Items50The creator’s order
  1. 1Come and See (1985)Come and See (1985) 8.3/10 on IMDbReleased 17 Oct 1985Elem Klimov makes a boy's experience of the Nazi occupation of Belarus progressively harder to bear. Sound, faces and disorienting movement deny the distance of a conventional combat spectacle. This is an exceptionally harrowing choice about civilian terror, with mass killing and sexual violence…0
  2. 2Apocalypse Now (1979)Apocalypse Now (1979) 8.4/10 on IMDbReleased 19 May 1979Francis Ford Coppola turns a journey upriver into a confrontation with the logic of an increasingly unbounded war. The scale of the images and sound is inseparable from the instability of the experience. Start with the original theatrical version if choosing between its different cuts; later…0
  3. 3Paths of Glory (1957)Paths of Glory (1957) 8.4/10 on IMDbReleased 25 Oct 1957Stanley Kubrick places the geometry of military authority against the exposed bodies of soldiers expected to obey it. Kirk Douglas gives the attempt to defend them a fierce clarity. The film's concentrated structure makes the distance between formal procedure and justice a powerful source of anger.0
  4. 4The Battle of Algiers (1966)The Battle of Algiers (1966) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased 8 Sept 1966Gillo Pontecorvo gives urban insurgency and repression the immediacy of events being witnessed rather than comfortably remembered. The organisation of streets, crowds and security operations makes the conflict legible without making its violence simple. Its documentary-like style is a dramatic…0
  5. 5The Thin Red Line (1998)The Thin Red Line (1998) 7.6/10 on IMDbReleased 23 Dec 1998Terrence Malick gives a Pacific combat operation room for fear, memory and conflicting ways of understanding the natural world. The shifting voices make individual lives feel larger than the objectives assigned to them. Choose it for a meditative war film whose beautiful images repeatedly coexist…0
  6. 6Saving Private Ryan (1998)Saving Private Ryan (1998) 8.6/10 on IMDbReleased 24 Jul 1998Steven Spielberg makes the physical confusion of combat hard to separate from the responsibility of deciding whom to save. Tom Hanks gives the mission a human scale amid the spectacle. The graphic opening is only part of its force; the later encounters keep returning to the uneven moral weight of…0
  7. 7Das Boot (1981)Das Boot (1981) 8.3/10 on IMDbReleased 17 Sept 1981Wolfgang Petersen makes a submarine's confined working spaces intensely legible before putting their occupants under pressure. Routine, exhaustion and waiting matter as much as combat. This is the original 1981 film, available in substantially different cuts; the longer director's cut allows more…0
  8. 8Grand Illusion (1937)Grand Illusion (1937) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased 18 Jun 1937Jean Renoir follows prisoners of war whose shared class or professional background can cut across national loyalties. The humane ensemble lets small courtesies reveal the boundaries that war has imposed. Its strength lies in recognising common feeling without pretending that recognition is enough…0
  9. 9Army of Shadows (1969)Army of Shadows (1969) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased 10 Sept 1969Jean-Pierre Melville makes resistance work feel like a succession of constrained choices rather than uninterrupted heroism. Lino Ventura's restraint gives procedure and loyalty unusual gravity. The suspense is severe because even a necessary action can damage the people involved, making this a…0
  10. 10The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased 11 Oct 1957Alec Guinness gives an officer's insistence on professional standards an increasingly troubling momentum. David Lean makes the construction project, the prison camp and the landscape equally imposing. The film is strongest when pride and military identity begin to obscure the question of whom an…0