The 1916 Battle of the Somme remains the most famous battle of World War I, remembered for its bloodshed and its limited territorial gains. What is often overlooked, however, is the literary importance of the Somme: more writers and poets fought in it than in any other battle in history. Narrated by Michael Sheen, War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme details the experiences of the poets and writers who served in the battle. The work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg and JRR Tolkien (who arrived at the Western Front with ambitions to be a poet) was informed and transformed by the battle. Taken together, their experiences allow us to see this dreadful historical event through multiple points of view. The film uses animation, documentary accounts, surviving artefacts, battalion war diaries and the landscape itself to reconnect this literature to the events that inspired it.


Himself - First World War Historian
Himself - Biographer, Siegfried Sassoon
Himself - Literary Historian
Himself - Author, Tolkien and the Great War
Himself - Son of Robert Graves
Herself - Biographer, Siegfried Sassoon
Himself - Editor, Selected Poems: Robert Graves
Himself - Royal Welch Fusiliers
Himself - Editor, The Oxford Book of War Poetry
The 1916 Battle of the Somme remains the most famous battle of World War I, remembered for its bloodshed and its limited territorial gains. What is often overlooked, however, is the literary importance of the Somme: more writers and poets fought in it than in any other battle in history. Narrated by Michael Sheen, War of Words: Soldier-Poets of the Somme details the experiences of the poets and writers who served in the battle. The work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg and JRR Tolkien (who arrived at the Western Front with ambitions to be a poet) was informed and transformed by the battle. Taken together, their experiences allow us to see this dreadful historical event through multiple points of view. The film uses animation, documentary accounts, surviving artefacts, battalion war diaries and the landscape itself to reconnect this literature to the events that inspired it.
2014-11-15
9.5
6.0Five years after a zombie outbreak, the men and women of R-Division hunt down and destroy the undead. When they see signs of a second outbreak, they fear humanity may not survive.
6.9The heir to a noble and influential family finds the love of his life, but she will only accept him if he becomes a kung-fu master. He becomes a legendary folk hero who tries to save the emperor.
6.5In this prequel to the animated series The King's Avatar, Ye Xiu enters into the pro gaming world of Glory, and competes in the first Pro League series tournament.
4.6Young women in Nazi-occupied countries are packed onto a train and shipped off to a prison camp, where the sadistic commandant uses them as rewards for his lesbian guards and perverted and deviate troops.
7.4Leo San Juan and his team of "ghostbusters" continue with their adventures, this time fighting against the mexican monster himself: "El Chupacabras".
6.0The bungling inspector Cruchot finds himself trying to save the residents of St. Tropez from some oil-drinking humanoid aliens. The only way to tell the aliens from the real people, besides their constant thirst for oil-products, is that they sound like empty garbage cans when you touch them. Chaos is ahead.
7.7When Scooby and the gang hear of a werewolf plaguing a traveling circus, they go undercover as circus performers to get to the bottom.
6.6An army major goes undercover as a college student. His mission is both professional and personal: to protect his general's daughter from a radical militant, and to find his estranged half-brother.
5.5Set in the 1800s, the film is about a "dacoit" tribe who take charge in fight for their rights and independence against the British.
7.2An inside look at one of the most anticipated movie sequels ever with James Cameron and cast.
5.1It is the year 2027, eight years after the first outbreak of The Sickness, a highly contagious, adaptive and lethal virus. The world is now run by a pharmaceutical corporation called The Company, which distributes a treatment for the virus but charges a high price for it, putting the majority of people in a state of poverty and dependence.
6.7Reunited witch twins Camryn and Alex adjust to their new life as supernatural beings while at the same time trying to maintain a normal existence in this sequel to the magical Disney Channel original movie Twitches. But they soon find themselves going head to head with the forces of darkness that threaten to destroy their world. Luckily, their birth mother, the powerful Miranda, is on hand to help out.
5.6Local Pennsylvania polka legend Jan Lewan develops a plan to get rich that shocks his fans and lands him in jail.
6.6When twin girls are found dead in their family’s barn, reality star turned TV-reporter Meredith Phillips and her de-facto camera crew are dispatched to rural Wisconsin to investigate the gruesome deaths. In their relentless drive to break the story, the reporters become entangled in a deadly mystery and uncover the small town’s shocking secret. Edited together from the crew’s multiple cameras, the film documents their struggle to survive the most terrifying night of their lives and becomes the only evidence of a crime too horrific to imagine.
