Rating: 
Summary: Finally released from VHS prison
Review: Having seen this movie about 6 or 7 times on VHS, I expected watching the DVD release to be a similar experience. Instead, I found the experience of watching the film in its original widescreen format, and with improved sound and a clearer print, to be much more involving and entertaining. The widescreen format reveals Nichols' fine sense of detail in composition- an important element sadly lost in the VHS rendering.The audiences and critics of 1970 were not too kind to this film. Perhaps its proximity to the Vietnam war was just too close. 30 years later, this film holds up well and seems more relevant than ever- presenting its ideas with stunning originality and force. And the humor is just as scathing as always. I still get a good laugh out of Bob Newhart's "Major Major" schtick and Orson Welles' bombastic General Dreedle. One technical problem with this film is the obscuration of dialog in noisy environments such as the scenes when propeller planes are going by. I watched the DVD with the English subtitles turned on and finally "got" many of the jokes I had been missing over the years!
Rating:
Summary: Catch 22
Review: i have read the book Catch 22, by joseph heller, its an amazing book which i will recomand every person to read. Catch 22 is a marvels book, which shows the impact of WW2, and the Army over soldiers. The book starts telling us about the second half of ww2, Yossarian, the main character, is a captain in the air force squadron on the island of Pianosa, near the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Even though he is a great soldier, he hates the war and killing, mainly because his friend Snowden died in his arms. Yossarian wants to stay alive and he know that fighting in WW2 wont give him a good chance for living, so for that he goes and pretends to be wounded so he could stay in the hospital and not go out to fight. But as well this doesn't work for a long time and the people in a higher level then him keep on sending him into the war to fight. So he doesn't know what to do for a while, after couple of days/ weeks he realizes that the perfect way of getting out of the army and the war, will be telling he is insane. This brings me back to my point before the summery, in the thesis, Catch 22. Catch 22 also is found in between character, for example when he went with his friend Nately to Rome, Nately falls in love a Hoe and basically tries to get her, but as soon as she notices him back and return his love back he gets killed. So after Nately's death Yossrian was in a shock, thinking about how the war took his friends away, and how people around him don't realize they r in a war. After a while being in Rome he gets arrested for being in Rome without a pass. He gets arrested and his Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn, which offers him later on a choice, either face a court-martial or be released and sent home with an honorable discharge. There is only one condition in order for him to be released, he must approve of Cathcart and Korn and state his support for their policy, which requires all the men in the squadron to fly eighty missions. As he thinks about it, he chooses to run away to Sweden, which gives him the power to do what ever he wants and not going after Catch 22's rules.
Rating:
Summary: For a movie: BEST MOVIE Compared to book: NO CONTEST
Review: I read 'Catch-22' first, and it instantly became my favorite book (as soon as I finally got through it). When I heard of the movied version, I was estatic, but in wonderment. How can such a complex book with no linear structure ever be adapted to movie form? My expectations were high, but weary... First of all, casting was excellent. Alan Arkin played a perfect Yossarian, as well as Jon Voigt as Milo, and so on. The settings were great, really convincing from what I read from the book. As far as the comparison to the book. If it stands true for one instance, the book is worlds better than the movie. As a reader, you get so much more out of Joe Heller's sardonic universe. The complex plot, the meticulous descriptions (in which he used words I never knew existed...either have a dictionary with you when you read 'Catch-22', or have a vast vocabulary!), and all the rest... The movie does attempt to follow Heller's complex plot structure, hopping back and forth to unravel plot points with each pass. The movie does this well with Yossarian's epidemic with Snowden. Most of the ingeniously clever dialogue is brought to the screen, but that's what makes the book/movie so great. At any rate, I highly recommend this movie, as well as anything from Joe Heller...the best writer of the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: It's not the book - what movie is?
Review: I read Catch-22 many years ago. Loved it. I've seen Catch-22 the movie several times. Loved it. But they are different. You are not going to get every nuance of the complex, convoluted book into the movie, but it is a good approximation. The movie works on its own, mostly due to the collection of oddball characters and circumstances. The long list of big named actors did a good job. However, the cinematography may be the star, here. As an "anti-war" comedy, this ranks near the top. The reasonably-priced DVD has a so-so commentary by director Mike Nichols with Steven Soderbergh.
Rating: 
Summary: ... BOO!
Review: I realize that no movie can ever be made and be true to the book. This movie is nothing like the book and in fact does the book a disservice. Do not waste your time with this movie. It fails to encompass any of the feeling or emotion of the original story. There are books that cannot be reduced to the "big screen" this is one of them. If you have seen this film and enjoyed it, Please read the book and get the whole experience of the original story.
