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Favorite war movies
A list of Shawn Ryan's favorite war movies was quite revealing; TPP agreed with him on 7 out of 10, and that's quite surprising. OK so here's our mutual list: Apocalypse Now (still gives me chills especially everytime a medical helicopter wakes me up at night while flying over our house), Casablanca (on my all time top ten list; ton of color for a B&W, 2nd only to the Third Man), Dr. Zhivago (inspiration for the F1's name), Das Boot (almost too claustrophobic to watch), MASH (brilliant antiwar film), On the Beach (most depressing movie ever), Saving Private Ryan (surprised me how good this film was). Now here's where we differ. Fail Safe? No, no, no, Dr. Strangelove is much, much better. Inglorious Basterds (just didn't do it for me). This is perhaps his worst pick, and TPP would argue that The Dirty Dozen is a better representative of the same genera, but even then it's not up to a top ten. Patton is a real classic in my opinion, a portrait of a warrior. My tenth pick is actually a problem. On one hand Mediterraneo is a sentimental favorite, perhaps the gentlest war movie ever made, and sentimental and sad too. However the nod goes to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly which most people think of as a western, but it's actually an anti-war movie, showing how war can make even greedy, anti-heros look good. The comments are now open for more nominations.
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8 comments:
All Quiet On The Western Front
Galipoli
Ice Cold In Alex
The Battle Of Britain
If you like Das Boot, you really, really should see the whole TV series. It's much better - the film is basically the series edited down to film length.
Trying to decide what genre of wordplay "the same genera" represents. :)
Wow! What a slip! All day spent on exams misusing species names must have affected my brain in terms of classifying movies. Clearly war movies are all in the same family.
TPP did see the TV series of Das Boot, but had forgotten. Hmm, also forgot about AQOTWF. Damn good movie.
Are you familiar with The Grand Illusion by Jean Renoir (1937)? It's one of my favorites despite being a war movie.
Interesting pick with The Good the Bad and the Ugly-a personal favorite of mine. I'd never thought of it as a war movie; the civil war acts as a backdrop and the theme you describe is one of many. While Tuco and Blondie interact with soldiers their involvement in the war is tangential and serves the plot only as an impediment to the achievement of their primary objective. If I had to assign a label, "western" is more fitting. If you use such broad criteria to define "war movie" you make the distinction less relevant. Braveheart. The Last Samurai. A Fistful of Dynamite. The Lord of the Rings. The Godfather. The Terminator. All these movies have wars, historic and/or fictional. That doesn't justify their designation as "war movies."
And how could anyone leave The Great Escape off their list of top ten war movies?
Bend makes a good point, but TGTBTU has several scenes with the expressed purpose of showing the futility and horror of war.
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