Is Warfare the most realistic war film ever made?

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In Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s brutal and immersive new film, memory informs the events that take place in real time to a unit of soldiers in Iraq Warfare , Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s assiduous new film on a single episode of the American war in Iraq, opens with a title card typical to a war picture: date, location, barebones summary – 11 November 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq. Navy SEAL team alpha one is supporting Marines in insurgents’ territory. And then one final, unusual detail in place of the standard “based on a true story” – “This film uses only their memories.” The “only” is an ominous indicator: this is a film working against the Hollywood tide to gloss, simplify or narrativize. Warfare, based primarily on Mendoza’s memories of that day as a former SEAL, as well as those of fellow soldiers and civilians present, is as much an experiment of translation as a cinematic achievement, a movie defined by both what it shows and what it does not. Much of the press surrounding Warfar...
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Waterloo Sunset review – inside an oasis of affordable living

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This highly watchable documentary spends time with the residents of an almshouse in central London – cheerfully dispelling misconceptions about ageing

Tourists drifting out of London’s Tate Modern sometimes find themselves peering through the gates of nearby Hopton’s Almshouses, a collection of 20 pretty cottages built around a grass courtyard which looks like a village green. If anyone asks what the place is, one cheeky resident tells them in a low whisper that it’s an institution for the criminally insane. Actually, Hopton’s is a little oasis of affordable housing for low-income over-65s, built in the mid 1700s by a philanthropist fishmonger for “the poor and decaying men of the parish”. Like many other elite men-only spaces it was slow to adapt to change, only admitting women in 2012.

It’s like winning the lottery, getting a flat here, says one resident, a former taxi driver. He lost everything after a divorce in middle age; moving to Hopton’s changed his life. This very watchable documentary introduces a handful of other residents too. Jenny, 92, cheerfully talks about a recent fall on a bus which left her with a sore back. Did she go to hospital, director Harvey Marcus asks from behind the camera? Jenny looks appalled. “No! I could get up and walk. Why make a fuss?”

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