Anthropoid (2016, Sean Ellis)
Solid movie with a standout script and effective acting too. I liked it. I especially liked the way the characters were written and I liked the type of scenes that we were shown and also those that we weren't shown.
An example of what we were shown was the meeting/date in the nightclub were the women show up for their dates with the two resistances fighters decked out in their finest clothes. Cillian Murphy says to the redhead, '
you're the most beautiful woman in the club.' Which she takes as a compliment...He then scolds her about her fancy look and dark lipstick saying it will draw attention from the Nazis seated in nearby tables...and attention is not what these two men want. I liked how that scene was written to resolve the problem..with a slap and a quick exit. The payoff is seeing the Nazis laugh at the poor man who was just slapped by the redheaded beauty.That scene was potatoes for the meat, nicely done.
I equally liked that we don't see anything from the head Nazi, Reinard Hedrick. We don't need to see his evil doings, we don't need to see anything about him until the final end.
So I thought this movie was tops except for one thing that drove me batty...the cinematography. Many of the scenes were filmed as close-ups, so close that the top of the actors heads were cut off. I get that a director would use this tight framing for a tense meeting or emotional conflict between two people but the camera rarely pulls back and shows us the whole 'picture'. The effect was the film felt like I was watching it on a phone, ugh! yet I was watching it on my big screen TV. Well big enough screen for me, it's 42 inches but I set fairly close to it.
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