Walking With The Enemy - Review

Walking With The Enemy
(2014 - April 25)
Action | Drama | History
2 hr. 4 min.

Rated: PG-13 | Frequent war violence but little else to worry about. Read more
Grade: B

Director: Mark Schmidt
Writers: Kenny Golde (screenplay), Richard Lasser (additional screenplay material)
Stars: Jonas Armstrong, Ben Kingsley, Hannah Tointon | See full cast and crew

Inspired by a true story, "Walking with the Enemy" is an unforgettable film of love, courage, and sacrifice. Set in Hungary during the final months of World War ll, a young man sets out to find his displaced family by stealing a Nazi uniform to pose as an officer. Filled with suspense and danger, he undertakes extraordinary measures to reroute his family and other Jews to safety by disrupting the activities of the German occupiers.

WWII drama Walking with the Enemy, directed by Mark Schmidt and starring Jonas Armstrong, Hannah Tointon, Ben Kingsley, Simon Kunz and Simon Dutton. It is bsed on a true story, Armstrong plays Elek Cohen, a young man living in Hungary during the Nazi occupation at the end of World War II who steals a Nazi uniform in order to pose as an officer. 

In the clip below, you can see Cohen in a restaurant interacting with another Nazi officer who is raving about the luxurious Nazi "resorts" where his fellow Jews, neighbors and family alike, are being sent, putting him in a sticky situation. His family has been taken away but he doesn't know where they have been sent.

I liked Walking With The Enemy, I couldn't help making comparisons to Europa a film that is much more artful in its relating of a similar tale, but is still a good film. It most certainly is an amazing and compelling story. Even though the film is just over 2 hours, it seemed like the script needed more time to tell the story and to delve a bit deeper into the characters. It felt a little too thin making it a triffle difficult to to understand how Cohen was able to pass as an officer so many times in such a small world especially particularly when he kept confronting the same German and Hungarian soldiers and officers.

I wanted to know more of how he managed his charade. Additionally, I would like to have seen more exposé. This is an era and a subject about which most people know precious little. All that said, Walking With The Enemy is an intriguing story. This is a film that you can enjoy with your family. The film presents an educational opportunity, a chance to teach the horrors of war and man's inhumanity to man. How a society can loose its way through prejudice, bigotry, fear and hatred.

It also teaches the value of self reliance, courage, dedication, love, duty and hope and how perseverance and bravery can overcome even the most formidable forces of evil.

I have a special interest in stories of the holocaust since I have had several Jewish friends who survived the holocaust, some who hid, fled the Nazis and some who lived through concentration camps. A friend of mine's Hungarian father hid from the Nazi Gestapo and their Hungarian collaborators eventually escaping to the west. It's a good film not a great one but I do recommend it.

 

Cast

   Jonas Armstrong      Hannah Tointon   

   Elek Cohen                    Hannah Schoen

   Ben Kingsley            Shane Taylor   

   Regent Horthy               Miklos Horthy Jr 

The Quiet Ones - Review

The Quiet Ones
(2014 - April 25)
Horror
1 hr. 39 - min. 

Rated: PG-13 | Intense sequences of violence and terror, some sexual content, brief backside nudity, some language, and smoking throughout. Common Sense Media says OK for 14 and up. Read more 
Grade: C

Director: John Pogue
Writers: Craig Rosenberg (screenplay), Oren Moverman (screenplay), 2 more credits
Stars: Jared Harris, Sam Claflin, Olivia Cooke | See full cast and crew

A university student (Sam Claflin of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire") and some classmates are recruited to carry out a private experiment -- to create a poltergeist. Their subject: an alluring, but dangerously disturbed young woman (Olivia Cooke of "Bates Motel"). Their quest: to explore the dark energy that her damaged psyche might manifest. As the experiment unravels along with their sanity, the rogue PHD students are soon confronted with a terrifying reality: they have triggered an unspeakable force with a power beyond all explanation.

The Quiet Ones is a sometimes annoying somewhat standard fare from England's iconic horror film studio Hammer. The studio which has been around since the 1930s made its living off of Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and John Carradine during its heyday in the 1950s through the 1970s which just happens to be the same time period The Quiet Ones is set. You might even call it a period piece, an homage, to the Hammer Horror films of the past. They were the kings of low budget and low-low budget horror films.

