Movie Review: *** Last of the Dogmen (1995)

 The premise of this movie is a band of Cheyenne Dog warriors have been existing, isolated in the woods of Colorado.  An anthropologist (Barbara Hershey) and a bounty hunter (Tom Berenger) find them, but then they have to keep their existence from all others.  In pursuit of this the bounty hunter has to steal some penicillin to treat a Cheyenne boy.  In doing so he is discovered.  They create a posse to follow him, and come close to creating a war with the dog warriors, but the two and one of the Dogmen (Steve Reevis) they are able to keep their existence a secret.  Our two heroes begin to fall in love, but the anthropologist decides to stay with the Dogmen.

Movie Review: ***^ Inception (2010)

Inception, This is a con artist movie, except con artists of a different nature.  These con artists steals ideas and information via dreams.  However, in this case, the con is of a different nature.  The con is to place an idea in another person’s brain, but to have the idea be the other person’s. 

Sounds complicated, and to be honest this movie is very confusing.  You have two dreamers, one creating the world, and the other doing the con inside that environment.  The con is Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the one who creates the worlds is Ariadne (Ellen Page).  The con is made more difficult because of history, Cobb lost his wife (Marion Cotillard) deep inside a dream, and she still haunts his dreams.  Other members of the con team are Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Eames (Tom Hardy), Saito (Ken Watanabe) who has hired Cobb to pull off the con, Yusuf (Dileep Rao) and Browning (Tom Berenger).  The mark is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). 

Talking about dreams can leave anyone confused, and in this case you are talking about dreams inside of dreams, inside of dreams and so on.  It can be come confusing.  In each level, things go faster.  As a result, in each deeper level there is more time to react to what is happening in the lower levels.  This is important, because “kicks” need to be timed to take place in all the worlds at the same time so you can wake up. 

This work is harder, because people programs defenses into their subconscious—which come out in the form of people defending and shooting.  Of course if you kill them, they don’t really die, but it is all confusing in the end with lots of action.

Movie Review: ****^Gettysburg (1993)

This movie fascinates and delights me.   I think it is the courage of the people who actually participated in these events that comes through.  It was produced by Ted Turner, and is based on the novel by "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara.  It shows the battle in general, but focuses on the stand on Little Round Top by Colonel Chamberlain (Jeff Bridges) and his men.  However the movie shows all three days of Gettysburg, and the heroics of Little Round Top was day two.  It starts showing how the skirmish got started, with General Buford's (Sam Elliott) cavalry defending Seminary Ridge.  Had that first day ended differently, this battle would have played out differently.  It would have been the Confederates entrenched on the high ground.  The big if of the war, was had General Stonewall Jackson been there, would he have left the Union forces with the high ground, and a night to reinforce and to dig in.
As noted, the battle of the second day focused on the wings, Little Round Top to the South, and Cemetery Hill to the North.
The Confederacy was unable to turn either flank, so the third day saw a full out attack on the middle, Pickett's (Stephen Lang) charge.  General Lee (Martin Short) had hoped the Federals had spread too thin.  He was wrong.  General Longstreet (Tom Beringer) argued for a different strategy all day.  Picket and his forces were ordered to attack.  After they were repulsed, Lee asked Pickett to see to his division.  His response, "I have no division."  They had been beaten, badly.