My 900th Review: 12 Anti-War Movies I've Reviewed~May 07 '06 Write an essay on this topic.
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In six and a half years on this site, I’ve reviewed at least a dozen movies that present the view that war is a tragic blight on the human race and it has far-reaching consequences that change us and our world, very often not for the better. They not really depressing, though, except for Skins. They are human dramas mostly and a few biting satires I have greatly enjoyed and think you will, too. There are many, many more movies that will be included in one or two lists in the coming weeks. I hope I’ve, either now or in the past, helped you to discover movies that timelessly speak for our human condition. Thanks for reading me, everybody! (1937) The Grand Illusion It doesn’t surprise me that Adolf Hitler banned this 1937 anti-war movie by Jean Renoir. It does, however, concern me that some people may not catch or will ignore the great beauty of this magnificent black and white. La Grande Illusion, with wonderfully-clear English subtitles, is not your usual type of war movie, for you will find no gore, special effects (like explosions) or intolerable cruelty depicted. As the director and co-writer Renoir puts it, the war of the movie, WWI, was a gentleman’s war quite unlike WWII. Having been a navy pilot in the war, Renoir may very well be right. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_120819256964 (1951) Red Badge of Courage There are astonishingly few professional reviews of this remarkable, little movie from 1951, based faithfully on Stephen Crane’s short 1894 novel. John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen), director and screenwriter, wished to somehow make it an epic movie, but fortunately because Louis B. Mayer was replaced by Dore Schary as head of MGM Studios, it was not. At 69 minutes The Red Badge of Courage would disarmingly please Crane and viewers like me, however. Instead of glorifying violence with copious gore and endless combat, this movie shows us the human side of war, the American Civil War in this case, simply and poignantly with the intensiveness of an extended short story. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_132424044164 (1959) On The Beach I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard of the movie, although if you're Australian I certainly would be! Never called World War III, nevertheless, what has taken place is the worst war imaginable and everyone has been snuffed out by the radiation except for Australia. Peck as Captain Towers of the USS Sawfish is stationed in Melbourne when the calamity happens and takes his sub out to measure for radiation. Bad news. They have but a few months or less before they, too, die. Fred Astaire (Top Hat) in his first dramatic role has the challenge of a grim-faced scientist who reads the results, knows how and when they'll die, but not why he helped to build nuclear bombs or why peace became something you achieved through a stronger and stronger defense, until one day a paranoid person thought someone started firing and so pushed the bomb button. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_103766265476 (1964) The Americanization of Emily What a brilliant movie, well worth the months of waiting for it until it was released recently on DVD in “matted” widescreen. Arthur Hiller directed The Americanization of Emily in black-and-white for a more atmospheric look, though in 1964 bright color was all the rage, and it definitely gives a 1940s’ realism to the British picture. Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the wonderfully satiric movie, Network, worked his magic again here, based on William Bradford Huie’s novel The Hospital. Imdb.com has only a few of the magnificent examples of his dialogue and I’m including them all in this review. They’re very good quotes, but many, many more await you in the 115-minute movie. Adm. William Jessup: The first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_183974727300 (1969) The Undefeated It put me through a range of emotions. First I am sad when the movie opens up with young Union soldiers being blown up by incessant cannonfire and then happy when a messenger gallops in on a horse to announce the end of the war…three days earlier. I could now feel the frustration and regret of Col. John Henry Thomas (Wayne) for the soldiers recently slain. Later we find out they are friends and sons of friends of his, that he wants no more of war, but to round up wild horses to sell to the U.S. army. Then we switch to a scene with ex-Confederate Col. James Langdon (Hudson with a fetching Southern lilt) who discovers a regiment still waving their flag and primed to keep on fighting. He angrily takes over and tells them to be ready at midnight to start their disguised-as-poor-people trek to Mexico. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_134017945220 (1975) A Boy And His Dog KA-BOOM!! KA-POW!!!! KA-BLOOEY!