Mayor Pete: Documentary Review and Commentary

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A contrived, and unintentionally hysterical, hour and half long campaign commercial for Pete Buttigieg, the relentlessly vapid and vacuous narcissistic sociopath White House wannabe.

This year has been a banner one for sycophantic documentaries of political figures.

First there was the eye-rolling, ass-kissing HBO documentary mini-series Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. Then National Geographic gave us the insidiously fawning Fauci.

Now Amazon has rolled out what may be the most unintentionally funny bit of homosexual hagiography in documentary history, Mayor Pete, which chronicles Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign.

The film starts one year before the Iowa Caucuses with South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg gearing up for his historic run as the first openly gay candidate for the presidency.

The opening sequence begins with a voice off-camera, I think it is Pete Buttigieg’s husband Chasten Buttigieg, lovingly telling the candidate, “don’t bullshit us, Peter!”

Mayor Pete and its diminutive subject then spend the next hour and half relentlessly bullshitting us, as this movie is less a documentary than it is an hour and a half long campaign commercial.

What’s so funny about Mayor Pete is that the couple at its center, Pete and his husband Chasten, who both appear to have been the recipients of charisma bypass surgery, have all the chemistry of two strangers sitting across from each other in the waiting room of a contagious disease clinic. When the two of them kiss it’s like watching lip-transplant patients trying to kiss for the first time. I suppose it’s a sign of progress that an openly gay man can now run for president and be in just as loveless a marriage as all of the straight candidates he’s competing against.

Another amusing thing about the documentary was that as it wore on, I realized of whom Pete Buttigieg reminded me…it’s the sociopathic serial killer Dexter who, coincidentally, recently returned to television after an eight-year absence. Did Dexter flee Miami after his last killing spree and hide out in South Bend, become mayor, and is now running for president? Find out on Dexter: New Blood.

Like Dexter, the wooden Pete works extremely hard to try to convince people he’s a normal person, yet his dead eyes give away the game. The guy exerts so much energy pretending to be human, he comes across as entirely inhuman.

Like the film that documents him, Pete Buttigieg is so contrived and manufactured I didn’t believe anything about him. I spent half the time wondering if Pete’s face was a skin-mask from one of his alter-ego Dexter’s unfortunate victims, or if he was just pretending to be gay in order to increase his electoral chances.   

Pete so aggressively pushes his homosexuality as his main selling point the ridiculous notion of his sexuality being just a function of branding and not biology started to seem considerably less absurd. Would any Democrat pay any attention at all to Pete if he were straight? No, of course not.

This is why Pete puts his homosexuality front and center, it gives him the precious political commodity of victimhood which translates to credibility in the eyes of identity-obsessed Democrats. This victimhood is enhanced in the movie with two scenes of homophobic protests against Pete, which are so buffoonish they feel staged.

Buttigieg’s husband Chasten too makes being gay the be all and end all of his identity. There’s a sequence in the film where Chasten goes to a gay camp for kids and leads them in the pledge of allegiance to the gay camp flag, and then dresses potatoes up as drag queens, which felt like the funniest skit Saturday Night Live has never aired.

There’s another sequence where Chasten is complaining that all the Democratic candidates have their wives on stage with them on election night in Iowa, except for Pete. Even Pete grows tired of Chasten’s whining at this point and resorts to ignoring him when placating fails.

Another immensely amusing thing about Mayor Pete is watching Buttigieg navigate the victimhood pyramid of the Democratic party.

Pete is constantly seen contemplating, rehearsing and then spouting platitudes regarding race. Most notably at a town hall in South Bend after a white cop kills a black man in the city.

In another scene, Pete is seen strategizing over race and he says of his efforts, “make sure it doesn’t read as very white.” Then the documentary cuts to Pete and Al Sharpton having lunch together in Harlem. Chef’s kiss.

As funny as that is, it pales in comparison to the ass-kissing of Joe Biden that the film and its subject engage in.

For example, after an impromptu conversation between Biden and Buttigieg in Iowa, the film cuts to Pete enthusiastically telling an aide that Biden is “such a good guy!”

Later after Buttigieg drops his presidential bid, he gets a call from Biden, and we eavesdrop on the conversation between the two. Mayor Pete the movie, and Mayor Pete the man, are both so affected and manipulative I couldn’t help but wonder if all of these scenes about Biden were staged well after the events of the 2020 primary.

Biden ultimately made Buttigieg the youngest and first openly gay Secretary of Transportation in U.S. history. In that role his greatest accomplishments thus far are taking paternity leave and saying that some roads are racist.

Fans of Buttigieg shouldn’t fret though, because as Mayor Pete reveals, Pete is addicted to style and allergic to substance, and is also malignantly vapid, vacuous, ambitious, narcissistic and sociopathic, which means he meets all the requirements to be the President of the United States of America. His ascension feels inevitable. God help us all.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass - Documentary Review and Commetary

My Rating: 3.8 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An insightful documentary well worth a watch. It isn’t perfect, but it is important.

Oliver Stone’s JFK hit theaters in 1991 and sent shockwaves through Washington and the corporate media because it was a compelling cinematic counter-myth to the equally fantastical Warren Report.

The Praetorian guards of the establishment in the halls of power and press met the film with ferocity as they set out to debunk and defang it, as it directly challenged their narrative and thus their authority. They failed. JFK was nominated for 8 Academy Awards and brought in over $200 million at the box office. More importantly though, it broke the spell of public indifference and somewhat loosened establishment obstruction in regards to the JFK assassination.

In the film’s wake the President John F Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 was passed and the Assassination Records Review Board set up and funded.

Now, thirty years later Oliver Stone is back, this time with a documentary streaming on Showtime, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, which sticks its thumb in the eye of those who mindlessly espouse the “official” story of JFK’s assassination as the truth.

As someone interested in the JFK assassination, and who has read a multitude of books on the subject across the spectrum, from Gerald Posner’s ‘Case Closed’ and Vincent Bugliosi’s ‘Reclaiming History’ to Jim Marrs’ ‘Crossfire’ and James W. Douglass’ ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’, finding a decent documentary worthy of a watch on the topic is a challenge.

Thankfully, Stone has stepped up to the plate with JFK Revisited, a serious work and worthy documentary that offers a coherent, if limited, counter theory to the official JFK assassination story.

The film runs a brisk two-hours, features a bevy of talking heads, including John M. Newman (whose two books ‘JFK and Vietnam’ and ‘Oswald and the CIA’ are terrific), David Talbot (who wrote ‘The Devil’s Chessboard’ – another fantastic book), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., James K. Galbraith, Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Henry Lee, and is a well-paced primer that would be a useful launching pad for anyone interested in diving even deeper into the assassination.

There is a four-hour cut of the film which will allegedly be made available to the public in the new year, and I’m looking forward to seeing that version as I assume it gets more into the specifics of who did the actual shooting, a subject the at-times rushed two-hour version foregoes in favor of more foundational topics.

The film does examine a plethora of fascinating JFK assassination topics though, including Oswald’s numerous and obvious connections to the intelligence community. The Warren Commission’s, the intel community’s and the media’s knowing distortions and deceptions regarding the assassination. The fantasy of the magic bullet theory. The contradictory medical evidence from Parkland Hospital in Dallas and the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. The other remarkably similar plots to kill Kennedy in Chicago and Tampa leading up to Dallas, which included other Oswald-esque patsies Thomas Arthur Vallee and Gilberto Lopez. As well as the story of Abraham Bolden, the first black secret service agent, who tried to inform authorities of the Chicago plot but instead of being hailed a hero was railroaded and sent to prison.

JFK Revisited also spotlights the struggle between Kennedy and the political establishment. Kennedy’s famed American University speech of June 1963, where he laid out his vision for a newfound, peaceful American foreign policy, opens the film. This vision is foundational to ‘the why’ of Stone’s theory regarding the assassination as it provides motive for the intelligence agencies and military to act to remove a president they deemed soft on communism and weak in general.

Kennedy wanted to promote anti-colonialism, normalize relations with Cuba, not make the same mistake as the French in Vietnam, and have détente with the Soviets, even including combining efforts in the space race.

The Intelligence community and Pentagon had a very different and much more nefarious agenda. They were busy eliminating Lumumba in the Congo, fomenting a military coup in France, conjuring both the Bay of Pigs and Operation Northwoods – which would use false flag terror attacks on U.S. targets to force a war in Cuba, and pushing for American escalation in Vietnam.

This is why Kennedy moved to reduce the CIA budget by 20%, fired CIA warhorse Allen Dulles (who curiously enough would become a powerful member of the Warren Commission), and famously declared he would shatter the CIA into a million pieces. According to Stone, the CIA beat Kennedy to the punch as it shattered his skull into a million pieces in Dealey Plaza, on November 22nd, 1963.

The gaping, gangrenous wound at the heart of America that rots our national soul, was born on that fateful day, and it still festers and it still matters.

Unlike both malignant political parties and the shameless corporate media, Oliver Stone, whose status as pariah is the fuel that powers all his documentaries, understands this, and he’s trying to heal that wound by seeking out the truth regarding JFK’s killing.

While the establishment may ignore JFK Revisited, the general public shouldn’t. It’s a useful and insightful film for anyone who wants to understand their government and what it’s willing to do in order to maintain its grip on power and the lucrative status quo.

Seek JFK Revisited out and watch it, it isn’t perfect, but it is vitally important.

For other JFK assassination related articles - check these out.

JFK and the Conspiracy Coundrum

JFK and the Media: The House Always Wins

JFK and the Big Lie

Oliver Stone, JFK Revisited and the Establishment Media

The Media Hates Conspiracy Theories…Except When They Don’t

Oliver Stone: Top Five Films

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Colin in Black and White: Miniseries Review and Commentary

Colin Kaepernick’s new Netflix autobiography ‘Colin in Black and White’ is the Super Bowl of self-pitying narcissism that reveals hims to be an entitled, self-absorbed jerk.  

Colin in Black and White is the new mini-series on Netflix that dramatizes Colin Kaepernick’s teenage years where he struggles against racism and to be taken seriously as a quarterback.

Kaepernick, if you’ll remember, once led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl and made a name for himself by kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games to protest against racial injustice, police brutality and systematic oppression.

I utterly loathe flag fetishism as a mindless display of vacuousness, so I never had a problem with Kaepernick’s protests. I disagree with him on some of the specifics of his stance, but I always respected his kneeling. The way I see it, if the NFL wants to turn their games into de facto celebrations of militarism, then players kneeling shouldn’t be beyond the pale.

I also think it’s obvious that Kaepernick was unjustly black-balled by the league for his protests. While I admit that Kaepernick is a very specific and unique QB talent and that his skill set isn’t a fit on every team, it’s ludicrous to think he couldn’t at least have been a back-up somewhere. Of course, that brings up the question of whether he would accept that secondary role and at a price below what he thinks he deserves.

The reason I mention my moderate stance on the controversial Kaepernick is because I want to make it clear I went into watching Colin in Black and White without an axe to grind against the man, quite the opposite actually.

Having said that, let me tell you that Colin in Black and White isn’t just an amateurish tv show so awful it would be laughable as an after school special, it also exposes Kaepernick as being quite a despicable and deplorable human being.

This show is like the Super Bowl of self-pitying narcissism and Kaepernick is Bart Starr, Joe Montana and Tom Brady wrapped into one.

The series opens by literally transforming the NFL combine into a slave auction. Besides the fact that the NFL combine is something so elitist most football players of any race can only ever dream about attending, and that players at the combine have worked their whole lives to get there and are competing to become draft picks and multi-millionaires with generational wealth who’ll be worshiped like gods in our culture…yeah…the combine is EXACTLY like a slave auction.

Colin Kaepernick’s ignorance about the horrors of actual slavery is to be expected though since his social justice warrior pose and victimhood addiction apparently makes him blind, deaf and dumb regarding Nike, the company he has a big endorsement deal with that uses slave labor to make its profits. Of course, Nike is immune from Kaepernick’s social justice posing because they give him a fair share of their blood money.

It’s equally absurd witnessing real-life Colin watch and comment as his teenage screen version pouts and preens like a cheap tart at a red-light street over his anger and disappointment that the best colleges in the country want to give him a baseball scholarship, and Major League Baseball wants to draft him and give him a million-dollar signing bonus, and the prettiest white girls in school throw themselves at him, while all little Colin wants is to get a scholarship to play QB and have a black girlfriend. Boo fucking hoo.

What really turned my stomach though about Colin in Black and White is that Kaepernick’s adoptive, working-class white parents, insipidly portrayed by Mary Louise Parker and Nick Offerman, are depicted as vapid racist caricatures.

