Technically ambitious and completely immersive, 1917 (2019), co-written and directed by Sam Mendes, is a uniquely powerful war film that says, yeah, war sucks, but during war, people go above and beyond simply because they must.

It’s the last year of WWI, and the film opens with two young British soldiers assigned a dangerous mission by their commanding general. As communication wires have been cut, they must hand-deliver a message to a front-line unit that tomorrow morning will make a doomed attack, and stop it from going forward. Multiplying the stakes for these soldiers is the fact one of them has a brother serving as a lieutenant in the doomed unit.

What follows is a story told with the appearance of a single take, following the soldiers from their trenches across no-man’s land to abandoned enemy positions to bombed-out ruins, each of them a horrific set-piece of half-buried corpses and snipers and murderous Germans and burning towns. It ends up feeling like DUNKIRK with similar stakes as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but without all the yanking on the viewer’s emotions.

The single-take visual effect is amazing, making theater viewing worthwhile, and providing an immersive experience while lending an additional atmosphere of realism to the film. The world-building is incredible. Morally, the story hits the right notes–that heroism isn’t in killing and conquering but accomplishing the mission regardless of personal cost, and that in war, men owe debts to the dead and the living. You don’t cheer when one of the soldiers kills a German, you do when they survive and get the job done. I also really enjoyed another moral of the story, which is each act of heroism makes its small contribution but overall may not make a major impact on the war itself, which remains brutal and unforgiving and tomorrow, may undo all the good that was done today.

The film had a few negatives for me. A minor complaint was using stars for cameos, when minor actors would have been great throughout to better respect the immersive technique. Another minor complaint was a character running through explosions that are almost right behind him. My biggest complaint was the one-take approach had a tradeoff, which was long stretches of walking around until I grew restless watching it, and the realism of the dialogue meant I never really got to know the characters very well, which made me far less invested in them emotionally. I get it the movie didn’t want to be emotionally manipulative but instead invest the viewer honestly, but it could have traded just a *little* of that so we could get to know the characters and empathize more.

Overall, this is a powerful movie, true to its vision, realistic to a fault, and technically brilliant. I enjoyed it enormously, though I’m not sure yet if I loved it. In the end, 1917 completely satisfied my brain even if it didn’t capture my heart. I hope there are more war films like it and DUNKIRK, films that put you in war and let you think and feel for yourself.

I was late to the party for MAD MEN, but I’m having fun with it, having just finished season 2. The show at times feels a bit like a soap opera, but overall I’m enjoying this depiction of the birth of advertising and the joys and sorrows of life in the early ’60s.

The show follows Don Draper (the fantastic Jon Hamm), a handsome, confident advertising whiz who works at a prestigious New York advertising agency. He’s the perfect man with the perfect wife, kids, and house in the suburbs. Other characters include his wife, who is suffering from boredom and angst about her security, and various people working at the agency. They live in the early 60s, a relatively utopian era of social order and prosperity, but everything is not as nice as it seems.

I love how the show presents the era from the viewpoint of its conventional wisdom, that everything is perfect, nobody should protest or rock the boat, homosexuality is demonized, women have no real security without men, women take care of house and kids but men call the shots, kids are largely ignored yet expected to behave perfectly, and that real men drink hard, fool around on their wives, compete with each other in an endless alpha male game, and otherwise rule their world. Everybody in the show seems happy with the way things are, not knowing any different; most of the characters are likeable but heavily flawed right to the edge of being detestable, and yet a product of their time. The show then presents the consequences of this society’s norms, letting the viewer judge the era for themselves.

The writing has a good pace with some nice if on-the-nose symbolism, the sets and costumes appear rendered in the era’s technicolor, the acting is strong, and the dialogue is witty. Besides the social commentary–not social commentary, really, but the invitation to the viewer for such–my favorite aspect of the show is seeing the birth of advertising. America enjoyed a healthy middle class at the time, people with money to spend and wanting to have it all, and corporations and their ad agencies delivered not only by providing products and new marvel gadgets, but by defining what a perfect life looked like. Besides an excellent summary of the principles of marketing, the show also presents fantastic commentary about the art of business. Even here, the show presents the consequences of this consumer utopia, showing people gaining a perfect life only to continue aging, feel empty, and suffer the malaise and uncertainty of midlife crisis.

