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As Good As It Gets

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

One of the very few war movies I'm still willing to watch. Unlike some earlier reviewers here I do not see any real link with 'Saving Private Ryan'. Spielberg (to me) is only really interested in making contemporary political parallels (I suspect re Israel) and of course his bottom line (he is notoriously parsimonious, and nothing wrong with that). Regeneration is a very good crack at an even better book in the Pat Barker series. That is its mission, a study of psychological damage done to young minds at war which is not usually reflected in the casualty figures. I know some of this from the recollections of my grandmother, of her father who survived the war, but for only a few years ''somewhat troubled''. I have his Military Medal here now. He was an 'Old Comtemptible' but not at all happy of having survived. I am not impressed by the artistic integrity of this fine film being so arrantly compromised in the 'Behind the lines' (US)version. Short changing buyers of this version and insulting their intelligences. Especially with such fine performances from all here, especially the incomparable Pryce and the only female reference in the film, the delightful Tanya Allen.

Pat Barker's award-winning 'Regeneration' trilogy was inspired by the fact that a number of the celebrated poets of the Great War had spent time being treated in the same hospital for shell-shocked officers. Her stories of ill men being made fit to die again have a necessarily ironic, but limited, narrative trajectory, but the books offset this through the precise economy of their prose and their complete lack of sentimentality. In his film of 'Regeneration', Gillies McKinnon has been broadly faithful to the spirit of the novels, but has softened them slightly - the setting is now not Edinburgh, but a beautiful Scottish country house, and the soldiers are assigned a dignity and innocence not wholly convincing. The result is a little bland compared to the original, a tale of good men, whereas the books are simply a tale of men and all the stronger for it.

War is hell and in many ways " The Great War " has had an effect on the British psyche not a million miles removed from the way Jews see the holocaust . It killed British idealism and has made the Brits Euro-phobic or at least Eurosceptic which is a testament to the years 1914 to 1918 . Indeed war is hell but unfortunately Gilles MacKinnon does the impossible and overstates the horrors of the conflict . " Overstates ! How is that possible Theo ? " . Look at the bizarre opening when young British soldiers wail like banshees amongst dead German counterparts as the camera comes to stop on a couple of Tommies having a brew . Are we in a British trench ? If so then why aren`t the stretcher bearers rushing to help the screaming troops ? Are we in no mans land ? If so how can British soldiers brew tea without the fear of German snipers ? Do you see the point I`m making ? The director ignores logic by painting grotesque pictures as to the horrors of war . War is hell but any movie director overstating the case does the dead a disservice , an image is only haunting if it makes sense and this kind of juxtaposition does not make sense I didn`t like REGENERATION , it`s stagey , melodramatic , too talkey and I`m at a loss if the director , screenwriter or author of the original novel should be blamed . I`m also at a loss to explain blatent homo erotic overtones in movies featuring the first world war , REGENERATION is full of them as was the later British film THE TRENCH If you want a taste of the conflict that killed British idealism I recommend you ignore REGENERATION ( And THE TRENCH ) and watch the 1960s BBC documentary THE GREAT WAR

Pat Barker's novel was completly destroyed when they made this film, the film takes a thoughtful book and replaces it with a load of mindless crap!The film jumps around the sequence and events and adds things to the plot to make the film more emotive. The acting was awful especially the guy who played Sasson, one of the greatest war poets. However Jonny Lee Miller was good although his character lacked definition as they left so many vital scenes out.Although the film does try to bring to life Pat Barker's novel it fails in a miserable pile mud and if it were fighting in world war 1 then it be shot down or shelled before it took a step. The exgeration of why Sasson got his MC was appalling, i do not belive it possible to take a german trench single handedly, the film was just pure bolocks seeing as Sasson actually got his MC for saving life not taking life. The film seems to ignore the fact that Pat Barker has taken facts and woven them into a story. The facts are history and the film makers should have never changed them, Sasson and Owen, and Rivers for that matter, are national hero's who should not be sidelined by a film to make the story seem more exciting.