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Lighter recent fare that deserves mention is of course Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino’s dark-humor parody. I left it off the list because there are more serious movies that explore the war in ways that are more to my liking. Patton is also fantastic, but omitted because I saw it more as a character study than a study about that particular conflict. The same could be said about another favorite of mine, Enemy at the Gates, about two assassins during the siege of Stalingrad. I’m also quite partial to Atonement but, again, that movie is less about the war than it is about the tragic lovers’ story. Valkyrie was a guilty pleasure, but not realistically a great World War II epic.

Really, I could go on forever with lists of honorable mentions. I haven’t even seen the overwhelming majority of the foreign WWII-themed movies whose names I read for the first time on Wikipedia.

5> Downfall

Dealing with the last days in Hitler’s bunker in Berlin, the German movie Downfall is memorable and worth many a repeat viewing. I have never seen - and experts agree - a more vivid and disturbingly realistic portrayal of the dictator than in this film. And the recreation of the bunker and its major players with such accuracy must also be noted. In Berlin, I had the opportunity to visit the location where some of the bunkers were. The accurate scale of the film is immediately apparent.

And the movie is not apologetic about its portrayal of the brutal generals who surrounded Hitler. Nor is it apologetic about the cowards the innocents or the brave. It simply hits you in the gut with every turn in ways that American films and filmmakers normally don’t dare to do, and leaves you completely stunned at the end. Helpfully, it portrays some Germans - particularly some citizens of Belin - as unwitting and even innocent bystanders. If you’ve read, for example, “Berlin 1945,” you know that the movie is eerily exact in showing some of the crimes suffered by the German people at each other’s hand. Downfall is truly a must see for any World War II student.

4. Das Boot

Not to be monotonous, but the next entry on the list is also a German film, the 1981 portrayal of life in a U-Boat, Das Boot (“The Boat”). The movie was directed by one of Germany’s most iconic directors of all time, the acclaimed Wolfgang Petersen. And like others on the list, it tells the story from the human perspective. The members of the crew are simple individuals trying to do what they believe is right for their country.

What follows, however, is anything but simple. The crew members first face almost light-hearted adventures and missions, but quickly find adversity at the hands of British airplanes. The fate of most members, as in most of these movies, is foreseeable and expected, and yet it is still effective in making a point about the horrors of war and horrific in experiencing it. A decidedly anti-war piece, Das Boot is worthy of being on this list for many of those reasons and then some, including the stunning underwater sequences for the boat.

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