You’re likely to find as many books on the Alien franchise as any other major sci-fi franchise (and we’ve tried to review all of them here at borg), but for the coming 35th anniversary of the release of the first sequel, Aliens, one of the best chroniclers of blockbuster films has provided the definitive look at the film in the giant hardcover book The Making of Aliens. J.W. Rinzler, the writer of some of the best known books about George Lucas’s films and Planet of the Apes, adds to 2019’s The Making of Alien (reviewed here) to give fandom his most readable account yet.
I was thinking about re-publishing a list of war movie recommendations in November for Veteran’s Day, recommendations provided by my father, Milton L. Bunce, Jr., movies that I recommended here at borg years ago. He passed away Saturday at the age of 79, and as a tribute to him I thought I’d go ahead and share again now two sets of recommendations of movies he enjoyed, which also influenced me and my movie preferences over the years. These are 20 films, one list of classic war movies that he thought reflected his own experiences in the U.S. Navy, and another, showing the preferences of a kid growing up during World War II at the local movie house. My father went to the movie theater every Saturday with his sister, and spent the day enjoying many of these great films on the big screen. If you have more time at home as many do this summer, what better opportunity to catch a classic you may have overlooked?
Usually we reserve Trailer Park for a pile-on of new movie trailers, but this year has seen a serious dearth of new both new movies and previews for new movies. So let’s highlight some true classics you need in your repertoire if they aren’t there already. Three standouts are airing on basic cable–depending on where you live and what you subscribe to–Saturday and Sunday. First up is the baseball comedy classic Brewster’s Millions. And then we have two different brands of war movie. So what are they?
With costumes designed by Anna B. Sheppard, the designer for Schindler’s List, Band of Brothers, Inglourious Basterds, and Captain America: The First Avenger, you know your World War II movie is in good hands.
The first ninety minutes of Overlord is the stuff of the classic World War II movie. Think Guns of Navarone or Von Ryan’s Express or a later film, Force 10 From Navarone. It’s also modern in the way of Inglourious Basterds, but that movie if it had been filmed by John Carpenter, complete with special effects from The Thing and action from They Live. It also co-stars Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt Russell (also Goldie Hawn’s son) as the tough and confident Corporal Ford, a John Wayne role like he plays like he’s been making movies for 40 years. If that isn’t enough to go out and get your hands on Overlord, I don’t know what you could want.
It begins with a paratrooper drop, filmed believably, like Memphis Belle, but with the action of Edge of Tomorrow. The first 40 minutes follows British actor Jovan Adepo as American soldier Private Boyce, a nice, naïve kid drafted recently and dropped into harm’s way behind enemy lines in France the day before D-Day. Like Starship Troopers and Edge of Tomorrow, this is 100% authentic war, look and feel, and we follow Ford and boyce and their squad from the air on down to the gates of a town where they hide out and plan to blow up a German radio tower. Despite J.J. Abrams producing this film and hints to the contrary, don’t expect aliens or zombies–this is not a secret Cloverfield 4. What Boyce, Ford, & Co. find is a lab beneath the tower where the Germans are conducting experiments on the local French villagers and their own men. It’s here where the story takes a turn for the weird.
The first 90 minutes are brilliant, face-paced, heart-pounding, nail-biting stuff. Young director Julius Avery and writer Billy Ray pursue the lore of the German experiments toward a the creation of a “superman” or “super soldier” and what that might be like. To their credit, they approach this like the Korean series Kingdom, which looked to a virus as the creation of a village of zombie-like villagers. Here Avery and Ray look to twisted science as well, but they add in a bit of a fountain of youth element as part of the creation of these soldiers. Spoiler: They don’t all turn out exactly as planned by the Germans.
Actor and Kansas City Royals baseball fan Paul Rudd stars in a new World War II movie premiering next month. He plays real-life professional baseball Morris “Moe” Berg in this espionage thriller from director Ben Lewin (Please Stand By). The movie adapts the true story of the catcher who became a World War II spy. The Boston Red Sox player was a private figure when, in 1944, the U.S. government’s wartime intelligence agency enlisted his services. His mission: To go behind enemy lines in Europe to assassinate the Nazi’s chief nuclear scientist before the Germans develop an atomic bomb. IFC Films is marketing the film as a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.
