I was gonna make this a poll, but there are too many choices to just clump into an "other" category.

Here are some films that come to mind...

-Saving Private Ryan
-Platoon
-Full Metal Jacket
-The Bridge on the River Kwai
-Enemy At The Gates
-Black Hawk Down
-Three Kings
-Born on the Fourth of July
-We Were Soldiers
-The Thin Red Line
-Tora! Tora! Tora!
-Patton
-Apocalypse Now
-A Bridge Too Far
-The Longest Day


I'd go with Saving Private Ryan, followed by Full Metal Jacket.

Here's some that I like a lot. As far as "best ever" goes, I don't know. But these are all great:

Westfront 1918 - G.W. Pabst
Hearts Of The World - D.W. Griffith
They Were Expendable - John Ford
Fixed Bayonets - Samuel Fuller
Attack - Robert Aldrich
Sands Of Iwo Jima - Allan Dwan
Hell Is For Heroes - Don Siegel
Days Of Glory - Jacques Tourneur
Air Force - Howard Hawks
The Thin Red Line - Terrence Malick

If so, what'd you think of it?

And I would have pegged you for a Paths of Glory fan.

>If so, what'd you think of it?
>

I'm not really a fan of Three Kings. I think the only movie of Russell's that I've liked so far is "I Heart Huckabees" which I thought was great.

>And I would have pegged you for a Paths of Glory fan.

I am. I just didn't happen to put it on there. I left off some other good ones too. . . Ford's "The Lost Patrol" would be one. Zoltan Korda's "Sahara" would probably count as a war movie (whatever it is, it's great).

i need to get on that.

The Thin Red Line is a very long and slow-moving film. I suppose it's not to everyone's tastes, and that's fine. But for me it's definitely one of the better American films of that whole decade (the 90s). And I'm not talking just about war movies, but movies in general. It's one of the best of the American movies made in that decade.

ill definately watch it this week though... the reason i never got around to seeing it for so long was mainly its legnth, just never seemed to have the time when i was in the mood to see it.

Platoon (1986)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Stalag 17 (1953)

watched it too long ago to analyse it, but just wondering if anyone else is not wild about it

then Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and Bridge on the River Kwai. (in that order)

On a side note, We Were Soldiers was a little underrated IMO. It was good but overlooked.



"Being the bigger man is overrated." -- Huey (The Boondocks)

myspace.com/dozingoff

Braveheart
Starship Troopers
The Dambusters
Guns of Navarone
Escape to Victory
Red Badge of Courage

Band Of Brothers

One could argue that it's not a movie... I'm just saying it's my favorite war DVD (set).

i dunno if u can call it a movie or whatever, but it deserves to be mentioned for sure.

I'm legitimately pumped anytime I see any of the actors from Band Of Brothers doing something else. That was such a fantastic series.

I watch the whole thing, 1-10 every three or four months and I haven't come close to being even slightly bored by it.

---------------------
No Corner Left Behind

Some notables, off the top:

(Fuller): Steel Helmet; Big Red One: Special Edition/Reconstruction
(Kobayashi): Human Condition Trilogy
(Ichikawa): Fires On the Plain
(Powell & Pressburger): 49th Parallel
(Wajda): Kanal; Ashes and Diamonds (Generation is the 1st in this trilogy, but I'm not too fond of it)
(Ray): Bitter Victory

>Some notables, off the top:
>
>(Fuller): Steel Helmet; Big Red One: Special
>Edition/Reconstruction
>(Kobayashi): Human Condition Trilogy
>(Ichikawa): Fires On the Plain
>(Powell & Pressburger): 49th Parallel
>(Wajda): Kanal; Ashes and Diamonds (Generation is the 1st in
>this trilogy, but I'm not too fond of it)
>(Ray): Bitter Victory

of these, which would you recommend as blind buys? (i don't have any of them...)

But the Human Condition Trilogy is as fine as any great war film...it's OOP, though.

Steel Helmet and Fires on the Plain are only on VHS for now (last time I checked) and Big Red One is OOP but the Special Edition/Reconstruction is out.

Thanks to okaycomputer's IFC Janus films project post...I see that Fires on the Plain and Ashes and Diamonds are being shown on Dec 19.

http://www.amazon.com/Beast-George-Dzundza/dp/B00005AVZU


'sorry, haters...God aint done with me yet.' - alcee hastings

Hamburger Hill..

no love for tigerland?

Colin Farrell was excellent in it, but I think his performance outshined the movie, which overall i thought was so-so.

as does Terrence Howard & Marcel Iures. All 3 of em outshine the lead Bruce Willis IMO.

>Colin Farrell was excellent in it, but I think his
>performance outshined the movie, which overall i thought was
>so-so.

Yeah his performance certainly was better than the movie but for a low budget boot camp flick w/ Schumacher @ the helm I thought it was pretty solid.

No better film *about* war.

Other films obviously show combat more compellingly.

Kinda like the asian Saving Private Ryan.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386064/

Saving Private Ryan looks like boyscout camp compared to that.

should definitely be added to this...

with humanizing Hitler that much.

but still can't help but to be intrigued that Oliver Hirschbiegel WENT THERE with this film...

shooting fire out of his nostrils and gnawing on the bones of children and small animals.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/

I'd like to add if any one enjoyed this movie please check out the novel
"Shortimers" it was based on the book is a different animal altogether

it was co-written by Michael Herr, who wrote Dispatches, and if you've read that you can see a LOT of it in the film.

I think the book and the movie contain many of the same elements

but the book has a much larger scope

and a bunch more "story" to it. And I love the movie.

I'm saying that, essentially, it's based on two books.

LOL

... it makes it all worthwhile.

We park our cars in the same garage my friend.


Bodybag II was almost as good.





Add my brand new myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/insightclopediabrown
http://www.myspace.com/dumhi
http://www.youtube.com/group/okayplayer
R.I.P. 3rd i

LOL!!!
What about "Bodybags 2". Think that ever got finished, seeing as how the producer died in a botched police raid?

Has anybody mentioned Blackhawk Down?

For me it is a tossup between Saving Private Ryan, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, with Blackhawk Down bringing up the rear.

Maybe Dick Ritchie came back, grabbed the dallies and put that shit out.

But I just love Full Metal jacket too much to go with anything else. I mean its damn near my favourite film of any genre. I can watch it again and again and again.

n/m

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/

One of the most affecting films I've ever seen.

Also, even though I'm not propounding it for best war film ever, I just wanted to add that Vietnam combat veterans generally say that the combat in Hamburger Hill is the most realistic they've seen.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093137/


~~~~~

Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart

-- WH Auden

i wish they would make a second season.

but that theme music made me wanna kill somebody

worse theme than 'enterprise', even

I liked the show a lot, but that theme music was cringe worthy. It was one of the show's producers or creators or something who wrote and sang that shit too.

fuuuck, I can kinda hear it in my head right now, and that makes me sad and angry...awful song.

---------------------
No Corner Left Behind

rewatched it just last Sunday, and some sequences are just amazing (like the attack on the Japanese camp), not to mention the usual Malick goodness

Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now
Saving Private Ryan
Glory

A SOLDIER'S STORY -- Denzel Washington's finest work.

THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN -- Larry Fishburne's finest work.

FULL METAL JACKET -- Great story. Joker's the shit.

PLATOON -- Deserved Oscar award.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN -- A believable story.

Post over!

If so, it, and its anti-epic style, takes a position at least in the top five.

If not, 'Full Metal Jacket' was always cool to me.