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The Fog of War – nf  – We had always wanted to see this 2003 Documentary about former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It won an Oscar and is directed by Errol Morris who used a special technique (Michael learned about it during a documentary about documentaries) where McNamara talks to the interviewer while looking at a monitor directly under the camera that is filming him so he speaks directly into the camera. McNamara was 85 at the time of the filming and is intent on giving the story of lessons learned through his experience with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Viet Nam War (about which we were most curious) as well as during his time as head of Ford and later the World Bank. The film was interesting, held our attention, made McNamara more likeable than we expected and showed him acknowledging he made mistakes. However at the conclusion we still didn’t really understand exactly where he felt he went wrong in Viet Nam or where he substantially disagreed with Lyndon Johnson. Political junkies will want to see this especially if you lived through this period of time. 2003

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Red Cliff – sp- If Steven Spiegelberg were to decide to make a blockbuster movie about the US North-South Civil war and the Battle of Gettysburg most Americans would probably be quite familiar with the various leaders and generals. Even more so apparently are the Chinese and the people of other Asian countries knowledgeable about the cast of characters who took part in the great battles as the armies of the north tried to conquer those of the southern China, leading to the battle at Red Cliff, which took place about eighteen hundred years ago. Director John Woo felt that this was so much the case that he needed to make two versions of this movie, one for non Asian world with more background material and a two part film with even more details of the actual events for the Chinese and others who are familiar with the historical events.

The 2 ½ hour movie which we saw has a brief English narration at the beginning and then is in Mandarin with English subtitles which you soon forget are present. It shows the personal and political decision of the northern dynasty to send it’s huge army which probably numbered in the hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the south to squash the smaller southern coalition. A great deal of the movie consists of battle scenes on the ground and between naval forces. At first we had the impression we were watching a Chuck Norris or Jackie Chen movie that we would only have seen in coming attractions, with bodies whirling through air, swords and spears impaling soldiers, blood squirting out of the period armor, catching spears in mid-flight, horses rearing up, thousand of arrows flying through sky and all sorts of acrobatics. People are being killed everywhere except the main characters who seem to be able to leap between thrusts of opposing soldiers. Then after awhile we realized that in fact we were watching a classic operatic story and ballet in a beautiful setting. John Woo told our film course that he used 1500 hundred Chinese soldiers in the movie and made them look like many times that number of warriors by computer generated editing techniques that he also used to enhance the magnificent appearing background. The movie also vividly shows the brilliant military strategies that were used by the outnumbered army including clever troop formations, innovative weaponry and an exquisite understanding of the forces of nature. Woo also chose to create a story line that was not in the known history of these events that involves the role of some very brave, strong and attractive women.
In the end it is a beautiful, poetic epic movie with an antiwar theme but yet pays homage to the value of people working together for a just cause even against daunting odds. This film has a cast of thousands, used 24 cameras and took 4 1/2 years to make. It obviously cost multi millions of dollars to produce which came from many countries including the Chinese government. We can’t see how it will miss being a tremendous hit in the Asian world and is bound to have a great following in the US. Anyone seeing this movie should be sure to not miss the closing credits, which includes some very moving verse. (2009)

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Waltz with Bashir – nf – We had never seen an animated documentary before but that is the essence of this movie. It won many film festival awards as well as a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and an Academy Award nomination in this category. Israeli Director Ari Folman set out to fill in the gaps in his memory concerning his experience in the Israeli army during the first war in Lebanon in the 1980s. He does this by interviewing soldiers who served with him at that time, some of whom he hasn’t seen in more than twenty years, plus others who went through this experience, whom he recruits by newspaper advertisements. In most cases he uses their recorded voices in the film but his team has a done a brilliant job developing techniques for depicting the story in cartoon animation which is based mostly on scenes recreated in a studio. The result is a realistic dramatic account of what was a very traumatic experience as this 19-year-old man went through the war and witnessed frightening horrible things. This presumably is why he has these memory gaps and why some of the narrators up until now have had difficulty in saying what they had seen. The key event is the massacre at Sabria and Shatila where the Christian Phalangists murdered Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. This group was a Lebanese political faction allied with the Israeli army who are shown stationed on the periphery of this area but voicing objections once they realized what was happening. The more you understand the history and the politics of this time the better you can appreciate the movie. However, the anti war theme is loud and clear and is punctuated by the massacre scene transitioning into actual newsreel footage of the aftermath of this horrific event. (2008)

