Action

Napoleon can be a good war epic, but the character development made Napoleon hateable and not interesting!!! Real Rating: 3.5 Cannons What I Like: -The battle scenes were epic, director Ridley Scott executed some mind blowing effects that will keep you engaged The So So: -The acting was good in certain aspects, but as for […]

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Action

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) on Amazon is a $60 million budget action-comedy film directed by Guy Ritchie which bombed at the box office but is doing rather well on streaming. The film is based on the book Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII by Damien […]

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Adventure

And so I’ve been on a bit of a Hemingway kick while reading a brand new book (Just released) by favorite author Mark Kurlansky. Kurlansky tracks some of his adventures in journalism alongside those of Hem while on assignments and travels in Europe, Cuba and elsewhere. I didn’t read this particular […]

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Drama

Night Train To Munich

NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH, a well-regarded British-made espionage thriller, arrived in England’s theaters in late July of 1940. World War Two had ‘officially’ started the previous September. This morale mission, directed by Carol Reed, landed a month after the debacle/escape of Dunkirk and two before ‘the Blitz’ got underway. The story is set a year […]

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Adventure

TV Review – Shogun Season One

Shogun Season One (2024)Written by Rachel Kondo, Justin Marks, Shannon Goss, Nigel Williams, Emily Yoshida, Matt Lambert, Maegan Houang, and Caillin PuenteDirected by Jonathan van Tulleken, Charlotte Brändström, Frederick E.O. Toye, Hiromi Kamata, Takeshi Fukunaga, and Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour I must confess that of all the Japanese media, the stories surrounding this historical period typically leave […]

TV Review – Shogun Season One

Drama

Duck, You Sucker! (1971) – The False Facades of Heroism and Revolution

“When I was young I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.” – Sergio Leone The great Italian director Sergio Leone was and remains one of the titans of international cinema. Despite such a meager output of only seven films (eight if one were […]

Duck, You Sucker! (1971) – The False Facades of Heroism and Revolution

Drama

“The Forgotten Battle”

“The Forgotten Battle” is about a postscript to Operation Market Garden, that late World War II gamble by the Allies to free Arnhem, liberate the Netherlands and shorten the war. That’s not “forgotten.” There was a movie about that debacle, “A Bridge Too Far,” that still turns up on grandpa’s favorite cable movie channels. This […]

Netflixable? Dutch, Germans, Brits and Canadians live through “The Forgotten Battle”

Biography

Benediction

Benediction is the story of English poet, writer and soldier Siegfried Sassoon. He was decorated for bravery on the Western Front, and went on to become one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry vividly described the horrors of the trenches while satirizing the patriotic pretensions that Sassoon believed were responsible for a fueling […]

Benediction

Drama

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

In 1946, a London writer, Juliet (Lily James) exchanges letters with a Guernsey farmer, Dawsey (Michiel Huisman) and she begins to learn about what the islanders endured during World War II under German occupation. I read the book on which this film is based a while ago. I’m also (as of August 2020) a resident […]

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018)

Drama

The Painted Bird (2019) Review – War Is Hell, European Version

Do you (somehow, in this day and time) feel happy, joyful and just wish to be down? Have you ever wondered how it would feel like to experience the war through child’s eyes, and to see many horrors, some of which, you didn’t want, or didn’t even think of seeing, happening to said child? Well, […]

The Painted Bird (2019) Review – War Is Hell, European Version