Articles by Neil Rosen
War and Remembrance is the follow up to Winds of War. John Gielgud is cast as the art historian Aaron Plaskow and Jane Seymour replaces Ali Magraw as his niece Natalie. Robert Morley comes in as the jovial British war correspondent Tugsbury whose daughter Pamela (Victoria Tennant) falls in love [...]
Rise and Kill First/ Ronen Bergman
Thi is an account of the targeted assassinations conducted by the Caesarea unit of the Mossad. The writer does not take a sympathetic stance and states their futility. Although the killings were sanctioned by the Prime Minister, the Mossad soon became a state within a state and though subject to [...]
Robert Mitchum and Winds of War
The recent reference in Bernadette’s (Angell) negative review of World on Fire to Winds of War prompted me to acquire the 6 DVDs of the series and revisit the career of Robert Mitchum, one of my favourites of the leading Hollywood actors. Robert Mitchum was certainly not yer normal Hollywood [...]
Lost in Translation
The Rusters asked me to recommend an in-flight movie from the menu and I chose one of my favourite films set in Tokyo – Lost in Translation. It is the first film directed by Sofia Coppola and featured memorable performances by Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray. Bill Murray born in Chicago [...]
CHURCHILL AND THE MOVIE MOGUL/BBC 4
I saw and read both sides of the argument yesterday in the Rust. The BBC has lost direction and as often happens where there is an impasse a dominating but not necessarily representative group appears, in this case the sisterhood. Virtually every arts programme has a feminist contributor who does [...]
Film criticism and Mark Kermode
In France film reviewing is taken very seriously. The film review magazine Cahiers du Cinema – literally translated as “Exercise books of Cinema” – spawned a fine generation of Auteurs like Jean Luc Goddard, Francois Truffaut and Alain Resnais. In the UK film reviewing can [...]
Secret of the Unicorn
There has been some reportage on the Rust on recalling the moon landings which prompted me to investigate whether a film or TV series cartoon was made of the two stories Destination Moon and Explorers of the Moon by Hergé featuring Tintin and Captain Haddock’s lunar exploration. I could not find [...]
Stanley Kubrick exhibition at the Design Centre
Monday I went to the Stanley Kubrick exhibition which was exceptionally well curated. Kubrick’s canon of films Paths of Glory, Spartacus, Dr Strangelove, Lolita, Clockwork Orange, Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket are notable for their sheer diversity and the costume drama Barry Lyndon remains [...]
Mr Klein (1976)
A few years ago I met up with the noted French film buff Ginette Vincendeau. Conversation turned to what was essentially a complicity by the Vichy Government with the occupying Nazis leading to the infamous round up (Le rafle) of the Parisien Jews In 1942. Some of the French police officers in Le [...]
Defending war films
Whenever I meet my fellow film reviewers at the Sundance Film Festival rest assured when we take a latte after some indie film of indescribable tedium and conversation turns to our favourite genres and films I’m under bombardment for enjoying war films most, yet I continue to defend them not [...]