War Film

“Full Metal Jacket”: a Brilliant Dark Vision of Man

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Duality, Contradiction, and Oxymoron in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket is often described as a film split in two: boot camp and battlefield, Parris Island and Vietnam, order and chaos. The split is real, but runs deeper than plot or structure. The film is built from duality and contradiction at … Read more

Devastating War Stories in Triplicate: The Powerful “Dunkirk”

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In Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan tells three inter-twined stories of differing lengths and at different speeds, showing how the terrors of war and heroic acts associated with it can exist on various time scales. There are instantaneous acts of heroism, the bread and butter of war films, but also more considered, lengthy heroics on day or … Read more

“War Machine” is Imbalanced, Has Too Few Barbs

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The satire is the most fragile of all the genres.  Drama fails or succeeds on the strength of very definite qualities like story, character, and pathos.  Comedy has leeway with its execution on account of its casual tone, as even the blackest comedies have a jokey kernel.  Strict genre fare or action is even more … Read more

Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory”, the Politically Powerful, and the Absurdity of War

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The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.The paths of glory lead but to the grave. -Thomas Grey, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,1751 Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory is often celebrated as the director’s first true masterwork.  Adapting a novel of the … Read more

The Tell-All Trailer Ruins Robert Zemeckis’s Lukewarm “Allied”

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Sometime in the near future, someone is going to stumble upon Allied in a Redbox or on a premium cable channel, have no idea what it is about, and end up liking the movie just fine.  Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard turn in reasonable performances, there is a surprising amount of detail to the plotting, and the ending is reasonable (if a little slap-dash; endings are hard).  Unfortunately, this movie is absolutely ruined by its trailer.  Of course, explaining why means delving into some pretty serious spoilers myself, which will also ruin the movie, but Allied isn’t so great to begin with, so it is no real crime there.  In fact, I can think of at least two spy movies starring Brad Pitt that are better than Allied (Spy Game and Inglourious Basterds; and yes it is).

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