The new All Quiet on the Western Front will, I’m sure, be popular and, like the British feature film 1917 (directed by Sam Mendes), will bring the horror and futility of the war to a new generation.…
When they arrived on set, they held a feast that included dancing and chanting that lasted nearly two days. It also included the ritual slaughter of a water buffalo…
Lebanon is a powerful vision of men at war, made real and intense by the fact that we never once move outside the tank, and only see the outside world from the interior.…
TAYLOR DOWNING reviews a classic war film.…
to highight Langley’s contribution, the film underplays or completely omits the work of the many female academics who played a key role in the project. Jo Appleby does appear in some scenes, but others like Turi King, Deirdre O’Sullivan, and Lin Foxhall are absent.…
Taylor Downing reviews a new documentary.…
Production of All Quiet on the Western Front took place in the spring of 2021, with filming in Belgium, Germany, and the Czech Republic.…
As the Russian army commits appalling atrocities in Ukraine, it might not feel like the best time to recall the heroism of the Red Army in the Second World War. But this year marks the 80th anniversary of the titanic Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late August 1942 to…
The newly released, star-studded British movie Operation Mincemeat is, on one level, about the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. On another, more profound level, it is about how people deceive one another. In its opening commentary, the film announces that ‘in every story there is what is seen… and…
The popular archaeology series Time Team has returned with its first new episodes in a decade. Felix Rowe took Current Archaeology behind the scenes at two very different excavations, investigating Iron Age Cornwall and Roman Oxfordshire.…
So, what’s different about this incarnation of Team Time? Besides the charm and expertise of several new cast members, these episodes wholly embrace the countless scientific advances in dating and scanning that have occurred over the last decade.…
The programme kicks off this weekend with an extended three-part extravaganza covering Time Team’s excavation of an Iron Age settlement in Cornwall.…
The early stages of Benediction (written and directed by Terence Davies) deal with this story in a very cursory way. There is no treatment of Sassoon (Jack Lowden) as a war hero. The distant conflict is covered by extremely poor-quality black-and-white archive.…
TAYLOR DOWNING reviews the latest film releases.…
Taylor Downing reviews a classic war movie.…
George MacKay (pictured) once again demonstrates he has the face of a wartime hero in this new adaptation of the bestselling book by Robert Harris, screened initially at the BFI London Film Festival last year and now on general release.…
Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen star in this retelling of the 1943 Allied plan to keep the invasion of Sicily a secret…
The results will be shared in spring, in a new episode of Time Team that will air on the ‘Time Team Official’ YouTube Channel.…
Taylor Downing surveys screen depictions of Pearl Harbor in a ‘War on Film’ special.…
Talk of the war in North Africa and most Brits will think of Tobruk or El Alamein, while most Americans will think of Operation Torch, the Kasserine Pass, and Tunisia. The victory at El Alamein was presented in a powerful British film made by the Army Film and Photographic Unit,…