The Movieforums Top 100 War Movies Countdown

HINTS BREAKDOWN


70: The Caine Mutiny is about a minesweeper ship.


69: A field full of dead bodies.

I'm doing terrible. Haven't seen any of these either.



Seen: 11/32

Like both of these quite a bit but voted for neither. Caine Mutiny I watched a couple years ago. Killing Fields was one I got to in preparation for the list, knowing it would show.

__________________
Letterboxd

Old Yellowstains and The Caine Mutiny was #80 on the MoFo Top 100 of the 1950s. But aaah, the strawberries. That's where I had them!

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

I haven't seen The Caine Mutiny.

The Killing Fields is very good, though it didn't make my ballot.

Yay! finally hit one. "The Killing Fields" was my #7. Only seen it once at its opening, will never watch it again. It made that big an impact.

Seen "The Caine Mutiny" in Jr, High. Don't remember much...

The Killing Fields is the first from my list to make the countdown! I only had it at twenty-one, good for just five of its sixty-eight points, so I am very happy it was on five other lists! Good on you, MoFo! For those who have never bothered to watch this Oscar winner, it is a must see. Oscar nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay the year that Amadeus swept all of those, and winning for Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and most memorably Haing S. Ngor for Best Supporting Actor. It still packs a whollop nearly forty years later.

It is not quite a Vietnam War movie, more specifically the unintended spillover of that conflict into neighboring Cambodia. Television's fictional District Attorney Jack McCoy is surely Sam Waterston's career-defining role, but film wise it is his portrayal here of real-life New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg. The first half of the narrative shows Schanberg and his trusty interpreter, Dith Pran (Ngor), and their fellow journalists (including John Malkovich and Julian Sands) covering the chaos in Cambodia as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge takes control of the country and the Americans quickly leave. If you don't know that part of history, Pot committed genocide upon his own people, estimates are upwards of two million souls during his decades of rule. Schanberg gets out of Cambodia but Pran, who had a chance to leave with his family but stayed as a journalist, was trapped. The second half of the film shows Schanberg's efforts to find and somehow rescue his friend and colleague and more importantly Pran's odyssey through the death and fear and Hell that Cambodia became under the brutal Khmer Rouge.

Ngor had a similarly harrowing story as Dith Pran's, of surviving the camps and eventually getting out of Cambodia, making his work on screen that much more powerful, and drawing natural comparisons to Harold Russell's role and win in the same category for The Best Years of Our Lives (still to come on our list, I am sure). Ngor acted somewhat sparingly after The Killing Fields, especially for an Oscar winner, though you may know him as the healer Michael Keaton's character goes to in My Life (1993) and he had a part in Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth (1993) and a two-episode arc on the series "China Beach". Ngor's remarkable life was cut short in 1996 when he was killed in an apparent robbery in the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles.


In addition to The Killing Fields I VERY highly recommend Jonathan Demme's film of Spalding Gray's monologue Swimming to Cambodia (1987). Not only is it the prefect introduction to Gray, who I believe was a sort of genius, but also gives more context to the goings on in the film, both behind-the-scenes and historically. Gray has a supporting role in the film, playing an aide to the U.S. Ambassador. If you have never seen one of his monologues he is a wonderful storyteller. Even though you get some "spoilers" for the plot, I would almost even recommend Swimming to Cambodia as a primer. Watch it before The Killing Fields.





HOLDEN'S BALLOT
21. The Killing Fields (#69)
25. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (DNP)

The Killing Fields was my #23. A very powerful film.


Also the first time I have correctly guessed a hint in this countdown!


I have not yet seen The Caine Mutiny.

Um... guys? Zero Dark Thirty is on YT, and it's probably not supposed to be there. If you want the link I can PM you.