Headline Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic Saving Private Ryan goes for the gut. e warned: Everything you’ve heard about the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is true. Steven Spielberg’s depiction of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy is so intense, so grotesquely realistic that you’ll want to avert your eyes – but you can’t. It’s a rapid-fire sequence of shocking images that will stay with you forever. A man whose arm has been severed goes back to retrieve it, as if reluctant to leave a part of himself behind. Another man is literally blown in half. Yet another lies on the beach with his intestines spilling out, crying for his mama, reminding us that most of these guys weren’t men at all but kids barely out of high school. The water lapping at the shore turns deep red with blood. Spielberg has taken a lot of flak for the violence and gore in this movie, but according to those who were there on that terrible day at Omaha Beach, this is exactly how it happened. There’s nothing gratuitous about it, and Spielberg is absolutely justified in sharing with us the nauseating reality. (However, the parents I saw in the theatre with pre-teenage children are guilty of abuse. This stuff is difficult enough for grownups to endure – please don’t inflict the film on those too young to handle it.) If your stomach can make it through the first half-hour, you’ll be okay. After that, the carnage is toned down a bit. Or maybe it’s just that we become so accustomed to it that we – like the soldiers – have shut off the part of our brain that reacts to the unthinkable. With Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg is finishing the job he began with Schindler’s List. He’s already shown us why World War II was fought; now he shows us how. Cinematically it is brilliant, making Spielberg almost a shoo-in for a Best Director Oscar. Most of the battle scenes are shot from low angles with shaky hand-held cameras and slightly speeded-up film, a deliberate imitation of newsreels made during the war. Color is diluted to make the landscapes appear even more bleak. The meticulously staged battle sequences are mind-boggling in their complexity and could only have been achieved by someone with Spielberg’s prodigious experience and abilities. Yet despite the film’s ambitious scope, the director doesn’t attempt to give us the big picture. Instead, he shows us the war through the eyes of a small group of men. Let’s face it: Shooting and blowing things up is shooting and blowing things up, whether it’s done for a noble purpose or it’s in a godawful piece of shit like Lethal Weapon 4. The violence only matters when it affects characters whom we care about. For that reason, the person most responsible for this movie’s success is not Steven Spielberg but Tom Hanks (who could also be up for another Oscar). As Captain Miller, he makes the decisions that determine where the action goes next and often determine who lives and who dies. He is a decent man who forces himself to be ruthless, though it’s not really in his nature. He’d rather not be where he is, but he commands out of a sense of duty – a fact not lost on his men. Miller strongly believes in not fraternizing with the troops; he’ll be a more effective leader if they don’t know him too well. So secretive is he about his personal life that the men place bets on what he actually does for a living. He also believes that the troops should never see him as fearful or indecisive, and he puts on a good show of it, tackling difficult assignments matter-of-factly and without hesitation. But Miller pays a price. The strain manifests itself in other ways – an uncontrollably trembling hand, and weird moments when he temporarily spaces out and becomes detached, as if viewing events from under water. Only once does he give in to the tears that can no longer be forced back, and even then he keeps glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one is watching. This guy is clearly a candidate for post-traumatic stress disorder, assuming he survives and makes it home. But without men like Miller, who put their duty above all else, victory in that war would not have been possible. When the captain sees the opportunity for an unexpected side mission that could benefit the Allies, a soldier reminds him that their objective is to save Private Ryan. “Our objective,” he says incredulously, “is to win the war.” Within that larger goal, however, he is under orders to find and bring home a certain James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon). Why? Because all three of Ryan’s brothers have been recently killed in battle, and it would be embarrassing to the U.S. government to have an entire family wiped out at once. Miller accepts this mission unquestioningly, though his men want to know why this particular soldier is more worthy of rescue than any other. A legitimate point, he tells them, but irrelevant as far as they’re concerned. After several missteps and a potential mutiny, the squad stumbles across the mysterious Private Ryan. But there’s an unforeseen twist: Ryan, too, is a man of duty, and he refuses to leave his post. So Miller’s men stay to help him defend a French bridge against the Germans, and another bloody battle ensues. Damon isn’t given much to do – he has one excellent scene with Hanks, and that’s about it – but the other soldiers keep the story moving. They’re a colorful (and expendable) bunch, all right – like the Bible-thumping sharpshooter (Barry Pepper) who prays to the Lord before taking aim. But the camera dwells most on Corporal Upham (Jeremy Davies), a wimpy, bookish translator who was added to the squad solely for his linguistic skills and has never been in combat. He serves much the same role as Noah Wyle’s character did during the first season of ER: Everything is new to him and therefore traumatic. When the battle comes, Upham is paralyzed with fear, and you just want to slap him. But you also wonder how you’d react in that situation: Would I freeze up, too, or would I be one of those heroes who takes a bullet for another man? Unless we’ve been there ourselves, we shouldn’t be judgmental. With Spielberg’s graphic rendition, you’ll feel as if you have been there. Some are calling Saving Private Ryan the best war movie ever made. Perhaps it is. But it’s still a war movie; it’s not an “important” film in the same sense that Schindler’s List was (the latter should be required viewing for every person on the planet). In the end, Spielberg’s message is that war is horrifying yet sometimes necessary. And that may be true. But I still prefer the message gleaned from Peter Weir’s 1981 masterpiece Gallipoli: War is stupid. n – Debbie Gilbert Directed by Chris Eyre from a screenplay by Sherman Alexie, Smoke Signals is a small film with a lot of heart. Set on a tiny Indian reservation in Idaho, Smoke Signals centers around 