Today's Poll: What are your three favorite WWII movies?

You forgot the award winning yet forgettable 2001 box office bomb "Pearl Harbor".....

Can we count the "Band of Brothers" series as one movie?

Right on Ed, especially since, it is the "70TH" anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

Cory I say that Band of Brothers should be consider. Such a great series.

I voted for the timeless, suspense-building classic "Bridge Over the River Kwai," with its standout performances by a pathologically prideful Sir Alec Guinness and the all-American relentlessness of William Holden.

"Saving Private Ryan" is unforgettable. It grips the audience from the get-go, with the brutal D-Day landings and some of the young soldiers puking and yelling pitifully for their mothers, many of them shot to death in the landing crafts.

Another movie I thought was compelling (but isn't on the list) was "The Pianist," with Adrien Brody starring as an emaciated Polish Jew, once a concert pianist, struggling to survive the Warsaw Ghetto after the German invasion.

My favorite part is when he's desperately foraging for something edible in a bombed out village and he discovers a large old can of pickles.

He pathetically tries to get into the can, it falls to the floor, and lands at the feet of a fearsome, cool-eyed German officer, who asks Brody the obvious question "What are you doing?" Brody's mousy truthfulness, his gaunt visage and his frosty breath in the wintry air make for a poignant moment. Then he is asked what he does for a living and he answers simply "I'm a pianist."

To see if he really is, the officer puts him to the test and tells him to play in a nearby room which has an old grand piano. The Nazi's quarry blows on his cold fingers and rubs them together futilely as he gets ready for the brief command performance.

He sits down awkwardly and as he begins you feel sorry for him -- under pressure to save his own skin, with a banged up, out of tune instrument and his stilted play, obviously long out of contact with piano keys.

But then his gift starts to creep in and the banished muse returns. He begins to hit his stride and plays beautiful music with real talent.

The German's countenance softens almost imperceptibly as he listens, with the cool eyes looking afar momentarily, as if to remember when life was good and such music made it better.

This man IS a pianist. He gets to live. And the wrenching film saga continues.

I agree, The Pianist was a great movie and so was Band of Brothers.

My favorite is Das Boot, the Werner Herzog classic depiction of a u-boat as it operates in the cold and aunforgiving depths of the North Atlantic. From the opening scenes of crated vegetables and dry good being loaded and stored in whatever space was available, one could almost smell the diesal fuel, oxide odor of the batteries, the smell of fear and adrenilin eminating from the crew. There is an understated, "it is what it is", quality to the film that transcends national identity and captures what has to be a most extraordinary shared experience stripped of any illusion of romantic daring replaced by the shared experience of extreme terror confined to a small space with no where to hide or escape.

My God, Ed, this sounds like a good scary movie. I've heard of it, but don't believe I've seen it. Surely I'd remember. I could NEVER be in a submarine, especially after thinking about what those Soviet men must have went through in their death tomb submarine some years back.

Billie I like your taste for war movies, I will see if netflix has the Pianist. I am not sure if, I saw that one. I enter that submarine at Buffalo Naval Park and I am glad I didn't pick navy and serve in a can.

Ed,
If you have not been there yet, stop by at he Buffalo naval park and go through the WW II era sub there. When you go in and see just how small they really are, Das Boot will be even better. The average WW II submarine based movie makes it look like they had all sorts of room. It's a real eye opener to see how little room there really was.

Actually Ed early in my diving career I got to dive on a sunken Uboat out off the NJ coast, I went in a little ways but not being trained in overhead environments I didn't go far but if you go and do as John suggested.....you will see how small our subs of that time were. Uboats were even smaller. Got to give the german mariner's their proper respect to cross the atlantic in one of those, let alone fight is an amazing feat.

I'll look to see if I have any photos left from the uboat dive and post them if I can find them... I might need help w that Howard :)

Even though it's in sub-titles, It's the cramped nature of the u-boat and Herzog's ability to recreate the whole feeling of the walls closing in that whle watching make you a part of the film. In an exercise of the ultimate voyeristic escape that film can provide, Das Boot is like psycho times ten.

I'd add Inglorious Bastards also.

If we are going to "count" band of brothers, then THE PACIFIC series was very good too. Took a while to get going, but very good

Saving Private Ryan will always be my favorite, but I was also one of the write-in votes for Patton and was wondering why it wasn't included.

Ed - Pearl Harbor was no box office bomb, love it or hate it, it grossed almost $500 million worldwide.