Ever since I was 17 years old and a Staff Writer for my high school newspaper, I have written for every section of two student newspapers and even a few publications not affiliated with either South Miami High or Miami-Dade College.  I've covered news events, done interviews, written editorials, been a foreign correspondent, and even helped out the Sports section once.

As a journalism major/student reporter, I noticed that although I was a fair all-rounder as far as reporting the news went, my talents and personality were best suited in two areas - entertainment writing and opinions/editorial writing.  I started the former in high school, first as a Staff Writer on the Entertainment Beat then as Entertainment Editor, then progressed to Op/Ed columns and editorials in college.  I don't think I did as well as a News reporter; I didn't suck at it, but I was never comfortable nor felt fully competent as a reporter.  Maybe I'm too shy or too worried about not making a mistake, but I just felt out of my league when I was assigned to interview department heads or cover a VIP making a presentation on campus.

I loved - and still love - writing reviews, especially now that I can do it online and for some financial gain.   They are fun to write, even though sometimes they aren't easy to write, plus I don't - contrary to what some think - have to always write glowing reviews.  Both the sites where I write for pay ask for both pans and raves.

A typical Pan review:

Private Lessons tries to have its cheesecake and eat it, too, but fails Aug 22 '07 (Updated Aug 22 '07) Suspense:   Pros For guys in the 18-24 age bracket, Sylvia Kristel Cons For most of us, the plot, theme, and schizophrenic vibe of the picture The Bottom Line Private Lessons tries to be a comedy/love story/caper film with lots of skin; it provides the skin but not the rest.

Full Review

Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot. In the early 1980s, when Your Humble Correspondent was in high school and, later, making an earnest attempt to do the "college thing," there was a seemingly endless series of movies that featured young adolescents trying to get laid. There were many variations on the "horny teens" theme, most of them involving young guys lusting after girls their age or a just bit older, and they were all billed as comedies, since anything deeper than humorous looks at how guys chase after girls for sex usually bores the target audience of men between the ages of 17-25. One particularly "hot" subgenre of the teen-sex set of films was the May-December pairing of cute but inexperienced younger guy and hot, sexy and very willing older woman, which was the sort of stuff that was at the heart of such fare as My Tutor, Risky Business, and the more recent The Girl Next Door. Leading the pack, as it were, is 1981's Private Lessons, which starred French sex-kitten Sylvia Kristel (Emmanuelle), Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnatti), and Eric Brown in a supposed-to-be-funny-but-isn't-really sex comedy/caper-style thriller hybrid involving a hot French maid, a shady chauffeur, and a hapless (on many levels) 15-year-old whose dad (Ron Foster) is a wealthy and often absent from home millionaire. Stripped (pun very much intended) to its very basics, Private Lessons' central story has Hesseman's duplicitous chauffeur Lester Lewis lusting not after the slinky and very illegal Nicole Mallow (Kristel) but rather his employer's money, or at least enough of it to make him financially secure for the rest of his life. Knowing Nicole is without a green card and fears being deported, he blackmails her into seducing the very young but horny Philly, then faking her demise in the midst of a sexual encounter in order for Lester to blackmail Philly, who would more than likely be willing to do anything to cover up Nicole's "death." While Mr. Filmore is away on a business trip, Nicole begins the process of seduction, mainly by making sure Philly can see her in various states of dress and undress. Eventually, Philly takes the bait, and Nicole becomes the boy's "private teacher" in the art of sex, starting with a scene in which the two share a bathtub in her servant's quarters. (Odd but true: Eric Brown, who plays Philly, was only 16 when Private Lessons was made, and Sylvia Kristel, who had shed all her clothes in Emmanuelle, opted to have a body double stand in for her during the sex scenes. I wonder...was this because Brown was a minor?) The rest, I suppose, is basically predictable. Nicole apparently "dies" while she's having sex with Philly, and Lester, after informing him that the French maid had a weak heart, exploits the situation by giving the boy a choice: Either Philly finds some way to pay Lester off, or the smarmy chauffeur tells Mr. Fillmore and the authorities what happened. There's a bit more to this, of course, and director Alan Myerson (working from a screenplay by Dan Greenburg) has all the stock cliches of teen sex movies down pat: the hot older woman, the naive but willing main guy, the chubby virgin know-it-all/best friend (Patrick Piccininni), and a host of clueless adults who come and go throughout the 87-minute film without realizing what Philly and Nicole are doing. Private Lessons has a weird schizophrenic vibe, at least in my view, because it wants to have its cinematic cheesecake and eat it, too. It tries being both a comedy (the plot is too silly to take seriously) and a somewhat serious love story (Nicole, despite being older, finds herself falling for Philly). This really is a very uncomfortable combination, and although Private Lessons was a modest hit in 1981 (the same year that Raiders of the Lost Ark ruled the box office charts), it doesn't stand the test of time as a classic of its particular genre. For what its worth, Brown and Kristel do have a spark of a bizarre chemistry; the kid is all right as the shy-but-horny Philly, and France's then-current "It" girl is surprisingly sweet and not-so-surprisingly smoldering as Nicole, even though the situation they are asked to portray their characters in is a bit, well, too silly to take seriously. The rest of the film ranges from the so-so to the simply discomfitting. Poor Howard Hesseman looks as though he wishes he was doing a WKRP reunion special rather than be seen in Private Lessons, and the chubby, smarmy, "nail-her-dude" best friend was Patrick Piccininni's sole big-screen credit, which I don't think did his career any good. If you're doing a research paper on the topic of why the 1980s left us such a bunch of really crappy teen sex comedies, then I suppose you should watch Private Lessons since it was the trendsetting movie that made Porky's, My Tutor and all those like-minded films possible. Otherwise, if an unclad and hot Sylvia Kristel is who you really want to see, rent Emmanuelle; it's classier, sexier, and - best of all - no body doubles or conniving chauffeurs anywhere to be seen. Recommended: No Video Occasion: None of the Above Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age

