the great war movie review

Review: ‘The Great War’ serves up World War I on a budget

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“The Great War” is an earnest, battle-on-a-budget action drama set in the final hours of World War I. Although writer-director Steven Luke’s reach often exceeds his grasp, he’s managed to present a meaningful, largely involving, if decidedly small-scale and fictionalized story about race, courage and comradeship.

When U.S. Gen. John J. Pershing ( Ron Perlman ), nicknamed “Black Jack” for his command of a regiment of African American cavalrymen ( “Buffalo Soldiers” ) in the 1890s, orders the rescue of a platoon of black servicemen trapped behind enemy lines in northeastern France, Capt. Will Rivers (the Nick Nolte-esque Bates Wilder) must lead his troops into one last fight for survival against the Germans.

Rivers’ problem, aside from having shell shock, is the aversion by some of his bluntly racist soldiers to risk their lives saving “the coloreds.” (The U.S. military was segregated in World War I.)

It’s not hard to predict how much of this will play out, at least from a unity, acceptance and lessons-learned standpoint, especially once a black private (Hiram A. Murray) joins Rivers’ perilous mission.

Still, Luke fills his at times heavy-handed, anachronistic script with enough sincere emotion and grace notes to counter the film’s physical and financial restraints (it was shot in exurban Minnesota), narrowly staged combat scenes and limited character development.

'The Great War'

Rated: R, for war violence Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes Playing: Arena Cinelounge Sunset, Hollywood; also on VOD

Rated: R, for war violence Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 13, Arena Cinelounge Sunset, Hollywood; also on VOD

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Summary During the final days of World War I, a regiment of daring African-American Buffalo Soldiers is trapped deep behind enemy lines. After one of these soldiers manages to escape, he’s ordered to join a select team of white troops, led by a battle-scarred officer, to find and rescue the survivors. Casting aside their racial differences, the ... Read More

Directed By : Steven Luke

Written By : Steven Luke

The Great War

Where to watch, bates wilder, capt. william rivers, hiram a. murray, pvt. john cain.

Ron Perlman

Gen. pershing, col. jack morrison, aaron courteau, sgt. allistor richardson, edgar damatian, pvt. cardinni, judah mcfadden, pvt. pinchelli, andrew stecker, cpl. anson kirby, cody fleury, pvt. o'malley, corporal johnson, jeremy michael pereira, captain a.j. stevens, jordan mcfadden, bill cooper, major reddick, charles hubbell, captain roberts, apostolos gliarmis, captain russell simmons, leonard searcy, private joseph le'fluer, kurt peterson, wade everett, captain hooker, critic reviews.

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‘the great war’: film review.

A unit of white soldiers is ordered to rescue an African-American regiment trapped behind enemy lines in Steven Luke's World War I thriller 'The Great War.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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Director-screenwriter Steven Luke must have spent a lot of time playing war games as a child. His debut feature, 2018’s Wunderland (for which he’s credited as Luke Schuetzle), was a World War II drama in which he also co-starred with Tom Berenger. His next pic, due next year, is an unspecified war film called Come Out Fighting . And his current effort, The Great War , is set during, well, you should already know if you took any world history courses.

Unfortunately, despite his obvious passion for the genre, Luke doesn’t yet have the cinematic chops (or clearly, the budget) to effectively put his vision onscreen. This World War I drama, about a group of white soldiers attempting to rescue an African-American regiment trapped behind enemy lines in France just as the war is drawing to a close, plays mostly like a racially tinged variation on Saving Private Ryan , complete with a character reading aloud a letter written by Abraham Lincoln. The Great War is being released theatrically just a couple of weeks before Sam Mendes’ acclaimed World War I-set 1917 hits screens, but it’s safe to say that this film won’t be providing significant competition in terms of either box office receipts or awards.

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The Great War Reviews

Lobs more cinema war cliches than grenades.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Dec 16, 2019

Unfortunately, despite his obvious passion for the genre, Luke doesn't yet have the cinematic chops (or clearly, the budget) to effectively put his vision onscreen.

Full Review | Dec 12, 2019

It simply does not have the budget or craft for the scale it requires.

Luke fills his at times heavy-handed, anachronistic script with enough sincere emotion and grace notes to counter the film's physical and financial restraints, narrowly staged combat scenes and limited character development.

So clumsy in its handling of racism within the American Expeditionary Forces that it makes some of the racial mishaps of "Green Book" seem subtle in comparison.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2019

Mostly recycled war movie cliches, with the props - guns, explosions, etc. - occasionally giving away the paltry budget.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 5, 2019

‘The Great War’: Film Review

There isn’t much to recommend in this poorly written and incompetently made WWI film, with a cringe-worthy handle on the AEF racism it sets out to tackle.

By Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly

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Coming to theaters across the nation soon, there is a powerful World War I picture, shot with the respectable ambition of simulating a single unbroken take. The bad news is, Steven Luke’s cliché-ladling combat picture is not that refined movie (called “1917”). What we have instead is “The Great War,” a start-to-finish inept battleground film set in the waning days of WWI around the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, so clumsy in its handling of racism within the American Expeditionary Forces that it makes some of the racial mishaps of “Green Book” seem subtle in comparison.

With a bewildering “let’s set our differences aside and work together” attitude throughout, Luke injects the film with a generically sappy score whenever a racist white trooper realizes his bigotry and offers to share his water with a black comrade as a symbol of his newfound decency or a teary-eyed white lieutenant doles out a story about brave men of a different race who once saved his life. You could cringe, but this movie (which would have been considered dated and offensive even decades ago) is so tone-deaf in its feelgood white perspective that you’d almost want to save your energy for something that earns it. Needless to say, Luke’s day-and-date release won’t be making a splash during its theatrical or digital runs, especially when Sam Mendes’ “1917” is just around the corner as the far superior war movie alternative of the year.

If you miss the title cards and can’t situate yourself initially, have no worries: You will know that you’re in France soon enough, as cinematographer Joseph Loeffler’s restless camera will helpfully offer a shot of a plate of fluffy croissants to alleviate your disorientation. (Though according to the film’s IMDb credits, the actual locations were somewhere in Illinois and Minnesota, which makes sense, because the scenery looks nothing like France.) The story that apparently blends fiction with loose truths follows the shell-shocked Lt. William Rivers (Bates Wilder, coming off strangely amateurish like the rest of the cast) and the team of soldiers he guides to liberate a lost platoon of African American troopers, the “Buffalo Soldiers,” trapped behind the enemy lines of the Germans.

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Aided by a soldier (Hiram A. Murray) who managed to escape those trenches, the “Saving Private Ryan”-esque rescue effort gets put in motion to both boost the general morale and address some publicity concerns. Following the mission from the sidelines are Ron Perlman ’s U.S. Gen. John J. Pershing and Billy Zane ’s fictional Col. Jack Morrison, both stuck in the pages of a disjointed script trying to figure out what to do with their parts. There are plenty of face-off arguments, noisy shootouts and fist fights along the way, and the one thing they all have in common is their general rookie feel. The weapons look fake, the stiff action sequences play like poor re-enactments, and you frequently wonder how anyone managed to keep a straight face while firing off some embarrassingly simple-minded lines of dialogue. Even the bright red, corn-syrupy blood splattered around looks like it’s from a different decade of cinema.

Generously speaking, some of these shortcomings — such as lighting that serves to make every daytime hour look like the golden magic hour — can perhaps be blamed on the film’s low budget, evident in pretty much every sequence. But the overall shortage of finesse signals something more troubling: the lack of taste and vision both on the page and behind the camera. How else could you explain the one customary female character that appears out of nowhere and gives a lecture about her choice to be involved in the war, paying lazy lip-service to feminism? Or all the slow-motion segments that aim for heartstrings but score giggles instead? Luke is clearly a history enthusiast looking for present-day resonance in the past. But not every personal ambition has to be transposed into a movie if the skills and resources to support it simply are not there.

Reviewed online, New York, Dec. 10, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 108 MIN.

Production: A Saban Films release, in association with Lionsgate, of a Schuetzle Co. production, in association with Wondervision Prods. Producers: Steven Luke, Andre Relis. Executive producer: Dean Bloxom.
Crew: Director, writer: Steven Luke. Camera (color): Joseph Loeffler. Editor: Shaun O'Connell. Music: Harrison Mountain.
With: Bates Wilder, Aaron Courteau, Hiram A. Murray, Billy Zane, Ron Perlman.

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The Great War

Bates Wilder (Capt. William Rivers) Hiram A. Murray (Pvt. John Cain) Ron Perlman (Gen. Pershing) Billy Zane (Col. Jack Morrison) Aaron Courteau (Sgt. Allistor Richardson) Edgar Damatian (Pvt. Cardinni) Judah McFadden (Pvt. Pinchelli) Andrew Stecker (Cpl. Anson Kirby) Casey Sill (Pvt. Quinn) Cody Fleury (Pvt. O'Malley)

Steven Luke

During the last days of the Great War, a group of U.S. soldiers are sent behind enemy lines to rescue a lost platoon.

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Review: ‘The Great War,’ When America Took the World Stage

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By Mike Hale

April 9, 2017

Speaking just over a century ago about national defense — at a time when he was still fervently engaged in keeping the United States out of World War I — Woodrow Wilson intoned, “While America contains every element of fine force and accomplishment, America does not constitute the major part of the world.”

It was a simple fact in 1916, and remains so, but it’s hard to imagine a politician — much less a president — stating it so baldly today. The “American Experience” documentary “ The Great War ,” a three-night , six-hour production beginning Monday on PBS, paints a detailed and entertaining picture of the years when America began to think of itself as the major part of the world.

The documentary is pegged to the centennial of the United States’ entry into World War I, but it feels as if it could be responding to current events, with alliances born out of the Great War being called into question and American politics warped by the desire to turn back the clock.

Directed by Stephen Ives, Amanda Pollak and Rob Rapley, with Mark Samels as executive producer, “The Great War” is a deluxe version of the standard talking heads and archival photographs documentary, full of arresting images and startling snippets of obscure history.

(How many of us know about the Black Tom Island incident in 1916, when a huge explosion at an ammunition dump in New York Harbor, blamed on German agents, blew out most of the windows in Lower Manhattan and was felt in Philadelphia?)

Also standard is the film’s practice of telling its larger story through a succession of individual portraits: Wilson, of course, but also lesser-known figures like the journalist Richard Harding Davis, the splendidly courageous suffragist Alice Paul and the Harlem bandleader turned soldier James Reese Europe.

Despite its overly broad title, “The Great War” is not a history of World War I per se. The major events of the war are sketched in, with appropriately grisly images, but the focus is on America and on the shifting attitudes and political and moral considerations that finally drew it into the conflict.

The picture of the country 100 years ago is often unwholesome in ways that, again, resonate with current turmoil. Prejudice against immigrants ran high. Anti-German feelings were virulent, and Wilson issued orders requiring the registration of all German-born residents (a program administered by the 22-year-old J. Edgar Hoover).

Americans were encouraged to spy on and report one another for violations of voluntary rationing programs or failure to buy war bonds. The government engaged in a sophisticated large-scale propaganda campaign enforcing loyalty. A poster shown in the film asks, in menacing capital letters, “Are You 100% American?”

Watching “The Great War” can give you a sense of a full circle of events. If this was how America became the world’s pre-eminent power, is this also how it surrenders the role?

The American Experience: The Great War Starting Monday on PBS

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The Great War Review: A WWI Drama With A Message Somehow Cheaper Than Its Budget

The Great War review: A cheap WWI drama with a messager cheaper than its budget

Steven Luke’s well-intentioned new World War I drama The Great War has an always-obvious pocket-money budget, which can excuse a lot of its shortcomings, such as how its version of France looks like Minnesota. But the inept direction and laughable writing are less easy to explain and prove a bigger problem in this inspired-by-real-events wartime tale of racism in the American Expeditionary Forces.

