I Served the King of England (2008)

In Theatres: August 22nd, 2008
Genre: Comedy, Romance, War, Foreign
Director: Jirí Menzel
Cast:
Ivan Barnev
Oldrich Kaiser
Julia Jentsch
Martin Huba
Marián Labuda

Plot:
Jan Dítì (Ivan Barnev) is short in height, but high in ambition. To put it bluntly, the young provincial waiter wants to become a millionaire. And he knows just how to do it: by hearing everything, seeing everything, and creating opportunities at every turn. Armed with this knowledge and an irrepressible wish to please, he soon leaves his first place of employment, a pub, for a luxury brothel and, finally moving onto an elegant Art Nouveau Prague restaurant. But by the late 1930s, things are changing: Hitler has taken the Sudetenland region and is breaking apart Czechoslovakia. Jan falls in love with Líza (Julia Jentsch), a Sudeten German proud of her Aryan blood. They marry, and soon after Líza is sent to serve on the Polish front, while Jan remains behind to serve as a nurse in a Nazi SS Research Hospital, but when she returns, she has a fortune in rare stamps that Jews had ‘left behind’ … After Líza’s less than heroic death, Jan sells the stamps and becomes … a millionaire. But he only has three years to enjoy his fortune: the new Communist regime puts him behind bars for 15 years, one for each of his millions… Upon his release from jail, Jan is sent to live in a decrepit border town. Here Jan reflects on the events that have shaped his life – and to reflect on what might have happened if he had played a different role in these events.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

In Theatres: 15 August, 2008
Genre: Action, Comedy, War
Director: Ben Stiller
Cast:
Ben Stiller
Jack Black
Robert Downey Jr.
Brandon T. Jackson
Jay Baruchel

Plot:
Through a series of freak occurrences, a group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying.

Australia (2008)

In Theatres: 14 November, 2008
Genre: Adventure, Drama, War, Western
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Cast:
Nicole Kidman
Hugh Jackman
David Wenham
Bryan Brown
Bruce Spence

Plot:
Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by Japanese forces firsthand.

Defiance (2008)

In Theatres: December 19th, 2008
Genre: Drama, War
Director: Ed Zwick
Cast:
Daniel Craig
Liev Schreiber
Jamie Bell
Alexa Davalos

Plot:
In WWII Russia, Jewish refugees band together into a brigade that hides in the forest, ambushes Germans and survives until war’s end, eventually 1200 strong.