"All Quiet On the Western Front."

(NOTE: This post is now free). Watching a war film in war time.

War films are always guilt-inducing. No matter how bleak and true to life, they are still served up as entertainment. Hard lessons told honestly and with pain and blood are still, at the end of the day, bent for entertainment purposes.

In my pursuit of trying to watch, for the first time in years, all (or most) of the Academy Award nominees, I turned to …