This week three very different films get DVD releases....

Iwo Jima: 50 Years of Memories (1996)

Over 25,000 Americans died. One of three was killed or wounded. After 36 days, it was over. This harrowing account of the Battle of Iwo Jima, broadcast on its 50th anniversary, is told entirely through those veterans who survived it--many telling their stories for the first time. With additional footage, and photographs, this release remains a moving tribute to those fought on "Hell's Volcano," and those who died.

I think with Memorial Day quickly approaching, films like this are a much-needed counterpoint to the usual gung-ho fare. Even if this one is 11 years old, its still relevant.  Probably now more than ever.

Army of Shadows (1969)

France, 1942, during the occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is one of the French Resistance's chiefs. Given away by a traitor, he is interned in a camp. He manages to escape, and joins his network at Marseilles, where he makes the traitor be executed... This non-spectacular movie (do not expect any Rambo or Robin Hood) shows us rigorously and austerely the everyday of the French Resistants : their solitude, their fears, their relationships, the arrests, the forwarding of orders and their carrying out... Both writer Joseph Kessel and co-writer and director Jean-Pierre Melville belonged to this "Army in the Shadows".

OK so its French.  Doesn't mean it has to be dull and quirky right?  Remains to be seen I suppose.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

The story of an 18-year-old marine recruit named Private Joker - from his carnage-and-machismo boot camp to his climactic involvement in the heavy fighting in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive.

Anyone here that hasn't seen FMJ?  OK, good.  FMJ is a genius piece of work in my opinion.  For the first half you find yourself laughing hysterically (but not really sure you should be) at R. Lee Ermy's Drill Sergeant character, until Private Pyle goes off the deep end.

Then Kubrick takes them from that protected little island and drops them into the surreal hell that is Vietnam.  Then the jokes keep coming from old Private Joker, but they just don't seem as funny, on purpose.

And yes FMJ has been on disc before, but this is the "Stanley Kubrick Collection" edition.  Whatever that entails.


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