Movie-A-Day #292: Full Metal Jacket

[KingLouieLouie]

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As many of you might have already notice, most of "my turns" at movie-a-day have consisted mainly of 80s films which certainly has be to my favorite decade of movies.... I was on the verge of a long diatribe regarding my personal feelings of today's film industry, but I'd perhaps rather save that for another thread at another time.....

Anyways, I must again say thanks to Amazon.com
for the following:

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com essential video
Stanley Kubrick's 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the '80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), Full Metal Jacket comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Then again, much the same was said about Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a masterwork both enthralled with and satiric about the future's role in the unfinished business of human evolution. In a way, Full Metal Jacket is the wholly grim counterpart of 2001. While the latter is a truly 1960s film, both wide-eyed and wary, about the intertwining of progress and isolation (ending in our redemption, finally, by death), Full Metal Jacket is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s' hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D'Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In Full Metal Jacket, depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it's no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point. --Tom Keogh

Personal Note:

Stanley Kubrick had to be one of the best directors of our time.... He directed some of the best cult-classics of all-time... I particularly enjoy the depths he was willing to take... no limits whatsoever..allowed for ones mind/imagination to flow all throughout without any time to come up for breath..... And that's exactly what he did with Full Metal Jacket.....

Matthew Modine, Arliss Howard, Adam Baldwin and Vincent D'Onofrio put on stunning performances, however, we all know Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman character more than anything else with his rather lewd dialogue... Of course..everyone has since memorized his now classic quotes which helped elevate this film to the level of attention that it has received....

I believe it was an excellent depiction of the Vietnam war since Kubrick elected to take a neutral stance by not showing how he sided on the conflict...

Of course.. the scripting just added so much allure that it drove several points home and helped punctuate all the emotions that each character had been enduring throughout.....Also, the bootcamp scenes also makes Full Metal Jacket stand-out compared to any of the previous Vietnam movies which offers a great deal of realism....It just gave a sense of how one gets molded into character while enduring all those harsh activities and transistions...

True, perhaps "Apocalypse Now" along with "Platoon" might be considered the 2 best Vietnam movies of all-time, however, Full Metal Jacket is one in which shifted how war movies in general are made...and will forever be a classic and one of my favorite movies of all-time.....

 

[Bada0Bing]

One of my all-time favorites.

 

[PortlandCardFan]

"This is my rifle,

this is my gun.

This for fight'in,

this is for fun!!"

 

[LoyaltyisaCurse]

The movie would have won an oscar if they would have done the battle scenes as well as they did the boot camp...

 

[KingofCards]

"How can you shoot women and children?"

"Easy, you just don't lead them as much."



Great movie.

 

[abomb]

Just saw this for the first time on Saturday. What a crazy film.

A-Bomb

 

[Shane]

Just saw this for the first time on Saturday. What a crazy film.

A-Bomb

Holp Crap arent you like 28? what took so damn long to see this one?

 

[abomb]

Holp Crap arent you like 28? what took so damn long to see this one?

yeah, 29.8. I had actually seen most of the drill sergant scenes before.

I once had a list of popular movies I had never seen. That list is pretty much done now, but I did just receive "Jaws" from blockbuster online.

A-Bomb

 

[Shane]

"Jaws"

A-Bomb

 

[Louis]

The movie would have won an oscar if they would have done the battle scenes as well as they did the boot camp...

Same with Heartbreak Ridge.

Both should've extended the training a little bit longer on film and then left it alone.

Especially FMJ. In Ridge they were prepping for war so maybe showing them in action was needed.

PS

Anybody else get confused during the opening of Jarhead and think it was FMJ?

 

[Ryanwb]

I always felt like FMJ was two movies.... The Paris Island part of the movie was flawless, very well done, but the 2nd half of the movie where Vietnam looks nothing like a Southern California movie lot was nothing extra special. Once R Lee Emery died you lost the best character interaction, plus I hate having to convince my wife that the dude in Vietnam with the huge gun is not Gomer Pile

 

[D-Dogg]

Dude, until a couple of years ago he hadn't seen Top Gun.

Seriously.

Really.

Yes.

Top Gun.

 

[abomb]

Dude, until a couple of years ago he hadn't seen Top Gun.

Seriously.

Really.

Yes.

Top Gun.

Thanks dude. Really.


I will post the list circa 1999 of movies I had never seen. As a sneak preview, I still havent seen Dirty Dancing.

A-Bomb

 

[NEZCardsfan]

Thanks dude. Really.


I will post the list circa 1999 of movies I had never seen. As a sneak preview, I still havent seen Dirty Dancing.

A-Bomb

I haven't either...it sounds like a chick flick. I haven't made it through a chick flick without yacking in my life. I take that back.....Fried Green Tomatoes was surprisingly pretty good.

 

[KingLouieLouie]

To elaborate on what I posted to begin this thread... I'm the complete opposite... I've only been to the movie theatre once since 2002 and that was to see "Love Actually" with a girl and a few of our friends visting MI during the Thanksgiving holiday of '03... and let's just say that I wasnt completely my choice.....

I bet I'm tne only on here that hasnt seen the following movies... "Napolean Dynamite", "The Passion of Christ", "9/11"... or perhaps any major film released past '02...

But virtually everything before then.. I did see.. especially all the cult-classics.. just read all my movie-a-days and you'd know....

 

[abomb]

I will post the list circa 1999 of movies I had never seen. As a sneak preview, I still havent seen Dirty Dancing.

This is probably worthy of its own thread based on entertainment value alone. This list is circa 1999 or so and was list a common movies I hadn't seen. I started it and D-Dogg added a bunch to it at the time. Being the first born (1976), my mom wouldnt let me watch too violent of movies when I was kid and I guess I never wanted to watch them as I got older. Probably no excuse for some of these now.

I will bold the ones I have seen since;

Any James Bond Movie
Any Alfred Hitchcock
Alien
Amistad
Animal House
Apocolypse Now
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop II
Beverly Hills Cop III
Caddyshack
Casablanca
Casino
Citizen Kane
A Clockwork Orange
Cruel Intentions
Dirty Dancing
Fight Club
Get Shorty
Gladiator
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part II
The Godfather: Part III
Gone with the Wind
The Green Mile
Hoosiers
The Hudsucker Proxy
It's A Wonderful Life
Jaws
L.A. Confidential
Leaving Las Vegas
Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon II
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Malcolm X
The Matrix
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Mr. Holland's Opus
Murder in the First
One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
Taxi Driver
The Termintator
Platoon
Predator
The Princess Bride
Psycho
Scarface
The Silence of the Lambs
Scream
Scream 2
Scream 3
The Shawshank Redemption
This is Spinal Tap
Top Gun
Wild Things
When Harry Met Sally

 

[NEZCardsfan]

Dude, see Taxi Driver now...it's great.

 

[Bada0Bing]

I'd get Caddyshack after that.