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Rambo: First Blood, Part II
Film
1985
Stallone goes back to Vietnam to rescue a bunch of abandoned PoW's in the most successful of the three insanely macho action adventures. Sly mangles dialogue as if he is chewing bullets while indulging in ludicrous comicstrip heroics. But remember: this was cooked up when a B-movie actor was in the White House. This big, dumb and fun film definitely says 'no' to diplomacy.
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FEature
Ran
Film
1985
The Japanese master director Akira Kurosawa tackles Shakespeare in this epic retelling of King Lear. Kurosawa sets the tale in 16th Century Japan. Aging warlord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) is preparing to divide his land up between his three sons. Refusing to take part in hypocritical professions of love for material gain, Daisuke Ryu fulfils the same role as Cordelia in Shakespeare's original. As the sons bicker and argue over the division of the spoils, the aging lord is driven from his home and slowly goes mad. A landmark of world cinema, this is a rousing, staggering epic and a haunting drama of timeless significance.
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Feature
Reach For The Sky
Film
1956
A film with all the clichés of heroism and overcoming disability, still leaves one with no doubt that Douglas Bader was a remarkable man. He had both his legs amputated after a flying accident in the early 30s and when war came, he flew for the RAF, being forced to bail out over Germany where he was taken prisoner, eventually placed in Colditz. This very British affair is made bearable by Kenneth More's humorous and inspiring portrayal of Bader. The moments that are particularly powerful are those in which he attempts to walk again with artificial legs.
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The Red Badge Of Courage
Film
1951
John Huston's pet project had a troubled history: he fought with MGM over casting and initial test screenings led to swift re-editing. To look at it now, you'd never know there'd been a problem; the film works as a powerful evocation of how a man can be affected by war. Audie Murphy stars as the eager young Civil War recruit whose keenness for combat is soon quenched when he experiences the full horrors of the war first-hand. Having quit the battlefield, he has to decide whether to muster up the courage to return or to give in to his fears and forever live with the guilt.
Regeneration
Film
1997
Based on the acclaimed novel by Pat Barker, Regeneration portrays the lives of various victims of shell-shock being treated at a psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh during the First World War. Among those inmates are the anti-war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The film is moving, not just because of the subtly conveyed horrors of war, but because of its story of a poet discovering his voice in a hitherto unimaginable world.
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Ride With The Devil
Film
1999
Set during the American Civil War, Ang Lee's superbly crafted film infuses new life into a well-known period by concentrating on the local battles and rivalries so that the confrontation is more personal and intense. This is not an abstract view of the divisions but a fiercely compassionate one, which charts a young boy's (Tobey Maguire) growth to manhood.
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Rome, Open City
Film
1945
Roberto Rossellini's first film of the post-Mussolini era is a real rough diamond, neo-realism par excellence, shot with hand-held cameras on the streets of Rome. It's based on the true story of a priest killed by the Nazis in wartime Italy, and Aldo Fabrizi brings an embattled matter-of-factness to the role of the doomed resistance worker Don Pietro, but the real power comes from the non-professional actors in the smaller roles - the children and the women on the street.
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Feature
Run Silent, Run Deep
Film
1958
This taut submarine thriller was one of Clark Gable's final films, in which he plays sole surviving commander from a torpedoed sub who's then put in charge of another, much to the chagrin of its second in command. It soon becomes clear that the commander is preoccupied with hunting down the Japanese destroyer that previously attacked his sub, leading his men into danger in order to avenge his previous humiliation.
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