I’d like to throw in The Thin Red Line for consideration.
Woody Harrelson loses his butt!
I also love war films, partly because it’s a window onto a world I’ve never had to know personally, and as a woman, no one’s ever expected or encouraged military service from me.
Have any of you seen Bravo Two Zero? I was really impressed by the skirmish in the flat, exposed Iraqi desert: eight special forces soldiers, with no transport, armor, or groundcover, against a [platoon?] of Iraqi soldiers and one or two of their tanks. What follows is almost unbelievable but true, based on the memoir by Andy McNab. For these men, the war was really a two-parter: first the war in the desert and surrounding terrain, and then a very different kind of ordeal in an Iraqi prison, testing each man who suffered that with the harshest emotional and physical challenges.
I like many war movies. One of my favorite movies of all times is Sargeant York. I also like The Great Escape.
StG
Count me amongst those who enjoy a good war movie (whilst despising war in general). One of my favorites is the WWI movie The Lost Battalion (starring none other than Rick Schroeder, of Silver Spoons fame!). Others that are in my collection:
Tora! Tora! Tora!
Saving Private Ryan
Band of Brothers
Bridge on the River Kwai
A Bridge Too Far
Patton
All Quiet on the Western Front
Stalingrad
Apocalypse Now
The Deer Hunter (though not really a war movie in itself)
We Were Soldiers
The Thin Red Line
The Beast
Black Hawk Down
Tears of the Sun (not so much a “war” movie as a “combat” movie)
Braveheart (hey, it counts! It may not be all that historically accurate, but there’s lot of fightin’)
Three Kings
Zulu
I’m pretty much in aggreement with the OP’s choices. Good Job Wartime.
My favorite war movie ever - Where Eagles Dare.
It’s got Clint, tons of dead Nazis, cool explosives, and the most incredible blonde chick- **Mary Ure **
In my collection…
Apocalypse Now
The Dirty Dozen
Saving Private Ryan
Das Boot
Battleship Potemkin
The Great Escape
Hell Is For Heroes
Will be in my collection one day…
The Battle of Algiers
Breaker Morant
Catch-22
Gallipoli
Henry V
MAS*H
Mr. Roberts
Paths of Glory
Platoon
Regeneration
Stalingrad
Villa Rides
Most of you probably have seen most of these, but two of the best, The Battle of Algiers and Stalingrad, are also Foreign (French and German) and thus harder to find… but it would be well worth your time seeking them out.
The Seven Samurai, All Quiet on the Western Front, Westfront 1918, Saving Private Ryan, They Were Expendable, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Sands of Iwo Jima, The Sand Pebbles, Objective, Burma!, Battleground, The Longest Day, The Great Escape, Dr. Strangelove, Schindler’s List, Paths of Glory, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Train, The Battle of Algiers, Open City, War and Peace (1965-1967), The Burmese Harp, Das Boot, Twelve O’Clock High, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Lawrence of Arabia, The Four Days of Naples, Tora! Tora! Tora!
Documentaries: Why We Fight (series), Victory Through Air Power, Target for Tonight, Listen to Britain.
And if homefront movies count: Since You Went Away, Gone With the Wind, The Best Years of Our Lives, Night of the Shooting Stars, Ballad of a Soldier, The Diary of Anne Frank, From Here to Eternity.
I like war movies, too. It’s a lot easier to engage war as a fantasy than a reality, which I think explains the disconnect. When we watch a war movie, we know all the deaths and injuries are fakes. Makes a huge difference.
My faves are
Saving Private Ryan
Band of Brothers
Midway (once they get past the whole stupid romance subplot stuff early on)
Zulu
The Big Red One
The Longest Day
I like the movies where military tactics and strategy are an important part of the film.
I think the reason “Saving Private Ryan” is so well-liked is that Spielberg realized that by showing early on just how brutal war is, he could raise the dramatic stakes a lot. The viewers would then understand that the troops who’d just seen their buddies literally getting their heads blown off and their guts exploded and their legs and arms shattered, now had to continue to advance into the fire that was creating all that carnage, and that there was no reason why they shouldn’t be next. The increased violence also radically increased the understanding of the courage required to do their jobs. Made it a lot less abstract.
Lots of good choices here.
I’d like to add The Lighthorsemen, Action in the North Atlantic, and Sahara (the 1943 Bogart one) to the mix
I agree with pseudotriton ruber ruber that *The Battle of the Bulge * was a joke. There is a compelling story here and I’d love to see it get a good treatment.
