Category Archives: War

Khartoum

Khartoum                                            5 stars

This is the last movie I saw in the theater before the Coronavirus shut down all the movie theaters in the state. Khartoum is the 1966 film that tells of the 1884 conflict in Sudan that occurred between the British led Egyptians and Sudanese against a Muslim army led by Muhammad Ahmad.  At the time Egypt was part of the British Empire and Ahmad was determined to take Egypt and the entire Arab world away from the Western powers and rule it himself.  I remember hearing the story of General Gordon and his doomed quest to keep the Egyptians and Sudanese from falling victim to the madman at the city of Khartoum on the Nile River.  In a purely political move the British Prime Minister, Gladstone knew he could not defend the city so he sent General Gordon, a hero in the eyes of the Sudanese, to the city to effect an evacuation of the city’s population, so that if he failed the blame would not fall on the British government.  The film brings these events to the big screen telling it as an epic tale aided with scenes involving hundreds of extras and a wide colorful screen.  The film stars the legendary Charlton Heston as General Gordon and Laurence Olivier as the evil and very tanned Ahmed.  These stars along with supporting cast of Richard Johnson and Ralph Richardson bring some of the most dramatic dialogue I’ve seen of the era.  One can compare it to the truly epic Lawrence of Arabia to give you an idea.  There is action too involving some well produced armed conflict in the desert, but the main attraction is the story itself.  It’s mainly about a man’s quest to do the right thing in the face of unbeatable odds.  I am really glad I finally got the chance to see it.  I don’t know when I will get the chance to go to the theaters again, unfortunately.

A Hidden Life

A Hidden Life     4 stars

We set aside the deadly other worldly creatures this time for a feature about the human kind of deadly creature. Last year’s A Hidden Life is based on the true story of Franz Jagerstatter, a poor Austrian farmer in the 1940’s who faced the threat of death and destruction brought on by a totalitarian ruler, Adolf Hitler. I didn’t know anything beyond that when I started the movie, but soon noticed that this looked a lot like a Terrence Malick movie, which of course it is. Among the Malick directed movies I have seen are To the Wonder, The Tree of Life, The New World and The Thin Red Line. Malick has a style all his own that includes hand held cameras following characters, wide angle lenses and quick editing cuts. The dialogue is kept short and there is plenty of narration from characters showing what they are feeling. His movies are usually long and convey a spiritual message you don’t often see in this business. In this movie there is also historical footage present to show the rise of Hitler. Franz refuses to serve in the Nazi German army as it goes against his religious beliefs. Why can’t he just serve as a medic like we saw in the movie Hacksaw Ridge about an American GI in the Pacific? That would require Franz to sign an oath of loyalty to the Fuhrer, something that his faith will not allow him to do. And it is something I pray never becomes a reality in the United States. His decision comes at great cost as he is placed in prison facing the threat of execution, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves operating their farm in the Alps of Austria. His fellow villagers shun them for his “traitorous” acts. I, for one am amazed that considering all the horrible things that happened during World War II, this story has not been forgotten. The dialogue alternates between English and German without any subtitles, but there is enough there for the viewer to get the idea of what is going on. The movie moves rather slowly with about half of it taking place in prisons with Franz suffering the abuse of guards and isolation from his family and at nearly three hours running length it may be a bit much for many moviegoers. For the story and fans of Terrence Malick, A Hidden Life should be seen.

