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Saiyûki (1960)
Weird and unsettling film to a seven-year-old
For some reason long lost (other than he thought I'd enjoy it), my Father took me to see this film at a drive-in theater when I was seven years old. I remember it being very weird, surreal, and somewhat scary. As another reviewer wrote, it has been "indelibly burned...in my psyche all these years." Unsettling is the best word to describe it's effect on me as a child.
First Man (2018)
Glacially-paced, muddled film
"First Man," the highly anticipated (partial) bio-pic about Neil Armstrong, the commander of NASA's Apollo 11 mission and the first man (thus the title) to walk on the moon, is a muddled mess.
Director Damien Chazelle's film-making choices, from shaky, way-too-close cinema verite close-ups and long, long silences (OK, OK, we know Neil Armstrong was a Silent Sam type) to banging, shaking, roaring and rattling blackout shots where the viewer can't understand what's going on, to lack of exposition (about precisely that -- what's going on), to Armstrong's constantly angry wife, are not only disorienting, but unpleasantly distracting.
This film can't hold a candle to superior films like "The Right Stuff," "Apollo 13," or the excellent made-for-cable HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon."
Neil Armstrong deserved much better than this.
The Gallant Men (1962)
Not bad, but...
I regularly watched "The Gallant Men" on Friday nights during its one-season run, and the show wasn't too bad, but I had a few nit-picks...
Its been stated that the soldiers in the series were supposed to be in the 36th ("Texas") Infantry Division, but they wear the 5th Army shoulder patch instead of the 36th's "T-Patch."
The "Lieutenant Kimbro" (Robert Ridgely) character over-acted way too often with an almost comic, grit-teethed, over-the-top intensity, and the "Pvt. D'Angelo" (Eddie Fontaine) character was way too corny with his occasional mournful ballad-and-show-bizzy singing. Also way too much (unrealistic) inter-action with good-looking Italian female civilians.
A watchable and looked-forward-to show for the 9 & 10-year-old I was back in 1962, but obviously inferior to compared to "Combat!" It had a great, short theme under the opening titles, which is curiously missing from any rebroadcasts or clips of the show I've seen on modern media.
Pork Chop Hill (1959)
One of the most realistic depictions of infantry combat on film
"Pork Chop Hill," a commercial Hollywood film about the several-days-long battle for an insignificant hill in the waning days of the Korean War in April of 1953, is one of, if not the, most realistic and accurate depictions of infantry combat ever put on film. The battle is seen mostly from the perspective of 1st Lt. Joe Clemons, a infantry company commander (Gregory Peck) in the 7th Infantry Division tasked with reclaiming the series of hills, one of which is nicknamed "Pork Chop" (due to its shape on the maps) from the Red Chinese troops who have overrun it. The actions, orders, and maneuvering of Clemons's company and two other companies in the fight are accurate and realistic, as are the attitudes and actions of the individual soldiers as they struggle to regain and hold the hill. A great movie, much closer to the truth than the majority of Hollywood war films.