War films are argument as much as spectacle, and the argument is usually about what the fighting was for. This tag collects reviews of war films and the craft questions they raise for anyone writing combat.
Artificial IntelligenceOn September 26, 1983, a Soviet early-warning system reported five American nuclear missiles. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov called it a malfunction, and he was right. Petrov Day marks the night one officer refused to believe the machine.
NovemberKurt Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden three stories underground and couldn't write about it for more than twenty years. When he did, he broke time apart to get there, and Slaughterhouse-Five still shows memoir writers how to approach what…
LeadershipThe memoir and leadership book of Jack Tilley, who rose from Vietnam-era private to the 12th Sergeant Major of the Army. Written with Army historian Dan Elder, it ends every chapter with the lesson behind the story.
HistoryJonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully retell the Battle of Midway from the Japanese side, using Japanese records to overturn decades of accepted history. It's one of the two nonfiction books I keep rereading.
HistoryGerhard Weinberg's one-volume history of World War II across every continent, more about why things happened than about the battles. It's one of the two nonfiction books I keep rereading.
MemoirMedal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins, a retired command sergeant major, tells the story of the 1966 fight for Camp A Shau, where 17 Green Berets held out against a far larger North Vietnamese force. He wrote it with journalist…
MemoirThe account of the November 1965 Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, written by the battalion commander who led it, Hal Moore, and Joseph Galloway, the reporter who fought beside his men. It became the 2002 film We Were Soldiers.
FamilyA ghostwriter can turn a veteran's, police officer's or firefighter's service into a memoir, even after the veteran has died. The interviews, the records that help, and when the manuscript needs a security review or a lawyer's read.
Fiction WritingEvery First World War film reviewed on this site, ranked. The first Best Picture winner, a docudrama cast with the men who lived it, tunnellers under Messines, and the war nobody adapts as often as the one that followed it.
1990sStar Trek: Deep Space Nine rates 10 and above on the rewatch scale and is the best series the franchise has produced. It is also the most underrated rating in Trek history. A station instead of a ship, a military…
1990sLife is Beautiful (1998) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Roberto Benigni made a comedy about a father convincing his son that a concentration camp is a game, won Best Actor, and produced the most divisive film…
2000sAlexander (2004) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Oliver Stone spent a hundred and fifty-five million dollars on a life that has no shape, released it, and then recut it three separate times across ten years trying…
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