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alvar777
Reviews
Flyboys (2006)
Better a Cartoon
I don't believe it, far from being surprised/astonished/whatever by the FX, I was shocked in horror. Seriously, all that cheap, full of gasoline, patched explosions, Cheesy dialogs and forced acting. Red Baron appears to me more real in combat scenes, all planes in the visual context, and nothing of this stickers of explosions superimposed to screens, no smoke afterwards, the horrible machine gun sound and slow motion bullet flight (read about 7.92 mm btw), the illogical sunlight angles. Strickes me they really did a children movie, and a bad one for that matter. Check Lord of the Rings again, you'll see how good FX are done and well mixed, overall. Please, just plain horrible thing, and what is more, a man running over a flaming zeppelin!
Not buying that. None of it.
Der Rote Baron (2008)
It is not perfect, but it worths
Is funny how many film nerds take films literally and criticize them, narrow-minded and quick enough. Life is more than just obvious and literal things, so films usually try to show those things in a bit more exaggerate way so people realize how things are or at least, in order to express some idea or feeling. As books, movies sometimes tell about something else, and don't have to have taken literally. Is funny how many historian nerds claim faults in such film or other. Strictly historic accounts would take a unusual long movie to make. Always licenses are taken and some freedom, lyrically too, showed. Sometimes the faults are there, but sometimes too those faults are left aside for being uninteresting in a film making. I really failed to see or read the statement "this is a documentary film", or the like. On medics films, we hear the real medic persons complain about such drug or anesthetic. Come on, don't be so serious, films have to be dynamically paced, regardless its real pace speed. We have metaphors, remember? Boredom kills films more than anything on this world, perhaps.
I went sideways, I know... about the film:
With some lyric and historical licenses, this one adds something not shown before and with objectivity: man is being killed (as today) on both sides of the front, nothing else. Ideals are worthy as long as we keep them alive, even when gone with the idealist himself, or worthless when they die facing some majority "truth". The movie doesn't lack action and earthly brotherhood with your fellow man, or that should be. Has some romance without catchy parts, and have a strange flash in almost all scenes, like a private and intense sense in each of the chronologically arranged cuts. The hard-to-grasp feeling, as for today, of gentlemanly conduct, regarding human life in some circles, and at the same time, the brutal butchery developed along 4 years by both sides of the fence. I guess in ancient times was about same situation, but this time, and from then on, machinery came into scene and that allowed man to kill man quicker, from afar. Also leads us towards the fact that the man really got into flying, a dream long desired, and this flying was perfected through war, the great technology bringer. Enough said, this film worth the watch and have some good moments, as the ambiance is there, and that is more that we can say of many Hollywood, CA productions of late, or before. So long.
The Light That Failed (1939)
Out of Judging
I don't know how some people could express anything over the original story, and with all the signs in evidence of not having read the story at all. First of all, Bessie is somehow in love with Torpenhow, not Dick Heldar. She actually never managed to meet Maisie, being unaware of her existence. Bessie tears apart Dick's painting over the rage of being insulted day after day by Dick, in order to get the main character of the "Melancolia". Dick met Maisie during his childhood, his first love, being both orphans, and as well expressed by Sunlily, during a shooting session with an old revolver, Dick gets gun powder burning close to his eyes (his cheek, Kipling states), etc and etc. The story adapted in the film is a totally different matter. Oh, by the way, since there are things in this world like marriage and lawyers, the "The more I see of men, the more I love dogs" of Diogenes of Sinope could be even more valid today. Cheers