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The Wind Rises
OK 66 Points 2013

Hard not to think of The Wind Rises as The Zero Movie, as it’s about the engineer who designed Imperial Japan’s lethal fighter – the dreaded Japanese Zero. Instead, Jirô Horikoshi gets painted in hagiographic terms in a movie nominated this year for an Oscar and a Golden Globe: Best Animate…

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WikChip Video Flights of Fancy in a Fatally Flawed ...
The Desert Fox:...
Really Great 66 Points 1951

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel – the Desert Fox – was Nazi Germany’s national hero, their military icon. Hitler needed him, couldn’t kill him, so he had Rommel kill himself. Absolute evil, thy name is Hitler.

That and more make The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel a touchstone World War II movi…

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WikChip Video Start with the end: Churchill on Rommel
Toni Erdmann
Really Great 66 Points 2016

A professionally successful woman mystifies her foolish father in the brilliantly funny Toni Erdmann. Nominated this year for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, its comedy comes from the juxtaposition of unconditional love with highly conditional status, the former in a family, the latter in a mo…

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WikChip Video Woman on the verge of a breakdown
Operation Finale
Perfect 66 Points 2018

The banality of evil gets a powerful debunking in Operation Finale, an awkwardly if accurately titled docudrama about the Mossad’s 1960 capture of Final Solution logistics chief Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Little Adolf was famously said to embody “the banality of evil” as he dissembled during …

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WikChip Video The (real) Man Who Got Eichmann
Jojo Rabbit
Really Great 66 Points 2019

The Hitler Youth get a satirical stake through the heart in the wonderfully wacky Jojo Rabbit. Taika Waititi – he of Thor: Ragnarok – wrote the screenplay, directs the movie and even stars as a wacky Hitler, well a Hitler as the imagi…

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WikChip Video Taika Waititi cracks wise.
Cabaret
Really Great 66 Points 1972

This paean to lost licentiousness in the face of fascism won eight (8!) Oscars, losing out only on Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (both to The Godfather for Pete’s sake). The movie that made Liza more famous for her talent than her…

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WikChip Image Sexy Brilliance.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Really Great 66 Points 2016

Now this is what a marvelous blockbuster should be. No surprise, as Marvel Entertainment always delivers. And talk about a monumental origin story, one that also harks back to existing plots! Wow. Plus, given that all the X-Men come out to play – all of them – it’s also a sequel in a way. Double …

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WikChip Image JLaw's sexy mutant goes nightstalking.
Thérèse
Great 66 Points 2012

Thérèse is a great film by the great Claude Miller of the great French novel Thérèse Desqueyroux, 1927. Think of it as Madame Bovary in the pine forests of Southwest France. Only Thérèse barely has sex, let alone affairs. Talk about a banal life. Look at her stunning poster visag…

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WikChip Image Taking in their combined estate.
Soul Kitchen
OK 66 Points 2010

A farcical feast at the table of contemporary Germany, Soul Kitchen’s recipe exceeds its ingredients, especially its barely OK screenplay. Seeking to satire the landscape of today’s melting-pot Western society, it ends up as little more than amusing and ultimately tiring. Still it’s worth see…

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WikChip Video The trailer kinda works, like the movie
Barbara
Great 66 Points 2012

Precious few movies about life in communist countries have made an impact in America. Barbara should be one of them. It’s a compelling drama – and a sexy one – about a glamorous doctor torn between two men and the different lives they represent. It’s also an insightful lens into the grim reali…

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WikChip Image Every Move Watched