Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Kodie Bird True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

TxMike After all these years I finally saw it, at home on DVD from my local library. It was fun just seeing all those first rate actors in their 20s and 30s when the film was made. Now those still alive are mainly in their 70s and 80s, many still acting.It is set in WW2, primarily in Italy. A group of ragtag aviators flying bombing runs. The story focuses on Alan Arkin as Capt. John Yossarian, bombardier. He is probably the most sane one there but he wants to survive, he wants to go home. At first it would be after 25 successful missions, then it got pushed to 50, then to 75. He was losing patience. It is mostly a madcap type of absurdist comedy. Most of it works, some of it doesn't for me. Still I am glad I took the time, it is such a classic.

LeonLouisRicci This is a Review of the Film. Not the Novel, whose Numbers are by Book Standards Stratospheric (still sells thousands of copies every year).The Source Material may be Sacrosanct to those who have Read the Vietnam Era, Counterculture Icon and Love to Belittle its Cinematic Representation for Not Including......Fill in the Blank and Consider the Movie Not Worth Considering are in the Wrong Space. This is IMDb...Key Letter "M" (Movie).But Any Movie that takes on as its Source a Novel that so many People Find Endearing and a Significant Part of Their Maturation Process or at Least a Significant Part of Their Literary Litany, is Asking for it.It Doesn't Matter who is Directing, Writing, or Starring in the Film. It Doesn't Matter how Much Money is Spent on the Production. You Don't Mess with a Person's "Favorite" Book. It's Insane that Anyone would even Try (second time director Mike Nichols).The Insanity of War is what this Satire is Offering. The Film is Beautifully Shot, well Scripted (Buck Henry), and is Overall Funny, Depressing, and Well Made. The Movie is Long and makes it Message Meaningful if Elongated.Sputtering a bit by the End, the Heavy Handed Need for the Hammering Home of what Amounts to the "Horror" of War and the Military Industrial Complex it could be Said that it Cannot be Overstated.So it's a Deep and Disgusting thing to Contemplate, considering the Suffering. It's one of those Dilemmas. Laugh or Cry. Can You do Both at the Same Time? If that's Possible, this Movie does what it does just Fine and You Should See it.See the Movie.....Read the Book...Entertainment to be had from Both.

alexcurren I suspect that if Robert Altman's ground breaking M.A.S.H. had not come out the same year, Catch-22 might have lived on as the Vietnam era satirical anti-war film. I'm glad M.A.S.H. did come along because this film was dribble. I think Mike Nichols ego got the better of him, having come off two hits (Graduate and ...Virginia Woolf), and the film suffers for this. He took a seminal postmodern work and destroyed it, the viewer forced to watch this disaster at twenty four frames a second.All Nichols had to do was pull a John Houston. For years many filmmakers tried to make the Maltese Falcon, but they deviated from the novel, and the films were awful. Nichols just needed to put the book in script form, and then chop off some of the fat in the editing room. Instead we are forced to watch this mangled train wreck. There are a few good moments, the Snowden scene cut up and running through the film was a very nice touch. The casting was good for the most part, but we didn't have enough time with each character to really get to know them, to care about them, to hate them. Believing Art Garfunkel as Natley the rich New Englander is beyond the talent and abilities of Mr. Garfunkel, and insulting to actors and New Englanders everywhere. Jon Voight was absolutely wrong for Milo, the whimsical pseudo-communist capitalist running an empire of trades and deals. The role demanded someone with a bit of the shady New York about him, not Mid-western Nordicism. So many little tidbits are missing, and Catch-22 is story about little tidbits, little stories that all weave together to form a rich tapestry of life. Major Major Major Major came and went like a flash, no mention of Washington Irving. I was hoping that they could have cast Peter Fonda, and played up the Henry Fonda resemblance more. Nor a hint of the CID men who came to interview him.One of the most critical, and humorous scenes in the novel is the interrogation of Clevinger. It was one of the funniest things I've read in a novel, and it surmises the absurdity of the chain of command, and war in general. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for this pivotal scene that never came. General Scheisskopf is also absent, along with his parades, and masochistic wife. I saw Doc Daneeka as the guy who tells really dirty jokes when no one is looking, an edge to the man, a cunningness, a shifty opportunistic abortionist, and as good as Jack Gilford is, he's not that guy. The list continues on and on. Arkin was somewhat of a saving grace for this picture; he was cast accordingly, and did the best he could amongst the visceral carnage laid out on celluloid. The subtle allegories to heaven were also a little hackneyed. True one reading from this novel that some of it happened in a death dream state, a blur between life, death, reality and unreality. It would have come off much stronger to play it straight, Bea Arthur straight, and punched the jokes in strong. It's the contrast of order versus dis-order that make Catch-22 so endearing. That military men act illogically in logical situations, and logically in illogical situations. When translating a dialogue rich novel such as Catch-22, it's usually best to stick with the story in the novel. It would be wonderful is someone down the road dusted off a copy of this fine work of post war literature, wrote it out in script form, and shot it. The whimsical, satirical, nonsensical, non-linear structure might play better with cinema trappings of early 21st century cinema; Post- Tarantino, Chapter 1, The Texan, and so forth. Until then we're left with this dud.

Tim Kidner I could never really quite get into MASH and that baseball game is wasted on me. Mike Nicol's Catch 22, though, that's different. It's instant. Straight away it just clicks as being a film that is warped enough to be well outside anybody's box. I know that MASH is Vietnam and this an Italian airbase somewhere in the Med in WW2, but from here-on in, there are big similarities.Alan Arkin has never been better and though I haven't read the book and probably never will, you can tell straight away that he was born for the role. His only other performance that comes near was his Oscar winning one as grumpy old uncle in Little Miss Sunshine. As the US air-force captain hell-bent on proving his insanity, Capt Yossarian has to try and convince everybody, especially himself.The film is on so many delicious levels that it can be seen many times and a different stance or joke is revealed that you didn't see before. I'm on my third. Dreams, nightmares, psychosis, nudity, superb, adventurous cinematography AND Orson Welles, that's one helluva combination. The stunts are worthy of expensive 'proper' war films and it must have been a very brave film for Nicols to even contemplate making.There's one hell of a cast too, aside of Arkin and Welles - Anthony Perkins, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Martin Balsam, Jon Voight and Martin Sheen - that's an invite list to the Oscars!My policy with such off the wall movies is not to try and understand them, unless it comes to me. Logic and reasoning can be an awful barrier to enjoyment, sometimes! For this reason alone, I'm not even going to try to explain the plot here.You'll want to watch Catch 22 for its WW2 satire, the imaginative direction, the well executed stunts and maybe above all these, the cast - and the humour that is so unreal, it's almost happening outside of one's mind and body.