Yet MORE Alternative Movies....

MUNICH - Steven Spielberg's epic account of the people involved with the fateful 1938 Munich Conference and the consequences that start to develop. It caused a great controversy for portraying Adolf Hitler (Gary Beach) as a total human being arguing that the manipulations of the Allies drove him on his path to vengeance....

Eric Bana (The Hulk) stars as a Hearst Movie Tone News producer with an Anti Jewish attitude who falls in love with a German Jewish debutante (Naomi Watts) blind to the fate of her people as she keeps flitting from party to party.

Also starring are comic actor Rowan Atkinson making a break into drama as PM Neville Chamberlain and Sir Anthony Hopkins as Winston Churchill. Nicholas Cage also makes an impressive showing as a Polish Diplomat trying to warn all involved about the dangers of Hitler and Nazism to the deaf ears of all the principles....

Spielberg associate John Williams produces another outstanding score and we see cameos by director John Landis as the American Ambassador, Jack Black as a Communist Spy posing as a Comedian, and Gwyneth Paltrow as a female British Journalist covering the Conference.....

THE PRODUCERS - Musical Comic Yarn with Nathan Lane & Matthew Broderick as partners in a candy making business being forced out of business by the spoiled rotten daughter (Uma Thurman) of a rival who seeks to create an affordable candy for Depression Era kiddies.....

Dakota Fanning also stars as a wise acre brat who unwittingly helps Lane & Broderick come up with a sweetmeat that winds up unsurping Thurmans plans....

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Controversial WW II drama that ranks with ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT & THE VICTORS with its blood soaked depiction of the 36th Infantry Divison's assault on Mount Trocchio dubbed "Brokeback Mountain" due to the numerous casulties incurred, last height before Monte Cassino during the bloody and questionable Rapido River operation in 1944....

Jake Gykenhall and Heath Ledger play American GI's with the 36th Texas Outfit who over the course of 2 days see their unit decimated into a surviving force of 141 men...Controversial too is the depiction of General Mark W. Clark (David Schwimmer of FRIENDS) as a cold uncaring Military Leader determined to grab a piece of glory without a thought for the men he commands....

Dale Dye once again put the actors through an authentic boot camp which involed them being rained upon and lying in the mud to bring home the gritty heart wrenching atmosphere of the Italian Campaign....

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is memorable for its final line uttered by an aged Italian woman (Talia Shire in a stunning cameo) happening upon an aged Ledger and Gykenhall revisiting the battlefield in 1979 and with one look at their eyes says....

"Were you at the Rapido? "

Saturday Night Fever - An account of one town's struggle, and losses, over the course of one night while dealing with the Spanish Flu.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK - Brad Pitt stars as a Austrian explorer/adventurer escaping from a British Internment Camp in India in 1943 and encountering an advanced Civilisation that includes the lovable Nicole Kidman (the future Mrs. Pitt) and Traci Lords ....

Pitt comes across them whilst seeking shelter in a Tibetan cave during a snowstorm and is forced to go underground by fierce Yeti's in which he comes across the survivors of the so called "wicked race" destroyed by Noah's flood who built their own ark and came to rest in a secluded Tibetan valley. Since then they moved underground and have achieved many scientific advances such as flying discs, advanced medical proceedures, and creature hybridization

Pitt also encounters the survivors of a 1920's Expedition including Dr Shaun Winchester and his companions Liz and Ed who sought to find this Lost Race based upon texts they discovered in a Calcutta temple. Also present is the dashing and handsome USAAF Pilot Capt. Henry "Indiana" Jones (Bruce Campbell) who crash landed flying the Hump. One thing Pitt realises is that they have'nt aged a day due to the conditions underground....

Despite the beauty of Kidman & Lords not to mention the scientific wonders, the Race has not abandoned its wicked ways since the days of Noah. Pitt finds out they have been manipulating the Human Race into a massive destructive war all through recorded history and are aiding Hitler & the Axis Powers into achieving the destruction of the Surface Civilisations. Afterwards, the Race will rule over the shattered remnants thanks to its flying discs and science....

