the big short is an hugely underrated movie. if you want to dive deep into the 2008 financial crisis, i would suggest the big short, margin call and too big to fail. these 3 can be called as an unofficial trilogy which tell different point of views(investors,bank and government) of the 2008 financial crisis
The Big Short is one of those films that should be played in classrooms everywhere. It's one of the few movies that could be described as "historical horror"
No All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)? That movie was amazing with full range battle scenes. It captured the spirit of the age and the desperation and despair of a generation.
When our dude was praising the access Katherine Bigelow was granted I got a little nervous. To make films that do anything less- modern day Catch 22s or All Quiet on the Western Front- you certainly won’t get any assistance or access. That’s a gate keeping which I think should make us a little wary. He was praising films for their grim depiction of war- and most of those were foreign films.
About Spotlight: I'm Catholic and we watched Spotlight with our youth group at church exactly to learn and not to sweep the whole issue under the rug. We were told, that the one thing worse than what happened at the sexual abuse scandal with the victims was how the Catholic church handled the situation. We were told to learn from this and if we, as future members or even leaders of local church communities encounter something like that, we should do what's right and make the necessary steps, inform the local authorities, the bishop,etc. ASAP, so that such horrible things may never happen again.
The only real tragedy of Master and Commander? It was released the same year as Return of the King, which dominated the Oscars, and overshadowed a truly great film with excellent performances. Both movies have stood the test of time very well.
I remember watching that movie and thinking it was incredibly boring. I was just 16 though and I think these days it would suit my interests a lot more, maybe I'll give it another shot!
My most favorite story from the A Bridge Too Far movie was when Anthony Hopkins was being observed by the real Colonel John Frost during the scene where Frost was running as the Germans were sniping at him when he tried to cross to the opposite side of the street. Frost would continuously tell Hopkins “you’re running too fast”. Hopkins is dumbfounded and reminds Frost that there were German snipers. Frost responds “I know, but I still walked.”
The scene where Szpilman is discovered by a German officer in The Pianist was real. The officer was hauptmann Wilhelm Adalbert Hosenfeld. He saved several Polish people in the Ghetto, including Jews. In 2007, Hosenfeld was posthumously honoured with Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the Polish President. In 2008, he was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem (Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust) as one of the Righteous Among the Nations - A title given to people that helped Jews during the Holocaust, which can only be nominated by a Jew. Which in Hosenfeld's case was Andrzej Szpilman, Szpilman's son. Another known German is, of course, Oskar Schindler. Also, in 2011, a commemorative plaque was unveiled where Hosenfeld discovered Szpilman.
The only discrepancy was in the choice of music Szpilman performed on the piano: according to his memoir, it was Chopin's nocturne in c # minor; but in the film, it was the first ballade. But this was only a minor detail which didn't fundamentally affect the storyline.
It really speaks to the quality of Apollo 13 that they could make a suspenseful scene that consisted entirely of a couple dozen guys with slide rules doing math.
The way the movie builds suspense is such an amazing feat. I lived through that time and knew they DID get back, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. What's truly strange is that I've seen the movie several times since, and I still get the same suspenseful feeling. It's a masterpiece IMHO
If you want a more recent film in this category of "historic" based history films- Look for "One Life" - A film staring Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Price and Helena Bonham-Carter - an amazing story which eventually played out in real life on British TV screens in 1988......and I watched that episode of "That's life" on TV on that Sunday when he the real Nicholas Winterton met the children he helped save as adults, that he and his fellow volunteers helped to get out of Czechoslovakia in 1938 before the Munich agreement- An extremely powerful film much like "Schindler's List"....and in the film the audience members in those recreated TV scenes is made up in part of the real children and grandchildren of the actual people who were on our TV screens in 1988.
I watched “Come and See” about three years ago during my sophomore year of college. I was in my dorm alone and it was around 10:00 when I finished the movie. Genuinely one of the most terrifying films I ever experienced. I cried and went on a long reflective walk afterwards.
Agree…this was the most frightening depiction of war that I have ever seen. The face of the main character after the burning of the church gave me nightmares. I think I read that he was not an actor.
I recently saw Schindler’s List, and I was devastated for about a week. It’s one thing to make a movie about great suffering, but it’s an entirely different thing when you have to grasp the reality that the suffering depicted in the film ACTUALLY happened. Brilliant movie.
Fat Electrician has the Unsubscribe Podcast where they interviewed an Iwo Jima veteran. There is a clip of his specific recounting of the battle. He even brings up Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima
Yeah... that's one of my bugbears, Malcolm and MLK both advocated for violence. They just disagreed on the proper application of violence to further Civil Rights/Black Liberation
Hi Chris. Just wanted to mention that Australia TV interviewed Neil Armstrong a few months before he passed away and it was fabulous. You could tell Armstrong was thoroughly enjoying himself throughout the interview. Highly recommend you, or anyone else interested to take the time to watch it.
I personally think Das Boot is the most balanced war movie i've ever seen. what I mean is that it has the moments of drama, suspense, triumph, humor, ugliness, humanity, honesty and desperation. It doesn't glorify anything or try to present any sort of political of historical narrative it's just honest and directly shows what being on a U boat was like which was something pretty unusual for the time. Most war movies pre 1990's definitely glorified a lot of their stories as "the good o'l boys winning the day" or "They did it despite the foolishness of their leaders and officers" but Das Boot is the total opposite of that.
One I would recommended is a movie called "the unknown soldier (2017)" it's also a mini series. It follows a Finnish infantry unit during the continuation war (1941-1944) against the soviets. It's a pretty accurate description of the fighting in that campaign. Myself would recommend the mini series more as its more detailed.
"Goodfellas" trivia: when Henry is introducing the audience to a restaurant full of mob guys, one of the people mentions is Michael Franzese, then a capo in the Columbo family.
What I love too is that Michael has spoke about this since, and cannot understand why he is mentioned. Though admitting he’d met Henry Hill as a wise guy he never hung out with their crew like it is somewhat portrayed as in the movie
"Shake Hands with the Devil" is a brilliantly written book by General Romeo Dallaire which is a must read if you want to learn more about Rwanda and the futile peacekeeping efforts to stop the slaughter. Really sheds a light on everything Dallaire (colonel at the time) struggled against regarding the UN's unwillingness to send more support to stop the suffering.
Being in Rwanda the slaughter gave Dallaire's failed efforts as leader of the UN forces to prevent the slaughter ended up giving him severe PTSD unsurprisingly. Nick Nolte plays a fictionalized version of him as Colonel Oliver in Hotel Rwanda.
