Zero Dark Thirty

Boy, I haven't written a movie blog review in a while.  In fact, it's been over a year.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that he wanted to see Zero Dark Thirty and he was probing for interest.  I quickly swam to the bait and bit the hook.

We went to the somewhat unsafe Owings Mills theater.  Fortunatley there were few people there, thus reducing the probability that we would be mugged, robbed, assaulted, abused, molested, battered, pick-pocketed, slashed, beaten, stabbed, shot, sliced, knifed, or generally made uncomfortable.

Zero Dark Thirty is the movie about the search and capture of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist master mind behind al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the bombing of the London subway, and the bombing of the Spanish trains, to name a few.

The movie is almost like a cinematic medley.  The first half of the movie is about the search for bin Laden.  Then there is the building of the case to make the strike against the compound where they suspected bin Laden was hiding, and then there was the actual military strike.

Zero Dark Thirty stars Jessica Chastain as Maya, the CIA agent assigned to the search for bin Laden, who through 12 years of stoic research, on-field experience, and a growing hostile and confident personality eventually becomes a regular bad-ass.

The movie displays some of the darker sides of the war on terror, such as torture and terrorist attacks. Many scenes are disturbing with a powerful images and sounds that will pound your chest.  As the intense screaming figure said in the old commercials for indoor lacrosse, 'we sell you a ticket for the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!"  This was certainly the case for Zero Dark Thirty.

The movie also stars Jason Clark as a fellow investigator, Kyle Chandler as Jason Bradley, one of the field directors, Jennifer Ehle as Maya's closest friend in the desert, and Jeremy Strong as the jack-hole director over the search.  The movie is based on real events, but cannot be identified as a true story as much of it is still classified.

I remember reading of the political storm brewing because of the fear that classified information was leaked to help write and produce the movie, in addition to the movie containing and promoting pro-liberal viewpoints.  I cannot comment on the leaks as I obviously have no idea what information would have been classified.  However, as a right-wing conspiracy theorist myself, I am confident in saying that I found no pro-liberal viewpoints in the movie.  I think it was just political grandstanding and sensationalism to create a ruckus.

Zero Dark Thirty is Rated R for language, violence, including scenes or torture and death from terrorist attacks, and smoking.  Yes, smoking.

I highly recommend this movie and I give this movie 4.5 stars.  It is long, probably about 2 hours and 20 minutes long.  I would have given it a little higher rating, but I think that Jessica Chastain lacks energy.  Her characters are always sort of dry and restrained.  In what you would expect as an intense scene of highly charged emotion, Chastain was melancholy and seemingly disengaged.  Regardless, you should still see this movie.

The Gallant Hours

I love watching war movies. Mostly movies from World War II. I wish there were more movies about the American Revolution and the Civil War, but there are not. From a cinematic perspective, it's good that World War II occurred when it did because film photography was finally advanced enough to get great footage of the actual war, and to recreate many of the battles that had occurred only months or years prior.

The Gallant Hours is a World War II movie about Admiral "Bull" Halsey. I think the most significant observation of this movie is that James Cagney looks remarkably similar to the actual person he portrayed in the movie. I wonder if the two men ever met. (I just looked it up and they did meet on the set of the movie!)

The movie starts off with Halsey getting ready to retire from the Navy, then goes into a reflection of his years as an Admiral in the Pacific Fleet. The film highlights a critical era in the War in the Pacific as the United States tries to stave off the Japanese in the Philippines.

Counter to the story of Admiral Halsey is the story of Japanese Admiral Yamamoto. What I found interesting is that the dialog in those scenes was in Japanese with no subtitles. The movie is narrated by Robert Montgomery (close friend of Cagney and father of Samantha from Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery). During the Japanese dialog, Montgomery only provides what I assume to be cursory narration.

The Gallant Hours, which was made in 1960, is just under 2 hours long. It was made in black and white. Also starring in the movie are Dennis Weaver (McCloud and Gunsmoke), Les Tremayne, Richard Burton, and Raymond Bailey, whom you may remember as Mr. Drysdale from the Beverly Hillbillies.

