The Sorcerer’s Apprentice:

John Nolte at Big Hollywood
Kyle Smith
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Inception:

John Nolte at Big Hollywood
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
movieguide.org Christian reviews

from Big Hollywood: WATCH: ‘Inception’ Stars Trash Evil, Stupid Cheney & Palin — Preach Hypocritical Environmentalism

Inception Prequel Comic

1. A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) [Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, disturbing images, terror and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A re-imagining of the horror icon Freddy Krueger, a serial-killer who wields a glove with four blades embedded in the fingers and kills people in their dreams, resulting in their real death in reality.

directed by: Samuel Bayer

starring: Jackie Earle Haley, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Kyle Smith:

Though Freddy is basically the same guy as in the 1984 original, his back story is different. For a few minutes the movie threatens to become interesting — then retreats. (Mild spoilers follow.)

Much like his fan Groundskeeper Willie from “The Simpsons,” Freddy actually worked at a school and was beloved by the 5-year-olds. But those kids may have been coached by hysterical parents to give false child-abuse testimony against Freddy that resulted in his lynching. The plot point echoes several 1980s witch hunts such as the Amirault case in which three preschool staffers were jailed based solely on testimony given by children. Later, it emerged the kids had been coached to lie about the abuse.

In the movie, the teens come to believe Freddy is punishing them to get back at the parents who may have cajoled them into giving false testimony as pre-schoolers. By the end, though, any feel for gray areas in guilt and punishment (does a molester really deserve to be burned alive?) is dropped.

more about this from Kyle Smith can be found here

2. Furry Vengeance (2010) [Rated PG for some rude humor, mild language and brief smoking.]

summary from imdb.com:

In the Oregon wilderness, a real estate developer’s new housing subdivision faces a unique group of protesters, local woodland creatures who don’t want their homes disturbed.

directed by: Roger Kumble

starring: Brendan Fraser, Brooke Shields, Ken Jeong, Patrice O’Neal, Jim Norton

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: nonstop Eco this and Green that, wildlife conservation, animals have families too ya know, stop the development of the forested areas, SUSTAINABILITY is the way to go!!

from The Globe and Mail:

This is the first children’s film that involves Participant Media, a production company founded by Canadian-born billionaire and former eBay president Jeff Skoll that contributes to films aimed at social change. Its roster includes An Inconvenient Truth, Goodnight and Good Luck, The Cove and The Soloist. In this case, the message is to avoid building subdivisions in forest areas (any children who were thinking of doing so should reconsider). [...]

The Sanders are the first residents of a new subdivision carved out of the Oregon forest. Dan’s company hides behind the green developer label, while using sleazy lobbying tactics to despoil the forest. His boss is played by The Hangover’s Ken Jeong, in his latest mentally unstable Asian guy role, and his boss’s boss is an East Indian, so the movie can’t be accused of being too politically correct.

As we learn in the pre-credits sequence, Dan and his company are up against a wily and ruthless opponent, a raccoon that inhabits the Oregon forest. The animal – a sort of woodsy Osama Bin Varmint – gets a lot of screen time, walks upright, squeaks and twitters, plans improvised roadside attacks and organizes the forest birds and animals with a stump speech that uses picture bubbles formed from his head to inspire them. [...]

As with Avatar, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, there’s a sense that the script (by Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert) taps into motifs drawn from current American military conflicts. There’s the obvious contrast between the high-tech human invaders and the ruthlessly resourceful insurgency, but more specifically, wait for the scene when all the forest animals are imprisoned in a forest-glade version of Guantanamo Bay, at which point even Dan realizes things may have gone too far.

from the Village Voice:

Furry Vengeance isn’t really a movie at all; it’s a message provided by the good people at Participant Media, who’ve brought you, among other entertainments, Food, Inc. (which will make you never want to eat again), The Cove (which is kind of like an espionage caper, only it ends with the real-life slaughter of hundreds of dolphins) and the forthcoming Climate of Change (a Tilda Swinton-narrated doc about ordinary folks’ efforts worldwide to combat global warming). The film’s Web site offers kids an activity guide and redirects them to the Endangered Species Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and Defenders of Wildlife. They all but print the lesson plan on biodegradable popcorn boxes.

In other words, Participant knows comedy!

Here is Participant Media’s “Social Action Campaign” for Furry Vengeance…

actress Skyler Samuels on my least favorite leftist buzz-phrase, sustainability:

“I am. I’m big into recycling and sustainable efforts. I’m on the sustainability club at school and trying to come up with ways to be more eco-friendly. So I was really excited to be a part of a project that kind of further expanded what I know.”

from Dustin Putman:

The film opens with the murder of a cigar-chomping land developer, who gets sent careening off a cliff by way of the forest animals’ devious Rube Goldberg contraption.

even the Elite Leftist Critics hate this movie for the “gross racial, ethnic and sexist profiling”

Dustin Putman also has a problem with:

[Brendan Fraser] gets mistaken for a transvestite when construction workers spot him through the window with a lacy bra on, and subsequently wears his wife’s pink sweats out in public with the words, “Yum Yum,” written on the back. In the midst of all this physical action—[...]—there are shameful displays of insensitive stereotyping against Native Americans and Asians, homophobic jokes of gay panic, a debasing portrayal of a senile elderly lady (Alice Drummond), and a scene where one woman punches another one out in order to steal her car.

and let’s not forget to include the little jab at “No Child Left Behind”

3. Harry Brown (2009) [Rated R for strong violence and language throughout, drug use and sexual content.]

summary from imdb.com:

An elderly ex-serviceman and widower looks to avenge his best friend’s murder by doling out his own form of justice.

directed by: Daniel Barber

starring: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Joe Bendel
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: [not playing near me]

from the Village Voice:

For a while, Caine holds his own as the titular pensioner, defeat registered in the quiescent slump of his shoulders, as he trudges through his last days living on a burnout London housing estate. Around him, a cheap knockoff of Prime Suspect takes shape, laden with copious “guvs” and “ma’ams” and “I’ve spoken to Division, and they concur” issuing from the hackneyed pen of screenwriter Gary Young. You won’t have to put up with this for long—worse is on its way, notably when the killing of a good friend turns Harry Brown into Dirty Harry, and he starts blowing away half the no-good youth of today in exponentially aggravated scenes of brutality and implausibility. No one will listen to Emily Mortimer’s Detective Inspector, a soggy substitute for Helen Mirren who remains unpersuaded that lumpen London is consuming itself without help from a killer, and sets off in heroic pursuit of the lone culprit. Director Daniel Barber’s lame handwringing about the root causes of youthful alienation forms a thin veneer over the real purpose of this self-important piece of rubbish—to hold us hostage to the director’s bottomless appetite for spurious depravity.

The Left ain’t too happy with this one…

here’s New York Magazine:

In Harry Brown, an old-age-pensioner Death Wish, murderous punks are taking over an English housing project and the mild, elderly widower Harry (Michael Caine) is driven, after a friend is murdered, to get back in touch with the soldier self he shamefacedly laid to rest after serving in Northern Ireland. I wish there were another wrinkle, but it is what it is: Seething Harry clearing the streets of scummy thugs while a detective (Emily Mortimer) on his tail wrestles with ethical questions that are finally beside the point when a taunting homicidal degenerate’s hands are around her throat. The chief problem is that Caine makes a grave, soulful vigilante avenger, and first-time director Daniel Barber gives the film a dank, streaky, genuinely unnerving palette. Moral artists have no business making a fascist, reactionary movie this effective. To hell with them.

4. Please Give (2010) [Rated R for language, some sexual content and nudity.]

summary from imdb.com:

In New York City, a husband and wife butt heads with the granddaughters of the elderly woman who lives in apartment the couple owns.

directed by: Nicole Holofcener

starring: Catherine Keener, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Kevin Corrigan

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Joe Bendel
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: [not playing near me]

from Emanuel Levy:

In the new, understated serio-comedy, Catherine Keener plays Kate, a New York antique dealer and philanthropist. When the tale begins, Kate seems preoccupied; there’s a lot on her mind. First, there are job-related issues, such as the ethical problem of buying furniture for low prices at estate sales before marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store.

Then there’s the “materialism” issue, based on her not wanting her teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele) to desire the expensive items that Kate wants. Add to it the daily concern of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) and you get the image of a bright, alert and busy woman, which begins to have doubts about her marriage and lifestyle.

A good eye for furniture has served Kate and Alex well. Specializing in trendy modern design, the store is so successful that they are able to buy the apartment next door. The plan is to enlarge and remodel the extra-space, except that it is still inhabited by former owner, Andra. Before they can knock down walls, they have to wait for Andra to vacate, that is to die.

Meanwhile, they stock up on vintage inventory by buying pieces from the apartments of newly-deceased New Yorkers. To alleviate his guilt, Alex rationalizes: “We buy from the children of dead people.” At one such occasion, Kate buys gorgeous modern furniture and accessories at a bargain from a man who doesn’t recognize the value of his mother’s “junk.” You see, Kate is a canny buyer but she suffers from bad conscience: She worries about the ethics of her business and the poverty and homelessness around her. To compensate, she hands out money to needy street people.

Daughter Abby is both amused and annoyed by her mom’s guilty fretting. Awash in teen-drama angst, she is preoccupied with her acne and the search for the perfect pair of jeans. For his part, surrounded by two demanding femmes, Alex looks on as a droll foil to both.

Predictably, Rebecca’s romance with Eugene takes off, but Mary’s affair with Alex fizzles out, when Alex feels remorse about his infidelity. Kate, meanwhile, is beset by guilt about the “state of the whole world,” and suspicion that “something is amiss” with Alex. In search for greater meaning, she tries out volunteering–reading to the elderly, helping out in a sports program for disabled youth. However, her efforts at redemption, through good deeds in themselves, just add to her sadness and often result in tears, rather than joy. [...]

As a scribe, Holofscener has always been sensitive to the zeitgeist, and in the adroitly titled “Please Give,” she again is concerned with timely issues of money, status, and class. In other words, how to live well, with flaunting your excesses, and be a good person at a time when American society is plagued by unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and other problems. [...]

Here is a comedy-drama that unlike most mainstream fare is attuned to the inherent contradictions of postmodern, capitalistic lifestyle. It’s an existence that seems stable and alluring on the surface, but when inspected more closely, it reveals shaky and dubious social and moral foundations.

5. The Human Centipede (2009) [Not Rated]

summary from imdb.com:

Two pretty American girls are on a road trip through Europe. In Germany they end up alone at night with a broken car in the woods. They search for help and find an isolated villa. The next day they awake to find themselves trapped in his terrifying makeshift basement hospital along with a Japanese man. An older German man identifies himself as a retired surgeon specialized in separating Siamese twins. However his three “patients” are not about to be separated, but joined together in a horrific operation. He plans to be the first person to connect people via their gastric system, in doing so bringing to life his sick lifetime fantasy “the human centipede”.

directed by: Tom Six

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
Joe Bendel
Kurt Loder

Poli-Bits: [not playing near me]

6. Face/Off (1997) [Rated R for intense sequences of strong violence, and for strong language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A revolutionary medical technique allows an undercover agent to take the physical appearance of a major criminal and infiltrate his organization.

directed by: John Woo

starring: Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Joan Allen, Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon, Dominique Swain, Harve Presnell, Colm Feore, CCH Pounder, Margaret Cho, Thomas Jane, Tommy Flanagan, Kirk Baltz, Danny Masterson

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
James Bowman

Poli-Bits:

Because we’re a covert antiterrorism team that is so secret that when we snap our fingers nothin’ happens

Victor, when we put this thing to bed, you can brand the Fourth Amendment on my butt!

porcelain casing… thermal cloak, nerve gas and biological payload…

it’s enough to flatten a square mile… and then, depending on the prevailing winds, the fallout will be a tad worse than Gulf War syndrome…

you are now the property of Erewhon prison… A citizen of nowhere… The Geneva Convention is void here… Amnesty International doesn’t know we exist…

I believe Sean Archer busted you for stalking the UN Secretary General…

alright, rub my nose in it, why don’t you? ten million dollar design. and now those militia nutjobs get to keep their cash?

now, I have got to go… I’ve got a government job to abuse…

well, i suppose it was only a matter of time before you forgot where we lived…

come on, give me a break… every house on this block looks the same…

That was the scene at the L.A. Convention Center, where an FBI agent became a city savior. Sean Archer disarmed a massive bomb just one second before it was set to blow. The apparent targets were three Supreme Court justices, scheduled to speak here today, and anyone unlucky enough to be within a mile of the scene…

Sir, look. You’re on the cover of Time. Listen, “In a single week, Agent Sean Archer has ordered a stunning series of blitzkrieg-styled raids on the hideouts, staging grounds, and safe houses of our nation’s assassins, car bomb…”

Sean, look, we’re friends, so I’m gonna tell you face to face. I don’t give a damn if you are Time’s Man of the Year. After last night’s blood bath, I am terminating your war on terrorists.

Is that because I’m getting all the kudos and you’re not?

I don’t know where you’re getting your intelligence. It’s not from field agents. Sometimes I think you know too much. Washington’s starting to worry. Justice wants a hearing. They’re concerned about the constitutionality of your gestapo tactics, and frankly, so am I!

Okay, I’ll give the taxpayers a break

7. The Forgotten (2004) [Rated PG-13 for intense thematic material, some violence and brief language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A grieving mother, Telly Paretta, is struggling to cope with the loss of her 9-year-old son. She is stunned when her psychiatrist and her husband tell her that she has created eight years of memories of a son she never had. But when she meets the father of one of her son’s friend who is having the same experience, Telly embarks on a mission to prove her son’s existence and her sanity.

directed by: Joseph Ruben

starring: Julianne Moore, Dominic West, Anthony Edwards, Jessica Hecht, Linus Roache, Gary Sinise, Alfre Woodard

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

She was turned over to federal agents. And she fled custody. Now, Mr. Paretta, why would the NSA be interested in your wife?

Do you remember when that TWA flight crashed over Long Island and everybody thought it was a missile, friendly fire, some kind of government cover-up?

Yeah, i remember that…

But then I thought, you know, how could the government erase our memories? It’s just not possible… it’s…

What?

Please don’t think I’m outta my mind…

I don’t anymore.

8. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) [Rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, language and drug use.]

summary from imdb.com:

A story of a group of California teenagers who enjoy malls, sex and rock n’ roll.

directed by: Amy Heckerling/written by: Cameron Crowe

starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Sean Penn, Ray Walston, Vincent Schiavelli, Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz, Nicolas Cage, Anthony Edwards, Taylor Negron, Nancy Wilson

Non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits:

teacher, Mr. Hand: Three weeks we’ve been talking about the Platt Amendment. What are you people, on dope? A piece of legislation was introduced into Congress by Senator John Platt. It was passed in 1906. This amendment to our Constitution has a profound impact upon all of our… Where is Jeff Spicoli? I saw him earlier today near the first floor bathrooms. Is he still on campus? Anyone? Yes, Desmond?

Desmond: I saw him by the food machines.

Mr. Hand: How long ago?

Desmond: Right before class.

Mr. Hand: Okay. Bring him in. What is this fascination with truancy? What is it that gets inside your heads? There are some teachers in this school who look the other way at truants. It’s a little game that you both play. They pretend they don’t see you. You pretend you don’t ditch. Now, who pays the price later? You!

Mr. Hand: In 1898, Spain owned Cuba outright. Think about it. Cuba owned by a disorganized parliament 4,000 miles away. Cubans were in a constant– Cubans were in a constant state of revolt. In 1904… the United States decided to throw a little weight around and…

Jennifer Jason Leigh: No, I’ve got to talk to you now.

Robert Romanus: Don’t go away. I hope this is important because I could be blowin’ a big deal.

Jennifer: Mike, I just… I just want you to know that I’m pregnant.

Robert: How do you know it’s mine? I mean, we only did it once.

Jennifer: I haven’t been with anybody else. I know it’s yours.

Robert: I mean it was your idea. You wanted to do it. You wanted it more than I did.

Jennifer: No. Take that back.

Robert: Alright, alright. I take it back. Look, we gotta do somethin’ about it. I mean, uh, we gotta get an abortion. My brother Art got his girlfriend one once. It’s simple. It’s no big deal.

Jennifer: Yeah. I got that planned. It’s going to cost $150 at the Free Clinic.

Robert: Doesn’t sound free to me. I suppose you want me to pay for it.

Jennifer: Half, okay? And a ride to the clinic.

Robert: Seventy-five dollars and a ride. Okay.

Jennifer: Okay. Thanks.

Nurse: Stacy, I can’t let you go unless you have a ride home.

Jennifer Jason Leigh: Oh. I told my boyfriend to meet me downstairs.

Nurse: Okay.

Jennifer: Thanks.

[exit abortion clinic]

Jennifer Jason Leigh: Brad.

Judge Reinhold: Since when do you go bowling anyway?

Jennifer: Okay, Brad. Please don’t tell Mom and Dad.

Judge: Come on! Who did it? You’re not gonna tell me, are you? Okay. It’ll just be your secret.

Jennifer: Okay.

Judge: You all right?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Judge: Come on. You hungry?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Phoebe Cates over the phone to Jennifer: I told you to tell Mike to pay for it. Why didn’t you tell him?

Jennifer: Linda, he didn’t show up.

Phoebe: That little p####!

Jennifer: I called his house. His mother told me he was in the garage helping his father.

Phoebe: Mike Damone’s a no-brain little p####, Stacy. I’m not gonna let him get away with this.

Jennifer: Linda, please don’t do anything. I don’t even like the guy.

Phoebe: Stacy, he’s not a guy. He’s a little p####!

Mr. Hand: Tonight you and I are going to talk in
great detail about the Davis Agreement, all the associated treaties, and the American Revolution in particular. If you can just turn to page 47 of Land of Truth and Liberty.

Spicoli: Oh, I left that book in my locker, Mr. Hand.

Mr. Hand: In that case, I’m glad I remembered to bring an extra copy… just for you.

Spicoli: What Jefferson was saying was, “Hey! “We left this England place ’cause it was bogus. “So if we don’t get some cool rules ourselves… pronto, we’ll just be bogus too.”

Mr. Hand: Very close, Jeff. I think I’ve made my point with you tonight.

9. Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her (2000) [Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexual content and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

An anthology of five loosely connected stories dealing with a variety of very different women in dealing with their own life problems.

directed by: Rodrigo Garcia

starring: Glenn Close, Cameron Diaz, Calista Flockhart, Kathy Baker, Amy Brenneman, Valeria Golino, Holly Hunter, Matt Craven, Gregory Hines, Miguel Sandoval, Danny Woodburn, Roma Maffia, Mika Boorem

Non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits:

do you think the men in the bank resent that a woman is in charge?

I’m okay with it…

and the others?

well i haven’t heard anything… it’s mostly women in here anyway… if they weren’t okay with it would it matter?

Holly Hunter: I took a home pregnancy test and it lit up like a Christmas tree.

Roma Maffia:Do you remember the date of your last period?

Holly: ummm… I haven’t had one since April.

Roma: I’ll have a look. Have you been trying to get pregant? [...]

Holly: No. [...]

Roma: Six weeks pregant. Does six weeks sound about right to you?

Holly: Yes.

Roma: Well, that means that you are due… around January 7th.

Holly: I don’t want to be pregnant.

Roma: You don’t?

Holly: No.

Roma: Do you want to have an abortion?

Holly: Yes.

Roma: Have you ever been pregnant before?

Holly: Nuh uh.

Roma: And you are how old?

Holly: 39.

Roma: Well, I gotta tell ya, this might be your last call. I mean… do you want to take a few days and think about it?

Holly: No.

Roma: Maybe there’s someone you want to talk it over with?

Holly: Nope. I have a hunch his wife is not going to like it.

Roma: Is this an ongoing thing?

Holly: Yes.

Roma: How long?

Holly: Three years.

Roma: And you have never mentioned it.

Holly: Oh, I told you about him. I just never told you the details.

Roma: [laughter] well that is a big detail. So what’s in store for the future?

Holly: Only a fool would say.

Receptionist: Okay, the doctor can see you tomorrow at three or Friday at eleven.

Holly: Tomorrow at three.

Receptionist: Here ya go.

Holly: Thanks. [takes a handful of mints on the way out]

Gregory Hines: What about you? You look tired.

Holly Hunter: I am. A little bit. I’m late with my period.

Gregory: You’re always late.

Holly: I saw the doctor at lunchtime. I’m six weeks pregnant.

Gregory: What happened?

Holly: I didn’t have the diaphragm with me that time in Palm Springs.

Gregory: Why not?

Holly: I counted days and figured we’d be okay without it. She set up an appointment for me. Tomorrow afternoon. To take care of it.

Gregory: I won’t be able to get back in time.

Holly: Well that’s okay. [...] You don’t think I should have this baby, do you?

Gregory: [makes a "No" sign with head]

Roma Maffia: Hey, all set?

Holly Hunter: Yes. How long will this take?

Roma: Well, it’s just gonna take a few minutes. It’s a real quickie. But they’re gonna ask you to stay around for a while after and you’re not going to be able to drive. Did someone come in with you?

Holly: Robert’s gonna pick me up at four. Why are you here, Deb?

Roma: I just want to stop by and say hello.

Holly: I don’t want you to stay.

Roma: Are you sure about this?

Holly: I don’t want you here.

Glenn Close: Hello.

Holly: Dr. Keener.

Glenn: Are you ready?

Holly: Yes.

Glenn: Very well. You lie down. Now, this won’t knock you out. It’s just to relax you.

Holly: I’m alright.

Glenn: Squish down a little bit more for me please… Would you move this over please? Let me see your chart. Alright. Okay, this might be a little bit cold. Did anyone call when I was in with Judy Goode?

Nurse: I don’t think so, doctor. You want me to check?

Glenn: No. Okay, you’re going to feel a little stick. Oh, it’s hot in this room. Do something about the air, please?

Nurse: DO you need all three of these?

Glenn: Okay. Try to hold still.

[Holly lets out a yelp]

Glenn: You’re almost done. Almost done.

[Holly leaves and starts walking down the street... then starts crying... and finally sobbing...]

Valeria Golino: Baby, tell me about the time when we first met.

Calista Flockhart: What do you mean?

Valeria: You know. At that party, when we first spoke.

Calista: What about it?

Valeria: I just want to know how it was.

Calista: You were there.

Valeria: Remind me.

Calista: I didn’t wanna go. Claire talked me into it. And I went as a butterfly. And you were there with Vicky. And you were Thumbelina. And you were wearing your clogs and your fish earrings. And you smelled of patchouli.

Amy Brenneman: You should consider being a detective.

Cameron Diaz’s blind character: There was an opening, but they gave it to a deaf-mute black man.

10. Saved! (2004) [Rated PG-13 for strong thematic issues involving teens - sexual content, pregnancy, smoking and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

When a girl attending a Christian high school becomes pregnant, she finds herself ostracized and demonized, as all of her former friends turn on her.

directed by: Brian Dannelly

starring: Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Macaulay Culkin, Patrick Fugit, Heather Matarazzo, Eva Amurri, Martin Donovan, Mary-Louise Parker, Nicki Clyne, Valerie Bertinelli

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
James Bowman
Christian Toto

Poli-Bits: Diversity!, TOLERANCE!! for every one (except for Fundamentalist Christians)

from James Berardinelli:

The film’s main flaw – the kind of narrow-mindedness of which it ironically accuses its subjects (in this case, the less religious a character, the more positively they are portrayed) – might be forgivable if Saved! made an interesting or original point, or just offered a few hearty laughs. But the movie’s brand of comedy is too sophomoric to be funny, the characters are developed in facile ways, and message lacks subtlety. Just because I may sympathize with some of what Dannelly has to say doesn’t mean I’m impressed by the way he chooses to say it. Sermonizing is sermonizing, regardless of whether the doctrine being preached is based on the Bible of the Church or the Bible of Liberal Politics. [...]

Saved! treats religion as a disease, not a life choice. It’s something people need to be cured of in order to live a meaningful life. (Maybe they don’t have to give it up altogether, but the fundamentalist aspect needs to go.) In order to refine this point, Mary is made increasingly sympathetic the further she drifts from her beliefs. Most of the “true believers,” like Pastor Skip, Mary’s mother, and Hilary Faye, are shown to be hypocrites. And the sympathetic supporters are non-believers Roland and Cassandra. It doesn’t take long before it’s apparent that Dannelly’s objective with this film is not just to lampoon fundamentalism, but to express contempt for it. In this world, the path to salvation comes through renouncing Jesus, not embracing him.

from Slant Magazine:

The film’s good Christians can’t even be called Christians: they’re crippled (and atheists), they’re Jewish, and in the case of Patrick Fugit’s missionary skater boi, they’re more than happy to eroticize Christ’s crucifixion (how scandalous!). Surely it’s no coincidence that Fugit never mentions Jesus in the film but Moore’s character engages his name a good hundred times. In essence: Good Christians are born by distancing themselves from Christ.

from the Washington Post:

TO THE LIST of exclamatory adjectives that are being applied to the religious satire “Saved!” (including “wicked,” “irreverent” and “subversive”) allow me to add another: condescending.

Sure, it is rude, mean even. And that’s okay. But when a comedy never misses an opportunity to let its audience know it thinks it’s better than the people it’s making fun of — especially when the people it’s making fun of are people who think they’re better than everyone else — such an approach is bound to come off as a little, well, hypocritical. Put another way, if you’re mocking holier-than-thou-ness, you can’t very well strike a hipper-than-thou tone.

That’s the problem in a nutshell. “Saved!,” which shows us the patronizing, ugly behavior that erupts in a Christian high school when a student (Jena Malone) gets pregnant out of wedlock, ends up patronizing and ugly itself. Ultimately, it’s as preachy as its finger-wagging victims.

from James Bowman:

Saved! — exclamation mark included — is directed by Brian Dannelly, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michal Urban, with an eye to the religious prejudices of the movie industry. He takes the theme of such recent movies as Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen or Mean Girls — that is the hothouse rivalries and hatreds of teenage girls — and turns the mean girls into Christians. Nor is their Christianity merely incidental to their nastiness. Like most movie Christians, they are either fanatical to the point of madness or merely hypocritical. Or both, as is the case with Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), the meanest of the mean girls at American Eagle Christian Academy who makes life miserable for Mary (Jena Malone) and her outsider friends, the Jewish Cassandra (Eva Amurri) and the paraplegic Roland (Macaulay Culkin), who are the only cool people in the school.

Cool people are, of course, by Hollywood convention, unbelievers, and the film naturally takes it for granted that those who believe in Christ’s message of love for all mankind are more likely than others to be hateful, scheming prigs, devoted only to gossip and backbiting. Hilary Faye and the others get the chance to show their stuff here when Mary, in a desperate attempt to “cure” her boyfriend (Chad Faust) of his homosexuality and after getting (as she thinks) a personal assurance from Jesus that it is the Christian thing to do, becomes pregnant. The ridicule of the traditional Christian attitude to homosexuality is all part of the political subtext of the film, which also shows us a poster of George W. Bush up on the wall in Mary’s classroom along with a display devoted to “Creationism.” If you listen carefully you can also hear Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) praying that — well, somebody — may “keep the presidency.”

Mr Donovan is hardly the first person you would think of in connection with such a role. But his lugubrious thoughtfulness, which got him his start in the movies of Hal Hartley actually works quite well in connection with a “with it” preacher who has Elmer Gantry-like secrets of his own but whose professional stock-in-trade is a cheerleader-like enthusiasm for G-O-D (“Gimmee a G!. . .”) He is just one of the movie’s good jokes. My favorite, however, is when, the Cassandra, the school’s lone Jewish pupil at the school spots Mary’s pregnancy and confides her suspicions to Roland. When he asks her how she knows, she replies: “There’s only one reason a Christian girl comes down to the Planned Parenthood.”

Startled, Roland asks: “She’s planting a pipe bomb?”

Like most of Saved’s humor, the joke is funny even though it is nasty and unfair to the Christian youths that are the too-easy target of its satire — and, of course, it bears little relation to the real world, in which no Planned Parenthood office has ever, so far as I know, been blown up by a Christian schoolgirl.

But at least this film does have something to satirize, which is more than can be said for most of the alleged satire of the toast of Cannes, Michael Moore. Mainly this is the absurdity of Christian efforts to be “cool,” as when Pastor Skip shouts with enthusiasm: “Let’s get our Christ on; let’s kick it Jesus-style.” Do even Christian schoolkids take this kind of thing seriously? Perhaps some do, but most must surely be as aware as are the “cool” themselves that they and all their works are the spawn of Satan. Are the pathetic few who prance about like Pastor Skip, trying to ingratiate themselves with the young, really worth the satiric effort?

And where the film may capture the absurdity of religion at the margins, it has no positive vision of its own. Its Christians may be deluded but hardly so much so — as the more serious kind of movie-goer may think — as the film-makers themselves, for whom all the problems of the world that religion addresses and all the fragile consolations it offers can be airily dismissed with a Hollywoody assurance that we can be perfectly happy and content in the world by doing what we feel like doing. Whatever else may be the truth of G-O-D, we can be certain He has not organized His world in that way.

1. It’s Complicated (2009) [Rated R for some drug content and sexuality.]

summary from imdb.com:

When attending their son’s college graduation, a couple reignite the spark in their relationship…but the complicated fact is they’re divorced and he’s remarried.

directed by: Nancy Meyers

starring: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski, Mary Kay Place, Rita Wilson, Alexandra Wentworth, Nora Dunn, Blanchard Ryan

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
Hollywood, STFU.
John Boot at Pajamas Media
James Bowman at the American Spectator

Poli-Bits:

from Hollywood, STFU:

There was surprisingly little message in “It’s Complicated”, which was appreciated. Although, I wouldn’t argue if some saw a legalization agenda in the few scenes with a lax attitude toward pot. However, the one thing with which I did take exception was a graduation scene of one of Jane and Jake’s kids. I can’t stand when a movie tries to slip one by you, almost subliminally. A poster on a wall, a slogan on a t-shirt, a sticker on a locker, or in this case a seating row marker at a graduation. It was momentary, and most people would miss it. However, I understand that unless the director is a complete hack, which, clearly, Nancy Meyers is not, the shot of a frame is meticulously composed. Nothing is in the frame which is not intended to be there. So when I see a shot of a college graduation where the students are seated by degree, and each seating section is labeled by a sign, and the sign for “Liberal Arts” is partially masked so that only the word “Liberal” can be read, I know that it’s not by accident. However, my only real beef was that “Liberal” should have read “Marxist”.

Alec Baldwin: You know, I think this is very French of us…

Meryl Streep: How is it French of us?

Alec Baldwin: I have a young wife but I am having sex with my old wife… Not old… you know, “ex.” I didn’t mean “old.”

2. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) [Rated PG-13 for violent images, some sensuality, language and smoking.]

summary from wikipedia.org:

The film follows the leader of a traveling theater troupe who, having made a deal with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations.

directed by: Terry Gilliam

starring: Johnny Depp, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Peter Stormare, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
Sonny Bunch

Poli-Bits:

I needed the money… when you run a charity, you have to give lots of money away… the red tape… the bureaucracy… you have no idea what a bunch of fascists the Charity Commission is…

[Four Russian gangsters see Tony, who owes them money. Tony flees into the Imaginarium. As the gangsters threaten Tony, Parnassus tempts them with a police recruitment song, promising they will enjoy being cops because they can continue being brutish:]

Hello, hello. Hey, boys, channel that violence for the good… Come on, join up… come on, lads.. Join up today… [singing:] We love violence with truncheon, badge, and gun… your right to silence ends, babe, when we begin our fun… but if you choose to join us, the choice is clearly yours… we swear that you’ll be legal when we batter down the doors… of people we don’t like, you know those weirdos, wogs, and scum… and if they show resistance, grab your weapons, load dum-dums… And split their flesh, their bones, their skulls, the sound will burst their ears… Please let them know and make it clear we’re the mothers of all fears…

Sustainability is great, if you can achieve it… the problem in most cases is you simply can’t get there…

aren’t you running the risk of entrenching the need for charity by increasingly institutionalizing it?

look, it’s an unfortunate truism that charity, like poor little Olga here, is always with us, to coin a phrase… [...]

and what’s your message to the President?

oh I wouldn’t presume to have a message for the President… I think, luckily for the foundation, we see eye to eye on most things… [...]

[children singing:] We are the children of the world… and we have suffered for your sins… but if you open up your heart… a beautiful new day begins… [...]

look at this: “Disgraced director of children’s charity ‘Suffer the Little Children’ was arrested last week” he was arrested last week on charges of stealing organs from Third World children and selling them to wealthy Westerners…

3. The Descent: Part 2 (2009) [Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, grisly images, terror and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

Distraught, confused, and half-wild with fear, Sarah Carter emerges alone from the Appalachian cave system where she encountered unspeakable terrors. Unable to plausibly explain to the authorities what happened – or why she’s covered in her friends’ blood – Sarah is forced back to the subterranean depths to help locate her five missing companions. As the rescue party drives deeper into uncharted caverns, nightmarish visions of the recent past begin to haunt Sarah and she starts to realize the full horror and futility of the mission. Subjected to the suspicion and mistrust of the group and confronted once more by the inbred, feral and savagely ruthless Crawlers, Sarah must draw on all her inner reserves of strength and courage in a desperate final struggle for deliverance and redemption.

directed by: Jon Harris

starring: Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto

Poli-Bits:

news woman: with the community still shaken from last year’s Slate’s Quarry tragedy, here in Boreham, it’s fresh heartache… as the search for the missing women moves into the end of its second day, hope is fading for Senator Kaplan’s niece, Juno, and her five friends…

one of the wise non-Americans: you want to lose that heavy metal… gun blast down there’d be like dynamite…

the “trigger-happy” American: my gun stays with me…

[after the trigger-happy American shoots off his gun setting off some boulders, trapping a girl beneath:]

Dan, a wise non-American: F###! F###### trigger-happy Americans. F###### only answer they’ve got to anything is a f###### gun!

4. District 13: Ultimatum (2009) [Rated R for some violence, language and drug material.]

summary from imdb.com:

Damien and Leito return to District 13 on a mission to bring peace to the troubled sector that is controlled by five different gang bosses, before the city’s secret services take drastic measures to solve the problem.

directed by:  Patrick Alessandrin/written by: Luc Besson

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Darin Miller at Big Hollywood
Kyle Smith
Sonny Bunch
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from movieguide.org:

DISTRICT B13 is a French action thriller, now out on DVD, which takes its story from today’s news headlines about riots by young Muslims in France. The story is set several years in the future, after the government has decided to place walls around the most troublesome Muslim enclaves.

from Kyle Smith:

The best Parisian action movie of the week is “District 13: Ultimatum,” a serviceable thriller with a lefty message.

As in “District 13″ (also known as “District B13″), to which this film is a sequel, “D13U” imagines a terrified white Paris literally walled off from black and brown citizens in housing projects. Near the beginning, there is a jaunt through the armed encampments of colorfully seething gangsters — Chinese, Arab, black and neo-Nazi. Later all will join forces. We are the world; we are the children…

One honest cop (Cyril Raffaelli) and ghetto-savvy Leito (David Belle, a pioneer of the gymnastic, dash-up-the-walls discipline called parkour) discover a plot by fascist cops to spark a civil war by framing Africans for cop-killing. The cop solution to the project problem: Blow them up and start over.

Luc Besson’s script (he also nabbed story and producer credits on this week’s “From Paris With Love”) marries his B-movie sensibility with appropriately sophomoric political grandstanding, tossing in semi-serious allusions to Gitmo, the Rodney King beating and Iraq: a firm called Harriburton is leading the fight to blow up the projects so it can win the rebuilding contract. Hey, argues an evil cop to the French president: Such destruction will “create jobs.” Sounds as sensible as our stimulus program.

from Darin Miller at Big Hollywood:

Spoiler alert: the film cannot be discussed without acknowledging its ending. In an awkward finish, gang members take the government headquarters building and stop Gassman. As a token of gratitude, the President promises unlimited funds to clean up the neighborhood. At that point, the gang leaders ask the President to go through with Gassman’s plan and blow their headquarters to smithereens.

The problem with this ending is that the inhabitants, while justifiably opposed to a government take-over in their district, fail to acknowledge that they are the problem. The gang leaders supply drugs to the rest of the city, and their violent lifestyle is the reason there are no good schools or family-friendly zones in the district. The idea that these leaders would turn their district over to the government to make it livable again is ridiculous, especially when they could have used their drug money to fix things the way they wanted it for years. Should we believe then that these leaders are happy to sacrifice their empires if someone else pays for the clean-up? It’s not likely, especially when the film reveals early on that hundreds of millions of Euros have already been poured into the district and it hasn’t helped.

The film’s strength is Parkour, not social commentary and the creators should to play to this strength or lose their fans in the future. That’s the ultimatum.

from the Village Voice:

In the rotting, riot-prone, walled-off banlieues of near-future Paris, David Belle returns as the endlessly inventive ghetto acrobat—vaulting out windows, leaping from roof to roof, turning the act of evasion into a form of courage—and he teams up again with equally idealistic policeman Cyril Raffaelli, who prefers to stand and fight, confronting drug dealers and corrupt politicians directly. [...] A rogue government security agency and evil corporation—called, get ready for it, Harriburton—are conspiring to bomb the banlieues and develop the rubble as luxury condos. “It creates jobs,” the villain tells the Sarkozy-style president. “We rebuild a neighborhood for the middle-classes, who’ll vote for you next time.” Besson explains the plot three times more than necessary, using flashbacks and a Rodney King–style cop video to underscore how government has failed (and quarantined) the poor.

5. Disgrace (2008) [Rated R for sexual content, nudity, some violence and brief language.]

summary from imdb.com:

After having an affair with a student, a Cape Town professor moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.

directed by:  Steve Jacobs

starring: John Malkovich

non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits: racist violence, post-apartheid South Africa, animal welfare, guy wears a Che shirt, power of teacher over student

from LA Weekly:

Dour, detached, and oozinggeneral contempt, the professor of literature who runs afoul of postapartheid South Africa in Australian director Steve Jacobs’ Disgrace might have been written for John Malkovich. In this film adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s brilliant 1999 novel, the actor brings his languid creepiness, along with a hard-working Cape Town accent, to the part of David Lurie, a snooty, 50-ish academic with an aestheticized passion for the Romantic poets. Divorced and still fancying himself a roué, David maintains a chilly, power-tripping attraction to women of color that leads him to seduce — some would say, rape — a beautiful mixed-race student named Melanie (Antoinette Engel). Such is David’s arrogance that when a multiracial academic committee accuses him of flouting university rules, he readily concedes his guilt. “I was enriched by the experience,” he says, rubbing in his disdain for political correctness while refusing to meet the committee’s demands for a public apology.

Forced to resign, David leaves Cape Town for the backcountry, where his daughter, Lucy (South African newcomer Jessica Haines), a lesbian hippie as idealistic as her father is disenchanted, farms her small homestead in precarious harmony with Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney), her inscrutable black overseer. Prodded by Lucy, David reluctantly volunteers at a local pet clinic, where a middle-aged animal-rights activist named Bev (Fiona Press) euthanizes unwanted dogs. It’s in these backwoods, a habitat as scrubby, raw and concrete as his city life was tastefully abstract, that David will be profoundly humbled and transformed by a shocking sequence of events. But if you know your Coetzee, you won’t be expecting a nice, liberal parable in which everyone learns to get along. There’s no Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Disgrace, no institutionalized acts of mercy, no olive branches extended from white to black or vice versa. Instead, the long-suppressed hatred of South African blacks for their erstwhile masters bubbles up in an ostensible robbery that turns into a rape and beating, whose savagery mirrors, then far surpasses, what David has done. Differentially scarred by the attack, he and Lucy react according to their disparate natures and political bents. [...]

In fact, Disgrace looks the chaos and hatred of postapartheid South Africa squarely in the face, probing the terrible fallout from white denial and pride without patronizing blacks by caricaturing them as noble victims. David may fancy himself apolitical, but his intransigence echoes that of South Africa’s former President P.W. Botha, who failed to show up when summoned before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And the film will surely resonate with audiences in Australia — whose government recently issued a formal apology to its Aboriginal population, and where Coetzee now lives — and wherever skin color has been made a basis for rigid social hierarchy.

Prior to his reckoning, David is not pro-apartheid. He’s something worse: a man who’s not for anything other than the gratification of his own desires and the arbitrary assertion of a droit du seigneur that was bred in the bone of white South Africans, or at least the country’s white males. But by the end of Disgrace, David has come to the painful yet oddly peaceful recognition that in the new South Africa, men like him have grown obsolete. It’s the women who “do what must be done.” Lucy’s decision about the baby she’s carrying, the land she lives off, and the people she lives with, may seem as bizarrely over the top to Western audiences as it does to her father — certainly, it made me catch my breath. Yet in making up her mind, she reveals herself not as the dippy hippie we thought she was, but as a practical representative of a new generation of whites who understand the precise magnitude of the debt run up by their parents, a debt that they must now figure out how to repay.

from Bina007:

Lurie’s daughter Lucy lives alone on a small farm, and runs a market garden and dog-kennel. She makes a show of practical independence, but it soon transpires that she is dependent for practical help and protection from her black “dog-man” Petrus, an ambitious New South African who will play the system of land grants and maybe something more sinister, to cement his ascendency over Lucy. Three young black men gang-rape and impregnate Lucy – an act even more traumatic because she is a lesbian – and lock the desperate Lurie in a bathroom before setting him alight. Lurie is fiercely angry, and wants Lucy to prosecute what turns out to be Petrus’ nephew, or maybe even son, but Lucy refuses. She will not run away from her country, and knows that the price of remaining is to accept subjugation by Petrus and to carry the baby to term. Lurie shares the reaction of the reader/audience – sheer shock that Lucy will not conform to our expectations of what a rape victim should do and feel….

from “World. Oyster. Stage.”

The daughter is attacked and gang-raped in her house after showing a kindness to a stranger; her father is beaten unconscious and can’t help her. We don’t see any of the attack on her, but we know. We see it from the father’s perspective. What happens afterwards is the puzzling bit, and the audience, I suspect, was meant to be as confused as the father when the girl refuses to leave her farm, doesn’t want to make trouble by going to the police, and even when one of the attackers shows up at her neighbour’s place at a party, and is his nephew, she still decides to stay and not cause a scene. She is pregnant from the attack, and as her belly swells, other things come into play. Her African neighbour offers an arrangement where she can become his wife and give him some more land, and in return receive his protection. There have been suggestions that the baddies will come back; there’s also the suggestion that her neighbour was somehow involved (he was away the day of the attack, which the father sees as a bit too coincidental.) [...]

Why doesn’t she leave and go somewhere safer? She refuses these things when her father asks. It’s like she is resigned to something; is she trading her life as a form of redemption for what she sees as her forefathers’ crimes of invasion?

6. Mega Piranha (2010) [Rated R for some violence, brief nudity and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A mutant strain of giant ferocious piranha escape from the Amazon and eat their way toward Florida.

directed by:  Eric Forsberg

starring: Tiffany, Barry Williams

non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits:

it is not a communist country, Mr. Ambassador… whatever you are thinking…

i’m not concerned about the communism, i’m concerned about our trade agreement… and the sanctions that are right now being prepared in Washington D.C. to be imposed against you…

oh, is that a threat?

no, it’s a reality…

he’s claiming it was terrorists… the CIA? thinks it could be the start of an anti-American military coup… i need you to check out that river bottom and tell me what really happened before we have another Afghanistan on our hands… do whatever it takes and do it fast…

your country… what about my country, huh? you Americans come here… treat us like we’re from a third world country… like we’re children… like we can’t take care of ourselves…

[on tv:] anti-American protests were seen on the streets of Caracas, Venezuela this afternoon following the assassination of US Ambassador Arnold Regis, the primary architect of the now-controversial Pan-American free trade initiative … no group has yet claimed responsiblity for the attack…

good… let’s close this case… the Venezuelan government is not happy. [...] i’m flying down to Caracas tonight to smooth things out at the capital… relations are bad to say the least…

and we’re sanctioned by the United Nations…

[sarcastically]: oh, well, the United Nations… how charitable…

for openers, Venezuela is a sovereign nation and one, i might add, whose relationship with us is not doing very well at the moment…

oh we’re gonna stop them, alright… but the Greenpeacers won’t like the way we do it…

what does that mean?

we have a nuclear submarine set to intercept the piranha in one hour… as soon as those creatures are far enough away from land: we nuke’m…

7. Knocked Up (2007) [Rated R for sexual content, drug use and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A one night stand turns into the unexpected for Ben, when Alison announces to him that she is now pregnant with his child. Ben decides that the best thing to do is to get his life sorted so he can care for Alison and his new child, which isn’t an easy job for him.

directed by: Judd Apatow

starring: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jason Segal, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr, Joanna Kerns, Harold Ramis, Alan Tudyk, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Ken Jeong, Craig Robinson, Loudon Wainwright III, Adam Scott, J.P. Manoux, Mo Collins, Ryan Seacrest, James Franco… 10 second cameos by: Jessica Alba, Steve Carell, Andy Dick, Eva Mendes, Dax Shepard

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Kurt Loder
Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review
John Podhoretz at the Weekly Standard
Peter Lawler
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

Ryan Seacrest: So if you want that perfect tan like the stars,
he’s the one to see. We’ll be right back on E! News. Stay with us.

Alison Scott: Okay.

Seacrest: Okay, is Jessica Simpson here yet?

Scott: Let me check. Let me see.

Seacrest: Is she on her way? She’s left her house?

Scott: Hey, guys? Okay, let me know when she’s pulling in. She’s about to pull in.
Seacrest: – Is she camera-ready?

Scott: Is she camera-ready?

Seacrest: If she’s gonna be in hair and makeup for three hours, I can’t do it. I’m not gonna be here. I got to do American Idol. It’s live. I got to do it. I got to be there. What are we gonna interview her about?

Scott: Nothing personal.

Seacrest: No personal questions.

Scott: No personal questions. Don’t ask her about her sister and her nose job.

Seacrest: No plastic surgery questions.

Scott: No plastic…

Seacrest: No personal questions.

[...]

Seacrest: Great. We’ll talk about the Middle East and maybe an idea of an exit strategy. Maybe she has a good pitch. Should I ask her about Korea? Maybe have her point it out to us on a globe? I don’t understand the young talent in this town!

You know what movie I just saw again the other day, which is #######, like, mind-blowing, and I haven’t seen it since it came out is Munich.

Oh, Munich!

Oh, man, Munich ####### rules.

Munich is awesome!

That movie was Eric Bana kicking ####### a##!

Dude, every movie with Jews, we’re the ones getting killed.

Munich flips it on its ear. We’re capping #############.

Not only killing but #######, like, taking names.

If any of us ### #### tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in Munich.

I agree with that.

I agree.

You know what is not helping us ### #### is the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, over here at our table.

I don’t like your shoes.

How was Burning Man this year?

#### you guys. I’m glad I’m not Jewish.

So are we.

Yeah, so are we.

You weren’t chosen for a reason.

I thought maybe we’d just talk and get to know each other better.

Cool. Okay. I’ll start. I’m Canadian.

Oh, that’s cool.

From Vancouver. I live here illegally, actually. Don’t tell anyone. But it works out in my advantage, I think, ultimately, ’cause I don’t have to pay any taxes. So financially that’s helpful ’cause I don’t have a lot of money. You know, I mean, I’m not poor or anything, but I eat a lot of spaghetti.

Jay Baruchel: I think it’s awesome that you’re gonna have a kid, man. Think about it like this. It’s just an excuse to play with all your old toys again.

Jonah Hill: You know what I think you should do? Take care of it.

Baruchel: Tell me you don’t want him to get an “A” word.

Hill: Yes, I do, and I won’t say it for Little Baby Ears over there, but it rhymes with “Shma-shmortion.” I’m just saying… Hold on, Jay, cover your ears. You should get a shma-shmortion at the shma-shmortion clinic.

Baruchel: Ben, you cannot let these monsters have any part of your child’s life.

Joanna Kerns: Allison, just take care of it. Take care of it. Move on. What’s gonna happen with your career? How are you gonna tell them?

Katherine Heigl: I’m not gonna tell them for a while. I have a while before I have to say anything.

Kerns: How could you not tell them?

Heigl: They’re not gonna know. I mean, I’m only gonna start to show when I’m like, I don’t know, six months or something. Seven months.

Kerns: Three months.

Heigl: No.

Kerns: Three months. Fat in the face, jowls, fat #ss.

Heigl: Debbie didn’t get fat.

Kerns: Debbie is a freak of nature.

Heigl: Mom, you know, it’s important to me that you be supportive.

Kerns: I cannot be supportive of this. This is a mistake. This is a big, big mistake. Now, think about your stepsister. Now, you remember what happened with her? She had the same situation as you, and she had it taken care of. And you know what? Now she has a real baby. Honey, this is not the time.

Katherine Heigl: You know, I was just calling to… To let you know that I’ve decided to keep the baby. I’m keeping it.

Seth Rogen: Oh.

Heigl: Yeah. So, that’s what’s happening with that.

Rogen: Good. That’s good. That’s what I was hoping you’d do. So, awesome.

Heigl: Yeah. Yeah, it is good.

Rogen: Okay, I know we didn’t plan this, and, you know, neither of us really thought it was gonna happen, but life is like that, you know, you can’t plan for it. And even if we did plan, life doesn’t care about your plans, necessarily. And you just kind of have to go with the flow and, you know, I know my job is to just support you in whatever it is you wanna do, and, I’m in, you know. So whatever you wanna do, I’m gonna do, you know. It’s… I’m on board. Yay!

Heigl: I really appreciate you saying that.

Did you see this sex offender website? These are all the sex offenders in our neighborhood.

Looks like your computer has chicken pox.

Those are sex offenders. These people live in our neighborhood.

Well, I’ll skip their houses when we’re trick-or-treating. What do you want me to do? Form a posse? Got your six-shooter on you? I got my lynching rope.

You shouldn’t take it so lightly.

I don’t take it lightly. You know, I’m not gonna go over to any of these people’s houses and say, “Hey, do you mind… Can you baby-sit?”

If I didn’t care about these things, you wouldn’t care about anything. Care more.

You’re so concerned with stuff, like “Don’t get them vaccinated. “Don’t let them eat fish. There’s mercury in the water.” [...] how much Dateline NBC can you watch? [...]

So I’m the bad guy because I’m trying to protect our kids from child molesters and mercury?

8. Last Chance Harvey (2008) [Rated PG-13 for brief strong language.]

summary from imdb.com:

In London for his daughter’s wedding, a rumpled man finds his romantic spirits lifted by a new woman in his life.

directed by: Joel Hopkins

starring: Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Kathy Baker, James Brolin, Richard Schiff

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

Harvey the American to Kate the Brit: ahh, s###… sorry, vulgar American…

Harvey: you got sad… why?

Kate: I was pregnant once… didn’t have it… I mean… I didn’t think twice about it… that’s what smart girls did… yeah… I do… I do sometimes wonder, you know, wh– whether they would be funny or clever or… [cries]… oh, i don’t know… neurotic… stupid, really… i don’t know why i told you that…

9. Black Snake Moan (2006) [Rated R for strong sexual content, language, some violence and drug use.]

summary from imdb.com:

A God-fearing bluesman takes to a wild young woman who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, looks everywhere for love, never quite finding it.

directed by: Craig Brewer

starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, S. Epatha Merkerson

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: sexual abuse, abortion, “combat anxieties among young soldiers”

from movieguide.org:

Samuel L. Jackson plays Lazarus, a blues singer turned farmer whose wife has just left him for his own brother. Lazarus tries to convince his wife to go to a local church counselor, but she flatly tells him no, because she doesn’t love him anymore.

Christina Ricci plays Rae, an extremely promiscuous young white woman cheating on her boyfriend, Ronnie, who has gone to join the Army. One night, after a stoned orgy with some other guys, Ronnie’s best friend tries to take Rae home. He beats her, however, and leaves her for dead on the side of the road near Lazarus’ farm.

The next day, Lazarus finds Rae unconscious and treats her wounds, including a persistent cough. He finds out about Rae’s wicked ways and, angered at his wife’s own infidelity and Rae’s attempts to seduce him, decides to chain Rae up to cure her. Thus begins a stormy relationship that slowly develops into a figurative father-daughter relationship. Eventually, with help from the local black pastor, Rae begins to see the light, and Lazarus realizes he cannot force people to change.

from wikipedia:

Rae’s boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) leaves for deployment with the 1960th Field Artillery Brigade, Tennessee National Guard, and in his absence she has bouts of promiscuity and drug use.

Ronnie [later] returns to town after being discharged from the National Guard due to his severe anxiety disorder.

from Filmic Passion:

Consider the story of Ricci’s husband, played by Justin Timberlake, who once again proves—as he did earlier this year in Alpha Dog—that he truly is a solid actor. After balancing machismo with self-loathing in Dog, Timberlake exudes vulnerability as Ronnie, an army soldier plagued with violent anxiety. [...] who exerts homicidal tendencies once he discovers his wife’s been cheating.

from The A.V. Club:

When Timberlake’s redneck brother viciously beats Ricci and leaves her for dead, grief-stricken bluesman Jackson brings her back to his shotgun shack and tries to set her on the straight and narrow.

Jackson sets about saving himself and exorcising his own formidable demons by rescuing Ricci from a life of sin and degradation. Their gradually improving relationship is contrasted with Jackson’s sweet, stumbling courtship of kindly pharmacist S. Epatha Merkerson, in a subplot that epitomizes the film’s surprising social conservatism. In Moan, promiscuity and abortion are the problems—Jackson is mourning the termination of his unborn child as much as the death of his marriage—and fidelity and marriage are the solution…

10. Happy Endings (2005) [Rated R for sexual content, language and some drug use.]

summary from imdb.com:

Happy Endings weaves multiple stories to create a witty look at love, family and the sheer unpredictablity of life itself.

directed by: Don Roos

starring: Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold, Sarah Clarke, Laura Dern, Johnny Galecki, Peter Horton

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: down with the rich/Mexican illegal immigrants/marrying for green cards/gay issues/artificial insemination/abortion

from movieguide.org:

Lisa Kudrow of TV’s FRIENDS stars in the movie as Mamie, a troubled, unhappy abortion clinic counselor. The movie opens with a distraught Mamie running through some suburban streets and getting hit by a car. The movie then tells the events leading up to this situation, including the situations of characters indirectly involved.

Twenty years ago, Mamie seduced her new step-brother, Charley, and became pregnant. She left town to get an abortion and now works as a counselor, supposedly making sure that the women deciding their babies’ fates are happy with their final decisions.

Their two step-parents dead, Charley now runs one of his father’s restaurants they both inherited. Charley is in a complicated friendship with two lesbians, their sperm baby, Max, and Charley’s own homosexual boyfriend, Gil. Working in Charley’s restaurant as a karaoke announcer is 22-year-old virgin Otis, who has the hots for his boss. Otis invites a well-received karaoke singer, Jude, to become his rock band’s lead female singer. Although Jude seduces Otis, she has designs on his rich father, Frank. Jude blackmails Otis into going along with her plan.

Meanwhile, Mamie is having a hot affair with Javier, a Latin masseuse. One day, an unkempt, would-be film student, Nicky, blackmails Mamie into helping him make a movie to get a highly competitive student scholarship. Nicky informs Mamie that he knows the identity of Mamie and Charley’s son, the intended abortion victim who Mamie secretly decided to put up for adoption instead. Nicky wants to make a documentary of Mamie’s reunion with her son, but she and Javier convince Nicky to make a documentary about Javier’s non-existent sex massage business instead.

All of these stories come to a comical climax that’s at times disturbing and sometimes sad.

Did you guys hear that thing on NPR this morning? About sperm.

Oh, no, no, no, I didn’t hear that one.

Well, maybe it was yesterday.

What was that?

Just about storage and freezing and stuff. [...]

Do you guys know how long sperm keeps?

No.

Do tell.

Twelve years.

What?

Yeah.

In the proper, you know, facility. I don’t know what it would be at home.

Did you hear the other story, though? It must have been after that, on the Khmer Rouge… about that guy who was growing vegetables behind the torture room?

No.

That was devastating. I almost had to pull the car over. [...]

Sugar, bad. Torture, fine.

Can I get some ice cream with that?

Oh, absolutely. I’II get it.

You know, there’s Tofutti in there, too.

You always been rich?

I’m not rich. It’s all relative.

That’s what rich people always say.

Nobody asked for a green card, huh?

Not for the crap jobs.

You stand at Home Depot, nobody asks you anything. Right?

Yeah.

But for Lifewell and Beverly Patrol… you had to have a green card.

How?

I got married. I was seeing this girl off and on… so she said she’d marry me. It wasn’t free. I’m still paying her.

Wow! Hey, you think we could get her for the documentary?

No way! You kidding me? It’s against the law. It’s major.

We had to pretend for a year we was married. They came over, they’d do interviews… ask us questions in different rooms. She was real good. Good actress, you know? But nobody knows. I mean nobody. Not even Mamie.

Mamie’s white, OK? You look like a scared Mexican. Like, down at the border on the news.

[written on screen:] Four months later. Charley’s father, Mamie’s mother. Charley tells them the big news.

Mamie’s mother: Pregnant? Pregnant?! Get your bony ####### #ss out of this car! What the hell is the matter with you?! What the #### were you…

[written on screen:] Abortion Day. Off to Phoenix. Charley will stay behind.

Mamie at 17: I gotta go.

Eric Jungmann: Wait… Wear this when they do it. It’s–it’s good luck.

Mamie’s mother: Mamie? Who’s in there?

Mamie: No one, Mom. I’m on the phone.

Mother: Charles is waiting in the car, so hurry up.

Mamie: OK, I’m coming.

Mother: I’ve got your blue bag.

Mamie to Jungmann: I only did it to get out of this house. OK?

Jungmann: No, you didn’t.

Mamie’s mother: Mamie! It’s time to go!

[written on screen:] Mamie is like Javier. They get paid to make people feel better.

Girl: But it– it already has a face, right? A face and a personality?

Mamie/Lisa Kudrow: It has more of a head than a face at this stage. And a personality? I don’t–Not a personality. I don’t think you could say that.

Girl: No one’s giving me any advice.

Kudrow: I’m not here for advice. I’m here to listen. I can’t tell you what to do.

Girl: That’s great. That’s helpful.

Kudrow: I had one when I was your age.

Girl: And were you sorry after? I mean, does it bother you? I’m Catholic.

Kudrow: I shouldn’t have told you that. And I’m Jewish, so… I shouldn’t have told you that, either.

Girl: Will you be here tomorrow? It’s tomorrow at 10:00 if I decide.

Kudrow: Tomorrow? No. No, but there will be someone for you… Janet, if you want to talk afterwards.

Girl: Yeah. I’m gonna do it.

Kudrow: OK.

Girl: I’m not maternal, either.

Lisa Kudrow: I don’t need to see my son. I was going to have an abortion, in fact… until someone talked me out it.

Jesse Bradford: If you don’t care, then why’d you keep updating the adoption agency… with your addresses? There’s four of them in the file.

Kudrow: He has the information. He can contact me if he wants to.

Maggie Gyllenhaal: I don’t even know why I’m here. I have already made up my mind.

Lisa Kudrow: It’s just something we do here… Jude. Or is it Judy?

Maggie: Jude.

Lisa: OK.

Maggie: I want the abortion.

Lisa: Do you want to tell me why?

Maggie: Well, I’m marrying somebody… and… I want to start out with a clean slate.

Lisa: This is not his child?

Maggie: It probably is. If it isn’t, it’s his son’s.

Lisa: Are you serious?

Maggie: Yeah, and then, if we have more kids… their brother or sister could be their cousin or… You see how it could get?

Lisa: Yeah. Do your partners know of your pregnancy?

Maggie: No.

Lisa: Do you have any feelings about your baby?

Maggie: You’re not supposed to say “baby”. You’re supposed to say “pregnancy” or “fetus”. I’m pretty sure about that.

Lisa: It’s important to you not to call it a baby.

Maggie: Mm-hmm. But that’s because you’re gonna rip it out of me… and flush it away. Are you pro-life? Will you sign my form?

Lisa: I’m just asking questions. I’m pro-choice, of course. But my opinions aren’t important here.

Maggie: Well, then, I’d shut up about them. I think we’re done. I have an appointment for tomorrow at 10:00.

Lisa: I don’t want you to misunderstand. I think everything is a much bigger decision than we think. And this one– this is the biggest. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t even know what to ask you.

Maggie: You’re a little ###### up, aren’t you? You gotta be better at this most days.

Lisa: This is about average. Here you go.

Maggie: Thanks.

Lisa: I’m not pro-life, though.

Maggie: Who is, once you start paying attention?

[Maggie Gyllenhaal drives to abortion clinic with angry protesters banging on her car:]

[Maggie lies down and says "I'm ready."]