"The Imitation Game" is disgraceful. They claim to adapt the biography but if they even read it they choose to flip significant statements in order to tell a hollywood movie e.g. they depict Turing naming the Bombe "Christopher" in a glorious gesture of honoring his childhood friend, while Hodges makes a big point out of the fact that Turing used his belief in the human soul to cope with Christopher's death. His work on artificial intelligence, made him abandon this belief, realizing this person is truely gone. But more importantly they needlessly insert a Russian spy into the story and depict Turing deciding to aid him to conceal his sexuality. Depicting Turing as a traitor to his country and validating the reasoning used by the british government to justify the supervision and horrible traitement of Turing that ultimately drove him into suicide. Thirdly, their attempt to represent his theoretical work is horrible. They use statements like "This is like solving the hardest crossword puzzle". The 1996 movie "Breaking the Code" with Derek Jacobi did everything a miilion times better. They actually include a beautiful six minute monologue where Turing explains the mathematical foundation of his early work. (You can find the monologue on youtube v=gV67Sj2jkVg)
Yeah, I think Benedict Cumberbatch gave such a compelling portrayal of Turing that it distracted most viewers from the fact that film itself was closer to Braveheart than Schindler's List.
Of course Schindler's list is in a category all of its own but I still find Schindler's list and imitation game and braveheart to ALL be excellent movies.
The Longest Day is credited as being the film that saved MGM from bankruptcy. The film was shot during a major delay part way through filming Cleopatra, starring Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. MGM nearly went bust filming Cleopatra.
They are actually quite wrong about the movie hotel rwanda. I had to read a whole novel in my College African History class, that is about one of the Tutsi refugees in the hotel, and how his characterization of Paul Russabagina is almost the complete opposite of what is depicted on film. The filmmakers essentially only told the story from his perspective, and it turns out he was using the hotel for profit had a lot of shady ties to Hutu militant groups and treated refugees horribly. The filmmakers essentially did not speak to anyone except him, though the accuracy of the depiction of the genocide still makes the movie worth watching but i would not put it on this list as it portrays Paul as a similar person to Schindler
In The Longest Day one of the actors standing behind Richard Todd is his own brother playing Richard Todd. In A Bridge Too Far one of the actors standing around Dirk Bogarde as General Browning is playing Captain Dirk Bogarde who was Browning's Dutch Liaison officer.
Stalingrad is excellent. I have a german friend whose grandfather was a young soldier sent there, it broke him - although he survived the war he never recovered and was haunted until he died. The Big Short is magnificent and all the actors are great in it, the cameos are used well. Lawrence of Arabia is a masterpiece even with the flaws. Spotlight is definitely frightening but so well made. Das Boot is hauntingly gritty and oppressive, another masterpiece and the longer cut is a must. A personal favourite of mine is A Bridge too Far, for many years I would watch it with my father at least once a year - he was a member of 9 Squadron RE in the early 60's so it had a special place for him since Market Garden was one of the units operations in WW2.
@@jimb9063 Sadly we talked about it many years ago and are no longer in touch. I only remember him saying his grandfather hardly spoke and due to the food issues at stalingrad his grandfathers stomach was also badly damaged from eating raw potatoes so he had trouble eating most food the rest of his life.
@@vereybowring Thanks. It's not unusual for people not to talk about traumatic experiences, so WW2, the "Eastern Front", and Stalingrad in particular? Can't begin to imagine.
No way. Where is waterloo on that list? The movie with rod steiger and christopher plummer as wellington is the most historicly description of the late years of napoleon and the battle itself.
Hey VTH huge fan been one for years, just wanted to say thank you for helping me through some rough times, and keeping that spark alive for my love for history
"Conspiracy" recreates the Wannsee Conference. It is shot in real time and the dialogue is from the record of that event. It is really chilling to see highly educated men calmly planning one of histories greatest crimes.
Such a chilling and great movie - Brannah is so so good at being outwardly pleasant but having such evil intentions. I wish more people knew about it!!!
Well said. I just put up a comment elsewhere here essentially saying the same thing. Considering its epic scope, "Malcolm X" is a surprisingly intimate film about one man's struggle to retain his soul. It's a character study on a huge canvas. I think it's a masterpiece.
@@VloggingThroughHistory and I agree with you what you said about it being fictional story in the history accurate timeline. Which, Ridley Scott should learn something to do 😂 maybe his movies would be more better. Let's say Napoleon, if it was a movie on Napoleonic wars with out Napoleon centered, would've been more epic than what ever the Napoleon was. Don't get me wrong I did liked the costumes and scenes of the accuracy but man did he butcher Napoleon.
@@IRFSI Scott remains one of my favorite directors, even with the historical blemishes. IMO Napoleon failed not (or at least, "not only") because Ridley Scott played fast and loose with the history (lol, I was expecting that)...but rather on the more fundamental level of simply telling an engaging, coherent story that grabs the viewer. Something he did do very well with the "also-somewhat-history-adjacent" Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, and it worked. But with Napoleon, Scott's breathtakingly vivid visual spectacle (always his strongest suit) finally just wasn't enough to compensate for a script that just fell flat. shrug. (and obtw...the fact that the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby ALSO couldn't help save that thing highlights just how really inadequate that script was).
@@cragnamorra he does historical movies good I love his films. Just napoleon wasn't exactly what I expected. But we can see what he delivers with gladiator 2.
15:20 On Rwanda, I emphatically reccommend the book "Shake Hands With The Devil" by Romeo Dalliare. He was the commander of the UN peacekeeping mission that was on the ground during the massacre, if I recall correctly.
Thanks for the tip Chris on the subscribe thing. I not had a problem with yours or Mr Terry but tbh I have seen video recommendations on channels I use to watch and was subscribed to (admittedly not watched them in over a year) but have been unsubscribed to. I get that YT probably has to clean up junk (speaking as someone that works as a Data Engineer) but it's still surprising and a bit unfair because I missed those channels so seeing their videos made me go...huh... Keep up the work Chris and I'll be looking out for your Europe trip notifications too as I might go. Sending wishes from the UK 🇬🇧
"Hotel Rwanda" was a good film. Given the events of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, there was a great reluctance to get involved in Rwanda less than a year later. To be fair, I am not sure what would have been a practical way to prevent the massacre.
@@cragnamorra, Ridley Scott made some changes when adapting the Mark Bowden book, but most of the guys I know who served in the military during that time period say the movie got it right overall.
I met Jim Lovell when I was 8 years old back in 2004 in Lake Forest near Chicago. The first thing he said to me was "I bet you thought I looked like Tom Hanks". Highly intelligent and amazing individual.
It's shame that Finnish cinema doesn't have reach almost at all. I truly think "Unknown Soldier" to be the most accurate war flick ever made and by watching few reactions from vets to it, they have seemed to agree.
