Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

LeonLouisRicci Uber-Liberal Tim Robbins (wrote and directed) This Energetic Ensemble of America in the Deep Depression Era and the Clash of Art and Industrial Right Wing Politics. Robbins Never Shy of His Heart Bleeding On His Sleeve, is Commanding with His Vision of Real Life Strife in Any Era Concerning Itself Completely in the Way it Uses Art to Compel the Vision of Real People and the Effect Top Down Intimidation and Downright Oppression of Thought can be So Devastating.The All-Star Cast Takes Turns with the Limited but Engaging Portrayals and Robbins Over the Top and Interwoven Story Reminds of Robert Altman. It's All So Much Pageantry and Playful Exuberance that the Viewer Can't Help but be Entertained and Enlightened.A Colorful and Broad Artistic Landscape with Real Life Characters Who Are Interestingly Villainous and Various Artistic Types Caught in the Hurricane of Hubris from the Culturally Challenged. A Daddy Warbucks Display of Unhinged Capitalism with No Regard for Individual Suffering Cannot be Overstated.The Movie has Been Criticized for Being Flamboyant and Disjointed, but the Story Takes on Quite a Bit in Historical and Social Concerns that it Might be Given a Pass as Exclamatory but Exciting Nonetheless.Overall, it is an Overlooked and Dismissed Propaganda Piece that is So Artfully Rendered it will Stand the Test of Time with it's Unapologetic Display of a World Gone Mad, Corruptible On All Fronts. It Takes a Stand and Defies Dissent Despite its Easy Target as Left-Wing Nonsense that in the Last Analysis that Criticism Doesn't Hold Up Because the Film's Thesis is Undeniably True.

blanche-2 A wonderful, large cast recreates the story behind "The Cradle Will Rock" in this 1999 film, written and directed by Tim Robbins and starring Hank Azaria, Ruben Blades, Joan Cusack, John Cusack, Bill Murray, Cherry Jones, John Turturro, Vanessa Redgrave, Susan Sarandon, Jamey Sheridan, Gretchen Mol, Emily Watson, Bob Balaban - etc.Before the Depression and the turbulence of the 1930s, plays focused on the upper class. Everyone talked like Katharine Hepburn and people wore beautiful clothes. In the 1930s, the working man began to have a voice with the works of William Sarayoan, Clifford Odets, and Maxwell Anderson, among others. During the Depression, FDR started the WPA, and the Federal Theatre Project was one of its programs. "The Cradle Will Rock" is a leftist labor musical by Marc Blitzstein that is chosen by Hallie Flanagan, head of the FTP, to premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theater in New York. The politics of the FTP come under question, the theater is locked, and the actors are forbidden to appear on stage.Orson Welles finds another theater for the production, and the story of the opening night performance, spontaneously performed by the cast from the audience as Blitzstein sat up on stage and played, was thought to be one of the most exciting moments in theater history by those who were there.Robbins focuses on the controversy surrounding the musical but also on several other important events. Maybe, in the end, it is too much content, but fascinating nonetheless. Diego Rivera, an avowed Communist, played by Ruben Blades, is hired by Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusak) to paint a mural at Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller, however, doesn't like the revolutionary tone of the mural. One of the actors, played by John Turturro, has to deal with a family that supports Mussolini's Black Shirts.Marc Blitzstein, in focusing on a prostitute in "The Cradle Will Rock," asks us who the real prostitutes are, and Robbins shows us in his depictions of Rockefeller, Hearst, and the Senate committee before which Hallie Flanagan testifies, the thin and sometimes nonexistent line between art and politics.The performances are terrific. Just about everyone is a standout, with John Turturro in an especially showy role as a man who wants to demonstrate principles and ethics to his children. Ruben Blades and Corina Katt Ayala could have been Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the resemblance is so strong. Vanessa Redgrave is excellent as Countess LaGrange, a wealthy woman who gets caught up in the proceedings. The gifted Broadway star Cherry Jones gives another strong performance as Hallie Flanagan, and Emily Watson is marvelous as Olive Stanton. The minute I heard the vocal rhythm of Angus Macfadyen, I knew he was playing Orson Welles. He does a beautiful job, as does Susan Sarandon as Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini's ex-mistress who came to the U.S. to sell Mussolini to the American people via William Randolph Hearst's newspapers.Well worth seeing, and the period is well worth reading about.

Benedict_Cumberbatch I was fortunate enough to attend a special screening of "Cradle Will Rock" with producer/assistant director Allan F. Nicholls, a man of remarkable resume (he worked with Robert Altman several times and therefore, knows what makes a great ensemble drama). Tim Robbins' ode to theater, the passion for arts (acting, in particular), freedom of speech and the price you have to pay for believing and living for it (art vs. politics), is an underrated mosaic of some very exquisite personalities (Orson Welles, Nelson Rockefeller, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, John Houseman, Hazel Huffman, among others) that are, one way or another, involved with a musical play that's about to be closed down for being "communist", in 1936's New York. Nicholls (who has a cameo as George Zorn) said that most of the actors worked almost for free, out of friendship for Robbins and love for theater, and that "Cradle Will Rock"'s poor reception at the box-office/critics, is the main reason why Robbins hasn't directed another movie since then. That's a shame, since this is even better than his previous directorial efforts ("Bob Roberts" and "Dead Man Walking"), which were much easier films. It's true you have to know at least a little bit about the people portrayed here in order to fully appreciate/understand the film, and movies like this don't usually become blockbusters, but the fact that "Cradle Will Rock" was ignored altogether and seems quite forgotten is really sad. The ensemble cast is one of the best I've ever seen - Emily Watson, Bill Murray, Vanessa Redgrave, Joan Cusack, Cherry Jones, John Turturro, Susan Sarandon, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Angus Macfadyen, Paul Giamatti, Bob Balaban, Hank Azaria, Jack Black, Philip Baker Hall, among others - and the screenplay is Altmanesque tapestry at its best. Hopefully, this film will be discovered in a not so distant future, and get the acclaim it deserves. 10/10.

endymionng movie with an excellent outstanding all-star cast... Basically it tries to illustrate the traps and pitfalls in the never-ending war between art, politics and money. Art (as is usually the case) being the preferred hero, but realistically portrayed as being almost impossible to hold down - and if one does manage to curtail the "art", it usually is at a loss for society as a whole. However traditional union stubbornness is also frowned upon in the movie.The movie tries to see the events and the multitude of characters involved from a sort of detached perspective which makes it a little bit difficult to get close to any of the characters. Many of the side-stories (at least 8) could easily occupy an entire movie of its own, but I give credit for the effort in trying to tie it all together.For me the Rivera versus Rockefeller part is the most poignant - That Rockefeller could even think that hiring a well-known socialist sympathizer as Rivera without doing something subversive is just both hilariously funny and naive. One could argue that making the joke a little bit less obvious would have saved a great piece of art, but I guess thats very typical of many artists.All in all a very fascinating slice of a time-period, but a little bit too fragmented to really score a bullseye in my view.