RodrigAndrisan

Although I would like to give stars to Eli Wallach, the best in the cast and a great actor in other films like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966), "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and others, Yul Brynner, also excellent in many other films, "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), "Morituri" (1965), ""Westworld" (1973) and many others, and Serge Gainsbourg for the extraordinary music he composed throughout his musical career, not for this film and not as an actor. The three of them were also the reason why I wanted to see the film, which turned out to be just a waste of an hour and 39 minutes, which is the length of the version I found on YouTube. Everything is lamentable in this production, the idea, the script, the direction, the acting. Why would the Russian army need horses in the war against Japan, which is an island, as the character Schloime Kradnik played by David Opatoshu also says? Most likely to eat them, not to ride them across the sea.

I don't usually write reviews for such films, my favorite films being the films of Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Marco Ferreri, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and a few more like them. This "Armageddon" is a real "armageddon" from a cinematic point of view, a long waste of time of 2 hours and 31 minutes. I saw it for the first time in the cinema shortly after it was made and I had to watch it again on TV, having nothing better to do, being stuck in a hotel room in Porthmadog, Wales due to the continuous rain. All the actors give an awkward performance, the story is puerile, explosions after explosions, super annoying, the standard face of Bruce Willis in all the scenes, frame after frame, the same in all the films, playing himself, like many other "actors". I made a much better short film in 2013, also with an asteroid about to impact planet Earth, without explosions and without awkward scenes, one after another, "Solitary" is the title, only 5 minutes long, with believable characters and situations, like in real life, it can be seen on YouTube if you write the title, "Solitary" and my name, Rodrig Andrisan. Back to Michael Bay's "Armageddon", the only ones more natural and believable are Billy Bob Thornton and the actress who plays the woman who comes to ask for a divorce in her husband's astronomical observatory. The fact that the film was nominated for 4 Oscars shows, once again, how irrelevant the Oscars are. The film also won some awards and the well-deserved ones are those won at the Razzie Awards and The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, i.e. The "awards" for the worst film and the worst performances from all those involved.

Ingrid Bergman at 55, is still a very beautiful and desirable woman. As Anthony Quinn, one of the giants of world cinema and one of my favorite actors, also thinks. I liked Anthony Quinn in all his films, even the less good ones. I especially liked him in LA STRADA, ZORBA THE GREEK, THE 25TH HOUR, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. I didn't like Ingrid Bergman in INDISCREET (read my review), but she is extraordinary in films like NOTORIOUS and ARCH OF TRIUMPH. Here, in A WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN, she does a decent, not great, role as a woman who is a grandmother and falls in love with a married man, not at all handsome, who is Anthony Quinn. The story is banal, the film is rather static, except for the scene when Anthony Quinn, with just one punch, kills his own son. Fritz Weaver is dull and, I am convinced, that is how it was supposed to be. Virginia Gregg stands out as the neglected wife of Anthony Quinn. I am convinced that with other actors in the roles played by Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Quinn, the film would have had no charm. Only their unique personalities give value to this film and make it worth watching. Ten stars only because I love Bergman and Quinn in other films. Miscast or not, I think that both Quinn and Bergman tried to be as natural, believable and convincing as possible. Who did it better? Obviously Bergman, but Quinn is also believable, despite the character's pure American name from Tennessee, the actor being a mixture of Mexican and something else mysterious.