Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

hasosch There are movies where people feel that they are underrated. Many of the comments that have been written suspect this for "John and Mary". Moreover, when a movie is built on dialectical experiments, thus focusing communicative structures, very easily the impression rises that the plot is thin or the story more or less absent. Neither of that is the case in "John and Mary".John and Mary meet one night in a New Yorker Bar. They are attracted to one another. The next scene shows them already in the morning in John's apartment. He is still lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, in reality watching Mary sniffling around his photos, drawers and other personal belongings. The director did without the usual "bridge"-scene, where He asks Her if she wants to come for a drink up to him, and so on. Why tell? We see it in all other movies where such scenes happen.Then the scene changes to breakfast. John is explaining to Mary that he buys organic farmer's eggs - it be worth the extra-trip. She thinks: Aha, a health-guru! The specialty is now that we hear what she thinks. She quietly comments everything he says and does. This goes so far that one time he really assumes that she sad something. She denies. How did he come to such an idea? Because he, too, is commenting what she is doing. However, he does it differently. She listens basically to what he is saying. He looks basically how she is behaving (according to a quip by Oscar Wilde). And so, what we see as voyeurs and not so much as audience (audire = "to hear, listen"), is an extremely complex network of flashbacks and flash-forwards, of what did happen in the past of John and Mary and of what may or may not happen in their common or not common future. Guessing a situation for the present means to extrapolate it into the future by using a strange mixture of logic and everyday's experience.The most amazing situations in the movies are there, where one person who makes a flash, is called back in "reality" by inference of the other person. One has the impression that the face of this person fits still to what she was thinking and not to the real situation on which she did not participate. So, there is an "imaginary rest" on the face of the called person, and this imaginary rest can influence enormously the whole ongoing situation by influencing the reaction of the calling person.This is, very broadly drawn, the content of this extraordinary movie, played by two of America's most gifted actors. In the end, we know: Only then, when real and imaginary dialog would coincide, one would be able to change the world by words. This means, John and Mary could reach by communication the desired status of relationship. But the two forms of communication never coincide, and so we use the imaginary dialog in order to govern the real dialog and make it controllable. However, communication is feedback, and strangely enough, from feedbacks alone new things can arise.

Xanadu-2 It had everything going for it, the hottest young stars of the late sixties, Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow, fresh from the successes of the Graduate and Rosemary's Baby. The director had just made the huge hit Bullit and the hopes were very high, the two stars were on the cover of Time magazine!It was set in swinging New York, nice photography, cool apartments and clothes, it had to be a hit, right?What went wrong?????? The script, I suppose. They hadn't considered that it had to say something. Instead we are treated to lots of meaningful looks from the leads. Though, they are good looking....Is it a comedy? Hard to tell, funny it wasn't. In fact it's dullsville! Quite embarrassing at times. It seems under-rehearsed, as if the actors had only read the script once. Mia Farrow is too mannered doing her little-old-lady-in-a-girls-body routine. Surprisingly Dustin doesn't overact.This film disappeared from sight. Ms. Farrow hardly mentions it in her biography. Does anyone remember it?

English_roG This is an all but forgotten little gem by Peter (Bullit) Yates, who uses a sensitive and witty script by the excellent John Mortimer.The direction, acting, and general tone are near perfect. Alas it was probably super cool for a year or two after it's release and nothing dates like 1960s high fashion.You may catch it on a late night TV channel - if so, postpone your bedtime for 90 minutes or so and enjoy!Last thought - This film may have been the source for Woody Allen's famous and celebrated "subtitles" scene in Annie Hall, made several years later with Mia Farrow.

henriks-2 I don't agree with Leonard Maltin's review about the slow pace of the movie. This is deliberate, and a sign of the times and the characters' situation. For those of you who are interested in Marantz trivia, in this movie, John (Dustin Hoffman) has an exclusive vintage Marantz HiFi setup. In view at times will be the Marantz 19 receiver and also the very unusual Marantz tangential record player... Unfortunately, the movie is not yet available on video!?