Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

zardoz-13 The worst Italian sword & sandal saga surpasses low-budget producer & director Roger Corman's period knock-off "Atlas" with a towering Michael Forest as the eponymous muscle-man in a colorful red short skirt. So many things are so horribly wrong about this lackluster epic that it makes you wonder what possessed Corman to shoot it in the first place. Okay, the scenic Grecian splendor is a big plus, but little else is as comparable. The high and tight 1960s' haircuts along with those pencil-thin mustaches do little to evoke authenticity. Forrest just doesn't cut it as the titular strongman. Mind you, he is tall, but he doesn't look like a weightlifter. The only bright spot in this dreadful mess is Frank Wolff, who went on to make a name for himself in Spaghetti westerns. Wolff chews the scenery with relish, and he is fun to watch. Nobody else matches his gusto. Nothing else about this abysmal outing is remotely memorable. Although I cannot tolerate this cardboard peplum, I love those English-dubbed spectacles with Steve Reeves, Mark Forrest, Gordon Scott, Gordon Mitchell, and Alan Steel. Altogether, "Atlas" qualifies as dreary from fade-in to fadeout. Everything about it has potboiler written all over it. For the record, ruthless city-state tyrant Praximedes (Frank Wolff of "Once Upon a Time in the West") has laid siege to King Telektos' city for months without success. The two leaders decide to select champions to represent them in the arena, and the victor will win the day. Predictably, Atlas tops his opponent in a fight that has little grit. When the villainous insists that Atlas kill King Telektos' champion, our noble hero relents and allows him to live. Eventually, Atlas figures out that he fought for the wrong guy. Clocking in at 79 minutes, "Atlas" must be one of Corman's worst that he'd love to forget. Perhaps a widescreen version instead of this severely cropped full-frame rendition would at least yielded more panoramic views of Greece.

heckles Sometimes you see a movie and wonder if it was made just so the crew could enjoy a six-week vacation in a nice place. Unspoiled Greece in 1961 was probably a very pleasant locale indeed for Roger Corman and friends to take such a vacation.The story is a familiar one: Buff, good-hearted but naive hero is tricked by a more worldly man into using his great strength for his benefit until the hero wises up. This is a plot used in the great sagas of Hercules, Sigfred, and Tom Cruise. Here the trusting hero, Atlas, is invited by a city-state tyrant, Praximedes, to be his champion in a fight to the death so that Praximedes can annex some defiant holdout city.The problem with all of this is: the movie is boring. Very boring. The fight scenes lack drama; the battle scenes look like extras throwing sticks that are supposed to be spears at each other. Michael Forest as Atlas can't act - period. Barboura Morris is the sex interest of changeable loyalties; she isn't bad looking, but she doesn't take off near enough clothes. --Oh, don't tell me it was 1961. "Spartacus" was made a year before, and that had a bathing scene. Plus a reference to homosexuality. "Atlas" was never meant to be a big-budget epic. So no excuses, Roger. This kind of movie, you have to sex up if you don't do anything else.Frank Wolff's Praximedes seems to be having a good time; but rather than coming across as a figurative tyrant (he makes no secret that he is a -literal- tyrant), he seems more like a glad-handing jerk, and a distinctly American one at that.I hope the crew enjoyed their vacation. The rest of us, if we want a Greek vacation, should catch "Summer Lovers" or "Venus on Fire".

horrorfilmx Cheap, sure. Corman --- of course. But not the usual fare, not even for the King of the B's. Here's the backstory: Corman was in Europe shooting another feature and supposedly entered into a co-production deal with another company. At the last moment his co-producers pulled out and took their money with them. Now Corman had two choices: abandon the project, or shoot the script he had for half the money he'd budgeted. Which did he choose? Well, the movie got made didn't it? Screenwriter Charles Griffith had also written LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and originally wanted to call this movie ATLAS, THE GUIDED MUSCLE, but Corman nixed that. So we get Steve Forrest (who also played Apollo on a STAR TREK episode) as a slightly malnourished looking Atlas, standing around with a bunch of extras in Greek costumes (including Griffith and Corman himself), looking around at the "grandeur" of ancient Greece, a bunch of the crumbling ruins which the villain explains away by saying "Well, we've been at war so long all the buildings have been demolished" or something like that. I'm not going to pretend this is a GOOD movie, but it's a great example of the unstoppable Corman machine in action.

crazycat007 ... that is, if you dig flicks that involve men wearing really high cut "togas" that look more like skirts. The battle scenes are absolutely laughable, with lots of shots of shields being hit by things (occasionally the wooden swords), and lots of guys who throw spears really poorly at their crew-cut Greek rivals. The charges just sort of slow in front of enemy lines, once even to turn around and change a formation four feet from the "battle line." Some of the editing looks like it may have been done by a deranged chimp, and that's just for the important dialogue scenes. There are a few shots where the camera literally gets knocked out of place. A final word of warning: the director took full advantage of shot width, so if you are unfortunate enough to watch this on tv, several scenes will have half of the speakers cut off at the edge of the screen. If you need something to MST3K, come and get it!