Movie Trailers

• Directors: Allan Dwan
• Producers: Edmund Grainger
• Writers: Harry Brown, James Edward Grant
• Genres: Action, Drama, War, Romance
• Actors: John Wayne, John Agar, Forrest Tucker, Adele Mara

Tough-as-nails career Marine Sergeant John Stryker (John Wayne) is greatly disliked by the men of his squad, particularly the combat replacements, for the rigorous training he puts them through. He is especially despised by Private Peter Conway (John Agar), the arrogant, college-educated son of an officer Stryker served under and admired, and Private Al Thomas (Forrest Tucker), who blames him for his demotion.

When Stryker leads his squad in the invasion of Tarawa, the men begin to appreciate his methods, except Conway, who considers him brutal and unfeeling when he apparently abandons a wounded comrade to the enemy. During the battle, Thomas goofs off when he goes to get ammunition for two comrades, stopping to savor a cup of coffee. As a result, he returns too late – the two Marines, now out of ammunition, are overrun; Hellenpolis is killed, Bass badly wounded. When Stryker discovers the truth, he forces Thomas into a fistfight. This is seen by a passing officer, but Thomas unexpectedly gets Stryker out of trouble for hitting a subordinate by claiming that he was being taught judo. His conscience ravaging him, Thomas breaks down and abjectly apologizes for his dereliction.

Stryker shows his soft side while on leave in Honolulu. He picks up a bargirl and goes to her apartment. He becomes suspicious when he hears somebody in the next room, but when he investigates, all he finds is a hungry baby boy she is supporting the best way she can. He gives the girl (the widow of a marine) all his money and leaves.

…

Stryker’s squad fights in the battle for Iwo Jima, witnessing the iconic flag raising on Mount Suribachi. (The flag used was the actual one raised on Mount Suribachi after the battle. It was loaned by the US Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia.) Afterwards, while the men are resting during a lull in the fighting, Stryker is killed by a sniper. His men find a letter on him, addressed to his son, saying all the things he wanted to say, but never got around to.

• Directors: Ben Stiller
• Producers: Stuart Cornfeld, Eric McLeod, Ben Stiller
• Writers: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux, Etan Cohen
• Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, War
• Actors: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Brandon T Jackson, Jay Baruchel

During the filming of hook-handed Vietnam veteran John “Four Leaf” Tayback’s memoir, Tropic Thunder, the actors—fading action hero Tugg Speedman, five-time Academy Award-winning Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, rapper Alpa Chino, and drug-addicted comedian Jeff Portnoy—behave unreasonably (with the exception of newcomer supporting actor Kevin Sandusky). Rookie director Damien Cockburn is unable to control the actors during the filming of a large war scene, and just five days into shooting the production is reported to be a month behind schedule. Cockburn is ordered by studio executive Les Grossman to get filming back on track.

Acting on Tayback’s advice, Cockburn drops the actors into the middle of the jungle, where he has installed hidden cameras and special-effect explosions rigged so he can film “guerrilla-style”. The actors have guns that fire blanks, along with a map and scene listing that will guide them to a helicopter waiting at the end of the jungle route. Unbeknownst to the actors and the production, the group have been dropped in the middle of the Golden Triangle, the home of the heroin-producing Flaming Dragon gang. Shortly after the group set off, the five actors are stunned to see Cockburn blown up by a land mine. Speedman, believing Cockburn faked his death, persuades Chino, Portnoy, and Sandusky that Cockburn is alive and that they are still shooting the film. Lazarus is unconvinced that Cockburn is alive, but joins the other actors in their trek through the jungle.

…

The four actors locate Tayback, Underwood, and Speedman and cross a bridge rigged to explode to get to Underwood’s helicopter. Speedman asks to remain behind with the gang which he considers his “family”, but quickly returns with Flaming Dragon in pursuit. Tayback detonates the bridge, allowing Speedman to reach safety, but as the helicopter takes off, the gang fires a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) at the machine. Peck unexpectedly stumbles out of the jungle carrying a TiVo box and throws it in the path of the RPG, saving them all. The actors and crew return to Hollywood, where footage from the hidden cameras is compiled into a feature film, Tropic Blunder, which becomes a major critical and box office hit.

