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Monuments Men

19deac92

19deac92

You are a meathead.
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I just came home from watching this movie with my wife and kids. All in all, a pretty good movie in my opinion. It stayed pretty closed to the actual events in question, at least as set forth in the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel, which I finished a couple of weeks ago.

Good performances (I thought) by Matt Damon, George Clooney, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, and John Goodman, along with Cate Blanchett as Claire Simone, whose character is based upon the real life French spy and heroine, Rose Valland.

I recommend this flick.

Any thoughts by anyone else?
 
So better than the reviews imply? It's pretty poorly reviewed around the internets.
 
I haven't read any reviews about the movie, so I cannot offer any comparisons with what any reviews might say. (I personally don't have much respect for movie critics, as "The English Patient" and "Chariots of Fire" were greatly praised by so called experts, but I found both movies to achieve unexplored levels of suckitude.)

Having recently read the book about what actually happened (before I knew of any movie coming out about it), I wanted to check it out.

I enjoyed myself, and I think everyone in my family did, too. Definitely not Oscar material, but an entertaining and somewhat educational film nonetheless.
 
I was really disappointed. It's a great story with a theme that should resonate with anyone who loves film (or any other art form). The film has a ton of talented people involved, but I felt like it ended up being less than the sum of its parts. The movie was disjointed and had zero character development (a real shame given all of the acting talent involved). It felt more like a history lecture than a movie. Clooney obviously cares greatly about the topic, but he would have been better off making a documentary than a narrative film
 
Dick Whitman said:
I was really disappointed. It's a great story with a theme that should resonate with anyone who loves film (or any other art form). The film has a ton of talented people involved, but I felt like it ended up being less than the sum of its parts. The movie was disjointed and had zero character development (a real shame given all of the acting talent involved). It felt more like a history lecture than a movie. Clooney obviously cares greatly about the topic, but he would have been better off making a documentary than a narrative film
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I can certainly see why you would feel that way. The movie is indeed disjointed, passing back and forth between the different groups. In real life, the Monuments Men were indeed divided up into ones and twos, assigned to different units hundreds of miles from one another across Europe, while Matt Damon's character remained in Paris for much of the time (and dealt with Cate Blanchette's character) as portrayed in the movie. In trying to remain true to the actual events and what each group did, I think that George Clooney was left with little choice but to structure the movie as he did.

Anyhow, I liked the movie, but my perspective is undoubtedly colored by having read a 400+ page book upon which it is based.

To the tagger who posted "op: monument [t]o obesity," what gives? I weigh 165 pounds. Keep spreading joy and cheer, my friend.
 
Thought it was a pretty solid movie, entertaining but not Oscar-worthy. Great cast, but everybody except for Cate Blanchett basically played themselves and didn't act. Music seemed a little disjointed and was kind of a distraction. There were a couple of scenes that didn't work, but the scene when Clooney was interrogating the Nazi and the scene with the dentist's nephew were worth the price of admission. Not a perfect film, but much better than the aggregate online ratings.
 
I guess with that many stars commanding big paydays they sacrificed on the script.
 
Moonz is going to love this movie. It's right in his Thin Red Line loving wheelhouse.
 
It was entertaining in the way that big budget history/ treasure hunt movies generally are, but its not transcendent or remarkable in any way. Like it was said earlier, all of the actors play themselves.

Sent from my C6606 using Tapatalk
 
Dino Gaudino said:
I guess with that many stars commanding big paydays they sacrificed on the script.
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Absolute crap. Clooney wrote the script. This was a labor of love for him. It has less than nothing to do with shorting the script budget.
 
The movie was made for like $13 million. Cast was paid nominal salaries and get a cut of the back-end (if it makes any $).
 
Also I'm pretty sure all the cast members took serious pay cuts to be in the film as a special favor to Clooney (and because they figured it had a decent chance of winning awards, which it certainly will not).
 
Tin Cup said:
The movie was made for like $13 million. Cast was paid nominal salaries and get a cut of the back-end (if it makes any $).
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If the budget was really only $13M, the cast worked for slightly above scale. Most of the $13M would be for locations, sets and hard costs.

P.S. for those of you who visit LA, Smokehouse Productions (Clooney's company) is named after his favorite restaraunt. When in town, he often hangsout there.
 
Tin Cup said:
The movie was made for like $13 million. Cast was paid nominal salaries and get a cut of the back-end (if it makes any $).
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More like 60 or 65 million
“If you pay everybody a full boatload, it’s a $150 million film,” says Clooney, who managed to stay under his $70 million budget. “You just can’t do it. Everybody worked for super cheap, like crazy cheap.” He says the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies operated under a similar business model, although the actors in the Steven Soderbergh franchise earned roughly a quarter of their normal salary. For “Monuments Men,” they were paid a 10th or a 15th of their going rate, but with a meaningful backend if the movie makes money, Clooney adds.
http://variety.com/2014/film/news/clooney-is-as-at-home-on-the-world-stage-as-he-is-on-the-soundstage-1201084932/
 
19deac92 said:
I can certainly see why you would feel that way. The movie is indeed disjointed, passing back and forth between the different groups. In real life, the Monuments Men were indeed divided up into ones and twos, assigned to different units hundreds of miles from one another across Europe, while Matt Damon's character remained in Paris for much of the time (and dealt with Cate Blanchette's character) as portrayed in the movie. In trying to remain true to the actual events and what each group did, I think that George Clooney was left with little choice but to structure the movie as he did.

Anyhow, I liked the movie, but my perspective is undoubtedly colored by having read a 400+ page book upon which it is based.

To the tagger who posted "op: monument [t]o obesity," what gives? I weigh 165 pounds. Keep spreading joy and cheer, my friend.
Click to expand...

Those bastard taggers call me a fatty as well. Keep up the good fight my man.
 
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