vubrandon George Roy Hill's screening of the novel "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut is a classic, old fashioned-style film that hilariously captures Billy Pilgrim's experiences during and after the war. The use of flashbacks and comedy movie show us the seriousness and the negative side effects of war, but does not fail to entertain us. The film is very funny throughout, which may take from the horrors and stress one may experience during war, but makes it easy for any audience to watch and enjoy.The main character, Billy Pilgrim, is played by Michael Sacks who perfectly embodies the nature of Billy Pilgrim. He is a tall and innocent looking character which excellently portrays the essence of a young boy in war. Many of my colleagues including myself, do not particularly enjoy films or books regarding war. However, due to the comedic fashion of this film, Hill's version of "Slaughterhouse Five" can be enjoyed by an audience of all ages and interests. One of the first scenes I found to be funny was when Billy was first found by a group of American troops in the snow. The troops question Billy at first, and hold him down as they survey the land for enemies. A situation that in reality must have been extremely scary, was actually quite funny as Billy lays in the snow obediently as the troops argue between each other discussing what to do with Billy. If that wasn't funny enough, the entire group then becomes captured by a group of enemy troops, which starts Billy's journey as a prisoner of war.One component of the film that I thought was very effective in capturing the essence of war, was the use of flashbacks through the eyes of Billy. Periodically throughout the film, a scene in "real time" will often change to a scene in previous times that share common sights or interactions. The switch between war times and post war times, and the future and the past, work well to embody the traumatizing effects that war zones can have on people. PTSD, also known as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" is an ongoing disorder that many retired war veterans will experience in their lives. I often hear and see of people who drop the the ground and take cover when they hear anything that resembles the sound of a gunshot, such as a firework or the slamming shut of a book. The use of flashbacks in this film really captures what it is like to live in a society after years of war. The performance of Billy Pilgrim's children in the book also play a role in successfully embodying the spirit of the war times. Billy's kids are concerned for their father when he starts spieling of the planet Tralfamadore and his new mistress Montana Wildhack. Perry King, who plays as Robert Pilgrim, does a great job at showing his concern for his father, especially in the scene when Robert goes to Billy's house to find him laying on the bed in darkness. Billy's son sits by his bed and talks to him of his own war experiences hoping to help his father return to his old self. This intimate moment was successful because of the staged relationship between son and father, executed by well casted actors who look so natural in the film.Although I absolutely enjoyed this movie, certain aspects due however fail to truly represent the horrifying nature of war itself. The film itself is Rated R for nudity and language but I believe the main purpose is to entertain the audience using war as a plot, as opposed to truly focusing on the horrors of war. The funny scenes keep the reader from experiencing the stress and anxiety of a war zone, which I feel is very important in a war movie, especially one about "Slaughterhouse Five". The flashbacks work well to give us a sense of the traumatizing aftermath of war, but the humor of the movie restrict the audience from feeling the war deep down inside.

NORDIC-2 On December 22, 1944, during the sixth day of the Battle of the Bulge, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a 22-year-old battalion scout with the 423rd Regiment, 106th Infantry Division, was captured (along with 7,000 of his comrades) by advancing German panzer forces. As a P.O.W. he was subsequently sent to Dresden, "the Florence on the Elbe." Though the city, an ancient cultural center, had no military installations or air defenses, the Allied High Command decided to firebomb it, presumably as payback for the German bombing of Coventry earlier in the war. In three separate air raids on February 13-14, 1945 (ironically Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday) hundreds of RAF and USAAF bombers dropped more than 700,000 phosphorous bombs on Dresden's 1.2 million defenseless civilians (its population nearly doubled by refugees fleeing Breslau just ahead of the Russians). The resulting firestorm, reaching temperatures nearing 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, obliterated 1,600 acres in the center of the city and incinerated more than 135,000 people. One of only seven Allied POWs in Dresden to survive the bombing, Vonnegut was assigned to corpse recovery and burial detail. The overwhelming horror he experienced in Dresden would haunt him for the rest of his life, indelibly coloring his view of life and all his work as a fiction writer. Indeed, the trauma of Dresden was so great that Vonnegut could not write about it directly for more than twenty years. After returning to Dresden on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967, Vonnegut finally wrote 'Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death' (Delacorte, 1969), a powerful, fatalistic anti-war novel that blends fact, fiction, and science fiction in inimitable Vonnegut fashion. Though a critically acclaimed National Book Award winner and a bestseller, 'Slaughterhouse-Five' also garnered considerable controversy, allegedly for its frank language and sexual references, but more probably because it contradicted the established mythology of WWII as "The Good War" by focusing on an irrefutable Allied war crime of truly monstrous proportions. Three years after the novel's publication director George Roy Hill ('Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid') brought out a film version scripted by novelist-screenwriter Stephen Geller ('Pretty Poison') that is remarkably faithful to the literary text. The movie stars Michael Sacks as Billy Pilgrim, a passive, mild-mannered optometrist of Illium (Ithaca, NY—Vonnegut attended Cornell) New York who somehow becomes "unstuck in time," i.e., he spontaneously finds himself bouncing between past, present, and future moments of his life. The signal event of his past is, of course, the Dresden firebombing. In some other moment Billy is abducted by a race of space aliens and taken to the planet Tralfamadore, where he is studied and then compelled to mate and have a child with Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine), another kidnapped earthling who just happens to be a voluptuous movie star. Absurd as it sounds, the abrupt jumping between these three scenarios—Dresden, postwar suburban America, and another planet—allows book and film to evocatively represent the Dresden atrocity, satirize the emptiness of post-war American consumer culture, and philosophize about war, human nature, and the meaning of life in general. A moderate hit at the box office—despite going head-to-head with 'The Godfather'—'Slaughterhouse-Five' won the Jury Prize at Cannes but received no Oscar nominations. Usually disappointed with film adaptations of his work, Kurt Vonnegut judged George Roy Hill's film an "artistic success." VHS (1998) and DVD (2004).

