Full Metal Jacket is only half of a good movie. I'm not a big fan of Kubrick, and I don't really like that movie beyond the brilliant work done by D'Onofrio and R. Lee Emery. Matthew Modine is one of the worst actors to continue to get roles despite the fact that he always sounds like he's reading his lines off the page, and Kubrick himself... I won't go there. I don't have a high opinion of the man.
I really like Saving Private Ryan a lot, even if that one is mostly a pop corn flick. The best to me is probably Glory or something like that, though. I don't know. I like a lot of war movies, but I don't tend to like the most recent modern war films. Maybe it's because of my experience in the army. I'm not sure. Even historical war films can be difficult to watch sometimes, but I really like them. *Paragraph edited for clarification*
Another good war movie, in my opinion, and the movie that put Colin Farrell on the map (at least for me) was Tigerland. It's similar to Full Metal Jacket if the first half of FMJ was the whole movie. It talks about how the Vietnam war affected people who were drafted and how fucked up it was.
I also really like Platoon. Personally I'm more of a Platoon guy than Apocalypse now, but both are fantastic films.
I really like war films about the people being affected by war as well. People don't think about them as much, but I really like them. There was a fascinating one about CNN, I think it was, during the first gulf war. Michael Keaton was in it. There was a scene where the building they're in gets bombed and it's the most accurate, realistic, and chilling thing I've seen in a war film... I think ever. That could be hyperbole, but I thought it was really good at the time (and it came out around when I went to Afghanistan if I recall so that had a lot to do with why I liked it's portrayal I think). I looked it up just now and it's called Live from Baghdad. It was an HBO movie.
This doesn't actually count entirely as a war film, but it is one of my favorite movies so I'll mention it. Jacob's Ladder is an amazing movie as well.
Anyway, I could ramble on all day about movies so I'll just stop there.
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