Eventually Pitt and his companions must overlook the divisions taking place between their respective nations and escape from these people.....

Steven Spielberg & George Lucas came up with the concept of this Movie based upon Richard Shaver's I REMEMBER LEMURIA serial in Amazing Stories. Earlier plans for Raiders were shelved due to the inability of Tom Selleck to take the Indiana Jones (Depicted as a College Professor/Explorer) role in 1981 and the walkout of Harrison Ford due to a contract dispute....

RAIDERS brings back memories of the 1930's - 40's Serials that thrilled our Parents and Grandparents especially when Campbell manages to take on 3 giant spiders sent after the group making their escape to the surface with only a shotgun !

Nicole Kidman passed on the Tom Cruise bomb Days of Thunder to do this flick after DEAD CALM and fell in love with Pitt and they remain married to this day. Traci Lords signed on as part of her flight from Porn Roles and went on to become an accomplished actress with roles as Amber Waves in the Burt Reynolds Crime Flick BOOGIE NIGHTS

Pitt and Campbell would also achieve success with Pitt going on to assume the James Bond role in 1993. Campbell was signed by director Sam Raimi who filled in for Spielberg after he came down with dysentery on the set. Afterwards Campbell and Raimi would go on to film two Sequels INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM which finds Jones taking on the descendents of the Civilisation in Manchuria allied with the Japanese in 1945 and INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADEin which Jones takes on the evil Ark survivors seeking the Templar Treasure in 1950's Turkey along with Soviet Agents led by Angelina Jolie. Although entertaining, they never came up to the standard of the first film....

Superb!!!! What an interesting idea!!!!

Of Mice and Men (USA, 1967).
A typical 'problem' film of the decade, this well-acted and well-scripted movie traces the love story between a brilliant researcher involved in a vaccine test programme and an animal-rights activist protesting her work. As the story progresses, the activist turns out to have contracted the very illness the programme was set up to combat and, refusing to benefit from what he considers unethical, turns down his lover's offer to participate in the first human tests. His deathbed scene is the occasion of a rather too lengthy speech marring an otherwise excellent piece of low-budget, high-quality studio craft.


Batman! (GB/India 1993)
A biopic of Ahmad Khan, the first cricketer to bat for Oxford in 1887, and his life's work to establish cricket as a vehicle for national pride and unity. Memorable mostly for cameo appearances of Sean Connery as Viceroy Lord Dufferin and Kenneth Branagh as Abdul Karim, Queen Victoria's munshi, the film played well in India (and in bootleg versions in Pakistan, where it remains illegal), but failed in mainstream European theatres.


The Insider (USA, 2002)
A biopic presenting a somewhat rose-tinted, but substantially accurate retelling of the career of George Herbert Walker Bush, decorated fighter pilot, selfmade millionaire, CIA spymaster and vice president, largely credited with holding together the Reagan administration during the crucial months of the President's well concealed illness in 1987, when the Berlin Wall was opened.


The Red Baron (GB 1974)
This rather unfortunate attempt at combining serious history and black comedy traces the life of Baron Rogge, a Russian intellectual and Communist agitator, from his first meetings with Friedrich Engels to his participation in the Paris Commune and his hairsbreadth escape from Russia into a comfortable British exile. The baron's reputation as a womaniser is used to the full, stringing together a series of nude and semi-nude scenes interspersed with rather hackneyed political pronunciamentos. Today mostly valued by Britt Eklund fans for containing her first FFN scene (cut in the UK release version, but retained in the French version and restored in the director's cut).

The Great Raid (GB/Australia, 2005)
A visually stunning movie about Operation Jaywick, a raid into Singapore Harbor. Starring Bill Nighy as Bill Reynolds, and Orlando Bloom as Ivan Lyon

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (US/JAPAN 2005) - Director John Woo's First War Film set during the "forgotten" occupation of the Aleutian Islands during 1942-43 by Japanese Forces. This has been hailed by many critics as a masterpiece ranking along with DAS BOOT and STALINGRAD for its perspective in the eyes of the enemy....

