The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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domino harvey
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#376 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 05, 2015 1:34 am

Conspiracy (Frank Pierson 2001) I figured I'd eventually see some unseen war film classics that deserved to make my list, I just didn't expect to encounter one so quickly after the list ended! This HBO/BBC co-production covering the secret Nazi meeting in which the Final Solution was materialized is a straight-up classic though and the best modern war film I've seen. Part of its appeal lies in how expertly all of the Nazis present are written and played, with human and humane distinctions and complexities of character. There are no heroes here, though, and one of the film's cruelest jokes is that even the most rational and sympathetic characters like those played by David Threlfall and Colin Firth (who gives the best performance in a film filled with great acting) are still saying some truly awful things while arguing degrees of depravity. It's fascinating and halfway through the film I was sitting up straight in front of the TV totally enthralled by the film's dramatics and dialogue and the way it shows what Godard often lamented was missing in films on Nazi Germany, the utter banality of evil via the bureaucratic nature of the proceedings. Highly recommended and available new from Amazon for all of five dollars at the moment.

Magnificent Doll (Frank Borzage 1946) Every single review says variations of the same thing: This is a bad history and a bad film. But I love Hollywood, even when it fudges the facts to make for a better entertainment. Plus who cares enough about Dolly Madison to get worked up over it? But alas, the naysayers are right and the biggest sin here isn't that historical or biographical accuracy has been smudged, but that in doing so a better film still could not be produced. Ginger Rogers, in her fading years, is the titular Mrs Madison, and even usual charmers like David Niven and Burgess Meredith as the famous colonial politicos can't salvage a lifeless slog like this. A film with no possible audience.

Morituri (Bernhard Wicki 1965) One of the numerous films of the era which conflated adult entertainment with joylessness. What a dull mess this tale of Marlon Brando's saboteur and his attempts at derailing the course of Yul Brynner's Nazi cargo ship is! And that's before poor Janet Margolin comes into the picture and the film really shows its disgust for the human race, as her character is subjected to or discusses such utter depravities for no other reason than to exploit their prurient interest in an audience and make for cheap provocation. It's disgusting, as is the film's ghastly finale wherein the wounded villain is goaded towards a life-raft that intentionally backs away from the man as he splashes forward helplessly while the heroes cackle gleefully. This isn't cathartic, it's sadistic. And don't get me started on the war crime of Brando's German accent!

Take the High Ground! (Richard Brooks 1953) Richard Widmark and Karl Malden, two of the finest actors of the era. Richard Brooks, a solid and dependable director. Take the High Ground, an utter piece of shit and, though I've said the words (and these words) so often they've lost all meaning, one of the worst films I've ever seen and another entry for worst film by a director who should know better. This "inspirational" tale of a drill sergeant and his charges and the weird love triangle he finds himself shoehorning into is so tone-deaf and clueless it's like receiving signals from an alien planet. Nothing and no one here is recognizably human. All narrative aspects are operating on codes so far removed from the militaristic that it's an inadvertent propaganda piece against the American military itself (and possibly a good argument against films as art in general). Perhaps that sounds wonderfully subversive. I know my own comments would make me clamor to see it myself. Maybe my strident negativity even leads you to believe it must have some worth because you so rarely find yourself in agreement with me on other films. Friends and enemies, there are only so many hours in the day and days in the year and years in our lives. Don't do this to yourself. This movie stopped me dead in my tracks months ago during my peak wartime viewing and only now have I recovered fully. It need claim no more victims.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#377 Post by Numero Trois » Fri Jan 09, 2015 3:23 am

Sixteen pages so far and no mention of Pabst's Westfront 1918? No doubt still one of the definitive WWI movies. I guess its unavailability over here contributes to that.

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colinr0380
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#378 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Jan 09, 2015 5:31 am

Yes, sadly I haven't had a chance to see Westfront 1918 yet.

I'm still kicking myself after realising a couple of days ago that I forgot to put Godard's Notre Musique on my list! ](*,)

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#379 Post by bamwc2 » Mon Feb 02, 2015 1:00 pm

If this genre project ever get repeated, this seems to be a good starting point to explore some of the more obscure titles out there.

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domino harvey
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#380 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 25, 2015 12:01 pm

Flat Top (Lesley Selander 1952) A familiar plot (more or less borrowed wholesale and applied to the Navy in Run Silent, Run Deep) finds Sterling Hayden serving as an implacably hard-case WWII Commander trying to convince his second officer to stop trying to be pals with his men and instead give them tough love and discipline. Over-stuffed with stock footage and half-heartedly constructed, this is a mediocre film that lacks even the slight interest this kind of film may have had were it made during the war itself. There's a reason Hollywood started phasing out cookie-cutter war pics like this (or, more accurately, began relegating them to TV).

Genghis Khan (Henry Levin 1965) I have no idea who the audience for this is. Omar Sharif is pitched to be heroic (?/!) as the titular character, standing up for women's rights while also kidnapping Françoise Dorléac and making her his wife by conquest (and she is later subjected to a gratuitous rape scene courtesy of the film's antagonist) and conquering Asia. Things take a turn for the surreal about an hour into this epic when James Mason shows up with a fu manchu mustache and leads Sharif and co to the Chinese Emperor, played by Robert Morley, who doesn't even attempt caricature and just sits there being Robert Morley. This is a bad film, as you could have probably surmised just from one look at the cast and crew.

the Patriot (Roland Emmerich 2000) There are a lot of reasonable claims to be made against the British in the Revolutionary War. And many reasonable claims to be made against the American colonies, honestly. But I'm not sure why this film depicts the British as proto-Nazis-- I'm not exaggerating, at one point the villainous British officer who delights in tormenting Mel Gibson and America, in that order, burns a church filled with lovable townsfolk (including one of the wives of our heroes, because we as an audience need an Emotional Pull to innocents being burned alive, apparently). He also shoots an unarmed ten-year-old boy and I think dances with Goody Proctor in the moonlight. At three hours, the film is overlong without being engaging. The narrative is overly melodramatic and pitched to MOTW levels of emotional understanding. I first saw this in high school in a military history class, which was really just Movies 101, and I forgot nearly everything about it for good cause (though I remembered the church scene). My only other real-life exposure to the film was the weird fact that my ex-girlfriend's super-conservative Tea Party member father owned exactly one movie on Blu-ray: this one. That says it all, I think.

the Shanghai Story (Frank Lloyd 1954) Edmond O'Brien is stuck in a Shaghai hotel, sequestered with a passel of other non-Chinese as Shanghai rebels take over the city and look for an American spy in their midst. Which means, of course, that the film only needs one set, the hotel, and a few backlot alleys. And that's what we get. Thoroughly mediocre, despite the best efforts of… actually, no one here is giving their best effort.

Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone 2012) Oliver Stone pulls off a neat trick with this twelve hour miniseries exploring "US history." Liberal filmmakers like Michael Moore often get accused of hating America, which is just a knee-jerk reaction to one's beliefs being challenged by Moore's in your face style and effective emotional (and comedic) ploys. But, were those charges to be lobbed at Stone's documentary, they'd be pretty sound based on the evidence offered here. There is a depressingly long laundry list of offenses America can and should be held accountable for in the past century, that's not in dispute. However, this doc claims to tell the "untold" story of America via twelve hours of non-stop negativity, with any contradictory evidence dismissed or excluded by Stone if it doesn't support the thesis that all American involvements in foreign conflicts (I'm not exaggerating) in the past century have been a mistake. I will never sit through this again, but if you read this and somehow feel compelled to watch the program, take note of how often Russia is praised. I would bet good money that more nice things are said about Russia in this series than are said about America-- unbelievably, in one segment, after Stone's narration points out that at least 100,000 rapes by Russian soldiers were reported from civilians and possibly the true number was in the millions, less than a minute later he claims the national image of the Russians as barbaric was slanderous and the result of a smear campaign. That's truly when I should have stopped watching, but I wanted to the right to complain about this so I soldiered on.

In addition to the bizarre Russia-fawning is an even more suspect fixation on Henry A Wallace. I think Wallace was an interesting guy and his story is compelling. Stone, however, is in love with him and gives him more screentime in a history of the 20th century than Nixon, LBJ, Ford, and Carter combined. He states numerous times that the world was ruined as a result of Wallace being dropped from FDR's ticket in 1944. Though only two presidents come off even remotely well in Stone's retelling of American history (The two you'd expect an uber-liberal to praise), special rancor is reserved for Truman. The anti-Truman episode is really where I should have stopped watching, but I correctly figured it couldn't possibly get any worse after that. Stone without exaggeration blames Truman for everything that's ever gone wrong in the world since and it becomes quite pathetic once the viewer realizes that the only reason Truman gets such a short shrift here is because in classic spurned lover style he's the one who replaced Wallace on the ticket.

Stone's opening narration states that he felt compelled to create a new history resource for younger viewers not getting the "real" history in the classroom. As an educational tool this film is an abject failure. For instance, Vietnam, which should be an easy thing for Stone to cover based on his career, is given screentime without ever addressing why America was so compelled to get involved in the first place. Yes, I'm sure all of us know why already, but if this is supposed to be exposing history to the blind sheeple, shouldn't there be some basic components of history in play? The whole film only works if you know the history already, and then of course it doesn't work at all because if you know the history then you can recognize Stone's insulting selective reading of the record and the whole thing just becomes infuriating. At one point Stone shows a clip from On the Beach, and like a Stanley Kramer film, this doc makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.

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domino harvey
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#381 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 23, 2015 7:06 pm

A Medal For Benny (Irving Pichel 1945) A sentimental film that begins as a broad ethnic comedy about native Californians and ends with some surprisingly adept social commentary bolstering the lowest classes in the wartime effort. An Oscar-nominated J Carrol Naish steals the movie as the kindly but foolish father to the titular troublemaker (who is never seen in the film) who the film cleverly moves from the butt of the joke to the central character as the narrative progresses. An effective piece of homefront work highlighting the need for everyone to pitch in and do their part, even those many would sneer at or shun. The ending here, a socioeconomic haymaker, is effective and clever in its upending of the traditional Hollywood plot machinations, and a solid reminder of how Hollywood lobbed wartime appeals at every American it could. Recommended.

Apartment For Peggy (George Seaton 1948) Shockingly dark in premise, this film makes a strong and sustained argument in favor of suicide in its first act, then pulls a brilliant, life-affirming stunt by upending every convincing argument made and ultimately showing the importance of perseverance through life. Fundamentally this is still Hollywood hokum, but of an exceptionally rare sort, especially in its boldness of premise and execution. Highly recommended.

Corvette K-225 (Robert Rosson 1943) Infamously ghost-directed by Howard Hawks as an excuse to sleep with star Ella Raines, this is a solid if unexceptional wartime tale of getting with the program, being the best, rising to the challenge, etc-- all the typical Hawks earmarks, only many, many films of the era were doing the same thing. A good film, but pales to the work that actually bears Hawks' name in this period.

the Fleet's In (Victor Schertzinger 1942) Quality fluff about a neophyte dater William Holden (!) who inadvertently finds himself placed in situations wherein he looks to be the Sheik of the Navy. Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton make a fine buffoonish couple, as they would again for Paramount, and Hutton has a few funny musical numbers scattered about that play up her typically boisterous persona. Like Thousands Cheer et al, the final third of the movie basically turns into a USO show, but it's always a treat to see some of the long lost vaudeville acts and comedians on screen.

Green Zone (Paul Greengrass 2010) Greg Kinnear is sorely missing a cape to twirl in and out of while exiting and entering assorted Iraqi meeting rooms as the Evil American Politician in this thunderingly dumb and tedious Iraqi War finger-wagging directed with typical artlessness by Greengrass and his paint mixer cinematography. Preaching to the choir movies like this are just Stanley Kramer possessions, and no one needs that in their life. No wonder this bombed.

Jarhead (Sam Mendes 2005) Effective anti-war satire that presents the titular soldiers as unwaveringly grotesque and broken caricatures of the worst (mis?)conceptions of American military servicemen. Frequently laugh out loud funny in its utter tastelessness (as exemplified in a bravura sequence wherein the entire barracks watches Apocalypse Now and screams the most horrendous adulation imaginable at the screen), the film plays its negativity straight and with little to no apologies for its tone, and is all the better for it. Who knew the guy who made the tone deaf American Beauty was capable of something as clever as this? Highly recommended.

the Kingdom (Peter Berg 2007) Suitably silly Iraq-set action film that is ludicrous but still surprisingly entertaining and well-made for what it is. No doubt there's some tricky racial attitudes at play here, but I wasn't surprised to read that the actual Middle East response to the film was fairly positive despite the One Good Arab character (who of course must meet his maker so that we can have acceptable loss and emotional payoffs of the most predictable sort-- not like the Hollywood movie can just off Jennifer Garner and her Tootsie Roll Pops, right?). The film's just novel enough in its premise to work and the last twenty minutes or so are all solid straight action shoot-outs enacted with maximum lack of credibility and subsequent entertainment value. Jamie Foxx is so terrible here that I was glad to see this back to back with Jarhead, where I could be reminded that he does indeed have some talent when prompted.

