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Gagged on Apocalypse Now being #2!
The Green Berets with John Wayne!
Being somewhat older than most folks here and a film buff for all those years, I figured a thread on Favorite War Films would do. There are many fine war films that have never been seen by those born past 1970, so I have put as many as I could remember. Just cut & paste the film's title into IMDb search mode and click away. IMDb is at http://us.imdb.com/
There are so many genres of films, television series and mini-series about warfare: Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican War, The War Between the States, Indian Wars, Pre-World War One, World War One, Pre-WW2, World War Two (Made 1939 - 1946 & Made After 1946), Korean War, Vietnam War, Cold War, Gulf Wars, The Homefront, War Bios, Service Comedies and Foreign Wars...
Patton
71. Come And See, 1986
A harrowing but worthy portrait of a young Russian boy's experiences during The Second World War as he turns from green teenager to hardened resistance fighter. The Second World War always brought out the best in Soviet filmmakers and director Elem Klimov found his ideal subject in this harrowing story of a teenage boy's view of the conflict. The lad Florya is taken off by a group of partisans, fighting in the woods of Byelorussia in 1943. They disappear and he is left to wander, gun in hand, until he rejoins them at the end as an active and hardened participant, his young face prematurely aged.
Hard to find, but highly-recommended. I'll never be the same.
from looking at the list, they have a VERY loose definition of a WAR movie....
terminate a flipped-out renegade US colonel played by Marlon Brando.
The problem with this synopsis is it is not only incorrect, but more to the point in regards to how we are treating the terrorists. Take this monologue for instance:
Col Kurtz: "I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."
That,...is our problem today with our leadership against the enemy. We are fighting a monster that doesn't care if they die, and has no desire for our democracy, liberty, and freedom.
"Sands of Iwo Jima" and "Blackhawk Down"
Many problems with this one.
1: Where was "Gettysburg?"
2: "Troy" does not belong on ANY "best movies" list
3: "Patton" should be number ONE, or at least in the top 10.
My list:
#1 - Band of Brothers
#2 - Saving Private Ryan
#3 - Patton
#4 - The Longest Day
#5 - We Were Soldiers
#6 - Gettysburg (top 5 if they cast someone other than that idiot martin sheen who ruined the R. E. Lee part)
#7 - Blackhawk Down
#8 - Full Metal Jacket (I've loved that movie since the first time I saw it)
#9 - The Dirty Dozen
#10 - Das Boot
This is a tough call, but off the top of my head I'd pick (last to first):
Stalag 17
The Great Escape
The Bridge Over The River Kwai
Sargeant York
Patton
Starship Troopers
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.
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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.
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
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
Sand Pebbles, From Here to Eternity, Slaughterhouse Five, The Blue Max, Das Boot, C47 with marines goes down on bypassed Jap island, can't remember the name, Heaven Help You Mr Allison, Mr Roberts, All Quiet on the Western Front, Dr Zhivago, anything with Lee Marvin,
