NG5 SHERWOOD JUNE/JULY 2021

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