Trapped behind enemy lines on the cusp of the armistice, the segregated African-American 92nd Infantry Division — “the Buffalo Soldiers” — are facing the prospect of their captured territory reverting to German hands once the clock strikes 11 am on November 11, 1918. It’s a setup slightly reminiscent of the one in David Ayer’s WWII tank movie Fury , which was also set at the very end of its conflict, causing a great deal of confusion for its characters, but comparisons to Fury don’t do The Great War any favors, let alone the comparison to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan that is deliberately evoked when General John J. Pershing (Ron Perlman) reads a letter from Abraham Lincoln justifying a rescue mission fronted by the traumatized Captain Rivers (Bates Wilder).

The racism in Rivers’ unit and the growing respect between him and Private Cain (Hiram A. Murray), a black soldier aiding them, prompts a great deal of embarrassingly feelgood scenes of overcoming bigotry, in which white characters — within whose perspective The Great War is firmly rooted — are given plaudits for basic acts of human decency. The later introduction of a woman paying explicit lip-service to feminism proves that Luke’s film isn’t satisfied unless it’s righting all the world’s inequality ills, but it lacks the craft to navigate the issues in its own execution, let alone anything else.

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The Great War (2019)

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‘The Great War’: Film Review

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100 Best War Movies of All Time

From peacetime to frontlines, from coming home to left behind: Rotten Tomatoes presents the 100 best-reviewed war movies of all time, ranked by Certified Fresh films first. — Alex Vo

Page 1: Movies #1-#100 | Page 2: Movies #101-#137

Grave of the Fireflies (1988) 100%

A Man Escaped (1956) 100%

Casablanca (1942) 99%

The Battle of Algiers (1966) 99%

Henry V (1989) 98%

Schindler's List (1993) 98%

Apocalypse Now (1979) 97%

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) 98%

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 98%

Das Boot (1981) 98%

The Hurt Locker (2008) 96%

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) 97%

Army of Shadows (1969) 97%

Grand Illusion (1937) 97%

Son of Saul (2015) 96%

Waltz With Bashir (2008) 97%

'71 (2014) 96%

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) 96%

Ran (1985) 96%

Paths of Glory (1957) 96%

To Be or Not to Be (1942) 96%

Eye in the Sky (2015) 95%

The Pianist (2002) 95%

Saving Private Ryan (1998) 94%

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 93%

Three Kings (1999) 94%

Spartacus (1960) 94%

The Great Escape (1963) 94%

Glory (1989) 95%

No Man's Land (2001) 93%

Wonder Woman (2017) 93%

Wings (1927) 94%

The Last of the Mohicans (1992) 88%

The Killing Fields (1984) 93%

Dunkirk (2017) 92%

Land of Mine (2015) 92%

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) 91%

Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) 91%

Stalag 17 (1953) 91%

Full Metal Jacket (1987) 90%

Gallipoli (1981) 91%

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) 90%

The Imitation Game (2014) 90%

Rescue Dawn (2006) 90%

Downfall (2004) 90%

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) 90%

Lebanon (2009) 90%

Gone With the Wind (1939) 90%

Patton (1970) 91%

The Big Red One (1980) 90%

Inglourious Basterds (2009) 89%

Lincoln (2012) 90%

Platoon (1986) 89%

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) 90%

The Wind Rises (2013) 88%

From Here to Eternity (1953) 88%

Tangerines (2013) 88%

Zero Motivation (2014) 88%

A Midnight Clear (1992) 88%

The Deer Hunter (1978) 86%

The English Patient (1996) 86%

Courage Under Fire (1996) 86%

Born on the Fourth of July (1989) 84%

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) 85%

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) 84%

MAS*H (1970) 84%

Doctor Zhivago (1965) 82%

Operation Mincemeat (2021) 83%

Atonement (2007) 83%

Casualties of War (1989) 84%

The Dirty Dozen (1967) 81%

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) 80%

The Thin Red Line (1998) 80%

Life Is Beautiful (1997) 81%

Devotion (2022) 80%

Che: Part Two (2008) 79%

Greyhound (2020) 78%

A Very Long Engagement (2004) 79%

Michael Collins (1996) 78%

Black Hawk Down (2001) 77%

Fury (2014) 76%

Black Book (2006) 77%

Good Kill (2014) 75%

Empire of the Sun (1987) 77%

War Horse (2011) 75%

Lone Survivor (2013) 75%

Braveheart (1995) 76%

Merry Christmas (2005) 74%

Flags of Our Fathers (2006) 76%

American Sniper (2014) 72%

Henry V (1945) 100%

Ivan's Childhood (1963) 100%

The Forgotten Battle (2020) 100%

Narvik (2022) 100%

Come and See (1985) 90%

Major Dundee (1965) 97%

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) 97%

Zulu (1964) 96%

Twelve O'Clock High (1949) 96%

Gunga Din (1939) 93%

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Chinese/American co-produced action-fantasy "The Great Wall" doesn't feel like a McDonald's-ified version of a Chinese film. True, when square-jawed Matt Damon fights alien monsters side-by-side with Chinese soldiers, the film sometimes feels like a spectacular big-budget action epic with a golden-age western-style hero. But the makers of "The Great Wall" succeed where many westerns fear to tread, namely by un-ironically valorizing the selfless collectivism that has become a cultural touchstone of modern Chinese cinema. "The Great Wall" has significant problems—namely with Damon and sidekick Pedro Pascal's lack of bromantic chemistry—but chief among its rewards is its ability to marry its Eastern and Western sensibilities.

Damon and Pascal play William and Tovar, respectively, wandering European mercenaries who are captured by the Chinese army of the Nameless Order shortly after they slay a mysterious green monster. The monster, they are told, is a "Tei Tao," one of a horde of creatures that attacks the now-famous Great Wall of China once every 60 years. William and Tovar are initially unmoved by the Nameless Order's considerable plight; they want to make their fortunes by stealing gunpowder from their hosts, and selling it to European traders. But eventually, William and Tovar's agendas drift apart after William becomes seduced by the formal control and selfless zeal that defines the Nameless Order.

And who wouldn't be impressed? The Nameless Order marches around in colorful suits of armor that come in hues of indigo, crimson and cerulean. They launch themselves at their enemies using pulleys, bungee cords, hot-air balloons, boulder-spewing catapults, and many, many arrows. Each crowd shot in this film is remarkable, but not because director Zhang Yimou ("Hero," " House of Flying Daggers ") and his assistant directors know how to direct extras. On the contrary, the impassive faces of the Nameless Order's soldiers remind us that all of these people, together, are remarkable. In that sense, the scene where William admits that he killed a Tei Tao "alone," without the aid of Tovar or his slain mercenary colleagues, is a significant reminder of the film's communal ideology: William, as an undisciplined loner, must prove that he's worth just as much as a selfless Chinese soldier.

The film's action scenes also exemplify a sense of precise, shared responsibility that one rarely sees in action-spectaculars. The army works together as a unit, just as the Tei Tao do. You can imagine how hard that philosophy might be to enforce given that it demands a big enough budget to focus on two warring armies' clashing maneuvers. But no, the film's action set pieces are not only thrillingly large-scale, but visually rapturous, despite a preponderance of computer-generated imagery. There are a handful of well-choreographed and well-directed, Damon-centric action sequences, but it's very easy to be seduced by scenes that focus on impersonal warfare. In the latter scenes, the art department flexes their collective muscles with every lionhead-shaped helmet and barbed offensive weapon. Who could remain unmoved after watching a group of individuals dangle, thrust, and throw everything they've got at a legion of deranged-looking creatures?

Unfortunately, the film slows down whenever it becomes a buddy comedy starring William and Tovar. If I had to guess, I'd say that screenwriter Tony Gilroy (" Duplicity ," " The Bourne Legacy ") was brought on to the film to punch up Damon and Pascal's wobbly scenes of light banter. But there's no spark between the two actors. In these scenes, Damon and Pascal perform time-honored roles that you'll find in many Asian films: the Caucasian performers who look like they wandered onto the wrong set and are unsure of what acting is. Damon orates through clenched teeth, which suits his fight scenes, but makes him sound constipated. Combine that with a weird Irish-inflected accent that presumably is meant to be generically European—his character boasts about fighting in various European conflicts—and you've got a crucial black hole where your leading man should be.

Thankfully, "The Great Wall" isn't really about Damon's character. In fact, it works best when he's part of a group, though he does predictably drift into a leadership role eventually. William's story is an assimilation narrative, after all, one where the hero sees the error of his past and tries to fit into a society that values utilitarian goals over individual needs. "The Great Wall" is unlike any American blockbuster you've seen, a conservative movie with action set pieces that are actually inventive and thrilling enough to be worthwhile. See it on as big a screen as you can.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in The New York Times , Vanity Fair , The Village Voice, and elsewhere.

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Film credits.

The Great Wall (2017)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of fantasy action violence.

103 minutes

Matt Damon as William Garin

Willem Dafoe as Ballard

Pedro Pascal as Pero Tovar

Andy Lau as Wang Junshi

Tian Jing as General Lin Mei

Hanyu Zhang as General Shao

Eddie Peng as General Wu

Lin Gengxin as General Chen

Ryan Zheng Kai as General Deng

Xuan Huang as Commander Deng

Lu Han as Peng Yong

Cheney Chen as Imperial Officer

Numan Acar as Najid

Zhang Yimou

Writer (story)

Marshall Herskovitz
Edward Zwick
Carlo Bernard
Tony Gilroy

Cinematographer

Stuart Dryburgh
Xiaoding Zhao
Mary Jo Markey
Ramin Djawadi

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How to watch History Channel’s docuseries ‘The Great War’ without cable

Updated: May. 27, 2024, 11:40 a.m. |
Published: May. 27, 2024, 11:40 a.m.

The History Channel’s new 4-hour docuseries “The Great War” covers U.S. involvement in World War I in the critical year of 1918 and is set to premiere Monday, May 27 at 8 p.m. Courtesy of History Channel

Ashley Dill | [email protected]

The History Channel’s new 4-hour docuseries “The Great War” covers U.S. involvement in World War I in the critical year of 1918 and is set to premiere Monday, May 27 at 8 p.m.

The story follows General John J. Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Force, who is charged with training and deploying an army almost from scratch; Michael B. Ellis, a young man fighting with the Army’s soon to be legendary Big Red One; and Horace Pippin and Henry Johnson, brave African American soldiers whose courage in battle helped their regiment be christened the Harlem Hellfighters.

“The Great War” docuseries will air tonight, Monday, May 27 at 8 p.m. on the History Channel.

For those who don’t have traditional cable services but want to stream the docuseries can watch it through Philo or DirecTV Stream . Both streaming services offers a free trial to new subscribers.

More about the show

According to History channel’s official synopsis, “The Great War is a four-hour cinematic documentary covering U.S. involvement in World War I in the critical year of 1918. After three years of horrific battle in the trenches of France and Belgium, the Allies are on the verge of collapse—and Germany the cusp of victory. The United States is forced to rapidly train, arm, and ship millions of young soldiers overseas to Europe for the first time.

“The Great War” weaves together the stories of these four men to tell one story: how an isolationist America reluctantly entered World War I and emerged a global power.

Where to find History channel

You can find which channel History is on by using the channel finders here: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse , Comcast Xfinity , Spectrum/Charter , Optimum/Altice , DIRECTV and Dish .

For those without cable, watch with these streaming services

You can watch it on Philo , an entertainment streaming service that offers 60+ channels and a free trial. DirecTV Stream also offers the History Channel along with MTV and more than 65 sports, entertainment and news channels under its Entertainment package.

More about Philo

Philo’s live TV subscription offers a free trial and costs $25 per month. It includes MTV and over 50 other classic TV, lifestyle and news channels. Subscribers can stream on up to three devices simultaneously, create up to 10 profiles and save unlimited live or future shows for up to one year.

More about DirecTV Stream

A new DirecTV Stream subscription starts at $70 per month The streamer offers MTV and more than 65 sports, entertainment and news channels under its Entertainment package ($70 monthly). New subscribers will be offered a 5-day free trial. Other plans offer over 90 to 140 channels, with prices ranging from $84 to $140 per month; you can also add on HBO Max, Starz, Showtime and other channels to add to your options for movies and TV.

