Siskel & Ebert Classics - 6/17/87 - Full Metal Jacket, Spaceballs *GREATEST EPISODE EVER?* 

Yes I think if there's a "definitive" episode of S&E to show someone, it HAS to be this one for that reason!

I thought that Ebert contraindicated himself. He was comparing other Kubrick films so Gene returned the favor by comparing "Benji." Ebert then wanted contextualization. Well he didn't want that when comparing "Benji." Lol it may still be a cheap shot though. Man I miss these two guys!

He should be ashamed of himself. "No, I'm not."

But what if Kubrick had directed the Benji movie...

@@anaximander66 "Boredom! Boredom with Benji running!"

So great

I just watched it. It was quite compelling.

Full Metal Jacket is Iconic Kubrick was an absolute master of getting such striking imagery Is it my favorite of Kubrick no but it’s still a great film

Kubrick is like Tarantino.Master of making some memorable scenes but when they need to make whole movie great they have a lot of problems that why i dont like them.The same thing is with Coen brothers except Fargo which is masterpiece from beginning to end.

@@mirkomustapic3883 Tarantino has made tons of films which are great the whole way through and Kubrick made some too.

Yeah. Spaceballs, too. One of Mel Brooks most beloved films.

I like it better than Platoon.

I'm a veteran and platoon was much more realistic

@@randallslinker3775 Um, 'realism' wasn't exactly Kubrick's goal. In *any* of his movies.

I don't know why we compare the 2 films? For me they are completely different. Platoon it's Oliver Stone talking about his experience of Vietnam from a human point of view. FMJ is much more political. If we want to compare to Oliver Stone's works we have to compare FMJ to his trilogy on Vietnam with Born on the Fourth of July and Heaven and Earth.

"Do you like being called private snowball?" 😂😂😂

Absolutely agreed. And I usually agree with him. More so than Siskel, anyway.

He makes the mistake of comparing it to another movie instead of just critiquing it for its own merits. Just 'cause both movies are based in Vietnam War does not mean they're the same thing. I've seen both.

I know I’ll catch hell for this but the second half of full metal jacket is mediocre

​@@ilovebrandnewcarpets I feel the same. The first part, the training, is mesmerizing. Everything else seems pedestrian by contrast.

Siskel is spot on with his opinion of Dr. Strangelove. I love it the most even though it has so much less going on than 2001, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon. Stanley Kubrick has shot the best performances of many an actor, even Tom Cruise.

Yet... With voice cloning we could have them back easily.

@@Anarchist86ed That would be utterly shameful. I hope nobody with any real power ever has an idea as awful as that one.

@@Anarchist86ed they were a heck of a lot more than voices; they were heart and passion and intellect. NEVER to be recaptured, sadly.

@@Ravenscroft82 Heart and passion, yeah sure. But intellect? Hah. Well... Ebert, at least, (I haven't read as many Siskel reviews) was a relentlessly self-aggrandizing blowhard who would bend over backwards to justify his tremendous pretentiousness and his tiresomely cliche political opinions. He actually said that a naked dead woman in The General's Daughter would've been just fine and dandy had he been watching some artsy and pretentious independent film, but it was in very bad taste to let the unwashed masses see such a thing. I've caught several similar statements in other reviews--he has a completely different set of "quality" and "tasteful" meters that he trots out only for *real* movies made for *real* connoisseurs like himself. He gave Team America one star despite apparently finding much of it funny, in part because he ironically couldn't understand the purpose of the satire that was saying "maybe actors aren't the most important people in the universe. Maybe we shouldn't listen to their political opinions". And I am NOT exaggerating, he very explicitly said that he didn't understand the point in mocking actor activists despite most of the movie being dedicated to talking about the power and importance of acting in absurdly hyperbolic terms. The other reason why it got one is is because the filmmakers actually had the audacity to say that--while we've obviously messed up a lot in the world--not everything America did was pure evil. He gave Fight Club a bad review because blah blah fascism, he gave The Hitcher a bad review (along with Siskell, sadly) because he lives in such a candyland limosine-liberal bubble that he couldn't recognize a darker coming of age story even when it was slapping him in his pudgy face and thought that someone fighting evil was obviously tantamount to becoming evil (he also tried to claim it was because of the gore, which is ludicrous as it's probably the least gory slasher movie I've ever seen.) And he gave The Deer Hunter four stars while giving Full Metal Jacket just two stars. The Deer Hunter, FFS.... the only example of I've ever seen of a movie doing one tremendously powerful scene early on and then spending the rest of the movie undermining, debasing and parodying that scene in the stupidest possible fashion until it had no meaning any longer. (And then topping it off by having all of the characters spontaneously sing "God Bless America", just in case we somehow failed to notice that there was some slight political undertones to the whole thing.)