• Directors: Marvin J Chomsky
• Producers: Robert Berger
• Writers: Gerald Green
• Genres: Drama, History, Romance, War
• Actors: Tom Bell, Joseph Bottoms, Tovah Feldshuh, Marius Goring, Rosemary Harris, Tony Haygarth, Ian Holm, Lee Montague, Michael Moriarty, Deborah Norton, George Rose, Robert Stephens, Meryl Streep, Sam Wanamaker, David Warner, Fritz Weaver, James Woods

Holocaust tells the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of the Weiss family of German Jews, and from the point of view of a rising member of the SS, who gradually becomes a merciless, bloodthirsty war criminal. Holocaust highlighted numerous important events which occurred up to and during World War II, such as Kristallnacht, the creation of Jewish ghettos and later, the use of gas chambers. The series ultimately attempted to portray the atrocity of this genocide to viewers.

• Directors: J Lee Thompson
• Producers: Carl Foreman
• Writers: Alistair MacLean, Carl Foreman
• Genres: Action, Drama, War, Adventure
• Actors: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker

The film opens with an aerial view of the Greek Islands, and a narrator (James Robertson Justice), setting the scene. The year is 1943, and 2000 British soldiers are holed up on the island of Keros in the Aegean near Turkey. Rescue by the Royal Navy is impossible because of massive guns on the nearby island of Navarone. Time is short, because the Germans are expected to launch an assault on the British forces, to draw Turkey into the war on the Axis’ side.

Efforts to blast the guns by air have proven fruitless, so a team has been hastily assembled to sail to Navarone and blow up the guns. Led by Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), they are Capt. Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck); Andrea Stavros (Anthony Quinn), a Colonel in the defeated Greek army; Corporal Miller (David Niven), an explosives expert; Greek-American street tough Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren); and “Butcher” Brown (Stanley Baker), an engineer and expert knife fighter.

Disguised as Greek fishermen on a decrepit boat, they sail across the Aegean Sea. They are intercepted by a German boat and boarded. On Mallory’s signal, they attack and kill all the Germans and blow up the patrol boat. Afterwards, Mallory confides to Franklin that Stavros has sworn to kill him after the war, because he was inadvertently responsible for the deaths of Stavros’ wife and children.

…

Mallory and Miller are taken on board the destroyer, while Stavros, who has fallen in love with Maria, decides to return to Navarone with her and shakes hands with Mallory, having given up his planned vengeance when Mallory risked his life to save him.

• Directors:
• Producers: Dan Maag, Thomas Reisser, Roland Pellegrino
• Writers:
• Genres: Action, Adventure, Biography, Drama, Romance, War
• Actors: Joseph Fiennes, Til Schweiger, Lena Headey

In 1906, a young Baron Manfred von Richthofen (Matthias Schweighöfer) is out hunting deer when he encounters an aeroplane overhead. Enchanted, he follows it on horseback, waving his arms like a bird.

Ten years later, Lieutenant Richthofen is serving as a fighter pilot with the Imperial German Air Service along the Western Front. After dropping a wreath over the funeral of an Allied pilot, Richthofen and his fellow pilots Werner Voss (Til Schweiger)and Friedrich Sternberg encounter a squadron of enemy planes led by Captain Lanoe Hawker. Richthofen shoots down Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown (Joseph Fiennes). After pulling Brown out of the wreckage of his plane, Richthofen assists Nurse Käte Otersdorf (Lena Headey) with applying a tourniquet to the Canadian’s wounded leg.

Later, after successfully shooting down and killing “the notorious Captain Hawker,” Richthofen awarded the Pour le Merite and promoted to command his own private aerial squadron. There, he is soon joined by his brother Lothar von Richthofen. He orders his men to avoid killing enemy pilots unless absolutely necessary and is enraged when Lothar deliberately strafes and kills a British pilot who has already been forced into a landing.

Later, during an aerial dogfight, Richthofen again encounters Captain Brown, who has escaped from a German POW camp after being nursed by Käte. Both are forced to ditch their planes in no man’s land and share a friendly drink. Brown expresses hope that they will not meet again until after the war is over and tells Richthofen that Käte has feelings for him. When Richthofen asks how he can be so sure, Brown retorts, “She bitched about you for weeks.”

…

The camera pans to a funeral wreath left by the Royal Flying Corps, “To our friend and enemy, Manfred von Richtofen.”

• Directors: John Wayne, Ray Kellogg, John Gaddis
• Producers: Michael Wayne
• Writers: James Lee Barrett, Robin Moore
• Genres: Action, Drama, War
• Actors: John Wayne, David Janssen, Jim Hutton, Aldo Ray, George Takei, Luke Askew, Mike Henry

At Fort Bragg, newspaper reporter George Beckworth (David Janssen) is at a Special Forces briefing about the American military involvement in the war in Vietnam. The briefing (at Gabriel Demonstration Area, named for SGT Jimmy Gabriel, first SF soldier killed in Vietnam) includes a demonstration and explanation of the whys and wherefores of participating in that Asian war.

