White Christmas

I’m not a big fan of musicals. I never have been and probably never will be. I can appreciate the craftsmanship of the performances. There is certainly plenty of talent on display in movies like White Christmas, even though it does little for me. It’s not the artifice of the song and dance numbers that bother me. I don’t need movies to be realistic in order to enjoy them. Often, and especially with White Christmas, my problem is all that singing and dancing delays the narrative. The first 45 minutes of White Christmas are fun and breezy. We move from WWII to Broadway to Florida to Vermont. We’re introduced to all the important characters and the crux of the plot is established. And then things slow way down. The hour and fifteen minutes that follow are overstuffed with big, showy musical numbers. Again, all the talent on display is impressive, but my interest in the movie dissipates with every new routine. White Christmas is really a mixed bag for me, I love the “let’s put on a show” storyline but there are just too many performances in the movie to keep my interest.

Rating: 64%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Men Behind the Sun

This is another of those super extreme gore movies that I guess I felt I had to watch as a horror snob or whatever. It's not especially gorier than like, Day of the Dead or the Saw movies, but it's incredibly difficult to watch because it's based on an actual historical Japanese unit (731) who conducted lethal biological research on captive Chinese civilians during World War II, killing thousands of people. (As far as the filmmakers, they killed a bunch of rats for the movie and filmed a real child's autopsy so that's nowhere near as bad but still rough to watch.) Anyway, at least the people in charge of the real camp got tried for war crimes. Oh, wait, what's that? They were granted immunity by the United States in exchange for all their research? Well that's just super.

RATING: 74%

Enterprise S4E1/2 - "Storm Front"

The Enterprise winds up fighting Nazis in Brooklyn during an alternate WW2 in a two part episode that is just so silly and fun like the best of TOS.

RATING: 81%

World War II Airplanes

World War II was a pretty terrible war we can all agree, what with the Holocaust, 60 million deaths, nuclear bombs, etc. But one thing that was not terrible were all the cool planes they had. Like, woah, the P-38 Lightning (see insert). What kind of weirdo plane is that? Or maybe you heard of a little old plane called the P-51 Mustang? Hubba hubba, aircraft! Are you a fan of quickly traveling from city to city in jets, hmmm? Yowza! For any of our readers out there driving a shitty Mitsubishi Lancer, I bet it's not as cool as this Mitsubishi produced vehicle. In closing, World War II was an awful tragedy for all mankind.

RATING: 81%

Inglourious Basterds/The Hurt Locker

I rarely feel as American as when I get a chance to see two war movies in the theater in one week. Inglourious Basterds is fun, but is utlimately stopped from being a great movie by obviously terrible choices (#1 being Brad Pitt and his costar, Brad Pitt's Ridiculous Accent). On the other hand The Hurt Locker is pretty tense and moving, but after watching it you'll probably just want to hug something for a few hours. So in conclusion war movies say a lot about the human condition, Oscars all around, etc etc.

Inglourious Basterds RATING: 61%
The Hurt Locker RATING: 85%

The Thin Red Line

#35 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line is visually stunning in every way, imaging that from a Terrence Malick film. I've always liked it better that Saving Private Ryan, because while although Ryan does do a good job of demonstrating the horror of wartime violence, it seems somewhat in love with the graphic detail of it, like Sam Peckinpah's Wild Bunch. Malick's film is also considerably less hokey, and deals with a small group of soldier's personal thoughts while caught up in the larger grisly mechanics of war. Somebody once made the argument to me that this film is irresponsible because the soldiers are demonstrating doubts about being involved in the only inarguable war, World War II, but I think that argument is bunk because this film demonstrates the actual realistic thoughts that individuals would have in this situation, not the jingoistic infallible patriotism of so many other WWII movies. Anyway, it's amazing so check it out.

RATING: 91%