This has got to be the perfect antidote to the Hollywood treatment of a war film. It's bleak, grim and repulsive - and all in a great, intentional, cinematographic fashion. The thread centres around the young "Flyora" (a superb effort from Aleksey Kravchenko) who is taken from his Belorussian family farm at gunpoint (along with anything it's possible to eat) by the invading Nazi troops. What now ensues follows this young man as he escapes his captors, finds an old rifle and determines to join up with the communists who are fighting almost insurmountable odds to thwart their encroaching, heavily armed, foe. What really resonates here is the simplicity of the production. There are no specials effects, no CGI to create many when there are few - it tells the simplest of stories in a manner that is truly brutal at times, then truly evocative at others. Man's inhumanity to man and all that - but writ large and depicting an invading army devoid of any semblance of humanity on just about every level. The experiences of this young man are truly horrific, but the presentation here is not especially graphic - though it's not for the faint hearted. We are shown what is happening, but Elem Klimov leaves plenty of scope for our own imagination to augment, if that is actually possible, the true grotesqueness of war, of random killings and destruction and all quite possibly exacerbated by the fact that the conquerors had no real idea what they were doing, or why - the film almost imbues them with the characteristics of the wildest of animals who enjoy their regime of torture and malevolence for the sake of it. The ending has a certain degree of vindication about it - but oddly enough it's not especially satisfying. The emotional exhaustion of the viewer has long since set in, and the true fate of what I can only really call these uniformed bullies is just, yet somehow inadequate. The film is gently paced, it could almost be a video diary as young "Flyora" meets and hides from those he encounters and we share his fears and risks en route. This is really well worth a watch but it's not an easy one.
While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.
Movie Star Rating : 7.5 Read More
20 years later, the recreation of the trial of a simple man that confesses himself as a war criminal, Carl Emmanuel Jung.
Movie Star Rating : 7 Read More
The Nazis knew it was their last chance. The British knew it was the deadliest threat they'd ever face. And the Americans knew it could fall into the wrong hands. The V2 rocket quickly became Hitler's greatest deadly weapon and beacon of hope to turn the course of World War II in his favor. Watch Nazi Germany's desperate attempt at victory as the Allies race to stop them and see how the V2 miraculously went from deadly weapon to amazing feat of space technology.
Movie Star Rating : 0 Read More
The Chinese army stops the Japanese army in 1938 at Suzhou.
Movie Star Rating : 7 Read More
A "know-your-enemy" propaganda film similar to "Know Your Enemy: Japan" and "My Japan", films about Japan with the same objective. It contains a history of the prelude to WW II, the death camps and other Nazi war crimes, and commentary on the character of the German people. Directed by Frank Capra, this film is in essentially the same format as his "Why We Fight" series. It was intended to be shown to American troops participating in the invasion and occupation of Germany. But by the time it was ready, events had overtaken it - Germany was already well on its way to falling - so the film was shelved. Although it is readily available for public-domain viewing on the Internet, it has never been widely distributed or shown.
Movie Star Rating : 7 Read More
Yugoslav farmer-turned-partisan Slavko Babić starts an uprising against the fascist Germans and their allies.
Movie Star Rating : 5 Read More
Joseph Vilsmaier Two-part TV movie focuses on the tragic events surrounding the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German passenger ship, at the end of World War II. On 30 January 1945, Captain Hellmuth Kehding was in charge of the ship, evacuating wounded soldiers and civilians trapped by the Red Army. Soon after leaving the harbor of Danzig, it was hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine and sank in less than an hour.
Movie Star Rating : 5.8 Read More
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