ybijzitter The story is weak and strange. At some moments the protagonist (Billy) resides in a WW2 situation, at some points in time he lives a life in the present time (1972) with a wife and kids. For no reason the protagonist just knows that his plane is gonna blow up. During the disaster he manages to survive (not explained how... and it's not believable). Then his wife becomes hysteric and kills herself by accident, which also isn't very believable. Then in the end for some reason Billy gets transported to an alien planet which seems utterly ridiculous. It doesn't have a purpose at all... Then he suddenly tells someone that he sometimes 'timetravels' to the future and sees his own death. Which we are then allowed to see. Why wouldn't he escape his death if he know it was coming that minute? All very strange and unbelievable. But in the end it felt like i watched 3 movies. A movie about a ww2 POW. A movie about a family man in 1972, and a movie about some guy kidnapped by aliens. In no way these different parts of the movie are connected and it all just seems very strange. Besides that the acting is very mediocre at it's best. If I were you, i'd decide to just watch something else. It's not a very enjoyable movie, but also not the worst one i've watched so i'll 'reward' it with a 3.

oneguyrambling An elderly Billy Pilgrim sits and writes his memoirs at a rickety old typewriter. To say that he has lead a very interesting life is an understatement, to say that his life makes for an interesting movie is a little more arguable.As Billy taps away at the keys the film drifts in and out of various times in Billy's life, ranging from his childhood all the way up until he is abducted by aliens and forced to live on another planet wiling away the time banging a Hollywood star.You read that right - this is not just a WW2 film.The bulk of the time though focuses on Billy's wartime experience - Slaughterhouse-5 refers to the former abattoir that Billy and fellow POWs are imprisoned in located in supposedly peaceful Dresden - and the years following his return home where he marries and raises a family. In between there is some action, but not much. What is there includes a plane crash, combat, internment and the UFO abduction thing, but nothing is exceptionally big or "Wow", even the war scenes aren't very "war-ey"..It is all quite well edited and seamlessly moves through the eras backwards and forwards, which takes a bit of getting used to as you think where is he now, once you see Billy's gap toothed mug and gauge his age you catch up quick though. It did add one funny joke where Billy's slightly chunky and annoying wife told him in every era how she planned to lose weight to make him happy - then we progress forward and find out that she never did, more unfortunately for old Bill is that she continued to be as annoying...Slaughterhouse-5 is practically unknown nowadays - it is 30+ years old - and it is no doubt weird. Just not weird enough to make it notably weird like say Eraserhead or Dark Star even though it is far better than both. I guess at the end of the day unknown-weird is still no more than unknown.The fact of the matter is that while it is pretty interesting and well made Slaughterhouse-5 has no one scene that differentiates it from the pack. You keep waiting for it to have the big reveal and explain everything but it never does.You probably should admire that as a movie watcher, but is it enough cause to hunt down this unassuming oddity from 4 decades ago? The answer is No, not really.Final Rating - 5 / 10. Not a terrible film, but nothing really going for it enough to provide cause for recommendation.