经典英文电影影评

珍珠港的影评pearl harbour film review Pearl Harbor consists of three incongruous acts, mashed together into an ungainly whole. It appears to be more interested in reproducing the success of Titanic, which also set a fictional love story amidst a tragic historical event, than it is in telling the story of the men and women who fought and died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Titanic worked because the central characters were interesting, the story was cohesive, the historical events were handled respectfully and with the proper dramatic tone, and underneath it all was an intelligent reflection on the human failings that permitted such a tragedy in the first place. Pearl Harbor reduces the historical backdrop into a series of action set pieces. Instead of exploring ideas inherent in the events, it extracts them, reducing the reason for Japan's attack to something inexplicable at best, and having utterly nothing to say about why the attack happened, how it was carried out, or how we responded. The film is dedicated to the men who died at Pearl Harbor, but what does it dedicate to them? It does not seem very interested in them except as a tool for dramatic imagery. Consider, for example, a scene in which we learn that men are trapped in a sunken ship in the harbor. We learn this to emphasize the brutality of the attack, as if such emphasis were needed. Then the film forgets this point entirely, providing the fates of those men in a narrated line just before the closing credits. Why wasn't the third act of the film about those men, instead of a rushed covering of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, complete with overblown crash landings and an improbable engagement with Japanese soldiers? If you want to see a real movie about Pearl Harbor or the Doolittle Raid, one that paints a deep and accurate picture of what it was like, one you can learn from, one that pays tribute to our veterans, or even just one that functions as convincing entertainment, there is no shortage of options. Tora! Tora! Tora! chronicles the events before, during, and after the attack from both the American and Japanese sides. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is as thorough a chronicle of the Doolittle Raid as is probably possible in a feature film, while also following the personal stories of a few individuals involved (any one of which is more interesting than the personal story in Pearl Harbor). The Purple Heart, one of the most heartbreaking movies I've ever seen, tells the story of Americans captured by the Japanese after the raid. Writing off the historical aspects of the film, I am left with the love triangle that makes up the entire first act and pervades the rest of it. It is wholly uninteresting. This same story has been told better, countless times before. Not one of the three characters is fleshed out into an individual: they are bland stereotypes, dolled up to look pretty and given trite lines that they recite to convey the illusion of genuine emotion. It's telling that it doesn't much matter to us how the love triangle is resolved. Unless they both die, she'll get one of them, and who cares which? Neither of the men are personable, and we surely suspect early on that her decision will be based more on fate than her own volition anyway. (In plots like this, it's survival of the survivors.) And so, alas, we are denied even the most basic of all elements of storytelling, namely, characters making actual decisions

网上资源很多的，列举两个~《肖申克的救赎》的英文影评 版本二邮件发给你 Though adapted from a Stephen King novella, "The Shawshank Redemption" has more to do with a man's internal demons than the kind that routinely rise up from overgrown graveyards. Like "Stand by Me," it's not a typical story from the horror King. Instead, it's a devoutly old-fashioned, spiritually uplifting prison drama about two lifers who must break their emotional shackles before they can finally become free men.Set in a spooky old penitentiary with turrets and towers, the movie manages to be true to its Big House origins while incorporating such horrific mainstays as the clanking of chains and the creaking of the walls. There's even a raven that roosts in the prison library, where he is cared for by a darling old trusty (James Whitmore). For the most part, however, the movie expands upon cliches that date back to James Cagney's prison portraits梩he twisted warden (Bob Gunton) and the sadistic guard (Clancy Brown).Director Frank Darabont, who apprenticed on B-scripts ("The Fly II") and TV movies ("Buried Alive"), manages to fashion an improbable new pattern from the same old material in his remarkable debut. While he deals with the grimmest aspects of prison life (sadistic guards, gang rapes and befouled food), Darabont is chiefly interested in the 20-year friendship that sustains Andy (Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman) .The movie opens in 1947 as Andy, a prominent New England banker, is on trial for murdering his wife and her lover. Not only did he have a motive, but he had the opportunity梙is footprints were found at the scene of the crime梐nd he had a weapon of the caliber used in the shootings. He insists that he is innocent, but the jury finds him guilty. Sentenced to life twice over, Andy is shipped to the maximum-security state prison at Shawshank, Maine. An introverted loner with an interest in reading, chess and rock carving, Andy doesn't make himself many friends until Red, a 30-year-veteran of the system, decides to take him under his wing.Things begin to change for the better when Andy finds a way to use his skills and education to benefit his fellow felons. When he overhears the guard captain complaining about losing most of an inheritance to taxes, he offers to trade his advice for three beers for each of the men who are working with him that day tarring the roof.His reputation as a financial adviser spreads, and soon he is doing the taxes for all the guards and running the warden's outside scams. This leads to a position in the tiny prison library, which Andy gradually expands into the best educational facility of its kind