Da 5 Bloods

Da 5 Bloods        5 stars

I only recently found out about Spike Lee’s new movie, Da 5 Bloods that was released on Netflix back in June. With the pandemic it didn’t get a lot of attention this past summer. It has been described as an action movie about four black American soldiers returning to Vietnam, but it is much more than that. Lee brings this fictional story to the screen that gives us a history lesson and expresses the anguish that black men have gone through in giving their service to a country that doesn’t repay them. Lee starts with some archival footage of events leading up to the sixties and the Vietnam War that sets the tone. The four men in their seventies, played by Delroy Lindo, Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. have journeyed to Vietnam in the present to reclaim the body of their fallen comrade and squad leader, Stormin’ Norman (Chadwick Boseman). Only they are also there to claim the treasure of gold that the US intended to pay to local Vietnamese to fight against the Vietcong. The men had buried the gold in the jungle during their tour during the war. Lee gives us scenes of the jungle fighting but in an interesting casting choice the older men also play the young versions of their characters in the war in 1968. The men, who call themselves Da Bloods, are all emotionally traumatized by the war and other events in their lives, especially Paul (Lindo) who has never gotten over the death of Norman as he blames himself for the loss. The movie is probably the best performance that Lindo has done. Chadwick Boseman who died this year gives us a fine performance in one of his last roles. There are several Vietnamese characters in the movie that give us their point of view of the war. They typically refer to it as The American War. Not only do we get plenty of emotional drama from the characters, but there is plenty of shooting and action when some rogue Vietnamese officers get wind of the mission. The outcome is reminiscent of other classic movies like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when greed overcomes loyalty. (If you listen carefully you may hear a reference to that film.) There is no shortage of graphic scenes and the movie clocks in at two and one half hours so the dedicated viewer is in for quite a ride. Da 5 Bloods is another fine achievement by director Spike Lee and is destined for multiple awards in the awards season.

Shadow in the Cloud

Shadow in the Cloud                       4 stars

In this year’s Shadow in the Cloud we follow a young female pilot, Maude (Chloe Grace Moretz) on a secret mission on a World War II B-17 bomber out of New Zealand. This is without a doubt the best B-movie of the year so far. You can tell it’s a B-movie at the outset by the seventies style rock music so you know you are in for a treat. Maude is a last minute passenger on the mission and the all male crew is not at all happy about it, as they berate her with sexist language and force her to ride in the Sperry turret in the belly of the plane, the only place where there is room. We soon see that she can handle herself well in the aircraft as she maneuvers the turret, and fires the machine gun at approaching enemy aircraft. Then there is the matter of an actual gremlin on the outside of the plane who is determined to rip it apart and kill everyone inside. For much of the movie we only see Maude in the turret as she must content with the abusive crew, enemy planes and the destructive creature. After we see the premise of the movie, things only get more intense as Maude performs incredible stunts with determination to stay alive and defeat both monster and Jap fighters with actions that only get more and more preposterous. Like any good B-movie the audience must take it all in stride and just go along for the action. Moretz is very convincing in the role making us believe she is a 40’s star who can dish it out better than she gets. Shadow in the Cloud is the best B-movie I’ve seen since 2018’s Revenge, also a movie where the female lead must take command of life-threatening situations with implausible results. The movie is available on Hulu and is recommended for all action movie lovers!

Atropia

Atropia 4 suns

As Atropia opens we see the streets of an Iraqi village with street vendors, animals and men with head scarves. Then we see some American Army vehicles come down the street with soldiers shouting at villagers. Insurgents appear, fighting starts. There is an explosion. Then everything stops and we find we are not in Iraq, but are on a US Army base in California called The Box in 2006 and this is a training exercise for soldiers about to deploy to Iraq. The villagers and insurgents are mainly Hollywood actors playing roles in this romantic comedy called Atropia. One of the actors is Fayruz (Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development and Search Party), who wants to get movie roles in Hollywood and schemes to find ways to get noticed. She learns of a famous Hollywood actor who is going to observe the exercises and believes this is her big chance. The head insurgent, Abu Dice (Callum Turner (The Boys in the Boat)) becomes suspicious leading to a confrontation and therefore the romance between the two. There is plenty of room for comedy in a movie about military training. (Remember Stripes and Private Benjamin?) Atropia delivers with bumbling officers and soldiers, misunderstandings when things go wrong and plenty of suggestive comments toward a female mock news reporter (Jane Levy of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist). It is mainly the two leads that carry the movie, especially Shawkat who delivers one of her best performances yet. Her ethnicity is Iraqi so she fits right into the part. She should have more starring roles given her comedic talent. The director/screenwriter, Hailey Gates has done well, given that this is her first effort at directing a feature movie. The movie was developed from a short done several years ago by the team of Gates and Shawkat. At the end a screen graphic tells us that there are hundreds of training sites like the one portrayed. Only now the enemy combatants are Russians. The theater was packed for this one, but unfortunately none of the filmmakers were present for Q & A.

