IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

ben-73164 I first saw this movie on Netflix and watched it non-stop until they took it off. Then I bought this movie and put it on my Macbook. I have no clue how many times I have watched it. I know it is over 50 times. You can ask me any question about any scene and I can tell you every word spoken and answer any question about any scene. If I play the movie and walk away , I don't even need to see what scene is playing. I can see it in my head very vividly and i know exactly what that scene looks like. I say I love this movie is a gross understatement. But if you ask my why I love it this much, I do not know how to answer. I often wonder why I love this movie as much as I do. There is something inside of me that this movie triggers beyond belief. I wish I knew what it was.

rightwingisevil still quite watchable by great acting of n.w. and r.r. r.r. played the reluctant bad news messenger who came to town to lay off many railroad workers and killed the whole town. n.w. played the whoring beauty who was viciously pimped by her mother. the young female actor who played the younger sister of alva, well, the impression i got from this movie was her ugly nose and day-and-night differences between she and her elder sister. to me, if n.w. was not drowned so young and so early, she would have received so many Oscar or any other movie festivals awards as "the best actress" for so many times and again. what a loss and tragedy to us. she's not only a beauty but also a natural born actor. r.r. also looked so handsome and played a decent role in this film. but if you have watched this film adapted from the great American play writer, you'd inevitably find out that there were so many flaws in this specific play that have caused the screenplay writer, another great movie culture contributor, wrote a over-the-top pretentious and too much staged pretentious screenplay. if without the effortless and natural performance of the lovely actress, the movie itself would only have turned out barely watchable, since the whole movie was just so pretentious and overly staged. a mother pimping her daughter to get by? a married old guy openly obsessed with a young woman and with the consent of her mother, well, disgusting but possible.

jzappa What stays with me about this ably produced, well-acted Depression-era drama about the upshot of railroad cutbacks on a cluster of boarding-house folks is the controlling effect Kate Reid has on her daughter Natalie Wood, to the point perhaps of tragedy. Why does she control her this way? For her own selfish reasons, maybe, but also for her own feelings of security and peace of mind, which Wood herself is longing for. The real tragedy could be the society for whom Redford, Wood's object of passion, works, which pits mother against daughter in a way that happiness can only be had one way or another, with or without the happiness of one or another.Sydney Pollack would become a maker of classic, star-studded Hollywood period dramas, thrillers, romances and comedies, but This Property is Condemned, which is maybe a little overdone, is one of his strongest pieces because it has a beautifully tragic understanding of the trap that is set by a desperate society of people. People who love each other resort to respectively manipulating each other to the point of excruciating emotional pain and abandoning one another's penultimate wishes. It is either Tennessee Williams' original one-act or the script by Francis Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer that makes this come so powerfully alive in at least two scenes, but it's the strong acting between Reid and Wood, and the one she gives me. She stars as the youthful Dixie belle, older daughter of the former who plays a sordid proprietor to some railroad men. Wood longs for another life while she teases every drop of testosterone in town, functioning as the shill for her mother. It is a movie that's adult without being scandalous, poignant without being slushy. Charles Bronson is first-rate as a coarse lodger, by the way.Does it have the vibrant energy between performers that Tootsie does? No. Does it have the brilliant editing touch and metaphoric tragedy of They Shoot Horses, Don't They? No. But I would still consider it among the strongest of Pollack's directorial works, the first collaboration between he and star Robert Redford, who gives an exceptional performance as the railroad efficiency specialist sent to dismiss nearly all of the crew. In narrative terms, the role is unrewarding and burdensome, but Redford, through tone, look and physicality, consummate acting, makes the character fully human.

moonspinner55 Tennessee Williams' one-act play about a loose-living belle down Mississippi way during the Depression who cottons to the new renter in her mama's boarding-house becomes an overblown star-vehicle for Natalie Wood and Robert Redford. Though well-produced, and with some very sensitive passages, the picture never quite gets going...and fails to wrap itself up satisfactorily. Redford is the railroad employee from New Orleans who pulls into a whistle-stop town to lay-off many of the workers; Wood teases and taunts him before deciding she loves him, though it may be too late. The characters act so rashly--biting and clawing at one another blindly, without thinking--that the two leads never manage to create a moving or sympathetic rapport. By the final third, the narrative has stopped making logical sense; director Sydney Pollack seems to hope that by coasting through solely on emotion, he'll be able to get us to the finish-line on good will alone. Unfortunately, the screenplay just isn't persuasive enough, nor are the performances strong enough, to negate the movie's weaknesses. ** from ****