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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Peter Berg: 2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
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?

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

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Liam Neeson, Taylor Kitsch and Rihanna look purposeful on the poster for Peter Berg's Battleship

Aliens enter our atmosphere and fall in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. - American and Japanese battleships have to fight them.

That is the premise in Battleship, crudely modeled over Hasbro's board game. The film offers good-looking effects, and there is no shortage of explosions, but it is still a boring sci-fi/military/disaster/action movie.
The characters are a bunch of Marines, who speak to each other in code and Navy-slang 90 % of the time, - pretty hard to relate strongly to, or to have any fun with.
When the world in the end has to be saved SPOILER by 'Mighty Mo' - the retired Pearl Harbor battleship - the film becomes involuntarily comical.
Battleship quickly became an infamous dud in Western minds, - although it actually did much better outside of North America, and thus didn't become quite the financial disaster that everyone had already somehow decided that it was. But it is a bad, stupid movie, - with some eye-candy to smoothen its digestion, like the VFX and ...

Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson in uniforms

men (and Rihanna) in uniforms.
The film's director Peter Berg (Lone Survivor (2013)) wasn't fully behind it; just weeks after its release, he was talking about its failure and his failure on it in a public Q&A.
Still, probably the main problem of Battleship is its awful script, by Jon and Erich Hoeber (the Red movies).

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2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

Watch the film's trailer here

Budget: 209 mil. $
Box office: 303 mil. $
= Flop

What do you think of Battleship?
What board game would you like to see a major studio throw 200 mil. $ after?