Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is probably Shakespeare's tragedy at it's most entertaining. I like the recent surge of films that reset the bard's works into modern times. Sometimes they work (like the luster of Branaugh's breathtaking 'Hamlet') sometimes they don't (as in the busy rock video 'Romeo + Juliet').Richard III sits somewhere in the middle. I'm not sure that this is the most fitting to present Shakespeare's tale of murder and bloodlust in a German coup circa WWII. However, as an entertainment I have to say I was captivated.I liked the touches of having Richard III (Ian McKellan) deliver his opening monologue while standing at a urinal and I have to say that I loved McKellan shouting 'MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE' while his jeep is stuck in the mud. McKellan plays the daylights out of the character (It's not as good as it is onstage but I can forgive him for that).It may not be right to play around with Shakespeare's settings but I'm just glad Hollywood is interested in him again. This is a minor adaptation the bard's work but I still enjoyed it.

On the surface, this is deeply flawed; there's some awkward dialogue, Harvey Kietel is OK, not amazing, the female characters are thin. But it's so damn full of breathtaking images, brave cinematic choices, multi-minute long shots, and a heart rending climax, that the flaws don't seem important some how. The story: A Greek film director caught in his own mid-life artistic and personal crisis goes on an odyssey to find lost footage by Greece's first filmmakers, traveling through the Balkans and revisiting his own life in the process. I can certainly understand the mixed reviews. This isn't an easy film, and if watched in the wrong mood, or without knowing what you're getting into (a slow, thoughtful 3 hour rumination on life, the past and art) could be very off-putting. But accepted on its own terms, warts and all it's an amazing odyssey; visual, emotional and thematic.

This is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen, probably THE worst. A friend had rented it even though we'd never heard of it because of a lot of praise on the cover but my only explanation is that in fear of being accused of not understanding the artsy-fartsy deepness of it, they praise it. After about an hour we were both ready to give up in order to kill time some better way like playing monopoly or watching girls in infomercials for exercise equipment, but we decided to stick with it. After all, it COULD pick up and it had been praised, but most of all we didn't want anybody to tell us we couldn't criticize it because we hadn't seen all of it and we REALLY didn't have anything better to do. I was horrible. There's one scene 15 minutes long (really, we checked) with almost nothing but mute shots of a gigantic Lenin statue being transported on a barge down some river. "Almost" because for 30 seconds there's a short dialog between the PA system on the boat and the border patrol's PA system. The images don't move for this duration.I must say there are many movies that are pretty good even though they are slow, but Your lives will be better if you don't see this movie.

Major films and movies that I have seen have been primarily service pictures. I say service pictures because any idea being developed is immediately delivered in a reduced state right into the movie-goer's lap. It's a fast philosophy. This is unlike Ulysses' Gaze. I am still impressed by the movie because of its confidence in the viewer. I have read comments complaining about the film's overly long scenes. The scenes are an interaction between your mind and the screen. An image is produced and the director leaves the image for you to contemplate. Images shouldn't be beamed into minds as 10 second clips like Moulin Rouge. So many people explain to me their love of movies as a form of entertainment and escapism. Movies are an art form but like everything in this post-modern age, they cannot exist without the deep intellectual objective view point dividing the subjective experiences. Ulysses' Gaze does not REQUIRE patience it rewards contemplation and understanding.Story-wise the plot is just as basic as The Wizard of Oz. An individual must journey to find home and a complete soul. I found it as a superb movie with its various allusions to mythology and actual history.