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I am sure you have heard some version of that short story about the drowning man who kept waiting for God to help him, right? In case you haven’t, well, here’s the basic summary of it: A man is stuck on the roof of his house during a flood, and he is praying to God for help. A rowboat arrives, and the people in it ask the man to come with them. The man rejects their invitation and continues to pray to God. Then a speedboat arrives, and the folks in it request that the man join them so that he can be taken somewhere safe. The man refuses to join them and keeps praying to God. After that, a helicopter comes to rescue the man, and he declines their helping hand too, only to resume his prayers. Finally, the man dies by drowning and goes to Heaven,...

World War II is a subject that filmmakers return to every year. In 2023 alone, we saw the U.S. home front tackled at a universal scale in “Oppenheimer,” the sweep of European resistance in “All The Light We Cannot See,” “A Small Light,” and “Transatlantic,” indulged in the action-packed catharsis of a Nazi murder-spree in “Sisu,” and heard, if not saw, the horror of the death camps in “The Zone of Interest.” In 2024, we’re already looking ahead to Guy Ritchie fucking up Nazis in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”

More recent series recreate the era, too, including Tom Hanks’ and Steven Spielberg’s final installment in their TV miniseries triumvirate about the American war effort, “Masters of the Air,” Hulu’s Holocaust survival story “We Were the Lucky Ones,” as well as Baz Lurhman’s, Hugh Jackman’s, and Nicole Kidman’s return to sweeping WWII melodrama in “Faraway Downs.