What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

repoman wrote: No War movie let alone one that is patriotic is ever going to win best picture. Not in this day and age.

Hurt Locker, Braveheart, Platoon.... you could maybe argue Schindler's List.


And yeah, Band of Brothers is much better than Private Ryan in terms of storytelling and character development. But it's not a fair comparison cuz you only have limited amount of time to do that in a movie. I MIGHT put the first 30 minutes of Private Ryan against the totality of Band of Brothers in perfectly achieving what it sets out to do.

Black Barney wrote:

repoman wrote: No War movie let alone one that is patriotic is ever going to win best picture. Not in this day and age.

Hurt Locker, Braveheart, Platoon.... you could maybe argue Schindler's List.

Yah I guess you got me on the "war" movie business but none of those movies are pro-America.

Platoon and Hurt Locker are pro America, no? Maybe I’m not sure what you mean

I can tell you this, a good war movie that is patriotic is probably not a good war movie in general.

Like Letters from Iwo Jima is way better than Flags of Our Fathers. Very similar war movies but Flags is the only one that is « patriotic »

Platoon and Hurt Locker are in no way patriotic. Both depict good people being broken and bad people being emboldened with the American military as the catalyst.

I suppose by Pro-America or patriotic what I'm suggesting is that American soldiers and/or military are not depicted as the bad guys.

Black Barney wrote: Platoon and Hurt Locker are pro America, no? Maybe I’m not sure what you mean

I can tell you this, a good war movie that is patriotic is probably not a good war movie in general.

Like Letters from Iwo Jima is way better than Flags of Our Fathers. Very similar war movies but Flags is the only one that is « patriotic »

Speaking of which, what happened to Clint Eastwood? I couldn't even bear the trailers for American Sniper, and his latest, 15:17 to Paris, looks even worse. I did like Sully, so I'm not criticizing him as a director, just questioning his over-the-top patriotism lately.

Black Barney wrote:

repoman wrote: No War movie let alone one that is patriotic is ever going to win best picture. Not in this day and age.

Hurt Locker, Braveheart, Platoon.... you could maybe argue Schindler's List.


And yeah, Band of Brothers is much better than Private Ryan in terms of storytelling and character development. But it's not a fair comparison cuz you only have limited amount of time to do that in a movie. I MIGHT put the first 30 minutes of Private Ryan against the totality of Band of Brothers in perfectly achieving what it sets out to do.

Band of Brothers (and The Wire) made me realize that television has grown up as a format. Private Ryan sucked because it tried to cram a ludicrous story into the lives of too few characters within the span of a couple of hours of viewing time. Every movie has this challengeg, in trying to tell a full and satisfying story in 90 to 150 minutes, but Private Ryan takes on so much more than it could handle successfully within that time constraint. Band of Brothers has the time and space to tell the real story of Easy Company in World War II, with credible characters and story and pacing. Private Ryan has some big stars doing adequate acting, while Band of Brothers has a lot of newcomers doing a great job. And I don't know if this standard practice for a war movie, probably not, but Band of Brothers ran their cast through a mini boot camp before they started filming, in addition to spending the first episode on just boot camp and paratrooper training. If Band of Brothers feels "uneven" it is uneven in the way that our lives are uneven. They didn't just cherrypick the most exciting battles, they used a lot of what they were told by Easy Company survivors.

repoman wrote: Platoon and Hurt Locker are in no way patriotic. Both depict good people being broken and bad people being emboldened with the American military as the catalyst.

I suppose by Pro-America or patriotic what I'm suggesting is that American soldiers and/or military are not depicted as the bad guys.

That's a simplistic outlook. The genius of Game of Thrones is to show us that there are good and bad people on each side of a conflict, and that show has several sides. American foreign policy may go wrong at times (Vietnam, Afghanistan), but the individual soldiers are no better or worse as human beings than anybody else on the planet, on average. Some of our troops have done absolutely heroic feats, while others did as little as possible, or even knowingly participated in atrocities. And that's true of troops throughout history, because human nature has not really changed over the centuries.

To be clear, I consider patriotism to be as useless as being a sports fan. You are essentially taking pride in the accomplishments of other people, mostly people who don't even know you. Except that sometimes patriotism is much worse, because it becomes an excuse to do terrible things to other people. Sometimes the same happens with organized religion. My view on the human race is that most people are not bad people, but all of us are occasionally capable of doing bad things.

Shellhead, yeah the boot camp the Band of Brothers cast went through was cool and a great idea.

I bet you didn't know this, but the cast of Saving Private Ryan went to a boot camp too run by Cpt Dale Dye (who plays Colonel Sink in Band of Brothers). And they intentionally didn't put Matt Damon through it so that the rest of the cast would have a bit of disdain (hopefully) towards the guy for not going through what they went through (Spielberg's idea)

Almost all war films have the cast put through boot camp, often with some form of twist for bonding purposes (eg Black Hawk Down had the cast representing the Rangers and Delta Force go to different boot camps).

People talk about the horrors of war. The best horror stories usually do a good job of introducing you to the characters, so that their fear and their deaths matter. Most war movies don't spend a lot of time on the characters, and even the ones that do can only handle a few key characters that often end up fitting into standard cliches: the hero, the coward, the slacker, the joker, etc. Band of Brothers introduces a pretty big cast, focusing on just a few of them in a given episode, so when they get injured or killed, it really counts.

repoman wrote: Shakespeare in Love is a great movie as well. If you are confused why it won over Private Ryan, it's because you don't accept or acknowledge the biases of Hollywood. No War movie let alone one that is patriotic is ever going to win best picture. Not in this day and age.

...Dude. 1928, 1930, 1939, 1957, 1962, 1970, 1978, 1986, 1993, 1996, 2003, 2009 and that's not counting things like ARGO or THE KING'S SPEECH, set in wartime for dramatic effect. These all have battle scenes or deal with their direct aftermath. Don't get pissy because HACKSAW RIDGE didn't win.

...and the war film you should be rooting for over SHAKESPEARE is THE THIN RED LINE.

The best war movies aren't patriotic. The best war movies question the enterprise of conducting war, its effect on humanity, and its morality. War movies steeped in patriotism are called propaganda at best, at worst they are mired in empty jingoism, racism, and toxic nationalism. I don't care to seek out films that depict American armed forces as the "bad guys" because I don't believe that is accurate either, but if a war film doesn't reach for something beyond extremely shallow, crowd-pleasing notions of duty, honor, and service then there is isn't much there.

I laughed through a lot of Saving Private Ryan and got A LOT of dirty looks. As far as the opening scene goes...my response to all of the hushed silences and gasps of shock was "well, what the hell did you think fighting in a war looked like". I suppose it was like seeing the Wild Bunch back when it released.

The bulk of the movie is maudlin, self-indulgent, and self-satisfied. It's the worst kind of war movie- the sappy bro-pic. Sure, the attention to detail was great and the technical quality was outstanding...but the writing and some of Spielberg's most grating direction ever made the film feel more corny than sincere.

But I'm more of an Apocalypse Now person, so there's that.

Ugh, Fock right off with that Thin Red Line

Terrence Malik is a boring ol bitty.

Black Barney wrote: Ugh, Fock right off with that Thin Red Line

Terrence Malik is a boring ol bitty.

"How come he don't blowed stuff up so good? I paid money to see asplosions, not think about why we do war!"

"The Wreck of the Unbelievable" on Netflix.

Pretty awesome treasure hunt show, by the truest definition. Very very cool. As a person who has a strong love for art and archaeology, this was right up my wheelhouse.

But before you research this, you must first watch it.

Once you have done all of the above, I want to go on record to say that I think Damien Hirst is a genius.