Marval Movie

In my life, I've seen a lot of movies, some that excel in greatness, others that fall flat on their face and others that don't stand the test of time too well and their appeal is merely observing how much the dust has gathered since then. Amadeus is one of the closest movies that earn the right to be called perfect.

The movie starts with two servants entering a dark candlelit house, we hear a voice cry out "Mozart I'm sorry, I killed you." They knock on the door there is no reply, they try to tempt him out with some delicious cream then they hear a thud. One breaks down the door and we see an old man on the floor, razor in hand and throat slit, simultaneously we hear Mozart's 25th symphony.

We later learn that the old man is Antonio Salieri a composer who is second-rate at creating, but first-rate at appreciating and recognizing greatness. We see him in an insane asylum and a priest is brought in to hear his confession, he dismisses him, but the priest insists that he must confess to God to forgive him. Salieri agrees (if only to humor him), but before he does he plays the priest (as well as the audience) a sample of music. He plays, the priest does not recognize it "What is it?" the priest asks, "I wrote it" Salieri replies. He then plays another which like the last one goes over the priest's head, "is there no melody of mine you can recall?" Salieri says, then with a sly look he plays another piece and the priest recognizes it instantaneously and even hums along with it even when Salieri stops. The priest says that it's charming and that he was unaware that he wrote it, " I didn't" says Salieri " that was Mozart".

So Salieri confesses his sins to the priest and we are taken back to him as a young man and how he longed to be a great musician since his youth and how he only amounted to a mediocre one at best and listening to Mozart 's greatness only made his mediocrity stand out all the more.

Salieri is played by F. Murray Abraham and he plays him with great presence, we can look at the subtle expressions on his face as well as his body language and can tell what he thinks and how it effects him, the whole movie shows him in a battle with God, Mozart, and his own sanity. There are few performances that after over thirty years remains so fresh and vivid, I don't think I have ever seen a performance to this high a standard in my time watching movies.

We later meet Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at a party that Salieri attends and he is like an unattended child in a room full of adults. He chases his girlfriend around, even dragging her across the floor by her ankle and when Salieri discovers this is the musical prodigy that he has admired all his life the expression on his face is priceless. Salieri hates Mozart's personality so much that he calls him "the creature".

Later after Mozart's performance Salieri looks over Mozart's sheet of music and is very moved by its heavenly greatness, if you watch his face he is either weeping for its beauty or weeping because of his jealousy.

Mozart is played by Tom Hulce (Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame). He plays Mozart as a genius who knows he is a genius, this leads him to take praise with much ease and taking criticism with virtually none. He has wild radical new ideas that he is so enthusiastic about and if you look at the wigs he wears they are more spiky and colorful than the others so in a society slow jazz players he's a hardcore punk (so to speak), his music is fast, radical and as one describes "too many notes" and lest we forget that ridiculous laugh.

By genre Amadeus is a costume drama, that's where there's a heavy emphasis on set and costume and they are usually some of the best looking movies that you'll ever see but the characters and the performances are as flat as an old Victorian painting that there based of. Here they move, the characters aren't stiff planks, they emote they have body language, they express and can talk. What I mean is in other movies their speech would be as stiff as their posture.

The movie is directed by Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Coco's Nest) and he knows how to use those gorgeous sets, the city of Prague where it was filmed as well as the actors. He and his writer, Peter Shafer (who wrote the stage play) give the characters and the story freedom to have fun, this is not a movie that grounds itself in being historically accurate to each meeting time at each location at each date. The point is the idea or the spirit, the joy of being a creative person, the ability to come up with ideas.

One of the main points of the movie is perfect. Salieri looks at Mozart's music and says its perfect and how if one note was changed or one phrase misspelled then it would all shatter. Conveniently this is also how I define perfect and how the movie plays, if you were to add or take away anything it would sis to be perfect and just about every frame of Amadeus needs to be there. But I myself don't believe in perfect, the world is not perfect (it spins on a tilted axis) I don't think there is a perfect building, painting, person nor a perfect film but there are some that come close and Amadeus is one of them. It's almost like one of Mozart's operas with great sound and beautiful images moving together in harmony.

There is a director cut of the movie. It is around thirty-five minutes longer and I don't see the point as I previously said if you add or take away anything then it will sis to be perfect, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't interested. I have not seen the entire directors cut but I've seen a few scenes, they are worth seeing but the selesai feature is a great movie as it is.

If I was asked to name the greatest movie of all time I wouldn't name my favorite, I would name the most well-made movies I've seen. Only a few films would make it like Citizen Kane, Singin in the Rain, Apocalypse Now and Amadeus.

Childhood makes us who we are, it is one of the most important parts of anyone's life and its very important to have someone special that you can rely on to get you through the hard times and to share in the good ones. But sometimes that person isn't always the same person you need for your adult life.

Ted is the story of how a little boy named John who grew up without any friends before one Christmas he gets a big cuddly teddy bear who he loves and one night he wishes that he would come to life and they could be friends forever. By what seems to be a miracle the toy really does come to life, narrator Patrick Stewart explains that "there is nothing more powerful than a child's wish...except a Apache helicopter". So naturally John is delighted, but his parents are freaked the hell out, at first. Overnight Ted becomes an international celebrity, this probably would happen if an inanimate object came to life with a personality. But as it was said "all glory is fleeting" and Ted fades into obscurity.

