Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer, a Dutch-Canadian female-led WW2 media podcast. A new episode airs every Friday!
Everything about Rosie and our WW2 adventures.
Description Transcript In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Battle of the River Plate (1956), about the first British naval battle of
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 the country to collect.
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 McIntosh, who taught herself Japanese and ended up producing propaganda in India.
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.
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 the Plus: Canadia mention.
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 have happened for the British monarchy’s reputation.
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.
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 African soldiers whose story went largely untold for decades.
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 happened to Louisa after her arrest. It’s also Mother’s Day this weekend, so we’re joined by a very special guest: Rhonda, Sam’s mom.
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.
Rosie the Reviewer reviews The Forgotten Army (2020), a Hindi-language mini-series about the Indian National Army and the all-women Rani of Jhansi Regiment: the WWII story most Western audiences have never heard.
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? Leave.
This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we talk about Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026), directed by Tom Harper and written by Stephen 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 choices that don’t land, the female characters who deserved better, the real history of Operation Bernhard and the Birmingham Blitz, and what made the original series work, and why this film loses it.
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 review The Shadow in My Eye (2021), a Danish film based on Operation Carthage, during which the RAF accidentally bombed a school in Copenhagen in March 1945.
We discuss the myth of the faultless liberator, what mainstream war media consistently refuses to show, and why the words ‘collateral damage’ carry so much weight.
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.