Enrique

It would seem to be hard to make a bad movie of such a subject as the history of Alexander the Great - yet Hollywood has failed hard twice, even 50 years apart! The old 1950s version with Richard Burton seemed to lose momentum and interest halfway through. I saw it in a movie screen in the early 1960s, again in VHS, and, with the proximity of the Oliver Stone blockbuster, got a DVD version at a special price just recently. Always a disappointment. But the new version is a total disaster. The cast - only Anthony Hopkins is decent as old Ptolomey. The rest of the stars, without exception, are just plain awful. The story - they miss some of the great battles, like the siege of Tyre and Issus (where Alexander almost lost to the Persians); also, some of the great scenes, like the Gordian knot. Only Gaugamela is shown in some detail and it is not even a good movie battle! The characters - none of the main characters (Alexander, Philip, Olympia) has even the smallest attractiveness that will make a movie watcher empathize with them. And where are Cleopatra (Alexander's sister), Alexander of Epirus, Mennon? The beginning - to make sure we dislike it from the start, the birth and serpent scenes at the start insure the audiences being repelled from the start. A recommendation - do go and see it! You just will not believe how bad is it unless you do. A second recommendation - read the Valerio Massimo Manfredi trilogy on Alexander. The movie is supposed to somehow be based on this; believe me, the books are much better!

Spider Man is the best ever Marvel comic movie adaptation - perhaps the best ever comic superhero adaptation. Tobey Maguire gives heart the movie to an incredible degree - hey, I am male and found him even "touching". What a great coup to have cast him as Peter Parker! Another big plus: the Green Goblin, except for his face mask, and, considering everything, not as bad as it could have been. He flew and threw his gadgets just like the comics character. J. Jonah James was magnificent, even if appearing all too briefly. And the general care taken to portray so many great little details of the comic shows a production made with love. I love George Lucas and the Star Wars saga, but "Spider Man" beats the new "Clones" movie hands down. It will never happen, of course, but, dare I say that Tobey Maguire deserves some Oscar best actor nomination mention? Please, Kevin Spacey (whom I like a lot) in "American Beauty" was not so good as Maguire in a challenging role.

This is a movie where it seems that the whole and the sum of the parts are different and yet are both big. The story is often confusing but not irritating and one wonders about its flow at moments. Yet it is never boring and always has something new to draw you into it. It is difficult to sum it up as a whole. Some of its parts: 1. The Chinese desert - simply breathtaking and different from any other desert seen on film. 2. The cities - those aerial views are something else! 3. The fights - the action scenes in "The Matrix" were great and original; the ones here are incredible and way beyond those. A must-see movie, for the story or the cinematography or any of its parts. I regret seeing it so late in its showings locally, as I wanted to see it again. It is hard to imagine it being so effective on a TV screen.