Ok, they surely meant to say "American made War movies". But still, some odd choices. Setting aside their ordering, the first four they mention do deserve to be in the top 10. The last three are a joke. Those in the middle, ok, sort of. My top 10 for "american made ones", no order intended: Blackhawk Down, Paths of Glory, Patton, Saving Private Ryan, Hamburger Hill, We Were Soldiers [Once, and Young], Apocalypse Now, The Longest Day, The Thin Red Line, Memphis Belle.
With close "honorable mention" to Deerhunter, Empire of the Sun, Catch 22, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Sand Pebbles, Cross of Iron.
Very tempted to include The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly in the top 10. But I suppose it isn't usually considered to be a warmovie....
So, again with the restriction to Yankee made flicks, whaddya guys think?
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11 comments:
the good the bad & the ugly is an italian movie.
Yup, I think of Sergio as a Yank, but of course he wasn't. So just as well I did not include it!
For whatever it's worth, The Thin Red Line is the one that has stuck with me. It is not true to how people usually speak, but it is to how they think.
AA: Your list is better. We need to order it now.
Order them? Now that is Hard.... right now I'd go with:
[1] The Thin Red Line
[2] Paths of Glory
[3] Blackhawk Down
[4] Patton
[5] We Were Soldiers
[6] The Longest Day
[7] Apocalypse Now
[8] Memphis Belle
[9] Hamburger Hill
[10] Saving Private Ryan
For the "honorable mention"
[11] The Sand Pebbles
[12] All Quiet on the Western Front
[13] Catch 22
[14] Empire of the Sun
[15] The Deerhunter
[16] Cross of Iron. [It really was Peckinpah's masterpiece].
20 years ago it would have been very different ordering.
I am shading into a twilight's perspective, it seems.
Since I have 16, to make it a "top 20"
[17] Letters from Iwo Jima
[18] The Big Parade
[19] Gettysburg
[20] The Blue Max
and you?
In the original comcast list, I'd nix We Were Soldiers, The Patriot, and Born on the 4th of July.
Band of Brothers ought to be in there. Indeed, Black Hawk Down. But what about Platoon?
Just had the guys over yesterday afternoon for a screening of Patton, slow cooked ribs, and cold beers.
Apocalypse
Full metal jacket
Iwo Jima & the other
Deer Hunter
MASH
but as a genre frequently aiming at exalting the virtues of the American Soldier (read John Ford/ Wayne), I find it uncomfortably similar to the soviet-style glorification of its own and tend to stay away from it as a form of entertainment. Even for a noble cause (assuming...), propaganda is noxious.
Now for foreign movies,
Vilsmaier's Das Boot & Stalingrad cast the war on a human, ideology-free context.
Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp - a terrifying depiction of despair and cannibalism during the war in the Pacific
Kurosawa's war epics (7 sam, kagemusha and, to a lesser extent, ran)
Visconti's The Damned.
Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun
I am missing dozens.
Ah, bullshit, Pepe. You loved Alexandra Nubsky and drooled at Da Bottleslap Putinkin.
But your right, bien sur. Movies which show Ricain soldiers, or the country they fight for, as other than drooling and debauched psychopaths should be Verboten. After all, where would NOLA be if quaint notions of a free republic and an honest constitution for a free people were to taint the purity of your own private S&G venture.
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