War Movie Theatre

EMERGENCY EPISODE! Prompted by Donald Trump tweeting about Alcatraz, Duncan felt he had to watch 1996's The Rock, which Rob thinks is probably a war movie. Is this the first second-screen movie? Does director Michael Bay understand subtlety? How much Nicolas Cage is too much? And is Sean Connery really playing James Bond for the last time.

We're back to our regular schedule on Thursday, with The Bridge On The River Kwai.

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Rob and Duncan watch 2024's Civil War with Helen Lewis of The Atlantic, whose forthcoming book The Genius Myth is dedicated to the film's director, Alex Garland. Is it really more of a road movie? How come Texas is in an alliance with California? And that's the guy without the camera doing there, anyway?

Next week: The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Suggestions? Comments? Drop us a line at warmovietheatre@gmail.com.

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This week Rob and Duncan pretend to be Duncan and Rob, in an elaborate plan to persuade the enemy that the podcast will actually be taking place in the Mediterranean. That's right, we're watching I Was Monty's Double, starring John Mills.

The true story of Operation Copperhead is told in Rob's book The Illusionist, out now in paperback.

Next week: Civil War (2024)

Suggestions? Comments? Drop us a line at warmovietheatre@gmail...

Rob and Duncan are joined by pollster and war movie nut Joe Twyman to watch the 1984 teen-resistance classic Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, and just re-released in glorious 4K. Think of it as Dirty Dancing: The WW3 Years.

It features a Problematic Moment so Problematic that it ended up being cut, a director who demanded he be paid in firearms, and Joe's unforgettable description of watching the movie on a US mi...

Duncan and Rob are back, fighting to get off the beach and home to England in Christopher Nolan's 2017 blockbuster Dunkirk. How did he persuade Americans to bankroll this? How did he persuade them to go and see it? And can we see a future for plucky novice actor Harry Styles?

Suggestions? Comments? Drop us a line at warmovietheatre@gmail.com.

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Watching the war movies that make us bloody glad it’s not the 1940s, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time, acclaimed author and historian Clare Mulley of The Spy Who Loved fame joins us to watch Roman Polanski’s harrowing story of the Holocaust, escape, chance survival and guilt, The Pianist (2002). As we discover, Adrian Brody’s astonishing physical transformation to play the role is not even the half of it. 

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Watching the war movies that make us think we’ve discovered the real secret of flying, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time we wheel, bank and glide with The First Of The Few, Leslie Howard’s stirring 1942 portrait of the birth of the Spitfire fighter plane and its doomed progenitor RJ Mitchell – played by Howard himself.

Our special guest J. Willgoose Esq of esteemed “collage rock” band Public Service Broadcasting h...

Watching the war movies that make us think mistily of Blighty, with authors Rob Hutton and (usually, but he’s on leave this week) Duncan Weldon. This time: Don’t be upset about the parachute, we’ll have our wings soon anyway, big white ones. Upper lips will wobble as brave airman David Niven enters the afterlife in Powell & Pressburger’s 1946 masterpiece A Matter Of Life And Death, the film that launched a thousand parodies.

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Watching the war movies that stiffened our upper lips, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: The mission is the man, and the cast is (literally) to die for. Steven Spielberg’s emotional, epic, stupendously violent Saving Private Ryan from 1998 is the war film that reproaches every “Achtung, Fritz!” actioner. Military historian and BBC legend Mark Urban joins our crack team in the undergrowth. Are these the greatest ...

Watching the war movies that put a bit of iron in our blood, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: Used to be that a Sunday didn’t pass without red-jacketed Michael Caine and Stanley Baker staging a last-ditch defence of Rorke’s Drift on TV… but they don’t show Zulu much these days. Why on EARTH should that be?

Special guest Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland and the new Empireworld, has never seen Zulu until now...

Watching the war movies that made us shape up and stop shilly-shallying, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: “This is not a gentleman’s war…” With historian Alex von Tunzelmann of Paper Cuts podcast fame, we watch a film regarded by some as the finest British movie ever made, Powell & Pressburger’s epic, moving The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp from 1943. Made during the actual war, denounced for humanising ...

Watching the war movies that made men* of us, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: Is a work of art worth a life? All right, what about a podcast then? This week we’re watching The Train, John Frankenheimer’s intense 1964 epic of bravery and moral torment. Can the French Resistance stop the Nazis spiriting a trainload of looted art away from Paris? Has a black-and-white movie ever looked this good? Is it basically ...

Watching the war movies that stiffened our upper lips, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: What do you mean, it’s not a war movie? It’s got Nazis in it. What more do you want? Our manly duo are tempted by political journalist Helen Lewis into watching the 1965 nuns, guns and arias extravaganza The Sound of Music. Will their emotionless exterior crack beneath Julie Andrews’ relentless sunniness, like “being hit ove...

Watching the war movies that stiffened our upper lips, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: Jude Law is a young Russian sniper in the somewhat messy yet highly entertaining ‘Enemy At The Gates’ from 2001. Why does Kill Your Friends author John Niven love it despite its many shortcomings? Would anyone have time for a love triangle in the middle of a war, much less a knee-trembler in an icy tunnel? Can they swerve th...

Watching the war movies that made us the men* we are today, with authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon. This time: “Broadsword calling Danny Boy!” It’s the big one as we skydive in on the Platonic ideal of the war-action pic, the 1968 classic Where Eagles Dare. Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton must break Allied asset General Carnaby out of Nazi prison the Schloß Adler with the pulchritudinous aid of Mary Ure. But is all what it see...

We’re back with a brand new name but the same doughty, never-say-die attitude, to watch the war movies that made us the men* we are today. Every week authors Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon gather under the blackout curtain to view a classic war film – and now they’re joined by equally battle-fixated chums too.

This time on the podcast formerly known as A Pod Too Far: Darryl F. Zanuck’s 1962 D-Day mega-epic The Longest Day with comedia...

If it’s December 1941 in the podcast, what time is it in New York? Rob Hutton sticks his neck out for no one. Duncan Weldon’s killed two German couriers in an effort to impress him. But of all the gin joints in all the world, who’s this walking into theirs?

For our Christmas special, we’re joined by the journalist and author Hadley Freeman as we watch Casablanca, a war movie disguised as a romance. But who’s Humphrey Bogart’s real l...

It’s Christmas 1944, and Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon are in a muddy, frozen POW camp, dreaming of Betty Grable. But is one of them a rat?

We’re watching Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17, the film that won William Holden an Oscar and may have inspired the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. Comedy? Drama? Escape movie? Or a mix of all three?

A Pod Too Far was written and presented by Robert Hutton and Duncan Weldon. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. The...

This week Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon are fighting seasickness and dodging torpedoes as they take the podcast on a submarine hunt.

We’re watching the 1953 classic The Cruel Sea, a frank picture of the terror and exhaustion of convoy duty, and the toll it took on the men and women of the Navy. Was Donald Sinden ever better, and did Jack Hawkins organise the worst pub quiz ever?

A Pod Too Far was written and presented by Robert Hutton...