Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Python Hyena Gloria (1999): Dir: Sidney Lumet / Cast: Sharon Stone, Jeremy Northam, George C. Scott, Cathy Moriarty, Bonnie Bedelia: It is a burning question as to why Sidney Lumet would remake the John Cassevette film for which he starred his wife Gena Rowlands? Plot regards a prostitute who takes a boy under her care. Sharon Stone spent three years in prison to cover her boyfriend's ass. He operates a mob in search of a disc that he killed a family to obtain but a boy survives. Feeling betrayed Stone protects the boy and steals the disc. Typical and predictable with way too much that we have seen before. A subway scene does nothing more than have Stone pursue the boy, and a scene involving her sister is not followed up. Directed by Sidney Lumet applies his skill but he is not creating the art he established with Network or Dog Day Afternoon. Stone is surprisingly good and handles humour effectively. She has seen the inside of a jail cell and the result of her sacrifice but now she slowly becomes a woman with responsibilities. Jeremy Northam plays the stereotypical villain. George C. Scott appears briefly and Cathy Moriarty is featured as Stone's sister who never seems to be used effectively. Regardless of one's thoughts on the Cassevetes film, this pointless remake does little to inspire interest outside stone's obvious sex appeal. Its themes cannot distract the fact that this is an unnecessary remake. Score: 3 ½ / 10

robert-temple-1 'Broad' as an American slang word for a woman must be pretty out of date now. I wonder if anybody still talks about either 'broads' or 'dames', as perceptions of women have moved on a bit. I don't believe they are 'chicks' or 'birds' anymore either. They also aren't any longer 'skirts' because so many don't wear them. All of these terms were somehow derogatory. 'Birds' were to be 'pulled', 'broads' were to be 'laid', and so on. In retrospect it is clear that these were all slang terms for women used by men, as put-downs to reduce women to objects of lust. It was OK to 'pull' a 'bird', but you can't linguistically speaking properly 'pull' a woman. So by reducing women to linguistic categories designed to diminish their worth, they could then safely be exploited without troubling one's conscience. A 'woman' still has some dignity, so in order to be exploited for purposes of lust, she must first be reduced in status to that of 'broad' or 'bird'. The reductionist urge to diminish women linguistically is equivalent to the use of the word 'untermensch' ('sub-human') by the Nazis to diminish the Jews so that they could kill them. Killing, 'laying', 'pulling', are all different destructive modes applied to linguistically diminished categories of humans specially targeted but who first need to be placed into special categories where it is OK to do anything to them that one wants. I say all of this because there is one remarkable moment in this film where Sharon Stone says of herself: 'I've always been a broad'. She has spent her life as a mobsters' moll, and in her moment of self-realization, freely confines herself to the category of 'broad' in recognition of her lifelong willingness to allow herself to be a lust-object for hire, to sleazy men who go around killing people. Sharon Stone is eerily convincing at being a 'broad' and she has the New York accent of a 'broad', and such a 'broad's' attitudes and mannerisms to perfection. So hers is a stunning performance in the central role of Gloria. The mobster whose moll she has been most recently is played by Jeremy Northam. For an English actor he did amazingly well at speaking like a New York gangster. He must have studied hard with his voice coach to pull that off! His casting is a typically inspired example of lateral thinking, doubtless by Sidney Lumet, the director. Lumet was such a thorough pro that he pulls off this film (please note that 'pulling off' is not related to the 'pulling' above mentioned, nor does it have anything to do with pulling off a jumper; are these linguistic notes becoming tiresome?) with his usual aplomb. The previous mobster whose moll Stone had been is called Ruby, and is played with unrivalled brilliance by George C. Scott, who oozes the most charming form of evil out of his eyes like lizard gall bladders being squeezed in a juice bar. And it glistens! Stone has just come out of prison after serving three years for something Northam had done. She comes to claim her money which was their 'deal', but Northam reneges, and the broad realizes she has been a chump. (Do people still say 'chump'?) And that is when the story really begins. Northam has just 'bumped off' (that euphemism is still in use) a family of Puerto Ricans in Washington Heights because the man had stolen a computer disc listing all the criminal contacts of the mobsters, such as which police officers and judges 'and even a congressmen or two' are on the mobsters' payroll. But the six year-old son of the Puerto Rican has escaped with the disc. Northam captures him and he is sitting in Northam's apartment where Northam is in dispute with a subordinate who wants to bump him off but Northam says: 'I won't kill a kid.' And that is when Stone turns up. Through complex circumstances, Stone and the kid (brilliantly played by child actor Jean-Luke Figueroa, who was actually nine but looked six) go on the run together. It gets more and more complicated. Stone has never liked kids or had any maternal instincts, and the film is largely about the transformation of her character through the enforced proximity to the kid. She starts to go all gooey, and the kid adopts her as his new mother, and it thus becomes a psychological drama. Lumet keeps this on an even keel and the film works because he was such a pro, and the same goes for Stone. The film could easily not have worked in lesser hands. But because it was done so well, the film is worthwhile, surprising, and very engrossing to watch. I noted that John Cassavetes was credited as co-writer and then discovered that he first directed the film GLORIA in 1980 with Gena Rowlands playing Gloria. I was unaware of that Cassavetes film and will now try and see it for comparison. Some have said it was far superior to Lumet's remake of it, and I would not be surprised. Gena Rowlands is respected on all sides for her great talent, and must have been stunning as Gloria. Certainly Rowlands was so overwhelming in Cassavetes's OPENING NIGHT (1977, but my rave review of it mysteriously disappeared from the IMDb website long ago), that I have no hesitation in pronouncing her a genius. So we shall see, but meanwhile, this film is very good regardless and should not be denigrated even if its predecessor were superior to it. Good remakes are very rare, and this certainly is one of those. Let's be fair.

