Journalist movies

This semester, we've watched three movies about being a journalist/photojournalist: Under Fire, All the President's Men, and We Were Soldiers.

Three things I liked about Under Fire were:

• It seemed very realistic. I mean, it was easy to get lost in the movie, and not think "oh hey, look at that computer in the background..." or something to that sort.
• It provides time to question if something is right or not.
• Finally, the role of the woman reporter. While it might not seem like a lot, it was nice to see a woman reporter doing that. It seems like in movies, it's always men who are the traveling journalists, and women just stay home and play with the kids. I enjoyed seeing Claire in the movie.

Three things I didn't like about the movie were:

• The plot seemed more like a love story sometimes.
  
• The movie kind of focused more on the Americans than the other characters, although that might be part of because it was by an American.
  
• I couldn't find anything else I didn't like about this movie.
  

The second movie we watched was All the President's Men. Three things I liked about that movie were:

• The way it was filmed--overall, it was very interesting to watch.
  
• It does a good job of showing all the work that goes into being an investigative journalist.
  
• As a history major, I enjoyed it because it shows the beginning of Watergate through someone else's eyes.
  

Three things I didn't like about this movie were:

• I didn't really feel connected to the characters. The movie focused mainly on what they were doing, and didn't leave a lot of room for developing the characters and becoming attached to them as people.
  
• To a certain extent, I feel like the film glamorizes journalism. Not every news story is like this or ends up like this one. I feel like this movie would encourage people to become journalists, and expect it to be this exciting sometimes.
  
• The ending is quick, and kind of unexpected. However, it does fit, so it's a minor complaint.
  

The last movie we watched was We Were Soldiers. We didn't get very far in this movie, but I have seen it before. I liked:

• The way the movie handled the war. They showed it through the eyes of the wifes (the scenes of them delivering the telegrams always gets to me), and through the soldiers.
  
• The transformation of the photographer.
  
• This quote: "We who have seen war, will never stop seeing it. In the silence of the night, we will always hear the screams. So this is our story, for we were soldiers once, and young." (Joe Galloway)
  

It's hard to find things I didn't like about this movie, but here are three minor things:

• While I loved Galloway's reasons for becoming a war photographer, they seemed a little cliche. I'm not doubting that those were his reasons, I just think that the writers of the movie could have made them a little bit less cliche.
  
• All the blood, but I know that they needed to have it. It's more a complaint because I don't like blood that much. I know it was needed for the movie, but it's hard to think of complaints for this movie, because I loved it so much.
  
• Also, the telegrams arriving to the houses of the wifes so quickly. I personally think that the telegrams would have taken much longer to arrive.

I think the movie that was the best representation was All the President's Men. I think it was the best representation because it shows how hard a journalist must work sometimes in order to get a story. Although the other two were also very good, they were war photojournalists, and had a very different relationship with who they were shooting.