The fact that Kaepernick, who co-created this series with Ava Duvernay, would belittle, demean and slander the couple (who are still alive) that raised, loved and nurtured him from infancy, and shelled out big bucks by paying for travel baseball and high-end specialized QB coaches to help him achieve his dream, is repugnant and repulsive.

In one episode where Kaepernick’s adoption is briefly explored, the show frames his soon-to-be parents as deciding to adopt Colin only after another adoption falls through. Kaepernick then chimes in with his woe-is-me wail that “since the day I was born, I’ve never been anyone’s first choice.”

Again, boo fucking hoo Kaepernick, you sad sack clown. Your parents actually chose you. They got up in the middle of the night to feed you and change you, they held you and loved you, they gave everything to you and they moved heaven and earth to make your dreams come true, and because they’re a different skin color than you, you reward them, not with gratitude, or respect, or love, but with a tv show that bends over backwards to publicly ridicule them. That says more about you, Kaepernick, than it does about your parents.

Of course, Kaepernick turns everything into racism because he’s a nitwit incapable of understanding anything else. So, when he and his parents disagree over the usual things teenagers and parents disagree over…hair styles, facial hair, wardrobe, choice in girlfriends, Colin sees this as proof of the racist conspiracy against him.

Due to Kaepernick’s desperate need for victimhood, everyone is racist in his eyes…coaches, referees, umpires, opposing fans, opponents, hotel employees, his parents. The fact that schools weren’t tripping over Kaepernick too is because of racism.

The word that kept popping into my head as I watched this self-pitying shitshow was pathetic.  There is absolutely nothing quite as egregiously pathetic as a grown man wallowing in long past perceived slights from adolescence. Nothing.

Adding to the idiocy is that Kaepernick, dressed all in black with a massive afro, looking like Morpheus from The Matrix wearing a wig as a joke, interjects various tidbits of racial knowledge throughout the show. Kaepernick is so hysterically ridiculous in these segments he seems like a character from Dave Chappelle on The Chappelle Show or Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live.

On the bright-side, Jaden Michael plays teenage Kaepernick on the show, and as bad as the show is, he’s terrific. Despite not having a lick of athleticism in his body, he’s a compelling screen presence and an actor who conveys an intriguing inner life. He’s a talent to watch.

A talent not to watch is Colin Kaepernick, whose NFL career is most certainly over, and considering his dead-eyed appearance on the self-serving, self-aggrandizing, self-pitying, celebration of delusional victimhood, Colin in Black and White, which reveals his truly loathsome nature and intellectual midgetry, one can only hope he disappears from the public eye as well. The sooner the better.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier - Documentary Review and Commentary

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Utterly useless piece of establishment media fluffery.

Just as MI6 super spy James Bond is back in theatres with No Time to Die, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele is back in the spotlight with the story that refuses to die, in the ABC “documentary” titled Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier.

Steele came to fame as the shadowy force behind the Steele Dossier, the document which sparked a media feeding frenzy and government investigations because it claimed Trump colluded with Russia and that those devious Russians had “kompromat” on Trump in the golden form of a “pee tape”.

Steele’s “coming out of the shadows” consists of him sitting down with George Stephanopoulos and having a cuddle session on fancy sofas in a posh apartment.

Stephanopoulos is the perfect choice for the softball interview since he and Steele have a lot in common - they’ve both worked for Clintons. Stephanopoulos as advisor to President Bill Clinton and Steele as de facto dirt finder for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

ABC tried to stretch the excruciatingly thin gruel of this supposed “interview” into an hour-long documentary by adding talking heads from their own newsroom. They failed, as the end result is a one-hour show that is hilariously shallow and vapid even by ABC News standards.

Out of the Shadows spends considerably more time rehashing the “history” of Russia, Vladimir Putin and Trump than it does actually talking to Steele. Russia is deemed a rogue state virus spreading westward with its villainy, Putin a KGB killer, and Trump a threat to American democracy. In other words, it’s standard establishment media talking points.

Steele’s background is somewhat explored, but being the ever-diligent super spy that he is, Steele never explicitly states that he worked for MI6. I guess he doesn’t want to blow his cover.

What Steele actually says in this interview is of strikingly minimal impact. Thanks to Stephanopoulos’ anti-journalistic, anti-adversarial, deferential approach, no new ground is broken.

It’s well-known that Steele didn’t just compile the dossier, he actively pushed it to media outlets, in effect, actively working to try and scuttle Trump’s election campaign. The fact that he was ostensibly working for Democrats at the time certainly makes it appear as if he was a part of a wider disinformation/interference operation, but of course that’s a topic Stephanopoulos whistles past in this patty cake chat.

Steele admits to no wrong doing or error, despite the U.S. intelligence agencies “eviscerating” his findings after thorough investigation, and the FBI labelling him “untrustworthy”.  

The issue of the “sources” Steele uses doesn’t get the attention it deserves either, as it’s reported that he only used one “key collector”, but Steele is quick to make clear it was “one collector” but not “one source”. That seems like a distinction without a difference.

As the documentary reports, that one collector was not a person in Moscow, but actually someone in Washington D.C. whose name is not revealed. The Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz reported this person claimed that the information being given to Steele was “word of mouth and hearsay”. In other words, Steele was acting less as an intelligence expert seeking truth with his dossier than he was being a gossip columnist spreading rumor and innuendo.

Steele’s declaration, “I stand by the work we did, the sources we had, and the professionalism we applied to it”, is as devoid of substance as the rest of the interview.

The most damning aspect comes toward the end, and even that is soft pedaled, when Stephanopoulos asks Steele about both the dossier’s allegation that Trump counsel Michael Cohen went to Prague to meet with Russian intelligence and about the pee tape.

Cohen denies the Prague meeting ever took place, and since he has flipped against Trump, one would assume he’s telling the truth. But Steele’s resolve remains, as he conjures up a wild scenario where Cohen is still lying because he wants to avoid being charged with treason.

Stephanopoulos of course let’s this utter lunacy pass almost without notice. He could’ve asked Steele how exactly Cohen got to Prague, since his passport shows no travel to the Czech Republic? Or pressed Steele to provide details or at least a passable explanation for how that meeting could possibly have taken place? But he didn’t, he just smiled and continued playing footsie with Steele.

The “pee tape” is the most salacious accusation in the dossier, and despite it never surfacing and no evidence it exists, Steele still stands by the claim…sort of. He says that the tape “probably does” exist but that he wouldn’t “put 100% certainty on it.”

When Stephanopoulos asks why the tape hasn’t come out? Steele replies that “it hasn’t needed to be released…because I think the Russians felt they’d got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president…”

Look, I loathe Trump, always have and always will, but this sounds like the ravings of someone deeply infected with a ferocious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is maybe why he is still taken seriously by the equally afflicted establishment media.

The more you know about Steele, the more readily apparent it becomes that he’s an absolute charlatan and bullshit artist masquerading as a serious intelligence expert. He’s no James Bond, he’s not even George Smiley. He’s more like a cross between Mr. Bean and Inspector Clouseau, who should, like this vacant and vacuous interview/documentary, be relentlessly ridiculed and righteously dis-respected.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Convergence: Courage in a Crisis - Documentary Review

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This documentary is devoid of insights and only serves up the same old insipid ideology of identity politics. The film ‘s manipulative thesis uses Covid as a cudgel to divide instead of unite and therefore reinforces the current power structure.

The Covid pandemic has been a difficult time for all of us, except of course for documentary filmmakers, who seem to be living through the most booming of boom times.

In recent months the much-hyped HBO documentaries Spike Lee’s NYC Epicenter: 9/11 – 2021 ½ and Nanfu Wang’s, In the Same Breath, have attempted, mostly unsuccessfully, to tackle the tantalizing topic of the Covid pandemic.

Now Netflix is getting into the Covid documentary game with Oscar winning director Orlando von Einsiedel’s Convergence: Courage in Crisis, which began streaming on Tuesday, October 12th.

The film’s thesis is clearly stated as “While Covid-19 exacerbates vulnerabilities across the world, unsung heroes in all levels of society help turn the tide toward a brighter future.”

If you want to truly understand the intellectual impotence and manufactured manipulation of Convergence: Courage in a Crisis, one need only watch the final few minutes as it concludes with a montage of ordinary folks from across the globe singing the song “Lean on Me” in unison.

This scene sparked my PTSD and I began having ferocious flashbacks to the cringe-fest that was the bevy of self-righteous Hollywood celebrities singing John Lennon’s saccharine anthem “Imagine” back in the Spring of 2020. Yikes.

What precedes that sanguine sing-along of “Lean on Me” is just as contrived and seems just as fake as the sing-along itself.

Convergence, like seemingly every other Covid documentary, is devoid of insight because it’s incapable of actually focusing on Covid, and instead uses Covid as a delivery system for its various political, social and cultural agendas.

For example, the film follows the stories of nine different people and couples as they navigate the peril of the pandemic and selflessly help others and fight the disease. These folks live across the globe in London, Miami, Delhi, Tehran, Sao Paolo, Lima, Oxford and Wuhan and do such varied things as treat the sick, clean hospital rooms, drive doctors to clinics and ambulances into poor neighborhoods.

Apparently though, according to Convergence anyway, the only people who were both deeply affected by Covid and also who fought most valiantly against it, were people of color, as they make up eight of the nine stories.

The lone white face featured in the film is Oxford Vaccinologist, Professor Sarah Gilbert, and she gets minimal screen time as she is treated as more an inconvenience to the film’s thesis than as a story worth watching.

A strange example of the film’s political bent is found in the story of Hassan Akkad, a Syrian refugee living in London. Akkad gets a job cleaning the Covid ward in a hospital and uses social media to protest the British government’s decision to not include immigrants like him working as porters and janitorial staff in hospitals in their “bereavement scheme” - which would grant “indefinite leave to remain” status for family members of any immigrant workers who died from Covid.

According to Akkad, the Assad regime tortured him and is currently bombing hospitals, a claim which should be taken with a grain of salt considering director von Einsiedel’s documentary The White Helmets is dubious in its veracity, but even though Akkad is living a good life in London, instead of being grateful he complains that he and his girlfriend deserve better immigration “status”.  

Another example of the film’s insipid ideology is that it declares that Covid isn’t the only pandemic around, that there’s also pandemics of inequality, racism, poverty and “misguided nationalism”. How original.

Of course, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter get a good bit of attention, mostly through the story of Dr. Armen Henderson, a black physician and activist in Miami.

When Henderson gets “racially profiled” by a cop in front of his own house during the pandemic, and his daughter witnesses the event through security cameras, Henderson claims the incident “robbed his child of her innocence”. I’m no fan of the law enforcement community but if you’re concerned about the loss of innocence of black children, blaming the police is about as obtuse as it gets when you consider black on black violence and the eroding morality and ethics of the wider culture.  

Dr. Henderson dreams of a sort of utopia of equity being born out of the dystopia of Covid, a notion also favored by World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Teydros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Dr. Teydros goes so far as to proudly espouse the eye-rolling slogan “Build Back Better” and claims that “opportunities are born from crisis.”

That same sort of sentiment is how we got the War on Terror and the atrocity of Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11 and got billions in bailout money to Wall Street in the wake of the financial collapse of 2007/08. If past is prologue, the idea of using Covid as a catalyst for some great change that will usher in a glorious world of wonder is a chilling proposition that will only further empower the powerful and further enrich the wealthy.

Ultimately, I found Convergence to be an infuriating and emotionally manipulative exercise that decided to use Covid as a cudgel to divide people rather than unite them, thus deceptively reinforcing the status quo.

Covid doesn’t discriminate, it affects everyone and, contrary to the propaganda of this documentary, we’d be better off looking beyond identity when it comes to solving big problems because once something becomes about identity, it stops being about anything else, most especially the truth. The insidiously manipulative and meaningless Convergence is glaring proof of that.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Fauci: Documentary Review

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This sycophantic cinematic venture and unabashed ode to Anthony Fauci, Narcissist-in-Chief at the NIH, is self-serving agitprop meant to feed the Fauci fetish of fools.

Fauci, the creatively titled new National Geographic documentary airing on Disney +, sets out under a decidedly deceptive guise of impartiality to tell the truth about America’s favorite foremost scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Over the last year and a half as the coronavirus has ravaged the U.S. and marched across the globe, Dr. Fauci, whom the film describes as “a world-renowned infectious disease specialist and longest serving public health leader in Washington, D.C.”, has become a beatified cultural icon to some and a lightning rod of controversy to others.

