steven18
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Post by steven18 on Mar 2, 2017 20:15:56 GMT
The best I'd say are Platoon, Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line, which are just as much about the inner war of the soldier as they are about Vietnam or WW2. Platoon is an amazing film, and just gets better and better with each subsequent viewing. Both The Thin Red Line and Platoon are great at showing the inner conflict of the grunt as he's constantly forced to make life or death decisions, completely stripped down to only survival. In both The Thin Red Line and Platoon the soldiers seem to live or die by chance, but also by the choices they make. They question themselves inside as the moving camera weaves in and around them, decide, then move one way and either live or die or are wounded with a short time for inner questioning in between. In the beginning of Platoon, Barnes seems like a heroic, fearless, survivor kind of figure, but as the film unfolds it turns out he's completely remorseless and sadistic. As the film goes on it seems like people like Barnes are the kind of people that like to start a fight, and the rest just struggle around it, until Barnes meets his inevitable fall by his own bloodlust, but Barnes and Elias live on in conflict in the soldier, the free, compassionate fatalist and the rigid disciplinarian survivor. Instead of hero-worshipping, at least in the usual sense, the soldiers are depicted as powerless and either fuelled by fear, or simply resigned. The pot smokers seem more resigned and less frightened and are better able to cope and get by whereas the others seem to go mad with fear or become sadists. In The Thin Red Line too the soldiers seem fuelled more by adrenaline and fear than by some kind of abstract heroism. The film is filled with amazing images that I hadn't noticed before, like the bodies scattered around the bare burned out tree seen from the helicopter, and the soldier clutching his burned face in agony before falling, and the shot of the deer as Taylor wakes up amongst the bodies, just a lone shot of a deer with nothing else in it as if for one tiny instant it's just life in a forest and not Vietnam or even a war zone. It's an amazing film.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2017 3:56:47 GMT
I think Platoon is the best film about Vietnam, at least on the battlefield. In a film filled with memorable scenes, I have to say my favorite moment is the look on Dale Dye's face the morning after the battle and the death toll is being calculated. Because he is not really acting there. He is reliving his experiences in Vietnam.
My favorite war movie overall is Black Hawk Down.
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gadolinium
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Post by gadolinium on Mar 8, 2017 22:38:59 GMT
Your thread made me rewatch Platoon. Thank you.
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Post by jeffersoncody on Mar 8, 2017 23:45:47 GMT
The best I'd say are Platoon, Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line, which are just as much about the inner war of the soldier as they are about Vietnam or WW2. Platoon is an amazing film, and just gets better and better with each subsequent viewing. Both The Thin Red Line and Platoon are great at showing the inner conflict of the grunt as he's constantly forced to make life or death decisions, completely stripped down to only survival. In both The Thin Red Line and Platoon the soldiers seem to live or die by chance, but also by the choices they make. They question themselves inside as the moving camera weaves in and around them, decide, then move one way and either live or die or are wounded with a short time for inner questioning in between. In the beginning of Platoon, Barnes seems like a heroic, fearless, survivor kind of figure, but as the film unfolds it turns out he's completely remorseless and sadistic. As the film goes on it seems like people like Barnes are the kind of people that like to start a fight, and the rest just struggle around it, until Barnes meets his inevitable fall by his own bloodlust, but Barnes and Elias live on in conflict in the soldier, the free, compassionate fatalist and the rigid disciplinarian survivor. Instead of hero-worshipping, at least in the usual sense, the soldiers are depicted as powerless and either fuelled by fear, or simply resigned. The pot smokers seem more resigned and less frightened and are better able to cope and get by whereas the others seem to go mad with fear or become sadists. In The Thin Red Line too the soldiers seem fuelled more by adrenaline and fear than by some kind of abstract heroism. The film is filled with amazing images that I hadn't noticed before, like the bodies scattered around the bare burned out tree seen from the helicopter, and the soldier clutching his burned face in agony before falling, and the shot of the