The Fury of "Fury"

 

FJ's sum-up: gritty, respectful, uncompromising

When done right, I love me a good film that pulls its audience into a world controlled by claustrophobia. It seems like a cinema trend right now, more coming out than normal, and some films pull it off with restraint, finesse, and often terror. The most recent I saw was "10 Cloverfield Lane", contained a young woman, a young man, and an ominous land owner, all trapped in a bunker because the world around them is (possibly) at war. "Fury" is another of these, and they don't come much better.

It is the 1945, Germany. The Nazis nearly defeated, Hitler has ordered all Germans to come out and fight for their country. Meanwhile the Nazis haven't surrendered yet, and still have no shortage of fire power, artillery, ground troops, and most ominous in this film, tanks. With their prestigious German engineering, it's announced at the beginning of the film these are superior in all ways to anything the Americans can dish out, but the fight is on the Americans' side so they must press forward. Enter Sargeant Don "War Daddy" Collier (Brad Pitt), commander of a Sherman tank with a five-man crew, as they and other battalions make their final deadly push to take Europe back, plunging themselves behind heavily-guarded enemy lines. Collier doesn't take crap from anyone, no patience to spare for someone not doing their job, even if that's a terrified peaceful young little clerk who types 60 words per minute, and was suddenly drafted into the army, shoved into the bowels of Fury, Collier's tank, in the spot where their last turret man sat when he was killed. Utterly inexperienced and terrified through and through, Norman can't focus on the war or their goals, let alone imagine killing a person. When he gets his chance, his hesitance instead allows the enemy to kill men from a neighboring squadron, a thing which sets Collier off on him as if he himself were a Nazi. Norman's character also turns this film into an effective coming-of-age picture, the awful wakeup call known as war that most of us can be grateful we'll never have to experience. (I have three little boys now, and thinking on all this, I can say with the deepest thankfulness and even tears that the draft is currently shut down.)

 

As Collier comes to put it: "This is my home.", and he means it too. "Best job I ever had." he says, patting the inner lining of his Fury's belly. This is a similar but in many ways different experience from the film's counterpart "Saving Private Ryan", a story never been told by cinema, the unnerving vantage point of the battle through the tiny peep holes within the tank (though, if you thought you'd never see another war film as horrifically realistic as that World War II epic, see this film and stand corrected.) The battle sequences seem sometimes much more intimate than in Private Ryan thanks to the tight quarters within that seemingly small yet hearty vehicle (and by comparison, that much more believable with so many practical effects rather than CG recreations). The film also depicts how easy it could be for soldiers to pit themselves against one another when having to live and work together so closely, even when all around them the enemy may strike without warning. For Fury's squad you've got Shia LaBeouf as Bible (in a career-high performance by a landslide, refreshing as hell), Michael Peña as Gordo, Jon Bernthal as Coon-Ass, and young Logan Lerman as Norman (whose nickname I'll let the film reveal to you). One could reasonably compare this film to Wolfgang Petersen's submarine epic "Das Boot", except in this film the soldiers aren't encased by water but rather by the constant threat of enemy fire. In this way, the tank acts both as a room with no leg space but also as a haven. Fury is their lifeboat, and within it, you the viewer can also feel a sense of security, especially when you see what kind of cajones it's really got when it lets loose.

One of the most memorable lines in the film are delivered by Pitt: "See that smoke? That's an entire city burning. This war is gonna end, soon. But before it does, a whole lot of people are gonna die." Know that this is not a historical film, but essentially it is; it portrays events that happened exactly as we see them on the screen. This is the first film of David Ayer's I've seen and from me he gets full marks for it. He's currently wrapping the Batman v Superman follow-up, "Suicide Squad". I'm utterly uninterested -- Ayer, how about you do give us more of this and none of that. 4 stars. Running time: 134 minutes.