I consider myself agnostic on Dr. Fauci, but admit that I’ve never understood the media and public veneration of him. I don’t loathe the guy, but he also just always struck me as a blowhard bureaucrat with an ego inversely proportionate to his intellect. But what the hell do I know?

Now, if you worship at the altar of St. Fauci – Patron Saint of “Science”, then Fauci will certainly satiate your Fauci fetish, but if you even mildly question the actions or intentions of the Brooklyn-born scientist/sage then this documentary is definitely not for you.

The film seems like a slick, hour and forty-five-minute campaign commercial meant to solidify the base rather than reach the indecisive. It boasts a plethora of personal interest anecdotes, as well as montages of family time and even shots of a sexy Fauci in the family pool in a Speedo (no, I’m not kidding). Then there’s the requisite conjured tears to indicate Fauci’s heartfelt humanity, and moments of him cursing to reveal how down-to-earth he is, and a healthy serving of pious-filled Fauci faux humility. Oh, and there’s also the cavalcade of establishment endorsements from the likes of Bill Gates, George W. Bush and Bono.

But if you were hoping for an actual investigation into Dr. Fauci, you’ve come to the wrong documentary, as filmmakers John Hoffman and Janet Tobias seem deathly allergic to actual journalism.

Looking for questions regarding gain of function research or a feet-to-the-fire moment over the venerated Fauci’s falsities and flip-flops regarding Covid and masks? Or answers to questions like…if the disease is so deadly, why is the southern border still so porous, potentially allowing in infected illegal immigrants? Or if the lockdown was instituted in order to avoid overwhelming ICU units and hospitals, why weren’t more ICU units built and hospital capabilities expanded over the last year and half? Or if the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission of the disease but only reduces the severity of the illness, then why should anyone care about the unvaccinated since they are only putting themselves at risk?

You’ll have to look elsewhere because Fauci doesn’t only not have answers to those questions, it never even considers asking them.

The whole documentary feels like a bad job interview, where the interviewer asks “what are your biggest weaknesses?” and the candidate replies, “I work too hard, care too much, and am too dedicated to helping people.”

Of course, this is a sentimental, softball cinematic venture so there’s no pushback amongst the prodigious amount of pattycake.

Even when the film does go through the motions of pretending to be impartial, it lets its bias overwhelm it.

For instance, Fauci’s arrogant bungling of the AIDS crisis in the 80’s is transformed into the narrative of a noble public health worker bridging divides, bringing people together and bravely standing up against homophobia.

Fauci’s mishandling of the AIDS epidemic in Africa is also shown in a similar light, but instead of Fauci fighting homophobia, he’s fighting racism.

The filmmakers use of Fauci’s alleged fight against homophobia and racism in these cases is meant to suffocate any liberal questions of Fauci’s record and solidify support among the movie’s ideological base.

The filmmakers and their saintly subject also use Trump as a convenient foil, once again to signal their and Fauci’s liberal bona fides. A red-faced Trump comes in for some very heavy criticism in the documentary, for example, when asked what his first impressions of Trump were, Fauci derisively responds “Yikes!”.

Fauci paints himself as a paragon of truth and Trump as an arrogant buffoon, but the good doctor’s own, sometimes fatal flaws never make a blip on the radar screen of Fauci.

For example, from the very beginning of his career all those decades ago, Fauci’s narcissism is readily apparent as he adores being in front of cameras and at the center of attention. This narcissism directly feeds his blind spot - arrogance, most notably in regards to the AIDS crisis and his failure to tell the truth regarding Covid to the American people. This arrogance has cost countless people their lives.

It’s Fauci’s lack of humility and inability to admit mistake that has done so much damage to the credibility of the medical establishment in the U.S.

If Fauci were consistent and truthful about what he’s done and hasn’t done, and where he’s been wrong, it would go a long way to healing what ails the medical establishment, but self-reflection isn’t Dr. Fauci’s strong suit, self-promotion is, and Fauci is proof of that.

Ultimately, Fauci is a painfully pandering paean to its subject, and an unintentional ode to the relentless narcissism that drives him. If, like Fauci, you love Fauci, then you’ll love Fauci. If you loathe him or are ambivalent, this piece of shameless and brazen agitprop isn’t going to convince you otherwise.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

NYC Epicenters 9/11 - 2021 1/2: Documentary Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Never before has a nearly 8-hour documentary talked so much but said so little. Spike Lee marinates 9/11 and Covid in unrelenting identity politics resulting in a documentary that is a tedious, tangled mess of misinformation.

Spike Lee’s new four-part HBO documentary series, NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 ½ caused controversy when critics pre-screened it because the series finale spent time focusing on the conspiracy theories of the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Lee, who openly disbelieves the official 9/11 story and in 2006 featured conspiracies regarding the intentional flooding of black neighborhoods in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in his HBO documentary When the Levees Broke, is usually an unrepentant firebrand, but under pressure the Brooklyn-based blowhard folded like a cheap suit and cut the entire controversial thirty-minute segment from the project prior to it airing.

I wasn’t granted access to the original version, but after having watched the edited, seven and a half-hour, uneven slog of a series that came to a close Saturday night on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I can report that if truth and accuracy are of prime concern then there’s about six and a half more hours that needed to be cut from the series, which abounds with disinformation, misinformation and propaganda, none of which has anything to do with 9/11.

NYC Epicenters is broken down into four episodes, with the first two episodes focusing on a myriad of more current events and the last two on 9/11 itself. Not surprisingly since this is a “Spike Lee joint”, every topic tackled, and there are a lot of them, is deeply marinated in a manufactured racial resentment.

In episodes one and two the story zigs and zags from Covid in China and New York, to Trump’s birtherism, to Covid’s impact on education and restaurants, to Black Lives Matter, to Trump’s charges of election fraud, to “kids in cages”, to black vaccine hesitancy, to January 6th and beyond. Spike’s approach to this dizzying array of topics isn’t chronological, rendering it virtually incomprehensible.

Watching episodes one and two is like a Bataan death march where every few steps Spike Lee shouts the phrase “disproportionately affects black and brown people” into your ear for no discernible or coherent reason.

These two episodes are entirely devoid of insights, and are like the scattershot, rancid remnants of a social justice binge barfed into an incoherent hodge-podge of alarmist headlines.

Adding to the egregiousness, Spike interjects himself throughout to a remarkably annoying degree by constantly interrupting his subjects and yelling at them to “say it again” when they’ve made a point with which he agrees.

Lee also peppers the program with Spike-isms, like calling ground zero “Da Pile” and Brooklyn “Da People’s Republic of Brooklyn” and referring to Obama as President Barrack “Bruddah Man” Obama and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as “Papa Joe” and “Sistah Kamala”. He also dubs Trump “Agent Orange” or “Der Fuhrer and Il Duce”. I’m a native-born son of “Da People’s Republic of Brooklyn” and loathe “Agent Orange” more than most, but even I found the Mussolini and Hitler comparisons sophomoric and shallow.

With help from his friends in the mainstream media, like Van Jones and Al Sharpton, Spike also vomits out the usual vacuous establishment talking points, like blaming Trump for the moral atrocity of “kids in cages” at the border while ignoring “Bruddah Man” Obama’s complicity in that crime.

He also blames anti-Asian violence on white supremacy and Trump’s rhetoric, even going so far as to show a white man assault an Asian woman, and putting up the white man’s mug shot, but then without explanation or identification of the race of the assailant, shows a series of murky videos where black people assault Asians.

Spike also regurgitates the MSM’s misinformation about the “Central Park Karen” story. That story is told by Christopher Cooper, the black bird watcher in Central Park who videotaped a white woman calling the cops on him. The media destroyed this woman, Amy Cooper (no relation), dubbing her the Central Park Karen. Spike does the same, intentionally ignoring much deeper reporting that puts some desperately-needed context and nuance into the situation.

Spike also declares that all the violence and looting at Black Lives Matter protests was a result of outside “instigators”. And yet, he holds up the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer by militia men as proof of right-wing, white supremacist nefariousness, while ignoring the fact that the FBI were so deeply involved in the inception of that kidnap plot as to have potentially “instigated” it.

Lee’s rabid partisanship blinds him to the obvious, that “instigators” may very well have sabotaged both BLM protests AND right-wing protests.

This possibility also never occurs to Spike regarding January 6th either, which he obscenely labels as being equivalent to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Using a deceptive graphic of those “killed by the Insurrection” is the piece de resistance of deceptive propaganda.

As for the last two episodes of the series, they’re rather standard and occasionally effective 9/11 reminiscences, but they too are peppered with a tedious hyper-racialism.

It’s unfortunate that even when finally focusing on 9/11, racial grievances are given the spotlight when the cataclysmic wars and the rescue workers stricken by deadly cancer post-9/11 are given short shrift.

The bottom line is that this nearly eight-hour, ego-driven extravaganza could’ve and should’ve been whittled down to a taut one hour, stripped of its incorrigible identity politics and solely focused on 9/11, with all of the modern-day political pandering, posturing and propagandizing left on the cutting room floor. But if that were to happen, then it wouldn’t be a “Spike Lee joint”…we should be so lucky.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

In the Same Breath: Documentary Review

New HBO documentary ‘In the Same Breath’ examines the horror of Covid and the Chinese and American government’s initial misinformation campaigns in response to the outbreak.

The film shows that trusting government, whether it be socialist or democratic in nature, is a fool’s errand.

In the Same Breath, the flawed but at times fascinating new documentary airing on HBO and HBO Max, chronicles the inept response and often deceptive practices of both the Chinese and U.S. governments in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and the power of propaganda to shape perception.

The documentary features some harrowing and horrifying footage from within Wuhan during the height of the Covid outbreak. Scenes of patients gasping for air and dying, and families struggling to decide whether their elderly mother should die in a hospital parking lot waiting for care that will never come or admit death’s inevitability back in the comfort of their apartment, are gut-wrenching.

One of the most unnerving sequences in the film is when a CCTV camera captures the very beginning of the pandemic when it records a cavalcade of people from the Wuhan fish market coming to a clinic with a cough and high fever. The doctor who greets and treats them then develops the same symptoms and goes from hospital to hospital looking for care, but is turned away every time, and later dies.

Director Nanfu Wang, best known for her searing documentary One Child Nation about China’s one child policy, obviously has insights into the Chinese mindset and she is unforgiving when it comes to the Chinese government.

In the Same Breath spotlights the relentless drumbeat of misinformation from the Chinese government that at first diminished the disease’s power, with officials declaring it doesn’t transmit human to human and dissenters arrested for their heresy. When the truth became undeniable, the government shifts into propaganda mode and stories of brave front line medical workers flood the Chinese tv market, with the message that the government and people of China are working hand in hand to defeat the Covid menace takes hold.

Wang, an American citizen born and raised in China, is a skilled documentarian who has a keen eye for Chinese propaganda but a bit of a blind spot for her own American political bias.

The two main villains of In the Same Breath are the corrupt Chinese government and the incompetent Trump administration. Both are deserving of scorn, but at least in the American side of the coronavirus pandemic story, this documentary feels a little shallow as it isn’t just the Trump administration that has misinformed and deceived regarding coronavirus, it’s been the entire political and media establishment.  

The documentary almost seems quaint when it ponders potential Trump authoritarianism when in his absence vicious tribalism and covid misinformation have continued to flourish unabated.

To her credit, Wang does briefly highlight some Democrats as being misinformation agents too, and excoriates Dr. Anthony Fauci, for his repeated deceptions, especially early in the outbreak.

What Wang doesn’t do is challenge the orthodoxy of HBO’s decidedly liberal audience. For example, the scientists and medical professionals who signed a letter in the summer of 2020 saying that protesting against the lockdown was dangerous and but that protesting for Black Lives Matter was mandatory because of the alleged epidemic of racism in America, are never mentioned, never mind ridiculed. This egregious event is tailor made for Wang’s thesis but is undoubtedly a bridge too far for the bigwigs at HBO and their liberal audience.

She also studiously avoids the controversial lab-leak theory.

Wang’s main focus is that she’s afraid of what people in power will do to maintain and expand their power, especially during a pandemic. She highlights China’s numerous authoritarian abuses and the Chinese people’s not only acceptance of those abuses, but outright praise for them, to make her case.

This all seems very relevant to the hotly debated vaccination issue here in the U.S., but unfortunately In the Same Breath only covers 2020, so that issue is never raised.

