Perhaps it's a generational thing, but I've generally found Vietnam War movies to be more compelling than World War II movies. No matter how you look at it, it's difficult to argue that we shouldn't have fought WWII. We can argue whether certain tactics were useful or effective, and how much of an affect racism had on the prosecution of the Pacific campaign, but few people would argue that the world would be better off if Hitler had won. This gives a certain optimistic tinge to the movies, no matter how negative they are in general - for all its blood and gore, Saving Private Ryan still comes off as a bit trite and over processed.

At their best, Vietnam movies bring out a more morally complex picture of the costs and ironies of war; we know that there's not going to be a happy ending, so we can't just shrug off the death and destruction as necessary steps to a higher goal. If we view war movies as a didactic tool for enlightening us about the consequences of war, this lesson can only be a good thing, because when entering into war it's impossible to tell if it will end well - it's far better to assume and plan for the worst and then have things go better than expected than to assume the best and be stuck in a disastrous quagmire.

In light of my affirmation of Vietnam movies, I'd like to suggest Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket as two excellent movies which focus on that subject.

If miniseries do count, I think that Band of Brothers is just amazing. It's one of those films that I can't stop watching if I catch it playing on the History Channel or HBO. It kicked Saving Private Ryan into the dirt and took its lunch money, imho.

And though the film version just couldn't capture the ferocity of Vonnegut's masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five gets points for just being Slaughterhouse-Five (and also for detailing the travesty of Dresden). But my all-time favorite, bar-none WWII film is Sophie's Choice. It's not exclusively about WWII, of course, but I think it really captures how WWII devastated the entire world one person at a time. Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline are phenomenal, and it's a truly haunting picture of both the atrocities of war and the ravages of mental illness.

And who can forget Casablanca? I know it's not a battlefield film, but it's WWII all the way, baby...and it's easily the best film of its kind ever made. It's pulpy, overwrought, and patriotic, yet it's steeped in Bogart's insouciant cynicism...it's romatic and gorgeous and sad and funny, and it has the best supporting cast ever. Plus, Ingrid Bergman was at her most ravishingly radiant.

Maybe it's a girl thing, but when I watch war films I could care less about blood, guts, or glory. What always gets to me is watching the way that through combat boys invariably become wounded, haunted men. Basically, I look to war movies to validate my belief that war sucks. That being said, I really enjoyed Enemy at the Gates. There are huge gaps in my education with regard to WWII, and I always appreciate a film that manages to teach me something while it entertains me. I reallly had no idea that things were so terrible over there in Stalingrad until I saw that film.

(And yeah, I know it's WWI...but A Midnight Clear strikes me as one of the most heartbreaking war films of all time. As a matter of fact, between A Midnight Clear, Johnny Got His Gun, and All Quiet on the Western Front, I'd argue that WWI might be a richer mine for deeply affecting stories than even WWII.)

I hated "Enemy at the Gates."  I liked "Stalingrad" monumentally better.

It all started with Birth of a Nation, and if you ask me it may as well have stopped there.  That movie has all the plot elements that have subsequently been copied by modern war movies: elaborate extra-filled battle scenes, climactic confrontations on the battlefield paralleling conflicts in the plot, growth through the experience of war. In a way, once you've seen one massive battle on screen, you have seen them all, and you may as well see the ones in this movie.  If movies were patents, then this thing would be prior art to at least three Mel Gibson films and almost everything John Wayne did.

The racism bothers people, of course.  Watching this movie makes you so aware of the racism that you start wondering if a better word than "racist" might be available; the word seems almost too tame.  (If you haven't seen the movie, the title refers to the "birth" of two nations: the post-Reconstruction US, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the film seems much happier about that second nation being born). But the film's point of view is worse than even that: the film was made from the point of view of the losers in the war.  You are almost made to feel sorry not just that the war occurred, but that the South lost at all.

This is instructive, in its own way.  It makes clear the ways that films are able to manipulate your feelings and serve as propaganda.  The propagandized viewpoint is so outrageous that there's no danger that it will slip under your radar, so its very easy to deconstruct the film and learn how all war movies play tricks on you.

Someone in the queue noted that I hadn't listed Apocalypse Now as an example of a great Vietnam War flick.  So, let me say it, I didn't overlook Apocalypse because I don't consider it to be a great Vietnam War flick.  Essentially, Coppola took Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and placed the plot in Vietnam.  Not that it's necessarily a bad flick, it just didn't resonate with me and my Vietnam experience.  There was no renegade colonel, deep in the heart of the jungle, just up the Mekong.  There were no assassination teams sent out to take out renegade colonels.  There was no epiphany in the jungle where the colonel or anyone else just chanted "the horror."  Which is why my favorite Vietnam movies tended to be a bit more factually based, like Spartans or Hamburger Hill and I could have gone on with a few others such as We Were Soldiers or The Boys In Company C.
   

Illegitimi non carborundum.

My current favorite war movie is A Bridge Too Far.

I would remove Saving Private Ryan - too sappy.   The Longest Day did the D-Day landing much better. And if you like graphic war violence, I'd put Black Hawk Down on the list.

Now, does The English Patient count as a war flick?

I would add The Dam Busters, based on the true story of the RAF's 617 squadron and the deployment of the boncing bomb; the amusing anti-war film Roi de Couer; and while I wouldn't call it a "war movie" though it takes place during WWII is the underated Empire of the Sun.

Another  movie, of a play you might of heard of, which on one level refers to the experience of the French resistance during WWII is the film version of Waiting for Godot that stars Zero Mostel and Burgess Meredith.

 A nearly perfect movie set in the aftermath of WWII is the classic The Third Man.

Man, No love for The Dirty Dozen?

Lurking in the wings is Lewis' unfinished, unreleased masterpiece "The Day the Clown Cried, a film in which Jerry plays "a Nazi clown who leads children to the gas chamber in a concentration camp."

Come and See
This is the absolute best war movie of all time, bar none, and the best WWII flick as well. I heard the original title was, Kill Hitler. It was made in 1985, when the situation in the USSR was just starting to loosen up. Great pulp. They hate Stalin, but hate Hitler more.

Necessary viewing for every 4th of July until we no longer occupy Iraq.

----- The earth may fail, but we will quiver

There's a Chinese film from 2000 titled Devils on the Doorstep which deals with the Japanese occupation of a rural Chinese village during WWII. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. Impeccably constructed and brilliantly acted, it's the both the darkest and most comedic (in the Greek theater sense of the word) black comedy I've ever seen.

Lawerence of Arabia, mostly set in WWI, complete with villianous Turks, romantic Arabs, and Sykes-Picot from Faisal's point of view.

Jet Pilot--a lovely Cold war film brought to us by Howard Hughes, John Wayne, and much cooperation from the USAF.  In this thriller,  the Duke convinces a hot female Soviet pilot spy to defect.   This may be the naughtiest John Wayne movie there is, with rampant sexual dialouge. Its also chock full of hilarious stereotypes about commies and Russia.  Another great thing about this movie is that it was mostly shot in 1950, but since Hughes demanded constant revision, the films wasn't released until 1957, by which time all of the fancy aircraft featured in the flight scenes were obselete.  

No Man's Land is a black comedy set in a trench during the Yugoslav wars.  It pretty neatly sends up the war and the uselessness of the UN and NATO at the time.

Tora Tora Tora is a pretty interesting movie, particularly its gallant portrayal of Yamamoto and Nagumo.  Imagine, a documentary style movie portraying an actual event that didn't rely on made up scenes!

Oh, and even though Cowboy Bebob and Steamboy are animation, and more about terrorism and politics than war,  they are totally rad and I highly endorse them.