Movie Review: THE PROMISE (2017) AA+

From Other Reviews: (I couldn't say it better). An incredibly important and confronting subject presented in a cinematically rich and accessible package, The Promise urges its audience not to forget the genocide of the Armenian people in this emotionally driven, impeccably performed historical drama.

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

Some moments in history are often used as cinematic fodder. Usually, they represent the worst of humanity: the triumphs and atrocities of WWII; the inhumanities and resulting resistance of the civil rights movement; and the recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists. Little however has been put to celluloid when it comes to one of the worst war crimes of the 20th century, the systematic genocide of the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during 1915.

Also see http://www.mattsmoviereviews.net/movie-critic-reviews/promise.html

Foreign Movie Review: A WAR (2015) AAA

Danish; subtitles

A powerful and painful movie about the REAL war that soldiers have to face when stationed in places such as Afghanistan.  This movie is NOT for the faint of heart. Moreover the cinematography, acting and direction are first class . . . plus.  This was Denmark's nomination for an Academy Award.

A Danish Company commander Claus M. Pedersen and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. Meanwhile back in Denmark Claus' wife is frightened and trying to hold everyday life together with a husband at war and three children missing their father. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that has grave consequences for him - and his family back home.

Other Reviews:

A War is a realistic drama about a Danish commander in Afghanistan, his unit, and his family back home, focusing on several key decisions that the commander must make, both in Afghanistan and back home in Denmark. Using naturalistic lighting, unobtrusive straight cuts, and a mix of stationary camera and hand-held, A War examines the moral complexities of asymmetric warfare and military justice. There are no easy answers, but there are spectacular natural performances from all of its cast. The sum total of these parts is an engrossing and seamless minimalistic movie, and another success from Tobias Lindholm. The Oscar nomination for A War is well-merited.

This is a very intense film that captures the utter fear of war and the awful situations that modern warfare can land people up in. It shows this from all sides. The acting is just superb and the direction from Tobias Lindholm ('The Hunt') is very accomplished.  This is a film that had me on the edge of my seat, the time flew by and as such I can agree with all the plaudits and easily recommend this as a great one to see.

Foreign Movie Review: BARBARA (2012) B

Available from Netflix DVD

A slow,slow moving and predicable movie with average cinematography and little dialogue. Sorry to have rented it from NETFLIX. However, other reviewers disagreed with me.

From An Other Review:
Winner of the Best Director prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival, the latest film from Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow) is a simmering, impeccably crafted Cold War thriller, starring the gifted Nina Hoss-in her fifth lead role for the director-as a Berlin doctor banished to a rural East German hospital as punishment for applying for an exit visa. As her lover from the West carefully plots her escape, Barbara waits patiently and avoids friendships with her colleagues-except for Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld) the hospital's head physician, who is warmly attentive to her. But even as she finds herself falling for him, Barbara still cannot be sure that Andre is not a spy. As her defensive wall slowly starts to crumble, she is eventually forced to make a profound decision about her future. A film of glancing moments and dangerous secrets, BARBARA paints a haunting picture of a woman being slowly crushed between the irreconcilable needs of desire and survival. Germany's official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film.

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: FORSAKEN (2016) B

A classic western movie with the guy returning from the Civil War.  The girl he left behind, the bad guys and the good guy with the six shooters.  Will keep your mind off of Russians tampering with elections, impeachment and illegal immigrants.

In 1872, JOHN HENRY CLAYTON (Kiefer Sutherland) retires as a gunfighter and returns to his hometown of Fowler, Wyoming in hope of repairing his relationship with his estranged father, REVEREND CLAYTON (Donald Sutherland). However, he soon learns that the town is in turmoil, as the railroad will be coming through the area and a criminal gang is terrorizing ranchers who refuse to sell their land. John Henry is the only one who can stop them, but his father does not want his son to return to a life of violence.

British Mini-Series: SPIES OF WARSAW (2013) A+

Available from Netflix streaming

As one critic said: Thoroughly enjoyable and quality drama . . . . It's a television series that wont let you down. Piece of good, bright entertainment. Four episodes.

PS (I have used the reviews from IMDb to support this write-up).
If you are interested in spy stories, this series is for you.  It's a BBC television mini series about spy drama of pre-World War II tension. There have been lots of lots of world war movies, but this one starts before the beginning of the war where spies from different region of Europe collide each other. So it is a cat-mouse game with many dangerous path ahead. Cinematography was very good but definitely not like James Bond movie with lots of strong action sequences.  It has all the ingredients of a good novel like romance, friends, betrayal, family and threats that a man as a spy who can go through in reality.

