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Brad Pitt seems to be finding a bit of a new niche as a WW-II guy. Here as a Canadian pilot-turned British spy-pretending at start to be French. Cotillard is pretty good throughout, but I kind of would like to see the story told entirely from her perspective. As it is she really only gets to do some heavy acting right at the end. I also would be interested in a movie about the character of Pitt's sister, an a British officer openly living as a lesbian during the Blitz.
The Woman in Gold
Apr. 23rd, 2015 06:01 pmDespite the always excellent Helen Mirren and the generally good Ryan Reynolds, the non-WW2 portions of the movie feel a bit..emotionally flat. They definitely try and imbue the quest for reparations for stolen artwork with the Austrian government with a heavy meaning. But I didn't fully buy into the value and strain of the long legal battle...
The movie has an easier time getting a deeper emotional pull with the WW2 flashbacks. But then escape from the Nazis is an easier conflict to sell...
The movie has an easier time getting a deeper emotional pull with the WW2 flashbacks. But then escape from the Nazis is an easier conflict to sell...
The Imitation Game
Jan. 15th, 2015 05:24 pmBenedict Cumberbatch makes a really good Alan Turing. The movie mostly covers Turing and the others of the Betchly groups breaking of Germany's ENIGMA device. Framed as a flashback during Turing's post-war arrest for indency, aka getting caught being gay...
Sunday Trade: Light Brigade
Jul. 18th, 2010 08:04 pm
Light Brigade written by Peter J Tomasi, art by Peter Snejbjerg, colors by Bjarne Hansen, letters by Ken Lopez & Rob Leigh
Just your standard WW2 story where a group of U.S. infantry are recruited by the immortal Centurion Marcus Longinus to stop a fallen angel and his army of near immortal half-human offspring from igniting an archangels Wrathful Sword upon the ever-burning Cross of the Nazarene and using it to overthrow God. So you know, same old same old...
Plus its drawn by Snejbjerg who I've loved since way back when he was on Books of Magic. And here he gives Frank Quietly a run for the money in the ability to draw humans that have been shot to fuck and back...
But the main appeal here is the story again. Which is kind of Devil's Brigade meets Zulu meets Demon Knight. So you know, its chock full of awesome and plenty of scenes where Nazi's get shot...
Inglorious Basterds
Sep. 9th, 2009 10:37 pmThis Tarantino movie felt somewhat like it was written by Garth Ennis. Just without all the dick jokes. And thats not a knock on the movie, which is possibly Tarantino's best work. The trailers and ads are a bit deceptive, in that it doesn't truly focus on the Basterds. They're almost the B-story at times. And while it has plenty of moments of brutal violence, there tends to be a lot of slow builds to the action. But really an excellent movie...
This week's delayed (stupid packing) game is Godlike. A WW2-era supers game. From '36 onward "Talents" begin appearing around the world. Generally just as their country gets involved. The first U.S. Talent The Indestructible Man, for example, shows up Oct 31, 1941. And many of these Talents are hard-core. One of the Axis ones can rob your body of inertia if he touches you, hurling you off the planet. Theres an African Talent who turns people into fucking salt. And the combat system is pretty lethal as well. The sample character, a soldier who can turn into a gorilla, is machine gunned down landing at Normandy...
So for my character I'm making a 18-year old Jewish kid from Chicago. He enlists in the Marines at his first chance. A quick-tempered kid who wants to hit those Ratzi bastards. And one whose Talent manifests during boot camp at Paris Island...
Alfie "Bonfire" Wulfstein
Age: 18
Oldest of four
Godlike has six attributes, which can rank from 1 to 5. A five is the max human potential. Each starts with 1 point and you get 6 more to distribute. For Alfie I go with Body 2, Coordination 3, Sense 2, Brains 2, Command 1 and Cool 2. The secondary attribute Will is Command + Cool to start so he has a 3...
