Nice review. Your comments at the begin about irony got a good laugh out of me. I never got around to seeing this, but maybe I should; I know a fair amount about the event it chronicles, so I'd be interested in their take. I'm a little surprised that there wasn't more social commentary in that review, though, given your contention that period pieces only really work if they're made relevant to our time (not a quote, but I think it reflects your views- feel free to disagree with me). We're living in a time when soldiers are sent to war for reasons that are dubious at best. Those same soldiers are told that the people who fight them are all heartless terrorists determined to destroy America, when in fact many of them are natives who simply don't want a foreign army in their country. The various Middle Eastern factions are even worse, particularly the Israelis and Palestinians, who are constantly demonized by the enemy leaders in order to obscure how much they have in common and how little they get from fighting each other. The only difference is that there's no chance in the Middle East of the factions having a truce based on shared religion, since they don't share a religion. Other than that, though, the Christmas Eve truce and its implications seem incredibly relevant to our current state of affairs. I'm sure you thought of all of that yourself, but I'm surprised that you didn't mention it.

I can't deal with every issue a film raises. Still, I thought the relevance of the film to today was obvious enough to go without saying.