Do yourself and your kids and grandkids a favor this holiday season: take them to see Midway.  It's an amazing story of valor, self-sacrifice, and bravery.  It's a story of men at their very finest.  Dive-bomber pilot Dick Best is shown sliding a black-and-white photo of his wife and daughter underneath the edge of a gauge in his cockpit before each battle. 

The "edge of your seat" special effects are too much for popcorn.  It's a short and powerful two-and-a-half-hour movie.  It ranks alongside Patton and Saving Private Ryan as a great World War II film, although you may have reservations if you just go online and check out the reviews — mostly two or three stars.

Overly long and overstuffed with both characters and battle scenes, this film (based on the same-named 1976 movie) clearly has its heart in the right place, but it's not much fun to watch.

–Joyce Slaton, Common Sense Media

Midway is a deeply inspiring movie. It's also a war movie, though, with all of the content that comes with it.

–Adam R. Holz, Plugged In

The film's drama is B-movie basic, but the destructive colliding metal-on-metal inferno of what war is makes "Midway" a picture worth seeing.

–Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Predictably, a lot of liberal reviewers are conflicted.  While they wouldn't support the Japanese, the idea of fighting and guns and violence in support of America is disconcerting.  And that's why you should go.  It's a movie to talk about.  It raises the most basic of questions: why did these young men do what they did?  Why were they willing to risk their lives for others?  Did the United States defeat Japan simply because of our larger population and bigger economy?  Or is our system actually superior?  Imagine a world where the Japanese attacked the American west coast.  What if the Boeing facilities in Seattle had been destroyed?  Imagine Los Angeles bombed, and west coast oil resources used against us.  The loss of Midway Island could have made that a reality.  It was on the minds of our military planners and in the hearts of those who fought.

While Pajama Boy will be discombobulated at fighting for America, it's hard to imagine even him not sensing why those who fought have been called the Greatest Generation.