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Category: Reviews
Mediocre thriller that is not half as intelligent as it thinks and the twist is obvious from the very start. The performances of both Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are good and are better than most of their work from the past decade but even they can’t elevate the inferior story.
Bleak and tense Russian film directed by Andrei Zvyagintsev who had directed the equally bleak film The Return. The adult characters are full of inner turmoil which never quite breaks the surface and the tension builds throughout the slow moving film with little release even through the very dramatic scenes that normally act as release valves in films like this.
Sweet and fun little film directed by Shane Meadows that potentially could have been as dark as his previous works but is better for not being so.
Having been immersed in the lives of the US Marine First Recon Battalion for the past seven weeks I felt at a loose end when the miniseries Generation Kill ended.
I loved Generation Kill, appreciated its realism and because it was based upon accounts of real events it was extremely close to being a documentary. Thanks to Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature I found a similar series but from a British point of view, the documentary series Ross Kemp in Afghanistan.
This five part series sees actor and investigative journalist Ross Kemp and a tiny film crew embedded with the Royal Anglian Regiment’s 1st Battalion (The Vikings) who were deployed to Helmand Province in 2007.
It’s viewable online at YouTube, but if you can buy the DVD do so because some of the profits of each sale go to the Army Benevolent Fund.
Bloody excellent documentary that makes you appreciate the sacrifice that British soldiers are making in defeating the Taliban.
The brilliant miniseries Generation Kill from the makers of the Wire and based on the book by Evan Wright has come to an end.
Alan Sepinwall has been doing some fantastic blogging about the series pretty much episode by episode.
Stark Sands who portrayed Lt. Nate Fick in the series writes about the fratty behavior on the ‘Generation Kill’ set.
Here’s the real Nate Fick giving a presentation and taking questions as part of the Rethinking the Future Nature of Competition & Conflict Seminar Series.
Trailer for his excellent book One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer
James Ransome writes about his experience of making the series and how it turned his life around and is interviewed along with the real life Eric Kocher on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
Staff Sergeant Eric Kocher is one of the men portrayed in Evan Wright’s Generation Kill. A U.S. Marine and member of the First Reconnaissance Battalion has received two purple Heart and a Bronze star, earned during his tour in Afghanistan and four tours of Iraq. There are five short videos on Big Think where Eric Kocher talks about the Marines, Generation Kill and Killing or Being Killed.