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1917

Started by besilarius, November 26, 2019, 05:48:25 PM

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W8taminute

I really want to see this. 
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

GibbyG

Excellent movie, although part of me thinks it is a movie set during war as opposed to a war movie. 

Michael Dorosh

My take:

https://canadiansoldierscom.blogspot.com/2020/01/what-1917-gets-right-no-spoilers.html

tl;dr: it was good, and not as far-fetched as some grogs have been claiming in various groups.

W8taminute

I saw the movie over the weekend and I liked it. 

It definitely is a good movie but I would only buy the DVD if it was on sale for one dollar.  Don't get me wrong.  Like I said it is a good movie just not one that you absolutely must have in your video collection. 
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

airboy

We saw it this afternoon.  It was very well done.  I'm glad I saw it and would encourage anyone interested in WW1 to see it.

That being said, I don't think I ever need to see it again.

Martok

Thanks for the feedback, guys.  I'm going to see if I can drag my dad to come watch this one with me (while there's still time); I think he'd enjoy it as well. 
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Silent Disapproval Robot

Watched it this evening with a buddy who was in the infantry for 23 years.  The two of us were snickering and groaning for most of it due to the ridiculous tactics displayed on screen and the absurd nature of mission.  Very disappointed in it in terms of history as well as story-telling.  From a technical aspect, the way it was filmed was pretty cool.  My recommendation is to watch Gallipoli instead of this one. 

Sir Slash

The wife and I saw it over the weekend and I really liked it. A bit implausible at times but the WWI sets were excellent and the action didn't overwhelm the film, these are 2 young soldiers in war, not superheroes fighting their way to Berlin. Overall very compelling to watch.  O0
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

MikeGER

#38
I saw it on Saturday.
It is a good movie for sure O0  but don't expect a Grogheads Grog war movie.
It is not Saving Privat Ryan or Band of Brothers in WW I. Its more comparable to a slow Apocalypse Now Redux (the extended Version) in WW I, capturing the absurdity of war and those absurd twisted and often cruel moments that define a persons war experience. 

Be warned Nr 1: the film want to be an art movie. scenes or still shots of them are often like a painting (reminds me on Almodovar's art work) and the director strongly wanted to create an 'iconic picture' (a still life) or a short 'iconic sequence' (a clip) - unique and defining the film 1917, wich he accomplished very well. but its art into your face, you can feeeel his intention when you see those scenes and that breaks the magic of true art, where that would comes naturally, and often in a retrospective, not in-situ.

Be warned Nr 2: the film is shot with camera in a kind of permanent "ego"-perspective (like a drone that it lassoed with a 5m rubber band fixed to the head of the protagonist and always pointed at him, but free to circle around in the plane defined by height level of the protagonist head) and without any visible cuts. feels like watching another persons video game - over-the-shoulder-look with very limited movement-cone of the cam. (see above)   
first that is great, you are really there! like a companion in arms running around with those two chaps. but after some time (like 30 min ) it gets more and more and more super strenuous and you wish for a counter-cut and a long shot or a establishing shot. its good to be always on the same height level and close but at one moment you realize that you (the watcher) never looks around. your eyebeam is always glued to the head of the protagonist, Period! .....like watching your self in a nightmare or under anesthesia out-of-body-experiences, that some people report they had it, or after they had gone through a reanimation.       
     
Now were the kind reader of my review is prepared. i recommend watching it as a piece of contemporary movie art with war as a theme   

Silent Disapproval Robot

Made me think of Thin Red Line.  Very nice cinematography but it felt like the director was more concerned with the look and style of the film than he was about the story.


airboy

Quote from: MikeGER on January 20, 2020, 05:17:19 AM
I saw it on Saturday.
It is a good movie for sure O0  but don't expect a Grogheads Grog war movie.
It is not Saving Privat Ryan or Band of Brothers in WW I. Its more comparable to a slow Apocalypse Now Redux (the extended Version) in WW I, capturing the absurdity of war and those absurd twisted and often cruel moments that define a persons war experience. 

Be warned Nr 1: the film want to be an art movie. scenes or still shots of them are often like a painting (reminds me on Almodovar's art work) and the director strongly wanted to create an 'iconic picture' (a still life) or a short 'iconic sequence' (a clip) - unique and defining the film 1917, wich he accomplished very well. but its art into your face, you can feeeel his intention when you see those scenes and that breaks the magic of true art, where that would comes naturally, and often in a retrospective, not in-situ.