Next are skills. Each is linked to an attribute and the value in it can't be above the linked attribute. Alfie played baseball in high school, so I give him Athletics 2, Run 2 and Throw 2. He's also a bit of a scrapper so he has Brawl 2. From his limited military training he gets Pistol 1 and Rifle 3. His best sense is Sight at 2 and he speaks and reads a bit of Hebrew, Language 1. While not terribly good at it, he does know how to pick up women with Seduction 1. And lastly he can Lie and Bluff, both at 2...
Finally we have Talents. Those come in three varieties. Enhanced attributes, Enhanced skills and Miracles. Miracles are all the general super-hero stuff. As may be guessed by his nickname, Alfie will have fire powers. The number of points for buying Talents is set by the GM. 15 is for a low-powered game while 75 would be a high-end one. The book recomends generally going with 25 to start, so I used that...
I buy him the Talent package Harm to represent fire bolts. He has 3d in it, with the bonuses of Burn and Penetrating and the negative of Graphic, thats a cost of 15. The remainig 10 I use for 1d of Immunity vs. Fire with the bonus of Reflexive, meaning it can activate without him thinking about it...
So basically, Alfie is a living flamethrower. A young kid about to be thrown into the cauldron of death and to see what his Talent does to a living person for the first time...
So for my character I'm making a 18-year old Jewish kid from Chicago. He enlists in the Marines at his first chance. A quick-tempered kid who wants to hit those Ratzi bastards. And one whose Talent manifests during boot camp at Paris Island...
Alfie "Bonfire" Wulfstein
Age: 18
Oldest of four
Godlike has six attributes, which can rank from 1 to 5. A five is the max human potential. Each starts with 1 point and you get 6 more to distribute. For Alfie I go with Body 2, Coordination 3, Sense 2, Brains 2, Command 1 and Cool 2. The secondary attribute Will is Command + Cool to start so he has a 3...
Next are skills. Each is linked to an attribute and the value in it can't be above the linked attribute. Alfie played baseball in high school, so I give him Athletics 2, Run 2 and Throw 2. He's also a bit of a scrapper so he has Brawl 2. From his limited military training he gets Pistol 1 and Rifle 3. His best sense is Sight at 2 and he speaks and reads a bit of Hebrew, Language 1. While not terribly good at it, he does know how to pick up women with Seduction 1. And lastly he can Lie and Bluff, both at 2...
Finally we have Talents. Those come in three varieties. Enhanced attributes, Enhanced skills and Miracles. Miracles are all the general super-hero stuff. As may be guessed by his nickname, Alfie will have fire powers. The number of points for buying Talents is set by the GM. 15 is for a low-powered game while 75 would be a high-end one. The book recomends generally going with 25 to start, so I used that...
I buy him the Talent package Harm to represent fire bolts. He has 3d in it, with the bonuses of Burn and Penetrating and the negative of Graphic, thats a cost of 15. The remainig 10 I use for 1d of Immunity vs. Fire with the bonus of Reflexive, meaning it can activate without him thinking about it...
So basically, Alfie is a living flamethrower. A young kid about to be thrown into the cauldron of death and to see what his Talent does to a living person for the first time...
Army of Shadows
Apr. 27th, 2009 08:38 amA 1969 French movie about the Resistance in World War II, only released in the U.S. in the last few years. The movie is slow-paced but gorgeously shot. And it takes an honest, if grim, view of the many hard-choices required by the leadership. The lead character is a former civil engineer who becomes one of the chief leaders of the Resistance movement...
But here is the deal. This is an excellent movie. Well made, brilliant cinematography, strong acting, excellent story. And it does nothing for me. I can tell its good, but otherwise I might as well be doing laundry. Which in fact I wandered off to do a couple times in the movie. What it reminds me of is The Shield. Not that the television show and this movie are really at all alike. But they're both things I can tell are great in pretty much every way, yet manage to hold no appeal to me. This isn't where other people see something great and I'm left baffled as to what they're getting out of it. This is where I can TELL what makes it good and yet it doesn't catch a hold of me at all. Still, despite that, I'd recommend it for others, who likely WILL catch a spark from it...
