Great White Hunter

Film: King Solomon’s Mines
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I’m going to do my best not to sound like a complete idiot by the end of this paragraph, but you might need to cut me a little slack. See, in the movie King Solomon’s Mines, things happen constantly, but nothing happens in this movie. Oh, there’s guys getting trampled by elephants, and people attacked by snakes, natives speaking Swahili, a missing guy, and even a quest for a lost diamond mine, but nothing freaking happens. I have never been this bored watching an action movie in my life.

The film starts by introducing us to the legendary Allan Quartermain (Stewart Granger), safari guide extraordinaire, great white hunter, able to shoot…whatever the hell Sean Connery said he could shoot in that crappy League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. Anyway, while on safari, one of Quartermain’s guides gets gored by an elephant. Tired of the racket, Allan decides to hang ‘em up and quit the safari business. After all, he’s got a wife who died and a seven-year-old son back in England. Why stay in Africa?

Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, Sword

Film: The Longest Day
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

In the annals of military history, there is probably no single day more important or meaningful, at least in the last 100 years, than June 6, 1944. For a modern movie watcher, Saving Private Ryan, or at least the opening of that film, is the quintessential cinematic depiction of D-Day. The Longest Day, from three decades earlier, though, is a true cinematic depiction of the invasion of Normandy by the Allied forces. There is no plot here beyond the invasion, no Private Ryan to rescue, just the story of getting a mass of soldiers onto a beach and getting them inland to start liberating Europe.

What makes The Longest Day particularly interesting is that it looks at both sides of the conflict and attempts to bringin as much as possible. We spend time on each of the five beaches, we spend time with the glider troops and paratroopers, and we also see some of the planning and defensive measures put in place by the German army. In other words, it’s more or less a comprehensive look at the buildup on both sides of the channel and then the invasion itself.