A few things about some of the movies and actors in them. For Apollo 13, the mission control set they made on the first floor was so realistic that Jerry Bostick, a mission controller from the Apollo era, went looking for the elevator because the ACTUAL room was on the third floor. Also, Jim Lovell took Tom Hanks to his home in Huston, taking longer than because Jim took longer than necessary doing test pilot stunts and Tom soaked it up. For the launch sequence, one of the Apollo astronauts asked where they found the footage like it was a lost archive. One final thing on Apollo 13, not related to history, but Ron Howard's daughter asked him how he did the water in the re-entry sequence and she used his advice to give a nod to him in The Mandalorian re-entry sequence she did. As fir accuracy, they had to take some artistic license or it would be a snorefest nobody understood, so it's one of the movies like Patton, wgere you said it was necessary. As to Sir Ben Kingsley in Schindler's list, i forget which channel it's on but he went over his roles in movies, and in the case of Schindler's List and Gandhi how he became cast as those characters.
I think two movies that I would put on this list would be Grave of the Fireflies and In This Corner of the World. They are both Japanese animated films about civilian life during WW2, with the former focusing on the firebombing of Kobe and the latter focusing on Kure and Hiroshima. Both are phenomenal films, and much like a lot of the other top entries, they fall in the category of must watches that you’ll never want to watch again
I'll add Barefoot Gen to those two films. the Bombing of Hiroshima and aftermath from the perspective of an 8 year old survivor, who would go on to write the manga the movie was based on
If you haven't seen "City of God, you should. It is a fantastic film (but hard and brutal), and deserves to be on a list of best pictures, period (it is #25 on IMDB's toplist...).
That was a damn fine WatchMojo list. Sometimes they really do knock it out the park with their picks. Honorable mention to a lot of the pronunciation by the narrator; quite a bit of it was spot on.
Chris, you make an excellent point about how such movies are much better with fictional characters and events within a larger historical backdrop. One such movie that's one of my all-time favorites is Cross of Iron... Which needed to be on this list too. If you haven't seen it, find it! 1977... Was out in theaters when Star Wars came out. Depicts a platoon of German soldiers just trying to survive on the Russian front (specifically the Crimea), with James Coburn as their senior NCO, and Maxmillian Schell as their idiotic glory-hound of a Captain. Also with James Mason and David Warner. I got to watch the movie with a German veteran who fought in the east (SS Wiking division), and he said for him it captured the essence of what it was like more than any other movie. Essential viewing for us German WWII reenactors 🙂
I think my favorite thing about Gettysburg is they really got the emotional aspect of it. Most of the high ups had fought along side each other previously and were friends with each other.
City of God is a great movie and it really sticks with you. There is an infamous scene with child violence that will make you feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Enemy at the Gates is so inaccurate even from the premise. It’s based off the journal of a Soviet Sniper who in the film is depicted as illiterate. It’s as blatantly anti-Soviet as you can get.
Having read Cornelius Ryan's book, it's clear the filmmakers focused on Zaitsev and took way too many liberties, namely in the portrayal of the NKVD and the Soviet bureaucracy in general. Krushchev was just a political officer and had no authority in ordering soldiers around, and the infamous "not one step back" order had been rescinded by the time of Stalingrad. Plus the "every other man gets a rifle" scene that Call of Duty would copy the same year.
I'm so glad Apollo 13 got the top spot; it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Lincoln is another. And I agree; after viewing it, I had the sensation of having seen the actual man, President Lincoln. Truly a defining performance!
My favourite piece of actual history overcoming popular belief is in Lincoln, At the start, we see Lincoln sat on a porch listening, with pained indulgence, to a soldier reciting the entire Gettysburg Address. Modern Amereican historians idolise the speech to the point of hagiography, Lincoln himself,thugh hated it with a passion pretty much from the monent he finished deliveiring it. He famously told his good friend Walt Leman that plough won't scour" indiciating that he thought he had delicered a drreadful oration that did not do the job. A very small and understated detail that is absolutely historic.
As a reporter for a mid-sized Midwest newspaper in 1995, Neil Armstrong, a friend of our publisher, was invited to be the guest speaker at our Veterans Day observance. I had the honor of interviewing him and in all my 78 years on the planet, I have never met a man more humble, more approachable than Armstrong. I of course persisted in trying to get him to talk about the moon landing. But he wanted to talk about the brave men and women at NASA who made his flight possible and the support of his family..
My husbands grandfather was a radio operator at Iwo Jima. He died before he was born. It’s a shame we never got to meet him and talk to him about his experiences. I mean the ones he would be ok sharing. I know many guys cant share because it is too much for them. I have 2 cousins that wouldn’t talk about their time in Vietnam.
All Quiet on the Western Front. The Bounty Blackhawk Down Chapter 27 (John Lenon's assassin) Joyeux Noel (Christmas Truce WW1) Letters from Iwo Jima I heard that The Lion in Winter is pretty good Glory?
In A Bridge Too Far Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks is actually in the front row of the briefing room during the scene watching Edward Fox play him. Wild stuff.
I fully agree with the idea that historical movies are better off being fictional stories within a certain historical time/context/event. Historical films will always be fiction anyway. They have to be. Dialogue, performances, facial expressions, etc, will always be inserted in ways that can guarantee a lack of accuracy. I think it’s great to insert fictional characters into that world, and tell fictional stories within them, with a diligent eye for accuracy. It’s not tried enough.
The entire set of Patrick O’Brien books (Aubrey / Maturin series “Master & Commander”) feels as if you are reading a historical narrative. So brilliant! One of my all time favorites.
Shake hands with the devil is honestly a movie that should've been mentioned; another film depicting the Rwandan Genocide, but it fully tells the tale of Romeo Dellaire and the Canadians who tried to save so many Tutsi's and Hutu's from death. It was made with the help of the real General, Romeo Dellaire, and was filmed in Rwanda and utilizes real footage from that horrible event.
I was stationed on Okinawa from '01-'03, and had the privledge of spending a day on Iwo Jima. It was a pretty incredible experience. Standing on the beach, and trying to walk inland and up hills through that volcanic ash made me appreciate even more what those guys accomplished.
I would HIGHLY recommend The Autobiography of Malcolm X. IMO he is one of the great Americans. The arc of his life is insane. From a criminal life to self taught Intellectual, and one of the most eloquent speakers of his time. He goes through so many changes. Like RFK, MLK, and others of his time I wonder what could have been had he been able to live a full life. An amazing human being that burned so brightly in a short time.
