Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer, a Dutch-Canadian female-led WW2 media podcast. A new episode airs every Friday!
Rosie the Reviewer is a passion project, built episode by episode. If you’d like to support what we do, you can help keep us on the air or pick up some Rosie merch. We’re working on more ways for you to get involved in the future.
This week, we discuss Casablanca, the old Hollywood classic released in 1942. It’s perhaps the most referenced and quoted movie ever. Here’s looking at you, kid!
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In this episode, Sam and Maartje are joined by literary friend Phoebe to talk about Catch-22. While there is a movie and a series, we mainly focus on Joseph Heller’s satirical novel, one of Sam’s all-time favourites. What does it all mean? Is this book impossible to adapt? Would it even be written today? We have a good chat about it.
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we’re joined by award-winning historian Clare Mulley, author of The Spy Who Loved…, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, and Agent Zo. We talk about Polish paratrooper Elżbieta Zawacka (Zo), Nazi-resisting test pilot Melitta von Stauffenberg, and the razor-sharp Christine Granville. Clare shares how she builds trust with her readers, balances storytelling with historical rigour, and restores women to their rightful place in the WWII record. And, this episodes is full of stories about the heroic women Clare writes about. You’ll want to pick up a book or two after this!
Episode ten is here! In this episode, we discuss the nuances of a Dutch film called The Forgotten Battle (originally titled De Slag Om De Schelde), about the ‘forgotten’ battle for the Scheldt.
In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we dive into Black Book, Paul Verhoeven’s 2006 thriller about a Jewish woman who goes undercover in the Dutch resistance. Nearly twenty years later, its themes of complicity, moral ambiguity, and survival feel sharper—and perhaps even more relevant—against the backdrop of today’s conflicts.
We unpack the film’s chaotic plot, infamous pube-bleaching scene, and the real-life resistance fighter who inspired the story. And we discuss the uncomfortable: how Verhoeven uses a WWII setting not just to thrill, but to ask unsettling questions about the blurred lines between victim and aggressor—and how quickly one can become the other.
A war movie that’s sexy, violent, politically loaded, and painfully relevant.
This week, we discuss the movie Anthropoid, about the mission of the same name, set up to kill the evilest of evils
Reinhard Heydrich. Perhaps one of the only evils to get the ending he deserved. (Spoilers, it was slow and painful).
Rosie the Reviewer is a passion project, built episode by episode. If you’d like to support what we do, you can help keep us on the air or pick up some Rosie merch. We’re working on more ways for you to get involved in the future.