The Gallant Hours is a great World War II-era movie, though the film depicts no battle scenes. I read that the movie was very accurate except for a few minor details. Cagney and The Gallant Hours were good enough for me to give them the coveted 5 stars. This is a great movie to watch for Veteran's Day!

The Hurt Locker

Another in a series of movies about war in Iraq, The Hurt Locker follows Bravo company, a group assigned to disarm IED's (Improved Explosive Devises).


The plot is not very complex and there really isn't much of a story-line in the movie. It's more on the lines of a documentary which is being reenacted. I couldn't find information stating if it was based on a compilation of true stories, but I suspect that it was. The storyline was written by Mark Boal who was embedded with a bomb squad in Iraq.


The movie follows several long sequences of events when IED's are discovered and must be disarmed. There is a lot of tension throughout the movie as Iraqi spectators gather and watch the bombs being disarmed. No one knows if any of the spectators have remotes to explode the devise or if they will come under fire during their mission.


I anxiously watched the movie from the edge of my seat wondering if the next bomb would detonate while it was being disarmed. Tension remained high throughout the entire movie. Additionally, there is a sequence where the company inadvertently rendezvous with a British outfit, one character which is played by Ralph Fiennes, and they suddenly are engaged in a firefight with insurgents from a distant home on the hillside.


The movie is a bit long - about 2 hours and 10 minutes, but I had no trouble sitting through the entire thing. The Hurt Locker is directed by Kathryn Bigelow (ex-wife of Cameron Bigelow, director of Titanic and Avatar), and she hasn't directed a big movie since K-19: The Widowmaker starring Harrison Ford in 2002.


The Hurt Locker also stars Jeremy Renner as William James (the disarmer), Anthony Mackie as JT Sanborn, the leader of the group, Brian Geraghty as Owen Eldridge, the somewhat incompetant rookie, and Christian Camargo as John Cambridge, the social worker who is concerned about your feelings.


Filmed in Jordan and Kuwait, The Hurt Locker is Rated R for war violence and language. Reading about production of the movie, it was excruciatingly hot during filming and they were shot at several times while filming only 3 miles from the Iraq border.


As you can tell, I really enjoyed this movie. I didn't leave hollering "Get 'er done, America!" like a Southern redneck. The movie really opens your eyes to the stress that our soldiers face every day in war and the movie does a great job of making you feel like you are in the middle of it.


I give The Hurt Locker the coveted 5 stars.

Inglorious Basterds

I add movies to my movie queue through several methods. My friend Kim is also a member of Netflix, so when I see that she adds a movie, I'll check it out. She likes the artsy stuff, so I have to be careful. Another obvious method is when I see a trailer on TV that is interesting, I'll add it to my Netflix queue. Finally, I'll click on my favorite actors and actresses on IMDB or Netflix and add their new movies.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I added Inglorious Basterds to my queue. I'm not implying early in the review that it was a bad movie. On the contrary. I thought it was a comedy. That it was not.

Inglorious Basterds stars Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz, BJ Novak (of The Office), and a bunch of other foreign actors. Mélanie Laurent, a 26 year old French actress, plays the Jewish theater owner. She's easy on the eyes. And speaking of eyes, as is appropriate for her role, her eyes gave off a sense of deep pain. Also in the eye-candy department is Diane Kruger, a German actress.

Three minutes into the movie and I was quite certain that this was no comedy. All the people being shot with a machine gun gave that away. The movie flows like any good historical movie. Until the part where the David Bowie song starts playing. And the hand-written name tags pop on the screen.

The premise of the movie is focused around a German SS officer (Christopher Waltz) who hunts down Jews. One of the Jews in his early hunts escapes and makes her way to Paris where she takes over her deceased aunt and uncle's theater. One day she meets a soldier who turns out to be sort of a war phenom who was cast as himself in a propaganda movie. He tries to proposition her, she is then forced to host a showing of his movie, which gives her an idea.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt is the horribly quaint Lt. Aldo Raine from Tennessee. I sound more like Carly Shay than Brad Pitt sounds like a southerner. Though I think that is by design. Lt. Raine is leading a crack commando group through France to raise hell. And hell they raise.

