Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

Director: Simon Curtis
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Kelly Macdonald. UK. 1h 47m

For years people had been probing for Winnie the Pooh, the character holds a lot of sentimental charm for so many generations, the profitability of this really came to be noticed, not after the museum was set up but when Disney basically bought it. For a long while I just assumed this was going to be a mushy Hollywood rendition of the creation story pasted with a rose tint and lateyed in the good times Disney branded family fun, but it couldn’t be further from what was magically achieved in this heartbreaking, thought provoking biopic.

Christopher Robin is the boy who, we all seem to know and love and yet no one really knows at all, well I’m sure the die hard fans weren’t shocked about any ot the revelations within Curti’s period piece but I did have my eyes opened to a life that seemed so charming, and yet through the creation of a cult classic book, part of what should have been a charmed childhood was ruined and all for the success of a book that reminds us all to care and take our time with life.

The Man With the Iron Heart (2017)

AKA HHhH AKA Killing Heydrich

Director: Cédric Jimenez
Starring:  Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O’Connell, Jack Reynor, Stephen Graham .UK. 2h 

World War II has a host of characters that will be eternally admired and despised, routinely Hollywood steps in to honour the brave hero’s with a rendition of their stories, just lately we’ve been finding more names of brave men who rose up to fight the evil tyrants of the SS. Hopefully these reminders will help remind future generations of the price of freedom!?

There seemed to be a race to release a homage to operation Anthropoid, this particular movie, with a working title of HHhH (Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich),  was put on hold and renamed to make way for a film released in  2016 which took the converted and obvious title of “Anthropoid” , starring Cilian Murphy but is this really the poor relation to the saga? Poor, no but an alternative perspective.. just maybe. Both cover the basics of the 1942 plot by Czech resistance who sent two young recruits from London to Prague to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless psychopath who came up with an evil plan known as the Final Solution. 

Deathwatch (2002)

Director: M J Bassett
Starring: Jamie Bell, Ruaidhri Conroy, Mike Downey, Laurence Fox, Kris Marshall, Hans Matheson, Matthew Rhys, Andy Serkis. UK. 1h 34m

The general trends with World War II movies is to punch your audience right in the gut with the violence and depression of the war. With all the progressions of cinema they all translate in more effect ways of demonstrating the darkest side of human nature and the brutal fight for freedom, but this isn’t the only way to portray the horrors of this dark chapter, since the was there have been numerous ghost stories written about lost soldiers, everlasting love and the occult nature of the “the enemies” of righteous civilisation. But is Deathwatch the new ghostly war story we need?

Bassett’s track record includes an array of action movies all tinged with the macabre, but Bassett is versatile in his approach with the lavish fantasy Solomon Kane filled with magic myth and monsters, and Wilderness, a group of wayward chavs verses a mystery slasher while stranded on a secluded island, he’s not a man who liked to be pinned down with a specialty apart from directing engaging movies.

Overlord (2018)

Director: Julius Avery
Starring: Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, Pilou Asbæk USA. 1h 50m

I didn’t know anything about this movie before I started seeing it’s backlash, but I personally believe that it’s a mistake to look at Overlord as a Horror movie, it’s just a Blackened Action War movie. The mechanism is generally simple, good guy Americana vs pure evil monster nazi,in between there’s a overnight coming of age, us and them dynamics and any excuse to shoehorn in some swearing and mild violence. Overall I find that the film sits neatly between a homage to lurid EC Comics series like Tales from the Crypt and the Wolfenstein video games, without taking it too seriously or trying to fit it neatly into historical facts I really enjoyed the black lead cast in their sometimes gory adventure, it’s not a great film, there’s nothing truly outstanding but for me it’s incredibly enjoyable.

Last nights Movie 20-05-13

I only managed one movie last night.. it was only nearly 3 hours long!

DER UNTERGANG – DOWNFALL

(Biography, Drama, 2004) (15) D: Oliver Hirschbiegel W: Bernd Eichinger S:Ulrich Matthes, Bruno Ganz, Christian  Berkel, Tomas Kretschmann. 2h 36m. GER

TAGLINE : April 1945, a nation awaits its…

Traudl Junge, the final secretary for Hitler tells of the Nazi dictators final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.

The final days of hitler.. whoo! What a pleasure to watch. Or is it? I’m not sure if the movie was trying to portray the homicidal f*ckwit as a fragile old man with 99 problems but he does come across as paranoid and feeling desperately abandoned. It’s enjoyable to see the downfall of a tyrant but it was never going to be a fun movie to watch, tons of suicides, killing off of the kiddies and doggies but ultimately the end of the war. It was different to see a screenplay deliberate the Second World War without really mentioning Jewish persecution or having yanks winning the war. It details the ignorance of the young. All in all it was interesting to see this from such a unique perspective with more humanist honesty than glamour.

Q : “And at that moment I actually realised that a young age isn’t an excuse. And that it might have been possible to get to know things.”

8/10

R: Schindlers List (1993), Pianist (2002) Medal of Honour