in the area. It takes him six years to do it, but Andy never gives up hope.It is hope that allows the self-proclaimed innocent man to survive what may or may not be an unjust imprisonment. And hope is his gift to his friend Red, who no longer even tries to impress the parole board at his hearings. He's become "institutionalized," he explains to Andy, and would be a "nobody" on the outside.Red's gift to Andy is absolution when he finally confesses his true sins. Whether or not he pulled the trigger, Andy blames himself for causing his wife's death; his redemption comes as he learns to give of himself over the course of this marvelously acted and directed film.Robbins gives a performance that evolves with beautiful clarity from starchy banker to warm and loving friend. Freeman is sure to gain his third Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Red. He also reads the film's lovely narration, much of it drawn verbatim from King's 1982 novella.A detailed portrait of the routine of cellblock life, "The Shawshank Redemption" might change a few minds about the usefulness of incarceration in terms of rehabilitation. Mostly, though, it reminds us of that we all hold the keys to our own prisons. 《楚门的世界》英文影评The Truman Show'' is founded on an enormous secret that all of the studio's advertising has been determined to reveal. I didn't know the secret when I saw the film, and was able to enjoy the little doubts and wonderings that the filmmakers so carefully planted. If by some good chance you do not know the secret, read no further.Those fortunate audience members (I trust they have all left the room?) will be able to appreciate the meticulous way director Peter Weir and writer Andrew Niccol have constructed a jigsaw plot around their central character, who doesn't suspect that he's living his entire life on live television. Yes, he lives in an improbably ideal world, but I fell for that: I assumed the movie was taking a sitcom view of life, in which neighbors greet each other over white picket fences, and Ozzie and Harriet are real people.Actually, it's Seaside, a planned community on the Gulf Coast near Tampa. Called Seahaven in the movie, it looks like a nice place to live. Certainly Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) doesn't know anything else. You accept the world you're given, the filmmakers suggest; more thoughtful viewers will get the buried message, which is that we accept almost everything in our lives without examining it very closely. When was the last time you reflected on how really odd a tree looks? Truman works as a sales executive at an insurance company, is happily married to Meryl (Laura Linney), and doesn't find it suspicious that she describes household products in the language of TV commercials. He is happy, in a way, but an uneasiness gnaws away at him. Something is missing, and he thinks perhaps he might find it in Fiji, where Lauren (Natascha McElhone), the only woman he really loved, allegedly has moved with her family.Why did she leave so quickly? Perhaps because she was not a safe bet for Truman's world: The actress who played her (named Sylvia) developed real feeling and pity for Truman, and felt he should know the truth about his existence. Meryl, on the other hand, is a reliable pro (which raises the question, unanswered, of their sex life).Truman's world is controlled by a TV producer named Christof (Ed Harris), whose control room is high in the artificial dome that provides the sky and horizon of Seahaven. He discusses his programming on talk shows, and dismisses the protests of those (including Sylvia) who believe Truman is the victim of a cruel deception. Meanwhile, the whole world watches Truman's every move, and some viewers even leave the TV on all night, as he sleeps.The trajectory of the screenplay is more or less inevitable: Truman must gradually realize the truth of his environment, and try to escape from it. It's clever the way he's kept on his island by implanted traumas about travel and water. As the story unfolds, however, we're not simply expected to follow it: We're invited to think about the implications. About a world in which modern communications make celebrity possible, and inhuman.Until fairly recently, the only way you could become really famous was to be royalty, or a writer, actor, preacher or politician--and even then, most people had knowledge of you only through words or printed pictures.Television, with its insatiable hunger for material, has made celebrities into ``content,'' devouring their lives and secrets. If you think ``The Truman Show'' is an exaggeration, reflect that Princess Diana lived under similar conditions from the day she became engaged to Charles.Carrey is a surprisingly good choice to play Truman. We catch glimpses of his manic comic persona, just to make us comfortable with his presence in the character, but this is a well-planned performance; Carrey is on the right note as a guy raised to be liked and likable, who decides his life requires more risk and hardship. Like the angels in ``City of Angels,'' he'd like to take his chances.Ed Harris also finds the right notes as Christof, the TV svengali. He uses the technospeak by which we distance ourselves from the real meanings of our words. (If TV producers ever spoke frankly about what they were really doing, they'd come across like Bulworth.) For Harris, the demands of the show take precedence over any other values, and if you think that's an exaggeration, tell it to the TV news people who broadcast that Los Angeles suicide.I enjoyed ``The Truman Show'' on its levels of comedy and drama; I liked Truman in the same way I liked Forrest Gump--because he was a good man, honest, and easy to sympathize with.But the underlying ideas made the movie more than just entertainment. Like ``Gattaca,'' the previous film written by Niccol, it brings into focus the new values that technology is forcing on humanity.Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives--of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is, the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process.如果你找不到，还需要的话，欢迎继续联系