deer as Taylor wakes up amongst the bodies, just a lone shot of a deer with nothing else in it as if for one tiny instant it's just life in a forest and not Vietnam or even a war zone. It's an amazing film. Terric post steven18. PLATOON, APOCALYPSE NOW and THE THIN RED LINE are all great war films, but I would like to add another one to your list; the unforgettable masterpiece COME AND SEE - it scorched my soul. PLATOON comes closest to echoing my own experiences of being conscripted and sent to war (an unjust war - and I was on the wrong side - in a country far, far away from Vietnam), so I would probably give the edge to this brilliant Oliver Stone film. I love the line where you say "The pot smokers seem more resigned and less frightened and are better able to cope and get by whereas the others seem to go mad with fear or become sadists." As someone who started smoking weed when I was in the army (and am still smoking it daily - nearly 40 years later) I can say there is some truth in what you wrote - I was scared nearly ALL the time, but the weed definitely helped. Also, Willem Dafoe's Sgt Elias - I had a corporal like him - is one of my favorite characters in all of cinema. 'Course Berenger is brilliant as Barnes as well, but guys like him always terrified the living shit out of me, even while kinda admiring their fearless attitude and combat smarts. PS. Loved Dafoe as Bobby Peru in WILD AT HEART too, and if ever get the chance, check him out in Paul Schrader's haunting drama about a small-time coke dearler, LIGHT SLEEPER. The man's one helluva actor.
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steven18
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Post by steven18 on Mar 13, 2017 0:39:23 GMT
Your thread made me rewatch Platoon. Thank you. good ta know
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Post by finalfantasy on Mar 13, 2017 0:56:02 GMT
Downfall is a fantastic movie about the last part of WW2. Definitely worth checking out.
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steven18
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Post by steven18 on Mar 13, 2017 0:59:42 GMT
Terric post steven18. PLATOON, APOCALYPSE NOW and THE THIN RED LINE are all great war films, but I would like to add another one to your list; the unforgettable masterpiece COME AND SEE - it scorched my soul. PLATOON comes closest to echoing my own experiences of being conscripted and sent to war (an unjust war - and I was on the wrong side - in a country far, far away from Vietnam), so I would probably give the edge to this brilliant Oliver Stone film. I love the line where you say "The pot smokers seem more resigned and less frightened and are better able to cope and get by whereas the others seem to go mad with fear or become sadists." As someone who started smoking weed when I was in the army (and am still smoking it daily - nearly 40 years later) I can say there is some truth in what you wrote - I was scared nearly ALL the time, but the weed definitely helped. Also, Willem Dafoe's Sgt Elias - I had a corporal like him - is one of my favorite characters in all of cinema. 'Course Berenger is brilliant as Barnes as well, but guys like him always terrified the living shit out of me, even while kinda admiring their fearless attitude and combat smarts. PS. Loved Dafoe as Bobby Peru in WILD AT HEART too, and if ever get the chance, check him out in Paul Schrader's haunting drama about a small-time coke dearler, LIGHT SLEEPER. The man's one helluva actor. Come and See - I watched only one half of this film recently and "scorched soul" sums it up perfectly. It's the only war film I've seen so far that seemed not anti-war or even showing war as necessary evil, but as totally absurd by its very existence. Went straight for the very core of my being, simply the shelling of the trees gave me this kind of realisation, or actualisation, the way things really are sort of hit me from some place deep within, and few films have ever done that to me. The Thin Red Line also gave me that strange feeling, all at once, where I felt complicit in everything that was happening, it's like those films point directly at you and destroy the thin line between viewer and participant, cause and effect. Sgt Elias and Barnes seemed like two opposing elements of the psyche, the demon figure and angel figure, torn apart when the demonic Barnes is unleashed, Elias dying before Taylor, losing his father figure so he has to take responsibility and defeat the Barnes in him (seen when he succumbs to fear and rage and taunts the one-legged man in the village). I love how things are torn apart and come together again and how no one really wins and the different kinds of soldiers have allegiances to either Barnes or Elias, the soldiers who enjoy fighting for its own sake and everyone else who resigns and falls in between and tries to survive the war makers. And yeah, Dafoe is awesome.
