Richard Dominguez No Matter How many Times I Watch This Movie I Am Always Amazed At How Like Kurt Vonnegut's Book It Is ... Billy (William Pilgram) Finds Himself Being Tossed Back And Forth Along His Life's Timeline, Reliving His Past As Well As His Future ... There Is So Much About This Story That Is Relevant To All Our Lives ... How Universally Large A Life Can Be In It's Impact On Others And Yet How Minuscule Our Lives Are In The Scope Of Existence ... Vonnegut Touches Not Only On Historical Moments In Our Lives But More Importantly On The Minute Details ... What We Realize (Without Having It Bashed Over Our Heads) Is That Billy Is Us And We, All Of Us Are Billy ... Vonnegut Address' The Most Important Of All Questions, Should We Make Up For A Past, Work For A Better Tomorrow, Should We Have Been Born There Instead Of Here, Should We Make A Left Turn Instead Of A Right Turn, Etc .... In This Brilliant Work That Reminds Us Of The Total Lack Of Control That We Actually Have In Our Lives And The Illusion We Create By Thinking That We Can Control Our Lives We Find A Kind Of Peace And Flexibility That Allows Us To Address The Answer To The Above Questions ... That It Does Not Matter, The Only Thing That Matters Is That We Make The Best In All Ways Of The Only Thing That Does Matter ... Now ...

tomsview I first read "Slaughterhouse Five" around 1970. There were things in there I couldn't keep to myself. I remember reading out to my father some of the amazing lines from the book such as "The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of a zipper on the fly of God Almighty." I don't think I spoilt it too much for him; he read the book straight after I did.Kurt Vonnegut paid his dues to write that book; you could sense the pain in many passages. But how could they make a film of that self-revelatory blend of eyewitness account and wildly imaginative fiction - war, social commentary and sci-fi?Well they did, and it turned out pretty good.George Roy Hill, who made "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", and "The Sting", knew how to tell a good story, and the screenplay was by Steven Geller who wrote the novel on which "Pretty Poison" was based.The whole premise of the story is that the hero, Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) is unhinged in time and drops in and out of different periods of his life without notice. Lesser filmmakers may have fallen back on narration, quoting directly from the novel. However this film doesn't do that. It explains Billy's time tripping at the beginning through a letter he is typing; it's simple and effective.Billy's episodic life with clever transitions between the sequences fits the episodic nature of film. At the core of the story are Billy's wartime experiences during the Battle of the Bulge and as a prisoner of war in Dresden. Once you get the idea, it doesn't matter where Billy ends up, whether it's on the planet Tralfamadore with Valerie Perrine in a see-through negligee, in bed in his neat suburban home or at a meeting of his Rotary club.The sequence with Howard W. Campbell Jnr. (Richard Schaal) heralds the stunning portrayal by Nick Nolte 25 years later in "Mother Night", which Vonnegut wrote before "Slaughterhouse Five". Apparently he thought both films caught the spirit of his novels.However, "Slaughterhouse Five" flopped when first released. Maybe it was feared that a brilliant book was sure to be screwed up.Not so in this case. The film is ironic, sad, insightful, funny and unique; just like the book. With its jumps in time, "Slaughterhouse Five" doesn't feel dated to the 1970's - it's really quite timeless.

Cosmoeticadotcom While the film falls shy of greatness, it certainly did deserve the awards it won, such as the Prix de Jury (3rd Place) at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival. And, given how many films from the 1960s and 1970s have been pigeon-holed, due to their cultural limitations, it's refreshing to see a film that reflects its era- the 1940s through 1970s, yet does not wallow in it. While one can argue with the film's philosophical posit that everything is connected and predetermined, the presentation, or the art, of the ideas, is excellent. On a personal level, one of the things I find most refreshing about this film is how there is not a single character in it that looks like a movie star. All the main and supporting character roles are played by average looking actors. I sometimes just get tired of looking at films where, even if good acting is involved (such as the films of a Michelangelo Antonioni or Federico Fellini, much less the schlock that Hollywood cranks out), the people all look like perfect mannekins. Another refreshing thing about this film is that it's one of the rare examples of a film (especially considering it was a big studio Hollywood film) set in World War Two era Europe that has nothing to do with the Nazi genocide of European Jews. It's simply next to impossible to make a film on the Holocaust that does not fall into terminal PC preachiness. This film, however, shows the war from a unique perspective; one where humor and the flaws of individuals are on full display, rather than the stridency of a political ax to grind.Slaughterhouse-Five may or may not be a great film (I vote no), but it is a film worth watching. While it does not break as much ground in its art form as its source material does in its, it is a film that sticks with the viewer, forcing one to cogitate upon what it has imparted, Whether or not that means one is time tripping like Billy Pilgrim is up for debate.'Poo-tee-weet.'

Al_The_Strange Chances are you may have heard of Slaughterhouse-Five; it's one of the highly-tutted classics of science fiction, penned by the ever-eccentric Kurt Vonnegut. As of this writing, I've never actually read the book, but this movie seems to capture the gist of things. It's a very strange, surrealist story that chronicles a man's life and death through a series of random time-jumps. The man was a prisoner in WWII (and the actual slaughterhouse was his residence), before raising a dysfunctional family afterwards, and then being abducted by aliens. Yep, strange stuff indeed.The film will be most memorable for the rough and dirty war scenes, the sporadic family outbursts, and the scenes on Tralfamadore. Parts of it drag a little, but there's enough interesting scenes to pull the film together and maintain interest, especially for fans of sci-fi, war movies, or bizarre cinema in general.I have no idea how close of an adaptation this movie is to the book, but on its own merits, the film does an interesting job of using its random narrative structure to show the character at the different phases of his life; really, it shows somewhere between three to five different narrative strings at once. Some scenes run into each other, with characters in one timeline finishing off dialogue from another, or scenes mirroring each other so that they're intercut together. It makes the film run as one long and smooth stream of consciousness, while exploring the character's life, memories, and psyche in full. In a way, you probably could interpret this whole film as the memories, memoirs, and dreams of a man who's either mentally insane or dead.If there's anything to complain about, it's just the sheer randomness of the story, for even with its constant focus on the main character, it never settles on any specific plot structure or tangible form.The film has quality photography and really excellent editing. Acting is a bit over-the-top, but it gets the job done really well, and the writing is not bad. This production has fine-looking sets, props, and costumes. Music is not bad either.For bringing a literary classic to life, the film is worthwhile seeing. As random and strange as it is, I'd recommended some caution: rent it and see what you think for yourself.4/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Good | Film: Good)