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The 50 Greatest War Movies Ever Made

A look back at a genre that has inspired a century of cinema..

This article originally ran on January 11, 2020. It has been updated with the addition of Napoleon and other films and is being republished for Memorial Day.

Speaking to Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune in 1973, François Truffaut made an observation that’s cast a shadow over war movies ever since, even those seemingly opposed to war. Asked why there’s little killing in his films, Truffaut replied, “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” The evidence often bears him out. In Anthony Swofford’s Gulf War memoir Jarhead , Swofford recalls joining fellow recruits in getting pumped up while watching Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket , two of the most famous films about the horrors of war. (On the occasion of the death of R. Lee Ermey, the real-life drill instructor who played the same in Full Metal Jacket , Swofford offered a remembrance in the New York Times with the headline “ Full Metal Jacket Seduced My Generation and Sent Us to War.”)

Is it true that movies glamorize whatever they touch, no matter how horrific? And if a war movie isn’t to sound a warning against war, what purpose does it serve? Even if Truffaut’s wrong — and it’s hard to see his observation applying to at least some of the movies on this list — it might be best to remove the burden of making the world a better place from war movies. It’s a lot to ask, especially since war seems to be baked into human existence.

So, like other inescapable elements of the human experience, we tell stories about war, stories that reflect our attitudes toward it, and how they shift over time. War movies reflect the artistic impulses of their creators, but they also reflect the attitudes of the times and places in which they were created. A World War II film made in the midst of the war, for instance, might serve a propagandist purpose than one made after the war ends, when there’s more room for nuance and complexity, but it also might not.

Maybe the ultimate purpose of a war movie is to let others hear the force of these stories. Another director, Sam Fuller, once offered a quote that doesn’t necessarily contradict Truffaut’s observation but better explains the impulse to make war movies: “A war film’s objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war.” The films selected for this list of the genre’s most essential entries often have little in common, but they do share that. Each offers a vision that asks viewers to consider and understand the experience of war, be it in the trenches of World War I, the wilderness skirmishes of Civil War militias, or the still-ongoing conflicts that have helped define 21st-century warfare.

This list opts for a somewhat narrow definition of a war movie, focusing on films that deal with the experiences of soldiers during wartime. That means no films about the experience of returning from war ( Coming Home , The Best Years of Our Lives , First Blood ) or of civilian life during wartime ( Mrs. Miniver , Forbidden Games , Hope and Glory ) or of wartime stories whose action rests far away from the battlefield ( Casablanca ). It also leaves films primarily about the Holocaust out of consideration, as they seem substantively different from other sorts of war films. Also excluded are films that blur genres, like the military science fiction of Starship Troopers and Aliens (even if the latter does have a lot to say about the Vietnam War). That eliminates many great movies, but it leaves room for many others, starting with a film made at the height of World War II in an attempt to help rally a nation with a story of an operation whose success required secrecy, extensive training, and beating overwhelming odds.

50. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

War movies released during wartime rarely have time to reflect. If bolstering the morale of a country in the thick of World War II isn’t the sole purpose of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo , it’s certainly one of the primary reasons it exists, retelling the story of the first air raid on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Men head bravely into battle. Women accept their separation and sacrifices with a brave face. And everyone understands it’s for the greater good. However, the film, directed by Mervyn LeRoy from a script by Dalton Trumbo, easily transcends propaganda by focusing on the details of the raid’s preparation and aftermath. LeRoy depicts the attack with chilling intensity, but it’s the time spent with the crew, led by Van Johnson, that makes the movie memorable. (This is as good a point as any to note that Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo makes frequent, unapologetic use of a widespread wartime anti-Japanese racial slur, a warning that applies to virtually every World War II film set in the Pacific and made in the decades after the war.)

49. War Horse (2011)

Steven Spielberg ’s adaptation of a 1982 novel that found a second life as a much-loved play in the aughts follows a young soldier named Albert (Jeremy Irvine) and his horse Joey on an episodic journey across World War I Europe. There they find no glory in fighting, just cruelty, absurdity, and horror. Albert finds moments of grace and hope in the midst of the bloodshed, thanks to Joey’s unlikely survival. Yet, in a film that draws heavily on the imagery and attitudes of John Ford, Spielberg always emphasizes such moments’ fragility. It’s a hard world for hoofed things, and those who love them.

48. Napoleon (2023)

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon Bonaparte biopic deserves a place on this list if only for the meticulousness with which Scott stages its battle scenes . The Siege of Toulon, the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, and other clashes (think of the film as a kind of Napoleon’s Greatest Hits ) all coherently depict the battle strategies of their commanders and the workings of the weaponry. Beyond this, Scott invests each with a distinct atmosphere and an unsettling intensity. (An early shot of a horse getting ripped apart by a cannonball sets the tone.) Here, war is a terrifying venture in which death can arrive quickly and mercilessly, sometimes by fire, sometimes by ice. Despite Joaquin Phoenix’s glowering, knowing performance as Bonaparte, the movie’s sense of the man himself seems less deeply considered, at least in the film’s shorter theatrical cut. But perhaps that’s the point: Anyone capable of seizing and grasping power on this scale may not be entirely human.

47. Courage Under Fire (1996)

The first Hollywood film about the Gulf War, the Edward Zwick–directed Courage Under Fire was also one of the first to address the then-hot-button issue of women in combat. But it’s not primarily about either thing. Instead, this Rashomon -inspired drama explores what it takes to act honorably under the most trying circumstances imaginable. Denzel Washington plays Lieutenant Colonel Serling, who’s charged with uncovering the truth about an incident that may lead to the late Captain Karen Walden (played in flashbacks by Meg Ryan) to becoming the first woman to receive a Medal of Honor. The deeper he dives into the story, however, the more contradictions he finds — all while struggling with a secret of his own. The film works both as a mystery and a character study, and Washington’s performance beautifully conveys the unspoken pain of a man who comes to realize that he’ll never be able to shake off the burden of the past.

46. Overlord (1975)

Blending new, narrative scenes with documentary footage, Stuart Cooper’s Overlord follows a sensitive young soldier named Tom (Brian Stirner) from his enlistment through the D-Day Invasion. A sense of inevitability hangs over the film, both because Tom keeps imagining his death and because the documentary scenes make him feel like a part of a story that’s already been written. The mix of dreamlike asides and historical footage gives the film a feeling like no other as it mourns, and honors, the many lost in the war by focusing on the life of a single soldier.

45. Sergeant York (1941)

A film about the hero of one American war, made as another loomed on the horizon, Howard Hawks’s biopic of Alvin York (Gary Cooper) depicts its protagonist’s military service as the final part of his evolution from a backwoods Tennessee hell-raiser into a self-sacrificing warrior willing to put the good of others above his own. Along the way, York wrestles first with his anger then with his religious beliefs, which he believes forbid him from fighting. The film’s version of the Army — a caring institution deeply concerned with the happiness and well-being of its soldiers and willing to allow time for reflection for those who doubt the rightness of its mission — may be pure fiction, but Cooper’s unerring sincerity and Hawks’s firm command of the transformative story make this a moving depiction of one man’s moral development.

44. Black Hawk Down (2001)

This violent account of an ill-fated 1993 raid in Mogadishu that left 19 American soldiers dead found a receptive audience in the first winter after 9/11, and its politics very much remain a matter of debate. At least on a technical level it’s a remarkable achievement, one in which Ridley Scott brings the full force of his directorial skills to bear on an often chaotic story with a sprawling cast of characters (made up of virtually every up-and-coming male star of the late-’90s). Scott’s never been associated with documentary-like realism, but here he uses his talent for capturing the intensity of a single moment to create a collection of fragments that cohere into a fully developed story. Criticized by some for glorifying combat, it has lately started to seem more about the perils of believing American force alone can fix a troubled country.

43. The Train (1964)

Inspired by a real incident, this John Frankenheimer film stars Burt Lancaster as Labiche, a no-nonsense French resistance fighter who reluctantly matches wits with the German Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield), a murderous aesthete intent on returning to Germany with a train filled with priceless art. Labiche’s plan involves a mix of deception and brute force, and Frankenheimer ramps up the tension as Labiche’s determination mounts. The tension comes both from the battle of wits between von Waldheim and Labiche, which Frankenheimer stages as a series of escalating conflicts that unfold over the length of the train’s journey, but also from Frankenheimer’s depiction of how the cost of war extends far beyond the battlefield. Labiche doesn’t care for art, but he comes to recognize what the stolen treasures mean for a country struggling to hold on to its soul.

42. Jarhead (2005)

Adapted from Anthony Swofford’s memoir of his time in the Marines during the Persian Gulf War, Sam Mendes’s Jarhead is a war movie in which the soldiers never quite reach the war itself. Instead, Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his unit (which includes characters played by Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx) experience the madness of war from the sidelines, first via their time in basic training, then in the borderline surreal desert of Kuwait (memorably captured by cinematographer Roger Deakins). Where other war movies focus on combat, Jarhead focuses on what it means to be a soldier, from the bonds formed serving side by side to the ways life outside the military can start to feel less real than the world created within the ranks.

41. The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

A reverence for history and a love for the material gives shape to Michael Mann’s moody adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans , starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, the adopted son of the Mohican chief Chingachgook (Russell Means). Mann brings a typically obsessive attention to detail to the extensively researched film, set at the height of the French and Indian War when the war had extended to terrain not far removed from wilderness, but he also allows displays of open emotion — and unabashedly sweeping filmmaking — rarely seen in his other movies. Mann has said that he saw the 1936 adaptation at the age of 3 and it had been “rattling around” in his brain ever since. His Mohicans plays like the work of a director trying to figure out what in all those images of combat and doomed love moved him so much then and how he could use his own voice to have the same effect on others.

40. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962)

Winner of short subject awards at Cannes and the Oscars, French director Robert Enrico’s adaptation of an Ambrose Bierce story offers a succinct, haunting depiction of a second chance that’s not what it first appears. Roger Jacquet plays a Confederate saboteur on the verge of being executed by hanging as the film begins. Then the rope snaps, allowing him to make a desperate attempt to return to the life he left behind until … Well, there’s a good chance you know what happens next, but let’s not spoil it. Enrico’s film became the only outside production to air as part of The Twilight Zone. That’s where most viewers encountered the virtually dialogue-free film, a depiction of a final chance to consider what really matters even in the midst of war.

39. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)

The work of a director never afraid to court controversy, Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence explores the abusive excesses — and barely concealed desire — running through a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Indonesia. There, a British Lieutenant Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti), previously stationed in Japan and fluent in the language, tries to maintain some semblance of civility by communicating with the mercurial Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano, then best known as a comic on Japanese television). The introduction of the charismatic and seemingly unflappable British Major Jack Celliers ( David Bowie ) complicates an already tense situation, particularly once it becomes clear that Celliers has become an object of obsession for the camp’s captain (Ryuichi Sakamoto, who also provides the score). Oshima’s film teases out the homoeroticism coursing beneath the environment (and coursing through many a war movie, for that matter), in the process commenting on two different cultures that express such feelings through denial and brutality. Some seeds of hope slip through, but Oshima suggests they’ll struggle to survive in such arid terrain.

38. Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)

A different sort of power struggle lies at the heart of Run Silent, Run Deep , Robert Wise’s adaptation of a best-selling novel following one U.S. sub crew’s troubled mission through the South Pacific. Clark Gable stars as Commander Richardson, a commander with a chip on his shoulder, and possibly a death wish, after losing a ship and much of his crew to a Japanese destroyer. One year later, Richardson gets a shot at revenge, but only by assuming control of a sub from its apparent next commander, the popular Lieutenant Colonel Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster). They keep it professional even though the crew chooses sides as Richardson puts them through an exhausting barrage of drills; however, tensions mount when it becomes apparent that Richardson is pursuing a vendetta outside the parameters of his official order. The submarine movie is practically a genre unto itself, and Wise’s contribution is one of the best, capturing the pressure and barely suppressed hostility of a job that’s dangerous even before the torpedoes start flying — and one in which indecisiveness and divided loyalties can mean death for everyone aboard.

