Director’s Film
Gallipoli (1981) – Superb
Genre – War Movie (based on true stories) Time: 1 Hour, 50 minutes Platform: You Tube (free) “Great” Britain always prides itself on its long history of ‘standing up for what’s right” and so on with WW1 and WW2 being two such examples. In both cases, the general historical view has…
Read MoreThe Hill (1965) – Brutally Stunning
Director: Sidny Lumet Cast: Sean Connery. Harry Andrews. Ian Bannen. Ossie Davis. Platform: Internet Archive (free) War films usually talk about the glory of dying for the flag and country. Very few talk about what happens when someone questions the system or the superiors. In every Armed Force , infractions or indiscipline is…
Read MoreJuror 2 (2024) – Slow Burn but absorbing
Clickable Links in Red Genre – Legal Drama Time: 1 Hour 53 minutes Platform: Amazon Prime – Rent Director: Clint Eastwood Cast: Nicholas Hoult. Toni Collette. Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult) and his wife Ally (Zoey Deutsch) are expecting their child, and Ally is in the final trimester of pregnancy. Justin is called to…
Read MoreThe Stranger (1946) – Superb Noir Mystery
All clickable links in red Genre – Mystery , Noir Time: 1 Hour 30 minutes Platform: Your Tube – Free Director: Orson Welles Cast: Orson Welles. Loretta Young. Edward G Robinson. Horror movies usually have a standard formula. Someone – usually the heroine or a female character – lets in a person or…
Read MoreKatyn (2007) – A horrific true story
All clickable links in red Genre – War Movie (true story) Time : 2 Hours Platform: You Tube Free Language : Polish Director : Andrzej Wajda There is a Cold War joke that goes like this Its 1981 and the Soviets are making threatening noises to invade Poland (like they did with…
Read MoreApocalypse Now (1979) – Timeless Classic
All Clickable links are in red Genre – War Movie Time: 3 Hours , 20 minutes (Redux). 3 hours, 5 minutes (Final Director’s Cut) Platform: You Tube Free Director : Francis Ford Coppola Some films are easily forgotten after watching. Then there are films that have a lasting impact on you and remain…
Read MoreFlags of our fathers (2006) – Superb retelling of war’s cost
All clickable links in red Genre – War Movie (true story) Time: 2 Hours, 12 minutes Platform: Amazon Prime (on rent), You Tube Free Every world event, be it social, political, technological, has a defining moment and defining image. The Berlin Wall being knocked down by ordinary people symbolized people power over…
Read MoreKillers of the Flower Moon (2023) – Superb drama
Dir: Martin Scorsese Cast: Robert de Niro. Leonardo di Caprio. Lily Gladstone. Nothing needs to be said about Martin Scorsese’s track record. In the guise of thrillers, period dramas or crime sagas, Scorsese always held a mirror to American society and, at times, presented the “zeitgeist” of that era. Almost all his films still…
Read MoreThe Battle of Britain – 1969 – Accurate and entertaining
Director: Guy Hamilton Producer: Harry Saltzman Script: James Kennaway. Wilfred Greatorex A common legend among the British is the trope of a “small bunch of British men against the might of the ugly bad …….. ” . In the blanks, you can insert Africans (Zulu and Khartoum), Pathans and Indians (Gunga Din, The Bengal Lancers),…
Read MorePOINT OF NO RETURN – 1993 aka The Assassin – Lost in translation?
Director: John Badham Cast: Bridget Fonda. Gabriel Byrne. Dermot Mulroney. Anne Bancroft. Conspiracy theorists will love this film. The premise is simple. A secret Government department trains young people convicted of severe crimes into an assassin squad. In this case, a female drug addict Maggie (Bridget Fonda) who has been involved in a…
Read MoreFuneral in Berlin (1966) – Divided Berlin and Palmer, the anti-Bond
Director: Guy Hamilton. Cast: Michael Caine. Oscar Homolka. Eva Renzi. Paul Hubschmid. Gunter Meisner. By 1966, Len Deighton had published his fourth spy thriller, The Billion Dollar Brain, with the same nameless hero. However, his second book, Horse Under Water, involving sunken U Boats, exotic locations and heroin trafficking, somehow wasn’t developed for the…
Read MoreLand and Freedom (1995) – Powerful yet poignant
Films on World war 2 (WW2) are a dime a dozen ranging from the great to the abysmal. But films on WW2’s curtain raiser, The Spanish Civil War (SCW(, are very few or not well known. Ken Loach’s 1995 film remedies that by offering a powerful and insightful view of The Spanish Civil War, as…
Read MoreRough Cut (1980) – A hidden Gem
Caper / Heist movies as a genre belong to two broad categories. Either the bad guys don’t get away with it – the police catch up with them. Or the bad guys get away with it – but with consequences. They also have two broad styles – dark and bloody. Or lightweight, crispy, and crackling…
Read MoreBrief Encounter – 1945 – Love hurts (and how)
World War 2 had just ended. Chance sexual encounters between men and women during the war were rampant, fuelled by the “tomorrow may not come at all” feeling. Some ended happily in marriage. Others sadly with as the men went missing or died during the war. But what does one do now that war…
Read MoreThey Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969) – Harrowing watch
“We have become a race of peeping Toms. Instead, we should go out and look inside at ourselves”. This is an excellent quote from one of the greatest thrillers, Rear Window(1954), essentially about human voyeurism that is integral to our basic instinct. Modern “reality” and “game shows” have only taken these aspects, far ahead.…
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