War Horse
Well, that was beautiful, wasn't it? Much d'awwness. I think what impressed me the most was the sheer beauty and flow of it. And the horses' acting. Holy shit, give these horses all the Oscars. Just the amount of effort that must've gone into shooting all the horses... wow. The stuff the poor things had to do! Some of that must've hurt, like when Joey runs around in the trenches, tries to go up and runs into sandbags and then falls down the slope and crashes down--Jesus, I'm not sure what the Humane Association (or whoever it was that did the animal welfare monitoring on it) must've thought of that. And then there was all the barbed wire and eep. But just the horses' acting was magnificient. I know they're insanely intelligent animals, but still, to get them to do all that stuff for a movie was phenomenal. And the most amazing, tragic shot of the entire film was, IMHO, that part in the disastrous cavalry charge when all those horses jump past the German machine guns without a single rider on their backs. Oh, and it really didn't help that they cut in to terrified baby Captain Nicholls in the middle of it. And then to Joey running on without him. WAAAAAAAAH!
The colours and the lighting in the film were just phenomenal. They were just like the sort of shots you'd expect to see in an old, early Technicolor film. And it wasn't CGI-y either, but this wonderful sort of mixed light that made people stand out from the background like they were cut out by the light shining upon them, and made them look larger than life, bathed in warm, flushed colours. Every tiny tuft of grass and heather was shining with colour. I kept thinking of Gone With The Wind so many times, especially whenever they were at the family farm.
Also, on a more shallow note, IS THERE ANY CAPTAIN NICHOLLS/MAJOR STEWART? Even their horses were gay for one another. And why did Nicholls keep smiling like that at him all the time? It was also lovely to hear and see both Cucumber and Hiddles on the big screen. They sure knew how to use Hiddles's baby blues. I was kind of distracted by this shining blue and was too askdhladskhf to pay attention to some of what he said. It was quite unfair.
But yes, all in all a lovely film. Even the harrowing stuff wasn't too harrowing because it was so beautiful and hopeful.