I’m devoutly agnostic on the vaccine question, but it’s striking to me that the same Chinese tactics and techniques regarding Covid featured in the documentary are currently either being copied or mirrored by the elite in the U.S

For instance, Wang makes a strong case that China has undercounted the number of dead in order to make the government seem more effective, turning a possible 30,000 dead in Wuhan into just 3,000.

In contrast, the U.S. corporate media have used a bait and switch approach where the highest number is always the one featured, possibly in an attempt to scare people into compliance. For example, in the early days of Covid the death toll made headlines, then it subtly shifted to the number of positive tests, and now to the percentage of sick who are unvaccinated.

Wang also expresses frustration with the U.S. government’s refusal to share accurate data with the American public, a sentiment she admittedly shares with ‘deplorable’ Trumpers.

China bullied people into silence and compliance by making emotional and nationalistic pleas, while in the U.S., the argument for people to take vaccines is also emotional – do no harm to grandma, and collective – we need to work together for herd immunity.

The bullying impulse is strong in the pro-vaccine movement too, as restricting liberties and requiring vaccine passports for government aid have remarkably become the default position among elites, many liberals and the media, despite resulting in obvious racial disparities.

As for In the Same Breath, it’s a flawed documentary, but if viewers can overcome its limiting bias and see the authoritarian forest for the partisan trees, it’s worth watching for no other reason than to remind of the insidious and nefarious nature of power and how easily freedom is suffocated by governments meant to protect it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Homeroom: Documentary Review

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A manipulative and meandering documentary devoid of insight or originality.

New Hulu documentary ‘Homeroom’ isn’t an uplifting depiction of the next generation of activists, it’s a depressing celebration of misguided victimhood.

The film is a divisive piece of racial propaganda that will be lauded by mainstream critics for its politically correct and socially acceptable intolerance, racial resentment and prejudice.

Homeroom is the new critically-acclaimed documentary that follows a group of politically engaged, minority Oakland High School students as they navigate their tumultuous senior year as it’s interrupted by Covid and the George Floyd protests.

The documentary, which premiered on the streaming service Hulu on August 12th, is the final installment of director Peter Nicks’ “Oakland Trilogy” (The Waiting Room and The Force) and boasts Black Panther director Ryan Coogler as its executive producer.

The main protagonist of Homeroom is high school senior Denilson Garibo, an undocumented immigrant who’s an ambitious member of the All-City Council (ACC) which represents the 36,000 students of the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD).

OUSD has its own police force and well before George Floyd’s murder Denilson and his fellow ACC member Mica, are pushing to have the school board abolish the school police in order to spare budget cuts in other student programs.

Denilson loves politics and certainly plays the part very well. Ever fluent in the emotionalist lingo of the moment, Denilson talks of students feeling “triggered” and “unsafe” around school police, of the “constant criminalization of black people”, and that he will stand up for “black and brown students”…apparently the white and Asian students are out of luck.

Denilson and his cohorts do seem like nice kids, but like most teenagers (and people) they also seem insufferably vapid as they’re constantly on their phones, even taking calls, in the middle of class. They aren’t so much concerned with education, something painfully obvious from their poor diction, vocabulary, and abysmal lack of logic, as they are with distracting themselves and reducing their attention span.

Their slavish addiction to social media isn’t harmless as it distorts their perception of reality by relentlessly inundating them with messages feeding their victimhood identities and fomenting anti-white sentiments.

For example, reports of Breonna Taylor’s slaying, videos of Ahmoud Arbery’s gruesome killing and George Floyd’s murder are passed around these kid’s social media echo chamber like confirmation bias baseball cards.

This focus on white violence against blacks is further reinforced when a black teacher gives a passionate lecture about a black female former student from the school who was stabbed to death in an Oakland park by a white man.

Director Nicks never challenges this distorted racial narrative but rather reinforces it as an objective truth.

The objective truth is that according to FBI crime statistics, the vast majority of black people murdered are killed by other black people. The same is true of whites, of course, as murder tends to be an intra-racial act.

But Nicks has no interest in truth, only in propagating racial propaganda that perpetuates victimhood and resentment.

An interesting example of Nicks’ biased approach is the brief clip shown of Amy Cooper, the infamous Central Park ‘Karen’ who called the cops on Christian Cooper (no relation), a black birdwatcher who told her to leash her dog, as an example of the unbridled evil of white people.

What is interesting about the use of this clip is that Kmele Foster recently investigated the Central Park ‘Karen’ incident and came away with a much more nuanced view of the situation. Basically, Amy Cooper isn’t the entitled, one-dimensional racist villain the media portrayed her as and Christian Cooper isn’t the martyred saint they made him out to be.

But Homeroom, its protagonists and director Nicks have no interest in, or tolerance for, such nuance and complexity regarding race, only in branding scapegoats.

For example, Denilson shamelessly decries the white middle class people attending school board meetings, claiming they’re “hijacking” it, and then tells a white board member he expected her to vote against his initiative because she’s white. Other minority students in the film say that gentrification, an influx of white residents, has driven them out of their neighborhoods.

Of course, if whites didn’t attend the school board meeting, they’d be branded as aloof and not caring about the community. And demonizing white people for moving into a black neighborhood is the evil of “gentrification”, while whites moving away from a black neighborhood is racist “white flight”.

That same circular illogic will also apply to Oakland Unified School District’s police. When they are abolished, crime will undoubtedly go up in schools, and then these same activists will claim that no one is protecting minority children.

The bottom line is that Homeroom is the sort of biased racial propaganda that we need much less of in our culture. It’s rightfully unimaginable that a white teacher would ever be celebrated for lecturing his class on black on white crime, or that black school board members would be singled out for their skin color, or that “middle-class blacks” would be admonished for attending a school board meeting.

All of this racial resentment is cheered as “activism” by the filmmaker, whose sole focus is on multiple African-American, Latino and Asian students, but not a single white student, despite whites making-up the largest percentage of Oakland’s diverse population, 35%.

As someone who has worked in California schools I sympathize with the student-activists featured in Homeroom. I can also unfortunately attest that the school-to-prison pipeline is very real and that major educational reforms are desperately needed, but the hyper-racialization and intolerance showcased in Homeroom and the wave of activist indoctrination taking hold in schools across the state (and country), are not the answer and will not lead to a happy ending for anyone involved, especially minority students.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union - Documentary Review and Commentary

New HBO Obama doc is race-obsessed establishment pablum meant to distract from the nefarious nature of American governance

The dull and derivative docuseries chooses hagiography over history and style over substance as it white-washes the sins of America’s only black president.

Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is the new three-part HBO documentary that sets out to chronicle Barrack Obama’s rise from obscurity to the highest office in the land.

The roughly five-hour series, which features no new interview with Obama but rather relies on archival footage and a plethora of sycophantic talking heads, premiered on HBO on August 3rd, and on HBO Max on August 4th, the former president’s 60th birthday. What do you get the man who has everything for his birthday? If your director Peter W. Kunhardt you give the gift of a shamelessly reverential, hagiographic documentary.

Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is one of those insipid, paint-by-numbers, deferential documentaries that is steadfastly committed to never challenging either its subject or its audience that results in a banal viewing experience painfully devoid of insights.

Designed to do nothing but placate Obama true believers with some ‘no-drama’ nostalgia, the series is resolute in its decision to never give voice to any serious oppositional perspectives. Yes, there are a few talking heads, like the brilliant Cornel West, who delicately air disagreements, but even those are couched in solemn genuflection to Saint Obama.

Not once is someone who actually opposed Obama on principle interviewed or allowed to speak for themselves. The series uses this echo chamber approach in order to appease its target audience of liberals who demand all contrarians and conflicting arguments be purged from their purview, banished forever for their heresy from the kingdom of those “on the right side of history”.

Instead, the filmmakers choose to read minds and project racial animus onto those who fought Obama.

Disagree with Obamacare? Racist! Oppose the stimulus package? Racist!

Ironically, the hyper-racial lens through which the series examines Obama’s meteoric rise and rule is less a monument to America as a racist nation than it is a testament to Obama’s failure and shocking political irrelevance just five years after leaving office, as well as to the intellectual vacuity and lack of imagination on the part of elite establishment liberals.

In this way the docu-series is the perfect revisionist modernization of the Obama myth in that it’s addiction to hyper-racism causes it to be utterly blind to any other topic.

For instance, there isn’t a single mention of Obama’s prodigious use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers, but there is an extended focus on black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates being mistakenly arrested by Cambridge police.

There’s no mention of Obama’s immigration policy which resulted in massive deportations and routinely placing “kids in cages”, but there is a focus on Trump’s racist demagoguery and birtherism.

Obama’s complicity in the death and suffering in Yemen, Libya and Syria is verboten, but there is ample time spent on Obama’s love of basketball and his black-centric musical taste.

And of course, Obama’s extra-judicial assassination of American teenager Abdulrahman al-Awlaki is memory-holed but George Zimmerman’s killing of teenager Trayvon Martin is highlighted.

This hyper-racial perspective not only allows the filmmakers to ignore Obama’s egregious sins but to also roll out a cavalcade of kiss-ass clowns like Michael Eric Dyson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Charlamagne tha God, Keegan Michael Key and Jelani Cobb (an executive producer on the series) to spout vapid and impotent inanities about how white supremacy is the DNA of America. The fact that voters, the vast majority of which were not black, overwhelmingly elected a black man to the presidency, not once but twice, would seem to refute that claim.

With its maniacal focus on style over substance, Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union fits perfectly into the usual establishment approach toward all things political.

Style is how Obama got elected, as his cool, thoughtful demeanor and eloquence were in stark contrast to Bush’s cowboy buffoonery. In turn, Trump’s reality tv/wrestlemania shenanigans got him elected post no-drama Obama, and Biden’s creepy grandpa routine got him elected because he contrasted Trump’s erratic freneticism (speaking of which, Biden is shown in archival footage in the documentary but never speaks, no doubt because that would alert viewers to his steep decline since his halcyon VP days).

But regardless of which specific stylistic mask is worn and by which president, its objective is to cover the never-changing agenda of the American political establishment which is imperialism and militarism overseas and corporatism and fascism at home. No matter who or what party is in charge and no matter how they behave on the surface, that insidious reality will never be challenged or changed, and this is why Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union exists…to reinforce that duplicitous and distractionary style over substance paradigm.

Obama, the first black president, wasn’t elected to change the substance of American policy, he was elected to distract from it, and this docu-series gives ample ammunition to the gullible and mindless to continue to focus on race and identity politics instead of on the voracious malignancy of U.S. policy, most specifically the cancer of America’s rigged-casino capitalism and the insatiable beast of the military/intelligence industrial complex.

In conclusion, if you’re a “Hope and Change” sucker searching for a short-lived, rather vapid injection of Obama-era nostalgia, then Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union is definitely the documentary mini-series for you. But if you’re more interested in cold, hard truths and unflinching insights about Obama, his presidency and America, then this is a five-hour waste of time.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Oliver Stone, JFK: Revisited and the Establishment Media

Oliver Stone’s JFK assassination documentary is being entirely ignored by the establishment media, which is a sign he might be on to something.

It’s telling that the MSM is celebrating strange, sexually charged movies at Cannes instead of even acknowledging Stone’s foray back into the troubling case of JFK’s murder.

Last week, Oliver Stone premiered his new documentary about the JFK assassination titled JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, at the Cannes Film Festival.

You’d think that Oliver Stone, the polarizing, two-time Best Director Academy Award winner, whose film JFK created such a furor it led to the US government passing the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, premiering a controversial JFK assassination documentary at Cannes would be very big news. You’d be wrong.

When JFK: Revisited premiered on Monday, July 12th, the mainstream media didn’t praise it or pan it, they pretended it didn’t exist.

The New York Times vast coverage of Cannes consisted of eleven articles, most focusing on the more salacious content, such as Benedetta, a steamy story about lesbian nuns, Annette, a musical where Adam Driver sings while performing oral sex on Marion Cotillard, and Titane, where a woman has sex with a car and lactates oil, but not once has JFK Revisited ever been mentioned in the supposed “paper of record”.

The same is true of The Washington Post, Boston Globe, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and every mainstream outlet I searched, as none of them acknowledge JFK Revisited exists at all.

The only media mention of JFK Revisited I found was in trade papers like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and in the British press in The Times and Daily Telegraph. Their reaction to the film was split, with Variety and The Times giving negative reviews and THR and the Daily Telegraph praising it.

Considering that Cuba, intelligence agency nefariousness, and conspiracy theories are making headlines, and that the small critical assessment of the documentary is split, it’s curious that the media is maintaining the status quo by endorsing sexual depravity at Cannes instead of pursuing truth by debating JFK Revisited.

