Month: December 2015

Full Metal Jacket

A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanising effects the Viet Nam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.

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Full Metal Jacket doesn’t come across as a traditional war film any more than The Shining comes across as a traditional horror film. Both, in what I’m starting to see is a trend from Kubrick, are just meticulously executed stories about people and how weird we are. Continue reading “Full Metal Jacket”

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope

Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a wookiee and two droids to save the universe from the Empire’s world-destroying battle-station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the evil Darth Vader.

I have no memory of an edition of A New Hope when it was just called Star Wars. I also don’t recall ever seeing Han shoot first. Such are George Lucas’ revisions, which are not so damaging as the circlejerk loves to preach, but instead make me question my own experience of the film. Continue reading “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope”

The Princess Bride

While home sick in bed, a young boy’s grandfather reads him a story called The Princess Bride.

The Princess Bride is everything an adventure film should be, and yet it slipped past my childhood unnoticed. I suppose that’s because it’s a cult film. Eurgh, I hate that phrase, but I’m using it (I suppose) to emphasise the modesty of its success upon release, and its quotability. It’s a film people go to midnight screenings of – half to actually watch the film, half to enjoy the company of other “cultists”. Continue reading “The Princess Bride”

The Lives of Others

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

I feel like I’m always dropping the fact I was born in 1992, but here’s another opportunity: The Lives of Others made real something I considered very much in the past. In 1989, three years before I was born, the Berlin Wall fell. Like an ignorant moron, the way I contextualise that is: that’s the same year Back to the Future Part II came out. Continue reading “The Lives of Others”