@@vigilante8374 Meanwhile… He basically lived at the Playboy Mansion, getting laid off his celebrity, for two decades. 😆 I can’t believe Roxanne is what they seemed most excited about. Ever called it the most original story? I swear they just go dumb sometimes, as it’s the _most_ derivative; being just a modern Cyrano movie. They act like there weren’t other Cyrano movies in the 80’s. Steve Martin is the only reason that movie was bearable back then, and it still wasn’t good.

Ebert clearly left the theatre with only the weak second half in his head. Their disagreement of the movie is fundamentally serious. You can bet they had arguments behind the scenes on the film 🎥

I completely disagree about the first part blowing the second away, I really enjoy the second half too and I think it compliments the first half extremely well exactly because they feel disconnected. It highlights how the orderly fashion and preparation of the first half completely goes out of the window once you actually arive at the chaos of vietnam. These trained ''killers'' who we have spent the entire first half of the film being disciplined, now run around thinking they are badass killers when in reality nothing can compare them to the true reality of war. (as is clearly demonstrated in the sniper sequence where three soldiers die and they struggle greatly to overcome just one 12 year old girl)

@@jonassimonsen6607 I will give it another try, that’s really interesting what you wrote. It’s been a long time!

It is almost two films in one, and the first half is better, tho the second half is also quite well done. The basic training sequence is funny, ironic, and ultimately terrifying. It is a commentary on the loss of individualism and humanity in the armed forces. I never forgot it, and it made it clear to me from a young age that the military wasn’t the path for me

You have to understand, this was a 20 minute show (with commercials added); they had about a minute to discuss each movie together. This isn't long-form movie critiquing that exists on RU-vid today. The more "long-form" reviews then were in their full reviews in the newspaper.

Did you know Siskel didn't like Apocalypse Now? I actually agree with him, but that movie was huge and considered excellent by many.

You know Gene doesn't get enough love but I tell you what, he absolutely gets a lot of movies right. They end up even each other out. So many classics Gene liked but Roger didn't including, Die Hard, Tim Burtons Batman, John Carpenters, The Thing, Starship Troopers.

Roger that.

well i mean the 'actor' if you want to call him one was an actual sergeant

Except when it comes to horror films. Gene was absolutely dismissive of every horror film he reviewed. He didn’t like anything about the genre, even when he was reviewing legitimately good films. It was hilarious to watch him rip apart terrible movies, but he didn’t always spot the legitimately good ones

That's his opinion

@@TheJPSouza Ok, and I am saying it is a crazy, off base opinion. I hope Ebert changed his view on the film as the years went on.

@@Harkness78 according to his website, as he did second reviews of some films, he haven't changed his review of Full Metal Jacket.

It's better than Platoon

@@PeterMayer It's definitely better than Platoon, but it's still one of the weakest Kubrick films.

By the way Ebert's criticism of 'Full Metal Jacket' is well founded. It's a decent but not great movie. However giving it a thumb's down was going too far to make his point.

