Enemy at the Gates (2001)
DIRECTOR: Jean-Jacques Annaud
CAST:
Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Rachel Weisz, Ed Harris, Bob Hoskins, Ron Perlman, Eva Mattes, Gabriel Thomson, Matthias Habich
REVIEW:
The Russian front in WWII hasn’t gotten much attention in a big-budget war film, so French director Jean-Jacques Annaud deserves some credit for giving us a rarely-shown viewpoint. However, the result is a mixed bag. Continue reading
Ride With The Devil (1999)
DIRECTOR: Ang Lee
CAST:
Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jewel, Jeffrey Wright, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Jim Caviezel, Simon Baker, Tom Wilkinson, Zach Grenier, Jonathan Brandis, Mark Ruffalo
REVIEW:
At first glance, Taiwan native Ang Lee seems a director who defies any discernible genre or common thread linking his films; he has directed everything from the Jane Austen romance Sense and Sensibility to the searing ’70s drama The Ice Storm (also featuring Tobey Maguire) to the martial arts extravaganza Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to the comic-book flick The Hulk, to the ‘gay cowboy’ drama Brokeback Mountain. Continue reading
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
DIRECTOR: Michael Mann
CAST:
Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe, Russell Means, Wes Studi, Eric Schweig, Jodhi May, Steven Waddington, Maurice Roëves, Patrice Chéreau
REVIEW:
Based loosely on James Fenimore Cooper’s novel, Michael Mann’s (Manhunter, Heat, Public Enemies) The Last of the Mohicans is a sumptuous and stirring adventure, an enthralling viewing experience that should appeal to anyone who enjoys Braveheart or Rob Roy. By every conceivable standard, The Last of the Mohicans is in the same league, and it’s a grand, passionate, rousing adventure on its own merits. Continue reading
The Beast (1988)
DIRECTOR: Kevin Reynolds
CAST: Jason Patric, George Dzundza, Steven Bauer, Stephen Baldwin, Don Harvey, Erick Avari, Kabir Bedi, Chaim Jeraffi
REVIEW:
From action director Kevin Reynolds and screenwriter William Mastrosimone, who adapted the script from his play Nanawatai (an honor code among ethnic Afghans requiring hospitality for any who request it, even an enemy), comes this underrated gritty war drama that sets a small-scale interpersonal conflict against the historical backdrop of a seldom cinematically-explored war (the 1979-1989 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). The Beast is a lesser-known entry in the war genre; despite a fairly small budget of $8 million, the movie still had a very weak box office performance, making back only $161,000, but for fans of grittier, more character-based war dramas, The Beast is sufficiently well-made to be worth giving a chance.
Continue readingInside The Third Reich (1982)
DIRECTOR: Marvin J. Chomsky
CAST:
Rutger Hauer, Blythe Danner, Sir Derek Jacobi, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ian Holm, Maria Schell, Trevor Howard, Elke Sommer, Stephen Collins, Renée Soutendijk, Randy Quaid, Robert Vaughn, Michael Gough, Maurice Roëves, Derek Newark, David Shawyer, George Murcell, Viveca Lindfors, Zoë Wanamaker
REVIEW:
Inside The Third Reich, a lengthy, critically acclaimed TV miniseries from two-time Emmy winner Marvin J. Chomsky, is a film adaptation of the same-named memoirs by Albert Speer, a bright, cultured German architect who became Adolf Hitler’s personal designer and later Minister of Armaments and War Production, ultimately spending twenty years in Spandau Prison for his use of slave labor to keep the German war effort going, during which time he ostensibly reflected on his errors in judgment and began to write his memoirs. Although forbidden to do so in prison, Speer smuggled them out through a sympathetic guard and formed them into an autobiography upon his release. As one of the few surviving individuals to have had such intimate contact with Hitler, Speer lived well off of book sales until his death shortly before its film adaptation. While many believe Speer to have downplayed his own role in the Third Reich, and criticize the miniseries for not questioning his account, its historical value is undeniable. Inside The Third Reich was filmed on a low budget over a few months of winter in Munich, which is made apparent by the presence of snow in nearly every outdoors scene throughout the miniseries. While the vast scope and detail of Speer’s writings require numerous events to be skipped over, it serves to give the viewer the basics of the workings of the Third Reich. Continue reading
Das Boot (1981)
DIRECTOR: Wolfgang Petersen
CAST: Jurgen Prochnow, Herbert Groenemeyer, Hubertus Bengsch, Martin Semmelrogge, Klaus Wennermann, Bernd Tauber, Erwin Leder
REVIEW:
Hailed as possibly the best submarine film ever made, and one of the most honest and unromanticized portrayals of war, Wolfgang Petersen’s simply-titled magnum opus Das Boot (“The Boat” in English) features only adequate special effects and few and far between action sequences, but overcomes any limitations with uniformly authentic performances, Petersen’s direction, and the haunting, sometimes stirring but more often melancholy score by Klaus Doldinger.