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sariz
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Post by sariz on Mar 13, 2017 3:26:21 GMT
If we are talking about films which talk about the war then i guess id choose Saving private Ryan and maybe Schindler's list.
But i prefer films which aren't exactly about the war but are just set in war times like the book theif, The English Patient ot Pearl Harbor.
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Post by marth on Mar 13, 2017 4:07:35 GMT
Excellent choices. I think Full Metal Jacket is a great war film too.
Edited:
I´ve just rewatched Das Boot. How could I forget this gem?
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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Mar 13, 2017 5:02:41 GMT
Most war movies I have seen have some kind of obvious "War is Hell" message which is not exactly groundbreaking. They also tend to blame the bureaucrats or some loose cannon military fanatics. Occasionally they will bring in military companies for condemnation, but they usually leave out the bankers and other high finance folk who always seem to be at the center of it and initiate it. There was no money in the 30s for people during the Depression but there was money for war. Also, the truthfulness of the media is rarely questioned. Reporters may get blamed, but not the owners of the companies.
So with that in mind, I think the best war movies would be something more about personal combat, like BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE GREAT ESCAPE, HELL IN THE PACIFIC, THE CHALLENGE (1970), unless it is a few hundred years removed from the present like THE SEVEN SAMURAI or THE LAST VALLEY. Or something of a genre mishmash like THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT.
If you are a fan of the THIN RED LINE or the opening scene of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN then track down the inspiration for both, Cornel Wilde's BEACH RED.
Rip Torn: "I'm a marine. I'm gonna kill those bastards. I'm gonna shoot them. I'm gonna bayonet them. I'm gonna break their arms. That's what we're here for, to kill. The rest is just crap."
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Post by kingkoopa on Mar 13, 2017 7:50:25 GMT
Platoon big time. That movie rattled me on levels I didn't know I could be rattled on. One of my all time favorites. For anyone interested, the music used for Willem Dafoe's big scene is called "Adagio for Strings" and was composed by Samuel Barber. Over time it has been adapted by choirs, orchestras, and ensembles of all kinds...if you dug the music, there are hundreds of cool versions floating around youtube.
While not in the same league as Platoon, I thoroughly enjoyed Black Hawk Down and Tears of the Sun.
Kudos for the nod to The Thin Red Line. I loved it and thought it was underrated upon its release. Showed some chops I didn't expect Owen Wilson to have.
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steven18
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Post by steven18 on Mar 13, 2017 8:20:04 GMT
Most war movies I have seen have some kind of obvious "War is Hell" message which is not exactly groundbreaking. They also tend to blame the bureaucrats or some loose cannon military fanatics. Occasionally they will bring in military companies for condemnation, but they usually leave out the bankers and other high finance folk who always seem to be at the center of it and initiate it. There was no money in the 30s for people during the Depression but there was money for war. Also, the truthfulness of the media is rarely questioned. Reporters may get blamed, but not the owners of the companies. So with that in mind, I think the best war movies would be something more about personal combat, like BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE GREAT ESCAPE, HELL IN THE PACIFIC, THE CHALLENGE (1970), unless it is a few hundred years removed from the present like THE SEVEN SAMURAI or THE LAST VALLEY. Or something of a genre mishmash like THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. If you are a fan of the THIN RED LINE or the opening scene of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN then track down the inspiration for both, Cornel Wilde's BEACH RED. Rip Torn: "I'm a marine. I'm gonna kill those bastards. I'm gonna shoot them. I'm gonna bayonet them. I'm gonna break their arms. That's what we're here for, to kill. The rest is just crap." Big business were never warmongers, if anything the it was the government at that time that thrived on war crises or any crises and used war as sort of fascist rallying cry to further its own cause. Also I don't see what blame has to do with it.
