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Showing posts with the label war

DUNKIRK REVIEW - PODCAST

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We review Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk on The Big Rewind .

DUNKIRK - REVIEW

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Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk is a WWII movie following several characters including soldiers, pilots and civilians as they try to survive during an evacuation in the North of France, just before German forces close in. This story is told from different perspectives and periods of time as a British mariner sails a boat towards Dunkirk in order to help the Allied troops while a Spitfire pilot faces numerous potentially deadly challenges in the air and soldiers on the ground try everything they can to stay alive and make it home. The intensity of the expanding war is captured perfectly by showing the humanity and heroism involved alongside the pain and misery these soldiers face every single minute that goes by. No matter how flawed the main characters are, we still understand them and feel for them since none of what they're dealing with is their fault: they just happen to all be stuck in the grimmest mess. These are people who are so tired and beaten that

DUNKIRK - VLOG 14/08/17

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I talk briefly about Christopher Nolan's latest: Dunkirk .

1941 - REVIEW

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Following the runaway success of both Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind , Steven Spielberg directed war-themed comedy 1941 back in 1979 and, although it wasn't technically a box-office bomb, it wasn't exactly a hit and it's only years later that it gained a cult following. The film is very loosely based on a mix of real yet mostly disconnected events as it explores the growing paranoia post-Pearl Harbor with US citizens fearing that Japan would attempt another attack and dealing with it in various ways. As an enemy submarine slowly tries to make its way to Los Angeles with the unlikely goal of destroying Hollywood, chaos builds in the city and we follow a variety of characters, each of them doing their own thing, with everything culminating in a cartoonish battle around Santa Monica pier. This is very much an ensemble piece in the vein of Dr Strangelove or American Graffiti with some characters having a very clear goal and others just kind of wandering i

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES - REVIEW

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After the Rise and the Dawn comes the  War For The Planet Of The Apes , the third and last part of the Caesar prequel trilogy in which Andy Serkis' motion-captured ape leads his intelligent kind to battle against the humans once and for all. Or, at least, that's what the trailers would have you believe. Based on those, you'd think the entire film was all-out war with Woody Harrelson's intimidating baddie facing off against Caesar in one last epic stand. The film is not that at all, it's actually much more subtle than that but "subtle" doesn't exactly make for exciting, bombastic trailers. The war in question is a rogue group of soldiers, led by The Colonel (Harrelson), who are trying to eliminate and/or enslave all the apes living in the forest. The apes defend themselves, of course, but it's not really a war for them, it's survival as they plan to leave the forest for a more peaceful setting. Unfortunately, The Colonel murders Caesar'

THE LAST SAMURAI - REVIEW

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Back in 2003, Tom Cruise starred in Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai , a film chronicling the fall of the samurai at the hands of a tactical collaboration between an increasingly modern Japanese government, its Emperor and the US. If you can get past the idea of Tom Cruise as a samurai and the fact that this is basically Dances With Wolves in a different setting, then The Last Samurai is actually a very good film. Cruise plays disillusioned, alcoholic former US Army Captain Nathan Algren, who is haunted by the memories of massacres involving Native American civilians, as he is hired to help train the Japanese army. He reluctantly agrees to travel to Japan and teach the Japanese soldiers how to use modern weaponry but he is captured after an impromptu battle against the samurai and is brought back to a village where he gets to know Ken Watanabe's Lord Mastumoto, the leader of the samurai rebellion, and learns the ways of the samurai. Realising how much of an underdog the sa

LINCOLN - REVIEW

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I should start by confessing that I tend to miss Steven Spielberg's more serious efforts and instead usually wait patiently for his next sci-fi epic. I missed War Horse but flocked to Minority Report three times upon its release, to give you an idea. Maybe I'm an idiot but... Tom Cruise riding a jetpack! Come on! Lincoln is the type of film you don't need to watch to see, if you catch my drift. It's typical Oscar bait with loads of talking, loads of courtroom "action", loads of safe lighter-hearted moments, big performances and smoky rooms. You've seen the trailer: you've pretty much seen the movie. That said, I am happy I saw the whole thing. All in all, it's hardly unpredictable, especially if you know what historically happened, but it keeps your interest until the end mostly thanks to terrific performances and a sharp script. Daniel Day-Lewis is as good as you'd expect, as is Tommy Lee Jones and although Lincoln is pretty darn l

PEARL HARBOR - REVIEW

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Oh boy, where to start... Ok, basic structure of the film: Act I - Everyone's Happy, Act II - Everything Blows Up, Act III - Everyone's Sad. This is literally it guys, if you're expecting anything deeper or more complex than that...then you obviously don't know who's directing this masterpiece of patriotic, macho cheese. Michael Bay's film actually taught me many things about the war: apparently all women were sexy, retarded nurses back then, all black men were cooks and Franklin D Roosevelt had no less than four chins. Yes, this is one history lesson I'll never forget. Every cliché in the book is thrown at us full throttle as every shot sports a giant American flag, every line is peppered with Parmesan and people walk in slo-mo whenever things get dramatic (read: all the time). Historical inaccuracies aside, at the heart of the film is a love triangle so irrelevant and predictable that it makes you wonder how the script could have possibly been more

BATTLE: LOS ANGELES - REVIEW

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Alien invasion disaster movies have always been a hit-and-miss affair. From the old Earth vs The Flying Saucers -type B movies to more recent big budget efforts like Independence Day . You'd think such a simple concept would be pretty straight-forward and easy to get right. Not so. Unfortunately Battle: LA, like so many similar films before it, fails to deliver. Instead we are given a kind of B-side cliched war flick with rubbish District 9 -style aliens thrown in. Earlier this year we had the awful Skyline in the same vein and although Battle: LA isn't qute as dire, it's still pretty poor all around. It's like the film contains all the shittest cliches and flaws which made Independence Day so cheesy but minus Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid and ANY sense of fun whatsoever. What's left? Not very much alas. Early on we're introduced to the film's main characters: a bunch of Marines, who are about as likeable and interesting as the plastic chair I'm c