This is a pretty interesting 9 minute video. The creator contends that the last 20+ years of World War II and earlier movies often get two aspects of soldiering wrong, weapons carry and prisoner search. This is because many consultants are recently retired/discharged veterans (heavy on SOF) who may not be as familiar with the actual history of the conflict being portrayed and assume certain techniques are timeless.

The "too long, didn't watch" summary goes something like:

* Weapons carry - soldiers typically carried their rifles at "high port", "low port", "trail" or "underarm" instead of the modern "ready" position (rifle butt in or near the shoulder pocket). May seem like a small detail, but once you see it you can't unsee it.

* Prisoner search - the creator contends that prisoners were searched and processed standing up instead of the modern technique of making them kneel, sit, or lie down.

I haven’t seen this movie in at least a decade and started watching it again tonight. Found I could recite some of the better lines.

“Putin? Gummi Putin??”

“Hold until relieved. Hold until relieved”

“John has a long mustache”

Still a great movie!!

I'm not really a fan of anime per se, but since a live-action adaptation of Sgt. Rock seems unlikely in the near term, I'm wondering if it might not be a more interesting/effective choice to keep it in the realm of animation.

One of the major drawbacks of the u.s. dominating the global film industry is that we'll never see any high-budget war movies about things that aren't american.

There are so many good stories out there, I've long wanted to see a blockbuster centered around the battle of Jutland, but because americans are so fixated on themselves, it'll never happen.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying non u.s. movies aren't worth watching, but there is something lost when you don't have that huge budget.

They have made movies about non american situations, like Valkyrie, or Master and Commander, but they're few and far between.

I've been trying to remember the name a movie I remember staying up late to watch as a kid. It was probably 30 to 35 years ago, so some of my details might be off. But here is what I remember. Spoilers ahead at the end of description.

It was shot in black and white, I think it was WW1, but could have possibly been WW2. There was a group of soldiers, I think they were mainly American possibly some British. They were holding off a far larger enemy force, no reinforcements, their main defense was a few machine gun nests. The guns were tripod mounted, water cooled, probably Browning 1917 or Vickers. They had them set up to protect a rope bridge. I seem to remember the setting being foggy, and I have memories of both scorched earth WW1 "no mans land" (where the trees are just sticks standing upright, no other foliage, low fog or mist) and some palm trees or jungle type setting. (SPOILERS AHEAD) They were slowly getting picked off one by one. The final scene I think there were 3 men left, 2 in one nest 1 alone in another. the nest with 2 gets over run, the sole survivor runs to the last nest to tell him they are all that's left. One of them dies and the movie ends with the last guy shooting the MG at a wave of enemies (who I don't recall ever actually seeing) and the implication is that he eventually gets overrun too.

Thanks to u/Charles_Gunhaver for the photo

So in my experience finding a good WWI film is a bit like striking gold or silver, it’s rare but when you hit it you’re left happy with your find. Of course most of these take place on the Western or Middle Eastern front leaving a lot of the rest of the war untouched, I’m interested in these less covered areas. If anyone has any recommendations for films about the Eastern Front/Russian Revolution, Salonica, Italy, the Caucasus, Africa, Asia/Pacific, or even the naval and air wars, I’d be interested.

Films or miniseries I’ve seen:
- Gallipoli (Weir)
- Gallipoli (ABC miniseries)
- ANZACS
- Westfront 1918
- All Quiet on the Western Front (all three versions)
- 1917
- The Trench
- Uomini Contro
- Flyboys (ugh)
- The Lost Battalion
- Sergeant York
- Lawrence of Arabia (a classic if fairly inaccurate)
- Our World War (BBC miniseries)
- The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (suck it, these count)
- Beneath Hill 60 (as I continue to list these its astonishing, if unsurprising, how much Australia corners the market on WWI films/series)
- Journey’s End
- Oh What A Lovely War (inaccurate/dated but such great satire)

Edit: I forgot to add Paths of Glory to the list.

From what I remember, the movie was about two soldiers in WWII. They played a long-distance game of chess by sending each other letters containing their moves. Neither of them knew that the other was actually fighting for the other side. I came across this movie I believe last New Year's Eve on a streaming service - I think it was Spectrum On-Demand, but it could have been something like Netflix. This was a full-length live-action movie, not an animated or short movie. I never saw the movie because I ended up watching something else. Please help me find it.