I would say Oppenheimer and the devils arithmetic. The devils arithmetic being about a girl who has a Jewish family and she accidently travels back in time and lives through the holocaust. Through her grandma's life. It was so beautiful and of course Oppenheimer
I paused the video and spent a minute trying to figure out if The Big Short actually a drama. Tonally, I'm not sure it's all that different from The Office. Really great film though. I recently watched that and Margin Call for the first time and was thoroughly entertained by both.
Speaking about Zodiac (quite possibly my favourite movie): it is a great movie, and I highly recommend. But I think they undersold just how well of a companion piece it is to the book. The book by Robert Graysmith is a phenomenal work of journalism and great at getting the facts across, the movie is great at getting the parts between the lines across. It's a wonderful tale of obsession and I can't recommend enough. It's not super bloody (especially for a serial killer film)
Speaking of Stalingrad, there is a lesser known movie called "Attack and Retreat" (english version) or "Italiani brava gente" (Italian version) from 1964 which tells exactly the same story as Stalingrad, but with Italians from the 8th Italian army in Russia. I swear Stalingrad is the same script slightly rewritten to replace the Italians with Germans. Peter Falk plays one of the characters.
I think it's a really good point to make that films can be accurate in one aspect, like Rusesabagina's story in Hotel Rwanda, but sadly lacking in another, like the UN peacekeeping force and Romeo Dallaire's efforts to prevent the genocide.
One unique movie I really enjoyed was “The Wind Rises.” by studio Ghibli. Unique in the fact that it’s an anime that tells that tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of famous Zero fighter. And yes, there are creative liberties taken at times, but I think it’s really cool because most anime movies by nature take on a genre of fiction and fantasy.
I think your comments about sometimes not getting the history totally accurate, but still capturing the essence of the times or events is a good point. Or that the best way to tell about a time or event is through fictional stories. Two movies that have had some debate about their "historical accuracy" still seem to have value in teaching about times and events: The Killing Fields and Rabbit-Proof Fence. Anyway, great job on the videos, keep 'em coming!
I feel like United 93 is a movie that , as you mentioned, is a must watch but you can only watch it once. I feel like it doesn’t get enough praise just because of how difficult it is to watch
Great point about films requiring internal consistency to be able to best capture the feeling of the history for modern audiences. In Deadwood for HBO there are a lot of shocking events and behavior, but they faced a choice between historically accurate foul language with its ‘horn-swaggling’ and using more modern words. The use of highly abrasive modern language was truer to the history because of the affect on the audience and gave us the characters who lived on the edge much more directly without the feeling of anachronism. Also for veracity of feeling before watching the last episode I drank two long shooters of straight whiskey and ten minutes later had a strong black coffee, which it seemed to be about how half the town got sustenance. Recommended.
Earliest I’ve caught one of your videos. Gonna take this opportunity to request that you react to History Buffs’ video on Master and Commander. Great movie and very accurate like the video says.
Highly, highly recommend The Big Short. One of my favorite movies of the last decade. It blew me away that the guy who made Anchorman and Step Brothers came out with something that serious.
Black Hawk Down! How the Ridley has fallen... Also responsible for The Duellists. In his directorial debut, he delivered one of the great Napoleonic versillamatudes of all time.
Fun Fact: Abraham Lincoln was a Vampire hunter
Damn. You beat me to it.
Surprised that film wasn’t on the list, very accurate
The South lost the war because the North has enough silver bullets for them.
True I saw the doc
When we gonna get a reaction to that?
I'm genuinely surprised that Waterloo wasn't anywhere on this list, even as an Honorable mention
It's usually described as one of the most accurate, so yes I agree.
ye its weird Waterloo not being there
agree
Its watchmojo.... what do u expect from them
No Waterloo and including The Imitation Game. What a list...
the big short is an hugely underrated movie. if you want to dive deep into the 2008 financial crisis, i would suggest the big short, margin call and too big to fail. these 3 can be called as an unofficial trilogy which tell different point of views(investors,bank and government) of the 2008 financial crisis
I wonder why it was so low on this list tbh.
Steve Carrell is great in it too.
Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell excellent acting job. Very, very good casting and excellent script.
The Big Short is one of those films that should be played in classrooms everywhere. It's one of the few movies that could be described as "historical horror"
I've see Margin Call and that was great. I'll have look at the other 2, thanks.
No All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)? That movie was amazing with full range battle scenes. It captured the spirit of the age and the desperation and despair of a generation.
Great point. I’m not really sure if these are ranked on accuracy, or quality for an accurate movie. Either way, ‘30 AQotWF should be high on this list
cant even find it when pirating, was able to watch the original scarface but all quiet seems to be much harder to come by
@@benlincoln7358they did have veterans from both sides design the trenches and fortifications, a big plus
Maybe because it’s historically authentic instead of historically accurate. Or it could be just because it’s Watch Mojo.
When our dude was praising the access Katherine Bigelow was granted I got a little nervous. To make films that do anything less- modern day Catch 22s or All Quiet on the Western Front- you certainly won’t get any assistance or access. That’s a gate keeping which I think should make us a little wary. He was praising films for their grim depiction of war- and most of those were foreign films.
About Spotlight: I'm Catholic and we watched Spotlight with our youth group at church exactly to learn and not to sweep the whole issue under the rug. We were told, that the one thing worse than what happened at the sexual abuse scandal with the victims was how the Catholic church handled the situation. We were told to learn from this and if we, as future members or even leaders of local church communities encounter something like that, we should do what's right and make the necessary steps, inform the local authorities, the bishop,etc. ASAP, so that such horrible things may never happen again.
The only real tragedy of Master and Commander? It was released the same year as Return of the King, which dominated the Oscars, and overshadowed a truly great film with excellent performances. Both movies have stood the test of time very well.
It also opened the same weekend (IIRC) as _Pirates of the Caribbean_
I remember watching that movie and thinking it was incredibly boring. I was just 16 though and I think these days it would suit my interests a lot more, maybe I'll give it another shot!
@@benschultz1784In the U.S. Pirates came out in July and M&C came out in November. I'm not sure about non-U.S. markets.
My most favorite story from the A Bridge Too Far movie was when Anthony Hopkins was being observed by the real Colonel John Frost during the scene where Frost was running as the Germans were sniping at him when he tried to cross to the opposite side of the street. Frost would continuously tell Hopkins “you’re running too fast”. Hopkins is dumbfounded and reminds Frost that there were German snipers. Frost responds “I know, but I still walked.”
And that's why he is/was a Colonel and not an actor.
