Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Python Hyena The Rainmaker (1997): Dir: Frances Ford Coppola / Cast: Matt Damon, Danny De Vito, Jon Voight, Claire Danes, Mickey Rourke: Flat and tiresome, which is unfortunate since it starts out just fine. Title doesn't make much sense but it stars Matt Damon as a young attorney who holds a corrupt insurance conglomerate responsible for the untreated leukemia of a dying boy. He receives legal assistance from Danny De Vito while Jon Voight plays the opposing lawyer. Interesting theme regarding dishonesty and truth among lawyers however, it is too predictable and structured like a courtroom drama. Director Frances Ford Coppola does his best but this hardly matches his work in The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. Damon is superb as this new attorney setting out to make a difference. De Vito steals scenes as he stoops to whatever level to achieve victory. Voight is standard issue as the opposing lawyer. Claire Danes is unnecessary as an abused housewife whose presence is basically to involve Damon in a romantic fling. It slows down an already boring film. Mickey Rourke also makes an appearance as a corrupt lawyer, as if that is beneath anybody here. Coppola is a terrific director doing work here that is far beneath him, with stars that are above it. It regards honest law but the screenplay evaporates like an ice cube in the mid day sun. Score: 4 / 10

Dr_Sagan I watched The Rainmaker (1997) recently (in 2015) because I heard about it in an episode of a series. "Like Matt Damon in the Rainmaker" I think it was the quote. I'm up for a good legal drama, so I seek to watch it (without actually knowing who's the director or the rest of the cast).Anyway, after 2 hours and 15 minutes this movie disappoints.It's unnecessary long for a rather simple story that it could fit nicely in a 45' minutes episode of a TV show, and it has no real thrills or interesting scenes. The material that you could build upon it, is there but the movie fails miserably to deliver.The drama is obvious but it doesn't build to a climax. The actual case as it presented in the courthouse it's boring too, and despite the effort of Damon to present himself as the rookie lawyer and Jon Voight's performance, you never get that sense of Davis vs. Goliath that this movie is all about.Sooo many good legal dramas and interesting and fun movies were shot in the 80s and in the 90s, but The Rainmaker is most certainly not one of them.

powermandan Most good courtroom dramas and legal movies deal with murder. Those are just simply the most fun ones to see. The ones that do not deal with murder have to be extra great for everybody to like it. This is one that is simply that good without the need of murder. This is based on the 1995 novel by John Grisham of the same name. I'll have to admit, I did not like the novel. It was too boring with too many subplots and just dragged on about nothing. What Grisham bored me with, Coppola condenses in a way that I wish Grisham wrote in the first place. This features a star-studded cast (Matt Damon, Claire Daines, Danny DeVito, Jon Voigt, Danny Glover, Teresa Wright, Mickey Rourke, Roy Scheider) that is bound to make this movie that much more enjoyable. The movie is about recent law-school grad, Rudy Baylor (Damon) who is assigned to a case involving a poor family suing a wealthy insurance company for not paying for their son's cancer treatments. The company hires a high-power law firm with years of experience with very little losses. Rudy has never even been involved in a case before. At first, the lawyers make him look bad. Then Rudy slowly turns the tables on them as he shows what the company has really been up to. That is what makes the courtroom portion so interesting. A youth fresh of of school successfully files a lawsuit in such an exciting and believable way. But it is not realistic how he is assigned a high-profile case right off the bat. In reality, Rudy would have to work for years near the bottom of a firm and slowly get to the position he is at in the film. This is not as good as most of Coppola's other movies and not 1997's best. The acting and everything might be good, but a big chunk of the movie is so gloomy and dull. But it is better than the book. Luckily, it is one of those that gets better as the minutes go. Bit by bit, the case gets more complex and Rudy tries to save the life of a woman (Daines) who's in a stormy relationship with her husband, all which make the movie a very fine watch.

Steve Schreiber With everyone today using buzz words to talk about health care legislation, this is a novel about a health insurance company scamming policyholders by refusing claims that is adapted to a screenplay for a movie that was written and filmed years before reform was on the horizon. It is extremely forward thinking for its time.The Rainmaker, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, wasn't a beautifully shot movie but it was executed well. This film holds up as it does not feel dated like many movies released around the same time. There are some movies you can tell when they came out and this is one of those films that ages very well as are not many outdated styles shown and the film was shot in a way that doesn't feel dated. By that, I mean that some movies released around that time had the same feel to them and this one felt much more like it was being played through a storyteller's eyes. There wasn't much flair involved in the filming but it didn't need that. Nothing was creative about the way it was shot but it worked.The casting of this film was great as each player delivers a fantastic performance top to bottom. A perfect example of this is that Dean Stockwell is only in this film for a short period of time and he delivers quite a performance given the limited amount of time on screen. Matt Damon works as the do-good attorney in a sea of snakes. Danny DeVito is about as good as he gets in this film. Coppola could have done a bit more with the framing of the film to work with DeVito's size but that is the only problem with the performance.The movie isn't perfect because there are quite a few issues with certain lines and regardless of how good DeVito and Voight are, there are some cheesy and predictable lines that they are forced to deliver that drag the movie down a little. The film could have done more with the given novel it had to work with but there is only so much that can be done to adapt a novel into a film. It will never be a perfect interpretation of the novel unless this film was done in the same way as The Stand or The Hobbit. You cannot please everyone and I think The Rainmaker did a good job with this story.