Archive for the ‘War’ Category

Where Eagles Dare

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

tn_whereeaglesdareIn Act I, Scene III of Richard III, Shakespeare wrote that there are places up so high that only eagles got the balls to go up there (exact quote). Schloβ Adler up in the Alps is not one of those places. It’s all Nazis and undercover MI-6 operatives in this joint. No birds at all as far as I noticed.

Loosely based on Disneyland’s Skyway and Matterhorn rides, WHERE EAGLES DARE is the story of a team of British commandos (Richard Burton, others) and one American (Clint) sent on a mission to infiltrate the Nazi-infested castle and rescue a captured general before he’s enhanced-interrogationed into giving up the Allied war plans or something. So they have to skydive, go on a snow trek, mountain climb, sneak in wearing Nazi uniforms, fit in, drink German beer (which Clint was against in THE ROOKIE, saying it has no aftertaste), and all kinds of dangerous shit. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Reviews, War | 32 Comments »

Tears of the Sun

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

tn_tearsofthesunBruceTEARS OF THE SUN is a Bruce Willis picture I missed until now. It’s about Nigerian refugees fleeing for Cameroon after anti-democratic military guys assassinate the president and his family and go around “ethnic cleansing” innocent people. I know, sounds kind of racist, but the secret is Bruce doesn’t play a Nigerian, he is not in blackface. He plays the lieutenant of an elite Navy SEALS unit sent in by Tom Skerritt (playing the twin brother of his character from TOP GUN, in my opinion) to rescue a Christian aid worker played by Monica Belluci. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Bruce, Drama, Reviews, War | 59 Comments »

Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

tn_dirtydozennextmissionHow do you know to lower your expectations for the sequel? When it’s included on the DVD with the first movie. And not as a double feature, but as a bonus feature. I didn’t realize this was on the DIRTY DOZEN dvd when I rented it, but I found it while browsing the extras. Never seen it before so I decided to give it a shot.

THE NEXT MISSION was made for TV in 1985. It’s supposed to take place about 6 months later, but Lee Marvin has aged 18 years. Somehow they got Marvin, Borgnine and Richard Jaeckel all to come back. They have a new mission with a new Dirty Dozen including Ken Wahl and Sonny Landham.

Alot of the movie, especially the first half hour or so, just made me sad. Marvin’s age is really showing (this was his next to last movie) and he just doesn’t seem like he’s into it at all. They make poor Lee and Ernest rehash the whole Borgnine-pitching-the-mission sequence and the Marvin-recruiting-the-convicts one and they even use whole chunks and paragraphs of the exact same dialogue as in the original. Then Marvin will say things like, “That sounds familiar.” (more…)

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Posted in Action, Reviews, War | 23 Comments »

The Dirty Dozen

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

tn_dirtydozenMan, it’s one of those concepts that’s too perfect to fuck up: twelve WWII era inmates of a military prison are sent on a dangerous mission to kill as many Nazi officers as they can. The Americans have this target, but they don’t want to waste good soldiers, so why not these lifers and death row cons, murderers and rapists? It’s kind of the same concept as “paint clothes.” You don’t paint the house in pants you’d wear to church, and you don’t want to waste your best soldiers on a suicide mission so you use these fuckos you got in storage. If they die – well, you weren’t planning on using them anyway. No loss.

For the cons it’s a good deal too. They get to go outside. If it’s true they like killing, here’s their chance for more. They get to postpone their executions, or kill some time before their executions. And if they do a good job and survive they might get pardoned, maybe, if fuckin Ernest Borgnine sees it in his heart. If they die in the line of duty, well, maybe they’d rather die that way than on a rope. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Reviews, War | 22 Comments »

Inglourious Basterds

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

tn_basterds(SPOILER GENERAL’S WARNING: I wish I had gone in knowing less, so you probaly shouldn’t read this before seeing the movie. To be safe though I’ll try to be vague.)

You always kind of know what you’re gonna get with Tarantino, and yet, you never know what you’re gonna get with Tarantino. Every movie he’s made after PULP FICTION seems to throw people for a loop at first. Why isn’t JACKIE BROWN more like PULP FICTION? Why isn’t KILL BILL more serious, like JACKIE BROWN? Why is KILL BILL VOLUME 2 all this character and shit instead of all the killing like part 1? Why does he take so long to make his movies, what an asshole. Why did he make DEATH PROOF as a quickie just-for-fun movie, what an asshole. (more…)

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Posted in Reviews, War | 173 Comments »

Miracle at St. Anna

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

According to the Rotten Tomatoes, Spike Lee’s new World War II epic has a 27% organic and plump rating (or whatever). In other words it has a lower approval rating than George Bush. Also, by the way, lower than CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK or DAREDEVIL.