The scene where Szpilman is discovered by a German officer in The Pianist was real. The officer was hauptmann Wilhelm Adalbert Hosenfeld. He saved several Polish people in the Ghetto, including Jews. In 2007, Hosenfeld was posthumously honoured with Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the Polish President. In 2008, he was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem (Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust) as one of the Righteous Among the Nations - A title given to people that helped Jews during the Holocaust, which can only be nominated by a Jew. Which in Hosenfeld's case was Andrzej Szpilman, Szpilman's son. Another known German is, of course, Oskar Schindler. Also, in 2011, a commemorative plaque was unveiled where Hosenfeld discovered Szpilman.
also there are a series of piano recordings by Szpilman, so that’s pretty cool (im a classical music fan lol)
Truly interesting history behind the story.
The only discrepancy was in the choice of music Szpilman performed on the piano: according to his memoir, it was Chopin's nocturne in c # minor; but in the film, it was the first ballade. But this was only a minor detail which didn't fundamentally affect the storyline.
It really speaks to the quality of Apollo 13 that they could make a suspenseful scene that consisted entirely of a couple dozen guys with slide rules doing math.
The way the movie builds suspense is such an amazing feat. I lived through that time and knew they DID get back, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. What's truly strange is that I've seen the movie several times since, and I still get the same suspenseful feeling. It's a masterpiece IMHO
If you want a more recent film in this category of "historic" based history films- Look for "One Life" - A film staring Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Price and Helena Bonham-Carter - an amazing story which eventually played out in real life on British TV screens in 1988......and I watched that episode of "That's life" on TV on that Sunday when he the real Nicholas Winterton met the children he helped save as adults, that he and his fellow volunteers helped to get out of Czechoslovakia in 1938 before the Munich agreement- An extremely powerful film much like "Schindler's List"....and in the film the audience members in those recreated TV scenes is made up in part of the real children and grandchildren of the actual people who were on our TV screens in 1988.
I watched “Come and See” about three years ago during my sophomore year of college. I was in my dorm alone and it was around 10:00 when I finished the movie. Genuinely one of the most terrifying films I ever experienced. I cried and went on a long reflective walk afterwards.
Agree…this was the most frightening depiction of war that I have ever seen. The face of the main character after the burning of the church gave me nightmares. I think I read that he was not an actor.
Battle of Britain, Dam busters, Battle of the River Plate and Waterloo.
I recently saw Schindler’s List, and I was devastated for about a week. It’s one thing to make a movie about great suffering, but it’s an entirely different thing when you have to grasp the reality that the suffering depicted in the film ACTUALLY happened. Brilliant movie.
I got 45 min inbetween my classes sooo this should help
Fat Electrician has the Unsubscribe Podcast where they interviewed an Iwo Jima veteran. There is a clip of his specific recounting of the battle. He even brings up Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima
And that vet said Flags of Our Fathers was a fluke.
What’s funny about Malcom X and Dr king is they kind of flipped roles. And Malcom X became more peaceful. While king took more radical positions
That’s why Malcolm got killed. The Black Muslims didn’t like that he became more peaceful/broke off from them.
@@jayden8636 he saw what Islam was really about after going to Mecca. He saw the lack of distinction over race
@@jayden8636I wouldn’t call the Nation of Islam an actual Muslim group considering they think that white people were created by a black alien
Yeah... that's one of my bugbears, Malcolm and MLK both advocated for violence. They just disagreed on the proper application of violence to further Civil Rights/Black Liberation
@@MalikF15 yeah if you actually read the Quran… it’s pretty disturbing.
Hi Chris. Just wanted to mention that Australia TV interviewed Neil Armstrong a few months before he passed away and it was fabulous. You could tell Armstrong was thoroughly enjoying himself throughout the interview. Highly recommend you, or anyone else interested to take the time to watch it.
I personally think Das Boot is the most balanced war movie i've ever seen. what I mean is that it has the moments of drama, suspense, triumph, humor, ugliness, humanity, honesty and desperation. It doesn't glorify anything or try to present any sort of political of historical narrative it's just honest and directly shows what being on a U boat was like which was something pretty unusual for the time. Most war movies pre 1990's definitely glorified a lot of their stories as "the good o'l boys winning the day" or "They did it despite the foolishness of their leaders and officers" but Das Boot is the total opposite of that.
you don't need dead people in the frame for a good war movie
The most sympathetic Nazis on film?
One I would recommended is a movie called "the unknown soldier (2017)" it's also a mini series. It follows a Finnish infantry unit during the continuation war (1941-1944) against the soviets. It's a pretty accurate description of the fighting in that campaign. Myself would recommend the mini series more as its more detailed.
"Goodfellas" trivia: when Henry is introducing the audience to a restaurant full of mob guys, one of the people mentions is Michael Franzese, then a capo in the Columbo family.
What I love too is that Michael has spoke about this since, and cannot understand why he is mentioned. Though admitting he’d met Henry Hill as a wise guy he never hung out with their crew like it is somewhat portrayed as in the movie
@@conorhilz6039, agreed. It does not make sense that he would be hanging out with crews from another crime family.
Martin Scorsese, he did not fucking direct Godfather😂
@@chrisbaker9641, no kidding.
Great video (as always) Chris. Really enjoyed it. I’m surprised though that they didn’t have ‘Waterloo’ on there (the film that is, and not the song)!
"Shake Hands with the Devil" is a brilliantly written book by General Romeo Dallaire which is a must read if you want to learn more about Rwanda and the futile peacekeeping efforts to stop the slaughter. Really sheds a light on everything Dallaire (colonel at the time) struggled against regarding the UN's unwillingness to send more support to stop the suffering.
Being in Rwanda the slaughter gave Dallaire's failed efforts as leader of the UN forces to prevent the slaughter ended up giving him severe PTSD unsurprisingly. Nick Nolte plays a fictionalized version of him as Colonel Oliver in Hotel Rwanda.
"The Imitation Game" is disgraceful. They claim to adapt the biography but if they even read it they choose to flip significant statements in order to tell a hollywood movie e.g. they depict Turing naming the Bombe "Christopher" in a glorious gesture of honoring his childhood friend, while Hodges makes a big point out of the fact that Turing used his belief in the human soul to cope with Christopher's death. His work on artificial intelligence, made him abandon this belief, realizing this person is truely gone.
But more importantly they needlessly insert a Russian spy into the story and depict Turing deciding to aid him to conceal his sexuality. Depicting Turing as a traitor to his country and validating the reasoning used by the british government to justify the supervision and horrible traitement of Turing that ultimately drove him into suicide.
Thirdly, their attempt to represent his theoretical work is horrible. They use statements like "This is like solving the hardest crossword puzzle".