And a typical Rave review:

view details

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace Review

Overall 2.5 (by 3 users)

Your
rating

Nov 18 2007

Star Wars fan of the 1977 Generation, Long-time reviewer, John Williams fan

Every saga must start somewhere....

Pros	Cons
John Williams' original score Good, if a bit uneven, plot Solid cast (mostly) Impressive visuals	A bit too talky We had to wait 16 years for it Its expository nature Spielberg should have directed it

Like many Star Wars fans of the 1977 Generation - those millions of young (and young-at-heart) movie watchers who were swept off their feet by George Lucas' space fantasy set "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away," I was really looking forward to the May 1999 premiere of Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the first of three "prequel" Episodes dealing with the rise of the Galactic Empire and the tragic fall from grace of a young Jedi named Anakin Skywalker, a.k.a. Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

 Also like many Star Wars fans, I thought that Episode I was a bit of a let down, considering that we had been waiting 16 years for Lucas to return to the tale centered on the Skywalker family and its fateful role in both the fall of the Galactic Republic and the decimation of the Jedi Order.  Maybe it was because it was talkier than I expected, or maybe it was because some of its plot points didn't quite jive with my own preconceived notions of what Episode I would - or should - have depicted. 

 And yet, even though I believe The Phantom Menace isn't the best of the six Star Wars Episodes, I also don't look on it as a pile of Bantha poodoo, either.

Although the film is at times more political than fans would have liked because its story revolved around a trade dispute and the Galactic Congress' inability to resolve it, The Phantom Menace begins to reveal how the Galactic Republic evolved into the evil Empire, how Senator Palpatine wormed his way to be Emperor, and most of all, how and why Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.

Assets: While it is uneven at times, The Phantom Menace is consistent to Lucas' original back story for the Classic Trilogy of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.  Readers of the novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope will note that the two-page prologue mentions a Senator Palpatine who manipulated his way into the Republic's highest elected office, aided and abetted by corrupt politicians and greedy corporations.  The prologue to the 1976 novel also mentions, albeit without details, that the Jedi Knights were nearly exterminated by treachery and deception.  Thus, Episode I and the Episodes that follow are essential to the Star Wars mythos.

