I never could understand the appeal of these guys. People liked to say Duritz sounded like Van Morrison. Funny, I don't remember Van the Man ever sounding this whiny and mewling. Duritz' obnoxious donkey-braying is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Which would be forgivable if his lyrics didn't sound like the ramblings of a self-serious 8th grade poser. And if his melodies weren't so obviously written later to awkwardly cram the lyrics into. Despite all that, some of the Crows' tunes are moderately listenable. This one isn't. The "sensitive poet" schtick just always rang false with me. But I guess this is the kind of swill you have to churn out if your goal is to fuck half the cast of "Friends". Congratulations, Duritz you assclown. Mission accomplished.

I'm all for artsy mysterious neo-noirish films that keep you guessing til the end. But this was just a big pretentious mess. Made all the more obnoxious by the fact that seemingly every attractive female character who crosses paths with our sad-sack protagonist offers him sex within minutes of meeting. Hmm, maybe the writer/director should save his unrealistic fantasies for porno.

Whenever I sit down to watch a wildly praised foreign (i.e.-not from the U.S.) film from the past I always ask myself as I'm watching: If this same exact movie were made in modern-day Hollywood with the exact same script (but in English, of course) and the exact same direction, would those same critics and foreign-film buffs still praise it? And in this case, the answer is obviously a resounding Hell No! (And thus it clearly exposes the irrational bias that many "serious" film fans don't even realize they have.) For if Stalker came out of a present-day Hollywood studio, these same people would rightfully dismiss this dull, pretentious waste of film that stretches a flimsy 15-minute's worth of plot into 2+ excruciatingly boring hours, and fills it with uninsightful, masturbatory psychobabble for dialogue. But because it's in Russian and it's from the 70's, and, oh yeah, it's a metaphor for... something (whatever...yawn), it's a "masterpiece". Lame.

You know how people always say the book was better whenever you tell them you just saw a film based on a book? And you know how you just want to bitch-slap them in their haughty self-righteous face every time? Well, here's a case where the book is NOT better than the movie. With this film, maestro Stanley Kubrick took an average book by horror-hack Stephen King and turned it into a moody, disturbing, and thought-provoking masterpiece. Take that, book snobs!

One of those great movies you can watch over & over again. A perfect crime flick that manages to be wildly entertaining without insulting your intelligence.