Interested in that German content because the characters regularly denied the humanity of the nazis. Like this ties directly into how this film is less…a character study or a story to be told but Steven Spielberg and Baby Boomers trying to deal with his dad:
Spoilers for Private Ryan??? Violence
Like nevermind examining the story of Ryan just looking at what the Americans do to the nazis.
Once they get off the beach you have people laughing while they shoot surrendering soldiers and relishing in setting them on fire as “justice”.
You have the one Jewish character flaunting his star of david every chance he gets while PoWs pass by without notice.
After storming the radio tower and taking hours for the surviving soldier to build graves they send him on his way at the protest of the other soldiers and eventually that is the guy to kill tom hanks and prove the nerd can then be born again hard (for killing an unarmed surrendering soldier that recognized him for his earlier kindness.) The message seeming to be that any kind of mercy will only become retribution upon your kind.
The dude that just knifes the jewish character walks past the nerd, seeing him a broken man that does not deserve death for abandoning his brother in arms.
Never mind that the entire film every American soldier has a clerk’s like “I wasn’t even supposed to be here today.” A whole generation of American Men Put Upon to do the right thing! And the right thing gets them killed! And that’s on…somebody! We need to figure this out. Steven’s dad didn’t even hate germans! But dammit he enlisted following Pearl Harbor and did the thing!!!
These Callus Cold-Hearted American Boys Who Did The Thing™ even if they didn’t want to and complained about it being stupid every step of the way. God I love America.
Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Saving Private Ryan these series of war films that the message taken from them that War/America is awesome.
I definitely had the belief before I started every night with a war film that they were all jingoistic hoo-rah dick slapping gorilla beating fart fests. That’s honestly almost never the case and is always intentionally/unintentionally critical of the whole enterprise. War is hell.
I remember back in the 90s we always had a TV guide at home. For all the youngsters reading this, that’s a printed magazine with info on TV programming/schedule and reviews of movies and shows in it. That specific TV guide was a German publication and it made sure to make a distinction between “war movie” and “anti-war movie” when listing genres a given movie fell into. I found that pretty interesting!
I’d also say, yeah, most American war movies are anti-war movies. They might still have some degree of pathos. The heart is in the right place most of the time though.
Have you seen Force 10 From Navarone (1978) with Harrison Ford? That’s what I’d call a war adventure movie where war is the manliest sport…
huh, that’s not the message i got from that movie, but i haven’t seen it in years. basically put me off of war films for the rest of my life though, figured i just needed the one that said “war is bad and sucks for everyone involved”
ah i would accept that, sure. i’ve been let down by other people’s perceptions of media many many times, see: Hotline Miami, Starship Troopers, etc. So this tracks.
usually when people tell me they like full metal jacket i ask which half is their fav and their answer lets me know whether to keep talking fo them about movies or not
I still remember when my friend joined the army reserves and came back from basic training with all these crazy stories, then I watched Full Metal Jacket and realised he just stole it all from there
In my new War Movie Dad persona I have not watched Full Metal Jacket but I did watched Jodorosky’s Dune and then listen to Pink Floyd and RX Bandits.
Turns out I knew all the facts I needed to know about Jodorosky’s Dune from people talking about it. Also will continue to take to heart how many of my friends know me and go “No you must absolutely not watch El Topo or Holy Mountain.”
Fucked up Alejandro was not given infinite money to make his conciousness extending project that would have caused the 3rd Impact. Turns out the most money is needed to make the most art.
Have been watching Ghibli movies in an attempt to watch all of them since Netflix is apparently
now my hobby. Only yesterday is still the best one but I haven’t watched them all yet.
I watched Soul and had a kind of psychically allergic reaction to it. Pixar just ain’t my jam (the first Toy Story is cool though). Felt compelled to articulate why it disturbed me so (questioning my sanity in the process but it’s an honest take).
Before we are born, and after we die, there is only The Cloud. We are data to be uploaded and downloaded. It’s the kind of sterilised post/pre-existence that only a college educated Christian cartoonist, dedicated to despiritualising and diluting their faith in the name of proliferation across an increasingly cultureless capitalist culture could come up with. No angels with harps, no devil trombones, just technocrats with clipboards and calculators. Remember, Jehovah can be spelled with an “i” (as in iPod).
I swooned in horror at what I can only describe as deeply superficial, demo reel dancing, demiurgical, Silicon Valley DMT dad doodling (with millions of dollars and probably just as many computers behind it) cast in a mould of maudlin middlebrow mid-life crisis, unconsciously calculating in the way only CalArts “creative content” can be. I could smell the storyboard sessions all over this thing.
This film doesn’t perform Jazz so much as it emojifies it. Seriously, Jazz is one of the highest forms of art humans have produced. Why do we get such measly portions of Jazz (one of which is fleetingly stunning (I want to excise it from the rest of the film and marvel at it)) vs. so much social mediaestheticised culturally denuded new age pseudo co(s)mic conspicuously corporate claptrap? + 30 Rock-style throwaway cutaways.
Also, Tina Fey passes as a better black man than an actual black man at the local barber shop! Oh, but she’s a young unformed soul, she’s not white, she only admits to choosing a “white lady” persona to piss people off in www.heaven.com. There’s a feeling that this is Black culture as a mere signifier, subordinate to some kind of neo-Mormonistic metaphysics I can’t believe anyone finds inspiring. The more I think about this film, the more insidious it becomes and not even through malice, but a specific kind of 21st Century American artistic bankruptcy. But maybe I’m thinking too hard about a kids movie, I’m sure they’ll love it!
