"The Book Thief"

I wasn't sure what to expect from this film-- after seeing the trailer, I was worried it would be some typical Hollywood movie on WWII and Nazi Germany, pushing holocaust hyperbole ... but it was actually a very nice, understated, very humanistic movie. What I liked about it was it was actually a fairly balanced view of Nazi Germany-- clearly showing the bad side of the fascistic regime but also showing ordinary Germans in a sympathetic light, and even showing the protagonists getting killed by Allied aerial bombs.

I read a couple of reviews of the film, and they were upset that the film didn't show more of the horrors of the war and the holocaust. But the film really only showed life in a small German town during the war, and it didn't shy from the issue of Jewish persecution, as the main German family hid a Jewish man in their basement at a great risk. The movie just didn't get into the concentration camp issue. The closest it got was showing Jews being marched down the street, to an unknown fate.

I also appreciated that they showed the Nazi officer railing against not just Jews, but also against Communists and even "Plutocrats".  It was implied the main character's mother in the movie was a Communist being shipped away to prison or expelled.

In any case, this movie and some other stories lately have given me hope that we are moving towards a more realistic realization of WWII and the holocaust. Not that mainstream holocaust propaganda isn't still dominant, but I feel like maybe there is a slight turning of the tide.