Spielberg and stanley

Raoul D’souza
October 24, 2003
Dr. Kendall

Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick and their two war movies
The War Film genre is seemingly as old as film itself. The very first winner of the Best Picture Academy Award, Wings (1929), was about World War I and there has been an endless barrage of films about men and women at and dealing with war ever since. From the Great War, to World War II, to Korea, to Vietnam, to the Gulf War, the war film has attempted to capture the experience of life on the battlefield. At last count, there have been nearly three thousand war films made and applying a common convention, it is safe to assume that ninety percent of those films are absolute rubbish. Out of the ten remaining percent, some three hundred films, maybe twenty or thirty movies can be considered true masterpieces. And two films, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket float near the top of even that selective pool. The two films are not sim...