Posted on 02/08/2006 7:32:44 PM PST by Bender2
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at channel4.com ...
I don't like war movies so I don't have a favorite. The only ones I've seen are Casualties of War, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Full Metal Jacket was the lesser of all the evils.
I didn't know we had so many Breaker Morant fans here. Edward Woodward was flawless.
It's on the reading list at all four military academies, the only sci-fi novel to get that distinction, plus on the Army and Marine Corps reading lists.
"I love to watch it with someone really young who look askew when the characters all rise at the dance when they play "God Save the Queen."
My daughter caught that they were in Britain during
WWII. I explained what was happening.
Her question: "Dad, why are they standing? They're playing
'America.' I thought they were English.
You are sooooo right about that scene. Meow!
Apocalypse now was not a good "war movie." It was a good piece of liberal propaganda.
...and a deft comment on America's Vietnam folly.
The only folly in Vietnam occurred in the Capital and Whitehouse! The war was won when we walked out in forfeit.
The Thin Red Line was so bad, that many people walked out of it, including us, long before it was over. I've never seen so many people talking during a film in a theater before, and I've never seen anyone walk out of any film in numbers as the film went on.
It was nothing but a liberal war infomercial. How it even made the top-20 is beyond me. The cast was as liberal and the "statements" trying to be made so transparent, with little if any artistic or theme value at all. The "storyline" was essentially non-existant as well.
It shouldn't even qualify for the poll.
Spot on!! Thanks!!!!
The hymn Randall Wallace and Nick Glenny-Smith composed for that movie, "Mansions of the Lord" (lyrics below), should become the Army counterpart to the equally beautiful Navy hymn "Eternal Father."
I cannot hear that music and those words without being moved to tears.
Perhaps because I lost at least one friend -- and will never know how many former students -- in Vietnam.
(http://www.virtualwall.org/ds/ShimpAH01a.htm)
***THE MANSIONS OF THE LORD***
from the movie "We Were Soldiers"
To fallen soldiers let us sing
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the Mansions of the Lord
No more bleeding, no more fight
No prayers pleading through the night
Just divine embrace, eternal light
In the Mansions of the Lord
Where no mothers cry and no children weep
We will stand and guard though the angels sleep
While through the ages safely keep
The Mansions of the Lord
I really liked that one too.
"Twelve O'Clock High"
An interesting note about this movie. While going through Navy OCS, my class had to sit through this movie for a leadership class.
As you know Gregory Peck is some hard charging O-6? who has to whip a air squadron into shape because the current CO is getting wore out and getting to close to his troops. Peck, as we all know is a good actor, but also a hard chargin' liberal. As expected, Peck also becomes consumed with his pilots well-being and he also has a nervous breakdown. I really didn't get why we had to watch it. We should have watched Patton instead.
Re Mansions of the Lord.............
What a wonderful creation. I cry like a fool every time I hear it.
Any recommendations on what and where a recording can be obtained?
WWIII
Red Dawn
"The Thin Red Line"
"The Great Escape"
"Bridge on the River Kwai" was on last week. I need to watch it again, I didn't understand it very well.
I love "Patton". Good call.
Breaker Morant
Andrzej Wajda's War Trilogy
The Great Escape
Patton
The Longest Day
The Big Red One
Das Boot
Europa, Europa
Stalingrad
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