I'm not even sure how to begin with (or end, or even put the stuff in the middle of) this review. On the one hand, Stalingrad is a stark depiction of what it must have been like during the battle of the same name. Full of vivid, graphic, and disturbing imagery, it paints a depressing picture, and rightly so. Not only in the production and effects, but the main characters, a squad of Germans, themselves get torn apart, inside and out, until the very end.

On the other hand, I found the film lacking in a few respects. The characters themselves don't seem to have much personality at all. The one exception might be the company Lieutenant, Witzland (Thomas Kretschmann.) He is the epitome of the man thrust into the heart of an evil situation, trying hopelessly to do the right thing, and it winds up the method of his destruction....

Ah, submarine movies. (Deep Breath).  If you've followed the site for any length of time you probably know I've developed a soft-spot for the sub-genre (no pun intended!) and 1990's adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel The Hunt For Red October is no exception.

In case you haven't actually seen "Red October", or read it, the plot goes something like this:  A Soviet sub commander, Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) takes a brand-new, experimental submarine on a mission to defect to the US with some of his officers.  As you can imagine this doesn't sit well with the rest of the Soviet Navy, and causes a fair amount of confusion on the US side of things.

That's where the venerable character of CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) comes in.  The resident expert on Ramius, he's dispatched to the submarine USS Dallas to actually meet with Ramius, prove his intention to defect, and bring him and the submarine home safely.  Natch, right?

1998's The Thin Red Line takes us to Guadalcanal in the South Pacific.  Based on the novel of the same name by James Jones, its a long and arduous journey into...

...well I'm still trying to figure that out.  The Thin Red Line is a visual masterpiece, I will give you that.  But there is more here than a few pretty pictures and excellent camerawork, but I'll be damned if I have any sort of grasp on it.

There are a few separate plots going on here, the one we are shown at first is that of Private Witt (James Caviezel), who has gone AWOL to live among the natives.  He's discovered, and thrown back under the command of 1st Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn), who ships him off to be a stretcher bearer, as a disciplinary measure.

I guess since the first Gulf War (at least on the ground) only lasted a couple of months, there probably aren't a lot of stories to tell.  At least we can fall back on Three Kings to fill in the gap.

Somewhat a re-telling of the Kelly's Heroes story, it follows four soldiers in their quest to steal some Kuwaiti gold bricks out of the hands of Saddam's army, after the war is over.  Unlike with Kelly's bunch, though, things go terribly, terribly awry in a surreal series of events that wind up telling more of the story that needs to be told more often.

Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) catches wind of the map that Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), and Pfc. Vig (Spike Jonze) find in a surrendering Iraqi's, um, backside.  Once they figure out what they've got, they set out on their quest in true '90s style.

Since I'm on a "Cold War" run to start off the site, lets look at 1995's "Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie."

"Trinity" is a documentary that explores the creation and development of nuclear weapons technology, primarily in the US military, but with a little bit of Soviet action thrown in as counterpoint.

Being a documentary, action is non-existant. That's not the point. The big draw of this film is the absolutely stunning film of the seemingly endless nuclear tests conducted in the South Pacific, in atmosphere (which I never knew were conducted) and underground. It's absolutely incredible to believe that something so infinitely destructive could at the same time be so, well, beautiful. You will find yourself feeling guilty at marvelling at the slow-motion footage of these detonations, only to realize their intended purpose. The different stages of the explosions, how they progress from initial detonation, to shock wave, thermal expansion and beyond are visible in nearly every one.

It starts off detailing how they came up with the "benchmark" for nuclear weapons strength, the kiloton. In essence, they put 1000 tons of TNT up on a test stand and set it off. I felt honestly scared for these guys manually carting box after box of TNT up onto the stand and tapping it firmly into place with their hammers. shudder

The absolute devastation of the bombs are shown in detail, both at their first two actual uses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and at the various test islands and atolls. Literally wiping them clean of pretty much everything.

There's a bit of a look at the 50s-60s cold-war hysteria that went on, and when you look at this footage and what was being developed, its easy to see why the entire country was so nervous.

I'd recommend this to anyone interested in the history of nuclear weapons, and to anyone who scoffs at the seriousness and destructive power of the atom. I'd put it in the "must see at some point" category.



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