War Horse

Oddly Dickensian - in that you just have to swallow (repeatedly) unbelievable coincidences - but if you can do that (repeatedly), then everyone's actions, motives, and emotions ring completely true, and draw you in, in a way that doesn't feel manipulative or fake, but very real.

And please note - calling it WAR HORSE is like calling that other movie TITANIC. That movie wasn't about a big boat, it was about the people on it; this isn't about the horse, except as a catalyst for all the human characters. And mind you, that other movie has no other comparison to a film of this quality - Cameron's merely effective at exploiting and manipulating emotions (and, in Terminator esp, at staging real action sequences and not just blowing stuff up, like Bay); Spielberg, at his best, is a psychologist and an artist at playing on a palate of human emotions and eliciting what I think are real and healthful releases of such.

And really, this is one nice piece of dialogue between two old married people, who are sick of one another but still love each other: "I'll hate you more, but I could never love you less."

And finally, old lefty me, how could I not love a film whose message, loud and clear and repeatedly is, "Poor people and horses keep the world running; rich people and war make the world a miserable, wretched place." Never been a big animal fan myself, but I got no problem with that message.