JonathanLB
Mar 2nd, 2002, 03:57:29 AM
We Were Soldiers (2002)
Jonathan L. Bowen
We Were Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson as Lt. General Hal Moore, was also based on the book that Moore wrote, which was published in 1992. Randall Wallace, who previously wrote Braveheart (1995), also wrote the film version of We Were Soldiers and directed it. The film focuses on an isolated incident in the Vietnam War where United States soldiers were outnumbered 5 to 1 and surrounded by enemy forces in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Backed by heavy artillery, helicopters, and bombers, an outnumbered group of men had to survive days in extremely hostile territory. In 1965, as the trailer for the film states, we were husbands and we were fathers, but in Vietnam, we were soldiers.
We Were Soldiers perhaps suffers the most because of its close proximity to Black Hawk Down (2001); the comparisons really cannot be avoided. Both films focus on United States missions that are controversial in their purpose and cost the country many deaths that should have been avoided. Both films also concentrate mainly on a short period of time, only one day in the case of Black Hawk Down and only several days for We Were Soldiers. Ridley Scott’s film about the conflict in Somalia, though, is simply far superior in every way to We Were Soldiers, which is not by any means a poorly made movie, but it certainly lacks the style and tension of Black Hawk Down.
While many people complained that Black Hawk Down did not set the context for the battle too well, We Were Soldiers fails to explain the importance of the battle it focuses on whatsoever. Only through reading external material can one learn that the outcome influenced U.S. policy for the next decade and was a very significant conflict in the war. Needless to say, the film also cannot compete with the older, but still masterful Vietnam film Apocalypse Now (1979).
We Were Soldiers starts with several fairly corny scenes and quite shaky dialogue too, but it moves into the action fairly quickly. While the script is not impressive whatsoever as a whole, a few excellent lines still abound, which mostly come from Sergeant Major Basil Plumley (Sam Elliot). Once the men enter combat, the actual fighting is quite impressive and captures the “war is hell” feeling quite well. The inclusion of many scenes with the wives of soldiers, including Keri Russell and Madeleine Stowe (Moore’s wife), are not effective at all and really interfere with the tension that the director could have built with the battle. Attempts to make the family scenes emotionally compelling fall flat. Nevertheless, the final battle to seize the high ground and win a key victory for the United States is compelling and downright awesome in parts, but not enough to make up for a rather plodding film. At two hours and fifteen minutes, the movie is a bit too long. With better directing and tighter editing, it could have been a quite an impressive film.
**1/2
40 Days and 40 Nights
Jonathan L. Bowen
Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett) is having trouble getting over his old girlfriend, Nicole, who he broke up with six months earlier. Whenever he has sex with other girls, which is just about every night, he has weird visions of the ceiling cracking and a black hole opening to swallow him, or something like that. Although everyone thinks he cannot control his urges, he takes a vow for Lent: no sex, no self-gratification, no kissing or anything else for 40 days and 40 nights. Barely after he starts his celibacy, though, he meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) while doing his laundry and begins to feel a special “connection” with her. Can he make it without doing anything sexual for 40 days and 40 nights?
After the horrible trailer for 40 Days and 40 Nights, only critics have an excuse to see such an awful film; everyone else should have taken the warning signs and stayed away. The film’s concept is not interesting, not compelling, not even funny, just unbelievably stupid, much like the entire movie. Hartnett really should stick to war movies and Sossamon was wonderful in A Knight’s Tale, but her talents are mostly wasted in 40 Days and 40 Nights. Not to say any of the acting is bad because acting is the least of the film’s problems.
40 Days and 40 Nights is insulting to the intelligence of any moviegoer. For one, seeing the movie with a friend of the same gender will still make the average person uncomfortable, but seeing it with a date or a friend of the opposite gender will make the average moviegoer squirm with discomfort. It is just a disgusting movie, but not in a funny and well crafted way such as American Pie (1999), its sequel (2001), or Road Trip (2000), just plain gross in general. Second, the film gives a very clear message that the only reason a guy would ever talk to a girl is so that he could have sex with her, and soon hopefully. Also, Erica is disappointed about not having sex with Matt on the first date, which “sucks,” according to her. The filmmakers seem to believe that men and women are not interested in each other for their personalities or because the other person is fun and interesting, but instead just so they can both get down and dirty. Ultimately, though, who really cares whether or not Matt can go 40 days without sex?
