Created Mar 16, 2014 02:05AM PST • Updated Dec 08, 2019 09:13AM PST
American history comes alive in these powerful and important movies. They are of post-modern vintage, characterized by extreme verisimilitude and state-of-the-art production values. Post-modernism notwithstanding, they exhibit little to no irony, an essential quality given the historic gravity of their stories.
Mea culpa: The title of this list suggests it should be limited to four movies. In practice each entrant on the list deserves to be lionized, so here they are.
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
 Discuss
Saving Private Ryan has a new neighbor atop the pantheon of Great American War movies. Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood's American Sniper illuminates the reality of America's 21st century war as never before, just as Steven Spielberg's classic did about the Greatest Generation's war. Like "Spielberg's WWII movie":http://www.viewguide.com/movies/118888-saving-private-ryan, Eastwood's instant classic makes vivid what we'd previously seen only in filtered images. However, American Sniper hits closer to home because it is set recently, about an ongoing war, and is a biopic… |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
Discuss
Solomon Northup has just become an iconic American hero, some fifteen and a half decades after he lived. Americans from this day forth will know his name like they know Patrick Henry's or "Harriet Tubman's":http://www.greatblackheroes.com/civil-rights/harriet-tubman/. That's not all. The movie that brought his memoir to us just joined the short list of supremely important American history films, alongside "Saving Private Ryan":http://www.viewguide.com/movies/118888-saving-private-ryan and "Lincoln":http://www.viewguide.com/movie_reviews/3658-lincoln up on the "cinematic Mount Rushmore"… |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
1 Forum Reply
The greatest bromance movie of all time – charming, funny, deeply affecting – Lone Survivor is more importantly the "Saving Private Ryan":https://www.viewguide.com/movies/118888-saving-private-ryan of our still young 21st Century. It viscerally depicts American heroes fighting my war against my enemy, the Good War, the necessary war per both Presidents Bush and Obama. It is quite simply a must-see movie. Indeed, every American of voting age should see it. Every citizen of the world who's of voting age should see it. The brutal parts are more tolerable than you may think, in no smal… |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
1 Forum Reply
Gripping from start to finish, though the end is never in doubt. Stands as a testament to American heroism, ingenuity and bravura movie-making. Tom Hanks – in one of his iconic performances – heads a stellar cast atop their games. The screenplay introduced not one, but two catchphrases into the popular lexicon. |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
2 Forum Replies
A fine, fine movie, Lincoln delivers an outstanding history lesson centered on an iconic performance for the ages. With it, Stephen Spielberg continues his own ascent into the American pantheon, while Daniel Day-Lewis creates his single most memorable role. The movie focuses on a great legislative battle Lincoln fought in the last months of his life, an apt lens through which to view the man in full. Canny and idealistic, melancholy yet jovial, riven by familial tension, Abraham Lincoln comes alive in the movie as fully human yet worthy of his demigod status. Lincoln delivers a … |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
A new laureate to the pantheon of great war movies. |
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Kelsey
– with 16 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
Discuss
United 93 takes place the day a tragedy occurred, September 11, 2001. It seems like a normal day to everyone. No one has any idea how big of an impact this day will have. At first everything goes as scheduled through the airlines. However, those who monitor the airplanes do become suspicious. They realize that there could be a possible hijacking situation on one of the planes. People are cautioned by this, but it is surprising to them since this hasn’t happened for 40 years. Soon they find out that several of the planes are in fact being hijacked. The workers try to do what they can to fi… |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
Discuss
Zero Dark Thirty tells the truthy tale of the deadly hunt for Osama bin Laden, making it one of the most potent political movies of all time. The certain reverberations are hard to predict. Wikileaks? Wikiflick. It starts with a dark screen, then a title card. September 11, 2001. Screen still dark, radio chatter fills the air, capturing the desperate last words between al-Qaeda's doomed victims and feckless 911 operators. It ends with a statement that any character, characterization, dialogue and – you know – most any "fact" can and may be bullshit. Any resemblance between a… |
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BrianSez
– with 17 Trust Points – rated it
Perfect
1 Forum Reply
Do war movies get any better than this? Puts you right there, in all the graphic realism that comes with war. But not just any war movie, this story spins a great tale that follows Hanks and his crew looking for and saving Ryan (Pitt). If you like war movies, this is a must-see. |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Great
1 Forum Reply
Essential though Patton may be – as war movie, as American history, as biopic – it's not the epochal statement the Academy thought they were canonizing with seven Oscars in 1971, including Best Picture. Back then Frances Ford Coppola's script seemed subversive, undermining American militarism during the trauma of the Vietnam War. Today it seems like a rudimentary evocation of the Greatest Generation. Thank God for the Greatest Generation. General George S. Patton was one of their foremost exemplars, even if his distinctive flamboyance marked him as something of an anomaly. The bi… |
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Wick
– with 66 Trust Points – rated it
Really Great
1 Forum Reply
The pantheon of essential WWII movies has a new entrant. David Ayer's Fury stars Brad Pitt as an American Staff Sergeant who must lead a platoon of Sherman tanks against the Germans' superior Panzers. Think Chevies vs. Benzes, with Brad and his battle-hardened crew in an outgunned Sherman named Fury. Set in the last month of the war, just before VE Day, fighting Germans in Germany, it was beyond ugly. Ayer & Pitt's Fury is an old-school war movie with new fangled realism. Even the music is old-fashioned, understated most of the time, making it a war movie with lots of quiet passag… |
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