Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[Alex]

On a trip to Fry's on Saturday, Flags of Our Fathers and Babel DVDs were prominently displayed so on an impulse I bought both to round out my pre-Oscars nominee watching. I can't remember the last time I spent more than $10 for a single-disc DVD but both were $19.99. I'll do my best to avoid such impulse in the future.

Babel was very much a disappointment. There really aren't specific things that I can point to (other than the stupid Gael Garcia Bernal/Adriana Barraza) that came up short but it was too long, too self-important, and ultimately boring.

Flags of Our Fathers is indeed, as iSm says, a very worthy effort. It isn't so much a war movie as a post-war movie and as such my complaint it that it is overly padded by actual war stuff. Also the 20-minute epiliogue is just too much and very kludgy. I still prefer Letters from Iwo Jima but it is a slim thing and taken as a unit the two movies are an impressive endeavor by Eastwood.