Recommend/Discuss Good War Films and Series

[Dalisclock]

My two cents.

WW2:
Band of Brothers.(haven't seen the pacific yet and just realized that it's sitting on my shelf downstairs)

Longest Day. D-day shown from every possible perspective, even down to the french resistance.

The Dam Busters. A bit slow but quite interesting as long as you understand that the first 3/4 of the movie are them preparing for the mission(including the development of the experimental bomb) and the last 1/4 is the actual mission. Also notable because George Lucas more or less ripped off the Death Star Trench sequence from star wars from this film and another, similar film called 633 squadron.

Das Boot. Perhaps the best, most realistic U-boat/Submarine movie ever made. Notable because they rebuilt an entire German U-boat for the film and didn't allow the actors to go outside while filming was in progress(so they'd be appropriately pale). Shown entirely from the German Navy perspective. The directors/extended cut runs an hour longer but has more character development.

Tora! Tora! Tora!. The attack on pearl harbor from both American and Japanese Perspectives.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Here's my pick, some of them already mentioned, that only makes them more recommendable to me =D

-Das Boot(German)
-Stalingrad(German)
-The pianist(Made in various countries, but mostly Polish)
-Tora! Tora! Tora! (Japan and US)
-The Memphis Belle (British and US)
-Idi i Smotri (Come and See) (Russian) tough one to see.

And if you're in for some animation, I recommend the Cockpit from Leiji Matsumoto, it glorifies its characters too much, but it's a good watch.

 

[Lieju]

I'm not a big fan of war-movies, but Lawrence of Arabia is one of my favourite movies.

Also I liked Yamato. If nothing else, it's interesting seeing a WW2 war-movie from a Japanese perspective, made for Japanese audience.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

A Bridge Too Far is the best war movie I've ever seen. Yes there is a lot of Hollywood in it and some facts get smudged to increase the effect for the audience but it covers a lot of good ground and delivers a lot of anti-war sentiment for a movie with plenty of gunfire and American bravado. The producer Joseph E. Levine financed the $22 million budget himself. That's a lot of money to put into a single film and I don't care how rich you are.

Spoiler: Plus we get awesome scenes like this

I can't recommend it enough.

EDIT: The German Stalingrad movie is also a great watch. Its pretty dark.

 

[Darks63]

One you could check out is a movie called "When Trumpets Fade". It a WW2 movie about the forgotten battle of hergon forest. Forgotten because The US army got stuck in a meatgrinder that only ended after the The Battle of the Bulge made the whole battle pointless.

It's not your usual heroic WW2 film in fact it has more of that Vietnam war is hell motif to it. Also the main character is a sarcastic prick who wants out of the war by any means that isnt dead.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Patton is my favorite World War II film. Granted the focus is about the eccentric character of the subject man, but man was he an interesting guy. And it made for a fantastic epic.

 

[AD-Stu]

I don't have a lot of experience with WWII material unfortunately (though Band of Brothers was truly excellent), nor Vietnam-era material. But for material based in the 90s onwards...

- Another +1 for Generation Kill, very well worth watching.
- Jarhead is well worth a watch. There's not a heap of action, but that's kind of the point. Reasonably faithful to the source material too, IIRC (I read the book too some time back).
- Black Hawk Down has a more action, and is also awesome. One of my favourite movies ever.
- I know The Hurt Locker loses points for its military inaccuracies (even as a layperson I can watch it and say "oh they'd NEVER do that...") and people's mileage on it varies a lot, but I still thought it was a hell of a movie. I felt the same about Zero Dark Thirty too, but I know that one's even more divisive with audiences.
- Someone mentioned Three Kings above, it's very different in tone to the other stuff on the list, but well worth watching.

 

[Dalisclock]

- Black Hawk Down has a more action, and is also awesome. One of my favourite movies ever.

I really liked black hawk down, except for the stupid little "This is why we're here" moments that kept showing up in the film and were very transparently inserted by the pentagon.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned "We Were Soldiers".

Combat veteran, and that's the only war film that nearly brought me to tears.

"Black Hawk Down" is also awesome (though it definitely took liberties with the books).

 

[skywolfblue]

I'll have to 'nth the nomination for A Bridge Too Far, it's really an excellent film.

I really love Enemy At the Gates. It does a good job at showing how horrific the eastern front of World War 2 really was.

