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Reviews
The African Queen (1951)
Good acting and photography, but a rather poor script ruins much of that
The film has a very good reputation and is routinely regarded as a classic and one of Bogart's finest works. In my view, however, this is in an overall assessment overrating the actual quality of the film.
The photography is quite good for much of the film; there are, obviously, lots of good shots of the meandering riverine area, and some of the shots of the boat itself are done very well (such as a rotating shot of the African Queen as she is moored on the bank of the Ulanga, or a zoom-out of the boat as Rosie and Charles think they are done for while they are, in fact, very close to their destination). The script, however, can only be called mediocre at best. It remained utterly unclear to me why on Earth Charles would ever agree to the plan - his doubts about the feasibility aside, he must also have understood that even if the plan succeeded, the boat that provides his living would be lost. Yet, this and other questions about the plan are never addressed, and instead Bogart's character allows Katherine Hepburn's character to boss her around while, at that stage, she has absolutely nothing to offer that he might be interested in. Add to that a lot of overly pathetic and schmaltzy dialogue - first between Hepburn's character and her brother, later between Hepburn's and Bogart's characters -, and you get a script of rather poor quality.
Some of the acting was decent. Bogart does a good job portraying a drunkard who is, much against his initial will, transformed into a hero, while Hepburn does a similarly good job at portraying an old spinster transformed into a passionate lover. It's just not sufficient to compensate for the many other shortcomings that the film suffers from.
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
A great opportunity wasted
Contrary to many other reviewers here who gave the film a poor rating, I'm not complaining about the plot. In fact, the plot of the film is not so bad, and certainly not weaker than that of the 2001 remake (which I liked much more than this original). It's just that this work doesn't develop the plot very well: The first half of the film is wasted on people talking other people into participating in the coup (which, in the end, they do, of course). The planning stage is virtually non-existent - Frank Sinatra simply pulls out a handkerchief with a "map" of Las Vegas and lays out the plan in detail, anticipating and refuting all possible objections. The preparation stage goes on smoothly, with the team's electrician simply walking into restricted areas of the casinos and re-wiring key electrics of the houses without being bothered by security. Too implausible for me to believe. Then the execution of the plan, which is almost a minor sub-sequence of the film to which the director did neither devote much time nor love for detail. The rest of the film is wasted on an overly extended plot about the gang trying to escape capture and get the money out of town. The setting of priorities could have been better, I dare say.
Clearly the film draws some bonus points from its all-star cast, but it does not employ them very well. The dialogues are mostly wooden - even sequences where there would have been an opportunity to intersperse some witty lines are handled rather unlovingly and with dull, flat dialogues (there are some exceptions to this, such as a nice little sequence with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine in a cameo as a drunken casino guest, but gems of this sort remain rare). The rat-pack stars don't even get much chance to display their talents in full, with only Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin getting one rather short song each.
To me, it seems that this film was just another step in Frank Sinatra's ultimately unsuccessful attempts to establish a noteworthy film career. An opportunity wasted, since with a setting and a cast like this, something much better could have been produced.
All the President's Men (1976)
The film by itself is not as good as people say is simply because the events depicted are important
I found it surprising how many reviewers here have based their vote on considerations that go beyond the film itself. We have the Republicans around who think that Nixon was treated unfairly by being forced to resign for Watergate, and that the attention the scandal and this film received are part of a left-wing bias in the American media. So they give it poor ratings. On the other side, you have those who think Watergate was an important part of American history, and that Bernstein and Woodward deserve the fame they got for their work. So they give the film high ratings. In my view, however, the film should be judged by itself, not by non-cinematic considerations of that sort.
Coming to that point, I believe that the film suffers from its pace, which is unbearably slow at some times and too fast at others. Much of the plot mostly depicts Redford and Hoffman interviewing people on the phone or in person, sometimes getting answers and sometimes not. While I, personally, do not expect a film to feature explosions and guns to be thrilling, I do believe that watching Robert Redford's telephone calls gets dull after the third or so time. Then, later on, when the investigations start to get traction, the pace becomes a bit too fast for the audience; names of people involved in various party or government institutions are flung around, making it hard to keep track of who is involved with whom in what manner. Towards the end, the film seems to surrender its difficult task of storytelling altogether, simply recounting the climax of the Watergate scandal by retelling it on a typewriter. That demonstrates, in my view, that the material makes for a good book, but is not really apt to be turned into a film.
As for the acting, Redford is doing an excellent job - he remains in character throughout the film, making you believe that this is how the real Woodward must have felt during the investigations. However, I feel that Hoffman remains rather clumsy, wooden, and awkward most of the time; he does not manage to involve the audience in the scenes in which he is a central figure.
In summary, while I acknowledge that this film has historical value for its close chronological link to Watergate itself (making, at the same time, the depiction of journalism and office work in the 1970s must be very realistic), I believe that much of the praise this film received is for the importance of the real-life events it depicts; its intrinsic cinematic quality is, in my view, rather mediocre.