Kathmandu:

Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar Steven Spielberg’s Munich is his most controversial film, which explores the effects of violence. A long movie with exquisite moments and incredibly empty one’s Munich will need a lot of patience and popcorn.

Writes critic Daniel Vancini, “At its core, Munich is a straightforward thriller. Based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas. It’s built on a relatively stock movie premise, the revenge plot: innocent people are killed, the bad guys got away with it, and someone has to make them pay. But director Spielberg uses that as a starting point to delve into complex ethical questions about the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence.

The movie starts with a rush showing the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by PLO terrorists at the 1972 Olympics with scenes as heart-stopping and terrifying as the best of any horror movie. Several of the terrorists are free and the Israeli government of Golda Meir recruits Avner (Eric Bana) to lead a team of paid-off-the-book agents to hunt down those responsible throughout Europe, and eliminate them one-by-one. Soon the work starts to take its toll on Avner, and the deeper moral questions of right and wrong come into play, especially as it becomes clear that Avner is being hunted in return, and that his family’s safety may be in jeopardy.”

Glenn Kenny, Premiere magazine’s resident critic concludes, “There are all sorts of nits I could pick regarding Munich, some bigger than others. There are plenty of people out there who already have screamed to high heaven about Spielberg trotting out the 20 millionth endangered-child scenario. A sex scene is receiving snorts of derision. But this lengthy, nuance-filled story about how eye-for-an-eye stuff differs from theory to practice is one of the most considered, thoughtful, and involving movies of its kind. You might thoroughly disagree with some of the questions it raises. You might even hate it. But it’s a serious dramatic exploration of a real subject.”

David Cronenberg’s, Hitchcockian, History Of Violence, is a defining film of quiet brilliance which explores survival and identity and got two Oscar nomination’s — one for a fabulous 15 minute performance. Critic Jeff Shannon says, “Director David Cronenberg knew that the story of mild-mannered small-town diner proprietor Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is in fact a multilayered examination of inbred human behaviour, beginning when Tom’s skillful killing of two would-be robbers draws unwanted attention to his idyllic family life in rural Indiana. He’s got a loving wife (Maria Bello) and young daughter (Heidi Hayes) who are about to learn things about Tom they hadn’t suspected, and a teenage son (Ashton Holmes) who has inherited his father’s most prominent survival trait, manifesting itself in ways he never expected. By the time Tom has come into contact with a scarred villain (Ed Harris) and connections that lead him to a half-crazy kingpin (William Hurt, in a spectacular cameo), Cronenberg has plumbed the dark depths of human nature so skillfully that A History of Violence stands well above the graphic novel that inspired it. With hard-hitting violence that’s as sudden as it is graphically authentic, this is A History of Violence that’s worthy of serious study and widespread acclaim.”