A Bridge Too Far is a long and complex look at the spectacularly failed Operation Market Garden, where Allied troops were to drop behind enemy lines into Holland and take bridges to support an advancing ground force in September 1944. As history has shown, it didn't go as planned. At all. This movie is... »
Flags of Our Fathers is the story of three men who were honored (I guess you could call it that) for their part in raising (one of) the flags over Iwo Jima in 1945. However it portrays this "honor" as that of being used as marketing pawns in the name of selling more war... »
1969's Battle of Britain is a pretty academic and mechanical look at the escalation of German bombing attacks in 1940 which we all know as "the blitz." An all-star cast consisting of such names as Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Curt Jurgens, Laurence Olivier, Nigel Patrick, Robert Shaw, and more round it out. But the... »
So is M*A*S*H a "war movie" or an "anti-war movie?" It's been called both, and I think they're right on both counts. Robert Altman's 1970 masterpiece which spawned the spinoff TV series comes at you from both directions, dead serious and dead funny. All at the same time. It follows the doctors of the... »
"300", a movie about the battle of Thermopylae, opens this weekend on the 9th. I don't know about you, but I think I'll be skipping this one. Just on the "style-factor" alone. It looks too much like some video game to be worth anything. I may be wrong but there's a point at which... »
Looks like a foreign film that will be seeing a limited release here in the states (not anywhere near me, like I have the time anyway!) The liberation of Italy, Provence, the Alps, the Rhone Valley, the Vosges and Alsace marked vital stages in the Allied victory. And in the place that France was... »
Ah context. Context is everything, especially when you're watching war films of this era. You've got the Hayes office, the Dept. of War, and in the end, you get propaganda films like 1943's Air Force. Of course, that's not to say that this is a bad film. On the contrary, this is actually quite... »
So not a lot of good things have been said about Stealth. Eh, I went into this expecting the worst, and came out feeling a little better about it. Not much, but a little. Bottom line is it's not as bad as everyone says. *If* you perform a little "suspension of disbelief" black magic,... »
December 7, 1941. A date which will live in infamy. Well it should anyway, its unfortunate that the Bruckheimer/Bay team got a hold of it and turned it into an unconvincing heart-string-tugging love story with a happy ending. There, I said it. OK so maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but there are a... »
Tora! is the quintessential model for a pseudo-documentary war movie, painstakingly attempting to chronicle the events (on both sides) leading up to the infamous 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Is this an action-packed thriller that will keep you pinned to the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen next? No. Absolutely not. ... »
New this week is an early classic, and a new classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) This is an English language film (made in America) adapted from a novel by German author Erich Maria Remarque. The film follows a group of German schoolboys, talked into enlisting at the beginning of World War... »
Quite possibly the first "hacker" movie of our times, WarGames shows us what can happen when we put our trust in these new-fangled computing machinery thingies, and then give them the power to destroy the planet. OK, so maybe thats overstating things a bit. WarGames is still a fun romp through the world of... »
Earn this. There are your standard-issue war movies. And then there are epic masterpieces such as Saving Private Ryan which should be the gold standard to measure all others against. It is primarily the story of Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his squad of soldiers as they survive the hellish D-Day invasion, and are... »