The film stars Rudd along with Paul Giamatti(Cinderella Man, The Illusionist, The Amazing Spider-man 2),Mark Strong(The Imitation Game, Kingsman, Shazam!), Jeff Daniels(Good Night, Good Luck, Radio Days),Sienna Miller(G.I. Joe: The Rise of COBRA, Layer Cake), Tom Wilkinson(Valkyrie),Guy Pearce(Alien: Covenant, Iron Man 3), and Wonder Woman’s Queen Hippolyta, Connie Nielsen. Adapted from a book The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, by Nicholas Dawidoff, with a script by Robert Rodat(Saving Private Ryan, Thor: The Dark World), the film has a similar look and feel to other recent World War II espionage thrillers, like Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie and Benedict Cumberbatch’s The Imitation Game.
Production design is by Academy Award-winning designer Luciana Arrighi(Howard’s End, Remains of the Day). Costumes were designed by Joan Bergin (The Prestige, In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot, Vikings). Three-time Oscar winning composer Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit) created the musical score.
Here’s Paul Rudd starring in the trailer for The Catcher Was a Spy:
Something about a film created contemporary to the World War II years automatically lends itself to a greater level of authenticity than the modern attempt at an epic war film. Dunkirk is one of those modern large-scale productions, falling in line behind the likes of 1998’s Saving Private Ryan and 2001’s Pearl Harbor. Dunkirk is better than both, and although it doesn’t have the gravitas of 1993’s Schindler’s List and is not as nail-biting as something like 1981’s Das Boot, Dunkirk still provides some good nuggets of emotion as we hone in on a dozen soldiers, sailors, and civilians attempting to get to the end of a week during the Battle of France–May 26 to June 4, 1940. Dunkirk doesn’t tell a story full of intrigue like 2008’s Valkyrie, but its reflection of the war seems all the more reality-based despite not using film methods like that of Steven Spielberg, who tends to film historical settings with filters that make audiences feel more like “we were there.” The most important lessons of history can be found in the study of World War II so any World War II film is a success if it can tell a story of brave leadership, brave soldiering, and accountability of the citizenry as Dunkirk does.
Dunkirk comes closest to Saving Private Ryan, presenting a believable wide-scope, giant battlefield, then bringing viewers into the brief encounters and interactions of a few. Compelling roles are shared evenly in the three stories by actors young and old–most importantly is newcomer Fionn Whitehead playing a soldier who barely makes it to the battlefield and then seems to have nothing but bad luck as he must make life-and-death choices at every step to try to get closer to home. From the older set, Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall, The BFG, Ready Player One) is a stoic Brit civilian who has his own reasons to try to bring some soldiers home. And Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises) plays the key fighter pilot, whose fuel gauge is broken and his assistance from other squadrons is nil. The aerial dogfights aren’t the exciting stuff of war movies of the past, but the story doesn’t really call for that. The theme is in the numbers: Can any individual beat the odds with the German fighter aircraft returning for further attacks on the beach, on the escort and attack vessels, and against the three British airplanes? Who will make it home, and who will not?
Director Christopher Nolan engages a unique story device, telling three stories simultaneously. The first begins a week before the finale that follows the fate of 400,000 British ground forces (with a few French soldiers) waiting to be picked up on the beach in Dunkirk for transport back to England after the failure to secure France (or picked off by enemy strafing). The second story begins one day before the finale, as a man, his son, and a friend answer the call in England for civilian boats to head across the channel to Dunkirk to transport troops home. The third story begins one hour prior to the end, and follows three British pilots trying to stave off a German aerial assault on the beachhead. Despite the spliced intersections of three clocks, Nolan makes it work. Astonishingly the audience is reeled into the story even if we learn almost nothing about the backstory of any character in the film. The best takeaway? The relative value in war of one man in a single fighter plane vs. 400,000 ground troops.
When Brad Pitt has another winning performance you find you’re glued to the screen. From Twelve Monkeys to Meet Joe Black, Ocean’s Eleven to Inglourious Basterds and Moneyball, Pitt has range, plus the charisma and presence that translates to star power. As with Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp, if you can strip away the celebrity and focus on the performance, Pitt seems like he just can’t fail. Pitt is just as mesmerizing as any character in his past body of work in the new film War Machine.
