When soldiers in WW1 refuse to continue with an impossible attack, their superiors decide to make an example of them - The 1957 film that established Stanley Kubrick's reputation, adapted by Kubrick, Calder Willingham, and Jim Thompson from Humphrey Cobb's novel about French soldiers being tried for cowardice during World War I. Corrosively antiwar in its treatment of the corruption and incompetence of military commanders, it's far from pacifist in spirit, and Kirk Douglas's strong and angry performance as the officer defending the unjustly charged soldiers perfectly contains this contradiction.The remaining cast is equally resourceful and interesting: Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris, Ralph Meeker, and the creepy Timothy Carey, giving perhaps his best performance.
Banned in France for 18 years, this masterpiece still packs a wallop, though nothing in it is as simple as it may first appear; audiences are still arguing about the final sequence, which has been characterized as everything from a sentimental cop-out to the ultimate cynical twist. 86 min A Very Long Engagement (2004)Tells the story of a young woman's relentless search for her fiance, who has disappeared from the trenches of the Somme during World War One. - The film is both a whimsical love story featuring, brown-eyed "Amelie" star Audrey Tautou at her most adorable, and a nitty-gritty depiction of the horrors of trench warfare. It is a very bad mix. Before the end of the war, Mathilde receives word that her fiance Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) is one of five wounded soldiers who have been court-martialed and pushed out in no man's land between the French and German armies: an almost certain death.
Mathilde, of course, does not believe. If he were dead, she would know. Thus begins one woman's extraordinary quest to discover the truth. In her very long journey, Mathilde receives numerous accounts of Manech's last days. She also meets all sorts of wounded soldiers who relive their harrowing experiences in an awful trench with the improbably comical name of Bingo Crepuscule. There are numerous war scenes: almost lovingly filmed explosions on the battlefield, replete with bloody guts and lingering dust settling slowly before the camera.
The plot seems unduly complicated with a large cast of lovable, eccentric characters. Beneath Hill 60 (2010) The extraordinary true story of Oliver Woodward. It's 1916 and Woodward must tear himself from his new young love to go to the mud and carnage of the Western Front. Deep beneath the German lines.
Woodward and his secret platoon of Australian tunnelers fight to defend a leaking, labyrinthine tunnel system packed with enough high explosives to change the course of the War.The true story of a remarkable WWI military campaign, "Beneath Hill 60" is a well-groomed Australian low-budgeter undermined by dull pacing and cliched characterizations. Second-time helmer Jeremy Hartley Sims commands a cavalcade of local thesps armed only with excessive expository dialogue. Set for a mid-April release -- to coincide with Anzac Day, a national day of military remembrance -- pic, like 2006's "Kokoda," is aimed squarely at the local market's proven appetite for patriotic war pics.
International prospects will be an uphill battle.
