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Radio War Nerd EP #425 — War Movies Feast Pt. 1, feat. Will Menaker (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-09 00:48:07
Imported:
2024-02
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Content

Guest: Will Menaker, Chapo Trap House 

Recorded: February 7, 2024

Will from Chapo joins us to talk about the best & worst of war flicks by chronological US wars. In part one of our series: movies about the Revolutionary War through WWII.

Subscribe to the Chapo Trap House podcast. Follow Will on Twitter (forever known as Twitter).

Total time: 1:15:53

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

*

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Order your print or ebook of John Dolan's new book Erdogan Pizza: Dispatches from a Violent & Grotesque World

Files

Comments

J. A.

Alright fine ill do my chores with my failson in crime big dick billy

etienne

🎵let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the looooby to get ourselves a treat 🎶

PostmasterFenian

this ep just makes me want to watch glory or last of the mohicans

Obvious Burner

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly takes place during the Civil War. There is even an officer dying of gangrene who talks about Andersonville.

CR

That scene is so transparently antiwar it's wild Clint let it be.

Mark Ames

Great movie too. I was thinking Fistful of Dollars/Few Dollars More, but yeah they leave the era/context vague, which was probably smart

CR

Now I want to hear John Roderick on to give his perspective having contributed to Friendly Fire until he was Tillman'ed by his cowardly cohosts for the whole Bean Dad bullshit.

Alex Payne

Yesss this is the collab I've been waiting for

PostmasterFenian

ride with the devil is horrible neoconfederate trash. Glory is the best civil war movie

Ian Stockdale

I propose Kubrick's 'Paths of Glory' as an anti-war movie

Sean Enright

The recent Underground Railroad series did a pretty good job of depicting the neo-feudalist planter class lunatics.

CR

Jason Isaac is a constant villain because he’s so goddamn good at it. Fittingly, one of the only American roles he played (on film) was Captain Michael Steele in Black Hawk Down. Steele didn’t exactly come off as a hero in the book or movie, but prophetically, Colonel Steele ended up being a war criminal in Iraq a few years after the movie was released because of course he was.

CR

BTW, The Simpsons did it. Regarding the bicentennial, in Lisa the Iconoclast (fittingly): “ Those tall ships really lifted the nation's spirits after Watergate.”

CR

On the other hand, Jason Isaac as Marshal Zhukov in The Death of Stalin was a fucking Chad

Obvious Burner

For WWI, one movie I'd volunteer was Gallipoli, a movie Peter Weir made with Mel Gibson right before a Year Of Living Dangerously.

Sean Enright

Whoever cast the Alamogordo episode of Twin Peaks The Return should cast a Civil War movie.

Ian Stockdale

Das Boot and Inglorious Basterds are two awesome movies, let alone WWII movies

Blorst of times

That Harry Dean Stanton comment was hilarious

Watermane

Movie Mindsetters are eating GOOD tonight

Bootsy

Yeah great film, Weir has such a good sense of character drama. It's a small miracle that he directed the Murdoch-funded big budget nationalist war film (though Australian leftists in the 70s were fairly nationalist in their cultural outlook, and the Gallipoli story can be interpreted either way).

Damnboooi

Legends of the Fall is generally boring but there are some good scenes of WW1 in it. For the Somme, right before a bunch of kids get mowed down by machine guns, an officer kicks a soccer ball into no man’s land before the over the top signal.

Norman

I tried to watch the East German Tecumseh movie when I was 17. It's awful, even in the original. As a young leftist, I wanted to like it so badly but I couldn't even finish it.

Nicholas Brown

Another odd American WWI selection: Johnny Got His Gun

Lewis Vaden

Great, now I need an ianucci film about McClellan

Enoch

Part two means there's still time to talk about the true greatest war film, Pom Poko. A movie about cute mischievous tanukis waging a life or death guerilla war against humanity that somehow takes both halves of that premise totally seriously. A portrait of the fractious internal scisms of a resistance movement and insurgency as a moral ploy for media attention, that also has scenes of testicles being used as parachutes. It has never failed to make me cry.

La Synthèse Humaine

for the next part i propose checking out John Woo's Vietnam war movie "Bullet In The Head" - which is basically him doing The Deer Hunter. he made it in between making The Killer and Hard Boiled so you know it rips!