11. Vera Drake (2004) [Rated R for depiction of strong thematic material.]

summary from imdb.com:

Abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s Britain–a conflict that leads to tragedy for her family.

directed by: Mike Leigh

starring: Imelda Staunton, Eddie Marsan, Jim Broadbent

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
James Bowman
Jack Cashill
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:  abortion, abortion, abortion, hate the rich!, abortion

from movieguide.org:

Regrettably, the director still could not resist from making a case for abortion by contrasting a wealthy young woman who quietly has the procedure performed in a clinic without as much as a hiccup with the poor women that Vera helps, who always run the risk of winding up at a hospital locked in a fight for their very own lives. His pro-abortion politics of envy are abhorrent.

there are too many scenes involving abortion for me to type out the dialogue… so instead please be sure to read the reviews up above by James Bowman and Jack Cashill…

dialogue:

You lose any mates, Reg?

A few, yes.

I lost a couple of pals, and all.

I lost my best mate.

Ah, that’s right… Bill.

Did our basic together and everything. Out in Palestine… he got ambushed in an orange grove.

I had to pack his kit up for him like…

Sit next to Reg.

It’s dreadful, isn’t it?

Terrible.

You warm enough, Reg?

Put the fire on, Dad.

I lost my mom in the blitz.

Did you, Reg?

Chapel Street market, March.

Well now we remember that bomb, don’t we, Dad?

It blew all the windows out.

12. The Cider House Rules (1999) [Rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexuality, nudity, substance abuse and some violence.]

summary from imdb.com:

Homer is an orphan in remote St. Cloud, Maine. Never adopted, he becomes the favorite of orphanage director Dr. Larch, who imparts his full medical knowledge on Homer, who becomes a skilled, albeit unlicensed, physician. But Homer yearns for a self-chosen life outside the orphanage. When Wally and pregnant Candy visit the orphanage Dr. Larch provides medically safe, albeit illegal, abortions Homer leaves with them to work on Wally’s family apple farm. Wally goes off to war, leaving Homer and Candy alone together. What will Homer learn about life and love in the cider house? What of the destiny that Dr. Larch has planned for him?

directed by: Lasse Hallstrom

starring: Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Delroy Lindo, Paul Rudd, Michael Caine, Kathy Baker, Erykah Badu, Kieran Culkin, Heavy D., Paz de la Huerta, J.K. Simmons, Erik Per Sullivan

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
James Bowman
Robert George at the National Review
prolife.com
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: abortion, abortion, migrant workers, more abortion, incest, illegal abortion, falsifying medical records, abortion, patriarchal rules shouldn’t apply to me, another abortion

from James Bowman:

The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, is the inspiring tale of an abortionist, Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine), and his long life of tireless, unselfish, devoted service to unwanted children in an orphanage in New England in the early part of the century; when, of course, he was forced to ply his trade illegally. Hm. I wonder if there could be any kind of a political agenda here? It’s just possible, I suppose.

The title comes from an observation made about the list of rules posted on the wall of a dormitory where migrant workers come every autumn to pick apples. The first few rules (the only ones we hear) are confusingly worded but all seem to add up to one rule, which is don’t go on the roof. This seems reasonable enough, considering the rickety state of the building and the likelihood of a serious accident to anyone who puts a foot wrong, but one of the migrants trenchantly observes that “Someone who don’t live here made them rules.” This seems to her-and to Hallstrom and to John Irving, who wrote the novel on which the film is based-to be a conclusive if somewhat illogical reason why the rules should not be obeyed. Fortunately, no one is killed by crashing through the roof as a consequence of not obeying them.

You get the analogy? The rules against abortion are (or were, when there were such things) made by men, who do not live in women’s bodies. Therefore, women need not obey them. Indeed, it is a question whether they need obey any rules imposed upon them by a patriarchal society. The only point in the film where any kind of moral judgment is made is when it is revealed that one of the migrant workers, Mr. Arthur Rose (Delroy Lindo), has been committing incest with his own daughter. Paradoxically, both this act and the rule against it must be regarded as artefacts of the patriarchal culture, but the film comes down on the side of opposition to incest anyway. Not to be disregarded, of course, is the fact that it provides an opportunity for the daughter to have a wholly-approved abortion.

The apple-picking in this movie takes place on the Maine estate of Wally Worthington (Paul Rudd) a handsome young man who is a pilot in the dangerous Burmese theatre of the last World War. Home on leave from the Army Air Force, Wally turns up in his smart roadster at the St Cloud’s orphanage, run by Dr. Larch, where the good doctor obligingly performs an abortion on his gorgeous, pouting girlfriend, Candy (Charlize Theron). While there he makes quite an impression, and Candy even more of one, on Dr. Larch’s young orphan assistant, Homer Wells (Tobey Maguire). Having lived in the orphanage all his life, Homer thereupon decides he needs to see more of the world. There follow idyllic days of picking apples along with the migrants on Wally’s estate and idyllic nights of screwing Wally’s girl while Wally is risking his life for his country in the Far East.

Candy explains her behavior by saying, “I’m not good at being alone,” but, of course, she also benefits from the fact that the unwritten rule against a girl’s screwing around on her boyfriend overseas is-you guessed it-made up by men. She is exempt from it ipso facto. Of course the great thing about this exemption is that men can benefit from it, too. Or at least abortionists can, who are presumably to be regarded as a sort of honorary women for the essential service they perform. Dr. Larch, for instance, is to be applauded not only for his career as an illegal abortionist but also for falsifying medical records in order to keep Homer out of the army and for forging medical and academic credentials in order to permit Homer to succeed him at the orphanage. More of those pesky patriarchal rules! Too bad that he meets an untimely end through his addiction to sniffing ether while listening to “Ukulele Lady” on the Victrola. One supposes it was the patriarchy that drove him to it.

from movieguide.org:

THE CIDER HOUSE RULES tells the tale of Homer Wells (Toby Maguire), a young man growing up in a remote orphanage in rural Maine. Doctor Larch (Michael Caine), an ether-abusing but kindly man, runs the orphanage and serves as a surrogate father to his charges. He considers Homer to be his protegee and trains him in medical skills until Homer can deliver babies and perform surgery with aplomb. Yet, the doctor and Homer differ on one issue: Dr. Larch performs abortions, which Homer insists is wrong. Homer argues that, if abortion were legal, he himself might have been aborted and that he is “happy to be alive.” The doctor insists that the young mothers who come to him are desperate and that he simply “gives them what they want” instead of telling them what to do, because “doing nothing” is wrong. “Our duty is not to leave things to chance,” he admonishes Homer. He claims, like all abortion advocates, that, if he does not give these women what they want, they will seek the procedure from amateurs and end up injured from a botched attempt. [...]

THE CIDER HOUSE RULES is offensive on so many levels. Its insidious manipulation of its audience with blatant symbolism and heart-tugging scenes, of orphans yearning for parents, of Homer picking shiny red apples in gorgeous mountain settings, of frantic young girls pleading with Dr. Larch for help, all in the name of abortion, is simply sickening. Even the movie’s title supports the pro-abortion theme. The “cider house rules” are a list of rules in the house where the migrant workers live and make cider. The workers burn the list, because “those rules weren’t written by the people who live here [in the cider house].” (Never mind that they were written by the people who own the cider house. Another vote for anarchy from the libertine left!) The analogy is obvious: since pregnant women (i.e., the keepers of the womb) were not the authors of abortion laws, the laws should be ignored and defied. Once the cider house rules have been destroyed, the workers declare that they will make their own rules, “every single day.”

[Dr. Larch] falsifies Homer’s medical records to exempt him from service in World War II. When the state licensing board moves to replace Larch, the abortionist concocts a phony educational history and counterfeit credentials for Homer, who had never so much as attended high school, much less college or medical school. Knowing that several members of the board are devout Christians (and thus the target of particular derision in the story), Larch embroiders his falsehoods further by claiming that Homer was a missionary ministering to the sick and needy in India. All of this is justifiable, according to the film, because he’s doing “the Lord’s work” (in this instance, the “lord” referred to is Molech, not Christ) and he needs Homer to be his successor.

1. The Losers (2010) [Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, a scene of sensuality and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

After being betrayed and left for dead, members of a CIA black ops team root out those who targeted them for assassination.

starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe Saldana, Chris Evans, Jason Patric

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John P. Hanlon at Big Hollywood
Kyle Smith
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from movieguide.org:

Finally, Max’s evil, covert shenanigans shed a bad light on the CIA which that outfit definitely doesn’t deserve (despite its slightly checkered history). In fact, Max’s plot to fake a terrorist attack on U.S. soil is a typical liberal/leftist conspiracy theory. This kind of radical political sensationalism, like all the kooky leftist theories that the Jews or President Bush (not Osama bin Laden and his Muslim henchmen) blew up the World Trade Center on 9/11, is mean, mendacious, unpatriotic, and Anti-American, if not seditious and treasonous.

Happily, however, despite the movie’s depiction of the CIA and Max, the good guys are not wacky leftist pinheads. In fact, they are shown to be heroic, mostly upstanding American soldiers who care about children, family and country.

from Kyle Smith:

Even the superweapons — “snooks”? — are, like the dialogue, silly without being funny. They’re green bombs that delicately implode large areas without pollution. Lots of carbon-emitting life forms wiped out and zero emissions? Maybe Max is an underappreciated Savior.

the character Cougar wears a Che shirt at one point…

2. The Back-Up Plan (2010) [Rated PG-13 for sexual content including references, some crude material and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A romantic comedy centered on a woman who conceives through artificial insemination, only to meet the man of her dreams on the very same day.

starring: Jennifer Lopez, Alex O’Loughlin, Michaela Watkins, Eric Christian Olsen, Anthony Anderson, Tom Bosley, Linda Lavin, Robert Klein, Cesar Millan

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
Parcbench
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from The Vancouver Sun:

As luck, and the screenplay, would have it, that same day she runs into Stan (O’Loughlin, from TV’s Moonlight and The Shield), who is also unaccountably single even though he is handsome, hunky, runs a cheese farm, arranges romantic dinner dates in starlit gardens and dreams of opening a sustainable gourmet food shop featuring only locally grown produce. [...] with a new-age approach to motherhood that culminates in a natural childbirth sequence – chanting, drums, the need for a mirror – which will, I expect, play very well to the moms in the audience.

from Kurt Loder:

Jennifer Lopez, at her most appealing here, plays Zoe, the owner of a conscientious Greenwich Village pet shop — not a “puppy mill,” as she disdainfully puts it, but a store that offers up proudly un-bred mutts for adoption. [...] Zoe and Stan — whose crunchy vocation is creating artisanal cheeses at an upstate farm — are of course made for each other.

from a blog commenter:

As to why studios would make dreck like “The Back-Up Plan”: Simple. Anything to attack the family, devalue marriage, and glorify the ’60’s hippie “anything goes” ethos.

3. Oceans (2009) [Not Rated]

summary from imdb.com:

An ecological drama/documentary, filmed throughout the globe. Part thriller, part meditation on the vanishing wonders of the sub-aquatic world.

documentary narrated by: Pierce Brosnan

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: [not playing near me] but here’s what I found in some reviews:

from Kyle Smith:

The movie ends with the usual alarmism about how endangered all of this is by man, and it interrupts its own majesty with some bizarre images, such as a rocket taking off and a Cutty Sark-style sailing ship going by, but these interludes are brief.

from the Boston Phoenix:

Despite the talents of Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud — the Oscar-nominated duo behind Winged Migration, who once again contribute their amazing, in-the-midst-of photography — the most striking thing about Oceans is its banality. Blame the perfunctory narration by Pierce Brosnan, the superficial science, the random vignettes jumping from dolphins to sea slugs and then to sea lions.

Or blame the requisite preaching to the choir about pollution and overfishing.

from Cole Smithey:

The filmmakers are careful to spend the majority of the film celebrating the dramatic and peaceful rituals of a wide variety of ocean animals, while punctuating the film eloquently and briefly with the enormous problem of plastics and pollution being dumped into the oceans. Most disturbing is satellite footage that shows the dark streams of pollution emanating from American rivers directly into the sea. [...] In an effort at improving an essential part of the ocean floor Disneynature is donating a portion of the film’s first week proceeds to save our coral reefs. Without Jacques Cousteau’s lifelong contributions to oceanic exploration, a film like “Oceans” would not be possible. When asked what he saw as the biggest threat to our planet, Jacques Cousteau said, that by far it was our population explosion. America’s population has more than doubled since Cousteau made that statement. If anything, “Oceans” makes us aware that sea creatures are people too.

from movieguide.org:

and there are some strong environmentalist elements showing polar icecaps breaking off in the wake of alleged global warming. If the viewer can see past that, they will find a beautiful, lush view of God’s creation waiting for them here.

NOTE: This is a “Participant Media” production… which means you can expect to be encouraged to help out in the fight for Social Justice!

and, well, what do you know? here’s the “action hub” for Oceans: http://savemyoceans.com/
click here for 10 things that they want you to do…

4. Avatar (2009) [Rated PG-13 for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking.]

summary at imdb.com:

A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Joel David Moore, Giovanni Ribisi, Michelle Rodriguez, Wes Studi, CCH Pounder

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John Nolte at Big Hollywood
Tim Slagle at Big Hollywood
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
Leigh Scott at Big Hollywood
Parcbench
Hollywood, STFU.
John Boot at Pajamas Media
Andrew Klavan
Jack Cashill
Sonny Bunch at the Washington Times
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
Peter Suderman at Reason.com
John Podhoretz at the Weekly Standard
video review: Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd at PJTV

articles:

Daily Gut: Some ‘Subversive’ Movie Ideas for James Cameron by Greg Gutfeld at Big Hollywood

“AP: Palestinian Protesters Pose as Na’vi From Avatar” at Big Hollywood

“L.A. Times: ‘Brave’ James Cameron Takes on Right-Wing Critics” by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Doing the Research the ‘L.A. Times’ Won’t: James Cameron’s Own ‘Avatar’ Script Contradicts His Latest Spin by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

‘Avatar’ and Hollywood’s Traitor Obsession by James Hudnall at Big Hollywood

Where Will James Cameron Stand When His Terrorist Chic Eco-Revolution Begins? by Kurt Schlichter at Big Hollywood

James Cameron: ‘Avatar’ is a ‘Tribute’ to Marines — PLUS: What the Sequels Might Look Like by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

‘Avatar’ and the Myth of the Noble ‘Blueskins’: Part One by Dan Gagliasso at Big Hollywood

‘Avatar’ and the Myth of the Noble ‘Blueskins’: Part Two by Dan Gagliasso at Big Hollywood

‘I Believe In Eco-Terrorism’: Does James Cameron Live In a Malibu Mansion? by Pam Meister at Big Hollywood

The Wrap: Cameron Claims Anti-American ‘Avatar’ Isn’t by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Time to Call Out James Cameron by Kurt Schlichter at Big Hollywood

‘Avatar’ and Boycotts: When the Left Does and Doesn’t Champion Free Speech by Frank DeMartini at Big Hollywood

Why Does Cameron Infantilize Native Peoples By Portraying Them as Helpless? by Kurt Schlichter at Big Hollywood

James Cameron: Marxism For Thee, But Not For Me at Big Hollywood

Avatar: What If Cameron’s Na’Vi Found Christ? at Big Hollywood

Spoilerific Thoughts: ‘Avatar’ is No ‘Dances With Wolves,’ and More… by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ Shows Hollywood How to Trash America and Make a Profit Doing So by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Easterbrook: ‘Avatar’ Trashes America and the Marines by Big Hollywood

How Disney’s ‘Pocahontas’ Became Avatar by Big Hollywood

Avatar: Film Art as Cultural Suicide by Noel Anenberg at Big Hollywood

Avatar and Shuster’s Shame Culture by Adam Baldwin at Big Hollywood

Joe Klein on Avatar: Americans Are the Bad Guys at Big Hollywood

Paranoid Elements Think Hollywood Has Proactive Agenda by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

Marine Official Slams ‘Avatar’: ‘Disservice to our Corps’ at Big Hollywood

A Veteran Speaks: ‘Avatar’ Demeans Our Military by Jack L. Treese, CWO US Army, Retired at Big Hollywood

Is It OK for Conservatives to Enjoy ‘Avatar’? at Big Hollywood

Obsessive ‘Avatar’ Fans Suicidal and Depressed at Big Hollywood

James Cameron: ‘Like the Redneck NRA Supporters They Are’ by John Nolte at Big Hollywood

‘Avatar’ Contrarian Round Up: ‘The King of the World is Naked’ at Big Hollywood

James Cameron Responds To Right-Wing ‘Avatar’ Critics
‘It’s high-quality left swill,’ writer/director jokes about his movie.
from mtv.com

Poli-Bits:

from John Nolte:

Giovanni Ribisi’s sweaty weasel of a corporate executive never moves beyond that and Col. Quaritch is all ‘roid rage, no humanity and his Big Speech about the necessity of “a pre-emptive attack to fight terror with terror” was as surprising as Cameron‘s use of a military “shock and awe” campaign to level the Na’Vi’s precious “Home Tree” as a tacky metaphor for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Oh yeah, he went there… [...]

but it’s always back to the film’s dullest characters: the one-dimensional Na’vi. You would think that with 15 years and a half-billion dollars, Cameron could come up an alien species that doesn’t drip with every Indian and African sacred-cow cliché imaginable. These are creatures who worship the Great Mother Eywa, have a sacred relationship with the earth, shoot bow and arrows, ride horse-like animals, whoop it up in battle, and talk like this: “It has only happened five times since the time of the first songs of our ancestors.”

The Na’vi also apologize to animals after killing but before butchering them. So I guess that’s okay. Maybe if Quaritch had gotten on the loudspeaker and spoken a little mumbo-jumbo before dropping a daisy cutter on Home Tree all would be forgiven.

On top of that, the Na’vi are an awfully stupid species. After years of dealing with the “Sky People,” for some reason they still haven’t figured out that arrows are useless against giant military aircraft. And is it okay to mention how hard it is to keep track of who’s who, because the Na’vi, uhm … all look alike? Twice I was sure Sully’s avatar had been killed. Twice I was disappointed.

Cameron’s brainchild tribe is boringly perfect and insufferably noble … I wanted to wipe them out. [...]

Think of “Avatar” as “Death Wish 5” for leftists. A simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin’ hate the bad guys (America), you’re able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all and still get off watching them get what they got coming.

from Jeffrey Weiss

So where are the politics? Start with the recapitulation of the invasion of the Americas by Europeans, and the subjugation of the indigenous peoples by outsiders with better technology. Move to the demonization of corporations and profit. Take a few swipes at President Bush 43 by invoking “shock and awe” and “preemptive war” to justify a brutal attack on the Na’vi home.

It’s broad allegory, to be sure. Aimed at having the viewer think about how we want to treat people whose lives, customs and values are different than our own. But allegory is only effective if we can see ourselves in it — if behind the inevitable distortion and artistry there are situations that we can apply to hard choices in our real lives. For all the otherworldliness in Gulliver’s Travels, for instance, Jonathan Swift was careful to embed many details that would have grounded the readers of his day in their everyday world.

Now for the religion. For a lot of the movie, I thought the description of the film as a love note to New Age faith was pretty accurate. The Na’vi claim a link with all living things on Pandora. They have sacred places where they say they feel the deepest connection. When they kill an animal they speak a ritual “prayer” of thanks for the use of the creatures as food.

All of which sounds a lot like a mash-up of American Indian and less specific earth-based faiths we can find around us today. (For another angle, here’s a reviewer in the India-based Hindustan Times who sees Hindu elements in the Na’vi.)

But then Cameron takes another step: It turns out that the Na’vi deity that they call Eywa is real as rocks. Trees, plants and many animals have literal connections to each other, forming synapses in a giant world-mind. A mind that manifests itself at a key point of the plot in a way that leaves no ambiguity about whether “she” is real or not.

Academics will argue about exactly how you define “religion.” But one element is common to every definition I’ve ever seen: faith. A religion requires its adherents to have faith in some aspect of the transcendent that cannot be proven using the material stuff of the ordinary world.

Explaining Eywa is a matter of neurophysics, not theology. So it’s not about religion.

from Martha Bayles:

In another sense, though, “Avatar’’ does introduce a new element: a hard-edged political message that, unlike the indirect and largely symbolic messages of previous blockbusters, is aimed at a specific target – namely, American foreign policy under the Bush administration (and, for some viewers, the Obama administration as well). [...]

But Pandora is being invaded by a multigalactic corporation, backed by a heavily armed mercenary force, seeking to extract a valuable mineral called unobtanium (get it?). The hero, a paraplegic ex-Marine named Jake, is recruited to spy on the Na’vi in a hybrid body called an “avatar,’’ remotely controlled by his human brain (don’t ask). Taken up by a lovely female warrior called Neytiri, Jake grows alienated from his mission, and when the mercenaries destroy the sacred Hometree of the Na’vi, he leads Neytiri and her people into spectacular battle against his fellow earthlings. [...]

“Avatar’’ does point the finger, and crudely, too. The corporation ravaging Pandora is clearly American, and while the name “Bush’’ is not uttered, the film portrays the mercenaries as culturally obtuse aggressors itching to “fight terror with terror’’ and drop incendiary bombs on the “tree-hugging’’ Na’vi. This is extreme, because however one feels about America’s current wars, neither the Taliban nor Al Qaeda is a tribe of idealized noble savages living in perfect harmony with nature. Further, there is something unseemly about caricaturing American soldiers as mindless goons at a time when they are fighting and dying far from home.

Avatar wasn’t quite far-leftist enough for this person:

Then of course there’s the whole colonial/imperialist fantasy where not only does the white man become the native, but he’s 1) better at being one of them than they are and 2) nessecary to save “the People” because the savages can’t manage it themselves. I dunno, after reading Always Coming Home and other similar pieces in my Linguistics and SF class last year, the attitude toward native cultures (both in terms of the superficiality of it all and the last thing I mentioned) really digusts me. It’s bad SF, lazy writing and it’s just plain offensive.

from Carl Kozlowski:

But worst of all is the fact that the RDA forces dress, look and act like US Marines, and their assaults play out like a greatest-hits collection of America’s worst military atrocities, from napalm-style bombings to driving the Na’vi away in a sequence that resembles depictions of the Native Americans’ Trail of Tears. Col. Quattrich resembles Donald Rumsfeld in both appearance and tone, particularly a ridiculously heavy-handed speech in which he tells his forces of the need for “pre-emptive war” to get what they want, and another character’s statement that the military assault will be “shock and awe.”

SPOILER ALERT: It all adds up to crossing a line that I’ve never experienced in a major American film: drawing the audience to cheer the brutal deaths of Americans who are clearly symbolizing the military. The RDA forces are shot, thrown off their planes, crushed by heavy objects and eaten by Pandora’s flying creatures, as their helicopters are brought crashing down in flames.

Which leads me to wonder who really wrote this overpriced pile of cliches and anti-Americanism – James Cameron or famed radical-left historian Howard Zinn? I’ve defended movies like “Brothers,” which some conservatives branded as anti-troop because it depicts the tragedy of post-traumatic stress disorder on the life of a US soldier and his family, but “Avatar” takes its message into almost outright hatred of our forces while hiding behind the slightest of smokescreens in its bare mention that they’re “mercenaries.”

Call a spade a spade, and call a uniformed fighting force composed entirely of Americans and led by a Colonel the military. Why couldn’t Cameron have left his agenda at home and crafted a non-political story in which Americans could be heroes, as they have been in countless situations anyone can agree on, even assuming Iraq is divisive?

from far-leftist Jeffrey Wells:

The political import of Avatar — and there’s no waving this aspect away because it’s right in your face start to finish, and especially in the third act — is ardently left. It is pro-indigenous native, anti-corporate, anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. Iraq War effort, anti-U.S.-in-Afghanistan (and anti-troop-surge-in-that-country, or strongly against the thinking of President Barack Obama and Gen. Stanley McChrystal), anti-rightie, anti-Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, etc.

Yes, it’s very teenaged adolescent in its super-imaginative wacko visions and exuberant energy levels, but politically it’s pure Che Guevara (more the Motorcycle Diaries or Che-in-Cuba version than Che in Bolivia), Naom Chomsky, Hugo Chavez, Howard Zinn, Gore Vidal, Oliver Stone, etc. Cameron is an earth-hugging lefty from way back (the flagrant despise-the-arrogant-rich current in Titanic being but one example) so this should come as no surprise to anyone. I for one am cheered and heartened.

If Sarah Palin sees Avatar and then sits down and actually thinks about what it’s saying (which is always a dicey proposition, I admit), she’ll hate this movie. Because Avatar hates her and her kind. Some righties will pretend to like it (“great popcorn flick! took my kids!”), but they’d have to be in major denial mode not to recognize that Avatar is much more MSNBC than Fox News. It really spits on the Fox News philosophy/worldview. If Cameron had for some inane reason put a Fox News-type character in the film, he/she would end up with a Na’vi arrow through his/her chest, trust me.

Call it the most flamboyant, costliest, grandest left-liberal super-movie anyone’s ever seen — a political tract that cost Rupert Murdoch God knows how many hundreds of millions to make and yet is totally pro-loincloth, pro-native, despise-the-greedy, hug-the-earth, worship-the-earth, down with the soulless short-end, down with the us-first, masters-of-the-universe thinking behind the Goldman Sachs/Timothy Geithner culture and up with the eternal/spiritual in all cultures and all corners of the globe. The tragedy of the Vietnam War echoes all through this film. Somewhere Ho Chi Minh is smiling.

Cameron explains the anti-imperialist current to John Anderson in a forthcoming N.Y. Times Sunday piece: “I’m…a child of the ’60s. There’s a part of me who wants to put a daisy in the end of the gun barrel. I believe in peace through superior firepower, but on the other hand I abhor the abuse of power and creeping imperialism disguised as patriotism. Some of these things you can’t raise without being called unpatriotic, but I think it’s very patriotic to question a system that needs to be corralled, or it becomes Rome.”

Spoiler: I leave it to the community to decide whether there’s a huge 9/11 metaphor in Avatar or not, but I felt one (although politically it makes no sense in the context of the film.) Call it a reverse 9/11 image. I’m not talking about the destruction of a man-made super-structure but a natural one. I’ll leave it at that and wait for reactions.

from Hollywood, STFU.:

In fact, after a decade or two of perspective, I fully expect that this groundbreaking work will be studied in the best film schools, right about the time they are covering Riefenstahl.

Seldom has a film been made which combines cutting edge technology, the highest standards of quality, and a deep, self-indulgent loathing of all things which The Left despises about America. I honestly don’t remember the last time I found myself booing and hissing at a film as the end credits started rolling.

Here’s “Avatar” in a nutshell. America is an evil place which: will not provide healthcare, even for its vets injured in combat; picks fights wherever it’s profitable, even in Chavez’s socialist utopia of Venezuela; has a bloodthirsty merc military which, at the beck of evil corporations, commits business-as-usual horrific atrocities while screaming “Git Sum!”; has no respect for any environment as they “kill their mother”; will take whatever they want whenever they want from whomever they want by any means necessary, the weaker the victim, the better. Let me be clear, this is one deeply hateful and offensive movie. It also happens to be great, which is why I mentioned Riefenstahl. Good job, and congrats, Jim.

If you go to see “Avatar,” be prepared to be amazed, and be prepared to be bombarded with all of the hate and bigotry which Hollywood has to offer. I, for one, will not be seeing this film a second time…

quite a few bits of dialogue featuring Jake Sully being called a moron:

Dr. Grace Augustine: [to Jake, just before he connects to his Avatar] Just relax and let your mind go blank. That shouldn’t be too hard for you.

Jake Sully: Neytiri calls me skxawng. It means “moron.”

[Jake gets down from the ship with a gun. Wainfleet follows]
Dr. Grace Augustine: [to Wainfleet] Stay with the ship. One idiot with a gun is enough.

Neytiri: Don’t thank. You don’t thank for this! This is sad. Very sad only.
Jake Sully: Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.
Neytiri: All this is your fault. They did not need to die.
Jake Sully: My fault? They attacked me! How am I the bad guy?
Neytiri: Your fault! Your fault.
Jake Sully: Easy. Easy…
Neytiri: You are like a baby. Making noise, don’t know what to do.
Jake Sully: Fine. If you loved your little forest friends… why not let them kill me? What’s the thinking?
Neytiri: Why save you?
Jake Sully: Yeah, why save me?
Neytiri: You have a strong heart. No fear. But stupid! Ignorant like a child!
[Neytiri walks away and Jake follows after her]
Jake Sully: Well, if I’m like a child, then maybe you should teach me.
Neytiri: Sky People can not learn, you do not see.

Moat: It is decided. My daughter will teach you our ways. Learn well, “Jakesully”, and we will see if your insanity can be cured.

5.  Lord, Save Us From Your Followers (2008) [Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some language.]

summary at imdb.com:

Why is the Gospel of Love Dividing America? Filmmaker and follower Dan Merchant donned his Bumpersticker Man suit and set out across America in this funny and moving look at the collision of faith and culture.

hosted by: Dan Merchant

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

this documentary is all about Social Justice or the “Social gospel”… and not the true Gospel…

from Youth Worker:

For all its goodness, Lord, Save Us does have a glaring weakness in this critic’s opinion: Merchant mentions “The Gospel of Love” several times, but he never gets around to sharing what that gospel is. In fact, if one ignorant of the core doctrines of Christianity were to watch this movie, they likely would walk away thinking the gospel is equivalent to doing nice things for others, such as donating to charity (considering Merchant spends much time highlighting the good works of Rick Warren, U2′s Bono and several other philanthropists). The wrath of God against sin, justification by faith, substitutionary atonement, salvation in Christ alone, the reality of hell—none of these topics are touched on or even hinted at in this film.

Also, the final line of the movie could leave some believing Merchant is a universalist. Merchant says at the close of the film, “Sometimes I feel like a river trying to make its way back to the sea. And though the journey is long, I know the sea refuses no river because I belong to the sea, and I believe you do, too.” It almost sounds like he’s saying, “You’re OK no matter what; we’ll all be together with God someday simply because we’re human. What religion you are or aren’t doesn’t matter—blah blah blah—truth is relative.” Just to be clear, I’m fairly positive Merchant does not believe this, so why he would choose to end his movie with this vague quote is baffling.

from The Independent Critic:

While it might be tempting to assume that Merchant would come down hard on the non-Christians, the opposite actually happens as Merchant repeatedly points out how Christianity is often devoid of Jesus’s core teachings and values.

At one point early in the film, Merchant heads to the street to ask people what they think of when they think of Christians…the answers are, at times, refreshing. Often, they are rather appalling as words such as “Crusades,” “theatrics,” “snobby,” “killing off non-Christians” and others are spoken.

from movieguide.org:

Merchant opens his movie by saying, as child, he was a strong, charismatic Christian but rejected some of his Christian upbringing when he realized that the apocalyptic scenarios of Hal Lindsay and other pre-trib theologians were not coming true. This disappointment with the false doctrines of some pre-millennialists made Dan a cynic regarding Christians.