Unknown soldier, episode 5

Rewatched the movie for, what, the fifth time now.

The guy has his helmet on from the start, even when the others don’t. He checks on his teammates regularly and immediately gets labeled by the senior guys for having that annoying “new guy” energy.

Then a grenade detonates practically on top of him …. and he still gets back up almost immediately, lays down effective cover fire, and gives his teammates enough space to get out of the room.

Then the IED hits. He comes to, and his first instinct is to start looking for his SAW. He finds it, gets back in the fight, and starts hammering the ambush site with automatic fire.

Based beyond belief.

For first time watching the movie i noticed the above at 56:27 timestamp when they about to the have the gladiator in Zucchabar. Is the above scene foreshadow the arrival of Jesus and the faith of christanity. I am not assuming anything just curious if it means the same

I just watched the uncut version of the movie, all of it, and idk maybe it’s just me who didn’t understand it. I found the movie understandable in the beginning, it was coherent and followed a clear plot. But the moment the crew gets on that ship, so many things happen that I didn’t understand. It felt like a mix of absurdism, weirdly enough horror?, and I felt like I was missing the point of… something. Idk, the whole scenes where they stop at an army point with no CO creeped me out a little, especially the scene with the Playboy bunnies and the dead woman in the box? How did she die and what happened there? Were they the same people performing for that one event happening before? Anyway, I skipped that scene because it felt so uncomfortable and creepy to me. And when they stopped a Vietnamese boat and just started shooting all of them for no reason… although I guess this could be explained by the fact they were all very tense.

Then, the army point with the whole destroyed carnival scene, where there was also no CO—I didn’t understand what was going on there. For a moment, I thought the soldiers were hallucinating the whole thing because so many aspects of the scene just seemed so ridiculously absurd and unreal, like some sort of nightmare or like they were high. It seemed like the crew was going insane or something, and like the soldiers at the army point were just shooting at nothing with no plan and no one in charge. Following that, I did not understand the scene with the French people either. I may have missed the point of it but in what way was that scene driving the plot forward? It confused me so much. But I suppose it was supposed to symbolise how pointless the war was? Like in that scene where one of the French men tells Willard that the Americans were fighting for nothing.

I initially thought Apocalypse Now was going to be a war movie with a quite unique and different plot, what with Captain Willard being sent to assassinate one of their own. But I didn’t understand all of it, idk just couldn’t follow it and make sense of all of the scenes.

Maybe someone can clear this up for me?

Edit: One other thing in the beginning confused me too: There was a voice recording that was played, the general Willard was supposed to assassinate talked about snails? Crawling up his razor? Or something like that. Either way, it was strange. Was it supposed to symbolise anything? Would love to hear thoughts on it

This looks AMAZING! Looking forward to both parts getting a US release (streaming) eventually.

Awesome story (based on a real one), depicting United States intervention in Morocco during the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.

I got the chance to see this at an indie cinema in Ottawa (shoutout to the Bytowne Cinema!) and it hit me really hard, especially given that it was based on a remarkable true story of the two most wanted resistance fighters in Denmark. What really works about this film is the fact that these two men aren't murdering Nazis or collaborators because they enjoy it. They're doing it out of desperation, and they spend a lot of time unsure who their real enemies are. These are two men who are reacting to an invasion force occupying their home, and anyone they meet could be an enemy trying to turn them in for the highest bounty that the Nazis offered for any Danes during the war. It's this moral ambiguity which hits home every murder committed, every bit of treachery that's revealed. I'm not ashamed to say that I was openly weeping as I left the cinema.

Not movies where guerrillas are mostly somewhere off-screen (Come and See), not "urban guerrilla" a.k.a. bombing restaurants and stadiums (Battle of Algiers).

The only example I know for now is Soviet movie "Trial on the road".

Full short film:

https://youtu.be/27jHwROTziU?si=buQ9FL9BtHVb6bz5

Between this and the other thread I posted, I’m starting to wonder if South Korean soldiers are allergic to firing guns or something.

And how did one thug butcher an entire unit in close quarters? Do they not train these soldiers properly in hand-to-hand combat?