Brian Brain

What's the take on the new All Quiet on the Western Front from 2022 or the 1930s version? I thought these might get a mention.

Matthew Garnham

On ww2 a really interesting film is Cross Of Iron by Sam Peckinpah who made The Wild Bunch. It focuses on the perspective of German troops on the Eastern front completely disillusioned and just trying to stay ahead of the Russian advance and survive to the end of the war. Everything is constantly in shambles and these guys in a very ww1 style are just trying to not get killed by their officers and their lost cause. James Coburn is the lead and the more films I see with him the clearer it is how brilliant he is.

Matthew Garnham

The absolutely excellent British WW2 film is The Guns Of Navarone, and then the is the incredibly bizarre sequel Force 10 from Navarone which has Harrison Ford right after Star Wars

Nosreffej

I'm going to rewatch Jean Renoir's 1937 Grand Illusion. I remember it being powerful and anti war

Alex

Clammy_Damp

My slop cup runneth over

drizzly_november

The 1999 cannibal Western, Ravenous, takes place during the Mexican-American War, centered around an isolated fort in the Sierra Nevadas.

Jonathan Penn

An interesting, touching, and I would say effective anti-war movie about W.W. I is the french film, "Life and Nothing But" by Bertrand Tavernier. It is set slightly after the end of the war and centers around a french officer charged with finding and identifying the dead. It is slowly paced, but I believe it well worth watching. And with respect to the now three versions of "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930 black and white Hollywood, 1970s TV, and recent Netflix), the 1930 version is by far the truer to the book and the better film ...yes, in my opinion. Jon P.

Doug Cartel

there was that one revolutionary war film they showed us in class and if i remember right, Rip Torn basically fires the shot heard 'round the world after poking his musket out of a bush best line in Paths of Glory is 'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'

Nick Mould

The Chris Morris/Peter Cook project that Mark mentions is called Why Bother? which was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 3, but released as an album.

Mark Ames

Great movie, dad took me to see it as a kid.

Mark Ames

Yeah Inglorious Basterds my nominee for best WW2 flick, but you get caught up in the flow and forget your notes. I do, anyway.

Will Menaker

I was sober as a judge! This is just me talking about movies.

Norman X. Picklestein

Best WWI movie has to be Lawrence of Arabia. And no Bridge on the River Kwai mention in WWII POW movies? David Lean got mugged on this pod!

Marc Catapano -Flowers in the Concrete Tours/Geekedelia Media

While by no means anti-war, The Longest Day - a really fun if goofy film - does manage to anticipate some later 60’s attitudes by depicting DDay as basically one screw up after another and attributes the Allied victory to the Germans having even more “D’Oh’s!”

CR

And Jaws (Richard Kiel) as a German-aligned partisan. And Carl Weathers (RIP) playing off Kiel pretty well in a couple of scenes.

CR

The rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht has been as insidious as the whitewashing (intended) of the confederate army as if they were duped into fighting for evil and not the political core of the regimes.

Jack Ross

One of the best war movies I’ve seen is an obscure Danish film called April 9th which recounts the story of a small Danish unit charged with the task of stopping the German invasion in the early days of WWII. Low budget but the practical affects and resourcefulness of the people who made it makes it incredibly realistic.

Michael S. Judge

To the extent that it IS a World War I movie, surely the best WW1 movie is LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

Breakaway

One of his best, for sure.

Doug Hamilton-Evans

Will is such a consummate host that he ends up running this episode. What a crossover. Cant wait for part 2.

Yairo Martis

Spielberg kind of stole that bangalore torpedo scene in Big Red One for Saving Private Ryan, but in reverse. In Big Red One, the one by one scene happens later in the movie, when we've been with the characters for a while. In Private Ryan, it happens near the end the first sequence, the beach landing, Hanks sends soldiers that we don't know and barely even see their faces, to their deaths one by one trying to take out the machine gun on the hill.

Podconsoomer

All quiet on the western front??

PostmasterFenian

Lol best part of the movie disappointed in how short zhukov is though irl still one of the all time great generals

The Squash

Brother Mennaker comes to pay homage. Praise!

