MovieSorter

loading Title loading Tws summary loading Trust ▲ loading Year Viewable
American Assassin
Good 66 Points 2017

The War Against Islamist Terror gets short shrift in the nearly risible American Assassin, which starts well, powerfully well, but then goes mostly downhill. Quality aside: Sequel or No Sequel? That is the question. This origin story sets a low bar, yet made money, so why not a sequel. It’ll al…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Lame conversation misses the point
Hotel Mumbai
Great 66 Points 2019

The 2008 Mumbai attacks were of 9/11 savagery and comprehensiveness, yet have faded from Western consciousness. Hotel Mumbai recreates them with stunning alacrity, moving quickly from the Islamist terrorists coming ashore in rubber boats to starting to shoot-up train stations, restaurants and e…

Full Review »
WikChip Video A Measure of Justice
American Sniper
Perfect 66 Points 2014

Saving Private Ryan has a new neighbor atop the pantheon of Great American War movies. Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper illuminates the reality of America’s 21st century war as never before, just as Steven Spielberg’s classic did about the Greatest Generation’s …

Full Review »
WikChip Video 10 Questions with the real Chief Kyle
The Messenger
Pretty Bad 66 Points 2009

Anger and pity suffuse this superficially sympathetic portrait of the US Army’s casualty notification service. GIs are uniformly depicted as damaged, deluded or destructive: those uninjured as much as the wounded. Families of the fallen are depicted as unsupportive of their loved one’s enlistment…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Cinema Soldiers: I'm not OK, you're n...
1 Reply
  • BrianSez – Thanks, I was considering seeing this, but now won't...
Lone Survivor
Perfect 83 Points 2013

The greatest bromance movie of all time – charming, funny, deeply affecting – Lone Survivor is more importantly the Saving Private Ryan of our still young 21st Century. It viscerally depicts American heroes fighting my war against m…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Greatest Bromance Movie of All Time
1 Reply
  • Wick – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://www.viewguide.c...
Act of Valor
Great 83 Points 2012

Think of Act of Valor as real US Naval Special Warfare come to cineplexes, not as a normal war movie. Thus the valor is certain, the acting not so much.

Directed by a couple of former stuntmen and starring a bunch of active duty SEALs, it is earnest in the extreme and often wooden in its no…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Real bullets make this a unique movie
2 Replies
  • BrianSez – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://www.viewguide.c...
  • Wick – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://www.viewguide.c...
Zero Dark Thirty
Really Great 83 Points 2012

Zero Dark Thirty tells the truthy tale of the deadly hunt for Osama bin Laden, making it one of the most potent political movies of all time. The certain reverberations are hard to predict. Wikileaks? Wikiflick.

It starts with a dark screen, then a title card. September 11, 2001. Scre…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Toe-to-toe over how to find bin Laden
A Most Wanted Man
Very Good 83 Points 2014

Noted mostly as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s cinematic swan song, A Most Wanted Man is also a clear-eyed look at the long twilight struggle that we in the West have with the Islamists who are trying to kill us. Hoffman goes deep – real deep – as a 21st century German intel officer trying to keep Ha…

Full Review »
WikChip Video 60 Minutes revisits Philip Seymour Ho...
Body of Lies
Good 83 Points 2008

Given the dismal state of Islamist terror movies, this surprisingly evenhanded thriller tops the heap, though its disjointed plot comes together slowly and Leonardo DiCaprio’s CIA character lacks charisma. Fortunately he’s flanked by two great actors, the estimable Russell Crowe and the slickly …

Full Review »
Good Kill
Really Great 83 Points 2015

Obama’s War on Terror comes alive in Good Kill. Set in 2010, after the second POTUS to prosecute the Islamist War dramatically escalated drone warfare, it unflinchingly portrays the toll on airmen and their families from a new kind of combat in an incompetently defined war. Albeit fictional, it…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Trailer for a thrilling & important m...