From what I understand, the description of battle in the earlier part of the movie was acurate - for a year and a half earlier, when the Germans frst invaded and the Soviets hadn’t yet gotten over Stalin’s purges and their general unpreparedness. By Stalingrad the Russian pretty much had their act together.
While Three Kings was hardly accurate, in that it depicted any “actual” event, it did capture the zany/ellubient spirit of the 1991 Gulf War, and I was pretty much able to identify real soldiers I knew from the characters on the screen, especially Ice Cube and Spike Jonze.
Another nod for Titanic. The story was passable at best, but fairly accurately depicted the collision, and the sinking, and beautifully rendered the ship herself.
I wasn’t there at the time… but I’d guess that Topsy-Turvy shows a pretty accurate portrayal of Gilbert and Sullivan and Victorian era England.
This Is Spinal Tap {yes, honestly} is constantly cited by musicians as a horribly accurate depiction of band life “on the road” - the ennui, the egoes, the petty bickering…
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas was pretty accurate in showing what it’s like to be on drugs… as far as I’ve experienced, anyway…
Can anybody weigh in on Samurai movies? I’ve been watching a lot of them recently, thanks to Netflix. In the last two months I’ve watched Yohimbo, Seven Samurai, Kurosawa’s Samurai Trilogy, Chushingura, and just today I finished Ran. I’ll leave The Last Samurai out of it, because, while I enjoyed it immensely, I understand that it’s fairly innacurate both to history and general Samurai motivations.
So, are any of these movies particularly accurate? Particularly innaccurate? Any I’ve missed that I should see?
I can’t believe it hasn’t come up yet; Office Space nails the modern corporate culture perfectly. The pointless forms and procedures, the consultants, the boss, almost everything. (The technical details about the scam are a bit wonky, but that’s immaterial.)
They weren’t that deep. They were behind the Normandy Beachheads, and probably wandering around on the western side, consdering they find Ryan guarding a bridge that presumably must be preserved for the assualt on Cherburg or St. Lo. The British troops and beaches were to the east of that and it was (D +3? D+5?), so the fact they didn’t run into any british troops doesn’t seem at all suprising to me.
Based on the PBS show last night, The Great Escape captured an amazing number of details exactly as they happened.
I guess I’m just a purist, but I think the only vampire movie that got it right was Nosferatu.
What?
I think the best portrayal of a “working class” band, the kind that makes its living playing weddings and bowling alleys and such, is Georgia.
I agree. Just check out Shadow of the Vampire–the true story of F W Murnau & Max Schreck–to understand why it achieved such verisimilitude.
The look and feel is okay, but as far as everything else… Terrible. They tried to cram every myth about the eastern front there is in the span of a few hours, and do a fairly good job at it.
They didn’t even get the main story (about the snipers) right.