Rosie the Reviewer: a WW2 movies and shows podcast

This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we cover The Book Thief (2013), based on Markus Zusak’s bestselling novel about a girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Her foster family teaches her to read, and hides something far more dangerous beneath the floorboards. We talk about the power of storytelling while books are burning, and about the small, enormous risks this family takes to protect someone. 🖥️ Visit o...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Battle of the River Plate (1956), about the first British naval battle of the Second World War. We discuss the standoff between three British/New Zealand cruisers and the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, the captured merchant captain who came to respect his German captor, and how the fight ultimately ended in a tense diplomatic stand...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Come and See (1985), directed by Elem Klimov and set in German-occupied Belarus. We follow Flyora, a teenage boy who joins a partisan unit and is drawn into the systematic destruction of Belarusian villages by German forces. We talk about the film, the history of what Germany did to Belarus, and the survivor accounts that Adamovich travelled across...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss From Here to Eternity (1953), based on James Jones's novel about the peacetime US Army stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor.  We also dig into the women of wartime Hawaii who were doing a lot more than waiting around, from the Women's Air Raid Defense tracking aircraft around the clock to OSS recruit Elizabeth McInto...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we are joined by guest Tom to discuss The Dirty Dozen (1967), directed by Robert Aldrich. We talk about Operation Jedburgh, the Filthy 13 from the 101st Airborne, and the German propaganda broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw. We also get into the film as an anti-war piece made in the shadow of Vietnam. 🖥️ Visit our website: www.rosiethereviewer.com 📸 Follow us on Ins...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Longest Day (1962), the docudrama based on Cornelius Ryan's nonfiction book about the Allied landings at Normandy on 6 June 1944. We go through the mega ensemble cast, stuff we liked and can’t get over how good Cornelius Ryan is at character driven narratives. We also get into: the star-studded cast, the lack of blood, some movie trivia and...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The King's Speech (2010), the biopic about King George VI and his unlikely friendship with Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue. We get into what the film gets right and where it takes some liberties... look, Edward VIII was a lot more pro-Nazi than the movie suggests. Also: how the Second World War ended up being the best thing that could...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Der Tiger (2025), a German film about a Tiger I tank crew on a special mission behind Soviet lines in 1943. What starts as a tense war film quietly becomes something else entirely. We talk about the Eastern Front after Stalingrad, give you much-needed tank facts (are we a tank podcast now?), and generally enjoy this one a lot. 🖥️ Visit our website:...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Days of Glory (2006), the Rachid Bouchareb film that follows a fictional group of North African soldiers fighting with the Free French forces to liberate Europe. We talk about the film’s honest depiction of colonial racism, the ensemble cast, what the film gets right and where it falls flat, and the real history of the hundreds of thousands of Afri...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Another Mother's Son (2017), the true story of Louisa Gould, a Jersey shopkeeper who sheltered an escaped Russian POW on the German-occupied Channel Islands. We talk about the film's strengths and where it shortchanges its own story, and we cover the history of the occupation, from Britain's decision not to defend the islands to what ha...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Empire of the Sun (1987), Steven Spielberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel about a kid more or less growing up in a Japanese POW-camp and making it home. We feel a little old because Christian Bale is in this and he's a child . Also: the Shanghai International Settlement, and Cadilacs of the Sky, baby. 🖥️ Visi...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Forgotten Army (2020), a Hindi-language miniseries directed by Kabir Khan about the Indian National Army: the soldiers who broke away from the British Indian Army and allied with Japan to fight for India's independence during World War II. We talk about the all-female combat regiment, the Rani of Jhansi, and World War II as a hinge in histo...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Thin Red Line (1998), directed by Terrence Malick and based on James Jones's semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. This might be the most philosophical anti-war film ever made. We discuss Guadalcanal as paradise, and the antagonist: the war as a whole. Not even the Americans are heroes in this one. The most heroic thing they did? Le...

This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we talk about Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026), directed by Tom Harper and written by Steven Knight. The film serves as the finale of the Peaky Blinders TV series (2013-2022) and is set during World War II, following an ageing Tommy Shelby as he navigates Nazi counterfeit schemes, the Birmingham Blitz, and a son he barely knows. We get into the writing choic...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we’re joined by Lisa Koolhoven, Dutch historian and WWII Rotterdam bike tour guide, and Kristen Hayford, American-in-the-Netherlands, who joined forces to make the podcast Beb & Bob | Collateral Damage about their journey to discover whether their grandparents' paths may have crossed in the Forgotten Bombing of Rotterdam by the Allies. Together, we re...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Pianist (2002), based on Władysław Szpilman’s memoir of surviving the Holocaust in Warsaw. We talk about the film’s quiet perspective, the reality of life in the ghetto, and provide you with historical context for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising. 🖥️ Visit our website: www.rosiethereviewer.com 📸 Follow us on Instagram: @rosie...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss recent Netflix hit The Swedish Connection (2026), based on the true story of Swedish diplomat Gösta Engzell, who helped rescue Jewish people during World War II using the power of paperwork. We also dive down the rabbithole of a much smaller character in the film, but a real bad ass dude in real life: Raoul Wallenberg. (Can someone please make a mo...

It's our 100th episode and also Women's History Month! So it's only fitting that in this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss So Proudly We Hail (1943), a World War II film about American Army nurses during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941–1942. The story follows a group of nurses working in increasingly desperate conditions as the war closes in, from jungle hospit...

Netflix’s Nr. 24 (2024) follows Gunnar Sønsteby, Norway’s most decorated citizen and one of the most effective resistance operatives in occupied Europe. Tense from beginning to end, the film uses a sparse, near-ticking score and a documentary-style framing device to press a harder question: was it worth it? An elderly Sønsteby lectures students who have never known occupation, and what he chooses...

This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we’re heading to the beaches of postwar Denmark with Land of Mine (2015), a Danish film about a young German POW crew tasked with clearing a mine-affected beach and the Danish sergeant who oversees the process. It’s tense, visually striking, and explores trauma, anger, humanity and innocence. A movie about what comes after. 🖥️ Website: www.rosiethereviewer.com 📸 I...

This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we’re tackling The Sound of Music (1965), directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. On the surface, it’s a sweeping musical about love, family, and catchy songs you’ve known since childhood. But watch it through a World War II lens, and it's surprisingly sharp. We revisit the Von Trapps’ romance, the Anschluss, and the film’s p...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss I Was Monty’s Double (1958), a British WWII film based on M.E. Clifton James' memoir. The film tells the almost unbelievable story of an actor recruited to impersonate Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in the lead-up to D-Day, as part of a wider Allied deception effort. Clifton James plays himself, and Monty. How any of this was true, we don&#39...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Miracle of the White Stallions (1963), a Disney live-action film inspired by the real rescue of the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School at the end of World War II. Set in the war’s final months in Austria and Czechoslovakia, the film offers a very Disney take on Operation Cowboy, the joint effort to save the horses as the Third Reich col...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Windtalkers (2002), a World War II film inspired by the real Navajo Code Talkers who served in the Pacific theatre. Set primarily during the Battle of Saipan, the film follows Navajo Marines using their language as an unbreakable military code. Unfortunately, the main character is white. Why? Still, we're happy to talk about Code Talkers. 🖥️ Vi...

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Taking Sides (2001), a postwar drama built around a single, unresolved question: can you separate the art from the artist? Set during the Allied denazification of Germany, the film centres on the interrogation of celebrated conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who insists that his art existed above politics. His American interrogator argues the opposite:...