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 Though I have a great dislike for war....I LOVE war films! WWII movies are the best! Ice cold Nazis and baby bayoneting Japs ! (please don't get offended because I used the term 'Japs" I use it cuz it  :lookingup:...awwww...I ain''t gonna go all PC! They were called japs in the movies...so I will call the enemy in the films 'Japs!' I don't invent this sh!t...I just comment on it...)

OK! Enuff social commentary!

TORA!TORA! TORA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFmVtZLnHio

"TORA TORA TORA!

Gung Ho (1943)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ViJ_zGtxLY

One of the most mind boggling pieces of wartime propaganda cinema EVER!!! " I just don't like japs."  Amazing . Teens from the 40's saw this and signed up.

I know I may be alone here, but I loooove BATAAN from 1943. Though it starts out cheesy enough, it eventually gets quite bleak and very tense. It may be a propaganda film, but it doesn't have the kind of sappy stuff you would expect, just the horrors of war (The horrors of the enemy, instead of the concept itself in those days X) ), and fighting to make a difference for as long as possible.

I think "Ice Cold In Alex" (1958) is a very good war movie about a British ambulance crew's (including John Mills and Anthony Quayle) trek across the Sahara to Alexandria trying to evade the Africa Korps. More of a survival than a combat movie.
  The wartime movie "Went The Day Well"/"48 hours" is also excellent. It's the sinister story about the infiltration of a quiet English village by German soldiers disguised as British Army signalmen. Although they succeed in wiping out the local 'Home Guard' they are then steadfastly resisted by local people.

So many good ones.

The Longest Day
The Great Escape
Bridge over the River Kwai
Guns of Navarone

That's off the top of my head. I've probably left off at least a dozen of my favorites.

Let's see -

ESCAPE OF THE BIRD MEN
TO HELL AND BACK (Starring my hometown hero, Audie Murphy, as himself!)
PATTON
ENEMY AT THE GATES
MIDWAY
 and my favorite of all, the greatest tribute ever to the Greatest Generation . . .

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN

I still tear up at the end!

Dirty Dozen with Lee Marvin, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, etc...

I enjoy watching "Kelly's Heroes". Great fun, even if it isn't completely historically accurate.

"A Walk In The Sun" is one I stumbled upon as a kid and got completely wrapped up in it.

"Where Eagles Dare" is another one I get a serious kick out of.

"Hornet's Nest" is another great adventure flick set during WWII.

I'd go with BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI and PATTON, honorable mention to SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.

SCHINDLER'S LIST also comes to mind, but Holocaust films are a separate genre.

In no particular order:

* HELL IS FOR HEROES - Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Fess Parker, Bob Newhart . . . in glorious black & white!

* HELL TO ETERNITY - Jeffrey Hunter as an American G.I., orphaned as a child and raised by a Japanese family.  And George Takei plays his brother!  Co-starring David Janssen.

* FROM HERE TO ETERNITY - Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine, Burt Lancaster . . . oh, yeah.

* OBJECTIVE: BURMA - Suspense, suspense, suspense and crackling dialogue.  Erroll Flynn leads a group of G.I.s on a mission to destroy a Japanese radar station.  The problem is, they're vastly outnumbered and Japanese troops are hunting them like animals.

* KELLY'S HEROES

* WHERE EAGLES DARE

* THE GREAT ESCAPE

* THE GUNS OF NAVARONE

* THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

Honorable mention: CROSS OF IRON.  Not a great movie, but a very good one.  Told from the Germans' perspective.  Excellent cast, including James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason, and David Warner.  I'm a big Sam Peckinpah fan.

Heroes of Telemark is probably my all-time favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Mj9nSB0Nc&feature=related#

Also like Where Eagles Dare, Battle of the Bulge, and Force 10 From Navarone.

As a kid I loved Battle of the Bulge, Tora Tora Tora and Midway.  While I can still watch them now, I think I like the nostalgia as much as the movies themselves.

