My opinion on the top three best war movies or TV series of all time.

1. Band of Brothers: Steven Speilberg/Tom Hanks production. 10 part miniseries on HBO back in 2001, about a company of paratroopers in the 101st airborne division in WWII, from D-Day to the capture of Hitler's Eagles Nest. Won all kinds of awards, including a Golden Globe award for best miniseries. It was kind of forgotten though, because the first episode premiered on September 9, 2001, two days before 9/11. After 9/11, people kind of forgot about it, because of the tragedy. But the series was so good, that by episode 5, I stopped watching the DVD set, because I wanted to savor the moment for a while, like enjoying a good wine, because I knew I would never see a series or movie that good ever again. Gripping and sometimes brutally realistic, it also had a poignant human side, telling the stories of the citizen soldiers. The stories in each episode were taken from diaries of the paratroopers, and interviews with surviving members of the unit.

2. The Longest Day: a classic from the 1960s starring John Wayne, Roddy McDowell, Sean Connery, etc. Also about D-Day.

3. Saving Private Ryan: everyone probably knows about this movie, so I won't summarize.


So what do you think? Anymore to add or subtract from the list?

some of my favorite war movies are

Pearl Harbor( I love this movie)
The Patriot
The Last Samuri

The Patriot with Mel Gibson? Yeah, I like that one too.
The Last Samurai was good. I think that actor Watanabe is going to be in the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha movie with Ziyi Zhang. Steven Speilberg is producer for "Memoirs..." by the way, though Rob Cohen is directing it.

Another thing about the Band of Brothers DVD set: I never saw a single negative review of it when I searched online. Check out Amazon.com user reviews, or the rotten tomatoes website. I've never seen so many positive reviews of ANY movie/series. Even my mom loved it, and she doesn’t like war movies. And I was surprised at how many of my female friends enjoyed it. I would gladly have paid twice the $90 I paid for the 6 disc DVD set. It was that good.

There are some things that you can do with a 10 hour miniseries that you can't do with a 2 hour movie, such as character development. You grow attached to some of the characters as the series progresses, and you hope they don't die. And because it was based on actual events, some of the characters do die. But even for the people who don't like violent movies, like some of my female friends, they were already attached to the characters through the first two episodes, so that they would continue to watch through even the incredibly violent combat scenes, so they could find out what happens to the characters.

I love The Last Samurai, Schindler's List, Troy and Gladiator. Okay, not very 'war' i know lol.

Band of Brothers DVD is right beside me now. Shall find time to watch it after my exams. My brother's almost forcing me to. "YOU MUST WATCH IT!!"

Steven Speilberg considered Holocaust movies like his "Schindler's List" in a category all its own. By the way, did you know that Steven Speilberg is Jewish? I didn't know that until a few years ago. Not that I care, either way. I love his movies, whatever he is. But some people have prejudice against Jews. But growing up in Hawaii, a melting pot of different ethnicities, most people here really don't care what race or ethnicity you are, because in Hawaii, everyone is a minority.
Oh yeah, Speilberg said that the story of Oscar Schindler needed to be told. In case other people didn't see the movie, Schindler was a Nazi, who saw that what they were doing to the Jews were wrong, and put his money, and his life on the line to save as many as he could from the death camps.

NOT IN NE ORDER BUHH, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, PEARL HARBOR, BLACK HAWK DOWN(I THINK MY FAV) ND BAND OF BROTHERS I DIDNT' FINISH IT..HAHA I LOVE WAR MOVIES!! I HAVE TO STILL WATCH JARHEAD~

Glory - the greatest war movie!

I think it's Saving Private Ryan. A very sad war movie, but it's good.

pearl harbour... gosh i love this movie.. so sad!

the last samurai... frcking made me cry when katsumoto(i think that's his name) died and they all started to bow and get on their knees

gladiator... great movie

saving private ryan... i saw it for the first time when it was dday this year

If you liked Saving Private Ryan, I think you would like Band of Brothers. For Band of Brothers, Steven Speilberg used the same cinematography style as Saving Private Ryan, namely using the handheld video cameras to record the action, making you feel like you are actually in the middle of the battle.
Band of Brothers is very violent. But if you can handle the violence in Saving Private Ryan, then you can handle the violence in Band of Brothers.

