Top five WWII movies...

The wife and I were deciding which WWII movie to watch yesterday (yes, I married very well), and we began a discussion over it, coming up with the top five WWII movies, based on whether one really wants to watch it more than twice.

In no particular order, but it kind of shakes out this way:

1. Battle of Britain (wife says I have airplanes on the brain, but she likes it, too).
2. Das Boot (wife strongly disagrees, as I watch the version in German with subtitles, and it's really long).
3. Patton (very well done both in pacing and acting)
4. Saving Private Ryan (while uneven, it captures D-Day and the confusion afterwards well)
5. The Great Escape/Bridge Over the River Kwai (I know, a tie)

Of note is that two have no Americans in them, and the tie at number five had Americans inserted because, hell, 'Merica!

The Band of Brothers mini-series doesn't count because it's a mini-series and not a stand alone movie.

Your thoughts?

My personal top 5:

Das Boot

Tora, Tora, Tora

Patton

A Bridge Too Far

The Longest Day

And mine:

1. Das Boot
2. The Longest Day
3. Patton
4. Battle of Britain
5. The Thin Red Line

Cheers,
Slug

Das Boot.
Kelly's heroes. (Seriously, rewatch it. It has great production values, aside from the music it could have been made this year )

The ones I have watched the most...

Kelly's Heroes without a doubt.
I'm going to put in Inglourious Basterds although it's technically 'alternate history'.
Das Boot.

Struggling for 2 more...

In no order:

Battle of Britain
Saving Private Ryan
Battle of Remagen
Patton
The Longest Day

Letters from Iwo Jima.
Tora! Tora! Tora!
A Bridge Too Far.
Conspiracy.
Der Untergang.

Someone should start a new thread about "top 5 Seven Years War movies".

It's called the "How esoteric can SimHQ get" challenge.

In no particular order:

The Best Years of Our Lives
The Dam Busters
Sophie's Choice
Stalag 17
To Have and Have Not

edited addition:
Damn! Forgot Frankenheimer's The Train.

And how about 'The Heroes of Telemark'?

Where Eagles Dare.
Can't count how many times I've seen it.

It's hard to go wrong with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in the lead roles!

HBO series "The Pacific".

In no particular order:

1: A Bridge Too Far.
2: Dieppe.
3: Saving Private Ryan. Yeah, they ditty-bopped and BSd like they were back on the block while moving, but the landing and battle for Ramelle were the absolute chaos of combat. Nothing else even came close until Black Hawk Down.
4: The Hill.
5: The Victors.

A TV show serial isn't a movie

Ascending order


Battle of Britain
The Longest Day
The Train
Das Boot

and at #1
Twelve O'Clock High

Run Silent, Run Deep. Gable and Lancaster at their best.
The rest have already been mentioned at least once.


Wheels

"What is it sir, I can't make that out"


But my favorite line from that film is "better put some gin in that lemonade"

Good movie but Gable was way too old to be playing a WW II era Navy Commander.

Lancaster is stellar though

Early war, they weren't that young however. But still old.

Saving Private Ryan has not aged well. It's no longer on my list.

I'm curious to know why you think a 20 year old film has not aged well.

I like this thread..

Das Boot
Run Silent Run Deep
Toes Tora Tora
Bridge Over River Kwai
Saving Private Ryan

Good to see you, Airdrop01.

++++++++++

I can't do new pics right now, but here's an old one with my top two...



1. Downfall
2. Das Boot

Looking through my DVDs, I'll add...

3. Saving Private Ryan
4. Flags of our Fathers
5. The Thin Red Line

Also...

Memphis Belle
U-571
Hitler's SS: Portrait of Evil

EDIT: Although I'm much more into documentaries than movies (i.e. Victory at Sea).

I really tried to like "The Thin Red Line" but it just didn't do it for me. Maybe one day I'll give it another shot.

1- Battle of Britain
2- A Bridge Too Far.
3- Patton
4- Midway
5- Tora! Tora! Tora!

What was the name of the movie about some Czech (?) pilot(s) flying for the RAF? When one pilot went home after the war was imprisoned by the Commies.

Ok remembered > Dark Blue World
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244479/

Dark Blue World

I forgot about one... sort of obscure but really good....Into the White...

More of a movie set in WWII than a WWII movie

Saving Private Ryan
Fury
Hacksaw Ridge
Letters From Iwo Jima
Memphis Belle

Foreign WWII Movies I highly recommend:

My Way

Battle for Sevastopol

Age of Heroes

Max Manus: Man of War

Oba The Last Samurai

For Those We Love

The Eternal Zero

I will second that query.


Same here Panzer, something about that movie just didn't work for me. I even tried to watch it more than once and I never could watch the whole movie.


Wheels

Dambusters
Aces High
Battle of Britian
Das Boot
The Best Years of our Lives

no particular order
! Saving Pvy Ryan
2 The Enemy Below
3 Letters From Iwo
4 Fury
5 Das Boot

The Thin Red Line is on my list of worst movies ever made, how Terrance Malick continues to get green lit for movies is beyond me ....

