Midway, mini movie review

 

Rating: B+

Even though I've grown up watching World War II documentaries, I don't know much about what happened in the Pacific during this war.  It's a shame, as I have a Great-grandfather who served in the Navy during both World Wars, and my Grandpa R's brother was a POW under the Japanese.  I don't know much about either.  When my Dad was a Marine he served on the USS Midway aircraft cruiser, named to honor the battle. He wanted to fly planes, but bad eyesight is a family thing, so when he was on the Midway he ate in this room where he could listen to the planes land.  One day he had to do something and missed his routine lunch and an airplane crash, spreading fire in the room where he ate.  His life was saved that day, and that's what I think of whenever I hear "Midway."

As for the movie, Midway shows the escalating conflict between the US and Japan, the tensions, attack on Pearl Harbor, and then the subsequent attacks in the Pacific and beyond.  If you know history, you know how this story goes.

So much historical focus is on mainland Europe and England during this time.  Conflict with Germany and Italy. The holocaust. D-Day. The air raids in London and elsewhere.  The Narnia kids getting sent to the countryside (fiction, but still showing an aspect of the times).  Just that part of the war seems so overwhelmingly massive.  Then throw in the Pacific, Japan, China, and then you realize why this really was a World War.  And it's amazing humanity survived.  We forget.

I've read some reviews that says the dialogue is cheesy and whatnot, but I don't mind it.  As tragic as this time was, I still love the outfits.  The music!  The start of swing dance.  It was a time of rationing. Sacrifice. Human vigor and determination.

There's a lot of characters.  People come and go.  It's war.  And there are moving parts everywhere changing, contributing.  Portraying this one aspect of WWII is a huge undertaking, and yet, even with everything going on, it's easy to follow along and get involved with some of the characters.  And what's nice about this movie is that it focuses on so many real people who actually fought and served. 

War is awful, yes, but we shouldn't forget the past. Learn from the mistakes. Grow from the strength of others. Understand. The battle of Midway was only 77 years ago.  It hasn't even been a century!  And yet I wonder what my Great-grandfather and Great-uncle would think of the fact that my siblings and I love visiting Tokyo and are learning Japanese.  They would think it unbelievable!!

We can't forget.

And it was nice that in the showing I attended there were so many ages.  I thought I was going to be the youngest, but there were high-schoolers there as well.  And everyone in the theater was getting into it, holding their breath at times.  And at the end there was some clapping.  I found myself quite emotional and glad to become more fully aware of this time in history.

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of war violence and related images, language and smoking.

The Words: Movie Review

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

The Words attempts to be Inception for book lovers.  Attempt being the operative word.

Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is a successful novelist, and while on a whirlwind book tour he finds himself in New York where he manages to read out loud 2/3rds of his book.  Technically that would have taken quite a long time, but I deviate.  In the middle of his reading Daniella (Olivia Wilde) sits and listens amongst the large crowd.

The Story Hammond tells follows Rory (Bradley Cooper) and Dora (Zoe Saldana).  Rory is a struggling writer, and during a honeymoon in Paris Dora buys him a worn out briefcase.  He's pleased with the gift, but it isn't until he's at home and going through the pockets of the briefcase that he discovers a manuscript.

This manuscript that Rory reads, typed out on yellowing paper, is the story of a young man living in Paris during WWII.  Instead of wondering who wrote the story, Rory is transfixed by the masterful writing, overwhelmed with the need to feel the words through his fingers as he types them, word for word, into a word processor.  One thing leads to another and "The Window Tears" is a runaway success.  What Rory doesn't realize is that this novel is the autobiographical story of "the old man" (Jeremy Irons).

The Words is a story within a story within a story, and we get the chance to see each of these plot lines play out.

The problem with this movie is the way each of these plot lines are developed and balanced.  I was least interested in Hammond's storyline and found myself wanting to watch the other two parts.  And I wish more was shown of "The Window Tears."  That part was enchanting and interesting, but was skimmed over.

Without giving anything away, the ending is a little abrupt if you don't reason how the three stories are connected, leaving a somewhat empty feeling when the credits roll.  But unlike Inception you wont spend months theorizing and arguing over the endings meaning.

I did enjoy many elements of the movie, and I could see it again in the future, but not immediately.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language, smoking . . . and a whooooooole lot of kissing.

Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed, Movie Review

Rating:  2 Stars out of 5

What's tragic is that everything the first movie got right, Saints and Soldiers, the second movie got wrong.

The first movie, which came out in 2003, was miraculously filmed entirely in Utah and under a million dollars (yet it looks like a major motion picture.)  From beginning to end the WWII epic has non-stop action and heartfelt moments.  The characters are strong and the story is focused.  Definitely a must see with a strong 4.5 out of 5 star rating.     

The followup movie, Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed, is overwhelmingly confused.

The exposition fell flat, and there was no real setup for how our cast of characters end up in enemy territory.  Yes, there is an opening scene involving the Germans, but it only connects when you listen intently to a small bit of dialogue somewhere in the middle of the movie.  (Since they choose to begin the movie this way, the main character should have been either the central German character, don't know his name, or the French resistant girl, Emilie.)   Then we are suddenly shown a bunch of people jumping out of airplanes.  If you go to the films website you learn this is the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team.  They volunteered to land in enemy territory, with a chance of no backup, to help the French Allied forces.  But there was no setup to this.  You get the gist gradually as the film progresses.  If I would have known the risk of their mission at the start, and the purpose of what they were doing, I would have been far more engaged in the plot then I was.   

Another major fault of the film is a lack of a main character.  Since this is a Saints and Soldiers film, it's safe to assume Jones, played by David Nibley, a man strong in the Catholic faith, is the central character.  He gets a lot of flashback time after all, only problem is a couple other characters received a lot of flashback time as well.  Instead of a main character with the support of a strong cast, we get a bunch of characters vying for our attention.  The result?  A huge mess with the lack of a focused story.      

As much as I enjoyed Corbin Allred as 'Deacon' in the first movie, it was a mistake to bring him back and have him portray an entirely new character.  Watching the trailer as many times as I did, I assumed Corbin was reprising his character.  Airborne Creed is a prequel to Saints and Soldiers, not a sequel, and Deacon could have been brought back.  Instead of taking advantage of a great opportunity, the writers choose instead to leave me questioning who Corbin's new character is, and that caused some distraction.   

One of the brilliant aspects of the first movie is the ambiguity of the Main character, Deacon's, religion.  You assume he's LDS, with a fair amount of clues leading to the fact, but this is only confirmed in the DVD commentary track.  The first movie tackled brilliantly the psychological hardships of war, questioning morality and what truly makes someone an enemy.  This new film tried to do the same, but did not succeed.

What's truly sad is that a lot of these problems could have been fixed in the script writing phase of pre-production.  This could have been a great film.

Sarah