Christopher Lee, John Carradine, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price cast of House Of The Long Shadows

Although Hammer never got their four stars working together in one film, that feat was accomplished by MGM in the disastrous House of the Long Shadows (when it was originally released it was so poorly received that its opening in the US was canceled), they did, however, make a slew of B-list horror hits and misses that were the bread and butter of the venerable British studio. But I digress, back to The Quiet Ones, it's the latest from the revitalized Hammer horror shingle, which gave us The Woman in Black (2012) starring Daniel Radcliffe which was actually quite good (reviewed in my 2012 Picks and Pans page). The Quiet Ones has a script co-written by Oren Moverman ("The Messenger," "Rampart", "Jesus' Son") unfortunately this Hammer follow up it is not nearly as strong as it should have been.

The Quiet Ones boasts all the hallmarks of horror movies you've seen before, an ancient evil, a based on a true story premise and unseen things banging around loudly. The story is set in the 1970s and employes the 'free love' morals and pervasive smoking so common to the era. It relies too much on the loud 'jump' type shocks rather than focusing on a strong story, script or direction. I enjoy a good horror film but for me the story is weak and implausible and falls short of what it could have been.

The direction and acting are both a bit less than stellar and occasionally it uses the dreaded 'found footage' shaky handheld camera technique. Hammer has announced a sequel to The Woman in Black its release slated for a 2015 opening. Let's hope they do a little more fine-tuning on that one. As is the assesment for so many other films, The Quiet Ones is not a truly horrible horror film just that it's not a really good one either.

On a positive note, this film was light on profanity and nudity making it somewhat family friendly.

Cast

            Jared Harris                 Sam Claflin              Olivia Cooke            

 Professor Joseph Coupland          Brian McNeil                     Jane Harper                

    Rory Fleck-Byrne         Erin Richards    

     Harry Abrams                    Krissi Dalton  

Bears - Review

BEARS
(2014 - April 18)
Documentary
1 hr. 17 min.

Rated: G 
Grade: B+


Directors: Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey
Stars: John C. Reilly | See full cast and crew


In an epic story of breathtaking scale, Disneynature's new True Life Adventure "Bears" showcases a year in the life of a bear family as two impressionable young cubs are taught life's most important lessons. Set against a majestic Alaskan backdrop teeming with life, their journey begins as winter comes to an end and the bears emerge from hibernation to face the bitter cold. The world outside is exciting-but risky-as the cubs' playful descent down the mountain carries with it a looming threat of avalanches. As the season changes from spring to summer, the brown bears must work hard to find food-ultimately feasting at a plentiful salmon run-while staying safe from rival male bears and predators, including an ever-present wolf pack. "Bears" captures the fast-moving action and suspense of life in one of the planet's last great wildernesses-Alaska! Directed by Alastair Fothergill ("Earth," "African Cats" and "Chimpanzee") and Keith Scholey ("African Cats"), "Bears" arrives in theaters April 18, 2014, to celebrate Earth Day.(c) Disney

Cute, cuddly, adorable baby animals, breathtaking scenery, what's not to like here? How can this not be a home run? Yet Disneynature  seems to have only hit a triple with Bears...a good thing but there's still no run scored. Watching the trailers these past several months gets you all excited to see the film but then it doesn't live up to the hype. It's good but it needed something more, perhaps a little better narration, that's not to say that the delivery by John C. Reilly is bad, yes it is a bit corny at times, but ultimately it's just not that interesting. The story is lacking.

 

 

The mother bear, Sky, which they eventually describe as the perfect role model for her cubs habitually makes one mistake after another (apparently in an effort to make the story dramatic), she puts her cubs in peril again and again. I really wanted to be charmed by this film and quite simply, I wasn't. Bears fizzled to an end that left me thinking...that was it? Even the spectacular Alaskan scenery became less moving as the film wound down to its lackluster conclusion. Good but not great. Like it's predecessor from Disneynature, Chimpanzee, it was a bit of a disappointment.

Behind the scenes, the making of Bears.

Cast

 John C. Reilly

Narrator (voice)