PodBill Just what I expected

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Paynbob It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Prismark10 If Peter Watkins The War Games had been broadcast as intended in 1965 it would had scared the hell out of people of Britain. The BBC delayed its broadcast until 1985. By that time the BBC scared the nation with the drama Threads.The War Game was released in the cinemas and won the Best Documentary Oscar, however this is not a documentary.This docu-drama imagines the effects of a nuclear strike in Britain. It is based on research of nuclear tests carried out in the USA, the impact of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombing campaigns and its aftermath in various German cities during World War 2.This is a grim film, it gets darker the more it goes on. Coldly showing the deaths from the aftermath of a nuclear strike but also showing a society that is breaking down.Even 50 years later this is a shockingly bleak film.

sjhvii As drama it was first rate but as a serious look at the problem it was banal. Outside the handful of fruitcakes in the Pentagon and the Kremlin no one ever thought nuclear war would be a breeze.An entire film saying look here these nuclear bombs thingies are really rather unpleasant was crass. As children of the Cold War my generation assumed that if it kicked off nuclear style it would be goodnight Vienna for all of us and this would have told us nothing we could not already have guessedThe utter inescapable horror of nuclear war was after all its whole point and the strategy underpinning the MAD.doctrineThe film gloried in its own misery and failed to notice that rather than hastening Armageddon the Bomb has helped keep the peace in Europe for a record period of time. Furthermore the three central predictions of the film were all wrong. Perhaps 4 new nations acquired the bomb in 50 years not the 12 nations in 15 years it foretold. Nuclear stockpiles generally have been slashed not increased and most importantly there was no massive nuclear War by 1980.. None of this was due to the Jeremy Corbyn like shroud waving. of this film

Charles Herold (cherold) Most of the reviews I've seen on this site seem to base their rating of the film on their rating of the film's message. People are horrified by the portrayal of a nuclear war unfolding in England and want to heed the message, in which case they give it 9 or 10 stars, or people dismiss it as propaganda that ignores political complexities and they give it a low score. I believe the message, but I still have mixed feelings about the movie.The film is essentially a docu-drama that lays out how a nuclear war could effect England. It starts quite slowly, with shots of what would happen if the government decided to do mass evacuations in anticipation of a war. The flat narration and fondness for facts gives it a bit of the feel of one of those informational documentaries they showed in school when I was a kid.The movie picks up speed when the bombs drop. We see the initial blast, with people's eyes melted (not being a big special effects movie, we are told the eyes are melted but just see people screaming while covering their eyes). We see what happens to a house 40 miles from the blast. We see a fire storm kill off civilians and firemen. It's pretty grim, and the movie will often point out that what happens in their scenario echoes what has happened in places like Dresden and Hiroshima.This movie was clearly made with the goal of convincing the world that we should get rid of all nuclear weapons. It suggests that the government's preparations for nuclear war and woefully inadequate and that most people have no idea what would happen during such a war. There are also a mix of quotes from those in favor of nuclear weapons, who are made to look foolish, and those against.This is quite effective. But it was probably more effective in the 1960s when this information was less well known. Unless you keep your head in the sand, you should know about the blinding flash, the terrible winds, the deadly radiation, the death on a massive scale.While I appreciate the filmmaker's attempt to warn an oblivious England about the potential for a war that would end life as they knew it, they dry, documentary approach and the blunt polemics make this more effective as a piece of propaganda than as a piece of film making. I don't use propaganda in a pejorative sense, since I approve of the thrust of the film, but the movie is designed as a piece of propaganda, and as effective as the horrific scenes are, the film is still rather stiff and dry.

MisterWhiplash While Stanley Kubrick was off making his own distinct wail against nuclear destruction with the form of black comedy in the UK, Peter Watkins made a much darker, much more realistic plea against insanity. His film, The War Game, is the anti-"Duck-and-Cover" propaganda film that pervaded movie-goers in the 50's. Some people believed it, but those with at least half a brain knew that actual nuclear devastation would be just that: devastating, and a desk wouldn't cover you, or anyone else. Watkins' point is to not only hammer the point that a nuclear bomb, any kind of bomb with significance, can kill, it can also main and hurt those who survive it. It's a definition of 'staggering' in art.The film takes the point of view of being an educational documentary, like something that the BBC would do, with interviews, testimonials from experts, and some reenactments of events. But for Watkins, to ratchet up the proper intensity - the required effect on the audience - he makes these 'reenactment' scenes no joke. When you see the 'actors' playing out these scenes in a post-blast city, trying to get around and not die, suffering in the post-blast of dying or pretty much dead, or when people on screen talk to the camera (i.e. soldiers, doctors, professionals) they don't look at all like actors. They look like they've come out of a war zone. When the narrator says that this is what a child would be like, burnt and scarred, there's no doubt from the point of view of Watkins this is what it would be.This isn't just speculation that Watkins is doing. If it were, it would have the same integrity as duck and cover. He backs up his rugged hand-held technique with a camera in those "reenactment" scenes of the what-if scenarios with facts about the bombing of Dresden and Hiroshima, and facts about what could happen with a blast even if it was forty miles away (you would feel it, oh yes). And ultimately, what Watkins' facts and "fiction" comes out to is a cry for reason. His objective 'news' narrator and the people on screen, all non-actors and some of whom may not even be acting (who knows, some of them, the ones in their forties and older, went through the bombs of WW2 in England), all give the impression of believability. More than that, we feel what these people go through, or could go through, and most frightening what could happen to us. It goes past a Cold War era scare-you movie and, in a similar way to Dr. Strangelove, crosses into a commonly felt fear. While Kubrick laughs, Watkins can't help but look on in dumbfounded shock.