22-year-old Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) and his struggle to come to terms with his feelings about his father Arnold (Gary Farmer) who left him and his mother a decade before. Word comes that Arnold has died in his trailer home in Phoenix, and Victor has no money to go there. Knowing this, Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) volunteers to help get there on one condition – that Victor lets him go along. The two make a contrasting pair. Victor is stoically angry and rarely speaks but to lash out, while Thomas is geeky and goofy with a gift of telling stories based in truth though doused in lore. On their way to Arizona, Thomas wears on Victor’s nerves by telling story after story. Victor’s father was magic, Thomas says. But Victor can only flash back to the last unhappy, drink-soaked days before Arnold left for good. Eyre and Alexie, both Native Americans, display a talent for setting the tone by keenly drawing the atmosphere. The Coeur d’Alene reservation is so small and so inclusive that two young women can maneuver their car around town all the while going backward without incident. The town is so small that the local radio station’s roving van has been broken down at a crossroads for more than 20 years, where the radio’s reporter discusses the two-car traffic and the shape of clouds. The town is so small that it can cheerfully accept the oddball Thomas, a man cloaked in legend because as a baby he was saved by Arnold from a fire that took his parents’ lives. Thomas serves as the comic foil and the sage. He presses his hands together, closes his eyes, and launches into tales that praise the power of fry bread or make a hero out of an ordinary man. Victor can only appreciate the full, brutal truth. He could use a bit of magic. In the end, Smoke Signals tells the simple, age-old story of accepting what you’ve got and loving your family, flaws and all. It’s the film’s unique point of view and comic sweetness that make it stand out. – Susan Ellis It’s hard to go wrong when your film has its roots firmly planted in beautiful photography, tight dialogue, and solid acting. High Art, the Sundance and Cannes award-winning independent film, fills the screen with dark, fuzzy images seen through the eyes of Frame magazine assistant editor, Syd (Rhada Mitchell), a newly promoted intelligent girl with a crappy New York apartment and a sweet nondescript boyfriend (Gabriel Mann). Syd’s life changes when a ceiling leak leads her upstairs to neighbor Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), a celebrated photographer who left the scene at her peak 10 years prior because she felt artistically trapped. The movie follows the lives of Syd and Lucy after this meeting as Syd pulls Lucy into working again, and Lucy helps elevate Syd’s career. Along with a working relationship, the two are drawn together sexually. Syd helps Lucy see the world she lives in, and Lucy becomes an idol for Syd. The photography featured as Lucy’s is the work of JoJo Whilden, a published and exhibited New York photographer who has known the director and writer, Lisa Cholodenko, for many years. The still shots add a strength to the film that another medium might not have produced. When Syd knocks on Lucy’s door, she is introduced to a world that is very clichéd. The mix of drugs and sex lately has been a standard for “cool” films. Cholodenko falls in and out of that moody pit of heroin hipster chic. When Lucy opens the door for Syd, her “couldn’t care less” attitude is when Cholodenko starts to fall into the pit. Even though Lucy has the advantage of being in her home, a stranger has entered her world. Syd is appropriately uncomfortable, but fits in too quickly with the heroin addicts living in the apartment. The drug scenes are a bit too perfect. Heroin is snorted off an elegant mirrored tray. Lucy, her beautiful German film-actress girlfriend, Greta (Patricia Clarkson), and their friends take line after line, imbibe drink after drink, and float around romantically on couches. The strength of these scenes is the acting; the dialogue is natural and no actor or actress pulls down the others. High Art’s sex scenes are some of the most sensitive I have ever seen. They are passionate, but realistic, the antithesis of the Hollywood “roll in the hay.” Clothes are taken off; they do not disappear in cuts while the music swells. Tammy Grimes does an excellent job as Vera, Lucy’s Jewish mother who refers to Greta as “the German” and is appalled by Lucy’s choice of lover. Her objection is less that Lucy is a lesbian, but more that her girlfriend is a “Jew-hater.” Patricia Clarkson also does a great job as Greta. There is only one opportunity for Clarkson to break Greta from her heroin-induced fog. She takes the chance and plays her anger with and dependence on Lucy perfectly. Cholodenko’s highly acclaimed feature-film debut is well deserved. Although some of her subject matter is a bit tired, the dialogue is original and refreshingly honest. There’s something unique about a writer who can draw intelligent, passionate characters without resorting to pedantic monologues and violent sex scenes. The characters speak for themselves instead. n – Meredith Pierce If you really wanted to push it, you could say that Disturbing Behavior is an allegory about the evils of teen sex. But that’s probably giving this throwaway film too much credit. Basically it’s a teen horror flick that is less disturbing than it is unimaginative. The disturbing behavior mentioned in the title refers to a group of high-school kids in the tiny town of Cradle Bay. These kids, known as the Blue Ribbons, are smart, well-groomed, and athletic. During his first day as the new kid, Steve (James Marsden) is introduced to the various cliques by his new stoner friend Gavin (Nick Stahl). Gavin is convinced that there’s something wrong with the Blue Ribbons and their knack for turning around even the most rebellious teen by including him or her in their fold. Indeed there is. It seems that a pesky school psychologist has been conducting an experiment that turns teenagers into perfect citizens. Well, not exactly perfect. Trouble is, when these kids get sexually aroused, they become violent. A little oral sex leads to a broken neck for one unfortunate girl, while a female Blue Ribboner smashes her face into a mirror to ward off those special feelings. Before long, Gavin is initiated into the group, so Steve teams up with the hostile and cool Rae (Katie Holmes) to get to the bottom of the Blue Ribbons before they get to them. Directed by David Nutter, who’s worked on The X-Files series and written by Scott Rosenberg, who wrote the screenplays for Con Air and Beautiful Girls, Disturbing Behavior proves to be little more than your average zombie movie delivered in teenspeak. “Who put acid in my spam?” asks Rae at one point. What I want to know is, who thought this movie was a good idea in the first place? – S.E.