He follows this introduction with an interview with Tony Campolo, who quotes Augustine, “The Church is a whore but she’s my mother.” Then, for a long period of time, he reviles evangelicals for taking moral stands on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

Merchant finally ends up in a confession booth at a homosexual fair where he apologizes to homosexuals for how horribly the Church has treated them, then apologizes for all the alleged sins of the Church as well as his own sins. [...] as he talks to a slew of liberals from George Clooney to Al Franken, who contend that Christians are unloving.

from C.W. Ross:

The movie also uses their own version of the popular game show “Family Feud” that they call “Culture War,” that first pits the ‘Christian Conservatives’ against the ‘Liberal Media Elite’ and the ‘Young Believers’, against the ‘Agnostic Scholars.’ The game showed that while the non-Christians were very in touch with issues related to today’s culture the Christians were completely out of touch.

from CrossWalk:

The film points out a major contributor to this cultural conflagration—the Church. Merchant compares the body of Christ to a Frankenstein-like monster. An institution started by Christ for good purposes, the Church is now going awry and frightening unbelievers.

6. Minority Report (2002) [Rated PG-13 for violence, brief language, some sexuality and drug content.]

summary from imdb.com:

In the future, criminals are caught before the crimes they commit, but one of the officers in the special unit is accused of one such crime and sets out to prove his innocence.

starring: Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow, Kathryn Morris, Tim Blake Nelson, Klea Scott, Neal McDonough, Steve Harris, Anna Maria Horsford, Joel Gretsch, Mike Binder, Arye Gross, Peter Stormare, William Mapother

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
James Bowman

Poli-Bits:

from spiritualityandpractice.com:

Americans are a fearful people. Years ago, residents of big cities were frightened to walk the streets at night because of rampant crime and drive-by shootings. Since 9/11, the public is reeling from fear of terrorism. People in all parts of the country report having panic attacks, sleepless nights, and dreams of death. The old amenities toward strangers have vanished. We are distrustful of people we don’t know, and even of some we know. God forbid, but what if that person is a terrorist? The media fuels this paranoia with constant warnings of likely targets and plausible weapons. The fact that most of the threats cannot be confirmed and few arrests of suspects since September 11 have stuck does not diminish the warnings’ power to scare the living daylights out of us.

In this post-9/11 world, we have settled into the house of fear. The results: The public seems willing to accept any policy that promises greater security and safety. Americans are handing over to those in power permission to spy on people, abrogate their human rights, and even to consider a military first-strike against suspected terrorist nations. Fear is one of the most effective tools in the hands of those who want to control us.

In a time when fear has taken on apocalyptic dimensions, the release of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report arrives like a blessing. Scott Frank and Jon Cohen have adapted the screenplay from a story by Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner). This science fiction drama takes place 50 some years from now in Washington, D.C. The citizens have become convinced that “that which keeps us safe also keeps us free.” Sound familiar?

The best sci-fi tales have always been an early warning system of the dangers inherent in present-day values, public policies, technological developments, and societal trends. This one enables us to witness the possible consequences of our fear-based way of living where we are willing to sacrifice our freedoms for a pipe dream of safety and security. At the core of this powerful and profound movie is the all-important question: What are we prepared to give up in order to have a crime-free society? [...]

Although Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a substantive sci-fi thriller, this one is even more poignant and powerful on a visceral level because of its relevance to the current reign of fear in America. It is interesting to watch how the citizens open themselves up not only to the surveillance cameras and mobile robotic spiders that take eyeball prints but also to the corporations and stores who use talking billboards to customize messages to consumers. Even more interesting is watching the maneuvers of those in power who can’t allow any questioning of the system. You can’t help but wonder how much of this is also a projection of the present into the future…

from Slate.com:

The year is 2054, and in and around Washington, D.C., murder has been eliminated by a private corporation with governmentlike powers of detention. The company, Precrime, has developed technology to tap into the minds of “Pre-Cogs,” psychic humans who float in a sort of sacred amniotic pool, their synapses wired to video terminals. What they visualize, and what shows up on screens in the company’s control room, are not “thought crimes” but crimes that definitely will be committed. Sounds invasive, no? [...]

I must admit that I find elements of this future attractive—and so, according to Minority Report, does the populace of 2054. A political advertisement for Precrime is stunningly effective: It shows people who would have been murder victims expressing gratitude for their lives. As the movie begins, Precrime is on the verge of a referendum that would make its policies the law of the United States, and a smirky Justice Department honcho called Witwer (Colin Farrell) has arrived to scrutinize the company’s inner workings—to ensure that the data that sends would-be culprits into suspended animation for the rest of their lives is reliable. The movie presents us with a classic totalitarian trade-off, upgraded by technology and the paranormal: Would you surrender a slew of civil liberties for a world without crime? Assuming that the right people were always jailed for the right reasons, I’d think about it long and hard.

dialogue:

commercial narrator: Imagine a world without murder.

various voices: I lost my best friend. I lost my aunt. I lost my dad. My father. I lost my wife.

narrator: Just six years ago, the homicide rate in this country had reached epidemic proportions. It seemed that only a miracle could stop the bloodshed. But instead of one miracle, we were given three– the Precognitives. Within just one month under the Precrime program, the murder rate in the District of Columbia was reduced 90 percent.

various voices: They were gonna be waiting for me in the car. He was gonna rape me. I was going to be stabbed. Right here.

narrator: Within a year, Precrime effectively stopped murder in our nation’s capital.

Lamar Burgess, Director of Precrime: In the six years we’ve been conducting our little experiment, there hasn’t been a single murder.

narrator: And now Precrime can work for you.

Vincent Nash, U.S. Attorney General: We want to make absolutely certain that every American can bank on the utter infallibility of this system. And to ensure that which keeps us safe will also keep us free.

various voices: Precrime? It works. It works. It works. It works. It works. It works.

shouting children: Precrime! It works!

narrator: On Tuesday, April 22, vote “yes” on the National Precrime Initiative.

Iris: I can’t help you. No one can. The Precogs are never wrong. But, occasionally, they do disagree.

Anderton: What?

Iris: Most of the time, all three Precognitives will see an event in the same way. But once in a while, one of them will see things differently than the other two.

Anderton: [...] why didn’t I know about this?

Iris: Because these Minority Reports are destroyed the instant they occur.

Anderton: Why?

Iris: Obviously, for Precrime to function, there can’t be any suggestion of fallibility. After all, who wants a Justice system that instills doubt? It may be reasonable, but it’s still doubt.

Anderton: You’re saying that I’ve halo’d innocent people?

Iris: I’m saying that every so often those accused of a precrime might, just might, have an alternate future.

Fletcher: Alright, here’s where we’re at. Three men in a room. The victim is here. John is here, and this unidentified male out the window. Now, the adjacent building suggests public housing, but I can’t make out the location. which means…

Witwer: There’s thousands of units like this one.

Fletcher: They’re everywhere.

Witwer: I’m sure you all understand the legalistic drawback to precrime methodology.

Knott: Here we go again…

Witwer: Look, I’m not with the ACLU on this Jeff. But let’s not kid ourselves, we are arresting individuals who’ve broken no law.

Jad: But they will.

Fletcher: The commission of the crime itself is absolute metaphysics. The Precogs see the future. And they’re never wrong.

Witwer: But it’s not the future if you stop it. Isn’t that a fundamental paradox?

Anderton: Yes, it is.

7. Appaloosa (2008) [Rated R for some violence and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

Two friends hired to police a small town that is suffering under the rule of a rancher find their job complicated by the arrival of a young widow.

directed by: Ed Harris

starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, James Gammon, Lance Henriksen

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith

Poli-Bits: nothing in the movie bothered me, but Kyle Smith writes:

Ed Harris plays a new marshall in town in 1882 who, together with his loyal deputy (Viggo Mortensen) tells the town elders that he is going to need Draconian new security laws in order to defeat the villain, Bragg, who cold-bloodedly murdered the previous marshall.

My interest was piqued: Was this to be a War on Terror allegory, with the outspoken liberal Harris as a hero who functions as a stand-in for President Bush? That could be interesting. “That’s the law,” says the marshall. “Your law?” he is asked. “Same thing,” he replies.

But the parallel doesn’t go anywhere. The idea of a security clampdown is dropped and the marshall becomes indistinguishable from many another movie lawman.

from the Village Voice:

Appaloosa has the shifting boundaries of friendship and love on its mind, but this isn’t a movie likely to raise comparisons to the tortured revisionism of Unforgiven, or even to last year’s hyperactive shoot-’em-up, 3:10 to Yuma—and that’s surely fine by Harris. He and his collaborators are playing it straight with a timeless male fantasy—horse, hat, six-shooter—a traditional approach that will please moviegoers like my dad and yours: men who walked out of No Country for Old Men puzzled, feeling like they’d been cheated out of a climactic gun battle between lawman and villain.

8. Miami Vice (2006) [Rated R for strong violence, language and some sexual content.]

summary from imdb.com:

Based on the 1980′s TV action/drama, this update focuses on vice detectives Crockett and Tubbs as their respective personal and professional lives become dangerously intertwined.

starring: Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Li Gong, Naomie Harris, Ciaran Hinds, Justin Theroux, Barry Shabaka Henley, Eddie Marsan, Isaach De Bankole, Oleg Taktarov

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Peter Suderman at National Review
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

dialogue:

Fujima: yeah, deal goes down another time, another place…

Crockett: So, what? No HRT weapons team out there?

Fujima: That’s right.

Crockett: Columbians? Russians?

Fujima: White supremacists [...]

Crockett: Aryan Brotherhood? Mongols? Nazi Low Riders? what?

Fujima: We think Aryan Brotherhood, but we don’t know for sure…

He’s AUC, y’know… Columbian right-wing paramilitaries…

Tubbs: this is the type of stuff the CIA does… in Baghdad…

Crockett: what’s it doing on a dope deal?

9. Collateral (2004) [Rated R for violence and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in LA. He must find a way to save both himself and one last victim.

starring: Jamie Foxx, Tom Cruise, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg, Bruce McGill, Irma P. Hall, Barry Shabaka Henley, Richard T. Jones, Klea Scott, Javier Bardem, Debi Mazar, Jason Statham

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

dialogue:

Max: you just met him once, and you kill him like that?

Vincent: what, I should only kill people after I get to know them?

Max: no, man…

Vincent: Max, six billion people on the planet, you’re getting bent out of shape because of one fat guy…

Max: well, who was he?

Vincent: what do you care? Have you ever heard of Rwanda?

Max: yes, I know Rwanda…

Vincent: tens of thousands killed before sundown… nobody’s killed people that fast since Nagasaki and Hiroshma… Did you bat an eye, Max?

Max: What?

Vincent: Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the whale, Greenpeace or something? No. I off one fat Angelino, and you throw a hissy fit…

10. V For Vendetta (2005) [Rated R for strong violence and some language]

summary from imdb.com:

The futuristic tale unfolds in a Great Britain that’s a fascist state. A freedom fighter known as V uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressive society. He rescues a young woman from the secret police, and she becomes his unlikely ally.

starring: Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, John Hurt, Stephen Fry, Stephen Rea

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Megan Basham at TownHall.com
Ace at Ace of Spades HQ
a commenter at Ace of Spades HQ
Kurt Loder
Michael Karounos at ChristianAnswers.net
Peter Suderman at the National Review

Poli-Bits:

from Peter Suderman:

Unsurprisingly, the film’s backstory has been rigged to promote a slew of contemporary causes. Vendetta takes place in a futuristic, totalitarian Britain where, after the implosion of the U.S. and a series of bioterror attacks on major British targets, a fascist regime with theocratic overtones rules in malevolent, dictatorial style. In this future, the British Conservative Party, led by the bombastic High Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), has sprouted a pronounced authoritarian streak. Not wanting to depart from the long history of dystopian fascist states in 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, they roll out the greatest hits of futuristic fascism: revoking privacy rights, banning most art, restricting homosexual activity, disseminating lies and propaganda through the media, and generally treating the citizenry with total disdain—all in the name of God and country. [...]

The Wachowskis take every opportunity to stroke their pet issues. Government sponsored homosexual discrimination figures heavily in the film, but for all the time devoted to the subject, it provides very little significant plot movement. It’s strongly hinted that America’s downfall was caused by its military presence in Iraq. The British government uses a color-coded curfew system as a method of keeping the citizenry in check. None of these elements does much for the central mystery, but they inject themselves into the proceedings with annoying regularity.

The film seems to have a special disdain for religion, portraying the British state as a sneering den of religious hypocrisy. A government puppet figure blasts the U.S. for being “godless,” blaming America’s downfall on “God’s judgment.” In one totally outrageous moment, a priest tries to rape a young girl. In cased anyone missed the point that religious belief is just a tool for manipulation, the government continually preaches “Strength through unity, unity through faith.” [...]

On the subject of terrorism, the confusion reaches almost frenzied levels. Governments that attack their own people are bad, of course, but the proper response to it is apparently to—surprise—attack one’s own people. “Blowing up a building can change the world,” V says, and somehow we’re supposed to sympathize with him when he wants to use London’s subway system to blow up prominent buildings.

It would be one thing if the Wachowskis had constructed their narrative in a way that allowed organic integration of these issues. Instead, they seem to have poorly retrofitted Moore’s original story, ripping out sizable chunks of his plot to make room for their pretentious gabbing. Particularly noticeable are the changes made to Chancellor Sutler. In the movie, he’s a fire-breathing Hitler caricature, the sort of Saturday-morning cartoon villain you expect to see shaking his fist and yelling, “I’ll get you next time…” Moore’s graphic novel made him an honest believer in the necessity of fascist rule to preserve his beloved country—a far more compelling, complex enemy. Changes like this abound, and they are telling: V for Vendetta may be the first movie to come off more one-dimensional and cartoonish than a comic book.

from ChristianAnswers.net:

The movie also repeats the cross motif that each of the other movies uses to denigrate Christianity. The particular cross in “V” is what is called a papal or archiepiscopal cross, with two transoms of uneven length. It serves as an ever-present red symbol of oppression and decorates the backdrop of a viewing platform before which goose-stepping troops march in American-style desert camouflage. This association of Christianity with an oppressive military has become a common motif in Hollywood productions, more recently in “Ultraviolet”. [...]

The movie is preachy to say the least, and harps on three major themes and one minor one: 1) the evil of America; 2) the government control of media; 3) the evil of Christianity; and 4) the innocence of Islam. These themes are portrayed so frequently in American films that it’s become necessary to rebut them as a counter to V’s assertion that “Art is fiction that tells the truth.” This is the movie’s transparent attempt to claim authenticity for its own fictions.

The first fiction portrays the United States as an evil society, racked by civl war; suffering from riots over medicine shortages; and as the source of the deadly virus that conservatives in England used to kill 80,000 of their own people.

What is remarkable about such Leftist fantasies about the presumed guilt of the United States is that all of those evils are in existence today and employed by regimes which were enemies of the United States, such as Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq. Just this past week, a Russian Communist accused the U.S. of inventing the avian flu (Center for Disease Information). Yet, reality is found in the disturbing revelation of the viral weapon the Communists in the Soviet Union developed (Technology Review).

The second fiction of the movie is that of a government-controlled (or supported) media which brainwashes its populace. In reality, this is true only of oppressive regimes and socialist societies like England where the media is, in fact, already Leftist. In the United States, we have a freedom of speech that is so wide-ranging in its liberties that it permits our media to print blatant forgeries libeling our President. Although Dan Rather was fired for publishing propaganda just before a national election, he can take comfort in the fact that he got a nice severance package and was tortured only by his attempts at explanation.

Thirdly, it is difficult for Christians to take seriously the hysterical fictions of Christian totalitarianism by those on the Left who make movies like this and contribute to organizations like Moveon.org or the Democratic Underground. The only totalitarianisms we have known in the modern era are either secular or Islamic, precisely the ones that the United States is trying to protect the world from. It is not Christians who blow up buildings, chop people’s heads off, or issue rewards for the death of Danish cartoonists. This is another case of wishful and perverted projection on the part of the Left. The movie further portrays the Anglican bishop as a pervert who preys on young girls and who has made a fortune from drug company graft.

Lastly, the fiction of Islam as a religion of peace is directly or indirectly referenced twice in the movie. The first is with the suggestion: “What if the worst attack was not the work of religious extremists?” This echoes the fever-swamp accusations by those Americans who think our own government was responsible for 9/11 and not Islamic terrorists. The second reference to Islam is when a TV entertainer is arrested and executed for having a Koran in his possession.

In no Christian land across the world is it a crime to have a Koran or even to preach death to Christians from it, as the imams regularly do in England, Italy, Germany, and the prisons of New York ( Newsday article). In fact, in Muslim Saudi Arabia the persecution of Christians is well-documented, as when two Philippino Christians were arrested, tortured, and deported in 2002 for privately practicing their faith. There are many such instances documented at The Voice of the Martyrs Web site or at Christian Persecution.

The movie further shows the pseudo-Christian regime arresting, torturing, and killing lesbian and gay couples. But in the real world, it is Muslims like the Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani of Iraq who say that “gays should be killed in the worst possible way” (Web reference). By no means are such Muslim comments limited to him, nor are they necessarily meant maliciously. It is simply what Islam teaches.

I saw “V for Vendetta” with nine Christian college students and was struck by their immunity to issues which I found offensive. I believe the reason for their neutral response is because our media have done a thorough job of tainting Christianity and exonerating Islam. While Hollywood is busy making movies about the fictional evils of Christianity, it is just as busy ignoring the real evils of Islam to gays, women, and Christians.

What is important for Christian viewers to remember is that movies are not just entertainment; they are ideological statements. And when movies persistently portray our country and our faith as evil, even skeptical believers who think that Hollywood is too shallow or too objective (!) to make anti-Christian movies should sit up and take notice.

What distinguishes Christianity from all other belief systems is the overwhelming message of grace, forgiveness, and redemption that we have through Jesus Christ. It is a mystery that this is so; it seems fantastic and a stumbling-block to non-belevers that it is so; but we live in a remarkable time when even the co-founder of string theory, Michio Kaku, can say in his new book, Parallel Worlds, that the universe is ordered according to a still-unknown theorem and that where there’s a theorem there must also be a Creator of that theorem. We live in a world of true and false statements, of good and evil deeds, and we must learn how to distinguish one from the other by the fruits of their practitioners.

“V for Vendetta” is a political speech disguised as a movie, but it affirms nothing positive, spending its time engaging in juvenile fantasies about the thrills of anarchism and the evils of Christianized regimes. [...]

…it is even better to understand that 400 years later it is neither Catholics nor Protestants who are a threat to our country. Rather, it is a union of leftist secularists and Islamic jihadists who have joined together to attack the values of our faith and the security of our nation through precisely the kind of propaganda and violence that V advocates.

“V for Vendetta” producer Joel Silver clings to the old canard that “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” in defending the anarchy in this movie. For these people, there is no difference between real Muslim terrorists and fictional Christian ones; between real totalitarianisms of the left and Christian ones. For them, it’s all one, and it’s all true so long as the truth is in the eye of the individual beholder.

While the English remember the 5th of November, let us in the U.S. never forget the 11th of September.

from Ace at Ace of Spades HQ:

Let’s cut to the chase. Even ignoring all the brain-dead ham-handed sledgehammer-subtle political text-messaging in the film — white male Christian conservatives are just plain evil, gays are lumious beings strong with the force whom the Sith want to eradicate, terrorism is often justified, but there is actually no external terrorist threat at all, as the government did it all [...]

Moving on to the poltical criticisms:

This movie’s politics aren’t as odious as I’d been lead to believe. They’re far, far worse.

V says of destroying a building (as best I can remember): “A building is just a symbol. So is the act of destroying it. Without people to witness it, the symbol has no power. But if enough people see it, blowing up a building can change the world.”

Osama bin Ladin just couldn’t agree more!

The ham-handed leftist politics are just everywhere. One minor character, played by Steven Fry, you know little about. When Evey shows up seeking his aid, there is a moment’s curiosity — will he just turn her into the authorities, who will kill anyone who gives her shelter? But at the very moment he reveals he’s a homosexual, all such doubts vanish. In this sort of movie, if you’re gay, you’re good. And of course he is good — very good indeed. He’s so good that he has a secret room where he stores objects and paintings and books censored by the state — incluing a poster reading “Coalition of the Willing — To Power” (joining together Bush’s “Coaltion of the Willing” and Hitler’s Will To Power, of course), and — get this — a KORAN! Because the Koran has now been banned by the government, and all Muslims, presumably, rounded up into concentration camps. [...]

Homosexuals and Muslims have been rounded up, but no Jews, apparently. Probably because the film didn’t want to give these bastard Zionists the coveted status of victim. So we are to guess that Jews are full collaborationists with the fascist regime.

The fascists seized power after terrorists (presumably Muslim; not sure if the film makes that explicit, but it’s definitely suggested) release a deadly plague and kill 100,000 people in England alone. (America is far more devastated; apparently it’s in a state of civil war.) But the Big Secret in the movie is the fascists released the plague themselves, then put the blame on poor innocent Muslims, in order to grab power.

So, the film feeds into 9/11 conspiracy theories that the Twin Towers were destroyed by the US Government itself.

Further, the fascist stay in power by spreading fear through the television, showing fictitious threats from terrorists, subversive undesirables rioting, the Avian flu (! — hey, that’s happening now, right?), etc. Suggesting, of course, that the Michael Moore “fictitious threat”/”fear keeps them in power” claim is accurate.

Displaying riots in the US, a shot shows an anti-Bush poster. But the film is set in 2020 or so — suggesting that perhaps Bush has remained in power by cancelling democratic elections and appointing himself President for life.

And on, and on, and on. Evey’s parents are good, we know, because the father was a writer (an artist!) and the mother was, presumably, a school teacher or social worker. Both were of course political activists, so Evey grew up right.

The complaint isn’t that one can’t feature writers or activists as heroes; it’s just that this film is so by-the-numbers and obvious in its effort to flatter every single interest group in the leftist coalition.

And if every lefty interest group gets flattered, so every lefty enemy gets insulted. The radio talk show host is a racist, homophobic jingoistic fearmonger. The bishop is of course a pedophile — a heterosexual one, because, as we know, gays never do anything bad. The head cop is brutal and stupid. The soldiers are all willing to fire on a crowd of unarmed civillian protestors without much compunction about doing so. And etc.

V for Vendetta is a revenge play, all right — it’s a fantasy vengeance of every leftist loser who dreams of slitting the throats of those who “oppress” him.

from filmsy.com:

The movie remains true to the book only by its plot progression, not by its inherent insinuations. The fascist government of the novel is based on Nazi Germany. The fascist government of this film is obviously based on the typifications of the Bush administration and neo-conservatism in general, thus flipping the original “Anarchy versus Fascism” motif into that of “Liberalism (Good) versus Conservatism (Evil).” The Koran is mentioned as being appreciated for its “beauty” and later on as being the possession which warranted a character’s death, thus insinuating that this is a fascist government based on a demonized view of Christian fundamentalism. Homosexuality is also depicted in this film as something beautiful and condemned by the government as being a sure ticket to the concentration camps. The problem with the shift from the fascism of the Nazi party to the slippery-slope fascism that some see in conservatism is that the Nazis detained and executed homosexuals not due to the morality of gays but because the nature of homosexuality interfered with the plan for racial purity and the propagation of the Aryan ideal. The shift from racial ideology to fundamentalist ideology gives the film a definite anti-Christian spin and implies that to not accept homosexuality, even on a moral basis, automatically puts you on the side of the concentration camp scientists.

The novel’s government, Norsefire (an allusion to the Nazi’s attachment to Norse mythology), is a full-blown fascist regime replaced here with the laughable typification of how liberals currently view the Bush administration. The black hoods over prisoners, the mentions of wire-tappings, the allegations that the government was responsible for terrorist attacks on its ownpeople , and the consistent screaming and shouting of the head chancellor are all vicious and ham-fisted mockeries of the Bush administration. Every character has an articulate voice and a chance to develop except the fascists: they’re not even characters, they’re stereotypes. Not that fascists should be given the moral equivalence of our protagonists, but you still want to establish character perspective (even with villains).

The supposed “uncompromising vision of the future” that the tagline suggests is more like “the slippery-slope, liberal-conspiracy-loving-theory-of-the-future” that the uninformed college student would write about in his angst-soaked, teary essay to a board of college professors who would hail his essay (and the other 3 million essays by “oppressed” college students across the nation) as the equivalent of the proverbial finger against the wicked and mean conservative government. When you unveil this film for what it is, it’s nothing more than a person fighting shadows.

from Megan Basham:

I have seen the terrorist, and he is me. And you. And all of us. So says Evey (Natalie Portman), an acolyte of V (Hugh Weaving), the swashbuckling savior of future England who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes.

But don’t worry, because being a terrorist is now a good thing. As we’ve been told by the media, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter…or masked superhero as the case may be.

In fact, according to The New York Daily News’ critic, Jaimi Bernard, even the term “suicide bombing” is now relative. “One person’s idea of social liberation through symbolic fireworks is another person’s suicide bombing,” she insists in her review of V for Vendetta.

So even though V threatens to detonate a load of explosives strapped to his chest, killing dozens of innocent people at the BBC (oh, excuse me, BFC) if they don’t give him air-time, just think of him as Batman — a little overly-dramatic and conflicted perhaps, but also sexy and an undeniable force for good.

I can see him this way because of all the Wachowski Brothers have taught me. My eyes have been opened, and I am no longer an automaton of the Right-wing religious-military-industrial complex.

Thanks to this “parable about terrorism and totalitarianism” (Roger Ebert) I have been “prodded to think” (The San Francisco Chronicle). And I now think that the Bush administration blew up the twin towers and tried to blow up two other U.S. targets on 9/11 in order to scare Americans into giving them more power. I think that conservatives hate art, literature, and music—especially jazz music—and want to lock it all away because, well, they’re just mean like that.

I think that Catholics are in league with Republicans, and that together it is they, and not radical Islamists, who would like to exterminate all homosexuals and execute anyone that produces material critical of the Church-State. I think it is Christians who persecute people for reading the Koran and not Muslims who persecute people for reading the Bible.

I think that the West’s military personnel are the ones who place hoods over innocent people’s heads then mercilessly torture and kill them, and that broadcasts of Islamo-fascists doing so are so much laughable propaganda.

But most of all, in true V style, I think that documents, like buildings, are only symbols, and that burning them can change the world. Therefore, I propose that we storm the National Archives and torch the Constitution—the document responsible for unleashing the Great Evil that is America.

After all, that’s what the Wachowskis want, isn’t it? When [spoiler alert] the English masses gather and cheer as Parliament, that British symbol of representative government burns, aren’t we too supposed to cheer? Aren’t we supposed to want to run out of theater ready to don our Osama Bin Laden masks, ready to confront the world’s biggest terrorist mastermind on the White House lawn?

Oh, but wait, the movie is “dystopian” and therefore has nothing to do with current events. The “yellow-alerts” the vile dictator employs are a coincidence. The campy television show in which vaudevillian Al Qaeda operatives torture busty blondes, suggesting that the threat of terror is as fictional as it is ridiculous, means nothing. The balding talk show host with a pill-popping problem isn’t intended to smear a real person.

And the fact that the script takes glee in constantly referring to the “former United States of America” and “their war” that left them “the world’s leper colony?” Umm, okay, that’s a little hard to explain…let’s just call that comic justice.

I could go into more detail, but really, there is no point. The fact the film’s release had to be postponed when V’s final heroic act of loading explosives onto a subway car in the London underground proved too realistic illustrates how in-sync the Wachowski’s are with actual terrorists. Forget not being worth the price of admission, this ode to Al Zarqawi and his ilk certainly wasn’t worth the price of pretty Miss Portman’s flowing mane of chestnut hair.

But the worst part of Vendetta isn’t the anti-Bush/anti-Blair agenda it pushes so feverishly. It’s the legions of film critics who have lavished that agenda with praise.

To be fair, some admirers claim that it’s only entertainment: “If you find a way to apply it to George Bush or Tony Blair, it’s only because the film’s themes are so universal.” (Cinema Blend) But most argue that the ideas it brings up are “important”: “That it so cannily reflects specific concerns of this moment in history makes it an almost important movie.” (Los Angeles Daily News)

The hangdogs can’t have it both ways. Either the movie has nothing to do with the War on Terror and it’s awful, or it has everything to do with the War on Terror and it’s appalling.

Incidentally, after reading the script, creator of the V comic book, Alan Moore, insisted Warner Bros. remove his name from the project. He told MTV, “[My comic] has been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country… [The film] is a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neo-conservatives — which is not what “V for Vendetta” [the comic] was about.”

Thankfully, cartoonish acting and a juvenilely self-reverential plot means no one except teenage boys (the ones in the row in front of me kept muttering, “Yeah, anarchy!” as London blazed) and crazed George Clooney disciples will take this movie’s “important ideas” seriously.

Those are the people who are this very moment wailing, “Free speech! Free speech! The Wachowskis have every right to promote their beliefs!” To them I say, yep, they sure do.

And I have the right to unmask them for the ignorant, irresponsible, paranoid filmmakers that they are.

from Alan Moore:

“V for Vendetta” was specifically about things like fascism and anarchy.

Those words, “fascism” and “anarchy,” occur nowhere in the film. It’s been turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country. In my original story there had been a limited nuclear war, which had isolated Britain, caused a lot of chaos and a collapse of government, and a fascist totalitarian dictatorship had sprung up. Now, in the film, you’ve got a sinister group of right-wing figures not fascists, but you know that they’re bad guys and what they have done is manufactured a bio-terror weapon in secret, so that they can fake a massive terrorist incident to get everybody on their side, so that they can pursue their right-wing agenda. It’s a thwarted and frustrated and perhaps largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values [standing up] against a state run by neo-conservatives which is not what “V for Vendetta” was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about [England]. The intent of the film is nothing like the intent of the book as I wrote it. And if the Wachowski brothers had felt moved to protest the way things were going in America, then wouldn’t it have been more direct to do what I’d done and set a risky political narrative sometime in the near future that was obviously talking about the things going on today?”

counterpoint from David West:

Yes, the original graphic novel, and Alan Moore, wrote the book as anti-Thatcher. The movie, however, came out differently and it became much more of a libertarian movie than I think Hollywood wanted. That’s why I use the V mask as my avatar in many places.

Let’s take a look at the plot:

1) Government uses a trumped-up crisis in health care and a mocked up virus in order to take control of health care.

2) Government uses further crisis to take away more and more of the people’s freedoms.

3) Government takes control of the economy.

