What are your favorite historical films, in terms of accuracy or representation? Any period and any national cinema applies…

Oh, man, there are tons of them. Off the top of my head?

Richard Attenborough (Gandhi, Bridge Too Far, Chaplin) and David Lean (Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge over the River Kwai) have a great gift for managing both the scope and color of history with real characters and dialogue that puts the ideas of the period up-front in a way that is exciting rather than leadenly serious.  

Ken Loach (Land and Freedom, Bread and Roses, the Wind that Shakes the Barley) and Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, Murder of Stephen Lawrence) are great for social history films from a left-wing perspective, telling stories that get overlooked by mainstream cinema and history texts without being didactic or losing sight of the human story.