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.
We talk about the movie and book Unbroken. We might be a little mean. But that’s got nothing to do with Louis Zamperini.
Part of our WW2 in the Pacific series: Explore more films and series on the Pacific theatre →
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It’s our 100th episode and also Women’s History Month! So it’s only fitting that in this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss So Proudly We Hail (1943), a World War II film about American Army nurses during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941–1942. The story follows a group of nurses working in increasingly desperate conditions as the war closes in, from jungle hospitals on Bataan to the evacuation from Corregidor.
We also explore how the film reflects 1940s attitudes toward women, including Hollywood stereotypes, and obviously wartime propaganda. Along the way, we look at the real stories of the nurses on Bataan and Corregidor. These women kicked ass!
This week, we dive into Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), based on a book by the same name. Sam has read it, so you don’t have to. Maartje gets more excited about a Canadian character in this than Sam, so the world is definitely upside down.
This week, we discuss Flags Of Our Fathers, about the famous flag raising photo taken on Iwo Jima. Sam has read the book and Maartje has also watched part of the companion film Letters From Iwo Jima. We’re very serious and learn one very important lesson at the end.
We discuss the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora! about the attack on Pearl Harbor just to see how much Michael Bay ‘borrowed’ from it. Kidding! We giggle over the Star-Spangled Banner played at 8 times the speed. Kidding! This might be the most accurate film about WW2 events ever made.
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.
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.