Falconeer The feeling of nostalgia one experiences watching the original "Gloria" with Gena Rowlands, is sadly not present in this modern remake. Noticeably gone is that sweeping, dramatic score for the original, which added a sense of sadness and later, a sense of hope for Gloria and her young companion. "Gloria" first and foremost, is a New York story, and the city plays the largest part. Face it, the gritty, diverse and savage NYC that existed in 1980, is sadly no more. And that is why this 1999 effort lacks the heart, the quality that made the original a classic. Sharon Stone is quite good here, but she is too young here to play the middle-aged, world-weary Gloria; she simply does not look all that much like a woman who has had a truly rough life. And the young actor Jean-Luke Figueroa, while being very adorable, and a fine child actor, isn't always convincing as the streetwise, Spanish kid from the Bronx. Sometimes he reveals himself as a spoiled, very Americanized kid who has never seen the inside of a ghetto in his life. Remember John Adames, the kid from the original? Now that little guy was the real thing, seemed like he had lived all his life in the barrio. I believe his acting was weak because he wasn't an actor, just a real kid cast as a character like himself. The realism that made the first so great is lost here, in a remake that is too slick, and too stylish to have any real heart. Another thing that is missing is the grittiness, such as the hotels they are hiding in when the mob is chasing them. In the original the sleazy flophouses and shady hotels Gloria and Phil were staying in really added to the level of danger and desperation. This time around, Sharon Stone and 'Nicky' (they changed the boys name for some reason?) are staying in 4 star hotels! Generic and a bit boring. Of course the weakest thing about the remake, is the total lack of connection between Gloria and the boy. They don't seem believable here. In the original the little boy actually falls in love with Gloria, almost in a romantic way, and that was the sweetest, and most endearing thing about their relationship. Maybe in this day and age it was thought inappropriate to go that route. And the ending for the remake does not really work. For the audience to believe that the mafia would simply release a boy who witnessed them murder his family, they would have to be pretty gullible. No, the boy was 11, and all would assume that in a few years, he would return to avenge his family. notice in the original, Gloria and Phil planned an elaborate escape, where the mob would assume they were both dead, which added an extra level of suspense. For the average viewer, 1999's Gloria is a fun, enjoyable movie, but was a pointless remake. seeing this I can only pray that some idiot doesn't try to remake "Taxi driver." What a disaster that would be, for the same reasons that this one failed...

Pretty Face The firs time I fell in love with Sharon Stone was in 1990's Total Recall and the last time I like her was in 1999 Gloria. Of course, I like her in Basic Instinct (1992) as Catherine Tramell and Sangre y arena aka Blood and Sand (1989) as Doña Sol.There is something that I can't figure out. Sharon Stone looks her best in Total Recall. That was in 1990. Then, she failed to look good until 1999's Gloria. I think it must be the movie directors.This movie is about Sharon Stone. If you like Sharon Stone, this is a must watch. You get to watch her close up all the time. You will see the gorgeous Sharon Stone running in high heels. My favorite quote - Nicholas 'Nicky' Nuñez: I like sleeping with you. Gloria: You're not the first guy to tell me that.Jean-Luke Figueroa got to enjoy making this movie.