37. Three Kings (1999)

David O. Russell ’s Three Kings begins as a darkly comic heist film in which three soldiers (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube) try to make an easy score in the chaos at the end of the Persian Gulf War. It develops into a tour of the human costs and unfinished business of that conflict as the three get drawn into the plight of refugees trying to avoid the wrath of the Iraqi Republican Guard. The film both captures and questions the spirit of the moment — in which patriotism embraced a quick, decisive Gulf victory — and previews the century to come, one that would erase the distance between the Middle East and the United States. The heroes try to get in and out without really getting involved or inviting any consequences. They find that’s impossible.

36. Stalag 17 (1953)

Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski’s play drawing from their POW experiences provide Billy Wilder with a chance to bring a touch of black comedy to a World War II story that opens with a narrator complaining that prisoners of war like him never get movies of their own. (That was true up to a point at the time; Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape wouldn’t show up for a few years.) Opening with a failed escape attempt, the film finds tensions running high as a group of American prisoners come to realize that they have an informer in their midst. Suspicions quickly fall on Sefton (William Holden), a cynical operator who’s cornered the prison’s black market and holds regular “horse races” in which men bet on mice named after famous racehorses. Sefton insists on his innocence, however, and attempts to find the real informant while turning the tables on the camp’s officious commandant (Otto Preminger). Wilder’s the last filmmaker to indulge in sentiment or knee-jerk patriotism, but this sharp, tense, funny film allows him to depict American perseverance against cruelty and authoritarianism in a style that suits him.

35. Ride With the Devil (1999)

An adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s 1987 novel Woe to Live On , Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil drops viewers into the chaotic world of Civil War guerrilla fighting. Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich star as a pair of Missouri Bushwhackers who tangle with pro-Union Jayhawkers in conflicts far removed from the war’s front lines. Their war becomes a bloody journey of discovery, particularly after they make the acquaintance of a former slave named Holt (Jeffrey Wright). Lee’s film doesn’t go out of its way to explain its context, which proved off-putting to some critics in 1999 (and apparently to moviegoers, who largely ignored it). While it helps to bring some Civil War knowledge to the film, the confusion suits a story that’s ultimately about the many tangled reasons we go to war, and the much clearer reasons the experience of war makes us strive to leave it behind.

34. Che (2008)

Steven Soderbergh ’s two-part Che is at once biopic and war movie, telling the story of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (Benicio del Toro) by way of his participation in a successful revolution in Cuba and his participation in a failed attempt at the same in Bolivia. Soderbergh brings a distinctive look and filmmaking style to each half, both of which offer a nuts-and-bolts depiction of how guerrilla warfare works — in success and failure. The thrilling door-to-door urban combat of the first half gives way to the chaos and failure of the second. Anchored by del Toro’s enigmatic performance, they combine to form a portrait of a complex man that gets beyond the T-shirt iconography of would-be revolutionaries.

33. The Story of G.I. Joe (1945)

Journalist Ernie Pyle earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his on-the-ground reporting covering World War II from the perspective of an ordinary soldier. Released a few months after Pyle’s death in the Battle of Okinawa, this William Wellman film stars Burgess Meredith as Pyle, who joins the 18th Infantry and befriends the men fighting on the front line, including Robert Mitchum (who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work) as a commander whose apparent standoffishness can’t mask the toll exacted by his job. No stranger to combat, or films about it, Wellman’s direction matches Pyle’s no-nonsense style, paying tribute to the men it depicts by letting them speak in their own voices.

32. The Deer Hunter (1978)

The subject of controversy since its release, Michael Cimino ’s The Deer Hunter offered almost unbearably intense scenes of the Vietnam War at a time when mainstream movies were just beginning to touch on the still-fresh subject. Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Savage, and John Cazale star as a group of Polish-Americans from Pennsylvania’s Rust Belt whose lives are reshaped in different ways by the war. Cimino’s films drew criticism for its depictions of the Vietnamese, and its sensationalized scenes of Russian roulette, but the heart of the film belongs to its depiction of small-town America. The nearly hour-long wedding scene that opens the film captures a sense of warmth and tradition that has all but vanished by the film’s final moments, lost somewhere overseas.

31. Da 5 Bloods (2020)

A searing indictment of American cultural imperialism and an unsparing depiction of the experiences of Black soldiers during the Vietnam War in the form of an adventure film, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods follows veterans Paul, Otis, Eddie, and Melvin (played respectively by Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) as they return to Vietnam in search of a treasure they had to abandon during a battle that took the life of their idealistic leader, Norman (Chadwick Boseman). Over the course of their journey, the film flashes back to their wartime experiences, forcing each of the men to reflect on where the years have taken him. From a scene set at a (real-life) nightclub named after Apocalypse Now to the decision to have the older actors play themselves in flashback, Lee keeps finding ingenious ways to blur the line between Vietnam’s past, its present, and the films about the war. In Lindo’s wrenching performance as a morally adrift powder keg wearing a MAGA cap, he has found the embodiment of the conflict’s lingering trauma.

30. They Were Expendable (1945)

Though star John Wayne famously never served in the military, many of those involved in making John Ford’s They Were Expendable had seen World War II firsthand in one form or another. That helps account for the dutiful but often grim tone of the film, in which a pair of Navy men (Wayne, Robert Montgomery) try to convince the higher-ups that their small, maneuverable PT boats have a place in battles others believe will be dominated by larger vessels. Set in the early days of America’s involvement in World War II, when one setback followed another, the film never lets viewers forget the human costs of war, how soldiers’ lives become means to an end, and how service means living with that knowledge at every moment. Naturally, the “they” of the title refers to more than boats.

29. From Here to Eternity (1953)

Based in part on his own experiences serving in the Army in Hawaii in the days before the Pearl Harbor attack, James Jones’s 1951 novel From Here to Eternity won scandal and acclaim for its often unflattering depiction of military life. Even though it tones down some elements of the book, Fred Zinnemann’s adaptation met with a similar reception thanks to its unvarnished depiction of abuse, extramarital passion, and boozy off-hours — a far cry from the unabashedly heroic portrayals of the American military that preceded it during the war. Montgomery Clift plays a principled bugler who suffers abuse for his unwillingness to join the camp’s boxing team, starring opposite Burt Lancaster as a world-weary desk sergeant whose affair with his commanding officer’s wife (Deborah Kerr) threatens to undo his career. The cast of complicated characters extends to Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, and Frank Sinatra. Cast, like Kerr, against type, Reed picked up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and Sinatra won the corresponding prize for his work as a self-destructive private, two of seven trophies earned by the film, including Best Picture and Best Director. Lancaster and Kerr’s heated beach embrace helped make Hollywood films safe for franker depictions of sex, and the awards suggested that America was again ready to see its soldiers as human beings, flaws and all.

28. Paisan (1946)

Between 1945 and 1946, Roberto Rossellini released three movies depicting various phases of World War II. Surrounded by Rome , Open City and Germany Year One — both excellent in their own right — Paisan moves up through the Italian peninsula via six episodic stories about the Italian campaign. Made not long after the events depicted, Rossellini uses his neorealist style to great effect, filming on location and mixing professional and nonprofessional actors to capture the perils and ugliness of the war — both for those who fight it and for the everyday people they liberate. To capture the devastation of the war on Italy (and, in a later episode, Germany), Rossellini had to do little but pick up a camera and film. Created in part via on-the-spot improvisations by his cast, Paisan has the immediacy of lived experience.

27. Gallipoli (1981)

Named for the long, bloody World War I campaign to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula, Peter Weir’s Gallipoli at first seems misnamed. It doesn’t even reach Gallipoli until deep into its running time, and doesn’t depict much combat until its final scenes anyway. Yet the film owes much of its effectiveness to Weir’s slow march to a bloody finale, following a pair of sprinters of contrasting temperaments (Mark Lee and Mel Gibson ) from their homes in Western Australia through a long journey that spans enlistment, training against the backdrop of Egypt’s pyramids, and finally to the beachside trenches of Gallipoli. Along the way, they encounter increasing skepticism about why Australians should fight the war as the film around them attempts to convey the futility and loss of fighting any war, and the stolen promise of lives that become just another body on the battlefield.

26. The Steel Helmet (1951)

Sometimes dubbed the Forgotten War, the Korean War has only inspired a handful of American films, most made when it was still in progress. Sam Fuller directed two of them, the quite good Fixed Bayonets! and the even better The Steel Helmet. Gene Evans stars in both, in the latter playing Sergeant Zack, a cigar-chomping, seen-it-all veteran with little time for inexperienced officers or anyone else who gets in his way. After befriending a young Korean boy he dubs Short Round (a name Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would later borrow), Zack finds himself holed up in a Buddhist temple with a handful of soldiers who may not be powerful enough to fight off the encroaching enemy. Drawing on his own military experience, Fuller uses the claustrophobic setup — and a limited budget — to stage a psychologically intense story that finds every character considering their limits. That includes African-American and Japanese-American soldiers needled by a North Korean prisoner about their country’s hypocrisy. For Fuller, the best sort of patriotism meant not looking away from your country’s flaws, even while fighting for it.

25. 1917 (2019)

Drawing inspiration from his grandfather’s war stories, Sam Mendes’s World War I tale follows two British lance corporals (George McKay and Dean Charles-Chapman) tasked with delivering a message that a planned attack needs to be called off. This essentially leads to a one-day tour of World War I experiences, including a trip through the enemy trenches, an encounter with a downed pilot, a visit with a civilian caught in a war zone, and, ultimately, a charge along the front lines — all shot as one continuous scene. The result is immersive and often terrifying, each moment serving as a reminder of the chaos and horror of combat and of the individual human lives so easily lost when casualties get reduced to mere numbers.

24. Patton (1970)

General George S. Patton believed himself to be the reincarnation of soldiers serving the Roman Empire and Napoleon, among other past lives. While this belief and others made those around him view him as eccentric (or worse), it also captured the temperament of a man who saw himself as a soldier first and couldn’t picture himself serving any other function in life. Co-written by Edmund H. North and Francis Ford Coppola , Franklin J. Schaffner’s epic-scaled biopic focuses on Patton’s World War II experience. That’s more than enough to fill a film, and more than enough to offer a complex, nuanced, often unflattering depiction of the hard-charging general whose victories in North Africa, Sicily, and elsewhere could be overshadowed by diplomatic gaffes, a megalomaniacal temperament, and abusive incidents, like the assault of shell-shocked soldiers he labeled cowards. The film reduces two such incidents into one, but it otherwise doesn’t let Patton off easy, giving room for George C. Scott’s full-bodied performance to capture the complexity of a born soldier for whom glory and ugliness often went hand in hand.

23. The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Shot on location and filled with nonprofessional actors, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers chronicles the clash between forces of the French government and rebels in the Algerian capital during the Algerian War. The film has the look and feel of a documentary, but its commitment to realism doesn’t end with its style. Pontecorvo details the often horrific methods used in both sides of the conflict, from torture to bombings targeting civilians. The director claimed he set out to make an objective, politically neutral account of the conflict. If its sympathies can’t help but tilt a little toward the colonized, the film still plays like a nightmare in which every escalation kills more innocents and every victory comes at a horrible cost.

22. Platoon (1986)

Oliver Stone drew on his own experiences in Vietnam for this tale of a privileged Army private Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) who enlists out of a desire to serve his country but finds himself overwhelmed by the on-the-ground moral compromises that service seems to require. Platoon won acclaim — and multiple Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director — in part because of its realistic battle scenes and attention to the everyday details of fighting in the war. Beneath those elements, Stone stages an almost operatic struggle for Chris’s soul with the hardened Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger) and the more compassionate Sergeant Grodin (Willem Dafoe). Platoon ’s most memorable achievement, however, is the way it captures the cloudiness and confusion of fighting a war in which the demands of his superiors, and the desire to survive, can blur the divide between good and evil.

21. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

With a few notable exceptions, like The Great Escape , by the mid-’60s American World War II films had started to feel pretty square. Robert Aldrich’s violent, high-spirited The Dirty Dozen tapped into the spirit of the era, bringing in a remarkable cast (Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, Telly Savalas, and Donald Sutherland among them) to play a band of military convicts gathered by an OSS officer (Lee Marvin) to perform a dangerous behind-enemy-lines mission in the lead-up to D-Day. Aldrich brings a light touch to the film’s opening acts, as the characters meet, take a dislike to one another, but bond as a team anyway. But the unsparing final stretch leads to a sobering body count and some unavoidable acts of violence that look far from heroic. War can be a romp until the bloodshed starts.

20. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)

After depicting the Battle of Iwo Jima and its aftermath from the American side with Flags of Our Fathers , Clint Eastwood revisited the event from the perspective of Japanese soldiers with its companion piece, Letters From Iwo Jima . Eastwood unrelentingly depicts the desperation of the Japanese soldiers’ last stand, defending their position from tunnels as they ran out of resources and succumb to disease. But it’s the time spent with the soldiers, particularly a private and a general (played, respectively, by Kazunari Ninomiya and Ken Watanabe), that makes the film unforgettable. By the film’s end, viewers understand everything that led the men to this moment — from those drawn by a sense of honor to those compelled by the inescapable edicts of the Japanese government — putting human faces on one of the war’s pivotal moments.

19. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Lewis Milestone’s adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark novel focuses on the experiences of a handful of German schoolboys inspired to serve in World War I by a teacher’s patriotic propaganda, after which they enjoy a few moments of glory before being thrust into the hell of war itself. Milestone depicts the awfulness of a World War I soldier’s life, one in which there’s never enough food, exploding shells make sleep impossible, and virtually any injury can turn fatal. The film’s elaborate battle scenes make extensive use of sound, an only recently introduced cinematic innovation that Milestone uses to assault viewers. (Some of the performances, on the other hand, haven’t quite figured out how to adjust to the sound era.) Though told from the perspective of German soldiers, the film works less as a critique of one country’s approach to war than war in general, leading to a set of devastating final shots that capture what it means to send a whole generation off to fight, and what’s lost when they don’t return. A Best Picture winner, its inspiration — from its intense battle scenes to the suggestion that war goes against nature — can be seen in virtually every war film that followed.

18. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

The first half of Stanley Kubrick ’s contribution to the wave of ’80s Vietnam movies tends to get more praise than the second, but they ultimately tell two parts of the same story. The first follows J.T. “Joker” Davis (Matthew Modine) through basic training, a dehumanizing process designed to turn young men into killing machines — unless, like Vincent D’Onofrio’s “Private Pyle,” they break in the process. In the second, Joker tries to hold on to the shreds of his humanity that he’s been able to preserve in the midst of the war, which Kubrick stages as a surreal swirl of violence and confusion in which nothing delicate and meaningful can survive. D’Onofrio conjures the look of a man who’s died on the inside. It’s echoed in the second half by the Vietnamese prostitutes unconvincingly asserting their sexual desire (a scene famously sampled in 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny”), unable to hide their boredom as they sell their bodies. Even those who survive war end up hollowed out on the inside, one way or another.

17. The Great Escape (1963)

The ideal to which many subsequent star-packed World War II films aspired, John Sturges’s The Great Escape fills a German POW camp with James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn, and, most memorable of all, Steve McQueen as allied prisoners determined to break out. Each brings his own skill to the endeavor, which Sturges shows in meticulous detail. McQueen embodied an anti-authoritarian spirit set to catch fire a few years later in the ’60s, and the film plays like a lighthearted heist film until a violent climax reminds us we’ve been watching a war film all along.

16. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

This list doesn’t want for Best Picture winners, among them David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai , which also took the prizes for Best Director, Best Actor (for Alec Guinness), and Best Adapted Screenplay (though blacklisted writers Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman wouldn’t receive credit until years later). It’s easy for the Academy to get behind great war movies, which tend to use a spectacle and a grand scope to address weighty themes. Kwai contains all of the above, but it feels remarkably intimate thanks to its focus on a handful of characters played by Sessue Hayakawa, William Holden, Alec Guinness, and others. The product of contrasting cultures, the film finds each figure responding to his experiences as part of a Japanese prison camp in Burma differently — yet none is more fascinating than Guinness’s Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, who comes to treat the forced construction of the eponymous railway bridge as a test of British gumption. The film treats his obsession as both an admirable manifestation of national spirit and a kind of war-stoked madness whose contradictions remain tangled to the end.

15. The Chimes at Midnight (1965)

Orson Welles’s long-in-the-works (and long-hard-to-see) adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays featuring the high-living John Falstaff is a great war movie for two reasons. Working on an extremely limited budget, Welles created the illusion of sweeping battle scenes that captured the intensity of medieval combat. But it’s also a film about how war and duty can shut down the better, more joyful parts of our nature. Welles plays Falstaff as an unrepentant rogue, but also as a good man in the ways that truly matter. His estrangement from Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), the man destined to become Henry V, plays as both inevitable and tragic, and the closing observation that Hal became a prudent, humane king who “left no offense unpunished nor friendship unrewarded” rings with both truth and regret.

14. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Quentin Tarantino ’s sprawling, episodic Inglourious Basterds is a World War II movie informed by the decades of war movies that preceded it and is fully aware of fiction’s ability to reshape history. The film pits, indirectly at first, the pitiless but ingratiating SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) against a troop of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of the honey-accented Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). As his film makes its way toward a final confrontation in Paris, Tarantino touches on everything from the racial subtext of King Kong to the power of propaganda to the ways different eras and subgenres of war films have interpreted World War II — until, finally, Basterds reveals itself as a revenge movie on a historical scale. It’s funny and audacious, but also shot through with a sense of sadness and loss, thanks in large part to Mélanie Laurent’s turn as the sole survivor of an opening scene in which Landa hunts for a Jewish family in hiding. It’s a reminder that while movies might get to rewrite history and even offer a shot at revenge, they can’t really undo it.

13. Das Boot (1981)

A look at life aboard a World War II U-boat, Das Boot adapts a best-selling German novel by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, drawn from his experiences as a war correspondent embedded with a submarine crew during the Battle of the Atlantic. Jürgen Prochnow stars as the experienced and disillusioned unnamed captain whose sense of military duty and commitment to his men overwhelms open distaste for Hitler, Nazism, and the execution of the war. The title, which translates as “The Boat,” captures the spirit of the film. The movie’s opening sets up the force of the military at the height of the war, but the focus soon becomes what it’s like to live underwater in alternately dull and terrifying (and increasingly disgusting) close quarters. Wolfgang Petersen brilliantly uses cramped spaces, the sounds of underwater combat, and the intense performances of a bedraggled cast to create an immersive depiction of submarine service that’s jaundiced about the practice of war even as it captures the bonds needed to stay alive in the midst of it.

12. The Burmese Harp (1956)

Kon Ishikawa didn’t plan to make The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain as companion pieces, but his two films about Japanese soldiers in the last days of World War II fit together well. Programmed as a double feature, it’s best to watch Fires on the Plain first to avoid ending in despair. Eiji Funakoshi stars as Tamura, a soldier who begins the film with tuberculosis and whose life only gets worse from there. Denied admission to a field hospital, he’s forced to wander a hellish landscape of the dead, the desperate, and the starving. Ichikawa depicts war as a relentless assault of horror via a story in which survival doesn’t always seem preferable to death. Released three years earlier, The Burmese Harp sounds faint notes of hopefulness in a similar environment via the story of a Japanese private (Shoji Yasui) who comes to realize a higher duty when he disguises himself as a monk in order to survive. The film doesn’t shy away from war’s grimness, but it also depicts the possibility of a hard-won spiritual awakening and some tenuous connections between wartime enemies that could grow stronger now that the fighting’s done. They’re slivers of optimism, but the film suggests they could spread and that maybe, someday, war might end.

11. Dunkirk (2017)

Christopher Nolan ’s daring account of the Dunkirk evacuation — a humiliating 1940 setback that advanced the German cause — attempts to capture the full scope of the event by depicting it via three differently paced timelines at once. One, the story of some stranded soldiers, unfolds over a week. The second, following civilians attempting to rescue soldiers by boat, is set over the course of a day. A third, in which a pilot storms the beach by air, covers a mere hour. What could have been a cerebral exercise carefully builds the tension on three fronts. A deeply emotional climax and stirring denouement captures the spirit of a nation desperately trying to find sparks of hope under grim circumstances.

10. The Hurt Locker (2008)

The moviegoing public has largely proved resistant to films about the Iraq War, maybe because it remained the subject of heated controversy even as the films started to appear (and remains so today). One exception: Kathryn Bigelow ’s Best Picture– and Best Director–winning The Hurt Locker , which doesn’t ignore the politics of the conflict but also focuses on the terrifying experiences of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team led by William James (Jeremy Renner). Bigelow captures the intensity of a job in which the slightest mistake means death, and how the experience becomes so enveloping that any other way of life starts to feel impossible.

9. The Big Red One (1980)

Sam Fuller had already been a crime reporter, pulp novelist, screenwriter, and soldier before he became a director. While he brought his World War II experiences to many of his films, Fuller wrote most of his autobiographical elements into this project, a sprawling war film based on his experiences in the Army’s 1st Infantry Division. He had first tried to film The Big Red One in the 1950s but couldn’t make it happen. Its realization looked increasingly less likely as the years went on, but the always intrepid Fuller persisted. Used to working on small budgets, he barely left Israel to create a war-spanning story that follows a 1st Infantry squad from North Africa, through Italy, D-Day, and finally to a Czech concentration camp. Playing a Fuller surrogate, Robert Carradine co-stars alongside Mark Hamill and Lee Marvin, the latter playing a hardened veteran of both World Wars. Fuller finds creative ways to stage the war on a budget — making particularly ingenious use of a watch during the Normandy sequence — and its limitations ultimately serve the film, keeping the focus on the experiences of a tight band of soldiers as they make their way from continent to continent and, ultimately, to the dark heart of the war itself. In the process, Fuller captures the ravages of war on both soldiers and civilians while also depicting why sometimes fighting becomes the only choice.

8. Come and See (1985)

Russian director Elem Klimov’s harrowing Come and See opens with a Belarusian teen named Flyora (Aleksey Kravchenko) imitating a soldier as he and a friend dig through a trench looking for guns. In the process, he seems to summon war to his village, first in the form of a partisan militia who enlists him to fight the German invaders, then in the form of the Germans themselves, who arrive not just as conquerors but as gleeful sadists with no regard for human life. An end title notes that 628 Belarusian villages were destroyed in the war “along with all their inhabitants” and that Klimov co-wrote the script with Ales Adamovich, adapting a book based on Adamovich’s experiences in a Belarusian militia. To capture that horror, Klimov uses both a restless camera and heavy use of a Steadicam, gliding through a devastated, perpetually overcast countryside and depicting one disturbing incident after another. Over the course of the film, Flyora’s face becomes a map of trauma (an effect the then-13-year-old Kravchenko achieved partly through hypnotism ). It’s a stark, haunting depiction of innocence lost that’s built around unblinking re-creations of World War II atrocities. But it’s mesmerizing, too — a cinematic tour of hell filled with surreal images (see: a Nazi officer carrying a lemur on his shoulder) and overwhelming scenes of chaos. It captures the worst aspects of war in a manner that denies us the ability to look away.

7. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Debuting in the Evening Standard in 1934, cartoonist David Low’s aging, walrus-mustached, potbellied Colonel Blimp came to embody all that was out of touch and out-of-date in a certain type of British military man. Released in the thick of World War II, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp serves as a kind of origin story for the character but also, and above all, as a defense of his place in history and in shaping the national character. Roger Livesey stars as Clive Candy, a lifelong British soldier first seen losing a war-games exercise after his young opponent chooses not to play by the rules. The film then flashes back to Candy’s younger days when those rules still applied. It follows him from an attempt to defend Britain from German propaganda at the turn of the century through the ups and downs that followed. Along the way he falls in love with a series of women played by Deborah Kerr and befriends a German officer (Anton Walbrook) whose attitudes change with the shifting circumstances of his nation. At once comic and elegiac, it’s clear-eyed about the changing times that have made Candy’s notions about the proper way to fight dangerously out-of-date. But it also admires the way he embodies the best traits of an England that prides itself on civility and fair play even in battle — a vision of itself that’s in the process of being forcibly changed by the demands of an enemy that finds no virtue in such values.

