Nomadland: A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An exquisitely crafted film that boasts a powerful yet grounded performance from Frances McDormand.

Oscar front-runner Nomadland chronicles the working class despair wrought by American capitalism, but still manages to kiss Amazon’s ass.

The film gives a gritty glimpse into the struggle of the working poor but genuflects to corporate power instead of exposing it.

Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand and written and directed by Chloe Zhao, tells the story of Fern, an older woman who lives in a van and survives as a seasonal worker in various locales across America.

The film, which is currently in theatres and streaming on Hulu, is based on the non-fiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century and uses some of the real people from the book to play themselves in the movie.

Nomadland is fantastic and an Oscar front-runner, but it’s not for everybody as it’s an arthouse, verite style film with a loose narrative structure that lacks predictable dramatic beats. It is less a straightforward story than it is a melancholy and mournful meditation.

It is the topic of that meditation - American capitalism, impermanence and grief that makes Nomadland such an intriguing piece of cinema.

The story begins with Fern being forced to leave her long time residence in Empire, Nevada after the town’s US Gypsum plant closes and the once bustling area is abandoned.

Fern then takes to the road to run from her grief over losing Empire and her husband and travels throughout the west searching for seasonal employment.

She makes friends with fellow travelers, all suffering in similar circumstances, as she lives out of her van while working menial jobs in Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Chloe Zhao’s deft directorial touch gives the film a looser pace which results in a narrative with great space to breath. Zhao allows space, silence, framing, lighting and a very effective soundtrack work in unison to finely cultivate the drama instead of imposing it upon viewers.

The sense of isolation and desperation felt by Fern is heightened by cinematographer Joshua James Richards’ gorgeous panoramic shots of the vast and beautifully bleak western landscape.

Like the desolate landscapes, the deep lines in McDormand’s gloriously cinematic face also tell the story of all the hardships and heartbreaks throughout the years that have brought Fern and her working class kind to the brink of extinction.

Speaking of extinction, the film repeatedly refers to dinosaurs, and the sub-text is clear, the meteor of globalization, financialization and anti-unionism has hit and Fern and the working class in America are dinosaurs destined to aimlessly walk the darkened earth searching for scraps until they drop dead from exhaustion.

The film also frequently references carnivores, the symbolism of which is that American capitalism eats up and spits out working class people like Fern. In one scene Fern is horrified watching a crocodile in a zoo devour skinned rabbits for lunch, her primordial horror is driven by the fact that American capitalism is the crocodile, and she and all the poor people she loves are the rabbits.

Fern and her friends all bought into the lie that is the American dream, and now they find themselves older with dwindling energy and resources, alone and vulnerable living out the American nightmare. They’ve worked hard their whole lives and have nothing to show for it except for the existential terror of life without any safety net.

Despite the finely crafted filmmaking, McDormand’s powerfully grounded performance and the film’s chronicling of the wandering underclass and rightfully bemoaning the Titanic-esque economic state of America, it disappoints because it refuses to name or chastise the corporate villains hiding in plain sight.

For example, Fern works every Christmas season at an Amazon warehouse. The film actually got permission to shoot in a real Amazon fulfillment center, and that undoubtedly compromised its integrity.

The Amazon related scenes seem as if they were scripted by the company’s human resources and marketing departments as they’re basically shameless ads for the corporate behemoth.

Fern is shown leisurely meandering down vast warehouse walkways smiling and waving to other employees, and having fun in the break room with new friends, and telling others about how much money she makes and how the company covers the cost of her long-term van parking while she is an employee. The reality of employment at Amazon is much different, as the union busting, worker exploiting Bezos beast brutally cracks the whip on its employees like a frantic pharaoh building a pyramid one box at a time.

On its surface Nomadland is a descendant of the Sean Penn directed film Into the Wild and John Ford’s famed adaptation of Steinbeck’s working class masterpiece Grapes of Wrath.

Fern is somewhat a cross between Into the Wild’s free-spirited protagonist Alexander Supertramp and The Grapes of Wrath’s Tom Joad. The problem though, as highlighted by Nomadland’s shameless acquiescence to Amazon, is that Fern is Supertramp without spirit and Joad without spine.

Maybe the film’s lack of testicular fortitude in regards to Amazon is just another piece of sub-text, surreptitiously alerting viewers that the real problem is the modern demonization of masculinity and the feminization of America. In this way Fern is a castrated Tom Joad, not only unable, but unwilling, to fight against oppressors, instead preferring to collaborate in her own exploitation and denigration. 

More likely though is that the film’s Amazon ass-kissing is a function of that corporate monstrosity’s massive influence over Hollywood. Amazon is now a major movie and tv studio, and the suck ups and sycophants in Hollywood know that to get on Amazon’s bad side is a potentially fatal career move…so they pucker up and play act at caring about working class concerns rather than actually doing something about them.

Nomadland will probably win a bunch of well-deserved Oscars, but unfortunately the film is The Grapes of Wrath without the wrath, as it ultimately genuflects to the corporate power that created the working class tragedy it masterfully chronicles.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Judas and the Black Messiah: A Review and Commentary

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

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but fantastic film that vibrates with a formidable vitality that also features two Oscar-worthy performances by Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

Judas and the Black Messiah, which opened in theatres and on the streaming service HBO Max on February 12th, recounts the true story of the betrayal of Fred Hampton, the charismatic chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, by Bill O’Neal, an FBI informant.

The flawed but fantastic film, written and directed by Shaka King, features a fascinating story and scintillating performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as O’Neal, which makes it among the very best movies of this thus far cinematically calamitous year.

I have never been much impressed by Daniel Kaluuya as an actor. I thought Get Out was ridiculously overrated and thought his performance in it was too. But as Fred Hampton, Kaluuya utterly disappears into the role and creates as charismatic and compelling a character as has graced screens all year. Kaluuya’s Hampton vibrates with a natural magnetism and intensity that is glorious to behold.

As great as Kaluuya is, and he is great, LaKieth Stanfield actually has the harder job and does equally outstanding work. O’Neal is a tortured and tormented soul, and Stanfield masterfully shows us all his shades. Stanfield’s subtle, complex and detailed work is most definitely Oscar-worthy, and is a testament to his impressive skill and craftsmanship.

Other performances don’t fare quite as well as Kaluuhya and Stanfield though. Jesse Plemons, an excellent actor, does the best he can with a terribly under written role as an FBI agent, and Martin Sheen, also an excellent actor, is so dreadful as J. Edgar Hoover it is like he’s acting in a different, and much worse, movie.

