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A good movie for a good Saturday...
Jan. 26th, 2020 08:45 amWe saw The Last Full Measure as planned (based on the real life story of airman/pararescuer William H. Pitsenbarger).
Full disclosure: you all know Seb has become my favorite actor, but I honestly don't like a lot of his films and won't see a lot of them (like Viggo, my other fave, he has done a lot of drecky films just to keep working and keep his name out there), but this is one I've been looking forward to since the first news came out he'd be the lead. It did NOT disappoint! My goodness, what an incredibly moving and uplifting film. You could tell all the actors were really invested in the story and their characters. It was a film that could have swayed too schmaltzy or too dark, but the themes were all handled with good balance (it may have leaned a bit toward schmaltzy, but that's a strength in my book). It had a political element but not partisan political, in that it didn't use political party to paint people as villains or heroes, which was refreshing and kept that side of things from stealing the spotlight. I don't know how much they fictionalized the way Pitsenbarger's Medal of Honor was given, but that storyline did an excellent job of showing how history can affect the present, in good ways.
My only frustration with it is the lack of marketing--either they didn't have a good distribution team or didn't have the budget or something, but they seem to be relying mostly on word of mouth to get people to see it, and I fear that won't be enough for it to earn a wider distribution. It was only showing in one theater here, and at the smallest screen at Alamo Drafthouse at that, and there were only about a dozen people at our showing--but it was a dozen people who left blowing their noses and smiling and sighing in that happy/sad way when you see something that touches your heart in the way that good movies do. I had to laugh when, in the bathroom afterward, a lady in the next stall said to her friend in another stall, "Well, Dr. Dolittle would have been funnier!" But I had heard her entire group chattering as we left the theater (they were all older, who no doubt lived through the Vietnam era as young adults) and knew they had been very moved by the film.
The cast was stellar: Sebastian Stan in his first ever lead role, supported by the likes of Samuel L. Jackon, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer, Peter Fonda, William Hurt, Diane Ladd... really, any film with THAT array of actors should have been released in November when awards voters are on the lookout, not in the dead zone of January. It's mystifying and frustrating. Anyway, this film drove me to create a Rotten Tomatoes account just to be able to give it 5 stars! I noticed that it has 98% audience score.
War movies aren't for everyone, but if you get a chance to see this one, do. It's about friendship, valor, recovery, loyalty and learning how to become a better human being. It's rated R mostly because of battle scenes that showed some gnarly wounds, but I didn't find it any worse than some of the stuff in LOTR. There were also some f-bombs, probably more than the one that a PG-13 rating allows.
Two thumbs way up.
Full disclosure: you all know Seb has become my favorite actor, but I honestly don't like a lot of his films and won't see a lot of them (like Viggo, my other fave, he has done a lot of drecky films just to keep working and keep his name out there), but this is one I've been looking forward to since the first news came out he'd be the lead. It did NOT disappoint! My goodness, what an incredibly moving and uplifting film. You could tell all the actors were really invested in the story and their characters. It was a film that could have swayed too schmaltzy or too dark, but the themes were all handled with good balance (it may have leaned a bit toward schmaltzy, but that's a strength in my book). It had a political element but not partisan political, in that it didn't use political party to paint people as villains or heroes, which was refreshing and kept that side of things from stealing the spotlight. I don't know how much they fictionalized the way Pitsenbarger's Medal of Honor was given, but that storyline did an excellent job of showing how history can affect the present, in good ways.
My only frustration with it is the lack of marketing--either they didn't have a good distribution team or didn't have the budget or something, but they seem to be relying mostly on word of mouth to get people to see it, and I fear that won't be enough for it to earn a wider distribution. It was only showing in one theater here, and at the smallest screen at Alamo Drafthouse at that, and there were only about a dozen people at our showing--but it was a dozen people who left blowing their noses and smiling and sighing in that happy/sad way when you see something that touches your heart in the way that good movies do. I had to laugh when, in the bathroom afterward, a lady in the next stall said to her friend in another stall, "Well, Dr. Dolittle would have been funnier!" But I had heard her entire group chattering as we left the theater (they were all older, who no doubt lived through the Vietnam era as young adults) and knew they had been very moved by the film.
The cast was stellar: Sebastian Stan in his first ever lead role, supported by the likes of Samuel L. Jackon, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer, Peter Fonda, William Hurt, Diane Ladd... really, any film with THAT array of actors should have been released in November when awards voters are on the lookout, not in the dead zone of January. It's mystifying and frustrating. Anyway, this film drove me to create a Rotten Tomatoes account just to be able to give it 5 stars! I noticed that it has 98% audience score.
War movies aren't for everyone, but if you get a chance to see this one, do. It's about friendship, valor, recovery, loyalty and learning how to become a better human being. It's rated R mostly because of battle scenes that showed some gnarly wounds, but I didn't find it any worse than some of the stuff in LOTR. There were also some f-bombs, probably more than the one that a PG-13 rating allows.
Two thumbs way up.