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The Messenger – sp – When you have a good script dealing with a storyline of families being informed by two military guys that their loved ones have been killed in action and you bring in top notch actors, you have the formula for a great movie. Co-writer and first time director Oren Moverman who has some background in the Israeli army captured the drama and emotion of death notification of the Iraqi/Afghanistan War. Ben Foster delivers an exquisitely sensitive performance playing Will Montgomery a young battle scarred veteran who is assigned the last 3 months of his military rotation to work stateside with Captain Tony Stone very capably inhabited by Woody Harrelson. The Captain knows the routine for these heart-wrenching visits with family members and has almost insulated himself from his feelings about what he is doing. Pain appears to drip from every pore as we watch them go on their appointed tasks. Samantha Morton is also outstanding in her role as Olivia Pitterson one of the wives who receives the dreaded news. The well-written script allows the story of each character to unfold, as the young sergeant becomes a buddy with the crusty Captain as well as becoming very understanding and close with the young widow. Steve Buscemi is also unforgettable in his role as a dad getting the news about his soldier son. Woody Harrelson was a guest at our screening and revealed that the director did not have the actors rehearse the notifications scenes, which appeared to intensify the spontaneity and rawness of them. This was counterbalanced in our opinion by a few unnecessarily drawn-out scenes where Harrelson and Foster’s characters were establishing their bonding by drinking in a hideaway cabin in the woods with two girls or visiting the sergeant’s old girl friend at her engagement party. Nevertheless we believe this film will stand as one of defining depictions of the war that we are in today. (2009)

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The Men Who Stare At Goats – sp – This is a comedy, or more specifically, a farce that is trying to make fun of the US Army for some ventures that they made into exploring the use of new age techniques and the potential of the application of the paranormal for fighting the enemy. The story is loosely based on book by Jon Ronson published in 2004 where he described the ideas of Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon who served in Vietnam War and in the late 1970s proposed the formation of the First Earth Battalion. He produced a 125-page manual of drawings, graphs, maps, polemical essays and point by point redesigns of every aspect of military life. Movie producer Paul Lister who was the guest at our film course told us that the actual manual was shown in the movie. In that manual it was proposed that rather than using bullets and munitions, a new force would attempt to first win the hearts and minds of the enemy by doing such things as using positive vibrations, carrying “symbolic animals” of peace—such as baby lambs—into hostile countries, greeting people with “sparkly eyes.” There was a bit in the movie where the character played by George Clooney tries to flash his eyes to bring about this effect. The overall storyline is that a recently divorced, unhappy newspaper reporter played by Ewan McGregor goes to Iraq to find a good story and meets

Clooney who tells how he is a former Jedi of the above group and is reactivated for a new mission. You add Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges to the mix with this premise and you get some good delivery of comedic situations, which brought about some loud laughs in the movie theater. There are attempts at “remote viewing” walking through walls, killing goats by starring at them etc. They also brought in the idea of giving LSD to people without them knowing it, which the US and the CIA are known to have actually done about 50 years ago. A real film clip shown in the movie of a news report of Iraqi prisoners continually being subjected to bothersome music to break them down to get information. Thus the film seems to also be attempting to satirize recent US actions with prisoners as well as the earlier time when the Earth Battalion was being proposed. Technically speaking, they are also confusing psychological warfare with paranormal or new age warfare. But after all, it is a comedy albeit it somewhat slapstick. In the end the movie goes nowhere. The targets of the satire are nebulous. It was fluffy without any real depth. (2009)

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In the Valley of Elah – nf – This is a story based on an incident, which actually happened during the current Iraq war. It follows the story of the grieving father played extremely well by Tommy Lee Jones as he seeks to find out what really happened to his soldier son. You might say this is an excellent detective story but it is also an expose of the morality of the war and the psychological damage that it has inflicted on so many soldiers. There were wonderful supporting roles by Charliez Theron and Susan Sarandon. Several of the young actors who played soldiers were actually combat veterans, which added to the depicted realism. 2007