The biggest issue with the film is that its secondary narratives, one which involves Hoover and the other involves Hampton’s girlfriend Deborah Johnson, lack a dramatic cohesion and power, and they distract from the main story and scuttle much needed momentum. The Hoover angle is distractingly cartoonish and the love story between Hampton and Johnson is uncomfortably lifeless, as Dominique Fishback is, to put it mildly, underwhelming in the role of Johnson.

Other issues with the film are that Shaka King’s direction was not quite as deft as I would have preferred. The script and the editing also could have been a bit tighter, but with that said, the film definitely has an undeniable energy to it and pulsates with a power that is impressive.

One final issue was the sound mixing. I watched the movie on HBO Max and the sound mix was utterly abysmal. Much of the dialogue, Daniel Kaluuya’s most of all, got lost under the music in the mix. This could be a function of HBO Max, which unfortunately is a horrible technical streaming service, or it could be I am going deaf, or it could be the sound mixing was atrocious…who knows…but it was irritating.

Predictably, most critics are using the film to connect the more recent Black Lives Matter movement with the revolutionary Black Panther movement of the 1960’s spotlighted in the film.

This is an intellectually egregious and mind-numbingly vacuous interpretation of the movie and its narrative.

The film isn’t about our current manufactured myopia regarding race, it’s about power and the great lengths those with it will go to subjugate those without it and maintain the status quo.

Infamous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, embarrassingly portrayed in the movie by Martin Sheen in an obscenely amateurish prosthetic nose, deemed the Black Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” for among other reasons because their free breakfast program for kids wasn’t just for black kids but for all kids.

In response Hoover unleashed COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) and its dirty tactics on the Black Panthers just as he had done previously to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and other leftists.

As highlighted in the film, the Black Panthers/Hampton were seen as direct threats to the power structure of the U.S. because they worked to bring all poor and working class people together, be they black, Native American, Latino and even Confederate flag-waving whites, against a common enemy, the ruling class, which subjugated and abused them.

Hampton, MLK and Malcolm X weren’t targeted by COINTELPRO’s massive surveillance and infiltration operation and ultimately assassinated under extremely suspicious circumstances because they were standing up just for black people, but because they were working to bring all peoples together to fight against the corrupt and criminal political power exploiting poor and working class in America and across the globe.

In comparison to the towering revolutionaries of Hampton, King and Malcolm X, Black Lives Matter are shameless courtesans to the establishment.

The FBI obviously don’t see BLM as a threat, hell it is such a collection of useful idiots the feds probably started it in the first place. The power structure’s greatest fear is that poor and working class black and white people will stop directing their anger at each other and start directing it at Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street. BLM is a critical tool to thwart that impulse and keep the proletariat separated by race…conveniently divided and conquered.

This is how something as innocuous as “All Lives Matter” is transformed into a racial slur instead of a rousing rallying cry. BLM gives away its establishment protection game by so aggressively making enemies out of potential allies, proving they’d rather separate people than bring them together for a clear common cause – stopping police brutality.

There are other signs that BLM is the establishment’s controlled opposition.

For example, when a protest by QAnon clowns at the capitol building turned riot it was immediately labeled an “insurrection” and false stories about it were propagated throughout the mainstream media and the feds hunted down the perpetrators, but these same feds and media supported the BLM “mostly peaceful protests” that attacked police stations and government buildings and took over portions of major cities like Portland and Seattle and turned other cities into looted, chaotic, burning madhouses for months.

Another example is highlighted in the film when Hampton belittles the idea of a school name change as some kind of substantial victory. BLM specializes in this sort of self-righteous symbolism, empty sloganeering (Defund the Police!) and toothless grandstanding that intentionally doesn’t address the actual conditions under which poor people suffer. It is all style over substance, as BLM would rather bring down statues than hunger, homelessness or homicide rates.

What makes Judas and the Black Messiah so poignantly tragic is that it shows that the FBI, which the left now adores, have always been the frontline workers for American fascism and their victory over genuine dissent has been spectacular.

This is why we now have vapid, race-hustling racial grievance grifters like Al Sharpton instead of intellectual giants like Malcolm X and MLK. And why we got the “hope and change” charlatanry of Barack Obama, a maintenance man for the status quo who dutifully bails out Wall Street while Main Street crumbles, instead of the revolutionary Fred Hampton. And why we are fed the lap dog of Black Lives Matter play-acting at defiance while being whole-heartedly embraced by the corporate and political power structure, instead of the bulldog of the Black Panthers putting genuine fear into the establishment.

The Black Lives Matter contingent think they’re Fred Hampton, but they’re frauds, phonies, shills and sellouts, just like Bill O’Neal. And that’s why I recommend Judas and the Black Messiah…not just for the film’s cinematic dynamism or the standout performances of Kaluuya and Stanfield but because it rightfully exposes those bourgeois BLM bullshitters.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 29 - One Night in Miami

In this week's episode of everybody's favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I take a look at director Regina King's One Night in Miami. This episode includes a discussion on the difficulty of turning plays into movies, Barry's bold recasting of the movie Airplane! and me melting down over the current state of film criticism.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota - Ep. 29 : One Night in Miami

Thanks for listening!

©2021

The Little Things: A Review

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

My Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A derivative and abysmally dull movie that is devoid of any redeeming qualities.

The Little Things, written and directed by John Lee Hancock, is a neo-noir cop movie set in 1990 that tells the story of Joe Deacon, a Kern County Deputy Sheriff, who returns to his L.A. roots and teams with L.A. County Detective Jim Baxter to try and find a serial killer. The film, which premiered on Friday January 29th, 2021 in both theatres and on the streaming service HBO Max, stars three Academy Award winners, with Denzel Washington as Deacon, Rami Malek as Baxter, and with Jared Leto as Albert Sparma, the suspected serial killer.

In 1995, David Fincher’s neo-noir cop movie Seven, starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, became a smash hit and propelled Fincher, Pitt, Kevin Spacey and Gwyneth Paltrow into the stratosphere of the Hollywood A-List. In an interesting what-could-have-been twist, Denzel Washington, who was already a mega-star in 1995, turned down the role in Seven which eventually went to Pitt. One can’t help but wonder how different the movie and the history of Hollywood, would’ve been if Denzel and not Brad were the centerpiece of Seven.

It seems Denzel thinks about that too, since he chose to do The Little Things, which is a very cheap knock off of Fincher’s iconic 90’s noir masterwork. Unfortunately, The Little Things is no Seven, hell…it isn’t even a decent episode of Law and Order, if such a thing exists.

