Screenhead

I have to admit, some of the most interesting movies I get copies of to review are the documentaries.  Strange little pieces about strange little things, like the entire career of H.P. Lovecraft.  And today, I’m bringing out a documentary of the kind the History Channel would probably love–War Dogs of the Pacific.

They mean it literally, you see–War Dogs of the Pacific is all about the dogs who fought in the Pacific theater in World War II.   They were trained pretty extensively, and they served a whole host of roles in the war, including guard duty, ferreting out enemy positions, sensing enemy movement, and even outright combat. See, back in the last days of World War II, the Pacific was about the only game in town left.  And the Japanese had developed an especial talent for hiding and attacking from ambush, so the idea came to use dogs to track hiding places.  And boy, did it ever work.

This movie is spectacularly informative, and will almost certainly tell you at least something new about World War II and about the role that dogs played in this war.  It’s a downright amazing role, too–considering that people back then handed over their pet dogs to serve in the war, in some cases for good,  is just plain old amazing.

Of course, getting past the sheer awesomeness of the idea, you’re left with a pretty good if somewhat short documentary–this has a runtime of about forty five minutes.  But it’s a pretty sweet forty five minutes, especially if you love documentaries or war movies.

The Screenhead Ten Scale loves this movie, but it realizes its tastes are a little unique, and thus hands War Dogs of the Pacific an eight out of ten for giving us all an excellent, if esoteric, view of World War II.

All right, folks, we’ve got a real doozy to take a look at today, an actual genuine honest to goodness WAR PICTURE from the folks at MTI.

If you’re worried right now, you’re not alone.  MTI has, as I’ve said in the past, always been a feast or famine sort of studio.  When they’re good they can do amazing things, but when they’re bad, they outright suck.  Always the question with an MTI movie will be, is this going to be great, or will it be horrible?

Today’s choice, Brother’s War, proves to be mostly horrible.

Based on a true story, Brother’s War features a British solider attached to the Red Army who discovers that the Russians have been committing war crimes against the Polish government-in-exile.  Naturally, the Russians don’t want this getting around, so Stalin’s intelligence service, feared throughout the Soviet Union,  is dispatched to capture the British soldier.  Naturally, they catch him, and lock him up with a German captain.  The Brit and the German both share something important, however–they’re both Freemasons.  When they escape, along with a nurse named Anna, they’re pursued by the Russians, in desperate hope of extinguishing the secret that the three now carry with them that could irrevocably alter the world.

So no, these are not actual brothers you’ll be hearing about, but rather the figurative brotherhood of Freemasonry.  Say what you will about them–and pretty much everything that can be said has been said–they consider themselves (or at least these two do) to be as thoroughly brothers as any blood relative.

It’s hard to call a movie with regular amounts of gunfire and explosions boring, but somehow, Brother’s War manages to be exactly that.  The tension created by the suspenseful scenes was minimal at best, and the action sequences fell flat due to a lack of coherence.  The scenes in the Russian prison suffer from a horrendous excess of acting, though sadly, not acting SKILL.  Watching the German escape was particularly sad as the interrogator managed to go down just by the German swinging his fist in front of him.  I know, it’s supposed to be a punch, but it definitely didn’t look like one.  It’s as though someone forgot to include basic stage combat courses in the curriculum for these actors. And the escapes aren’t that much better, really–the whole thing comes off as lacking.

Frankly, there wasn’t much exciting going on here.  And that’s a particular insult if this is actually based on a true story, because I’m pretty sure the ACTUAL affair was vastly more exciting and vastly more terrifying than this sad little wreck was.

About the only high point of this misery was the background music.  They really went all out with the strange Russian psuedo-hymns–you ever heard the Red Army Choir sing the national anthem?  That’s the kind of thing I’m hearing on this one.  It’s got a weird kind of eerie grace to it, and that’s what you’ll be hearing in the background throughout Brother’s War, should you actually decide to subject yourself to it.  Though I will admit that the second half is somewhat better than the first, it, much like war itself, isn’t really worth what you had to go through to get there.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Brother’s War a three out of ten for being only an occasional auditory pleasure, and failing to remember that it’s supposed to be a movie rather than a soundtrack.