Syriana (Stephen Gaghan 2005) Not nearly as confusing as it was made out to be, but not nearly as interesting or successful as Gaghan's far superior Traffic (the obvious model here). George Clooney won the Oscar for being George Clooney and not having an Oscar.

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domino harvey
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#382 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:48 pm

Fascinating eighteen minute infographic on the deaths of World War II

http://vimeo.com/128373915" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Yojimbo
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#383 Post by Yojimbo » Wed Dec 30, 2015 10:04 pm

My list (better late than never)

Top 10
1.Grand Illusion
2.Come and See
3.Hiroshima Mon Amour
4.Okraina
5.Lacombe Lucien
6.All Quiet on the Western Front
7.the Red Badge of Courage
8.the Cranes Are Flying
9.the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
10.the Burmese Harp


11-20
11.Battle of Algiers
12.the Big Red One
13.Triumph des Willens
14.A Time to Love and a Time to Die
15.Army of Shadows
16.Le silence de la mer
17.Ivan's Childhood
18.Landscape After Battle
19.A Canterbury Tale
20.Rome, Open City

21-30
21.Ballad of a Soldier
22.Cross of Iron
23.Das Boot
24.Pilgrimage
25.Hell Is For Heroes
26.Au Revoir Les Enfants
27.Wings (Larisa Shepitko)
28.Popiól i diament
29.The Beguiled
30.Death of Yugoslavia


31-40
31.Shame
32.Grave of Fireflies
33.They Were Expendable
34.The Red And The White
35.A Midnight Clear
36.the Hurt Locker
37.Red Angel
38.the Small Back Room
39.the Lost Patrol
40.the Bridge

41-50

41.the Round-Up
42.Lincoln
43.Hope and Glory
44.Battle Of Chile
45.Bloody Sunday
46.Werckmeister Harmonies
47.Men in War
48.In Which We Serve
49.Ice Cold in Alex
50.Essential Killing

And yes, I have seen 'Paths of Glory' - at least twice - but I just think Kubrick was trying too hard, even in this one, without possessing quite the passion, or the poetry, as the best French, or Russian, or Japanese film-makers.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#384 Post by bottled spider » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:02 am

Torpedo Bombers (Semyon Aranovich, 1983). Its claim to fame is that it incorporates some documentary footage, of the same engagements, taken by the opposing German, British, and Russian aerial and naval forces. That is, if I understood correctly the poorly translated blurb on the back of the DVD cover. Although I seem to remember the film being more concerned with life on the airbase than with battle scenes. I've forgotten much of the film itself but remember liking it a lot. Aranovich was primarily a documentary film maker, and co-directed with Sakurov a strange and interesting one about Shostakovich, Sonata for Viola: Shostakovich.

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domino harvey
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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#385 Post by domino harvey » Mon Aug 08, 2016 11:09 pm

Recent viewings:

A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough 1977) The best of the big budget, all-star cast WWII epics, here focused on the failures surrounding the needlessly deadly Market Garden operation. It’s not surprising that this one didn’t do boffo box office in the states, given that it's a downer story with no easy rah-rah rallying points. The film uses its star cameos well (a rare feat indeed in these kind of flicks) and there are some wonderfully edited sequences of combat that are as good as anything I’ve seen in any WWII movie. Recommended.

A Yank in the RAF (Henry King 1941) Titular flying yank Tyrone Power joins the likewise titular military branch in order to be close to his London-stationed ex Betty Grable in this typically mishmashed bite of a handful of different war picture apples. Grable is lusted after by all three of the film’s male protagonists, and frankly Power comes off worst of all in his juvenile bad boy-isms (no prizes on guessing whether he ends up victorious in his romantic pursuits). Not a good movie, but an entertaining example of the kind of scrappily patriotic war movies Hollywood rapidly churned out for eager audiences early on in the war.

Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton 1969) Fine but unexceptional collection of British stars putting in their five minutes in this polite, clinically-sterile look at the titular turning point early in the war. Instantly forgettable due to its inability to be anything at all. The marital discord scenes between Christopher Plummer and Susannah York are an embarrassment to all involved, however.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (Robert Stevenson 1971) It’s been so long since I’d seen this that I’d forgotten it was a musical! But this is thankfully one of the rare childhood favorites that retains some magic and appeal on revisit as an adult, and this is a silly but sweet kids’ adventure about Angela Lansbury’s apprentice witch finding herself taking care of a trio of bombing-displaced London orphans in the early days of the war. The kids are solid, the special effects impressive for the era, and the movie is admirably droll and overblown in all the right measures. Recommended.

Closely Watched Trains (Jirí Menzel 1966) Popular WWII-set Czech New Wave film about a young train station worker who struggles with sexual impotency and other distractions. Like a lot of art movies with blindsided fatalistic endings, the finish here feels unsatisfying and false, but there’s some fine moments of effective absurdity and memorable dark comic set-pieces, like the typist who gets covered in rubber stamp imprints and then gets shown off by her outraged mother to all with eyes, to sweeten the sour note it goes out on.

Commandos Strike at Dawn (John Farrow 1943) Small Norwegian (!) town finds itself invaded by Nazis who are somewhat sympathetic to the natives (the Nazis say something along the lines of, “Hey, you guys are almost Aryans”) but also do things like steal all the blankets from shivering old people— I’ve seen Nazis do a lot of dastardly acts on-screen but I appreciated that as ludicrous as this was, it was a new one! Paul Muni is one of the locals who covertly fights back against the invaders, and the best stretch of the film is the ten minutes or so where the townspeople impose their will on their aggressors, including a memorable outcome to one Nazi caravan asking for directions.

Enemy of Women (Alfred Zeisler 1944) B-movie with A+ character assassination of Goebbels, here a pathetic failed playwright who became a Nazi because he was rebuffed by an aspiring actress (who had a Jewish stage director, natch). There are a few hindsight-informed moments of utter lunacy in the film, highlighted by a psychic reading wherein Rommel is informed of his eventual dispersal to Africa among other parlor tricks. Unfortunately, the film has to shoehorn in a conventional Hollywood romance between the actress and her non-Nazi beau, and the film loses itself after a silly but strong first act focused primarily on Goebbels.

the Fighting Sullivans (Lloyd Bacon 1944) A cruel film in its fashion, as it spends 100+ minutes building up the camaraderie and life-lessons hard-earned by the real-life titular five brothers before they enlisted and were placed on the same Navy cruiser as a PR stunt, only to all die together. I can’t even begin to fathom the loss for their family (what precious little of it is left), and for all its Hollywood hokum, there’s an effectiveness to the film's inevitable finale. The brave face the film puts on their sacrifice likely fooled no one then or now— what an awful thing to happen, to not just these kids but everyone’s kids. Nowhere near as good a homefront flick as that other Bacon-directed, Anne Baxter-starring vehicle from this year, Sunday Dinner for a Soldier, but an interesting ompanion piece to it nonetheless.