I really like Saving Private Ryan; I thought the battle scene were great and I especially like the scene of Private Ryan's mother at her kitchen sink, seeing the car coming up the long road, with corn fields on either side, drying her hands, going out to meet the officer & minister on her porch and wobbling and then sitting down as her grief at the news of her sons deaths hits her.  A very effective moment and a reminder of the true cost of war.  I also really like the scene with General Marshall reading the Lincoln letter:

“Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln”


I consider The Longest Day and Bridge Over the River Kwai great movies. 

Good call by the person who remembered Cross of Iron.  I liked that movie more than they did and interesting to see a movie based upon the German experience. 

I like Where Eagles Dare, with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton, but this is almost as much a suspense movie as a war movie.

There is a movie, Attack, with Jack Palance and Eddie Albert that I like mostly for a scene, famous amongst my brothers and I, where Jack Palanace says to Eddie Albert, who is the film's gutless villain Lt Cooney, " Cooney, you double cross me one more time and I take this grenade, shove it down your throat and pull the pin." 

There is a movie with Steve McQueen and Frank Sinatra Never So Few maybe, which I loved as a kid.  I haven't seen it in years but I remember loving Steve McQueen in the role of Ringer (?).  As ever, very cool.

Also there is a movie called Too Late the Hero with Michael Caine.  Again, I saw this as a kind and loved it, I'd be curious to see it now to see if it is any good.

Another WWII movie that's completely different from those suggested up till now: None But the Brave with Frank Sinatra. A bunch of American and Japanese soldiers are both stranded on an island, make a temporary truce and start to form friendships while they wait to see which side shows up first with the rescue. There's a tension throughout because everyone understands that they are still enemies and as soon as rescue arrives, they're back on a war footing.

Very interesting movie. I wonder if even 20 years after the end of the war, the studio got any guff from audiences for showing Japanese sympathetically.

Wow...so many good ones listed...Hotspur reminded me of a big time favorite...MIDWAY! Wow! The action in that one is unbelievable!

Also....every time this film is on tv I watch it! VON RYANS EXPRESS (1965)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-umWzR3Z3M

A really bizzare fav...I saw this on channel 17 (uhf...not cable  :wink: ) in 1981...

HITLER-DEAD OR ALIVE (1942)

Ex cons are hired to catch or kill Hitler....and they do! Unique wartime propaganda mixies the gangster film into the war propagand film! RECOMENNDED for BAD movie fans!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeeWYyH5MZE

The Big Red One
The Victors
Sands of Iwo Jima


The History Channel

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNKnw8UMUZ0

Agree! A lot of people find the propaganda WW2 films of the 40's offensive or corny,or both. I love 'em. Ther'e like Sgt.Fury comic books come to life! And I like Sgt.Fury,Sgt.Rock,The Haunted Tank,GI Combat,even the crappy Charleton war mags! In fact...the inspiration for this thread was a movie I saw on TCM called BOMBIDIER (1943)

Corny and predictable and glorifying war...but gimme a bottle and a cigerrete...I can watch this stuff all da
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yGnm1XYolE

I was gonna mention Von Ryan's Express but you beat me to it RC!   :tongueout:

Another good one is Stalingrad . (1993)
It's always nice to watch a WW2 film from a perspective other than the U.S.
Stalingrad is filmed entirely from the German perspective.
Other than a bit of heavy-handed music and a few scenes where it's obvious parts were edited out, this film is fantastic.
You can watch it dubbed in English, but it sucks to watch it that way.  I prefer it in German with subtitles.  Makes it seem much more authentic.  Plus the German language is always cool to listen to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDheiNzWKiY

Here's a cool scene where the Germans are attempting to overrun a Russian factory.
A lot of the battle scenes are very well done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZMHZBAUbqM

I like a few but only one film set in WWII that I enjoy watching over and over again. That's Stalag 17. I find it humorous and intense at the same time. It made me get into William Holden films which was the only reason I watch Bridge Over The River Kwai the first time I watched.

Ooh, forgot STALAG 17--that's an absoulte classic and I can watch it over and over too!  I guess I forgot it because it's not about war per se, it just uses war as the setting.

