War Movie Theatre

The first in our August repeat run is the revival of our Christmas 2023 episode on Casablanca, with special guest Hadley Freeman. A passionately political film disguised as a romance, this is also a Jewish movie where no one mentions being Jewish, and a war movie where the war is all offscreen. It's hardly a surprise that Rob and Duncan think Humphrey Bogart is cool, but Hadley's pick for the sexiest man in the film is frankly a sh...

In what is surely the most obscure episode of any podcast ever recorded, Rob and Duncan are joined by author and documentary-maker Phil Tinline to watch 1954's "Prisoner of War", the film that was going to turn Ronald Reagan into a major movie star.

The reason that never happened wasn't simply the quality of the movie. It was also because of a shift in the US military's attitude to prisoners returning from Korea, which makes th...

Pop down to Africa, would you, and pull off a quick coup? This week, Rob and Duncan are joined by Tim Shipman to watch the most 1978 film ever released. Richard Burton! Richard Harris! Roger Moore! It's The Wild Geese!

Problematic moments, war crimes, it's got them all - or has it? Marvel as Duncan explains that the Geneva Convention might not apply. Thrill as Tim describes how, in a way, the film is sort of a documentary. Inspi...

This week, we're going back to World War 1 and over to the desert to watch the epicest epic of them all, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Has sand ever looked better? Has casting ever been more problematic? And has my telly broken, or is the screen supposed to be black during the overture?

With guest Jack Blackburn of The Times, who loves this film so much that his infant son has already watched it at least once.

Next week:...

Rob and Duncan are joined by screenwriter Mark Greig to discuss Robert Aldrich's 1956 noir war movie Attack. Will they make it to the end of the episode with one of them killing another?

Next week, it's back to the desert, with Lawrence of Arabia.

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Rob and Duncan watch the 1943 film that promised to tell audiences the secret story of British victory in the desert.

That was not in any sense true, but unknown to the filmmakers, this movie would inspire a real D-Day operation.

More than that, it's an early Billy Wilder film, with all his trademark style. War movie? Spy story? Film noir? You decide.

Next week, Robert Aldrich's Attack!

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Rob and Duncan are joined by Diplomatic Correspondent James Landale to pick noses, smell farts, and torpedo Allied shipping in the greatest submarine movie ever made, Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 Das Boot. If the submarine war was hell, then making this film wasn't much more fun. But find out how the crew ended up giving Indiana Jones a lift.

Next week: Five Graves to Cairo.

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Rob and Duncan are joined by Alex Massie and Henry Dyer to watch Peter Weir's magnificent 2003 Napoleonic naval epic. How did it compare to the novels? Is this the only war movie in history where an American character was removed? And why are people getting bits of the script tattooed onto their bodies?

Next week, we're still at sea with Das Boot.

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Rob and Duncan are joined by John Crace, sketchwriter for The Guardian, to watch Mosquito Squadron, a film John's dad took him to see in the cinema. Is this the perfect example of the less-than-golden age of war movies? Is there any movie it doesn't rip off? What does it say about life on the home front? And, hang on a second, were the land-based bouncing bombs real?

Next week, all aboard HMS Surprise as we watch Master And Comm...

Rob and Duncan turn their attention to the American Civil War, watching the 1989 true story of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the Union Army's first African American regiments. The film won Denzel Washington an Oscar, launched Andre Braugher, and caught Morgan Freeman just as his career was taking off. But it also captures much of the changing way war was fought in the Nineteenth Century, which gives Duncan a chan...

Klendathu must be destroyed! Rob Hutton and Duncan Weldon are joined by Jonn Elledge, best-selling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders, as they strap on their helmets and go on a bug hunt to watch Paul Verhoeven's oft-misunderstood masterpiece Starship Troopers. Clunking misfire or brilliant satire of modern fascism?

Next week, it's Ferris Bueller's Civil War, as we watch Glory.

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Rob and Duncan are joined by journalist Sanchia Berg for another Powell and Pressburger outing. This time, it's 1944's A Canterbury Tale, where three pilgrims try to unravel a mystery in the wartime Kent countryside. Not a hit on release, it's since found an obsessive fan base. But will it win our hearts?

Next week, in a slight change of pace: Starship Troopers

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Following listener outrage after we watched Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, we're watching Leslie Norman's 1958 version, starring John Mills and Richard Attenborough. Joining us is pollster Joe Twyman, whose grandfather barely made it off the beach in 1940.

Did we prefer the sweeping epic nature of this version, or were we too distracted by John Mill's accent and age?

Next week, we're watching A Canterbury Tale, available on the...

To coincide with VE Day, we asked Deltapoll to find the nation's favourite WW2 movies. Now that people have stopped shouting abuse at *us* over the resuls, we thought we'd take a look at them. With Rob, Duncan and Deltapoll's Joe Twyman, who's here to tell you you're not as normal as you think you are.

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Actor and comedian Miles Jupp (whose own war movie credits include Napoleon and Rogue Heroes) joins Rob and Duncan to discuss Alec Guinness's Oscar-winning performance in the 1957 classic.

The film was based on a novel by a Pierre Boule (who would go on to write Planet of the Apes) who decided to transpose his experiences at the hands of his fellow Frenchmen into British characters. At the time it had the most expensive set eve...

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.

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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)

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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...