The series is based on the book by Alan Frust which is set in October 1937 in the capital of Poland, Warsaw. A French spy Jean Francois Mercier is assigned to look the situation on the German border. As his first report confirms something big is getting ready by the Hitler, which creates diplomatic tension between the neighboring countries especially Poland. So he hires some people to do inside jobs and that put many in danger. The locations change when characters start to explore in the cities between Warsaw, Paris and Berlin. Between all this he meets a young French woman and instantly fall in love with her. When the country near to be at war, what are their plans and how it can be executed is the rest which unfolds in an exceptional manner.

Movie Review: ARRIVAL (2016) C

This movie was nominated for an Academy Award.  It was one of the losers.  It was billed as a science-fiction movie.  Unfortunately, it didn't have too much science and the fiction was incoherent.  Just a mish-mash of random scenes that appeared to be pasted together from the cuttings on the editing room floor. (With today's technology, they were assembled from the digital cuts).

This is what the movie looked like.  When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team--lead by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams)--are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers--and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity. But first we see touching scenes of her and daughter who, unfortunately passes away in her tweens.

This was from a critic who is in the fourth dimension: A new film from Denis Villeneuve . It’s brainy, with its hero linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) offering explications of concepts like the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. It’s mind-bending, reveling in the kind of time paradoxes that dare you to diagram them with elaborate flowcharts. And it’s wonky, with its other main character, a theoretical mathematician played by Jeremy Renner, explaining one of the film’s twists by revealing that .083333 … is (spoiler alert?) precisely equivalent to 1/12.

And like many recent sci-fi movies, Arrival focuses on alien contact. That alien race first appears around the globe in giant, somewhat Sphere-ical spaceships

The film’s tagline “Why are they here?” is in fact its driving question. Most of the action, such as it is, involves Amy Adams’ linguist and Jeremy Renner’s mathematician trying to speak to the aliens and figure out what they’re saying back. All the chat about nonlinear orthography can get a bit academic, and its dominant motif also functions as a kind of microcosm of all these brainy, high-toned sci-fi movies: scientists pointing markers at whiteboards while explaining the inner workings of the plot.

Classic Movie Review: THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946) AAA

A memorable film about the aftermath of World War II in the United States., this film opens with the homecoming of three veterans to the same small town. The movie exposes the reality of altered lives and the inability to communicate the experience of war on the front lines or the home front.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, February 17, 2015, 5:16 PM

(Originally published by the Daily News on Nov. 22, 1946. This story was written by Kate Cameron.)
When Samuel Goldwyn said recently that ‘The Best Year of Our Lives,” which had a gala premiere at the Astor Theatre last night, represented his outstanding achievement as a Hollywood producer, he spoke nothing but the truth. His new film is everything he claims for it and more.
As far as this review is concerned, it is the best picture to come out of Hollywood since the end of the war. It is a slice of postwar life in an American town, with a little of everything that goes to make up the major and minor adjustments of the men who returned from the various war fronts to civilian life.

Strong Human Interest.
The transitions of Sergt. Al Stephenson, Capt. Fred Derry and sailor Homer Parrish to their old life in Boone City, are filled with human interest. There is great joy, as well as grief and laughter, in the adventures of the three service men, as Al returns to his grown up family and his old job at the bank, as Fred sheds his uniform and the glamor attached to an officer of the Air Corps for the linen jacket of a drug-store clerk, and as Homer tries to get used to a pair steel hooks that have replaced his lost hands.

Documentary: FIVE CAME BACK (2017) AA+

The wartime contributions of five prominent Hollywood film directors during World War II are profiled.

Excellent series, a little slow in the beginning, but stick with it.  On Netfix streaming.

The five directors were, Frank Capra, George Stevens, John Ford, John Huston, and William Wyler, all of which have been among the most highly regarded and influential directors, in the history of filming.

Forced me to see THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, which turned out to be timeless.  A great picture after 70 years in black and white. I'll review that next.

Steven Spielberg (who's production company - Amblin TV) also produced it, on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross and David Bianculli.
 

From Other reviews:  Talk about the greatest generation, I can not recall being so moved by their stories of their participation in WWII, since the last time I watched one of their fine films. I have so much more appreciation of those films, knowing now what I have learned from this series!