The Guns of Navarone and Force 10 from Navarone are decent movies. (They've got flaws, but it is nice to see them featuring the Italian front which doesn't get shown much in movies)

If you're looking for something on the Civil War, look up The Civil War by Ken Burns. It's just pictures and historians talking, so it's not an action movie, but if you want a historically accurate documentary, it's hard to find better.

I'm also not looking explicitly for things to kill my soul, if you know a good, entertaining or fun natured film that happens to be in a war context, lay it on me. I love Kelly's Heroes.

If you enjoyed the whimsical side of Kelly's Heroes, I'd very highly recommend Hogan's Heroes. A completely fictional and silly tale of American POWs manipulating their dumb German captors so that they can carry out acts of sabotage and such within Germany.

[edit]Forgot completely about The Desert Rats an excellent movie on the Africa campaign!

 

[Ironshroom]

Band of Brotehrs. Its already been said, but screw it, I love that show!

 

[Thaluikhain]

Personally, my favourite war movie is "Breaker Morant"...thogh, mostly about a court martial during the Boer War.

 

[blackaddicus]

Patton is my favorite World War II film. Granted the focus is about the eccentric character of the subject man, but man was he an interesting guy. And it made for a fantastic epic.

Patton is one of my all time favorite ww2 movies, however that would have more to do with the fact that the good General is one of my personal idols.

The Hurt Locker loses points for its military inaccuracies (even as a layperson I can watch it and say "oh they'd NEVER do that...") and people's mileage on it varies a lot, but I still thought it was a hell of a movie.

I agree with The Hurt Locker losing points for its inaccuracy. My younger brother is a Sapper (combat engineers) with the Australian Army (job description involves blowing stuff up), and he could pick out things that i couldn't pick out as wrong.

- Black Hawk Down has a more action, and is also awesome. One of my favorite movies ever.

I really liked black hawk down, except for the stupid little "This is why we're here" moments that kept showing up in the film and were very transparently inserted by the pentagon.

BTW the rounds that are used in Black Hawk Down are all blanks, you can tell as the rounds all have crimped heads.

All that said two interesting ww2 war movies that i could recommend are The Guns of Navarone and Force 10 From Navarone both are based on books by Alister MacLean, with a focus on stealth operations and sabotage.

 

[Raikas]

People have already mentioned my two favourite WWII movies (Das Boot and Stalingrad), so I'll just add my favourite WWI movie - Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah, it's less action-heavy and it's absurdly long, but I think those things actually work in its favour.

For a different take on the whole WWII context, I'd also suggest Mrs. Miniver - a movie made during the war about the homefront (in the UK). It's dated now, and sappy in parts, but still totally worth watching IMO. There's a US tv series from the 1990s called Homefront that's set immediately after WWII that has a somewhat similar style (although I'm not sure how easy it is to find that one - something about issues with the rights to the music, I think).

 

[jhoroz]

Paths of Glory is a great anti-war film about WWI and one of my favourite Kubrick films.

 

[Kyber]

Talvisota - Winter War

It's a fantastic depiction of Finlands struggle against the Soviet Union, an overwhelming opponent. It shows what goes trough the minds of the soldiers, who do not care what side is right, they just care about protecting their homeland. If you can get past the subtitles, I implore you to give it a watch, it's superb.

Also, not many films there that are filmed from the side of the Axis.

 

[jklinders]

The Devil's Brigade comes to mind as worth a watch. Loosely based on the true story of the formation of the 1st Special Service Force in WWII in North America. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062886/

This is a rare case of the truth being way cooler than fiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil's_Brigade

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I would name many stated above, but to add a new one it would be Tunnel Rats. Yep, a Uwe Boll movie, now dont dismiss this movie. Its about the Vietnam war and the American solider trained to fight in the tunnels under ground. I think its an area of that war movies tend to forget about.

Would also add Saving Private Ryan on its battle scenes.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I forgot about Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers. Clint Eastwood's dual movie compilation about the battle is really neat and fair to both sides. The Japanese are still extremely fanatical, but it at least shows that a lot of that was dogma and patriotism ingrained into them, rather than a sadistic desire they developed individually.

 

[jklinders]

I forgot about Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of our Fathers. Clint Eastwood's dual movie compilation about the battle is really neat and fair to both sides. The Japanese are still extremely fanatical, but it at least shows that a lot of that was dogma and patriotism ingrained into them, rather than a sadistic desire they developed individually.

Both of those are on my to watch list. I have no idea when I will see them but I want to sooner or later.