4) Government arrests those vocal opponents and tries to make them ‘disappear’. V, the antagonist in the movie, is one of them. He is experimented upon, but like Number 6 in the Prisoner, he resists.

5) V strikes back at the government, not because he wants to, but because the sheep have no guts to do so. Eventually, like the original tea party in Boston, people wake up.

6) V eventually destroys the Parliament building (thus the Guy Fawkes mask), as he dies, passing along his job of taking down the government to Evey. However, as he is doing so, the people take to the streets…PEACEFULLY, though wearing the masks. Look at the movie – they don’t act. They are showing they are a formerly silent majority that are fed up. Sound familiar?

V was created long before anyone knew who Osama Bin Laden was. Don’t fall for the bs that there is a correlation between the two. V does act as a terrorist, but isn’t that what the tea parties are already being labeled as, even though we are that peaceful, formerly silent majority.

1. Crazy Heart (2009) [Rated R for language and brief sexuality.]

summary at imdb.com:

A faded country music musician is forced to reassess his dysfunctional life during a doomed romance that also inspires him.

starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Beth Grant, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John Nolte at Big Hollywood
John P. Hanlon at Big Hollywood
Kyle Smith
Christian Toto
Parcbench
James Bowman at the American Spectator
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: no leftist content…

dialogue:

Bad Blake: Now I’m playin’ a f####n’ bowling alley backed by a bunch of hippies

2. The Young Victoria (2009) [Rated PG for some mild sensuality, a scene of violence, and brief incidental language and smoking.]

summary at imdb.com:

A dramatization of the turbulent first years of Queen Victoria’s rule, and her enduring romance with Prince Albert.

starring: Emily Blunt, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, Jim Broadbent

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Parcbench
James Bowman at the American Spectator
Rebecca Cusey
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Salon.com:

There’s a reason Queen Victoria, who ruled Great Britain from 1837 to 1901, inspired one of the Kinks’ most joyous songs: The band’s 1969 “Victoria” opens with the words “Long ago life was clean/Sex was bad and obscene,” a recognition of England’s stuffy, repressive past that sounds like a rebuke — until the point, in the next verse, where the songwriting brothers Ray and Dave Davies declare, with irony-free affection, “I was born, lucky me/In a land that I love.” Victoria, the country’s longest-reigning queen, spent much of the 19th century getting her country ready for the 20th, preparing, unwittingly but dutifully, for two destructive and horrific wars, for the collapse of the empire she herself helped build, even for free love and rock ‘n’ roll. No wonder the Kinks loved all she represented, flaws and attributes alike. [...] And Vallée doesn’t focus just on the love angle: He lays out with clarity the various political machinations and frustrations — including scandals, assassination attempts and complicated decisions with potentially dire consequences — the young queen had to face. Vallée and Fellowes make it clear Victoria was a tough-minded, self-determined woman with a job to do, not a dainty maiden waiting for her handsome prince. [...] That’s not to say Victoria and Albert don’t have their problems. Vallée gives a sense of their clashes and of the ways in which Victoria sometimes felt, at the beginning, that her authority was being undermined by her husband. But the picture overall gives a sense of a partnership that was surprisingly modern

from an interview with actress Emily Blunt:

Lisa Crispignani Rizzo (Facebook Fan): While preparing for this role were you surprised by any of Queen Victoria’s accomplishments?

Emily: I was surprised by, actually what her and Albert did together. They did such incredible feats for social reform and the arts and sciences and architecture and poverty. I think for me I was surprised on a whole like what they managed to achieve and how they went against tradition and wanted to make things better. There was a real need to make things better and I loved that about them. They were courageous in that way.

from Mick LaSalle:

He’s Victoria’s suitor, a sweet, capable guy, who actually likes Victoria for herself, which would not be easy under the best of circumstances. With Blunt playing her as bratty and 21st century, it’s even harder.

from James Bowman:

Jean-Marc Vallée’s film (written by Julian Fellowes), The Young Victoria, is a very handsome picture deserving of every credit for its respectful posture towards the past and especially towards royalty, which it would have been easy for it to have patronized.

dialogue:

Albert: I believe we have a duty to those in need of our protection. It is the business of every sovereign to champion the dispossessed, for no one else will. Take housing. May I show you? Industry is expanding so fast that people are not considering where the workers will live. But I’ve been experimenting. By building these units of two, you can build safe, clean homes for two families for less than the cost… I’m sorry. I don’t mean to preach…

Victoria: No, there’s no need to apologize for being passionate. It seems I have a lot to learn. With all my duties, and I do take them very seriously.

Albert: I know you do.

** In the public mind, the leader of the Conservative Opposition is their pet hero, Napoleon’s conqueror, the grand old Duke of Wellington.

** But not in fact.

** No. [...] The next Tory Prime Minister will be Sir Robert Peel.

** Which side does Victoria favor?

** She’s a Liberal. Above all, she favors Lord Melbourne.

written on the screen before the ending credits:

Among their accomplishments, Victoria and Albert championed reforms in education, welfare, and industry.

3. The Lovely Bones (2009) [Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.]

summary at imdb.com:

Centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from heaven. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.

starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, Amanda Michalka

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John Nolte at Big Hollywood
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
Kyle Smith
Parcbench
Sonny Bunch
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Sonny Bunch:

Yes, the mother goes to California (where she serves as a noble migrant worker, or some such),

from John Nolte:

Jackson’s film is a serious one dealing with big themes involving child murder and grief and justice and the afterlife. But incredibly, dropped right in the middle of all this harrowing drama, is a flat-out comedy montage straight out of a Chris Columbus movie that has Susan Sarandon’s grandmother-character fumbling and stumbling about like Uncle Buck with the household chores, including — yes! — an out-of-control washing machine. Better yet, it’s all set to a pop song.

from Times Online:

The best scenes in The Lovely Bones are not the fantasy but the East Coast cornfields and claustrophobic domestic life in the clapboard suburbs of the Seventies.

4. Peacock (2010) [Rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic material and a scene of violence.]

summary at imdb.com:

A train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town’s bank clerk

starring: Ellen Page, Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas, Cillian Murphy, Bill Pullman, Keith Carradine

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto

Poli-Bits:  “Peacock touches on some touchy subjects such as child abuse, cross dressing, prostitution, insanity” as well as a Senate campaign and women’s independence

from a user review at imdb.com:

it’s set in a not too distant rural America where the oddities of life must be kept well hidden for one to survive.

from Christian Toto:

A local politican (Keith Carradine) wants to use the derailed train setting as the backdrop for a fundraiser, which pits Emma against John in a battle that, while intriguing, never coalesces into something dramatically unique.

from DVD Verdict:

John Skillpa (Cillian Murphy, Sunshine) is a quiet, reclusive man living in Peacock, Nebraska, during the 1950s. Most people in Peacock know who John is, but they’re all pretty curious about what sort of life he leads when he isn’t working at the local bank. He’s just so quiet and shy; he won’t say much of anything to anyone. One day, a train flies off the rails and crashes in John’s yard. A woman happens to be in the yard at the time, and she quickly runs into the house when people start running up to survey the accident. A handful of people assume that this is John’s never-before-seen wife. What they don’t know is that the woman was actually John himself…or rather, his alternate personality. Her name is Emma, an equally shy and quiet woman largely modeled after John’s late mother. When John switches from one personality to the other, the one he leaves behind remains unconscious of what is going on with the other one. As time passes and more people grow curious about the relationship between John and the mysterious woman in his house, the personalities begin to clash. John wants to continue hiding and keeping to himself, but Emma secretly yearns to be a liberated woman. Which side will prevail in this inner conflict?

5. Mammoth (2009) [Not Rated]

summary at imdb.com:

While on a trip to Thailand, a successful American businessman tries to radically change his life. Back in New York, his wife and daughter find their relationship with their live-in Filipino maid changing around them. At the same time, in the Philippines, the maid’s family struggles to deal with her absence.

starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Michelle Williams

non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits:

wow… talk about your leftist guilt-trip movie… you know it’s bad when even Ebert has problems with it…

a child in the poverty-stricken Philippines ventures into the dangerous child-prostitution section of town at night in order to make some money because he misses his mommy who is forced to work as a nanny in Amerika because the wealthy exploitative Amerikan couple are too busy exploitating the third world to spend time with their daughter… (the boy ends up being hospitalized, by the way, after following some man who then apparently rapes him)

sleazy American guys pawing at the prostitutes in Thailand…

“Third World poverty and the consequences of global capitalism”

“a Thai bar-girl named Cookie, who represents yet another unsavory aspect of the exploitative relationship between the West and the Third World – prostitution.”

“Yes, we know about the West’s exploitation of the Third World in the name of globalisation. Yes, we know that it is the children who suffer as a result. And yes, we know that we are all implicated on some level.”

“Mammoth makes a call for a new, globalized family unit and then mourns its failure to materialize.”

from Ebert:

Our health-care system rests, to a sizable degree, upon the shoulders of Filipino doctors, nurses, patient-care specialists and caregivers. There is a reason for this. Medical schools in the Philippines produce many graduates who take such jobs in North America, where there is a perennial shortage.

One of the central stories in “Mammoth” involves a Filipino nanny who cares for rich children in Manhattan while her own children at home live in relative poverty and tell her on the phone how much they miss her. The film intends to make us feel guilty that such people care for us and not for their own. I don’t buy that. At least in the case of the Filipinos I’ve known, they worked hard to win jobs over here, are sending much of their income home, are saving to bring over their kids and are urging them to get an education to help them find jobs when they get here. It certainly helps that English is one of the national languages.

In a world of massive inequality, they’re at least taking those direct measures available to them to improve their family situations. Only superficial thinking about global reality would lead a Swedish-born director like Lukas Moodysson to offer the sentimental simplifications in “Mammoth,” which cuts back and forth between a lucky American kid at a planetarium and her nanny’s children telling her they love her in a phone call. This is hard, but it’s harder to be unable to feed your children or offer them a future. [...]

If Leo weren’t rich maybe he’d be back home where he’s needed.

His wife, Ellen, is a surgeon specializing in pediatrics, which brings her into touch with a young patient who –but you can guess how this world simply isn’t fair. There are so many reasons to be outraged and depressed by this film, indeed, that it all but distracts from the real and immediate qualities of the four fine actors. [...]

“Mammoth” is a perfectly decent film. Too bad it isn’t more thoughtful. It’s easy to regret misfortune if all you do is regret it.

from alibi.com:

Swedish director takes us on a guilt trip around the world

While mom selflessly serves as an E.R. surgeon at an inner city hospital, dad signs multimillion-dollar deals as the founder of a hotshot video game company. All of this activity leaves little Jackie (Sophie Nyweide) to be raised by the family’s saintly Filipino nanny, Gloria (Marife Necesito). Gloria treats Jackie as if she were her own—ironic, considering Gloria has abandoned her own two sons back in Manila to earn a better living here in the U.S.

Although each of the film’s characters are connected, they act as if they’re in separate movies, spinning out in their own wide orbits and rarely interacting face-to-face. Mom wades elbow-deep in blood and domestic abuse working late nights in the E.R. Each troubling case seems to reinforce the knowledge that she’s become increasingly estranged from her daughter. Dad, meanwhile, is halfway around the world in Thailand working on a major business deal and trying to stay in touch with his family via cell phone. Over in the Philippines, Gloria’s preteen sons are becoming increasingly unhappy with their mother’s absence, unable to see the bright future she envisions for them all.

There are times when the story meanders. Leo’s story segment about meeting and interacting with a prostitute in Bangkok takes a particularly long time to fire up. Is this a story about inequality? About economic exploitation of poor Third World nations by rich Americans? Is the Vidales family irresponsible for entrusting the day-to-day rearing of their only child to a relative stranger? Should they give Gloria the boot, quit their breakneck jobs and do the work themselves? Is Gloria a good parent for sacrificing so much to give her kids a better life? Or is she a bad parent for trading close proximity for a big payroll? Moodysson seems to waffle. Perhaps he finds merit in both arguments. That’s logical of him, but not very dramatic.

Despite its rather artificial construction and its heavy pall of upper-middle-class white guilt, [...] A scene in which Gloria’s mom drags her grandson to a (very real) Philippine dump for a tragic object lesson hits home as hard as anything Moodysson’s done.

from efilmcritic:

Off on a business trip to Bangkok, Leo is eager for adventure, settling on an island paradise locale, soon tempted by Cookie (Run Srinikornchot), a sultry prostitute who awakens Leo’s sense of Western shame. [...] The title comes from a specific perversion of nature and prosperity, where Leo is offered a pen adorned with mammoth ivory, kick-starting the gaming wizard’s spiritual challenges in Bangkok, where he feels tremendous discomfort with his wealth, especially around Cookie and his projection of third world struggle upon her.

from HollywoodChicago.com

The relationship between American families and their foreign maids is a subject that has been tackled in a variety of previous indie pictures, from Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Babel” to Todd Solondz’s “Storytelling.” Yet in “Mammoth,” the English-language debut from Swedish-born filmmaker Lukas Moodysson, the material is dealt with in a refreshingly humanistic way, devoid of sensationalism (the story concludes with neither deportation nor asphyxiation).

[...] this film delves into considerably darker waters, exploring the connection between globalization and alienation. A more fitting title may have been, “Apart.”

Gael García Bernal and Michelle Williams play Leo and Ellen Vidales, an exceedingly photogenic couple in New York, who share an expensive apartment, an adorable daughter, and next to no time with each other. The film opens just as Leo is heading out on a business trip to Thailand. Ellen is constantly preoccupied with her demanding job at a hospital, and routinely places her daughter, Jackie (Sophie Nyweide), in the care of her Filipino maid, Gloria (Marife Necesito). The ever-widening void that develops between Ellen and Jackie mirrors the literal separation Gloria has from her own children, who are still living in the Philippines. Gloria took the job in America so she could eventually afford a house for her family, but the prolonged time of her absence is beginning to take a toll on her kids, particularly Salvador (Jan Nicdao). Meanwhile, in Thailand, Leo finds himself with unexpected time on his hands, and becomes drawn to a bar girl (Run Srinikornchot), whose need to support her own child has led her to a life of prostitution.

The key theme connecting these story threads is a sort of self-defeating parental sacrifice. All of these characters are going to great lengths in order to provide for their family. Their unending quest for money has created a chasm separating them from the very people they’re striving to support. [...] Yet Moodysson is smart enough to know that a mammoth problem like globalization couldn’t possibly be solved or satisfyingly “wrapped up” in a two hour drama. He has created a deft portrait of a world out of balance, where the vital and intimate act of parenting can be commodified.

from spiritualityandpractice.com:

In an effort to show Salvador that things aren’t so bad, Gloria’s mother takes him on a tour of the mean streets of the city and to see a garbage dump where people scrounge for food and other valuables.

from Slant Magazine:

Has an auteur ever turned on his characters and the worldview they triumph as sharply and definitively as Lukas Moodysson? The Euro-pop feel-goodisms of his debut and sophomore productions may have been, in hindsight, an aesthetic blind alley (an emotionally mature film about a ramshackle socialist co-op that miraculously manages to eschew both quirky familial clichés and carpe diem bromides while still remaining impressively uplifting is a hell of an act to follow) [...]

here, matronly confrontation is used not to gradually whittle characters with unnervingly detailed psyches, but to insist upon types that individuals involuntarily embody within the tortuous emotional web of Western exploitation. In particular, the decision to heavy-handedly depict rather than excruciatingly imply the penurious details of Gloria’s outsourced labor—she sends her wages home toward the building of a new family house while her mother and children weep bitterly in their third-world alienation—overshadows the New York and Thailand threads with pitifully manipulative, slumdog squalor. [...]

the gratuitous dose of “reality” provided by a clumsily foreshadowed act of child rape in Mammoth suggests that no matter one’s economic stratum, most interpretations of “dedicated parenting” are likely to be tested and brutally chastised by social circumstance.

[...] In the film’s feverishly antiseptic hospital sequences, Ellen’s failures as an urban mother impel her to selfishly invest emotion in the damaged youths that pass through her ward, an attempt at foraging self-worth dismally doomed to crumble every time that the fatalistic crossfire of the streets outside intervenes. And though the all-but-unspoken duel for the flighty favor of Ellen’s daughter between Gloria and Ellen herself veers dangerously close to Spanglish-grade race-relations myopia, the petulant exchanges displaying the limbo of their half-business, half-personal relationship are laced with reluctant bitterness and embarrassed jaundice. When Ellen softly scolds Gloria for “distracting” Jackie with her patient tutorials on Filipino culture, Williams deftly digs into the subtle scorn of a deservedly spurned matriarch (she later, of course, is overcome with regret over the incident; after all, why should we feel guilty for outsourcing parental duties?).

[...] the cyclical nature of Mammoth is intended as a critique of the specious complacency of American domesticity despite the turmoil of emotions we share with—and we thrust upon—the less fortunate.

from the Village Voice:

Get Pummeled by Global Guilt-Tripping with Mammoth

English, Tagalog, and Thai are spoken in Swedish writer-director Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth, but he communicates only in the idiom of Crash and Babel: the Esperanto of feel-bad humanism. [...] Unspeakable things happen to children in Mammoth, too, though mostly off-screen—and solely as the result of outrageously overdetermined symmetries between First World privilege and Third World misery.

from filmcritic.com:

Instead, we’re treated a remarkably subtle exploration of family in a time of capitalism.

from Week in Rewind:

Additionally, Leo finds himself giving into the temptations Thailand has to offer to the foreigner with cash in hand. The movie quickly turns into a depressing story of relationships both developed and torn apart by the affects of consumption. “Mammoth” has been compared to “Babel” and it does seem that similar elements of the film are found in the interrelated relationships formed across an economic and global map, [...]

We watch as Ellen works extremely long hours in the E.R., and witnesses her daughter emotionally detach from her. Sophie finds a new mother in Gloria, who provides more consistent, hands-on nurturing. Leo takes up a beach bungalow because he is so horribly bored of staying in his 5-star hotel while waiting to sign documents for a multi-million dollar deal. He decides to make friends with other tourists who take advantage of the local treasures and ends up at a lounge where he meets a prostitute, Cookie. As his mighty American hero side emerges, he insists on giving Cookie a large chunk of money with the promise that she not work the rest of the night. This must have felt morally invigorating because Leo later calls his wife and leaves a message saying that when he gets back, he wants to start doing charity work (the beautiful irony continues when he does end up sleeping with Cookie).

This does, in fact, seem to be a message of the movie. Americans can solve guilt by paying the right person. Ellen finally has a night off from work, so she plans a special pizza-making dinner for her and her daughter, but Sophie was looking forward to attending the Filipino church with Gloria and sulks until she gets her way. The next day, Ellen brings home an expensive telescope in an attempt to win Sophie back through something that Gloria cannot provide. Leo furtively leaves Cookie while she sleeps but makes sure to provide around $35,000 in designer trinkets on the nightstand. Gloria continues the cycle in an American fashion by purchasing toys to send home to her children after yet another phone call from her son is filled with sobs. She picks up a basketball and notices at the checkout stand that it is stamped with “Made in Phillipines.”

In the end, the families are brought back together but not without tragedy. Most specifically, Salvador naively enters a sex trafficking area in the middle of the night and ends up in the hospital. The film is slow-paced in the typical Moodyson style that centers on everyday interaction with characters with various moments of interpretable montages supported by Cat Power and Ladytron. The bleakest (or very darkly humorous) moment in this dismal film is probably the very last. The Vidales are all on the couch snuggling together and are happily watching their daughter sleep. There is a sense that the two adults understand the mistakes they have made and will move towards change but, alas, the closing lines are:

Leo: “Do you have to work tomorrow?”
Ellen: “Yes. You?”
Leo: “No. I think I’ll take a few days off. Take Sophie to school.”
Ellen: “Good…We will have to find another maid.”

The American show must go on!

from Time Out New York:

They have a cute daughter who seems to be doing fine despite her parents’ workaholic ways, no doubt thanks to the doting efforts of live-in Filipino nanny Gloria (Necesito), whose own children back home have it rough. (We view the crippling poverty and nod soberly.)

from Box Office Magazine:

Moodysson, who won acclaim for his 1998 film Show Me Love and Lilya 4-ever in 2002, uses such contrasting images such as a stuffed refrigerator full of fruit and food and the luxury lifestyle of New York, with the poverty and deprivations of the Philippines and Thailand.

It is all too simplistic and obvious and increasingly the preachy tone becomes irritating.

from movieretriever.com:

Ellen and Leo’s nanny has left her own sons in the Philippines to care for a stranger’s daughter in New York. We watch with impending doom as her two young children wander their home country trying to make money so mommy won’t have to work anymore. Sadly, this is easily the weakest section of the film, as tragedy feels inevitable or else the commentary on how wealthy people pay the poor to essentially leave their own children wouldn’t resonate. The intended emotional impact of the Filipino third of the film feels manipulative.

from Manohla Dargis:

In “Mammoth,” when a rich child eats her lunch in New York, a poor boy in the Philippines cries. And so it goes, as privilege begets exploitation with grimly deterministic logic and pages and pages of bad dialogue

6. Surviving Crooked Lake (2008) [Rated PG-13 for some disturbing bloody images, brief strong language, drug use and smoking.]

summary from imdb.com:

A summertime canoe trip turns into a nightmare for four 14-year-old girls.

non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits: Nothing

=======================================

tomorrow, for Earth Day, Avatar will be released onto dvd/blu-ray in a non-3D edition with no special features… and the movie “Oceans” will be released into theaters… Oceans is a “Participant Media” production which means it might be a leftist preach-fest…

here’s a review of Oceans from the Boston Phoenix:

Despite the talents of Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud — the Oscar-nominated duo behind Winged Migration, who once again contribute their amazing, in-the-midst-of photography — the most striking thing about Oceans is its banality. Blame the perfunctory narration by Pierce Brosnan, the superficial science, the random vignettes jumping from dolphins to sea slugs and then to sea lions.

Or blame the requisite preaching to the choir about pollution and overfishing.

Cole Smithey, the reliable leftist, has this to say:

The filmmakers are careful to spend the majority of the film celebrating the dramatic and peaceful rituals of a wide variety of ocean animals, while punctuating the film eloquently and briefly with the enormous problem of plastics and pollution being dumped into the oceans. Most disturbing is satellite footage that shows the dark streams of pollution emanating from American rivers directly into the sea. [...] In an effort at improving an essential part of the ocean floor Disneynature is donating a portion of the film’s first week proceeds to save our coral reefs. Without Jacques Cousteau’s lifelong contributions to oceanic exploration, a film like “Oceans” would not be possible. When asked what he saw as the biggest threat to our planet, Jacques Cousteau said, that by far it was our population explosion. America’s population has more than doubled since Cousteau made that statement. If anything, “Oceans” makes us aware that sea creatures are people too.

1. Kick-A** (2010) [Rated R for strong brutal violence throughout, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity and some drug use - some involving children.]

summary from imdb.com:

Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so.

starring: Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong, Elizabeth McGovern, Yancy Butler, Xander Berkeley

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John Nolte at Big Hollywood
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
Leigh Scott at Big Hollywood
Kyle Smith
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
Peter Suderman at Reason.com
Parcbench
movieguide.org Christian reviews

an article by Christian Toto: “Think ‘Kick-A**’ is inappropriate? Don’t expect much sympathy”

Poli-Bits: nothing… just a reference to vigilante justice…

2. Death at a Funeral (2010) [Rated R for language, drug content and some sexual humor.]

summary from imdb.com:

A funeral ceremony turns into a debacle of exposed family secrets and misplaced bodies.

starring: Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan, Keith David, Loretta Devine, Danny Glover, Regina Hall, Peter Dinklage, Luke Wilson, Ron Glass, Zoe Saldana, James Marsden

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: the only political references I caught were: the deceased father was said to look “like Colin Powell”/”just like a republican”… and there was a message of tolerance at the end… (i missed part of the movie at the beginning, though)

==============================

here are some conservative reviews for movies that will only be playing in limited theaters this weekend:

1. “The Perfect Game” review by Rebecca Cusey:

2. “The Joneses” review by Parcbench:

Yep, the Jonses are a fake family put together by some major corporation (i.e. the villainous corporation) in order to push some kind of super-consumer lifestyle. They call it “stealth marketing,” and each family member has a certain group of potential buyers that they target. As a whole, they are selling the American Dream (or at least what the filmmaker feels is the American Dream). [...] The only thing we are left with is a blurry anti-capitalist/anti-consumerism message that doesn’t hold much water. The film endorses and idea that Americans are so stupid that they feel the only key to happiness is to spend a lot of money.

The film takes a few familiar and painfully predictable turns that leaves it as a rushed combination between American Beauty and Boiler Room. We get it, Hollywood hates capitalism. The nice thing about this film is that is attempts to poke fun at how movies utilize product placement as well. Of course, that is strategically left buried under the mountain created by its “capitalism kills” message. Ultimately, this is the kind of film Michael Moore would make if he was a halfway respectable filmmaker and slightly less combative.

Even though the film stands strongly against the idea of marketing and capitalism, it would have been enjoyable had it been either cast differently or written with more control. [...] The only consistent aspect was a weak attempt to “tell the truth” about the “evil” corporations.

3. “The Joneses” review by Joe Bendel at Big Hollywood

Pity the poor American consumer. Evidently, a little charm and a winning smile are enough to sell them anything. They voted for Obama after all, although this film probably does not have that example in mind. It is those nefarious guerrilla marketers fleecing unsophisticated suburbanites that are supposed to stir our moral indignation in Derrick Borte’s The Joneses, which opens today in New York.

Steve Jones is not really Steve Jones. He is a former car salesman hired by a shadowy marketing company to pose as the father in a Potemkin model family pushing high-end consumer goods on their unsuspecting neighbors. His lovely wife Kate is really their boss or the slightly sinister sounding “cell” leader. All ridiculously good-looking, the Joneses (Demi Moore, David Duchovny, Pineapple Express’s Amber Heard, and a dude from a cancelled CW show) effortlessly bedazzle those dumb, hardworking rubes. Before they know it, they are buying ugly track suits and sports cars they cannot afford because of the “ripple effects” generated by the Joneses’ extremely unsubtle product placement.

Therein lays the greatest problem with The Joneses. While it unequivocally reproaches the supposedly predatory capitalism practiced by the phony family, it simply drips with contempt their hapless targets. This is personified with excruciating clarity by the Joneses’ Mertzes: Larry and Summer, the couple next door. Though he supposedly owns his own business, he is a classic hen-pecked husband, nauseatingly ineffectual in every way. Summer is an equally unsympathetic figure, obsessed with her motivational tapes and her Mary Kaye-like cosmetics sales program. Sure, the Joneses wreck havoc on their lives, but it seems like the film can hardly blame them for taking advantage of such easy marks.

Of course, it is hardly shocking when the Joneses’ neighbors start having economic problems, since nobody in this film ever seems to work. Instead, they spend all their time on the golf course or at the spa. When asked what he does for a living, Steve Jones replies “a little of this, a little of that, but mainly just keeping my wife happy.” This would arouse plenty of suspicion in Middle America, but everyone in the Joneses accepts it, no questions asked.

Indeed, the filmmakers seem to have little or no familiarity with “flyover country.” Predictably, the Joneses’ predominantly white upper-middle class neighborhood is presented as an intolerant enclave of conformity. To emphasize the point, when the gay fake son Mick comes on to the wrong guy at a party, he naturally gets a beating rather than a firm but polite rejection. As a result, Duchovny’s constant moral agonizing seems hollow and misplaced. Frankly, had the audience been encouraged to root for the Joneses to make their nonsensical sales targets, the film might have worked better.

Obviously, Moore and Duchovny make an attractive couple. To be fair, as they evolve from coworkers to tentative lovers, they demonstrate enough chemistry to suggest a straight-up rom-com might be worth exploring for them. Unfortunately, they are squandered in a thoroughly unbelievable, frequently unpleasant film.

Sure, the plot is predictable and the characterization is problematic, but the Joneses’ faulty premise is its Achilles heel. It suggests American consumers are inherently irrational and utterly immune to economic incentives. Yet, it is flatly contradicted by hundreds of years of economic history, including the predictable drop in demand that always follows tax increases levied on luxury goods, shocking absolutely no one except perhaps a stray filmmaker here and there. The truth is average Americans are decidedly rational. It is The Joneses that could use an infusion of common sense. It opens today (4/16) in New York at the Chelsea Clearview.

4. “Handsome Harry” review by Kyle Smith:

…An old buddy (Steve Buscemi) from Harry’s days in the Navy 30 years ago calls to tell Harry he’s dying — and is afraid of going to hell because the two men and several other sailors viciously beat another sailor, a gay man who made a pass at one of the group.

This episodic movie is at times stagy, as Harry, increasingly desolate with regret, visits several of the sailors involved to help him remember the parts of the incident he has blacked out. As one of the old buddies, “Deer Hunter” star John Savage is reeling, prideful and damaged in a strong performance. But an episode with a professor (Aidan Quinn) who turned pacifist feels formulaic.

The story quietly builds to a rueful and fraught climax in which Campbell Scott does his usual exceptional work, while Harry absorbs some hard lessons. But as one character puts it, “We’re here to learn.”

5. “The Cartel” review by Kyle Smith:

For parents of kids in public schools, the heartbreaking documentary “The Cartel” is a revelation.

Documentary filmmaker Bob Bowdon takes us through the inept, corrupt, embarrassing and spendthrift New Jersey public school system to expose what lies in plain sight: Teachers’ unions work for their own interests, not those of the children. They defend the miserable status quo while making mountains of money (Jersey spends more than $17,000 per pupil) disappear.

Talking to Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, children and adults, Bowdon meets frustrated parents in Jersey City whose rigorously assembled application to create a charter school was rejected on a technicality.

Bowden discovers that you can attend Camden schools for 10 years without learning the alphabet, and captures the tearful face of a little girl who learns, at a lottery for places at a charter school, that she’ll be stuck in her present failing institution indefinitely.

In Camden, desperate parents have formed the Camden Educational Resource Network — a jerry-built alterna-school, with volunteers and virtually no budget — in a church. Tuition is 30 bucks a month.

The teachers’ unions demonize vouchers, which would supply competition, but as Bowdon points out, food stamps and Pell Grants are vouchers. Moreover, private and public schools enjoy healthy competition at the university level.

Witty animation spots nail down excellent points: If your car was determined by your ZIP code, and people who lived in certain ZIP codes got Yugos whereas others got BMWs, would anyone seriously stick with the Yugos — and call for more money to be spent on them?

The worst you can say about “The Cartel” is that every reasonable observer (even om Brokaw is shown making supporting cases in clips) already knows why public education is failing so many children.

