Seen any good films lately?

Mrs Figg that should perhaps be in spoilers.

Spoiler:

I have amended your post with a spoiler tag at the appropriate bit Mrs Figgs- as would be a shame to spoil it for those who dont know how it goes.

Spoiler:

And in the open like a man Mrs Figg!!!

If I was a man! It would be always out in the open.

You might be, under all that bustle and cats.
Hard to tell on Forumshire- look at Orwell.

Is there a 'have you seen any bad films lately?' thread?
I saw The Hurt Locker- and yes it hurt- how this got the praise it did I have no idea- as blatant a bit of propoganda film making as I have seen since Mickey Mouse teamed up with Donald Duck to take down Hitler.
By a strange coincidence I was listening to the News Quiz on radio 4 and one of the panleists described the portraya lof Iraqi's in it as 'slightly less subtle and a lot more offensive than Bernard Bresslaw in Carry on up the Camel'- he wasn't wrong.
Just appalling- unless you enjoy chanting U.S.A. I'd steal clear of this.
Its also deathly boring as a story, the plot is so thin you couldnt use it to make a roll up with. And the charcaters are unbelevable nonsense-a gung-ho bomb disposal expert-yeah he'd have a long career

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Just appalling- unless you enjoy chanting U.S.A. I'd steal clear of this.
Its also deathly boring as a story, the plot is so thin you couldnt use it to make a roll up with. And the charcaters are unbelevable nonsense-a gung-ho bomb disposal expert-yeah he'd have a long career

What I find most interesting is how many different points of view I've heard applied to this movie. I know people who thing it's blatantly anti-American, anti-war, pro-war, but I've never heard the "chanting USA" charge before. The friend on whose recommendation I watched it thinks it's about soldiers who don't want to be in-country and are counting the days to going home, in a country that doesn't want them there, with officers who are not strictly sane. I didn't see it exactly that way either.

For me, I can watch it either as a $15 million action adventure movie (for which it's mediocre and I agree with most of your points except pro-American) or I can watch it as an introduction to Improvised Explosive Devices which I thought it did quite well, especially considering the budget. The explosions were not the usual big, beautiful Hollywood fireballs that I was expecting. They're well thought out and executed, and understand they're pretty well researched. I think they're the real stars of the movie.

I wonder if this isn't why it got so much critical attention. With tens of thousands of soldiers coming home with large parts of themselves missing there was kind of a feeling that the actual enemy was the IED's rather than the Iraqis. This is the first movie that's tried to take that perspective (probably why the Iraqi characters were given so little development).

In general though, I'm not a fan of war movies. I'm not sure I could name a really good one. Probably from growing up with Dad telling me why every WWII movie was sh*t.

I had a look post watching it around some various reviews- the majority glowing but amnong them were a wide variety of reactions to how things were portrayed.
Heres a few comments which chime with, or were close to my own feelings about it;

Derek Elley of Variety found The Hurt Locker.... script showed, "signs of artificially straining for character depth".
Tara McKelvey from The American Prospect wrote that the film is pro-U.S. Army propaganda, although it sets itself up as anti-war when its message in the beginning is "War is a drug". She continues, "you feel empathy for the soldiers when they shoot. And in this way, the full impact of the Iraq war – at least as it was fought in 2004 – becomes clear: American soldiers shot at Iraqi civilians even when, for example, they just happened to be holding a cell phone and standing near an IED". She concludes, "For all the graphic violence, bloody explosions and, literally, human butchery that is shown in the film, The Hurt Locker is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the U.S. Army that I have seen."
John Pilger, journalist and documentarian, criticized the film in The New Statesman, writing that it "offers a vicarious thrill via yet another standard-issue psychopath high on violence in somebody else's country where the deaths of a million people are consigned to cinematic oblivion."
Brandon Friedman, also a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, shared a similar view at VetVoice: "The Hurt Locker is a high-tension, well-made, action movie that will certainly keep most viewers on the edges of their seats. But if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me."
A review published March 8, 2010 in the Air Force Times cited overall negative reviews from bomb experts in Iraq attached to the 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Division, quoting a bomb disposal team leader who called the film’s portrayal of a bomb expert "grossly exaggerated and not appropriate", and describing the lead character as "more of a run and gun cowboy type…exactly the kind of person that we're not looking for". Another bomb disposal team member said that the lead character's "swagger would put a whole team at risk. Our team leaders don't have that kind of invincibility complex, and if they do, they aren't allowed to operate. A team leader's first priority is getting his team home in one piece."