Continue readingA Bridge Too Far (1977)
DIRECTOR: Richard Attenborough
CAST: Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Hardy Kruger, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell, Liv Ullmann
REVIEW:
From producer Joseph E. Levine and director Richard Attenborough comes this unwieldy but sporadically impressive “war epic” making the strange choice to throw up a boatload of money and effort portraying in grandiose, The Longest Day–style one of the Allies’ biggest fiascoes of WWII, the ill-conceived Operation Market Garden. Adapted from Cornelius Ryan’s 1974 best-selling book chronicling the operation in comprehensive detail from compiled interviews with both Allied and German participants and Dutch civilians (The Longest Day was also based on Ryan’s book covering the D-Day invasion), A Bridge Too Far was self-importantly touted as “one of the most expensive war movies ever made!” (costing $26 million, an impressive sum in 1977) but was only a modest box office success and received mixed critical reviews. Perhaps this is partly because watching a big, lavish, star-studded movie about an Allied defeat is too much of a downer for audiences expecting some “rah rah” flag-waving, but also the movie lacks the drive and focus to maintain consistent interest over its formidable three hour runtime. It’s overlong, muddled, ponderous, and overbaked, though not without scattered impressive moments. For WWII buffs, it’s worth watching as the kind of epic “classic” they don’t make this way anymore, but for anyone without a strong interest in the subject matter, it’s likely to be a slog. Continue reading
The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
DIRECTOR: John Sturges
CAST:
Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter, Donald Pleasence, Larry Hagman, Treat Williams, Jean Marsh, Anthony Quayle, John Standing, Sven Bertil-Taube, Siegfried Rauch, Michael Byrne, Joachim Hansen, Maurice Roeves, Wolf Kahler
REVIEW:
The Eagle Has Landed is not your typical war movie. Those looking for a more serious meditation on the costs of war should look elsewhere. Based on the book by espionage and international intrigue writer Jack Higgins, The Eagle Has Landed is intended as suspense-thriller escapism, but, while mildly entertaining in a goofy sort of way and with some bright spots, isn’t quite the twisty-turny potboiler it aspires to be. Continue reading
Patton (1970)
DIRECTOR: Franklin J. Schaffner
CAST:
George C. Scott, Karl Malden, Ed Binns, Michael Bates, Karl Michael Vogler, Siegfried Rauch, Richard Münch, Paul Stevens, Tim Considine, Clint Ritchie
REVIEW:
Equally effective as a war film or a character study, Patton still holds up today chiefly due to the towering lead performance by George C. Scott. Rod Steiger, Lee Marvin, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Burt Lancaster were all offered the title role, but after watching the film it is impossible to imagine anyone else but Scott. Patton can be enjoyed simply as one of the great film performances of all time. Scott does not simply play Patton; he has become so synonymous with the character that the real George Patton of WWII archive footage seems like an imposter. Credit is also due the capable direction by Franklin J. Schaffner, producer Frank McCarthy (a retired brigadier general who had worked for twenty years to make a movie about Patton), the intelligent, even-handed screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, and the cinematography by Fred Kroenkamp, who enhances the film with his sweeping shots of Tunisia, France, and Germany. John Huston, Henry Hathaway, and Fred Zinnemann had declined to direct. William Wyler agreed but later left over script disagreements with Scott. Whatever difficulties they may have had during filming, the efforts of the cast and crew paid off, as Patton went on to win eight Oscars, including Best Actor for Scott (which he famously refused, calling the Oscars a ‘self-serving meat parade’), Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Production Design.