Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week.

Photo by Ian MacDonald on Unsplash

War is something that seems to always hold a place in our collective consciousness. Consequently, war is the subject of countless books, movies, shows, and other media. Even excluding all the nonfictional accounts, war fiction is a thriving and seemingly inescapable genre.

In honor of Veterans Day this Saturday, Nov. 11, this weekend’s recs will explore war fiction and highlight some of the standouts in the genre with some nonfiction Veterans Day recs along the way.

Content warning: due to the subject matter, the majority of the films recommended are rated R.

If you have 5 minutes…and are a veteran, scroll through this list of Veterans Day freebies you can enjoy this weekend.

Bonus: if you’re a veteran, make sure to check out Villanova’s Office of Veterans and Military Service Members.

If you have 10 minutes…and want to learn more about the history of Veterans Day, read this article.

Bonus: check out this Q&A-style guide to Veterans Day.

If you have 15 minutes…and want to learn more about an issue that disproportionately impacts veterans, read this article about veteran homelessness.

If you have 45 minutes and 55 seconds…and want to know how realistic many of these war fiction films are, watch this video of veterans and military service members rating their accuracy.

If you have 2 hours and 33 minutes…and want to watch one of the most prolific yet somewhat controversial Vietnam war films, watch Apocalypse Now, available in Falvey’s DVD Collection.

Bonus: if you want to watch an incredibly brutal war movie based on a true story, watch Hacksaw Ridge. It follows the story of pacifist Pfc. Desmond T. Doss, played by Andrew Garfield, who was drafted into WWII and served as an army medic and earned a Medal of Honor. This movie is incredibly harrowing, but it’s truly worth watching at least once.

If you have 2 hours and 34 minutes…and love Spike Lee films, watch Da Bloods 5. This follows a group of Black Vietnam War veterans who return to Vietnam to retrieve the body of their fallen commander and, in a treasure hunt of sorts, to retrieve the gold they found and buried in battle.

If you have 2 hours and 49 minutes…and haven’t seen it yet, watch Saving Private Ryan, available in Falvey’s DVD Collection. Perhaps it was just me, but this is the first war movie I remember watching as a child, and it stuck with me.

Bonus: if you want to watch a PG-13 war movie (a somewhat rare occurrence due to the subject matter), watch War Horse, available in Falvey’s DVD Collection.

If you have 6 hours…and prefer books, read All Quiet on the Western Front, available at Falvey. No, it wasn’t just an award-winning movie from the 2023 awards season. It was adapted from this classic novel set in WWI.

Annie Stockmal is a second-year graduate student in the Communication Department and Graduate Assistant in Falvey Library.