Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018)

It had been surprisingly long since my last anime movie that was unambiguously a fantasy. All I knew about this one was the cover image, but it seemed promising as a departure from my latest viewings.

In what I'd call a flintlock fantasy, Maquia belongs to a human(oid?) race called the Iorph, who stop physically aging in adolescence. They live in a secluded utopia until an invasion by the Mezarte kingdom, bent on learning how to replicate their longevity. In the commotion, Maquia, then age 15, rides a Renato (read: six-eyed wyvern) and ends up far away. She discovers and adopts a newborn orphaned boy, whom she dubs Ariel. Over the course of decades, she must find her place with regard to Mezarte society, the surviving Iorph, and Ariel.

Beasts of No Nation (2015)

For all its plaudits, this bombed at the box office. Some theaters declined to play it because it also went straight to Netflix streaming. Plus, I suspect that many prospective viewers were reluctant to watch such a dark story in an immersive environment with no pause option. Well, there's no better time for me to check out something bleak than right after a fun flick.

The film was shot in Ghana, with some lines in Krio and Twi, but honors its title by not specifying where in West Africa it's set. The decade is hard to guess too. Amid a civil war, prepubescent boy Agu (Abraham Attah) gets separated from some of his relatives and witnesses the killing of the rest. He runs into a rebel battalion, whose unnamed Commandant (Idris Elba) recruits him with an almost fatherly approach. That's not much if any better than wandering the wilderness alone....

Hondo (1953)

I chose this from my YouTube list partly for its short runtime, 84 minutes. Imagine my surprise to see "Intermission" about halfway through. No, there's no several-minute segment for music, much as I like the John Williams-esque scoring.

In an unspecified Old West setting, unhorsed, somewhat notorious soldier Hondo Lane (John Wayne) arrives at a remote homestead to fuel up and buy a horse. He meets Angie Low (Geraldine Page) and her young son, Johnny (Lee Aaker), but not her long-absent and unaccounted-for husband, Ed (Leo Gordon). Hondo warns that local Apaches are gearing up for war on the frontiersmen. Angie feels confident that if a recent treaty doesn't dissuade the Apaches from attacking her, her benevolent past will, but Hondo wisely disagrees. He keeps a close watch, gradually hoping to fill the void Ed left behind.

Ike: Countdown to D-Day (2004)

I seem to be watching more movies involving soldiers lately, including a few rewatches I didn't write about on this blog. It's not that my interest has grown. In this case, I noted that the anniversary of D-Day is coming up. And the TV movie runs less than 90 minutes without commercial breaks.

The story begins in December 1943, but the exact number of days remaining is first shown after one of several time jumps, to March 1944. It ends, of course, shortly after the Normandy landings. General Dwight Eisenhower (Tom Selleck without a mustache) spends the interim mostly hashing out details with other important figures, including Omar Bradley (James Remar), George S. Patton (Gerald McRaney), Walter Bedell Smith (Timothy Bottoms), Winston Churchill (Ian Mune), and Charles de Gaulle (George Shevtsov).

Sniper: Inside the Crosshairs (2009)

Had I given this choice a little more thought, I would have saved it for Memorial Day weekend. At the time, I just picked it for the 90-minute runtime and the change in genre from what I'd seen lately.

Specifically, it's a documentary about some of the most accomplished living snipers in the U.S. Army. Some may have been the MVPs of their platoons, key to winning battles that were otherwise not in their favor. Others were impressive in breaking records. Personally, I didn't bother remembering their names, because I took more interest in the technical side: physics and other factors to consider for efficacy.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Man, I'd last seen a Hobbit movie before I started this blog more than a decade ago. The threequel was reputed to be the weakest link in a pale imitation of The Lord of the Rings, hence my lack of hurry to see it. Nonetheless, it looked like the most promising DVD I hadn't watched in my local library, having better ratings from general audiences than from critics.

The Desolation of Smaug ends with halfling Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) accidentally inspiring the titular event. Not long into TBotFA, human archer Bard (Luke Evans) slays the rampaging Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch), but that's not the end of the dragon's evil influence. One of Bilbo's dwarven companions, King Thorin (Richard Armitage), finds Smaug's trove almost as corruptive as the One Ring and refuses to share any of it with the humans of newly burned Lake-town, despite his prior oath and their obvious need. When elven King Thranduil (Lee Pace) comes with an army to claim a family treasure, Thorin is undaunted, and the other dwarves obediently prepare to fight. Perhaps fortunately, before the first casualty, the arrival of two armies of darkness induces the other three to team up.

How the West Was Won (1962)

I'd seen this title many times over the years, thanks primarily to its all-star cast. For a profitable epic, it's had a pretty middling reception on rating sites, but it did net some Academy Awards. I chose to watch it not long after my last John Wayne western because I knew no better way to kill 164 minutes last night.

