michael1951

I'm sorry I didn't re-read the book right before seeing this, but at least I've read the entire six books so far (and seen all the previous movies), so I have a fairly good knowledge of the plot. If I didn't, I would have found this movie completely incomprehensible. It's a series of scenes out of the book, and some of them are quite amusing, but they are simply strung together without any real connecting thread.

For a movie titled "Order of the Phoenix," I would personally have liked to have seen a little more of the Order. I didn't even find it very clear from the movie whether Minerva McGonagall was a member of the Order, and I'd have liked to have seen a stronger development of the relationship between Harry and Sirius, although the good performance by Gary Oldman (of whom I'm not otherwise all that big a fan) does help compensate for any weakness in the script.

Realistically, I may be being a little too harsh, considering that the book is over 800 pages and some condensation had to be made, but some things seem to have been left in because they were cute (like the Weasley twins' magic performance during the O.W.L.S.) even though they weren't essential to the main story and wasted time that could have been better spent developing the central elements of the story.

If you see this theatrically, try to see it in an IMAX theater, which is an interesting experience, but otherwise you might want to wait for the DVD release. But most of all, know the story in advance, or you'll really have trouble following this movie. It just doesn't equal its four predecessor movies for a coherent storyline.

Like a lot of "political" movies (including another of Henry Fonda's, "Advise and Consent"), this one just hasn't aged well. It has a roman-a-clef aspect to it, with Fonda playing the "Adlai Stevenson indecisive type" and Cliff Robertson as the "Richard Nixon cut-throat type" and it's very much a period piece.

I might have ranked it lower, but I give it a 5/10 for a really good (but all too short) performance by Ann Sothern as "Sue Ellen Gamadge," a National Committeewoman and charmingly conniving back-room wheeler-dealer. It's not one of Ann's great performances (she's got too little screen time), but she shows that talent of hers for adding a comic touch to a dramatic character without destroying the drama, as she did most famously in "The Whales of August."

All of the performances in "The Best Man" are decent, but this certainly isn't one of Henry Fonda's great movies. Still, it's worth watching at least by any fan of Ann Sothern who really wants to see an example of the breadth of her acting talent.

I'm rating this a FIVE, but I'd probably rate it a good deal lower (probably more like a TWO) if I weren't such a fan of Jennifer Burns. It's certainly not one of the greatest movies of all time, but it's definitely a lot better than hard-core sci-fi (and especially Asimov) fans give it credit for. For myself personally, I'm very definitely not a fan of sci-fi films and got this one only because of Jennifer, whom I really got a kick out of in the "Josh Kirby: Time Warrior" series. I'm also not at all a fan of sci-fi short stories, only of full-length novels, and I haven't read "Nightfall" or any other Asimov story though I have read all of his novels.

"Nightfall" is one of the most popular sci-fi short stories of all time (and probably the most popular), so it's to be expected that Asimov fans would be disappointed in this low-budget production which does have many of the faults that its critics point out. On the other hand, if you're like me and you've never read the short story then you'll probably find this movie reasonably enjoyable, especially for Jennifer Burns. Just recognize that you're probably not seeing a faithful adaptation of the short story, any more than Roland Joffe's 1995 production of "The Scarlet Letter" was at all a faithful adaptation of Hawthorne's novel. As a huge admirer of Hawthorne, I abhor what Joffe did to him, so I can understand why Asimov fans might detest this adaptation of their favorite sci-fi story, but I still recognize that Demi Moore turned in a really nice performance in "The Scarlet Letter" and I think Jennifer Burns did likewise in "Nightfall."

I assume that fans of Asimov's story should take heed of criticism of this movie by fellow Asimov fans, but I really found Jennifer Burns quite enjoyable in her role as the saucy and headstrong Illyra, so I'm giving it a FIVE for her performance while recognizing that I'd probably rate it a good deal lower if it were some actress I didn't at all care about (or if I were a super-fan of Asimov's story). But dang it, it's unfortunate that Jennifer's career seems to have foundered on these kind of Corman productions and that she hasn't had a shot at some better properties.