Jeff Normal

If I remember my social studies class, pretty sure the Mohawk nation were allied with the British in the French Indian War. I think the force depicted in Last of the Mohicans was Huron/Ottawa alliance. Also, the only watchable scene of the Patriot was obviously “inspired” by the Last of the Mohicans (one of the best films of all time, despite historical inaccuracies)

The Squash

I'm quite surprised this was missed. I haven't seen it in one full go but it feels very anti war.

Trout Mask Original

I know it's Film, and French to boot, but Renoir's Grand Illusion merits a nod as a great WWI Film.

Sean

please bring Hesse for part two!

xnfec

Ravenous (Antonia Bird) is Mexican-American war adjacent, sort of. See Atun Shei's take on the film on Youtube.

.

Last of the Mohicans was filmed where I grew up. It’s an incredibly beautiful place. Great ep. Excited to listen to part 2.

Christopher Small

American WWII movies in the immediate post war era loved to glom onto the image American GI's as scrappy freewheelers, like the old image of Americans as a country of Tom Sawyers trying to pull off a grift. Y'know, Hogan's Heroes, Kelly's Heroes, the Dirty Dozen, etc. (M*A*S*H for Korea, too). Then in the Vietnam war era there was kind of a realization that that kind of soldier shoots his CO and smuggles heroin. Maybe there's a Russian movie about the Chechen war out there somewhere about a wacky Sgt. Bilko type who, like, sold off all his company's tanks or something

MoldyTolge

The Stooges did do a few Nazi episodes, but none revolve around stealing T-Stoff unfortunately

THEKILLERWHALE

He can't stop hosting! It's in his blood.

Alexander Fuchs

The big parade deserves to be mentioned. a lit of great ww1 movies missing if you exclude foreign films, same with ww2 withiut the soviets

xnfec

milo minderbinder

Hazel Motes

My dad took me to see Gods and Generals when I was 9 or 10 years old and he’s still apologizing for it to this day.

Shane

John, on the note of Father, Ted, you have to read between the lines when Ted says “those protestants, up to no good as usual.”

tMinozaJ

Radio War Nerd Letterboxd list when?

Smallbusinessman

Now is when all the comments list all the movies you missed. So, no love for Thin Red Line eh?

Ian Fletcher

No Spanish-American War movies but there is the TNT miniseries Rough Riders!

Kendall

This film technically takes place right after the close of WWII, but Ashes and Diamonds is a worthy (albeit obvious) pick from Polish cinema. Also, love Will, but seems like he cut short Mark’s episode about his panic attack watching When Harry Met Sally (!). Hope it’s not exploitative to say I want to hear more (given how serious you sounded introducing it, Mark).

Ben H

For the War of 1812, there are two movies about Jean Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans called “The Buccaneer”. Charlton Heston plays Andrew Jackson in the 1950s one. I vaguely remember seeing the 1950s film on television (Turner Classics or something).

Ian Stockdale

Yeah, the setup is "Tom Hanks, in 'You've got mail', - that movie scared the SHIT out of me!", and I'm on the edge of my seat...with no payoff. I wondered if it was an inadvertent cut-off or Will helping Mark from out of something he 'almost didn't want to share'.

Nicknimh

Germans are weirdly obsessed with Indians, but all their knowledge of them comes from American Westerns. Kind of like Japan's fascination with Jews.

Nicknimh

Another true anti-war movie that's pretty well known is Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies, which has traumatized generations of Japanese children. It's about a war-orphaned brother and sister who live on the streets during the 1945 terror bombing of Japan and ultimately die of starvation. Come and See isn't really anti-war because, while horrifying, it leaves the viewer and protagonist with a feeling of intense, righteous hatred for the Germans. In GotF you never see an American nor is there any recrimination against them, just faceless bombing and children who are incapable of understanding the war.

Eoin Donnelly

Pains me to say it as long time listener and fan- but John’s Father Ted comment made Irish ears burn!

Crosley Querin

"He got to eat Jane Fondas pussy" has got to be one of the hardest lines to grace the first 5 minutes of any RWN episode.

j

Spanish American war movie sort of could be „beach pebbles „. With Steve McQueen…

j

Beach pebbles „. With Steve McQueen?

