If your main interest is in defence
and ww2 you have to search
through a great selection.
But what's to buy and
what's to forget ?
To help you to make the right choise with spending your money i made a selection with ratings, comments and clips.
About the rating : 5 stars is the maximum rating (*****).
The movie Das Boot directed by Wolfgang Petersen and produced by columbia tristar home video is a real first class quality production. There are a few reasons for this. At first its based on true historicaly events like the battle for the Atlantic Ocean and the German Wulf packs (a group of hunting submarines). This fight and the great lossses when the anti submarine strategy from the allied naval forces improved are shown in this movie.
The director is a master when it becomes to the atmosphere
and claustrofobic submarine conditions when the fight is at his breaking point and can also show you the boring daily routine and the social tension when there is simply nothing to do.
Its a long movie which tells you the story from the beginning, the glory, the daily routine and the catastrofic end.
This movie shows you also the madness of warefare in a well ballanced story about submarine U-96.
This movie received 6 Oscar nominations in 1984.
Rating : ***** .
Movie trailer on You Tube :
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From the cold and deep waters from the Atlantic Ocean we go to the hot air above Britain in 1940. The classic movie The Battle of Britain is the story of the brave pilots who fought against the Germans in a battle which changed history. This movie from the MGM studios directed by Guy Hamilton in 1969 has attracted a fine selection of top actors.
But this crew of actors by itself does not make a great movie.
The best example for this fact is the movie The Battle of the Bulge, about
the battle around the Belgium city of Bastogne during the German Ardenne offensive.
This movie is the most terrible war movie i have ever seen.
Its a true waste of money and even for free its a punishment to see the movie from the start untill the end.
The historicaly incorrect use of tanks (M47 Patton tanks with a German cross as marking) and the terrible story line and unrealistic battle conditions and suffering makes this movie a shamefull production and waste of time.
But let's go back to a fine piece of movie art.
With this movie i was suprissed by the realistic air battle with the famous Spifires, Hawker Hurricanes and German Messerschmitt's.
Its storyline shows clearly how close the Royal Air Force was to the point on which the battle was lost because of a lack of trained pilots and proper fighter planes due to the terrible losses during the air battle.
I only have one point to make on which the moviemakers made a mistake.
That's when they use the wrong wehicles when they show some German action on the ground to prepare for the invasion of Britain with groundtroops loaded in ships. But this small mistake is nothing when you look at the total picture.
A detail which is often forgotten when we think about this air battle is the fact that there where a lot of pilots from other nationalitys like the Polish, active in the RAF and this movie shows clearly the communication problems and also their killer instincts when it comes to action.
Rating : *****.
In remebrance of those who fought
for our freedom.
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After the cold waters and the hot air we will stand with both feet on the ground when we have a look at an other war movie classic :
A bridge too far.
This quality production from MGM and directed by Richard Attenborough
in 1977 is based on the book from Cornelius Ryan and tells the tragic story about the operation Market Garden. In september 1944 Montgommery made a plan to end the war before christmas.
It was a combined air/ground offensive, the Market part was the air assault with British and American paratroopers near strategically bridges and the Garden part was the groundoffensive from the Belgium border along a small road (Hells Highway) to the captured bridges.
The last bridge at Arnhem (today called the John Frost Bridge) was never reached by this groundoffensive and after a tragic battle the British and Polish paratroopers where no longer able to keep the Germans away.
The story in the movie follows all the steps in the operations and preparations and make you understand why some things which are great on paper does not work in the hard reality of war.
The tragic story also makes clear what whisfull thinking and ignoring important intelligence information on a high level can mean for the soldier in battle.
The only point on which the movie makers made a mistake is again the use of vehicles which are not historicaly correct. We see this again and this mistake is made a lot of times in war movies from the sixties and seventies.
At least they tried to camouflage the details to make look a likes.
But this error does not effect the good overall impression.
Rating : *****.
The You Tube trailer :
More updates to come !
