OT: Favorite War Movies This Weekend
As we honor our fallen war heroes this weekend many of us like to watch one, or more, war movies. What are your favorite military related films/series and/or what will you be watching this weekend?
Fury - just watched this last night...awesome tank WW2 film if you haven't seen it
Patton - anyone not seen this? George C Scott is amazing
Midway - WW2 Battle of Midway retelling...long but very good
Joyeux Noel is an interesting movie, and well worth seeing, but a tad too sentimental and unsubtle for my tastes.
For Korea, The Bridges at Toko-Ri is an excellent choice, but there are few really good movies about the ground war.
Tora Tora Tora
The Longest Day
Midway
Guadicanal Diary
Kelly's Heroes. Cause after all those you deserve a little fun.
This is not the Koala porn thread
We Were Soldiers.
Would have been a great film except for the stupid and totally fictional attack at the end. Dunno why Hollywood has to add crap like that when the basic (true) story is so compelling, and all the fiction does is taint the whole movie.
is that people consistently misuse that phrase, including one proprietor of this here establishment named (cough, cough), well, I'll just refer to him as "BC" to protect anonymity.
"A Bridge Too Far" does not mean "you went too far." It means some mission or goal, however noble or worthy it may have been, was overly ambitious and largely doomed from the outset (the Allies' Operation Market Garden, for example, as brilliantly portrayed in the film).
THIS IS WRONG: "Maizen's posts expressing disappointment at missing a few high-profile MBB recruits were reasonable, but his insistence that those misses mean Beilein is a lousy recruiter and the wrong coach for this program is a bridge too far." No, it isn't a bridge too far. It's just going too far and saying something dumb as a result.
THIS IS RIGHT: "Docking a bad MGoBlog commenter 100k points may keep them from posting new threads, but if the goal is to make them more responsible in all of their comments, that's simply a bridge too far." (in other words, it would be great if this thing worked for that purpose, but don't kid yourself, it ain't gonna).
Also right: "Sopwith thinks he can stop all the world's misuse of the phrase a bridge too far because he reveres both that film and the English language. But while posting scolding comments on MGoBlog might change one or two people's minds, trying to eradicate the misunderstanding entirely is a bridge too far. It's just going to end with him curled up in a fetal position cursing to himself the way he already does when people say 'literally' instead of 'figuratively.'"
/rant
picture of sopwith later tonight, drowning his sorrows over the constant destruction of the english language....
I wish I could upvote this more.
What you should be ranting about is that Market Graden didn't go "a bridge too far" AT ALL! The only purpose of the operation was to to sieze the Arnhem Bridge. If they weren't going to do that, they weren't going to do any of the other drops.
The Allied problem was that they went "a bridge too many." The operation shouldn't have been launched until XXX Corps was much closer to Arnhem.
Where Eagles Dare, Kelly's Heroes, 1941. A lot of you guys may be too young for most of these. Some are comedies, but still fun to watch.
Many movies I like have been mentioned, Patton perhaps my favorite. I'm going to mention Breaker Morant, about an Aussie serving in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War, then put on trial for executing prisoners (so not entirely a war movie). The movie gave the impression they were carrying out the Brits' dirty work, following verbal orders, then getting scapegoated, and of course, there was no record of such orders.
I saw Das Boot in MLB (4?) during winter. The heat was set too high, and with all the people it was pretty hot by the end of the movie. But it added to the atmosphere of the tense depth charging of the sub.
I went to see Midway in Sensurround when I was a boy. The next showing was sold out, so my dad got tickets to the following one, and took me to see Bambi in the interim. I could hear the rumble of explosions in the next theater, which was quite the juxtaposition.
Breaker Morant is and isn't a war movie. But what a great movie.
Correct! The humor is very 1950's, but the story is still great.
and said the Hue City scene in Full Metal Jacket was as close as you can get to what he experienced in that battle.
mmm yes with a scottish accent too
Favorite war movie has to be Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back.
Glory
Also Black Book (Zwartboek) is a great movie about the Dutch resistance to Nazi occupation.
And finally The Thin Red Line by Terrance Malik is a great story of an island hopping battle against the Japanese. It juxtaposes the absolute beauty of the pacific island where they were fighting with the horror of war. It has a pretty great cast too. Lots of big names, though a few star appearances feel a little jarring. When Clooney shows up for 5 minutes it can take you out of it for a bit. Still great.
Very powerful
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/la_grande_illusion/
Dr Stranglove
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dr_strangelove
Casablanca
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1003707_casablanca?
The Horse Soldiers, a 1959 Civil War movie.
Tora ! Tora ! Tora ! from 1970.
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr. A marine and a nun are stranded on an island in the South Pacific during WWII. Directed by John Huston.
This film bring back memories for me. My Dad served in the Marines in the South Pacific during the war. He was always proud of being a Marine. Years later he took me and my brother to the drive-in movie theater to watch this movie. Good movie. And reminds me of my Dad.
The Boys in Company C - my all time favorite old war time movie. Dude took a grenade for all the kids. “Alvin”
Paths of Glory (1958) with Kirk Douglass
Platoon (1986)
For starters...
Come And See
surreal at times but powerful. Amazing, in fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_and_See
A Bridge Too Far
relatively little known (seems to me) but massive attack that went badly for Allied forces. James Caan, Sean Connery, and a host of other famous faces.
Longest Day
DDay film made in black and white (unfortunately).
Bridge on the River Kwai
(very loosely based on real events, still great)
Tora! Tora! Tora!
first big film about Pearl Harbor. Forget the film made in the 2000's.
If you are looking for a documentary, the History Channel did a fantastic job with it's Rise And Fall of the Third Reich back in 2010.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1855924/
The recent "Red Tails" film was bad. 30mm CANNON shells bounce off American planes, because 'murrica.
Bridge Over River Kwai wasn't realisitic. But that's ok. It was a great movie. Definite good guys. Definite bad guys. The ending is one of the most memorable scenes ever.
2:00 min video (WARNING! Spoiler alert!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PskoqCtRFD4
The Pianist
Blackhawk Down
Saving Private Ryan
Jacknife (Robert DeNiro, Ed Harris)--not really the best war movie ever, but a good one
You want the expanded 2004 version at 158 minutes, although the original 113 minute version cut by Universal after Samuael Fuller's first cut came in at four hours is a fine picture in it's own right. The recut version I believe won something at Cannes some years after Fuller's death. He died pissed off about the original version.
Starring Lee Marvin at the height of his powers, along with Robert Carradine and Mark Hamill among others.
Semi biographical account of Samuel Fuller's experiences serving with the First Infantry Division in Africa, Sicily, Omaha Beach and France during WW2. Fuller was the real deal having earned the Silver Star, Bronze Star and a Purple Heart during his service. He was present at the libertion of the Falkenau concentration camp.