Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

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.

kidboots This movie was a major find for me - the fifties ushered in a more realistic noir genre (thanks to "He Walks By Night", "Dragnet" etc) zeroing in on loners, killers whose motivations were never fully explained, helped enormously by outside location shootings and casting unknown actors. Adam Williams is perfect casting as the fresh faced boyish loner, he is just appealing enough for it to be understandable why lonely women were taken with his charms.Carl Martin is a gardener whose creepy personality was enough for his blonde wife to look elsewhere. Toward the end he tries to justify his behaviour on his wife's abandonment but from the start, with his barely concealed gun it is so obvious that he enjoys killing. As the film opens, the police are baffled by yet another "blonde killing" but this time they have a clue - the killer left a calling card in a piece from a blue coat and as the forensics guy says, an expensive one!! Martin is always one jump ahead of the police - they have been combing men's clothing repair shops but Martin realises this is just what they expect him to do and burns it!!The pacing and editing keep you on the edge of your seat - usually with the expectation of violence that is always implied but never seen. As when a beautiful blonde gives him the "come on" in the bar, they get to talking in her car, the next scene shows her obviously dead. What follows is a really cracker of suspense - Carl and his "date" parked under a bridge are noticed by a passing policeman, he tries to drive off but the car becomes bogged in the dust - even that doesn't arouse the cop's suspicions. When the policeman wants to take a closer look at the girl who Carl says is just drunk, that precipitates a mammoth chase on foot along with gun play through unfinished freeways, zig zagging around the Produce Market where the killer thinks that by his fancy footwork with changing taxis, he has given them the slip!!As well as trying to track through a murderer's mind there is also a routine police investigation going on - from the discovery of the murder weapon being a pair of secateurs, it is concluded that they are looking for a gardener. Carl has already lined up his next victim - she is the daughter of the man where Carl buys his gardening supplies. Initially turned off because she is married, he can't resist his compulsions which end in a shoot out, outside Martin's ramshackle house amidst a poor Mexican hillside settlement, soon to be demolished for Dodgers Stadium.This definitely should be ranked along with "The Sniper" as one of the early 1950s best "unknown noirs"!!Very Recommended!!

MartinHafer "Without Warning!" is a film that actually caught me by surprise. While it's a low-budget picture with mostly no-name cast (the biggest star is the character actor Edward Binns), it is a first-rate film about the police and their relentless search for a serial killer. However, these cops don't work over witnesses or act tough--they do what real cops do and the film is well worth seeing for its CSI-like style.The film is about the search for a serial killer who remains very true to type. He loves murdering young bleach blondes who look very similar. He also kills them the same way...with a pair of gardening shears. But with very, very few clues since the killer is very bright, the police must slowly put the pieces together and do a lot of legwork to catch up to Carl Martin...a very nasty but seemingly normal sort of guy.The film excels at showing forensics and describing police work. It also is taut and keeps the viewer interested not just in procedure but in the story itself...which seems very real and free from glamour and clichés. Well worth seeing and a film that deserves to be seen.

robert-temple-1 This film noir is a typical Hollywood B picture of the early fifties, made on a low budget and with obscure talent. However, it works very well. It was the first film directed by Arnold Laven, whose subsequent career, which lasted until 1985, was mainly in American television series, although his second film was VICE SQUAD (1953), starring Edward G. Robinson and Paulette Goddard, so he was moving up from B status already. None of the actors in this film ever achieved significant status. The story concerns a psychotic serial killer, well played with suitably demented expressions and a great deal of tension by Carl Martin, who was jilted by a blonde of a certain type, so he repeatedly seeks out blondes who resemble her, in order to kill them and thus get back at her. From the beginning of the film, there is no secret about who the killer is, and we see him at work, stalking and stabbing the women to death with his garden shears (he is a professional gardener). The film is thus all about how they can identify and catch him, since his fingerprints are not on file and there are so few clues. The film lapses from time to time into a 'police procedural drama', but only briefly, and I suspect it was originally designed as one but then they decided to cut most of that out and just get on with the story, which was a good idea. For those who like early fifties noir, this film has a great deal of interest, is well made, and holds the attention.

Martin Teller Like THE SNIPER and HE WALKED BY NIGHT, this film follows both the police and the serial killer they're trying to catch. And it lives up to that standard of quality. As usual, the procedural elements are the weakest parts, with nice attention to detail but rather dry and routine (the corny voice-over, the forensic evidence, the false confessions, the rounding up of the usual suspects, the psychological profiling, the dead-end leads and near misses). But the film absolutely shines when dealing with the killer. Adam Williams (recognizable as the baby-faced baddie from NORTH BY NORTHWEST) is creepy without being at all silly, an air of quiet danger hangs over him. There's a thick tension and dread as he stalks his victims and evades the authorities, with those conflicted moments when you almost don't want him to get caught. The supporting performances are not as memorable, but overall quite solid without anything to complain about. The photography is generally excellent, with terrific use of close-ups and a lot of good location work. Nice score as well. Well-paced and riveting film with some very fine qualities, a nice hidden gem. I'll be buying this one.