Before you start wondering how I get incredible access to all the very latest movies that haven’t even come out yet, you should pay close attention to one thing–the spelling of the above title.  This is not Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”, this is the ORIGINAL “Inglorious Bastards”, from 1978.

Yes, the guys at Severin Films have jammed a very large straight pin in the massive gas sack that is Quentin Tarantino’s ego and sent it whizzing all around the room by presenting, clearly, the fact that Tarantino’s version is really a remake, though as we’ll discover, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This version, the ORIGINAL version, revolves around a group of criminals who would receive the death sentence in a World War II Allied prison camp, but instead break out, with the plan to shoot their way into Switzerland, but instead find themselves neck-deep in a suicide mission.

After only about ten minutes in, I was positively enamored with this movie.  Sure, a war movie is generally at least kind of good–there aren’t that many BAD war movies, though they do exist–but this one is a class all by itself.  There’s plenty of action, and more than enough comedy to go around.  These guys are flat-out great; they may have been examples of the very worst the army had to offer, but they really knew how to get a job done.  They’ve got thieves and killers and compulsive gamblers, but when it comes time to do a job, they really know how to get it done.

Even better, there will be a variety of adventures for our inglorious bastards to slog their way through, and they will approach them all with a style all their own.  It’s downright amazing what these guys are going to get into, and it’s actually even more amazing how they get out of it.  More than once I found myself grinning, chuckling, and muttering at my TV, “Those magnificent, inglorious bastards”.

I think they saw me coming when they titled this thing.  I really do.

Despite the fact that this movie is over thirty years old, it’s aged well.  Clearly some remastering has been done in the DVD translation, but the effects aren’t half bad, the props are downright authentic and the set designs and background are top-notch and absolutely realistic.

In fact, I’m hard pressed to say anything BAD about this movie.  Believe me, I’ve gone over this with a fine-tooth comb and I’m having a hard time finding anything wrong.  Oh, sure, by TODAY’S standards, the whole thing’s somewhat lesser-grade, and maybe it was a good idea for Tarantino to go and slap a fresh coat of paint on this one with some modern, updated effects tech and some more explosions.  A potato-masher grenade explosion really shouldn’t look like a gust of compressed air firing up from the ground.

Despite this, there’s absolutely no way such a thing will ever get in the way of you enjoying this movie.  If you have even the vaguest enjoyment of war movies, then you’re going to go nuts over this one.

Inglorious Bastards is a fantastic war movie that aged well over the years, and is more than deserving of a remake that I personally have high hopes for.  And around here, it’s SO good that it’s going to get a clean ten out of ten.  There’s just nothing wrong with it worth noticing.

Tom Cruise is a crazy, scary man.  If you read the tabloids long enough you’ll find scads of stories about him, his sheer lunacy, and the sheer lunacy that applies to his dealings with Scientology.  But one thing is true…he’s a pretty good actor. And when you run to the video store and grab a copy of Valkyrie, well, you’ll probably notice that yourself.

In Valkyrie, we’re introduced to a huge and incredibly convoluted plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler by elements within his own army.  The best part is, much of this actually happened.  Klaus von Stauffenberg (a real person, here played by Tom Cruise) is part of the military arm of the attempt to kill Hitler, using his own plans against him.  See, Hitler had a plan just in case someone should turn against him called Operation Valkyrie, in which a reserve contingent of the German army, dubbed the Reserve Army, was kept around Berlin in the event of an uprising to suppress civil insurrection.  So Stauffenberg and his contingent feign an uprising…on the part of Hitler’s own SS.  This allows them to enact Operation Valkyrie to seize the SS, and with both the Reserve Army and the SS removed from the equation, the path becomes clear to seize Hitler’s government.

