365 Days. 365 Films.

It is not surprising that this film has been nominated for a million and one awards this award season, it’s directed by Spielberg (arguably the world’s greatest living director), it’s set during WWI (and a lot of Oscar winners/nominees are set during a war of some sort) and it goes one better than a human interest story by having a horse as the main character.

War Horse is like a bigger budget Black Beauty at war – it’s a very inspirational and beautiful story, but it can be a bit too soppy from time to time. There are the occasional moments where you just have to cringe and mostly at the lead’s performance (Jeremy Irvine – not the horse) and the aforementioned sop.

Besides all this it is a fantastically entertaining film with stunning special effects and a wonderfully written narrative – definitely a brilliant family film as Spielberg is prone to make. The cinematography in particular is outstanding and although it has been said that Spielberg is a typical fourth wall director, his genius subtlety definitely drops in this one and I think it makes for stunning viewing that way too.

I think it will win the Best Picture Oscar, but only for the reasons stated in the first paragraph of this review – it has all the usual elements for an Oscar winner, but because of the slightly off-putting soppiness, I don’t think it’s thoroughly deserving considering it’s competition.