I've worked out that there are not enough top 5s on this darn forum so i thought i would start one to see how it goes (becuase everyone loves a lis )  So here are my top 5 aviaiton based fillms of all time, watch because it is awesome:

1. Top Gun (best bar none, only for the great action and lines "Slider, you stink!!"
2. The Aviator
3. The Dam Busters
4. Battle of Britain
5. Airplane

I think honurable mentions must also go out to Memphis Belle and the Hot Shots films (which are so like Top Gun that i couldn't mention them in my top 5).

No mention to Pearl Harbour though, which was just plain awful

I would have to add 'Air America', for the effort made in getting so many rare types so right.

It's just a shame the pair singing 'Horse with no name' jumped the gun by many years as the song wasn't written at the time the film was set......

 

 

I have to say that in my book 'Iron Eagle' beats 'Top Gun' hands down.

I'm a big fan of both 'The Aviator' and 'The Right Stuff' although they're more movies about people with some aviation thrown in rather than actually being aviation movies.

'Apocalypse Now' and 'Black Hawk Down' both contain some spectacular helicopter footage and it was pretty much all done for real rather than computer generated (With the exception of the crashes in BHD). 

'Little Dieter Needs to Fly' is an excellent documentary about Dieter Dengler, a German who became obsessed with flying as a child during the Berlin airlift. He became a US citizen and then a Naval Aviator and was then shot down over Laos and escaped from a POW camp. It's quite a story and was recently dramatised as a movie called 'Rescue Dawn' starring Christian Bale though I've yet to see that one.

Agreed Batfink that Acocalypse now has some fantastic helicopter scenes ( i foolishly forgot about that one!?!). I have to stand up for Top GUn though, it is a great film that is so cheesy that it works as both a great special effects film(that still stand up) and i cult success 

Another film that i think should be considered is 'Firefox'. As with any film thats been taken from a book it isnt as good as the book(the author was Craig Thomas and it is a very good read if you havent read it) but still it was a well made film and didnt really stray too much from the book.

What about 633 Squadron with those lovely Mossie's?

Empire of the Sun for the Hanna P51 flyby.

 Not film but TV and a Piece of Cake, which will be remember for Ray flying the Spitfire under the bridge.

Some more films:-

Twelve O'Clock High - B-17's

Strategic Air Command - B-36 & B-47

Tora! Tora! Tora!

1. Top Gun, of course. There was a Top Gun quiz on facebook and one multiple choice question was to name Maverick's (played by Tom Cruise) aircraft. If you're on facebook and you've not done the quiz, the answer for that question is the F-16 Tomcat. I thought it was a redherring because the tabloids refer to them as TomKat.

2. A couple of weekends ago I watched Mosquito Squadron on tv. And saw the aircraft for real at a museum, RAF Hendon, the same day.

3. I loved Apollo 13, (topical seeing that it's 50 years of spaceflight this week!).

4. Flightplan - I've never been on a 747 so it was good to see the inside!

5. Excitingly, the remake of the Dambusters is out in next year. Remakes are always worse than the original because they lack the charm that film making had in the past. But with Peter Jackson behind it, it should do alright. And our own Stephen Fry is writing the script. I bet you'll all go and see it out of curiosity!!

 

 

 

Top Gun would be great fun to watch if you could just fast forward past all the cheesy 80s music.... And past all the 'macho' male posturing... And past Meg Ryan being annoying...... And past Tom Cruise being smug.... And past Kelly McGillis being boring.... In fact, if you could just cut it down to the forty or so minutes of actual aircraft footage it'd be quite good.

Batfink:

Top Gun would be great fun to watch if you could just fast forward past all the cheesy 80s music.... And past all the 'macho' male posturing... And past Meg Ryan being annoying...... And past Tom Cruise being smug.... And past Kelly McGillis being boring.... In fact, if you could just cut it down to the forty or so minutes of actual aircraft footage it'd be quite good.

I have to say that the cheesy music and funny dialogue really add to it for me, the cheese adds to the action well!!!

