Greyhound (2020)

I never thought I'd see Tom Hanks starring in a feature film with the same production values as a SyFy Channel original movie, but here's Greyhound — an otherwise tight, lean, straightforward picture. Hanks plays a commanding officer leading a convoy of ships through dangerous waters, facing off against German U-boats during World War II....

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (hereinafter TMoUW) claims to be “based on a true story.” If by “true story” they meant “Inglorious Basterds by way of Kingsman,” then I agree 100%. TMoUW isn’t as egregious as Basterds, but it does operate under a Tarantino-esque kind of manipulative, historically negationist wishful thinking approach (and even has its...

12 Strong (2018)

It’s a bitter irony that 12 Strong was released only three years before Kabul crumbled faster than Kevin Spacey’s career. Then again, this movie has as much to do with the war in Afghanistan as the Arab uprising had to do with Lawrence of Arabia — which is exactly where director Nicolai Fuglsig and screenwriters...

Occupied City (2023)

Occupied City is reminiscent of the sweeping, fly-on-the-wall epics of Frederick Wiseman, only much more ambitious in scope and intent. While Wiseman’s films are (admittedly gargantuan) slices of life, this time travelogue-cum-tough love letter to the thrice occupied city of Amsterdam (once by the Nazis, and more recently under the double occupation of the coronavirus and...

Sisu (2022)

I’m always wary of movies that, before anything else, feel obligated to give us the dictionnary definition of their title. Have these filmmakers never heard of synonyms? If they’re so worried about what they perceive to be an obscure term, why didn’t they choose a more accessible word, one they feel is ‘popular’ enough to be...

Assault on Hill 400 (2023)

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest, which included the titular Assault on Hill 400, was the longest battle on German ground during World War II, and the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. Surely it deserves better than a loafer budget (because it can’t even afford to be shoestring) Asylum clunker. Here's a...

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (2023)

Looking back, Snatch’s arguably greatest achievement was creating the illusion of intelligence; either that was a fluke, or Guy Ritchie has for some reason been deliberately working ever since toward a single goal: to incrementally dumb his material down. The Covenant marks a new nadir for the British filmmaker; a movie apparently made for an...

The Alamo (1960, 2004)

Well, someone must have really gotten carried away. Even though the 1960 and 2004 versions of The Alamo purport to depict the same historical event (the titular Battle of the Alamo), each bears precious little resemblance to the other. If I had to guess, though, I’d say that the newer film comes closer to the...

Midway (2019)

The key difference between this Midway and 1976’s Midway is that the latter was released in the days when movies were made more carefully and were reluctant to insult the intelligence of their viewers. Whether or not it was historically accurate (and I wouldn’t go out on a limb that it was), Midway ‘76 looked like...