Auschwitz (2011)

Uwe Boll is best known for his schlocky adaptations of video games, several of which I like far more than they deserve.  He is not, however, a film-maker known for his subtlety, judgment or taste.  So when he announced his intention to make a film about the infamous Nazi extermination camp, it was hardly a surprise (except possibly to Boll) that the news was received with something less than enthusiasm.

The movie itself begins with Boll talking directly to the camera and explaining his reasons for making the film.  In essence, these are that he does not think previous films have properly communicated the horrors of the Holocaust; because young people today (particularly German youths) are ignorant of what occurred; and because genocides are still taking place in the modern world.  All of which are admirable goals, but as the confused and tedious melange which follows so amply demonstrates, he's not the film-maker to achieve them.

Boll's intro is followed by a series of interviews with teenagers, asking them what they know about Auschwitz and the Holocaust - which in most cases can be summed up as 'not much', though a few show glimmers of knowing more - then some archive images of the actual camps, before we head into the 30-40 minute section of scripted film that is the core of the movie.

This section shows two groups of prisoners arriving at Auschwitz, being processed, and then sent to die in the 'showers'.  Afterward, their bodies and belongings are stripped of valuables - gold fillings are pulled out with pliers, hair is shaved for wigs, jewelry is confiscated, and so on.  At the end, two guards discuss the how their comrades are coping with the psychological pressures of being mass executioners, as well as their own plans for escape if the Soviet Army reaches the camp.  In the hands of a skilled writer and director, this work could probably be quite stark and powerful.  In Boll's, it is just dull.

The movie closes with another long section of interviews, and a final statement from Boll that is more or less a repeat of his intro.  And then, after 70 minutes that feel a lot longer, it finally ends.

There's merit in making a film that unflinchingly portrays the banality of Nazi evil, but it requires more talent than Boll possesses to successfully tackle such a challenge.

The Wire, Season 3 (2004)

Pretty much the only reason this is a "Qualified" recommendation is because you probably need to have seen the first two seasons of The Wire in order to get the most impact out of this season.  If you have seen those first two seasons, then you can go straight to a full recommendation, because this is an exceptionally well put-together show.  The acting is solid, the characters are rich and complex, and the scripts are tight as a drum.  There are no lazy "idiot ball" moments here.  When characters mess up - and they do, often - it's for plausible, in-character reasons: they've got a pre-established weakness or blind spot, or they're acting on incorrect information or deductions.  If only more writing - be it for TV, the big screen, or on the page - was as rigorous.

This season sees intense political pressure on the Baltimore Police Department to bring down crime numbers "by any means necessary".  The politicians are probably expecting some creative reclassification of cases and a few more police brutality complaints.  They get both of those things, but they've underestimated just how creative some senior officers can be, which may well cause the whole initiative to blow up in their face.

At the same time, Lieutenant Daniels and his team are trying to make cases against violent, drugs-related offenders: a brief which becomes a lot more urgent when notorious kingpin Avon Barksdale is released from prison and destabilizes what had been a relatively quiet time - in terms of murders, at least - in the narcotics industry.

Not that Barksdale is free of troubles of his own: his right hand man Stringer Bell has led the organisation in a different direction while Avon was incarcerated, and there are young up and comers on the street who are pushing into the gap that's been left.

The Wire is top notch stuff.

The Loved Ones (2009)

Brent's out for a driving lesson with his dad when a bloodied man suddenly appears in the road.  Swerving to avoid the guy, Brent hits a tree and his father is killed.

Six months later, both Brent and his mother are still deeply affected by the accident.  Brent's coping methods - cutting himself with a razor blade and engaging in dangerous solo rock-climbing stunts - aren't exactly the healthiest of options, but thanks to the care and attention of his girlfriend Holly he is slowly becoming more or less functional.  The two are planning to attend the end of school dance together.

Unfortunately, Brent never makes it to the dance.  He's drugged and dragged off instead, and awakes to find himself in a much more macabre and deadly situation ...

The Loved Ones has been described as a "slasher romance", and - in the decidedly off-colour way you might expect of such a combination - it kind of is.  It's also a very black comedy, with sound effects and visual cues used to generate a lot of slightly nervous laughter.  It's deftly directed all round, in fact: nicely shot, and cleverly edited.  I like the way that it implies a lot of terrible things without directly showing them.  They probably did it this way at least partly to save money on effects, as this is a small budget Australian film, but they've made a virtue out of necessity in the process.

The cast is also really good - especially Robin McLeavy's demented little turn.

This is decidedly gruesome, twisted fun, but fun nonetheless.

The Tudors, Season 2 (2008)

I generally avoid spoilers in my reviews, but The Tudors is - admittedly rather loosely - based on actual events that occurred nearly five hundred years ago, and which you may well have learned about at school or college, so I'm going to be a bit less circumspect than normal.  So if you don't know about Henry VIII and you want to watch the show unspoiled, then you should stop reading at the end of this paragraph: because my review for you is "if you don't mind a lot of sex and violence, and some not every nice things happening, then The Tudors is worth seeing for its strong performances and lavish costumes".

