The Movieforums Top 100 War Movies Countdown

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45. Waltz with Bashir

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One vote.

Night and Fog was my #16. I'm guessing that both this and Shoah are going to be the only documentaries that make this list, but they jointly represent the peak of what the war documentary can be - where Lanzmann's film puts a living human face on the unthinkable toll of wartime atrocities across a staggering nine hours, Resnais opts to condense a similarly powerful statement into half an hour without showing people until its blunt but decidedly earned use of archival footage at the end.

I've seen Dunkirk twice and think it's merely okay.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

48. Night and Fog - I never even thought of voting for Night and Fog, even though I have it on Criterion - the fact it's a short film kind of blinded me, so I didn't consider it. I'm not 100% sure it would have made my 25, but it would have been in the running so I'll include it as an overlooked entry from me. So many of the images we've seen from the German concentration camps are confronting, but in Night and Fog they shake you to your core - I remember being genuinely upset both times I saw this film, and I've got an extremely hardy constitution when it comes to things like that. In many instances you could call this exploitation - but it's actually our duty to remind each other, and keep on reminding each other over and over again for as long as we have the capacity to do this to each other. If this hadn't of happened, I wouldn't of thought it possible we could - but obviously blind hatred can inspire mankind to do the worst things imaginable. Alain Resnais shows us this bluntly, and brilliantly - step by step, how it happened. This ought to be required viewing for everyone.

47. Dunkirk - This is a strange one for me - I love the way Dunkirk looks and sounds cinematically. I really admire the craftmanship, and enjoy looking at it, with cinematography that shines and what Hans Zimmer does with the ticking and Shepard tone is absolute genius. I can watch Dunkirk just for those two brilliant factors. As a whole though, it didn't do to me what I thought it would. Whether it be from a personal familial connection to the events, or the way I've appreciated war films in the past, I had certain expectations which in the end were off-target. So for me it's a very curious film - it looks and sounds so beautiful and is absolutely marvelous and I've seen it a few times, admiringly, but I never get inside it. I'm never inside any of the character's minds, for whatever reason. I rate it very high, but the human factor is a little missing.

Seen : 36/54
I'd never even heard of :11/54
Movies that had been on my radar, but I haven't seen yet : 7/54

Overlooked films : Breaker Morant, Fail-Safe, Night and Fog

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46. Swing Shift
45. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

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"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

Big hurray for Dunkirk here; great movie, and still my #1 of 2017 to this day.

I haven't seen Night and Fog but I know I must one day. I have seen many images of the Holocaust in film and on page but I know I need to add this one to my watchlist.

Dunkirk was my #12. It pretty much blew me away in every way a movie can. Despite the sparse dialogue, I was connected to several characters in the film, especially Fionn Whitehead's Tommy, who couldn't catch a break in trying to escape, with every route constantly cut off. Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Hardy also gave me people to focus on and care about. And yes, it is a beautiful-looking movie and that only bumps it up in my esteem. A total triumph from Christopher Nolan.


#8Hacksaw Ridge On point #67
#10The Hurt Locker Bombs away! #58
#12Dunkirk Retreat! #47
#21Tora! Tora! Tora! In the vanguard #63

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

Night and Fog is terrific, but I didn't put any documentaries in my list.

Dunkirk is average. It's Nolan so naturally it's massively overrated.

No votes.

Night and Fog is one of my toughest watches ever, made me sick to my stomach. I will never understand humans that contributed to these camps. I have it on my top shorts and docs lists.

Dunkirk (my #89), is kind of a 'mixed bag' to me. Sound, cinematography, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy are the elements I liked about it. The disjointed storytelling is one of the things I didn't like about it.

SEEN 36/54
BALLOT 10/25

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Vyacheslav Tikhonov = 3
Ludmila Savelyeva = 3
Sergey Bondarchuk = 3

Tom Hardy = 2
Gregory Peck = 2
Burt Lancaster = 2
Jason Robards = 2
Yūsuke Kawazu = 2
Shōji Yasui = 2
Nick Nolte = 2
Orlando Bloom = 2

46. Three Came Home

46. The Imitation Game
45. No Greater Love

46. No Greater Love
45. Waltz with Bashir

Argh falling behind here. Gone the the Wind is a movie I watched way way back in the early 2000s and haven't revisited since then. The Human Condition Trilogy is a masterpiece but my vote may or may not have gone to the first film as I believe that was the one decided to vote on as a representative of the whole. But of course voting for all three films is cool too. I just didn't have room for all three.

Barry Lyndon is an amazing film like pretty much everything from Stan The Man Kubrick. Anyone that disagrees are...well the rest of us know. But it doesn't lean enough in the war category for me to include. Plus I had a couple other Kubricks already on the list. The Guns of Navarone is a great war film too. Pretty much everything you want from a WW2 side story film from the 60s that you might watch on a Saturday afternoon. Or as honeykid puts it, bank holiday afternoon film. I'm writing this as I go through the thread I'm still honeykid's posts!

This is true! I did say something like this. Good memory. I think it was to save a Kubrick for my 30s, though, as I would have been in my 20s when I wrote it. Still, same idea.

Night and Fog is a masterpiece, although a tough 30 minutes. I didn't include it on my list, though. It would have been top 50 for sure and realistically could have been top 25 but I went with the very long and equally devastating Shoah instead. I know Mark respected this film a lot and it probably would have been near the top of his list. I saw Dunkirk in theatres and you know what it was one of my favourites of the year and near the top of Nolan's filmography. It had me from start to finish. Probably top 50 war film for me as well.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Doesn't get much more devastating than Night & Fog

My List:
12. All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
13. Night and Fog (1956)
14. Jojo Rabbit (2019)
23. Hotel Rwanda (2004)

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Got nothing for the hints 😕

Seeing as I had so few war films I genuinely like, Night & Fog was a shoe in the moment I thought of it. Normally I wouldn't because it's a short, but it's too important to leave out. I think I had it at #13. I had another documentary on my list, too, but I never thought that'd appear on the list.

I've not seen Dunkirk.

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