Thank you Mr. Spielberg, for bringing this to the world, in your ongoing efforts to tell the story of how this war has changed the course of human history. My hope is that this documentary, now available on Netflix, will be viewed by millions, and help to remind us, and inform others, of what America was once all about. I really think that this important and Oscar-worthy series, should be required viewing in our educational institutions.

Foreign Movie Review: THE MAN WHO WILL COME (2009) A

The horrid story of the massacre of Innocent civilians in Italy during WWII by the Nazis.  This slaughter was carried out in retaliation of Italian partisan action against the Germans in occupied Italy in 1943.

It turns out in occupied Norway during WWII partisans were also killing German soldiers , under British secret service direction.  The killing was stopped because the Germans killed 10 Innocent civilians for ever soldier killed.  The price of the minor sabotage, that didn't materially effect the war effort,  was not worth the loss of life by the Norwegians.


From Rotten Tomatoes: A real life tragedy during World War II inspired this period drama of  an eight-year-old girl growing up in a small town near Bologna, in the 1940s. Martina is an sensitive and impressionable child who was struck mute by the death of her baby brother, though she seems to be improving now that her mother Lena is expecting another child. But as Lena and Martina's father Armando struggle to keep the children clothed and fed, war rages in Europe, and the family has been forced to take in several relatives who've fled the fighting in the larger cities,

As Axis forces patrol the village, a growing number of underground resistance fighters are organizing in and many citizens are torn between their support for the patriots and their fear of reprisal from German soldiers. As resistance activities simmer, the German SS arrives in  and Martina a witness to a massacre. L'uomo Che Verra (aka The Man Who Will Come) was an official selection at the 2009 BFI London Film Festival.

British TV Spy Series: THE GAME Season 1 (2104) AA

One more of the excellent MI5 spy series created by the BBC.  It appears that this one ran only for one season.  There were weak spots in parts of the plot, but the last two discs were very good.

From other Reviewers;
Tense, fast-paced, and rich in atmosphere, The Game is a gripping spy drama with more than one kind of intelligence.
The deeply creepy idea of shadowy terrorists seeking to sneak warheads onto enemy soil resonates with American viewers, which lends menace to this already heart-stopping thrilling show, easily the equal of the early seasons of Homeland or cable drama The Americans. The pacing is quick, the motives murky, the characterizations deft. We know everything we need to know about one agent when she sizes up an undercover colleague as a spy because he hadn't thought to crack the spine of the novel he was pretending to read
BBC America’s new six-episode spy miniseries “The Game” combines elements from both types of fiction, with an emphasis on the former. Set in the drab London of the Cold War, it pits very human British spies against a potentially disastrous Soviet plot.

Foreign Movie Review: THE INNOCENTS (2016) A+

A painful movie about the Russian abuses of women in their counter offensives against Germany during WWII. 

From Rotten Tomatoes:
The Innocents begins quietly, before devolving into unspeakable horrors. The heartbreaking film follows Mathilde, a young French Red Cross nurse in December 1945, as she discovers a group of nuns who have been raped by Soviet soldiers, and are now dealing with more than half a dozen pregnancies. The screenplay, which is based on true events chronicled in notes by Red Cross doctor Madeleine Pauliac, handles the delicate story with care. The already gut-wrenching plot is only improved by the soundtrack – often comprised of the nuns singing morning prayers – and the cinematography is stunning, with beautiful muted shots of Polish landscapes and their war-ravaged occupants. Most critically, director Anne Fontaine delicately handles the impossible choices Mathilde and the nuns face and the moral issues, including holding onto one’s faith following senseless acts, they repeatedly come up against. The Innocents is a powerful, brave film that will stay with you for days.

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.

Documentary Mini Series: THE UNTOLD HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES (2012) AA

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT (MUST SEE)  CONTROVERSIAL  DOCUMENTARY. In this multi-series (about 12 or 13 episodes) documentary, Oliver Stone presents an an extremely cynical and damming view of the motives of leaders of the United States and other countries.  Just looking back at the last century we see 60 or 70 million killed by wars.  Much of what is in the material is true but he leaves out many of the positive problems solved by the US. After you see this series you will better understand why Trump won the recent election. 

