In The Valley Of Elah

In the Valley of Elah
$17.98

Gone Baby Gone
$29.99
I rather liked this film. It was colorful--both in the characters and in the lack of black and white--or perhaps at least a lower level contrast than much of what I'm used to.

Challenging, developed, well acted, but somewhat sloppily narrated. I don't know if this is the result of the script, the direction or production, but whichever the case, the film ends up bending over and whispering answers in your ear to questions you were just about to ask like the obnoxious couple three rows back in the theater. Not terrible, just a little distracting.

In the Valley of Elah
$19.98
With the fresh spate of suicidal bombings violating the impending election in Iraq, my viewing of Haggis's terrifying, Valley' has added resonance. Yes, so many war films have urged us to outrage, to sense the futility, the heroics, the cruelty, the power plays and their perversions. But not since, 'The Deerhunter', has the chilling consequences of violence been so devastatingly enunciated. It is no surprise that the tale has connexions to an actual event (albeit tenuously, as a lead reviewer notes. And I don't mind that Haggis even uses the actual dad as a surrogate authority for his own film's moral integrity).We need feel the sympathy and ramifications of of all characters caught in the malestrom(though I do think the young woman found murdered in the bath is stacking the cards too high even for these dramtic ends. And the inverted flag is a flawed in its overstatement).T L jones, whose grity and sullen fdemanour has made him the perfect messenger for late mid-life crises, the causes in which he eventually will tally his own contribution, is magnificent. The old-boy's network is unravelling. The new kid's deal with their stresses in unprecedented ways, and the lines once drawn in the sand have been erased.

In the Valley of Elah [Blu-ray]
$12.87