ENGAGING CULTURE

Since I’m in bed with what feels like strep throat, I’m not going to be doing much grilling this Memorial Day. But I’m all set for some patriotic movie watching. I thought I would share with you my top five war films.

5. Paths to Glory / Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1957/1987)
Kubrick did a great job crafting these films so that you really feel the grit and pain of war. Paths of Glory is one of Kubrick’s often overlooked gems.

4. Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981)
Das Boot is not just a great war film: it’s a great film period. Maybe it is true that epic themes make the greatest novels and films. Here is a movie that explores heroism, duty, patriotism, hope, fear and the futility of war–all grand themes–explored in the confined, and collapsing, spaces of a German u-boat.

3. Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986)
It won 3 Oscars. It has a great ensemble cast, everyone from Willem Dafoe, and Charlie Sheen, to Forrest Whitaker, and Johnny Depp. Most fully captures the feel of the Vietnam war.

2. The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
The greatest fault of The Thin Red Line was its timing - it was released at around the same time as Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. While most people dismissed it as the ‘other’ World War II movie of 1998, it’s actually a very different kind of film - the film itself is not hurt by similarity to Ryan but was hurt commercially due to the misconception. It’s easy to forget that it was nominated for seven Oscars. This is an extraordinary film that is superior to Ryan.

1. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
This psychologically jarring war epic takes a surreal, uniquely disturbing and unforgettable look at Vietnam. No other film so excellently captures the horrors of war. What I like most about Apocalypse Now is that it offers no answers or conclusions. Consequently, because of this open-endedness, it infuriates some viewers who like their movies to be much more obvious. While I categorize it here as a war movie, it’s really more of a personal study of man.

So there you have it. But maybe you have more of a taste for WWII and holocaust memorial. So here’s my top 5 holocaust films thrown in for free. No explanation for the following lists, because I’m going back to bed!

5. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
4. Amen. (Costa-Gavras, 2002)
3. The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)
2. La Vita è bella (Life is Beautiful) (Roberto Benigni, 1997)
1. The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002)

Okay, I lied. Amen is a little known French film about a Nazi who tries to warn the Catholic Church about the holocaust but is met with more politics than compassion. And if you feel like a laugh is a better memorial. I will also throw in my top 5 war comedies at no extra charge. Most of them are really old, probably because we’re for the most part too uptight to laugh at war now.

5. In the Army Now (Daniel Petrie Jr., 1994)
4. The General (Clyde Bruckman, 1927)
3. The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)
2. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Did I forget one of your favorites? Are you planning to see ‘Indy and the Crystal Skull’ or catch up on Iron Man this Memorial Day? Let me know in the comments, I really do care.