The Monuments Men (2014)

The Monuments Men is being too critically shunned. It is not what you expect from watching the previews, but comes through with heartfelt stories that are designed to show you what these men endured. Each of The Monuments Men characters come from the arts world and are driven into action by the need to save precious art works spanning across Europe. Bill Murray is a genius per usual but lacks when it comes to on screen time. I feel as though many characters like John Goodman are overshadowed by the likes of Matt Damon and George Clooney. They make themselves very prominent in the script but often take time away from those who would truly make this film shine (Murray and Goodman). Even though it is not as good as expected it shines in many scenes. I still give it a 8/10

Fmovies: What a waste of money and time. Had George employed the editors making the trailer to write, direct and edit this film, it might have actually been enjoyable. This was unfortunately one of the most disjointedly scripted movies I have ever had the misfortune to watch. The story was randomly hopping this way, that way, presenting completely unrelated anecdotes from the different missions the Monuments Men were on. As another IMDb reviewer (Wilbrifar) pointed out: " It's like watching a sequel to a movie you didn't see; the characters are acting like "here we are, old buddies together again in Part 2" and the audience is left totally out in the cold because there was never a Part 1. " That is very much how the movie felt; the actors were proficient in delivering their lines as well as they could, given the nightmare of a script they had to follow - but there was no chemistry between any of them at any point, so when they were getting all joking and friendly with each other, it just looked and felt awkward; like being at a party where you're watching someone be overly friendly to someone else. I would never watch this again.

Having read the original book from which "Monuments Men" is taken, I was very interested to see the movie. There is a really fascinating and historically important story here, and it could have made a great film. However, soon after the show begins, it all starts to fall apart. The reason? George Clooney. He directed, and he wrote the screenplay. It's amazingly obvious that in neither of these capacities does Clooney know what he is doing. The screenplay is an absolute joke, totally disjointed, disconnected, silly, trite, and incredibly amateurish for a major Hollywood star of Clooney's stature. The same goes for the directing. George Clooney is obviously a guy with a huge ego, capable of fooling himself and a lot of other people who should know better, that he knows what he is doing. Film-making schools should show this movie as a classic example of what not to do. It's fundamentally flawed in every respect. Editing, music, etc.------one is taken aback by the unbelievable ineptness. Co-stars Matt Damon and Bill Murray and John Goodman and the rest of the cast merely parrot their lines in strange, disjointed scenes that beg to be rewritten by someone with a brain in his head. On the one hand, I totally condemn this piece of Hollywood egotistical stupidity, but on the other I heartily recommend it as an example of how bad movies can get in the hands of people with enormous egos. Stick to acting, Clooney---for God's sake don't direct and write screenplays ever again.

The Monuments Men fmovies. In 1943, the American Professor Frank Stokes (George Clooney) convinces President Roosevelt that the art stolen by the German should be retrieved and he recruits six art experts to form the Monuments Men's unit to travel to Europe with him to search the treasures. On the arrival, they split to several cities to guide the Allies to find the arts to return them to the owners.

I do not know how accurate "The Monuments Men" is but this movie has a boring story, terrible screenplay and unconvincing performances. The movie is neither a drama nor an action movie or comedy and has several main characters divided in subplots, some of them interesting and others pointless. In the end, "The Monuments Men" is a very disappointing film and sort of war propaganda. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Caçadores de Obras-Primas" ("Masterpieces Hunters")

The movie deserves an A for effort but misses the mark dramatically. The question is: why? The story is evocative and the cast is excellent. Where the movie goes wrong is how it presents the story. The movie attempts to inject a whimsical element in story which is out of context. There was nothing whimsical about the plan to save priceless artwork. Also, the story moves at a slow pace and inspires little if any excitement or drama. The discoveries of the hidden artwork has little dramatic impact, nor do the interpersonal relationships between the characters which in the movie are shallow. Even the attempt at romance comes off as tepid and half-hearted, as well as implausible. The idea of a young, handsome, married American officer, alone in Paris, having dinner in the apartment of an attractive, intelligent, single French woman who made him dinner and not staying for at least another drink is a stretch. True, he is married and his faithfulness is commendable, but still .... The movie does have some strong dramatic moments, but in general the story is bland. Yet despite the movie's drawbacks, it still manages to tell a story about an historical event of great importance and significance, and for that reason alone is worth watching.

"The Monuments Men" is a group of men (in real life around 350, and in this film 7) who are tasked with saving the historically and culturally significant monuments, fine arts and archives during World War II. They have to find and return that which the French hid and the Germans were finding and stealing and then hiding. And the film decided to tell this story comedically.

The film took a really long time to get going as they wanted it to be about the men that took on this task. But they changed their names and I also couldn't tell you a single characteristic of any of them. The men were paired off so they each had their own region to investigate, but none of that was interesting. The worst part was giving James Granger (Matt Damon) and Claire Simon (Cate Blanchett, representing the real- life heroine Rose Valland) a love story. They did have a reason for such nonsense, or how about just sticking with how it actually happened.

George Clooney has said the film is about 80% accurate, and that seems fair enough. But the problem isn't the historical inaccuracy; the problem is that the cheap humour diminishes the very people and story they're trying to empower. The humour was just a handful of lines wanting to kill Hitler and standing on a landmine. It just didn't make the film entertaining. The story could have done that but it didn't become interesting until they started discovering where the Germans hid the art. Coincidentally, the same point when the film started following the real story.

"The Monuments Men" very clearly wanted to help remember an important part of history and spark a debate about the cost of war on soldiers, civilians, and history and society. The debate is raging on, but the film missed the level of entertainment by not trusting its audience to be interested in exactly what happened.