war
Camera Obscura is a terrifying glimpse at PTSD, seen through the eyes of a war photographer who comes home and starts to see grisly images.
The Wall has a kick-ass ending worth shouting about- it’s just a shame the journey there is significantly less interesting.
Afterimage is the swan song of legendary director Andrzej Wajda, depicting the artist Władysław Strzemiński during Stalinist-era Poland.
This World War ll film is entertaining, though unfortunately Their Finest doesn’t really impress as it should.
While The Promise has lofty aspirations and a flimsy base, it proves too thin and drab to be truly gripping.
High concept on paper, in reality, Mine turns out to be convoluted and utterly confused about the story it is telling, ending up feeling more like a Michael Bay film on a shoestring budget.
Fantassút, a short documentary about the largest refugee camp in Europe, is a surprisingly beautiful depiction of real people who lived through hellish conditions.
Cries from Syria comes from the perspective of those standing in opposition to Assad, and serves as a tribute to Syria’s children.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is atypical for Ang Lee; though the visuals are impressive, the film surrounding it fails to have an impact.
Army of One could have been a lot of different things, with plenty of room to shock and titillate fans of Larry Charles’ usual propensity for visceral subversions of cultural norms. Instead, the movie falls flat as a conservative piece of biographical fiction.
What helps to distinguish Hacksaw Ridge is that, at its core, it is a film that attempts to combine the seemingly contradictory qualities of pacifism and the violence associated with patriotism.
About midway through Andrei Tarkovsky’s feature 1962 film debut of Ivan’s Childhood, in the midst of a Russian battlefield field torn asunder during World II, a cross is backlit by a setting sun. The cross is obscured in shadow and yet its beauty remains. A spiritual man, Tarkovsky was never afraid to ask questions about spiritual matters.
When it comes to World War II, there is never a shortage of stories that are needed and are waiting to be told. Anthropoid is one of these stories. The film begins with an introduction to the true events that have led up to the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi official to be rendered a necessary means in a time of war.
One of the most overlooked elements of the action genre is sound – more specifically, its use of sound cues to tell a story. However, this mode of storytelling is not only powerful by itself, but is especially suited to the needs of modern action films. Recent advances in sound technology now make it possible for action directors to put sound cues to their full use.
In part one of ‘Gender at War’, we looked at several films which have changed the perception of women in war. Traditionally, women have been pushed to the side – presented as Madonnas (wives, mothers or whores) with no space for them in the gritty action. The increased presence of women as soldiers in war films (instead of passive grieving objects) has forced other questions about the act of war to arise.