Spam my WAR Countdown ballot!...movie recommendations needed

I know what you mean. I read yesterday that before Pearl Harbor there was an organization called America First with 800,000 members and they vehemently opposed the U.S. being involved in another war. And that sentiment was pretty strong with the general populace too. That all changed of course after Pearl Harbor and Wake Island.

Last night I stayed up till 3:00 am watching Objective, Burma! (1945)



This was a solid war movie with a nice blend of realism, action and suspense.



Errol Flynn is the only major star, but the rest of the cast is filled out by familiar 2nd stringers with names most people don't know. I was pleased when I spotted and immediately identified Anthony Caruso - best known for his role as Bela Oxymyx in the Star Trek episode: "A Piece of the Action."

(People may also spot Beaver's dad: Hugh Beaumont, and "Mr Kravitz" (from Bewitched): George Tobias.)

My only criticism is my most frequent one: at 2 hours & 22 minutes it's a bit on the long side - I think if they'd made it 20 minutes shorter it would've been just about perfect.

I give it

I've seen Objective, Burma! (1945) and really liked it. More so than many WWII films that were made during the war. I thought it was pretty exciting film and Errol Flynn is always personable on screen. I gotta watch that one again, thanks for reminding me of it.

Yes. I was impressed. So many war films were cranked out during the war that some seemed like cookie-cutter copies (and thus were a bit mediocre or came off a simple rah-rah propaganda films). I think this one benefitted from a plot that followed just one mission (rather than trying to use it as a look at the entire war). It was genuinely tense.

It also kind of bought into the cliché of the diverse platoon shown in so many WWII movies: (the guy from Brooklyn, the Italian guy, the Jewish guy) but at the same time veered away from it - almost like it was about to cleverly touch upon it, but then move away before the cliché could be fully carried out - which was an interesting touch.

One scene I noted which I believe was copied in Aliens(1986)... right before the parachute drop, the camera pans the soldiers as each one is preparing in a different way (one's reading a small bible, one's just staring, one's doing Rosary beads, one's sharpening a knife, and then the camera stops on the last one who is fast asleep - which is funny, since all the rest seem somewhat nervous). Excepting what the soldiers were doing, it seemed like the scene in Aliens was an almost frame by frame homage.

It's been decades so I'd like to see Stalag 17 again.

"the guy from Brooklyn"...it had to be George Tobias am I right?

It's interesting that Objective Burma! is 2 hours 20 minutes long, that's long for way back then. Today that's the usual runtime for a movie but in the 1940s an action film would be more like 1 hour 45 minutes.

I'll have to see if I can spot the Aliens frame by frame homage. I did once see a 1950s b horror film that was literally the same scene and shot in Aliens when Ripley is holding the little girl and the creature is inches from them and she tells the kid to look away. I couldn't believe I seen the same scene in this old creature feature.

I liked that William Holden's character never deviates from looking out for himself first and foremost. That made his character seem all the more real to me. One of my fav war films from one of my fav directors.

You are correct. And whenever Tobias threw a grenade he yelled "Mazel Tov!"
And I couldn't figure out if that was for the benefit of one of his comrades (who I'd assume was the "Jewish guy" - something led me to believe that the first time it happened), or, if Tobias himself was the "Jewish guy" in addition to being the guy from Brooklyn, or, being the guy from Brooklyn, he was also the comic relief and it was just something he yelled when he threw a grenade.

Runtime - most definitely! I was not planning on staying up till 3:00 am!

In Aliens, I believe it was Hicks who was asleep when they "drop." (At one point the Sgt. says, "And somebody wake up Hicks!") I did find the scene in Aliens, and found my memory is not exactly accurate - it's similar to the scene in Objective, Burma! but hardly "frame by frame".
There was another similar scene with a drop-ship in Starship Troopers where each soldier is shown to be reacting differently - one is puking, one is howling with delight, etc.

Battle of Britain (1969)

This movie contains one of the best aerial war scenes I've seen. From the air and from the pilot's viewpoint, we see a bombing on an RAF air base field. The scope of that shot is nothing short of amazing. We see the entire air field, acres of it and there's thick black smoke billowing from previous bomb drops. The smoke covers most of the area and climbs 100 feet or more into the sky with buildings burning. Then we see actual explosions on the ground as more bombs are dropped. All of this is from the perspective of a German Luftwaffe pilot and is filmed from an actual aircraft.



Battle of Britain is a huge budget movie that assembled a large number of actual WWII aircraft to be used in the movie and tells the story of Britain's heroic challenge of the German's Luftwaffe air force. The aerial scenes alone are nothing short of amazing. I was equally impressed with the movie's historical details. After I read IMDB's trivia section I realized lots of the details and events in the movie actual did happen as shown with a few inconsistencies. I didn't connect to the film's story as much as I would've liked. There's so much going on in the story that one needs to go into the film with an understand and appreciation for what happened during the battle of Britain. With a huge all star cast and a lot of characters there's just not a lot of time for them to develop their stories.

+

Saw parts of this one on TCM today - I only wish I'd had the time to finish watching it.
Not a combat movie, but one about the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia called Hangmen Also Die! (1943)



Directed by Fritz Lang, this WWII movie was filled with intrigue, thrills & suspense.
Seemed like an intense film.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035966...ngman%2520also

Oh that sounds good. I haven't seen it but I do have the movie. I see it's also rated highly at IMDB 7.4 not too shabby. I also see it has Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan & Anna Lee. I'm not familiar with Anna Lee, what was she like?

What was she like? Pretty cute, I'd say.

But there's not much time to admire her beauty as the story is one of war. She plays the daughter of a character played by Walter Brennen who is taken hostage. (Hundreds of Czechs are held hostage to try to coerce the populace into giving up the assassin who killed a barbaric Nazi executioner.)

I was surprised to see Walter Brennen in this role and waited to hear him speak... although his voice is as recognizable as always, his countryfied accent is more subdued, and his acting is so good that he's just as convincing as a Czeck as everybody else. Everyone seems to speak with their natural accent - although there are a few international actors whose natural accents fit their role (such as some of those playing Nazis).

As said, I missed both the beginning & end of this movie. But I was locked in for the parts I did see. (I hope maybe TCM put it in their On Demand menu - but usually when I hope for that it doesn't happen.)

P.S. Don't tell anyone... but there's a mole in the underground resistance!

Oh damn moles, voles too