Channel 4's top 100 War Films

Das Boot was no. 17.

The full listings are available at the channel 4 website:

http://www.channel4.com/film/newsfeatures/microsites/W/greatest_warfilms/results/100-96.html

If movies like Gladiator were in there, why none of the Star Wars movies, or Battlestar Galactica, or Aliens (that was a "war" - of sorts!).

And if anyone says they are fantasy - what about U571??? That film is a farce!!

Everyone knows it was the British that got the Enigma machine, not the septics!
 
I usually watch these 100 best...... programs but where do they get the votes from?.The top 100 albums which was on the other week was a farce.Abbey road didnt even featue in the top 100.
Tell me about it! :rolleyes:

Channel 4 printed a list of 150 albums from which punters vote for their favourite 10. "Abbey Road" was not included among the list of 150! They also missed out The Beatles "Rubber Soul", Bowie "Low", Bob Dylan "Highway 61 Revisited", Hendrix "Electric Ladyland", James Brown "Live and Lowdown At the Apollo", The Stones "Beggar's Banquet", Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" and many other widely acknowledged classics.

Top researchers working on their shows obviously...
 
i thought one notable omision from the 100 was THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE. quality film a joke its note in there.
 
another couple of films missing were SINK THE BISMARK and BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE
 
miller25 said:
i thought one notable omision from the 100 was THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE. quality film a joke its note in there.
I was talking to someone who had not seen the first half and said this film was going to be in the top 50 :oops:

Yet films like Love and Death were in there, this war clearly a comedy. I also looked at the top romance films and notice that Casablanca was in there as well as the war film.
 
Just how far will they 'drill down' with these 'Top 100 Movie' related programmes?

It won't be long before we see the 'Top 100 Best Boys' !!

Cheap TV at it's cheapest, really P me off !
 
What about Hamburger Hill, A Midnight Clear or Catch 22? Or Birdy, which is a great movie about what happens after combat.

Anyone remember a rather cheap, but never-the-less effective, 80s 'Nam movie called 84 Charlie Mopic (I think that's right). Great premise, and a very shocking ending. I bet that wasn't in there.

Also remember seeing an old B&W movie one afternoon on C4 about two young soldiers preparing for the D-Day landings. No idea what is was called, when it was made or who was in it, but it bounced along all very light-hearted and cor-blimey govner until the ending on the landing craft - one of the soldiers peeks over the top and bang - he's dead - then the ramps go down and the other one is killed. Very shocking ending, on a par with Gallipoli.

I missed the first hour of Part Two on Sunday night, so appologies if any of the above were included.

...oh, and when is someone in Hollywood gonna get off their arse and make a movie of Chickenhawk. Everyone I've ever met who's read the book rate it among their top-five - funny, terrifying and heart-breaking - with a truly shocking ending. If done right, it could easily become the greatest 'Nam, or indeed, (anti) war movie ever made.

It would even make a great tv series, along the lines of Band of Brothers. BTW - have you seen that a follow-up series is in production, which follows another group of soldiers in the Pacific campaign?
 
So. No appearance by:

Battle of the Bulge
Sink the Bismark
Battle of the River Plate


Well you can add to the list of movies that don't appear:

Is Paris Burning
Run Silent, Run Deep
The Road Back
Sergeant York
The Story of GI Joe
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Stalag 17
Coming Home
In Harm's Way
Twelve O'Clock High
The Victors
Cross of Iron
Journey's End
The War Game
Objective, Burma
The Fighting Sullivans (the story reworked by Speilberg for "Saving Private Ryan")
A Guy Named Joe (again remade by Speilberg as "Always")
Heaven and Earth
Fail Safe
On the Beach
1941
The Red Badge of Courage
The Battle of Midway (either version!)
A Canterbury Tale
Mister Roberts
The Manchurian Candidate
The Blue Max
Foreign Correspondent
The Halls of Montezuma
Hamburger Hill


And that's just a few off the top of my head. I bet if we get the books out there are dozens more.

Considering the movies that are on the list and categorized as War movies, the above omissions are inexcusable, regardless of their respective merits. If all that is necessary - as it seems- is that the film is set during the time of any kind of war, then we may as well stick in musicals like South Pacific , The Glenn Miller Story and For the Boys (that has Bette Midler warbling through WWII, Korea and Vietnam - if that doesn't qualify then what does?). Or even Cagney's musical Yankee Doodle Dandy which encompasses two World Wars and was deliberately made as a WWII propoganda piece. I mean if we're going to class Gladiator as a War movie, then surely anything goes?

And if we're including comedies, then why The General and Love and Death, yet no Great Dictator or Good Morning Vietnam?

And as for the order of the list!!! According to this Troy is a better movie than From Here to Eternity, The Battle of Algiers, Ran, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Rome Open City and The Big Red One. Of course it is.

Like all of these Channel 4 movie list shows, the voting list appears to be compiled by a team of researchers who have seen about ten movies and seemingly stick a pin in a list to decide the rest. These people don't even have a cursory knowledge of cinema, let alone a comprehensive one. Voting then is apparently carried out, in the main, by people that think movies began with Star Wars.

It's a wonder that wasn't in there - I mean it's got "Wars" in the title and everything.

Like all of these C4 list shows - a joke. :rolleyes:
 
What about Hamburger Hill, A Midnight Clear or Catch 22?
How could I have forgotten A Midnight Clear? :rolleyes: :smashin:
 
Cross of Iron was in there.
 
