[SA Chris]

Let's not start on Maverick

[Yossarian]

I think one of the best tank films is The Beast. Late 80s film about early 80s Soviet T-55 which gets lost in a valley in Afghanistan. I first watched it with a UK armoured infantry guy who pointed out the (at that time) Soviet doctrine of lone tank patrols with armed crews who could fight in or out of the tank, which is fairly crucial to the plot.

Amazing cast - Jason Patric, Stephen Baldwin, Steven Bauer, shot somewhere in Israel that looks just right, badass Afghans, etc. it’s very good.

[duncan]

[Tigers outclassed Shermans in just about every aspect except speed / maneuverability.

...and reliability, cost and ease-of-manufacture (all hail Henry Ford), fuel consumption (the Germans were perpetually short), manoeuvrability (Tigers were too big and heavy for many country roads and bridges), and crew experience and training (1940s US was already motorised and most tankies knew how to drive and fix vehicles before joining the army).

In the unlikely event of meeting a Tiger that hadn't broken down or run out of petrol you back off and call rocket-firing Typhoons to take care of it.

The Americans had a better-than-Tiger tank in 1943 - the Pershing - but stuck with the Sherman because it was good enough and they could produce and ship them by the 1000s. [/Tooze]

[SA Chris]

TBF I did mention manoeuvrability

I find it an interesting subject, my grandfather was a commander of one of the first Flamethrowers, weapons that the Nazis allegedly hated so much they shot any captured crew when they broke down (which is how he apparently met his fate).

Until they made their own version.

[Wellsy]

I think one of the best tank films is The Beast. Late 80s film about early 80s Soviet T-55 which gets lost in a valley in Afghanistan. I first watched it with a UK armoured infantry guy who pointed out the (at that time) Soviet doctrine of lone tank patrols with armed crews who could fight in or out of the tank, which is fairly crucial to the plot.

Amazing cast - Jason Patric, Stephen Baldwin, Steven Bauer, shot somewhere in Israel that looks just right, badass Afghans, etc. it’s very good.

The Beast is an absolutely cracking film

[Paul B]

This one?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094716/

[Wellsy]

Yeah. Definitely worth a watch

[TobyD]

The Courier good quality spy thriller with a decent cast and a strong story. The characters have a bit more hinterland than in many spy thrillers, and it's not overlong. It's on Netflix.

[tommytwotone]

A few I've watched recently...


Fury (Prime) - what's been said above - probably not that historically accurate, and quite harrowing, but an entertaining watch


Inglorious Basterds (Netflix) - finally got round to watching this, excellent. Christoph Waltz is absolutely amazing.


Ad Astra (All4) - (and yes, I've watched a lot of Brad Pitt films) - not what I was expecting, quite low-key for what I thought was going to be a sci-fi thriller / action kinda thing. Good, but not great.


Life (Netflix) - pretty meh I thought, for what is a very "Alien by numbers" type of plot.


Midsommar (Netflix) - fucking hell. Been waiting to watch this and it didn't disappoint. Creepy, weird, horrifying. Left a lingering feeling for a day or so afterwards.


Train To Busan - (All4) - another one I've been waiting for for ages - absolutely brilliant. A zombie film that ticks all the zombie film trope boxes, but actually has a lot of heart / emotion running through it.

[duncan]

TBF I did mention manoeuvrability

I find it an interesting subject, my grandfather was a commander of one of the first Flamethrowers, weapons that the Nazis allegedly hated so much they shot any captured crew when they broke down (which is how he apparently met his fate).

So you did! 

I was a World War Two nerd as a thirteen year old then forgot all about it when I got into climbing.

Grim to hear about your Grandpa. Both my dad (radar operator in a Swordfish on the Arctic Convoys) and Grandad (stoker on unknown ship in WW1) survived their military service though both found it pretty traumatic. Recently, I've been trying to discover a bit more about my dad's early life, he died relatively young without giving away very much, and dipped my toe back into the world.

Best naval war film: The Cruel Sea: 1950s humane, unheroic convoy story, all about the men rather than the boats. Highly believable despite cardboard effects, half the cast had seen service.

[teestub]

Midsommar (Netflix) - fucking hell. Been waiting to watch this and it didn't disappoint. Creepy, weird, horrifying. Left a lingering feeling for a day or so afterwards.

Ha I finally plucked up the courage to watch this week too, what an amazing film! So much depth in terms of set design etc. and the story is so well done.

Have you watched The VVitch? Thought that had a similar vibe.

[SA Chris]

Recently, I've been trying to discover a bit more about my dad's early life, he died relatively young without giving away very much, and dipped my toe back into the world.

I wanted to learn more too, and had this book on my Amazon wishlist for ages (didn't pay that much!) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flame-Thrower-Andrew-Wilson/dp/0553245333 and was surprised that it actually mentions my grandad by name, briefly says what he was like and says what happened to him.

Apologies OT.

[SA Chris]

A few I've watched recently...