6.2When ten-year-old Lewis is suddenly orphaned, he is sent to live with his Uncle Jonathan in a creaky (and creepy) old mansion with a mysterious ticking noise that emanates from the walls. Upon discovering that his uncle is a warlock, Lewis begins learning magic, but when he rebelliously resurrects an evil warlock he must find the secret of the house and save the world from destruction.
7.7Inuyasha and his brother, Sesshomaru, each inherited a sword from their father after his death. However, their father had a third sword, named Sounga, that he sealed away. Seven hundreds years after his death, Sounga awakens and threatens mankind's very existence. How will the children of the Great Dog Demon stop this unimaginable power?
6.6In the sixties, Eddie and the Cruisers were the hottest band around. But the tragic death of its lead singer broke the band up...only Eddie is not dead. He works as a carpenter in Montreal, but his love of music forces him to create a new band which will have to struggle with its anonymity.
7.7After successfully won the Tokyo qualifying tournament, Chihaya and her friends are set to go on to the nationals. As they prepare, Chihaya is faced with new personal issues as her childhood friend and inspiration, Arata, has announced that he has quit competitive karuta. Not only that, but a new rival emerges in the reigning female champion karuta player, Shinobu Wakamiya, a karuta prodigy who became the nation's and the world's greatest female karuta player as a 9th grader. All of this forces Chihaya to reexamine her love of the game in the midst of preparing for one of the biggest tournaments of the year.
7.5Madoka Kaname, an ordinary middle-schooler, along with her best friend Sayaka Miki, are offered the chance to have any wish they want granted by the mysterious Kyubey, and become magical girls and fight witches. However, fellow magical girl Homura Akemi seems intent on stopping Madoka from becoming a magical girl at any cost. Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part I: Beginnings is a retelling of the first half of the TV anime series.
7.8Scooby and the gang experience outdoor fun as they go back to Fred's old summer camp. As summer goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that the spooky camp stories told by the fireplace, are more real than they've though and soon, it's up to the gang to try and solve the mystery of camp scare.
7.6A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
7.5The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
8.3Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.
8.0During World War I, English officer Thomas Edward 'T.E.' Lawrence sets out to unite and lead the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes to fight the Turks.
8.3A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
7.9A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.
7.5A young American soldier, rendered in pseudocoma from an artillery shell from WWI, recalls his life leading up to that point.
7.2Alvin York a hillbilly sharpshooter transforms himself from ruffian to religious pacifist. He is then called to serve his country and despite deep religious and moral objections to fighting becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI.
6.9An ornithologist mistaken for an explosives expert is sent alone into a small French town during WWI to investigate a garbled report from the resistance about a bomb which the departing Germans have set to blow up a weapons cache.
6.9An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.
6.0In 1917 when the British forces are bogged down in front of the Turkish and German lines in Palestine they rely on the Australian light horse regiment to break the deadlock.
0.0Leo and Lucille Frank are a newly wed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in the old red hills of Georgia. When Leo is accused of an unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and devotion.
6.2Three American soldiers help a young girl deliver a secret message across enemy lines.
7.3Young Frenchwoman Mathilde searches for the truth about her missing fiancé, lost during World War I, and learns many unexpected things along the way. The love of her life is gone. But she refuses to believe he's gone forever — and she needs to know for sure.
5.0Theodore Roosevelt was America's 26th president and a larger-than-life legend whose incredible story must be seen to be believed. Narrated by George C. Scott, this documentary weaves extremely rare archival footage with meticulous recreations alongside the music of John Philip Sousa in a dynamic panorama of the great events of Teddy Roosevelt in the early years of the 20th century.
5.7Drama-documentary recounting the events of the 1st July 1916 and the Battle of the Somme on the Western Front during the First World War. Told through the letters and journals of soldiers who were there.
8.8Based on Michael Morpurgo's novel and adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, War Horse takes audiences on an extraordinary journey from the fields of rural Devon to the trenches of First World War France.
5.5The true story of a French WW1 deserter who, with the support of his wife, spends a decade in disguise as a woman.
6.6Richthofen goes off to war like thousands of other men. As fighter pilots, they become cult heroes for the soldiers on the battlefields. Marked by sportsmanlike conduct, technical exactitude and knightly propriety, they have their own code of honour. Before long he begins to understand that his hero status is deceptive. His love for Kate, a nurse, opens his eyes to the brutality of war.
6.5The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.