I don’t think that’s fair. This movie is WAY better than George Bush. The other thing that’s been unfair is how all the pre-release coverage was about Lee’s alleged feud with Clint Eastwood. The movie is about the Buffalo Soldiers (or “experimental colored brigade” as a white commanding officer calls them in the movie) so some reporter got Lee to say something about there not being enough brothers on the wall in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. Then somebody told Clint that Spike said some shit and got Clint to say some shit back and then the two quotes were taken out of context and repeated, so in the IMDb headlines and in the imaginations of movie fans around the world it turned into a battle between Spike and Clint instead of a movie that can stand on its own.

In my opinion Spike is a very talented and unique filmatist who makes a legitimate (but debatable) point about Clint, and Clint is also a very talented filmatist who doesn’t need anybody standing up for him or feeling sorry for him because, not sure if you noticed this but HE’S CLINT FUCKING EASTWOOD. He can handle it on his own. And besides, nobody cared when Larry Clark actually did intentionally attack Clint with an unfair portrayal as a racist gun nut in WASSUP ROCKERS. I guess outspoken black man vs. Clint is more sensational than weird pervert vs. Clint. (more…)

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Posted in Reviews, War | 1 Comment »

Black Book

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

ZWARTBOEK

Paul Verhoeven has always been one of the top weirdo-pervert directors in my book. (Literally – in my book 5 On the Outside I had a review of THE HOLLOW MAN in chapter 9, “WEIRDOS, CREEPS & PERVERTS.”) Less pedophilic and more of a crowdpleaser than your Larry Clark, Verhoeven is a true original. Even making a studio movie about a cyborg he manages to tell a story with a strong point-of-view about the state of the world. Throughout his years in Hollywood, Verhoeven made many great popcorn movies that outrageously pushed the envelope of violence and sex and sneakily snuck in some subversive politics. And that’s pretty much my favorite type of movie in the world is one that does that. It’s like some poor sucker buys a box of Mike and Ike’s and doesn’t realize somebody tossed a couple MATRIX red pills in there.

But hot damn, I didn’t expect a movie this good out of him at this date. I’m a ROBOCOP man, I’m a STARSHIP TROOPERS man, a TOTAL RECALL man, even to a certain extent the world’s only HOLLOW MAN man. But I’m ignorant of his pre-robots and spaceships period in his native Netherlands, I’ve never even seen SOLDIER OF ORANGE (which this is I guess a companion piece to). So I didn’t know what to expect when Verhoeven packed his bags and went back to the motherland for an expensive by their standards thriller set in the last throes of World War II. The movie he made came out officially in 2006, but since it’s a new release here it’s an early favorite for my BEST GOD DAMN MOVIE OF 2007.

BLACK BOOK is the story of Rachel Stein, a fictional Jewish singer in the Netherlands trying to cross over into the safety of Allied territory. Her plan goes south, but she ends up joining the Resistance and changing her name to Ellis. Throughout the movie she is involved in many adventures and ordeals, but her primary mission involves going undercover as an employee and lover of a Gestapo leader she met on a train, a guy named Muntze. Her friend tells her what a bastard this guy is, but on the train he had seemed kind of charming, and showed her his stamp collection. “And such a man collects stamps,” she says, curiously. (more…)

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Posted in Drama, Reviews, Thriller, War | 1 Comment »

300

Saturday, March 10th, 2007

Make no mistake about it, it’s hard out here for a Spartan. Alot of these bastards, they’re “baptized in the fire of combat.” They grow up having to fight their dad all day, and I mean really fight him. You thought your dad pushed you too hard at hoops, well at least he didn’t beat on you until you fucked up. These guys, the beating is the actual practice. It’s their culture.

In some of the other neighborhoods, like Arcadia for example, you can grow up to be a potter, a sculptor or a blacksmith. In Sparta, you’re a soldier. But you don’t even get to talk about it, like “What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I’m a soldier. I’m baptized in the fire of combat.” In Sparta, they ask you what your trade is you gotta yell out “WHOO WHOO!” or something. You are highly trained in combat and in grunting.