The 1996 movie "Breaking the Code" with Derek Jacobi did everything a miilion times better. They actually include a beautiful six minute monologue where Turing explains the mathematical foundation of his early work. (You can find the monologue on youtube v=gV67Sj2jkVg)
Yeah, I think Benedict Cumberbatch gave such a compelling portrayal of Turing that it distracted most viewers from the fact that film itself was closer to Braveheart than Schindler's List.
Of course Schindler's list is in a category all of its own but I still find Schindler's list and imitation game and braveheart to ALL be excellent movies.
20:55: Scorsese didn't direct "The Godfather." Francis Ford Coppola did.
(EDIT: And I saw you correct yourself. Excellent!)
The Longest Day is credited as being the film that saved MGM from bankruptcy. The film was shot during a major delay part way through filming Cleopatra, starring Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. MGM nearly went bust filming Cleopatra.
Der Untergang is amazing. A must see if you haven't seen it
I'll watch it as soon as Steiner gets his counterattack going
They are actually quite wrong about the movie hotel rwanda. I had to read a whole novel in my College African History class, that is about one of the Tutsi refugees in the hotel, and how his characterization of Paul Russabagina is almost the complete opposite of what is depicted on film. The filmmakers essentially only told the story from his perspective, and it turns out he was using the hotel for profit had a lot of shady ties to Hutu militant groups and treated refugees horribly. The filmmakers essentially did not speak to anyone except him, though the accuracy of the depiction of the genocide still makes the movie worth watching but i would not put it on this list as it portrays Paul as a similar person to Schindler
In The Longest Day one of the actors standing behind Richard Todd is his own brother playing Richard Todd. In A Bridge Too Far one of the actors standing around Dirk Bogarde as General Browning is playing Captain Dirk Bogarde who was Browning's Dutch Liaison officer.
Stalingrad is excellent. I have a german friend whose grandfather was a young soldier sent there, it broke him - although he survived the war he never recovered and was haunted until he died.
The Big Short is magnificent and all the actors are great in it, the cameos are used well. Lawrence of Arabia is a masterpiece even with the flaws. Spotlight is definitely frightening but so well made. Das Boot is hauntingly gritty and oppressive, another masterpiece and the longer cut is a must. A personal favourite of mine is A Bridge too Far, for many years I would watch it with my father at least once a year - he was a member of 9 Squadron RE in the early 60's so it had a special place for him since Market Garden was one of the units operations in WW2.
Wow. Do you know if your friends grandfather happened to have got out in time, or did he spend years in the USSR?
@@jimb9063 Sadly we talked about it many years ago and are no longer in touch. I only remember him saying his grandfather hardly spoke and due to the food issues at stalingrad his grandfathers stomach was also badly damaged from eating raw potatoes so he had trouble eating most food the rest of his life.
@@vereybowring Thanks. It's not unusual for people not to talk about traumatic experiences, so WW2, the "Eastern Front", and Stalingrad in particular? Can't begin to imagine.
No way. Where is waterloo on that list? The movie with rod steiger and christopher plummer as wellington is the most historicly description of the late years of napoleon and the battle itself.
Agree! Definitely should be on the list
Hey VTH huge fan been one for years, just wanted to say thank you for helping me through some rough times, and keeping that spark alive for my love for history
"Conspiracy" recreates the Wannsee Conference. It is shot in real time and the dialogue is from the record of that event.
It is really chilling to see highly educated men calmly planning one of histories greatest crimes.
It's probably one of the most excruciatingly historically accurate movies ever made but not too many know of it.
@@russell2al1 The Offhanded way they talked about creating the Holocaust was so Depressing!
Such a chilling and great movie - Brannah is so so good at being outwardly pleasant but having such evil intentions. I wish more people knew about it!!!
Conspiracy was even shot in the real location where the Wannsee Conference actually took place. That location actually still exists.
11:25 the Penteton actually has a whole department (Defense Department's Entertainment Media Office) dedicated towards working alongside Hollywood
Of course, that means everything about the military has to be portrayed in a positive light
Malcolm x is a movie about growing as a person and how your perspective change with experience
Well said. I just put up a comment elsewhere here essentially saying the same thing. Considering its epic scope, "Malcolm X" is a surprisingly intimate film about one man's struggle to retain his soul. It's a character study on a huge canvas. I think it's a masterpiece.
@@mcnultyssobercompanion6372 100%
Master and commander is my all time favorite movie I watch at least every year
great choice.
@@VloggingThroughHistory and I agree with you what you said about it being fictional story in the history accurate timeline. Which, Ridley Scott should learn something to do 😂 maybe his movies would be more better. Let's say Napoleon, if it was a movie on Napoleonic wars with out Napoleon centered, would've been more epic than what ever the Napoleon was. Don't get me wrong I did liked the costumes and scenes of the accuracy but man did he butcher Napoleon.
@@IRFSI Scott remains one of my favorite directors, even with the historical blemishes. IMO Napoleon failed not (or at least, "not only") because Ridley Scott played fast and loose with the history (lol, I was expecting that)...but rather on the more fundamental level of simply telling an engaging, coherent story that grabs the viewer. Something he did do very well with the "also-somewhat-history-adjacent" Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, and it worked. But with Napoleon, Scott's breathtakingly vivid visual spectacle (always his strongest suit) finally just wasn't enough to compensate for a script that just fell flat. shrug. (and obtw...the fact that the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby ALSO couldn't help save that thing highlights just how really inadequate that script was).
@@cragnamorra he does historical movies good I love his films. Just napoleon wasn't exactly what I expected. But we can see what he delivers with gladiator 2.
Mine too buddy, mine too. Just an incredible atmosphere.
15:20 On Rwanda, I emphatically reccommend the book "Shake Hands With The Devil" by Romeo Dalliare. He was the commander of the UN peacekeeping mission that was on the ground during the massacre, if I recall correctly.
Thanks for the tip Chris on the subscribe thing. I not had a problem with yours or Mr Terry but tbh I have seen video recommendations on channels I use to watch and was subscribed to (admittedly not watched them in over a year) but have been unsubscribed to. I get that YT probably has to clean up junk (speaking as someone that works as a Data Engineer) but it's still surprising and a bit unfair because I missed those channels so seeing their videos made me go...huh...
Keep up the work Chris and I'll be looking out for your Europe trip notifications too as I might go. Sending wishes from the UK 🇬🇧
The heads up is much appreciated, I was wondering why I was seeing less of your videos. Subbed again 👍🏼
"Hotel Rwanda" was a good film. Given the events of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, there was a great reluctance to get involved in Rwanda less than a year later. To be fair, I am not sure what would have been a practical way to prevent the massacre.