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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Mar 13, 2017 9:19:29 GMT
Big business were never warmongers, if anything the it was the government at that time that thrived on war crises or any crises and used war as sort of fascist rallying cry to further its own cause. Also I don't see what blame has to do with it. Big business with a Biblical world view (especially leaning to the OT which is probably the most pro-war text ever written) most certainly were/are warmongers. The latest example was Goldman Sachs executives discussing the best way to attack Syria and Iran with Clinton. There were others with an interest in warfare but the bankers were funding that interest and most certainly encouraging it. Fear and tribalism can be used to encourage war, but not without money and media support--who owns the media and why are they pro-war. Are they patriots to the country or do they have another allegiance? The government is not some murky entity--it is made up of men attached to society and industry and business (and media). Fascism like Communism can mean different things depending on the media source and its integrity. And blame is usually inserted into a war movie if only subtly, but it leaves out certain parties and doesn't want audiences to think about them. For me that means it is propaganda and not a true anti-war message. Follow the money. As George Carlin said the owners of the country don't want informed citizens capable of critical thinking. You can assign blame to the soldier for going off and fighting a stranger, but it is a dumbed down and simplistic unless it is being fought with spears and rocks. In the industrial age it is big business, or a racket as one general said. I'd like to see a movie about the death of Patton-how is it that he was hit by two vehicles and died in hospital in a way that suggested he was injected by air through a syringe. Why did he write in his diary and tell his friends and comrades that he felt the US should have sided with Germany to defeat Bolshevik Communism? Why did the media in the US not report this? That's a big story that would make a great movie. For some reason Hollywood doesn't want to tell it.
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Post by sostie on Mar 13, 2017 9:31:47 GMT
Hope & Glory Life & death Of Colonel Blimp Zulu Come & See A Bridge Too Far
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steven18
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Post by steven18 on Mar 13, 2017 10:05:10 GMT
Big business were never warmongers, if anything the it was the government at that time that thrived on war crises or any crises and used war as sort of fascist rallying cry to further its own cause. Also I don't see what blame has to do with it. Big business with a Biblical world view (especially leaning to the OT which is probably the most pro-war text ever written) most certainly were/are warmongers. The latest example was Goldman Sachs executives discussing the best way to attack Syria and Iran with Clinton. There were others with an interest in warfare but the bankers were funding that interest and most certainly encouraging it. Fear and tribalism can be used to encourage war, but not without money and media support--who owns the media and why are they pro-war. Are they patriots to the country or do they have another allegiance? The government is not some murky entity--it is made up of men attached to society and industry and business (and media). Fascism like Communism can mean different things depending on the media source and its integrity. And blame is usually inserted into a war movie if only subtly, but it leaves out certain parties and doesn't want audiences to think about them. For me that means it is propaganda and not a true anti-war message. Follow the money. As George Carlin said the owners of the country don't want informed citizens capable of critical thinking. You can assign blame to the soldier for going off and fighting a stranger, but it is a dumbed down and simplistic unless it is being fought with spears and rocks. In the industrial age it is big business, or a racket as one general said. I'd like to see a movie about the death of Patton-how is it that he was hit by two vehicles and died in hospital in a way that suggested he was injected by air through a syringe. Why did he write in his diary and tell his friends and comrades that he felt the US should have sided with Germany to defeat Bolshevik Communism? Why did the media in the US not report this? That's a big story that would make a great movie. For some reason Hollywood doesn't want to tell it. Large companies have been coerced into becoming one with the state, through implementation of laws and systems that large companies can afford to accommodate and that allows a government presence in companies, and a company presence in government, and so business and government become inseparable, while smaller companies who are unable to afford to implement these changes go under, so it's like filtration, and the free market is strangled, and yet Similarly the Nazis forced big business to work for their interests by supporting competitors and slandering any company that refused to become a part of the German war machine. At its core though I don't think the call to arms is about money, more about the desire for power, unity and purity, the fascist impulse to destroy and annihilate and remake from the ground up and to do away with "the system," desire for absolute power and control, utopia, war and crises a means to rally the masses together to achieve this goal. Not just war itself, but the threat of war and disaster is used to give people a sense of purpose and so private interests are deemed selfish and useless in such crises and the state, or government as god enfolds all, but this is destructive and deluded as life as we know it is not perfect and cannot all be accounted for to create the perfect utopia of man's vision, and the systems and traditions fascism and its war machine seek to eradicate are necessary illusions.