How about DOWNFALL -  a German language rendering of the last three months of Hitler's life, as seen through the eyes of one of his young secretaries.  Really, really good film!

Four off the beaten path but still good films either set in or dealing with the impact of World War Two:

Heimat, made in the 1980's, largely in black and white, by the (West) German director Edgar Reitz. Subtitled. This complex film is probably at least ten hours long and follows the lives of a number of German families living in the Rhineland from after WWI, through the coming of Nazism and the war itself, and into the years of industrial Germany's rise from the ruins. In one great scene a snobbish social climbing newly-rich hausfrau, who'd once hosted a dinner party for Wilhelm Frick and other Nazi bigwigs, prepares to sicophantically greet arriving American soldiers, only to be confronted in all her bigotry by the fact that these American are from a "Colored" regiment. Great moment! PBS once aired Heimat in its uncut entirety and because of its subject matter some segments of the US public had kinipshin fits.

Das Boot, which may be the greatest film ever made in such a confined space, a German U-boat in the 1940's. A plain and simple brilliant motion picture, IMHO. Like All Quiet on the Western Front, and Guy Sajer's book The Forgotten Soldier, this is a movie that challenges you to think from a foreign perspective.

After the War, another long film, this one set at the very end of World War Two and then moreso as the generation who were children in Britain during the '40's matures and lives in the decades "after the war" that Britons consoling themselves through the horrors and hardships of the Second World War were told again and again would be a veritable paradise on earth.

Lastly, Island at War. It's often forgotten that Germans occupied British soil in World War Two, the Channel Islands, which sit closer to France than to Britain but which are English nevertheless. (The same islands which were the setting for The Others.) This six-hour production takes place on one of these occupied islands, and shows what life was like for English citizens governed by Nazis. Like Heimat, Island at War gives another complex view of human relations and the tragedy of war itself.

I'm always up for a good war.

I think I have about 200 war films, at least half are WWII

However, ones I that have real "rewatchability"

Saving Private Ryan
Patton
The Great Escape
Europa, Europa
Schindler's List
From Here to Eternity
The Longest Day
Band of Brothers
Stalingrad
Run Silent, Run Deep
Stalag 17
A Bridge Too Far
The Thin Red Line
The Big Red One
Bridge Over the River Kwai
The Dirty Dozen
Das Boot
Au revoir les enfants
The Pianist
Der Untergang (Downfall)

and about 100 others.

There's one WW2 film I'm thinking of but can't remember the title.
Normally I'd post this in the "What Was That Film?" board but since were here discussing WW2 films...

The movie was filmed from the German perspective.
It had a few German kids in it and they're informed that the Allies will probably be breaking through their area at any time.
They set up a defense.

It would've been an 80's or 90's film.
That's all I know.

I haven't seen it, but I've read about it.
Anyone know what WW2 movie that is?

I forgot about this one.  Bought the DVD and loved it.

Great movie, and especially interesting if you grew up watching "Hogan's Heroes" with its lovable bumbling Germans. Sgt. Schulz in STALAG 17 is definitely *not* cuddly. Was also interesting seeing the role Peter Graves played, considering his later heroics running the Impossible Mission Force.

Another good one I forgot ...

When Trumpets Fade

It's about the battle of Hurtgen Forest along the Siegfried line.

Hey I saw Midway in "Sensurround"  (I think Earthquake was the only other movie to get this treatment).  Holy s**t, the explosions felt like you were there, and when Dolittle's B24s took off from the carrier at the beginning you thought you were on the deck with them.


I like pretty much lover every thing people here have  mentioned.  These were the late show movies I grew up with during the 60s.  One I don't think I've seen mentioned is Sahara with Humphrey Bogart, Loyd Bridges, Dan Duryea, Bruce Bennett, and J. Carroll Nash.

The mention of Stalag 17 reminded me of another darkish WWII comedy, Mister Roberts. Great roles for James Cagney, Henry Fonda, and a young Jack Lemmon.

