War Horse represented all that.
From the opening to the ending scene, it's just wonderful art in motion. A lot of shots you could see and feel something uniquely special, be it just a pan or a still shot. Furthermore, Spielberg had the scenic locales to assist him in his delivery.
But of course it's not just as simple as finding the right angle to shoot a scenic view, but he also added on things like smoke or compositioning to create even more texture in every single shot. Simply beautiful.
The story however, was a drag in the middle for me. Things moved too slowly as the hero in the story, the horse Joey, moved from "owner" to "owner"; and thereby telling yet another story that didn't seem to have any connection with the main storyline - at first...
Also, some of the scenes like the beginning where Jeremy Irvine's character first met Joey, was kind of childish. It's as if Spielberg and the team of writers wanted simplicity but ended up with something that's not quite there yet.
Other scenes had bad transitions and or inconsequential sub-plots that I still thought was a waste of time.
And when Spielberg has brought us Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, but decided not to show any violence or gore in this particular war movie, I thought that was a little odd because the effects and affects on the psyche were unsuitably toned donw.
What ticked me off the most was that a lot of characters in the movie always exclaimed how great a horse Joey was, even when they first saw him. But as an audience, I didn't get to experience what's so great about this horse. I only knew Joey was great because almost every character said so.
I thought it was a difficult story to tell since the main character is a non-talking horse, but Spielberg did made it work, and then some. The ending, I must admit, everything about it, was beautiful.
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