Movies -- A Recap -- Part XLIII -- War or War-Adjacent Stories

The Zookeeper's Wife follows a Warsaw couple through WWII as they use their zoo to guide Jews fleeing the Nazi occupation of Poland, while also trying to care for the animals who remain.  The couple's faith is tested as Jan leaves his wife at the zoo to join the Warsaw uprising.  I found the actors' accents distracting at times as they came in and out, but it was also nice that some of the cast were German or Polish, which mitigated that in some scenes.

I stumbled upon The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare on an airplane (I saw someone else watching it and had to figure out what it was!) and boy, was it a trip - and based on a true story! It's a little bit hard to comprehend something described as an "action comedy war film," until you realize that it's also a Guy Ritchie film; then somehow it all makes sense. A group of undercover renegade British soldiers aboard a fishing boat set about planning and executing an attack on a German resupply base.  Chaos ensues.  I didn't recognize a lot of the cast, but thought they were well-selected for their roles.

The critical reviews for All Quiet on the Western Front were what got my attention.  I had read the book a couple of times and may not have bothered with the movie if it had not been so well received.  (I have not seen either of the other two film adaptations, done in 1930 and 1979.)  The story more or less follows the book: a young, idealistic German boy signs up to fight for the fatherland. He quickly realizes that war is not what he imagined.  It's a dark, sad story; WWI may have been the worst kind of hell.  I would recommend steering clear of this one if you find yourself lacking the stomach for gore; "visceral" is a good word to describe it.  But other than that  I'll leave it to you to decide whether it stands up to the hype.

As you know, I adore Matt Damon.  The Good Shepherd is one of those sprawling spy stories (in this case, mostly fictionalized) that covers decades of someone's life - in part because the things that happened to them all those years ago shaped who they are and how they got here, and in part because the art of good spycraft often unfolds over years or decades. Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, and we follow him all the way from his days at Yale to his ascension to the highest rungs of the CIA.  It's a long, slow, character-builder, but I was entertained the whole time not only by Matt's lovely face, but also by the historical clothes and styling, as well as the scenes set in England. If I ever thought, though, that I wanted to be in the CIA, this movie is a good reminder that it would be a terrifying way to live.

Ahh, what a classic G.I. Jane has become for me.  When I want to watch something that's not a war movie but has heavy military presence, it's always fun to watch Demi Moore become the world's most badass lady. And, though I didn't begin to like Viggo Mortensen until he transformed himself into Aragorn (which is really the version of him that I like most), he does a nice turn as Master Chief in this film.