Last movie you watched......

Sam Mendes directing, with Roger Deakin behind the camera. What more can you want? I'm hyped.

 

Gotta be better than 1941 and 2012 - maybe even as good as 1984 and 2001.

 

I dunno, WWI movies have never been good. Don't know why, but most of them suck through a straw.
Love WWII movies. Pretty lukewarm on WWI movies.

 

'All Quiet on the Western Front' is one of the greatest movies ever made.

As is 'Paths of Glory.'

Also 'Grand Illusion,' 'Wings,' 'The Big Parade,' 'Lawrence of Arabia,' etc.

 

All. Even the black knight upon rewatch was dumb.

 

Not according to the masses.

 

That's one of the most interesting things to me about movies - it's where art and mass entertainment collide.

 

Yup, same as with writing. I’d rather read a Jeff MacGregor than a Bill Simmons, but that’s not where the main vein resides. Ce la vie.

 

"Lawrence of Arabia" was whole shitload of camels trotting through the desert.

 

Wings? The 1927 movie ? Big fan??
Ok.

So going back a 100 years , you listed five.
Though, I argue Lawrence of Arabia is not a WWI movie.

You could probably list two dozen WWII movies without Googling any of them. And another dozen Vietnam movies.
But Ok ...

I think WWI movies - and Pirate movies - often fail to be big hits or epics, for whatever reason, despite having a seemingly solid time period and adventure to draw from.

 

Pirates of the the Caribbean, dude, is a huge series.

World War I to American imaginations basically took place in France and it was about grappling back and forth for a relatively small plot of land. World War II seems to strike people as more world encompassing and epic, sprawling. Plus it had Nazis and they get people all kinds of riled up. WWI was basically a clusterfuck that started because countries had these weird alliances. The good and evil is a little more murky than it is with WWII.

That said, Gallippoli was also a pretty big WWI movie. WWI probably has as many great novels written about it as WWII, what with Farewell to Arms, the Sun Also Rises (though set after the war), Parade's End, and the works @Azrael noted.

 

Well, I listed six WW I movies that are regarded as historically great and very important to that 100 years of moviemaking you mention.

'Wings' was the first movie ever to win an Academy Award as Best Picture, for example.

There are literally scores of WW I movies that are neither great nor important, but merely good or bad, from Hell's Angels and Sergeant York and Farewell to Arms to Blue Max and Legends of the Fall and War Horse.