Genre: War

Fiction about combat and its long shadow, from the front line to the kitchen the soldier comes home to. War stories done right honor the cost without glorifying the bill.

Roberto Benigni in character as Guido, a man in 1940s Italy during the Holocaust narrative of Life is Beautiful. TITLE: Life

Comedy

Life is Beautiful (1998) Review

Life is Beautiful (1998) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Roberto Benigni made a comedy about a father convincing his son that a concentration camp is a game, won Best Actor, and produced the most divisive film…

Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great in battle armor, likely from a scene in Oliver Stone's 2004 film.

Biopic

Alexander (2004) Review

Alexander (2004) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Oliver Stone spent a hundred and fifty-five million dollars on a life that has no shape, released it, and then recut it three separate times across ten years trying…

A young girl stands in a stone maze facing a pale, horned creature with enormous antlers in a dark forest setting. TITLE

Drama

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Review

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Del Toro built two worlds with identical rules and let a child move between them, and the fascist captain is more frightening than anything in the labyrinth. It…

Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman at a piano, gaunt and thin, in a scene from The Pianist.

Biopic

The Pianist (2002) Review

The Pianist (2002) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Polanski survived the Krakow Ghetto as a child and spent sixty years declining to film the Holocaust before he made this. It won the Palme d'Or and three…

Christoph Waltz as SS officer Hans Landa sits at a wooden table in a farmhouse kitchen, holding a glass of milk during the

Black Comedy

Inglourious Basterds (2009) Review

Inglourious Basterds (2009) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Tarantino wrote it in 1998, could not solve the ending, made Kill Bill instead, and came back a decade later. The opening scene is a twenty-five minute conversation…

Keira Knightley and James McAvoy in a scene from the 2007 film Atonement, depicting the central characters whose lives are

Drama

Atonement (2007) Review

Atonement (2007) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A thirteen-year-old tells a lie and two lives end. The last ten minutes do not reveal a fact, they change what kind of object you have been watching.

The MS St. Louis ocean liner at sea, carrying Jewish refugees denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada in 1939.

Drama

Voyage of the Damned (1976) Review

Voyage of the Damned (1976) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The true story of the MS St. Louis, which carried 937 Jewish refugees out of Hamburg in 1939 and was refused entry everywhere it went. A…