For the full extent of my high school years (1988-92), I was a cadet in the United States Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. My fellow cadets and I worshiped the Boot Camp half of this film. R. Lee Ermey was like a god to us, and we memorized all of his speeches. But because we were so obsessed with the Ermey character, we never seemed to watch the second half. We apparently bought into the myth that it sucked.

Looking back now on that Boot Camp half that looms so large in my memory, I find two truths at work: First, it's been parodied so many times since then, frequently by Ermey himself, that it's initially hard to take…

This film has always given me a deep sense of unease. This feeling particularly applies to the first part, which takes place at basic training. In fact, I feel that what the recruits are exposed to affect myself directly. The whole film deals with partial degradation of human dignity and the self, but the way Kubrick throws this in our faces already from the beginning grabs me every time.
The haircut-sequence is an important part of this. As before a surgical procedure, the skulls are prepared for the psychological interventions that will follow. Human hair, an important part of who you are, is left behind in a heap on the floor. By completely changing and standardizing appearance this helps alienating…

There are only a handful of truly iconic war films and this most definitely belongs among them. It does not merely depict elements of war in a realistic way, it also intelligently critiques and satirizes our species' instinctive tendencies to wage war and the inescapable need for a communal spirit while cyclically purveying an 'us vs them' mentality.

In the first part, perhaps most famous for the foul mouthed genius of Lee Ermy, Kubrick shows us how the cogs are created in the machine that was the Vietnam war. By dehumanizing new recruits, Kubrick shows us the strengths and weaknesses of our race. When pushed, we can achieve anything we want. When thrust together we take care of our own…

Full metal jacket

Full Metal Jacket is a film directed by Stanley Kubrick that tells a strong narrative of characters going to war. This movie is set up in a non-traditional film style where there are two separate parts. In the first half of the film, we see boot camp, where the drill sergeant is extremely intense and gives an amazing performance. This first act is filled with shouting and intense cussing that shows how intense boot camps truly are. The second act feels naturally strange due to the lack of dialogue after so much yelling, however once you get re-acclimated to the film, everything is fine. In this part, we see the characters go to war, where men get…

Probably the most inconsistent film from Kubrick, for me. There were moments that I found excessively repetitive, while a few others (namely, most of the early section in the second part of the film) dragged on a bit too much for my liking, seeing that the character work wasn't particularly the main focus of the film.

But the rest of this film, was Kubrick working at his highest possible capacity! He just wasn't one to fuck around! The perfect symbiosis he achieves with theme and spectacle, make up some of the most grandiose and hard-hitting portrayals of war in the history of cinema. His achievements in the first and last thirds of the film will be forever chemically burned into…