The Kingdom (2007)
Directed by Peter Berg
A team of U.S. government agents is sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East.
7 connections found
View:
7 connections, in both directions
What critics compared The Kingdom to
But director Berg ("Friday Night Lights"), cinematographer Mauro Fiore and editors Kevin Stitt and Colby Parker Jr. keep even the pro forma moments moving with jumpy visuals and rapid cutting.
I haven’t liked his garbage movies like Very Bad Things, and I haven’t liked his critically-acclaimed films like Friday Night Lights.
Actor/director Peter Berg ( Friday Night Lights ) is an edgy, frenetic filmmaker who likes to temper his action with some humor, so tackling a terrorist actioner, with wiseacres Jamie Foxx and Jason Bateman onboard, seems right up his alley.
The Kingdom is directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights), an actor-turned-filmmaker with a notably crisp, confident visual style usually well suited to restless action.
Much sappy sentimentality could ensue, but director Peter Berg, who made even high school football seem life or death in Friday Night Lights, injects intensity into every shot with his handheld camera and varying degrees of focus.
Battleship (directed by Peter Berg of The Kingdom and Friday Night Lights) is a dumb action blockbuster, but not generously, life-givingly dumb, like the Mission: Impossible movies or Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (ahhh, 2012).
Battleship was directed by Peter Berg, who is not without talent (he made The Rundown and The Kingdom and Hancock and Friday Night Lights).
Being spawned from the same game-makers’ nest as Transformers has led to comparisons and yes, director Peter Berg’s (The Kingdom and TV’s Friday Night Lights) take has much in common with Michael Bay’s battling car-robot toys series.
But the fact that it works as well as it does is due to director Peter Berg (“Friday Night Lights,” “The Kingdom,” “Hancock”), who proudly took a cue from Michael Bay to deliver a rousing, flag-waving, absurd and very loud $211-million crowd-pleaser that literally fires on all cylinders.
Peter Berg, the film's director, also captained "Very Bad Things," "The Kingdom" and a few other movies you've probably mistaken for TNT series when flipping through channels at 2 a.m.
“Argo” is definitely worth seeing in theaters, maintaining a serious “Spy Game” meets “The Kingdom” vibe of fast-paced drama.
Berg is no stranger to enclaves of American masculinity (“Friday Night Lights”) or infernos in the Middle East (“The Kingdom”), but “Lone Survivor’s” life-in-the-military prologue doesn’t inspire much confidence: The character delineation is weak, the observations pedestrian, the style marred by recruitment-video aesthetics, all grinding voiceover and overactive music (by the never-subtle Steve Jablonsky and the instrumental rock band Explosions in the Sky).
Berg’s “The Kingdom” is the better war film – its political subtext is a much more comfortable fit – but that doesn’t negate the high points of “Lone Survivor.”
As he’s shown in his other military theme films, “The Kingdom,” and the far less serious “ Battleship ,” few parts of the film-making process elicit a heartier “OohRah!” for Director/Writer Peter Berg than showing Armed Forces in action.
He has also stumbled with lame offerings like “Battleship” and “The Kingdom.”
That process was at the heart of his films “Friday Night Lights” and “The Kingdom,” and it’s central to “Lone Survivor,” as well.
The football players of "Friday Night Lights," the FBI agents of "The Kingdom," the sailors of the silly "Battleship" — these are all clear-eyes, full-hearts, can't-lose kind of guys.
Advertisement
Points of reference include any number of historical fictions dramatizing modern military conflicts in the Middle East: Peter Berg's "The Kingdom" and "Lone Survivor," Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down," Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker," Clint Eastwood's "American Sniper."
Efforts such as 2007's " The Kingdom ," " Rendition " and " Lions for Lambs ," as well as 2008's " Stop-Loss ," have been earnest yet heavy-handed, bogged down by their own Hollywood slickness and self-importance.
As good as they were (and The Kingdom was very good), they were no more involving than a good action film or a sad drama.
The world’s most notorious and beloved film-fest troublemaker for 30 years now, the director of a relentless series of aestheticized provocations such as The Kingdom (1994), Dogville (2003), Antichrist (2009) and Melancholia (2011), von Trier specializes in pushing sociosexual buttons and exploring the victimization of women.