Another thing I find interesting is the way that events in The Phantom Menace mirror those of A New Hope in what Lucas intended to be a music-like progression of themes.  Anakin as a nine-year-old faces some of the same situations his son Luke will face 32 years later...meeting a Jedi mentor, leaving home to "learn the ways of the Force," becoming involved in a galactic conflict, and saving his friends and thwarting - temporarily, anyway - the villains' evil plot in the film's last act.

 Also in the movie's list of assets are the stunning visuals. Star Wars is, of course, a series known for its spectacular vistas of space battles, exotic worlds, and strange creatures, and The Phantom Menace is the first Episode to fully exploit the power of digital artwork and computer technology to overcome the technical difficulties faced by Industrial Light & Magic in 1975 and the early 1980s.  Many fans say that CGI effects aren't as "real" as traditional miniature-and-matte painting effects, but depicting Coruscant's city planet environs would have been nearly impossible with the techniques used to create the Classic Trilogy.

Finally, The Phantom Menace is enrichened by John Williams' Romantic-era styled score, which not only uses the familiar Star Wars Main Theme, the Force motif, and subtle quotations of The Imperial March from the Classic Trilogy, but adds new ones to the repertoire, such as Anakin's Theme and the rousing Duel of the Fates, as well as action cues for the space battles, the Podrace on Tatooine, and even a theme for the accident-prone Jar Jar Binks.

Liabilities:  Even the most forgiving of fans has to admit that The Phantom Menace is not exactly the best of the Star Wars movies, and I seem to be among the more lenient reviewers.  So even as I say in all honesty that I enjoy Episode I a great deal, I'm aware that it has some problems that can't really be fixed without doing a Special Edition version.

 First, let's consider its function - to give exposition.  Most viewers, even those a bit too young to have been members of the 1977 Generation, know how the saga ends: the Rebel Alliance wins the Galactic Civil War, the Emperor is defeated, Anakin Skywalker is redeemed by his Jedi son, and good triumphs over evil.  The Prequel Trilogy, especially Star Wars - Episode I, is intended to set up that story by introducing the characters, whether they were new ones (such as Qui-Gon Jinn, Padme Amidala, Shmi Skywalker, or even the CGI creations Watto and Jar Jar), or younger versions of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and the boy destined to become Darth Vader.  In short, it's the first act of a three-act play, and that's usually the least interesting part.

 Another problem is that Lucas is a decent director, but considering how underwhelming Jake Lloyd's performance is as Anakin Skywalker, I think Steven Spielberg would have been a better choice to helm The Phantom Menace.  Star Wars films aren't renowned for their great acting or dramatic excellence, nor are they meant to be, but considering that Irvin Kershner's adroit handling of his cast in The Empire Strikes Back earned the respect of the saga's fans, maybe Spielberg's skill at working with actors, particularly child actors, would have improved The Phantom Menace somewhat.

The biggest problem for me, paradoxically, is that one of the reasons why the movie is necessary - the political theme - also is the root of my biggest peeve: it's definitely very talky.   If it's not the Sith Lords and their minions plotting to destroy the Jedi, it's either the Jedi Council debating on whether Anakin should be trained as a Padawan or the Senators debating the invasion of Naboo, it's a bit like watching an intergalactic version of C-SPAN.

Final Thoughts: Although flawed, Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace  is still a good attempt to "start" the space-fantasy series on an epic scale.  It is weighed down by its nature as the expository film that deals with the plots and counterplots that will carry on into Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, but it also offers fans some of the same elements that made A New Hope fun to watch: stalwart heroes, imposing villains (especially Darth Maul, who really gets very little screen time considering how prominent he's featured in the promotional campaign), and thrilling space and lightsaber action sequences.  It's not as fresh or exciting as Episode IV was when that film was released in 1977, but it's still worth watching.