I watch a lot of movies. I mean, a lot of movies. And if there's two things that cinema loves, it's big battles and quiet moments. In the hands of the right people, either end of the spectrum can become things of beauty, literally motion pictures - like the paintings of the masters given life. The problem is, Sturgeon's Law is always in effect - 90% of everything is bullshit - and movies are not immune. For every films that makes you think, make you feel, or anything else that art makes you do, there's nine Dude, Where's My Cars - films that aren't even entertaining.
"Good" and "Bad are, of course, relative terms. There's tons of people who love all three Rush Hours, where as I think buddy comedy cop flicks peaked with Midnight Run. I'm sure people will always remember The Dark Knight - but Batman Begins holds up better to repeat viewings (the "social experiment" suffers the law of diminishing returns - but the training sessions take on a more sinister tone once you know the twist). Does this take away from an argument of "good or bad"? I don't think so - but in terms of entertainment value, I'd say it is fairly damning. I'm not a good judge of skill, but I know what I like, and the films that stick with me are usually the arty ones, or the ones that I can relate to.
A further example: I liked The Hurt Locker. I liked it better in the form of Alatriste. The former is about war as an addiction. The latter is about war as a way of life, no more different than accounting or masonry.
There's a good chance you haven't heard of it, or the series of books that inspired it - this is a shame, since the books are rollicking adventures in the vein of Dumas, and the film is really a meditation on the life of a solider with some great fight scene thrown in.
Viggo Mortensen's Diego Alatriste is a man who takes comfort in his friends, who takes his ward under his wing as a matter first of honor and later in a kind of familial sense, and leans on (and is lent on by) them during their times in between combat. Having served in the Spanish army since the age of 13, warfare and combat is all he knows in the world. The Spanish Golden Age is already on the decline, and Alatriste and his companions sense it, even as they attempt to cling to the ideals of the age - courage, honor, artistry.
Now, the film is limited compared to the books - and it is best taken not as a single cohesive movie but rather a series of vignettes that follow the protagonist from his agreement to look after Inigo (Unax Ugalde as Alatriste's ward) to his final stand. The movie does follow fairly closely to the high lights of the books, with a few minor tweaks that either work well enough or are different enough that they work well within the film's world. One of the strong points of the film, but lacking a few of the layers presented in the books, is the roaming duels between Alatriste and Malatesta (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) - an Italian mercenary and a dark mirror of Alatriste. The strugle between these two is one of the major lynch pins of the film, countering the father/son pattern of Alatriste and Inigo.
Alatriste's relationship with Maria de Castro (Ariadna Gil) is likewise mirrored by Inigo's budding romance with Angelica de Alquezar (Elena Anaya), with both betrayals of trust and quiet moments of romance and relationships that do sometimes border on melodrama but for the most part come across as honest.
And through it all, there is war. War between the Spanish and Dutch, war between France and Spain, war between Alatriste and Malatesta, and the home life skirmishes that can sometimes be doused by the bonds of family, and other times cannot be healed because of those same bonds. After a misadventure, as conflict flairs once again between the Spanish and the Dutch, Alatriste is given a chance to return to the very field of combat that introduced us to him, and to leave his poverty and the mark on his head behind. It was war that taught him how to make his meager way in the world, war that granted him a kind of son in Inigo, and it is war that he is good at. "Flanders is Hell," he says, and he is answered, "Without Flanders there is nothing. We need this Hell."
See this film.
"Good" and "Bad are, of course, relative terms. There's tons of people who love all three Rush Hours, where as I think buddy comedy cop flicks peaked with Midnight Run. I'm sure people will always remember The Dark Knight - but Batman Begins holds up better to repeat viewings (the "social experiment" suffers the law of diminishing returns - but the training sessions take on a more sinister tone once you know the twist). Does this take away from an argument of "good or bad"? I don't think so - but in terms of entertainment value, I'd say it is fairly damning. I'm not a good judge of skill, but I know what I like, and the films that stick with me are usually the arty ones, or the ones that I can relate to.
A further example: I liked The Hurt Locker. I liked it better in the form of Alatriste. The former is about war as an addiction. The latter is about war as a way of life, no more different than accounting or masonry.
There's a good chance you haven't heard of it, or the series of books that inspired it - this is a shame, since the books are rollicking adventures in the vein of Dumas, and the film is really a meditation on the life of a solider with some great fight scene thrown in.
Viggo Mortensen's Diego Alatriste is a man who takes comfort in his friends, who takes his ward under his wing as a matter first of honor and later in a kind of familial sense, and leans on (and is lent on by) them during their times in between combat. Having served in the Spanish army since the age of 13, warfare and combat is all he knows in the world. The Spanish Golden Age is already on the decline, and Alatriste and his companions sense it, even as they attempt to cling to the ideals of the age - courage, honor, artistry.Now, the film is limited compared to the books - and it is best taken not as a single cohesive movie but rather a series of vignettes that follow the protagonist from his agreement to look after Inigo (Unax Ugalde as Alatriste's ward) to his final stand. The movie does follow fairly closely to the high lights of the books, with a few minor tweaks that either work well enough or are different enough that they work well within the film's world. One of the strong points of the film, but lacking a few of the layers presented in the books, is the roaming duels between Alatriste and Malatesta (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) - an Italian mercenary and a dark mirror of Alatriste. The strugle between these two is one of the major lynch pins of the film, countering the father/son pattern of Alatriste and Inigo.
Alatriste's relationship with Maria de Castro (Ariadna Gil) is likewise mirrored by Inigo's budding romance with Angelica de Alquezar (Elena Anaya), with both betrayals of trust and quiet moments of romance and relationships that do sometimes border on melodrama but for the most part come across as honest.
And through it all, there is war. War between the Spanish and Dutch, war between France and Spain, war between Alatriste and Malatesta, and the home life skirmishes that can sometimes be doused by the bonds of family, and other times cannot be healed because of those same bonds. After a misadventure, as conflict flairs once again between the Spanish and the Dutch, Alatriste is given a chance to return to the very field of combat that introduced us to him, and to leave his poverty and the mark on his head behind. It was war that taught him how to make his meager way in the world, war that granted him a kind of son in Inigo, and it is war that he is good at. "Flanders is Hell," he says, and he is answered, "Without Flanders there is nothing. We need this Hell."
See this film.
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