I’m kidding, it’s no surprise that the American myth making media who bequeath to us the official narrative from which “respectable” people will never deviate, are tossing JFK Revisited down the memory hole and lavishing praise on horny nuns and coital Cadillacs.

You see the establishment love to distract the masses and hate conspiracies…except for the ones they love.

JFK assassination conspiracies are rejected outright as unserious despite a plethora of damning evidence because they indict the establishment itself. Half of the talking heads on cable news are former (wink-wink) intelligence community members, and the vast majority of journalists are lapdogs for the intel agencies, so they’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them in service to the truth about the JFK assassination.

This same anti-conspiratorial press spent four years breathlessly belching up every half-assed Russia conspiracy story they could conjure, including Russiagate, claims of Russia using microwave weapons or hacking into power grids and voting machines, and shouted them from the rooftops 24/7 until they become presumed true despite a complete lack of evidence.

As Noam Chomsky would say, this is how deceptive propaganda is effectively disseminated and consent is manufactured, through “controlled market forces, internalized assumptions and self-censorship”. “Serious” people prove their seriousness by believing those absurd officially sanctioned anti-Russia conspiracies because they are deemed “serious” and are propagated by other “serious” people, while “unserious” conspiracies like JFK, 9-11 and the lab leak theory, are ridiculed, and those believing them demeaned as “conspiracy theorists”.

This is why the establishment loathes Stone so much, because he flipped the script in ’91 by using his considerable cachet in the wake of his massive Hollywood success, to make a movie about the JFK assassination that obliterated the official myth of the Warren Commission and presented a compelling counter-myth.

To get a taste of how much the establishment despises Stone, go read Stone’s JFK: The Book of the Film, which features the movie’s 97 reactions and commentaries about the movie.

Unlike his adversaries, Stone prints those who disagree with him, as evidenced by articles featured in the book such as “Does JFK conspire against reason?”, “Hollywood Wonders if Warner Brothers Let JFK Go Too Far”, “Oliver’s Twist”, “The Paranoid Style” and “The Plot to Assassinate the Warren Commission”, to name but a few.

The hysteria that JFK triggered among the elites in ‘91 is perfectly encapsulated in a tale told by late film critic Roger Ebert, who claimed Walter Cronkite gave him a “tongue-lashing” and said he should be “ashamed” of himself for praising the movie.

Stone became more of an establishment pariah when he interviewed Fidel Castro in 2002 and Vladimir Putin in 2015-2017. Stone spoke with America’s enemies instead of just mouthing the mindless official mantra, an unforgivable sin in the eyes of the media who believe there’s only one narrative, and we can’t complicate it by listening instead of yelling.

Stone’s history of being a firebrand and his loyalty to truth above the official narrative, is why JFK Revisited is being intentionally ignored. Any press is good press, even a bad review spreads awareness of the product, so hitting the ignore button is the best way for the establishment to silence Stone and maintain the JFK status quo.

And thus far the media blackout is working as intended, as JFK Revisited has yet to secure a distributor here in the American market which is desperately hungry for content.

I haven’t seen JFK Revisited so I have no idea if it tells the truth regarding the JFK’s assassination, but I do know that the establishment media is addicted to lies and allergic to truth, which makes me think Oliver Stone might be on to something.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Pentagon UFO Report Viewer's Guide

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 59 seconds

The Pentagon is releasing their UFO report, so now might be a good time to check with movies to see what to expect when we make contact.

This Friday the Pentagon is supposed to release its highly anticipated report on UFOs, or as the government now calls them, UAPs – unidentified aerial phenomena.

Similar to Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I’m a long-time, self-confessed, tin-foil hat wearing UFO enthusiast/fanatic. As such I’m delusionally hoping the recent government and media pivot to taking UFOs seriously will lead to some sort of “disclosure”, where the truth out there will finally be revealed.

Of course, my more rational side knows that anytime you’re relying on the government or media for transparency or truth you’re playing a fool’s game.

Regardless of what the new UFO report says, the possibilities of what’s going on in our skies and under our seas span from the mundanity of mistaken perception combined with malfunctioning equipment to the momentous notion of extra-terrestrial/inter-dimensional visitors. Despite the alleged implausibility of it, my bet is on the latter, which means that aliens are indeed traversing our air space and ocean depths with technological aplomb and military impunity…so it might be a good idea to figure out their intentions.

As a film critic, I thought the best way to prepare for contact with our elusive galactic visitors the Pentagon cannot confirm or deny exist was to turn to movies as a guide, as our collective imagination has projected onto the silver screen and our culture a cavalcade of useful alien archetypes.

The Benevolent Aliens

Movies about human-alien contact that feature gentle aliens we’d be lucky to have visit us are very reassuring, and among the very best that cinema has to offer.

In this archetype, which features fantastic movies like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Abyss, Arrival and The Iron Giant, the aliens are good guys and the villains are our aggressive and deceptive government.

In some of these types of films, like Starman, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Midnight Special, the alien can be a pseudo-Christ figure, and government bureaucrats a nasty combination of the Sanhedrin and brutish Roman soldiers.

These benevolent alien stories put us at ease because in them humans are still in power. These movies are philosophical in nature and posit that the problem isn’t the aliens, it’s our own corrupt human nature, something we foolishly believe we can eventually overcome.

The Malevolent Aliens

Hollywood has inundated audiences with a plethora of malevolent aliens with distinctly human-mindsets over the years as well, which may lead us to assume nefarious intentions on the part of actual visitors from space.  

For instance, in the less than stellar Independence Day, War of the Worlds (1953/2005), Edge of Tomorrow, Battle: Los Angeles and Starship Troopers, aliens, despite their non-human appearance, seem remarkably human in their militaristic behavior and thirst for blood and conquest. The malevolent alien archetype scares us because it renders us powerless and reflects our violent aggression back onto us.

The creators of these fictional aliens assume that extra-terrestrials share our depraved belligerence and can only be defeated by military force (and accompanying bigger budgets), which is not surprising considering Hollywood’s long-standing, fierce commitment to making shameless propaganda for the Pentagon.

A similar archetype is the vastly superior malevolent alien with a specific weakness. For example, in the taut thriller A Quiet Place the terrifying aliens are blind but have super-sensitive hearing…maybe too sensitive. In the often-over-looked M. Night Shyamalan gem Signs, the alien’s weakness is water, while in War of the Worlds it’s susceptibility to the common cold.

This specific archetype is actually religious in nature as it spotlights humanity’s desire to think they exist under God’s divine protection against the demonic evil of alien invaders, which is sort of amusing considering there are actually reports of some real-life military brass believing UFOs/Aliens are “demonic” entities.

The Hunters

To me the most terrifying alien archetype is that of the alien hunter whose prey is humans.

In Predator, the alien hunts humans for sport, and in the Alien franchise, the alien is a horrifying beast relentlessly hunting humans in order to propagate its species by incubating its eggs in our bellies. Alien in particular forces humans to consider the prospect of being moved down the food chain, and while that’s exhilarating in fiction, in reality it’s absolutely chilling.

The Shapeshifters

Another terrifying alien archetype is the shapeshifter that can assimilate and mimic humans. Films like The Thing (1983), Species, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956/1978) and Under the Skin all turn humans into potential aliens.

This archetype is unnerving because it makes us suspicious of other people and ourselves. Aliens might already be among us, and anybody, including us, could be an alien. That said, if aliens are seductresses that look like Scarlett Johansson (Under the Skin) and Natasha Henstridge (Species), there are worse ways to die.

In conclusion, to be optimistic about alien visitation, watch E.T. For a realistic portrayal of how all this UFO stuff will go down, check out Close Encounters or Robert Zemeckis’ under-rated Contact. For a philosophical/religious alien experience dive into Arrival, Starman or The Iron Giant. For a tense thrill ride, go with A Quiet Place. To indulge the nightmare scenario, go with John Carpenter’s The Thing (1983) and Ridley Scott’s masterpiece Alien. To see a fantastic documentary that seriously examines the UFO phenomenon, watch Out of the Blue (2003). And to find the truth regarding UFOs, keep your eyes on the prize and to the skies, and trust absolutely no one.  

A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

Final Account: Documentary Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 58 seconds 

New Nazi documentary ‘Final Account’ is a powerful and prescient warning for our identity politics obsessed age

Luke Holland’s film, which chronicles the complicity of ordinary German’s in the crimes of the Third Reich, is a reminder that it’s easy to label our enemies as Nazis…but the true search for evil should begin with a look in the mirror.

The new documentary Final Account is a collection of interviews with elderly, ordinary Germans recounting their experiences of life under the collective madness of the Nazi regime and their connection to, or complicity with, the Holocaust.

The film opens with a quote from Primo Levi, “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

Director Luke Holland, whose mother lost her family in the Holocaust and who himself died of cancer in 2020 after the film’s completion but before its premiere, goes on to prove Levi’s thesis.

Holland began production in 2008 and ultimately interviewed 300 people for this fascinating project, and his bare-bones, oral history approach, works exquisitely well in revealing the banality of evil.

Holland’s subjects were indoctrinated into the Nazi system early in life. The women went through the League of German Girls, the men the Hitler Youth. The males then graduated to the Waffen SS, some becoming concentration camp guards and one becoming a member of Hitler’s elite body guards, the Leibstandarte.

Their recollections regarding the holocaust run the gamut. Some claim to have known nothing, while others say they heard whispers and gossip but were too afraid to speak up or act. Others give grudging admissions of complicity, while some admitted the egregiousness of the crime but doubt its scale. And one, a former member of the Leibstandarde, is unbowed by the weight of history.

This former bodyguard of Hitler says the Fuhrer was a great leader with a good plan, except that the Jews should’ve been deported and not exterminated. He’s so unabashedly defiant he refuses to accept the Nuremberg ruling that the Waffen SS, of which he was a member, was a criminal organization because “then I would dirty myself”. His reasoning is wrapped in patriotism as he explains that the Nuremberg court wasn’t a German court, and therefore lacks authority in his eyes.

Other stories reveal how Jew hatred and the Holocaust were normalized. Stories of children being taught anti-Semitic songs in school, reading books with derogatory Jewish depictions and being indoctrinated by teachers into Nazi ideology are common.

Tales of visiting camps in order to get a cavity filled from a dentist who was a prisoner, or of routinely seeing prisoners escorted to and from camps, some being worked or starved to death slowly before their eyes, are mundanely recounted.

None of these revelations are met with tears or even overt remorse, just a stern, steely-eyed matter of fact-ness.

The most compelling subject in the film is Hans Werk, a former member of the Waffen SS. Werk is at times elusive and at times defensive, but he evolves over a series of interviews.

The most electrifying moment in the entire film is when Werk goes to the sight of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi leadership made official the Final Solution policy, to speak to a group of college students about his guilt.

After saying he is ashamed of what he did as a member of the SS, these students push back. At first it seems they’re resistant because they think he’s lying about his contrition, then it becomes clear they’re actually angry with him for his shame. They call him a traitor for being ashamed of being German and having fought for Germany.

This scene is electrifying because it’s the only time the veneer of control recedes and the beast comes to the surface baring its teeth. Werk is shaken by the young men confronting him, and his horror at the realization that the disease of Nazism has passed to a new generation is readily apparent on his face as he pleads with them to “don’t let yourself be blinded”.

Werk’s warning fell on deaf ears in that room, and across the globe as well. The Nazi disease, or as my Jungian therapist friend describes it – the “not-see” disease, is back in our collective psyche with a vengeance. “Not seeing” the humanity of the other has reached epidemic proportions.

The dehumanizing sentiment of Nazism is readily apparent in recent videos of Jews rampaging on the streets of Israel attacking Arabs, Palestinians roaming the streets of New York attacking Jews, blacks viciously attacking Asians and whites, militarized police brutalizing minorities and rioters wreaking racially motivated havoc, as well as in stories of Uighers being held in Chinese concentration camps.

This ugly sentiment is also found in the establishment approved Critical Race Theory, a shamelessly anti-white and anti-Asian ideology that demands people be judged by racial and ethnic categories instead of by the content of their character, which is now being used to indoctrinate students in schools and becoming the default setting in corporate American.

This industrialized effort at dehumanization is horrifyingly reminiscent of the process which created the legions of “functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions” which populate the Nazi nightmare of Final Account.

Final Account is not a great film, it is somewhat derivative in style as evidenced by its repeated use of a melancholy cello played over shots of hollowed out concentration camps, but it is most certainly a powerful and prescient one.

It is cold comfort that the collaborators and perpetrators of Nazi evil in Final Account will soon be dead of old age, for the spirit of Nazism is obviously alive and well in our world, living in all of our hearts, whether we have the courage to admit it or not.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT. 