Hell in the Pacific

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and The Enemy Below...both with Robert Mitchum

The Desert Fox

The Devil's Brigade

The Guns of Navarone

Battleground(my first WW2 movie)

Guadalcanal Diary

Bridge at Remagen

and the TV shows Black Sheep Squadron and Rat Patrol.

Did you know FRANK SINATRA changed the ending of the film from the novel?  Once again, he knew what he was doing and made the film much more poignant with the tragic ending. 

I see some of my favorites have been mentioned, like PATTON and OBJECTIVE: BURMA! but I don't think anyone mentioned 12 O'CLOCK HIGH, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE or DESTINATION TOKYO which is probably the only CARY GRANT film I really like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTw9S6caAG0&feature=PlayList&p=3D8AE8909528BA67&playnext=1&index=9

I reviewed Too Late the Hero a while back. You can find it here: http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,121173.0.html


Sahara is one of my favorites. Interesting film which has a diversity of characters that regardless of their differences of country or color of skin have to work together to fight a much larger enemy; an enemy which is about discrimination and hatred.

Hanover Street is an interesting film. It starts off slowly, as it builds as a romance, but picks up pace, and dramatically, when the two main characters who share a love for the same woman (only one of them is aware of the other's connection to her) have to depend on each other when what would have been an covert drop for one of them behind enemy lines ends up getting them shot down and putting both of them behind enemy lines.

ROLLERCOASTER with George Segal was also in Sensurround.  However, the theater where I saw it did not show it in Sensurround.  :hatred:

I'm pretty damn sure its Die brucke (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052654/) except that it is an old b/w film. They mention a 2008 remake, though. I saw it a few years ago, found it very good although it took a while to start.

As for me, my favourite WWII films have already been mentioned. I'd say the absolute best of them are the extended version of The big red one, The thin red line and Enemy at the gates.

But often I'd settle for lesser films with higher entertainment value, such as Where eagles dare, Saving private Ryan or even U-571. Hell, even I found The battle of the Bulge tons of fun.

That's it!  Thanks a lot!   :thumbup:
For some reason I was thinking this was a more recent film.
I'll have to check Netflix to see if it's available on DVD.


Another good WW2 film is A Midnight Clear.
That's the one about the platoon of American soldiers set during Christmas in the Ardennes Forest.
They come upon a group of German soldiers who want to surrender but they all have to make it look like the Germans put up a fight (a fake skirmish) or else their families will be killed by the Nazis.
Needless to say, things don't go as planned.

(Skip to the 1:50 mark)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc2u1f5laZg

One of my favorite TV shows in the 60's was Combat! starring B movie veteran, Vic Morrow.

Did anyone mention Escape From Sobibor with Rutger Hauer and Alan Arkin? It's about an uprising and escape from a Concentration Camp. It's based on the true story and it's really good.

What about the worst ones?  :teddyr:

My votes are for "Escape to Athena" (it has Roger Moore playing a Nazi officer) and "Sergeant Steiner", an ill-advised sequel to Sam Peckinpah's "Cross of iron".

  I haven't seen that since i was about 16,i do remember that one to be very good thats the one where they cant pass the dragon teeth laid out by germany,i do remember a good sense of hopelessness conveyed in that one

Yes, When trumpets fade is a very good one too. I got it together with The thin red line for just a few bucks, and didn't expect it to be that good. If they only had had a bigger budget for the battle scenes it would be a modern classic. I found it to be even better than Hamburger Hill, a Vietnam film by the same director which seems to have some cult following out there.

I'm posting again because I just saw Castle Keep, starring Burt Lancaster and Peter Falk. I think it belongs to this thread, even if it is a damn weird movie. It's about a bunch of American soldiers who settle in a Belgium castle and spend the time doing absurdities and getting laid at the local brothel until they end up caught in the battle of the Bulge.

The weird thing about it's the tone and the dialogs. It's almost as if the whole thing had started as a straight story and then somebody laced everybody's catering with LSD. It has some great battle scenes in the second half, but the rest of the movie comes accross as a sort of literate version of Kelly's heroes.