Saturday Night at Market Chess Cinemas

On this anniversary of D-Day, Saving Private Ryan (1998) merits another viewing, if only for its depiction of Omaha Beach landings, in what the estimable historian Stephen Ambrose described as a frighteningly accurate. In addition, the film is based on this true story of the four Niland brothers. 

Saving Private Ryan, of course was Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ dramatic World War II epic. The all-star cast features Hanks, Matt Damon, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Vin Diesel, Jeremy Davies, Giovanni Ribisi, Paul Giamatti, the late Dennis Farina, the memorable Barry Pepper as Jackson the Sniper, and Adam Goldberg.

For the analytical types out there, I actually once saw a film professor convincingly argue that this film met all of the elements of a standard “horror film," as though Spielberg may have intended it to be a horror film as a metaphor for the horrors of war--Even the "good war" like WWII was.