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76. Full Metal Jacket (#94)

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT, with the occasional weekend off.

This time, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.

Director Stanley Kubrick crafts a bold and disorienting look at the chaos of the Vietnam War, with a film of two halves. The first half of the feature film unfolds against the backdrop of United States Marine Corps training on Parris Island, before the second half focuses on the disorganisation of the Nam itself.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 94th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: army, film, full metal jacket, innocence, killology, Movie, r. lee ermey, review the two-fifty, rip, stanley kubrick, vietnam, Vincent D'Onofrio | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Nemesis (Review)

Posted on January 16, 2017 by Darren

Nemesis is a great example of Star Trek: Voyager pitching itself as generic Star Trek.

This is a story that is not unique or particular to this crew. In fact, the story could easily be adapted to service characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or even Star Trek: Enterprise. In some respects, Nemesis might even work better if Robert Beltran were swapped out for Jonathan Frakes or Colm Meaney or Connor Trinneer. There is very little in the script that relies on the particularities of this show or the nuances of its characters.

The Rifleman…

While this lack of a distinct identity is a problem for Voyager as a television series, it does lead to some great episodes. Many of the best episodes of Voyager could easily be ported to or from any of the other shows. It was an approach that really came to the fore during the third season, when Jeri Taylor and Brannon Braga made a conscious choice to steer the show away from its focus on a crew stranded far from home and towards a more generic Star Trek sensibility.

At its best, this leads to very strong allegorical storytelling. Episodes like Remember and Distant Origin are very much archetypal Star Trek episodes, extended science-fiction metaphors with a strong moral core that evoke the Star Trek beloved by so many of its fans. Nemesis is very much an episode constructed in that tradition, a metaphorical exploration of the dehumanisation of soldiers through combat training and conditioning. It is a powerful and thought-provoking piece of social commentary and a superb piece of Star Trek.