Be warned Nr 2: the film is shot with camera in a kind of permanent "ego"-perspective (like a drone that it lassoed with a 5m rubber band fixed to the head of the protagonist and always pointed at him, but free to circle around in the plane defined by height level of the protagonist head) and without any visible cuts. feels like watching another persons video game - over-the-shoulder-look with very limited movement-cone of the cam. (see above)   
first that is great, you are really there! like a companion in arms running around with those two chaps. but after some time (like 30 min ) it gets more and more and more super strenuous and you wish for a counter-cut and a long shot or a establishing shot. its good to be always on the same height level and close but at one moment you realize that you (the watcher) never looks around. your eyebeam is always glued to the head of the protagonist, Period! .....like watching your self in a nightmare or under anesthesia out-of-body-experiences, that some people report they had it, or after they had gone through a reanimation.       
     
Now were the kind reader of my review is prepared. i recommend watching it as a piece of contemporary movie art with war as a theme

I'm not an artsy-fartsy film guy so this sort of review is beyond me.  But this review is spot on.

Toonces

That was a really good review, MikeGER.
"If you had a chance, right now, to go back in time and stop Hitler, wouldn't you do it?  I mean, I personally wouldn't stop him because I think he's awesome." - Eric Cartman

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GroggyGrognard

@MikeGER, nice and engaging review.


I'll wait until '1917' comes up on streaming to see it. And I might then consider watching both '1917' and 'Journey's End' (one of the best war movies in recent years.) back to back. It could be interesting to compare the two movies, even if they are entirely different stories.



Groggy
"Strong prejudices in an ill-formed mind are hazardous to government."
-Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

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Sir Slash

By far and away the most impressive aspect of the film was the extensive sets and the hundreds of live extras used, I didn't see a single CGI soldier in the whole film nor the same soldier used twice.  The way the camera followed the characters made this part far more effective. Like being part of an actual army in the field. Somebody clearly used a whole bunch of guys and dug-up a whole lot countryside to make this movie.  :clap:
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

JasonPratt

I may get the Blu just for the extras showing the groundwork of the film.

I saw the film with Bro back on Saturday; the only correction I have to MikeGER's review, is that every once in a while the camera does 'look around' instead of being droned to the two protagonists. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen -- the most memorable example being the musical solo before the climax (no spoilers) where the camera unmoors and walks around for a couple of minutes.

The only CGI figures I (thought I) spotted were 'puppets' of one or the other protag taking a jump somewhere a couple of times.

After a while it does seem like the plot advances time in the film by some significant degrees, particularly late in the film before the climax -- I don't mean the one protracted time jump but after that, we go from full dark outside to bright morning in thirty minutes. Even allowing for the 'camera' eye being fooled by lighting contrasts at the start of that sequence into thinking the night is darker than it is, that janked me out of the film over that period of time.

I liked how Sam Mendes made the film as a personal honorariam to a WW1 vet relative of his who used to tell stories.  O0

At several points in the film I couldn't help but draw direct comparisons to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This also amused me. (It helps and/or doesn't help that one of the main protagonists looks a lot like a more hobbity version of Elijah Wood in the film trilogy, and sounds somewhat like him, too, in vocal timber and cadences, though not in accent.)

I was watching the film for a while thinking, hm, doesn't really look like a Sam Mendes film, I guess that's a good job doing a stylistic stretch there? -- then the night-time sequence kicked in, and AH THERE IT IS, THERE'S THE SAMMENDENESS!  :D ;D

Around the same time, and partly for the same reason, I leaned over to Bro and muttered, "and from here on out we're supposed to wonder if this is an Owl Creek Bridge thing, right?" Surprisingly this turns out not to be true! -- which I realize is partly a spoiler, but it was so janky that a particular super-important event, also super-important to the plot, is treated like a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (i.e. and let us never speak of this again). X happens so that plot and super-Mendy stylism can happen, but X itself is never referenced or explained again. You could practically meme it with a Monty Python paraphrase! ....pause, so, moving along then.

Eh, I've had worse; YOU LIE!!!  ::)

Everyone has seen the film should know what I'm talking about, but I'll add a brief spoiler cut here:

[spoiler]Protagonist gets shot in the chest point-blank by a rifle, hard enough to blast him backwards down a flight of stairs like he was hit with a shotgun. Afterward, a trippy nightmarish dreamlike sequence starts. Mundane reality slots back in eventually, with a lot of exhausting action following the chest shot. No damage to the protagonist however, except a bump on the head from landing on the stair landing. Nope, not an Owl Creek Bridge thing, he isn't lying dead in the house after all, not the slightest explanation is given about why he doesn't have a giant sucking chest wound much less a hole in his back. Those Brit WW1 troops sure wear a lot of clothes, I guess! There's not even a visual reference to the event later, so far as I could see, and I was watching for it! This is after someone gets stabbed with a knife resulting in realistic damage, if not overly realistic.[/spoiler]
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