But here is the deal. This is an excellent movie. Well made, brilliant cinematography, strong acting, excellent story. And it does nothing for me. I can tell its good, but otherwise I might as well be doing laundry. Which in fact I wandered off to do a couple times in the movie. What it reminds me of is The Shield. Not that the television show and this movie are really at all alike. But they're both things I can tell are great in pretty much every way, yet manage to hold no appeal to me. This isn't where other people see something great and I'm left baffled as to what they're getting out of it. This is where I can TELL what makes it good and yet it doesn't catch a hold of me at all. Still, despite that, I'd recommend it for others, who likely WILL catch a spark from it...
Sunday Trade: Enemy Ace
Aug. 10th, 2008 09:28 pm
Enemy Ace: War in Heaven, written by Garth Ennis, art by Chris Weston, Christian Alamv & Ayss Heath
Recently the roommate convinced me to try one of Ennis' latest books. War is Hell, where he redoes one of Marvel's 'classic' characters, ace fighter pilot The Phantom Eagle. Of course the books involves black and coarse humor, graphic violence, surly misanthropes bound together by the shared horror of war and so on. And the whole thing left me cold. And I think this book and his War Stories are the reasons why. Ennis loves to tell war stories and westerns. As much as he hates super-heroes of late. But I think he's gone to the same well to often and now everything reads the same. And so he has to try and get you with more and more lurid and graphic "shocks"...
Which is a pity. Because Enemy Ace: War in Heaven is damn good. It takes a WW1 era character, German pilot Von Hammer and puts him into WW2. And you see a character, already cynical and disillusioned about the "glory" of war run into the horrors of the Soviet front, the spying and twisted politics of the Gestapo and the even greater horrors of Dachau. I miss being impressed by Ennis' work...
Aimee and Jaguar
Aug. 20th, 2007 03:00 amLilly is a housewife out at the opera with her lover. Felice spots her while there with her girlfriend, Lilly's nanny. The two are drawn to each other and eventually begin a relationship and fall in love. Of course this is Berlin during the Allied counter-invasion of Europe, with Lilly's husband being a Nazi officer on the Russian front and Felice being secretly Jewish things don't work out that well...
The movie is based on the memoirs of Lilly Wust. Both main actresses (Juliane Kohler/Lilly and Maria Schrader/Felice) turn in stellar performances, as does the supporting cast. Plus, like many German movies, the lighting and cinematography help heighten the mood at every turn. An excellent movie, if you don't mind tragedies...
The movie is based on the memoirs of Lilly Wust. Both main actresses (Juliane Kohler/Lilly and Maria Schrader/Felice) turn in stellar performances, as does the supporting cast. Plus, like many German movies, the lighting and cinematography help heighten the mood at every turn. An excellent movie, if you don't mind tragedies...
The Great Raid
May. 7th, 2007 01:40 amI think this movie lasted in the theater for like a week. Which is too bad, because its quite good. Ok, maybe they could have cut most of the Fillipino Resistance cell stuff. And the lovers seperated by war stuff that was part of it. Those scenes weren't bad, just not really needed...
Anyway, the movie is about a raid on a POW camp during the retaking of the Phillipines during WW2. A group of Rangers and Fillipino guerillas rescue over 500 captured U.S. soldiers, survivors of the Batan Death March and 3 years as POWs. Also the Japanese in this? Eeeeeevil. I mean, they pretty well were during this, but still. Eeeeeeevil...
Anyway, the movie is about a raid on a POW camp during the retaking of the Phillipines during WW2. A group of Rangers and Fillipino guerillas rescue over 500 captured U.S. soldiers, survivors of the Batan Death March and 3 years as POWs. Also the Japanese in this? Eeeeeevil. I mean, they pretty well were during this, but still. Eeeeeeevil...