The movie is a bit gory and includes all of the expected violence and profanity that you would expect from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Inglorious Basterds is rated R for said violence and profanity, in addition to some sexuality and an incorrectly spelled word in the title.

I found myself drawn to this movie despite its length (2 1/2 hours) and was anxious nearly the entire time. Oh, my gosh! What's going to happen now? Additionally, if Christopher Waltz does not win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Hollywood needs to be burnt to the ground. Then again, that might not be a bad idea anyway.

Nonetheless, I think this was a great movie and freely and under no duress give this movie 4 stars.

Uncommon Valor

I recall this being a pretty decent movie from my childhood. I knew that it was about the Vietnam War and that Gene Hackman starred in it. Beyond that I had no recollection of anything about the movie. Unfortunately, my library did not have this movie, so when an opportunity presented itself on Netflix I dropped it in the queue.

Uncommon Valor is not entirely about the Vietnam War, as I learned. The movie is set mostly in 1982, though the lead-up to that point has Colonel Rhodes (Gene Hackman) searching for leads in Southeast Asia for the whereabouts of his son who was left behind during the war. The government refuses to help, but the father of another missing soldier financial backs the operation. In 1982 he leads a group of soldiers who were in his son's unit back to Vietnam in a rescue attempt.

The soldiers make their way back to Southeast Asia along with a young soldier (Patrick Swayze). From there we have lots of shooting, explosions, and cussing.

Uncommon Valor is rated R for violence and language. The movie was directed by Ted Kotcheff, known mostly to the current generation for his work on Law & Order SVU. However, he also directed Weekend At Bernies, North Dallas Forty and another similar 'return to Vietnam' movie, Rambo: First Blood.

My childhood fondness for this movie must have been centered around the helicopters and the shooting. Rewatching this movie as an adult, I see just an average rehash of several other Vietnam-related movies. The movie is not terrible, so I'll give it 3 stars.

Johnny Got His Gun

This classic from 1971 is one of those movies that most people have probably never seen, though many Metallica fans may know. Many clips from the movie were used in the video for the 1988 song "One" off of the And Justice for All CD. In fact, the video was ranked 38th on the MTV Top 100 Greatest Videos.

Johnny Got His Gun stars Timothy Bottoms as Joe Bonham, a young man who joins the military during World War I and is sent to the trenches in France. Soon after getting there, Bonham is hit by a shell and ends up in a hospital, only to realize that he has lost his legs, his arms, his sight, his hearing, and his lower jaw, though the song declares that he lost these from a landmine. He now has no way to communicate to with the outside world.

The movie then becomes a series of flashbacks, visits with a helpful spirit played by Donald Sutherland, and dialog with himself in his mind.

As the movie progresses, Joe must learn to adapt to his surroundings. He figures out how to keep track of time. Meanwhile, a friendly nurse has a feeling that there's still a person inside, and she communicates with him through touch.

After a visit to the spirit of Donald Sutherland, he figures out that he can use Morse code to communicate by thrashing his head in code. Doctors soon figure this out, but they do not like the message.

Jason Robarbs stars as Joe's father in this movie that flashes between black and white and color. The movie was directed by Dalton Trumbo, also known for Papillon, Exodus, Spartacus, and probably his most famous work being Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

The movie is not the greatest quality, nor does it contain the greatest acting, but it's one of those subjects that really makes you think, "Wow, that would be terrible if that really happened" and perhaps it did. And now when I see the video for One by Metallica, I can say, "I saw that movie!"

Johnny Got His Gun is rated PG as some material may not be suitable for children. I know that the black and white footage of the armless, legless, faceless man were disturbing to me....and I'm 36!

Because of the novelty of this movie I give it movie 3 stars.

Defiance

I love a good war movie. Heck, I usually like a bad war movie. Especially when it's about World War II. It is such a fascinating part of our history. Almost the ENTIRE planet was at war. How crazy is that?

Defiance is a war story that is a true story about a not-so-glamorous part of the war. The movie is set in Eastern Poland in the woods. There, the Bielski Brothers have fled their village after a German invasion and while roaming in the woods happen upon a group of wandering Jews who had fled the Nazis. Note that I separate Nazis and Germans. They were 2 distinct groups. The Germans were the soldiers. The Nazis worked for the political party and for the most part are the ones that ran the concentration camps and the Jew extermination policy. One could be a part of both groups, but being a German did not make one a Nazi, just as an American in the army is not necessarily a Democrat.

