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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…

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…

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 …

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…

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.

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…

Newton Knight is a newly essential Matthew McConaughey role that finally knights Newt Knight as a true American hero. Even more, Free State of Jones is an only-in-America story, so corny it could only be true. A deeply moral white man frees enslaved blacks and marries a black woman during the Civil War. Whaaat?

Knight was a 19th century Mississippi übermensch: physically, morally and martially superior to those around him. He was a burly 6'4" at a time when the average man was a skinny 5'8". A yeoman farmer who had no slaves, he depended on his own labor to feed his family, as did most…