Letters from Iwo Jima

Title: Letters from Iwo Jima
Year: 2006
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: Iris Yamashita; story by Yamashita and Paul Haggis; based on a book by Tadamichi Kuribayashi & Tsuyoko Yoshido
Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya
Music: Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens
Distinctions: Oscar for Best Sound Editing; Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Directing and Best Original Screenplay; currently #199 on IMDb's Top 250
Synopsis: the battle of Iwo Jima, from the Japanese point of view
Length: 141 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), January 2009
Subjective Rating: 6/10 (Okay).
Objective Rating: 7/10 (points off for cinematography, special effects/design and music) c. 2.6/4 (Good).

The shape of it is a great way to do a war movie -- building up to a huge battle for the first half of the movie, followed by mayhem. I didn't like how they handle the character-related stuff very much, though - although the characters themselves are good. Visually, it's usually too dark to see who we're looking at. And the beach appears to be stormed by a cartoon army.