Some Reviews By Others:  "Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick have done what many would consider impossible. They have written a political history of the United States in the 20th Century that tells us exactly how the United States became an empire through conscious decisions, and how the struggle to maintain that empire will go on despite which political party holds office. It is a brilliant survey of the untold story." (Lloyd C. Gardner, author of The Road to Tahrir Square)

“A brave revisionist study which shatters many foreign policy myths… the Stone-Kuznick team grapples with the unsavory legacy of American militarism . . . . Make room on your book shelf for this compelling leftist primer.” (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Deluge)

“Finally, a book with the guts to challenge the accepted narrative of recent American history… This is the 'Washington didn't really chop down the cherry tree' book for our last hundred years." (Bill Maher)

“Kuznick and Stones’ Untold History is the most important historical narrative of this century.” (Martin Sherwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus)

"By casting a spotlight on the shadier aspects of America's past, as well as the humane alternatives, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick provide a thought-provoking rebuttal to the nationalist myths that are far too often served up as history. They remind us that, until Americans have the courage to confront reality, they will remain trapped by their illusions." (Lawrence Wittner, author of One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953)

"We won't be able to manage America's future if we don't know its past. In their Untold Story, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick peel away layers of misleading myth about America in the 20th century. Some will be surprised, others angry. Most will understand their nation much better, especially the young. Then perhaps we can move forward in the new century." (Jeff Madrick, author of Taking America)

Many books have been written about specific episodes of American intervention and military aggression. And yet the master narrative remains intact: the US is the "indispensable nation," relied upon by people and nations around the world to preserve the peace and defend freedom. The immense contribution of The Untold History of the United States is to shatter the conventional wisdom, challenging readers to re-conceptualize the American role in the world...Everyone, who reads The Untold History will learn something new and be compelled to examine long held assumptions. For students of US history, this is an invaluable work. (Carolyn Eisenberg, author of Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944-1949)

"A fascinating and provocative work. This courageous and clear-minded account of American history and the foundations of the American empire is a milestone in a surprisingly small genre of books, namely, critical history written of and for the people. It should have the widest possible reading." (Bruce Cumings, author of The Korean War)

"Kuznick and Stone tell the untold history of the United States--the often disastrous consequences of American exceptionalism and global domination--with passion and clarity... beautifully illustrated, well-argued, and compellingly written." (Marilyn Young, author of The Vietnam Wars)

Foreign Movie Review: COMING HOME (2015) A+

A sad movie about what could happen to people when political dictators separate loving couples for many years.  Lu Yanshi  and Feng Wanyu  are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner, just as his wife is injured in an accident. Released during the last days of the Cultural Revolution, he finally returns home only to find that his wife has amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize Lu, she patiently waits for her husband's return.

This movie shows how far the Chinese have come in admitting the terrible repression that occurred during the Cultural Revolution.  It is an absolute reputation of the politicians that ruled China during that period of the late 1960's and 1970's.  As an aside , we in the USA have never really and publicly come to grips to the excesses of the Vietnam and Iraq invasions.

China’s Communist leader Mao Zedong launched what became known as the Cultural Revolution in order to reassert his authority over the Chinese government. Believing that current Communist leaders were taking the party, and China itself, in the wrong direction, Mao called on the nation’s youth to purge the “impure” elements of Chinese society and revive the revolutionary spirit that had led to victory in the civil war 20 decades earlier and the formation of the People’s Republic of China. The Cultural Revolution continued in various phases until Mao’s death in 1976, and its tormented and violent legacy would resonate in Chinese politics and society for decades to come.

Lessons Of Darknes (1995) AAA

A documentary that is beyond startling.  If you have the guts to watch what depraved men can do . . . don't miss this one hour film . . . from Netflix.  May also be available from your Public Library

From Rotten Tomatoes:  Straddling a line between documentary and science fiction, Werner Herzog's Lektionen in Finsternis (Lessons Of Darkness) is an epic visual poem set in the burning oil fields of Kuwait following the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War.

Herzog, as much a daredevil as a documentarian, took his small crew in a helicopter and, floating above the fields, photographed jaw-dropping footage of the blazing, blackened landscape. Alternately horrific and majestic, the movie is a phantasmagoric, if distanced, catalog of horrors.

Boiling lakes of crude oil, twisted scraps of melted metal, and ominous billows of smoke and fire abound. On the ground, the images are just as otherworldly. Herzog filmed scenes of firemen in full-body suits, working -- futilely it seems -- to contain the blaze.

There are also a couple of interviews with Kuwaiti women, who talk heartbreakingly of the brutalities they suffered at the hands of Iraqi soldiers. In his voice-over narration, Herzog assumes the identity of a spectator from another planet, making bemused comments about the catastrophe with no attempt to inform the viewer of the factual circumstances behind it.