But few documentaries have covered such an important matter so convincingly and with such clarity. When it comes to public education, we are all New Jerseyans.

6. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” review by Kyle Smith

The Frenchman, Thierry Guetta, started out filming the moonlit escapades of such graffiti masters as “Invader” and Shepard Fairey, who before creating a famous Barack Obama poster obsessively plastered a stylized image of wrestler Andre the Giant on any inviting outdoor surface.

After meeting, Banksy and Guetta shared a droll escapade at Disneyland, where Banksy planted a life-size mannequin that looked like a Gitmo prisoner and earned his captured accomplice four hours of interrogation in the House of Mouse.

7. “The Perfect Game” review by movieguide.org

Very strong Christian worldview with some strong Bible references, lots of prayers, lots of positive descriptions of God and Jesus, strong Catholic priest, strong black minister, mitigated by many moral problems and politically correct socialist, anti-capitalist, anti-American elements such as mean factory owner, factory goes out on strike to listen to their children play Little League baseball, boy disobeys father to play baseball, coach lies as a major plot device, one lie rebuked but another not addressed, a negative view of legal immigration, a negative view of patriotism, a hostile view toward police, and the white Little League teams; [...]

Faith in the movie is very strong. Prayers are made in the name of Jesus. Prayers are miraculously answered. When the Padre has to return to Mexico because of a visa problem, a strong black Baptist preacher becomes the team’s spiritual advisor. Eventually, even the Doubting Thomas comes to faith.

Although the faith is so strong, there are some troubling moral moments. Angel walks out on his father, although they’re eventually reconciled. Cesar lies to the team. One of his lies is rebuked, but another is never addressed. Equality of all people is stressed, but often at the expense of showing all white Little League teams, white policemen, and white newspaper editors as being bigoted, mean-spirited racists. The politically correct anti-white race card is played in the first scene and continued throughout the movie. There are other movies dealing with the same issues, like PRIDE and GLORY ROAD, which much more breadth, depth and less racism. There are also several scenes that seem to have politically correct anti-capitalist and anti-American themes.

Thus, THE PERFECT GAME is a mixed bag. The movie’s Christian worldview and ending are inspiring, but there are holes in the acting and the politically correct morality.

8. “Exit Through the Gift Shop” review by Kurt Loder

9. “The Joneses” review by Kurt Loder

1. The Perfect Game:

In between these sappy bookends, the film recounts how down-on-his-luck Cesar (Clifton Collins Jr.), having quit his job with the St. Louis Cardinals because of discrimination, molded a rag-tag group of Monterrey, Mexico kids into a champion squad, a task mainly accomplished by making them run lots of laps and having faith in God. Perseverance, sermons from Cheech Marin’s man of the cloth, and kindness toward others are put forth as the easy-bake ingredients necessary to succeed, with The Perfect Game preaching open-mindedness right up until the tale’s conclusion. But by that point, the team—heckled by numerous white redneck caricatures—has been joined by a kindly African-American preacher (John Cothran Jr.) and a tough-cookie female reporter (Emilie de Ravin) to form a triumvirate of persecuted minorities. No doubt some of these particulars are true, but they’re conveyed via so many sloppy clichés and truisms that every moment is smudged with screenwriter W. William Winokur’s blunt fictionalizing touch.

source

And as they play their way through 1957 Texas and Kentucky, on their way to Williamsport, they face racism, “wetback” insults and the like across America’s bigot belt.

source

The Perfect Game is as much about sports trophies as a triumph over the rampant racism and sexism of the time. And that rare film for children presenting problem-solving solutions other than violence, and which has much to impart to adults as well as kids about coping mechanisms in a not always welcoming world. Directed and co-written by William Dear, The Perfect Game stars Clifton Collins Jr. as Cesar, a gifted ball player who can’t seem to get to first base in more ways than one, with the St. Louis Cardinals. Stuck in a dead end job instead as locker room attendant with the Cardinals because he’s shunned as a Latino despite his athletic talent, a disgusted and bitter Cesar returns to his poverty stricken Mexican village where he toils in an iron foundry, and drowns his despair in alcohol. [...] Though fairly conventional as athletic competition on the field, the film is a powerful tale as it plays out between games, a kind of progressive journey north into the dark heart of Jim Crow and a shameful US buried history, as experienced through the traumatized but resilient hearts and minds of these underdog kids in more ways than one. [...] Added to that heady and heartfelt mix is Emilie de Ravin as Frankie, a ridiculed cub reporter for daring to infiltrate the good old boys club at her newspaper and not get married instead. And though consigned to covering Little League as a joke, she eventually figures out how to play the game her way while exposing Jim Crow, and get even with the macho overbearing boss back at the office. [...] Lou Gosset Jr. as yet another baseball outcast who knows what it’s like to have a gift but live in the shadows of the professional sports world

source

2. The Joneses:

…this vicious but clever and highly entertaining indictment of American consumerism masquerading as the American dream will convince you the right people can sell you anything that ticks, flashes, rings, pops, purrs, hums or sparkles—anything except happiness.

When you first see the all-American Joneses, they are pulling into the lush, lime-colored lawn of their perfect new house—which looks like a centerfold in Architectural Digest—their eyes glistening with possibilities. Mom and Dad, named Kate and Steve (Demi Moore and David Duchovny); their curvaceous, drop-dead daughter, Jenn (Amber Heard); and their hunky son, Mick (Ben Hollingsworth), are ready to do some damage. After a perfect dinner that looks prepared by the winner on Top Chef, they all don their tailored designer pajamas, say good night like the Waltons and head for their separate bedrooms. Before you can say “Lights out,” the perfect daughter strips naked in the dark and slips into bed with her perfect dad, ready for some perfect hot-and-heavy incest. Mom furiously switches on the light, declares they’re not having any of that nonsense this time around and sets things right. Yes, the Joneses are too beautiful and perfect to be true, and it doesn’t take long to find out what their groove is, or what they’re up to. When you find out, get ready to pick your jaw up off the floor.

THE JONSES, SEE, are not a family at all. In fact, they don’t even know each other. They’re a team hired by a newfangled covert-marketing firm called Life Image, whose clients hire the company to push the coolest, newest products and sell lifestyles. The Joneses are a unit posing as the cast of The Donna Reed Show to create high-end demands for everything from golf clubs to frozen sushi. Every member of the unit has to carry their share of the load. Their goal: to seduce everyone they meet into becoming titans of “gimme, gimme” and create a ripple effect to convert naïve dupes into selling their products for them. Kate throws lavish parties to turn the neighborhood wives onto Sam’s Clubs. Steve, a former car salesman who thinks he can con anybody, hits the golf course to sell sporting goods. Jenn becomes a classroom cosmetics queen; Mick’s new buddies buy out the latest in digital wide-screen TV’s. Lauren Hutton is the tough executive who arrives every 30 days to evaluate their progress with computer graphs and edgy pep talks: “You’ve been here two months and everybody’s drinking your Kool-Aid.”

Things go south when one envious neighbor (beautifully played by Gary Cole) tries to keep up with the Joneses, goes bankrupt and commits suicide. And the game plan weakens when the family begins to show a human side. Steve tries to be a team player, but his heart gets in the way. Every time he moves closer to the conjugal bed, Kate puts him in his place as the gang leader, with lines like “This is business. I’m your boss. I don’t need to be friends.” Like moving prisoners from one lockup to another, the company tries to change the cell, but it’s too late. To sell lifestyles, you have to sell yourself, and the Joneses don’t know who the hell they are. Jenn is involved with a married man; Mick creates a scandal at school when he turns out to be gay; and Mr. Jones has already fallen for Mrs. Jones. The biggest mistake is when the fake family begins to act like a real family. Only a cad would tell you how it ends, but believe me—a meltdown is inevitable.

The Joneses is a cross between alternate-universe dynamics and a reality TV show, with relevant things to say—about the vulgarity of possessions filling the hole where self-value should be, especially in a recession—and compelling performances to say them with. Surprising, inventive and crisply, merrily written and directed by Derrick Borte, The Joneses is a brisk, captivating entertainment. Think Ozzie and Harriet on speed.

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A terrific new film about capitalism’s tipping point

He may work for the Fox Business Network, but financial guru Dave Ramsey is usually right, and never more so than his mantra, “Don’t keep up with the Joneses. The Joneses are broke.”

If we have learned anything from the recent financial meltdown, it’s that America’s consumerist addictions are both pathological and fixed. It’s true that lower-income households’ indefatigable belief that they will some day be rich keeps them poor, but it’s also true that blue-chip corporations feed that delusion on a daily basis by dangling carrots of upward mobility on TV, in print ads and, with the help of lobbying efforts, literally everywhere you turn. Have you been advertised to at a urinal yet? I have.

This need for product-driven betterment, and the cynical research behind it, infects the rich just as easily. In The Joneses, the startlingly adept debut from writer-director Derrick Borte, David Duchovny and Demi Moore play the Joneses, a seemingly perfect and wealthy family with two kids (Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) who move into a sprawling mansion in an unnamed suburban town and immediately inspire the envy of the other residents. They have all the newest gadgets, wear cutting-edge fashion and drive fresh-from-the-factory sports cars. They seem to have it all, and they’re delighted to tell you about everything they own, and how it can improve your sex life/golf game/high-school popularity.

These Joneses, it turns out in a brilliant cautionary twist, are salesmen, corporate plants employed by a market research company in order to spread the viral word about retail products in the most viral sense.

Taking their cue (and key phrases) from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point – “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts,” goes Gladwell’s law – these Joneses are both the “persuaders” and the “mavens” in one attractive, sexy package. They must use their demonstrative powers to coerce their neighbors – or “connectors” – to buy, buy, buy even if they can’t afford to keep up. It’s the anthropomorphization of capitalism in your own backyard.

The story beats are familiar: Duchovny and Moore develop feelings for each other, the kids get in trouble and the need to confess looms. “This family is fucked up,” admits Duchovny. He’s not wrong. But Borte’s polished treatment of the material feels confidently in service of his point – it’s an assuredness that reminded me of David O. Russell – and the actors involved commit to their situation wholeheartedly and entertainingly. By the time it all comes crashing down (and it must in a cautionary tale like this), the consequences never feel forced or false. To co-opt a stupid phrase that trumpeted a particular Oscar nominee last year, this is the actual “movie of the moment,” only that moment has lasted for 30 years and we’re only now waking up to a simple reality: the system is fixed.

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here’s a conservative review of the movie from Joe Bendel at Big Hollywood

3. Exit Through The Gift Shop:

To the jangly guitars and Spandau Ballet-esque crooning of Richard Hawley’s “Tonight The Streets Are Ours,” Exit Through The Gift Shop opens with a montage of willful destruction of private property. Sometimes it is a clever tweak on obtrusive advertising, sometimes it is just random, destructive spray paint on anything in the can holder’s path. It is an apt metaphor for the film that is to follow. It bounces between clever and abhorrent, but always with an eye toward entertainment. [...]

Exit Through The Gift Shop tells, in its own unique way, the story of 21st Century street art. It is a comedy, an adventure, an expose, a commercial, an unashamed bit of posturing and, at times, one of the most infuriatingly/innovatively “meta” motion pictures I’ve ever seen. [...]

The film is credited to Banksy, the most secretive and, in my opinion, clever of the underground, not-quite-legal artists on the “scene.” The bulk of the footage, however, was shot, independently, by a man named Thierry Guetta. We travel with him as artists flee street cops and Disneyland security, all in the name of making a subversive statement. [...] It is also twistedly inspiring. The film all but begs for its audience to go out and dangerously break some law.

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Through Guetta, we meet folks like Shepard Fairey, who later became famous for his Obama poster (though he was already an underground star for his satirical-fascist image of wrestler Andre the Giant). Guetta follows Fairey and others on their midnight guerrilla-art missions, videotaping their exploits for a doc he plans to make.

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Check out the scene where Banksy is “installing” a blow-up figure of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner in Disneyland and Guetta gets hauled off by a gang of Uncle Walt’s goons or the shot of millions of counterfeit tenners with Princess Di’s face on hidden in Banksy’s studio.

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Poor, poor Banksy. Four stars for Britain’s most fashionable, Left-wing, renegade artist from the Daily Mail film critic! I feel I’m spray-painting graffiti all over his street cred.

Possibly because I am one of the more notorious lick-spittle running-dogs of the capitalist bourgeoisie, Banksy’s small army of publicists chose not to invite me to a preview of his first movie, but in the adventurous spirit of urban guerillas everywhere I smuggled myself in. And I enjoyed it.

Exit Through The Gift Shop purports to be a documentary by the world’s most bankable graffiti artist, about the street art movement in general, and in particular its video chronicler and biggest fan, an excitable and deeply improbable French nutcase called Thierry Guetta.

Like all the best anarchists, Banksy does not claim the director’s credit – no one does – but he appears to be the film’s driving force and pops up during it as a mysterious hooded figure with a digitally altered voice that makes him sound like the long lost love-child of Darth Vader and Kathy Burke.

He explains how he came to meet Guetta and inadvertently helped unleash him on the world as a fully-fledged artist, despite Guetta’s lack of art training or, indeed, any noticeable talent.

We are told that Guetta has become a huge commercial success despite being unencumbered by creative ability or possibly because of it, under the name ‘Mr Brainwash’, mainly through selling blatant rip-offs of work by Banksy himself and other fashionable folk, especially Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst and Shepard Fairey.

I am in no position to say whether Guetta’s story is a true one. Many times during the movie, I was reminded of Orson Welles’s F For Fake (1973), a film about a hoaxer that was, in fact, a hoax itself.

But Banksy’s rueful account of the monster he himself created has the ring of poetic truth.

It captures like no film before the reality that every explosion of subversive art eventually leads to a sellout of its ideals, sometimes by no-talent opportunists like Guetta, or more frequently by talented opportunists and rampant self-promoters like – well, Banksy, whose own attacks on capitalism have earned millions at auction.

And now here I am giving Banksy the ultimate in undesired praise, a favourable review in the Left’s most routinely reviled newspaper.

Sorry, Banksy, whoever you are, but I like your energy, your sense of humour and your lovehate relationship with the gullible admirers of everything labelled anti-establishment or avant-garde, all the more so if it’s ridiculously over-priced.

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Though it’s credited as a Banksy picture—as in the ever-elusive U.K. graffiti ninja whose puckish, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian stencils have appeared everywhere from metropolitan billboards worldwide to the West Bank barrier wall—the film ostensibly began with him tapped as its on-camera subject.

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4. Nobody’s Perfect:

In an occasionally amusing, even upbeat documentary about people born with deformities because their mothers took the drug Thalidomode while they were pregnant, Niko von Glasow, himself a Thalidomide victim, pulls together twelve people on an unusual project. To have them “come out” in the most graphic way, all would get photographed nude, their tiny arms, or miniature legs could be seen by all passersby as the posters would be exhibited in a public square in Germany.

Most of the Thalidomode babies were born in Germany from mothers who, while pregnant, took the drug between its release in 1957 until 1961 when it was banned. The drug was not properly screened before its release and was being used by these women to reduce the feeling of morning sickness, typical of pregnancy’s ill effects. Some women may have taken only a single such pill, but that’s all that was needed to produce babies with deformed arms and legs, while the luckier kids might be missing only their thumbs. [...]

Andreas Meyer represents the guy who is most political, most focused on the arrogant way that the Grünenthal Corporation, developer of the drug, never apologized and fought any settlement to the limit, forcing the victims in a class action to accept a fraction of what they should have received. He notes that Grünenthal’s head chemist started experimenting on Jews in the Krakow concentration camp during the Second World War.

I’d have liked to see more coverage on exactly how this drug works in the human body to cause such damage. What does come across perhaps partly resulting from the Thalidomide disasters of the late fifties is the attention our own U.S. government pays to Big Pharma. If you’ve been watching the commercials for Cialis, Viagra, on how people now trust their hearts to Lipitor and the like, you may have noticed that more time is taken up with announcements of harmful side effects than on the virtues of the drugs. As the Cialis people say on TV, “If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, consult your health care provider.” Why? To be congratulated and envied? This is all to the good and obviously the drug makers would not be putting this information into TV spots unless forced to do so by the FDA.

The documentary, however valuable in information, could use Michael Moore’s wit to relieve some of the monotony of the talking heads, the bane of documentaries in general, and also to get across a more effective broadside against the corporation that continued sending out its product months after its gruesome side effects were publicized.

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5. No One Knows About Persian Cats:

Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi puts aside Kurdish themes for a topic that would appear even more politically sensitive in Iran: the underground music scene. This bold piece of docu-fiction, an open protest against censorship and the repression of individual liberties, will no doubt make waves in Iran, where its only hope for release is on black market DVD.

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While the director is on record as loving music—eating, sleeping, listening to it throughout the day—his principal objective in making this film is to underscore the unreasonable repressions of the regime, led by the stolen election of Mahmoud I’minneedofjihad. While driving through in Tehran’s traffic jams, the duo are stopped by the police who confiscate their dog, as dogs and cats may not legally be taken outdoors. “Filthy,” says the policeman off-screen, as he seizes the dog through an open window and speeds away. The most humorous scenes find motormouth Nader pleading with a judge who wants to sentence him to a stiff fine and 75 lashes, and one in which a rock band sorrowfully admits that a few cows on one singer’s small farm refuse to eat or give milk while the band rehearses. We actually see a pair of bovines looking at each other as if to say “What’s with these guys?”

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6. The Secret in their Eyes:

He visits his former office, greeted by Judge Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil), a woman for whom he has been carrying a torch for a quarter century, unexpressed because of class differences (she is a Cornell graduate, he has only high school). A long flashback to 1985 brings us to the investigation of the rape-murder of Liliana Coloto (Carla Quevedo), a 23-year-old newly married to Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago). The police seem unusually eager to close the case, to the extent that they beat confessions out of two innocents, but Espósito and his bumbling alcoholic assistant, Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella), doggedly pursue the case to the disgust of the chief judge, who is so opposed to a re-opening that Espósito and the magistrate come to physical blows. Something’s rotten in the state of Argentina—at a time that a junta will do anything to get at rebels believed by the government to be terrorists./“El secreto de los ojos” intrigues by similar means, is more complex, bringing in the politics of the extreme right-wing government at a sad time in Argentina’s history

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Secret proposes political messages about present-day Argentina’s difficulty in reckoning with its history of violence, as well as a note or two about the country’s dependence on the States. These points help separate the movie from the bulk of junky cop flicks, but a bad film’s bad no matter what language it speaks.

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7. Have You Heard from Johannesburg?:

Projected as fourth in a six-feature epic, chronological overview of the struggle against Apartheid — but finished first because this section’s U.S. focus facilitated funding — “Have You Heard From Johannesburg?: Apartheid and the Club of the West” provides an engrossing look at grassroots activism making a global difference. Latest docu from Connie Field (“The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter,” “Freedom on My Mind”) is a straightforward, well-shaped mix of interviews and archival footage. Beyond fest play, the feature seems most suited for pubcasting, with the complete series sure to stand as an important educational tool and historical record.

While the series will commence in 1948 with the first United Nations session, “Club of the West” focuses on the early-to-mid-1980s, when the Reagan White House clashed with U.S. public sentiment. Reagan, seemed to view South Africa’s government as a friend, to many eyes enabling a blatantly racist system. He insisted proposed economic sanctions would only hurt “the very people we’re trying to help.” Pic charts growing Stateside opposition to that view, culminating in the dramatic, internationally influential 1986 Senate override of the President’s veto.

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Assessments of the geopolitics of the Cold War (the U.S. long considered the ANC “terrorists propped up by the Soviets”; Mandela was imprisoned in 1962 with the CIA’s help) and big-business interests are further illuminated by the thoughts and deeds, whether awe-inspiring or appalling, of activists, politicians, and titans of industry. In Johannesburg’s vast accretion of anecdotes, history is indelibly etched. White-maned Conny Braam, an anti-apartheid activist in Amsterdam, recalls arranging floppy disks to be clandestinely transported between Mandela and Tambo via sympathetic KLM flight attendants. The former chair of Shell Oil defensively demands of his offscreen interviewer, “No holier than thou, please.” Archbishop Tutu remembers the reproach he delivered to Reagan: “Mr. President, your history is bad.”

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8. Handsome Harry:

A manipulative memory lane road movie more focused on enforced penitence for the characters and viewers alike than plot points, Handsome Harry, despite superb performances, feels like an unconvincing, self-conscious narrative agenda that was essentially created to scold just about everyone on and off screen for bad behavior. Along with a nearly anthropological scornful indictment of heterosexual male species culture as pathological when not simply peculiar. Which may leave perplexed audiences to feel less uplifted, than guilty as charged.

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dismantle social myths about masculinity./in the way Harry and his navy buddies blot out their youth or wince at its memories. As middle-aged men, they don’t lament lost innocence but the principles and friendships they allowed themselves to betray./These actors show vulnerability in their physicality with each other and their complex relations to women.Their different levels of bonhomie recall the insight of Bob Rafelson’s 1970s films as well as a post-Cassavetes sense of exposure—but with a different acceptance of male openness that, like La Mission, reflects a changed perspective on masculine behavior./Director Bette Gordon presents the actors’ sensitivity with tactful insight and appreciation reminiscent of Katherine Dieckmann’s very fine Diggers. Gordon doesn’t indulge peacocking like George Clooney’s directors; she provides a context for rethinking masculinity that connects with the actors’ candidness.

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9. The Cartel:

But Bowdon is admittedly less snarkier and ingratiating than Moore, if not as an artist then as a journalist, and The Cartel becomes gripping when it stops dishing facts and Bowdon begins to unload on the Garden State’s education system for shamelessly rejecting all but one of 22 applications for charter schools in 2008 (and for the flimsiest of reasons), and on teacher unions for their callous disregard for the physical and academic well-being of students trapped in schools with no means of bailing. Tenure policy gets a well-deserved beat down, as do Democrats (excepting the occasional lone wolf like Diane Feinstien) for opposing school vouchers, because the practice, at least on the surface, doesn’t appear to align with their liberal sensibilities; their belief that allowing kids in zip code schools to use vouchers in order to go to private or charter schools will have an adverse effect on those students who stay behind is handily refuted by research that Bowden intelligently presents.

But where the film really comes alive is in its giving a human face to those affected by the state’s thuggish education system, documenting the heroic efforts of a volunteer school devoted to the livelihood of students from especially bad school districts like Camden, revealing the tearful results of a lottery that will determine whether Newark parents will get a chance to send their kids to charter schools, and extolling the heroism of teachers like Beverly Jones for taking a stand against a system without fear of retribution. The cronism and nepotism that’s institutionalized in the state’s education system is shocking and revealed by Bowdon with sympathetic regard for the students. The Godfather-like graphic theme applied to the film’s title may be corny, but it’s fitting all the same, because you leave the film believing, and ardently so, that people like NJEA president Joyce Powell are nothing but mobsters.

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A union-busting doc with an adamant—if not quite apolitical—focus on the children slipping through the cracks, The Cartel uses New Jersey as Exhibit A in its case against this country’s crooked education system. Though it is first in education spending, New Jersey has an abysmal dropout rate and equally dire testing scores; director Bob Bowden cites what a former school superintendent calls “rampant, pervasive, institutionalized” budgetary corruption and a deeply entrenched, self-interested teachers’ union as the culprits. Bowden, a former local television reporter and anchorman, pulls together a familiar repertoire of talking heads, man-on-the-street interviews, remedial graphics, and stilted B-roll, and ultimately this information-packed indictment plays like a feature-length “in-depth” news segment. Moving loosely from angle to angle—the tenure system, the plot against voucher programs, the stonewalling of charter schools—The Cartel makes up for what it lacks in style and structure with selective but stone-cold facts. Although a school-district president rolling up to a budgetary hearing in a white limo and an administration parking lot clogged with luxury cars are undeniably good gets, Bowden’s strength as a documentarist is more evident in the patience and logic with which he makes an argument for a state and a system in desperate need of reform.

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go here for the political content in this week’s new dvd releases…

1. Pirate Radio (2009) [Rated R for language, and some sexual content including brief nudity.]

summary from imdb.com:

A period comedy about an illegal radio station in the North Sea in the 1960s.

starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Emma Thompson, January Jones

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Parcbench
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Kyle Smith’s article: Libertarian Wonderland: “Pirate Radio”:

“Pirate Radio” takes place in 1966, when the BBC refused to broadcast much pop or rock — so a ship anchored just outside British territorial waters broadcast rock around the clock that half of Britain’s population (according to Curtis) listened to every week. The shipmates have established themselves a merry libertarian paradise beyond the reach of the law. Naturally, a nefarious cabinet minister (Kenneth Branagh, who is excellent) tries to find a way to illegalize the whole outfit. Curtis is a squishy liberal (witness his HBO movie “The Girl in the Cafe,” about solving world poverty through government action– not much chance of that, since lousy third world governing is the primary reason so many millions are poor) but he could not have made the case for freedom from government intrusion more delightfully.

from Kyle Smith’s review:

The boat is a libertarian wonderland in which an American deejay (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a wacky owner (Bill Nighy) and a dandified lothario (Rhys Ifans) frolic in peace, free of all government intrusion — until a buzz-cut Cabinet minister (a briskly hateful Kenneth Branagh, who trained for this part by playing a Nazi in HBO’s “Conspiracy”) tries to invent a reason to shut it down. [...]

Rock ‘n’ roll, to Curtis (who was a kid at the time), is all little kids jumping on beds, tired nurses on break, custodians at work and lots of people (this is his strangest tic) who listen on the toilet. He is taking the mickey out of rock’s view of itself as an esoteric taste for self-described rebels: Listening to rock is for everyone, even oldsters in sweater vests.

At the same time, though, broadcasting rock becomes a genuine act of rebellion, not just a pose of sullen alienation. The pirate radio broadcasts become actually illegal, the shipmates facing risk of prosecution and even death.

from movieguide.org:

Very strong Romantic, antinomian worldview promoting the “Sexual Revolution” and loose morals of the 1960s, with some apparent revisionist history and a very strong politically correct, mocking attitude toward broadcast standards and a man who promotes them [...] disc jockeys flaunt obscenity standards, and morality is mocked in many ways.

from Parcbench:

Imagine government-controlled airwaves, with politicians deciding what music is deemed listenable. It sounds like Tipper Gore is in charge, but in fact we are talking about the British government in 1964. [...] There was an outbreak of rogue radio stations that were based on ships just outside of British waters. Apparently, when American youth culture was “turning on” and “dropping out,” millions of Brits were tuning in. In 1967, with the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, the British government made it a crime for any Brit to work on these ships. But this didn’t stop the rock movement for long. In the end, the creation of a BBC rock station can be seen as a victory for the pirate radio rebels. How nice for them. But as an American, I kept wondering why this movie had to be made in the first place. It’s not like British radio freed rock music. Back in the 1950s, Alan Freed took care of that over here./“Pirate Radio” is loosely based on the journey of the ship Caroline, which operated such a radio station in the North Sea during the more interesting and somewhat more romantic first half of the 1960s. If only this movie were half as interesting or romantic or funny or dramatic. Instead, we have a movie with a grand idea (artistic and social impulses that cannot be stifled by a government) but executed with no conviction.[...] In the end, “Pirate Radio” feels more like a 1970s TV movie about the cliché of rock than an authentic 1960s tribute to the power of libertarian ideals and anarchic rebellion. [...] Best line in the movie (spoken by the captain of the “Radio Rock” ship): “Governments loathe free people doing what they want.”

from Kurt Loder:

Imagine you’re a British teenager in the mid-1960s. The new breed of English rock is taking over the world. Across the pond in America, the Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones, Animals, Troggs and Yardbirds can all be heard around the clock on U.S. radio. Back at home, though, the government controls the airwaves, through the dowdy BBC, and the government has decided that no one needs to hear this unseemly music.

The new movie “Pirate Radio” trains a fond eye on the rebellion that this oppressive state of affairs spawned: an outbreak of rogue radio stations based on ships anchored just outside of British territorial waters. Radio Caroline was the first of these outfits to go on the air, in 1964, and it was soon joined by others — floating outposts playing music that people actually wanted to hear. Millions of listeners tuned in.

The pirates didn’t last long, though. In the summer of 1967, the government shut them down with the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, which made it a crime for any British subject to work on or supply their ships. But the outlaws won, in a way: Only weeks after they were crushed, the BBC started its own, rather pirate-like pop station, Radio 1. Mission accomplished, you might say. [...] and the movie grinds to a halt whenever Kenneth Branagh appears as a prissy government functionary obsessed with taking the pirates down. (With his prim mustache and sputtering pomposity, Branagh seems to be playing Peter Sellers in “I’m All Right Jack,” the old Boulting brothers comedy.)

from Rebecca Cusey:

The Ups: Some good music.

The Downs: Every time the Sexual Revolution, rebellion, and drug culture of the 60s is portrayed as brave and wonderful by Hollywood, I want to strangle someone with a tye-dye shirt.

dialogue:

Prime Minister: Now, there is one final matter to discuss. Pirate Radio. In whose department does this fall?

Sir Alistair: That would be me, Prime Minister.

Prime Minister: What’s the plan, Sir Alistair? They’re very popular. And they’re not actually breaking any law that we know of.

Sir Alistair: We’re going to shut them down within the year. They are a sewer of dirty and irresponsible commercialism and low morals.

Prime Minister: Indeed. Very well. I leave it in your capable hands.

The Count: Right, this was the deal. I asked all of you to demand of me to do a very foolish thing, and you sent in ideas in their millions. But one idea has defeated them all, so I’m proud to announce I will soon be the first person to say the “F” word on rock’n'roll radio in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. But my aim is not to offend, it is to entertain. But also, perhaps, to educate a little. Because if you shoot a bullet, someone dies. When you drop a bomb, many die. If you hit a woman, love dies. But if you say the “F” word, nothing actually happens. So here it comes. Especially for you, the “F” word. First though, this very fine piece of music.

Quentin: You can’t do this.

The Count: Why not? it’s just a word!

Quentin: Charming thought, but here’s the simple situation. The authorities already dislike us. If you do this they will hate us, and by hook or by crook, they’ll find a way to close us down.

The Count: They can’t close us down. We’re pirates. That’s why we’re sitting out here in the middle of the freaking ocean.

Quentin: Believe me, they will find a way. Governments loathe people being free. [...]

The Count: My dear comrades, I have some sad news. The powers that be have decreed that the “F” word is a word too far. But at least for now, even though our dreams of freedom have died a tragic death, The Hollies are still alive.

Sir Alistair: Now, I have told the Prime Minister that we will shut them down within 12 months.

Fredericks: As you will see, sir, they’re not in fact outside of the law at the moment, sir.

