Latest news with #warfilms
Digital Trends
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
5 best HBO Max movies to watch on Memorial Day
Memorial Day occupies its awkward corner at the end of May as a time both to honor our fallen heroes and to celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer. To that end, both war films and summer films are called for to while away the long weekend before we can start preparing our out-of-office emails. Here are five movies on HBO Max worthy of any post-barbecue evening — three movies about summer and two about war. We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+. Recommended Videos Mystic Pizza (1988) Mystic Pizza, the story of three waitresses at a real-life Connecticut eatery the summer before college, does everything movies of this type are supposed to do in creating an impossibly bucolic world: everyone owns waterfront property, it's perpetually a beautiful New England summer, and townies look like Julia Roberts. Also, everyone survives exclusively on pizza, though it is Connecticut-style pizza, which proves you can't have everything. With a script co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Alfred Uhry, Mystic Pizza has a pedigree far more prestigious than its (forgive me) cheesy reputation. Stream Mystic Pizza on HBO Max. Seven Samurai (1954) For any other filmmaker, Seven Samurai would be a career-defining masterpiece. For Akira Kurosawa, it was merely an entry in his impossibly illustrious 1950s, alongside Rashomon, Ikiru, and Throne of Blood. Takashi Shimura (also a co-star of Rashomon and Ikiru) leads a band of mercenaries contracted to engage in a great battle to protect a village from bandits. Seven Samurai was made in the rubble of Japan's recovery from World War II, and it is, unmistakably, a war film. It is a portrait of what makes a society both at peace and at war — its organization, discipline, fears, entertainment, and weaknesses — and its selective need for those who can protect it in a crisis, only to discard them once that crisis has passed. Stream Seven Samurai on HBO Max. Aftersun (2022) Aftersun, a Charlotte Wells film loosely based on a summer trip the director took with her own father as a child, feels like a memory. Set at a low-grade beach resort in Turkey, the film follows Wells' counterpart, 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio), and her 30-year-old father, Calum (Paul Mescal). Calum's youth gets him confused for Sophie's brother more than once, and the keen sense that his childhood was interrupted by Sophie's arrival pervades the film. Mescal received his first Oscar nomination for this achingly gorgeous memory play. Stream Aftersun on HBO Max. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) Forty years of British war-making are soaringly summarized in this superb film by the prototypical British wartime filmmakers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes). Roger Livesey is Clive Wynne-Candy, who climbs from enlisted man in the Boer War to major general during World War II, guided by a sense of stereotypically English honor that becomes more archaic as the century winds on. There is something unique about the way Powell and Pressburger use Technicolor. Their films, especially this one, have a texture and richness almost nothing can match; one wants to lick them off the screen. Stream The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on HBO Max. A Tale of Summer (1996) Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) has a problem. He's waiting patiently by the seaside in the north of France for his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Lena (Aurélia Nolin), but he's also being pursued by Solene (Gwenaëlle Simon) and nursing a will-they-won't-they friendship with waitress Margot (Amanda Langlet). This, if you're curious, is what passes for a problem in France. Éric Rohmer's exquisitely French romance, lazy and contemplative as a perfect summer's day, never ceases to delight as the years go on. Stream A Tale of Summer on HBO Max.
Digital Trends
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
5 best Netflix war movies to watch on Memorial Day
War is hell, but for the movies, it's something more complicated. Some directors see war as a stylistic challenge, while others view it as an opportunity to drive home the trauma of the men and women on the ground. Netflix has a selection of war films spanning costume drama, science fiction, and recent history, all valuable in reflecting on the human drama of combat. We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+. Recommended Videos The King (2019) A David Michôd-directed adaptation of several of Shakespeare's history plays, The King was arguably the first big-budget film anchored solely by Timothée Chalamet, whose two Oscar nominations followed shortly thereafter. Chalamet, in his gruff-young-striver mode, plays the young King Henry V during his invasion of France as part of the Hundred Years' War. The sword-clanging action is pleasurable, solid, and steely in places and realistically anti-climactic in others. Joel Edgerton, also a co-screenwriter, is Henry's fictional drinking buddy Falstaff; most entertaining, though, is Robert Pattinson as Louis, the Dauphin of France, with an outrageous accent and a Lord Fauntleroy simper that make him a perfect foil to Chalamet. Stream The King on Netflix. Black Hawk Down (2001) If you prefer your war films jaw-rattling and glamor-less, Ridley Scott's brutal verité will be right up your alley. In October 1993, the United States led a UN peacekeeping operation in Mogadishu to capture the leader of a Somali terrorist group. A Black Hawk helicopter carrying a contingent of American Special Forces was shot down over the insurgency-torn city. The men aboard were forced to fight their way out, and Hollywood came calling about eight years later. Black Hawk Down is suffused with eardrum-shattering gunfire and almost relentlessly unwilling to depict soldiery as anything but horrifying. A mile-long cast list led by Josh Hartnett heaves with sweat and anxiety. Stream Black Hawk Down on Netflix. Charlie Wilson's War (2007) Aaron Sorkin's script for this Mike Nichols film, about the United States' arming of the mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, is Sorkinesque to its bones, down to the obligatory Gilbert and Sullivan reference. (Philip Seymour Hoffman's sclerotic CIA agent, roaring out his qualifications, finishes with 'And I'm never ever sick at sea!') That's why it's so curious that the story has the air of being unfinished, leaping from the meddling of one wily Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) to its consequence — the