@@cragnamorra, Ridley Scott made some changes when adapting the Mark Bowden book, but most of the guys I know who served in the military during that time period say the movie got it right overall.
I met Jim Lovell when I was 8 years old back in 2004 in Lake Forest near Chicago. The first thing he said to me was "I bet you thought I looked like Tom Hanks". Highly intelligent and amazing individual.
My favorite historically accurate movie is Star Wars. Imagine where we'd be if the Empire didnt fall.
probably fine since it happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
Richard Todd in The Longest Day played his own commanding officer in the same operation Todd participated in.
It's shame that Finnish cinema doesn't have reach almost at all.
I truly think "Unknown Soldier" to be the most accurate war flick ever made and by watching few reactions from vets to it, they have seemed to agree.
Tali-Ihantala 1944, The Winter War ,Beyond the Front Line are some other great Finnish war movies to watch.
A few things about some of the movies and actors in them. For Apollo 13, the mission control set they made on the first floor was so realistic that Jerry Bostick, a mission controller from the Apollo era, went looking for the elevator because the ACTUAL room was on the third floor. Also, Jim Lovell took Tom Hanks to his home in Huston, taking longer than because Jim took longer than necessary doing test pilot stunts and Tom soaked it up. For the launch sequence, one of the Apollo astronauts asked where they found the footage like it was a lost archive. One final thing on Apollo 13, not related to history, but Ron Howard's daughter asked him how he did the water in the re-entry sequence and she used his advice to give a nod to him in The Mandalorian re-entry sequence she did. As fir accuracy, they had to take some artistic license or it would be a snorefest nobody understood, so it's one of the movies like Patton, wgere you said it was necessary. As to Sir Ben Kingsley in Schindler's list, i forget which channel it's on but he went over his roles in movies, and in the case of Schindler's List and Gandhi how he became cast as those characters.
I think two movies that I would put on this list would be Grave of the Fireflies and In This Corner of the World. They are both Japanese animated films about civilian life during WW2, with the former focusing on the firebombing of Kobe and the latter focusing on Kure and Hiroshima. Both are phenomenal films, and much like a lot of the other top entries, they fall in the category of must watches that you’ll never want to watch again
Especially for Americans, and especially for Christians who take “love your enemy” seriously.
Hard things to watch, though.
I'll add Barefoot Gen to those two films. the Bombing of Hiroshima and aftermath from the perspective of an 8 year old survivor, who would go on to write the manga the movie was based on
If you haven't seen "City of God, you should. It is a fantastic film (but hard and brutal), and deserves to be on a list of best pictures, period (it is #25 on IMDB's toplist...).
That was a damn fine WatchMojo list. Sometimes they really do knock it out the park with their picks. Honorable mention to a lot of the pronunciation by the narrator; quite a bit of it was spot on.
I would put "Letters from Iwo Jima" on the list. "Waterloo" has some minor inaccuracies, but they are i. m. o. forgivable.
I’ve heard good things about A Night to Remember, Gangs of New York, and the Deer Hunter.
Chris, you make an excellent point about how such movies are much better with fictional characters and events within a larger historical backdrop. One such movie that's one of my all-time favorites is Cross of Iron... Which needed to be on this list too. If you haven't seen it, find it! 1977... Was out in theaters when Star Wars came out. Depicts a platoon of German soldiers just trying to survive on the Russian front (specifically the Crimea), with James Coburn as their senior NCO, and Maxmillian Schell as their idiotic glory-hound of a Captain. Also with James Mason and David Warner. I got to watch the movie with a German veteran who fought in the east (SS Wiking division), and he said for him it captured the essence of what it was like more than any other movie. Essential viewing for us German WWII reenactors 🙂
I think my favorite thing about Gettysburg is they really got the emotional aspect of it.
Most of the high ups had fought along side each other previously and were friends with each other.
City of God is a great movie and it really sticks with you. There is an infamous scene with child violence that will make you feel incredibly uncomfortable.
Enemy at the Gates is so inaccurate even from the premise. It’s based off the journal of a Soviet Sniper who in the film is depicted as illiterate. It’s as blatantly anti-Soviet as you can get.
Having read Cornelius Ryan's book, it's clear the filmmakers focused on Zaitsev and took way too many liberties, namely in the portrayal of the NKVD and the Soviet bureaucracy in general. Krushchev was just a political officer and had no authority in ordering soldiers around, and the infamous "not one step back" order had been rescinded by the time of Stalingrad. Plus the "every other man gets a rifle" scene that Call of Duty would copy the same year.
But it's a great movie...
I'm so glad Apollo 13 got the top spot; it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Lincoln is another. And I agree; after viewing it, I had the sensation of having seen the actual man, President Lincoln. Truly a defining performance!
42:25 That look says so much that, as a fellow dad, I caught right on to. You're doing great Chris, keep on keepin' on
Some really good movies. I agree about Come and See. My favorites that are missing are Matewan & Eight Men Out - both John Sayles movies.
My favourite piece of actual history overcoming popular belief is in Lincoln, At the start, we see Lincoln sat on a porch listening, with pained indulgence, to a soldier reciting the entire Gettysburg Address. Modern Amereican historians idolise the speech to the point of hagiography, Lincoln himself,thugh hated it with a passion pretty much from the monent he finished deliveiring it. He famously told his good friend Walt Leman that plough won't scour" indiciating that he thought he had delicered a drreadful oration that did not do the job. A very small and understated detail that is absolutely historic.
As a reporter for a mid-sized Midwest newspaper in 1995, Neil Armstrong, a friend of our publisher, was invited to be the guest speaker at our Veterans Day observance. I had the honor of interviewing him and in all my 78 years on the planet, I have never met a man more humble, more approachable than Armstrong. I of course persisted in trying to get him to talk about the moon landing. But he wanted to talk about the brave men and women at NASA who made his flight possible and the support of his family..
Not sure how accurate it was, but “free state of jones” is excellent
I would add two pictures:
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1959) - about the Titanic
SAN FRANCISCO (1936) - the 1906 earthquake and fire
My husbands grandfather was a radio operator at Iwo Jima. He died before he was born. It’s a shame we never got to meet him and talk to him about his experiences. I mean the ones he would be ok sharing. I know many guys cant share because it is too much for them. I have 2 cousins that wouldn’t talk about their time in Vietnam.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
The Bounty
Blackhawk Down
Chapter 27 (John Lenon's assassin)
Joyeux Noel (Christmas Truce WW1)
Letters from Iwo Jima
I heard that
The Lion in Winter is pretty good
Glory?
Lincoln is my favorite historical movie. It's amazing how accurate Spielberg got it, compared to Napoleon.