All these factors came into play when I was viewing it and whilst its fine as set pieces go everything else about it is pretty awful- and if a director can't get tension out of bombs potentially going off at any second whist the hero creeps towards it they shouldnt be directing anyway.i

I agree with pretty much all of that. Especially this one :
"The Hurt Locker is a[n] .... action movie that will certainly keep most viewers on the edges of their seats. But if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me." That's pretty much what my Dad said about "Saving Private Ryan".

But the question still remains "why make a war movie in the first place?" Moral justification? That's pretty questionable. Realistic experience? Why would people pay for that??? I'm suggesting that the very idea of blending War and Entertainment to make Money is problematic. The possible exception is comedy/satire which can potentially make the audience laugh while asking them to examine deeper issues.

[Note: this isn't a strong opinion. As a matter of fact I just made it up right now, so I'm happy to be contradicted, especially with couter-examples of good war movies that are crowd-pleasing, accurate and not jingoistic, all at the same time.]

Spike Lee tried to tell the story of war from a black American point of view in, The Miracle at St. Anna, whether it was successful or not I dont know.

I havent seen that one Mrs Figg, so cant comment-but might be worth looking up. Can anyone recommend it?

But you are right David, outside of satire (and even they are usually anti-war) its hard to think of a good war film that sets out just to try to portray war without an angle on it first.
Bad ones are easy though- the biggest offender of them all for me being U-571- which has brave Americans saving the world from the nazi threat by stealing an enigma machine and cracking the german codes. Only America had nothing to do with this pivotal movement in the war as it happened 2 years before America even bothered showing up. It was carried about by the British and French agents in the aftermath of the fall of France. The code was broken by a team of the best genius they could round up at Bletchley Park in England.
Of course the film simply gets round this mere inconvience by setting the whole event two years later so America is in the war and can save the day.

The Thin Red Line is one war film that springs to mind as being on the good list. Not your average war film.

Mrs Figg wrote:Spike Lee tried to tell the story of war from a black American point of view in, The Miracle at St. Anna, whether it was successful or not I dont know.

I haven't seen it, but I just looked it up. It apparently cost $45 million to make and only took $9 million. It would be interesting to see Spike Lee's take on the war, but like most of his stuff I'm sure there is a strong editorial voice.

Thin Red Line may be worth another try. The only time I saw it was in Alaska in a fish cannery bunkhouse common room with cannery workers, fishermen and a lot of cheap beer...... as I remember the movie was less dramatic than the full contact tackle ping pong

I doubt it will be to everyones tatses. It some ways its more like a visual war poem.
But besides that side to it one of the things I also like about it is the way the actual battles are protrayed. They are battles, the events and the drama are defined by terrain, enemy emplacements. You know what they have to do and whats in the way and theri stratgey and it all doesnt fall into the usual trap of not filming a battle like its a battle.

The miniseries "Band of Brothers" was interesting in that it followed one real company through the entire war, and had the input of many of the soldiers who were actually portrayed. Although you can see that it was adapted, I think it's pretty good for accuracy, and was financially successful as well. But it's 10 episodes, and even then it feels compressed.

um next time you go to Alaska doing naked ping pong I want an invite!

I'm making no promises, Mrs Figg. I worked the salmon season up there for 10 summers, but I may be getting a little old for that. It was the wild west in every way. My longest week was 136 hours on the clock. Don't know if I could do that anymore. (Or the ping pong.... )

I'll just use my imagination then

Has anyone seen 'Attack The Block' yet?

avengers spolier

Spoiler:

Did you ever get round to watching Costner's "Wyatt Earp", Petty? Watched it again yesterday for the first time in a long while, and, much like "The Assassination of Jesse James", it just gets better and better Just thought I'd ask if you'd watched it and in which case hear your thoughts on it. Much recommended to all other Western fans too, of course