War Films | Cagey Films

Being human: two new Criterion releases

Posted on June 23, 2021March 3, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

Erin "Tiny" Blackwell engages impishly with the camera in Martin Bell's documentary Streetwise (1984)

Two very different new releases from Criterion explore what it means to to maintain one’s humanity in the face of inhuman systems. Masaki Kobayashi’s overwhelming 9 1/2-hour epic The Human Condition (1959-61) follows a conscientious socialist into the brutal horrors of Japan’s occupation of Manchuria during the Second World War, while Martin Bell’s Streetwise (1984) and it’s sequel Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell (2016) document the lives of homeless kids on the streets of Seattle during the Reagan era and the aftereffects of that experience in later life.

Getting serious

Posted on June 9, 2021June 9, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Jean Gabin embodies Georges Simenon's famous detective in Jean Delannoy's Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (1959)

Another eclectic selection of recently watched Blu-rays, from two atmospheric French mysteries starring Jean Gabin as Maigret (1958-59) to the nightmarish horrors of war in Eastern Europe in an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s controversial novel The Painted Bird (2019), from violence tourism in near-future Brazil in Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’s Bacurau (2019) to tenderness and violence on the American frontier in Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow (2020) and children faced with the threat of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War in Frank Perry’s Ladybug Ladybug (1965).

Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1977): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on January 23, 2021January 22, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Sotnikov (Boris Plotnikov) is ready to accept his own death in Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent (1977)

Criterion upgrade their bare-bones edition of Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (1977) with an extras-packed Blu-ray restoration of this starkly beautiful war film which moves from visceral realism into religious allegory.

2020: Year-End Thoughts

Posted on December 30, 2020December 29, 2020 by Kenneth George Godwin

The cost of security and comfort is high in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)

It’s that time of year again. How to decide what’s “best” out of the six-hundred-plus movies I watched in 2020? It’s an impossible task, so here’s a fairly random selection of things which may not be best, but certainly appealed to me and stuck in my memory.

Fall viewing, part one

Posted on November 11, 2020March 19, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Beware the mutant spider bite in Fritz Böttger's Horrors of Spider Island (1960)

A round-up of recent viewing, as usual heavy on horror and exploitation.

Exiles at war

Posted on October 14, 2020March 23, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Erich von Stroheim exudes egotistical confidence as Field Marshall Erwin Rommel in Billy Wilder's Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Two German emigre directors avoid Hollywood war movie cliches in a pair of Blu-rays from Masters of Cinema: Fritz Lang’s anti-nuclear Cloak and Dagger (1946) and Billy Wilder’s suspenseful character drama Five Graves to Cairo (1943).

World Cinema Project 3: Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on October 7, 2020May 27, 2023 by Kenneth George Godwin

... but Lucia (Adela Legra) refuses to be tied down in Humberto Solas' Lucia (1968)

With volume 3 of their World Cinema Project box sets, Criterion has released another treasure trove of largely unknown (in the West) features spanning five decades and six countries, from the Expressionist horror of Mexico’s Dos Monjes (1934) to the Neo-realist horrors of life on Brazil’s streets in Héctor Babenco’s Pixote (1980), with stops in between in Indonesia, Iran, Mauritania and Cuba.

The good, the mediocre and the annoying

Posted on August 5, 2020March 24, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Calvin Lockhart as big game hunter Tom Newcliffe aims to bag a werewolf in Paul Annett's The Beast Must Die (1974)

A couple of recent disappointments from Indicator – excellent editions of two mediocre movies (Guy Hamilton’s Force 10 From Navarone [1978] and Paul Annett’s The Beast Must Die [1974]) – are offset by the terrific French television series of adaptations from the Maigret novels and stories by Georges Simenon, fifty-four feature-length movies centred on a magisterial performance by Bruno Cremer as the famous detective.

A frustrating evening

Posted on July 22, 2020April 3, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Michael (Hywel Bennett) can't avoid the distrust, even contempt, of Ellie (Hayley Mills)'s relatives in Sidney Gilliat's Endless Night (1972)

When my friend Howard came over for an evening of movie-watching recently, we ended up with a highly idiosyncratic double-bill of problematic features, one representing self-conscious art, the other polished commercial craft – neither entirely satisfying: Josej Von Sternberg’s The Saga of Anatahan (1953) and Sidney Gilliat’s Endless Night (1972).

A post-Covid 3D evening

Posted on June 27, 2020December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

One of the few eye-poking moments in Owen Crump's 3D Korean war movie Cease Fire (1953)

To mark our emergence from the Covid lockdown, my friend Steve and I ate barbecued bratwurst and watched a couple of movies which emerged from his big 3D TV screen: Owen Crump’s Korean war docudrama Cease Fire (1953) and John Brahm’s B-movie horror The Mad Magician (1954), Vincent Price’s threadbare follow-up to the hit House of Wax.

Tag: War Films