The Katyn Massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the Soviet secret police in April and May of 1940. Though the Soviet Union claimed that Nazi Germany had orchestrated the slaughter in 1941, it officially acknowledged responsibility for the killings in 1990, after decades of state-sponsored cover-ups. Piotr Szkopiak…
Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre referred to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as an “incredibly complex, contradictory, and larger-than-life human being.” This complexity is lost, however, in Joe Wright’s (“Pan”) Darkest Hour, a look at a crucial time in British Prime Minister Churchill’s stewardship that covers the period from May 10,…
Set in post World War II Mississippi, Mudbound — based on Hillary Jordan’s Bellwether Prize-winning novel — tells the story of Henry and Laura McAllan, a white farming family, and Hap and Florence Jackson, the black sharecroppers who live on and work their land. Both families have — among other similarities and commonalities — relatives…
In 1940, more than 300,000 Allied soldiers were trapped and surrounded by German forces in Dunkirk, France. It was a devastating blow and a key victory in the Battle of France; Hitler would not be stopped for five more years. However, the evacuation and rescue of the troops by British destroyers and other smaller vessels,…
For a British voter and cinemagoer, it is a singular experience to see a film about Winston Churchill in the aftermath of a general election. The film is especially distinctive in 2017, as the British government displays all manner of contradictions and at times inadequacies, whereas Churchill, both the film and the legend of the…
To find an uninteresting interview with a survivor of the holocaust is an impossible task. These are, after all, firsthand accounts of nightmares made real; memories from the extremist boundaries of the human experience. It’s akin to watching Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin discuss landing and walking on the moon, describing experiences…
Sometimes a film only needs to have the right atmosphere to make it a charismatic treat to watch.
