It hard to muddle through all the garbage today to find some decent shows and movies to watch, much less that are genuinely good stories.
Recently, I’ve been loving some shows set in WWII era the tell great stories minus any modern day style cringy moments.
If you have the time to tune into something new that sticks with the old school philosophy of just telling some solid tales, here’s one historally-based mini series and one creature feature KDrama to check out. As a bonus, there’s also a forthcoming action-comedy movie based on a wild true story I have high hopes for.
Masters of The Air on Apple TV+
The team that the created the excellent Band of Brothers and The Pacific miniseries now takes a look a the airmen with a story based on historian Donald Miller’s book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. It follows the 100th Bomber Group, and some beautiful Flying Fortresses. It also includes some fantastic acting across the board, especially Austin Butler (Elvis) as Major Buck Cleven. So far the air battles have been amazing. The pattern of bringing to life the souls and friendships behind these men who embarked on these dangerous missions that were such strengths in the original Band of Brothers continues here. So far the first three episodes have dropped in this series, and all three are wonderfully done. Now is a good time to catch up.
Gyeongseong Creature on Netflix
Heading overseas to an intensely creepy and action-filled horror K-Drama, is this series set in1945 Japan-occupied Gyeongseong (former name for Seoul at the time). This series is an intense monster-centric horror revealing some ungodly human experimentation on the Korean people resulting in some unthinkable results. It also shows some of the underground fight against occupation that was a very real part of Korean history. The costumes and set are amazing, the creature is thoroughly disturbing and the lead Park Seo-Joon (one of my favorite actors from anywhere today) and Han So-hee make a beautiful pair. If you’re sick of the turn heroes like Indiana Jones and James Bond have taken lately, this brings you back to some good old-fashioned adventure.
All ten episodes of this are now on Netflix, with a second season coming later this year. I will say the final episode was a bit, well, surprising to say the least. I hope to see some things cleared up in the second one.
Once you get caught up on these, there’s a movie coming to the big screen looks just plain entertaining:
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Directed by Guy Ritchie, the comedy is based on the real life top secret group of off-the-wall heroes (that even included James Bond creator Ian Fleming) gathered by Winston Churchill to take out the Nazis by any means they deem fit. And there really wasn’t anything they didn’t deem fit. I’m hoping this will be enjoyable, but it is hard not to love Henry Cavill (in the lead role as Gus March-Phillips), even in bad things.
I would recommend reading the book, Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII first, because it is really cool to see this type of underground badassery happening under Churchill’s leadership. This is scheduled for an April 19 release, so plenty of time to get your reading done.
As an action comedy, this is going to take quite a few liberties with the truth, but from the looks of it, it will be all in good fun.
The era of “The Greatest Generation” was as flawed as every other age, but there is just something about the time that was so much cooler, classier, and tougher than today.
It is nice to see at least some in the entertainment industry figuring that out.
