Taps (1981)
Scott and a young Tom Cruise. Taps is Harold Becker's 1981 military academy drama.
Genre: Military
Service, command, and the machinery of war on screen. Military film reviews watching for the details that veterans notice and Hollywood forgets.
MilitaryBasic (2003)
Rashomon-style investigation of a Panama training accident. Basic is John McTiernan's 2003 American military thriller.
ActionThe Dogs of War (1980)
Irvin's 1980 mercenary thriller. Christopher Walken leads a coup in a fictional African country.
DramaApocalypse Now (1979)
Coppola's 1979 Vietnam Heart of Darkness. Sheen, Brando, Duvall, Hopper.
Drama
ActionUnder Siege 1 & 2 (1992, 1995)
Die Hard formula adapted with Tommy Lee Jones substantial in the first. The Under Siege films are a two-installment action franchise starring Steven Seagal as Casey Ryback, a Navy SEAL whose operational skills are deployed against terrorist takeovers of confined…
ActionStarship Troopers (1997)
Starship Troopers is one of the most misunderstood films of the 1990s and one of the most accomplished political satires in mainstream science fiction. The adaptation is loose in ways that have generated decades of argument.
DramaThe Greatest War Films — Beyond WWII
Twenty war films beyond WWII — from Paths of Glory to All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), covering WWI, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and the Civil War. The films that engage honestly with what war costs, not in…
ActionPredator (1987) Review
The film is thrilling on its surface and interesting underneath, which is rarer in the action genre than the genre's reputation suggests. This is not a film that accidentally achieved something.
ActionAliens (1986) Review
Aliens earns its 8 by doing the one thing sequel filmmaking almost never manages: it doesn't compete with the original. Ridley Scott's Alien is a horror film about isolation and violation, one creature, confined space, systematic elimination of everything between…
MilitaryWorld War II Movies
Ranking the 19 greatest WWII films ever made, plus 20 honorable mentions. From Schindler's List to Das Boot, discover the movies that defined war cinema.