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy Mushroom Clouds, Batman, ‘politicians have finally solved the problem of urban blight’! I think you’re right, Robin. It doesn’t look good for the human race, does it? It sure doesn’t! It doesn’t look like a race at all anymore, but like everyone’s gone underground. Exactly, Robin. So shall we. To the Bat Cave! No, you haven’t timewarped back to 60s television for another episode of Batman. To the best of my knowledge, those words were never spoken nor dreamed of by the comic book heroes. Yet you have rather entered a science fiction fantasy, dangling on the bizarre edge of horror and political satire, created by the nefarious L.Q. Jones (The Incredible Hulk TV series), director and screenwriter of A Boy And His Dog, aka Psycho Boy And His Killer Dog. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_78883360388 (1983) To Be Or Not To Be Frederick and Anna Bronski (Brooks and Bancroft) are husband and wife, entertaining all of Warsaw, Poland with their stage numbers in 1939. When they begin a spoof of Hitler, the police force them to abandon it, so then Frederick yells to the stagehand, played by Ronny Graham the movie's screenwriter, “Sondheim! Send in the clowns!” After the clowns Frederick decides to do his beloved “Highlights from Hamlet” act, beloved to him, that is! When Anna hears that her husband has scheduled that, she sends a note to a handsome, young lieutenant in the audience who obviously has a crush on her. When Frederick says, “To be or not to be…,” then he must come backstage to visit her. His leaving actually inspires Frederick’s performance, hehe. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_78201458308 (1994) The War After the Vietnam War life was not a bowl of cherries, at least not for poor southern people and veterans living with nightmares, anguish and discrimination. Kevin Costners veteran character, Stephen Simmons, in the Jon Avnet-directed movie, The War, grunts to his wife, God bless America. Theyll give you a hand-out before they give you a job! He lost three jobs because of his nightmares, so he checked into a mental hospital for help with them, but upon returning to his family as the movie begins, he loses a custodial job at the kids school because the school discovered he had been a mental case and had a law about hiring such people. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_164226895492 (1999) One Man’s Hero The 1840s’ war between the very large territory of Mexico (California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Texas included) and the United States is usually not dwelled on too much in history classes for good reason. I certainly don’t remember covering it and I’m betting that most of you are vague on the details as well, so like me you will be shocked and dismayed with what you discover in this two-hour movie, based largely on facts and superbly directed by Lance Hool, who is known best for action movies like Man On Fire and Missing In Action. 1999’s One Man’s Hero is that movie, badly neglected and either loved or hated by all. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_162048020100 (2002) The Cuckoo (Kukushka) Awards have plastered this 2002 Russian film for many reasons. Directed and written by Aleksandr Rogozhkin, Kukushka or Cuckoo is a 99-minute delight I do not wish to forget and you will not either, whatever you are in the world. It speaks to all of us who have had a difficult time communicating to someone of a different culture and who speaks an unfamiliar language. It speaks to those pacifists among us tired of fighting an enemy and disillusioned by the chaos of war. Not the least it speaks to people everywhere who believe that enemies can, with patience and friendliness, become friends. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_228757114500 (2002) Skins Is this tightly-scripted movie about the impotent rage of the broken, impoverished Oglala Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota? You bet. Is it about haunting shame, regret and heartbreak simmering behind their eyes? Definitely. It’s also about two brothers, one a disillusioned, alcoholic Vietnam Vet named Mogie (a stunning Graham Greene, Dances With Wolves), the other a respected police chief so frustrated with the apathy of everyone that he becomes a vigilante, named Rudy (a seething Eric Schweig, The Last of the Mohicans. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_94961372804 (2004) Hotel Rwanda What, I ask you, causes people throughout history to hate and oppress strangers? If you reply that it’s a wish for power, that’s not the source of the problem. If you reply that it’s a love of violence stemming from psychological instability, you’re getting closer. When Winston Churchill declared something like “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” he said a very perceptive thing. Fear, I contend, fuels animosity, frustration and rage that may lead to ghastly acts of bloodshed upon individuals, other countries, people of a different religion or sexual preference or skin color or…the list goes on and inexorably on. Read the rest: http://www.epinions.com/content_185251761796  |
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