Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Genuine" or, in the longer version, "Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire" is a German movie from 1920, so it soon has its 100th anniversary. It is still silent and, even more obvious, in black-and-white. Director Robert Wiene and writer Carl Mayer have worked (together) on a couple more fairly famous silent film classic, especially "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari", which also came out in 1920. Their effort with "Genuine", however, seems quite forgettable to me. The vampire did look scary I must admit and we have to give them thumbs-up because this was actually done before Nosferatu, bit still the action, story and acting were just not too interesting. There are 2 versions out there, a long one that runs for almost 90 minutes and a 44-minute version, the one I watched. Actually, I only found the short version. But I am perfectly fine with it as, like I wrote before, this was a mediocre film at best and **/***** is almost still a generous rating. No need to watch another 45 minutes of it. I do not recommend "Genuine", a genuinely uninteresting film,

Hitchcoc Watching this late at night, I kept dozing off and then rewinding to see what I'd missed. This woman who is sometimes seen as a vampire, has incredible power over men. She can get them to do what she wants, even to the point of killing themselves or others. She was kidnapped and sold into slavery and has this rage and craziness in her eyes. Men can't resist her and fall into her traps. We don't know what her motives are other than to seek revenge on those who put her in this position. There is a lot of overacting (a hallmark of the silent cinema anyway) and very little plot. Robert Wiene ("The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary") is just getting started and some of the cinematography is interesting. But over all, it just doesn't do much to captivate the viewer.

cstotlar-1 I caught this years back at the Paris Cinematheque hoping to find something of interest from the director of Caligari. It was a disappointment in just about every way for me. First, the film at its original length seemed to go on forever. The elements were there, granted, but they didn't combine as they did in the previous film. I had the feeling of watching a film that was going through all the necessary steps but missing all the points. It was more an exercise in style which blindly followed all the guidelines but missed going anywhere. On the other hand, and perhaps unfairly to subsequent films, "Caligari" was a one-of-a-kinder that left no space for a sequel. Period.Curtis Stotlar

Levana Robert Wiene repeats the techniques he used in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" with far less success in "Genuine". His looming architectures and broad swaths of darkness are glaringly at odds with the utterly ridiculous story of the seductress-priestess-wild girl brought to unsuspecting Europe. There are some striking visual effects, such as the jungle of branches where Genuine climbs up and up to escape from her prison, but they don't add up to anything. (I should note that only fragments, adding up to about a half hour, survive of this movie; but I suspect that the parts I didn't see wouldn't have added any deeper meaning.)