MOTP tells the story of 3 idealistic young recruits Saito, Kirshimi, and Naguto who join the Army seeking adventure as modern day Samurai, once out of basic training they are sent to attack and occupy Attu Island. Soon their visions of glory evaporate as their force is slowly turned lethargic by disease, enemy fire, and insanity...

Saito is shot down by his Commanding Officer when he tells him he cannot participate in an attack due to frostbite, Naguto freeezes to death after trying to reach their lines after a raid on a American Mess Hall for food, and Kirshimi is left alone podering the meaning of it all. He is ordered to take part in a final banzai charge and he then recollects the childhood antics of Saito and Naguto in the snows of Northern Japan marching as brave warriors and then hearing Saito's drunken father derieding them as marching penguins.....

He keeps replaying this memory over and over again as his remaining force is blown away by American gunfire and he then walks past several GI's trying to capture him and drowns himself in the frozen sea....

As this happens one American GI remarks to his Lt. that the "Jap" looked like a marching penguin and with that the Lt is shown in a childhood flashback remembering how his own mother chided him for marching up and down their Iowa farm like a penguin....

Woo effectively shows the folly and decimation of war and the usage of the penguin motif symbolises the childlike innocence the young have towards war...

Produced by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez

RAY (USA 1993) - Filmed to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous 1968 assasination attempt against Martin Luther King Jr, this biopic of James Earl Ray (portrayed by Tom Hanks) attracted much controversy when the King estate attempted to block its release, claiming that director Alan Parker was guilty of portraying Ray in too favourable a light. The film concentrated on the early life of an enigmatic figure who, having committed suicide shortly before being captured by the authorities in the spring of 1970, had become firmly lodged in the American national psyche.

2001: A Space Odyssey (USA, 2005)

Acclaimed documentary offers an in-depth look at the brave men and women who made up the first International Mars Mission.

Now I feel like I've been in space twice. -- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, British astronaut (sole surviving member of the first manned flight to the Moon.)

History of the World, Part One (USA, 1981)

Epic drama from legendary director Mel Brooks runs nearly six hours, as it tells the story of humanity from the earliest stirrings of civilization to the Fall of Rome. Often criticized for being too somber and bleak in its depiction of the human race over the millenia, it was defended by many for its sweeping vision and superb visual style. Despite this praise, it failed to recover its immense cost at the box office, and plans for Part Two and Part Three were never carried out.

An Intolerance for our time -- Gene Siskel, New York Sun.

"The Devil´s general" (2003) french original "le general du diable", depicting the life of General Massu, victor over the vietnamese and algerian insurgents and his conflicted relationship with Charles de Gaulle.

Jean-Paul Belmondo´s display of the general is considered his greatest role, although the film was not received well outside France for it´s uncritical support of the quelling of the 1968´s riot, although whole theatres are reported to have stand up singing La Marseilleise during the climax of the film when paratroopers broke the siege of the Elysee Palace.

it´s Cannes premiere came to a famous eclat when exiled former leader of the insurgents, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, MEP for the German Democratic Republic, tried to protest the film but was clubbed unconscious by the handbag of Brigitte Bardot.

"How the West was Won" - Fictionalized account of one Panzer unit's experiences as they rolled through northern France in 1940. Notable for the countercasting of John Wayne as Heinz Wilhelm Guderian.

"Battle of the Bulge" - Follow the hapless pratfalls as Herman Goering's dietician (played by Henry Fonda) attempts to moderate the Reichmarchalls ravenous appetites.

The Aviator (2004): The tale of General Curtis LeMay. It was a documentary that put Martin Scorcese's name on the map once and for all, detailing LeMay's rise through the ranks in WWII, his founding of Strategic Air Command, his increasing support for a war with the Soviet Union, and finally, when he appeared to go crazy and order an unprovoked nuclear strike on the Soviet missle bases. This, of course, led to the limited Nuclear War of 1963, but we will never know LeMay's reasons as he shot himself just before soldiers stormed the Alaskan Air Base he was in. The movie also covers President Joseph P. Kennedy's attempts to negotiate over the "hot line" with Soviet premier Vyacheslav Molotov, in a somewhat comical light since Molotov was intoxicated at the time.