Ted is the first full length film for Seth McFarland (creator of Family Guy & American Dad) and whoever is a fan of either of these show will enjoy the humour of Ted. Ted is raunchy, crude and offensive, but still is charming...in its own way. McFarland doesn't really offer much as a visual director (apart form a few sight gags), his real strength is in his writing offering all kinds of jokes from character driven to situation.

Once Ted and John grow up, John (Mark Wahlberg) has met a great girl named Lori (Mila Kunis) and they have been in a happy relationship for four years except that Ted (Seth McFarland) who now has taken on the role of a dead beat roommate and is weighing John down. Lori loves him, but she knows that Ted is holding him back from being the fully grown adult that John could be.

The real achievement of the film is Ted himself.  He is one of the gems of C.G.I. integrated characters into live action movies, the light that shines through his fur is convincing and there are appreciated touches like patches of his fur that are missing or worn away (as would happen to a teddy bear that's over ten years old) and all the actors are convincing while interacting with Ted. Not as good as Gollum though.

Just like McFarland's other shows this movie has more than its share of references. The most prominent is the Flash Gordon movie, both John and Ted adore the movie and its more than a reacquiring theme through the movie. Ive never seen the movie but I didn't feel in the dark, but it probably would have gone down smoother if I would have seen it. There are also an unprecedented amount of celebrity cameos, to the amount that I just couldn't keep up with. Most of the time I just didn't know who these people were, but when I did it was always a great joke.

Anyone who knows their two cents about McFarland knows that he uses a few a his regulars a lot,  Alex Borstein (Lois Griffin) has a cameo role as John's mother and Patric Warburton (Joe Swanson) and one of John's co-workers. I swear that whatever Patric Warburton is in he is hilarious and this is no exception, plus it leads to a Ryan Reynolds cameo in the film that is unforgettable, I never thought I would say this but I was glad to see Ryan Reynolds.

Eventually it all comes down to a choice for John between Lori or Ted. So Because John isn't a complete idiot he chooses Lori but still has a hard time letting Ted go.  Ted eventually gets a job at a convenient store (that I doubt he really wanted to get) and lives on his own but still him and John hang out almost everyday.

Ted is an excellent comedy that hits on all fronts, from visual, to dialogue and to flat out shocking. I think that it may be better than There's Something About Marry, because while it is a little less gross but like Mary there are about six really hard laughs that I haven't had in a movie for a long time, as-well as more than a few decent ones scattered through the rest of the movie. If your easily offended then I don't know how you survive in this modern day and age, but if your a fair game and want to see a more riskae comedy then this one about a boy and his bear will not disappoint.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 4

The old West was a place of heroes, villains, cowards and just simple folk. It was also a place of war, disease, in-glory and racism. Of course it was, comfort always get better with time, a hundred years from now people will look back on us and wonder how the hell we lived in such conditions. And as the movie states at the beginning some people are born in the wrong time, and Seth McFarland's character, Albert Stark, is from the present but was born is the harsh world of the old West.

The movie is about a local Sheep farmer (Albert Stark, played by Seth McFarland) that is a coward in the world of the old West i.e. he wants to live. He worms his way out of a duel then looses his girlfriend (Amanda Seyfried) but to his luck another woman named Anna (Charlize Theron) arrives in town and seems to think that there's more to this farmer than what first appears (I'm not so sure).

It is the great chemistry between McFarland and Theron that really works in the movie. They really do seem to work off each-other well and find one-another funny.

As the title would imply people die in this movie and not in the generic way. Death in this movie can come from anywhere at anytime so it always keeps you on your toes. Some of them are a little cheep by simply going for the shock laugh and others are well executed by having subtle buildup and execution. 

The movie is very hansom. The lighting and sets are all believable and look like a legitimate Western. There are also these nice swooping shots that are just fun too see. McFarland ups his game for this movie, there are more technically bold shots as well as a stronger visual style. But still it is his writing and his unique comic delivery that is his strong suit.

The movie is nearly two hours long and it really should be an hour and forty minutes. There are a few jokes that go on too long and it seems like nobody can argue with the star that seems to just keep going because he's also the writer and director. There not terrible or even unfunny but it is some excess fat on the movie that needs to be trimmed.

As well as the stretched out jokes is the obvious ego trip that comes with McFarland's script. As the writer, director and main star he seems to be trying to reach a position of Orson Welles and Mel Brooks, but he is not at that stature. He is the writer and main character so obviously he is so wonderful and great, others don't see it but Anna does and does her best to fan his ego, fan it until its ready to burn the whole town down to the ground. 

Out of nowhere comes a Ryan Reynolds cameo in the movie. That's two in a row since McFarland last movie Ted. Without spoiling it, this is even better than that movie. I'm beginning to like these, if McFarland has a Ryan Reynolds cameo in all his movies I would be pretty fine with it. Also along with Reynolds are so many other cameos, many many cameos, you could probably make a game out of spotting all the cameos sprinkled throughout the movie. However there is no Patrick Warburton, that is bad, no matter how good the movie is adding Patrick Warburton would always make it better. 

A Million Ways To Die in the West seeks the stature of Blazing Saddles and just about touches it on its reaching. McFarland needs a friend to tell him when he's going too far because as of now its working for him but its a razors edge walk. 

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 4