Video: Three upcoming movies tell war stories
As the year ends, three films tell fictional and nonfictional stories about the war. All are worthy of attention:
The flick: Fury
Starring: Brad Pitt, Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf.In a nutshell: Pitt portrays Wardaddy, a hardened Army sergeant who must lead his tank crew on a mission behind enemy lines. Lerman is the rookie who undergoes a literal trial by fire. From the looks of it, this is an intense band-of-brothers flick.
Opens: Oct. 17.
Fiction of nonfiction: Fiction, but who cares? It sounds like a great ride.
Why we want to see it: Have you ever wondered what it might be like inside a tank? For most of us, a movie theater is as close as we want to get.
See the official website here.
The flick: The Imitation Game
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley.
In a nutshell: Cumberbatch portrays Alan Turing, a mathematician, cryptologist and computer scientist charged with cracking the German Enigma Code.
Opens: Nov. 21.
Fiction or nonfiction: Nonfiction. Turing is regarded as one of the founders of computer science. Indeed, a building at the University of Manchester, England, is named for him. Despite Turing's genius, his life took a tragic turn: He was prosecuted for homosexual acts, subjected to chemical castration in 1952 and died two years later as a result of cyanide poisoning. He was formally granted a royal pardon in 2013, according to the BBC.
Why we want to see it: The movie is already winning awards at film festivals. Critics describe Cumberbatch with the word brilliant. Beyond that, this is the kind of intellectual thriller that offers a picture of behind-the-scenes action during World War II.
See the official website here.
The flick: Unbroken
Starring: Jack O'Connell, an English actor who was in 300: Rise of an Empire. The true stars are behind the camera -- Angelina Jolie directed a script written by Joel and Ethan Coen.
In a nutshell: During a search-and-rescue mission in 1943, the airplane carrying Olympian Louis Zamperini crashed in the Pacific. He and two other men drifted on a raft for 47 days before being captured by the Japanese.
Opens: Dec. 25.
Fiction or nonfiction: Nonfiction. Based on the best-seller by Laura Hillenbrand, the movie depicts the wartime service and imprisonment of Zamperini.
Why we want to see it: Zamperini, who died earlier this year, lived through a series of harrowing events. Under Jolie’s direction and with a script by the Coen brothers, Unbroken promises to be an excellent movie.
See the official website here.
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