Besides the ones you mentioned Born on the Fourth of July is pretty unforgettable. It's Platoon's companion piece really. Also First Blood (original Rambo) was one of the first movies to touch on ptsd from Vietnam while being action packed of course but still heartbreaking.
Animal Mother, is still a favorite screen name to use when i need to make one up on the fly.
I'm not enough of a 60s history buff to know which is the best representation of the war, but Platoon is my pick for the best movie of the bunch and Oliver Stone, who wrote and directed it, served in the war so I assume it is at least representative of his experience of it.
you left out The Deer Hunter.
You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.
All those movies are powerful, and deeply disturbing. With them, I like the PBS 13 part (I strongly believe) series based on Stanley Karnow's book "Vietnam: A History." Even as a documentary, it puts you there, amnd the background music make you feel the evil of it all. It, like the above movies, sucks one right into the drama like Dylan's lyric, "Its a hard rain's a-gonna fall."(grammar?)
The best was Full Metal Jacket and worst Green Brett
I actually left out "The Deer Hunter" on Purpose. I think it may have been a bit too soon to fully capture the Vietnam experience. I will watch it again though. I also don't put Apocalypse Now high on my list because I feel like they just used the setting of Vietnam to explore the same issues presented in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Even though it was a highly regarded movie.
The list I gave was by no means complete. There are plenty of other movies that present the issues that weren't big blockbusters.
For my money, I have to go with the Oliver Stone Trilogy... Of course this was before the time that studios knew that trilogies could actually make money so it wasn't exactly marketed as such.
1) Platoon Best Vietnam movie all around in my opinion. Winner of best picture at the Oscars in 1986 and one of my favorites of all time. Charlie Sheen pre-Tiger Blood! Showed the American experience in Vietnam.
2) Born On the Fourth of July. Another one of my favorites. Showed the American experience at home. It makes me want to ignore Tom Cruise's obsession with aliens and volcanoes...well... that's another thread.
3) Heaven and Earth The oft neglected of the trilogy, probably because it focuses on the Vietnamese experience in the war. I guess female, Vietnamese protagonists didn't seem to sell tickets back in 1993. If you have any interest in the Vietnam conflict then I recommend this movie. I always like to see these issues from both sides.
BTW, don't you think it's time for a new Vietnam TV series? I bet HBO could Game of Thrones that shit. I'm thinking a series like "The Wire" that follows the story from both sides. Goldmine. Call me, HBO.
1. Full Metal Jacket
2. Apocalypse Now
3. The Deer Hunter
Casualties of War can seem a bit exploitative at times but man is it horrific. It really does make you feel like shit while watching it. A feeling that lingers well after the movie is over.
I liked "The Boys Of Company C"
Too young to have actually experienced the Vietnam era, but I still rank Apocalypse Now as one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen.
A single sperm contains 37.5 MB of data, and the average ejaculation is equivalent to almost 1600 GB. -- I'm feeling pretty industrious today.
Born on the fourth of July
Far and away.....FULL METAL JACKET! The inhumanity of boot camp. But they treated you like that because if you could survive that, you could survive anything. Or so they thought.
I'll admit right off that war movies tend to depress me to a significant degree. I actually often have to force myself to watch most of them, even those that are purely fictional/entertaining like Tears of the Sun, Courage Under Fire or Enemy at the Gates. I can handle violence/gore in movies just fine, but I guess that I'm really not cut out for the whole 'militaristic spirit'.
Having said that, Full Metal Jacket would be my choice (it's surprisingly one of my favorite movies ever). It's loaded with Kubrick's usual cleverness and the astute mix of realness and satire fitted my own liking perfectly. It was a sharp criticism without any sort of hypocritical patriotism, which I appreciated quite a lot and which is exactly the spirit that I want to be into whenever I'm watching a war movie.
for the record, i hated full metal jacket. it seemed (to me) to glorify violence and it seemed soul-less. of course, i'm not a big fan, normally, of mayhem in slow motion, but still, it seemed to take it one step further to the point that all i really recall of it is the over the top gore.
You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.
If I may skirt the OP a bit...the best "Vietnam" War Movie ever made was The Killing Fields and while it was set in Cambodia rather than Vietnam one could argue that the rise of the Khmer Rouge was linked to the war in Vietnam and the interventions of both France and subsequently the US in Southeast Asia. One of the most powerful films ever made.