Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer, a Dutch-Canadian female-led WW2 media podcast. A new episode airs every Friday!
Find all Rosie the Reviewer episodes here.
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.
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 talk about the standoff between three British and 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 ended in a tense diplomatic standoff in neutral Montevideo.
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.