*
Ok, no copying any of those reviews, that's copyrighted material ;) Haha.
This will give you some idea how I compare to the critics of USA Today lately (in fact, I am almost exactly at the same overall star rating lately, it's stunning!). The first rating will be mine, second is USA Today's.
Snow Dogs: 1.5 / 1.5
Collateral Damage: 3 / 2
Big Fat Liar: 1 / 2
Crossroads: 0 / 1.5
Dragonfly: 2.5 / 2
Hart's War: 2.5/ 2
John Q: 2.5 / 2.5
Queen of the Damned: 2.5 / 2
Super Troopers: 1 / 1
We Were Soldiers: 2.5 / 3
40 Days and 40 Nights: 1 / 2.5
Overall: 20 / 22
So I'm actually rating lower than the critics there, haha, but if you add in The Count of Monte Cristo, which I gave 4 stars (because it WAS 4 stars, the USA Today critic was smoking weed that day), but USA Today gave 2.5, then it's pretty even.
Also, on Dragonfly and Hart's War, both films are much close to 2 stars than they are to 3, so USA Today pretty much agreed with what I said, I was just a tiny bit more generous. With Crossroads, I am sorry, but that movie just entirely sucked, they shouldn't have been so nice to give it 1.5. That is super generous.
Still, all of these bad movies are making me look like a real hardass critic when really I'm not that difficult to please. Of course, I love great filmmaking, but critics don't seem to appreciate too many films that are obviously quite good, like a critic giving Remember the Titans less than 3.5 stars is stupid. I thought it was nearly perfect, a definite four star film, but some of the critics gave it 2.5 and 3 as if it were just barely better than average! Oh no, oh no, hehe, I have seen plenty of movies to know what is average and what is only slightly above average, Remember the Titans and Count of Monte Cristo are a few of the best 100 films ever made, not mere 2.5 star films damnit! That being said, I understand why critics give so many lousy reviews because if you see everything, you see a lot of lousy movies.
The difference is that I generally like mainstream movies significantly more than critics and art house movies significantly less (or WAY less), so the fact that I'm even handing out lousy reviews to these Hollywood releases is pretty telling. Then Amelie really blew chunks, yet critics liked it, so lately I'm one of the harsher critics around I guess :\
Jonathan L. Bowen
We Were Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson as Lt. General Hal Moore, was also based on the book that Moore wrote, which was published in 1992. Randall Wallace, who previously wrote Braveheart (1995), also wrote the film version of We Were Soldiers and directed it. The film focuses on an isolated incident in the Vietnam War where United States soldiers were outnumbered 5 to 1 and surrounded by enemy forces in South Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Backed by heavy artillery, helicopters, and bombers, an outnumbered group of men had to survive days in extremely hostile territory. In 1965, as the trailer for the film states, we were husbands and we were fathers, but in Vietnam, we were soldiers.
We Were Soldiers perhaps suffers the most because of its close proximity to Black Hawk Down (2001); the comparisons really cannot be avoided. Both films focus on United States missions that are controversial in their purpose and cost the country many deaths that should have been avoided. Both films also concentrate mainly on a short period of time, only one day in the case of Black Hawk Down and only several days for We Were Soldiers. Ridley Scott’s film about the conflict in Somalia, though, is simply far superior in every way to We Were Soldiers, which is not by any means a poorly made movie, but it certainly lacks the style and tension of Black Hawk Down.
While many people complained that Black Hawk Down did not set the context for the battle too well, We Were Soldiers fails to explain the importance of the battle it focuses on whatsoever. Only through reading external material can one learn that the outcome influenced U.S. policy for the next decade and was a very significant conflict in the war. Needless to say, the film also cannot compete with the older, but still masterful Vietnam film Apocalypse Now (1979).
We Were Soldiers starts with several fairly corny scenes and quite shaky dialogue too, but it moves into the action fairly quickly. While the script is not impressive whatsoever as a whole, a few excellent lines still abound, which mostly come from Sergeant Major Basil Plumley (Sam Elliot). Once the men enter combat, the actual fighting is quite impressive and captures the “war is hell” feeling quite well. The inclusion of many scenes with the wives of soldiers, including Keri Russell and Madeleine Stowe (Moore’s wife), are not effective at all and really interfere with the tension that the director could have built with the battle. Attempts to make the family scenes emotionally compelling fall flat. Nevertheless, the final battle to seize the high ground and win a key victory for the United States is compelling and downright awesome in parts, but not enough to make up for a rather plodding film. At two hours and fifteen minutes, the movie is a bit too long. With better directing and tighter editing, it could have been a quite an impressive film.