No other western I know takes place over such a long period. It's divided into five chapters, spanning from 1839 to 1889. The focus is on the westward-moving Prescott family, including but not limited to patriarch Zebulon (Karl Malden), matriarch Rebecca (Agnes Moorehead), and daughters Eve (Carroll Baker) and Lilith (Debbie Reynolds). Eve takes a shine to wandering fur trader Linus Rawlings (James Stewart), while Lilith falls for gambler Cleve van Valen (Gregory Peck). Their lives are partly affected by the California Gold Rush, the War Between the States, and other armed conflicts.

Father Goose (1964)

I hadn't heard of this movie before YouTube suggested it. It turns out to have been Cary Grant's second-to-last work and one of his favorites, not least because he acts more like himself than ever before. (No, the protagonist doesn't do any drugs besides whiskey.)

American civilian sailor Walter Eckland (Grant) swipes Australian naval supplies and openly cares only about himself, so we don't feel too scandalized when Commander Frank Houghton (Trevor Howard) strong-arms him into staying at a Papua New Guinea hut and watching for Japanese planes during World War II. He hears about an eligible replacement he can fetch, but by the time he arrives, the replacement has been killed. All he finds are teacher Catherine Freneau (Leslie Caron) and seven female students of various ages, two of whom speak only French. Reluctantly, Walter takes them to the relative safety of his hut, where Catherine disapproves of his slovenly lifestyle. The navy can't rescue them any time soon, so they'll have to get used to each other.

Number 24 (2024)

I picked the first war epic I could find for Veterans Day. Not much has been written about it yet, because it's a Norwegian indie with limited screening, but it gets a warm reception among viewers.

In old age, Gunnar Sønsteby guest-lectures a class about his life from shortly before World War II to the end of it, during part of which he was Agent #24 of Britain's Special Operations Executive. In particular, he coordinated the Oslo Gang, which specialized in sabotaging German occupation projects, usually with explosives, but expanded to assassinations.

Midway (1976)

I considered saving the last U.S. war movie left on my list for a patriotic holiday, much as I like to save horrors for October. But in all likelihood, I wouldn't remember on time. Besides, I was already in the mood for something very different from what else I'd seen lately.

The story begins with the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April '42. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Tohiro Mifune overdubbed by Paul Frees) sees it as a blessing in disguise, because now his superiors will give him carte blanche for his next move. Soon after, U.S. intelligence staff supervised by Commander Joseph Rochefort (Hal Holbrook) and monitored by composite character Captain Matthew Garth (Charlton Heston) find inconclusive evidence that Japan's next target is Midway Atoll. By the time of the eponymous battle in June, U.S. naval forces are not fully prepared and consider themselves the underdog.

Brothers After War (2025)

This is the first documentary sequel I've ever seen. Brothers at War (2009) escaped my notice, but this one has a much higher IMDb rating, albeit with few votes yet. When I happened to be very close to the theater, I picked this viewing partly for a convenient start time and partly because someone I trust had endorsed it.

Director Jake Rademacher has surprisingly many literal brothers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here he pays visits to them and some veteran friends, including women, to see how they're doing. (None of my sources name them all.) Some are doing quite well; others are struggling on at least one front. They all know soldiers who died either in battle or later by suicide.

Unbroken (2014)

For Veterans Day, I picked the first new-to-me war movie I found on Netflix. I did not know that it was directed by Angelina Jolie and co-written by the Coen Brothers, but those facts would have increased my curiosity.

In 1943, Olympic runner Louie Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) is serving as a U.S. Air Force captain when his plane gives out over the Pacific. For nearly half the movie, he and the other two crash survivors, Phil (Domnhall Gleeson) and Mac (Finn Witrock), are holding out on rafts. Then they get taken as POWs, which is a worse situation in some ways, particularly under the war crime-level command of "the Bird" (Miyavi).

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

The only Godzilla movie I'd seen before was the 1954 original, which my dad and I found surprisingly serious. Most of the rest sounded schlocky, and Pacific Rim confirmed that I had little interest in kaiju. But GMO (heh, appropriate initials) got such a warm reception that I had planned to see it in a theater, only to discover that I'd waited too long. Once I saw that it was on Netflix, I pounced.

The story is really about Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a World War II pilot who first cheats his way out of a kamikaze mission and then is too scared to shoot the titular mutant dinosaur during an island rampage. He goes home to face poverty in a bombed Tokyo neighborhood where neighbors tend to blame his cowardice, tho one Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe) and an orphan in her care, Akiko (Sae Nagatani), shack up with him to improve their chances. He gets a job sweeping for naval mines -- and then sees that Godzilla has gotten even larger in the wake of Bikini Atoll experiments. As further devastation ensues, Shikishima and his compatriots (among them Hidetaka Yoshioka, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Yuki Yamada, and Munetaka Aoki) can see that the world's governments aren't helping, so they take it upon themselves to try to kill the beast.