The Little Things is a painfully derivative, cliche ridden, visually stale, dramatically stilted, narratively incoherent mess filled with ridiculously preposterous character choices and even more preposterous plot twists…but besides that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

The trouble with The Little Things is most definitely writer/director John Lee Hancock. Hancock’s filmography, which includes such notable pieces of mundanity as The Rookie, The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks, is a who’s who of forgettable films. Hancock is one of those Hollywood company men who make a very good living churning out middle of the road drivel that is pointless and meaningless. Hancock’s summit is mediocrity, and he never clears base camp with The Little Things.

If you thought that with a cast of three Oscar winners you’d at least get some interesting performances…you’d be very wrong.

Rami Malek is absolutely atrocious in the film as the wrapped too tight detective Baxter. Malek is so uncharismatic, dull and lifeless it’s quite remarkable. Malek’s stilted and uncomfortable performance is filled with so many bizarre side glances and preening it feels like he has either never acted before or can only act as Freddie Mercury.

The great Denzel Washington is also out of sorts, and never finds a rhythm or purpose to propel his character. It is jarring watching Denzel, one of the best actors and movie stars of his generation, flail so fruitlessly and wander so aimlessly through a film so obviously beneath him.

Thankfully, Jared Leto really stretches himself and plays a wild-eyed weirdo who may or may not be a serial killer. I am kidding of course, Leto is forever playing weirdos and this one is his least interesting. There isn’t anything remotely compelling about this forced and contrived performance.

In conclusion, much to my shock and chagrin, The Little Things is a frustrating and aggravating viewing experience that was an utter chore to sit through. I’d rather be tied up and slashed to death by a second rate serial killer than watch this third rate movie. I cannot imagine anyone with any semblance of taste or half a brain in their head would ever enjoy this movie in the least.

©2021

Promising Young Woman: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. This flawed, very dark comedy has a certain cinematic vitality to it that is compelling, and it also features a stellar performance from the beguiling Carey Mulligan.

Promising Young Woman is a #MeToo revenge fantasy that is both galling for its hatred of men but glorious for its artistry

****This article contains spoilers for the film Promising Young Woman****

Sometimes a movie says something you intensely dislike, but it says it so well you have to tip your cap. A case in point is the darkly comedic #MeToo revenge fantasy Promising Young Woman,

The film, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, tells the story of Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a med-school dropout consumed with grief and anger over her best friend’s rape and death.

In search of cathartic revenge, Cassie spends her time trolling bars pretending to be drunk to the point of incapacitation so that predatory men will attempt to prey upon her. Once they try and take full advantage of her she transforms to reveal herself to be a sober social vigilante shaming men for their repulsive behavior towards women.

Not surprisingly considering the subject matter, Promising Young Woman seethes with vicious misandry that is as disturbing as it is relentless. The film is an unabashed girl power polemic and propaganda piece that espouses the imaginary boogeyman of a pervasive “rape culture” that has only ever existed in the warped minds of Woman’s Studies majors and feminist fanatics. 

The film’s approach re-imagines the misogynistic tropes of Hollywood’s old male dominated storytelling by replacing it with an aggressive man-hating that manifests itself as every male character in the film being an utterly irredeemable predator, a sniveling coward, or both.

In this way it is like a feminist dark comedy version of an old Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sly Stallone, Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood movie where one identity group, be it blacks, Mexicans, Russians or Arabs are reduced to stereotypes and are all the bad guys, except in this movie every guy is the bad guy.

Another movie that I kept thinking about while watching Promising Young Woman was Falling Down, the flawed but intriguing 1993 Michael Douglas film directed by Joel Schumacher. In Falling Down Douglas plays William Foster, a rampaging regular guy who keenly feels that modern life is unjust toward him. Promising Young Woman is the #MeToo version of Falling Down in that it takes a person’s frustrations at perceived injustice and pushes it to absurd extremes.

Besides finding all men deplorable, Promising Young Woman film does have some other flaws. For instance it runs about a half hour too long in an attempt to find a satisfying conclusion, but the ending is ultimately unsatisfying because it tries so hard to be satisfying. 

The film’s yearning for ultimate girl power catharsis also transforms it from biting satire into pure revenge fantasy, which ironically ends up neutering the film’s feminist/anti-male social commentary. 

When Cassie finally gets her revenge at the end of Promising Young Woman, this actually proves the alleged problem of a dominant patriarchal rape culture is just an imaginary dragon slain by Cassie in a Quixotic fantasy. But if the film had stuck to its artistic guns and let Cassie fail and be left to stew in her rage, fury and failure until the end of time, then the movie would’ve succeeded in highlighting the prevalence and power of the patriarchal rape culture its premise so adamantly claims.

It may come as a surprise after reading what I’ve already written that while I found the cultural politics of Promising Young Woman to be as repulsive as the film finds my gender, I also found that the movie possessed a rage-fueled vitality and artistry that at times was intoxicatingly entertaining, which is a credit to first time feature director Emerald Fennell.

My appreciation of the film is also a testament to the beguiling work of Carey Mulligan. Mulligan gives an incisive and insightful Oscar-worthy performance that is stunning to behold for its dynamism and detail. Mulligan masterfully imbues Cassie with a seething and righteous fury that animates her every action and it results in a gloriously magnetic performance.

Supporting actor Bo Burnham is also terrific as Ryan, a man with a crush on Cassie. Burnham, a comedian and director himself, is compelling as he tries to be both charming and passive in Cassie’s presence. The chemistry between the two actors comes across as grounded and genuine, and it elevates the film considerably.

It may seem odd that I am praising a film that has such a pronounced cultural and political perspective that I find distasteful and with which I vehemently disagree. But unlike so many writers and critics of today who find it impossible to tolerate anything or anyone in life that doesn’t agree with them fully, I am not only able to tolerate things I disagree with, I can actually appreciate them.

Promising Young Woman is both a testament to the worst totalitarian and draconian instincts of modern feminism and the #MeToo movement but also a glorious monument to Emerald Fennell’s bold direction and Carey Mulligan’s mesmerizing acting.

I recommend you see the film and judge it for yourself, and even though it viciously judges all men, audiences should have enough integrity to honestly judge it on its merits, not just on its pernicious cultural politics.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

One Night in Miami: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed film but worth seeing because it boasts strong performances, most notably from Kingsley Ben-Adir.

One Night in Miami, which is streaming on Amazon, is generating critical adoration for its powerful performances and for its supposedly timely social commentary on race and racism in America.

The movie, written by Kemp Powers and directed by Regina King, tells the story of a fictionalized meeting between Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown in a Miami hotel room in 1964 immediately following Clay’s victory over Sonny Liston to become Heavyweight Champion of the World.