"The BFG" Is Why Big Movies Exist

 

Joe's sum-up: scrumdidliptiously special

(2016) You may not recall your first viewing of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial", or consciously noticed that with each viewing it dazzles the nerve endings of the imagination just like the first time or even better. But that's the experience I expect I'll always have with subsequent viewings of "The BFG". Perhaps it's that it was directed by Spielberg with a screenplay penned by Melissa Mathison, the two partnering again after their extra-terrestrial success 34 years ago. Perhaps it's the otherworldly cinematography and visual effects, perhaps the perfect JW soundtrack, or just the sweet moving chemistry between the two protagonists, the BFG (Mark Rylance, "Bridge of Spies") and his little companion Sophie (introducing Ruby Barnhill). As most always with the Spiel, it's all of the above.

I rarely post a review of a high-budget Hollywood blockbuster, as they get their own press from the press, for better or worse. Can't help it this time. I sat with my beautiful wife and my three darling little boys last night as the film poured over our senses from start to finish, like music from another dimension. We've all been plowing through Roald Dahl books for years now, finished this one late last year before plunging headlong into The Hobbit. The boys delighted in both novels, along with the other six or so Dahl books we've read. We always make a point to enjoy each of the adapted film after finishing its book, and not once has any of us been disappointed by the adaptation. Roald Dahl was so repulsed and infuriated by the first film ever adapted from a book of his, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (Wilder not Depp, the one we skipped) that he said he would never let another of his children's books be made into a movie. Just before his death he did make two exceptions, an animated rendition of "The BFG", for which, when the credits rolled, Dahl stood and applauded. ("The Witches" film was made the year he died -- he called it applauding.)

 

The story arc is simple, and beautiful for it. Sophie, a London orphanage's perky little insomniac, spies an ominous shadow on her street one night, followed by its owner, a tall cloaked figure with ginormous ears, who from a distance can hear her heart beating inordinately fast and thus scoops her up, bringing her to his home across the sea for fear she would send the Royal Navy knocking on his door. She is little terrified of him, though he likewise immediately proves altogether harmless, clumsy, protective, sweet, and yes friendly. Living in an orphanage with a nasty matron, Sophie warms to him and his simple yet wondrous world. Dangerous too -- for neighbors he has nine child-eating giants, each twice his size (and he stands over 30 feet), who make sport of bullying him and attempting to sniff out his new friend. He meanwhile makes his profession in the dream business, catching them, mixing them, and blowing them into the rooms of people who could use them. His meals comprise of one of the most ghastly food items in cinema history, snozzcumbers, countered by the delightful frobscottle (I can only imagine the laughs Roald Dahl gave himself when concocting that particular beverage). She comes to call him BFG (for big friendly giant).

 

This film could never have been made into a live-action feature far long before now. Thank heavens no one attempted it, because the CG technology is finally such that the entire story is realized more through the stunning visuals than any other thing. Whether your eyes are being filled with wide magical landscapes, deep caverns in the BFG's home containing thousands of jars of dancing, luminescent, multicolored will o' wisp dreams, the two of them bounding in the magical wild as they go to catch them, or a close-angle of the deep introspective conversations they often have, you should be doing so in the biggest movie theater in town. John Williams described his score thus: "The BFG tries to capture dreams with his net and does something that almost looks like a Ray Bolger or Fred Astaire dance; It is an amazingly musical and choreographic sequence which required the orchestra to do things that are more associated with musical films." The orchestra never disappoints for this film. John Williams' more recent scores are admittedly less memorable than those of his earlier career (no surprise after Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T., among many others). The feelings of this score are distinct and more complex, sprinkling the film with a free natural spring of life throughout. I'm still counting the days before this 83-year old icon finally calls it quits.

Enough said. Either I've sold you on this film or I haven't. It did not do well at the box office for its first two weeks due to other big family films emerging, but no excuse. Nutshell: If you enjoy Spielberg the director, you'll love this film. If you enjoyed any of his other children's features such as "The Goonies", "Jurassic Park", "E.T.", "Hook", "Jurassic Park", "Tin-Tin", "Jurassic Park", you'll love this film. If you enjoy Roald Dahl's works, you'll love this film. If you enjoy family adventure movies in general, you'll love this film. Basically, if you don't love this film, crawl back into your little Gollum hole because the world must bore you most pitifully.