attacks of 9/11, carried out by the very men the US had trained — without deigning to trace the line between points A and B. Still, the film, Nichols' last, is delightful, an absurd exploration of the backroom kibitzing that populates battlefields. Stream Charlie Wilson's War on Netflix. Dune: Part Two (2024) Director Denis Villeneuve has made plenty of films about violent conflict —2010's Incendies (2010) is about the Lebanese Civil War, and 2015's Sicario is about a CIA strike against a drug cartel. An artistically minded Villeneuve is drawn to the elegant warfare of science fiction. His two-film adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel Dune tells the orange-saturated, visually stunning tale of an interplanetary war that is both technologically unsophisticated — our heroes fight with blades and crossbows — and high-tech. (The threat of nuclear warfare hovers.) The action sequences in Dune: Part Two drift rather than rush and sweep rather than shudder. It's war as a visual exercise, like a battle plan plotted on an otherworldly map. Stream Dune: Part Two on Netflix. Starship Troopers (1997) A more literal transposition of America's imperialistic desert wars onto science fiction can be found in Paul Verhoeven's gloriously dumb adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's crypto-fascistic 1959 novel. Verhoeven wanted to make a satire — a film about an expansionist human species defeating an insectoid alien species called the Arachnids. The goal was to question the militaristic undertones of twentieth-century sci-fi by seeming to espouse them. In Verhoeven's words, the film's characters are 'fascists who aren't aware of their fascism.' This metafictional component of the story doesn't entirely work because the movie lays on the stupidity too thick to be entirely satirical. However, Starship Troopers is a rare film that seems to profit from its shallowness. It was made for a popcorn era that seems to have faded, with Verhoeven's trademark borderline-softcore love scenes and a cast (Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Neil Patrick Harris) of surpassingly dopey gorgeousness. (Verhoeven says he cast the film to recall the preferred subjects of Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi documentarian.) Stream Starship Troopers on Netflix.
Wall Street Journal
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Memorial Day and the Best Movies of Our Lives
On Memorial Day we have a duty to remember. Part of how we remember is through film. Its makers should be thanked for capturing war's valor and loss. World War II got the great movies, scores of them. There are acknowledged classics—'The Bridge on the River Kwai,' directed by David Lean, with a long-uncredited screenplay by the blacklisted Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. 'From Here to Eternity,' from the James Jones novel, directed by Fred Zinnemann. Everyone of a certain age has personal favorites. Among mine, 'They Were Expendable,' produced in 1945, directed by John Ford and starring the Duke, John Wayne.
The Independent
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
This movie beat Saving Private Ryan as UK's top WW2 epic
Christopher Nolan 's Dunkirk has been voted the UK's favorite World War II film in a poll conducted by Deltapoll for the War Movie Theatre podcast. Saving Private Ryan came in second, followed by The Great Escape, The Dam Busters, and Battle of Britain. The poll included both classic and modern war films. Dunkirk depicts the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation, while Saving Private Ryan portrays the search for a paratrooper during the Normandy invasion. The remaining top 10 films include The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, Pearl Harbour, Schindler's List, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The Guardian
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk tops poll of UK's favourite second world war films
Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk has been voted the UK's favourite second world war film, beating classics such as The Dam Busters and The Bridge on the River Kwai. The 2017 film, starring Harry Styles, Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan, portrays the 1940 evacuation of more than 330,000 Allied troops from the French coast. Saving Private Ryan (1998) placed second, followed by The Great Escape (1963) in third, with The Dam Busters (1955) and Battle of Britain (1969) completing the top five. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan follows a special US detachment searching for a missing soldier after the Normandy invasion. The Great Escape tells the story of a group of Allied prisoners attempt to escape a Nazi camp. The poll, conducted by Deltapoll for the War Movie Theatre podcast, pitted modern war films against older movies, considered classic by many fans. Other entries in the top 10 included The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, Pearl Harbor and Schindler's List. The journalist and author Robert Hutton, co-host of the War Movie Theatre podcast with fellow journalist Duncan Weldon, said: 'Cinema has always been looking for great stories, and war provides everything, heroism, moral conflict, adventure, romance. 'Even as the second world war was being fought, it was inspiring some of the greatest films of the last century, such as In Which We Serve or Went the Day Well?, which deliver moments of human drama and comedy as well as action. 'Afterwards, it became a way for us to tell ourselves stories about what had happened, and then a generation later, with Saving Private Ryan, it became a way to commemorate.' On Dunkirk topping the list, Hutton said: 'It's not surprising that Dunkirk is top of the list, it's the most successful war movie of the last decade. But it's noteworthy that half the list is from the golden era of war movies in the 50s and 60s. Four of them were made within eight years of each other. 'I'm a little sad that John Mills, who seemed to be permanently in uniform on Sunday afternoon TV in my childhood, doesn't get a film in this list. 'And I'd have liked to see at least one of the great Alistair MacLean commando movies, Where Eagles Dare or The Guns of Navarone, in there. But mainly I'm appalled to see Pearl Harbor on the list, which ought to be a war crime.' The full top 10 list, according to the War Movie Theatre podcast poll, was as follows: Dunkirk (2017) Saving Private Ryan (1998) The Great Escape (1963) The Dam Busters (1955) Battle of Britain (1969) The Longest Day (1962) A Bridge Too Far (1977) Pearl Harbor (2001) Schindler's List (1993) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