Sir Alistair: Then they soon will be, won’t they, Mr. [...] Fredericks. You see, that’s the whole point of being the government. If you don’t like something, you simply make up a new law that makes it illegal.

Sir Alistair: So, young man, how’s it going?

Dominic: Well, sir, I think I may have had a little breakthrough. The pirate stations only exist because they sell advertising.

Sir Alistair: Oh yes, you can listen to our pop music, but only if you also buy Findus Frozen Fish Fingers.

Dominic: Exactly. So what we can do immediately is make advertising on the stations illegal for British companies. We would cut off the boats’ cash with one fell swoop.

Sir Alistair: Brilliant.

Gavin Canavagh: Government plans to undermine us have failed spectacularly. In fact, a recent poll says that at an election, 93% of British people would vote for the pirates rather than the government.

Dominic: Just sign it, sir. And in three days, our heroic disc jockeys become dangerous criminals.

[peace symbol on shirt and a couple of peace signs]

2. The Slammin’ Salmon (2009) [Rated R for pervasive language and sexual references.]

summary from imdb.com:

The owner of a Miami restaurant indebted to the mob institutes a contest to see what waiter can earn the most money in one night.

starring: the Broken Lizard crew, plus: Will Forte, Michael Clarke Duncan, Olivia Munn, Jim Gaffigan, Vivica A. Fox, Morgan Fairchild, Lance Henriksen

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Sonny Bunch at the Washington Times

Poli-Bits: nothing leftist… the only political references pop up during the ending credits outtakes… an actor says the following: “and I’m a Barack Obama”/”and I’m Osama bin Laden”/”and I’m Obama bin Laden”

3. Tenderness (2009) [Rated R for disturbing violent and sexual content, and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A policeman (Crowe) works to figure out whether a violent teen (Foster) murdered his family.

starring: Russell Crowe, Laura Dern

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith

Poli-Bits:

from Urban Cinefile:

Director John Polson’s friend Russell Crowe takes the unglam support role of a semi retired cop in this thriller adapted from a novel, in which a young man slips through the system – by dint of his youth – after brutally murdering his parents. Indeed, it may be a politically motivated story, in which the author wants to make a point about the weakness of the criminal system.

from The Age:

Hot on Eric’s trail is Lieutenant Cristofuoro (Russell Crowe), a dogged, unkempt cop unwilling to believe that the correctional system has corrected anything, and whom he believes will claim Laurie as his next victim.

from Sky Movies:

Eric Poole (Foster) appears a fine, upstanding example of American youth with his old-fashioned manners and God-fearing ways. He even says grace before meals.

So it’s a bit of surprise when we learn that he battered his mother to a pulp and shot dead his father with a hunting bow when they discovered what he got up to in his spare time.

Deemed to be rehabilitated, he’s released from prison and brightly plans to takes up a college degree without even the benefit of a probation officer to check that’s he’s on the straight and narrow.

The only person who is convinced that he’s an unreconstructed psychopath with murder indelibly stamped on his mind is Lt Cristofuro (Crowe), a semi-retired police officer with a bedridden wife.

dialogue:

tv news reporter: “…confirming today the teen will be tried as an adult for the brutal murder of his parents. His case will be heard in Buffalo City Court, commencing later this month. By contrast, Eric Komenko committed the same crime at 15, but prosecuters chose not to try him as an adult in this case, citing high levels of the antidepressant Zoloxia found in his bloodstream as a mitigating factor. Komenko’s sentence, juvenile detention. He is expected to be released this coming Friday on his 18th birthday, his record expunged. Public questions about Komenko’s case remain, however. Victims’ rights groups are protesting his release, while members of Komenko’s Baptist congregation are supporting it.”

Eric: “Antidepressants messed with my chemistry. The state even testified to that.

Lieutenant Cristofuoro: I know. I was there.

Eric: Look, I did this evil thing. But I know I can put it behind me. That’s what expunged means. What do you want from me?

Cristofuoro: You’re a psychopath, Eric. You’re going to kill again. You know it, and I know it. And I want to prevent that from happening. And when I do, I want you to know it’s going to make me very happy. It’s the best thing for you. When you walk out of here, know I will be waiting for you. I got nothing else to do.”

Eric’s Aunt: Eric, you don’t have to pray. Or only if you want to. In this house, your spirituality is your own.

Eric: I do want to.

Lori: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Chinese cop before. No, I don’t think I have. I’m Lori. Lori Cranston. My real name’s Lorelei, actually. But I hate that name. I don’t even know where my mom got it from. Have you ever seen a Chinese cop? I don’t think it’s racist to ask that.

[Jesus fish on Eric's car]

4. Final Storm (2009) [Rated R for some sexuality, violence and brief language.]

summary from wikipedia.org:

a biblical apocalypse thriller film. The plot concerns a mysterious character named Sylas (Luke Perry), who takes refuge from a storm in a farm owned by two characters, Tom (Steve Bacic) and Gillian (Lauren Holly).

directed by: Uwe Boll

starring: Luke Perry, Lauren Holly

the only review I could find

Poli-Bits:

an R-rated Biblical End Times movie that contains profanity/sex/nudity… the End Times content is more of a minor backdrop and it’s incorrect… but it contains several verses from The Book of Revelation…

from Dread Central:

Is the end of the world at hand? Where is everyone? Is it the rapture? Have they been left behind? If so, why them? Either way, what’s up with the handful of violent townspeople lurking about? Why is Luke Perry dressed like The Great Gatsby? So many questions that should be getting asked that don’t get asked because the script constantly downplays the bigger picture and has characters either not ask the pertinent questions at all or not until a much later more convenient time. Even when it comes to Silas, Tom and Gillian constantly pass up the appropriate follow-up question or insistence that he elaborate on certain statements he makes.

A pity the frustrating script keeps the otherwise solid cast playing dumb because there are instances of genuine intrigue that left me wondering where it was all headed and how it was going to resolve itself. What The Final Storm amounts to in the end is little more than a tepid Lifetime Network thriller about a rural family trapped with a potentially homicidal houseguest who may have his sights set on making the house and the wife his own set against the backdrop of biblical Armageddon with a final scene that will leave you speechless in ways only an Uwe Boll movie can.

dialogue:

a succession of snippets of dialogue from what sounds like a radio and/or tv broadcast during the opening credits:

sudden reversal of weather systems which began six months ago, continues to wreak havoc around the globe… we’re currently seeing snow and ice storms in much of the northern hemisphere and our satellites are showing random frequent hail storms, tornadoes, and hurricanes… with reports of thousands of communities isolated by washed-out highways… many boats have disappeared altogether… communication lines are down… there’s no count yet of the missing or dead… since the collapse of the financial markets, rioting and political instability are causing serious global repercussions… transportation and energy systems are severely damaged worldwide… food and water shortages sparked widespread violence… in central London today the streets teemed with angry crowds looting and attacking authority figures… as you can see here, outnumbered police resorted to trampling protesters… an 8.0 earthquake in [???] has caused a nuclear accident with radiation levels extremely high… and what shall be the sign of Thy Coming and of the End of the Age… Jesus said there’d be signs and that these signs would increase in frequency and in intensity as the earth hurdles toward annihilation… looters are clearing out what little is left with no new deliveries of food announced or expected… and the angel said: thrust in thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth… for her grapes are fully ripe… And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. I submit that this world is the field and that God has sent His Son Jesus to go out into the field and gather the grapes and collect the harvest…

Silas: Look at that…

Gillian: what is that?

Silas: a Blood Moon…

Gillian: Blood Moon? what does that mean?

Tom: And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal; and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth

[Bible shown on screen opened up to the following verses:]

In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;
Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

Silas: are you a religious man, Tom?

Tom: w’the hell you doing?

Silas: reading the Good Book… i couldn’t sleep…

Tom: what happened to your hand?

Silas: clumsy… you know, i like the Old Testament… all the swords and the bloodletting… I find the New Testament to be a little preachy… how about you?

Tom: i figure Revelations is more your speed…

Silas: it’s a fanciful Book to be sure, what with all of its beasts, dragons, and whores… which are all out there for those that have the eyes to see’em… but if you’re looking to go to sleep, i suggest St. Paul… the man does tend to ramble on…

Tom: you really think it’s the end of the world, don’t you?

Silas: think on it, Tom… how would the world end? fireworks? big explosion? no… it’s a whimper… and all we have to do is stack up the chairs and *blow sound* turn out the lights…

Tom: okay, so what now?

Silas: in the end, the Almighty’s just gonna reach down… and pinch out the stars… one by one… your heart is looking for answers, but your pride refuses to seek… i suggest you start right here… [...] you’re supposed to have faith…

Tom: faith? in what, your b###### stories?

Silas: you’ve been pushing yourself too hard, Tom… you should probably just go to sleep…

5. Defendor (2009) [Rated R for drug use and language throughout, violence and sexual content.]

summary from imdb.com:

A comedy centered around three characters: an everyday guy who comes to believe he’s a superhero, his psychiatrist, and the teenager he befriends.

starring: Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Sandra Oh, Kat Dennings, Clark Johnson, Michael Kelly

non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits: corrupt cops, vigilantism, sex slave trade, “guns are for cowards”

from Emanuel Levy:

With everything established, the filmmakers come to a fork in the road. Instead of opting to take advantage of the humor inherent in the premise, or making any kind of meaningful statement about vigilantism or crime, “Defendor” tries to have it both ways. It goes on to depict a few hapless adventures, with Defendor accidentally attacking an undercover cop (Elias Koteas), who just so happens to be corrupt. He also befriends Kat (Kat Dennings), a drug-addicted prostitute with an open mind who accepts his illusion in a way nobody else ever has.[...] The police, and even the courts all try to stop the insanity, but Arthur always gets back into his Defendor lifestyle by plying his surprisingly effective escape tactics. Eventually his meddling goes past the point of no return, and the chance to make a real difference presents itself, though without an easy exit strategy. This is where “Defendor” gets serious and stays that way, in a vain attempt to grasp at some kind of theme about what it means to be a hero. “Defendor” is the feature debut of actor-turned-writer/director Peter Stebbings. Based on ideas from his Vancouver childhood where he observed the down-and-out characters who populated the city’s slums, “Defendor” may have been intended as a serious take on vigilante justice and the delusions of grandeur that can grow out of a cynical frustration with the system. Such was the case with last year’s delicious “Watchmen” or any number of similar stories, from “Batman” to “The Boondock Saints.”

from Socal:

At this point, all appearances indicate a humorous tongue in cheek superhero spoof, but wait for it: Defendor will soon reveal its darker alter ego. Arthur suffers from an undefined metal disability and was tragically abandoned by his mother. He was raised by a cold and indifferent grandfather, a WWII veteran who ingrained his patriotic sensibilities into the confused little boy with superhero comics as his only solace. Arthur’s honesty, frankness and goodness is his real secret weapon, endearing him to his boss Paul Carter (Michael Kelly) and the crack-smoking young prostitute Kat (Kat Dennings), who ultimately befriends and believes in him.

As Defendor, Arthur feels empowered to deal with the frustration of losing his mother to drugs and prostitution by lashing out against the vermin his grandfather called “the Captains of Industry.” Arthur is fearlessly determined to seek this evil mastermind out and bring him to justice. As luck would have it, there is such a lowlife at large, drug kingpin Vladimir Kristic (Alan C. Peterson), who is corrupting the city with his gang of “Biker” thugs. Defendor is a constant thorn in the side of one of his primary henchmen, bad cop and slimy pimp Chuck Dooney (Elias Koteas), who finds himself no match for marbles, wasps or lime juice (“Please, God, not the lime juice!”) squirted directly in the eyes as a form of torture. Kat has escaped the angry Dooney and finds temporary solace in Arthur/Defendor’s secret hideout, a Public Works storage facility underneath a bridge. Initially Kat takes advantage of Arthur’s naïve trust in her, using his ATM card to fill her “bling” pipe daily, but soon comes to appreciate his goodness and discovers she can relate to his self-defense mechanism of donning an alter ego: he tapes a “D” on his chest to give him the courage to fight evil while she hides behind a wall of intoxicating fumes to avoid her reality.

Does this sound trite and maudlin? No worries, because Defendor is anything but. First-time director and screenwriter Peter Stebbings swings like a pendulum between dark comedy and drama with virtually no missteps and stays true to his characters, allowing them no entitlements for self-pity or victimhood. Arthur’s black-and-white world applies to all characters for the most part; when he explains to his court-appointed shrink Dr. Park (Sandra Oh) why it was appropriate to trash a pedophile’s dry cleaning business and throw the perp into a garbage can, she visibly struggles between the correct response in regards to right and wrong and congratulating him for taking matters in his own hands. In a society where the justice system has failed or is just too slow and reluctant to react, maybe we do need a vigilante warrior like Defendor to fight back because we’re afraid to.

from an interview with Woody Harrelson:

At the Toronto International Film Festival, where Defendor premiered last September, Harrelson shies away from too close a comparison between his vigilante character and the actor’s own history of environmental, vegan, peace and marijuana activism.

“I believe in vigilantism as it relates to captains of industry,” he says, picking up on his character’s belief that a man called “Captain Industry” was responsible for the death of his mother. “We’ve got to take our ecology back. But I don’t really believe in the broad sense believe in vigilantism.”

He continues: “Is the message [of the film] to go out there and fight crime yourself? I don’t know if that should be the message. But it’s just about a guy who cares enough and is passionate enough about what he sees in society that he tries to do something. In that sense I think it’s a pretty hopeful message.”

from Classical 96.3FM:

The dark underside of the city is reflected in the shattered psyches of Stebbings’ heroes. From his youth, Poppington has heard how the “captains of industry” were destroying the good blue-collar workers of his hometown. Kat’s a punk when she isn’t turning tricks; naturally, she falls into line with the Defendor’s anarchical thinking. They both want to overturn a system that may be terrible but is also beyond their comprehension.

dialogue:

radio talk show host: There are a couple of options here. One, the cops in this town are incompetent. Two, they’re underfunded, and that’s a real possibility. And three, they’re crooked. How do you think this city got its nickname, “Hammertown”?

mother: what does this teach us, Jack?

son: next time have a gun. [...]

mother: no, it teaches us that fighting never solves anything.

Poppington: Be a man… [...] Guns are for cowards

Poppington as a child: When will I see Mommy again?

Poppington’s grandfather: You won’t. How many times do i have to say it? Could you hold that still, please, or I’ll bash you.

Poppington: Why?

Grandfather: Drugs. The drugs did her in.

Poppington: I hate the drugs. I hate the people who do the drugs.

Grandfather: Hate the pushers, kid. They’re the bad guys.

Poppington: Who are the pushers?

Grandfather: The scum whose freedom I fought for. Captains of Industry.

6. Crazy on the Outside (2010) [Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A recently paroled ex-con who has trouble adjusting to the wacky normalcy of life outside of prison. He has spent the last three years behind bars after getting caught committing a crime and taking the rap for his much more dangerous pal.

directed by: Tim Allen

starring: Tim Allen, Julie Bowen, Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta, Jeanne Tripplehorn, JK Simmons, Kelsey Grammer, Jon Gries

non-Conservative reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

go here to check out the many leftist movies coming this weekend in NYC/LA…

1. Date Night [Rated PG-13 for sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference.]

summary from imdb.com:

In New York City, a case of mistaken identity turns a bored married couple’s attempt at a glamorous and romantic evening into something more thrilling and dangerous.

starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Mark Wahlberg, Common, William Fichtner, Leighton Meester, Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Olivia Munn, Will i Am, Taraji P. Henson

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
Rebecca Cusey
John Boot at Pajamas Media
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: there’s no leftist sucker punch… just some corrupt cops, a harmless housing crisis reference where a broker mentions how much lower a house price is now… and several references to this book:

The movie opens with a telling scene of Claire attending a book group, at which her suburban cohorts find common ground with the heroine of the quintessential Oprah-certified novel – the memoir of an Afghan girl forced to have her first period under Taliban rule. (source)

Consider Phil and Claire’s book club: Naturally, it’s entirely women, and Phil feels out of place. When one member dismisses his reaction to the book, saying, “You have no idea what it’s like to be a teenage girl having your first period under Taliban rule,” you know that’s a joke someone worked on. That’s not a caricature spitting, “You men are so insensitive!” because it’s the shortest possible shorthand for Phil’s discomfort; that’s a constructed joke that gets an earned laugh. (source)

from John Boot:

Whenever Hollywood ventures into suburbia, you may have a reasonable expectation that moviemakers will have considerably less sympathy for what they find than they typically do for, say, the average Shiite insurgent or Communist dictator. So Date Night, which is far from a great comedy, but does have enough laughs to make it worth watching on home video or pay TV, does take a surprising stance: That ordinary suburban upper-middle-class family types are nice, normal people who just need a little more sleep and maybe some time to themselves. (At least in the Northeast. Maybe someday soon Hollywood will discover that southerners are not necessarily scary rednecks, or that veterans aren’t all freaked-out malcontents.)

2. Letters to God [Rated PG for thematic material.]

summary from imdb.com:

Inspired by a true story. A young boy fighting cancer writes letters to God, touching lives in his neighborhood and community and inspiring hope among everyone he comes in contact. An unsuspecting substitute postman, with a troubled life of his own, becomes entangled in the boy’s journey and his family by reading the letters. They inspire him to seek a better life for himself and his own son he’s lost through his alcohol addiction.

starring: Robyn Lively,  Ralph Waite

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John P. Hanlon at Big Hollywood
John Ashcroft! at Big Hollywood
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

John P. Hanlon:

The movie, which was inspired by a true story, has a strong message and a clear goal. This is an unabashedly Christian film about people finding faith and hope in Christ. Tyler inspires many members of his family and his community to develop stronger relationships with God, even as those members watch Tyler deal with cancer.

dialogue:

man to a bartender wanting to get waited on: what do I have to do? fill out a form?

bartender: spoken like a true government worker…

3. Babel (2006) [Rated R for violence, some graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use.]

summary from imdb.com:

Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families.

starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Rinko Kikuchi, Elle Fanning, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nathan Gamble, Clifton Collins Jr, Michael Pena

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Slant Magazine:

But most striking is the film’s critique of American privilege, the notion of two rich white Californians coming out on top at the expense of the rest of the world’s people.

from Victoria Alexander:

Traveling in a bus filled with tourists, Susan is hit by a stray bullet. Dangerously close to death and four hours away from a hospital, the bus driver goes to the nearest village, where a villager provides help. The other tourists, selfish Westerners, want to leave Richard and Susan behind and continue their road trip. It is a cruel indictment of how rich people on vacation behave while the poor villagers show wordless compassion.

from the Village Voice:

Alas, they’re also unlike anything else in Babel, which stacks contrivance upon contrivance as it trip-wires and time-shifts a series of climactic calamities to unfold almost in unison—an apparent bid to out-intolerate Intolerance. The director and screenwriter mean to show the butterfly effects of American arrogance and post–9-11 solipsism throughout the world. Thus wealthy Californians Pitt and Blanchett turn their life-or-death dilemma into an international cause célébre, other tourists or citizens be damned, while the sweet blond children end up in a border-patrol wasteland. The Americans’ linguistic helplessness becomes a dully literal metaphor for I-stand-alone isolationism.

Meanwhile, anti-terrorist hysteria places the Moroccan lads and their guiltless family in crosshairs. Only the lives of Americans matter, the movie wails: The filmmakers expect you to feel guilty when the white kids survive.

from the Village Voice:

The movie is a monument to unintended consequences. A hunting rifle left by a Japanese tourist in Morocco wreaks havoc around the world. As Babel’s multi-part, densely edited “simultaneous” narrative recalls D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, so González Iñárritu’s enthusiastically received third feature conjures many of the festival’s big themes, including terrorism, illegal immigration, and gringos in the desert. There’s even a critique of American entitlement;

from Salon.com:

Meanwhile, Abdullah’s family becomes the object of a manhunt by the ruthless Moroccan police, and the U.S. government makes angry noises about terrorism.

from Kurt Loder:

Arriving there, Richard calls home to San Diego, where the family’s longtime Mexican nanny, Amelia (Adriana Barraza), is tending the couple’s two young children. Amelia had been planning to take a day off to attend her son’s wedding in Mexico. But Richard tells her to cancel that plan, since he and Susan will be delayed in returning home, and there’s no one else to stay with his son and daughter. Unwilling to miss the wedding, Amelia decides to take the kids with her, and soon they are on their way across the border. [...]

Back in San Diego, the sweet-natured Amelia can’t understand why there should be so much difficulty attached to taking two American children on a short trip that happens to cross a border. (Some INS agents are prepared to wreck her life in the interest of raising her immigration-consciousness.)

from filmIreland:

The husband Richard, runs around the village shouting and demanding immediate medical aid, which made it impossible to sympathize with him or his wounded wife. I felt more sympathy for the Moroccan people having to tolerate such a disrespectful group of tourists. The two Moroccan children and their family get treated unjustly by the local police in order to cater to the media attention generated by the shooting incident and the resentment of the American tourist.

The story involving the Mexican nanny is set up to show the vast cultural difference between Americans and Mexicans. The story is a montage of images of a ‘typical’ Mexican wedding, (triggerhappy drunken screaming, headless chickens, and a lot of dirt!) as golden haired ‘gringo’ children watch with confusion, fear and awe. The rest of the events that involve (one would never guess!) the US border and immigration officers are completely implausible, set up to indulge the movie’s dramatic climax and political opinions.

from Warsaw Voice

Ińárritu says he wanted his film to tackle the problem of one person’s inability to understand another (hence the title). He also wanted to tackle false stereotypes. However, with Babel he falls into a trap, as he resorts to stereotypes and Hollywood clichés himself. Western tourists in Morocco are self-important and simultaneously foolish and frightened. Mexicans are deeply contemptuous of the American gringos yet dream of California-style affluence. Moroccan boys are oppressed by taboos that dominate private life in their part of the world. And Japanese schoolgirls look as if they jumped straight out of a Manga comic book for adults. Or for pedophiles.

Unlike previous Ińárritu films, right from the start viewers get a sense that everything will end well, at least as far as the characters from the Western world are concerned. American and Japanese children cannot be seriously harmed, whereas Moroccans can suffer and die, even if they are innocent. The worst that can happen to Western tourists and inhabitants of luxury skyscrapers in Tokyo is breaking down in tears, while a Mexican housekeeper will have her life ruined.

dialogue:

Is this Mexico?

Yes, this is Mexico…

My mom told me that Mexico is really dangerous…

yeah… it’s full of Mexicans

tv or radio report:

Today, near Tazarine, there was an incident… an American was shot… Authorities say it could have been a robbery… but the American government was quick to suggest a terrorist link… Minister Hassan Hazal has said that terrorist cells have been eradicated in our country… and one act of vulgar banditry followed by superficial evaluations the U.S. places on it cannot ruin our image or the economy

If things don’t work here, I’ll meet you with the gringos…

M#####F###er, f####ing gringo a#####es… here they come…

4. The Strangers (2008) [Rated R for violence/terror and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A young couple staying in an isolated vacation home are terrorized by three unknown assailants.

starring: Liv Tyler, Scott Speedman, Gemma Ward

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Sonny Bunch at the Weekly Standard
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

5. The Relic (1997) [Rated R for monster violence and gore, and for language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A researcher at Chicago’s Natural History Museum returns from South America with some crates containing his findings. When the crates arrive at the museum without the owner there appears to be very little inside. However, police discover gruesome murders on the cargo ship that brought the crates to the US and then another murder in the museum itself. Investigating the murders is Lt. Vincent D’Agosta who enlists the help of Dr. Margo Green at the museum – she has taken an interest in the contents of her colleague’s crates. Unknown to both there is a large creature roaming the museum which is gearing itself up for a benefit reception which the city’s mayor is to attend

starring: Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, Clayton Rohner, James Whitmore

non-Conservative reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

6. The Brothers Bloom (2008) [Rated PG-13 for violence, some sensuality and brief strong language.]

summary from imdb.com:

The Brothers Bloom are the best con men in the world, swindling millionaires with complex scenarios of lust and intrigue. Now they’ve decided to take on one last job – showing a beautiful and eccentric heiress the time of her life with a romantic adventure that takes them around the world.

starring: Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi, Robbie Coltrane, Maximilian Schell, Ricky Jay, Nora Zehetner

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
Kurt Loder
Rightwing Film Geek
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

dialogue:

they were The They… all well-loved, rooted, happy as you please… always there in every town… Playground bourgeoisies…

I’m not thrilled they set this in Mexico… there could be legitimate reasons, but… uhh… Mexico is… and I don’t like to simplistically villify an entire country, but… Mexico is a horrible place…

7. Jade (1995) [Rated R for grisly afterviews of murder victims, violence, language and strong scenes of aberrant sexuality.]

summary from imdb.com:

When the assistant district attorney of San Francisco investigates the mysterious death of an important millionaire he discovers that the first suspect in this case is a friend of his who is married to an important lawyer. Now it is difficult for him to distinguish between what is reality and what should be reality.

starring: David Caruso, Linda Fiorentino, Chazz Palminteri, Angie Everhart, Michael Biehn, Richard Crenna, Kevin Tighe

non-Conservative reviews

Poli-Bits:

from a commenter at imdb.com:

My only complaint is the normal Liberal in-your-face bias that Hollywood always seems to show. They just can’t help giving you their pro-Democrat, anti- Catholic, anti-authority bias. Early scenes provide some cheap shots on Nixon and Reagan and later we see the film’s two male starts talking irreverently in church. The governor is a sleaze in the story and the cops are corrupt. I’ve just come to except these modern-day film clichés and not let it interfere with my enjoyment of the film.

dialogue:

[photos are shown of the corrupt California Governor with Reagan, Nixon, and Thatcher]

[photo of girl holding protest sign saying "Students for Animal Rights"]

1: We made the prints on the hatchet handle…

2: Patrice…

1: No, but we got lucky… They came off of an arrest in Palo Alto in 1980… Some kind of animal rights protest in Stanford… no charges ever filed…

Republican Governor of California: if you drag me into this business, David… if my name even shows up on the periphery of this, David… you better get the f### out of the state of California because you have as much of a future here as Jerry Brown

Republican Governor of California: It’s a tragedy for justice when law enforcement people go bad…

David: they were cleaning up your s###…

Governor: they were just two loyal supporters… two supporters who got carried away… they just wanted to see if Mrs. Gavin had any more pictures of the Governor… they acted purely on their own out of misguided loyalty…

David: Kyle Medford was shaking people down… he had pictures of you and he was killed for it… Patrice was in those pictures… she was next, and then Henderson… who could ID everybody… that left Trina Gavin…

some guy: why are you wasting the Governor’s time?

David: anything happens to Trina Gavin, I have a roll of film with you and a dead hooker…

Governor: and what if something happens to you?

8. The Ninth Gate (1999) [Rated R for some violence and sexuality.]

summary from imdb.com:

A rare book dealer, while seeking out the last two copies of a demon text, gets drawn into a conspiracy with supernatural overtones.

director: Roman Polanski

starring: Johnny Depp, Frank Langella, Lena Olin, Emmanuelle Seigner

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
James Bowman
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

9. The Mist (2007) [Rated R for violence, terror and gore, and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A freak storm unleashes a species of blood-thirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole-up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.

starring: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher, Toby Jones, William Sadler, Chris Owen, Alexa Davalos, Nathan Gamble

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John Nolte at Libertas
Kyle Smith
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Kyle Smith:

“The Mist,” a pretentious left-wing monster movie with about 15 minutes of alarming creatures and a whole lot of bickering, is a pre-9/11 story which Stephen King wrote eons ago. It operates in the post-9/11 era about as well as a Studebaker at the Daytona 500. [...]

King’s well-established loathing for Christian evangelists (if you ever suspect you’re in a Stephen King story and you’re locked in a room with a Bible-loving biddy and, say, a zombie hellhound, take your chances with the latter) is dully personified by Marcia Gay Harden. As the monsters begin to reach into the store like it’s a bowl of Doritos and commence snack time on her fellow villagers, she starts babbling about God’s vengeance, abortion, stem-cell research and even human sacrifice.

This is the sixth time I’ve endured Harden in the past year – who says I’ve got the best job in the world? – so I think I speak with authority when I say her charisma make Dennis Kucinich look like John F. Kennedy.

Yet, with cheery remarks like “Don’t go out there. It’s death out there. It’s the end of days!” she inspires a pro-monster cult to rise around her. A civil war threatens to break out somewhere between the charcoal briquettes and the Ovaltine.

King’s man-turns-against-man routine is not only dramatically inert – we aren’t really in the mood to listen to bickering when there are mutant species afoot – but conceptually phony. After 9/11, were people kinder than usual, or did we load up on pitchforks and prophecies and burn one another’s barns?

Since issues of race and class are raised only to be dropped, the characters are as thin as the one-ply toilet tissue in the store-brand aisle.

What is supposed to be a quietly moving scene between a soldier and a checkout girl instead reminded me of the gag in “Airplane!” about the sweet virgin who decides to booty-call every guy on the plane because it’s about to crash.

from movieguide.org:

The person who eventually takes over as leader of the group, Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), starts off on a positive note preaching that this may be a judgment from God and anyone who doesn’t know God needs to repent and ask Him for forgiveness. But, in the next breath she is cursing and threatening violence. Also, the other people mock her claims of hearing from God. In fact, almost everyone considers her a “loon.” Then, as she convinces others to join her side, she is depicted as a cult leader, with one person stating “let’s get out of here before someone starts drinking the Kool-Aid” (a reference to cult leader Jim Jones, a radical socialist, and the mass suicide he led in the 1970s). Mrs. Carmody quickly turns from repentance and quoting the Bible, to preaching that God wants blood sacrifice, and they need to offer the unbelievers to the creatures. So her character becomes blasphemous, evil, manipulative, and murderous – while all the time still claiming to be speaking “God’s will.”

There are also some Romantic elements in the movie, represented by such lines as “people are basically good” and the need for “faith in humanity.” The Humanist examples are lines such as “people become like animals and just want to kill each other,” along with some spurious reasons offered about why “people invented politics and religion” to deal with their problems.

from John Nolte:

The Frank Darabont who sticks in our mind is the one who turned a slightly above-average short story by Stephen King into the majestic Shawshank Redemption. The Darabont on display in The Mist (an adaptation of another King short story) is the one who made The Majestic into a cloying, left-wing polemic [...]

The Mist is a film where 11-minutes in a sweet old lady makes a speech scolding America for spending money on corporate handouts and bombs instead of education; a film where 15-minutes in the first reaction a Christian woman has at the sight of fog is to proclaim, “It’s the end of days!” as opposed to, “Could be a cold front;” a film where three uniformed Army troopers are locked in a grocery store under attack but leave it to the pudgy, nebbish bag boy to be the hero; a film that wants to be about man’s inhumanity to man but which results in yet another example of Hollywood’s contempt for its audience. [...]

