The arrival of director Kathryn Bigelow’s highly anticipated nuclear war thriller “A House of Dynamite” (in theaters and on Netflix now) heralds the return of a long-forgotten genre: the cautionary tale about atomic Armageddon. Filmmakers over the years have explored nuclear war both from the perspective of the decision-makers and the survivors who may wish they had been blast casualties.

‘Fail Safe’ (1964)

When a lone American bomber squadron receives mistaken orders to nuke Moscow, it sets into motion a chilling series of events in director Sidney Lumet’s haunting thriller. As officials try to get Colonel Jack Grady (Edward Binns) to call off the attack, the president (Henry Fonda) weighs conflicting advice from a militant political scientist, Dr. Groeteschele (Walter Matthau), and the

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