Defiance stars Daniel Craig (James Bond in both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) as Tuvia Bielski and Lieve Schreiber (The Manchurian Candidate and RKO 281) as Zus Bielski, 2 brothers. While both men acted with fake Russian\Polish accents, Liev Schriber actually made a good Polish Jew, whereas Daniel Craig makes a good Brit speaking in a Polish accent who probably doesn't go to church as often as his mother would like.

Once the first few families of Jews were found, Tuvia decides that they must protect them. Over time, the refugees number in the thousands. Zus, on the other hand, wants to be a fighter rather than a protector and leaves to join a Russian detachment. Meanwhile, Tuvia, the now default leader of the refugee, finds himself fighting not only a war, but partisan bickering and struggles for gathering food, protecting the people, and trying to remain unseen by the occasional German observation planes.

Almost the entire movie is set in the woods of present-day Belarus, though filming was actually done in nearby Lithuania. Another notable fact is that many of the cast were relatives of surviving refugees, which number in the tens of thousands.

Defiance was directed by Edward Zwick, no stranger to directing big films, also known for Glory, Legends of the Fall, The Last Samurai, and Blood Diamond.

The movie states that it is 2 hours and 17 minutes long, though my DVD player was able to knock it out in 2 hours and 5 minutes. Perhaps I have an aggressive DVD player. Defiance is rated R for violence, mostly for violent gun battles and exploding bombs, and language.

Though an interesting story, the acting was a bit melancholy and dialog was slow. After watching the movie, I read about the true story and found it to be fascinating. However, I will have to give the movie 3 stars. I think it could have been a little better.

The Americanization of Emily

I love watching Turner Classic Movies. Today, April 7th, is James Garner's birthday. In his honor, they are showing a James Garner-a-thon. Today I watched The Americanization of Emily, staring Garner and Julie Andrews, best known for The Sound of Music.

The comedy is set in London during World War II, prior to the D-Day invasion. The premise is that Garner is sort of an aide-de-camp to Admiral Jessup (Melvyn Douglas). His job is to make sure that the Admiral has all of the goods, drinks, company, and back-rubs that he needs. Anything the General wants - Garner makes sure he gets it.

Upon arriving Garner meets Emily Barham, a staff member at headquarters. His flirtations with her are scoffed, though he does not end his pursuit. Over time she opens up to him, but learns that he is not what he appears on the outside. Instead, he's a coward who hates war, and is spiteful towards the arrogant and hypocritical British.

His plans to stay where it's safe get torpedoed when General Jessup goes nuts and decides that in an effort for the Navy to get more of the action in D-Day, they will make a documentary filming the invasion. The General wants the first casualty of the invasion to be a sailor and he wants Garner to be there to film it.

This movie is an adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky's play, based on the book by William Bradford Huie and directed by Arthur Hiller, not Arthur Miller. Being a big fan of James Garner and older movies, I found this black and white (talkie) movie to be very funny.

Too old to be rated, the movie is fairly innocuous, though Garner does make some sexual references that may have been taboo at the time, and we do see some girls in bras, and a naked back of a girl caught in bed with James Colburn. It probably would have been given a PG-13 rating had it been rated today.

I like this movie and gave it 4 stars. Happy Birthday, James Garner!

Das Boot

As we all know, VHS tapes are on the out and DVD's are here for a bit longer. We'll probably all be watching movies digitally in the next few years. However, in that time I still have my VCR and a few VHS tapes. I decided to watch them again for posterity sake while I still own a VCR.

The movie I dug out of my box for this weekend was Das Boot, the German movie about World War II - from their perspective. As any historian will tell you, history is told by the victors. In this case, the Germans decided they wanted to show what it was like for German seamen of the submarine flotilla, or Kriegsmarine.

The movie starts out with a party in some French town and everyone is totally out of their mind stupid drunk. However, they know what they're getting into. Nearly three-quarters of all Germans who went out on a submarine never returned. Most knew that there was a good chance that they would never see land again.

