This movie hits all notes almost perfectly.  This is an extremely tactful look at what it takes to let someone know that their spouse, son, or daughter has died in a war.  This is one of the few movies that I actually took away something from and was emotionally reached.  It is so hard to watch these two men who are appointed to tell the families of the deceased, in these incredible scenes, that seem incredible because they are all in one long drawn out shot which draws the viewer in even more.  It doesn’t matter race, status, age, it is all shown in a realistic and respectful way.  The craft of the film follows a specific pattern which at first I thought I was tired of until I realized it was to help me get into the head of the main character and just what a war will do to a solider.  The dialog is never dull and the performances are stellar.  The lack of music and backround noise only add to the dark tone of the film.  There is an element of entertainment value missing though and I found myself nodding away, but never the less this is a strong film.

This film, while consistently funny, never fully develops into a complete film.  There are long stretches that almost had me on the floor laughing, and the jokes are pitch perfect and never dumbed down or held back.  The performances of the supporting characters I believe will turn into classic performances if people can actually sit through this the whole way.  I almost had to tear my hair out at some of the situations these people get themselvs into.  It was so hard for me to watch Paul Rudd, continually take it from these guys and not lash out and pound someones face in, which I was hoping at some point for him to do.  While the final scenes are effective at bringing the good characters back to good, I couldn’t help but find myself on the side of the assholes most of the film.  What does that say about me?  But it is funny which I guess is the point and you do have a little something to take away, I guess I was just frustrated the story relied on so many coincidences.

This is a perfect little documentary for its subject.  I loved everyone talking, their thoughts about style, and all the other non-sense that comes along with being a rowdy teenager.  I got the same feeling of freedom and letting loose of these guys, that I got from the documentary “Riding Giants.”  Unless your more intersted in the history of skateboarding than I am, you will not be bored by long stretches of this film.  I found however, the history of the people far more fascinating than the history of the sport.  That really dragged this film down for me.  Still enjoyed though.

This is a movie that is built for the Oscars.  Which usually works, especially when you have as smart a script as this.  For the first three fourths of the movie you will be completely lost and have no idea what anyone is talking about.  Its hard enough to keep the characters straight.  Which annoyed me at first until I realized that we’re not supposed to understand whats going on.  It paints the perfect picture of big businesses shady conference room talk.  The back stabbing and killing anyone thats in my way attitude works perfectly.  And when it finally all does clear up, and you finally do realize whats going on, its an exciting story that gets played out.  In the end, however, its just another well put together film about Iraq, which isn’t a bad thing, I just feel like all these movies run along the same line.  But still an effective thriller.

While not his best effort, this must have been a very good start for Christopher Nolan.  The writing is pitch perfect for the energy this film puts out.  Especially in the main character, who is very likable.  Its not a very energetic or grab you by the shirt collar type of movie but it gets its point across with the amount of time that they were allowed to work with.  This is mainly due to the fact that its told out of order, with seemingly three different storylines going on.  If it had been told on a linear path I could see myself getting superbly bored with this movie.  Instead I found myself consistenly thinking back to previous scenes saying, “oh thats how that happened.”  Its shot in black and white, which gives many seemingly boring shots a splash of beauty.  The story does seem to get a little mishandeled for about the last fourth of the movie which would have one scratching their head, but it all does come together, even if it is in an awkwardly shaped package.   

This is an awkward movie.  The acting is sooooooo bad.  None of the actors seem to put much effort into their performaces.  They are all one level and forced to go through all the emotions at some point.  Like the script was trying to make them interesting by making us look at all of them sad, happy, angry, lethargic… ect. ect.  The story is kind of interesting, but it seems like it was way limited by its budget.  Like they had to make some weird cuts to cover the time span because what they tried to do cost too much.  The villain is the most interesting character and he’s on screen for about 1/8th of the movie.  The story is there, but the outcome just seems to coincidental to be taken seriously.  Which is how I ended up not taking the entire movie seriously. 

I feel like this movie suffers from a little bit of an identity crisis.  It can’t decide who it really wants to focus on as a main character, it can’t decide if it wants to be a comedy or a serious statement, and some of it seemed a little bit hard to follow.  I appreciated the fact that it was somewhat of an original storyline in an overplayed genre, but a lot of it seemed so ludicrus that in the end it detracted from the message of the film which I couldn’t really take seriously after watching the story unfold.  The serious and dark parts of the film also take away from the comedy which gets a few chuckles, but would have been much funnier if they could actually decide which route they wanted to take.  I also felt some sort of dissconnection with the characters, not that they were played badly, but more so from the fact that they feel played out with too much simplicity, all just pieces of the screenplay rather than fully realized individuals.  There was potential here, but sadly it nevers comes full circle into an excellent movie. 

This movie trys way to hard to be “The Blair Witch” project.  You can’t just put a camera into the hands of teenagers, have some shaky running away scenes and expect it to have the same effect.  Their first problem was the main characters are dicks.  Not only are they dicks, but they are super uninteresting as well.  Its literally them pulling pranks for nearly two hours which doesn’t really tell us what kind of people they are, and after a while I just kept thinking back to how the three teenagers in Blair Witch are ten times more likable.  There really isn’t much of a story here, some citizens of a small town way back, murders, church, upsidown cross…… zzzzzz.  Not to mention they seem to leave out HUGE parts of the story.  Their car could be being attacked by an unknown whatever, and they would just skip to the next day with no explanation.  How is that supposed to be scary?  What a bad movie.

This film borrows from a lot.  There are elements here from everything from “The Ususal Suspects” to “Insomnia.”  But what it lacks in orginallity it makes up for in presentation.  This is a thrilling movie with a great cast of characters.  The two main characters, especially, seem to play off eachother very well.  We come to appreciate the subtly of the two performances, which really ties the whole movie together.  It combines all those elements of film noir that we’ve seen before and puts them together in a very well written adaptation.  We get your normal mystery/murder, that we spend the entire movie trying to figure out, but  it goes in a direction that we can actually follow and believe.  There could have been some better cuts to shorten this movie, especially within the last 5 scenes, where you keep waiting for the movie to end but it never does.  The last scene was a little ridiculous as well. It tried too hard to give us that happy ending, which we really got about 20 minutes ago.  But despite the lagging ending a few miscues here and there I thought this was a very solid movie.