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Ricochet Movie Fight Club: Week 15
According to Miffed White Male, the quintessential American movie was The Right Stuff. Enough of you agreed to give him the win, and the right to ask: What’s the most entertaining movie set during WWII?
The Rules:
- Post your answer as a comment. Make it clear that this is your official answer, one per member.
- Defend your answer in the comments and fight it out with other Ricochet member answers for the rest of the week.
- Whoever gets the most likes on their official answer comment (and only that comment) by Friday night wins the fight.
- The winner gets the honor of posting the next question on Saturday.
- In the case of a tie, the member who posted the question will decide the winner.
Notes:
- Only movies will qualify (no TV shows) however films that air on television (BBC films, a stand-alone mini-series) will qualify.
- Your answer can be as off-the-wall or controversial as you’d like. It will be up to you to defend it and win people to your side.
- Fight it out.
Haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s on Netflix…
Try it for yourself.
Maybe I’ll give it a try tonight, or download it for my flight in a few weeks. I always end up watching The Sopranos on flights, I could use a change of pace.
The movie is explained very well in #88
http://ricochet.com/778094/ricochet-movie-fight-club-week-14/comment-page-3/#comment-4848282
He was. I’ve read a summary of the excised scenes and a couple were about pushing boundaries, I thought they pushed enough boundaries with what they left in, and a few were characterization building, if Clint missed them I’m not going to second guess him. I count Clint as one of the greatest directors ever. I think the pacing of the released version is pretty good, but we never really learn much about Kelly or Big Joe or, perhaps thankfully, Crapgame. And adventure films working from thinly drawn stereotypes can be quite enjoyable. How much characterization do we really get in the Connery Bond movies?
Watch it and judge.
$10 for a disk from Amazon, or https://youtu.be/gbvakYSIuVI
Did anyone mention Private Ryan? Good, but not my fave.
And Band of Brothers deserves an honorable mention.
I agree. One lesson from these threads is there’s no accounting for taste. Someone nominates a movie I love, and it gets no love. Other movies I can’t stand seem to be wildly popular. You may enjoy it!
Not a film. Excellent and certainly cinema quality, but just not a film.
As for Finding Private Ryan, for my part I found the premise strained and irresponsible and nothing in the movie redeemed that for me. That and spending several minutes in the opening on the thousands of men who drowned without ever reaching the beaches at Normandy as a recognition of a great tragedy seldom treated with, detracted directly from the unicorny premise that the fate of one soldier was something that a command could dedicate a squad to in the middle of an existential battle.
Hanks gives a great performance, but the film is ludicrous and I never needed Hanks to show me that war is demonically evil. Every good drama on war does that.
I like the depiction of the uniforms and equipment, but not much else. The story is absurd, and the weaselly interpreter makes me want to punch his face, and I’m a very easy going kind of guy. I remember seeing Roger Ebert review the movie and he declared that the weasel was the important character that everyone would identify with. Huh? The coward who can’t do his job, and who stands there and watches as a German soldier disembowels the soldier he’s supposed to be supporting? I never thought very highly of Ebert after that.
On a scale of 1-10, Band of Brothers is an 11. But it doesn’t count because it’s a Miniseries.
Likewise, Winds of War and War & Remembrance. They get downgraded by casting, and the prevalence of soap-opera sub-plots, but otherwise remain probably one of the finest dramatizations of the whole war, and certainly of the Holocaust, ever put on film.
Can we declare a separate mini-series category and commence voting on that as well?
Band of Brothers and The Pacific both count as films, see the rules bullet #6. A stand alone mini series is a film in multiple parts, with a beginning and a well established end point, as opposed to a tv series like, say, Game of Thrones which was open ended and had multiple seasons.
BOB counts, and is very entertaining. Regarding Saving Private Ryan:
But Spielberg’s theme is that fatherhood is manhood. Hanks’ character doesn’t have children, but his responsibility is to take boys through a chaotic world, and he takes it because he has to. When he crawls out of the ocean (a scene of retroactive abortion) he looks up at a young man, who, in super-slow motion and without sound, looks like a child for a moment. When the sound comes, the soldier shouts, “What the hell do we do now, Sir?” Hanks’ response is effectively: you can’t stay here, you’re not safe. You have to run full speed through it all.
All of his men have special talents, and because they’re the best, they are given this special responsibility. The captain’s great flaw is that he’s too reticent – there’s a reason he has so much faith in Barry Pepper’s sniper. He has to put all of his soldiers in dangerous positions and has to watch most of them die. But they all die heroes. In a sense, his death is merciful. “Angels on our soldiers” is his last line before he tells Private Ryan to earn the miracle of life.
The movie gets a bit too much attention, but I think it’s a special one.
But it also has the gratuitous nods to homosexuality, especially with the homoerotic scene at the end in the bell tower. The movie tried too hard to be artsy.
Ah, you’re on the verge of nominating my favorite movie (self-written and directed) Saving Captain Nemo. It’s three… three… three films in one! Due out this summer.
It’s been a bit since I’ve seen it. I don’t know that I caught that one.
You don’t mean the one with Adam Goldberg where Upham (his name is bit of a clue) is crying on stairs, right? I’d call that one a rape. And it’s hinted pretty well that Jeremy Davies’ character didn’t have a father around. After seeing Hanks die, he abandons his weakness that he confused with mercy.
I am shocked to see no one has so far mentioned Otto Premingers Epic In Harms Way. A fictional retelling of the battle of the pacific. Its not my number one choice. But it would be in my top ten.
As someone who has watched a lot of WW2 movies and has written and studied the war itself. The best WW 2 bar none, is the extended restored cut of Samuel Fullers ‘The Big Red One”. With the additional FOURTY SEVEN MINUTES.
This movie stars Lee Marvin and follows a squad of US GI’s from the landings in Morroco, the Tunisian campaign, the fighting Italy, the landing of Normandy, the Hurtgen forest, which plays like a Grimms fairy tale, and the capture of Auschwitz.
The fact is I cant think of any other movie that really covers the fighting in Morroco, Tunis or the Hurtgen forest.
The scene during Aushwitz is got to be Mark Hamill’s finest work, where his shell shocked soldier comes to grips with the enormity of what they captured there.
The movie really is a MASH like series of Vignettes and captures the insanity of the war in a way that Apocaplyse now tried and failed to do, as AN was move a descent into madness. This movie just it right. Probably its because its based partly on Fullers own experience in the war.
Even if you cant get the restored cut. Before I watched it I would have likely said The Longest Day was the best movie.
But this is the best WW2 Movie bar none.
THE BIG RED ONE
But for you Pacific Lovers this is probably the best of the Pacific Campaign.
Well, I see my absence has resulted in 107 comments and three votes for The Guns of Navarone.
How about this. If you want me to stay away, vote for #16.
Force 10 from Navarone is a better movie than Guns.
Also no love for the Battle of Britain?
None.
As much as I enjoy seeing Robert Shaw act while drunk, it’s not even close.
I’m pretty shocked that I’ve never seen this one. I’ll watch it today.
I just never saw it, but it’s on my list now. Clearly, I’ve missed a lot of greats.
Just having a bit of fun. That’s the point here, I hope.
Does The Final Countdown count?
I liked it, and the cast was . . . unbeatable. But I thought that the personal stories, like the romance with Susannah York, derailed it a bit.
Yes.