It's Oscar Weekend
I must be in the grip of Oscar weekend. Here are additional films I can recommend in no particular order. Some famous, some obscure.
Midway. Henry Fonda, Charlton Heston, and many more, including Toshiro Mifune, who plays Admiral Yamamoto. “Scratch one flat-top” was a pithy phrase which may have marked the turning point of the Pacific war.
Mister Roberts. Also Henry Fonda, as well as Jack Lemmon (Academy Award for this one), Ward Bond and William Powell.
In Which We Serve. British, 1942, High seas. One of David Lean’s first films. With Noel Coward.
(and now to dry out)
The Desert Rats. WW2 Libya. Richard Burton - one of his first starring roles, James Mason, Robert Newton
Lawrence of Arabia . David Lean’s greatest? Should be a misdemeanor to watch this on a small screen. Historically, a British fleet was shelling Aqaba.
The Hill. Prison camp movie set in WW2 Libya. Starring Sean Connery between his roles as James Bond in Goldfinger and Thunderball.
Lion of the Desert. A 2 a.m type film starring Anthony Quinn and Oliver Reed, about Libyan patriot Omar Mukhtar, who led resistance against Italians in the 1920s and 1930s. The film was directed by Moustapha Akkad, born in Syria and educated at USC, who achieved success as exec. producer of the Halloween series. He and his daughter were in Jordan in 2005 to attend a wedding when they were killed by a suicide bomber, an act which helped turn Jordanian opinion against Al Qaeda.
Battle of Algiers. A French-made anti-colonial film about the urban guerilla war between the Algerians and the French.
55 Days at Peking. Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner. Besieged foreign diplomatic enclave during the Boxer Rebellion.
Alexander Nevsky. Russian, 1939. About 13th century Russian resistance to the Teutonic Knights, intended to stir resentment against the Nazis prior to WW2 (released only a few months before the Molotov-von Ribbentrop non aggression pact) Directed by Eisenstein with a score by Prokofiev. The Battle on the Ice is a half hour sequence considered to be among the greatest cinematic battle scenes ever filmed.
Tunes of Glory. Post WW2 barracks film about a Scottish regiment. Alex Guinness considered it to be among his best performances (I could barely recognize him in his character).
Kagemusha. Directed by the great Akira Kurasawa.