'Serenity'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I don't know how much light Come See the Paradise would shed on the issue of WWII-era US internment of Japanese Americans, but it would at least raise the issue.
Also, Empire of the Sun would illustrate the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and the internment of foreign nationals.
I.E., there's more to human history than makes it into the textbooks.
Stalag 17 maybe? It's got humor and there's action. So maybe?
For WWII from a historical perspective, I'd go with The Longest Day over Private Ryan. It gives a fairly even handed treatment for all of the combantants, not just USA. Tora, Tora, Tora is similar for Pearl Harbor.
Why not just go with Pearl Harbor ????
She wanted world history, not fantasy.
Also a bit grim, but it shows the aftermath of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's a Japanese film (subtitled in English) called August Rain. If it helps, it has Richard Gere in it.
Would he be too young, or too bored by, Band of Brothers? It covers a lot of WW2 european locations and battle conditions, for all that it's primarily a character study of the men of Easy Company.
Likewise, From the Earth to the Moon (1998--I have no input on more recent versions) is more recent history, but if you're doing The Right Stuff, the miniseries hits a lot of that time period, too.
Kind of a very specific WWII topic, but I really enjoyed The Monuments Men.
Isn't World History going to be less about the 20th century and more about "ancient civilizations" around the world? What are the good movies about Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, China? How about the rise of Islam/Christianity? Medieval Europe and the Renaissance? Why can I not come up with titles for these topics?
Ooh, Mongol, I forget who it's by I think it's Russian. About Genghis Khan, very good. I honestly don't remember if it was subtitled or what.