Go Tell the Spartans (Ted Post 1978) Mediocre exploration of the early days in the Vietnam conflict, with tough-guy Burt Lancaster commanding a squadron of reluctant and inexperienced soldiers against the Viet Cong. There are some who highly praise this film for its anti-war message, but being against the Vietnam war is about the easiest target imaginable. Unexceptional and forgettable in every way.

How I Won the War (Richard Lester 1967) Anti-war film that insults its left-leaning audience by undermining all manner of conventional narrative pleasures and conventions under the auspices of being counter-cultural. Like, it’s against the system, maan, to be square and make sense. This built-in defense against detractors is as cowardly as any of the film’s unintelligent swipes at the British officer culture of the second world war. Even though it was a just war for the Allies, there are no doubt countless good reasons to criticize relevant elements of WWII just as there are in any combat situation, but making a film to scare away the old fogeys who fought and/or supported the war and are now the parents of the kids going to see this shit is just a series of easy and unfair targets preaching to a choir that is intimidated into submission to this film’s aggressive barrage of unfunny bits of surrealism and direct address. Which I could see in a Marx Brothers movie, where it would also have the unfair advantage of actually being funny, making sense, and being subversive while still being enjoyable by a universal audience. Duck Soup is subversive, How I Won the War is just stupid.

Lucky Jordan (Frank Tuttle 1942) Awful cheapie about Alan Ladd’s gangster kingpin getting drafted and trying to sell US secrets to spies before having the requisite change of heart. This is on the (far) lower end of patriotic fare in this era, and Ladd is so obnoxious here (he basically plays an adult version of the first act of any Freddie Bartholomew movie) that it’s hard to care that he is eventually won over to the cause, though I did like that his reasoning for turning wasn’t because America was so great, just that the Nazis were worse!

the Night of the Generals (Anatole Litvak 1967) Passably entertaining mix of genres that sounds far more bold than it actually is: the film presents us with a cast of characters, protagonists and antagonists, entirely made up of Nazis. This is only eyebrow-raising for a brief duration before it becomes clear there are Good Nazis and Bad Nazis, and none of the sympathetic characters end up being (too) complicit in the ills of the Third Reich, which is such a copout. The film tells of a hunt for a serial killer who is thought to be one of three high-ranking generals, and the film quickly reveals to the audience that it’s Peter O’Toole and then sets about slowly showing his overly-mannered madness. There is one moment of violence near the end of the film that is genuinely shocking in its upending of expectations (calling to mind a similar use later in the Departed), but too much of the film plays it far safer.

OSS (Irving Pichel 1946) Similar to 13 Rue Madeleine, this spy story gives us the training in the first act and then the mission and assorted plot complications for the rest. But, like that film, it’s sloppy as hell and looks like a second string production despite the star-power of Alan Ladd. A moderately fatalistic ending is a plus here, but there are one too many illogically suicidal acts being sold as brave to really give the film credit for intelligence or emotional complexity. That said, there is a nice stretch early-on in the film where the audience receives some wicked how-to’s on how to be a spy and stalk and sneak on others, so maybe if someone’s exerpted that clip to YouTube it’s worth a watch!

1776 (Peter H Hunt 1972) The quest for a great film about the American Revolution soldiers on, though I must confess there are long stretches in this film musical of the fateful congressional arguments for independence where everything somehow works. The direction and blocking in these debate scenes are terrific, with long takes and a nice sense of architecture for the meeting room itself— this is one of those sets that is so fully explored that it feels like a room I’ve actually visited— but the film continually drags to a halt for its raison d'etre, the awful and mercifully forgettable songs carried over from the Broadway production. And I assume they filmed every last one of them given that this movie is nearly three hours long. In a bizarro inversion of the usual, the film is more inventive and better-directed in its scenes of narrative bridging between the songs than it is during the performances of the songs themselves. I have no earthly idea why there is such a fervent cult following for this film, but I was somewhat swayed by the end of it to believe it was at least an okay film.

Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick 1960) I hadn’t seen this since high school history class (ah, public school education, where a week of this movie counts as learning about antiquity), and revisiting it in the new restoration, it’s thankfully free from so many of the crutches that render most of Kubrick’s oeuvre unwatchable for me (and these absences are, I gather, one of the reasons this film gets sidelined by his fans!), even if overall it’s not much more than an average costume epic. I did appreciate the burgeoning bits of naughtiness, like Jean Simmons swimming in the nude and the beefcake scenes of Laurence Olivier bathing (and bating Tony Curtis with the infamous gay [barely] subtext), which preconfigures Cleopatra’s grandiose cheesecake and is a welcome diversion from the usual piety normally found in epics from this era due to the majority being Biblical in nature! Peter Ustinov won his first Oscar for his typically droll performance here, and he was up against one of the weakest competitions in the history of the award (does anyone even believe much less remember that Jack Kruschen was nominated for the Apartment?), but he deserved to win it more nine years earlier for playing Nero in Quo Vadis, so it was a catch-up award by the Academy more than anything.

Ten Seconds to Hell (Robert Aldrich 1959) Moderately engaging sketch of a team of bomb dispersers in post-war Berlin who one by one meet their maker, with the last alive getting a pot of all of their contributed wages. This plays like Wages of Fear lite, but Jack Palance and Jeff Chandler are good as the two intense leads, and this being a 50s Aldrich pic, Wesley Addy is of course also on hand. I appreciated how the film threw the audience into the bomb diffusing without explaining the process, but overall this is a slim little wisp of a picture.

the Trojan Women (Mihalis Kakogiannis 1971) Wildly uneven adaptation of the Euripides tragedy, with some fine actresses like Katherine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave mostly set adrift in alternately too stagey or, in the case of Genevieve Bujold’s regrettable freak-out as Cassandra, overly affectated in inappropriate stylizations. Like a lot of straight Shakespeare productions, I have my doubts how watchable this movie is if you’re not already familiar with the source material.

Twilight’s Last Gleaming (Robert Aldrich 1977) Long and drawn-out tale of Burt Lancaster’s hijacking of a nuclear silo in order to force the president to reveal the “real” reasons for the Vietnam war to the American public. So many of the “suspenseful” moments here fall flat, and Lancaster can do this kind of role in his sleep. The only time the film really shines is in the second half, when the focus turns to Charles Durning’s performance as the president. Durning exhibits a wide range of credible emotional responses to the threat, and there’s something both telling and perverse in Lancaster’s steadfast faith in the “goodness” of the president even while forcing his hand in such an apocalyptic fashion. Unfortunately, there’s never a moment in the film that isn't completely obvious and predictable from a mile away, and the ending button with Melvyn Douglas isn’t nearly as deep as it thinks it is.