The most amazing part of this entire exercise is that this actually happened, and essentially came within a gnat’s whisker of actually succeeding, which would have brought the war to an end quite a bit sooner than it actually did.  Frankly, with stuff like this going on, it’s a wonder Hitler’s regime managed to last as long as it did.  Watching this epic story of love of country and betrayal play out is downright amazing—even more so when you consider that Hitler would commit suicide just nine months after the events of Valkyrie.  It’s as though something was conceived that day that would be born as real as any man.

History aside, however, this is actually a very riveting movie, made doubly so by the fact that it has an unusually long runtime of a full two hours, in an era where eighty to ninety minutes is standard operating procedure.  It’s a stunning, deep and rich epic that makes its viewer sit up and take notice.  While most of us who haven’t studied World War II history extensively may not have known about Operation Valkyrie or the other fourteen assassination attempts on Hitler, this one carries an authenticity to it that makes it especially good.  These were men so concerned about the direction of their country that they were willing to surrender their status and their very lives to bring about its downfall and rebirth.

And though the Stauffenberg heirs didn’t personally care for Cruise’s portrayal of him, I confess that I liked it just fine.  If Tom Cruise would lay off the lunacy and do more acting like this, more people would take him much, MUCH, more seriously.

But that aside, Valkyrie is a great thriller / suspense title  and deserves your dollars and your time to watch.  It’s downright inspiring in its portrayal of resistance to a madman, and it looks as beautiful as the plot itself is deep.

I have to admit, when I finally managed to lay hands on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I really wasn’t all that sure what to expect from it.  Of course, the plot was obvious enough…everyone had been talking about it since its Oscar bid.  But what I found when I watched it was unusual enough to make it worth talking about.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is about life in its most primal form, reversed—for most, life can only be lived forwards and understood backwards.  But for Benjamin Button, it’s lived backwards, and strangely, understood forwards.  Born in his eighties due to a bizarre condition that ages him in reverse, we follow Benjamin Button throughout his life, his loves, and his own inevitable end.

It’s a strange movie, this one—similar to titles like Forrest Gump, focusing on the unusual life of an unusual person, it’s a deep and rich epic with lots of stories to tell, both heartwarming and horrifying in their ways.  It’s told from the perspective of a woman dying in a hospital, her granddaughter reading the diary of the man that meant so much to her over the years—specifically, Benjamin Button.  There’s so much to see here that it’s a lot like being with an elderly person.  It has all the stories of a lifetime.  Not all of them are interesting, and some of them are downright sad, but some of them are beautiful.

And that’s exactly what this movie is, almost three straight hours of stories.  Benjamin Button will find love, find loss, find war, find peace, find hope and charity and everything in between.  You’ve got to really want a movie like this, because a movie like this is an undertaking.  It’s a project.  You’ve got to block out nearly three hours if you want to see this one, and three hours is not easy to come by these days.

But if you put the three hours into it, what you’ll get is a story of shocking depth for Hollywood.  You’ll get great performances—those who said that this is some of Brad Pitt’s greatest work were not kidding—and you’ll get some beautiful images.  Even when Benjamin went to war, they managed to make it look beautiful in a way.

And as I grew to realize, fumbling along through this…this enormous brick edifice of a movie…I began to wonder, maybe this was too much.  Maybe there’s too much going on here.  Maybe it’s made itself downright inaccessible to just about everybody by requiring so much of its audience.  And in a way, I’m happy that they thought enough of me to subject me to this monster, knowing that I could take it or leave it, but if I wanted to take it, I would have to EARN it.

This movie questions my worth to be part of its audience.  After years of being underestimated by movies, it’s nice to be challenged so blatantly.  The only question that remains is, do you want to take them up on their challenge?  Do you want to sit through a three hour movie and watch beauty and loss and pain and joy and everything else that makes up one man’s life?  Do you want to care this much about one guy?  If you do, then go.  Go and get a copy of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  If not, well, there’s plenty else for you out there.  You can get two, most of three movies into that same place.  But none of them will be quite like what you could have had with Benjamin Button.