Private Ryan hasn't aged well? No explanation has been forthcoming as of yet. I'd love to hear it.
I'm going to go back further for some favorites of mine. Movies I watched again and again.
1. The original All Quiet On The Western Front. Realistic and gritty for it's time. Some unforgettable footage.
2. They Were Expendable. One of John Ford's best, I think. No "Rah, rah, U.S.A!" crap that was typical of the times. Just a really well done film of the United States getting it's butt kicked in the opening days of WW2. Great film.
3. A Walk In The Sun. A forgotten film that deserves more attention. Again, no over the top patriotism or heroics. No love story. No silly subplots. Just a squad of infantryman landing in Italy and heading for their assigned target. A German held farmhouse. It's obvious, watching this, that Spielberg was a fan. You can see that he was influenced by it in Saving Private Ryan.
4. Battleground. The story of the 101st Airborne's defense of Bastogne. Great performances and realistic action.
5. Pork Chop Hill. Korea this time. Love this one. Again, gritty, realistic, and no heroes. Well, not Hollywood types. Just soldiers doing their job. Trying to take a hill that noone really cares about. Gregory Peck is terrific as usual.

Gritty - The Cross of Iron.

A very good movie with a very distinctive Sam Pekinpah quirkiness added to it.

The opening credit sequence is also one of the best I've seen for any war movie.

Don't understand the comment about Saving Private Ryan not aging well. In any case, other than the excellent landing sequence at the beginning, I thought the movie generally sucked because of Spielberg's failure to rein in his syrupy sentimentalizing. The film is very schizo.

Over-sentimentality has been a key feature of almost every Spielberg film.


As for Saving Private Ryan, only the Omaha Beach sequence, the short German sniper sequence and the final battle in the town really stand out to me. The rest of the movie is pretty forgettable IMHO.

That about sums it up PM,,But It's a good movie to have in with a pizza and a few beers to kill during the dull spots..As a side note watched Darkest Hour last night it was a bit entertaining but like it better than Dunkirk..Battle of Britain was better

"Darkest Hour" and "Battle of Britain" are both very good but they also have a very different focus. Darkest Hour is more about the big picture/behind the scenes political aspect while BoB focused mostly on the actual combat between the RAF and the Luftwaffe.

I agree with that PM but for entertainment they are good..Just wonder if Churchill drank as much as he did in the movie..If I drank like that I'd be stiff for a week..I really don't look for accurate historical content I figure you probably won't see it..I only watch main stream shows and I think Letters From Iwo gives me a good feel for what Japenese soldiers went through but no movie can make you feel what combat is really like..

A quote I have heard attributed to Churchill, can't vouch for it however, is "So much whiskey, so little time".

Churchill must have had massively awesome genes because he was a chain smoker and heavy drinker but yet lived to be 90.

He had smoked and pickled himself which always makes meats last longer.


Wheels

Pretty much the whole theory behind my lifestyle choices.

I had a an uncle who drank a lot and lived to be 96. On days when he wasn't feeling well, he said it was because he had too much blood in his alcohol system.

1. The Dambusters.
2. The Cruel Sea.(a gritty antidote to Das Boot.. )
3. Dunkirk.(my father-in-law was there)
4. The Longest Day. (he was there too)
5. Kelly’s Heroes. (portrays the lunacy of it all)
6.The Dambusters (well I am former RAF!)

1: The Battle of Britain
2: Sink the Bismark
3: Dambusters
4: The battle of the river plate (for scenes shot with actual WW2 warships, including one that was at the battle)
5: The enemy below

Pretty British heavy list there, although I'd give honourable mentions to Saving private Ryan, the Cruel Sea, Dunkirk, and Tora Tora Tora!

In no order,

Come and see
The longest day
Das Boot
The bridge at Remagen
The big red one



Ardmore

I saw "The Big Red One" when it first came out, and remember not liking it at all. I still recall a scene that really bugged me. Our heroes are hiding in a cave from artillery fire, and as German soldiers run in to the cave, two of them are standing at the entrance. One pulls off the German's helmets and the other bops them on the head. I thought, "You're kidding, right Fuller?"

What I found most odd about “The Big Red One” is how an actor in his late 50’s was cast to play a platoon sergeant.

Yes. Not only that, his CHARACTER was too old. They show him as a young man fighting in France in 1918. So we're to believe that he's leading a combat infantry platoon in his late forties? There are other things, too. I know a lot of people like this film, but I'm not one of them.

A platoon sergeant in his mid-40s would have been nothing unusual back then, they didn’t have retention control points and once you hit the highest pay grade at the time (E7 equivalent, IIRC) your position determined your rank. Get sent to an infantry company that had a 1st Sergeant? Then you became a platoon sergeant (or maybe motor sergeant, supply sergeant, or mess sergeant) even though you were the same grade as the 1st Sgt. Go to a battalion and you became the sergeant major, same pay grade as the 1SGs in the companies but outranking them. To make things even more confusing there were technical sergeant ranks as well.

It was only a made for TV movie, but I always liked When Trumpets Fade
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135706/