The next day, Captain Leutenant Henrich Lehmann-Willenbrock is led to his new boat, U-96 and they head off to sea to intercept ship convoys and sink their prey.

What is interesting about the movie is that there is a strong anti-Nazi feel amongst the men. Most seem to understand that they are being led by an ego-maniac and eminent death awaits the country.

In reading about the movie, the actors were confined to the submarine model that was created for the movie for many hours and denied sunlight. This was to help give a more realistic sense of the anxiety and darkness that the sailors would have experience at sea.

Truly a military movie classic, this is a must see. The only actor that would be known to Americans is Jürgen Prochnow who was in The English Patient, Beverly Hills Cop II, and Dune.

Das Boot is Rated R for violence, language, and tense situations. The movie is long - it's 209 minutes, which for people that attended Baltimore City Public Schools - that's 3 hours and 29 minutes. I give this movie the maximum rating - 5 stars.

Stalag 17

I keep a list of movies that I want to see at some point in my life. This weekend I had the opportunity to knock out 2 of them. The first was the previously reviewed Pleasantville. The second one is a classic black and white movie. A talkie. It was Stalag 17.

Now I would image that most people are not familiar with this movie unless you lived in the 1950's or are a big William Holden fan. I certainly cannot claim the former, but I can claim the latter.

Additionally, this movie was the inspiration for the late 1960's / early 70's T.V. comedy Hogan's Heros staring Bob Crane (Hogan), John Banner (Schultz, who ironically is played by a Jewish actor), Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink - also a Jew), and Richard Dawson (Newkirk). In fact, the guard in Stalag 17 was also named Schultz, and was an overweight, somewhat bafoonish guy, just like the Schultz of the T.V. fame. You may recall his famous catch-phrases, "I know nothing. NOTHING!"

Stalag 17 is like a comedic drama. There are plenty of laughs in the movie, from Shapiro (Harvey Lembeck) and Animal (Robert Strauss), as well as drama from Price (Peter Graves) and Lieutenant Dunbar (Don Taylor). The underlying theme of the movie opens with a failed attempt to have 2 prisoners escape through a tunnel. These prisoners are shot and killed as they exit the tunnel. Immediately everyone in the camp suspects a mole. The sarcastic Sefton (William Holden) is an immediate suspect because he bet dozens of cigarettes that they would not escape. He then barters his reward with the soldiers for an egg, an exotic meal in the prison camp.

Meanwhile, 2 Americans are captured and brought to the camp suspected of sabotage. If this is the case they would not be considered prisoners of war and would be eligible for execution. The camp musters a plan to capture the detained Dunbar and get him out of the camp. Sefton, in addition to wanting to help get Dunbar out of the camp, wants to identify the real mole and untarnish his name.

The movie is too old to be rated by the existing totalitarian MPAA and their evil ways, but I suspect that if it was rated, it would be PG-13 for some violence and some thematic elements, meaning tense situations. The movie is exactly 2 hours long.

I already consider this one of my all-time favorite movies and give it 5 stars. If you are a war-buff, Americana-buff, or a William Holden fan, get this movie on your list and watch it. On a side note, Thomas Magnum mentioned it as his favorite movie in an episode of Magnum, P.I. So if Magnum thinks it's a great movie, you KNOW it's a great movie.

Operation Petticoat

I have been trying to see the classics for a couple of years now. I'm not so sure that Operation Petticoat is considered a classic, but it does star Tony Curtiss (father of Jamie Lee) and Cary Grant, who is a classic actor. The movie was directed by Blake Edwards, director of the infamous Pink Panther movies and Breakfast at Tiffany's. The movie even casts minor roles for Marion Ross (Happy Days) and Dick Sargent (I Dream of Jeanie).

Operation Petticoat is a comedy about the U.S.S. Sea Tiger, a U.S. submarine during World War II. The movie follows the zany adventures of the sub and it's eclectic and often times dysfunctional crew members.

The movie starts off with an attack on the naval base and the Sea Tiger is sunk. Cary Grant (Lt. Commander Sherman) is given permission to raise and repair his ship, but only with a skeleton crew. Furthermore, he is given Naval dandy supply officer Lt. JG Nicholas Holden (Curtiss). Holden's naval experience does not exceed organizing some social activities for the Officers' Ladies Club.