Skeptical civilians and journalists are told that multinational Communism is what the U.S. will be fighting in Vietnam; proof: weapons and equipment, captured from North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong guerrillas, originating in Communist Russia, Communist Czechoslovakia, and Communist China. Despite that, Beckworth remains skeptical about the value of intervening in Vietnam’s civil war. When asked by Green Beret COL Mike Kirby (John Wayne) if he had ever been to Vietnam, reporter Beckworth replies that he had not, but then accepts the soldier’s challenge, and agrees to go and bear witness.

In South Vietnam, Beckworth arrives at an American Army camp where he witnesses the humanitarian aspect (irrigation ditches, bandages, candy for children) of the Special Forces mission. Still, he remains skeptical of the U.S.’s need to be there. He changes his mind after a ferocious North Vietnamese Army attack upon the SF camp, admitting he probably will be fired from the newspaper for filing a story supporting the American war.

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Near the end of the story, Beckworth is briefly seen, carrying his portable typewriter and a duffel bag, joining a troop headed for the front.

• Directors: Akira Kurosawa, Ishiro Honda
• Producers: Francis Ford Coppola, Akira Kurosawa, George Lucas, Tomoyuki Tanaka
• Writers: Akira Kurosawa, Masato Ide
• Genres: Drama, History, War
• Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai

The film opens with a shot of what appears to be three identical Shingens. One really is Shingen, the second is his brother, Nobukado. The third man is a thief whom Nobukado accidentally came across and spared from crucifixion, believing the thief’s uncanny resemblance to Shingen would prove useful. Shingen agrees that he would prove useful as a double and they decide to use the thief as a kagemusha.

Shingen’s army has besieged a castle of Tokugawa Ieyasu. When Shingen visits the battlefield to hear a mysterious nightly flute player, he is shot by a sniper. Mortally wounded, he orders his generals to keep his death a secret for three years. Shingen later dies while being carried over a mountain pass, with only a small group of witnesses.

Nobukado presents the thief to the generals and contrives a plan to have this kagemusha impersonate Shingen full-time. At first, even the thief is unaware of Shingen’s death, until he tries to break into a huge jar, believing it to contain treasure, and instead finds Shingen’s preserved corpse. After this act, the generals decide they cannot trust the thief and set him free.

The Takeda leaders secretly dump the jar with Shingen’s corpse into Lake Suwa. Spies working for Tokugawa and his ally, Oda Nobunaga witness the disposal of the jar, and suspect that Shingen has died and go to report the death. The thief, however, overhearing the spies, goes to offer his services hoping to be of some use to Shingen in death. The Takeda clan preserves the cover-up by saying they were making an offering of sake to the god of the lake.

…

In full control of the Takeda army, Katsuyori leads an ill-advised attack against Oda Nobunaga, who controls Kyoto, resulting in the Battle of Nagashino. Wave after wave of cavalry and infantry are cut down by volleys of matchlock fire, effectively wiping out the Takeda. During this scene, much of the battle is offscreen. Although the charge of the Takeda army and the volley of fire from Nobunaga’s soldiers is seen, the actual death of the Takeda men is not shown until the battle is over and the viewer sees a vast scene of carnage as more time is given to the aftermath. (In reality, the clan continued under Katsuyori’s leadership for years after the battle). The kagemusha, who has followed the Takeda army, witnesses the slaughter. In a final show of loyalty, he takes up a lance and makes a futile charge against Oda’s fortifications, ultimately dying for the Takeda clan. The final image is of the kagemusha’s bullet-riddled body being washed away down a river, next to the flag of the Takeda clan.

