Color With The Marines at Tarawa / To the Shores of Iwo Jima - Double WWII Documentary Feature (1945) Review

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(More customer reviews)One may ask why with the History Channel around anyone should buy a
video tape covering the American invasions of these two Pacific
islands? First off the price ... you can't lose much even if it is
not to your tastes. I feel uncomfortable rating a film that has real
people being blown to bits, I rate it at 5 Stars only because as an
historic record of these battles this tape is hard to beat. The film
starts out with the invasion of Tarawa on the Bieto Atoll. This is a
film made by the War Department and the USMC, I was suprised to see so
much color film. There is a good monotone narration (typical of War
Dept films of WW2) which is suprisingly honest and blunt about what is
about to happen. Troops are shown loading ammo as the Naval
bombardment hits the island. Next Navy aircraft plaster the tiny
island, as the landing craft and Amtracks head toward the beach enemy
guns can be seen flashing as they fire at the Americans. Music has
been added to many scenes, the USMC Hymn can be heard several times on
the tape. Incredible footage of "Jap" troops bursting into
the open as they flee their troched bunker, a Marine has his helmet
shot off his head on film, medics using new blood plasma techniques,
tanks(Lee's and Sherman's) blasting bunkers at point blank range,
"Nip" machine gun on pier and on scuttled ship in harbor
rips into Marines, suicide snipers in trees being blasted, bulldozers
crushing trenches and finaly the 1st prisoners being searched and
escorted to the waters edge. Alot of corpses are shown, American and
Japanese, enemy weapons are examined and then the flag is raised. The
part of the film that covers the invasion of Iwo Jima is much the
same, the opening scene of an American Battleship smashing through the
waves with "bone in teeth" is breath-taking. After a sitrep
on board we witness a bombardment and air attack before 500 landing
craft in 10 waves hit the shore. A destroyer closes to the waters edge
to pour 5" and 40MM fire point blank into the base of Mt
Suribachi, tanks get stuck in the black sand, flamethrowers are
squirted into every crack in the ground, artillery and rockets are
fired en mass non-stop just yards in front of the advancing Americans,
cave clearing with explosives, burning Japanese corpses, praying
Marines, stacked helmets of dead Marines, planes being to land on the
island and the narrator says how our B-29s will blast the Japs into
ashes...these are not cheery images and I am suprised the Corps agreed
to be so honest about the two battles shown here, if you are
interested in the WW2 Pacific Theater get this tape, it is as
informative as a good book, seriously it is. The film end with FDR's
famous speach.


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Windtalkers (Special Director's Edition) (2002) Review

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(More customer reviews)Windtalkers is the story of two American soldiers (one played by Christian Slater, the other played by Nic Cage) who are assigned to protect two Navajo soldiers who work as windtalkers, transmitting messages past Japanese codebreakers using their code based on Navajo language.
Yes, there's a lot of violence. Yes, it's grim. The bodyguards, Cage and Slater, are instructed to kill the windtalkers rather than let them fall into enemy hands.
This is a big war movie, not quite on the scale of Saving Private Ryan, but somewhere between something that grand and magnificent and, say, Behind Enemy Lines. Cage and Slater do a good job with their parts, which aren't very fully fleshed out characters.
Woo's direction used to be so over-the-top and artsy... the fight scenes used to be like cartoons, with bad guy and good guy blazing away at each other with two pistols... the most violent scenes were often preceded by or accompanying flocks of birds taking to flight, and bullet-riddled bodies always seem to pirouet in slow motion before they fall down dead. Woo has left a lot of the old personal director's style out of this one, actually. There ARE a lot of bullets, and a lot of the fighting scenes are very unrealistic (true to old Woo there), and there is one scene very reminiscent of old John Woo, where a butterfly floats gracefully above a river then suddenly a bloody body falls into that river, destroying the gorgeous image, juxtaposing a graceful natural image with a gory violent one, etc.
ANYWAY, mostly this is a shoot 'em up war movie, and the old John Woo style is MOSTLY absent.
The story has that one feature going for it, the protection of the Navajo codetalkers, but otherwise it's a very standard war movie, in terms of plot. Still, this movie comes off surprisingly well.
If you're a fan of the American John Woo movies, like Broken Arrow, or Mission Impossible II or Face/Off, or you liked some movies recently like Black Hawk Down or Behind Enemy Lines, you ought to take a look at Windtalkers. It's not the best war movie of the last few years (I'd vote for Saving Private Ryan for that), or the best action movie, but it is entertaining and memorable...

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In the brutal World War II Battle of Saipan, Sergeant Joe Enders (Academy Award(r) winner*Nicolas Cage) guardsand ultimately befriendsBen Yahzee (Adam Beach), a young Navajo trained in the one wartime code never broken by the enemy, the Navajo Code. But if Yahzee should fall into Japanese hands, how far will Enders go to save the military's most powerful secret? John Woodirects this "exciting" (Premiere),

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The Bridge on the River Kwai (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) (1957) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm still not entirely sure why Amazon lumps the reviews for all versions of a given release in the same category. It makes it especially hard to locate reviews on the blu ray version. Anyway, this is a review of the blu ray version recently released, in a collector's format. It is composed of basically a digibook within a hard external case, which is quite flashy as it has raised illustrations and looks quite nice. Upon removing the digibook (which is quite a bit thicker than others), you will find a blu ray version of the film, a dvd version, and a few other things.
First up is the small production book. Actually in comparison with the material you get from other digibooks (which are usually scant on information), these few pages are full of notes and events during filming, almost a quick documentary in itself. It's nice to see a version of this book-within-case that is heavy on words and light on pictures, which are still nice on a few pages.
Second are the replica lobby cards, located after the incorporated book. Not much to say about these, a nice addition for collectors but not much else.
Finally the movie itself. As far as picture goes, its unbeatable for a film from 1957. Much like the other big releases around this time period, care was indeed taken to release a near perfect picture. Obviously in full 1080p, the lighting and scenery really shine here. I'm no expert on filmography and never really looked into the film types and ratios, but what I can judge is a quality blu ray transfer. The picture is sheer excellence down to the last scene, and is quite reminscent of the older James Bond transfers which were fantastic. All in all, as good picture as you'll see anywhere else in blu ray. The audio is great as well, with a fantastic 5.1 transfer. I have 5.1 sound, and it I can tell you it was transferred with the utmost of care. There is no mono soundtrack included in this version.
Extras include a wealth of features, including the previous releases' documentaries and new unreleased features such as Alec and William on the Steve Aleen show. Also included is a narration of the premiere by Holding. The main thing here is the "beyond the bridge" section, in which the full film plays and when applicable scenes come up, the screen size is reduced and graphics will appear on the screen with the movie, along with factoids about the scene. It is a great feature for those who won't mind the screen reducing every now and then.
All in all, this is the definitive version of the film. Chock full with features that you'd expect from a collector's release as well as the film itself (ranking among my all time favorite films), you can't go wrong with this. If you own a previous version, strongly consider this. If you've never owned it or seen it, buy it TODAY.

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Isolated Music Score, An Appreciation by John Milius, Rise & Fall of Jungle Giant Documentary, Making of The Bridge on the River Kwai.

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