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iron_mike
Reviews
Das Boot (1981)
Try and see the series!
I would have given this 10, but since I haven't seen the digested film version, and can't see how it could possibly be as good, I have only given it 9. If you like the film, you'll love the series. Try and see it subtitled. And the book for that matter! The claustrophobic tension of life in a submarine is gripping.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Average war movie.
Take away the gratuitously gory opening scenes, and what you have is an average war movie. Yes, war is hell, but just being explicit about what a bullet or shell can do to a human body isn't going to turn you against war. Personally I found this movie exploitative.
If you want to see what the effects of the Second World War were really like, then ignore the movies. Instead check out the classic seventies series 'The World at War'. Far more shocking and sickening than any Hollywood blockbuster.
Apollo 13 (1995)
Accurate, but not very gripping.
I really wanted to love this movie. Unfortunately, perhaps because it is such a well known incident, there is just no tension in this movie - unless you're one of the apparently vast number of young people with no knowledge of the past.
The movie seems to be an accurate account of the events, if somewhat sanitised, but quite frankly you'd be more enlightened by watching a documentary.
Pales in comparison to the excellent 'The Right Stuff'.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Tedious and predictable supernatural "thriller"
WARNING - IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ENDING OF THIS FILM READ NO FURTHER!
The Sixth Sense was hyped as a supernatural thriller with an unexpected twist. Well once you know the boy can see and speak to the dead - which you know from the trailers - the ending is predictable from the first five minutes. And there are enough clues for anyone. But the idea that the Bruce Willis character could go for a year and realise that he was dead (whoops! did I spoil the ending for anyone?) is just plain ludicrous. Didn't he notice that everyone - not just his wife was ignoring him? Besides these stupidities the film was slow and dull, and about as scary as an episode of The Munsters.