This leaves the slightly less-stupid to take another set of sides. This time it’s between those who believe in Hollywood’s version of a Christian and those who can’t figure out that it might be the lights attracting all those giant bugs slamming up against the store windows.

The Christian woman is Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), portrayed by Stephen King and subsequently Darabont not unlike terrorists often portray Jews in the Middle East: as dangerous, less than human hypocrites. It’s not enough Carmody is preachy and judgemental, or that she blames the end-times on abortion and stem-cell research. No, she calls for the blood sacrifice of Drayton’s child because this is a film cynically designed to appeal directly to religious bigots — which may explain why such a snoozer has a 66% fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes.

dialogue:

but with funds being cut every year… you’d think educating children would be more of a priority in this country, but you’d be wrong… Government’s got better things to spend our money on… like corporate handouts and building bombs…

as a species, we’re fundamentally insane… put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another…

shut up, you miserable buzzard [...] stoning people who p### you off is perfectly okay… they do it in the Bible, don’t they?

woman never shuts up… like those speeches Castro used to make

Mrs. Carmody: we are being punished… for what? for going against the will of God! for going against His forbidden rules of old! walking on the moon! or, or splitting His atoms! or, or, or stemcells and abortions… and destroying the secrets of life that only God above has any right to! [...]

other people: Kill him! String him up! Stab him!

Mrs. Carmody: Feed him to the beast! Let the abominations smell his blood!

Mrs. Carmody: there is one God… the God of the Israelites… and He is a stern and vengeful God… and we have been mocking Him for far too long… and now He demands retribution in blood… it is time to declare yourselves… take sides… the saved and the damned… read the Good Book… it calls for expiation… Blood!

some guy: hey, crazy lady, I believe in God, too… i just don’t think He’s the bloodthirsty a###### you make Him out to be…

Mrs. Carmody: well, you take that up with the devil when you run into him…

want another reason to get the hell out of here? I’ll give you the best one… Her… Mrs. Carmody… our very own Jim Jones… I’d like to leave before people start drinking the kool-aid…

from wikipedia:

With the discovery that two soldiers from the Arrowhead Project have committed suicide during the expedition’s absence, the remaining soldier, Private Wayne Jessup (Samuel Witwer), reveals that the project – rumored to be an attempt to look into other dimensions – was the likely origin of the mist. At Carmody’s command, her followers use Jessup as a human sacrifice and throw him out into the mist where he is killed by an enormous, mantis-like creature. While preparing to leave the following morning, David and his group are intercepted by Mrs. Carmody, who at first demands that Billy is to be sacrificed, then David’s whole group. Ollie quickly shoots and kills her, horrifying her followers and forcing them to reluctantly allow David’s group to leave.

10. Kingdom of Heaven (2005) [Rated R for strong violence and epic warfare.]

summary from imdb.com:

Balian of Ibelin travels to Jerusalem during the crusades of the 12th century, and there he finds himself as the defender of the city and its people.

starring: Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Edward Norton, Liam Neeson, David Thewlis, Jeremy Irons, Alexander Siddig, Brendan Gleeson, Kevin McKidd, Michael Sheen, Ulrich Thomsen

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto
James Bowman
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Christian Toto:

Less nuanced is the filmmakers’ cringe-worthy political correctness. The Muslim warriors are uniformly honorable and strong, while the Christians embody a more credible range of human behavior — from relative benevolence to unbridled aggression. When a dutiful Jeremy Irons tells Balian that instead of fighting for God, the Christians are fighting for wealth and power, you can practically hear liberal-minded cast and crew applauding themselves just off set.

from Kurt Loder:

A warrior monk, portrayed by David Thewlis, tells Balian that he no longer feels any need for religion — it is a breeding ground of fanatics. “Right action” is God’s only concern, he says, not blustering ideology. And Jeremy Irons’ Tiberias ruefully admits that, while he once believed in the Crusades — in “liberating” the Holy Land from Muslim “infidels” — he now realizes that the endless battles have been mainly for wealth and land for the ransacking conquerors. It is impossible to hear these reflections and not be put in mind of the current situation in the Middle East.

from James Bowman:

And what, you may ask, is the moral of the story? Well, it’s not as if you couldn’t guess. Turns out that the Crusades were not the struggle between Christians and Muslims that you might have thought they were but between both Muslim and Christian religious fanatics on the one hand and modern tolerant liberals like the film-makers — oh and, by the way, everyone else in Hollywood — on the other. Who knew?

The most hilariously idiotic of the film’s many historically stupid moments comes at the climax of the battle for Jerusalem in 1187 when Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom), the commander of the city’s Christian defenders, has a parley with the leader of its Muslim besiegers, Saladin, here invariably given his more authentic moniker, Salah al-Din (Ghassan Massoud). Nice that they insist on accuracy in something. Balian tells his adversary that he will surrender the city if the Muslim army will give its Christian inhabitants a safe-conduct to the sea, where they may take ship to return to Europe. The terrible alternative, Balian tells him, is that he will give the order for all the religious sites in the city to be destroyed: “Your holy places, ours — everything that drives men mad.” It’s hard to imagine a more perfect example of Hollywood’s view of religion — or of a thought that would have been more unthinkable to the person supposedly uttering it.

Such words would have been sheer gibberish — evidence of madness themselves — in an age in which “religion” was inseparable from the culture. Another character says “I put no stock in religion” and generally speaking we are to understand that neither does anyone else who is in the least sympathetic here. The only true religious believers, at least on the Christian side, are thugs and murderers. But at the time of the Crusades “religion” wasn’t the optional Sunday-morning pastime it has since become. It was a matter of identity. For someone to say “I put no stock in religion” would have been as nonsensical as saying “I put no stock in being my father’s son.” People’s religion wasn’t just what they believed, it was what they were. In other words, like so many movie-makers before them, Scott and Monahan have looked into the past and seen nothing but their own silly faces looking back at them.

from Frontline Fellowship

This is a True Story – Only the Facts Have Been Changed

Kingdom of Heaven also distorts history beyond all recognition. The “hundred-year truce” between the Christian and Muslim armies is a figment of their imagination. The warfare throughout the 12 th Century was incessant.

The depiction of the Knight’s Templar as a band of religious fanatics trying to shatter the truce and provoke war with the Muslims by attacking caravans, is a total fabrication. No Knight’s Templar ever attacked any caravans. Attacking caravans is what the founder of Islam, Muhammad, engaged in regularly. As did his handpicked apostles, the Caliphas. The Knights Templar were formed primarily to protect travellers from the attacks of the Muslim army. In fact it was the slaughter of Christian pilgrims, by Muslim armies, in violation of earlier agreements of safe passage, that precipitated the crusades in the first place. [...]

According to Kingdom of Heaven, the real hero in the story is the famous Muslim general, Saladin (1138 – 1193). Although an exceptionally gifted military strategist and unusually chivalrous, the film has uncritically accepted, and embellished, the legends about Saladin beyond what the historical record would support. A Muslim Kurd, from Northern Iraq, Saladin was raised in a privileged family, and was very ambitious. At age 14 he joined his uncle’s military staff, and at 31 followed him to Egypt where his uncle was Grand Vizier. When his uncle died two months later, Saladin seized power, defeated competing Muslim leaders and started a dynasty which established Egypt as the major Muslim power in the Middle East.

Far from having war forced upon him, Saladin initiated the conflict by declaring a Jihad against the Christians. He swept throughout Palestine capturing more than 50 crusader castles in two years. At the battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187 Saladin’s army defeated the Christians on the shores of Lake Tiberius (the Sea of Galilee) – although in the film this battle is depicted as in waterless desert! Far from being the magnanimous victor depicted in modern legends and this film, Saladin was a ruthless general who had thousands of Christian prisoners beheaded in cold blood – including after the battle of Hattin.

In the film, Saladin is portrayed as being most gracious in allowing the defenders of Jerusalem safe passage. In fact after the negotiated surrender of Jerusalem, which the Patriarch of Jerusalem initiated, Saladin demanded that every man, women and child in Jerusalem pay a ransom for his or her freedom or face the grim prospect of Islamic slavery. In order to save the lives and liberty of the poor people who could not afford the heavy ransom demanded by Saladin, Balian paid out of his own resources the ransom required for those who could not afford it.

Twisted Theology

The theology in Kingdom of Heaven is also all wrong. The film depicts some monk standing by the roadside repeating: “To kill an infidel is not murder it is the path to heaven!” As any student of the Bible would be able to tell you, neither the concept nor those words appear anywhere in the Christian Bible. However, as any student of the Quran should be able to inform you, that is exactly what the Islamic doctrine of Jihad teaches.

At one point early in the film as Muslims bow in prayer towards Mecca, Balian comments: “You allow them to pray?” A knight sneers and answers: “As long as they pay their taxes!” In fact the crusaders never required any extra taxes of Muslims in order to allow them to pray. That is the Islamic doctrine and practice of Jizya. To this day Muslim governments require Jizya – tribute taxes – of dhimmi’s (Jews and Christians under their Islamic rule).

Before the crusaders march out to the disastrous battle of Hattin, the film has one knight declaring: “The army of Jesus Christ cannot be beaten.” However, there is no such doctrine in the Bible, or in Christian theology. It is, in fact, Islamic dogma that no Muslim army can never be defeated by an infidel army. This Muhammad asserted on the authority of Allah himself. [...]

The ridiculous speech with its feel good “why can’t we all just get along” drivel dished up by Orlando Bloom’s Balian on the walls of Jerusalem (while Saladin’s armies politely delay their attack until he has finished) may sound believable to some 21 st Century Humanist, but these were not the convictions or sentiments of any 12 th Century crusader. As for the pathetic egalitarian gesture of knighting everybody – without any training, testing or code of conduct – is so unhistorical, and so out of touch with reality, as to make one wonder what drugs the scriptwriter was on at the time. [...]

Crusade Against Christianity

The ridiculous and inane comments attributed to the bishop in the film are also not only highly unlikely, but jarringly anachronistic. Producer Ridley Scott, and scriptwriter William Monahan, obviously hate Christianity. But, just in case any viewers lack the discernment to detect the unveiled anti-Christian hostility and prejudice, which permeates the entire movie, Ridley Scott, has gone on record as stating: “Balian is an agnostic, just like me.” Of course there was no such thing as agnosticism in the 12 th Century, especially not amongst crusaders. The word “agnostic” was a 19 th Century invention.

Just in case anyone misunderstood the motivations behind his movie, Ridley Scott has been quoted as saying: “If we could just take God out of the equation, there would be no f… problem!” [...]

Further evidence of the blind anti-Christian prejudice of many in Hollywood is seen in some of the reviews of Kingdom of Heaven: Frederick Brussat of Spirituality and Health comments: “We are pleased to see (the Muslims) come across in a more positive light in this well intentioned blockbuster about the crusades…all of the Christians in this story come across as arrogant and unlikable human beings…never darkening the door of a church. Their Muslim counterparts, on the other hand, are seen doing the ritual prayer; in one impressive scene this involves Saladin’s entire army.”

Varia Galley’s Filmiliar Cineaste is quite positive about the film and describes it as “A grand success and a moving depiction of the crusades as a bloodbath in the name of piety…Scott…makes the point that religious zelotry…has historically resulted in mass slaughter.”

That is, of course, a commonly held article of faith of Secular Humanists, but the fact is that far more people have died in the name of Atheism and Secular Humanism (over 180 million citizens were murdered by their own Secular Humanist / Atheist / Communist governments just in the 20 th Century alone) than by all other organised religions combined.

A Political Agenda

It is also interesting to note the political lessons that some reviewers seem to derive from the film. William Arnold in the Seattle Post Intelligencer comments that the Kingdom of Heaven “is an again compelling argument for the growing contention that the city (Jerusalem) should be internationalised and administered for all faiths by the United Nations”! Considering that the United Nations could not even administer Angola, Rwanda, Somalia, or Bosnia without widespread massacres taking place under their “protection” it is not very clear why the United Nations should be trusted with anything at all. [...]

Crude Stereotyping

“Kingdom of Heaven is a whole lot of nothing about O, you know, that thing that happened in olden times when a bunch of power hungry white men went a bit god-crazy and invaded the Middle East on a moral superiority kick. The gold wasn’t bad either ” (Walter Chaw – filmfreakcentral.net). This typical, if crude, stereotyping of the crusades is quite enlightening. It illustrates the pervasive ignorance of history that enables revisionist film makers like Scott to get away with such blatant distortions of reality.

The Facts of History

The fact is that the crusades of the Middle Ages were a reaction to centuries of Islamic Jihad. In the first century of Islam alone Muslim invaders conquered the whole of the previously Christian North Africa destroying over 3200 churches – in just 100 years. In the first three centuries of Islam, Muslim forces killed Christians, kidnapped their children to raise them as Muslims, or compelled people at the point of the sword to convert to Islam. Up to 50% of all the Christians in the world were wiped out during those first three centuries of Islam. The Saracens (as the Muslim invaders were called) desecrated Christian places of worship and were severely persecuting Christians. Pilgrims were then prevented from visiting those places where our Lord was born, was crucified and raised from the dead. It was only after four centuries of Islamic Jihad that the crusades were launched as a belated reaction to the blatant Islamic Jihad.

Logistics and Economics

As the Christian History Institute has pointed out, the characterising of crusaders as only in it for the plunder and the loot betrays an ignorance of both geography and history. The vast majority of the crusaders were impoverished and financially ruined by the crusades. Crusaders, through great sacrifice and personal expense, left their homes and families to travel 3000km across treacherous and inhospitable terrain – and the shortest crusade lasted 4 years. Considering that only 10% of the crusaders had horses, and 90% were foot soldiers, the sheer fact of logistics is that the crusaders could not possibly have carried back enough loot to have made up for the loss of earnings and high expenses involved with these long crusades. Many crusaders lost their homes and farms to finance their involvement in the crusades.

There’s More to Life than Money

Perhaps self-seeking materialistic agnostics in the 21 st Century cannot understand that some people could be motivated by something other than personal financial enrichment, but the fact is that many people make sacrifices for their religious convictions, and in order to help others. In the case of the crusaders, the historical record makes clear that amongst the motivations that led tens of thousands of volunteers to reclaim the Holy Land was a sense of Christian duty to help their fellow Christians in the East whose lands have been invaded and churches desecrated by Muslim armies, and a desire to secure access to the Holy Lands for pilgrims. There was also a desire to fight for the honour of their Lord Jesus Christ, Whose churches had been destroyed and Whose Deity had been denied by the Mohammadan aggressors. In other words, to the crusaders this was a defensive war to reclaim Christian lands from Muslim invaders.

We may not share their convictions, or agree with their methods, but we ought to evaluate them in the light of the realities of the 11 th and 12 th centuries, and not anachronistically project our standards and politics back upon them.

The Missing Jihad

Scriptwriter William Monahan, and Director Ridley Scott, obviously don’t understand the motivations behind the crusaders, and apparently they do not understand the Islamic doctrine of Jihad either – which the film makes no reference to. Considering that Jihad was the central threat that had lead to the reaction of the crusades, this omission is inexplicable. Kingdom of Heaven preoccupies itself with fictionalising crusader atrocities, but it ignores the pattern of the preceeding five centuries of genocide and aggression by Islamic armies. For those wanting the politically incorrect rest of the story which Kingdom of Heaven does not even hint of, you would want to read Slavery, Terrorism & Islam – The Historical Roots & Contemporary Threat.

Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven is politically correct, anti-Christian, pro-Muslim propaganda. It makes poor entertainment and is a worthless distortion of reality.

1. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans [Rated R for drug use and language throughout, some violence and sexuality.]

summary from imdb:

Terence McDonagh is a drug- and gambling-addled detective in post-Katrina New Orleans investigating the killing of five Senegalese immigrants.

directed by: Werner Herzog

starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Xzibit, Shawn Hatosy, Jennifer Coolidge, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Brad Dourif, Irma P. Hall, Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Kyle Smith
Kurt Loder
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits: police corruption

leave it to the great Werner Herzog to make a post-Katrina movie set in New Orleans and never blame Bush for it… (though there is a mention of Guantanamo)

dialogue:

Val Kilmer: that means Guantanamo Bay ?rules?

drugdealer guy: this that Taliban s###… that’s what this is… that s### that Osama give a m#####f##### before they blow themselves up

2. Amelia (2009) [Rated PG for some sensuality, language, thematic elements and smoking.]

summary from imdb.com:

A look at the life of legendary American pilot Amelia Earhart, who disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a flight around the world.

starring: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, Cherry Jones, Mia Wasikowska

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Carl Kozlowski at Big Hollywood
Christian Toto
movieguide.org Christian reviews

Poli-Bits:

from the Flick Filosopher:

The movie consists, mostly, of a series of flashbacks covering the ten years prior to that historical circumnavigation, when she has affairs with the publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere: I’m Not There, The Hunting Party) — who invents her in the eyes of the media — but to whom she is wary of making any “medieval” vows of faithfulness, and with the aviator Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor: Angels & Demons, Cassandra’s Dream), too, who shares her passion for flying. She doesn’t hesitate to love both men at the same time, and you can have all the debates you want over the rightness or wrongness or the fairness or the unkindness of what she did — is it “cheating” when you’ve made no bones about your lack of desire for exclusive loyalty? — but this was who she was. And this is what the film gives us: her idea of autonomy and independence that is so intrinsic to who she is that there is no question about it in the film’s mind.

That — the assumption of autonomy, whether your idea of autonomy is the same — is a luxury rarely accorded to women in our pop culture, and it is wonderful to see here.

dialogue:

George: But all the money from this will go to Mrs. Guest.

Amelia: Except for the part that goes to you…

George: Well, this is America… and therefore I am obligated to make as much money as I can…

Amelia: How much fuel do you lose because of these?

pilot: costs us at least 400 gallons…

Amelia: well, then why have them?

George: the owner wants to protect her plane in case you have to ditch it at sea…

Amelia: but those are decisions I have to make, not somebody else… they’re not making this trip, we are…

George: But she owns the plane, and this is still America, Miss Earhart… Ownership is the trump card…

pilot: Sad to say, but dollars put planes in the air…

from a letter written by Amelia:

In our life together, I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly…

Minister: Amelia, do you promise to love, honor and obey this man…

Amelia: excuse me, sir? may we take that back a bit, please? Love, yes, if it’s warranted… honor, same thing… obey, I can’t promise that under any circumstances… but the groom understands that…

George: please remove “obey” from the prayer so we can wrap this up before the bride runs off…

3. Nim’s Island (2008) [Rated PG for mild adventure action and brief language.]

summary from imdb.com:

A young girl inhabits an isolated island with her scientist father and communicates with a reclusive author of the novel she’s reading.

starring: Abigail Breslin, Gerard Butler, Jodie Foster

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
Christian Toto

Poli-Bits: nothing…

but… if you’re a leftist reviewer… you might agree with Cynthia Fuchs when she writes:

Early in Nim’s Island, the lovely, serenely self-confident Nim (Abigail Breslin) loses herself in a new book. It’s the latest in her favorite series, written by Alex Rover and starring Alex Rover, an adventurer of the Indiana Jones persuasion. As Nim settles into her bed and begins reading My Arabian Adventure, the screen situates her in the middle of the fantasy, such that Alex (Gerard Butler) appears in the desert, surrounded by dark-skinned Arabs in white robes. To effect his escape from the threat of a “Pot of Spiders,” he grabs up one of his enemies’ swords and starts swashbuckling. They fall by the wayside, defeated.

Nim smiles, her faith in Alex’s heroism reaffirmed. But you might be cringing. Racist fantasy is never a good start for a children’s film, or any film, for that matter. It’s also not helpful that Alex’s next adventure, imagined by his creator back in San Francisco, Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster), has him tied to a pole and carried by black African primitives, who mean to dump him into a volcano as a human sacrifice. Erk.

These disturbing images are, to be fair, brief, essentially jokey moments in Nim’s Island. The focus is more earnestly on the relationship that develops between 11-year-old Nim and Alex from San Francisco…

4. Analyze This (1999)[Rated R for language, a scene of sexuality and some violence.]

summary from imdb.com:

The basic premise of this film is what if one of gangland’s Dons suddenly started having anxiety attacks because of past problems. When he decides to see a shrink, what can he tell him without giving away the gang’s secrets and reveal too much about his own situations? Add to the fact that this type of individual is used to everyone catering to his whims and he expects the psychiatrist to do the same, neglecting his regular practice and his attempts to get married.

starring: Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, Joe Viterelli, Molly Shannon, Max Casella, Tony Bennett

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
John Simon at the National Review
movieguide.org Christian Reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

5. The Piano (1993) [Rated R for moments of extremely graphic sexuality.]

summary from imdb.com:

It is the mid-nineteenth century. Ada is a mute who has a young daughter, Flora. In an arranged marriage she leaves her native Scotland accompanied by her daughter and her beloved piano. Life in the rugged forests of New Zealand’s South Island is not all she may have imagined and nor is her relationship with her new husband Stewart. She suffers torment and loss when Stewart sells her piano to a neighbour, George. Ada learns from George that she may earn back her piano by giving him piano lessons, but only with certain other conditions attached. At first Ada despises George but slowly their relationship is transformed and this propels them into a dire situation.

starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin, Cliff Curtis,

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian Reviews

Poli-Bits:

from James Berardinelli:

The Piano is about passion, the most basic and primal element of human nature. No matter how thick the veneer of civilization is, or how deeply-buried beneath layers of social repression those latent emotions are, passion ultimately cannot be denied. This is something that the three principals of this movie learn in various, often unpleasant, ways. [...] The Piano has powerful emotional themes resonating through it, all dealing with the release of repressed passion. Baines, who has embraced the native Maori methods of living, no longer clings to the values of British society, and is therefore quite capable of expressing himself freely — which he does, albeit in some strange ways. Stewart, however, views the Maori with suspicion and hostility and, in clinging to the tenants of English society, refuses to allow himself to feel until one violent moment when everything comes pouring out. Ada, hampered as much by her lack of voice as by social pressures, is yearning to break free, and only through Baines does she find the courage to do so.

6. The Beautiful Country (2004) [Rated R for some language and a crude sexual reference.]

summary from imdb.com:

After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.

starring: Damien Nguyen, Nick Nolte, Tim Roth

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian Reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Reeling Reviews

Moland has done great work with his cast (the villains on either end are unfeeling capitalists

from PopMatters:

“I’ve been to your country,” Captain Oh (Tim Roth) tells Binh (Damien Nguyen). “Both of your countries. You will always be out of place wherever you go. And poor.” Damien nods and bows his head, used to being called ugly, different, and doomed. In rural Vietnam, where he has grown up, he is called [Bui Doi] (translating as “less than dust”). Alone and afraid, he is also determined. [...]

Their eventual escape and transport on Captain Oh’s ship exposes still more of the hypocrisies that order the refugees’ world. They huddle in the hold, starving amid filth and stormy disarray, advised that they should stay healthy, in order to earn the transporter (Temuera Morrison) top dollar (“You’ll all be rich in America,” he lies). With nothing but time and desperate hope on their hands, the wage contests for water and wormy rice, based on the ability to list U.S. products: Clint Eastwood, NBA, and Folgers coffee. For most of the journey, Binh observes, trying to remain unseen and out of danger; when pressed to his utter limit by a dreadful turn of events, he reveals himself: he knows the names of more products than anyone, spitting them with aggressive contempt rather than expectation.

Having signed papers that consign them to work off their passage once they arrive in New York City, the new illegal immigrants follow strict routines: Binh again keeps his head down as he shuffles from his Chinatown restaurant job (where he throws out platefuls of uneaten food) to his underground bunk every night, while Ling sings at a karaoke bar, turning tricks with odious, brash Caucasians in suits. Again, Binh’s inclined to rescue her, but she feels so lost at this point that she can only reject his affection. “I’m ugly too,” she says, as they stand surrounded by NYC traffic, her fake leather fringe jacket and gaudy jewelry flashing in the neon lights.

Despondent, Binh plays cards with his bunkmates, the tv in the background conveniently running Gordon Gekko’s “Greed is good” speech at the very moment they let slip that Binh actually has legal rights as a child of a U.S. soldier. That is, he came by way of the horrific ship voyage when he would have been afforded free air transport to the States (owing to the 1984 Amerasian repatriation program, and then, the 1988 Amerasian Homecoming Act, which formalized immigration and provided acclimation programs in the U.S.). It’s a stunning, depressing discovery, that he has been so easily exploited, at any number of moments over the past months. And yet, Binh is also coming to understand this Western capitalism: humans are property, in war and in peace.

The frustration gets him moving again, catching a couple of emblematic rides. The first is with a group of Vietnam war veterans, all amputees (“What you lookin’ at boy?” comes the initial challenge, until Binh assures him that he’s seen many people without limbs. The second offers another way of thinking about race, racism, and the status of immigrants. A truck pulls over, and the Mexican driver peers out at him: “I thought you were Mexican,” he says. “Ah what the hell, get in.”

At once metaphorical and brutal, Binh’s long-anticipated reunion with Steve (Nick Nolte) offers only rational reasons for the father’s abandonment. Binh may or may not forgive him, but the more daunting effect is visible in their long pauses — and Steve’s brief, pained fingering of his son’s “ugly” face. They’re both seeking, both enduring the continuing costs of war — the Vietnam war in particular, others certainly. Literally blind, Steve embodies U.S. lapses and longings, political and moral missteps, and the guilt that drives and undermines all efforts to do right.

7. House on Haunted Hill (1999)[Rated R for horror violence and gore, sexual images and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

How far would you go for a million dollars? Would you spend the night in a haunted house? When twisted billionaire Stephen Price and his devilish wife, Evelyn, offer six strangers one million dollars each, there is only one rule to the game: they’ll have to survive one night in a former mental institution, haunted by the ghosts of the inmates killed there, and an insane doctor who did unspeakable things… At first, everyone is having fun, thinking that the whole thing is a joke. But once the entire house automatically seals itself shut, they realize that this is no joke.

starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Max Perlich, Jeffrey Combs, James Marsters, Lisa Loeb, Peter Graves

non-Conservative  Reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

8. Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007) [Rated R for strong bloody horror violence, language and brief sexuality/nudity.]

summary from imdb.com:

8 Years have passed since Sara Wolfe and Eddie Baker escaped the House on Haunted Hill. Now the kidnapped Ariel, Sara’s sister, goes inside the house with a group of treasure hunters to find the statue of Baphomet, worth millions and believed to be the cause of the House’s evil.

starring: Amanda Righetti, Cerina Vincent, Erik Palladino, Jeffrey Combs

non-Conservative Reviews

Poli-Bits: it just wouldn’t be Hollywood without the obligatory mention of the church and the Inquisition…

9. L’enfant (2005) [Rated R for brief language.]

summary from imdb.com:

Bruno and Sonia are boy friend and girl friend, playful, immature. She’s still in her teens; they chase each other, share cigarettes, spray sodas and wrestle. The thing is, they also have a new baby. Just out of hospital, Sonia seeks out Bruno to bring him his son. Bruno’s indifferent. In the grimy Belgian city of Seraing, he’s a petty thief with no interest in work, no plan, spending money as fast as he can fence cameras and jewelry. He sells the baby. Sonia’s reaction and Bruno’s surprise at her response inform his subsequent actions. The camera follows and observes him: has he a nascent conscience or any chance at redemption? Can he help himself?

non-Conservative reviews

Poli-Bits:

from Slant Magazine:

They may see Bruno’s actions as the residual damage of a heartless social existence (a dog-eat-dog global market)

from Los Angeles Times:

In these and the still earlier “La Promesse,” the Belgian directing brothers deal with themes they have made their own: the difficulty of being moral in an amoral world and the grinding, unforgiving nature of reality for those forced by poverty to live on the margins of society. [...] For if they are after nothing else, the Dardennes are determined to demonstrate how little room to maneuver there is for individuals marginalized by implacable social forces, how difficult it can be to have ordinary feelings while living in painfully impoverished circumstances.

from the Village Voice

and an unlikely affinity for Robert Bresson; the mode might be described as spiritually infused social realism./As the brothers’ 1999 come-from-nowhere Cannes laureate Rosetta suggested a Marxist remake of Bresson’s Mouchette, so their second Palme d’Or triumph, L’Enfant (premiered here at last fall’s New York Film Festival), revisits Bresson’s more abstract Pickpocket in its saga of crime, punishment, and redemption.

10. [REC] (2007) [Rated R for bloody horror violence and language.]

summary from imdb.com:

“REC” turns on a young TV reporter and her cameraman who cover the night shift at the local fire station. Receiving a call from an old lady trapped in her house, they reach her building to hear horrifying screams — which begin a long nightmare and a uniquely dramatic TV report.

non-Conservative reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

11. The List (2007) [Rated PG for thematic elements including some peril and brief incidental smoking.]

summary from imdb.com:

A sudden death tied to a list from the past leads to unimaginable evil. Fresh out of law school and full of hope for the future, Renny Jacobson is stunned by his father’s sudden death–and then by the terms of the will: the elder Jacobson has left the bulk of his estate to charity. For his only son, he has left nothing more than the contents of a deposit box and interest in a company no one has heard of–the Covenant List of South Carolina, Ltd. When Renny encounters lovely Jo Johnston, meets the members of “The List,” and discovers the staggering value of his father’s mysterious bequest, his hope is resurrected. But why is Jo, to whom he is deeply attracted, so reluctant for him to claim his rightful share? Renny feels the supernatural power of the 140-year-old covenant–feels it and wants it for himself. But when his life and Jo’s begin to unravel, he is forced to face the truth about “The List.” And nothing short of a miracle will save them from its grasp.

starring: Malcolm McDowell, Hilarie Burton, Pat Hingle, Mary Beth Peil, Will Patton

Conservo-Libertarian Reviews:
movieguide.org Christian Reviews

non-Conservative reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing

from PopMatters

The List is tale of supernatural combat in which the forces of greed, black magic and the lust for power are pitted against Christian faith, love and the power of prayer.

12. Midnight Clear (2006) [Rated PG-13 for some mature thematic elements.]

summary from imdb.com:

A recently homeless and jobless loser, a senior citizen estranged from her family, a mother of one dealing with her husband’s brain damage, a gas station owner stuck in a job he hates, and a youth pastor feeling irrelevant face depression and loneliness on Christmas Eve. As they cross paths and experience random and minor acts of kindness, their lives are changed forever.

directed by: Dallas Jenkins

starring: Stephen Baldwin, K Callan, Victoria Jackson, Richard Riehle

non-conservative reviews

Poli-Bits: nothing