Ed's Review Dot Com

DreamWorks SKG, Reliance Entertainment, Amblin Entertainment,

Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irvine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Kebbell, David Kross, Eddie Marsan, Nicolas Bro, Rainer Bock, Patrick Kennedy, Leonhard Carow, Celine Buckens

This is a spectacular, epic film of World War I, and a boy named Albert Naracott (Jeremy Irvine) who’s drunken father bought a horse that was tall and fast and beautiful, but was not a work horse. The family owed a large mortgage on their farm, and Albert took on training and care for the horse whom he taught to pull a plow. The horse was purchased for the army, and the soldier who bought him knew that the price he could pay was much less than this horse was worth, so he promised if he could he would return the horse after the war. But the war was ugly for horses, and even uglier for the soldier mired down in it. This is story of a young man and his horse and the longing to be together if the only both can survive the horrors of war.

This was an interesting Christmas Day film! It’s a horrible war, and Mr. Spielberg certainly put a lot of work into making this one EPIC picture. It fills the screen with the horrors and suffering of war, and provides us with a few very noble and courageous moments. However it did not make me think of Christmas, that’s for sure. But the holidays may have been the proper time to bring out a film of this magnitude.

But the basis of the story, no matter how grand and big it is on screen, is the simple story of the love of a boy for his horse and the troubles the have to face to survive with little money and then a horrible war. I enjoyed the film very much. I did not rate it 5 stars, as it was not so awe inspiring that it knocked me off my chair, but it was certainly a blockbuster film. This is an amazing story, and one that should appeal to most everyone. The acting was superb, and the action just fills up the screen. Be sure to see it if you haven’t had a chance!

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

GK Films,

Zana Marjanovic, Goran Kostic, Rade Serbedzija, Branko Djuric, Nikola Djuricko, Dolya Gavanski

In this story about the Bosnian War, Danijel (Goran Kostic) has a relationship with Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), a Bosnian who’s now a prisoner in a camp he oversees. Their relationship started at a dance club, but a bomb attack suddenly changed everything. Danijel uses his position in the camp to protect Ajla by giving her a special task of drawing portraits of the camp leaders. But as Ajla gains strength, and Danijel’s position is compromised, things get very complicated and it’s very difficult to carry on a relationship when they are on different sides in this horrible war.

This story was directed by Angelina Jolie in her first attempt at directing. She took on a very powerful story for her attempt, and she was, I’m pretty sure, trying to put a human face on the terrible atrocities that took place over there in the 90′s. Well, in many ways she succeeds, but in some ways the film falls short. In many ways the story is hard to believe, and it’s difficult to follow sometimes. It’s hard to accept that it’s really an accurate depiction of the situation, but some reviewers who lived through it swear that it was just like it was shown. It just seems a bit too set up to be historical fiction, and it’s more like taking a historical event and putting a fictitious story behind it to make your point.

The realistic thing about this is that the actors are really from this area. The down side of that is that it made them hard for me to understand. I tried to put the subtitles on and follow it closely, but if you miss reading a line or two, it’s hard to follow along with what’s going on.

All that being said, I didn’t hate the movie in the least. But I did not come out of it all fired up and ready to march against the war either. It just left me a bit too ambivalent. If you’re interested in the historical facts, and want to know more about the holocaust that happened here, then by all means rent the film. But if you’re looking for a strong romantic drama, this will probably leave you wishing for a better story. I came down in the middle, not sorry that I watched it, but not very excited about it either.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Universal

Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear

Green Zone is fiction.  It’s the story of how it could have happened, not how it happened.  If you take that into consideration, there is a little bit of drama and a little bit of action, but it’s really dumbed down and it uses every cliche in the book.  It’s kind of like,  your friend poked you in the eye with a pencil but he didn’t mean to poke you in the eye with a pencil.  He meant to poke you in the ear with a pencil.  What did they intend?

They intended to push the view of a few Hollywood people and a few liberal media hounds on everybody and make you think it was real.  But it’s not.

But if you put the politics aside, and look at the movie as it is, it’s still not very good.  The action is spotty and sketchy.   The acting is not very real.  What was Matt Damon doing?   I know, trying to convince you that the right thing to do is get P.O.’d at your superiors and go rogue and fight your own battles.  After all, those evil soldiers are killing our own people for their evil ends.

I just think the story was not well developed.  I know it’s anti-Bush, and anti-war, and anti-America, but at least make a good story about it.

It’s just weak.  And I have been looking for a chance to get this off my chest once and for all.  If the police were called to a bank robbery and a man in a mask with a long coat with his hand hidden under the coat kept screaming at the top of his lungs….”I’ve got a gun,  I’ve got a gun in here!  I’ve got a Magnum 357 under my coat and this hostage is going down if you come one step closer!!!”   And this guy with a gun happens to get shot when the cops storm the building, is it the cops fault he didn’t really have a gun?  He assured them 1000 times he had a gun!   I’m sorry Saddam, but if you say you have WMD over and over, not only to the UN and the free world, but to all your other Middle Eastern neighbors, if you insist on not allowing the UN to inspect, and if you drag it on and on and on saying,  “I’ve got a gun!  I’ve got a gun,” people are going to think perhaps you HAVE A GUN!

So the search for WMD was a bust, and nothing major was really found, but if he hadn’t blustered his way through threatening everyone, things wouldn’t have ended up like they did.  I’m glad he didn’t have them, but what if he did?

Anyway, I didn’t completely bust this movie because there are some redeeming qualities.  It does have Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, and there are some pretty good moments.  Shot in Europe (mostly Spain) they did a pretty good job of making it look like Iraq.  They just were so caught up in the message that they didn’t pay attention to the quality of the movie.