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 really liked two:
1) Sands of Iwo Jima. There is a scene where John Wayne saves another soldier from blowing himself up while training with grenades, but gets slightly injured. Another soldier walks up and says, "hey, they might give you a medal for that." Wayne says "Knock it off."
2) In Harms Way, it showed how some characters you thought would end up unscathed, end up severely injured or dead. War is hell. I think it also had a clip of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in American History. I wish someone would make a movie out of that. The book is superb. can't remember the author off-hand.
French and Indian War. But it's called Northwest Passage I think. Awesome movie that I haven't seen in years. That was one of pop's favorites
I saw it years ago but I loved it.
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?
The Wind and the Lion and The Wild Bunch are my two favorite movies of all time.
Of course, I haven't seen Brokebutt Mountain yet...
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A real sleeper is the Aussie movie Breaker Morant, based on the true story of a of Australian soldiers, loyal to the English Crown, who were sacrificed for political purposes by an English military tribunal during the Boar War. Vastly underrated fare,
Also like 1992 Last of the Mohicans, and of course my all time favorite movie, Braveheart.
We agree on We Were Soldiers but as far as showing as history, Full Metal Jacket did not impress me much as a Nam war film. It had a more WW2 feel to it and I chalk this up to Kubrick being a hermit for the past 20 plus years before the film was made.
I like The Boys in Company C but there is one question that drove me nuts. The 'boys' had finished basic and one asked, "What's an 0300?" I almost barfed in the theater!
Tell those high school teachers to show Go Tell the Spartans(1978) for it is much more factural about the Vietnam War, especially the early years...
Drums Along the Mohawk, from 1939, is another good one. especially if you like Henry Fonda
I agree. Breaker Morant is one of my favorite movies of all time. The book, "Scapegoats of the Empire" has been out of print for a long time but you can still find a real dogeared copy on Amazon or Celibris(sp?)
Anybody ever see "Battleground" with Van Johnson?
I'm a sucker for submarine movies, especially the old black and white WWII ones. Also, anything with aircraft carriers.
I wish someone would make a movie about A-10's blowing up a lot of stuff and killing a lot of bad guys.
I'd also like to see a movie where we lay waste to Iran, Syria and all of the middle Eastern Islamofascist scumbags including the Palestinians and their ululating mothers.
Weekend Warriors
Last year I taped and watched the Discover Channel's time-line film about Flight 93... It took me to such emotions, I don't know if I can watch the newer versions...
Yes, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 were true warriors and heroes!
Gad! My skin tingles just typing this...
How about Jet Pilot with John Wayne and a hot redheaded chick. All the flying scenes were done by Chuck Yeager.
Cross of Iron - that's a good one too. Sam Peckinpah made some great movies - and some pretty bad ones too (as in "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia"). The worst part of Cross of Iron was the attempt at a psychedlic fantasy between James Coburn and Senta Berger. That just did not fit. Otherwise, it was a superb rendition of the hopeless German experience on the Russian Front in WWII.
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.
The Wild Bunch was Peckinpah's best, though. You just can't beat a movie that stars William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, and Ben Johnson drinking, fighting, and carousing in Mexico in the early 1900's. That was a group of Men's men if there ever was one.
WWII: "The Desert Fox" with James Mason
Civil War: "The Horse soldiers" with John Wayne.
Indian Wars: "Ulzana's Raid" with Burt Lancaster
WWI: "The Blue Max" with George Peppard
Janet Leigh.
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