Full Metal Jacket & Apocalypse Now

Saving Private Ryan was good...but Black Hawk Down was also great,

i really liked the patriot and pearl harbor

blackhawkdownn cuz i like the action and last samurai

Thanks for the idea of a Christmas present lol. I'm definitely going to get Band of Brothers for somebody.

I really enjoyed The Patriot and Gladiator.

Battle Royale II: Requiem & Black Hawk Down.

full metal jacket was quality...i also liked glory and saving private ryan...but yea check out full metal jacket quality stanley kubrick movie

AMEN!!! Who wouldn't with the marvelous cast it has? Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes, and Matthew Borderick. Matthew's character was a bit wimpy for a man with a title like that, but gosh, he was CUTE!^^;

I haven't gotten the chance to see Saving Private Ryan yet, but I will get around to it some day. After all, it stars Tom Hanks and Steven Speilberg was a part of it, so it's gotta be good.;]

As for series, Band of Brothers. No doubt.

LOL, I watched Glory in eighth grade at school. It was a nice movie.

My favorite war movie is Black Hawk Down, though it's not exactly a war movie, more of a mission type of thing.

Otherwise, Saving Private Ryan made me cry. I loved how they were trying to find the last brother and everything.

And if you mean any type of war, then I loved, loved, loved LOTR. Battle scenes between good and evil!

Battle Royale is considered war?!?! well, if thats the case, then i thought the first battle royale was the best. the second one was a kind of let-down for me.

how come nobody said 'The Pianist'???.....

not that into war movies, but some of them are qutie good.

MY FAVORITE WAR MOVIES:

PEARL HARBOR
WE WERE SOLDIERS
BEHIND ENEMY LINE
TAEGUKGI

all are very exceptionally good movies.

When you do see Saving Private Ryan, try to watch it on as big a screen as possible, with surround sound. It didn't have as much impact when I watched it later on a rather small TV screen.

I remember soon after Saving Private Ryan came out in theaters in 1998, they had these two combat veterans (Vietnam) on Good Morning America (I think it was that show) who saw Saving Private Ryan, and they said that the movie brought back some bad memories of their experiences in combat. It was mostly because of the way Saving Private Ryan was filmed (with the handheld video cameras) that made you feel like you were in the middle of the battles yourself. Band of Brothers had some segments filmed the same way, but too bad Band of Brothers was never on the big screen in the theaters--it probably would have been just as intense.

Of course, as Tom Hanks said in the making of Saving Private Ryan, "guys like me can imagine what it would be like to be in actual combat. But what it's actually like to be there, I'll never know. Never." Same here for me, and most people on this forum.

I watch war movies, but I don't support war. Personally, I think invading Iraq was a mistake. But I guess I'm drawn to war movies, because it shows life at the very extreme. Sometimes, I think war is inevitable. Hitler had to be stopped, there is no question there. But war should be avoided as much as possible, because war is the ugliest thing that humans participate in. The worst things you can imagine happen in war zones. Not just the killing of soldiers, but civilian casualties as well. Look at the fall of Berlin at the very end of World War 2. After the Russians captured Berlin, the Russian soldiers raped an estimated 2 million German women in retaliation for the brutality that the Nazi SS dished out to the Russian civilians during their rampage of Russia--(from the BBC history website). The Russian soldiers felt justified after Russia lost 20 million civilians during the War. That's right. 20 million! The Japanese imperial army brutalized civilians during their occupation of China in the 1930s (killing an estimated 4 million Chinese during that period).

But I think war movies can be good, in that people don't forget how brutal and ugly war is, and do as much as possible to avoid it.

I guess you like the Vietnam era war movies, which is cool too. For me, I got burned out on Vietnam War movies after watching Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and The Killing Fields in a 3 week period a while back.

Pearl Harbor was good. Except I don't like when they add love stories in war movies. Some people like it when that happens and that's cool too. But for me I like to keep romance movies seperate from war movies. Which is why I thought that Enemy at the Gates (w/ Jude Law, Ed Harris--about snipers during the battle of Stalingrad) would have been a better movie WITHOUT the love triangle.

War movies? Haha. I love these.