Because of the shortage of supplies, Cmd Sherman cannot repair his ship. Holden, however, uses ingenuity and comes up with the supplies through some creative acquisitions.

Once off at sea, they attack a ship near an island, only to learn that some American nurses are trying to escape. The rest of the movie deals with interactions between the men and the women and Captain Sherman trying to maintain some sort of normalcy on their voyage. Things are only complicated when the ship needs to be primed and painted because of the recent repairs. The paint situations causes them to paint the ship pink.

This movie is clever and classical funny from the days of yore, not the in-your-face kind of funny of today's movies. Operation Petticoat was made in 1959, the same year that Grant starred in the critically acclaimed North By Northwest. Had it been rated by today's standards, it probably would have been rated PG-13 for theatrical violence and some sexual undertones.

I give this movie 4 stars. I enjoyed it, but remember that I have a bias towards older movies. But this one is in color, so don't be too afraid to watch it.

Lions For Lambs

Honestly, Tom Cruise hasn't made a decent movie since Top Gun. There are some that will argue that Cocktail was a good movie. No it wasn't. Eyes Wide Shut? People only liked that movie because of the gratuitous nakedness. And Mission Impossible? More like Mission Imposter.


So when Lions For Lambs came out, I should have known better. It stars Tom Cruise as a Senator who's working on a new strategy in the war on terror. What drew me to the movie was that it was directed my Robert Redford, a decent actor. However, Meryl Streep was also in it. Not so decent.


In this movie, we are presented with 3 plots - Robert Redford as a professor at a college trying to engage a student whom he thinks has potential. Tom Cruise is in a dialog with Streep, a reporter to one of the big newspapers. He is trying to promote the new strategy. And finally, some troops have been deployed to Afghanistan to implement this new strategy and they are getting creamed.


Almost the entire time I kept thinking, when is this movie going to start? Where is it going? I figured the 3 had to be tied together by more than circumstantial activities. But no. That was the movie. Was anything resolved? Nope. Conflict resolution? Was there conflict? Good feelings at the end. Nada. What was the point of this movie? I know it was a jab at the Bush Adminsitration, not that I have a problem with that. Are we supposed to start looking at the bigger picture in life? Maybe.


I think this is the type of movie where you need to watch the directors cut or his interview at the end so that you can understand what the hell his intention was. As far as entertainment value, this movie had none.


Lions For Lambs is 92 minutes long, but it's a long and agonizing 92 minutes. The movie is rated R for violence, if you can make out the violence on the dark blue on black screen that is supposed to be night, and some language. Overall, I give this movie 2 stars. I figure there's some point in there somewhere and I can understand actors and directors using their stage as a place to push their agenda. But at least make it somewhat entertaining. Booo!

Apocalypse Now

I borrowed Apocalypse Now from a friend. This is the 1979 Viet-Nam classic that stars the who's-who of the 1970's and 80's cinema.

Per typical Francis Ford Copula-style, this is not your average Viet-Nam war movie. When we think of Viet-Nam movies, we now think of Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill, and Platoon. This movie is more about being set in Viet-Nam during the war and less about the war.

The movie stars Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin Willard, who could easily be confused as a young Charlie Sheen, but not a young Emilio Estevez. He is a soldier who specializes in secret missions. He won't even tell the general which missions he was on. Or, in the words of scientology's craziest psychopath - Tom Cruise, he could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you.

Sheen is sent on a mission up a river into Cambodia (but that's a secret). He's going to use extreme prejudice and eliminate the unstable Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). He's holding out in Cambodia with some sort of native dope smoking love camp. And we all know that the government needs to eliminate dope smoking love camps.

The majority of the movie focuses on Sheen's daydreams and the ride up the river. Along the way he runs into the irascible surf-nut Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, where you see the infamous Ride of the Vulcary attack on the river village. If you know anything about this movie, then you know the quote, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." This is Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore at his finest moment. This is right before he sent some soldiers out on surf boards to check out the waves - this during a firefight.