The Six Triple Eight

The Six Triple Eight          2 ½ stars

The Six Triple Eight tells the important true story of the 6888th battalion, the only Women’s Army Corps unit of color to serve overseas in World War II. This group of women were tasked with sorting through 17 million pieces of mail that needed to be delivered both to the American troops serving in Europe and to their families back home. Others before them had tried and failed at this enormous task, leaving millions without word from their loved ones. Besides having to find ways of accomplishing this monumental job with less than adequate facilities, they had to endure countless episodes of racism and sexism heaped on them by white men in the army and in the press. Tyler Perry, the writer/director, tells the story in his dramatic fashion, but all too often makes his characters appear as stereotypes without enough development. He certainly has a talented cast to work with that includes Kerry Washington, Susan Sarandon, Oprah Winfrey, Sam Waterston and Ebony Obsidian (Sistas). Except for Kerry Washington (Scandal) as Major Charity Adams, the characters seem two dimensional or just there as cameos in the cases of Sarandon, Waterston and Winfrey. Washington portrays the strength and determination of Adams well as she yells commands to her troops and deals with individuals on a personal level, all the while having to stand up to the racism exhibited by white American officers. Having seen so many examples of racist behavior in movies portraying the fifties and earlier, these seemed very stereotypical and comical, such as black soldiers being called lazy and stupid over minor matters. Of course, one cannot miss the degrading of people of color brought about by segregation of the period, something made clear in the movie. It took far too long I thought to get to the point of the movie as first we had to go through the love story of one of the women soldiers played by Ebony Obsidian as Lena Derriecott, whose Jewish boyfriend is sent to Europe and is killed in battle early in his service. (I didn’t need to see him talking to her from beyond the grave.) Too much time passes before the importance of an air force pilot being killed in an early scene is finally revealed. We also must go through Lena’s relationship with a black soldier serving in Europe. More interesting to me were the scenes where the soldiers endure the hardships of their treatment and despite this, manage to find inventive ways to track down the identities of thousands of US servicemen when many of the pieces of mail seem to be indecipherable. And even though they are well behind enemy lines they must endure the threat of air attacks from the enemy. I have only seen a handful of Tyler Perry’s numerous projects (that doesn’t include a single Madea movie) and this one is too highly melodramatic as is his style, based on what I have seen. At the end of the movie, we are rewarded with actual footage of the army unit and its commander, Major Adams. The movie was released just in time to be eligible for the Academy Award nominations. We will see what materializes from it. The Six Triple Eight is available on Netflix.

Three Minutes – A Lengthening

Three Minutes – A Lengthening 5 suns

This short documentary about a three minute section of color movie film is one of the most fascinating documentaries I have seen. A few years ago writer Glenn Kurtz found a home movie filmed by his grandfather, David Kurtz in 1938 for a vacation to Europe. Among the places he visited was Nasielsk, Poland, a predominantly Jewish village north of Warsaw that was David’s birthplace. The three minutes of film shows the faces of well over 100 people, all Jewish, who were in the street, many of them fascinated by the American who was using his new camera to film them. Of course the tragic thing is that only a year later the Nazis would come to the town and force all the Jewish residents onto the trains taking them to the concentration camps. Only about 100 people from the village would survive through the war. The filmmaker takes us through the extraordinary efforts to find the places and names of the people in this short section of home movie, leading in directions that would find some individuals still living. There are stories even about the fabrics worn by the women and the buttons of coats originating from a nearby factory. The writing has a poetic aspect to it as we realize we feel so close to these people through the pictures, but that the once thriving community was to be lost in such a short time.

