Saving Private Ryan

"27 minutes of brilliance; two hours of melodramatic waffle" - Mark Kermode, BBC Radio 5live

Mark Kermode delivered the above verdict on Steven Spielberg's World War II epic after 14-year-old Wittertainee Matthew, who was studying the film as part of his English coursework, emailed in seeking a quote to put into his essay. The melodramatic waffle is epitomised in the scene in which a mother is seen at home in a house in a cornfield kneading dough.

The film stars Tom Hanks as Captain Miller and MATT DAMON as the eponymous Ryan.

Regarding the 27 minutes of brilliance - the hand-held scenes recreating the battle of Omaha beach - the problem was the succession of films (such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine) that ripped it off, and did it so crassly that it made you wonder if it was worth developing the technique in the first place; the ne plus ultra of this being Rambo.

Simon Mayo once got into trouble during the movie mashups discussion for referring to the porn version of the film, Shaving Ryan's Privates. This was tastefully removed from the podcast.