I've had a busy week, so I thought I would reward myself with a few movies. I started with a morning showing of Restrepo, then followed that up with Please Give, then watched The Happening in the privacy of my own home. Lets start by saying that two were good and one was bad. I won't tell you which was good and which was bad until the end of the respective reviews.

Restrepo

Directed by: Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger

Genre: Documentary

The doc follows Second Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalian, 503rd Infantry Regiment (airborne) of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team which was posted in the Korangal Valley in mid 2007. The Korangal Valley is located in the Kunar Province in Northeastern Afghanistan is is generally considered to be one of the more dangerous postings in the US Military.

If you are anything like me, you have very little knowledge of what combat is really like, other than what little tidbits elderly relatives may pass along. That, for me, is very little as my relatives generally like to keep war stories to a minimum. That's why a documentary like this is so interesting.

I'll keep plot details to a minimum except to say that bad shit happens and people are left to deal with it in their own way. Watching a young adult like myself deal with such a complicated and dangerous situation in such a realistic way is an incredible thing. Zero prewrapped straws.

Please Give

Directed by: Nicole Holofcener

Genre: Comedy/Drama - Indie

Oliver Platt and Catherine Keener are a husband and wife who co-own a vintage furniture shop. Their stock comes from the estates of the recently deceased. They have a next door neighbor who is a bitter 91 year old who never has anything to say about her loving granddaughter Rebecca and bitchy granddaughter Mary. Their lives intersect as Kate (Keener) and Alex (Platt) have plans to purchase the old lady's apartment when she dies.

The movie does a great job and drawing characters and providing those characters with motivations. It also has a realistic look at infidelity and provides answers as to how a good man could cheat. It's a difficult task to make a man seem sympathetic while having a loving wife and the movie does a terrific job. It also provides answers as to how Mary acts the way she does. She's self centered and painfully honest to the point of being cruel.

It isn't fast moving, but it is a worthwhile. It might not be terribly profound but whatever simple ideas it does illustrate, it does very well.

The Happening

Directed by: Shyamalan

Genre: Horror/Unintentional comedy

It took me five minutes to get a reading on this movie. When Marky Mark's character, a science teacher, says that "Science will come up with some reason to put in the books, but in the end it'll be just a theory. I mean we will fail to acknowledge that there are forces at work beyond our understanding" it told me all I needed to know.

The acting is bad, the script is terrible, and the whole thing is on a level slightly below a made for tv movie. After watching The Last Airbender, the fault can safely lie with Shyamalan himself as everything bad comes from something he had his fingers in. Somebody in this industry needs to nut up and tell him his movies suck before he foists any more on an unsuspecting public. There may be a good horror in THAT concept. Don't waste your time, I'm not wasting any more on it.