Overall, I’m enjoying MAD MEN as an excellent period drama that captures the zeitgeist of the era, and look forward to continuing on to the next season. However, I don’t recommend it if you’re quitting smoking.

Netflix’s THE KING provides a mashup of the historical and Shakespearean Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V with beautiful cinematography, brooding atmosphere, and plenty of medieval grit, but fails to either provide a true biopic or the powerful level of storytelling in its source material. Overall, it’s very enjoyable the way THE OUTLAW KING was, but as with that film, there was a pronounced lack of character development. The result is I was fully immersed in the film while I was watching, but then when it ended I shrugged and mostly forgot about it.

The historical Henry V (king 1413-1422) was the second king of the House of Lancaster, son of Henry IV, who overthrew Richard II to claim the throne. In his youth, he fought the Welsh in a revolt and helped his ailing father rule until political conflict drove them apart. When his father died in 1413, he assumed the crown and pressed his claims in France, leading to a string of victories, most famously Agincourt, when the English longbow and muddy field resulted in the slaughter of the flower of French chivalry. In this, Henry united his kingdom and established it as a major power.

The Shakespearean Henry IV Part 2, we see Henry as Prince Hal, living a life of debauchery with Falstaff as his mentor in the criminal underworld. When his father dies, he transforms into Henry V, a cunning king, having learned about what makes the common people tick. In Henry V, he goes to France and defeats the French host at Agincourt, bolstering his men’s courage with the rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech including the line, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Thematically, these stories are about growing from a boy to a man, the challenges of rule, and war.

THE KING appears aimed at marrying these two visions buttressed visually by plenty of medieval realism and atmosphere. Stylistically, it succeeds, from the great cinematography to the rich dialogue to the horrific battle itself. The acting is terrific, with Timothée Chalamet (the poor man’s Cillian Murphy) doing a fantastic job as the brooding Henry. There’s a bleakness and loneliness to the overall presentation, which worked for me. Thematically, the story appears to be about ruling wisely, which requires a balancing act between promoting peace while appearing strong, and finding people you can trust to give you honest and wise advice.

I had a number of criticisms of this film, such as Henry undermining his own goals of internal and external peace by murdering enemies (one of them casually) while invading France (nominally to further his father’s goals on the continent), and the way the Battle of Agincourt is presented, though it’s fun to watch. This didn’t hurt my appreciation, though. What did was the same lack of character development that made THE OUTLAW KING similarly a fun spectacle about people I didn’t care about. We never really get a sense of who Henry is, what his flaw or mis-belief is, and how he must change because of the central conflict (he does change, but not much). As with OUTLAW KING, a bride appears, whom the protagonist will treat as an equal, which smacks of pandering to modern sensibilities, as these brides have almost no screen time or influence in their films. As a result of plot taking charge over character, the story feels disjointed as it covers a lot of ground.

Overall, I liked THE KING quite a bit, hope Netflix makes more of these historical epics, and recommend a watch. I just hope in the future the writers take that extra leap and infuse the story engine with deeper, organic characterization to make me care more about what happens in the historical plot.

Directed by Steven Spielberg but without the usual heavy-handedness, and based on the book TEAM OF RIVALS: THE POLITICAL GENIUS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, LINCOLN (2012) is an amazing film about the final four months of the iconic president’s life, emphasizing his efforts to both end the Civil War while getting the thirteenth amendment passed in the House of Representatives. With a star-studded cast led by the great Daniel Day-Lewis, who shreds every scene while embodying the wit, strength, and humanity of Lincoln, this is an amazing film that treats its audience as intelligent adults and presents an insider look at how the institution of slavery legally ended in America for all time.

As I grow older, I find myself fascinated by sociological storytelling, in which a system is the main character, around which we have an ensemble cast of people acting within that system. THE BIG SHORT, GAME OF THRONES, the FOUNDATION series, and THE WIRE are all great examples. These stories don’t have villains so much as different individuals who find themselves in conflict with each other within a particular system. LINCOLN is one such story, as much about a major historical event than Lincoln himself, however instrumental he was in that event. They say lawmaking is similar to sausage making in that you really don’t want to know what goes into the sausage, but in this case, the sausage making makes for tense, fascinating storytelling–and provides a real appreciation for the tightrope Lincoln had to walk between the different factions: Democrats and right-wing, moderate, and left-wing Republicans.

Overall, I highly recommend LINCOLN if you like history, incredible acting and world building, and sociological storytelling.