War

Criterion Collection wrote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition (Ningen no joken), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai) from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals an impediment rather than an advantage. A raw indictment of its nation’s wartime mentality as well as a personal existential tragedy, Kobayashi’s riveting, gorgeously filmed epic is novelistic cinema at its best.Read More »

Synopsis
The war is over. Soviet troops are marching past the captured Reichstag (former seat of government) in Berlin. A young soldier with a submachine gun in hand, a Ukrainian peasant from the Dnipro region, Ivan Orliuk pauses, towering by the Brandenburg Gates. He stands like a magnificent monument. Before the war, Orliuk’s was the most peaceful of occupations—he tilled the soil. With the war, he took to arms to cover a difficult road from the Dnipro all the way to Berlin.Read More »

In 1942, Rommel halts his victorious Afrika Korps and sends German agent John Eppler
and radio operator Sandy to Cairo. Their mission is to learn where the British plan to
launch their counteroffensive. Eppler immediately communicates with Amina, an Egyptian
cabaret dancer and his former mistress, who agrees to help him. Unknown to them,
British counterespionage chief Captain Robertson has learned of Eppler’s presence in
Cairo and is working with the leader of Cairo’s Jewish underground, Radek. Amina lures
an ineffectual British officer, Major Wilson, to her houseboat and has him drugged and
robbed of his briefcase containing British counteroffensive details. While Eppler and
Sandy relay the information to Rommel that the battle will take place at Alam Halfa,
Yvette, a member of the Jewish underground, sneaks aboard the boat and revives the
unconscious Wilson. They are interrupted by Amina, who shoots Wilson but is herself
stabbed to death by Yvette. Eppler arrives and is about to kill Yvette when Robertson
and Radek appear and arrest Eppler. Eppler’s satisfaction at having already informed
Rommel that the counteroffensive will take place at Alam Halfa is short-lived. Robertson
had seen to it that the plans in Wilson’s briefcase were false–the real battle will take
place at El Alamein.Read More »

Quote:
In 1943, Hitler orders the final destruction of the Yugoslav Partisans. The Partisans begin a trek northward to the relative safety of the Bosnian Mountains – their goal is to cross the treacherous Neretva gorge over one remaining bridge. Along the way, they battle German tanks, Italian infantry, Chetnik Cavalry, strafing airplanes, disease and natural elements.

Yugoslav director Bulajic is telling his story from all points of view, but his sympathies lie with the Partisans. The film has pro-Communist leanings, and tells several interwoven stories stressing the importance of comradeship in wartime. There are many important characters: Yul Brynner (“Morituri”) as crack demolition expert Vlado; Sergei Bondarchuk (director of “Waterloo”) as short-tempered artillery officer Martin; Franco Nero (“The Mercenary”) as an Italian Captain with no faith in Fascism; Hardy Kruger (“A Bridge too Far”) as Colonel Kranzer, who fights with dedication which begins to dwindle as he realizes the bitter reality that the partisans are a formidable enemy; Ljubisa Samardzic (“Battle of the Eagles”) and Sylva Koscina (“Hornets’ Nest”) are brother-and-sister, and Koscina is to marry Ivan (Lojze Rozman) after the war; the list goes on and on, and although every character is significant, it’s impossible to list them all. There’s an interesting twist, too: the legendary Orson Welles plays a Chetnik Senator who battles for concessions with General Lohring (the great Curd Jurgens), a commited Nazi officer who is determined the wipe out the Partisans once and for all.Read More »

Plot Synopsis: A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw.Read More »

At the start of the 1967 Six-Day War (June 5-10) between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, a team of eight Israeli commandos, with their female boat captain in tow, are sent on a suicide mission deep into the Sinai to destroy an important Arab radar station at Sharm El Sheikh to pave way for the main invading Israeli forces.

imdb comment wrote:
This movie could be consider as one of the few movies that described the historic moment that israeli people lived in Israel during the Six-Day War, especially because they were surrounded by a great number of enemies , and their determination to remain like a Jewish State allowed to them to defeat it. I watched the movie like 20 years ago, and in that time, I Got the oportunity to record in my Betamax , and I still have it with me, and when I have time, I enjoy watching it again. The best scene could be when the commandos destroyed the radar station from Egyptian Army.Read More »

In 1964, nuclear war wipes out humanity in the northern hemisphere; one American submarine finds temporary safe haven in Australia, where life-as-usual covers growing despair. In denial about the loss of his wife and children in the holocaust, American Captain Towers meets careworn but gorgeous Moira Davidson, who begins to fall for him. The sub returns after reconnaissance a month (or less) before the end; will Towers and Moira find comfort with each other?Read More »

Synopsis
Marcello Mastroianni stars in this French farce, an absurd “western” set in Paris, with Mastroianni as the incurably vain General George Armstrong Custer. Richard Nixon is the American president, but everyone is costumed appropriately for the previous century. Buffalo Bill (Michel Piccoli), the famous scout, is here portrayed as a limp-wristed bungler. Ugo Tognazzi plays one of Custer’s Native American opponents; he runs a curio shop selling Native artifacts made in sweatshops by white women. The climactic battle is held in a large construction excavation where Les Halles market used to be. The language the two sides use to justify their conflict is lifted from that used in the then-current Vietnam War.
~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

Synopsis:
A four man US fireteam on patrol seizes a passing young vietnamnese girl and continue to torture, rape and kill her. Only one soldier refuses to take part in it and reports this incident to his superior, who dismisses it as simple wartime incident. As a consequence for his report, the soldier has to fear for his life. Later, the perpetrators are convicted, although subsequent appeals reduce their sentences significantly.
The plot takes place in a bavarian forest and reenacts a real war crime that happened in the vietnam war. The soldiers wear US uniforms, have authentic names but speak with a pronounced bavarian accent – a conscious directing decision known as Brechtian distancing effect.Read More »