The movie is adapted from the play of the same name and features a series of long conversations and monologues talking about “the struggle” for civil rights and about how “black people are dying in the streets…you must choose a side.”

Unsurprisingly, critics are calling it “timely” and that it “shines a light on present-day America” because of the Black Lives Matter protests last Summer.

These are culturally cheap, socially easy and intellectually shallow lessons to glean from One Night in Miami. The movie strikes me not as an opportunity to highlight how much racism allegedly still exists in America today, but instead as a testament to the staggering amount of progress made in the last 56 years.

The civil rights movement of the 20th century dramatized in One Night in Miami was one of the most extraordinarily successful endeavors in American history.

From 1964 to 2008, black people went from being second-class citizens protesting for voting rights to successfully voting for a black man for president. That black man, Barack Obama, won both of his presidential elections resoundingly.

The Civil Rights Act became law in 1964, and although it certainly didn’t happen overnight, over the course of the last 56 years anti-black discrimination has receded in America to the point where it is now deemed legally, morally and socially repugnant.

Case in point is an early scene in the movie where Jim Brown visits a family friend, an older white man played by Beau Bridges, in his home town in Georgia in 1964. After some lemonade and congratulatory conversation on the front porch, Brown offers to help the man move a piece of furniture inside the house. The man declines, telling Brown without a hint of shame that they “don’t let niggers” into their home.

That scene is so shocking and jarring because it is inconceivable in modern day America.

Cassius Clay, who shortly after the events dramatized in the movie becomes Muhammad Ali, is a perfect example of the massive change in American perspective from 1964 onward.

In 1964, Clay/Ali was reviled by most Americans for being a loud mouth, malcontent and Muslim. By 1974 he was celebrated as an iconic hero for his courageous victory over George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle. By 1996 he was a living legend and avatar for the very best of America as he carried the torch for the U.S. at the summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Objectively, by nearly every measure, discrimination has been so reduced as to be nearly non-existent. Subjectively though, the ghosts of oppression still haunt black minds and guilt still infects white minds. This transforms the fight against racism from an external struggle against discrimination to an internal one against perceived prejudice (which still exists among all races) and that is a much more complex, complicated and confounding battle to wage.

The chains of slavery are long gone, as are the legal discriminations of the Jim Crow era…and yet the need to project the subjective issue of prejudice into a struggle against the phantom of an external “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” in order to identify as both a noble victim and brave resistor is extremely powerful and intoxicating.

There is a certain sense of cos-playing in the current “anti-racist” movement. It is an existential yearning for purpose and meaning by trying to emulate the greats of the civil rights movement who succeeded in changing the country.

Every woke poseur, be they white or black, thinks they’re John Brown, Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton all rolled into one. They aren’t, they’re puffed up toddlers ranting and railing against the imaginary monsters hiding under their bed.

The subjective, self-serving yet self-defeating woke hyper-racialization of recent years has turned demands for equal treatment into the cries for special treatment, and has transformed MLK’s dream of judging people by the content of their character into racism, and judging people by the color of their skin into enlightenment.

This immoral madness puts us on a downward trajectory that only leads to calamity in the form of a catastrophic conflagration.

As for One Night in Miami, I recommend it as it is a flawed but captivating film that boasts two Oscar level performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X and Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke.

Near the end of the movie there’s a scene where Sam Cooke sings his civil rights anthem, “A Change is Gonna Come” on the Tonight Show.

The song’s soulful chorus is, “it’s been a long, long time coming, but I know, a change gonna come”.

Thanks to men like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke and countless courageous others, change has come… and One Night in Miami is an excellent opportunity to acknowledge it.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Run Hide Fight: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. The movie could have been much worse. It may appeal to adolescents and those with adolescent tastes in movies, but for everyone else it isn’t worth seeing.

Run Hide Fight, written and directed by Kyle Rankin, is a new action thriller film that tells the story of Zoe Hull, a female high school student fighting back during a school shooting.

The movie, which stars Isabel May as Zoe and Thomas Jane as her father Todd, is basically Die Hard but set in a high school with a female protagonist.

Run Hide Fight has garnered some media attention due to its being the first film distributed by The Daily Wire, the conservative media outlet founded in 2015 by political commentator Ben Shapiro. The movie is available for streaming exclusively on The Daily Wire for paid subscribers beginning on Friday January 15th.

As Andrew Brietbart once said, “politics is downstream of culture” and with this in mind Shapiro is leading the charge for conservatives to make a more concerted effort to be involved in popular culture, long a bastion of liberal domination.

Conservatives have for decades railed against liberals’ control of entertainment, decrying the impact it has in shaping public sentiment. But despite all the handwringing, conservatives have never really made a serious move to compete in that arena, just complain about it.

Conservative filmmakers have traditionally lacked the talent, skill and craft to make worthwhile conservative art or entertainment, which is usually so politically heavy-handed, artistically obtuse, intellectually trite and emotionally infantile as to be ridiculously unwatchable.

Run Hide Fight sets out to reverse that trend.

As someone more arthouse than action movie, more cinema than politics and who has zero interest in Ben Shapiro, his whiny politics and his even whinier voice, my expectations going into Run Hide Fight were very low, and my assessment is as follows.

The film is most definitely derivative, formulaic and predictable as it borrows liberally from the Die Hard blueprint. The structure of the narrative and the character archetypes are almost identical to Die Hard…but not as good.

For example, one-dimensional bad guy Tristan Voy and his henchmen are pale imitations of Die Hard’s deliciously devious villain Hans Gruber and his collection of monstrous minions.

The film also suffers from some sloppy directing and flimsy storytelling as director Kyle Rankin is no master craftsman like the criminally under valued John McTiernan.

Rankin’s decision to juxtapose the realistic and viscerally unnerving school shooting violence with the action hero fantasy violence of Zoe’s John McClain-esque counter-attack is definitely tonally jarring, disorienting and off-putting.

But there are also some bright spots.

The well paced film runs an hour and forty-nine minutes and kept me engaged the whole time.

The film’s politics are pretty subtle, with conservative values just a back drop, not the main attraction.

And finally, Isabel May does a terrific job in carrying the whole movie. May is not Bruce Willis, but she is a formidable force and flashes moments of genuine brilliance in the movie.

Is Run Hide Fight a great movie? No. But it also isn’t a bad movie. To its credit, it is, like the vast majority of Hollywood’s output, just a plain old regular movie…but that is a huge first baby step for conservatives trying to get into the pop culture game.

