Keyword Archive:
Germany

The Blue Max (1966)

Sunday, November 4th, 2007
★★★★★

This is 1918. Things have changed.

The dazzling flying sequences in this movie are worth the price of admission all by themselves. This is a good thing because the story is nothing to write home about. Much like its contemporaries, Grand Prix and The Battle of Britain, The Blue Max presents a somewhat shallow, sudsy story set against a beautifully photographed backdrop of aerial combat in World War I. You’ll remember this movie for those scenes (and scenes of Ursula Andress barely wearing a towel) long after you’ve forgotten what the whole thing was all about.

The Blue Max

(more…)

Posted by in Movie Reviews | Comments Off

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005)

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
★★★★★

You will soon be standing where we are now.

Only the young and idealistic would believe that they could reverse the course of a murderous regime with a few thousand mimeographed leaflets, but that is what the members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi student resistance group, tried to do and that is the crime for which many of their members, including 21-year-old Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch), were executed.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

(more…)

Posted by in Movie Reviews | 2 Comments »

Munich (2005)

Monday, September 3rd, 2007
★★★★★

Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.

Steven Spielberg’s lengthy rumination about the effects of revenge as a response to terrorism succeeds on the level of a thriller but falls short of its larger goals. Seeking to be evenhanded, Munich ultimately sags under the weight of its own equivocation.

Munich

(more…)

Posted by in Movie Reviews | Comments Off

Judgment at Nuremburg (1961)

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006
★★★★★

You know, there’s one thing about Americans. We’re not cut out to be occupiers. We’re new at it and we’re not very good at it.

Stanley Kramer’s second courtroom drama starring Spencer Tracy in as many years is mostly an actor’s tour de force, but surprisingly not for the film’s nominal stars, Tracy and Burt Lancaster. Both of these veterans step back and let a handful of others take center screen. The talent pool is so deep in this film that the fifth-billed actor, Maximilian Schell, took home a Best Actor Oscar, the deepest that award has gone into a film’s “bench.”

Judgment at Nuremburg

The film is a heavily fictionalized version of the actual Judges Trial during the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. (more…)

Posted by in Movie Reviews | 2 Comments »

The Great Escape (1963)

Friday, September 2nd, 2005
★★★★★

One has to ask some very strange things in the job I have.

The Great Escape is a featherweight escapist entertainment (pardon the pun) disguised as a true story. While the basic facts of the story are faithful to real events, great liberties are also taken, mostly to make the film more appealing to American audiences.

The Great Escape

(more…)

Posted by in Movie Reviews | Comments Off

Downfall (2004)

Wednesday, August 31st, 2005
★★★★★

The war is lost… But if you think that I’ll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I’d prefer to put a bullet in my head.

The German film Downfall details, rather unflinchingly, the horrific and often bizarre last twelve days of the Nazi regime during April and May of 1945. By now, Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz) has retreated to the bunker as Stalin’s forces encircle the city of Berlin. Bent and infirm, he is no longer the beer hall firebrand of the early Nazi era.

Downfall

The last few holdouts like Heinrich Himmler (Ulrich Noethen) and Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes), gather around the Führer as he orders counter attacks by armies that exist only in his fevered imagination. His generals attempt to convince him that there is no hope and they should appeal to the western powers to broker a peace. Hitler and a few fanatical yes-men like Goebbels squash any such attempts at reason.

(more…)

Posted by in Movie Reviews | Comments Off