Saturday, July 14, 2012

Cold War Movies…

Model Graveyard.  Gresham, Oregon.  January 27, 2012.

Wrapping up our home schooling unit on the history of manned space flight and the space race, we are going to spend a couple days on the Cold War.  Thought I might look for some ideas for a good movie to watch.

The only one that really leaps into my mind is The Day After because, quite frankly, this movie pretty much defined the Cold War for me.  Especially the mid-1980s. 

However, while I think that movie might explain to our boys why his mother and I don’t think that nukes are cute little weapons in games like Roblox, I am not sure if it really does much to explain much more about the era than the fear of a bad ending…

So, I went looking through the following lists for some ideas.

Category:Cold War films - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Films of the Cold War:
As the decade came to a close, however, political conflicts in client nations and plans by the United States and the Soviet Union to implement new intercontinental ballistic missile technology led to renewal of Cold War hostilities and prompted the long-time cold warrior Ronald Reagan, who was elected President in 1980, to declare the Soviet Union and her allies an "evil empire." His Director of Central Intelligence, William Casey, saw the country returning to what he nostalgically described as "the good old days of the Cold War." Despite the accelerating arms race, the renewed East-West tensions never revived the fears of communist expansion and imminent nuclear war that had defined America's Cold War culture during the 1950s and 1960s. Invoking the specter of the "evil empire" did more to recall an era when America was more prosperous, more unified, and more capable of heroic action than the nation that had endured defeat in Vietnam and a general disillusionment with national institutions.

The sense of the Cold War as theater or as an exercise in nostalgia informs many films dealing with Cold war subjects.

Rankopedia: Best Cold War Movie:
There are several Great Films Based on Cold War. I have Listed some them in this Ranking. The Cold War was the period of conflict, tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940s until the early 1990s.

Six incredibly bad films inspired by the Cold War » peoplesworld:
For some filmmakers, the Cold War became a convenient excuse for moronic plotlines, insufferable jingoism, and unapologetically reactionary politics. The U.S. government, typically through the military, produced its own propaganda shockers ("Red Nightmare"). Low-budget "exploitation" filmmakers sought to cash in on the zeitgeist with efforts such as "Rocket Attack U.S.A.," "Beast of Yucca Flats," and "Red Zone Cuba." In the eighties, fear of Reagan's "Evil Empire" inspired American and British movie studios to churn out bigger budgeted (but just as schlocky) Cold War actioners like "The Final Option" and "Red Dawn."

The Best Cold War Films of All Time, or at Least the Most Cold Warry:
In fact, those are the films that I want to celebrate – the movies that both embraced the terrifying nightmare of global war and laughed in the face of four decades of silent terror. Because without them, we'd probably all be living in mountain bunkers or adapting to our tentacles.

The Best Cold War Movies Ever.... - The 10 Best Movies Ever - Epinions.com: From the moment the Cold War started (some say it was in 1945, others say it was in 1946), Hollywood made many films about the East-West war-in-times-of-peace. Most, of course, dealt with espionage and political intrigue (Ice Station Zebra, The Package, The Hunt for Red October), a few dealt with true-life incidents (The Big Lift, The Missiles of October, Thirteen Days), while a handful went to the logical - or is it "illogical"? - extreme and showed the Cold War turning hot, either by accident or on purpose.

5 Best Cold War Films | Screen Junkies:
The 5 best Cold War films were not difficult to pick. The time period of the Cold War is fascinating and the panic and paranoia was perfectly captured in Hollywood. To get a better idea of what it was like and how it's remembered today, watch the five best Cold War films ever made.

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