©2021

The Me You Can't See: Review and Commentary

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 27 seconds

The navel gazing narcissism of Prince Harry’s mental health series The Me You Can’t See is not something you need to see

The series focuses too much on royal gossip and self-serving celebrities and not enough on how to help regular people struggling.

The Me You Can’t See is a five-part documentary about mental health issues produced by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry that premiered on May 21st on the streaming service Apple TV.  

The uneven series features interviews with Oprah and Harry, Lady Gaga, Glenn Close, and a plethora of regular people. Thankfully, unlike their thirsty celebrity counter parts, the segments featuring non-famous participants and unconventional approaches to mental health hold some value.

The most compelling of these regular-folk are the parents at the Selah Care Farm, who have lost children to suicide. Their brutal honesty and unfathomable, gut-wrenching grief are deeply moving and profound.

Equally compelling is the story of a young boy named Fawzi, a Syrian refugee living in Greece. The trauma Fawzi suffered in Syria is horrifying, but the doctor helping him heal is a beacon of hope for humanity.

Other captivating and insightful stories include Rashad, a black man suffering depression, Forget, a granny in Zimbabwe who provides mental health care in her remote area, Ambar, a young woman diagnosed with Schizophrenia, and Ian, a man with an egregiously traumatic childhood who takes part in a study on the hallucinogen psilocybin as a way for people to address their trauma, anxiety and depression.

Unfortunately, The Me You Can’t See doesn’t focus entirely on everyday people but instead wraps itself in the shallow Oprah aesthetic and the toxicity of celebrity and victimhood culture.

Oprah has long been painfully obtuse in regards to mental health and even admits as much on the show, but despite this admission she is still completely incapable of being anything other than a carnival barker and new age snake oil saleswoman, as The Me You Can’t See proves.

The big draw of the series is Prince Harry who’s featured throughout speaking about his journey to therapy, his struggle with the death of his mother, the “neglect” and “bullying” he suffered at the hands of the Royal family and his ultimate escape from it all.

Harry claims he began therapy four years ago at Meghan Markle’s insistence. What is so peculiar though is how completely devoid of self-awareness he seems to be.

For example, near the end of the series Harry says he “has never had any anger through this”, but he is obviously seething whenever he talks about the “firm”, the media and the paparazzi.

Harry seems to be in denial of his shadow, and it would serve him better to acknowledge this anger with the paparazzi in particular, because then he might come to better understand that the paparazzi is not the disease that killed his mother, it is merely a symptom.

The disease that killed Princess Diana was fame, and by moving to Hollywood, becoming enmeshed in the entertainment world, and putting himself front and center in this series, Harry is not shunning the beast that devoured her but embracing it.

The series is a frustrating viewing experience because while it tackles a worthwhile subject, it uses celebrity culture as the gateway into that discussion, which is the equivalent of serving booze at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

The reality is that celebrity and victimhood culture is a trauma upon our society just as much as fame is a trauma upon those who attain it because it confuses sadness with depression, nervousness with anxiety, and obstacles with trauma while breeding a populace of fantasists fueled by delusion and narcissism.

Oprah, Harry, Lady Gaga and the rest may genuinely suffer but their celebrity status makes their public struggle feel performative and self-serving. And in many cases if the famous wanted to decrease their anxiety and trauma they could do so by simply withdrawing from public life.

For instance, Harry claims that he and Meghan simply could not withstand negative media attention anymore. So, his solution was for them to start a production company, sign a deal with Netflix, do a huge interview with Oprah and publicly navel gaze on an Apple TV series. This is obviously self-defeating.

Also self-defeating is the rich and privileged Harry being filmed doing an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) therapy session where he recalls a trauma from his life and then hugs himself, rapidly moves his closed eyes and rhythmically taps his body. That treatment may be effective but it comes across as so ridiculous as to be a hyper-parody, and will set back working-class views of psychiatry two hundred years.

Ironically Fight Club’s Tyler Durden accurately diagnosed our current mental and emotional dis-ease and malaise much better than The Me You Can’t See when he said,

“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war... Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

And we’re very depressed and anxious too…and The Me You Can’t See would’ve been better served preaching as the antidote to those maladies the power of resilience, becoming comfortable with discomfort, and overcoming petty traumas and not identifying with them. Instead, the series is an often-vapid, victimhood touting, celebrity culture band-aid on a complex and cavernous existential spiritual and philosophical bullet wound.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

7th Annual Mickey Awards™®: 2020 Edition

Estimated Reading Time: Ever prone to narcissistic indulgence, expect this awards show article to last, at a minimum, approximately 5 hours and 48 minutes.

Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin…

After what seems like an endless year, the pinnacle of cinematic achievement, the Mickey Awards™®, is finally upon us.

The Mickeys™® and its shadow award the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™®, are always the final awards of the awards season, but since everything was pushed back due to covid, we are in the unprecedented situation of giving out awards in May. I realize this seems odd, and while the Mickey™® committee considered giving out our awards sooner, we decided to stick to tradition so as to not make the other awards (looking at you Oscar) even more irrelevant than they already are.

To be blunt, 2020 was not an a good year for movies. While there were certainly some good movies, none of them were great. This is especially apparent when contrasted with the stellar output of movies in 2019, which featured a murderer’s row of cinematic heavyweights.

On the bright side, at least some smaller movies got the spotlight this year, I just wish those movies could have been more convincing in making a case for others to join me in the cult of the arthouse.

Regardless of all that, the God of Cinema declares we must give out Mickey™® awards. For those of you who are unfamiliar…here is a quick rundown of the rules and regulations of The Mickeys™®. The Mickeys™® are selected by me. I am judge, jury and executioner. The only films eligible are films I have actually seen, be it in the theatre, via screener, cable, Netflix or VOD. I do not see every film because as we all know, the overwhelming majority of films are God-awful, and I am a working man so I must be pretty selective. So that means that just getting me to actually watch your movie is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself…never mind being nominated or winning!

Winners of Mickey™® Awards receive an appropriately socially distanced meal at Fatburger and/or Shake Shack…on me! And yes, you can order a shake for your beverage! And the sterling conversation with me is included with the meal! You’re welcome.

Now that all that is out of the way…buckle up…IT’S MICKEY™® TIME!!

Best Cinematography

The nominees are…

Mank - Eric Messerschmidt : Gloriously shot film that utilized a luscious black and white and also featured a visual aesthetic that was an homage to its famous subject matter.

Nomadland - Joshua James Richards: Used gorgeous shots of vast, sparse and beautiful landscapes to set an intriguing mood and propel the story.

The Vast of Night - M.I. Litten-Menz : On a shoe string budget this movie looks like a big budget project and its intricate camera movements were astoundingly complex.

THE WINNER IS…. Mank. Messerschmidt won the Oscar with his crisp bleck and white cinematography but now he reaches the ultimate summit of cinematic excellence with his first Mickey award.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The nominees are…

Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: A solid integration of the original subject matter into a loosely coherent mood piece.

The Father - Florian Zeller: A fantastic adaptation of his own stage play that actually elevates the material instead of denigrating it, which is a rarity.

THE WINNER IS… The Father: The Father is an absolutely phenomenal script and Zeller justly deserves his first Mickey Award.

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees are…

Mank - Jack Fincher: An unruly behemoth of a story that is wrestled and transformed into a brutally insightful political statement. Astoundingly impressive piece of screenwriting.

Another Round - Thomas Vinterberg: A story about a mid-life crisis and death that focuses on life and manages to make its day drinking protagonist sympathetic and compelling.

Sound of Metal - Darius Marder: On the surface this is the most predictable and mundane of ideas…but Marder turns convention on its head and discovers profundity.

THE WINNER IS… Sound of Metal: From the mundane to the magical and the predictable to the profound, Darius Marder so fleshed out this story as to never write a cliche or false note. A well-deserved Mickey Award is his reward for excellence.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are…

Sierra McCormick - Vast of Night: A nobody from nowhere, McCormick absolutely crushed a role that was mind-bogglingly complicated and did it with enormous aplomb and magnetism.

Olivia Colman - The Father: The most intricate work of Colman’s career, she fills every scene and every shot with unstated meaning and anguish.

Amanda Seyfried - Mank: Who knew that Amanda Seyfried could be so good? As Hollywood starlet Marion Davies she looks amazing and matches her beauty with a nuanced and inspired performance.

Maria Bakalova - Borat: An absolutely balls to the wall performance that only she could pull off.

THE WINNER IS… Sierra McCormick: There’s an extended scene in The Vast of Night where nothing happens except McCormick talks and listens on a telephone…it is utterly mesmerizing, and is a testament to her talent, skill and craft.

Best Supporting Actor

The nominees are…

Daniel Kaluuya - Judas and the Black Messiah: Kaluuya is deliriously magnetic as Chairman Fred Hampton and completely owns the role and the film. It isn’t quite Denzel as Malcolm X, but it is still electrifying to behold.

Bo Burnham - Promising Young Woman: Burnham is fantastic in the darkly comedic/rom-com portion of this movie, and his chemistry with Mulligan is believable and charming.

Kingsley Ben-Adir - One Night in Miami: Ben-Adir masterfully avoids imitation and mimicry as he re-creates Malcolm X as less a cocksure firebrand and more an insecure outsider yearning for acceptance. A truly brilliant piece of acting.

Chadwick Boseman - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom: Boseman has always been more movie star than great actor, but in Ma Rainey he taps into an energy and emotion that he had avoided in previous roles. This is far and away Boseman’s greatest performance.

THE WINNER IS… Daniel Kaluuya: Kaluuya is fast positioning himself as one of the best actors in the business…and his resume just got a tremendous boost with a prestigious Mickey Award.

Breakout Performance of the Year - Sierra McCormick: I had never heard of McCormick before The Vast of Night, but her unforgettable performance impressed me no end. I am willing to bet it impressed other Hollywood big wigs too…and I hope we get to see a lot more of her in movies that matter going forward.

Best Foreign Film - Another Round: Thomas Vinterberg is a great director and Another Round is a gloriously Vinterbergian film. Complex and layered yet darkly funny and philosophical, Another Round is unpredictable, satisfying and the type of movie that keeps you thinking about it and talking about for days afterward.

Best Actress

The nominees are…

Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman: Mulligan is one of the best actresses of her generation and she brings all her powers to bear on this absurdist and twisted dark fantasy. Impossible to imagine any other actress pulling this off.

Frances McDormand - Nomadland: McDormand gives a rare nuanced performance as Fern, the grieving wanderer searching for something out there on the fringes of society. I think McDormand is over-rated as an actress, but this is one of her very best performances.

Vanessa Kirby - Pieces of a Woman: The luminous Kirby gets down and dirty in this misfire of a movie, but her performance is powerful and poignant. I hope we see much more of this Vanessa Kirby going forward.

THE WINNER IS… Carey Mulligan: Mulligan’s versatility is extraordinary and is on full display in Promising Young Woman. In lesser hands this role is a disaster, in her skilled mitts it is artistry…and the Mickey Award is rightfully hers.

Best Actor

The nominees are…

Riz Ahmed - Sound of Metal: Ahmed is one of the best actors out there, and he brings all his talent to Sound of Metal. Ahmed has the uncanny ability to fill himself with an inner life that is vibrant and dynamic and it shows on screen. A stellar piece of acting.

Anthony Hopkins - The Father: Hopkins, ever the master of controlled fury, gives arguably his greatest performance in The Father, as he unravels the character with each passing scene.

Gary Oldman - Mank: Oldman brings a sloppy slice of life to the Hollywood legend and it makes for a combustibly cantankerous experience. Few, if any, actors would even attempt this, nevermind pull it off as well as Oldman.

Mads Mikkelson - Another Round: Mikkelson transforms throughout this film from a burdened, defeated man to a confident king, to a struggling sad sack. Mikkelson is one of the great under appreciated actors of his time, and Another Round is evidence of his brilliance.

THE WINNER IS…Anthony Hopkins: Hopkins is one of the very best actors of his generation, and his stunning work in The Father, filled with precision and specificity, has now given him the most prestigious award in cinema, The Mickey™®.

Best Ensemble - Mank - Gary Oldman is the straw that stirs Mank’s drink, but the cast is loaded with solid actors giving career best performances. Amanda Seyfried, Arliss Howard and Charles Dance in particular do stellar work that elevate the film.

Best Director

The nominees are…

David Fincher - Mank : Fincher’s fearlessness is on full display in Mank as he throws caution to the wind and makes a dizzyingly complex film that is a thumb in the eye to his corporate overlords.

Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : Zhao’s comfort with silence and space make Nomadland the film that it is, and lesser directors would have scuttled the ship.

Florian Zeller - The Father : Zeller masterfully puts his audience through the horror of dementia by relying on his exquisite script and his stellar cast. This movie was no easy task and Zeller proved himself a formidable filmmaker.

Darius Marder - Sound of Metal : Marder brought all the craft of old school movie making to Sound of Metal. A fundamentally brilliant bit of directing that drew the most out of his cast and his crew.

Thomas Vinterberg - Another Round : Vinterberg is one of the most interesting directors around, and Another Round is him at his most accessibly artistic.

Andrew Patterson - The Vast of Night: Patterson’s feature debut is stunning for its confidence and technical audacity. I truly cannot wait to see what he does next.

THE WINNER IS…Darius Marder : Marder’s artistic courage, commitment and deft directing touch brought his profoundly unique vision to life on Sound of Metal…and now he’s got a Mickey Award!

Best Documentary - Can’t Get You Out of My Head : Director Adam Curtis is the best documentarian in the business and has been for nearly two decades. His newest project is a six part series that debuted on BBC in February. Like Curtis’ other revelatory series Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares and HyperNormalization, Can’t Get You Out of My Head is brilliant for taking a sprawling subject matter and profoundly transforming it into the psychological and personal. it is currently available on Youtube, and though it may feel impenetrable at first, I highly recommend you watch every episode.

Best Picture

9. One Night in Miami - Four excellent performances propel this stagey drama and make it a worthwhile watch.

8. Promising Young Woman - Director Emerald Fennell wraps a disturbing revenge fantasy in a bubblegum aesthetic, and though it is flawed it possesses an intriguing cinematic power.

7. Judas and the Black Messiah - An uneven but captivating film that highlights two fantastic performances from Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

6. The Vast of Night - This is a little movie with big ideas and it nearly pulls them all off. A staggering piece of technical filmmaking that boasts an intricate and detailed performance from Sierra McCormick.

5. Nomadland - An arthouse meditation on the dark side of the American dream that somehow manages to be decidedly corporate friendly. Despite its shallow philosophy, the film is well-made and well-acted and very well shot.

4. Another Round - A compelling Danish drama that is gloriously acted and exceedingly well directed. This movie not only has a sense of humor but a deep sense of the profound.

3. Mank - Mank got lost in the shuffle this year, and although it isn’t a perfect movie, it is a very good one. Filled with solid performances and Fincher’s brilliance, Mank gets better upon each re-watch.

2. The Father - I expected little from The Father, and got a whole hell of a lot. This movie is like a horror film as it traps viewers inside the experience of dementia, and it makes you pray you never suffer that fate. An exquisitely jarring cinematic experience.

1. Sound of Metal - A pretty basic movie and idea that is phenomenally well-directed and acted. A quiet movie that finds profundity in the silence.

Most Important Film of the Year: Nomadland

Nomadland is the most important film of the year…but not in a good way. What makes Nomadland so important is that is symbolizes an artistic acquiescence to corporate power and reinforces working class impotence.

As I’ve written before, it is shocking that Nomadland is a story about people who are victims of American capitalism but the movie entirely ignores that reality, and in fact bends over backwards to portray the corporate behemoths (like Amazon) that cause the suffering we see in the film, as the good guys. The film might as well have been produced by Gordon Gekko or the Koch brothers.

It isn’t an accident that Amazon were so happy to let Nomadland shoot in their workplace and create the impression that working there is a wonderful experience where they treat you well, you make new friends and you make good money. Of course, the reality is much, much different.

The thing that is so horrifying is that Hollywood, and most importantly - the artists in Hollywood, refused to speak up against Nomadland’’s deception and Amazon’s evil. The film, its director and lead actress won a bevy of awards and yet not once in their acceptance speeches did they hold Amazon to task for their poor treatment of workers or anti-union practices or even speak up about those left behind by American capitalism.

Just think, Sally Field once iconically held up a “Union” sign in Norma Rae, and now Frances McDormand shits in a bucket while swearing that anti-union Amazon is a terrific place to work. What a sign of the very bad times.

Last time McDormand won an Oscar, the brassy actress shouted and touted diversity and inclusion…but this time around she was as quiet as a church mouse in regards to Amazon and unionization and its poor treatment of working people. Funny how McDormand was so courageous when it costs her nothing but so cowardly when biting the hand that feeds would be the right thing to do. Class act that McDormand…loud when she can self-aggrandize but silent when it matters.

Nomadland and the universal and uncritical love for it, signals an end to artists pushing back against corporate hegemony, and instead genuflecting to corporate power. This new era feels Orwellian, as the only thing that matters now is identity politics. If Nomadland hadn’t been written and directed by a “woman of color”, I doubt it would’ve received so much critical love, or avoided the Amazon controversy.

And so…this is why corporate America is attached at the hip with woke politics, it is a means to a dastardly end. Corporate America can be as evil as it wants and can exploit its workers all it wants, just as long as it spouts woke platitudes about diversity and inclusion and “black lives mattering” or whatever other politically correct smokescreen it wants to use…and as Nomadland proves, this distractionary measure will work…and cinema, art and humanity will all suffer.

On that very down note….thus concludes an uninspired Mickey™® awards for an uninspired year of movies!! Congratulations to all the winners and to all of my readers for surviving this decidedly heinous year. Keep an eye out for the Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® Awards…which will be coming soon to celebrate the very worst in cinema and culture!

Here’s to a better 2021! See you next year!

©2021

The Oscar Train Wreck

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 20 seconds

My biggest question regarding last night’s egregiously bungled and boring Oscar telecast is…if an awards show collapses but no one is watching, does it make a sound?

Interest in the Oscars has been in steep decline for years now, and after suffering through the entire three hour and twenty-minute show last night I can dutifully report that the 93rd Academy Awards came in with a whimper and left with a whimper too.

The night’s climactic moment was a dud as the show ran long, as usual, and then rushed to announce Best Actor, which everyone thought would be an emotional moment as it was expected to go to the late Chadwick Boseman. The award instead went to went to Anthony Hopkins. Uh-oh.

Hopkins is most deserving of the award, but his victory will no doubt spur more cries of “racism” from the usual woke suspects. Adding to the discomfort was the fact that Hopkins wasn’t present at the show, and so the telecast ended basically with everybody standing around looking at one another like they were waiting for a train.

Speaking of which, the show was held at Los Angeles’ Union Station – which is a train station, which is apropos since the show was an absolute train-wreck.

Union Station is known as a hub for hordes of homeless in Los Angeles, and I’m sure that as much as homeless people have defecated in that public space over the years they’ve never made a stink as odious as Oscar’s producer Steven Soderbergh did last night.

Soderbergh put his stamp on the show as he shot it like a movie, with more handheld cameras than static shots, and by mixing up the order of awards. For instance, contrary to previous Oscar ceremonies Best Director came early in the proceedings and Best Picture wasn’t the last award.

Of course, the Oscars are going to be the Oscars, so the show was filled with the usual rambling speeches, self-righteous political pandering, and the airing of racial grievances, but what it didn’t have was any clips of the nominated work. Want to see the nominated cinematography, acting, costumes, hair and makeup or production designs? Not on Soderbergh’s watch!

Instead Soderbergh had presenters share inane “fun factoids” about each nominee like a kindergarten teacher handing out Valentine’s Day cards in class. This was accompanied by a roving camera desperately whirling around searching the room for these unfamous nominees like a toddler lost in a train station frantically looking for its parents.

The lowlight in the evening of lowlights was a “music game” where nominees guessed if a song played by DJ Questlove (who replaced the traditional orchestra) was an Oscar winning song. This hapless and ham-handed bit deteriorated into Glenn Close pretending she knew the song “Da Butt” and then humiliating herself by getting up and doing “Da Butt” dance. If Glenn Close ever had a relationship with dignity, it ended in a ferocious divorce last night.

The entire endless evening felt like one long extended version of Glenn Close doing “Da Butt”, and conjured all the gravitas of a junior high school drama club awards night.

The Oscars did make history though regarding diversity with “artists of color” winning two of the four acting categories and Chloe Zhao being the first woman of color ever to win Best Director and Best Picture.

So maybe #OscarsSoWhite has transformed into #OscarsSoWhat*? Unfortunately, I’m sure the Academy would prefer even the righteous anger of racial resentment to the overwhelming apathy that hangs over the festivities like a toxic cloud of poisonous gas.

Even the stars who came out to aid Soderbergh in his time of need, like Halle Berry and Harrison Ford, looked disinterested. The usually luminous Berry looked like she had slept at Union Station or was suffering a hellacious flu when she presented an award, while Ford just seemed like he was baked off his ass as he mumbled through a presentation.

Soderbergh did not limit the award winners in the length of their speeches, which led to some unnecessary verbosity, but also to some moments of profundity. Director Thomas Vinterberg’s speech after winning Best International Feature Film for Another Round, was painfully poignant as he spoke about the tragic death of his daughter Ida during filming.

In contrast, Frances McDormand’s grating short speeches managed to remind everyone she’s the most annoying person in all of Hollywood, which is an achievement even greater than her three Best Actress Oscars.

As shrill and grating as she is, McDormand’s movie Nomadland was the biggest winner of the night as it won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress.

The biggest losers of the night though were any poor bastards like me who stayed up to watch, and of course, the Academy Awards themselves.

If last night’s abysmal Oscar ceremony proves anything it is that the Academy Awards are on the fast track to irrelevancy, and even though the show ran late, that train left Union Station right on time.  

*Joke courtesy of Leo - Da Irish Poet!

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Epsidoe 34 - Oscars Predictions

On this episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I get all dressed up and go to the Oscars. Tune in to listen to our Oscar predictions, Oscar dream scenarios and Oscar nightmares, as well as lamentations for the sorry state of the movie industry.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 34 - Oscar Predictions

Thanks for listening!

©2021

93rd Academy Awards: The 2021 Oscar Prediction Post

Estimated Reading Time: 3 hours 47 minutes 22 seconds

The Academy Awards are once again upon us and the biggest question about them is…does anyone give a rat’s ass?

As the show’s dwindling ratings prove, interest in the once mighty Oscars has been in steep decline in recent years. It would seem the perfect storm of a plethora of streaming service tv shows and reduced attention spans, as well as a paucity of genuine movie stars and a plenitude of identity politics has wounded, maybe fatally, the once iconic awards.

As a denizen of Hollywood, I’ve never experienced an awards season that has generated so little interest. It appears that even though, due to streaming services, movies are more available to more people than ever before, they seem to have never mattered less.

Part of the reason for that is that, for a vareity of reasons - not the least of which was Covid, 2020 was just a cinematically lackluster year. A handful of good movies came out this year, but no truly great ones, and certainly no films that ignited the public’s passions.

With that said, the reality is that it is my sworn and solemn obligation to share with you my Oscar picks. Please remember that these picks are NOT TO BE USED FOR GAMBLING PURPOSES!!

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Who will win: Yuh-Jung Youn (Minari) - Not a fan of this movie or this performance, but it checks a diversity box Academy members want to celebrate. I personally think Amanda Seyfried (Mank), Olivia Colman (The Father) and Maria Bakalove (Borat) are considerably more deserving. There’s an outside chance Bakalove pulls the upset…but don’t bet on it.

Who should win: Seyfried or Colman.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Who will win: Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) - This is a slam dunk, and deservedly so. While I liked Paul Raci (Sound of Metal) and LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah), Kaluuya crushes his role as Fred Hampton.

Who should win: Kaluuya

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Who will win: Promising Young Woman - Emerald Fennel : This is one of the few interesting categories. I think Fennel wins because the Academy is desperate to to appease the woke wolves at its door, and Fennel is a woman so she qualifies. There’s a pretty good chance that they give the award to Aaron Sorkin for his atrocious The Trial of the Chicago 7. That movie is dreadful and the script a joke, but it taps into the whole self-righteousness of the moment. That said…I think Fennel gets the nod.

Who should win: Sound of Metal - Darius Marder

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Who will win: Nomadland - Chloe Zhao: I think Zhao and Nomadland are the big winners come Oscar night…but if Florian Zeller wins this award (which I think he should) for his adaptation of The Father, it could be a monkey wrench into the Nomadland dominance.

Who should win: The Father - Florian Zeller

ANIMATED FEATURE

Who will win: Soul. This is a no-brainer. I liked Soul and it is certainly an antidote to our tumultuous times. Also…the Pixar machine is unstoppable.