In another time War Machine would be a theatrical release–it carries the production values, cast, script, and studio support as much as any other movie, and is produced by Pitt’s own Plan B Entertainment, the same company that garnered a Best Picture Academy Award for 12 Years a Slave. But we’re now in No Man’s Land. With Netflix making not only its own competitive, award-winning shows for the small screen, it has moved on to the theatrical film that simply isn’t intended for a theatrical release. War Machine is based on Rolling Stone writer Michael Hasting’s book The Operators, a biographical account of now retired General Stanley McChrystal that was expanded from the piece he wrote when he was embedded with the general and his men. You’ve heard the story, the one that took down the general’s career as he was attempting to gain traction in his efforts in Afghanistan in 2010. McChrystal’s was an American story, one that has plagued leadership in wartime notably since World War II– how do you win a seemingly unwinnable war? You’ll be hard-pressed not to find story elements from Vietnam days in War Machine, but also echoes of the Persian Gulf War, and other actions where data, facts, politics, economics, miscommunication, and personalities muddled direction and purpose. Only War Machine isn’t about McChrystal really–Brad Pitt’s character is only based on McChrystal. For storytelling purposes it’s close enough, and fortunately allows the viewer to enjoy the fictional story being told without the effort of comparing the story to the real events the underlying book was chronicling. So throw out your own politics for a few hours and get ready for an interesting character study.
Were War Machine released in theaters, there’d no doubt be discussion of the film as the next chapter in a line of films with Twelve O’Clock High, The Best Years of Our Lives, Apocalypse Now, Patton, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July. Pitt’s General Glen McMahon is Pitt aged a decade or so, sporting gray hair and a fixed sideways sneer, a raised eyebrow, and a stature (especially when running exercise laps before the other troops awaken) that makes him almost unrecognizable. McMahon is smart, fierce, determined, and strong–the perfect selection for someone who has been appointed to complete an impossible task–in essence, do all that needs to be done to fix Afghanistan and get ready to leave without bringing in more troops–when he should have known he was doomed to failure from the beginning. Don’t we want our generals to be confident, strident, and to a certain extent, bold risk takers? McMahon is quirky, just a little bit off, while exhibiting a bravado and charisma–albeit awkwardly packaged–that entrenches the picture in believability. Pitt believes in his character so we do as well. This includes the loyalty of his men, which begins to form the movie’s all-star cast, including McMahon’s obnoxiously loyal, angry, and mouthy#2 man played by Anthony Michael Hall (the film’s take on then-Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served 24 days recently as national security adviser) and an image guy played by Topher Grace. The cast is rounded out on all sides by Ben Kingsley as President Karzai, Alan Ruck and Griffin Dunne as Administration policy wonks, Tilda Swinton as a German politician, and Meg Tilly taking on the role (brilliantly) of McMahon’s wife (plus a nicely handled cameo by Russell Crowe).
How can a movie get better on repeated viewings? What makes that possible? After three viewings of the home release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story–the Digital HD edition, the Blu-ray, and the 3D Blu-ray–it’s apparent the film on repeated viewings is indeed as good as the initial theatrical viewing if not better, a rare feat in any genre. Naysayers who didn’t like the CGI effects of Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia–the primary criticism of the December theatrical release–should find even a home theater big screen television will mask any distractions seen on a 30-foot theater screen. The Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray provide the best, clearest picture and sound of any prior Star Wars release. The 3D transfer is as good as any 3D Blu-ray release to-date, and the special effects, clothing details like stitches and seams are clear and vivid, as is the weathering (or lack thereof, when logical) on props. As with most 3D movies, outdoor scenes, like the Scarif ground battle, are even more vivid with sharp foregrounds and backgrounds. Check out the complete review of the film from December here.
The special features disc includes a version of the bonus features viewable together as an entire documentary and also viewable by chapter. The extra disc available through Target stores only includes two short extra chapters, and although the creature shop feature is excellent the two extras wouldn’t normally be enough to tilt a buyer toward the Target edition–costs being the same–and some may instead opt for packaging, like Steelbook boxes (Best Buy only) or Connexions cards (available only in the Wal-Mart edition). Fun bits in the features to look for include Bodhi actor Riz Ahmed’s audition tapes for Edwards, a feature documenting many Easter eggs from the show even the best eye likely never identified, and interviews with motion capture actors Guy Henry (Grand Moff Tarkin) and Ingvild Daila (Princess Leia), both who look little like Peter Cushing or Carrie Fisher, proving that simply using lookalikes or prosthetics would not have been a realistic option for re-creating these characters. The standard bonus features included with the bundles are K-2SO: The Droid, Baze & Chirrut: Guardians of the Whills, Bodhi & Saw: The Pilot & the Revolutionary, The Empire, Visions of Hope: The Look of Rogue One, The Princess & the Governor, Epilogue: The Story Continues, and Rogue Connections (the Easter eggs list).