Fury (Prime) - what's been said above - probably not that historically accurate, and quite harrowing, but an entertaining watch


Inglorious Basterds (Netflix) - finally got round to watching this, excellent. Christoph Waltz is absolutely amazing.


Ad Astra (All4) - (and yes, I've watched a lot of Brad Pitt films) - not what I was expecting, quite low-key for what I thought was going to be a sci-fi thriller / action kinda thing. Good, but not great.


Train To Busan - (All4) - another one I've been waiting for for ages - absolutely brilliant. A zombie film that ticks all the zombie film trope boxes, but actually has a lot of heart / emotion running through it.

Surprised you didn't jump to World War Z! (which I really liked).

I watched Peninsula, the "sequel" to Train... which I really liked too, it has some moments but it's not as good.

[steveri]

Birdman a movie about movies/theatre. But don't let that put you off. Witty, strong performances and a lot of that single shot energy of Boiling Point up there. I wouldn't say I enjoyed Midsommar but I'm glad I watched it. The VVitch too, good immersion in another world. Always good to watch Anya Taylor-Joy, plus Chris Finch from The Office. See also Buster Scruggs (daft and fragmented but enjoyable).

[tommytwotone]

Surprised you didn't jump to World War Z! (which I really liked).

Ha - I actually did, but remembered that after loving the books, the film is a bit of an anticlimax. First hour or so is good though.

Note there are some good classic horrors knocking about as it's coming up to Halloween time...BBC has Poltergeist, Evil Dead (the original one) and Don't Look Now for a starter.

[J_duds]

The Mist - terrifyingly good, the mist covers up the poor CGI, it was absorbing and clichéd. Also had a great ending to this horror movie. On Film4 last night and on All4 app.

[seankenny]

Threads - for some reason I rewatched the BBC’s 1984 nuclear war drama, which follows a young couple couple in Sheffield in the run up and then the aftermath of an all-out conflict between the USA and USSR. Why did I put myself through this? It is an unrelenting parade of fear, horror, misery and suffering which lives on within you in long after the final scene. Sure, it’s a bit obviously low budget but there’s enough to keep the imagination filling the gaps. If you were too young to have lived through the Cold War then this gives a very good sense of what we feared back then, even as children. But only bother if you’re going to sit down and engage with this brilliant but very disturbing work it on its own terms. I still feel rather off.

[mrjonathanr]

Did you ever watch Edge of Darkness?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness

[Falling Down]

The day after Threads was screened was an interesting day at school. Kids, teachers, dinner ladies… everyone was traumatised. I’ve not seen it since.

[andy popp]

If you were too young to have lived through the Cold War then this gives a very good sense of what we feared back then, even as children.

To be honest, I really don't think I ever felt like I was living in fear, though that's not to say others didn't genuinely feel a sense of dread.

[seankenny]

If you were too young to have lived through the Cold War then this gives a very good sense of what we feared back then, even as children.

To be honest, I really don't think I ever felt like I was living in fear, though that's not to say others didn't genuinely feel a sense of dread.

Fear is maybe the wrong word, but I also suspect there may be an age difference thing going on here. I was 12 when I first saw Threads; during the period of peak nuclear annihilation concern in the early 80s I was just old enough to be aware of the outside world, but still with a child's active imagination.

[tommytwotone]

Similar vein, but when we were up in Kirkubright in Dumfries and Galloway over the summer there was a Raymond Briggs exhibition which contained a lot of the original work, sketches etc.

Forgot what an impact When The Wind Blows had on me when I was barely 9 or 10 or something.

[slab_happy]

Ah, a fellow member of the generation who got traumatized because it came out when Briggs was best known among children for Fungus the Bogeyman?

It felt odd to realize that younger generations presumably haven't grown up with vague knowledge at the back of their brains about whitewashing your windows and building a fallout shelter under the stairs using sandbags and doors.

(As a child I was always confused because it seemed like your house would be less protective if you took the front door off to build a shelter with. It took me a very long time to realize that they probably meant internal doors from rooms you weren't using for shelter purposes.)

[seankenny]

Yeah there was a lot of this stuff, Briggs, Z for Zachariah, War Games, and if you were into what today would be labelled geek culture - SF, fantasy, RPGs etc - then you got a double dose. I was less concerned about the initial blast as I come from a small town on the Yorkshire coast, so radiation sickness and fallout was much more my youthful area of concern.

In a sort of weird mirror image to the idea of younger generations not knowing about fall out shelters, presumably we are now seeing the emergence of generations who don’t  experience our warm autumns and punishing summers as anything but… normal.

[TobyD]

The Banshees of Inisherin

Absolutely brilliant movie, in my opinion and worth every penny of a cinema ticket. It's not an easy watch, despite being extremely funny and beautifully shot. After the first ten minutes, I wasn't loving it, but by the end, I'd struggle to think of a better film I've seen recently.

I didn't read any reviews before I saw it, but here is the extract of Mark Kermodes review from rotten tomatoes:
"Swings between the hilarious, the horrifying and the heartbreaking in magnificent fashion."