Best and Worst war movies

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Giancarlo


Just for that, I lost all respect for you totally.

Ted Striker

You hate America

[Daz]

Galipoli
Apocalypse

[Saras]

Cockleshell Heroes great mission should mean good material for a good movie, but

[Buck Birdseed]

Worst: I didn't see all of it, but as far as I could make out Ted Turner's version of Gettysburg was absolutely dreadful.

I'll think of some good ones later. M*A*S*H was pretty good...

[Chemical Ollie]

The irony of Pearl Harbour: An ultra-patriot American movie released just after 9/11, where the heroes volonteer for a suicide bombing mission.

I liked most of the movies mentioned. The most recent I saw was "Patton", but I regret I purchased the DVD. One great movie no one mentioned (I think) is Enemy at the Gates.

Has anyone seen No mans Land, a quite recent movie about the war in Bosnia?

[Alexander's Horse]

strange that some people think the thin red line wasn't realistic. I found it haunting.

what is brought out really well is what it means to assault a position and officer's role of driving men over an objective regardless of cost when you really feel like the smartest thing to do would be to run away. I really got drawn in to the drama and fear and the ruthless primitive brutality of an infantry assault. The fact that soldiers were being shot down by gunners they couldn't even see before they even got close to the objective was very realistic and chilling.

It reminded of an earlier classic, 12 o'clock High, which I actually saw as an officer training film. Gregory Peck plays an officer whose job it is to keep daylight raids over Germany going in 1943 in spite of horrendous casualties in the newly arrived 8th airforce. You get to dread every mission. But Peck must keep the crews flying to almost certain death sooner or later. This is what war is really like, not mock heroics or spectacular pyrotechnics.

[Chemical Ollie]

I fell asleep the first time I saw Thin Red Line. It was late at night in a hotel room on a business trip.

But it has its moments - I still remember one quote: No matter how much you train and how good you are, if you're in the wrong place in the wrong time, you're just gonna get it!

[molly bloom]

'Culloden' is an excellent 'war' film. It centres on the deciding battle of the Jacobite Uprising of 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie actually managed to get as far south as Derby and seriously put the wind up the Hanoverian establishment, but thanks to his own magnificent incompetence secured defeat, despite having one of the most gifted military commanders ever to come out of the British Isles.


What I find particularly good about the film is that it also looks at the social consequences of the defeat, the conflicting personalities and ideologies and the gruesome aftermath of the battle and the war.

The director arrives at a remarkably unsentimental depiction of a conflict which has long been subject to sugar coating in novels and painting and music.

http://www.iofilm.co.uk/fm/c/culloden_1964.shtml

I'd also recommend the French film, 'L' Armee des Ombres' or 'Army of Shadows' as its direct translation into English would have it, and Rossellini's 'Roma: Citta Aperta' about the Allied invasion of Italy, the fall of Mussolini's regime, and the creation of the Republic of Salo and the Nazi occupation of Italy.

'L'Armee des Ombres':

http://www.irishfilm.ie/cinema/f_season1.asp?SID=27

'Roma: Citta Aperta':

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004CNH2/026-5664412-9896441

For a different view of WWII, a 'what if' look is provided in 'Went the Day Well ?' which imagines what might have happened had the Germans successfully managed to take over a British village. Again the view of British people is remarkably dissimilar to that provided by something like 'Mrs. Miniver'.

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/studios/ealing/filmography/29.html

And of course there those other films such as Pasolini's 'Salo' which deal with aspects of WWII as well, and also Alain Resnais's 'Nuit et Brouillard'.

'Nuit et Brouillard'/'Night and Fog' :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000093NQZ/026-5664412-9896441

Pasolini's 'Salo'

http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/salo/

And a film which everyone should see, especially in the context of Iraq, Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers'.

[Cruddy]

Favourites - Cross of Iron, Full Metal Jacket, The Beast of War.

Least Favourite - Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence - I cried when I first saw it, on the replay I realised I must have been temporarily mentally unbalanced to have had that reaction. U571 (or whatever number) was a stinker too.

[SpencerH]

Not mentioned yet :

Zulu

Waterloo.

I'd like to know why some people dont like black hawk down?

[Cruddy]

Well, since you asked...

I've only seen up to the bit before the chopper actually crashes. I wonder how come US troops zero their rifles on a target about 20 metres away...

... When I've finished watching it I'll let you know some more things wrong with it. I don't dislike it so far - who knows, I might actually think it's great?

[Sir Og]

Come and See/Go and See

One of the greatest war movies ever. It depicts the horror on the eastern front.

[SpencerH]

Combat distances in urban warfare are very short. It makes sense to zero your weapons at contact ranges.

[Sir Og]

I don't have the time and my English is not good enough to describe "Come and see" but if you want a war movie this is the ultimate one.
No hollywood movie has ever been or will ever be even remotely close to this masterpiece.

Deffinately a must see however it might be difficult to rent it in the states or anywhere else for that mater. Probably can be found on the net.

[Proteus_MST]

Best: IMHO "Saving Private Ryan"

Worst: Dunno, but all films where war is pictured as something, where the "good guys" are always intelligent dudes who barely get a scratch from enemy fire, whereas the enemy side consists only of dumbasses who die by the thousands when the good guys appear on the battlefield