Rating:
Summary: Good satire
Review: I really enjoyed this movie. I love good, ridiculous satire. Although it felt pretty cold at times I couldn't ignore the great craftsmanship that went into this. Mike Nichols shot if very simply. Lots of looong one takes framing 3 or more people, which I really enjoyed. Great to see the actors to "do it". I actually started to joke to myself that the shoot might've only lasted a week because the majority of the movie is eaten up by all the long one takes. And good framing. This movie was ALL the framing. Careful, thought out, well done framing. It's so nice to see a movie that isn't CUT! CUT! CUT! Makes me want to see more 2 shots in movies. And what a cast. I almost couldn't believe how many people were in it. Garfunkle, Charles Grodin, Jon Voight, of course Alan Arkin (who was really good I thought), Osen Welles (great as the general), the guy who played Welles' step son was great, and many others. Hot chicks too. And Nichols wasn't afraid to show tit. I love seeing intelligent comedies that are directed with a sense of art to them. Like Coen Brothers movies or Rushmore, or Polanski. Comedies don't have to be shot poorly. Not just "point-and-shoot" like most directors do. Anyway, I would totally tell you to check out this movie. At times it was a little slow and a tad cold feeling, but it's intelligent, funny, bizarre, and very worth watching.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Catch 22. Let it go.
Review: I saw Catch 22 again for the first time in years. I saw it when I was a teenager in the mid 70's. I thought it was good then. I just watched it again and I couldn't believe how dated the film comes across. The movie has the feel of the anti-war movement of the 1960's. I have always been an Alan Arkin fan. Richard Benjamin was good in "House Calls", but the performances seem dated and very unfunny and very unsatirical in Catch 22. The actors seem frenetic in their acting. Time as passed this film by. It has become caught in a timeframe when many films where made from about 1966 to 1973 where they have a feel which dates them. Films like the Godfather was made in '72, but you don't get that 60's feel from it. It still holds up. Catch 22 doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: A change
Review: I take back most of the things I said. This is a great movie, and Milo is good.
Rating:
Summary: Catch-22 the movie
Review: If you have read the book catch 22 you will be dissapionted. But you must remember that the way the book was written must have made it imposable to even think of a screenplay let alone write it. But once you look at it as a stand alone picture, you will see a large budgeted, darkly comiedic, and beautifully shot film. Ya, it could be better but not every comes out perfect.
Rating:
Summary: Good when taken by itself...
Review: If you start comparing this film to the book (which obviously you must do to an extent) you will find so many things wrong with it you will never stop. A good comparison would be Stanley Kubrick's version of "The Shining," which also is very good when taken separate from the book while the book is far superior. Catch-22, the novel, is a brilliant piece of writing that could never be captured on screen, but I think Nichols makes a vallant effort of it. One complaint is the character of Milo is blown out of all proportion, becoming in the film a meglomanical dictator rather than a flagrant opportunist who exploits the men for his "Syndicate." Jon Voight, it must be said, does a good job in this interpretation of Milo.
Parts of the book are notably absent; Orr is barely mentioned until the end, the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade, one of my favorite parts, is gone completely and the brutal satire surrounding the Chaplain's life on the base and the doctor believed dead in a plane crash which he wasn't on (so everyone now ignores him and he can't be fed) are not included. The chaplain's interactions with the other men are almost gone altogether, and we never really get a glimpse of his character as it exists in the novel. Also, I think the film would have benefitted from showing Colonel Cathcart's form letter sent to the relatives of men who died...if you don't know what it says that alone makes the book worthwhile (of course, I could say that about scores of incidents in the book, it is worth reading any time, anywhere).
Good things: the cast is fantastic, and Orson Welles' brief appearances as Dreedle are great, he personifies the general perfectly (the "take him outside and shoot him" scene is arguably the funniest in the film); Alan Arkin is great as Yossarian, and the Snowden scenes, where a little more of the incident is revealed each time, are wonderfully crafted, as are the (chronilogically) following scenes where Yossarian refuses to wear clothing.
Finally, the end is faithful to the book in all but one respect, that being the novel's final three sentences, which (as I think I said in my review of the novel) pretty much sum up the feeling of the entire novel, where one is led to believe one thing is happening just before the opposite occurs (the fact that Heller could get you going midway through a three-sentence paragraph and then whip you back the other way is a testament to his brilliance).
So in the final analysis, don't buy this film if you think it will be an adequate adaption of Heller's novel, because it is not, nor could any film hope to be. But if you want a darkly funny, satiric, well-acted anti-war film that contains the skeleton of the source book, by all means buy this, and if it leaves you hungering for more then get the book (actually read the book first, that way you can fill in the gaps in the film as you watch it).
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