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Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 5:18 pm
by jeff00t
the best mini-series: " Generation war " ( 3 episodes of 1h30)
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 4:26 am
by DrSher
Ruckajaerven.
Talvisota
Tali-Ihantala
Kasym
Katyn
Idi I Smotri
Brestskaya Krepost
Das Boot
Stalingrad
Hunde, Wollt Ihr ewig Leben (yes it is from 1953, but maybe the most accurate of them all in some way)
Rommel
Band of Brothers
Anthropoid
Valkyrie
I feel most of the well known WW2 movies is often at tactical level with some exceptions, like Rommel
In addition to this, there are at least 8-10 mini-series that now are on youtube from Star Media (Belarus film). Each series is about 6 hours or more, but have great plots; typical honest and cold reality of Soviet mind and spirit; with lots of accuracy in details, although plot is not always so.
If you want to try one, I would recommend to start with (search in English for "hunting the Gauleiter" ), which is the plot around assassination of Gen-Kommissar Kube in Minsk in 1943. It starts on 21st of June (!) of 1941 and finishes with an amazing historical twist aftermath in 1972 (!). Please do not hold me responsible for getting you hooked on Belarus culture, WW2-specific part and Russian language. The acting in these movies and the characters are the most realistic you will ever see, IMHO.
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sun May 19, 2019 5:00 pm
by kondi754
New HBO series by George Clooney
I saw 2 first episodes and it's a great job (at least from historical POV

), although the original 1970 movie seems to be better...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5056196/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JARn16yojbQ
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 9:05 pm
by OldFocker
Murphy's War
Patton
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Mon May 27, 2019 3:59 pm
by huckc
Catch-22 is a bit outlandish for my tastes but has some gems in it for the ww2 buff. It's unique in being centered around a B-25 battalion doing tactical level-bombing rather your typical four-engine B-17 or B-24 fare.
It's also on hulu which is much more accessible than HBO. If you're not in the USA just crank your VPN to there.
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 1:38 pm
by kondi754
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2020 11:17 am
by KarisFraMauro
Did a quick check of previous posts and didn't see anyone list the Soviet film "Come and See". Maybe I missed it, or maybe it's just obscure? Most WWII movies are a bit frustrating because of the liberties taken with historical fact. Not that I'm an expert on the topic myself, but I'm pretty sure the usual hollywood fare of "Tom Hanks singlehandedly defeats the nazis" is something of an exaggeration for domestic audiences. Das Boot was of course an early favourite, especially in light of the superb soundtrack by Klaus Dodinger. Believe he also did the music for a German police show. However it was originally a tv miniseries so it's stretching the definition of movie somewhat. Kelly's Heroes is somewhat interesting to me, insofar as it's more a heist flick with tanks.
I enjoyed Dunkirk but thought the odd and conflicting timelines were a bit superfluous. Christopher Nolan sometimes gets preoccupied with making movies tricksy for the sake of tricksiness. Inception comes to mind. Anyway the movie reminded me of a pretty good counterfactual science fiction novel called "Afrika Reich". It posits that the Dunkirk evacuation failed and rather than the usual nazis taking over the entire world, they negotiated a peace in exchange for the British colonies in Africa. I gotta dig up the sequel one of these days...
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2020 12:54 pm
by kondi754
KarisFraMauro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 08, 2020 11:17 am
Did a quick check of previous posts and didn't see anyone list the Soviet film "Come and See".
"Idi i smotri" (in Russian, but of course written in the Latin alphabet), yes, there was mentioned about this movie here
Re: USA & Hanks
Americans (or rather Hollywood) tell stories, so war must be shown from the perspective of 1 soldier or a small group of soldiers
Hanks is not the worst, because he doesn't pretend to be an indestructible hero (like Stallone / Rambo), but an ordinary man who is afraid and would like to return home tomorrow
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2020 12:43 am
by KarisFraMauro
Ah that's good to hear. I wonder if the team that did Chernobyl could do a WWII movie from the Russian perspective... I confess to having a bit of a grudge against Mr. Hanks because of his role in the infamous "Mazes and Monsters" tv movie capitalizing on a Dungeons and Dragons panic. Like being a nerd in high school wasn't difficult enough without that to deal with.
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 am
by ptje63
Would recommend watching "1917"... True...ww1 instead of 2... But brilliant filmed in several long one-take shots...
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2020 1:37 pm
by kondi754
ptje63 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 8:22 am
Would recommend watching "1917"... True...ww1 instead of 2... But brilliant filmed in several long one-take shots...
+1, one of the best war movie ever

Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2020 6:06 am
by KarisFraMauro
I had to do a fair bit of thinking to come up with something not previously listed but here goes. The Burmese Harp. Pretty much all the current Japanese movies are really bad, but there were a lot of good old black and white ones. Not always by Akira Kurasawa either.
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:40 am
by PeteMitchell
One more... The Bridge on the River Kwai
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridg ... River_Kwai
Edit: just saw kondi had mentioned it already...
Would be nice to have live links to online versions of all these movies though...

Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:46 am
by KarisFraMauro
Some movies, like those by David Lean, bear both repeated watching and repeated mentioning

There's a British movie reviewer I follow a lot named Mark Kermode, I think he's the one I heard about The Burmese Harp from. Come and See I heard about in a movie discussion on the website for The Guardian newspaper.
I like radio dramas a lot and tried one about Stalingrad on the BBC website but it wasn't very good. I think it was based on the writings of a Soviet war correspondent, but the entire first hour (out of four) was well-fed people in Moscow agonizing about their relationships.
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:58 pm
by goose_2
KarisFraMauro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:46 am
Some movies, like those by David Lean, bear both repeated watching and repeated mentioning

There's a British movie reviewer I follow a lot named Mark Kermode, I think he's the one I heard about The Burmese Harp from. Come and See I heard about in a movie discussion on the website for The Guardian newspaper.
I like radio dramas a lot and tried one about Stalingrad on the BBC website but it wasn't very good. I think it was based on the writings of a Soviet war correspondent, but the entire first hour (out of four) was well-fed people in Moscow agonizing about their relationships.
I find it truly sad that no one has seemed to capture a decent storyline for Stalingrad. I rewatched Enemy at the Gates recently and was disappointed to find out it was very inaccurate, and the footage I have seen of other movies showing Soviets charging while on fire seemed so ridiculous that I could not continue watching. Why do you think there is not a decent movie on the biggest turning point of the war?
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:27 pm
by kondi754
goose_2 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:58 pm
KarisFraMauro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:46 am
Some movies, like those by David Lean, bear both repeated watching and repeated mentioning

There's a British movie reviewer I follow a lot named Mark Kermode, I think he's the one I heard about The Burmese Harp from. Come and See I heard about in a movie discussion on the website for The Guardian newspaper.
I like radio dramas a lot and tried one about Stalingrad on the BBC website but it wasn't very good. I think it was based on the writings of a Soviet war correspondent, but the entire first hour (out of four) was well-fed people in Moscow agonizing about their relationships.
I find it truly sad that no one has seemed to capture a decent storyline for Stalingrad. I rewatched Enemy at the Gates recently and was disappointed to find out it was very inaccurate, and the footage I have seen of other movies showing Soviets charging while on fire seemed so ridiculous that I could not continue watching. Why do you think there is not a decent movie on the biggest turning point of the war?
There was German movie "Stalingrad" (1993) Very solid, quite good...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt000000000108211/
and I can't agree with your statement about Soviet infantry tactics
such suicide attacks (with one rifle for two soldiers) are well described in historiography
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:02 am
by KarisFraMauro
The best depiction of the Soviet soldier I've encountered was a book by the British historian Catherine Merridale, called Ivan's War. It draws on a lot of sources both official and unofficial, with the most important being interviews she managed to conduct with veterans during her travels in Russia. It's really unfortunate, in fact tragic, that the events of those days have been turned into propaganda even today. In the west it's basically ignored, while in the east it's used prop up the government.
One thing from the book that stuck in my mind was how families would be denied survivors benefits for spurious reasons. Bodies would either be utterly destroyed during battle, or disappear entirely beneath bogs. Whatever the case the "official" line would be that they defected to the nazis as traitors. A very moving read which I highly recommend.
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:04 am
by hurly
sry double post
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:11 am
by hurly
kondi754 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:27 pm
goose_2 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:58 pm
KarisFraMauro wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:46 am
Some movies, like those by David Lean, bear both repeated watching and repeated mentioning

There's a British movie reviewer I follow a lot named Mark Kermode, I think he's the one I heard about The Burmese Harp from. Come and See I heard about in a movie discussion on the website for The Guardian newspaper.
I like radio dramas a lot and tried one about Stalingrad on the BBC website but it wasn't very good. I think it was based on the writings of a Soviet war correspondent, but the entire first hour (out of four) was well-fed people in Moscow agonizing about their relationships.
I find it truly sad that no one has seemed to capture a decent storyline for Stalingrad. I rewatched Enemy at the Gates recently and was disappointed to find out it was very inaccurate, and the footage I have seen of other movies showing Soviets charging while on fire seemed so ridiculous that I could not continue watching. Why do you think there is not a decent movie on the biggest turning point of the war?
There was German movie "Stalingrad" (1993) Very solid, quite good...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt000000000108211/
and I can't agree with your statement about Soviet infantry tactics
such suicide attacks (with one rifle for two soldiers) are well described in historiography
here you can watch the full movie with english subtitles sry the best I can offer for the English speakers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfk178n80CU
Re: Yours favorite movies about WWII
Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2020 1:30 am
by goose_2
hurly wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:11 am
kondi754 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:27 pm
goose_2 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2020 1:58 pm
I find it truly sad that no one has seemed to capture a decent storyline for Stalingrad. I rewatched Enemy at the Gates recently and was disappointed to find out it was very inaccurate, and the footage I have seen of other movies showing Soviets charging while on fire seemed so ridiculous that I could not continue watching. Why do you think there is not a decent movie on the biggest turning point of the war?
There was German movie "Stalingrad" (1993) Very solid, quite good...
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt000000000108211/
and I can't agree with your statement about Soviet infantry tactics
such suicide attacks (with one rifle for two soldiers) are well described in historiography
here you can watch the full movie with english subtitles sry the best I can offer for the English speakers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfk178n80CU
thanks buddy new movie to watch Yay!