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Enjoyable Movies

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Amadeus is fantastic -- can't count how many times I've seen that one.

A good film but highly inaccurate. The director deviated significantly from the acknowledged facts about Mozart and inaccurately portrayed him as a vulgar and sometimes whiny aristocrat. Also, most historians believe that his relationship with Salieri was a close one and definitely did not end with Mozart being murdered.

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It has been a while since I have seen Amadeus... but I had thought that Salieri had not killed him in the movie, but thought he did.

Salieri's reasoning, if I recall, was that God did not want him to have any good music to his name (or no eternal fame?), so God killed Mozart before he could finish the peice Salieri was going to steal from him...

I don't know how historically accurate this is, but I think that is the way it happened in the film.

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I saw The Scarlet Letter tonight. I don't know if it's been mentioned, but it has now. :-) Great movie! It has one of my favorite actors, Gary Oldman, and he's fantastic (as always). Plus Demi Moore is so convincingly strong and defiant that I'd be tempted to put her name in the "to play Dagny" list... if only she looked the part.

It occurs to me that I really haven't seen enough of Moore's movies. I should rent some... any recommendations? (Please, nobody recommend "Aliens.")

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"The Wind and the Lion" with Sean Connery (a Berber chief) and Brian Keith (Teddy Roosevelt). Based on a true incident around 1902 where the Berbers kidnap an american businessman (a woman and her kids in the movie).

My favorite scene in the movie is the part where a detachment of Marines and Sailors from a U.S. battleship in port (Tangiers?) march through the city and storm the palace of the prince in order to put political pressure on the local government to reign in the wayward sheik and get the american hostages.

The movie holds an eerie resemblance to events unfolding in the region today (the germans and french don't lift a finger to help). I give it 4 stars! Anybody else remember it and care to comment?

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Wow, I'm surprised no one mentioned "Gladiator." Granted, the supernatural element (Maximus, the protagonist, speaking to figurines representing his family, for example) detracts from the heroism that makes the movie so good, but I don't think it's enough to deem the movie "bad." I also especially enjoy the soundtrack (which I have a copy of), very heroic and inspiring. I would definitely recommend this movie.

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I just saw Black Hawk Down for the first time pretty recently, and I have mixed feelings about it. In a lot of ways, it is a very well-made film, and it does have moments of heroism as Joerj11 mentioned. But overall, it seemed rather malevolent to me and was pretty mixed thematically (e.g., it had both pro- and anti-American elements).

In the end, I guess I would say that it is worth seeing once (if you like war movies, at least), but I probably wouldn't bother with it again.

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I thought Stand By Me was a very good movie.

And, believe it or not, I enjoyed the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Yeah, you can laugh but I thought it gave a good depection of man's will to survive, even in the toughest circumstances.

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Sure it seems grim.  But the moral core is rock solid.  Those who live by reason like Bacon's character ultimately triumph in the realm that crimes can be solved through reason and diligence.  Those, like Penn's character and Robbins' character, continue to suffer because of their emotionally driven mistakes.

JC, I have a question about the ending of Mystic River. So anyone that doesn't want to know should stop reading now.

I liked the movie up until the ending. The ending parade had me confused. Bacon's character and Penn's character wink at each other. Did this signify that Bacon (the detective) knew that Penn's character had killed the Robbin's character? I feel like it must have b/c if it didn't then the movie when be mocking justice letting a cold blooded murderer like Penn get off. I wish Eastwood would have made that clearer.

Also, the actor I liked the best in the entire movie was Lawrence Fishbourne who was excellent as the streetwise detective. Fishbourne is an excellent actor despite his politics but then next to Penn and Robbins anybody looks good.

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A few movies I enjoyed, no particular order, some maybe already listed.

Momento

Following

LA Confidential

The Life of Brian

LOTR (all of them)

Kill Bill (both)

Reservior Dogs

Tombstone

Smila's Sense of Snow

Girl, Interrupted

The Professional

Geez, I could go on... I watch too many movies!! :pimp:

VES

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My CyberNet contains a list of movies of interest to Objectivists appearing on cable or satellite each month. There are mini-reviews of "oldies but goodies" that Ayn Rand liked and more modern films suggested by other Objectivists. Some CyberNetters take my movie list to the video store when they are looking for just the right movie to rent.

I'll be glad to send a free sample CyberNet on request (see sig).

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Here's a list of some movies I like. Atlhough most have positives and negatives, the positives predominate:

The Thirty-Nine Steps

Witness for the Prosecution (and basically any other Hitchcock movie)

The Brothers Karamazov

The Scarlet Pimpernel (Leslie Howard/Merle Oberon version)

Cyrano de Bergerac

The Great Escape

Casablanca

Marooned

Hobson's Choice (with Sharon Gless)

Whispering Smith

Only the Valiant

Hombre

Seven Ways from Sundown

Prince of Foxes

The Winslow Boy (Cedric Hardwicke version)

It Happened One Night

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Zulu

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Khartoum (Charlton Heston, Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson)

I also like a lot of the movies that have already been recommended, such as Flight of the Phoenix, Braveheart, etc.

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