The problem is the film is only streaming on The Daily Wire and to see it you must pay to subscribe. I understand what Shapiro is trying to do with this business plan, but I think it’s terribly flawed.

This film is definitely geared toward a teen audience and what Shapiro wants to do is bring young adults to his website to see his lone film, and then stick around to read and listen to right-wing news in the hopes of bringing them into the conservative fold.

This single film alone just isn’t good enough though for some teenager to expend enough time, mental energy and money to actually subscribe to a website they’ll only use once to watch a middling movie in a market already flooded with a cornucopia of middling movies.

Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or the myriad of other streaming services are teeming with a plethora of similarly mediocre, mildly entertaining films, whereas The Daily Wire only has this one.

Sure, the people who already subscribe will be happy to have access to Run Hide Fight, but by limiting who can see the film, Shapiro is just reinforcing his echo chamber and not expanding his reach, which if conservatives want to get into the pop culture war should be his ultimate goal.

If Run Hide Fight were available on video-on-demand and anybody could rent it for $5 or buy it for $15, thousands of young adults would watch it and it could maybe help The Daily Wire build a relationship with an untapped audience. If VOD services refused to carry the film, that would only generate free publicity and rebel cache for the movie.

Shapiro’s current business model loses out on the money from expanded access via video-on-demand and myopically cuts off his right-wing nose to spite his liberal-hating face by letting only true blue conservatives see it.

As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, and Run Hide Fight is a decent enough teen action thriller that it would make a good impression on young adult audiences, if only they had an easy opportunity to see it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption and Conspiracy - A Review

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Although the film features some compelling talking heads, its thesis is too shallow and one note to compulsory viewing.

The new Netflix documentary ‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption and Conspiracy’ pulls its conspiratorial punches in favor of the establishment friendly route of blaming racism

 The documentary lacks insight and profundity because it studiously avoids the hard questions in favor of easy answers.

Crack: Cocaine, corruption and conspiracy, directed by Stanley Nelson, recounts the rise of crack cocaine in the 1980’s and the calamitous War on Drugs unleashed in response to it.

Cocaine, corruption and conspiracy are three things I can’t get enough of, so when this documentary was released on Netflix January 11th, I dove right in. The movie certainly lives up to its name as it does chronicle cocaine and corruption, but when it tries to tackle conspiracy it stumbles noticeably.

The film opens strongly with a chapter titled “Greed is Good” that highlights the ties between the muscular American capitalism of the Reagan revolution of the 1980’s and the explosion of the drug trade in America’s inner cities. 

The drug dealer as a black market, underclass extension of the archetypal American entrepreneur, is a compelling idea, but unfortunately, the film quickly eschews such high-minded observations and devolves into purely race-based analysis.

The film’s thesis is that crack, the media and political response to it, and the War on Drugs, were a function of racism.

The documentary repeatedly makes this assertion and assumes it to be true but unfortunately never actually proves it. In fact, the movie is often at cross-purposes with itself over its race-based contention.

For instance, the film claims that due to racism, law enforcement originally didn’t police black neighborhoods and therefore let drugs flourish. When black communities demanded aggressive police action to combat crack and officials responded with increased policing of black neighborhoods, that’s deemed racism too.

The documentary is chock full of this sort of circular logic, confirmation bias and shirking of responsibility.

Another racial argument is that the government’s amenable response to the opioid crisis, which affects more white people, as opposed to its draconian response to the crack epidemic, which affected poor black neighborhoods, is proof of racism.

This ignores a fact that the film details extensively, that the crack epidemic was accompanied by massive gun violence, something that hasn’t occurred with heroin.

Drug gangs selling crack engaged in gun battles over territory that resulted in many deaths, but it wasn’t just drug users and dealers that were dying, it was civilians caught in the crossfire too. This led to much public outcry and government officials resolving to stop the bloodshed.

As Sam Quinones reports in his 2015 book Dreamland, Mexican heroin dealers in the U.S. use a very different approach than violent crack dealers. To avoid police attention, these dealers don’t carry guns or use violence, and target smaller cities with a customer friendly approach that includes phone orders and direct delivery. In essence, these dealers have become like the Big Pharma companies that pushed the scourge of opioids onto the American public with the blessing of the government and medical establishment in the first place.

The documentary ignores these facts in favor of reducing everything to simple racism.

As for the “conspiracy” in the film’s title, the movie raises but then refuses to answer whether the CIA smuggled cocaine into the U.S. from Central America (thus creating the crack epidemic) during the Iran-Contra affair.

This “conspiracy” is referenced numerous times but while never refuted, it’s also never endorsed. The furthest the film goes is to say that it’s understandable that black people believe in this conspiracy since they’ve been so victimized by the government and the war on drugs.

There is compelling evidence that the CIA did smuggle cocaine into the country and were responsible for the explosion of crack and guns in inner city neighborhoods.

Gary Webb famously wrote about this in 1996 for The Mercury News and in his 1998 book, Dark Alliance.  In response, the mainstream media quickly jumped to the defense of the CIA and pilloried Webb, essentially ending his career. Webb ended up “committing suicide” in 2004 by shooting himself twice in the head.

An Inspector-General’s report later verified much of what Webb claimed according to journalist and Webb biographer Nick Schou who wrote, "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade."

The CIA is ruthless and amoral, so their use of the drug trade as a social destabilizer and off the books income source shouldn’t be shocking.

Alexander Cockburn details the intelligence community’s history of llegal drug operations in his 2014 book Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. According to Cockburn the CIA was testing LSD on unsuspecting civilians in San Francisco and smuggling heroin from Vietnam in the 60’s, running cocaine and guns from Central and South America in the 80’s, and restarted the opium trade in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001.

The documentary dutifully ignores Webb and Cockburn’s conspiratorial context, and its cowardly agnostic approach make the film seem like controlled opposition, as it simply recycles establishment sanctioned talking points around the war on drugs and uses racism as a shield to avoid bigger questions. In other words, the movie is just another opiate for the myopic mainstream masses.

Racism and a CIA conspiracy can both be, and probably are, major contributors to the moral atrocity and social calamity that is the War on Drugs, but shouting one and tap dancing around the other turn Crack into just another documentary that would rather tell people what they want to hear, rather than tell them the whole uncomfortable truth.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Pieces of a Woman: Review and Commentary

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. After the first thirty minutes the film isn’t very good but Vanessa Kirby is very good in it.

Pieces of a Woman is a story of forgiveness… so why is Netflix so keen to cancel its star, Shia LaBeouf?

Pieces of a Woman, the new arthouse film starring Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf that is garnering some Oscar buzz, premiered on Netflix on January 7.

