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Archive for the 'Action' Category

From Here to Eternity

January 14th, 2007 by Jennine

I finally watched the classic From Here to Eternity with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra.

The movie was made in 1954 and up until Jarhead was known as the “most accurate portrayal of the US military”.

Unfortunately, because of the above quote I had certain expectations of the film that were not met. Don’t get me wrong I still enjoyed From Here to Eternity but was not impressed by the romanticism of army life even with it’s drunkenness, brawling and abuse of its soldiers.

From Here to Eternity as you would expect was filmed in black and white. The casting was brilliant and you have to feel for Montgomery Clift’s character, Robert E Lee Prewitt. Prewitt has just been transferred to a new regiment and the Captain in charge is boxing mad. The Captain informs Prewitt that unless he joins the boxing squad he will never become a Sargent. Due to personal reasons, Prewitt is determined to never box again.

Sargent Warden, (Burt Lancaster) is a career soldier and is Captain Homes right hand man. If it weren’t for Warden the whole regiment would be in a complete mess. Warden embarks on an affair with Homes wife, which just confuses him.

It was an interesting movie and I’m sure the book would be even more so. I’m glad I saw it and I would definitely watch it again. This would be a movie that would be great to see re-made without the strict censorship laws, which were around when it was made.

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Aeon Flux

January 1st, 2007 by Jennine

I really enjoyed this, a lot more than I was led to believe I would. I believe that if you were a fan of the cartoon Aeon Flux then you will have more of an inkling of what is happening than if you have never seen or heard of Aeon Flux.

Even though I thought the movie was good, it wasn’t great. There were flaws and I think that it may have been beneficial to audiences if they had broken it down into at least two or three separate movies. To go straight into this world, without knowing why people wanted change and the atrocities that were going on behind the scenes, hinders why it is imperative to have the Monicans to keep the regime honest.

To my surprise Charlize Theron was actually quite a credible Aeon. I was sceptical in the beginning about her pulling off this character but she wore Aeon like a second skin and I forgot it was Charlize. Even her voice sounded like the cartoon character.

The supporting cast were equally suited to their roles. Trevor Goodsmith (Marton Csokas) was superb and quite well cast as was his brother, Oren (Jonny Lee Miller).

As I’ve said the only real problem I had with Aeon Flux is they did it in one movie. This was easily a three part movie with all the previously written material showing the progress by the Monicans and by Aeon herself. It may have also appealed to more people if broken down into smaller parts.

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