A Midnight Clear: under-seen and excellent.
The Execution of Private Slovik, based on a true event. Martin Sheen is outstanding.
Patton, for the entertainment value.
The delivery was hilarious. My friends and I used it for years afterward. (Not referring to a Black person, but as a phrase of agreement.)
What are you talking about? Denzel Washington has 2 Oscars, one of which is Best Supporting Actor for Glory! The other is Best Actor for Training day and he’s been nominated a bunch of times. Broderick has never won dick. Maybe you meant his “Tony award winning best” for singing and dancing which might have been out of place for his character in Glory.
Otherwise I agree, great movie.
If you want a wartime Guadalcanal movie, try Guadalcanal diary (also watch for a young Anthony Quinn in it).
If the Pacific theatre is your cup of tea, try The Pacific, the companion serie to Band of Brothers.
“John Rabe”, about the Rape of Nanking.
Not much battling going on. But I thought it was a powerful movie. The main character is a Nazi who writes Hitler to get to the Japanese to chill out in Nanking.
If you went to school in the 90s, you’d hear about how we forced Japan into an unwinnable war by cutting off their oil. This movie shows WHY that oil was cut off.
I’d skip The Pacific. Found it so bad I quit watching about halfway through. Gratuitous gross out stuff…did we really need to see a marine flipping something into the open skull of a Japanese corpse? Storyline is very jumbled and difficult to follow, as the narrative keeps jumping around. Even the cinematography sucked…many of the night battle scenes are little more than muzzle flashes.
One of the more disturbing movies about WW2 (perhaps of all time) is “Come and See” - unusually, a WW2 movie made by the Russians.
Truly unforgettable. Though you may want to forget some of the visual images - they are beyond merely graphic, into the realm of traumatizing.
Sometimes considered the greatest war movie ever made - I dunno if I’d go that far. Perhaps the greatest ‘war as hell’ movie.
Ministry of Fear (1944) is a noirish spy thriller set in Blitz-era London. Directed by Fritz Lang, no less, and based on a novel by Graham Greene, who also wrote the novel behind The Third Man, set in post-WWII Vienna (not Berlin!) and featuring some of the best theme music ever.
A Walk in the Sun (1945) is a more psychological movie set in WWII Italy.
Yes I meant Tony award winning best, and he has won them for his dramas. Meaning he’s a good actor
(If you like movies like The Third Man, the Alfred Hitchcock version of The 39 Steps (1935) is public domain and available for free download.)
Yes! Agreed!
Another vote for* Blackhawk Down* and We Were Soldiers.
I also would recommend Flight of the Intruder, but it breaks the airplane rule and the Vietnam rule, so maybe I won’t. It does co-star Wilem Dafoe’s mustache as a US Navy aviator, and has Danny Glover giving some epic ass-chewings. It is about a pair of Navy aviators becoming frustrated with the severe limitations they are having to operate under in regards to targets they are allowed to attack. Also has a couple of fun sequences where they are out getting in trouble on shore leave (bar brawls and the such.)
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAFTOOOOOOOOOON!!! GET IN HERE!
Oh, and the Starship Troopers movies can be entertaining, but you have to view them from a certain perspective (beer and popcorn help). Don’t look for a good movie in this series. Mostly just look for a fun movie. Well, at least in the first one. The second one was a crappy horror flick with a few really good scenes, and the third one was this close to being good, but just ended up as pure camp.
If you like Master and Commander, then you should definitely check out the Hornblower TV films, based on the Horatio Hornblower series of books. The TV movie series follows Hornblower from when he first joins the Navy, to when he finally gets promoted to Captain in the last movie (the series is more or less ended, given that the star, Ioan Gruffudd, went and got himself famous and making superhero movies). Takes place during the Wars of French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
Six movies total, two of them longer two-parters, all available on DVD.
Keeerap, that sounds intense. Sometimes though intense is good. Checking, I see it IS available on Netflix. I’m going to have to give that a look see some night when I’ve prepared myself for what’s apparently well beyond your average matinee.
Here’s three more:
“The Bridges at Toko Ri” (Korean War) The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) - IMDb
“The Blue Max” (WWI) The Blue Max (1966) - IMDb
“The Enemy Below” (WWII Pacific) The Enemy Below (1957) - IMDb
Hamburger Hill
We Were Soldiers…
Blackhawk Down
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Dirty Dozen. Lee Marvin at his finest.
Also, as someone mentioned above The Longest Day is perhaps the greatest WW2 movie ever filmed.
Yeah, Come and See is the first film I thought of when I came into this thread. If you admired the documentary-like verisimilitude of the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, you’ll appreciate Come and See.
Oh, and I also recommend Kelly’s Heroes for light relief. 