Under Fire (Roger Spottiswoode 1983) Yet another noble hagiography of the Important Work of wartime photojournalists and correspondents. Set in a fictionalized version of the Nicaraguan unrests of the late 70s, Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy plays lovers with zero chemistry caught up in the crossfire of the warring factions, with second-billed Gene Hackman playing third wheel— the relationship between Hackman and his cable-knit sweater is the film’s only riveting on-screen coupling. Ed Harris is also on hand to be eye-rollingly vulgar and morally objectionable as a soulless American mercenary, because there was apparently a latent danger of this film being subtle. This movie is so by the numbers dull that it’s hard to get worked up one way or the other about its mediocrities. Also, while it’s not the film’s fault, one of the main refrains in the score to this film sounds like the theme to the X-Files-- talk about a disconnect between sound and screen!

What Did You Do In the War, Daddy? (Blake Edwards 1966) A textbook collection of cliched comic ideas that have never been funny, including bon mots like the foolish horndog falling head over heels for a man in drag, a person in a position of power going wackily insane, someone drunk behaving drunk, and endless fistfights. The pro-Italy vantage of this tale of a lazy Army company who strikes a deal with the Italian brigade they’ve been ordered to capture to fake a battle and just laze about the village is curious: the “real” villain is allowed to be the Nazis but Italy is 100% let off the hook, presumably because this was the mid-60s and the Italian film market was at the height of importance.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#386 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Sep 15, 2016 3:34 pm

Watched a couple war movies recently:

Lone Survivor (Peter Berg, 2013): a competent and exciting action movie that, when set against others of its type like Black Hawk Down, 13 Hours, and American Sniper, reveals the extent of its conventionality and blandness. Any melodrama in the dramatic scenes in those other movies was offset by a battle aesthetic so committed to realism that the melodrama was engulfed or negated. In Berg's film, the battle aesthetic is motivated by the same melodramatic conception as the maudlin dramatic scenes opening the movie. You can see this for instance in its use of traditional action construction: the main structural technique of the fighting is a close up of a marine shooting followed by a medium shot (sometimes as a POV through a weapon scope) of an Afghani exploding in blood. Not only is this repetitive, it's a poor use of battle space. The movie wants the spacial compression and immediacy--and the catharsis of those techniques--of traditional cause-and-effect action editing and cinematography. This would be fine if the other movies mentioned (or something like Sicario) hadn't demonstrated how much more effectively combat scenes can be put together. Along the same lines, the film valourizes its four main characters by punctuating its dramatic moments with cheesy techniques like slow-motion and sad music. So, again, rather than the feeling of being in the midst of a modern battle, you feel like you are watching larger-than-life cinematic heroes, a choice that contrasts awkwardly with many of the film's successful attempts at realism (one of my favourite being the muted dismay of the soldiers whenever they're shot). When Michael Bay ends up making a less melodramatic, less traditionally shot and edited war movie than you, you've screwed up (ok, that's unfair, Bay was plainly reigning himself in and fitting his style to the material, a display of solid judgement his imitator, Berg, didn't have the aesthetic sense to observe).

Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012): excellent procedural thriller that lacks something that made The Hurt Locker so effective: the charting of a particular psychology. Here, all we learn of Maya we learn within the first 15 minutes. Nothing we're shown afterwards contradicts that or shows us something unexpected. She is strong, smart, unreasonably driven, and speaks her mind from the start to the end in more or less the same proportion. That isn't to say it isn't often fascinating--I love the conversation between her and Jessica in the hotel restaurant where it's suggested Maya has no personal relationships. It's a great moment unfortunately cut short by an explosion. If Maya is less interesting than her cause, that cause and the steps that lead to its completion are gripping and fascinating, handled with a sure sense of narrative tension. The final raid, while not as intense as some of the the Hurt Locker's war scenes, is nevertheless probably the most realistic depiction of an military assault ever filmed.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#387 Post by Yojimbo » Fri Sep 16, 2016 10:05 am

Of my most recent new War film viewings, I think 'Jarhead' and (perhaps surprisingly) 'The Sand Pebbles' would be most likely contenders for a revived Top 50 list.
I was a tad disappointed with 'Letters From Iwo Jima', but then I'm not really a huge Clint Eastwood fan: he's just too literal for me, albeit that this one had more poetry in it than I'd come to expect from Clint.

The shots of the abandoned Iraqi soldiers and their vehicles - which I'd recalled from the real-time coverage of that first Iraq War - pretty much clinched it for 'Jarhead'.
With 'The Sand Pebbles', it was partly McQueen, of course, but the editing was superb - as you would expect from Robert Wise - and it may also have been Richard Crenna's finest performance. And possibly Dickie Attenborough's too.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#388 Post by Yojimbo » Fri Sep 16, 2016 10:17 am

domino harvey wrote:Recent viewings:

Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton 1969) Fine but unexceptional collection of British stars putting in their five minutes in this polite, clinically-sterile look at the titular turning point early in the war. Instantly forgettable due to its inability to be anything at all. The marital discord scenes between Christopher Plummer and Susannah York are an embarrassment to all involved, however.
Battle of Britain is notable for me for being the only film I saw in the cinema, where I was accompanied by my mother (apart from the collective Mother and 'brood' attendance at 'The Sound Of Music'). I'm sure the 14-year old me was squirming in my uncomfortable seat throughout that marital spat when - as I recall - the fair Susannah displayed a fair bit of leg! :D

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#389 Post by domino harvey » Thu Nov 24, 2016 12:24 pm

Recent viewings:

Captain Newman, MD (David Miller 1963) Early look at the psychological effects of the second world war on active duty soldiers with Gregory Peck as the titular saint who manages to save most of his patients with surface-level insights into their psychoses. Like a lot of mental ward movies, the film seems to exist solely for actors both established and fresh to wildly overact under the auspices of being “crazy.” Bobby Darin even netted an Oscar nomination, though he stacked the Academy Awards deck by being both mentally disturbed and a drunk. The film has an uneasy comic tone, mostly spurned on by Tony Curtis’s scheming orderly (a carbon copy of his role in Operation Petticoat), that jars against the frequent “serious” turns, in what amounts to an anticipation of M*A*S*H, and in more than just tone(s)— the film’s episodic and endless duration is like marathoning four or five episodes of a socially Important sitcom, and not one of the good ones.