Rogue One easily merits ranking as the third best film in the series after Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back–but truly in a league with those two films. One of the best war movie stories put to film, the best prequel or prequel that is also a sequel (yes, even considering the great Godfather II), the best space battle, the best use of spaceship filming (director Gareth Edwards avoids 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Trek: The Motion Picture-era overly-long ship takes and instead uses his imagery only as necessary to drive the story forward), while featuring one of the all-time best heist movies.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story finally answers the question of what kind of movie you would get if Hollywood would only, finally, let a diehard fan direct a major franchise film. For all the great cast of actors and heroic characters in this unique tie-in film that falls outside the episodic trilogies, the real hero turns out to be director Gareth Edwards. Edwards does so many things right with Rogue One you’ll lose count, and the best of this is surprise after surprise of what is at the next turn. And if you watched all the trailers that seemed to reveal all too much, surprise again, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This is, without exception, the most fun movie in the franchise since The Empire Strikes Back, despite its equally dark tone, and it has all the action of the original Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens, fans immediately jumped at the chance of finding its place in the list of the best and worst of the prior six films. Is Rogue One better than The Force Awakens? In many ways, yes. In other ways, such as the use of too many jumps between geographic road marker titles along the way and tightness of story plotting, Rogue One is probably a bit behind. What fans really want to do is compare Rogue One to the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. So how does it compare? It really is too soon to tell. The hype and excitement of any new blockbuster in a franchise you love makes you want to heap on the high praise. Is The Force Awakens as good as we thought a year ago? Fans will never agree. But the fact Rogue One is worthy of the comparison to Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back should be praise enough.
The best thing about Rogue One is CGI and motion capture technology improvements. The best kept film secret in several years should be kept for all to experience, and later we can all chat about it once everyone has had a chance to see the film. Prepare to be impressed. Technology is finally catching up with Connie Willis’s future Hollywood novel Remake. Rogue One also has great writing–an issue that haunted the prequels. The dialogue is smarter than probably all the past episodes. The space battles aren’t superfluous like in Return of the Jedi and all of the prequels. Every step in the film is in furtherance of the goal–find the plans to destroy the Death Star. This is not a mere MacGuffin, this mission has gravity for everyone. Delivered like an epic World War II era film, Rogue One is the best war movie of the franchise.
In honor of servicemen and servicewomen this Memorial Day weekend, today we’re recommending ten classic war movies as selected by retired U.S. Navy third class petty officer and electrician’s mate Milton L. Bunce, Jr. who served aboard the USS Goodrich DDR 831 in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea and the USS Hancock CVA-19 in the Pacific before and during the early days of the Vietnam War.
If you’re looking for some realism and detail, he’s picked some great classics and any one will hit the mark for you this weekend.
The Wings of Eagles is director John Ford’s 1957 biopic about his friend, U.S. Navy pilot Frank “Spig” Wead, considered one of the best biopics committed to film. It stars John Wayne, Dan Dailey, Maureen O’Hara, and Ward Bond, and provides a splice of the history of aviation’s role in combat. Keep an eye out for the great early airplanes in the aircraft carrier scenes. And the character of Captain Hazard was based on real-life U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve officer Jimmy Doolittle.
Twelve O’Clock High is a 1949 Darryl F. Zanuck production about the U.S Army’s Eighth Air Force flying daytime bombing missions against Nazi Germany and occupied France during World War II. It’s one of those dramas that will soon be on your list of best films if you haven’t seen it yet. These airmen are realistically portrayed keeping up the good fight against a seemingly never-ending battle where failure was not an option. Check out some outstanding acting by star Gregory Peck. This film is on the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Based on an Alistair MacLean’s 1957 novel that was inspired by the Battle of Leros during the Dodecanese Campaign of World War II, the 1961 J. Lee Thompson film The Guns of Navarone is an epic adventure war movie like no other. The filming location in and around Athens, Greece and top-notch acting by the powerhouse trio of Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn add to a suspenseful movie about a multi-national team attempting to destroy a mountain fortress. And it’s a great action movie. (Milton was on liberty in Athens in 1960 where he visited some of the filming locations around the time of production).