The film, written by Kata Wéber and directed by Kornél Mundruczó tells the story of a Boston couple who suffer a traumatic home birth of their daughter. 

The film’s theme is the power of forgiveness, even for the most egregious of injuries. This would seem a prescient and poignant lesson in our current age of relentless cancel culture and shameless embrace of victimhood. Unfortunately, while that is a theme we need right now, this muddled misfire of a movie is not an adequate delivery system.

Pieces of a Woman starts off spectacularly, with a masterfully executed, compelling and captivating opening thirty minutes. But after that it quickly deteriorates into a maudlin, melodramatic exercise chock full of every dramatic cliché imaginable.

On the bright side, the film is an actor’s showcase and the luminous Vanessa Kirby makes the very most of the opportunity. Kirby, best known for her work on Netflix’s The Crown, gloriously transcends the mundane script and middling direction by giving a subtle, specific, dynamic and magnetic performance as the grieving yet resilient Martha.

Netflix is pushing for Kirby, already a Best Actress winner at the Venice Film Festival, to get a much-deserved Oscar nomination.

Netflix is also promoting the rest of the cast to get awards consideration… well, almost all of the rest of the cast. Every cast member is featured on Netflix’s “For Your Awards Consideration” webpage, except for Shia LaBeouf.

Why has LaBeouf, the main supporting actor in the movie who some critics – not me – claim is “remarkable”, been excluded from Netflix’s awards consideration material?

The answer is that LaBeouf’s former girlfriend, singer FKA Twigs, filed suit against him in December of 2020 for past sexual, physical and emotional abuse. In the wake of this lawsuit other women, including singer Sia, have come forward making varying claims of mistreatment.

In response LaBeouf wrote to the New York Times, “I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel. I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years…I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I'm ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt."

He later stated that many of the allegations were not true but that he owed the women “the opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done.”

He added that he was “a sober member of a 12-step program” and in therapy. “I am not cured of my PTSD and alcoholism, but I am committed to doing what I need to do to recover, and I will forever be sorry to the people that I may have harmed along the way.”

So, in a surreal twist, LaBeouf’s character in Pieces of a Woman is an at-times abusive alcoholic and in real life the actor is now accused of being an abusive alcoholic.

This is obviously a complex situation, one that requires a foregoing of our culture’s compulsive and muscular Manichaeism. But it would seem Netflix has not absorbed the nuanced message of forgiveness highlighted in Pieces of a Woman and are, ironically, purging LaBeouf from promotional material for a film about the power of radical forgiveness.

LaBeouf is not alone in being tossed into the memory hole by Netflix over allegations of past misdeeds. Johnny Depp recently lost a libel case against The Sun whom he sued for calling him a “wife beater”. In response, Netflix removed all of Depp’s films from its service.

It’s important to note that neither LaBeouf nor Depp have been proven to have committed any crime, they’ve only been accused. And yet Netflix didn’t hesitate to swiftly punish them anyway.

It’s also curious that Depp’s former wife and alleged victim, Amber Heard, has also been accused of abuse (by Depp) but has faced no public consequences from Netflix or anyone else.

Another indicator of our culture’s victimhood bias is in nearly every internet article I’ve read detailing FKA Twigs’ lawsuit against LaBeouf and Netflix’s punitive actions, there was a notice informing readers of specific resources available to them if they ever “experience domestic violence”.

This is a commendable public service, but it’s striking that despite these articles also referencing LaBeouf’s alcoholism and mental health issues, none of them ever direct readers suffering from those conditions to equally helpful resources.

The reality is that these notices and Netflix’s punitive disappearing of LaBeouf and Depp are simply exercises in virtue signaling and pandering to the online outrage mob.

LaBeouf and Depp may be terrible people who’ve done terrible things, but dispensing punishment and condemnation before accusations are proven is unwise and unhealthy. Even after findings of guilt, we should attempt the difficult but imperative task of foregoing vengeance and victimhood in favor of cultivating repentance and forgiveness, which would have longer lasting effects and be a path to a more decent, kind and compassionate culture.

In conclusion, Pieces of a Woman doesn’t live up to the stellar work Vanessa Kirby does in it, just like Netflix doesn’t live up to the enlightened principle of forgiveness at the heart of the film.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Episode 27 - Wonder Woman 1984

In this tension-filled episode Barry and I discuss the much anticipated Wonder Woman 1984. Highlights include shared frustrations over the movie‘s missed opportunities, multiple mispronunciations of Gal Gadot’s name and an enraged me viciously assaulting Barry over a misunderstanding.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Ep. 27 - Wonder Woman 1984

Thank you for listening and Happy New Year!!

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 26 - Mank

In this episode of everybody’s favorite cinema podcast, Barry and I debate David Fincher’s polarizing new film Mank. Topics discussed include Gary Oldman’s brilliance, Fincher’s frustratingly complex genius and an obscure old movie named Citizen Kane.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Ep. 26 - Mank

Thank you for listening!

©2020

Death to 2020: A Review and Commentary

In a year ripe for satire, Netflix’s predictable mockumentary ‘Death to 2020’ is proof of comedy’s calamitous demise

The film’s tepid and establishment friendly comedic takes on 2020 feel like the final nail in comedy’s coffin.

Death to 2020 is the new Netflix mockumentary that sets out to humorously sum up the nightmare that was 2020. The film, which premiered on the streaming service on December 27th, recounts the actual terrible events of the past year and has fake experts played by actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Lisa Kudrow on as talking heads to comedically comment upon them.

The makers of Death to 2020, Charles Brooker and Anabel Jones, are best known in the U.S. for their terrifically terrifying and unnervingly prescient sci-fi horror show Black Mirror. But U.K. viewers first got to know them from their more comedy-oriented projects like the “Wipe Series”.

Death to 2020 is much more like the Wipe Series than Black Mirror as it attempts to be a comedy. Unfortunately, it fails in that endeavor.

What makes Death to 2020 so irritating is that it has nothing unique to say and it doesn’t even say the same tired old stuff uniquely.

Granted, some of the jokes are mildly amusing, and some of the performances are good, Tracey Ullman as Queen Elizabeth II, Hugh Grant as a stuffy and ornery British historian and Diane Morgan as one of the top five most average people in the world, are well done. Others, such as Leslie Jones as a behavioral psychologist and Lisa Kudrow as a conservative spokeswoman, are decidedly not.

Ultimately the film has the comedic heft, impact and staying power of a snide and snarky tweet.  At best it resembles a high-end, star-studded 2020 version of one of those silly Best of the 80’s clip shows on VH1.