Gordon Schmidt

I'm glad you mentioned Come and See, and I'd like to add a couple more Soviet war films. The first of these is Ballad of a Soldier (available on Youtube!), which is a very sentimental but still wonderfully done film. It's about a soldier who performs well in combat and is thus allowed a week's leave to go see his mother. Much pathos to do with the Soviet people struggling behind the lines ensues. The other film is Commissar, which was actually banned when it was made and narrowly saved from destruction before ultimately being released during Glasnost. The film is about a pregnant commissar who shelters in a shtetl to give birth during Russian Civil War, and it deals very directly with Jewish themes as well as the Holocaust. This is why it was banned- such subjects were taboo in Soviet film, apparently. My professor said that as soon as the censors saw a Star of David on a building in the shtetl they would have protested. At any rate, the film is fantastic- the director was apparently a devoted communist, but deeply embittered at the state of Soviet society. That disillusionment really shines through in the film, as does the director's own struggle with his ideology and his Jewish identity. I don't know where to find it, but I strongly recommend it.

Harvey Marsalko

Surprised there was no mention of Birth of a Nation. Prob deserve a whole episode by itself

CR

Malick needs to release all 3 million feet of footage for the full effect

CR

Salvador and Romero for part two (or three) on the Cold War and how evil America has been in prosecuting the Cold War, as opposed to the utter dreck of Heartbreak Ridge and the “liberation” of Grenada.

Edward P Slocomb

Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite) is explicitly a story about the Mexican Revolution. There are more Sergio Leone films with war elements than without!

Jeff

In the same high school class I actually watched Glory and Andersonville! But given my history teacher, I think this was more about his love of just wheeling in the tv as a lesson plan.

Christopher Price

the USSR was a dictatorship of short kings. it's funny considering the Russian reputation for height that so many Soviet figures were 5'6" and shorter.

Peter Z

Yep, my favourite war film of all time. (JoJo Rabbit also deserves a mention for resurrecting the comedy-war genre).

Jonathan Penn

Just for fun I wonder what other listeners think of the three serial WWII epics- "Band of Brothers," "The Pacific," and now showing "Masters of the Air." I think the first much better than the next two, although it is somewhat unfair to judge the last as it still has about half of its episodes to go. Unfortunately for me, the dialog so far in "Masters" seems terribly cliched and the storyline too simplified. But that may be a bit harsh. Should we include these in W.W. II films?

Jonathan Penn

And for W.W. I, I can be the first to mention the absurdist "King of Hearts." It isn't a great movie, but who didn't love the ending when the soldier shows up naked at the insane asylum, looking to be admitted.

Candido Gonzalez

The only anti war movie so far has been Antz. Ill never forget the aftermath of the ants vs termite battle where Zee is holding barbado’s head smh

nick

Lol, that scene really made an impact on me as a little kid. Got me thinking hard about war and death

Haemu

The Italian film Uomini Contro (Many Wars Ago) is a great WW1 / anti-war film. Does a great job portraying the cold aristocratic psycho officers and the primarily peasant or proletarian soldiers as completely alien to and alienated from each other. It depicts brutal and pointless human wave attacks that are ordered not for strategic or tactical reasons but simply to bolster the honor of the commanders in charge. Lots of grim humor and a touch of absurdism as well.

Mark Ames

Haven't seen Commissar but I will now. I just read it's based on Grossman's stories about the Civil War, a good sign.

Horseloverfat

What about the extremely micro genre of “exploring the transcendent value of all life through the Pacific Theater”? It’s only The Thin Red Line

Horseloverfat

Honestly worth noting not just as a flick but also for the anecdote that terry let George Clooney think he was top billed and cut him out of every scene but one lol

Dan

The Train with Burt Lancaster is pretty good. Found it on prime recently.

Jack Dulaney

Great episode, but guys. If you’re introducing him, he’s got to be referred to as his nom de guerre “Wide Dick Willie”

Toshio42

found 2006's Wind That Shakes the Barley to be an unflinching Irish take.

Jeff Normal

“Oh what a lovely war” was an English production about WW1 and would TOTALLY qualify as anti war…kinda unwatchable but the last scene is freaking brilliant (worth typing in into YouTube)

The Great Bears of Gallowswood

Hell yeah my grandfather was in Kelly’s Heroes!! He was Donald Sutherland’s cynical tank driver lmao