Million Dollar Baby (2004): Documentary of the Lindbergh's attempts to get their son back after he was kidnapped in 1932 and the kidnapper demanded a million dollars. It ends with them finally rescuing their son alive, but the kidnapper has escaped, and was never found again.

The Longest Day (1993): Popular, well acclaimed story of a world where a day lasts 28.6 Earth days, and focuses on a young "Zzzikhatai" named Frrme, and what an average "day" is like for him.

WE WERE SOLDIERS(2001) Mel Gibson produced and directed this heart wrenching and well acted movie regarding the various Ukranian and Cossack men & women who fought against Stalin (Daniel Day-Lewis in his most brutal but lush role) under the command of General Vlasov (Gary Oldman) and his POA forces under German command.

WE WERE SOLDIERS drew a lot of criticism from both the Anti Defamation League for its glorification of a unit they felt committed numerous atrocities against Jews and from British Military Historians for showing the HM Army as cold hearted thugs in their brutal efforts to repatriate them to Soviet Russia after VE Day. However Gibson stood by his film and won critical praise from many film critics and from Steven Spielberg as well who reportedly wept during the forced repatriation scenes during a special preview in Chicago....

Also notable is Bono making an acting debut as the Commander of the London Irish Unit who stares down his superiors in reporting the refusal of the London Irish to assault the hapless family members of the Cossack forces...

During a Barbara Walters interview Gibson stated "Well the real tragedy of this film is that sometimes people are forced to join with even more unpleasant groups to free themselves from tyranny and wind up in a more worse situation. I'm neither praising them or damning them but showing an unpleasant legacy of WW2 that gets overlooked in the Disneyised treatments of the conflict"....

WE WERE SOLDIERS is also noted for its breathtaking visuals shot in Ireland, Poland, and Spain and features several touching songs by Bono and U2....

"Monster-In-Law" - The gripping tale of the last years in the life of Ekaterina Svanidze, married to Yakov Dzhugashvili, who was the eldest son of Iosef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known to the world as Stalin. One has to wonder how much better this movie would have been without the hopeless miscasting of Jennifer Lopez as the main character.

Eyes Wide Shut - The tale of life in Germany in the late 30's, seen through the eyes of a seemingly happy couple (played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman), who each harbour secret issues with the plight of Germany's undesireables.

The Matrix: What if the world you know wasn't quite what it seems?
Neo (Keanu Reaves) lives a peaceful life in a small mid-western farming community following the second American civil war.
One day however his peace is interupted with the apperance of a mysterious woman called Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) in his life. Despite the tribal elder (Hugo Weaving) warning him away from such people Neo falls down the rabbit hole and into the revelation that American civilization is not as dead as everyone believed and in fact continues to exist in virtual form.
However this is a land under threat, the tribal leaders are not the peaceful agrarians they seem and in fact viciously defend this existance from technology attacking both the virtual world and the real.
Will the one who will restore civilization to the real world be found?

BLACKHAWK DOWN (2001)- a new Australian movie detailing 1 of the worst peacetime disasters in Australia's mil hist, namely the 1996 Blackhawk collision disaster which claimed the lives of 15 hihgly-trained members of the SAS Regt...

Sense & Sensibility – A docudrama chronicling Secretary of State Colin Powell’s attempt to get a word in edgewise in the lead-up to the beginning of the Second Gulf War.

Band of Brothers – An intimate view of the founding of the Christian Brother’s Winery.

Endless Summer – The adventures of a Foreign Legion detachment posted to French Guyana.

Attack of the Clones (1992): Slapstick comedy about the antics of energetic identical twin 7 year olds.

All the President's Men (2005): Muckraking documentary about the numerous affairs of President Hillary Clinton.