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

A preview had intrigued me ahead of this documentary's release, but then I forgot. Seems nobody in my circles was talking about it, despite Peter Jackson directing (not that my circles frequently discuss documentaries). Only when Netflix announced that it would stop streaming did I jump at the chance. A 99-minute runtime for the theatrical cut helped.

There is no main narrator herein. Instead, we get recorded recollections from various British World War I veterans (who, ironically, sound like they did grow old) overlaying video, photos, and editorial cartoons. We don't learn any names before the end credits, so it manages to be generally anonymous yet decidedly personal.

Oppenheimer (2023)

I knew my dad and I would have to see this while it was still in theaters. Not only is it popular, but it loses something on a smaller screen. Not that nuclear explosions, "real" or imagined, make up much of the three hours.

The story covers the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) from his doctoral student days in 1926 to his receipt of the Enrico Fermi Award in '63. His key work on the Manhattan Project and reactions to its aftermath tend to dominate the focus, but there's more to it than that. He hangs out with communists too much for the comfort of authorities, and two party members, eventual wife Kitty Puening (Emily Blunt) and codependent Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), become his love interests.

Rio Grande (1950)

It is by sheer accident that I have watched all of John Ford's Cavalry Trilogy in chronological order, the first two entries being Fort Apache (which I didn't review for some reason) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (which I remember better than I predicted). I also didn't intend to watch two Victor McLaglen movies in a row, but oh well.

In 1879, Lt Col. Kirby Yorke (John Wayne), owing largely to military obligations, has not seen his wife, Kathleen (Maureen O'Hara), or their son, Jeff (Claude Jarman, Jr.), since the Valley campaigns of 1864. Then they both show up at his Texas fort at once -- Jeff to serve as a trooper and Kathleen to try to get him out of it. This is not an ideal environment for a reunion, especially when the regiment has to defend settlers from a string of Apache raids.

Dishonored (1931)

This movie has a lot of the same people involved as the next year's Shanghai Express. Maybe that's why it was recommended to me. At any rate, I moved it up in my queue because it probably won't be streaming anywhere soon.

In 1915 Vienna, Marie (Marlene Dietrich) has turned to prostitution to make ends meet after her husband died in the war. When the Austrian Secret Service chief (Gustav von Seyffertitz) overhears her declare that she fears neither life nor death, he tests her patriotism and then invites her to become a spy a la Mata Hari. In particular, she is to seduce suspected Russian mole Col. von Hindau (Warner Oland) until she can intercept his intel. His correspondent, Col. Kranau (Victor McLaglen), is a tougher nut to crack....

Pork Chop Hill (1959)

I've hardly seen any depictions of the Korean War outside of M*A*S*H, which involves little to no onscreen battle. For more of that, I figured on Lewis Milestone to do a good job. And it's based on a soldier's account, so I stood to learn true history.

In 1953, the Chinese People's Volunteer Army seizes the American outpost on the titular hill. Lt. Joseph G. Clemons (Gregory Peck) leads K Company in an effort to recapture it, starting before dawn. But higher-ups have not prepared them well. For example, one border is much better defended than was said, keeping L Company too busy to meet up as soon as expected. It soon becomes apparent that heavy losses will follow.

Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)

OK, so I got a head start on my war movie viewing for Memorial Day. This one may have caught my attention because of John Wayne getting an Oscar nod for it when he thought his She Wore a Yellow Ribbon performance worthier. As it is, some viewers think SoIJ is great, and some think Wayne is the only great thing about it. I'm sure four years after World War II wasn't great timing for public interest either.

The story begins with some U.S. Marines arriving in New Zealand in 1943. Sgt. John Stryker (Wayne) strikes me as a typical harsh sarge, but his men deem him unusually so. Most personally hostile to him are PFC Pete Conway (John Agar), son of a colonel whom Stryker liked but who wasn't a kind father, so Conway tars Stryker by association; and PFC Al Thomas (Forrest Tucker), on whom Stryker had snitched in the past. As a former sergeant major with a drinking problem, Stryker doesn't have the cleanest record himself. Nevertheless, his overall approach gradually wins the men's admiration, starting with the Battle of Tarawa. And you can guess the climactic setting.

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

The 1930 adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque novel was my favorite Academy Best Picture of the decade. How could a remake live up to it? Well, for one thing, the visual quality hasn't aged well. Also, its "Germans" make no attempt not to sound like Americans, whereas this version was German-made.

In 1917, four teenage friends, the most focal being Paul (Felix Kammerer), are moved to join the German army. They soon find themselves in a northern French trench with the more seasoned "Kat" (Albrecht Schuch), who helps steal food for them. About a year passes in total. As for the rest, all I really need to tell you is that the source material is antiwar....