Innuendo61020 Reviews

Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

Awesome movie and album

[13 May 2002]

I, personally, am a big Pink Floyd fan and "The Wall" has to be my favorite album of theirs. The album, being two LPs or CDs long, follows one long story of a rock star named Pink Floyd. When Pink is very young, his father is killed in WWII and he is raised by an overprotective mother and ridiculed at school. He grows up to become a rock musician, but amidst his depression, he turns to alcohol and drugs. The whole idea of "the wall" is that Pink builds a mental wall around himself to protect himself from the chaos of the outside world. But "the wall" becomes too isolating for him and he tries to get out of it. When he can't, he turns to violence and becomes a dictator-like character, in order to hide his former personality. Roger Waters (lead singer and bassist for Pink Floyd) did a great job of turning "The Wall" into a motion picture.

The movie itself is very incredible. Because of the fact that there is very little dialogue in this movie (only a few lines) and the story is told by Pink Floyd's music, you really need to know the whole story of "The Wall" (album) before you see the movie. The acting in the movie is a little shaky. I personally don't feel that Bob Geldof was the best choice for the lead role. Two of the songs from the album are re-sung by Geldof in the movie and he really doesn't have the best singing voice (well, not at all as good as Roger Waters). The animation in the movie is awesome, though. Gerald Scarfe does an incredible job with all of the animation. It is so powerful and it amplifies the movie much more. Who could forget the scenes of the marching hammers? The hammers are one of the symbols of the movie (they are used as symbols of power and destruction by Pink when he becomes a dictator). This movie combines many different aspects of art by putting together great music, awesome animation and spectacular filmmaking. I recommend this movie to anyone that wants to see a powerful, immense and fantastic film.

The Day After (1983 TV Movie)

A very controversial, but excellent film

[8/10 · 18 February 2002]

This film originally aired as a TV movie back in 1983 in the United States. It depicts the effects of nuclear war on the citizens of the Kansas City area. In the film, during the actual attacks, a lot of raw footage of nuclear blasts and explosions is used, but no computer enhanced special effects were needed in this film to get the point across. The point, being of course, that nuclear war is horrible. The movie was aired to show leaders of nations in the world what would happen if nuclear war was ever waged. When this film was first aired, Cold War tensions were high and the fear of nuclear war was very imminent. Though the events in the film are very powerful, a disclaimer at the end of the movie even tells the viewers that the events depicted in the film are far less worse then what would actually take place in a real nuclear war.

I feel that the plot was created well. The film shows what happens before the attacks, the actual attacks and then what happens after the attacks. The attacks were not shown too soon after the movie began but well into the movie and built up enough to show a lot of drama. The acting is very good, in my opinion. The late Jason Robards plays the lead role and a few other familiar faces take part as well (Steve Guttenburg, John Lithgow). The writing is fair, but not bad for a made-for-TV movie.

Overall, the movie is very excellent and places itself very positively in my book. It was a very controversial film for its time and it did scare the hell out of many people (truthfully, it did shake me up a little the first time I saw it). It's really not for the kids, even though it was a TV movie, because the scenes of the nuclear blasts and radiation sickness aren't very light.