Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Fury

David Ayer’s fifth feature film takes us deep into the action of the European Theatre of World War II as we follow the disparate crew of a Sherman tank as they fight their way through Germany towards a crossroads showdown with a column of German troops.

War is a bloody endeavor and film history is filled with movies that focus on the historic victories, domestic cheerleading and noble valor of soldiers and war efforts facing off against dangerous and repugnant foes. Few films have focused on the grizzly, brutal nature of combat making Fury a part of the newer breed of war films that avoid the glorification and focus on the desperation, fear and bloodshed inherent in the various operations that may have been constructed on self-sacrificing aims, but which nevertheless highlight the need to humanize and vilify the abhorrent results of war as a whole.

Brad Pitt leads a superb cast in the simply structured, sometimes predictable war drama. While Pitt ably showcases his true talents, it’s young Logan Lerman who ends up the film’s MVP. Like the young idealists depicted in Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front, Lerman’s Norman Ellison exemplifies the lost innocence of soldiers heading into war without forewarning of its viciousness, callousness or crippling volatility. Norman shifts from despondence to vehemence as death and violence claim the lives of those around him and his wide-eyed disbelief is met with a lack of concern and a desire to destroy what self-loathing he may have left.