Failing at Safe. Bombing Moscow: the dream of every American chickenhawk politician during the Cold War. Bombing New York: the dream of every other country. In FAIL-SAFE, a grim parable about a war triggered due to a computer glitch, everyone’s dreams come true. Released in September 1964, only a few months after Stanley Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE (Jan 1964), Sidney Lumet’s … Read More
THE LONGEST DAY
The Longest Fey. A German soldier tells his commander “Some sort of rubber dummies have been dropped by parachute!” – and he wasn’t talking about the Americans. THE LONGEST DAY has the distinction of revealing many interesting World War II tactics even to jaded modern, post-RYAN audiences. Such as the British dropping 3-foot-high dummies as night decoys, made to shoot … Read More
MIDWAY
Midway between “average” and “annoying crap.” MIDWAY opens with a title card: “This is the way it was. The story of the battle that was the turning point of the war in the Pacific. Told wherever possible with actual film shot in combat. It exemplifies the combination of planning, courage, error and pure chance by which great events are often … Read More
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT
Vengeance is Swine. Play with fire, you burn your fingers and / Lose a hold of the flame, oh It’s over, it’s done / The end is begun If you listen to fools… The Mob Rules! — Black Sabbath, “Mob Rules.” It’s Twelve Angry Cowboys! Long before Henry Fonda was sequestered in a jury room trying to convince a buncha … Read More