The biggest problem with Death to 2020 though is the problem with most comedy nowadays, in that it is such a suffocating and stultifyingly safe and painfully predictable exercise as to be frustrating and fruitless.

If you have seen a single monologue in the past year by any of the sanctimonious, self-righteous serfs to the establishment on late night tv, such as Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Bill Maher, Trevor Noah or John Oliver, then you’ve experienced the same impotent comedy of Death to 2020. 

The tired formula of the late night comedy eunuchs, where they flaccidly recite establishment-approved witticisms devoid of insight and edge, is dutifully replicated here just in mockumentary form.

The result is, not surprisingly, that there’s not an ounce of originality or profundity found in the hour and ten-minute film that is too long by roughly an hour.

Also clearly lacking from Death to 2020 is any semblance of comedic testicular fortitude as the usual safe targets are held up for ridicule. Of course Trump is pilloried because he is a walking punchline, as is clueless Joe Biden, who, amusingly, is referred to both as a “prehistoric concierge” and a ”civil war hero”, but obviously none of that is even remotely daring.

“Karens”, conservatives and anti-lockdown activists are also the butt of many jokes, but the equally golden opportunity to lambaste the illiberal left for laughs is never taken. For instance, the comedy rich environment of the Black Lives Matter movement is not mocked, and the “protestors” looting and burning businesses in the name of George Floyd don’t get taken to task either.

But most telling is that also absent from the comedy firing line are celebrities, like the highly hysterical dopes and dullards who vomited out the repugnantly self-serving “Imagine” and “I Take Responsibility“ videos.

By ignoring these subjects Death to 2020 reveals itself to be little more than just another pandering video compliantly committed to kissing the right asses and devoutly dedicated to never biting the hand that feeds it.

As George Carlin famously once said of the powerful in America, “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it!” But the establishment court jesters who made Death to 2020 either are desperate to become members or are already in the club, as their resolute refusal to challenge the status quo is a perfect representation of the sad state of comedy in 2020.

Yes, there are some notable exceptions, Dave Chappelle and Bill Burr being the most prominent, but beyond that, whether it be Stephen Colbert weeping on air like one of the buffoons he used to belittle, or Jimmy Fallon castrating himself with a cowardly apology for an allegedly offensive blackface bit from twenty years ago, or John Oliver’s pathetic pandering to wokeness, or Saturday Night Live’s fierce commitment to anti-comedy or any of the other mainstream comedians who have groveled and genuflected to those who hold the power in our culture, 2020 has been the absolute nadir for contemporary comedy.

The bottom line is that 2020 has been a most brutal year that may have changed our world forever but it is also rife with profound opportunities for humor. Unfortunately for us, 2020 may also have killed comedy, and Death to 2020 is its decidedly unoriginal and unfunny death knell.

My Rating: 2 our of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Although at times mildly amusing, there is nothing original or noteworthy to see here.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Just when you thought 2020 couldn't get any worse - along comes 'Wonder Woman 1984'

 Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 12 seconds

Wonder Women 1984 is the horrendous, man-hating, militaristic, imperialist movie no one wanted but that 2020 deserves.

On Christmas Day the highly anticipated Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84) premiered in theatres and on the streaming service HBO Max. The film, co-written and directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot, is the sequel to the smash hit 2017 film Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman (2017) wasn’t a perfect movie by any stretch, but it was a well-crafted, thoroughly entertaining superhero origin story. The film featured a star making performance from the gloriously gorgeous Gal Gadot and tapped into the anti-Trump feminist zeitgeist of the time and was handsomely rewarded with a hefty $822 million box office.

As for Wonder Woman 1984, it is the exact opposite of Wonder Woman as everything good about the original is bludgeoned to death in the sequel.

In Wonder Woman, Gadot’s character, Diana/Wonder Woman is forced into a fish-out-of-water scenario and must adapt to the rigid confines of feminine etiquette in 1918, a task rife with comedy for an Amazonian warrior princess. This played to Gadot’s strengths as an actress and her impassioned naivety came off as charming and magnetic.

In WW84, the fish-out-of-water is Steve (Chris Pine), Diana’s resurrected boyfriend…and that falls entirely flat and fails miserably. The predictably unclever lowlight of which is a 1980’s fashion montage that features a recurring American flag fanny pack.

Diana is no longer naïve in WW84 but the bearer of burdens, and this shift brutally exposes Gadot as being a wooden, severely limited, remarkably dead-eyed and dull actress.

As for the plot of WW84, it is so incoherent as to be inconceivable. At one point a tertiary character yells out “what the hell is going on here!” and I completely concurred with that sentiment. I had almost no clue what the hell was happening most of the time in this movie, but thankfully the characters were so poorly written and dreadfully acted that I didn’t care.

As for the film’s politics…if you like white male hating movies that feel like two and a half hour long commercials for American and Israeli militarism and imperialism...Wonder Woman 1984 is the movie for you.

Wonder Woman (2017) succeeded because it wasn’t heavy handed in its cultural politics, but no such deftness and delicacy is on display in WW84.  

The film makes perfectly clear that white guys, Steve the lone exception, are irredeemably evil and painfully one-dimensional. To prove this point there are endless scenes of both Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) and Diana being sexually harassed by 80’s guys, all of them white except for an Asian guy who is apparently white guy adjacent.

White guys are even revealed as the reason why the film’s main villain, Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal)- a Latino, is bad. A flashback shows his villainy being born when he was bullied as a child by…you guessed it…evil white guys!

Another group held up as evil are Middle Easterners. There’s an “Egyptian” Emir who’s so bad he wishes for and receives a giant wall that encircles his Caliphate-esque kingdom of Bialya. The giant wall sprouts up and cuts off water to poor people and essentially imprisons them…which sounds a lot like Israel’s West Bank wall used against Palestinians…but of course in a supreme bit of Orwellianism in action, in Wonder Woman 1984 the bad guys creating the wall aren’t Israelis but Arabs.

The film’s unsubtle and unsurprising politics are made shamelessly clear when Gadot, who as a former Miss Israel (2004) and a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Force is a walking avatar for Israel, fights a convoy of heavily armed Arabs, and saves Arab children from being killed by those same evil Arab men.

Ultimately, if you love America’s belligerent foreign policy, especially in the Middle East and in relation to Russia…you’ll definitely connect with WW84.

Repulsive politics aside, this film is just appallingly directed by Patty Jenkins, as it is humorless, tedious and devoid of any drama, tension or notable action.

Jenkins made a name for herself with Wonder Woman, and has since signed a deal to direct some Star Wars movies, but her dismal work on WW84 has exposed her, just like it did Gadot, as an extremely limited one-trick pony.

