TV Series: JUSTIFIED (2010- ) C-

This series, stars Timothy Olyphant as a maverick U.S marshal enforcing the law his way in his Kentucky hometown, received great ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.

Watched the first two episodes and gave up on this predictable plot-less series of a super confident marshal taking charge and killing the real bad guys in rural Kentucky.
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Movie Review: CHURCHILL (2017) B

I view this movie as a totally unrealistic depiction of Winston Churchill in the days leading up to D-Day . . . June 6, 1944, when allied forces stormed the beaches in Normandy, France during WWII.  It is well known that Churchill wanted to continue to attack on more sites on the Mediterranean but was overruled by the United States who felt the attack through France was the quickest way to get to Germany and end the war.

Churchill was fully in charge of allied military operations prior to the United States entering the war in December 1941.  He was obviously frustrated because he had lost the power to dictate military operations. But the movie shows that this loss totally devastated him.

The movie shows Churchill almost catatonic because he felt that our attack was the wrong strategy . . . even though British forces were fully involved. The movie attempts to show that he was also was fearful of repeating his deadly mistakes during World War I, in the Battle of Gallipoli, he was exhausted by years of war, plagued by depression and obsessed with his historical destiny.

From Other Reviews:  In the annals of historical biopics, Jonathan Teplitzsky’s “Churchill” stands out as a uniquely awful and tedious caricature of a fascinating subject. The film, which imagines British prime minister Winston S. Churchill as wracked with misgivings and opposing the Allied Forces’ D-Day invasion until the very last minute, strikes this reviewer as a load of utter rubbish from first frame to last. Certainly, movies have the right to varying degrees of creative license and to interpret the characters and actions of historical figures. But the screenwriter of “Churchill,” Alex von Tunzelmann, a historian herself, has taken liberties that completely misrepresent the historical record.
“Churchill” is mostly a monotonous succession of scenes in which Churchill raves, waves his arms and shouts at anyone in his vicinity that D-Day mustn’t go forward. He has other ideas for an invasion. The Aegean! Norway! Eventually Montgomery gets fed up and blasts him for his “doubts, dithering and … treachery.” The latter word would be justified, if any of this were actually true.Andrew Roberts, a prominent Churchill historian, wrote, “The only problem with the movie … is that it gets absolutely everything wrong. Never in the course of movie-making have so many specious errors been made in so long a movie by so few writers.”
It really is that bad.

Movie Review: HACKSAW RIDGE (2016) A

Unfortunately I was familiar with the story line of the movie before I saw it in the theater. So it didn't get into the feelings (and pain) of the men involved because I was familiar with the plot.

Netflix had a special documentary film that went into the details of the Japanese defenses using three ridges and special tunnels built into the ridges on Okinawa. Watching the frontal attack by the Americans on the ridge seemed like foolish strategy considering the defenses the Japanese set up on other ridges as well.  It seems that we could have taken Okinawa without the loss of tens of thousands of men.  And our plans to attack the Japanese Islands in November of 1945 seems insane. It would have cost millions of lives on both sides. (But that is a different story altogether).
From Rotten Tomatoes: HACKSAW RIDGE is the extraordinary true story of Desmond Doss [Andrew Garfield] who, in Okinawa during the bloodiest battle of WWII, saved 75 men without firing or carrying a gun. He was the only American soldier in WWII to fight on the front lines without a weapon, as he believed that while the war was justified, killing was nevertheless wrong. As an army medic, he single-handedly evacuated the wounded from behind enemy lines, braved fire while tending to soldiers and was wounded by a grenade and hit by snipers. Doss was the first conscientious objector to ever earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.