"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘WWII’

Red Tails

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

tn_redtailsI’m starting to feel like a pushover, ’cause I’m enjoying all these poorly reviewed movies. RED TAILS is a simple pleasure – a straightforward, old-fashioned tribute to the camaraderie between the pilots and crew members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African-American Air Force squadron. It centers on the friendship between straight-laced, mustache-having but sometimes flask-swigging Easy (Nate Parker) and reckless, authority-bucking wannabe-ace Lightning (David Oyelowo). Easy (unlike his grandson Easy E) always wants to be professional and follow protocol, Lightning likes to disobey orders to go play chicken with a German ammunitaion train or carelessly dive on a battleship with no backup.
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Saving Private Ryan

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

tn_sprspielbergNo joke, I never saw SAVING PRIVATE RYAN before. I’ve never been big on war movies and I think back when it was a recent movie I was real cynical and suspicious of any type of flagwaving. I thought movies like this were just brainwashing kids to join up in case they needed to blow up Iraq again.

But that’s stupid. This one’s about “the good war” and still makes it look like something to avoid at all costs. The famous Omaha Beach invasion sequence near the beginning is a total bloodbath, soldiers pouring off the boats into waves of machine gun bullets. They might as well just be jumping from a diving board directly into a giant fan, it seems like. (read the rest of this shit…)

Schindler’s List

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

tn_schindlerslistspielbergYou know what movie’s good? SCHINDLER’S LIST! Why did nobody tell me this before?

Would you believe this was my first time seeing SCHINDLER’S LIST? It’s getting toward 20 years old and I remembered I hadn’t gotten around to seeing it yet. It’s kind of a heavy decision to make one day: hey, I got 3 hours before I gotta leave for work, maybe I should watch SCHINDLER’S LIST? Never had the urge I guess. (read the rest of this shit…)

1941

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

spielbergtn_1941This movie has a reputation as kind of a mess. Admittedly it is a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In my opinion a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was not necessarily one of the top two or three things the world hoped for as Steven Spielberg’s followup to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. But fuck ’em. It’s what they got and they oughta fuckin appreciate it. (read the rest of this shit…)

Captain America: The First Avenger

Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

tn_captainamericaCAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is the last of the Marvel Comics soda can labels before next year when all the separate labels will be united into one all-star label called THE AVENGERS (the comics one, not the one with Sean Connery in the teddy bear costume). The IRON MANs, THOR and INCREDIBLE HULK were all on Dr. Pepper I believe, though, and this one’s on 7-UP. So it’s a whole new ball game. I think it dips a bit into the cheesy side visually and filmatism-wise, but it’s an enjoyable story that’s a little different from the other super hero guys and stands on its own better than THOR. In fact the way it leads up to this AVENGERS movie allows it to end on an odd emotional note that it wouldn’t have otherwise.
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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. (read the rest of this shit…)

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. (read the rest of this shit…)

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. (read the rest of this shit…)

Vern Reviews FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS!!

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

Merrick here…

The fabulous Vern sent in his thoughts on FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. His reviewis rather long, so I’ll get out of the way and let him speak for himself.

Here’s Vern…

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. (read the rest of this shit…)

Windtalkers

Saturday, June 15th, 2002

Sometimes in a man’s life, he decides to move from Hong Kong to America, do a movie with Jean Claude Van Damme and then spend the rest of his life struggling to regain what he once had. Fighting to just be John Woo again. Hoping to recapture that innocent time when he was the guy who did THE KILLER and HARD BOILED and not the guy who wants to produce a computer animated movie about ninja turtles.

Maybe you read about all those teenage Iraqi christians who went on a long journey hidden between boxes in the back of a truck to escape persecution and find freedom in America, and Uncle Ashcroft thanked them by throwing them in prison on unspecified “immigration violations” with no charges or plans to ever release them. Well this isn’t as bad, but I think most americans are still pretty ashamed of how we rewarded all the Hong Kong directors seeking asylum in Hollywood with the Curse of Van Damme. Anyway, if anybody could’ve overcome it we all thought it would be John Woo. (read the rest of this shit…)