War

The soldiers no longer know why they are at war, and when it even started. Daily and dutifully they march to the river and shoot at the opposite village from 9 to 5 – orders are orders after all.Read More »

Two American soldiers escape from a Japanese prison camp, in order to reach Mindanao and hand over to the Allied Forces a top secret coding device.Read More »

Gripping wartime thriller with Hugh Williams starring as a British journalist working in Norway who finds himself hunted by the Germans when he uncovers a secret U-boat base. Deborah Kerr co-stars as the daughter of a Norwegian sea captain helping the Brit combat the Nazi menace.Read More »

Very entertaining Kihachi Okamoto feature, and while it is a WWII film, it is also a tribute to John Ford’s Westerns, set in Manchuria. In addition to the regulars in the series, a fine performance by the always lovely Kumi Mizuno.

One of Okamoto’s trademarks is his recessive staging, i.e. the big foreground wide-angle look, the kind of wide-screen composition which is quite common in spaghetti westerns, particularly those of Sergio Leone’s (partly due to the technical problems of the Techniscope format, widely used in Italy in that period). We could notice this signature in Okamoto’s late 50s films already, that is, a few years earlier than Leone and other western directors.Read More »

Winter, 1941. World War II rages on as Nazi troops invade the Soviet Union and besiege the devastated city of Leningrad. Foreign journalists are quickly evacuated, but in the chaos that ensues, Kate Davies is left behind.Read More »

Quote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to the ironic image of lovers Kaji and Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) meeting under an archway auspiciously called the Southern Gate of Peace in Manchuria as Imperial troops march in the street, Kobayashi presents an incisive image of 1930s Japanese society that is morally consumed—and ravaged—by increasingly extremist values of militarism, occupation, and nationalism.Read More »

Quote:
Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to the ironic image of lovers Kaji and Michiko (Michiyo Aratama) meeting under an archway auspiciously called the Southern Gate of Peace in Manchuria as Imperial troops march in the street, Kobayashi presents an incisive image of 1930s Japanese society that is morally consumed—and ravaged—by increasingly extremist values of militarism, occupation, and nationalism.Read More »

A beautiful Austrian refugee in England–who is also a Nazi agent–marries a scholarly English pacifist. He lives near a secret military base she needs to get information about so she can help in Hitler’s planned invasion of England.Read More »

A battle weary GI and his unit stand ready to defend a small German town, a key position in the Allied advance to win the war, against the assault of the seasoned infantry and tank units of the German 11th Panzer Ghost division.Read More »