It's the man that's made of steel, the tank is only a piece of iron

Lebanon

(2009)

Set in 1982, during the first Lebanon War, Samuel Moaz’s film owes something to the sweaty claustrophobia of Das Boot. The action takes place entirely within the confines of an Israeli tank, its four young occupants reacting to their situation with varying degrees of stress and fear. All are relatively inexperienced and just want their mission, and their military service, to be over.

Moaz apparently based his screenplay on his own experiences as a gunner, and it is with the gunner character here that we most identify. His sight provides our only access to the outside world (apart from the occasions when someone descends into the tank from the upper hatch). The constant terror and disorientation is effectively achieved, while outside the violence and carnage present an imminent threat.

What didn’t wholly work for me was the lack of perspective on the quartet themselves; it’s one thing to be thrust into the tank, but there isn’t enough prepping of who these men are and how long they’ve been in this situation (aside from the gunner, who has just arrived). As a result, it occasionally feels more like an experimental exercise in performance and narrative than a wholly immersive piece of filmmaking.

***1/2

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

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(SPOILERS) You can see the Noah Baumbach influence on Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, with whom she collaborated on Frances Ha; an intimate, lo-fi, post-Woody Allen (as in, post-feted, respected Woody Allen) dramedy canvas that has traditionally been the New Yorker’s milieu. But as an adopted, spiritual New Yorker, I suspect Gerwig honourably qualifies, even as Lady Bird is a love letter/ nostalgia trip to her home city of Sacramento.

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Despicable Me 3 (2017)
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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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