Bang Bang! Boooooom! Ahhhhhh! Mediiiiiiiiic! Those damned politicians! Aggggggggh! Bang Bang! Mediiiiiiiiic! You just became a Daddy? Boooooom! Noooooooo! Mediiiiiiiic! Whyyyyyyyyyy? I’m glad you made it, son.
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Welcome
Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.
Just curious — seeing as how Saving Private Ryan was on TV last night, how would you compare these two movies?
Haven’t seen SPR since it came out, but I remember liking it, but not loving it. I think Ryan does a much better job in terms of making the characters real people — and it deals quite well in moral ambiguity. In fact, in retrospect, I’d give SPR a hardy thumbs up. WWS is just as bloody as SPR (bloodier? maybe.) but is completely by the book. Spielberg’s film tries to be a “different” war film and for the most part suceeded. This bomb-astic film is completely flat, one-dimensional, rah-rah jingoism with poor dialogue, no memorable characters and really nothing memorable other than the cool ways in which people get blown to bits. It basically is a horror/slasher film for gore fanatics.
Recent war films that, I feel, did something interesting are The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down and No Man’s Land.