6. Apocalypse Now (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola’s loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness keeps true to Conrad’s use of a river journey as a trip into the most forbidding reaches of the human psyche while transposing the action to the still-fresh Vietnam War. Martin Sheen stars as Captain Willard, a special-ops soldier charged with ending the career of the insane, abusive, charismatic Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) with “extreme prejudice.” Doing so means making a dangerous journey to a camp that Kurtz rules over like a god, with stops along the way that include time with a battle-happy surf-enthusiast commander of a helicopter unit (Robert Duvall), a USO appearance from some Playboy Playmates that stirs madness, and encounters with locals made tragic by the fog of war. (The extended versions released in 2001 and 2019 include even more episodes, including a French plantation sequence that provides an even stronger connection to the colonialism of Conrad’s book and the colonialist roots of the war.)

Coppola famously had a difficult time making the film, so difficult that his experiences inspired the great making-of doc Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse . That chaos may not have been necessary to create the sense of a world spinning out of control, but maybe it didn’t hurt. Sheen plays Willard as a man always on the verge of giving into the madness of the world around him, a world that grows less explicable and crueler the closer he draws to Kurtz. Coppola’s film is disorienting and disturbing, using Vietnam to capture the insanity of all war and drawing on Conrad to suggest that war might just be an outgrowth of an awfulness at the core of humanity itself.

5. Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The end of the 20th century stirred a great deal of reflection about what happened in the middle of it, particularly during World War II. The passing of time had done little to make the Second World War look any less like a struggle for the very soul of the planet, one that could easily have been lost at several turning points — the D-Day Invasion of Normandy among them. Steven Spielberg ’s Saving Private Ryan opens with a harrowing re-creation of that attack, offering a grunts’-eye view of the chaos and a zombie movie’s emphasis on gore. (If a movie could end war just by depicting the horrors of battle, this scene alone would have brought peace on earth.) It’s such an extraordinary sequence that it often overshadows the film that follows, which masterfully depicts the experiences of a handful of soldiers led by Tom Hanks ’s tough Captain Miller. The results are wartime experiences without a hint of romance or nostalgia. It’s clear-eyed about the realities of warfare and even questions the group’s mission — the search for a single soldier in order to prevent his mother from losing all four of her sons in war — that’s less a crucial operation than a PR exercise. It never questions the importance of the fight, however, and emerges as a stirring tribute to those who died saving the world in which we now live.

4. Grand Illusion (1937)

To gauge the effect of this Jean Renoir masterpiece about French WWI POWs and their German captors, it’s worth considering who didn’t want it to be seen. Joseph Goebbels hated it, particularly the way its criticisms of World War I reflected badly on the Germany that initiated World War II, declaring it “Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1.” But it wasn’t just Germany that came to find the film troublesome. Rereleased in France in 1946, the film didn’t sit as well with many French critics, who found its depiction of connections between French and German officers and its pacifist attitude out of step with the times. That reaction makes sense in the immediate aftermath of a war filled with atrocities on a scale never previously seen. But, years later, the mournful quality baked into the film overwhelms those concerns. Renoir fills Grand Illusion with hopeful suggestions that a common humanity can overwhelm nationalism, but also a sense that the possibility for that sort of connection is slipping into the past — along with any sense that war can be a noble exercise. It’s a stunning expression of humanism, but one filled with warnings about how little it takes for such values to fall away.

3. The Thin Red Line (1998)

Terrence Malick ’s adaptation of James Jones’s 1962 novel based on his World War II experiences fighting in the Guadalcanal campaign changed shape significantly as it made its way to the screen. Malick’s first film in 20 years, The Thin Red Line attracted the attention of established and rising stars alike, some of whom saw their roles reduced, or even deleted, from the final cut. Somewhere there’s an alternate version of the film in which Bill Pullman, Mickey Rourke, and Lukas Haas appear and Adrien Brody plays a key role rather than popping up for a few minutes of screen time. Malick’s editors, in an interview included in the Criterion Collection’s editions of the film, offer the best explanation for his decision-making. Malick cut the film not to service the plot but to make room for the film’s voice-overs. Paired with stunning images of war in the Pacific , they provide lyrical reflections on the characters’ wartime experiences and the loss of innocence that comes with those experiences. Malick returned from his moviemaking absence in full command of his signature ability to capture wonder, but in depicting a kind of hell on earth, he uses that ability to disorienting effect. Here, war spoils all it touches, from those who partake in it to those swept up in it to the land itself. To Malick, it’s an act of awful defiance against creation.

2. Paths of Glory (1957)

It’s worth keeping Truffaut’s famous quote (told to the Chicago Tribune in 1973) in mind when thinking about Paths of Glory . If even the most pacifist-minded war films often end up glamorizing war — and Truffaut specifically suggested they did later in the same interview — Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 adaptation of Humphrey Cobb’s World War I novel comes closest to slipping through that trap. Beyond depicting the sheer brutality of trench warfare, it serves as an indictment of the act of war itself. Over the course of the film, officers order soldiers to their death in a battle they know they can’t win, one soldier betrays another to cover up a crime, and the film treats self-sacrifice less as a noble virtue than a value extolled because of its military usefulness. Heroism never enters the picture, apart from the willingness of Kirk Douglas’s Colonel Dax to try to expose the hypocrisy and wrongdoing of executing three men for cowardice.

Kubrick immerses viewers in trench life and drains scenes of recon missions and battle of any glamor. Only the terror remains. But it’s his ability to depict the human cost — on the condemned soldiers, on Dax, and on those who evade justice — that makes the film so haunting as it builds to an extraordinary final scene. Its final moments feature a moving rendition of a song by a German singer (played by an actress credited as Susanne Christian but soon to be known as Christiane Kubrick after marrying the director), leading to a moment of connection and vulnerability for those compelling her to sing. The differences melt away, if only for the length of the song. Then the war begins again.

1. Ran (1985)

When Akira Kurosawa made Ran , he knew he had one last chance to make a grand statement. He’d spent years developing the project, a stretch in which he had difficulty securing financing for any sort of film, much less a sweeping epic that would become the most expensive Japanese film made at that point. His eyesight was faltering and the prospect of death never seemed far away. (Indeed, he’d lose his wife of many years while shooting the film.) So he put everything he had into the film, weaving Shakespeare’s King Lear into a story inspired by the life of the 16th-century feudal ruler Mori Motonari. Tatsuya Nakadai plays Ichimonji Hidetora, an aging daimyo determined to split his kingdom among his three sons, one of whom rejects the offer as foolish. The other two bring war to the land via bloody conflicts depicted largely as the result of the ruthlessness with which Hidetora ruled the land.

Ran , which translates as “Chaos,” is both a mammoth film and a tiny one. Kurosawa employed armies of extras — and burned massive sets to the ground — to depict the strife. Simply as a technical accomplishment, it should be on any list of the greatest war films ever made. But it’s also the story of one man’s tragic end and of his horrifying rush of reflection and regret. As Hidetora watches the destruction of everything he’s built, he realizes too late how little his accomplishments matter, how much virtue he’s cast aside to achieve them, and how time humbles even the proudest. All that fighting and death has accomplished nothing. Maybe, as the title suggests, war affronts the natural order and the blood we spill poisons the land for which we fight.

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Digital Trends

5 best war movies you should watch on Memorial Day

Posted: May 27, 2024 | Last updated: May 27, 2024

Incendies (2010)

Before creating spectacular sci-fi hits like Arrival and Dune , director Denis Villeneuve crafted the underrated war drama Incendies. It’s centered on the grueling journey of twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette), who travel to their mother’s homeland following her death to fulfill her last wishes. They also hope to understand her cryptic letters and learn more about their family, but soon stumble upon a startling truth about their history.

Set against the backdrop of civil war in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, Incendies explores how conflict and even war crimes are inextricably linked with the twins’ unknown past. The film greatly benefits from Villeneuve’s direction, with the filmmaker’s now familiar trademarks infusing Incendies with suspense and emotion. The film also showcases an excellent use of flashbacks to weave the characters’ past and present together, underscoring the inevitability of their trip and all their mother’s actions and experiences that have led up to it.

Incendies is streaming on Mubi.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

The Zone of Interest is a recent Oscar-winning war movie based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, which told a partially true story. Set in 1943, the film is centered on a family living near the “Zone of Interest,” with buildings from a concentration camp standing right behind the walls of their home. In this lavish house, Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), raise their kids, entertain guests, and maintain the grounds with the help of some Jewish servants.

Director Jonathan Glazer’s war film is a genuine standout in the genre, as it shatters ideas of what perpetrators of injustice and brutal acts look and sound like. Its depiction of the banality of evil through the Höss family is shockingly simple, yet deeply unsettling, with mundane scenes like Hedwig trying on a coat and comments about plants covering the wall becoming sources of horror. The 2023 film is an essential display of the kind of people who can commit horrific acts and a reminder that they can be astoundingly normal.

The Zone of Interest is streaming on Max.

<a>Columbia Pictures / Columbia Pictures</a>

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

Dr. Strangelove is a genre classic and a terrifyingly relevant and darkly comedic war movie. It satirizes Cold War anxieties through the story of a paranoid U.S. Air Force general named Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), who orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union without proper authorization. As the President of the United States (Peter Sellers) and his advisers scramble to deal with the crisis, chaos and bizarre hilarity fill the War Room. Meanwhile, RAF officer Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Sellers) attempts to foil Ripper’s plans.

Often cited as one of director Stanley Kubrick’s best movies , Dr. Strangelove uses its unique brand of comedy to highlight the absurdity of total annihilation via nuclear warfare. The satirical gem expertly laid bare the public’s real fears through clever jokes and plot points that clearly parallel actual events and policies. The 1964 film also features a wonderfully over-the-top comedic showcase by Peter Sellers, who masterfully plays his three roles, including the title character.

Dr. Strangelove is streaming on Max.

<p>The third film adaptation of the eponymous 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Netflix’s <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/all-quiet-on-the-western-front-netflix-movie-review/">All Quiet on the Western Front</a> is a contemporary triumph for the war genre. Set during World War I, it follows the spine-chilling journey of an initially young and idealistic German soldier, 17-year-old Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), who is eager to enlist in the army alongside his friends after hearing a patriotic speech. Wearing uniforms they don’t know are from dead soldiers, they go straight to the frontlines and experience inconceivable horrors, with only Paul surviving for a few more unforgiving and violent years.</p><p>With a memorable score, detailed costumes and makeup, and incredible set pieces and cinematography, All Quiet on the Western Front is a must-see modern war movie. The 2022 film primarily focuses on how Paul’s terrible and often gruesome experiences transform the protagonist from a victim of propaganda to just another disillusioned soldier with imminent death on his mind. Although its deviations from the source material have been divisive, most can agree that director Edward Berger’s adaptation is an impressive adaptation that can stand its own.</p><p>All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming on Netflix.</p>

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

The third film adaptation of the eponymous 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a contemporary triumph for the war genre. Set during World War I, it follows the spine-chilling journey of an initially young and idealistic German soldier, 17-year-old Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer), who is eager to enlist in the army alongside his friends after hearing a patriotic speech. Wearing uniforms they don’t know are from dead soldiers, they go straight to the frontlines and experience inconceivable horrors, with only Paul surviving for a few more unforgiving and violent years.

With a memorable score, detailed costumes and makeup, and incredible set pieces and cinematography, All Quiet on the Western Front is a must-see modern war movie. The 2022 film primarily focuses on how Paul’s terrible and often gruesome experiences transform the protagonist from a victim of propaganda to just another disillusioned soldier with imminent death on his mind. Although its deviations from the source material have been divisive, most can agree that director Edward Berger’s adaptation is an impressive adaptation that can stand its own.

All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming on Netflix.