_Alexander the Great
_Saving P. Ryan
_The Last Samuri
_Troy
_Taeguki
_The Gladiator
_Pearl Harbor
_The Patriot
_Braveheart

Pearl Harbor & Troy are my all time favorites. I bawled in Pearl Harbor.

heh
TaeGukGi.
Jarhead (i liked it, different type of war movie)

someone mentioned Glory xD i remember watching that in school for the civil war subject.

pearl harbor had pretty good scenes
Last Samurai!! man i need to watch this again.

havnt watch Saving PVT. Ryan or Band of Brothers

Hamburger Hill
Platoon
U-571
Tae Guk Gi
The Sand Pebbles

Pearl Harbor was really good

definitely black hawk down and saving private ryan

'Der Untergang', 'Tae Guk Gi' and 'Im Westen nichts neues'

I haven't seen those German films that you mentioned. I take it they were from a German perspective. You don't see too many World War 2 movies from the German perspective, in the U.S. There was Das Boot, All Quiet on the Western Front (actually that was about World War 1). Any others?

Just wanted to continue a little on this. In regards to Saddam Hussein and his military (conventional anyway), he really wasn't any threat, military wise, to the US. He had his butt kicked in the first Gulf War. His armor consisted of obsolete Soviet made tanks that stood no chance against US high technology. Compare this with the situation with Hitler in World War 2. Hitler's Wehrmacht (German army, navy, air force) was one of the best trained and technologically advanced military entities in the world, at that time. Had Hitler listened to the advice of his generals, instead of making boneheaded tactical and stategic mistakes by himself, Germany just might have won WW2. (After all, Hitler was only a mere corporal in his time in the military; he knew very little about making intelligent military decisions). As opposed to the fight against Saddam, the fight against Hitler had very grave and far reaching consequences. If Germany had won the war, most of Europe would probably be Nazi today. The Holocaust may have never been exposed. And this would be a very different world that we live in today. That's why the generation of Americans that fought and helped defeat Hitler, is called "the greatest generation"

Did you know that Hitler's scientists were working on nuclear weapons? After the war ended, and after the international scientific community examined German documents, it was concluded that the Germans were about a year or so away from making an atomic bomb. Scary thought, isn't it? Hitler with an atomic bomb.

Hitler's scientists were also working on the AMERIKA project: making long range bombers capable of reaching Washington DC, New York, etc. Taken with the fact that by 1945, German scientists were only about a year away from developing atomic bombs, and you see why Hitler had to be stopped.

i watched it in eight grade too! I LOVED IT!

the korean movie 'tae guk gi' is a great war movie too. i cried soooooo hard.

i usually hate war movies but i have to say glory & tae guk gi were so good

taegukgi was really good. and i'm not saying that just coz won bin was in it =)

i also saw glory in 8th grade! lol i thought it was really good as well.

i lOOOOve war movies. even though i haven't watched many. they make me really sad and depress, but they help me to appreciate my life a lot =)

my favorites are The Last Samurai and Taegukgi

FIRST BLOOD



is a very good story, I just bought the DVD and finished watching it.

We Were Soldiers was a really sad war movie.

LMAO. After reading the replies, I think a lot of us saw "Glory" in 8th grade.xP I rewatched it over the summer and I started thinking whether or not there's an edited version of it because they use profanity quite a bit in the movie or maybe I was too young to know what those words were then so I don't remember.-__-


Oh, GOD, I had no idea that (the 2 million German women raped by Russian soldiers) happened.-.- I can see they're angry, but I mean...that's just...disgusting. But yah, I agree with you on how I watch war movies because they're a part of our history and I acknowledge those who were affected and participated in the wars, but I don't support them unless they're just as in Hitler's case.

glory
saveing private ryan

Saving Private Ryan, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Glory(Haha), The Patriot. I don't remember any others.

Troy, Last Samurai and Lord of the Rings (lol gotta <3 cg's).

yes battle royale II is an allusion to the destruction of twin towers. they made nanahara the 'terrorist'. i liked the first one though, it gave more insight to each of the main student's situations and concerns.

