The Final Take with Parker Mott

The unthinkable event: nuclear fallout in an innocent Kansas pastoral town in "The Day After" (1983).

“A nuclear family stands in the archway of an arcade emblazoned with symbols of Western culture, high and low, and watches three missiles arc over an idealised landscape.”
- Susan Boyd-Bowman, on the press poster of The Day After (1983)

Laughter in Dr. Strangelove comes from both fear and joy. The film’s entertainment value is paradoxical – we are amused by humanity’s pathetic, fallible efforts to overcome global destruction. With Dr. Strangelove, harmony and perfectibility in America no longer exists and Kubrick demonstrates this realization through a sort of nightmare comedy, a sub-genre where wit and woe coexist simultaneously in a hopeless struggle against the arrival of our doom. (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(111 minutes)

SEALs engage in an act of valor.

I’m not going to recommend Act of Valor, but that’s not to say I wasn’t entertained or, even sometimes, absorbed. In fact, you can expect a list of contradictions in this review, so I’m sorry. But how else to critique a film that opens with the murder of 300 innocent Filipino children in a terrorist attack and ends with a shot of a Navy SEAL surfing under an intertitle that commemorates the loss of American fighters? Seriously, are civilians that expendable? (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(127 minutes)

Control (Hurt) dismisses class in the "Circus" room in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy."

“This isn’t about soldiers in trenches anymore. We’re the frontrunners now,” asserts Oliver Lacon, who then casually takes his knife and butters his bread. It’s about the most truthful thing anyone utters in Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a thriller thrusted in a time – the 1970s – when the world’s pipes leaked of lies and deceits. Then, competing governments were stealing each other’s intel right under their tables. So, of course there must be a mole involved. And in that case, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy becomes one elaborate whodunit. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(145 minutes)

John Miller (Bale) trifles with Yu Mo (Ni Ni) in "The Flowers of War."

My heart goes thud to the thought of a story about the Nanking Massacre told through the eyes of a drunken American mortician. For one of the most anticipated films in China, would it have killed it to be about its people? This is sensitive subject matter, and it deserves more sensitive treatment. The Nanking Massacre took place over 6 weeks in 1937-38 and resulted in, arguably, about 300,000 Chinese casualties. For those who died, most were raped beforehand. It’s a huge stigma in Japanese and Chinese history, and there has been much debate over the gravity of it being a “massacre.” (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(146 minutes)

A firm bond between man and horse in "War Horse".

War Horse is a film that seems to have bypassed its story for the spectacle. But this is okay when in the nifty hands of Steven Spielberg. His new film is a proficient work of filmmaking passion, but not necessarily narrative. Based on the 1982 book by Michael Morpurgo and the 2007 stage play by Nick Stafford, War Horse is a faithful, perhaps overly earnest homage to classic Hollywood craft that pays every tribute to John Ford except the lasso. (continue reading…)

4 Stars out of 4
(171 minutes)

The fallen angels of C Company in The Thin Red Line.

The Thin Red Line is not a war movie. Instead of being a clear representation of World War 2 it takes place out of time in some exotic, unknown space in some sort of beautifully haunting reverie. Instead of showing soldiers fighting rigorously on the battlefield, it studies them and their thoughts that exist outside of the action. Well, this is not about soldiers but fallen angels. This is not about war is hell but that war is a passage through heaven on the way to hell. The film is majestic, with each frame being tarnished by the surrounding madness and chaos, descending upon the natural world. Okay, the surface of The Thin Red Line is a war movie but it exists at higher ground, about ideas instead of what it is like to pull the trigger. (continue reading…)

2 Stars out of 4
(103 minutes)

The rebellious Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) loses his moral innocence in Winter In Wartime.

A plane crashes to open Winter In Wartime, which acts as an apposite metaphor for the film itself. No it’s not terrible but completely unneeded in the impressive array of World War 2 films. The base of the story is a loss-of-innocence tale and that’s all you need to know, and will get. It’s beautiful to look at, painted with saturated whites manifesting the falling snow and the roaring winds. It’s glum while rather majestic, cold but fiercely elegant. (continue reading…)

3 Stars out of 4
(105 minutes)

A soldier is shellshocked after being shot in Armadillo.

If the timing of Armadillo’s release somewhat thwarts its impact, one can still expect to be shaken. Armadillo is a documentary about madness, in its purest and – granted – thoroughly explored form. Some have called it the Apocalypse Now of cinema verité and I could agree by adding a touch of The Hurt Locker and Jarhead. So Armadillo is a true-to-form and also very familiar war documentary about soldiers on their precarious duties abroad. It works but it’s nothing revolutionary. But what can it say? You can’t blame the film that everyone who has watched a war movie understands “war is hell.” (continue reading…)

2.5 Stars out of 4
(94 minutes)

The rabbit hole of the tank.

One of Hitchcock’s golden rules was once you (the camera) are in the vehicle, you remain in the vehicle. That’s the concept to Samuel Maoz’s Lebanon, a noble cinematic achievement that many perceive as the redolent The Hurt Locker. In various ways it is (it has no villains and not necessarily heroes and it never cares to explain its events that take place) – except in Lebanon, an unconventional take on the First Lebanese War in 1982, our sense of space is alienated and our fear is compacted.

Lebanon seems deadly real with its display, rarely cloys and delivers genuine shocks. Some will become vehemently fascinated by Lebanon, but at the same time, more so frustrated. Despite its close ups and impressionistic shots of water, sweat, and flowers, the film can act unexpectedly arid in which its message, or mere energy, is as oblique as its detached narrative. (continue reading…)