 His high-flown rhetoric, dense with mythical portent and allusiveness, underscores this visionary movie's detached view of the destruction of the Kuwaiti oil fields.

Foreign Movie Review: Labyrinth of Lies (2015) AA

Labyrinth of Lies is a very important move that shows the German people coming to grips with the atrocities committed by their people during WWII.  Just recently  a new memorial was opened in Berlin.  "Holocaust of Bullets ", deals with the millions killed by the Germans in Eastern Europe during the second world war.

It has taken over 50 years for honest men and women to deal with the past horrors committed by their fathers and grandfathers

The movie shows a postwar Germany where young people are shielded from the atrocities carried out by their parents, neighbors and bosses. Most of them are sick of the war and prefer to push their guilt to the back of their mind. It seems stranger than fiction that such crimes against humanity could be systematically buried, but the movie is based on a true story.

In the film  a journalist identifies a teacher in the playground as a former guard from Auschwitz, but no one wants to take notice. However, a young prosecutor takes on the case and can't even be stopped by his boss. During his research he realizes that some Germans claim that they never heard the expression "Auschwitz," while others try to forget about it. As the prosecutor doesn't give up, the Attorney General Fritz Bauer retains him to take charge of the investigations. Struggling with an overload of information, the young attorney blunders into a labyrinth of guilt and lies where he almost gets lost.

The movie end when the results of one of the first trials of German atrocities . . . performed by Germans . . . was held in Frankfurt in the early 1960's.

Strange that we in the United States have never dealt with the atrocities performed by our elders on the Native Americans.

TV Series Review: MI--5 Season 7 (8 Episodes) AA+

This is the only series that I can remember seeing a 100% approval rating by the people who send their views to Rotten Tomatoes.  And that's why the series has aired for 10 seasons, ending in 2011.  I promise it is fast moving , exciting and will keep you at the edge of your seat. Available from Netflix DVDs

Season seven of British spy thriller "MI-5" opens with Adam Carter (Rupert Penry-Jones) valiantly battling to move a car bomb away from a densely packed memorial service. Meanwhile Harry secures the release of Lucas North (Richard Armitage), a MI-5 officer imprisoned in Russia for eight years. It's not long, however, before Ros begins to suspect Lucas' loyalties. The rest of the season deals with a top secret Cold War-era operation named Sugarhorse.

If you like SPY/CIA/MI-5 action . . . don't miss this Series of excellently acted and produced programs.  It's James Bond without all the frills and magnificent cinematography of those movies.

Foreign Movie Review: FOR A WOMEN (Pour Une Femme) (2013) C

Subtitles: French

A relatively weak and somewhat confusing movie about the relationship between various people immediately after the liberation of France in1945.

Includes flash backs and also deals with the collaboration between the Nazi's and French during the war and splinter parties in the French political system in the late 1940's

Edited from Rotten Tomatoes:
Anne has a very active imagination, only natural for a writer. But in her mid-thirties, she still knows practically nothing of her own family's past. After her mother's death, Anne discovers old photos and letters that convince her to take a closer look at the life of her parents, Michael and Léna. The young couple met in the concentration camps during World War II, later moving to France to start their new life together. Soon, Anne's research into their Jewish history and their ties to Lyon's communist party reveals the existence of a mysterious uncle, Jean, whom everyone seems intent on forgetting entirely. As she gradually closes in on the discovery she didn't know she was looking for, her father grows ever more ill, and may take the secret that kept them apart for so long to his grave. In a journey that stretches from post-war France to the 1980s, Anne's destiny intertwines with her father's past until they form a single, unforgettable story.

Foreign Movie Review: FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN (2009) A+

Made in Ireland: subtitles needed

Very unusual, VERY well acted (Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt) and emotionally powerful movie about the relationship between the Catholics and Protestants during the war that went on in Northern Ireland in February, 1975.  

A Seventeen year-old Protestant (named Alistair) kills the Catholic Jimmy Griffin in his house in front of his younger brother Joe Griffin. Alistair is arrested and imprisoned for twelve years while Joe is blamed by his mother for not saving his brother. Thirty-three years later, a "Reality" TV program promotes the meeting of Alistair and Joe in a house in Northern Ireland, expecting the viewers to witness the truth and the reconciliation of the murderer and the victim in real time. 

As you would expect, the movie doesn't end on a happy note.

I personally do not believe in the concept of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions similar to the one created by Desmond Tutu in South Africa. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission_(South_Africa)