"War Horse"
Richard's Review: 3 stars
"War Horse" is one part "Saving Private Ryan," one part "ET" and all Spielberg. Pulling its inspiration from both a children's novel set during World War I and the 2007 stage adaptation of the same name, it is the kind of movie that used to win Best Picture awards.
It's handsome, well crafted and emotional, but also old-fashioned and a bit too traditional for its own good.
Newcomer Jeremy Irvine stars as Albert Narracott, the son of Ted (Peter Mullen), a poor but proud Devon farmer. In the months before the outbreak of World War I Ted gets caught up in auction fever and wildly overpays for a thoroughbred horse in the local village.
The horse, named Joey, is a beauty, but Ted needed a workhorse not a purebred. His son Albert, however, bonds with the horse and rains him to plough fields and earn his keep. When war is declared the horse is recruited into the cavalry as an officer's official ride.
Heartbroken, Albert vows he will be reunited with Joey at the end of the war. In the coming years the horse changes hands several times, passing from the British to German armies, to a French farmer and his granddaughter, before winding up, alone, in No Man's Land.
He's the little horse who could… could save the family farm, fight a war, bridge the gap between enemies, but most of all, survive.
"War Horse" is an old-fashioned, inspirational horse movie, fueled by big emotional moments and Joey's even bigger soulful eyes.
Combining epic, realistic battle scenes with smaller emotive moments Spielberg has made a traditional feeling film that nonetheless feels uneven. For every scene that really works, like shooting part of one sequence through a reflection in the horse's eye, there are two others that feel unnecessary.
It's frustrating because the things that work are spectacular. Spielberg has an unerring eye when it comes to shot composition and he knows how to suck every drop of emotion out of a scene. Few moments on film this year are as effective as Joey's entrance into the No Man's Land between the German and English trenches.
Wrapped in barbed wire, writhing and snorting, it's magnificent in its tortured beauty (although horse lovers may find it hard to watch). But for all its highlights the first twenty minutes drag, Irvine has almost negative charisma and the end is coated in an almost sick-making thick layer of Spielbergian sugar.
"War Horse" is a beautiful looking film, handsome in both its craft and intention, but runs out of racetrack because of too many moments of unearned emotion.
"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
If there is one movie this year that should be a guaranteed tearjerker, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," should be it. It has all the elements to make eyes water -- a trailer that hits all the right emotional notes, a sad-eyed child protagonist, a dead father and to top it all off, 9/11. Whether the water works are turned on or off will likely only depend on whether you are made of stone or not.
Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the movie explores the horror of 9/11 through the eyes of a gifted 10-year-old named Oskar (Thomas Horn). His father (Tom Hanks) was killed in the attack, leaving behind Oskar, his mother (Sandra Bullock) and grandmother (Zoe Caldwell) who lives in the brownstone next door.
A year after the "worst day" Oskar finds a blue vase containing an envelope simply marked "Black" and a key. Thinking the key must unlock something special -- a message from his father perhaps -- he embarks on a well organized, if somewhat daunting mission to find out what the key opens.
"Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is a 9/11 movie that isn't about ideology but the human cost of ideology. There's no talk of Osama Bin laden or al-Qaeda, instead it is about a young boy's search to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. His search isn't for answers as to why 9/11 happened, but rather to keep a connection to his father alive.
Horn does much of the heavy lifting here, carrying the movie while veterans Hanks, Bullock and Max Von Sydow watch from afar. In most scenes he is supremely effective, his doe eyes conveying the pain, hurt and confusion that comes along with great loss. Only occasionally does he fall into precious kid actor territory.
It's a tough character, an old-beyond-his-years boy, who may or may not have Asperger's Syndrome. He's smart but awkward and Horn usually finds the balance, but every now and again the character becomes all quirk. Are we meant to believe Oskar would have a WWII gas mask on him in preparation for his first subway ride? In moments like that we're taken out of the story as Oskar becomes a more a vessel for some of director's Stephen Daltry's quirky character ideas.
His strongest scenes are the most emotional. A long conversation late in the movie with his mom is a show-stopper. His reaction when he figures out why his father has left so many phone messages on 9/11 is heartfelt and tragic. Like asking to kiss the first woman he goes to see on his journey. The movie gets it right in those tender moments.
Hanks is barely in the movie, seemingly cast because of the goodwill he naturally inspires in audiences. The film needs a lovable dad who is largely absent through the story and Hanks fits the bill. Bullock is given more to do and her every-woman appeal brings great empathy to the mother's character.
Von Sydow is brilliant in a character whose presence is completely unnecessary to the success of the film. He doesn't forward the action or add much overall, but he's such a joy to watch I'm really glad he's there.
On a tear-jerker scale of one to ten this young boy's discovery that his connection with his dead father will be a metaphysical one rather than a physical one, is a seven. A bit over long, with a drawn out ending, but a few moments guaranteed to trigger the water works.
"The Darkest Hour"
Richard's Review: 1 1/2 stars
Slipped into theatres with little fanfare on Christmas Day, "The Darkest Hour" is a holiday gift even less welcome than Aunt Edith's stale fruitcake.
Before the bleak time referred to in the title, Ben and Sean (Max Minghella and Emile Hirsch) arrive in Moscow, get screwed in a major business deal, and meet some hotties (Olivia Thirlby and Rachael Taylor) in a bar. Just as things are getting cozy with their new friends the lights go dim. In another kind of movie that would mean a start to some hot and heavy romance but the only sparks that fly here are from the evil aliens who have invaded earth and use electrical impulses to disintegrate the puny humans in their path.
The new friends band together to fight against the ETs, collecting a ragtag bunch of high wattage commandoes and hangers-on to form an Electrical Resistance Army to stand against the creatures.
The Darkest Hour" could easily have been titled "The Dorkiest Hour" as it contains every nerd cliche from almost every sci fi film ever made. There's the obvious "Red Shirt" character, doomed to die with only a few lines of dialogue under his belt. The other characters aren't exactly blessed with great dialogue. An endless stream of cliches -- "We can't be the only ones left!" -- all have a been-there-heard-that feel. Then there's the human dustification annihilation scenes lifted from "War of the Worlds," and the eerily empty city streets borrowed from "I Am Legend" and "28 Days Later," are just a couple of the movie homages that make up this science fiction pastiche.
The entire thing plays out like a cut and paste job. Still, cut and paste jobs are nothing new in movies and even the most cliche film can be rescued if it has compelling characters.
Unfortunately "The Darkest Hour" falls down on that score as well. I'm sure they all have character names but they're so uninteresting they may as well be called Generic Girl Number 1 or Unexpected Hero with an Attitude.
Quick! Somebody call Central Casting! Some of their stock characters have escaped their cages! "The Darkest Hour" almost lives up to its name. It's a dark, dull way to spend, not hours, but ninety minutes.