It wasn't only the Russians that killed and raped. The Japanese did it to the Chinese during their occupation in the 1930s. Do a google search on the Nanjing (also spelt Nanking) Massacre in 1937. Imperial Japanese army soldiers raped and killed some 150,000 women in that city. I'm part Chinese, and also part Japanese, and I did a lot of soul searching after I saw some of those pictures that those Japanese soldiers took of what they did back then. I felt ashamed of my Japanese heritage, and anger because I am also Chinese. I had nightmares from what I saw. They didn't just rape the Chinese women, they tortured them and then killed them in the most brutal and inhumane ways. And I warn you, do NOT look at those pictures if you have a weak stomach. It will haunt you. It is a vision of hell. Most historians agree that the Nanjing massacre was one of the most brutal events ever in the entire recorded history of the world. To me, it was even worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews, although more Jews died during the Holocaust. What's worse, in interviews after WW2, the Japanese soldiers had no remorse for what they did.

The Nanjing Massacre is known as the "forgotten Holocaust", because until recently, it was not widely known, mostly because of political reasons. Recently, there were protests outside the Japanese embassy in China, because in Japan, high school textbooks were "sanitized" as to what happened in the massacre.

The sad thing is that this scenario plays over and over again. Just last year, in Sudan, in the ethnic unrest there, black tribesmen were killing people from other tribes, and there were mass rapes reported.

I think that they should make a movie detailing the events of the Nanjing massacre. Sometimes, I really wish I didn't know about the massacre, because it was the most disturbing event I'd ever learned about, worse than even the Holocaust. It really made me think about my Japanese heritage in a bad way (I'm also part Chinese too). But I think the story needs to be told.

If some of you here would like to learn about one of the darkest chapters in recorded history, there is an article about Chinese-American activist Iris Chang, who was largely responsible for putting the Nanjing massacre more into the public light here in the United States, and abroad. Here's the link:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12...hina1-9650.html

Why was one of the most disgusting events in recorded history, so unknown to most people? During their occupation of China in the 1930s, the imperial japanese army performed inhumane biological and chemical weapons experiments on the Chinese civilian population, killing many thousands. After the war ended, the U.S. government was very interested in the results of these experiments, so as to improve the United States own biological and chemical weapons programs. You think the U.S. doesn't deal with biological and chemical weapons? Think again. Do a google search on the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland, and see for yourself. Anyway, General Douglas MacArthur (who I use to think was a WW2 war hero), brokered secret deals with the Japanese government. In exchange for their research on germ warfare, the murderous actions of the Japanese army in China (estimated 4 million Chinese killed) and elsewhere in the Pacific would be ignored by the U.S. In the end, a few high ranking Japanese officers were found guilty for ordering their men to brutalize the Chinese population, but the individual soldiers who commited the actual crimes against humanity (estimated to be about 120,000 Japanese soldiers) were NEVER punished for their acts. The U.S. just turned the other way. And the Japanese soldiers showed no remorse, sometimes bragging about how many Chinese they killed.

From Chinese government and academic documents, confiscated Japanese soldiers photographs, Japanese soldiers confessions, and in the diaries of Red Cross officials stationed in Nanking--the Japanese killed so many men, women and children with machetes that their arms became tired and they had to rest before they continued. The soldiers also used bayonets, machine guns, live burial and fire. Decapitation was popular, evidenced by dozens of photographs in James Yin Shi Young's The Rape of Nanking (Innovative Publishing Group, 1996). Chinese heads were fed to the dogs. Women were raped, forced to perform bizarre sexual acts, then killed. Fathers were forced to rape their daughters, and sons, their mothers. Chinese men were forced to rape corpses. Competitions took place among Japanese soldiers to see how many Chinese they could kill in one day. The United States just looked the other way, ignoring all of these disgusting crimes, just so they could get the germ warfare research of the Japanese. I think that that was the most disturbing of all--that the U.S. could have brought punishment to these criminals, but did nothing.

Love Pearl Harbor (although the love story was greater protrayed in the movie)

The Last Samurai- pretty cool n loved the fight scene

Saving Private Ryan- very sad, but very true

We Were Soldier- pretty good

The Pianist- is this considere a war movie? I love it a lot

the U.S only entered the war due pearl habor.. they didn't give bull about the holocaust happening in Europe prior.

We Were Soldiers had the best combat scenes for a Vietnam war movie