Posted on 11/11/2008 1:36:51 PM PST by oldleft
I was just wondering, what are some of the favorite Freeper movies out there which honor American veterans?
Here's a quick list of a few of my favorites. I don't think you can go wrong watching any of these today.
- Saving Private Ryan
- Glory
- Midway
- We Were Soldiers
- Black Hawk Down
So what are your favorites?
Crimson Tide is pretty good. So is A Few Good Men.
Mr.Roberts is a wonderful movie. Back in my pre-VCR youth, I would try to watch it every time it came on. It had a great message...it’s possible to be a hero anywhere you are, whether your fighting the Japanese or fighting obstructive pencil-pushers in your own ranks.
Some other war movies I like:
Kelly’s Heros
Patton
Heartbreak Ridge (has this been mentioned?)
Apocalypse Now
I understand AN is notnecessarily a good veteran’s day pick, just an enjoyable war movie. And I think Colonel Kilgore is a lot more likable than Coppola meant for him to be.
A black and white war movie lends a gritty appearance just by being shot in B&W. I saw “To Hell and Back” on a B&W TV before I saw it in color. Watching it in color was a disappointment.
I'm a film noir buff and think the challenges of filming in B&W far exceed the challenges directors face filming in color. Before Schindlers List, Speilberg was a very good director. That film made him a great director.
I’ll mention some lesser known but really good movies:
The Dawn Patrol. Both the 1930 and 1938 versions.
The Dam Busters. The 1955 version has been remastered, and of all things, Peter Jackson is filming a remake of it right now.
The Battle of Britain.
The Battle of the River Plate.
The Big Red One.
The Bridge At Remagen.
Come and See (extremely harsh, graphic, and realistic. brilliant.)
Dunkirk.
The Fighting Seabees.
Fires on the Plain (Japanese WWII. Very harsh.)
The Horse Soldiers.
The Longest Day.
Merrill’s Marauders.
Northwest Passage.
Sink The Bismarck!
The Steel Helmet.
They Were Expendable
Wings (1927).
Best Years of Our Lives & Air America!
Have you seen “Duel” It was a Spielberg TV movie with Dennis Weaver menaced by a deranged truck driver. The truck looks really evil in B&W. That was another movie I saw in BW first, and in color that truck just looked like any other dirty old tanker truck.
When I see a movie like “Midway” where they do not pay attention to any details, I tend to have a skewed opinion. Showing a 1942 battle where some airplanes have 1944 wing patches, and they show a F9F Panther crashing on the end of a flight deck just makes me wish for better production values.
The reason I like “A Bridge Too Far” is that you see a real effort to use proper vehicles and weapons. There are no grey M48s with black crosses on the turret.
I can appreciate you being a stickler for details. Take the actual field scenes of baseball play in Pride of the Yankees. Authentic? No way. Cooper was not an athlete. He was filmed in reverse -— batting righthanded and running to third base -— then the film was flipped in order to make him appear as though he was a lefty, as Lou Gehrig was.
For me, a movie has to be entertaining, first and foremost. I don't generally enjoy message movies or soap operas. Horse operas are different. ;^) If I want to see realism, I'll watch a documentary.
Speaking of message movies - “All the Young Men” Alan Ladd’s last movie, I think.
Young men in barracks don’t grow into plaster saints.
Carpetbaggers was Ladd’s last movie.
And movies with endless profanities and blood and guts doesn’t make for an enjoyable film either.
Now my favorite war movie was “Sergent York” and that had no cussing or blood and guts, but was also very accurate. But a Vietnam movie that didn't have cursing would be a bit anachronistic. I was in the USAF. I had successfully purged my vocabulary of cuss words before I went in (heard a girl use the F word as a noun a verb and an adjective in the same sentence), but by the time I came out I was spicing my language with curse words, it is just part of the military culture.
Thank William Wellman for “Battleground.”
A link to Wellman at the Internet Movie Database.
Full Metal Jacket contained a whole lot of cursing and blood. That didn't stop it from being a fine Vietnam era war movie. OTOH. Paths of Glory had no profanity or gore, yet it was a powerful war/anti-war movie. One of the best ever. Btw, both were directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Bonnie and Clyde and the Wild Bunch were two of the first films that made blood and guts realism a centerpiece of its action sequences. They were both ground breaking in their approach and it worked. Entertaining and enjoyable.
The war films of the 40`s and 50`s may have been sanitized when compared to movies of today, but that didn't make those films any less entertaining or enjoyable. The plots of those films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, left a lot up to ones imagination. Versus today, when the human senses have to be bombarded with all manner of human rudeness and cruelty, in order to make their point and get a WOW reaction from the audience.
Someone was bound to make a realistic movie about D-Day. However, do you think the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan was entertaining and/or enjoyable? I don't.
But Full Metal Jacket wouldn't have been the same movie without the realistic depiction of cursing and violence.
I think what you are saying, and I agree, is that ‘just cussing and blood and gore’ makes for a bad movie’. And yes, the crutch of cheap sensationalism is often used in the stead of actual story telling.
Sergent York was a great movie because it told the actual story of an actual man. A hero who didn't want to be a hero. A peerless fighter who didn't want to fight. A pious and gentle soul with a uncanny knack for killing people and taking them prisoner.
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