Thanks for all the suggestions! This list should keep me busy for a couple of years.
I think that Hamburger Hill and The Dirty Dozen are just the type of thing I’m looking for.
A few that haven’t been mentioned yet, all WWII-related:
Sahara: not the Matthew McConaghey vehicle but the '43 edition, starring Humphrey Bogart and a much-abused M3 Lee tank, battling Germans over, well, a waterhole. Makes an interesting double feature with The Beast mentioned previously.
The Train: a personal all-time favorite, starring Burt Lancaster and his clenched jaw as a Resistance fighter trying to prevent the theft of French artworks by the Nazis near the end of WWII. Highly fictionalized from real events but a classic action film.
The Bridge at Remagen: somewhat overlooked effort starring George Segal and Ben Gazzara, covering the crucial late-war effort to secure a allied bridgehead over the Rhine. My father fought in that action, and he considered the film not entirely inaccurate as to events although there apparently was a lot less shooting at the point of the actual capture of the bridge than is shown in the movie.
Cross of Iron: Sam Peckinpah does WWII, specifically the doomed German campaign in Russia, in his characteristic sardonic style. James Coburn and Maximilian Schell ham it up to a pleasurable degree.
The Cruel Sea: Stanley Baker and Jack Hawkins lead a harsh life aboard a British escort vessel battling U-boats early in the war. Remarkably dark story for a film made in the immediate post-war period.
Of films aleady listed, my personal top five, in no order (if anyone cares) would be:
Das Boot
12 O’Clock High
Bridge on the River Kwai
Zulu
Kelly’s Heroes
I notice that, in the 70’s, war (or the military) is portrayed as “situation normal; all fouled up” kind of way.
But nowadays, the military is portrayed as having their shit together. (Satellite surveillance, all the best gizmos that never seem to malfunction, a clear plan, etc.)
So, when the film was made definately seems to make a difference in the atmosphere of a war movie.
Wow, I haven’t thought of The Bridge at Remagen in years and years. I was a big WWII buff as a kid and remember seeing that movie on late-night TV back then, and really liking it. I should see it again.
I’ve been meaning to see The Cruel Sea for a long time. The book, by Nicholas Monsarrat, is a favorite of mine: great characterization, an interesting mix of naval action and shipboard tedium, and a heartbreaking shore-based subplot for one of the HMS Compass Rose’s officers. I’ve heard good things about the movie, too, although I suspect it won’t fit my mind’s-eye picture of the characters very well.
You can bet that every single one of these films was made with the cooperation of the military, which is how they got to use those gizmos. (I doubt the military could prevent someone from, say, using stock footage of an F-16 or an M1A1 or doing something clever with CGI, but they also aren’t bound to help produce films that will show them in a bad light.)
That is, of course, aside from the obvious cultural shift.
That’s kind of why I’m not interested in Viet Nam movies. I mean I am, but I’d watch them for completely different reasons.
You might like We Were Soldiers. It helps that the movie takes place early on in the war, when folks were a lot less cynical about the whole thing. Essentially, the plot was about a major engagement between a Battalion of American airborne cav troopers, and a large force of Vietcong and NVA troops. Both sides are presented fairly positively. We even get to see the NVA commander discussing the battle with his officers, so we can see how they are adapting their tactics to deal with the superior American firepower.
Plus, it’s got Sam Elliot as Sergeant Major Basil Plumley, and his scenes are worth whatever you pay for the movie alone. He’s the master of the growling one liner.
Blackhawk Down showed the U.S. military screwing up royally, by-the-numbers. And had the full cooperation of the U.S. Military in its making.
I think it (military cooperation) has more to do with overall “tone” of the story. Blackhawk Down was based upon the book of the same name by Mark Bowden, who presented an honest, no-bullshit assessment of everything that went wrong. He also gave credit where credit was due when things went right.
But he didn’t do it with an anti-military “tone,” if you take my meaning. With the possible exception of Ranger Captain Steele (played by Jason Isaacs), no one was portrayed in a buffonish, caricaturish manner. There was no underlying anti-war/anti-military message, other than, “War is hell, chaos and confusion incarnate, and there are no guarnatees.”
Eh, I think all the ones I came in to mention have been mentioned. But in honour of Shogun 2 Total War, I’ll add Heaven and Earth. Not for all tastes, but STW fans should enjoy it.
84 charlie mopic is a very honest movie about a long range patrol during the vietnam war. it doesn’t have a political point of view, just involves you intensely in the lives of a few ordinary men in a difficult situation, the most honest war movie ever made. also, read the book We Were Heroes Once by Galloway and Hal Moore, you’ll never want to waste time on most war movies again, especially ones with mel gibson…
Wasn’t that in Studs Terkel’s “The Good War”?
Although I watched the entire thing, it didn’t get substantially better. The flipping-into-open-skull-and-splashing scene really stands out as an example of disgusting direction…it’s like the director wanted to make the audience flinch for watching a war-themed program.
I did like one scene though. The key parts of the scene are wordless, but I hope I am interpreting it correctly. Two marines find a live baby on top of a pile of dead bodies in a shelled-out house. They stand in the doorway, paralyzed, afraid to touch the baby because of the prevalence of Japanese booby traps. There’s some effective acting as you see their own self-images suffering as the realization sinks in that the war has reduced them to being unable to help an infant. Another soldier comes along and scoops the baby up, leaving the first two to their self-loathing.
Indeed. Worth noting, of course, that one’s time is never wasted with war movies starring Mel Gibson. 
I don’t remember much about it but Midway was a big one in the 70’s.
+1 on 84 Charlie Mopic. Only saw it once, years ago but it left an impression.
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Another view of Vietnam, and another war: Air America.
Gene Ryack: Here at Air America, what’s considered psychotic behavior anywhere else is company policy.
A Very Long Engagement is visually stunning and has some truly riveting (and graphic) scenes of trench warfare.
King of Hearts is a wonderfully weird little movie from the 60s that’s hardly anyone seems to remember. It’s set in a mental hospital during the First World War and has has Alan Bates and Geneviève Bujold in it. What more could you want?
Air America had its moments – enough of them that I have it on DVD. I feel, though, that it could have been better.
OTOH, I can’t hear A Horse With No Name without thinking of that film. 
Another recommendation for Restrepo, a great documentary.
One that hasn’t been mentioned yet (that’s also available for streaming on Netflix) is Ballad of a Soldier, a Russian WWII movie about a young soldier trying to get home on leave from the front to visit his mother.