Also making appearances in the movie are Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishburn, Frederic Forrest, Dennis Hopper (at least he wasn't selling retirement services on the beach this time), and R. Lee Ermey (gunny from Mail Call and Full Metal Jacket).

Overall, the movie is very artistic and less action-oriented as I seem to recall. The audience is supposed to be intrigued by the thoughts and pains of Captain Willard. Light is an important element along with extended sections of hypnotising music and sounds. You can interpret this to mean that they will play songs by The Doors. This would explain why Apocalypse Now also earned 2 Oscars, one for Best Sound and the other for Best Cinemotography, though different from my version of cinematography. I watched this movie when I was in my early teens and thought it was pretty cool. I am assuming I thought it was cool because of all the gunship fighting and the potty mouth. Being less in tune with the intended deepness of the movie gave me a different interpretation of the movie then than what I get now.

That being said, I think I would prefer to stick with my teenage impression of the movie. I'm less inclined to like artistic movies, unless, of course, there's good cinematography.

Apocalypse Now is rated R for violence, lots of it, profanity, lots of it, and adult situations. The movie three days long, though only 153 minutes if you watch it straight through to the end, a formidable task indeed.

I gave Apocalypse Now 4 stars. The movie had a great impact on moviedom and starting giving the audience a different view of what it was like in Viet-Nam. I believe it spawned other movies like the ones mentioned earlier. Though some may say that The Deer Hunter inspired Apocalypse Now. You should watch this movie not so much because it's a good movie, but because it is a part of Americana.

The Best Years of Our Lives

I picked up this movie at the library solely for the purpose that it won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1946. I had never heard of the movie. I did not know any of the actors in the movie. And the DVD cover looked more like a soap opera cover.

The basic premise of the movie is 3 men are returning home from World War II and they must readjust to the world they left. All 3 hitch a ride on a B-17 as it crosses the country. One man, Harold Russell, is from the Navy. He had his hands blown off in a non-combat incident. Originally written as a seaman who lost his hands in a combat mission, the part was rewritten for Russell who really did lose his hands to a non-combat incident. Another is a captain, Dana Andrews, in the Army and the third, Fredric March, is a Sergeant.

Ironically, the high ranking captain returns to the drugstore where he worked only to find his position gone, but does get a job working at the perfume counter. The Sergeant, on the other hand, is a high ranking banker who easily gets his job back. The seaman, however, spends little time on his career, if at all, but focuses on his girlfriend and the challenges of being in a world without hands.

In another subplot, Andrews returns to his wife that he married just before he shipped off. He doesn't seem to love her as much as he thought he did. On the other hand, he met the Sergeant's daughter, Peggy Stevenson, who's probably in her 20's, and they think may be falling in love with each other.

In typical 1940's post-World War II fashion, in the end everything is all hunky-dory. However, the movie was the first to deal with the problems that many soldiers faced after the war. The movie was met with much acclimation and after the Korean War in the early 1950's it was re-released.

The movie itself, in my opinion, was not that great. However, it was very relevant for the time and often that is what makes a movie important. I gave this movie 3 stars from a movie viewing perspective. If you are searching for movies of importance, then I would view this as a 5 star movie.

Mrs. Miniver

Another movie set during World War II, Mrs. Miniver is also set in London just before England declared war on Germany.

Mrs. Miniver, played by Greer Garson, begins the movie as self-centered and materialistic, quite an unlikable character. She is married with several children, but states that she gets what she likes and she likes nice things. In her eyes, nothing matters but herself.

Upon the outbreak of the war, her oldest son joins the Royal Air Force and is sent to defend London during the German bombing raids. In the meantime, her husband is called to duty to help the country in the Dunkirk evacuation. Left alone for several days, she struggles with events that make her reevaluate what is important. She becomes strong and protects her family and becomes a more powerful woman.

The movie was acclaimed and won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress, among the six that it won in 1942. In addition to Garson, the movie stars Walter Pidgeon (How Green Was My Valley), and Reginald Owen (Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol).

Overall, this movie did not keep my interest as much as other black and white classics. The spirit of the movie, however, was strong. The German pilot - was not. I give this movie 3 stars. It was decent, but there are many more black and white movies that are more worth watching.