Valkyrie

[Hunter Rider]

^^^^ Awesome avvy.

 

[gwynplaine]

Can't wait to see Valkyrie.

 

[Doctor Jones]

^^^^ Awesome avvy.

Thank you.

 

[Dark Donnie]

TV Spots:

[YT]RcSeSaHR54c&fmt=18[/YT]
[YT]yigU9nBJPEU&fmt=18[/YT]
[YT]swSaYWdZ0KM&fmt=18[/YT]
[YT]qfc7k_bIxQ4&fmt=18[/YT]
[YT]lXc9vbXM9L8&fmt=18[/YT]

 

[tzarinna]

There's a screening on Thursday, I hope to get in.

 

[Retroman]

The spots aren't working for some reason.

 

[Dark Donnie]

They were working the other day I got them off Movie-Box

 

[Superark]

This movies looks to be really good, though I am disappointed about the accents, but I'll live.

Hope Singer and Cruise get some Oscar recognition for this, though I'm not sure the latter will.

 

[Retroman]

They were working the other day I got them off Movie-Box

Donnie, thanks for the lead on the site. It's the embedded versions of the videos that aren't working. On themoviebox.net it works just fine. Perhaps it's youtube's decision to change all their content from 4:3 to 16:9 that's causing this.

The spots were nicely cut and the movie looks to be very intense and dramatic.

 

[The Lizard]

I just want to go on record as saying that despite my firm conviction that Tom Cruise is a nutball egomaniac and Scientology is a sleazy scam, I will go see Valkyrie if it gets enough good reviews.

 

[Dark Donnie]

Donnie, thanks for the lead on the site. It's the embedded versions of the videos that aren't working. On themoviebox.net it works just fine. Perhaps it's youtube's decision to change all their content from 4:3 to 16:9 that's causing this.

The spots were nicely cut and the movie looks to be very intense and dramatic.

No problem...glad you got them to work

 

[Venom75]

There have been quite a few great WW2/Third Reich era films that have come out in the last few years and I hope this one makes it on the list. But I LOVE the foreign films from Germany. Der Untergang in the best World War 2 film I've ever seen and Bruno Ganz is brilliant as the Fuhrer. I also just watched a film based on the life of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose(also from Germany,I believe). Very good.

 

[Nirvana]

I just realized that this was coming out on Christmas Day...and I thought it was coming out the day after. Looks like I'll be seeing a lot of movies Christmas Day.

 

[tzarinna]

I went to see it tonight. Small crowd, very small.

I thought there were good performances by all, except Tom Cruise's perm, yeesh.

Stand out performances by Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson.

 

[Dark Donnie]

I went to see it tonight. Small crowd, very small.

I thought there were good performances by all, except Tom Cruise's perm, yeesh.

Stand out performances by Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson.

Was it a good thriller?

 

[tzarinna]

It wasn't as intense as it could have been. It got to be more so close to the end.

 

[Cinemaman]

Could you post your review?

 

[tzarinna]

I don't ususally don't do full on long worded reviews.

I thought it was a good movie. It was pretty simple, not very complex in that it moved about quite fluidly. There wasn't a lot to keep me on the edge of my seat, there was some comic relief but it fit in well, nothing over the top at all. I thought the story was presented it well.
I like I said in my previous post, Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson were stand out performances, but again nothing is over the top in this movie. So in that regard in really liked it. There might have been a little over the top by Tom in the end but I won't give that away.

 

[Dark Donnie]

Reviews:

Variety

Hollywood Reporter

 

[I Am The Knight]

So the consensus so far seems to be that it's "good"....

 

[Cinemaman]

I'm afraid I'll be disappointed, as the film is getting very mixed reviews, which mostly imply it's good, but is far from great

 

[stargazer]

I'm still watching it. I'm sure I'll like it, at least.

 

[[A]]

REVIEW: VALKYRIE

Possibly the best thing anyone can say about Valkyrie - and this is not intended as some kind of put-down - is that Bryan Singer's movie takes a story with an ending that is blindingly obvious to the entire audience and makes it suspenseful. Hopefully our education system has not deteriorated to the point where people walking into a film about an attempt on Hitler's life will be ignorant of the plot's outcome, but even people who know about Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg's plot to blow up Der Fuehrer will find themselves on the edges of their seats in the movie's third act as the coup comes so very close to success.

Weirdly, this is pretty much the only level on which Valkyrie works. Singer (and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander) have essentially made a very serious caper movie, ignoring any sort of moral or philosophical concepts that one could explore in a movie about a few good Germans trying to get rid of the bad ones. It's a prestigiously cast thriller, but Valkyrie never rises above - or seems to even aspire above - being just a thriller.

