The Thin Red Line B. & W., American, 1,964; with Jack Warden and Kier Dullea

The best W.W.2 movie, I.M.H.O. Dullea plays a fresh infantry recruit who is determined to have every advantage in battle and to kill before being killed.
Warden is his sergeant.
Very realistic, especially in how it portrays the stress of battle and men going off the deep end because of it.

Battle for Algiers B. & W., Italian, 1,965

The best movie about a liberation struggle I've ever seen.
It covers a small part of the Algerian war for independence from France, focusing primarily on the deadly struggle between one rebel cell and the Legionaire commander sent to destroy it.
Generally unsentimental and fair - especially in it's characterizations.

The Wild Rovers Color, American, 1,971; directed by Blake Edwards, with Ryan O'Neal, William Holden and Karl Malden

The most lyrical Western I've ever seen.
O'Neal and Holden play two cowboys who witness the accidental death of one of their fellows.
Realizing how little the dead man had made of his life, the two decide to make their fortunes before they meet a similar fate.
The rob their boss and take off north with the boss's sons on their trail. This doesn't sound like much of a plot, but it's in the details and the characterization that the movie really shines.
Almost all the baloney which Westerns had been shoving down our throats from the beginning is avoided here.
Gun play, an violence generally, are not shown as being heroic or even rational.

There's a scene in the movie in which the two men capture and try to break a wild horse.
Their shear joy in this is one of the movies finest moments and the scene is recapitulated at the end of the movie.
Remembering this I have to wonder whether or not the most meaningful thing about our lives is just a set of joyous moments.

Don's Party Color, Australian, 1,975; directed by Bruce Beresford

A hilarious comedy from down under.
Don, his college mentor and a bunch of 'friends' come over to Don's house for an election night party.
The humor and rancor are unrestrained as various old friends insult one another and bed each other's wives on the q.t.
If I really thought Australia was this much fun, I'd go immediately!

Breaker Morant Color, Australian, 1,980; directed by Bruce Beresford

One of what may be called the Australian golden age of movies which produced such classics as the Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Gallipoli.
The movie is based on an actual incident, to wit, the trial of a couple of British Army officers charged with war crimes in the Boer War.
The Boer War was one of the first, modern dirty wars.
Combantants and civilians, men with arms and prisoners begging for mercy were killed alike.
Concentration camps were invented in that war and tens of thousands of civilians died of neglect in them.
The British have a sterling reputation in America, but continental Europe had a quite different view of Britain's human rights record.
A view which played a part in the attitudes of collaborators in the Nazi era.

While guilty, the two officers were carrying out orders given by the notorius Lord Kitchner.
The trial takes place in a squalid army camp.
The flash backs of the actions of the two and the ongoing battles around the camp are cut together in a way that makes for much excitement and confusion.
At one point a large surprise attack is mounted on the camp by the Boers and the two men are let out and given rifles in order to help defend it!

A good movie which will get your dander up against the makers of those, oh so genteel drawing room dramas on our public T.V. channels.
They didn't always have such a polished image and for good reason.

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