Help Me I Don't Even What Is This: “Full Metal Jacket”

Memorial Day just came and went, and usually I watch war movies to celebrate. But specifically war movies that convey the idea that war is hell, even if it is sometimes justified. In past years I've watched “Paths of Glory”, “A Bridge Too Far”, and “Saving Private Ryan”, but this year I thought I'd pop in a war movie that's constantly referenced and considered a “classic” but that I hadn't seen yet, and that's Full Metal Jacket.

So do the prostitutes, as the movie makes abundantly clear.

Iron Man 3: The Last Alien

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Video Game Review: "Star Trek"

You know, I wasn't even going to finish this shit. I was fully intent on never thinking about this piece of electronic sod again. It was a transient horror, and I could take solace in the fact that I only rented it, and returned it with weapons-grade satisfaction. But I can't avoid it, because an innocent girl handed me a poster advertising it today at Free Comic Book Day. And that girl told me, not knowing my horribly unsatisfactory experience in renting it, that I could try out the game in the trailer parked outside the comic book shop. I cannot possibly replicate the noise I made in print.

Help Me I Don't Even What Is This: "Neon Genesis Evangelion"

So I'm starting a new column. I think of myself as a film person, but there are plenty of “classic” film and TV series that I haven't seen. Lawrence of Arabia, The West Wing, The Adventures of Ford McFarlane: never seen 'em. So, as a combination personal journey/excuse to write, I'm going to watch, every week or so, a “classic” and review it.

Now, if you read this blog, you know I loves me some giant robots. I'm all about that Gundam shit, and I love Macross too, as well as more obscure stuff like Dragon's Heaven. But I'd never seen Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Which is weird, because I love schoolgirls!

Neon Genesis Evangelion is arguably the most influential anime of all time, next to Mobile Suit Gundam. If MSG is Japan's Star Trek, NGE is its Twin Peaks, a mindfuck series full of dense symbolism. Superficially, it's about a teenage boy who is coerced by his distant and emotionally abusive father into piloting a giant bioengineered cyborg to defeat aliens known as “Angels” that are attacking what's left of humanity. And for the first half of the series, that's all it is. Every episode is a different battle against whatever weird abomination is coming for humanity this week. But around the halfway point, the series begins to turn inescapably depressing and intense. Monster-of-the-Week battles give way to a razor-sharp deconstruction of the mecha genre and a brutal dismantling of the psyches of the main characters as their every flaw and trauma are analyzed.