Catch-22 (Mike Nichols 1970) Noble failure that condenses and handpicks a few storylines from an admittedly unfilmable novel and like the source text, the overall experience is sporadically interesting but doesn’t add up to much. Nichols tries to mimic the hyperstructure of the novel by using bridging links between scenes, but these end up feeling pretentious and at-odds with the overall comic tone of the picture. Arkin is poorly directed and left to his own devices he overacts “crazily,” but the rest of the name-cast is quite good.

La dénonciation (Jean-Doniol Valcroze 1962) Cahiers co-founder Valcroze isn’t mentioned much when people talk about the New Wave, and based on the two films I’ve seen, it’s probably in part due to him not being much of a director! The film seems a response to the famous Positif attack on the (perceived) refusal of the Nouvelle Vague films to tackle “serious” subjects, but this story of a guilt-riddled WWII collaborator who refuses to name names again when he stumbles upon a murder is too obvious and tries too hard to be Serious. While better than L'Eau a la bouche, this still isn’t very good, with long awkward pauses and no sense of rhythm or style other than lack thereof. And this brand of ending, while typical of many New Wave films, has never felt more false or phony— at least unironically so!

Operation Petticoat (Blake Edwards 1959) If you wanted to show someone what comic timing is, screen this film and then explain that it’s what’s missing. Unfunny is too mild a word for this reverential (it’s wholly underwritten by the US military) and overly-familiar Navy comedy, one of the many foisted on audiences in the wake of the Teahouse of the August Moon, that finds the boys on a sub in the early months of the war forced to board some women, with predictably sexist results.

Orphans of the Storm (DW Griffith 1921) The Gish sisters get sidelined by the French Revolution. It’s amazing how Griffith spent years twinkling on the same notes in his finales and still making them work. The man loved the climactic race down to the wire, and this one is particularly amusing in how it prolongs the inevitable in order to allow for Our Heroes to arrive in time to save an innocent from the guillotine (though nothing here is quite as amusing as the warden in Intolerance who gets the message to stop the execution, reads it, and then discards it without halting the gallows). Griffith is of course a master of building large-scale complications and obstacles, and the melodrama here is so bald and overblown that it was impossible for me not to warm to it almost immediately. Recommended.

the Purple Plain (Robert Parrish 1954) Parrish is one of the great unsung terrible directors of the Hollywood studio era and this film is a great example of his undisciplined and artless approach. Gregory Peck is a pilot with a death wish who crash lands in the desolate Burmese wilderness and must drag himself and his wounded navigator back to safety, which mostly means walking into the camera (Picture how Huston’s the Red Badge of Courage would function if all of the characters’ blocking markers were behind the camera). Lots of Mondo-ish borrowed footage, endless shaky camera shots that look like complete amateur hour shit, and some truly horrendous special effects give this junk value-added badness.

the Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Norman Z McLeod 1947) Daydreaming Danny Kaye finds himself wrapped up in a spy plot in this silly and most unfunny farce that like Kaye himself alternates between being tolerable and interminable. The film appears to suffer from some sloppy editing and several key scenes in the picture seem to be excised for time (and the film is still awfully long at 110 minutes), leading to frequent confusion. Not really sure why this has any cultural cachet at all.

Thomas l'imposteur (Georges Franju 1965) Franju recasts Emamanuelle Riva from Thérèse Desqueyroux, the greatest film ever made about depression, into a different kind of depressing experience. Riva is sidelined by the narrative and mostly wasted as a princess who gets involved in the efforts of the first World War largely due to her crush on a young solider with a powerful name. While I fail to see what in Jean Cocteau’s source material won it such respect other than the name on the jacket, Fabrice Rouleau as the titular solider does his best to be completely miscast and ineffective in a role that demands an actor capable of carrying the film. Uh, no, not here. Outside of a memorable set piece involving a flashlight, there’s little of the visual wit Franju at his best is associated with, and the film, while never actively bad, isn’t actively good either. A disappointment.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#390 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Nov 26, 2016 5:55 pm

domino harvey wrote:A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough 1977) The best of the big budget, all-star cast WWII epics, here focused on the failures surrounding the needlessly deadly Market Garden operation. It’s not surprising that this one didn’t do boffo box office in the states, given that it's a downer story with no easy rah-rah rallying points. The film uses its star cameos well (a rare feat indeed in these kind of flicks) and there are some wonderfully edited sequences of combat that are as good as anything I’ve seen in any WWII movie. Recommended.
Sounds good. I'm glad you reviewed this because my only memory of it was watching it at the drive-in when it came out, in the backseat at 8 years old or so, finding it slow and falling asleep in the middle of it. Now I know it's actually a good film that I should eventually check out.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#391 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jul 30, 2017 2:55 pm

I’m trying to get a handle on my unwatched stockpiles, so I’m making a dedicated effort to whittle my reserves down some. And I should, as I have well over 700 movies from the War genre alone that I’d like to get around to seeing! I wish I was exaggerating that number, but it’s accurate. So I’m going to prioritize this genre for the immediate future. I’ll continue weighing in via this thread as I work on knocking that target down in true Send in the Marines fashion. Here’s my first drop and give me twenty:

Behold a Pale Horse (Fred Zinneman 1964) Notorious Spanish Civil War rebel leader Gregory Peck hides in France from Anthony Quinn’s officious official in this weak morality play from standard-bearer for mediocrity Zinnemmann. Quinn is this best thing here, but after a promising first act, he’s sidelined by Peck’s far less engaging tough guy routine. The film is based on a novel by Emeric Pressburger, though I’m sure he’d rather no one recall that now.

the Big Parade (King Vidor 1925) Uneasy mix of low comedy, romantic melodrama, and war flick. The film starts strong with the unfulfilled promise of being a precursor to all those Freddie Batholomew movies where the spoiled rich kid learns how the world really works, but the movie quickly discards this in favor of John Gilbert’s protagonist being milquetoast and overshadowed by two annoyingly unfunny buddies. The comic antics of these two, which mostly involve trying to molest Gilbert’s love interest, are tedious and given more screentime than actual combat. The film does have one bravura sequence once the fighting (finally) starts in which our three heroes remain in focus at the forefront of a moving line as their compatriots fall down dead behind them. But the film never reconciles its brief “horrors of war” with the overall end product, and Gilbert remains an uninteresting cipher throughout.

