by Alyssa
Apparently January 2009 saw some sort of fascination with WWII and Nazi Germany and quite frankly, so did I!
Good
Opening December 31, 2008 (but that’s close enough to January for us), and starring Viggo Morteson. “Good” is the story of John Halder, your everyday good guy and literature professor, living in Nazi Germany with a lot of family problems – crazy wife, demanding children and a mother suffering dementia. Halder investigates compassionate euthanasia considering his own circumstances and writes a book. It gains national popularity through Nazi propaganda, and it eventually leads to his heightened career and eventual fall.
This should be a side of your typical World War II movies that is rarely seen – the rise of an ordinary man because of Nazi propaganda as opposed to the decline of a man and also the inside workings of the Nazi side. Also, according to Jeffery Lyons at NBC, this is the best work Morteson has ever done. Sign me up!
Revolutionary Road

Leo and Kate finally reunite ten years later in what is thought to be just as good as Titanic in Revolutionary Road. Based on a novel by Richard Yates, this story about your typical suburban family in the mid-1950s shows their hard times and disappointment for settling for mediocrity. After watching some trailers, there are some pretty good parts… including lots of raunch, which makes everything a little more awkward when one realizes Kate Winslet’s husband, Sam Mendes, directed the film. Their dissatisfaction with their life in the ‘burbs spins their relationship into jeopardy with jealousy and constant fighting.
Sounds kind of typical, but it has already been nominated for 4 Golden Globes and… it’s Leo and Kate! Opens January 15.
The Reader
Apparently Kate Winslet has been pretty busy lately, with two movies coming out within a week of each other. The Reader, opening January 9, is another WWII/early 1950s movie where a young man (Michael) is nursed back to health by Kate the Cougar. The two form a risqué relationship, ended abruptly by Kate. Eight years later as a law student studying and observing Nazi war crimes, Michael suddenly finds his cougar back in his life… as a defendant in the court room! Dun dun dun….
As a total WWII era junkie with an awkward love of the idea of cougars, you can bet I will be there.
Defiance
To complete our WWII/Nazi Germany theme (completely on accident, I assure you), one more side to it all! Daniel Craig, Leiv Schreiber and Jamie Bell play three Jewish brothers living in Poland during the war who escape to the Belrussian forests. Here they join Russian resistance fighters and plan to build a village to protect those like them.
And that’s all I got on this one. Hopefully there is more of a plot to this when movie time comes, but I feel like it is a pretty typical without being overly depressing Holocaust film. I guess we will have to wait and find out on January 16.
Image Sources: http://www.librarising.com/astrology/celebs/images2/T-Z/viggomortensen.jpg, http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/53/93453-004-F91DDF75.jpg, http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2008/06/defiance_poster_shows_daniel_c.php