War, of course, does not remain only on the battlefield. It reaches into numerous areas of culture and individual lives. Yet this list aims to stick as close to the direct treatment of war as possible. Unfortunately, this notion forces the omission of some great films, such as The Pianist, recently, and Doctor Strangelove, more historically. There are countless examples. In alphabetic order, here are ten films sure to stir the humanity within a viewer and get his or her noggin churning in ways he or she might never have imagined from the bluntness inherent in the presentation of a war:

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Based on the novel of the same title by the German author, Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front is the tale of German boys led into World War I by a nationlistic school teacher. As one might take from the title, the film is not the typical action jaunt, instead dipping into the horrors and fallacies of war and its propaganda. Much like Isaac Rosenberg's famous WWI poem, "Break of Day in the Trenches," where a rat knows not nor cares about the difference between the German and English hands it encounters, the film speculates on the faulty notion of "enemy." The enemy the boys discover are not faceless, nameless automatons but thriving humans, like themselves. Further, the carnage they face daily renders all "just causes" irrelevant and non-existent. Made during the relative infancy of moving-film, director Lewis Milestone gives All Quiet the era's stark, unflinching, realistic view of the landscape and the conflict.