In A Bridge Too Far Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks is actually in the front row of the briefing room during the scene watching Edward Fox play him. Wild stuff.
One of the most underrated historical WWII docs on Netflix is Five Who Came Back if were talking about good Netflix historical movies
All the Presidents Men is one of my favorite movies. I love that part of history. True fact, my husband and BIL were born on the day Nixon resigned.
Chris, definitely add “The Big Short” to your watchlist. It’s fantastic.
I have more hours sleeping while the Godfather is playing than actually watching it.
So true!
I think of the Battle of Stalingrad more as a fracas or a kerfuffle than a skirmish.
A bit of the ol’ fisticuffs, that’s all.
I fully agree with the idea that historical movies are better off being fictional stories within a certain historical time/context/event. Historical films will always be fiction anyway. They have to be. Dialogue, performances, facial expressions, etc, will always be inserted in ways that can guarantee a lack of accuracy.
I think it’s great to insert fictional characters into that world, and tell fictional stories within them, with a diligent eye for accuracy. It’s not tried enough.
The entire set of Patrick O’Brien books (Aubrey / Maturin series “Master & Commander”) feels as if you are reading a historical narrative. So brilliant! One of my all time favorites.
Shake hands with the devil is honestly a movie that should've been mentioned; another film depicting the Rwandan Genocide, but it fully tells the tale of Romeo Dellaire and the Canadians who tried to save so many Tutsi's and Hutu's from death. It was made with the help of the real General, Romeo Dellaire, and was filmed in Rwanda and utilizes real footage from that horrible event.
I was stationed on Okinawa from '01-'03, and had the privledge of spending a day on Iwo Jima. It was a pretty incredible experience. Standing on the beach, and trying to walk inland and up hills through that volcanic ash made me appreciate even more what those guys accomplished.
23:42 That really affected on view of Black Hawk Down which was my favorite war movie as a kid
You should react to "I Watched Every President’s Favorite Movie...(Ranked) ". Its cool to see what every presidents favorite movie was
I would HIGHLY recommend The Autobiography of Malcolm X. IMO he is one of the great Americans. The arc of his life is insane. From a criminal life to self taught Intellectual, and one of the most eloquent speakers of his time. He goes through so many changes. Like RFK, MLK, and others of his time I wonder what could have been had he been able to live a full life. An amazing human being that burned so brightly in a short time.
11:50 Careful! They aren't pilots in the navy, they are 'aviators' lol
i would love to see a video about your top 10 historical movies!
I would say Oppenheimer and the devils arithmetic. The devils arithmetic being about a girl who has a Jewish family and she accidently travels back in time and lives through the holocaust. Through her grandma's life. It was so beautiful and of course Oppenheimer
The Big Short is real good. Does a great job with “boring” info and making it much more digestible. Highly recommend but get through RDR 2 first 😂
I paused the video and spent a minute trying to figure out if The Big Short actually a drama. Tonally, I'm not sure it's all that different from The Office. Really great film though. I recently watched that and Margin Call for the first time and was thoroughly entertained by both.
Speaking about Zodiac (quite possibly my favourite movie): it is a great movie, and I highly recommend. But I think they undersold just how well of a companion piece it is to the book. The book by Robert Graysmith is a phenomenal work of journalism and great at getting the facts across, the movie is great at getting the parts between the lines across. It's a wonderful tale of obsession and I can't recommend enough. It's not super bloody (especially for a serial killer film)
History Buffs did an amazing review of Tora! Tora! Tora! I’m sure we’d all love to see you react to that one!
Excelent video once again Sir! Thank you so much
Speaking of Stalingrad, there is a lesser known movie called "Attack and Retreat" (english version) or "Italiani brava gente" (Italian version) from 1964 which tells exactly the same story as Stalingrad, but with Italians from the 8th Italian army in Russia. I swear Stalingrad is the same script slightly rewritten to replace the Italians with Germans. Peter Falk plays one of the characters.
La Rochelle mentioned! I live in the sister city, New Rochelle
I expected Hacksaw Ridge to be on here
Good but not as good as most of these movies
I think it's a really good point to make that films can be accurate in one aspect, like Rusesabagina's story in Hotel Rwanda, but sadly lacking in another, like the UN peacekeeping force and Romeo Dallaire's efforts to prevent the genocide.
One unique movie I really enjoyed was “The Wind Rises.” by studio Ghibli. Unique in the fact that it’s an anime that tells that tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of famous Zero fighter. And yes, there are creative liberties taken at times, but I think it’s really cool because most anime movies by nature take on a genre of fiction and fantasy.
I think your comments about sometimes not getting the history totally accurate, but still capturing the essence of the times or events is a good point. Or that the best way to tell about a time or event is through fictional stories. Two movies that have had some debate about their "historical accuracy" still seem to have value in teaching about times and events: The Killing Fields and Rabbit-Proof Fence. Anyway, great job on the videos, keep 'em coming!
I feel like United 93 is a movie that , as you mentioned, is a must watch but you can only watch it once. I feel like it doesn’t get enough praise just because of how difficult it is to watch
Great point about films requiring internal consistency to be able to best capture the feeling of the history for modern audiences.
In Deadwood for HBO there are a lot of shocking events and behavior, but they faced a choice between historically accurate foul language with its ‘horn-swaggling’ and using more modern words. The use of highly abrasive modern language was truer to the history because of the affect on the audience and gave us the characters who lived on the edge much more directly without the feeling of anachronism.
Also for veracity of feeling before watching the last episode I drank two long shooters of straight whiskey and ten minutes later had a strong black coffee, which it seemed to be about how half the town got sustenance. Recommended.
Great example with Deadwood.
No way Letcher County! I grew up in Buchanan County, VA. About 10 minutes away from Pike County, KY!!!
Big Short is a much-watch, it's entertaining and informative!
Don’t forget Margot Robbie in the bath scene ❤️
Earliest I’ve caught one of your videos. Gonna take this opportunity to request that you react to History Buffs’ video on Master and Commander. Great movie and very accurate like the video says.
City of God is one of my all-time favorite movie. An unforgettable masterpiece.
Definitely still subbed and the bell is on! Keep up the good work my man!
Highly, highly recommend The Big Short. One of my favorite movies of the last decade. It blew me away that the guy who made Anchorman and Step Brothers came out with something that serious.
waterloo and letters to iwo jima shouldve definetively been on this list, could also make an argument for charge of the light brigade
Black Hawk Down! How the Ridley has fallen... Also responsible for The Duellists. In his directorial debut, he delivered one of the great Napoleonic versillamatudes of all time.
That Brazilian film reminded me of a Colombian film “ vendedora de rosas” which follows this girl in a poor neighborhood in Medellin