The Messenger News

It's fitting that Samantha Morton is co-starring in a drama called The Messenger , in limited release now.

"The Messenger" has been on the tip of Americans' tongues for months, thanks to prerelease screenings at film festivals from Sundance to Sedona.

Caption: Woody Harrelson outside American Airlines Theatre for the 9th Annual 24 Hour Plays New York City, USA .... HARRELSON'S VEGAN TREATS LEFT CO-STAR FEELING ENERGISED Vegan WOODY HARRELSON gave meat lover BEN FOSTER pause for thought on the set of new movie THE MESSENGER - by insisting he try vegetarian and non-dairy food during filming.

Thanks so much, Hollywood. Once again this Thanksgiving holiday you're offering a safe haven from all that pumpkin pie, frenzied shopping and strained relations.

War is made of many parts, from the reasons for initial conflict to stories from the battlefield to the incongruity of life once soldiers return home.

When signing to star in "The Messenger," Ben Foster had no idea of the impact the project would have on him.

In "The Messenger,'' Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster are a captain and staff sergeant who deliver news of soldiers' deaths to significant others and parents.

When filmmaker Oren Moverman returned to Givatayim, near Tel Aviv, on leave from his paratrooper unit during the first Lebanon War, he often shut himself in his room and repeatedly watched the Vietnam War saga "Apocalypse Now." "My head was still in the combat zone," the 43-year-old said from his Manhattan home.

"New Moon," the first sequel in the "Twilight" saga is only slightly better than the original, but it's also a moody, talky, sappy melodrama.

Daily News Film Critic In "The Messenger," Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster play Army officers assigned to inform next of kin that their loved ones are dead, killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In "The Messenger", Woody Harrelson's latest with the starring role of Captain Tony Stone, who has the unenviable regular assignment of delivering the news of the death of Army personnel killed in action to the next of kin.

Playing a young soldier who notifies families that their sons and daughters have been killed in combat weighed heavily on "The Messenger" star Ben Foster.

Ben Foster is one the finest of Hollywood's new breed of actors, be it on Six Feet Under or in films like 3:10 to Yuma and Alpha Dog.

WOODY HARRELSON may be the John Wayne our war in Iraq deserves. If Harrelson's newest, The Messenger , seems to run off the rails, it may have been intended to be the kind of movie that wasn't supposed to be on the rails in the first place.

The film about the end of the world, which had a reported budget of somewhere around $260 million, was released on a little over 3,000 screens and made an estimated $19,095 per screen.

Oren Moverman wasn't supposed to be a director. He had this script called The Messenger that he cared a whole lot about, but he figured he could only do right by the script and his co-writer Alessandro Camon if he found what he calls a "real director" to handle it.

Woody Harrelson stars as U.S. Army Captain Tony Stone, a casualty notification officer, in the film "The Messenger," now playing in Manhattan.

Woody Harrelson is taking his role as a soldier in this week's The Messenger very seriously.

When Samantha Morton appears in a movie, everything else goes a little blurry. Soon there's only that moon face and the enigma of the other .

For those who do, there is The Messenger, Oren Moverman's haunting new film about a captain and a young staff sergeant working the army's "bereavement notification" beat, which requires them to go around the area near Fort Dix, NJ, knocking on the doors of relatives and spouses to inform them that one of their loved ones has been killed.