5 Best World War II Movies are:
 

Objective Burma
Battleground
Patton
The Great Escape
The Cruel Sea

Hmmm...I might include Tora ! Tora ! Tora!

Bridge On The River Kwai

Longest Day
To Hell and Back
Kelly's Heroes
Guns of Navarone
Dirty Dozen

The Great Escape
The Guns of Navarone
Patton
Operation pacific (long story, old favorite)
U-571

I would consider for inclusion Sink the Bismark.
...and another movie about a submarine spying mission to Tokyo that has been more-or-less remade once or twice since under other titles... I forget the orignal title. Das Boot is a German submarine movie that ranks up there, too, and unusual because it's a GERMAN movie! LOL

I think there were at least 20 WWII movies better than Patton. That was almost as much a modern Hollyweird hatchet job as it was a WWII movie. Ranks up there with Oliver Stone's repeated sh*ty attempts to re-write history. Just my opinion;YMMV.

Twelve O'Clock High
Band of Brothers (series)
Run Silent, Run Deep
Schindler's List
Empire of the Sun
Das Boot

And it's almost cliché to add it, but I will anyway because it's still a great flick...

Saving Private Ryan

They Were Expendable

Sink the Bismarck

The Enemy Below

From Hell to Eternity (not from Here to Eternity which is itself a formidable picture but not strictly a WW II picture)

The Thin Red Line (Malick)


Of course one regrets leaving out To Hell and Back, Guadalcanal Diary, Run Silent Run Deep, A Bridge too Far, Europa Europa and many others.

But not Das Boot which I find a cloying piece of maudlin revisionist German self-pity, much like the despicable movie Stalingrad, in which the perpetrators of the war seek to portray themselves as it's innocent victims, the German myth of "clean hands". Downfall is a much more honest German look at things and come to think of it probably belongs right up there with the best pictures about the war.

My 10 year old daughter and I just watched that. We both loved it.

John

My list would be:
A Bridge Too Far
In Harm's Way
Twelve O'Clock High
The Cruel Sea
Der Untergang (The Downfall)

I'm gonna name a few missed, and that I also think were great.. most all old WWII movies are great to me..

The Fighting Seabees
Sands of Iwo Jima
Midway
Saving Private Ryan
Catch-22

Wham---Yeah, In Harm's Way is terrific, one of Wayne's best non Ford or Hawks portrayals. And the romance between Wayne and Neal is SO well done, like real adults.

Ole Preminger made some pretty good pictures.

Another good Navy picture is The Gallant Hours in which Cagney portrays Halsey during the Guadalcanal campaign when the Japanese Navy was giving ours a very hard fight and we suffered the worst naval defeats in our history. The picture was directed by Robert Montgomery who fought in the Navy during the war.

Montgomery also did some fill-in directing on They Were Expendable after Ford took a header off a camera crane.

OH.. I really liked McHale's Navy too..

Bridges at Toko Ri, ,,The Hunters,,Patton,,The Caine Mutiny,,,Saving Private Ryan

"Mrs. Miniver" and "The Best Years of Our Lives" are worth mentioning.