The Artist
I was hesitant to see this, as it seemed kind of gimmicky and I am a big fan of dialogue. But I thought if I was going to see it, I should go ahead and do so in a theater, as a silent movie would have a much smaller chance of pleasing me and holding my attention on a TV.
It was good/solid, but my reservations were justified.It jsut didn't work for me much less enamor me like many reviewers who seemed to fall under its spell. I'm glad they loved it and its the type of innovative cinema I like to see produced, but it left me kind of ho-hum.
3/5 stars, more out of respect than enjoyment
The feeling I get from the couple reviews I've seen on it is that it is a cutesy movie that brings up people's nostalgia for classic movies, but doesn't bring anything different to the table. In other words, the exact type of movie that pulls on the Academy's heartstrings.
From the trailers I've seen I fully expect this and Warhorse to battle it out for the Oscar this year.
Despite checking this thread pretty much daily, Ive gotten lazy with my reviews and havent done one in maybe 2 months. I'll try to catch up, but I did see War Horse so...
War Horse....So a Spielberg-directed film set in WWI Europe has got to be good, right? Wrong. If you are a 10-14 year old boy you will probably love this movie, if not, there are very few reasons I could recommend seeing it. It starts out slow about a struggling family trying to keep their farm, alongside headscratching actions and over the top dialogue, that is only saved by some nice acting from Peter Mullan. In retrospect, this was probably the strongest portion of the film somehow. After this half hour or so start where the bond between horse and boy is formed, the war starts and the horse is sold to a British Army officer and from there, it is basically about the horse bouncing around Europe during the war from pseudo-owner to the next. The horse is never in one place long enough to provide any connection to the human characters, and that felt like a blatant error to me and made it hard to stay interested in the movie. The middle 60-90 minutes is somehow just as slow as the beginning, except with no character development, and surprisingly little action. When the battle scenes did come late, I found them frantic, poorly shot, and not all that suspenseful. Considering this is a Spielberg movie, that may have been the most surprising disappointment of War Horse. After this, the horse somehow is granted miracle after miracle in a storyline that one would expect in an animated Disney movie, although I did still think it achieved some emotional impact late, as unbelievable as the circumstances may have been. That said, overall this is a movie that provides subpar acting, a wandering storyline, battle action as satisfying as an appetizer at Applebee's, and leaves little for the viewer to really enjoy. This felt like a made for TV movie that was about an hour too long in it's near pointless 2nd Act.....
1.5/5