Lone Survivor (2013) - Wahlberg and Berg's stout Navy SEAL war movie

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+ Best War Movie of the Year

Mark Wahlberg portrays a tough, real-life Navy Seal in Peter Berg's Lone Survivor

A Navy SEAL team in Afghanistan are sent on a risky mission behind enemy lines to kill a Taliban leader. But the opposition is greater than anticipated, the terrain is exceedingly difficult, and the communication gets severed.

Writer-director Peter Berg (The Kingdom (2007)) makes a gritty, effective movie out of this horrific true story, based on the 2007 novel by Marcus Luttrell (Service: A Navy SEAL at Work (2012)) and Patrick Robinson (Intercept (2010)). The war record that otherwise might be of the kind that would change young men's minds about joining the forces and risking their lives for dubious purposes in faraway, poor parts of the world, becomes a film that immortalizes these men as strong, good, tragic heroes, which doubtlessly impresses new youths to join the ranks. Lone Survivor boasts visceral fight and falling scenes to support its very simple story, (one of a small group of men's fight, death and struggle to survive.) It is a piece of American patriotic war-lore, manipulative and simple but well-made, earnest and without qualms.
Lone Survivor sports a strong cast that heightens it: Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild (2007)), Eric Bana (Black Hawk Down (2001)), Ben Foster (Kill Your Darlings (2013)), Taylor Kitsch (True Detective (2015), TV-series), - and Mark Wahlberg (The Happening (2008)) are all very good here.

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Battleship (2012) - 200+ mil. $ worth of brainless destruction

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 49 mil. $
Box office: 149.3 mil. $
= Box office success
[The rights to the book were sold to Universal in 2007 in a bidding war for more than 2 mil. $. The film was then made largely without studio interference, with key cast members working for scale and producers even putting a mil. $ each into the production. The cast underwent training for the movie; Berg even visited the families of the deceased SEALs and became embedded with SEALs in Iraq for a month, (the first civilian to have been allowed this); and Luttrell and other SEAL's were advisers on the film. Lone Survivor was shot in New Mexico September - November 2012 and received a 25 % tax credit. Several stunt performers were injured during the making of the fall scenes. The movie was screened for several American football teams, gaining word-of-mouth, before its limited release. It opened wide in January at #1 to a 38.2 mil. $ opening weekend domestically, the second-largest January opening ever, behind Cloverfield (2008). It grossed 125 mil. $ in North America (83.7 % of the total gross), with Australia (3.5 mil. $/2.3 %) and the UK (3.4 mil. $/2.3 %) being the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets. The film was nominated for Oscars for Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing, losing both to Gravity (2013). Lone Survivor is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Lone Survivor?

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) - Bigelow makes the Bin Laden manhunt into suspenseful, debate-inspiring, intense contemporary cinema

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+ Best War Movie of the Year

The really great, evocative poster for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty

After 9/11, the Americans seek the responsible criminals in Afghanistan, Pakistan and surroundings. We follow their methods and the hunt, its losses and final goal: Osama Bin Laden.

Jessica Chastain fights in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty ...

Jessica Chastain (The Help (2011)) is outstanding as modern strong-woman Maya, who leads the manhunt. 

for America!

Also Jason Clarke (White House Down (2013)) has a memorable performance as a tough interrogator. 

Jason Clarke in Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty

The film's general excitement is remarkable, given that we already know the outcome, (the concluding raid of Bin Laden's compound that resulted in his death had happened in May 2011 and changed everything about the movie that was already written and in pre-production at that time.) 
The explicit approach to highly controversial events and methods in Zero Dark Thirty, including torture, is laudable, and perhaps the film sheds some of the mystery and suspicion from many people's perception of America's activities abroad sine 9/11.
The last act of the film with the mission of raiding the house is a bit long, - which was fully accepted in '12, where the news interest and sensational curiosity value was still sky-high, but may be less so in years to come. - What did the Navy Seals do to get Bin Laden? Everyone wanted to know.
Detracting also from the greatness of Zero Dark Thirty, - [which is a military term for 30 minutes past midnight, both the time of the mission and the symbolic place of darkness wherein the whole ten year manhunt took place], - is its fictionally permissive account of reality while still claiming to show the true story.
Regardless, Zero Dark Thirty is an impressive feat and a suspenseful, troubling movie, which will interest anyone who wants to try to understand the post-9/11 era.
It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker (2008)), who has yet to find her next movie.

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See the very well-crafted trailer here, - which basically oversteps its limits, in saying that 'THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED'. Only the mission in the end is totally fact-based, while most other scenes have fiction layers involved

Budget: 40 mil. $
Box office: 138.7 mil. $
= Big hit (#1 in America in its wide release weekend)

What do you think of Zero Dark Thirty?
What would you like to see Bigelow tackle next?