Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

fredroyer Holy cow, is this a terrible movie. Maxwell got the title right but got everything else wrong. I've read all 3 books countless times: Gods and Generals, The Killer Angels, and The Last Full Measure.This movie is 4 hours long and there are long, long, long stretches where Maxwell made stuff up. This movie has nothing to do with the book. There's nothing about Hancock and Armistead in California, Jackson going to see his mothers grave. Why would Maxwell cut out the Battle of Sharpsburg just so he could write endless scenes of Stonewall Jackson that never even happened?The point of view is entirely from the Confederacy - the movie smacks of "Lost Cause". The whole point of the book was to establish the point of view from both sides: here we get nothing but Jackson and little bit of Chamberlain.The death of Jackson is endless. I think it goes on almost 25 minutes. By the way, Robert E. Lee was a Lt. Col when he resigned from the US Army, not a full bird Colonel.

rocks-67264 So let me get this straight, slave owning southerners, always invoking God (while owning slaves) with their slaves standing at their sides in lovely fictitious brotherhood are destined to beat the "blue devils". The confederates are painted as brave and smarter than the "Yankees" never seeming to make a tactical mistake while the northerners are portrayed as bumbling idiots.What a bunch of garbage. This is pure unmitigated southern propaganda. If we didn't all know the results of that war one would think the South won after having watched this garbage. Unwatchable propaganda, unless I suppose you're a southerner who pines for a time and circumstance that never actually occurred

zardoz-13 Director Ron Maxwell's "Gods and Generals," the prequel to "Gettysburg," appears far more polished than his initial American Civil War movie. In "Gettysburg," lots of critics carped about the bogus beards that the actors sported, principally Tom Berenger's Longstreet. Maxwell made sure that his prequel didn't suffer the same fate in the facial hair department. Indeed, the beards look far better. Indeed, lenser Kees Van Oostrum's widescreen cinematography looks immaculate as does most of the sprawling sets. Of course, the Virginia Military Institute looks contemporary for its day because dirt has been put down to cover the asphalt road. Nevertheless, despite the sheer brilliance of this lengthy spectacle, "Gods and Generals" has some problems that some Civil War buffs, particularly historians, may not charitably tolerate. For example, the film refuses to address the issue of slavery, and most of the slaves seem more reminiscent of the loyal slaves from "Gone with the Wind" and "So Red the Rose" era. Basically, this epic war movie was designed to showcase Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Confederate General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson, Union General Winfield Scott Hancock, and Union Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. Maxwell devotes the bulk of the film to Jackson, and Stephen Lang performs splendidly in the role as the pugnacious but religious leader who died accidentally at the hands of his own men.. Robert Duvall replaces Martin Sheen, but Duvall resembles Lee more than Sheen. The action unfolds with Lee's refusal to take Abraham Lincoln's offer to command all Union forces. Lee explains to Preston Blair that he cannot take up arms against his home state of Virginia. Meantime, Jackson serves as an instructor at VMI when he notices cadets tearing down the Union flag. Later, at the Virginia secession convention, state officials vote to secede from the Union and they offer Lee the job of commanding all their troops. Naturally, Lee accepts this offer without a qualm. When Maxwell shifts his attention to the North, he takes us to Maine, where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain explains his views about the complicated issue of slavery to his class at Bowdoin College. This is Chamberlain before he entered the Union Army, and this time around we meet his concerned wife, Frances Caroline 'Fanny' Chamberlain (Oscar winning actress Mira Sorvino). Unlike "Gettysburg," women play a larger role in this Civil War film.The film takes place between April 1861 and May 1863, and Maxwell depicts the battles of First Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, and concludes the action less than two months before Gettysburg. This magisterial film will no doubt be a chore to sit through, but it does have its rewards. If you don't know much about the Civil War, prepare to be changed. For example, one seasoned military officer shows Chamberlain and his brother the proper way to load a musket, using a nine step method. This same officer impresses upon Chamberlain the necessity for rigorous discipline and training so the soldiers can responds to commands in an expeditious manner. If you saw "Gettysburg," you will learn, too, how the Chamberlains met Sergeant Buster Kilrain (Kevin Conway) and came to be fast friends. Most critics lament the long speeches, but this is a chessboard movie. Unfortunately, Maxwell is probably more ambitious than he should be and the narrative becomes quite unwieldy at times.

chaos-rampant This prequel of sorts to Gettysburg has all the flaws of that film and none of its charm. Endless speechifying, rousing muzak, platitudes and more platitudes, but at least Gettysburg had a certain intelligibility inherited from the western. This is clustered, badly edited, haphazardly filmed with no flair at all. The 'Hail Caesar' speech as Union soldiers are about to be thrown to their certain Fredericksburg death is one of the most cringe-worthy moments in any film ever.As to whether or not it is pro-Southern. People truly were as religious as the film shows, especially during the war. Southernerns had truly constructed a Cause, and believed in it, that allowed the issue of slavery to remain elusive; they were fighting for the affront of invasion and the right to not be told what to do. A small minority were slaveowners after all. Blacks did assist the Confederacy in various ways. And there was a notion that the war was waged on behalf of corporate and bank interests against Southern economy.But the film presses on these things in a sentimental way, with sad violin music subtly playing underneath the speeches, with the black maid at Fredericksburg defiantly defending her white owner's home against looting Union soldiers. We don't see the more vitriolic, more bellicose side of the Confederate argument.Duvall is a more fitting Lee than Sheen, but he plays him without any interest. Sheen channeled more than a little Apocalypse Now when he brought a fatalistic, half-mad glint in Lee's eyes.