The SAC Trilogy :

- Strategic Air Command  (B-36 & B-47)

- Bombers B-52 ("No Sleep Till Dawn" in England)

- A Gathering of Eagles  (B-52G & Titan ICBMs)

Further :

- The Hunters  (Furious Dogfights in the Skies of Korea)

- Toward the Unknown  (Flight Testing at Edwards AFB in the Fifties)

and much more .........

 

Tora Tora Tora is one of my favourites.

I would add Airport too 

A complete piece of crap that everyone's so far managed to avoid mentioning is 'Wings of the Apache' (It was called 'Firebirds' in the States). It was pretty much supposed to be the US Army version of 'Top Gun' but with the AH-64 in the starring role instead of the F-14. It had better actors than Top Gun in Nicholas Cage and Tommy Lee Jones but somehow ended up being far worse which is not an easy feat to achieve. I have vague recollections of the the bad guys who were South American drug barons having their own Private Air Force of Drakens and MD-500s. Tommy Lee Jones got shot down and removed a stinger missile from the wreckage of his Apache, put it over his shoulder and shot down the bad guys with it.

How about Bat 21. Based on a true story and with Gene Hackman who is a cracking actor.

1. The battle of Britain for all those warbirds and german bombers

2. "Les chevaliers du ciel", if "warbirds" is the army counterpart of "Top Gun", "les chevaliers du ciel" is the french "top gun", there's 5 min of an alpha jet flying over the alps that i've maybe watched 50 times.

3. Top Gun: my childhood dream (when I was 8 or so) was to be Maverick (even if I'm not american and if I don't believe that Xenu is coming to kills us all)

4. The right stuff: my second childhood dream was to be chuck yeager (more complex than Maverick, I guess I was 12 :-) )

5. The final countdown for giving us to watch a Zero killed by a F-14, very rare sight isn'it?

Further :

- On the Threshold of Space  (medical research, rocket sled tests and manned ballooning into the stratosphere before  the beginning of the real spaceflight)

- X-15  (the saga of the fastest rocket plane)

I've not seen it for ages but remember 'Wing to Wing' making an impression on me, more about not giving up, British stiff upper lip and all that. Found this link if anyone else remembers it http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/1945to1951/filmpage_wtw.htm

Also the Blue Max for the cool uniforms

I've just realised I neglected to mention 'Snakes on a plane'. I'm generally a big fan of movies that are so crap that they're good, however this one was just so crap that it was crap.

Snakes on a Plane, a film where the name title is better than the film. Still Sammy L, what a legend  

And why not "Those Magnifincent Men in Their Flying Machines" ?

Last night I saw 'Wings over water' which I hadn't seen before and was about the Fleet Air Arm. I was watching it with a friend who's dad appeared in it fleetingly. He flew a lot of stuff during the war and his favourite was the Corsair. He went on a convoy to pick a load of them up from the States and at the end of the war due to the lease agreement, they had to tip them all over the side of the carrier! Can anyone shed any light on why that might be, seems a terrible waste?

Someone mantioned Firefox ! What about "Stealth" ? It's the "Fast and the Furious" with aircraft ! ?

 

Sorry, I'm not for a second suggesting it in the top 5 but it might be in someones !

Stealth is remarkably like Fast and the Furious you're right, it really was one of those films that could have done with any semblance of plot

I'd have to add "Flyboys" a 2006 film about the American squadron fying in France in WW1  (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454824/). There's a real feeling of peril in the many flying shots.

The BF109 low pass at the beginning of "Battle of Britain" always takes my breath away (a bit like the Alan de Cadinet Spitfire intro video that's on the internet somewhere ("Oh my God")).

The flying in "Les Chevaliers du Ciel" is amazing, but the dialog is just aweful (in English or in French).

 How about the original "Flight of the Pheonix" (1965) Not so much flying, but it still counts IMHO, and using the same "it features a crashed aircraft" how about "Sole Survivor" (1970) with William Shatner (no, really), the story of which is loosely based on the discovery of the B-24 "Liberator" bomber "Lady Be Good"  in the Libyan desert and has a great twist at the end.

PS. What ever happened to the remake of the Dam Busters? I keep seeing mention (including on Budgie News Website) but it all seems like smoke and mirrors.....