Best War Movies

Chas.E, is it possible that this is the movie that you were talking about ?

Hey, I never knew about that version, I give about a 1 in a million chance of me ever seeing it. I’ll add it to my list. Thanks.

No, the version I saw was a low-budget production in English that dated to the mid 1970s. It was a low-budget production of Public Broadcasting in the US, which did everything cheaply in those days.

I quite enjoyed The Bridge at Remagen and A Bridge Too Far, but for genuine horror I’d always go for Stalingrad, a German-made filme from the early 1990s that outdoes SPR for being one of the most hopeless and depressing films ever. It follows a small group of German soldiers sent from Italy to Stalingrad, in a blitzed urban wasteland clearing factories with flamethrowers to fending off Russian tank attacks on the snow-covered steppe.

For war-related films, nothing beats Threads (UK), When The Wind Blows (UK) or The Day After (US, title correct?) for nuclear horror.

Y’all have already named most of my favorites. One I’ll add is The Beast, a sort of a “you reap what you sow” yarn about a Soviet tank crew in Afghanistan.

Don’t have much to say about the above films that hasn’t already been said. But I do have a few random comments:

  1. Loved the opening line in Three Kings: “Hey, are we still shootin’ people?” Also loved the shot of George Clooney agressively ramming the jeep forward until the whole frame is taken up by Bart Simpson on the radiator, clutching the American flag in his little fist.

  2. Nice bookend for Dan Aykroyd to be in 1941 and in Pearl Harbor.

  3. Not precisely a “war” movie, but the best movie set in wartime that I’ve seen: Hope and Glory. I could go on all day about how terrific it is, but I’ll just say this. If you see it again, or for the first time, notice how all the significant scenes start with one mood and end with another.