There is a really great plot idea in Burial: In 1945, at the tail-end of World War II, a small band of Soviet soldiers is tasked with secretly hauling Hitler's body across Poland where it will be put …
Though there are countless dramas of Jewish people hiding in Europe during World War II, The Invisibles focuses on a select group that many (including myself) may not know about. At one point in 1943,…
Georg Elser (Christian Friedel), a small town carpenter and musician, spends his time being a ladies' man and flirting with married women at the beer hall where he plays accordion in the evenings. Loc…
Based on Diane Ackerman's book, the story revolves around the titular character, a woman named Antonina Zabinski (Jessica Chastain). She is sort of an animal whisperer at the Warsaw Zoo, where she hel…
When Zev Guttman (Christopher Plummer) stumbles from his bed in an assisted living facility, calling for his dead wife, Ruth, there is little to suggest that this fragile old man would be capable of c…
All along I've been thinking that Defiance is an insufficient name for a film about surviving the Holocaust. It's too nondescript, too generic--the movie could be about anything, really. Why not give …
North Face promises—and delivers—all the token movie-poster exclamations: Romance! Adventure! Danger! Death! And, yes, even Nazis!
Based a true story, North Face tells the tale of two Germans and two…
When I was 16, I became obsessed with classic Hollywood films, which sprung forth from a summer vacation reading and viewing of Gone With the Wind. I hopped from director to actor to genre, absorbing …
When I had heard that The Book Thief was being made into a movie, I pitied the director who would be faced with the challenge of adapting such a lovely book to the big screen. Markus Zusak's novel, ab…
In a very interesting and striking promotional stunt for a movie, The Book Thief's marketers from Fox paid for a two-page ad campaign of no words, no images... nothing. In fact, it must have been alar…
Perhaps showing what a timeless classic it is, Casablanca has provoked different reactions in me depending on when in my life I saw the film. I first watched it as a teenager when I was in the throes …
If you have never seen Cabaret, your impression may just be that of Liza Minelli's iconic role as Sally Bowles with her jazz hands and bowler hat, dancing saucily with a chair. Well, yes, that scene i…
