'Good Nazi' Film Awakens Ugly Ghosts

...and 'the greatest film ever made'

(NEWSER) - The Criterion Collection re-release of Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition does high-definition justice to the WWII film critic David Shipman has called “unequivocally the greatest film ever made,” according to Very Short List. The movie follows a good—and handsome—man through the “innumerable trials in World War II–era Japan.” You may even be "surprised by how profoundly moved you are by hour nine.” More»

Supporting cast shines, but film not exactly sharp on historical details

(NEWSER) - Valkyrie isn’t that good—and surely not Oscar-worthy, Peter Travers writes in Rolling Stone. “And the sooner you accept it, the more fun you’ll have at this satisfying B movie.” The supporting cast is fantastic, and Tom Cruise’s presence just serves to make “you wonder why the SS man we’re rooting for is an American, while most of the other Germans are British,” writes Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. More»

Massacre still colors Sino-Japan relations, informs China's identity

(NEWSER) - Seventy years have passed since the "Rape of Nanking," when Japanese soldiers brutally massacred as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians, but the effects of the trauma are still very much present in China and its relations with Japan. Memorializing the event plays a major role in cementing China's sense of its own history, Der Spiegel reports. More»

Berlin does an about-face on anti-Hitler movie

(NEWSER) - Tom Cruise will be allowed to shoot his new movie, about a German military officer who tried to assassinate Hitler, on German soil. Earlier reports said the megastar would be banned because of his ties to Scientology, which Germany regards as a threat to democracy and keeps under "official observation," as it does neo-Nazi groups, reports Yahoo News. More»

Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones return for alien flick

(NEWSER) - Sure, no one was that desperate for a Men in Black 3—but it's actually a pretty good summer movie. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back defending the planet from aliens, and this time, Josh Brolin's along for the ride as a young Jones.

• The movie "turns out to be so much fun," writes AO Scott in the New York Times . While it "carefully fulfills its blockbuster imperatives—with chases and explosions and elaborately contrived plot twists—it swerves into some marvelously silly, unexpectedly witty, and genuinely fresh territory."