[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Good movies (not sub-related):

Tora! Tora! Tora! (outstanding history, great movie as well)

I remember when this "premiered" on network television here. We watched it. I was a kid so my understanding was limited in some aspects, altho I certainly knew about Pearl Harbor and that it's what got the US officially into the war. Have seen it in bits and pieces since, probably need to rent it and watch all the way through again.

My main recollection of this movie is the reaction of one of the Japanese admirals (Yamamoto?) when he finds out that they attacked without their political/diplomatic emissaries having delivered some kind of ultimatum or statement of intent or whatever to the appropriate US officials at the appointed time way far away in Washington DC. Don't know how historically accurate that is, or if I misunderstood what was happening. But it gave me a sad feeling of "well the politicians *******ed things up and now the guys in uniform - on both sides - are gonna have to pay the price."

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (slows down in the middle, as it's one man's true story) but great carrier and flight scenes)
Wake Island (made during the war, propoganda, but informative and good)
The Great Raid (little-known recent film, tells the true story of a prisoner-of-war-camp liberation)

Have heard of the first one but not seen it as far as I remember. Not familiar at all with the latter two.

Flags Of Our Fathers (mostly about the aftermath, but still good battle scenes)

Letters From Iwo Jima (great movie about the Japanese side, and marks Clint Eastwood's entry into the Great Directors Of All Time category)

Have seen the latter, not the former. It's in my Netflix queue somewhere.

Midway (way too much romance and fiction, but gives a good overview of the battle, and some good aircraft shots)

Tried to watch this one a couple times but as is sometimes the case with his movies I just couldn't get past Charlton Heston, who I can really only stand to watch when the scenery chewing is kept to a minimum and/or the quality of the "product" overall is much higher. Sadly, not the case here for me, since IMO what I saw of the film seemed very cliched and formulaic. Also, if Hollywood wants to make a movie about the PTO and have me connect primarily with the stock American "good guys," they need to not put Toshiro Mifune in charge of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Help me out here, guys. Movies that tell the story of the Pacific war.

I believe The Thin Red Line is about Guadalcanal? Which I did not realize or remember until I was moving it up to the top of my queue after some high praise of it in another thread here. For some reason I thought it was about 'Nam. I have it at home now but due to its length probably won't be able to watch it until the weekend.

Part of it for me is that I'm not a "war movie" fan, generally speaking, meaning it's a genre that doesn't typically appeal to me, like say sci-fi. I'll forgive a lot in a sci-fi film if the "concept" or the effects are entertaining enough. But I'm not likely to sit through a war picture "just because" - it usually has to be either so well made that its appeal transcends any question of genre, or have some element of it that appeals to me personally at the moment even if it's not a five-star product.