Tag: Movie review

The Bridges at Toko-Ri, Enter the Void and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

I have been busy over the last few weeks. Have finished Chapter 1 of Iron II and also Chapter 1 of the follow up to Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate. It’s all top secret though, so I can’t say anything. Instead here are some reviews of films I have seen lately:

The Bridges of Toko-Ri.
On the face of it just standard 50s Korean War drama starring William Holden and Grace Kelly. But look again. Apparently Holden only took the part on the understanding that the book’s sad ending would not be changed by the Director. And it pays off. I haven’t read the book, but it must be very thoughtful. Holden’s character, Harry Brubaker, was a hero pilot in WWII and then became a lawyer. However he is called up to fly jets in Korea and gets involved in the mission to bomb a set of bridges which are a key supply route from China so consequently very heavily defended. You might think, ‘Aha! 633 Squadron all over again!’ But no, the film veers away from that kind of feat of derring-do. Instead we find out that Holden’s character is afraid of fighting. He has a wife, Nancy – ably played in one of her last films by Grace kelly – and two children, and he just has too much to lose. Also he can’t understand why he has been called up when his status was completely inactive and reservists are still at home. Is it something to do with his ace-status?

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D.O.A. (1950) and Helen of Troy (1956)

As many of you know I am a big movie buff. After a solid afternoon’s writing on Sunday I settled down to watch two movies in the evening, D.O.A. (1950) and Helen of Troy (1956).

D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival) is a noirish movie about a guy with a shady business who goes on an unexplained break to a city in US and gets poisoned. Thinking it’s just a bad hangover he goes to the doctor who tells him it’s fatal and he has days to live. He then goes on a desperate hunt for his own killer before finally reporting a homicide at the Police Station. The officer asks him who was murdered and he says “Me.” This is actually the film’s opening scene and surprisingly the officer, far from being incredulous, actually hunts for the report of the guy’s murder which he already has. Continue reading “D.O.A. (1950) and Helen of Troy (1956)” →

2 Films: Anonyma (2008), Road of No Return

Well I had a week off work last week and I watched lots of films. Some were so-so like ‘Anonyma – The Downfall of Berlin’ and others I didn’t like ‘Road of No Return’

Anonyma tells the story of a German journalist who goes back to Berlin in the last day of April, 1945 to witness the end of Nazism and gets caught up in the Russian takeover. They could have made a lot more of the fact that she was a journalist – in fact the only observation that really resonated was when she mentioned that they could feel Berlin becoming ‘Russian’ by the hour. Apparently a true story written anonymously in the 40s or 50s and the author herself was so castigated that she withdrew all further editions of the book after the first. Continue reading “2 Films: Anonyma (2008), Road of No Return” →