Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Aedonerre I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Kirpianuscus An "if". as seed of a special dark comedy. a nice idea. repetitive scenes saved by a good performances. and tomotoes. a war of visions in the skin of a strange hospitality. and the known flavours of old fashion film noire. its basic virtue - it is a real provocative film. not impecable but using a smart story who propose new perspectives about values, challenge of idea, punishment in Raskolnikov style and the game with not the reasonable end. because it seems like a cage with rats and the end, after long time after you saw it , is the more significant memory about it. a film about justice and "soft" form of intolerance. a sort of clean up. and the magnificent performance of Ron Perlman

moonspinner55 Group of grad students in Iowa--roommates living in a large house with a big backyard--invite a stranded trucker to dine with them one evening which ultimately results in a confrontation over beliefs and ideals, culminating in the man's demise. Soon after burying the obnoxious lout, the liberal gang comes to an agreement: why not clean up their state (and, thereby, the country) in the same fashion, one Conservative Republican at a time! Poorly-made dark comedy is shot and presented like a lame television show, even though the intrinsic idea in Dan Rosen's screenplay is a provocative one. The students share a united dilemma (how long should they let a potential victim ramble on with his or her hate-speech before they treat them to their brand of poisoned wine?), yet Rosen doesn't develop the ensuing turn of events with any aplomb. Worse, the liberal youths (meant to be as extremist-left as their victims are extremist-right) quickly turn smug and psychotic, losing their quirks and misguided appeal. *1/2 from ****

Robert J. Maxwell This is a pretty amusing send up of self righteousness and political extremism on the small scale. Five liberal room mates -- Diaz, Eldard, Gish, Penner, and Vance -- at a university in Iowa share a full-course meal in their home with a young man who reveals himself to be an unashamed macho war monger. A fight breaks out and the guest easily overpowers the wimpy hosts but is stabbed in the back by one of them. The victim burps, falls to the floor and dies.For the most part, the instrument of the deliberate murders that follow is poisoned wine. Let me recount the names of some of the right-wing victims: Bill Paxton is the dedicated warrior; Charles Durning as a minister who thinks queers deserve to die of AIDS; Mark Harmon as the ne plus ultra of male chauvinism; Jason Alexander as a man devoted to despoiling the earth; Pamela Gien as a librarian who thinks that "Catcher in the Rye" is pornographic. She doesn't drink so she has to be stabbed in the back.But this is the kind of comedy that doesn't need an excess of gore to be funny, so there is no gore at all. The ludic element lies elsewhere -- partly in occasionally clever but noetic unknowables. Example: If you were alone with Hitler in 1929, knowing what you now know, would you let him live? Partly the humor lies in ancillary themes. The Gang of Five decide to bury their first victim in the back yard, resulting in a suspicious-looking mound of earth. They put a tomato plant on top to disguise its contours. Eventually they have half a dozen huge tomato plants growing on the graves and there is a super-abundance of red ripe home-grown tomatoes. At first they can the tomatoes but the cabinets are finally filled. Then they slice them and hang them up to be sun dried. The tomatoes keep coming and getting bigger. They begin skeet shooting the tomatoes. They swing at them with baseball bats. Their last supper is spaghetti with marinara sauce. Another scene has Carmen Diaz planting pansies around the borders of the graves but it simply make the place look more like a cemetery than ever. (She gets PO'd when Vance rips them out.) And one of the roomies is a painter. He recreates, in a monstrous manner, Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel. On the dining room ceiling. (It should have been Da Vinci's "The Last Supper.")They run into trouble when they manage to persuade a rabble-rousing, right-wing TV maniac, Ron Perlman, to have a good meal at their home. During the dinner, before he is served the "dessert" wine, he cheerfully admits that he only rants on television because of the ratings, that in actuality he is full of crap. He thinks both extremes are dangerous and that centrists control government and always will. And if he met Hitler alone in 1929? No, he wouldn't kill Hitler. (The hosts reach for the "dessert" wine.) Instead, he would do his best to talk Hitler out of his designs. The connivers hesitate, then scurry outside for a discussion.Left alone in the dining room, the phony right-wing nut job lights a cigar and wanders around. He's about to pour a glass of the "dessert" wine but it smells funny to him. Then he picks up a local paper and reads an item about all the missing locals. The penny drops and he stares back at the bottle of poisoned wine. Lieutenant Columbo should have such intuition.It's all kind of amusing, so why isn't it funnier than it is? Great material, nice photography and lighting, and no clunk performances, but I kept thinking what Ealing Studios might have done with this plot in the mid-1950s. There would have been less extravagance in the performances for one thing. The room mates keep arguing and shouting at one another, leading to a scene in which one is about to shoot another with a magnum. There would have been fewer victims, probably, and more comic elements attached to each murder. Some of the victims are hardly seen, getting barely enough screen time to say a few words before their demise. There is discontinuity in some of the characters too, and it stands out. Carmen Diaz is flippant about the first murder but anguished for no reason by the last. Except for Courtney Vance, Jr., who remains consistent, their positions through time are erratic. And sometimes the mood shifts violently without justification.But, these qualifications notwithstanding, I kind of enjoyed it. I still wish it had been made in the mid-50s by Ealing, but it's kind of fun, and welcome relief from most of the garbage showing up on the screen lately.

adamjh10 This movie brings up a lot of major and provocative questions. It is not a work of film art, but it is a work of psychological art. The thoughts and questions that I find myself having are far more penetrating than the aesthetic questions that I have about this film. Advice: try to answer and address the questions posed by the film, and don't try to analyze this film as a piece of visual or film art. It will be more rewarding for you. This is a great film for two reasons: one, the film presents a lot of issues that I think intellectuals should try to answer, and two, it shows off the acting skills of a lot of young actors (at the time). I would highly recommend this film to anyone who wants to have some questions to mull over.