Reviews by Dark Shadows

I'd never recommend this edition, it's picture quality is very poor (constantly flickering) the TV version as seen on TMC in 2016 was much better (darker overall tone with less flickering).

Solaris is extremely overrated so is it's director Tarkovsky and some if not most of his movies (especially The Mirror). His movies are waaay too long, have too many dialogues and lack suspense. 2001 and Alien are much better made Science Fiction movies.

this movie had much more potential, in my opinion just another overrated independent film as so many others (especially Tarkovsky and Bela Tarr) nice soundtrack and black/white cinematography but not a lot was going on in the entire movie, it's too slow and too long.

I thought this movie was deeply disturbing but I found it rather dull, boring and with no disturbing atmosphere at all, movies like Cannibal Holocaust had disturbing moments due to the shaky camera effect and the great soundtrack, but this movie with it's lame piano music as the only music in the entire movie had no disturbing atmosphere at all, it seemed there was one act after the other, nothing really unexpected happened-pretty disappointing movie IMO! I've seen worse at a younger age when I rented some extreme sado-maso/fetish movies. as I said before a disturbing movie is in my opinion only created by some intelligent camerawork and a great soundtrack which was here not the case. I found even the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) more disturbing than this pervert fascist pig flick.

This movie features some of the finest set design (by legendary Hans Dreier) in any movie, this alone would be enough to create a fascinating movie but if you add on top of this the spectacular performance by Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, Erich von Stroheim as Max von Mayerling and William Holden as Joe Gillis (who is also a fantastic narrator of this movie) and you'll get a true Masterpiece. It's one of only very few movies I can watch again and again, simply because there are so many interesting things to see (the creepy old mansion, the medieval old furniture out of a fairytale, the fascinating Norma Desmond, Norma's Oldtimer, the dead monkey, amazing costumes, great cameos by Cecil B De Mille and Buster Keaton etc.). Simply one of my alltime faves!:)