Patton - I had to watch this three hour movie over the course of three days. The first hour was spent establishing Patton as an interesting character: a Renaissance martinet. Oh, and also, explosions. Forty-five minutes of that hour was used up with explosions. Give me an explosion-free version of this movie. I would say I liked the screenwriting, but it seems all the lines I liked were just quotes from the man himself. What I did well and truly like was the music.
The Bridge on the River Kwai - Again, another ponderous war movie. I couldn't go to war, I would be bored to death. Perhaps I'm just used to the pace of a 90 minute movie with poor cinematography. I know the end is supposed to be suspenseful but, is it? Is the bridge not going to be blown up? Of course it is. What is so odd to me is that because they used the name of an actual place, it suggests this is what happened, when it is not what happened at all (evidently there were two bridges and the one blown up was the shabby one, which prisoners built at gunpoint). Why on earth wouldn't they change the name? Change the name and you can write and film what you like. I liked the conflict in all the characters, though I find it hard to believe Alec Guinness could lose sight of the big picture in that way.
The Deer Hunter - Yeeessh. Man, I did not like that movie. It was uneven. Russian Roulette, Part the First; hard to believe, hard to watch, but compelling. Russian Roulette, Part the Second, utterly ridiculous. How does Mike get the money to fly back to Saigon? Did they explain that? If they did, I didn't see it, probably because I was skipping over one the ponderously slow sections in which I had to watch iron smelt. And the singing at the end? Was there no better way to end it? People did some tremendous acting, I'll give it that.
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