Still here?

Right, then I assume you know all about the six wives business and Henry's break with the Pope which led to the formation of the Church of England.  And if you didn't, well, you only have yourself to blame for continuing to read.

Season two of The Tudors begins with the final stages of Henry's quarrel with the Pontiff, as the English King seeks to annul his marriage by any means necessary so he can wed Anne Boleyn.  Anne (brilliantly portrayed by Natalie Dormer) is much younger than his first wife, and Henry believes she will give him the male heir he so desperately desires.  Opposing the breach with Rome becomes steadily more and more dangerous as Henry's patience wears thin with those who do not support his agenda, but Anne's apparent triumph comes with huge risks.  If she fails to provide the son that Henry demands, her fall from grace will be swift and final.  The question of the heir forms the focus of the second half of the season, as allies and enemies within the court jockey for position and intrigue either for or against Anne's interests.  And as you either know, or can guess from the fact that Henry has four more wives to get through yet, Anne isn't going to get out of this season alive.

Maniac (2012)

Frodo's a weirdo loner who's also a serial killer.  And we see a lot of the film as if we were him, with the camera as his eyes.

That's pretty much the whole pitch - and whole content - of this film.  Elijah Wood is Frank Zito, a guy who restores mannequins for a job and who murders and scalps women for a sexual thrill.  I mean yes, we get some backstory about why he (believes he) has this compulsion - in a not exactly stunning display of originality, it's Oedipal - but that doesn't exactly do a lot to extend the formula of the film.  It's pretty much stalk a woman, kill and scalp her, dress up a mannequin to "be" her, have a flashback about mommy, and then repeat.

Even the arrival of Annie - a vivacious photographer with whom Frank is immediately infatuated - doesn't do much to change things up.  Frank still stalks and kills other women, even if he manages to act something approximating normal while in Annie's presence.  The only real evolution therefore is that we now switch to waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Annie to become the movie's Final Girl.

I wish I could say that things get more interesting when that shoe does drop, but frankly they just get sillier.

One for gore hounds only.

Archer, Season 3 (2011)

Season 3 of this off-colour spy spoof starts with Sterling Archer on a South Pacific bender of booze, women and becoming a Pirate King, and ends when he and the rest of the ISIS agency take part in a spacefaring mission that turns Moonraker up to 11  There are plenty of over the top hi-jinks in between those book ends, of course, including Burt Reynolds, cyborgs, and the Yakuza.  Not all at the same time, alas, but the show has several more seasons to run, so we can hope.

I've discussed the crazy, messed-up nature of this show in my reviews of the previous seasons, so I won't go over that in detail again.  Instead I wanted to call out something I really like about show, which is that no matter how silly it is - and it can be very silly - it remains internally consistent within its own events.  So it's perfectly okay to have both functional cyborgs and ubiquitous cell phones while the USSR still exists and World War 1 veterans appear to be in their 70s, but once the show establishes something about a character, it sticks to it.  Stuff that seems like a throwaway gag when introduced will be retained and referenced later.  It has a low key but consistent attention to continuity that would shame most "serious" TV shows.  Stuff that happens in the show informs events later on, which adds a nice extra touch of interest when you're watching a bunch of episodes back to back, and it helps to make characters feel more rounded because when we learn things about them, those things stay relevant and true later on.

If you liked earlier seasons of Archer, I see no reason you wont have a great time with this one, too.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

I've said of a number of films in this set that they don't make movies like this any more, and that goes double for A Bridge Too Far.  Not only is it another ensemble based piece that is most interested in depicting the strategic sweep of events, ahead of personal stories - though it does show more of the latter than some of the other movies in this set - but it is also unapologetically a film where the good guys fail.

Operation Market Garden, the offensive on which the film was based, was an Allied attempt to break the German defences on the Rhine and expose the Third Reich's industrial heartland to a land attack.  Had it succeeded, it might have ended the war as much as six months earlier.  But it was always a gamble, requiring three groups of paratroops to land up to 60 miles (100 km) behind German lines, seize several key bridges, and then hold out for several days until an armoured thrust could reach them.  And said armoured thrust could only make the journey on a single narrow, raised road, because all the other terrain was too swampy for heavy vehicles to traverse.

Hardly the easiest of circumstances, and the plan also relied on good weather, and on an assumption that the attack would face only "old men and boys".  In fact, they would face veteran troops and armoured units under the command of Field Marshal Model, widely regarded as one of the finest defensive commanders of the war.

A Bridge Too Far is thus a film about heroism in the face of terrible adversity.  And as I said, a film that's ultimately about failure, when no amount of heroism can overcome the odds.

I suspect if it were made today it would make a much bigger deal of Operation Berlin, where 2,400 besieged paratroopers withstood massive German attacks and then escaped back to Allied lines, to give us a Dunkirk style story of  "victory". Well, as someone much more notable than I once said: "wars are not won on evacuations".

This is a sombre film, but one worth seeing, I think.