Entertainment Weekly has psted their review of "Rambo."  Pretty short, but they do give it better than average marks, which does surprise me.  Haven't had a chance to see it yet (can't get away!)

This closing statement does give a little bit of hope that the old Rambo's not dead yet....

The brutality, tough enough to take, would be intolerable if Stallone didn't toss the movie like a cant-clearing grenade at notions of stay-the-course righteousness (not to mention at the sermonizing of more faith-based agonies staged by Mel Gibson). Rambo teaches that fighting sucks, good intentions can be futile, and coalitions of the willing are a charade: A man's got to do what a man's got to do. Sometimes that means tying on the old bandanna to hack one's way out of the Hollywood jungle so disorienting to aging action stars.

Link: Rambo | Movie Review | Entertainment Weekly

Technorati Tags: war movie news, new releases, rambo, review, stallone

H.G. Wells really was a bloody genius, and a prophet in the vein of Jules Verne.  His book, The Shape of Things to Come, presents a sort of "history of the future," and predicts with uncanny accuracy some of the terrible aspects of warfare that would come to pass only a few short years later.

In Things to Come, the movie starts out in a fictional city called Everytown, but its safe to say that it serves as an allegory for any modern city.  In this version of the future, war is imminent, and eventually Everytown is bombed into oblivion in an offensive that can only be described as a prediction of the 1940 "Blitz" of London.

So, anyone remember the big military story of the late 90's, you know, before 9/11?  Yeah, not so much, do you?  Well, No Man's Land takes us back to the fight in Serbia and Bosnia, and looks at that conflict from the inside.

First off, a warning, the movie is nearly all foreign languages, with a little English thrown in.  Smatterings of French and German, with the majority in... well, the native language, which I'm not even sure what to call it!  But it really doesn't matter, as No Man's Land is a fine bit of film making, and a great statement about that war, and war in general.

The story pits individuals from each side trapped in a trench between the two lines, the "no man's land" as it were.  Ciki (Branko Djuric), the veteran, and one of his companions, Cera (Filip Sovagovic), versus Nino (Rene Bitorajac), the greenhorn from the opposite side.  Nino's Sergeant has mistaken Cera for dead, and booby trapped him with a "bouncing betty" style mine.  The majority of the picture follows the arguing and trading of the upper hand between Ciki and Nino.

I guess since the first Gulf War (at least on the ground) only lasted a couple of months, there probably aren't a lot of stories to tell.  At least we can fall back on Three Kings to fill in the gap.

Somewhat a re-telling of the Kelly's Heroes story, it follows four soldiers in their quest to steal some Kuwaiti gold bricks out of the hands of Saddam's army, after the war is over.  Unlike with Kelly's bunch, though, things go terribly, terribly awry in a surreal series of events that wind up telling more of the story that needs to be told more often.

Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) catches wind of the map that Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), and Pfc. Vig (Spike Jonze) find in a surrendering Iraqi's, um, backside.  Once they figure out what they've got, they set out on their quest in true '90s style.

Oh man, I can't believe I've never found the time to see Das Boot until now.  I mean, what was I thinking?!  If ever there was the definitive "submarine" war movie, this is it, hands down.  I think in my younger years I was put off by the length of it, but no more.

The plot follows the crew of the German U-Boat, U-96 as they set out into the Atlantic to attack convoys heading for Britain.  The problem is that by this time, the Royal Navy has figured out how to fight the underwater menace, and has left the U-Boat fleet sparse and spread out.

That doesn't keep U-96 out of danger, however.  On numerous occasions they must avoid being destroyed by depth charges, and they manage to pull it off, mostly due to the commanding presence of their Captain, Willenbrock (Jürgen Prochnow.)

But the combat isn't the great part of this film.  Consider that, apart from about three short episodes, one at the beginning, one at the end, and one about two-thirds in, the entire film takes place on board the sub.  All three and a half hours.  Now, that might sound tedious and dull to some, but director Wolfang Petersen turns this into an incredible story of human survival and spirit.

War movies just ain't what they used to be, you know?  Of course, neither is the business of war, and The Kingdom shows us the new face of war, fought in little pieces by terrorists on one side and our very own FBI on the other.

In The Kingdom, an Islamic terrorist blows up a bunch of American civilians inside their Saudi community, and once rescue workers and officials arrive to clean up the mess...  They blow the lot of them up with an even bigger device.  The casualties include the FBI man on scene.

This brings the ire of some of the rest of his group, led by Special Agent Fleury (Jamie Foxx), followed by Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), and Adam Levitt (Jason Bateman.)  They manage to get over there against the better judgement of their superiors, and in fact most of the US government, and quickly find themselves in a strange and foreign land.