Command Decision (Sam Wood 1948) Clark Gable struggles with the stresses of being responsible for the titular stressors in this superb examination of leadership. It is inexplicable to me that Henry King’s inferior Twelve O’Clock High, released a year later, is considered an exemplar film of wartime leadership, as I have never seen a film from the studio era tackle the various aspects of leadership as incisively as this picture. Not just in Gable, but also in his fellow officers, especially Walter Pidgeon, who gives a marvelous performance here as a PR-concerned Major General (including an unexpected and superb long-take monologue halfway through). This character could so easily have been one note and obvious, but Pidgeon fills him with fully-sketched grayness and competency that his perspective, and that of Gable’s, and to some extent that of Brian Donlevy and even Charles Bickford’s journo, all make sense and are reasonable— yet all conflict, and someone has to make the final choices that effect the lives of men (and subsequently accept full responsibility). This film is clever, well-acted, and produces several compelling moral quandaries and rarely cheats in finding its answers. Highly recommended.

the Devil’s Brigade (Andrew G McLaglen 1968) William Holden is put in charge of a group of American misfits and proud Canadian soldiers in this predictable and often quite annoying Dirty Dozen wannabe. The ragtag Yanks are so obnoxious and the filmmakers find their antics far more amusing than I did. As in several of McLaglen’s other works, camaraderie is only formed via an extended brawl, and all it does it prove my theory that, like food fights, extended mass fistfights have never ever been funny or entertaining.

the Green Berets (John Wayne and Ray Kellogg 1968) Notorious pro-Vietnam War film co-directed and starring John Wayne. The film is everything you’ve heard it is, but worse than that, it’s so dull and filled with cliches and the hackneyed nature of the final film is as offensive (if not more so) as its political message. Hard to pick a low point in a film stuffed with them, but how about the little orphan Asian boy who hangs out with Jim Hutton (here a long way from palling around with Paula Prentiss et al) who is introduced with Oriental music cues every time he’s on-screen? He gets placed safely in barracks during a violent firefight and his only company is his little dog. Zero points afforded for guessing what comes next. So embarrassing as a film that I just feel pity rather than hatred.

Gunga Din (George Stevens 1939) Unfunny buddy pic with three raucous British soldiers played by Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr facing off against each other and the Thuggee cult (yes, the same one from Temple of Doom) in India. The fisticuffs in this film are, uh, unrealistic, and the fighting scenes often sped up in a fashion that makes it look like a Three Stooges short. The film has the emotional depth of the Three Stooges as well. Joan Fontaine in an early role plays the shrew none too well, though Sam Jaffe in brownface is passable in the titular role. The Kipling cameo in the finale is the height of solemnity made unintended absurdity.

the Jacket (John Maybury 2005) Adrien Brody’s Iraq war vet is killed in action, then brought back to life, only to be framed for the murder of a cop and sent to a mental ward to quickly die again. Somewhere between those two deaths, and also somewhere many years afterwards, lies the action of the film. Brody finds a way to travel to the future while undergoing radical psych ward therapy and eventually romances Keira Knightley (so he’s obviously keen to visit 2007 from 1992 anyways), but he also is put in the race against the clock detective work of investigating the details of his own death in order to prevent it. Or something. This is such a mess, hypercut with so many edits that early on the filmmakers just start overlapping scenes on top of each other in a mad dash to get more footage on-screen… and yet, my resistance eventually gave way to amiably going with the film’s not fully conceived notions and admiring how unlike the laboriously serious Jacob’s Ladder, the filmmakers realize their silly material is tailor-made for the non-pretentious treatment it receives here. Little more than a decade later, it is clear this film has zero cultural cachet given that no one (that I’m aware of) bothered last year to point out that much of what made Arrival’s plot so clever was in fact done here first.

Jacob’s Ladder (Adrian Lyne 1990) Some compelling moments and sequences here and there, but many films far better than this have been sunk by the identical set up and delivery. There is literally one, maybe two times this kind of plot can work, and those chits were already cashed by far greater filmmakers in the forties, and without the self-important dalliance with faux-depth that is as shallow and meaningless as, well, the film that contains said mad gasping.

Kim (Victor Saville 1950) An Indian-passing white orphan in British India uses his skills to pass military messages between spies, including Errol Flynn. After being under-enthused by Gunga Din, I went into this Kipling adaptation with trepidation, but I was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining it all is. I appreciated how consistently the Indian way of life was bolstered as superior to that of British “civilization,” without infantalizing or romanticizing the Indians, and the film is above all rollicking good fun. Recommended.

Night People (Nunnally Johnson 1954) It’s American military vs the Russians in post-war Berlin as Gregory Peck must negotiate a swap for Broderick Crawford’s kidnapped son. While the plot is compelling in theory, in practice it’s somehow presented in a stretched out fashion despite the film only being an hour and a half long. Peck’s machinations to maneuver through the intrigue have some punch, but this early Cinemascope pic also suffers from non-plot woes, via the growing pains of coming so early in the ‘Scope process— if there are two people in the frame together, they are shot as far apart from each other as possible

Image

—though this stylistic messiness more than anything in the film itself is where any interest, however slight, is found.

Operation Pacific (George Waggner 1951) Why are there so few good Pearl Harbor movies? This one takes place after the attacks but is so bad that it belongs in spirit to films released fifteen years earlier during Hollywood’s ugly transition years of heightened hokum. The film opens with Wayne’s submariner rescuing a baby he affectionately names “Butch” and a passel of nuns and orphans from the clutches of the Japanese, and if you think that’s the start of a movie you don’t ever want to see, how correct you are. Patricia Neal as Wayne’s ex-wife is given one of the single worst “pep talks” I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness courtesy of her direct supervisor, chastising Neal for wanting Wayne to be sensitive, understanding, or at bare minimum non-rapey. Stupid women, got to put them back in their place post-war. Thanks Hollywood!

the Quiller Memorandum (Michael Anderson 1966) Blasé Harold Pinter-scriped spy film that gets off on being aloof in absence of anything worthwhile. George Segal’s lame banter falls flat as he tracks down a neo-Nazi movement that could just as easily have been Boy Scouts given what we see here, which is virtually nothing. Max von Sydow is completely wasted in the empty and overly familiar amiable villain role. Not capable of being clever, the film relies not only on being uneventful but in showing unearned pride in its wheel-spinning. What a complete waste of time.

Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk 1957) Blatant attempt at recapturing Gone With the Wind with northerner Montgomery Clift falling for southern belle from Hell Elizabeth Taylor while Eva Marie Saint plays the driftwood hometown good girl pining away. This movie is long and throws a lot at the audience, but not much sticks. The film has one jarringly effective scene in which Clift discovers unprompted the racial views of his new wife, but nothing else here packs that wallop, especially once mental illness and superfluous gothic intrigue come into play. Three hours and the biggest budget MGM ever allowed and all we get is familiar melodrama and tasteless prestige picture components.