Tom Cruise sits at the center of Valkyrie as Stauffenberg, the one eyed, one handed German soldier who decides that the only way to save The Fatherland in the final days of World War II is to betray it and kill Hitler. He finds himself in an elite conspiracy made up of some of the highest ranked members of the German political and military system, and he decides to use a coup-battling contingency plan (called Valkyrie) as the way to actually effect a coup. It's a highwire act that requires Stauffenberg himself to get Hitler to sign off on an amended Valkyrie and then place a bomb in Der Fuehrer's presence, as well as getting away safely and taking over Berlin's administrative and beauracratic facilities. There's a delicious irony to the idea of using Hitler's paranoia and beauracracy against itself, although the movie doesn't seem to quite note that. It just keeps moving along as a high toned thriller.

Cruise, despite many worries, is perfectly fine as the American-accented Kraut (there are some who may find the wide array of accents on display - from Thomas Kretschmann's German to Cruise's American to everybody else's variations of English - distracting, but it wasn't all that big of a deal to me. Being annoyed by that feels like a nitpick), although his character as written is stiff, uninteresting and shockingly arc-free. Stauffenberg's actual first lines in the film are a declaration that he would like to kill Hitler, and he never moves from that plan or shows a hint of doubt. There's zero journey for this character, and we never get a look at the turmoil that must have accompanied the man making this decision. The movie feels like it's part two of a two part miniseries, and part one was where all of the steps that Stauffenberg took to go from a loyal German to a traitor willing to risk his life happened.

Part one was also, as former CHUD writer Mr. Beaks noted to me, where Kenneth Branagh's character had a role. Branagh shows up at the beginning as the leader of the conspiracy, and then he's shipped off to the front. He never shows up again until the end, when the conspiracy is captured and he meets his final fate (I don't feel like this is a spoiler - you can't imagine that people taking part in a conspiracy to kill Hitler will have met happy endings), but he's presented as a major character. It's all part of the feeling that at least the first act, if not a whole first movie, was jettisoned in an attempt to make a pacier, more streamlined film.

Which works on its own terms. Singer has a murderer's row of English actors at his disposal, including the aforementioned Branagh, Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard Terence Stamp and Tom Wilkinson. Each of these actors dig into fairly slight roles, and each of them brings more doubt and confusion to their character's obviously tortured psyches than Cruise can seem to rustle up. As a result, each and every single other character feels more complex and identifiable than Stauffenberg (except for his wife, played by Carice Van Houten, who is completely and criminally underused. Like Branagh, she feels like a character who had a bigger role in part one of this miniseries). Again, it's not that Cruise is bad - he's fine in the role - it's just that his character is sort of a bullet, always moving ahead and never giving any problem a second thought. He's a weird main character, and not one who we can ever feel like we understand.

While all of these actors class up the joint in delightful ways, they also give Valkyrie the feeling of a BBC drama. Singer's movie, while exciting in the third act, never quite becomes thrilling. It's part of the film's internal disconnect that it's a heist movie without thrills and a serious film without thoughts. While watching Valkyrie I kept thinking about those Discovery Channel documentaries that feature lots of re-enactments that are shown silently while the narrator describes what's happening, people's motivations and what they're thining. Valkyrie often plays like those re-enactments writ large with terrific actors. There's a feeling that what's missing is something deeper than just showing the events.

Valkyrie looks gorgeous; shot on digital video, the movie showcases an eye for composition and scenery that we might have forgotten Bryan Singer has. On the down side, the digital video often gives the film the look of a very good TV show, a hazard that goes with the territory - and which only reinforces the feeling that this is a classy re-enactment in a BBC documentary.

Valkyrie's not a stiff, but it's a minor film at best. Without enough going on under the snappy German army hat to make it a prestige picture and without enough thrills and excitement to make it a mainstream audience picture, Valkyrie sits somewhere in no man's land. It's hard to imagine anyone really loving this movie or, for that matter, really hating it. Well made and mostly well acted, Valkyrie is an exercise more than a complete motion picture, the kind of movie that Singer probably should have made for a miniscule budget. I see Valkyrie as Singer trying to find the middle ground between his earlier, better work and his latest, studio blockbuster stuff. To put my metaphor into horrible WWII terms, it's not like he invaded Russia in winter, but it's also no D-Day landing.

7 out of 10

http://chud.com/articles/articles/17448/1/REVIEW-VALKYRIE/Page1.html

 

[Nirvana]

My brother and I decided to have a Christmas Movie Day and see this along with Benjamin Button, The Spirit and Frost/Nixon.

 

[[A]]

^ That's quite a line-up