Oops!

Yes, crossed out a few from my list that on second glance turned out to be there. Wish they'd put them all on one page instead of spread over 20.
 
I've added the list into the search database on Total DVD and you can see the full list here .
 
Hi,

Stuart - thanks for that list. Most helpful! :)

Everyone else - I note that "Crimson Tide", "The Hunt For Red October", "Patriot Games", and many other "war" films weren't included. :confused:

I have to agree with everything that Pauley says, on this issue! These list shows, are very suspect, at the best of times. Not only because they are not compiled by members of the public, but also because the list is pre-compiled by Channel 4. That is, C4 will say "Right, we want to make a Top 100 Comedy Movies show, and so here is a list of 110 comedy films. Now let the public vote via our website, which of those 110 are their favourites/best, etc, and then this will form our Top 100."

It's not a proper free choice of the Top 100. It's a choice of the best 100 out of a pre-defined list, chosen by people who don't have a :censored: clue about real cinema!

I know that all these kinds of lists are subjective, but at least give people the chance to vote for their favourite films, and not be forced to select from a pre-defined list.


Pooch
 
Was Taegukgi in the list?

Absolutely shocked that Das Boot was #17. What a bunch of monkeys the "public" are :(

DT

PS, Mediterraneo is my wild-card entry :smashin: . OK, not a war film in the classic sense, but damn funny it is!
 
The was also

The Young Lions (good Brando performance).
Too Late The Hero
Tobruk
Play Dirty
The Desert Fox
The Desert Rats
And if Dr Strangelove was in there also
The Bedford Incident should be considered.
 
Great Stuart

That's much more convenient. :smashin:

What Pooch says is right - these polls are definitely not a free vote. Your choice is restricted by the Channel 4 list, inevitably compiled by a team lacking anything approaching in-depth knowledge of the subject/genre.

These are always bad, but the War Movies one was worse than most given what was left out.

Plus, on the voting side you're also at the mercy of those who simply vote for the current flavour-of-the-month or the most recent thing they've seen/heard.

I remember in '90/'91-ish Radio One had their Top 100 albums of all time list, as voted for by listeners. You then had the ridiculous situation of albums by the Spice Girls and Take That being placed above The Beatles, The Stones, Aretha Franklin, Dylan, Bowie, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Stevie Wonder, etc.

The Number 1 position was taken by Simply Red "Stars" which had been available at that time for a matter of months - so plenty of time to judge its durability as an "all-time great". :rolleyes:

Five years later they re-did the poll and this time that album wasn't even placed in the Top 100, which shows how fickle the typical voter on these things can be.
 
And Christ I've just seen that Lawrence of Arabia is number 40.

NUMBER FORTY!!!!!!!!!!

WTF? :suicide: :lesson: :( :thumbsdow :eek: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
The was also

The Young Lions (good Brando performance).
Too Late The Hero
Tobruk
Play Dirty
The Desert Fox
The Desert Rats
And if Dr Strangelove was in there also
The Bedford Incident should be considered.

God the list of omissions is endless! Agree about Strangelove - if fictional wars were allowed, then "Fail Safe", "On the Beach" and movies of that ilk should have been considered too. Not to mention "Lord of the Rings".

This is more of a shambles with each passing hour. Brings to mind their "100 Scariest Moments", with "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", "Star Wars" and "Willie Wonka" all gaining a place, but no mention of the likes of "The Haunting", "Night of the Demon" or dozens of other classic horror movies.

Farcical! :thumbsdow
 
dynamic turtle said:
And Christ I've just seen that Lawrence of Arabia is number 40.

NUMBER FORTY!!!!!!!!!!

WTF? :suicide: :lesson: :( :thumbsdow :eek: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Scary isn't it? I thought it wasn't there at all at first, as it hadn't turned up in the Top 20 or so.

Ironic isn't it, that one of the people who would be most appalled by that placing would be the director of the Number 1 movie on the list.
 
im still getting over battle of the bulge not being in there what an absolute cock.

its up a classic HENRY FONDA, ROBERT SHAW even charles bronsen and TELLY SAVALAS were all in it all the ingedients for a great war film and it was a good war film. major oversight by channel 4. how can you take the list seriously .

that it, said my 2 pence worth about it. going to watch it tonight just to remind myself of how gooder film it actually is
 
No Tora! Tora! Tora! Either!

A superb war film and a truer account of the Pearl Harbor attack than "Pearl Harbor", as the story is told from both the Japanese and the American view of the attack.

That top 100 list must have been voted for by brainless jelly-fish.
 
sorry mate but Tora! Tora! Tora! was actually in the list number 39.


on a side issue i find it puzzling that rambo 2 was at 100 when rambo first blood wasnt in there at all i would say first blood was the better film
 
miller25 said:
sorry mate but Tora! Tora! Tora! was actually in the list number 39.

Well, I stand corrected then! :)

That'll teach me to use <CTRL/F> to search through each page of the listing, without actually looking at the page properly!

Doh!

Glad to see it wasn't missed.

As for Rambo... First Blood is the best of the bunch!
 
The list will be different at different times i would expect, agree the list is pretty wide reaching, but i don't pay much credit to it as The Thin Red Line wasn't at number one!Came out at the same time as SPR but a totally different animal,fantastic :thumbsup:
 

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