Sons of Liberty (Michael Curtiz 1939) My quest to find a good Revolutionary War movie continues and finds nothing of value in this short biographical two-reeler. Poor Claude Rains stars as Haym Salomon, a Jewish businessman who financed a good part of the American Revolution. This film is so awful that it beggars belief— halfway through, Rains interrupts services in his temple to read aloud George Washington’s plea for more money and the ensuing wretchedness is as enjoyable as watching someone set a dog on fire.

Souvenirs of Death (Edward L Cahn 1948) Burgess Meredith voices a German handgun as he charts his owners from the German lines to assorted Americans, suburban and underworld, in this Passing Parade short. The problem of German war trophies being used for criminal activities is hard to separate from a more general call against arms in society, making the moralizing unexpectedly progressive.

the 300 Spartans (Rudolph Mate 1961) Considerably less stylish than Snyder’s more well-known treatment of this material, this is borderline passable swords and sandals fluff, with nothing particularly bad about it but little to recommend either.

To the Shores of Tripoli (Bruce Humberstone 1942) Early entry in the war effort from Fox with fresh young pup John Payne locking horns with the mean ol’ sarge Randolph Scott at Marine training camp in the weeks leading up to Pearl Harbor. This is as by-the-numbers as you’d expect, but I found it reasonably entertaining for what it is, and I appreciated the brief subplot about a hapless farm boy who wants nothing more than to pass training and be a marine but, despite his best and dogged efforts, just isn’t good enough.

Uncommon Valor (Ted Kotcheff 1983) Gene Hackman is determined to rescue his Vietnam vet son from a POW camp in this ridiculous precursor to Rambo. Hackman guilts several of his son’s fellow soldiers into abandoning their lives by going on a suicide mission, which is preceded by a lengthy bootcamp in which the out of action soldiers receive training that makes it look like summer camp. For experienced soldiers, these dudes practiced so little in the way of responsible gun handling during these sequences that it started to stress me out, even though this film isn’t smart enough to criticize such behavior. And that’s the larger problem with the film itself: I don’t find this brand of brainless bravura heroic at all, but selfish and foolhardy. I also object to sequences like a gunfight against armed Laotian police guarding the border, who believe Hackmen and his crew are opium runners. Hackman and team gleefully shoot the policemen and lament when two get away. But these aren’t the bad guys. These are police officers doing their job and trying to keep out bad guys with guns, and Hackmen and company attack first. These are the assholes I’m supposed to be rooting for?

Valkyrie (Bryan Singer 2008) Somewhat hollow but reasonably watchable tale of the failed assassination attempt on Hitler from within. Tom Cruise is fine as the heroic German Colonel who tries to instigate a coup, but the film is a bit artless in its glossy, unexceptional construction and presentation. I mean, the foiled coup story fares better here than in the Night of the Generals, but that’s feint praise indeed.

the War Lover (Philip Leacock 1962) Steve McQueen plays to his type as a cocky asshole WWII pilot who gets away with all manner of unprofessional behavior because he’s so good. The film does a fine job of showing how even a strictly regimented organization like the US military is willing to look the other way so long as you produce results, and McQueen becomes increasingly hostile and unlikable as the film progresses to its logical, if obvious, conclusion.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#392 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Jul 30, 2017 3:37 pm

domino harvey wrote:And I should, as I have well over 700 movies from the War genre alone that I’d like to get around to seeing! I wish I was exaggerating that number, but it’s accurate.
I'm wondering what it does to one's psyche to watch that many war films. Or bad films for that matter...

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#393 Post by knives » Sun Jul 30, 2017 4:36 pm

Uncommon Valor is more Rambo 2 than Rambo or First Blood, which is what I assume you mean. I like it okay, but the 80s weren't a great time for war in American cinema.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#394 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jul 30, 2017 4:52 pm

Rambo is First Blood II (which I assume is the film you're calling Rambo II), and though I thought this was ripping that film off while watching, afterwards I discovered it actually predates it

And Rayon Vert, we may have an answer to that question soon enough, though of course I've already seen several hundred war films. If 100+ 80s slashers can't break me, I doubt this will!

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#395 Post by knives » Sun Jul 30, 2017 6:27 pm

Except, just to highlight the insanity, that is technically the fourth films name.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#396 Post by swo17 » Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:18 pm

domino harvey wrote:Souvenirs of Death (Edward L Cahn 1948) Burgess Meredith voices a German handgun as he charts his owners from the German lines to assorted Americans, suburban and underworld, in this Passing Parade short. The problem of German war trophies being used for criminal activities is hard to separate from a more general call against arms in society, making the moralizing unexpectedly progressive.
Took me a minute to figure this out, but this is a short available on the Command Decision DVD (as is Tex Avery's excellent King-Size Canary).

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#397 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:26 pm

Yep, and the awful Claude Rains one is on Dodge City. I have a bunch of Warners Night at the Movie discs to get to and can label where the shorts come from in future writeups if it helps. Also, Warners sneakily released the superb Resisting Enemy Interrogation on a bonus DVD that came in the Blu-ray War box with Memphis Belle, Battle of the Bulge, and Defiance, FYI

Knives, I could have sworn the last Rambo movie was called John Rambo, but sure enough, it is just called Rambo too! These movies addmitediy take up limited headspace in my mind as it is and having seen the first three is I think more than enough of this character and his exploits to last a lifetime

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#398 Post by swo17 » Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:15 pm

domino harvey wrote:I can label where the shorts come from in future writeups if it helps.
It does.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#399 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:32 pm

domino harvey wrote:Knives, I could have sworn the last Rambo movie was called John Rambo, but sure enough, it is just called Rambo too! These movies addmitediy take up limited headspace in my mind as it is and having seen the first three is I think more than enough of this character and his exploits to last a lifetime
You are missing out on one of the most astonishingly violent movies ever made. It's worth watching just to marvel at how that thing ever got rated R.

Speaking of Rambo ripoffs, the miserable low-budget Chuck Norris vehicle, Missing in Action, is a shameless ripoff of Rambo: First Blood part II, with Norris returning to Vietnam to rescue POWs. Except, confusingly, it was released the year before Rambo. Turns out it was ripped off of James Cameron's Rambo script, which had been floating around for a few years, and released a few months prior to Rambo to cash in on that the more expensive film's marketing.

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Re: The War List Discussion and Suggestions (Genre Project)

#400 Post by domino harvey » Sun Jul 30, 2017 8:40 pm

Didn't the trailer show Rambo tearing off someone's head? I do have it on Blu-ray as the other half of a double feature with one of the other Rambo movies. I've had it up for sale on Amazon for a couple years and still no takers. Don't tempt me to actually watch the damned thing while it's still in my house!

May also be worth mentioning that Uncommon Valor is produced by John Milius, and boy does it show!

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