Who should win: Soul I guess.

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Who will win: Mank - I think Mank finally gets on the board here. if it loses this category it may very well get shut out of all awards. The big competition will come from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Who should won: Mank.

COSTUME DESIGN

Who will win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom - I think Ma Rainey and its popular costume crew win here for a variety of non-merit based reasons. If Mank wins, which it could, that is a big deal and could portend a mini-Mank run in some behind the camera categories.

Who should win: Mank.

MAKEUP AND HAIR

Who will win: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Same as above.

Who should win: Mank.

EDITING

Who will win: Sound of Metal - There’s a chance that Trial of the Chicago 7 could win (God help us), but I think Sound of Metal pulls it off. If Nomadland win then look out, that is a sign it will win a huge amount of hardware on Oscar night.

Who should win: Sound of Metal

SOUND

Who should win: Sound of Metal - Outside chance that Mank or Soul win, but that seems very unlikely. if Mank wins it is another sign of a big night for that movie…but that seems unlikely.

Who should win: Sound of Metal

VISUAL EFFECTS

Who will win: Tenet - This seems like it’s going to happen.

Who should win: I’ll be honest…I don’t know.

SCORE

Who will win: Soul - Jon Batiste, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: This seems like a slam dunk too. An outside chance Terence Blanchard wins for his bombastic score to the equally awful Da 5 Bloods.

Who should win: Soul.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Who will win: My Octopus Teacher - I’m not sure why but people love this movie and I think the votes for potential winners Collective, Crip Camp and Time get split and the octopus wins.

Who should win: No idea.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Who will win: Another Round - I think this beats out Qou Vadis, Aida by a nose.

Who should win: Another Round.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Who will win: Nomadland - This is a bellwether award…if everything goes to plan then Nomadland should win and clean up at the Oscars. If Mank wins…its gonna be an interesting night because that signals Mank has a ground swell of support and Nomadland is floundering.

Who should win: Mank. Nomadland is extremely well shot by Joshua James Richards, no doubt about it, but my tastes run slightly more towards Erik Messerschmidt and Mank.

BEST ACTOR

Who will win: Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) - This is set in stone. With Boseman’s tragic death and the narrative around the award, it would be an absolute shocker of the highest order if anyone else won. The only other potential winner is Anthony Hopkins for The Father…but that ain’t happening.

Who should win: Anthony Hopkins. Boseman is very good in Ma Rainey…but Hopkins is on another level in The Father.

BEST ACTRESS

Who will win: Viola Davis - Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom : This is one of the very few interesting categories. Frances McDormand is the front runner but I think that the fact that she won recently (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and a win here would put her in Meryl Streep territory with 3 Oscar wins, the Academy will look to feed the diversity beast by awarding Davis for her sub-par performance in that dreadful movie.

Who should win: Carey Mulligan - Promising Young Woman : I thought Mulligan was better than everybody else.

BEST DIRECTOR

Who will win: Chloe Zhao - Nomadland : This too is a slam dunk. No way Fincher or Vinterberg pull of an upset. Just impossible.

Who should win: Fincher, Vinterberg or Zhao. Three different directors making very different films all did solid work.

BEST PICTURE

Who will win: Nomadland - This is happening. There is no stopping the Nomadland juggernaut. If Mank or (GOD HELP US ALL) The Trial of the Chicago 7 win, that is a sure sign of the apocalypse.

Who should win: Mank or Sound of Metal. They won’t win but I think they should. Nomadland is a good movie, but I thought these two were a little better.

Here’s the rest of the categories of which I have no opinion just a guess…

ORIGINAL SONG- One Night in Miami

LIVE ACTION SHORT - Two Distant Strangers

DOCUMENTARY SHORT - Concerto is Conversation

©2021

Exterminate All the Brutes: A Documentary Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!****

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A pretentious disappointment.

If you’ve ever wanted to know what it feels like to be stuck on a four-hour flight sitting next to a rambling, drunken college student who just read their first book about colonialism, genocide and white supremacy and mistakenly thinks they have some profound insights, have I got a documentary series for you…

Exterminate all the Brutes is the new unconventional, four-part docu-series from filmmaker Raoul Peck now available on HBO and HBO Max that explores the vast history of colonialism, genocide and white supremacy from a non-white and non-European perspective.

The documentary is based on the books Exterminate all the Brutes (Sven Lindqvist), An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) and Silencing the Past (Michel-Rolph Trouillot), and chaotically mixes documentary footage, home movies, popular films, animation, and fictional scripted scenes to create a sort of experimental, impressionistic cinematic essay instead of a straight forward documentary.

Exterminate All the Brutes, a phrase which comes from Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece Heart of Darkness, highlights the greatest hits of horror in the history of humanity and is divided into four parts titled, “The Disturbing Confidence of Ignorance”, “Who the F*ck is Columbus?”, “Killing at a Distance”, and “The Bright Colors of Fascism”.

From Europeans explorers, to the plundering of Africa and the slave trade, to the eradication of the Native American population, to Hitler, the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima, the documentary leaves no stone of brutality, barbarity and white supremacy left unturned.

The series attempts to tie together the genocide of the American Indians, slavery and the Holocaust in order to expose the unique evil of white supremacy and its impact on modern Western civilization.

The writer and director Raoul Peck, who’s documentary on James Baldwin, I am Not Your Negro, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2017, should be applauded for his ambition on Exterminate All the Brutes, but certainly not his execution. Ultimately, in his attempt to create a profound, personalized poem, Peck instead produces a painfully pretentious polemic.

The series is not so much thorough as it cluttered, and while it has a specific topic, it is devoid of a distinct thesis. I would probably agree with Peck’s argument regarding colonialism if I could actually discern what exactly it was. As a result of this lack of a detailed thesis, the documentary comes across as a distracted, incoherent, stream of consciousness diatribe fueled by an adolescent, if not infantile, intellectualism. It feels more like a tantrum resulting from deep frustration and helplessness than a dissertation born out of intense study.

Peck’s journey into the heart of darkness of colonialism, slavery and genocide may very well be a noble venture but it is also egregiously narcissistic. Peck not only tells you what he knows but endlessly recites how and from whom he came to know it.

Peck also vents his rage at individuals he dislikes, like Donald Trump, and groups he despises, like the Scots-Irish…boy does he have a bug up his ass about the Scots-Irish.

Peck’s anger also distorts his argument as he makes contradictory statements regarding his flawed premise. For instance, he brushes aside the “Guns, Germs and Steel” hypothesis and calls early Europeans backward and uncivilized, but then describes that Europeans came to dominate African peoples simply because they were able to create advanced technology and weapons that Africans could not.  

The greatest flaw of the documentary though, and there are many, is that as it guides viewers through the history of white European atrocities, it never breaks new ground or reveals unearthed truths. Anyone with half a brain in their head is aware of the horrors of colonialism, slavery and genocide by now. The fact that the U.S. was born on the back of African slaves and the genocide of American Indians isn’t exactly breaking news. But as Peck himself states in the film, “it is not knowledge that we lack”, which begs the question…if we don’t lack knowledge then what is the purpose of this four-hour monstrous mess of a docu-series?

Peck is also his own worst enemy as a storyteller as he narrates the series and his voice-over is, without exaggeration, the worst in the history of the spoken word. Never has someone talked so much (and so inaudibly) and said so little. Peck’s droning, garbled voice isn’t helped by the insipid platitudes he mutters like “neutrality is not an option” and “there are no alternative facts”.

That sort of overwrought emotionalism and intellectual vapidity is the life-blood of Exterminate All the Brutes. This is most evident in the cringe-inducing and laughably ludicrous scripted dramatic scenes haphazardly inserted throughout the series.

Actor Josh Hartnett is tasked with playing the embodiment of white supremacy and white privilege throughout history in the series of amateurish scenes, and his performance entails shooting a lot of brown people in the head and looking menacingly at the ones he hasn’t killed.

These scenes, and the scenes from Peck’s earlier dramatic films also shown, reveal the director to be a middling-at-best filmmaker, and Exterminate All the Brutes seems to be a case of an artist and pseudo-intellectual biting off considerably more than he could ever possibly chew.

In conclusion, I watched Exterminate All the Brutes so that you don’t have to. And trust me…you don’t have to…you really don’t have to.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Coded Bias: Documentary Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. The film tackles a fascinating topic but is too narrow and shallow to be of much use.

Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, explores how artificial intelligence algorithms propagate racial and gender bias.

Big tech totalitarianism is one of the most important issues of our time, and I’m on board with any film highlighting the inherent perils of over reliance on insidious technologies. But Coded Bias, while being somewhat informative, ultimately falls flat because its focus on race and gender is much too narrow.

The film sets out to show how artificial intelligence dehumanizes people and encodes racial bias into the job, college, mortgage and loan application process as well as the criminal justice system, but this misses the techno-tyranny forest for the trees and is akin to complaining about a lack of art by people of color on the walls of the Titanic.

MIT computer scientist Joy Buolamwini opens the movie by recounting how she discovered racial bias in facial recognition software and then documents her attempts to combat it with her collection of activists named the Algorithm Justice League (AJL).

Buolamwini makes for a compelling protagonist on this journey into the Orwellian hellscape of artificial intelligence due to her superior knowledge of the subject matter and magnetic personality.

Equally compelling is the disturbing information about the totalitarian use of algorithms by the Chinese government to control their populace through a social credit system and the U.K.’s baby steps down the same authoritarian path as it implements its own flawed facial recognition program.

Americans are under the same invasive surveillance and are imprisoned by a similar social credit system, the only difference being that they are unaware of it and it’s being done by big tech companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

But these issues are painfully complex and Coded Bias is often at cross-purposes with itself when confronting them. For instance, the film highlights the Chinese and U.K. government’s draconian use of technology, but then spotlights activists demanding the American government assert itself more aggressively regarding oversight.  

The same is true when Buolamwini takes her racial bias study to IBM to show them that their facial recognition tech fails to adequately work on black faces. In response, the company fixes the problem, which results in…more black people being able to be put in facial recognition databases. This pyrrhic victory makes the AJL seem like controlled opposition.

In this way the AJL is reminiscent of Black Lives Matter, in that they’re really a grievance delivery system designed to divide people and distract them from the much bigger issue. The race and gender obsessed AJL, just like BLM, makes enemies of potential allies by refusing to see all victims as equal.

For example, the conservatives and “conspiracy theorists” that have been de-platformed by algorithms from Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube are not considered worthy victims of tech totalitarianism by the AJL (and are never mentioned in the movie), but these ‘deplorables’ could be powerful allies in the fight to rein in the Sauron of Silicon Valley.

In one scene Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio is aghast at the power and pervasiveness of the FBI’s extra-judicial facial recognition program. The AJL no doubt loath Jordan (an easy thing to do), but he could be an effective asset in attempting the Herculean task of restraining the tech behemoth.

In contrast to Jordan, in the same congressional hearing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ignores deeper concerns and instead theatrically focuses her ire at the majority “demographic group” that writes the code for artificial intelligence…white males.

The arch-villains of big tech expanding their surveillance capabilities without the slightest thought to ethics or human rights makes the possibility and probability of a dystopian corporate and draconian governmental future (and present) extremely high, but the film and the AJL are simply incapable of moving beyond their slavish devotion to identity politics and their own biases against white men to focus on that truly horrifying bigger picture.

The reality is that artificial intelligence doesn’t just dehumanize black people, it dehumanizes all people, and any movement that fails to put that fact front and center is deserving of distrust if not disdain.

If the AJL were serious about stopping techno-tyranny they’d be fighting vociferously to restore every person’s right to privacy and freedom of speech, especially if that speech is ugly and hateful, and for the right of people to own their personal information and data, and to stop tech companies from collecting and selling that data, and to either shatter the tech monopolies into a million pieces or transform them into public utilities. But they aren’t serious and they don’t aggressively address any of those issues.

Coded Bias ends by recounting the true story of Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet soldier in 1983 who defied technology during a missile scare and refused to launch a nuclear counter attack against the U.S. The film states that if the artificial intelligence of a Strangelovian “doomsday machine” were in charge, and not Petrov’s humanity, then the world would have been obliterated. This nod to individualism is a nice sentiment but rings hollow after 90 minutes of relentless identity politics. It’s also somewhat amusing since the heroic Petrov is a member of the dreaded white male demographic.

In keeping with the Dr. Strangelove metaphor, Coded Bias and the activists it spotlights unfortunately aren’t truly interested in fighting against big tech’s artificial intelligence “doomsday machine”, they just want to make sure the war room is diverse and inclusive enough.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021