NG16 JUNE/JULY 2021
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The story of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is one of<br />
the most peculiar in recent memory. After a family<br />
tragedy, Snyder left production on Justice League in<br />
2017 and Warner Brothers brought in Joss Whedon<br />
to reshoot and re-edit the film. This resulted in a<br />
choppy mess that felt incoherent and very mixed in<br />
its tone and overall sense of storytelling. After years<br />
of fan outcry for a ‘Snyder cut’ of the film, we were<br />
finally given what we wanted almost 4 years after the<br />
film’s initial theatrical release.<br />
Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a triumphant<br />
comeback for the controversial director. He rounds<br />
off his trilogy of DC films in an appropriately epic<br />
way that will leave fans of DC satisfied and begging<br />
for more. This is truly Snyder’s vision come to life and<br />
it doesn’t feel bogged down by studio interference.<br />
It’s a love letter to fans of the comics and serves<br />
as a powerful testament to what can be achieved<br />
through passion for the craft. Despite the film having<br />
a few issues here and there, mostly regarding the<br />
script, the 4-hour runtime is utilised very well to craft<br />
likeable characters and an engaging story, allowing<br />
it to become a far superior film to what we got in<br />
2017.<br />
8/10<br />
ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE<br />
LEAGUE (<strong>2021</strong>)<br />
Writer: Sam leary<br />
8 / 10<br />
FULL METAL JACKET<br />
Stanley Kubrick is ultimately known for mastering the<br />
cinematic art of screwing with your head, whether it<br />
be in a claustrophobic hotel complex or the vacuum<br />
of space. Nearly 35 years after he captured the<br />
psychedelic and moral hell of the Vietnam War, how<br />
does Full Metal Jacket’s screaming war-face stand?<br />
This film can essentially be considered in two separate<br />
halves. The first, centring on the brutal process of recruit<br />
training, focusing on ruthless drill sergeant Hartman<br />
(played astoundingly by R. Lee Ermey) ordering each<br />
private through backbreaking training, and villainously<br />
punishing anyone with a hair out of place, to transform<br />
these trainee ‘maggots’ into war-thirsty killers. The nonstylised<br />
cinematography, unlike Kubrick’s other famous<br />
works, plays well into the training-montage element,<br />
creating a claustrophobic feel as you’re arrested into the<br />
paranoid perspectives of the privates with the complete<br />
absence of sound except the barking of orders and<br />
responses. The sudden shift in cinematic tone in the<br />
first half’s finale shows more of Kubrick’s auteur touch<br />
still-present in an unfamiliar environment.<br />
Full Metal Jacket’s second half, however, doesn’t quite<br />
hold up as well. Our now-hardened recruits move onto<br />
an all-out war montage in their Vietnam outposts. While<br />
the concrete jungle violence and moral questioning<br />
faced by the wise-cracking military journalist, Joker,<br />
certainly entertain, the tropes seem quite overly-familiar<br />
even before the film’s release.<br />
While not the milestone in war films to the extent of<br />
previous achievements, Full Metal Jacket remains<br />
an iconic classic filled with some of cinema’s<br />
most brilliantly-colourful dialogue and arresting<br />
performances, though its quality in terms of uniqueness<br />
condenses mostly into its first hour. Now before you let<br />
those eyes wander off the page, answer me this! You<br />
got a war face?<br />
8 / 10<br />
Writer:<br />
George Neal