable attempt to put Vonnegut's complex ideas into words accessible to every five-year-old, skipping over the poetry and ambiguity of the author's concept as if it was a bit of pretentious nonsense that does not deserve to be adapted for the big screen. The scenes related to Dresden are extremely badly staged, making it look like the producers ran out of budget and did not have money when it was time to film the most important location in the book. The complexity of the conflict between Billy and his children is sacrificed for a happy-go-lucky conclusion, while the ending itself is quite possibly the worst ending of any book adaptation ever filmed. Throwing the whole episode of the post-war horse riding out of the window, the creators instead replaced that ambiguous, poetic finale with an illogical scene of such remarkable one-sidedness that I would have never believed in the possibility of such a thing had I been told about it beforehand. Ultimately, it is very hard to recommend the movie to anyone who has not read the book in advance, for the film makes it very easy to misunderstand and lose interest in ever reading Kurt Vonnegut's masterpiece. As for those who did read the book, the only reason why you could see the film is to get a "sudden" revelation that for all the greatness of that outstanding writer, the time when any of his books would be adequately adapted for the screen has yet to come.
Rating:
Summary: Analyze this.
Review: The very bizarre - almost mystical - antiwar novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was difficult to transfer to the screen. However there are still many good moments in this complex film about a New York optometrist who has fantasies about a strange futuristic planet and nightmares about Nazi prisoner-of-war camps. Many of the images are brilliant, but the movie is hard to follow, even for those who read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Nowhere Near the Greatness of the Book!
Review: This has got to be my very favorite book of all time, but also one of my least favorite movies of all time. I loved every little word printed in the book and the movie just failed in comparison. I do realize that no film can be EXACTLY like the book, but I felt that this movie took far too many allowances in straying from the book. I was very disappointed and I only sat through the whole film was because of my intense love of the book. I was very disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: Strange
Review: This is a story that only comes together right at the very end. You'll be wondering why it seems to jump about throught different times; stories set in the past, present and future.But stick with this, it's strange but interesting. The title however makes it sound like a slasher, and it's not at all.
Rating:
Summary: Quite nearly perfect- "Wall" like
Review: This is one of those movies that you have to watch again and again to catch everything -- and maybe you never will. The moments are structured that way. This movie reminds me a lot of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" (or really vice-versa since SH5 came out first). The free-association cuts between similar past and future events are very effective. I'm wondering what the movie would be like with a good Pink Floyd soundtrack. The movie did an excellent job of illustrating the absurdities of life (the wife who continually says she will lose weight and never does, and so forth). Lots of humor... the Tralfamadorians tell Pilgrim that he has no free will and he responds "What'll I do?" I read the book as well. I actually like the movie better (because I saw it first). Both the book and the movie are effective at feeling just a little *too* real.
Rating:
Summary: More Like Torture House
Review: This movie is extremely weird, many things don't make sense. Why did this movie have scenes where Pilgrim would be doing something during World War II then would be doing something similar in some distant year. Those sequences would jump for example. It would go W.W. II, Now, W.W. II, Now, etc. Events in this movie don't follow chronological order, instead they jump around. Since I don't know how to put the half on stars yet I will type this. I give this movie * 1/2 stars. Some of the normal World War II things save this movie from being BOMB. Slaughter House Five is not worth putting your money on.
|