The Red Baron is one of the most famous guys to ever have flown a plane. You might have heard of him before but you’ll definitely remember him after you see the movie. Who was The Red Baron? Who killed him at the end? The movie doesn’t answer these questions as historians failed to do it so far. He was a great pilot but was he as good a person? Is the hero we see here an actual hero? Let’s not forget it was still a war and he did do his best and more to shot down 80 enemy fighters. He would have killed more if he had the chance.

The Red Baron is a movie you should consider watching. It has everything you’re looking for. There’s romance, action, excitement and a hero dies at the end. I have not ruined the ending for you. I couldn’t have since it’s based on actual events. You’ll have to watch it for the aerial display if you’re a plane lover. The dog fights are amazing but I would have expected more minutes to be dedicated to actual plane fighting.

Besides Matthias Schweighöfer who’s playing the Red Baron you’ll recognize Joseph Fiennes whom doesn’t need an introduction anymore and Lena Headey, the leading lady in The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yes, she’s John Conner’s mom. Still hot but not as dangerous in here.

I am sure you have heard the songs “Cisco Kid,” “Low Rider” and “The World is a Ghetto.”

On October 14, 2008, War will release three special commemorative packages, containing their greatest hits live in concert and will include a live DVD, a Blu-Ray DVD and a double CD. These three packages mark the band’s first live releases. 

Recorded at a sold-out performance at The Grove in Anaheim, California, in late December, 2007, the legendary band War has slated their first releases in 14 years, all three titled Greatest Hits Live, definitive sets that will ensure the band’s continuing status as part of the collective consciousness of American popular culture. 

War’s Greatest Hits Live packages are fully loaded with ammo, consisting of classic tracks and radio staples, just a few of which include “Spill the Wine,” “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” “All Day Music,” “Gypsy Man,” “Galaxy” and “Outlaw.”  A medley on the DVDs includes covers of “I Want To Take You Higher” and Junior Walker’s “Shotgun.”           

“The World Is A Ghetto,” which is also featured on these sets, was honored as the Pop Album of the Year in 1972 by “Billboard Magazine.” 

Their songs are heard in major motion pictures, including Lethal Weapon, Boogie Nights, Fridays and Gone in 60 Seconds, as well as on hit television shows that have included Beverly Hills 90210, My Name is Earl and The Simpsons.  Their songs are also featured on popular video games, such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Skate 2. 

International history was made when “Why Can’t We Be Friends” was played in space, as NASA beamed the track to Soviet cosmonauts and U.S. astronauts in 1975.

Just when you thought the tension had eased after the war of words between George Clooney and Charlton Heston, or Uwe Boll and everyone, the stage has been set for the battle between legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood, and legendary director Spike Lee.

It all started in Cannes this year, in which Spike Lee (who directed classics such as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X) was promoting the forthcoming WWII movie Miracle at St. Anna, concerning four African-American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in Italy. On the subject, Lee criticised Eastwood’s two war film Letters from Iwo Jima, and Flags of Our Fathers, for not representing any of the African-American soldiers who fought in the battle of Iwo Jima. “It was a conscious decision [by Eastwood] not to have any black people”.

Eastwood responded in an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian, and he was not a happy camper. Eastwood said that Flags of Our Fathers was about the men who raised the flag for that iconic picture and that ” [the African-American contingent] didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go, ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Eastwood’s last words on the subject were “A guy like him should shut his face”.

Them’s fighting words, and Lee promptly responded to ABC News: “the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation [.....] come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there”. Lee denied that he suggested that the true story of Flags of our Fathers should be rewritten to feature an African-American character, and “It’s just that there’s not one black in either film. And because I know my history, that’s why I made that observation.”

Personally, I think the situation has been blown out of porportion. Lee has a certain point in that there are no black actors to be seen in Flags (Letters from Iwo Jima is told from the Japanese side), but would their inclusion as essentially extras in the background have made much of a difference? Lee was really making a statement on Hollywood’s depictions of WWII as inaccurate, but to be honest, what does he expect? You can’t get much further from the truth than Hollywood films. Which is why it will be very interesting to see how Miracle at St. Anna fares when it is released in September.