Basically, you’re trained your whole life to fight, and you learn that the best thing in the world is to die “a beautiful death” in battle. If it’s not that great of a battle then forget it, it has to be a really good battle, and then if you die, that’s awesome. No mention of 72 virgins, or the afterlife at all, unless “Tonight we dine in Hell!” is meant literally, which is debatable.

But then after all that training they might not even let you fight. First of all, you have to have a son. Not just a bun in the oven either, it has to be a born son to carry on your name. Bloodlines are a big deal to these people. And then there are body image issues to deal with. There are some serious pecs and six packs on these Spartans. I don’t know if shirts were invented yet or not, but they don’t wear shirts. You can imagine that if you didn’t have pecs like that you would feel pretty fuckin worthless. You’d look like a freak. (more…)

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Posted in Action, Comic strips/Super heroes, Reviews, War | No Comments »

Letters from Iwo Jima

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Dear Friends,

Last year we all heard Clint Eastwood, who I still consider the greatest living human, was directing this World War II movie produced by Steven Spielberg. Not really my genre, but with Clint directing obviously I was looking forward to it. Things got more interesting during filming when he announced that he realized the story of Iwo Jima needed to be told from the Japanese perspective too, so he was doing another movie straight after FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, originally titled RED SUN, BLACK SAND. And that sounded more interesting to me. Way to be ambitious, Clint.

But when FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS came out it was underwhelming enough that, to be honest, I lost some of my interest in LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA. That first movie’s not terrible, and I really like what it was about – the complicated feelings of some guys who are declared war heroes for bullshit reasons and have to go along with it in order to raise war bonds and help out their fellow soldiers who are still fighting. But the way the story was told was just not Clint enough. Usually when he directs the stories are pretty spare, pretty bare, and the emotions are raw. The score of FLAGS was about the only thing that was the usual laid back Clint. He had to jump between the present day with the son of one of the flag raisers interviewing the survivors, the actual battle of Iwo Jima, and the war bonds tour after the battle, and then all of those are jumbled up so they’re in even less order than it sounds like.

So at the very least you gotta keep track of these 5 guys who raised the second Iwo Jima flag, plus you will need to remember some of the other guys who raised the first flag and figure out which parents are theirs, and you have to figure which young character corresponds to which old man in the present day, all this while trying to figure out which of the identical looking grey helmets got killed during chaotic shaky cam battle. And with all that you don’t really attach to the characters like you did, say, the 2 or 3 characters at the heart of MILLION DOLLAR BABY. And when the emotions come out sometimes it comes across corny instead of powerful. (more…)

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Flags of Our Fathers

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

Well, shit. I feel like an asshole giving a room-temperature review to my man Clint Eastwood’s long awaited WWII drama. Because Clint is the best. If there was some reason why the entire human race had to be destroyed except for one movie star, and I had to choose who it would be, I would choose Clint. I don’t care if he’s old, he’s the number one Badass Laureate of all time. He’d make a damn good last representative of our species, and he could still take on the vampires pretty good I think. But despite (and partly because of) my great respect for the man, I gotta be honest: I don’t consider this a great movie.

I like the idea behind the movie, which is not the usual “war is hell” but instead “war is complicated.” Starting with the dialogue at the very beginning it tells you that nothing is black and white, people aren’t just heroes or villains and that they have to make it seem that way to sell a war. Some of the movie is about the battle of Iwo Jima and some is about three of the guys who hoisted the flag in the famous photo going on a tour to be introduced as “the heroes of Iwo Jima” to promote war bonds. But these guys have a hard time with it not only because putting up the flag wasn’t the heroic part of what they did, but because they actually put up the second flag. The first one was a spontaneous gesture, the second one was a replacement flag so the marines could keep the historic first flag. The second flag happened to be photographed really well though, so they got all the attention. Also their flag was bigger.

There are complications because some of the flag-hoisters have died, and there’s confusion between the two flag-raisings, and some of the wrong parents have been notified that their dead sons are in the famous photo. To me the most effective scene in the movie is when Ryan Phillippe, who actually is in the photo, has to lie to a woman to convince her that her son Paul Walker, I think) is in there too. It’s a hell of a situation they’re in because they think it’s all a bunch of horse shit but then they realize how much it means to these parents to know, or to think, that their son is in the photo. And they also want to sell war bonds because if somebody doesn’t raise a whole hell of alot of money they won’t have the equipment to win the war. (I don’t think Eastwood intends the movie as commentary on the Iraq war, but you can’t help but notice the contrast between this struggle to sell war bonds and the complete lack of direct sacrifice any of us make for the billions that are being poured into Iraq.) (more…)

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