Klondike


KLONDIKE           5 suns

My personal winner for the day was KLONDIKE. It’s a fictional story about a Ukrainian couple who live in an isolated farmhouse in Eastern Ukraine, but it is set in 2014 during the war of Russian incursion when a Malaysian airliner is brought down by a Russian missile. News footage from the actual events give us more background to the story. Tolik and Irka are expecting a child, but their world faces havoc when this war is brought to their doorstep. Tolik struggles to deal with the damage to their home, the soldiers who demand that their needs be met and a wife who refuses to leave her home. Things are further complicated when Irka’s brother shows up and we find that the family has sympathies on opposite sides of the conflict. The camera work is striking with the very long scenes that slowly reveal the horrors of war in the background while the characters are struggling just to survive. The film is highly relevant to today with its message about the futility of war. It deserves some special recognition.

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front  4 ½ stars

This time I went from the horrors of narcissistic billionaires to an even greater horror, the viscousness of all-out war, by viewing the 2022 film, All Quiet on the Western Front. This is the German language film based on the well-known novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. The book was made into the Academy Award winning film in 1930, and now we have the latest version, made with all the special effects of the present day. The film, by director Edward Berger, holds nothing back in presenting how horrible and devastating war can be. (I also happened to take a guided tour of World War I battlefield sites in France around this time so got a first-hand view of some authentic locations where The Great War was fought.) The opening scenes focus on a World War I battle between the Germans and the French showing us what trench warfare was like, with the soldiers seeing their comrades killed in an instant. But then we see the aftermath, with the bodies being gathered for burial as well as the gathering of the uniforms of the dead. The film then follows the path of the uniforms showing how they are cleaned and then mended so they can be reused by the next group of soldiers, giving us the feeling of a never-ending cycle of death. Like the book we follow teenage recruit Paul and his friends who are very enthusiastic about joining the army and the glory that awaits them. They are assured that the war will be over soon, and they will return to their homes as heroes. Of course, this is not to be as we are treated to one scene of horror after another showing the effects of modern weapons of war. Often the assaults result in scenes of hand-to-hand combat between the adversaries but based on my tour and readings, actual hand to hand combat was a rarity in World War I. More common were the artillery bombardments resulting in large casualties followed up with infantry attacks causing the enemy to retreat from their trenches. In this respect the movie and book are not accurate. We are also treated to scenes of comradery among Paul and his fellow soldiers during the quieter times in the trenches and the surrounding countryside. Against these scenes are those showing what life is like for the higher brass who issue the commands sending thousands of men to their deaths. These well-fed men with their large mustaches feast on their wine and cheese seemingly without a thought of concern for what the men are going through. They are only concerned about their own glory by achieving the victory in battle that forever eludes them. The frightening scenes of battle are backed up by an unsettling score and some of the best cinematography I have seen. The movie was the recipient of four Academy Awards which are well deserved. If you are at all interested in anti-war films, All Quiet on the Western Front must be on your list.

The Catcher Was a Spy

The Catcher Was a Spy   3 stars

The Catcher Was a Spy takes us back to the espionage days of World War II when men in trench coats and fedora hats met secretly at night to gather intelligence and plan strategic assassinations. Here director Ben Lewin tells the true story of professional baseball player Moses “Moe” Berg who volunteered for the OSS and was sent on a mission to find and assassinate nuclear physicist Werner Heisenberg who may or may not be working on a German atomic bomb. The usually comedic Paul Rudd steps into the dramatic role of Berg and does a decent job given the material. I wanted to like the movie more but there wasn’t enough to get excited about though the combination of sports hero, wartime intrigue and harrowing situations would seem to provide plenty of material. Berg is an interesting subject, given the facts that he was Jewish, studied at universities, spoke several foreign languages and was sometimes perceived as being gay. We don’t get a full picture of Berg and his motives making him a mysterious figure which may be a good thing for the movie. With hindsight we now know that Germany was not close to producing an atomic weapon though it was feared they might be. So perhaps the premise of tracking down a scientist who could be working on such a weapon during a war is not that interesting of a story after all despite the background of the baseball player turned spy. That’s just a thought.