Except that it’s not always faked. A few movies have made extensive use of actual war footage (cf. “Midway,” which made unflinching use of dogfighting, bomber, and battleship/carrier footage). And the makers of many war films, particularly those which are based on histories or memoirs, have taken great pains to re-create events with as much verisimilitude as possible, right down to using the actual names of individual soldiers and depicting their casualties (“Band of Brothers,” “Bravo Two Zero,” and many more). And even when the gore is toned down, or the characters are all fictional composites or left undifferentiated, or when the limitations of the filmmakers or the medium fail to convey the full heft and horror of battle, as it must (NO film will ever be able to fully convey Stalingrad) – even those films are patterned on reality, representing, however fitfully or expressionistically, real events.
[I’ll never forget the first time I saw “Midway”. I was about nine or ten years old, it was a lazy weekend afternoon, and my brother and I were headed outdoors to play, when our father suggested we instead stay put and watch this movie, saying that this was good and serious, with real war footage, and that it would show us something of what war really looks like. When the battle footage sequences started to appear, he pointed them out: “that, right there, is actual footage of Americans dying, kids, from the war… those are real planes and pilots… bomber crews… and those are Japanese Zeros… Kamikazes…”. And then he’d explain that the Kamikazes were deliberately killing themselves in order to kill as many of our sailors and sink as many ships as possible. And our reaction was just, wow. Until that eye-opening experience, movies were just movies, and as much as they impressed us, we knew they weren’t *real*. That is, until “Midway”. (Years later, I’d make my own, less naive reassessment of “Midway,” but I digress…)]
Hence the sense of reverence that many viewers feel when watching a war film, as compared to similar depictions of war and violence in a fantasy, sci-fi, or other completely fictional context. “Midway” had its corny aspects, but there’s a greater sense of gravitas in even one plane going down in flames in its archival footage than there is in the entire “Battle of Hoth” sequence from The Empire Strikes Back – as much fun as Star Wars fans (myself included) can have in chewing over the minutia from that sequence.
I forgot to add The Beast (Russians in Afganistan) to my list.
Carry on.
Has anyone heard of Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War? It’s a movie about two Korean brothers forced to enlist in the army and fight in the Korean War. It’s a bit more of a family drama between the two brothers than it is about the actual Korean War, but there’s Saving Private Ryan-esque sequences, fighting and effects in it.
Just chiming in to put in a good word for Go Tell the Spartans.
She was pretty damned incredible, wasn’t she? 
The wife and I have a running joke based on Where Eagles Dare. Mrs. Consigliori, for instance, might be downstairs while I’m at the computer, and she’ll be trying to yell up to the room I’m in to tell me something. After a couple of “What’s?” and “I can’t hear you!” exchanges, she’ll yell at the top of her lungs: BROADSWORD CALLING DANNY BOY!!! (a reference from the movie).
That is my cue to log off and get my ass downstairs.
FWIW- Thanks to all for your responses to this thread. There are several flicks mentioned that I haven’t seen, but I will see them soon.
Also has LOTR’s Sean Bean in it if that’s your thing.
Enemy at the Gates painted a pretty ugly picture of Stalingrad.
Also liked (not necessarily the best, just not mentioned)
WWII
A Bridge too Far
The Dirty Dozen
WWI
Galipoli
Legends of the Fall
French & Indian War
Last of the Mohicans
Ancient wars:
Gladiator
Troy
No war movie list would be complete without mention of
Run Silent, Run Deep
PT 109
In Harm’s Way
The fighting Seabees (My dad was a Seabee officer in WWII)
And several others whose names escape me right now.
It’s questionable whether Das Boot could be called a fictional adventure, given that it was based on a true story (the journalist character in the movie was real, and wrote a book called “Das Boot” about his patrol).
Check out “Stalingrad.” Another German WWII film, from the same director as Das Boot. Another very brutal look at the war from the loser’s perspective.
I think it’s been mentioned before, but Band of Brothers was pretty darn good.
Also Saving Private Ryan. Can’t wait for the Hanks/Spielberg Pacific War epic; it’ll be similar in scope to Brothers only it won’t be based on an existing book.
One conflict that hasn’t been mentioned is . . . umm . . . Grenada. But I’ll put in a vote for Heartbreak Ridge. Makes me wish I’d been a Marine.
Others:
Enemy at the Gates
Gallipoli
The Big Red One (just out on DVD)
Last of the Mohicans
Paths of Glory
Full Metal Jacket (although this was far from Kubrick’s best; part of me is just fascinated at how he recreated Parris Island and Viet Nam while never leaving England)
Have any of you guys seen Soldier of Orange?
Personally, I’m a sucker for WWII submarine movies specifically. If I’m flipping channels and come across Run Silent, Run Deep or Operation Pacific then the next two hours are shot.