<p>Schindler’s List is never excluded from any discussion of the <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/10-best-war-movies-ever-made/">best war movies of all time</a>, and is also among the greatest films ever made. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel titled Schindler’s Ark, the 1993 movie tells the true story of Oskar Schindler (future <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/liam-neeson-best-action-movies-ranked/">action movie star Liam Neeson</a>). The German businessman saved the lives of more than 1,000 mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, risking his own life and fortune to protect them from the Nazis.</p><p>Shot in haunting black-and-white, Schindler’s List is a hard-hitting, intense, and emotional retelling of real event sthat shows how one person can make a difference in hopeless situations. It contrasts unimaginable evil within the Plaszów concentration camp with Schindler’s astounding bravery.</p>

Schindler’s List (1993)

Not just one of the best war movies ever , but also hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, Schindler’s List is an iconic masterpiece by director Steven Spielberg. Based on the heroic, yet heartbreaking true story of the German businessman Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), it depicts how, after arriving in Krakow in 1939, he saves the lives of over 1,000Jewish refugees by employing them in his factories during World War II.

The renowned adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel is a genre-defining work that brought Schindler’s story to life on the big screen in stunning black-and-white. Spielberg maximizes every moment of the film’s three-hour runtime, using suspense, heartache, and shock to show the stark reality of the unimaginable evil that dominated that period. It’s a haunting and unflinching portrayal of one of humanity’s darkest chapters and a testament to the difference just one person can make when they decide to do the right thing.

Schindler’s List is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Patrick Melrose’ on Netflix, Where Benedict Cumberbatch Is A Man At War With His Addictions And Personal Demons

Where to stream:.

Patrick Melrose
Benedict Cumberbatch

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Patrick Melrose arrives on Netflix as part of a Cumber-content punch up. While the streamer already features Benedict Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog and The Imitation Game , the premiere of his new limited series Eric will be accompanied by 1917 and this brilliantly caustic five-episode miniseries, directed by Edward Berger ( The Terror , All Quiet on the Western Front ) and starring Cumberbatch in the title role, which originally premiered on Showtime and Sky back in 2018. Based on the book series by Edward St Aubyn , Patrick Melrose received numerous Emmy nominations, won BAFTAs for Best Mini-Series and Best Leading Actor, and features a stellar cast alongside Cumberbatch, including Hugo Weaving, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Holliday Grainger.

PATRICK MELROSE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The ringer rattles on a dark green table top rotary phone. It is 1982. “ Patrick, Is that you?…I’m in New York…Rather bad news…Your father died the night before last… ”

The Gist: While it looks at first like Patrick Melrose (Cumberbatch) has doubled over with grief upon learning that his father David (Weaving) has died, he’s actually just reaching down to grasp a hypodermic needle, which fell under the side table after Patrick’s most recent injection of heroin. So the old bastard’s gone and died, he’ll summarize in one of his frequent and frequently salty voiceovers. “What did that feel like? Pain or rage? Were you scared? God, I hope so.” Patrick will take the comfort of lovers like the willing Debbie (Morfydd Clark) or the cynical Julia (Jessica Raine); he’ll also take their Valium while reiterating his adoration for heroin and musing that he might finally give up hard drugs. He could do that, and maybe he finally will. But what is the source of the void within him, the one Patrick temporarily fills with smack, coke, ‘ludes, and booze? His journey will start with 48 frenetic hours in New York, where he must pick up his father’s ashes, attempt to maintain outward stability, and hopefully not submit to other, darker urges.

With David Melrose’s death, we begin to learn about the wealthy man’s character – no compromise, best or nothing, don’t trust anyone – but also about his fractured relationship with Patrick, which is revealed in flashbacks full of suggested trauma and emotional abuse. (Patrick Melrose is played as a boy by Sebastian Maltz.) Beginning in 1982, the series travels through the decades across five episodes. And by the time 2005 rolls around, Patrick will have found new highs and lows as a person, even as he continues to try and process how his father treated him and how his mother Eleanor (Leigh) seems to have let it happen.

While the Patrick Melrose cast is uniformly terrific, this is Benedict Cumberbatch’s show, and that makes it particularly binge-able for anyone who’s a fan of the actor’s trademark breadth and intensity and who might have missed it the first time around. There is a lot of serious stuff here, including emotional and physical trauma, suicidal thoughts, rampant drug use, and revelations from old wounds reopened. But Patrick Melrose is also bitingly funny, powerfully directed, and full of chances for Cumberbatch to channel a kind of redemption for his very broken, but very watchable main character.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Patrick Melrose is at least partly set in 1980s New York City, which also happens to be the setting for Netflix’s Eric , where Cumberbatch plays a puppeteer struggling with the disappearance of his son and the more frequent appearances of a giant blue monster puppet. And in 2020, Melrose director Edward Berger helmed Your Honor for Showtime, which featured an all-consuming performance from Bryan Cranston. (All-consuming performances, of course, are the norm for both Cranston and Cumberbatch.)

Our Take: In 2024, we know and love a Cumberbatchian performance. The range, the intensity, the unexpected ease with comedy. We know and love that stuff so much that Benedict Cumberbatch has built on it with a kind of humorous meta-extension of his established persona, like when he’s hosting Saturday Night Live or even when he’s cutting down Tony Stark with one-liners as Dr. Strange . Which is why it’s such a thrill to return to Patrick Melrose six years after its debut.

Cumberbatch was already a star when it premiered, of course. He’d already landed Emmys and BAFTAs for Sherlock . But playing the twitchy, acerbic, cynical, hilarious, self-absorbed, and very emotionally scarred Melrose brought all of the actor’s considerable talents to bear, and often brought them to bear in the course of a single scene. Physically expressing the fits and starts of an addict looking for his fix, diluting hours of soul-searching and clinical care into a frazzled internal dialogue between himself, his therapist, and his father, with the added input of his NYC heroin dealer – and with Cumberbatch shuttling through each of their accents as Melrose stumbles and frets, high as hell in his fancy hotel room – is to watch, fascinated, as an actor totally rips into a role. And what’s equally fascinating? He makes Patrick, who Allison Williams as Marianne correctly calls a “self-involved little shit,” into a character who is totally compelling despite his myriad faults. And if none of that does it for you, just stick around to watch Cumberbatch transform his features and limbs into Silly Putty once Melrose gets ahold of some 1980s quaaludes.

Sex and Skin: There are a few sexy situations, and sex happening in situations. But maybe what you need to remember about this series is Decider’s headline from back when it premiered in 2018: “ ‘Patrick Melrose’ Is A Benedict Cumberbatch Thirst Trap .”

Parting Shot: He’s decided. It required copious amounts of street drugs, and a bungled, half-cocked suicide attempt, but Patrick Melrose has decided. “I’m going to get clean.” Which is great! But then there’s the thought of what comes after. And for the very first time, Patrick cries for real.

Sleeper Star: It’s a toss-up between Hugo Weaving as the elitist, boorish and profoundly awful David Melrose, who we meet by reputation and in flashbacks, or Benedict Cumberbatch’s spot-on impersonation of Hugo Weaving as the elitist, boorish, and profoundly awful David, who Patrick knows will never fully depart his memory.

Most Pilot-y Line: Patrick’s serious trauma can be pretty delicious when it becomes fuel for Cumberbatch to deliver lines like this: “Ironic that my father’s remains were so hard to find, when I have no trouble discovering them in myself.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Benedict Cumberbatch is a revelation in Patrick Melrose , with a multi-faceted performance – many moods, many accents, many states of relative sobriety – that centers the hard hitting emotions of the series in a character who’s never too fucked up not to root for.

Johnny Loftus ( @glennganges ) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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After Germany makes an all-out push to take Paris, America is forced to make hard decisions that will either break the Allies or turn the tide of war. Key regiments known as Big Red One and The Harlem Hellfighters help pave the way to a hard-fought victory–and a new American century.

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The 10 Funniest 'The Big Bang Theory' Episodes, Ranked

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The Big Bang Theory is a beloved sitcom that charmed audiences for over a decade, offering an unparalleled blend of scientific intellect and sidesplitting humor. With its quirky characters, witty dialogues, and clever pop culture references, the show delivered countless hilarious moments that have left an indelible mark on television history.

From Sheldon's ( Jim Parsons ) eccentric antics to Leonard's ( Johnny Galecki ) outrageous escapades, the show's funniest episodes capture the essence of the show's comedic brilliance. While there are plenty of episodes that solidified The Big Bang Theory as a true masterpiece of humor, it's worth exploring the ones that brought science and laughter together in perfect harmony , from Season 3's "The Staircase Implementation" to Season 7's "The Cooper Extraction."

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10 "The Staircase Implementation"

Season 3, episode 22 (2009).

"The Staircase Implementation" starts with Leonard and Sheldon fighting over the thermostat, as expected from any great episode of TBBT . Penny ( Kaley Cuoco ) calls him crazy for putting up with Sheldon, so he quickly regales the story of how they became roommates in the first place and how it has been good for him in certain situations. The plot includes Leonard dodging a bullet when Sheldon saves him from the clutches of a North Korean spy, letting him move in when needed, and eventually growing on Leonard as a roommate and buddy.

Seeing Leonard's futile efforts to fix the staircase over the years, with him falling down the stairs and being attacked by a pigeon has surely brought some side-splitting laughs to fans. It's full of absurd moments and physical comedy that make it a top-tier episode. Plus, it's a delight seeing how the friendship between Leonard and Sheldon started and bloomed .

9 "The Panty Piñata Polarization"

Season 2, episode 7 (2008).

The comedic chaos in the episode "The Panty Piñata Polarization" ensues when Penny barges into Sheldon's room, wanting to watch America's next top model. Howard ( Simon Helberg ) and Raj ( Kunal Nayyar ) ignite their chivalrous streak by tracking down the top models and attempting to woo them while Leonard tries to make sense of the situation. Meanwhile, Penny and Sheldon are having their own chaotic debacle after she takes one of his onion rings and gets herself struck out of Sheldon's apartment after sitting in his spot on the couch.

The episode has an outrageous premise, which sees the conflict between Penny and Sheldon quickly escalate . They both know how to get at each other, with Penny using all the available washing machines during Sheldon's laundry day and Sheldon creating a pinata out of Penny's underwear. But while it's funny seeing Penny and Sheldon get at each other, it eventually ends when Leonard gives Penny Sheldon's kryptonite: his mother's number.

8 "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis"

Season 2, episode 11 (2008).

This episode humorously dives into gift-giving dynamics during Christmas, mostly centered around Sheldon. When Penny presents Sheldon with an autographed napkin from Leonard Nimoy, Sheldon's meticulous nature sends him on a comical quest to find the ideal way to reciprocate Penny's kindness. Meanwhile, Leonard is filled with jealousy and insecurity as a renowned physicist is seemingly interested in Penny.

Sheldon's journey to finding the perfect gift leads to hilarious attempts , including an awkward gift exchange with Penny where Sheldon buys gift baskets of varying values to figure out which one best matches her gift. Eventually, Sheldon lands on the right gift that he rarely gives: a hug. It's a must-watch episode for those who want to see the genuine friendship and connection between Penny and Sheldon .

7 "The Nerdvana Annihilation"

Season 1, episode 14 (2008).

The group of friends stumbles upon a time machine prop replica, triggering an unexpected and entertaining chain of events. When the time machine reaches Sheldon's apartment, their competitive nature ignites, sparking a heated bidding war. It's funny to watch the playful rivalry between the friends as they all have a deep passion for geeky collectibles.

While the boys are on a timeline of their own, Penny faces her distress. She missed her work shift, resulting in an unpaid day, after going through with Sheldon's plan of taking the stairs in the next building because the boys were bringing the machine up to the apartment. The way Penny rants about the guys' new toy, calling it as something "Elton John would drive through the Everglades" is memorable and particularly funny.

6 "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency"

Season 3, episode 8 (2009).

In "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency," the group's dynamics take a comedic turn when Penny slips in the bathtub and dislocates her shoulder. Unfortunately for Penny, Leonard, Raj, and Howard are out in the desert observing a meteor shower, with her unable to call anyone she trusts for immediate help. In an unexpected sequence of events, Sheldon, who is usually socially challenged, comes to her rescue. Overcoming his awkwardness, he drives Penny to the hospital.

