THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS (2008)

[The Burgomaster]

This movie teaches us nothing new about the Nazis or the Holocaust, but I liked it anyway.  Some critics said it would have worked better as a short story rather than a feature length film, but I thought it worked just fine at a lean running time of just over 90 minutes. 

The plot involves an 8 year old boy named Bruno whose father is a German officer.  The father gets a promotion and is assigned to oversee a concentration camp.  Bruno doesn't understand what the Nazi Party stands for and ends up secretly befriending an 8 year old Jewish boy named Shmuel who is a prisoner in the camp.  They spend a small amount of time each day talking to each other through the electrified barbed wire fence.

Most of the brutal treatment of the Jews is kept offscreen (but what you don't see may be more unsettling than if you did see it).  Rupert Friend is scary as Lietenant Kotler, a staunch Nazi who terrifies Bruno.

Check it out if you have a chance.

[3mnkids]

 I thought the acting by the boys was fantastic. The ending is heartbreaking. 

[BoyScoutKevin]

I saw it, and I liked it. I know there were some complaints that the Nazis weren't portrayed as the evil scum-sucking slime like the way they are normally portrayed, but I think it works better, more frightening, to see them portrayed as basically normal people with families, who did terrible, terrible things.