One of the important messages of Thank You for Your Service, first-time director Jason Hall’s perceptive drama about the physical and psychological effects of war, is that returning veterans need to be able to talk about what happened in combat and how they have been personally affected by it. Too often, however, friends or loved…
When writing about the death of Abraham Lincoln, poet Carl Sandburg said, “A tree is best measured when it’s down.” These words more than apply to the life of photojournalist Chris Hondros, a Getty war photographer and two-time Pulitzer finalist, who left a gaping hole in the world of journalism when he was killed by…
Otherwise known as “Interstellar Civil War: Shadows of the Empire,” or “Star Warfare Rangers and the Cyborg Witch of Endor.” The final details are being nailed down as I type. The cut to which I was exposed was unfinished, with a basic sound mix and filler shots in place of what we assume will be…
In 1940, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were trapped and surrounded by German forces in Dunkirk, France. It was a devastating blow and a key victory in the Battle of France; Hitler would not be stopped for five more years. However, the evacuation and rescue of the troops by British destroyers and other smaller vessels,…
To find an uninteresting interview with a survivor of the holocaust is an impossible task. These are, after all, firsthand accounts of nightmares made real; memories from the extremist boundaries of the human experience. It’s akin to watching Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin discuss landing and walking on the moon, describing experiences…
Movies have been telling stories about dogs in the military since Rin Tin Tin starred in silent films like “A Dog of the Regiment” way back in the 1920s. Those were made-up stories that turned “Rinny” into one of Hollywood’s biggest money-makers of the pre-sound era (supposedly even getting him the most votes for Best…
Not your average bad movie, it’s definitely trying to be good. It’s just not quite there.
