Top Five War Movies and ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’

'All Quiet on the Western Front'Netflix's dark-horse Oscar contender

All Quiet on the Western Front 2022

Edward Berger's German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's 1928 novel, the first version directed by a German filmmaker. Felix Kammerer plays Paul, a young recruit whose terror never really lets up for two and a half hours; Albrecht Schuch plays his best friend Kat. Sean and Amanda both found it visceral and hard to sit through twice; Chris hadn't revisited the story since film school and was surprised by how much it landed. All three single out Volker Bertelmann's three-note synth score, reportedly indebted to Led Zeppelin, as shortlist-worthy. Daniel Brühl plays a key figure in the armistice negotiations, an addition to Remarque's book that's drawn criticism from purists but ties the film to what comes after: World War II.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 1930

Lewis Milestone's original, widely regarded as a landmark of pacifist filmmaking and, per Sean, the template nearly every war movie since has drawn from. Its melodramatic, oratorical acting style is the thing the 2022 version most visibly departs from.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1979) 1979

Delbert Mann's TV movie remake, which Sean calls decent but stiffly received, arriving in the shadow of the 1930 original.

The King 2019

David Michôd's Timothée Chalamet film, cited by Amanda as looking almost identical to All Quiet on the Western Front, both credited (or blamed) on the flattening, over-clarified look of anything run through Netflix's pipeline.

Its Oscar chancesthe only real war movie in a crowded field

Top Gun: Maverick 2022

The other blockbuster sometimes called a war movie, but with no real enemy or geopolitics attached.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2022

Same critique as Maverick: spectacle about a globalist threat, not grounded in an actual war.

The Fabelmans 2022

One of the more intimate Best Picture contenders competing with All Quiet for a slot.

Tár 2022

Another of the field's intimate dramas in the same conversation.

The Whale 2022

Sean's example of Oscar perversity: a movie with almost nothing in common with All Quiet, aside from both being in the mix.

Elvis 2022

Cited alongside All Quiet as a 'maximalist' 2022 production where every department (costumes, sound, cinematography) has to be firing to work.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 2022

The 'sequel wave' Sean doesn't think the Academy rewards with a Best Picture slot this year.

Hacksaw Ridge 2016

Chris and Sean's precedent for the bloc of Academy voters who reliably nominate a 'real' war movie.

Sean's Top Five War Moviesbest to worst

No. 1

Apocalypse Now 1979

Sean's No. 1, shared with Chris. Coppola's Vietnam epic, which Sean traces back through Conrad to Homer: one man going up a river to find Kurtz. Willard starts the film already burned out, skipping the usual innocence-to-disillusionment arc most war movies run. Vittorio Storaro's cinematography and the legend of the shoot itself both factor in.

No. 2

Come and See 1985

Elem Klimov's film about the Nazi invasion of Belarus, seen through a 15-year-old resistance fighter. Klimov lived through the events; his wife, Larisa Shepitko, made a related war film before dying in a 1979 car accident, and he spent close to a decade getting this one past Soviet censors. Sean rewatched it the same week as All Quiet on the Western Front and came away thinking it does everything that film does, and more.

No. 3

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp 1943

Powell and Pressburger's film follows a British officer across the Boer War, World War I, and World War II, with barely a battle scene in it: mostly a story about the woman he keeps choosing duty over. Sean says it doesn't land at 19; it lands later.

No. 4

Paths of Glory 1957

Kubrick's first major production, based on Humphrey Cobb's 1935 novel: a colonel (Kirk Douglas) defends soldiers court-martialed for refusing to advance on a battle he knows is unwinnable, with Adolphe Menjou as his opposite number. The film that got Kubrick handed Spartacus.

No. 5

Saving Private Ryan 1998

Sean's most conflicted pick: he doesn't rewatch war movies often, and this one got tangled up in his memory with its Best Picture loss to Shakespeare in Love. Revisiting it for a Rewatchables episode changed his mind: every choice in it argues the war was a mistake, right down to why Hanks's character dies.

Chris's Top Five War Moviesbest to worst

No. 1

Apocalypse Now 1979

Chris's No. 1, shared with Sean.

No. 2

Platoon 1986

Oliver Stone's film, drawn from his own Vietnam service. Chris saw it around age 10 or 11 and says it reset what he thought a war movie could be: not Guns of Navarone heroics but people who looked like guys from his own neighborhood. Some of it plays heavy-handed now, he says, but the performances (Dafoe, Berenger, a standout Keith David) still hold.

No. 3

Dunkirk 2017

Christopher Nolan's evacuation film. Chris calls the dogfight sequence the best set piece of the decade and ties Nolan's time-manipulation approach directly to All Quiet on the Western Front's own influences.

No. 4

Ran 1985

Kurosawa's King Lear adaptation, war as one king's personal psychosis. Chris ranks it with anything else in Kurosawa's filmography, ahead of Kagemusha.

No. 5

The Great Escape 1963

John Sturges's POW picture with Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, and Charles Bronson. Chris's proof that war movies can just be fun. Amanda tried watching it muted on a flight and had to turn the sound back on; it doesn't work without the banter.

Amanda's Top Five War Moviesbest to worst

No. 1

Casablanca 1942

Amanda's No. 1, made during the war it depicts, by her own admission a rebuttal to everything else she argued on this episode about war movies needing to dwell on horror rather than romance. She calls its script the most quotable ever written.

No. 2

Inglourious Basterds 2009

Tarantino's WWII revenge fantasy, which Sean also had on his list before ceding the slot to Amanda. She calls it a war comedy that's also about the making of war movies and propaganda, anchored by Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa.

No. 3

Born on the Fourth of July 1989

Oliver Stone's Ron Kovic adaptation, with Tom Cruise as the paralyzed veteran turned antiwar activist. Amanda grew up near Kovic's Long Island hometown and heard him speak in high school.

No. 4

Quo Vadis, Aida? 2020

Jasmila Žbanić's film about the Srebrenica massacre, told through a UN translator trying to save her family. Amanda calls it as harrowing as anything else discussed on this episode, played out at the scale of one family instead of a battlefield.

No. 5

The English Patient 1996

Anthony Minghella's adaptation, with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. Amanda's pick for a war movie that's really a romance: a nurse and a bomb-disposal specialist finding each other at the end of World War II.

Field report: 'Skinamarink'a chaotic Saturday night for Sean and Chris

Skinamarink 2022

Kyle Edward Ball's microbudget horror film, shot in his childhood home: two young kids wake up to find their parents gone and the doors and windows of the house missing. Shot in near-darkness, faces never shown, with a heavy, echoing sound design. Sean watched it alone on his laptop and found it effective; watching it with Chris in a packed, restless AMC Burbank theater (after a five-hour tequila-and-wings detour triggered by the Chargers blowing a 27-point lead to the Jaguars) blunted it completely. Coughing and walkouts kill a movie this dependent on isolation.

Also mentioned raised along the way

In passing DuneArrivalSicarioStalag 17The Battle of AlgiersA Man EscapedVon Ryan's ExpressWhere Eagles DareThe Monuments MenThe Hunt for Red OctoberKagemushaA Matter of Life and Death49th ParallelLawrence of ArabiaDr. StrangeloveFull Metal JacketThe Guns of NavaroneMegalopolisM3GANScream VI80 for BradyAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads

TV Slow HorsesThe TerrorDeutschland 83Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Podcasts Off GuardJMO

Ads TremfayaBoar's HeadCarvanaWells Fargo Active CashNetflix's FIFA World Cup Launch EditionBlinds.comStorm Energy