The Monuments Men

A Nice Little Film

These are the words I text Smith just after seeing this film. I really enjoyed it. If this film had a purpose then it showed man’s duty to protect culture and the importance that should be placed on it. It also showed camaraderie and dedication to a cause that is “just”.

You quickly forge the cast and the “big” scenes seem to just fit but I can see that they took a lot of work. The film had scenes from the Normandy Landings to Paris, the Battle Of The Bulge, St. Lo, etc. To get the “look” of the film right was a huge amount of work and probably un-noticed by most.

There were no overblown heroics and I had expected some time spent on “basic” training with the laughs thrown in but this was avoided too. As I said earlier:

A Nice Little Film

I now have some more places in Europe to visit. I have been to Bruges but I didn’t know that the statue of the Madonna and Child was there. Time to return I think. I will say one thing and I have to blame the culture of the 1980s: I was half expecting some of the cast to find or say they were searching for the “Fallen Madonna With The Big Boobies”. Such was the influence of ‘Allo ‘Allo on my childhood. Damn!

I did watch a trailer for this and I’m pretty sure that there were a few lines in the trailer that weren’t in the main film. That’s good. I hate seeing all the “big” bits of a film in a trailer and then the actual film fails to overcome my expectations. Comedies struggle with this, they put the funny lines in the trailer and then there’s nothing left for the main film. An exception to this was The Heat with Sandra Bullock. I didn’t see this at the cinema because it looked as though they had put all the funny bits in the trailer. I was wrong. This film had me laughing out loud ALL the way through. It was far better than the trailer.

Rant:

I really should try and avoid films the first few days that they are released. People in the cinema with loud sweet packets are REALLY ANNOYING. I nearly turned around and told these people to “fuck off”. Any food taken in to the cinema should be something that is quiet to eat or access. There is no need to take noisy packets of food into a cinema. It just shows what anti-social pricks you are. If you want to eat food while watching a film do it at home. You are probably too fat anyway and so shouldn’t be eating more food anyway.

End of rant.