100 Greatest War Film -- What is your favorite war movie?

Channel 4 ^ | 2-6-006 | Channel 4

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Channel 4 brings you the results of the 100 Greatest War Films of all time, as voted for you.

1. Saving Private Ryan, 1998 The first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan is a visual assault, acclaimed as one of cinema's most accurate realisations of warfare. Capt John Miller (Tom Hanks) is among the US troops storming Omaha Beach on D-Day. Thereafter, you follow this everyman soldier on a humanitarian military mission to rescue the surviving brother of three soldiers killed in the same week. Spielberg crafts a shocking and moving illustration of the Second World War.

2. Apocalypse Now, 1979 Francis Ford Coppola's epic hallucination of the Vietnam War, in which Martin Sheen journeys through Vietnam and Cambodia to terminate a flipped-out renegade US colonel played by Marlon Brando. The shoot was notoriously troubled, but the result is a war movie unlike any other: a spectacular opera, a straightforward plot blown up by rampant imagination, and a deft comment on America's Vietnam folly.

[Supernatural]

I also liked:

The Battle of the Bulge

Zulu

Big Red One

[Jack Deth]

That is one HUGELY messed up listing of films!!!

Where's "They Were Expendable"?
Where's "Hell Is For Heroes"?
Where's "Battleground", "The Grest Escape", "King Rat", "The Hunters", "The Odd, Angry Shot", "Go Tell The Spartans", "The Bedford Incident", "Cockleshell Hoeoes", "The Desert Fox", "A Midnight Clear", "The Dam Busters", "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo", "In Harm's Way"?????

"633 Squadron"??? You've GOT to be kidding!

Jack.

[World'sGoneInsane]

Bridge on the River Kwai. May not be considered a "war" movie, but worth seeing and including as a classic.

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Re: What was the picture where Kirk Douglas and a bunch of poor enlisted men, I think French, were being executed for the errors of their commander?

Very stirring film. Also loved Captain Newman. Wasn't the central patient in the film Bobby Darin?

That was Paths of Glory (1957) and Stanley Kubrick first bigtime directing job...

Kirk Douglas came to regret it as Stanley later claimed he did everything on the film from directing, to writing, to tearing down the sets. It is a wonder Kirk did not break him in two...

Yes, Bobby Darin played Cpl. Jim Tompkins in Captain Newman, M.D. (1963) and I believe was nominated for an Oscar as Supporting Actor. Robert Duvall and Eddie Albert both had outstanding supporting parts in it.

[LibFreeOrDie]

Alec Guinness is even better as a military man in "Tunes of Glory" (not to be confused with Kubrick's "Paths of Glory"). It's a character study, with a small cast, but Guinness is amazing as Major Jock Sinclair.

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Re: Anybody ever see "Battleground" with Van Johnson?

Yes, Battleground (1949) is one of the best war films of all times and it stands up even today. They used a really large freezer to shoot the snow scenes and that showed the troopers' breath smoking as it tends to do in cold weather. That one thing "Band of Brothers" CGI production failed to show even as good as it was...

BTW Van Johnson also did The Last Blitzkrieg (1959) and played a German commando team operating behind American lines in GI uniforms during the Battle of the Bulge.

I am temped at times to get a copy of each film and edit them together showing Van fighting himself... {...evil Vincent Price laughter...}

Gad! I am rotten to the core!

[LibFreeOrDie]

...as Stanley later claimed he did everything on the film from directing, to writing, to tearing down the sets.

And Kubrick even married one of the cast - the young German singer. He was a busy guy!<.P>

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Re: Wow. Talk about a post chock-full of good information!

Thanks, applause is always appreciated...

BTW cash, stocks and bonds are also accepted, too!

[Supernatural]

Really a very nice thread. Lots of fun and made me remember a lot of movies I had forgotten due to old age.

[Tulsa Ramjet]

I'd like to throw you to the fish." - Wayne talking to "Shane's" boy?

"Egan? Rock. Can you bunk out tonight?" - Wayne about to get lucky with that actress from "Hud".

[World'sGoneInsane]

Alec Guinness is even better as a military man in "Tunes of Glory"...

I believe I saw that, but it was too many years ago to remember. I'll have to look out for it. Thanks.

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Re: How about Jet Pilot with John Wayne and a hot redheaded chick.

That was Janet Leigh in all her glory circa 1953 when the film was shot, but producer Howard Hughes mucked around and did not release it until 1957.

I saw that film in its first run in a theater in Dallas, Texas. I went in a 10-year old boy... But when Janet took off that sweater in the first reel... I became a man!

BTW Hughes was able to get a lot of USAF support in making the film (Like those 60 plus F-86s flying in formation!) including many aircraft semi-secret like the X-1 and its B-29 carrier. However, all the delays over four years before its release made all those geewiz planes nothing special. The film did not do much at the box office and as I recall was not released to video until the 1990s.

[Supernatural]

Bombers B52

Twelve O'Clock High

Remember them?

[Sauce]

Good evening all,
Tank; rare film about the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.

[Balata]

U-571 is worth a mention.

[ScubieNuc]

HBO made a movie called "When Trumpets Fade." It was about the battle of the Ardennes Forest. Very well done in my opinion.

The other movie that didn't make their top 20 was "Hamburger Hill." Amazingly accurate according to someone I once worked with. (said he was there...I don't know, but I thought it was a well done movie.)

Probably my all time favorites would be "The Last of The Mohicans", and "The Sandpebble." ("Blackhawk Down" and "We Were Soldiers Once" get honorable mention)

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Re: Has anyone ever seen "The Night of the Generals"? That was written by the same German author as Cross of Iron. It chronicled a Wehrmacht general officer who liked to murder prostitutes and the local policeman who hunted him down. As I recall, Peter O'Toole played the part of the General. He makes a really good psycho! It was loosely based on that sick b@st@rd Reinhold Heidrich.

First, do you mean SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Main Security Office, and Reich governor of Bohemia and Moravia? BTW his genetic (and suspected Jewish) grandfather was named Reinhold Heydrich? Yes, The Night of the Generals (1967) was a good film, but I believe they used SS Oberst Jochen Peiper as the model for O'Toole's general. He was referred to by his men as "Blowtorch Peiper" for his unforgiving. no mercy assaults in Russia, Italy and the Bulge.

Peiper was also the 'hard as the steel of our tanks' role model for Robert Shaw's Col. Martin Hessler in Battle of the Bulge (1965).

Yes, O'Toole played a terrific psycho in 'Night' and as the stories go about him, he was considered more than a bubble off plumb by his cohorts and co-stars... But I loved just about ever film he made.

Not many people know this, Normy, but Peter O'Toole was known to take a drink now and then...

Yep, O'Toole got ripped once in Picksley and it took two deputies, the High Sheriff, four state troopers and a Salvation Army Colonel to get him out of the outhouse!

[Mike Darancette]

1. Glory
2. We Were Soldiers
3. Gettysburg
4. D-Day
5. Tora, Tora Tora

[ScubieNuc]

Oh Yeah!!!

Excellent movie, "Pursuit of Honor" !!!

The only Don Johnson flick I think I liked. The most intriguing thing is that it is based on a true story.

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Re: WWII: "The Desert Fox" with James Mason

BTW great trivia question: Name all the films in which James Mason played Field Marshal Erwin von Rommel?

Can I assume The Horse Soldiers, Ulzana's Raid and The Blue Max are not one of them?