9 Movies to Watch for Memorial Day

Commemorate America’s fallen warriors with great films that honor the deeper spirit of the holiday

Shawn Levy,

AARP

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En español

Published May 24, 2023

/ Updated May 24, 2024

Tom Sizemore and Tom Hanks wearing military gear in the film Saving Private Ryan

(Left to right) Tom Sizemore and Tom Hanks in "Saving Private Ryan."

Maximum Film/Alamy

Yes, Memorial Day marks the start of summer. But the holiday was founded to honor our nation’s war dead. So learning more about America’s conflicts and their aftermath from movies is an apt way to mark the day — especially if the weather doesn’t feel all that summery just yet. Here are some good ones available for streaming or rental.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Among the greatest of American melodramas, William Wyler’s epic about three servicemen who return home from World War II bearing physical and psychological traumas won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, plus a special Academy Award. Poignant and forthright, it features career-defining performances by Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright and, most memorably, Harold Russell, who lost both hands in demolition training during the war.

Watch it: on Prime Video, Kanopy

Gardens of Stone (1987)

Francis Coppola directed this fine, emotional adaptation of a novel by Nicholas Proffitt, who served in Vietnam and in the Old Guard, standing watch over the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. James Caan and James Earl Jones play Old Guard vets troubled by the vague rationale and bloody cost of the Vietnam War, struggling to reconcile those feelings with their solemn duty. The starry cast also includes Angelica Huston and Dean Stockwell, and D. B. Sweeney as an eager young soldier whom the older men try to mentor. A sleeper that lingers.

Watch it: on Apple TV, Tubi

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Fifty-plus years after D-Day, Steven Spielberg, the son of a World War II veteran, crafted arguably the most visceral depiction of combat ever seen in an American movie. Bracketed by the invasion of Normandy Beach and a fictitious battle in a French town, the film follows a platoon searching for a soldier whose three brothers have died in combat and whom the Pentagon wishes to find and send home. An unforgettable, immersive vision of warfare from a master of action filmmaking, it inspired one of its stars, Tom Hanks, to create the great miniseries Band of Brothers, as well as the follow-ups The Pacific and Masters of the Air.

Watch it: on Apple TV, Pluto

***Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima* (2006)

When director Clint Eastwood turned his attention to World War II, he focused on the story of the six servicemen who were famously photographed raising an American flag on Iwo Jima only to grow disillusioned when they found themselves used as human props in fundraising drives back home. Eastwood crafted some memorably potent battle sequences and became so engrossed in the story that he directed a second film, Letters from Iwo Jima, nearly simultaneously, portraying the battle from the perspective of Japanese troops. That film, shot almost entirely in Japanese, was nominated for Best Picture.

Watch it: Flags of Our Fathers on Apple TV, Letters from Iwo Jima on Apple TV, Tubi)

The Messenger (2009)

Writer-director Oren Moverman’s dark, moving film features two soldiers invested with the duty to inform families their loved ones have died in combat — a side of warfare rarely touched upon in movies. Woody Harrelson plays a stony veteran of this painful task, and Ben Foster plays a new arrival to the unit, a combat vet whose personal issues lead him, against his mentor’s stern advice, to become emotionally attached to a widow. The subject matter has you emotionally vulnerable from the outset, and the actors (including Samantha Morton and Steve Buscemi) are credible in their pain and confusion.

Watch it: on Apple TV, Kanopy

Five Came Back (2017)

A fascinating three-part documentary series based on film historian Mark Harris’s book, Five Came Back follows five of Hollywood’s most accomplished directors — Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler — as they brave the front lines of World War II to create training films and newsreels for military and civilian audiences. All five directors were well beyond the age of conscription when they went to war, not to mention prosperous and professionally secure, but they literally faced combat alongside troops to make their films.

Watch it: on Netflix. Also watch Capra’s Prelude to War, Ford’s The Battle of Midway, Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro and Let There Be Light, and Wyler’s The Memphis Belle

Last Flag Flying (2017)

Director Richard Linklater, our greatest cinematic poet of the passing of time and generations, tells the story of three Vietnam vets (Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne) who reunite after one of their sons has died in Iraq, a loss that forces them all to address the wounds they’ve carried around since their own combat days. Based on a novel by Darryl Ponsican — to whose The Last Detail it could be a sequel — it’s sometimes a bit sentimental but never less than serious and respectful. And the cast, including the great Cicely Tyson in one of her final roles, is glorious.

Watch it: on Prime Video

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel became an Oscar-winning Best Picture in 1930, but this newer version by Germany’s Edward Berger is the one to watch (it won Best Foreign Language Film, Cinematography, Original Score, and Production Design). It’s a grim yet gorgeous movie, depicting the banality and horror of trench combat in World War I with unflinching candor with a vivid sense of the dehumanizing effect of battle on a protagonist (Felix Kammerer), who signs up as an idealist and winds up in hell.

Watch it: on Netflix

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Shawn Levy is the author of Paul Newman: A Life, Rat Pack Confidential, The Castle on Sunset and a forthcoming biography of Clint Eastwood. He hosts the Glitter and Might podcast about Hollywood.