The episode manages to make viewers laugh by highlighting more funny interactions between Penny and Sheldon, as well as the reaction of the boys after getting high due to eating cookies laced with marijuana. While Penny and Sheldon are dealing with her shoulder emergency, the guys are having a campfire and eventually run out of food, only to be saved by a care package from Leonard's mother. When Penny and Sheldon are home, she asks Sheldon to sing "Soft Kitty" so that she'll feel better, providing a warm but hilarious moment between the beloved TBBT duo .

5 "The Hamburger Postulate"

Season 1, episode 5 (2007).

In the episode "The Hamburger Postulate," the boys are seen giving their order to Penny at the Cheesecake Factory when they bump into Leslie ( Sara Gilbert ). She tells Leonard about the physics department needing a cellist for their orchestra, and he jumps at the chance to play since he is a cellist himself. It's entertaining to see Leonard scramble when Penny asks about the history between Leonard and Leslie , seeing as the scientist has been constantly pining for Penny.

As Leonard navigates his newfound romantic territory, Sheldon's interference becomes increasingly evident, creating funny and cringe-worthy moments. The episode humorously underscores the challenges of balancing personal relationships with the quirks of Sheldon's personality. The show's knack for blending relatable situations with the unique dynamic of the characters is further on display in the episode, especially since it took full advantage of Sheldon's lack of social awareness.

4 "The Love Car Displacement"

Season 4, episode 13 (2011).

There are plenty of amusing episodes in the fourth season of The Big Bang Theory , but the episode "The Love Car Displacement" takes the cake. It sees the gang embark on a trip to a science panel in San Francisco. Penny, who is now considered Amy's ( Mayim Bialik ) best friend, joins the group after scoring an all-expense-paid spa package. The journey begins with Sheldon's detailed orientation for the trip, causing some amusement. As the trip unfolds, Sheldon's peculiarities come to the front, leading Penny to challenge his authority as the "road trip god."

A series of room-sharing shenanigans occur at the hotel, with Penny and Amy ending up as roommates. Another source of funny awkward interactions and unexpected interruptions in the episode is Leonard and Penny's romantic tension, especially when the former tries to initiate intimacy with the latter . The episode culminates in a chaotic and hilarious drive back, with Leonard's speeding attracting the attention of the police.

3 "The Cooper Extraction"

Season 7, episode 11 (2013).

"The Cooper Extraction" is a special episode that explores an alternate reality where Sheldon never existed. Sheldon announces that his sister is about to give birth and that he is about to head home to Texas. Despite Sheldon's reluctance to witness childbirth, his absence leads to an unconventional Christmas tree decorating party, with rules discarded due to his absence.

The funniest parts of the episode involve each character imagining what their lives would be like without the presence of Sheldon . For example, Bernadette ( Melissa Rauch ) envisions that Howard is still living with his mother, meanwhile, Leonard and Raj imagine themselves turning to food for comfort. While there are plenty of hilarious scenarios that the gang has invented in their head, the episode is touching as it shows how important Sheldon is to them.

2 "The Troll Manifestation"

Season 8, episode 14 (2015).

Season 8 of The Big Bang Theory elicited plenty of laughs. The episode "The Troll Manifestation" takes a look at Leonard and Penny discussing Leonard's work with a particle detector and super-fluids over dinner. Leonard gets excited about a theory involving a super-fluid vacuum, and he rushes off to share it with Sheldon. Sheldon's response is positive, and he gives Leonard a sticker as encouragement. Later, Leonard wakes up to find Sheldon has turned their concept into a research paper. They publish it online, leading to a positive reception and a brief encounter with an internet troll.

The episode was particularly funny as it showcased how the socially inept Sheldon and the insecure Leonard dealt with internet troll comments . What's more, the comment from the internet troll really got to them, especially when it called Leonard and Sheldon clowns. However, the kicker of the episode is perhaps the revelation of who the troll was: Professor Stephen Hawking — which understandably befuddled Leonard and Sheldon.

1 "The Opening Night Excitation"

Season 9, episode 11 (2016).

Star Wars fever grips the guys in the episode "The Opening Night Excitation." Despite technical hurdles, Sheldon and his crew snag opening night tickets. Torn between the premiere and Amy's birthday, Sheldon chooses Amy, influenced by a dream (and a nudge from Arthur Jeffries). Seeking the perfect gift, he learns the most meaningful gift is closeness. And after some awkward fumbling, Sheldon and Amy share their first intimate moment.

The episode is funny and enjoyable due to Sheldon's intense obsession with Star Wars , which pushes him to go to extreme measures just so he can score some tickets. Will Wheaton also makes a cameo in the episode, which provides some meta-humor for fans of Star Trek . However, Sheldon and Amy's relationship milestone is perhaps the central source of humor in the episode , as it's funny to watch them navigate their relationship and try to be intimate together. The reactions of the gang are also priceless, especially Penny's and Bernadette's.

NEXT: The Best Sheldon Episodes 'The Big Bang Theory', Ranked

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Review: ‘The Great War’ serves up World War I on a budget

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COMMENTS

'The Great War' Review: A Segregated Black Unit Fights in World War I
In the film, a regiment has broken through German lines. But the clock is ticking to the cease-fire, and at 11 a.m., Nov. 11, 1918, the territory they have captured will go to the Germans, leaving ...
Review: 'The Great War' serves up World War I on a budget
Dec. 11, 2019 4:16 PM PT. "The Great War" is an earnest, battle-on-a-budget action drama set in the final hours of World War I. Although writer-director Steven Luke's reach often exceeds his ...
'The Great War' Review: When America Made Its Entrance
According to the venerable traditions of anniversary journalism, "The Great War" is a few years late, its focus being the entry in 1917 of U.S. forces into what would come to be called the ...
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During the final days of World War I, a regiment of daring African-American Buffalo Soldiers is trapped deep behind enemy lines. After one of these soldiers manages to escape, he's ordered to join a select team of white troops, led by a battle-scarred officer, to find and rescue the survivors. Casting aside their racial differences, the determined men join forces to find their lost comrades ...
'The Great War': Film Review
'The Great War': Film Review. A unit of white soldiers is ordered to rescue an African-American regiment trapped behind enemy lines in Steven Luke's World War I thriller 'The Great War.'
The Great War (2019)
Rated: D Dec 16, 2019 Full Review Roger Moore Movie Nation Mostly recycled war movie cliches, with the props - guns, explosions, etc. - occasionally giving away the paltry budget. Rated: 1/4 Dec 5 ...
The Great War (2019)
The Great War: Directed by Steven Luke. With Bates Wilder, Hiram A. Murray, Ron Perlman, Billy Zane. During the last days of the Great War, a group of U.S. soldiers are sent behind enemy lines to rescue a lost platoon.
The Great War
The Great War Videos. The Great War: Trailer 1. 1:28 Added: Nov 22, 2019 View All Videos (1) The Great War Reviews ... Mostly recycled war movie cliches, with the props - guns, explosions, etc ...
'The Great War' Review
The bad news is, Steven Luke's cliché-ladling combat picture is not that refined movie (called "1917"). What we have instead is "The Great War," a start-to-finish inept battleground ...
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During the last days of the Great War, a group of U.S. soldiers are sent behind enemy lines to rescue a lost platoon. ... Film Movie Reviews The Great War — 2019. The Great War. 2019. 1h 48m. R.
Review: 'The Great War,' When America Took the World Stage
The "American Experience" documentary " The Great War ," a three-night, six-hour production beginning Monday on PBS, paints a detailed and entertaining picture of the years when America ...
The Great War (2019) review: A cheap WWI drama with a messager cheaper
The Great War Review: A WWI Drama With A Message Somehow Cheaper Than Its Budget. This inept drama about a segregated unit trapped behind enemy lines in WWI has little about it worth a recommendation — least of all its embarrassing treatment of racism. Steven Luke's well-intentioned new World War I drama The Great War has an always-obvious ...
Watch The Great War Full Episodes, Video & More
"The Great War" is a four-hour cinematic documentary covering U.S. involvement in World War I in the critical year of 1918. After three years of horrific battle in the trenches of France and ...
Watch The Great War
In the wake of the Russian Revolution he worried about Communism creeping into America, and "the most likely vessel for that," he told a friend, was "the American Negro returning from abroad ...
The Great War (2019)
For a movie outside of the mainstream this, again, is very remarkable in many ways. When a comparison to bigger movies begins, though, The Great War suffers in contrast. Not horribly, mind you, but there were a few things that were especially difficult to ignore. First was some of the dialogue using some war cliches.
The Great War
During the final days of World War I, a regiment of daring African-American "Buffalo Soldiers" is trapped deep behind enemy lines. After one of these soldiers manages to escape, he's ordered to join a select team of white troops, led by a battle- scarred officer, to find and rescue the survivors. Casting aside their racial differences, the determined men join forces to find their lost comrades ...
The Great War (2019) Movie Reviews
Buy movie tickets in advance, find movie times, watch trailers, read movie reviews, and more at Fandango. ... The Great War (2019) Critic Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. ...
The Great War (2019 film)
The Great War is a 2019 American war drama film written and directed by Steven Luke and starring Bates Wilder, Hiram A. Murray, Billy Zane and Ron Perlman. Cast. Bates Wilder as Captain William Rivers; Aaron Courteau as Sergeant Allistor Richardson; Hiram A. Murray as Private John Cain;
'The Great War': Film Review
The bad news is, Steven Luke's cliché-ladling combat picture is not that refined movie (called "1917"). What we have instead is "The Great War," a start-to-finish inept battleground ...
100 Best War Movies of All Time
The Big Red One (1980)90%. #50. Critics Consensus: The reconstruction of Samuel Fuller's epic account of his days in North Africa in World War II elevates the film into the pantheon of great war movies. Synopsis: Having previously fought in World War I, an unnamed sergeant (Lee Marvin) now leads soldiers of the U.S.
The Great Wall movie review & film summary (2017)
The Great Wall. Chinese/American co-produced action-fantasy "The Great Wall" doesn't feel like a McDonald's-ified version of a Chinese film. True, when square-jawed Matt Damon fights alien monsters side-by-side with Chinese soldiers, the film sometimes feels like a spectacular big-budget action epic with a golden-age western-style hero.
How to watch History Channel's docuseries 'The Great War ...
The History Channel's new 4-hour docuseries "The Great War" covers U.S. involvement in World War I in the critical year of 1918 and is set to premiere Monday, May 27 at 8 p.m. The story ...
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50. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) . War movies released during wartime rarely have time to reflect. If bolstering the morale of a country in the thick of World War II isn't the sole purpose ...
The Great War: Western Front Review
There are around a million games about the Second World War for every one about the First, and The Great War: Western Front serves as a pretty good illustration of some of the reasons for that ...
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The Zone of Interest is a recent Oscar-winning war movie based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, which told a partially true story. Set in 1943, the film is centered on a family living near the ...
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Watch The Great War Season 1 Episode 2
After Germany makes an all-out push to take Paris, America is forced to make hard decisions that will either break the Allies or turn the tide of war. Key regim...
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The 13 Best War-Horror Movies, Ranked ... 20 Great Hitman Movies, Ranked According to IMDb John, Anton, Vincent - every hitman joins the party! ... 'Eric' Review: Benedict Cumberbatch Is Brilliant ...

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Reviewed online, New York, Dec. 10, 2019. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 108 MIN.

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100 Best War Movies of All Time

Grave of the Fireflies (1988) 100%

A Man Escaped (1956) 100%

Casablanca (1942) 99%

The Battle of Algiers (1966) 99%

Henry V (1989) 98%

Schindler's List (1993) 98%

Apocalypse Now (1979) 97%

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) 98%

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 98%

Das Boot (1981) 98%

The Hurt Locker (2008) 96%

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) 97%

Army of Shadows (1969) 97%

Grand Illusion (1937) 97%

MAS*H (1970) 84%