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bennett
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Post by bennett on Mar 13, 2017 11:32:20 GMT
Come and See from 1985 if you haven't already seen Highly Recommended. I still have to get around to watching Son of Saul ASAP.
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Post by Fox in the Snow on Mar 13, 2017 11:38:32 GMT
The Human Condition trilogy The Thin Red Line Fires on the Plain
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Post by Primemovermithrax Pejorative on Mar 13, 2017 12:30:39 GMT
Large companies have been coerced into becoming one with the state, through implementation of laws and systems that large companies can afford to accommodate and that allows a government presence in companies, and a company presence in government, and so business and government become inseparable, while smaller companies who are unable to afford to implement these changes go under, so it's like filtration, and the free market is strangled, and yet Similarly the Nazis forced big business to work for their interests by supporting competitors and slandering any company that refused to become a part of the German war machine. You have the tail wagging the dog. I wasn't going to go into detail but since you force me.. What you accuse the National Socialists of doing in Germany is exactly what Mark Twain, HG Wells, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, Walt Disney, Roald Dahl, and others (including Jews themselves like Spinoza, Shahak, and Gilad Atzmon) accused Jews of doing in the US and Europe. Powerful Jews control the banking and media and then will slander anyone who opposes their aims, they will accuse their victims of what they have been doing. According to the Old Testament and the Talmud, jews are the chosen people of the one true god, and non jews are goyim or animals. You can look it up if you don't believe me. It was shocking when I saw the scriptures, but I had read the Old Testament and verses like this are bad news: Deut 20:10-17 "When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. . . . This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy themthe Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusitesas the Lord your God has commanded you." No one asks, why exactly did Hitler criticize Jews that caused them to declare a "holy war" against Germany in 1933? What did he accuse them of doing? Why did he (and Patton) consider Boshevik Communists such a danger, and why did Western media not mention that Lenin and Trotsky and other Bolsheviks were Jews, or that Stalin was a zionist? Why were the mass murders after the Bolshevik takeover not covered in the Western media? Why can you get 5 years in prison in Germany for publicly questioning the concentration camp story? Its odd that there is no talk about extermination camps in Hollywood films until the 1970s, but even stranger is that someone can go to jail for publicly questioning what we assume can easily be proven. These laws have been pushed in many countries and as I think I mentioned, Amazon recently removed 100s of Holocaust revisionist books. I used to scoff at the conspiracy theories until Trump came along, because it didn't make sense that the media were comparing him to Hitler for wanting to bring jobs back, or fighting corruption, or getting rid of the federal reserve, or not having a war with Putin, or being against ISIS. So basically yeah, I cannot watch a WW 2 movie the same way anymore. The scariest thing I read is that the main scientists who proposed the atomic bomb in 1932, and then urged the US to build one, were Jews. Leó Szilárd, Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, Frisch, Oppenheimer and Meitner. Once again, they claimed the Germans could make an atomic bomb but provided no evidence that the Germans were even interested in it. There is a similar WTF if one looks at the history of the African slave trade, who owned slaves, who didnt, and what Hollywood never told us. Facebook will ban someone for posting this quote but it comes from Voltaire (who was anti-Christian so he didn't attack jews because they killed Jesus like some claim): "You seem to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserved to be punished, for this is your destiny..[The Jewish nation] dares spread an irreconcilable hatred against all nations; it revolts against all its masters. Always superstitious, always avid of the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous, crawling in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity. Here are what were the Jews in the eyes of the Greeks and the Romans who could read their books....I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people [Jews] would not some day become deadly to the human race." When I read that last line I think of the atomic bomb.
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gogoschka1
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Post by gogoschka1 on Mar 13, 2017 16:14:15 GMT
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Post by stefancrosscoe on Mar 13, 2017 18:05:10 GMT
Troma's War (1988)
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