Same here. I'm a history buff & always been. I still have great memories of studying 'The French Revolution' and 'The Russian Revolution' back in high school history class. I also studied "The History of the United States" in grade 13 history & found it fascinating. I've probably watched & bought every great documentary made about WWII. 'The World at War' still ranks among my favorite WWII documentary series. I've seen & purchased many good to great WWII movies. 'Saving Private Ryan' was the icing on the cake for me in terms of 'great' war movies.
A few years ago i began researching WWI and have been hooked since! I have viewed several great documentaries about this awful war. I have also read many books about it & strongly recommend reading "The Guns of August" by Barbara Tuchman. There's been several movies made about WWI but not as many as WWII. One great WWI movie is "All Quiet on the Western Front", which i purchased a year ago but still have yet to see it. I have seen "Paths of Glory" and liked it. But i have a feeling that '1917' will rank among the best WWI movies along with a few others. By the way one very good movie with the war as it's background is "Passchendaele", a Canadian movie which came out about a decade ago or so. It was directed by and stars Paul Gross (The Mounty) and Caroline Dhavernas. "Legends of the Fall" starring Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt & Aidan Quinn also ranks among my favorite movies with WWI as its background.
I went to see 1917 this past weekend. I saw it in IMAX, which i always love. I'll be honest & admit that my initial reaction to the movie was that i found it so-so. Usually when i see a great movie (like Dunkirk a couple of years ago) in terms of great moviemaking i end up buying the bluray or in 4K when it comes out. But after 1917 i figured i had seen it once & probably wouldn't feel like seeing it again. However yesterday i changed my mind after reading a few reviews of the movie. Let me explain why:
The best thing about the movie is it's great cinematography. It's extremely realistic, especially when you watch it in IMAX. I also loved the many cameos of great actors in the movie who appear less than a minute each in the entire movie. It was also a very good story and the acting performances from the two main actors were brilliant, especially George Mackay's, whom i also loved in the extremely good movie "Captain Fantastic" which starred Vigo Mortensen. But one thing about the movie that i missed when i saw it a few days ago is that director Sam Mendes shot the movie to look like it was one continuous shot for the entire movie!!! Of course there's a little of CGI involved in order to make it appear this way but i read that many scenes were actually shot for approximately 10 continuous minutes at a time without any breaks or interruptions and the next scenes were spliced together using CGI in order to make it appear into one continuous shot for the entire movie!! That's absolutely brilliant moviemaking and why i now must have to see it again!! I've always been a sucker for great moviemaking & great cinematography and that's where this picture has really got my attention!
Why this movie didn't earn its share of Oscars indicates to me that once again the fix was on.....just like in past years when Harvey Weinstein was still the main player in Hollywood & not in prison. Had Weinstein been behind 1917 i'm 100% certain that it would have won best movie & best movie director. I'm certain of this. But this time it would have been 100% deserved. However, i'm saying this without yet having seen 'Parasite', which i will be seeing either later today or within the coming days since i just received my movie order from Amazon which includes 'Joker', 'Yesterday', 'Ford vs Ferrari', 'Parasite' and 'Midway'.
For myself, the most enjoying movie i've seen this year has to be 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'. It's such a good movie! Well made, great storytelling, great acting and the movie that finally convinced me that Quentin Tarentino is indeed a moviemaking genius!