**1/2
40 Days and 40 Nights
Jonathan L. Bowen
Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett) is having trouble getting over his old girlfriend, Nicole, who he broke up with six months earlier. Whenever he has sex with other girls, which is just about every night, he has weird visions of the ceiling cracking and a black hole opening to swallow him, or something like that. Although everyone thinks he cannot control his urges, he takes a vow for Lent: no sex, no self-gratification, no kissing or anything else for 40 days and 40 nights. Barely after he starts his celibacy, though, he meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) while doing his laundry and begins to feel a special “connection” with her. Can he make it without doing anything sexual for 40 days and 40 nights?
After the horrible trailer for 40 Days and 40 Nights, only critics have an excuse to see such an awful film; everyone else should have taken the warning signs and stayed away. The film’s concept is not interesting, not compelling, not even funny, just unbelievably stupid, much like the entire movie. Hartnett really should stick to war movies and Sossamon was wonderful in A Knight’s Tale, but her talents are mostly wasted in 40 Days and 40 Nights. Not to say any of the acting is bad because acting is the least of the film’s problems.
40 Days and 40 Nights is insulting to the intelligence of any moviegoer. For one, seeing the movie with a friend of the same gender will still make the average person uncomfortable, but seeing it with a date or a friend of the opposite gender will make the average moviegoer squirm with discomfort. It is just a disgusting movie, but not in a funny and well crafted way such as American Pie (1999), its sequel (2001), or Road Trip (2000), just plain gross in general. Second, the film gives a very clear message that the only reason a guy would ever talk to a girl is so that he could have sex with her, and soon hopefully. Also, Erica is disappointed about not having sex with Matt on the first date, which “sucks,” according to her. The filmmakers seem to believe that men and women are not interested in each other for their personalities or because the other person is fun and interesting, but instead just so they can both get down and dirty. Ultimately, though, who really cares whether or not Matt can go 40 days without sex?
*
Ok, no copying any of those reviews, that's copyrighted material ;) Haha.
This will give you some idea how I compare to the critics of USA Today lately (in fact, I am almost exactly at the same overall star rating lately, it's stunning!). The first rating will be mine, second is USA Today's.
Snow Dogs: 1.5 / 1.5
Collateral Damage: 3 / 2
Big Fat Liar: 1 / 2
Crossroads: 0 / 1.5
Dragonfly: 2.5 / 2
Hart's War: 2.5/ 2
John Q: 2.5 / 2.5
Queen of the Damned: 2.5 / 2
Super Troopers: 1 / 1
We Were Soldiers: 2.5 / 3
40 Days and 40 Nights: 1 / 2.5
Overall: 20 / 22
So I'm actually rating lower than the critics there, haha, but if you add in The Count of Monte Cristo, which I gave 4 stars (because it WAS 4 stars, the USA Today critic was smoking weed that day), but USA Today gave 2.5, then it's pretty even.
Also, on Dragonfly and Hart's War, both films are much close to 2 stars than they are to 3, so USA Today pretty much agreed with what I said, I was just a tiny bit more generous. With Crossroads, I am sorry, but that movie just entirely sucked, they shouldn't have been so nice to give it 1.5. That is super generous.
Still, all of these bad movies are making me look like a real hardass critic when really I'm not that difficult to please. Of course, I love great filmmaking, but critics don't seem to appreciate too many films that are obviously quite good, like a critic giving Remember the Titans less than 3.5 stars is stupid. I thought it was nearly perfect, a definite four star film, but some of the critics gave it 2.5 and 3 as if it were just barely better than average! Oh no, oh no, hehe, I have seen plenty of movies to know what is average and what is only slightly above average, Remember the Titans and Count of Monte Cristo are a few of the best 100 films ever made, not mere 2.5 star films damnit! That being said, I understand why critics give so many lousy reviews because if you see everything, you see a lot of lousy movies.
The difference is that I generally like mainstream movies significantly more than critics and art house movies significantly less (or WAY less), so the fact that I'm even handing out lousy reviews to these Hollywood releases is pretty telling. Then Amelie really blew chunks, yet critics liked it, so lately I'm one of the harsher critics around I guess :\