Defiance (2008)

The James Newton Howard score was nominated for the Oscar, and lost the Golden Globe to Slumdog Millionaire, and the movie is one of the National Board of Review's 10 best films of the year. I've listened to the score a couple of times now, and it's good, but not my favorite (ask me later--I haven't made up my mind). Based on a true story, Daniel Craig (the newest James Bond, Munich (2005), the excellent Enduring Love (2004), 2003's Sylvia and The Mother) stars as Tuvia Bielski, one of four brothers who fled Poland and hid from the Nazis in the forests of Belorussia (now Belarus) with other Jews joining them as time went on. Liev Schrieber (The Painted Veil (2006), A Walk on the Moon (1999), and director/writer of the sublime Everything is Illuminated (2005)), Jamie Bell (Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Billy in Billy Elliot (2000)), and young George MacKay play the other brothers. Though the topic is bleak, the cinematography was anything but: those were some beautiful forests (adjacent Lithuania stood in for Belarus) in rich color. Director Edward Zwick (Glory (1989), The Last Samurai (2003), and Blood Diamond (2006)) is no stranger to making pretty pictures out of strife, now that he's done with TV's thirtysomething, where the strife was never life and death. Defiance was a tad long (2:17) but had good performances all around, lovely trees, women with speaking roles, extras with connections to the story, violin solos by Joshua Bell, and magnificent sequences in the snow.