@@chadcollins6068He's definitely right about Vietnam itself--it looks bad. I don't mean bad like in a war zone, but bad as in "this is obviously a soundstage in London because Kubrick gonna Kubrick." I don't necessarily demand realistic on-location filming but for what's supposed to be a hard-hitting war picture, give me a *sense* of verisimilitude, please.

@@pronkb000 Totally. I remember watching it and being confused as to the setting. It didn't look like South Asia one bit. Turns out Kubrick was being lazy and didn't want to fly anywhere.

i wouldnt say that. both great movies. full metal jacket a bit better

For instance if you just want to base it off of AFIS top 100 - platoon is on there, full metal jacket is not. IMO it should be. but to say it hasnt stood the test of time is incorrect

See platoon. It’s terrific and only moderately related to Full Metal Jacket, which is also wonderful. Ebert was wrong to make it seem as if they were so comparable. They really were very different films examining very different elements of the war and the military generally

Yea, you should definitely see Platoon, there’s a reason why it won best picture.

I mean they literally played fmj when I went through boot camp. I think it's a pretty accurate take on the Marine Corp and from talking to buddies in the Army them too.

FMJ is about a 6/10, slightly above average. Very overrated.

Cosplay Time Capsule Totally disagree, Full Metal Jacket is a near masterpiece imo. It’s probably one of Kubrick’s top 5 films, it’s one of the top war movies of all time for me

I really don’t get why so many people are disappointed in the second half of Full Metal Jacket, it’s not exciting as the first half of the film, but it still has a meaningful purpose and subtext

agree on full metal jacket, the basic training section would be stronger as a short film i think.

@@HugoSoup57 FMJ is easily one of the weakest Kubrick films for many reasons. For one, it lacked discipline in conveying its message, it meanders throughout the narrative and lingers way too heavily on the exploitative stuff and skips the character development in favor of stylistic riffing (this is more pronounced in the 2nd half). In addition, the editing and pacing was entirely off. Compare it to a masterpiece like Clockwork Orange, or Eyes Wide Shut where there's not a waste shot or transition, FMJ feels more like a beginner director's work than a master auteur's. I understand that it's an entirely different genre than what Kubrick is used to do, but he still could have reigned it in much more. Kubrick made the same kind of mistakes in The Shining, and these two immensely popular films (unsurprisingly) ended up being his weakest artistically.

I'd say you're missing the point if you think Kubrick was going for realism.

@@amjoshuaf I'm not talking about realism. I'm talking about suspension of disbelief, something he achieved in "The Shining".

@@Mario_N64 Again, I'm not sure that's the point of the film. Kubrick spends a lot of time making references to other hollywood films to intentionally draw your attention to the artificiality of what you're seeing. For example, the interview scenes take place in front of a theater playing John Wayne's Red River. Mario, you have to get your head out of the green pipe, my good man. Just a little Mario joke there.

Wrong

I like how people who love the film immediately come to defend flaws and frame them as "intended brilliance". It's okay to like a flawed film (most films are flawed, in fact), and still acknowledge the flaws.

Yeah about that. He was one of the only critics who liked 2001 a space odyssey when it first came out

Look, you aren't always gonna agree with movie critics. So what. I disagree strongly with some things Ebert has said, but I don't let that detract from the stuff he's said I consider great.

Pizza the Hut is such a bad 'Dad joke' that it almost becomes funny again

One big problem with Space Balls is we're had forty years of Star Wars parodies since then. It might've seemed somewhat clever to jab at the merchandising back then, given that Star Wars was one of the very first movies to ever do aggressive merchandising on that scale (along with Planet of the Apes), but now... meh. Although not quite as good as Young Frankenstein, I always thought that Dracula: Dead and Loving It was just criminally underrated.

Blazing Saddles pisses me off to no end for the way it headed into the ending.

Ebert thumbed it down, and was entirely correct. Maybe Gene just liked Mel Brookes too much to be objective.