• Directors: Jean Jacques Annaud
• Producers: Jean Jacques Annaud, John D Schofield
• Writers: William Craig, Jean Jacques Annaud, Alain Godard
• Genres: Drama, History, Thriller, War
• Actors: Jude Law, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Joseph Fiennes, Bob Hoskins, Gabriel Thompson

The story focuses on the exploits of Vassili Zaitsev (a character based on the real-life Vasily Zaytsev and played by Jude Law), a Ural peasant who was taught how to hunt and shoot by his grandfather, now fighting on the Eastern Front of World War II. A Red Army soldier, he is traveling in a train’s cattle truck along with other soldiers and civilians, where he notices a young woman (Rachel Weisz) before the train is converted into a military convoy headed for Stalingrad, a city that is now under attack by the German Army. Upon arriving on the city’s outskirts, the soldiers attempt to cross the Volga on unprotected river barges, bombarded by German Stuka dive bombers and artillery, resulting in many casualties. When the survivors disembark on the other side, only half of them are given Mosin-Nagant rifles; while the rest, among them Vassili, are given only a five round clip of ammunition. As their comrades are shot down, the men with the clips are to use the dead men’s rifles. In a hopeless charge against the well-armed Germans, the Red Army soldiers are massacred both by the enemy, and by several Soviet NKVD machine gunners who cut down anyone who attempts to retreat.

…

Two months later, it is revealed that Stalingrad is liberated and Zaitsev finds Tania in a field hospital, safely evacuated and recovering.

• Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer
• Producers: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, Peter Safran
• Writers: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer
• Genres: Comedy, War
• Actors: Sean Maguire, Carmen Electra, Diedrich Bader, Ken Davitian, Method Man, Nicole Parker

The film opens with a Spartan elder inspecting a talking baby ogre. The baby vomits on the inspector and is then discarded with a punt off the hill. Next, he inspects a Vietnamese baby, and Brangelina instantly adopts it. Baby Leonidas is then inspected, having a six-pack, biceps, and beard from birth. He is accepted as a Spartan and prepared for kinghood through his childhood training, from fighting his grandmother to enduring torture. Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is then cast out into the wild, and survives the harsh winter while killing a giant dancing penguin, who defecates on his face. Returning a king for his inauguration ceremony, Leonidas sees Margo (Carmen Electra) dancing and asks her to marry him, to which she responds by giving him the combination to her chastity belt.

Years later, Leonidas is training when Captain (Kevin Sorbo) informs him that a Persian messenger has arrived. The messenger has come to present Xerxes’ demands for Sparta’s submission. Leonidas arrives to greet the messenger in the Spartan way (high-fives for the women and open mouth tongue kisses for the men). After growing angry with both the messenger’s disrespect and making out with his wife, Leonidas kicks him, the messenger’s bodyguards, and then several other people he simply disliked, ranging from Britney Spears (Nicole Parker), Ryan Seacrest, and Kevin Federline (Nick Steele) to Sanjaya Malakar (Tony Yalda) and the American Idol judges into “the pit of death”. As Leonidas walks off he turns to a column that has a switch that reads “Garbage Disposal”, and flips the switch causing the celebrities to spiral to their “death”.

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The film ends with a musical number set to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” performed on American Idol by all of the characters in the film. It also spoofs Britney Spears’ VMA comeback performance.

• Directors: Edward Zwick
• Producers: Freddie Fields
• Writers: Kevin Jarre
• Genres: Drama, History, War
• Actors: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman, Andre Braugher

Captain Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) leads his company of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment in an attack on Confederates posted along the Hagerstown Pike at the Battle of Antietam, on September 17, 1862. The regiment’s Lieutenant Colonel (Dwight Wilder) is killed immediately in front of him, and the attack is beaten back with heavy losses. Shaw is wounded slightly in the neck, falls between two dead soldiers, and passes out. He is awakened by a black gravedigger named John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman). Later, while on leave in Boston, Shaw (whose father was a wealthy and socially prominent abolitionist) is offered command of the first all black regiment authorized to be raised as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 54th Massachusetts. After some hesitation, he agrees, and asks his childhood friend, Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes), to be his second in command. Their first volunteer is another one of Shaw’s friends, an educated, free black man named Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher).

They soon have hundreds of men joining the regiment, including John Rawlins the gravedigger, a proud escaped slave named Trip (Denzel Washington), and a shy, stuttering, free black man named Jupiter Sharts (Jihmi Kennedy). While traveling to the camp, Sharts asks Thomas to teach him how to read. Once at camp, Thomas, Rawlins, Trip, and Sharts all share one tent along with a mute drummer boy. Immediately, Thomas’s and Trip’s relationship gets off to a bad start as they disagree over sleeping space in the tent. Trip ridicules Thomas’s educated and refined manner and, subsequently, Thomas mistakenly patronizes Trip, setting off a pattern of animosity between the two.

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The final credits roll against the background of Saint-Gaudens’s memorial to Shaw and his men that stands today on Boston Common.