Jenkins’ inability to shoot a decent fight scene, and to exploit the 80’s for comedy and cultural relevance, are calamitous comic book cinema crimes of negligence.

Jenkins doesn’t even plumb the plethora of popular 80’s music in order to set tone and place and appease her nostalgia-craving audience, a tactic used to great success by recent tv shows like Stranger Things. Unbelievably there isn’t a single 80’s song in the entire film, and that is the most monstrous moviemaking malpractice imaginable!

WW84 saves the worst for last as in its climactic scene Gadot gives a monologue directly to the camera meant to be profound and poignant that is pretentious and patronizing…which is eerily reminiscent of Gadot’s other 2020 misfire, the “Imagine” viral video. In that disastrous effort she and her fabulously wealthy celebrity friends condescendingly sing John Lennon’s saccharine anthem in a tone-deaf show of faux solidarity with those poor little people suffering during the pandemic.

A testament to how unbelievably unbearable this year has been is the fact that the best Gal Gadot movie released in 2020 was “Imagine”. It’s entirely fitting that this awful, dreadful, no-good year should end with a movie as awful, dreadful, and no-good as Wonder Woman 1984.

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A dreadfully tedious and idiotic movie that pales in comparison to the first Wonder Woman from 2017.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Midnight Sky - It's the End of George Clooney's World as We Know it...and I Feel Fine.

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

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. The Midnight Sky is so dreadful it makes you wish the earth were uninhabitable…especially for George Clooney

Christmas season is when movie studios put out prestige films and big box office contenders. In normal times, people flock to theatres during the holidays because they’re off work and it gives them something to do with family or, in some cases, to avoid family.

This year with coronavirus closing many theatres, the studios are still using the holidays to roll out their biggest movies but now they’re using streaming services to supplement or replace theatres. For instance, on Christmas day the Pixar animated film Soul debuts on Disney + and the highly anticipated Wonder Woman 1984 premieres in both theatres and on HBO Max.

Not to be outdone, Netflix’s early entry into the big movie holiday sweepstakes, The Midnight Sky – a film with a $100 million budget directed by and starring George Clooney, was released on December 23rd.

I’m sure Clooney and Netflix were hoping that The Midnight Sky would be the comeback vehicle to launch him back into the pop culture stratosphere…but unfortunately it is neither a crowd-pleaser nor an art house gem, and thus this cinematic rocket crashes and burns on the launch pad.

 Set in 2049, The Midnight Sky tells the story of Augustine (Clooney), a scientist dying of cancer in an outpost at the Arctic Circle who must protect a stranded young girl after an ecological apocalypse while also trying to warn an incoming space crew to stay away from earth and to start civilization over again on a moon of Jupiter. If that sounds ridiculously convoluted or just plain ridiculous to you, you aren’t alone.

Despite boasting a top-notch cast that includes Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Kyle Chandler and Demian Bechir, there is no genuine drama to be found in this muddled misfire of a movie.

I get what Clooney was going for with The Midnight Sky. Ever the good Hollywood liberal he wanted to make a big budget, prestige movie with a diverse cast that dramatized climate change. I’m willing to bet Clooney at least considered casting Greta Thunberg as the little girl in the movie just so he could more emphatically make his point and signal his limousine liberal virtue.

The problem is that this movie is so painfully predictable, and so full of saccharine sentimentality and maudlin melodrama that watching it makes you yearn for any disaster, ecological or otherwise, to strike as soon as possible in order to end your misery.

The film attempts to be a family drama, a space drama, an adventure story and a race-against-the-clock thriller, and it fails miserably at all of those things. Ultimately it tries so hard to be everything it ends up being a whole bunch of nothing.

It also features a dramatic climax so predictable yet cringe worthy it made me roll my eyes so hard I nearly gave myself a seizure.

I’m old enough to remember when George Clooney was at the top of the Hollywood heap and a highly respected actor, director and producer.

He was admired for being a tv and movie star but also for producing a daring live tv version of Fail Safe, directing the Oscar nominated Good Night and Good Luck, and for his Oscar winning acting in Syriana. He was also respected for starring in some ambitious movies, like Three Kings, Solaris, Michael Clayton and The American, which were notable artistic ventures for a big movie star.

But it has been quite a while since Clooney has acted in a movie that mattered, and his directing career has been on a similarly downward trajectory.

His first directorial feature was Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), a quirky and somewhat endearing little movie, followed by Good Night and Good Luck (2005), which garnered him a Best Director and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination. After that there’s been a precipitous decline.

Leatherheads (2008), The Ides of March (2011), The Monuments Men (2014) and Suburbicon (2017) are all forgettable movies rightfully condemned to the bottom of the bargain bin at a Walmart check out counter.

Sadly, The Midnight Sky might be the very worst of them all.

In my mind Clooney has always been a sort of a poor man’s Warren Beatty, a pretty faced womanizer who wanted to be taken seriously so he used partisan politics to mask his inherent frivolousness and intellectual vapidity and vacuity.

Beatty is by far the better artist, actor, director and political animal than Clooney could ever hope to be…but that hasn’t stopped gorgeous George from using the Beatty blueprint and using it well, as Clooney’s career rewards have far exceeded his limited talent. But Clooney’s recent recurring failures, The Midnight Sky included, have exposed him to be a Hollywood emperor with no clothes.

Of course, we should shed no tears for George Clooney as he is insanely rich and lives a delightfully comfortable existence…but the writing is on the wall and in the bottom line business that is Hollywood, if Clooney doesn’t churn out a hit or award winner soon, it will be his career that suffers the apocalypse instead of earth. 

The bottom line is that The Midnight Sky is a mess of a movie you shouldn’t waste one second of your time on. My Christmas gift to you is that I watched this piece of garbage so you don’t have to. Merry Christmas to everyone!

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This is a disastrous disaster movie.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Chadwick Boseman Saves His Best for Last in the Middling 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom'

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which stars Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman and is based upon the August Wilson stage play of the same name, premiered this past Friday on Netflix with much fanfare.

The buzz surrounding the film, which tells the story of legendary blues singer Ma Rainey and her band as they endure a tumultuous recording session, proclaimed that Boseman, the famed star of Black Panther who died of colon cancer this past August at the age of 43, would win a Best Actor Oscar for his final film role.

I went into my viewing of Ma Rainey skeptical of the voracity of Boseman’s supposedly Oscar worthy work. In the wake of the tragic death of an artist, particularly a young one, critics often succumb to sentimentality and overlook skill. I assumed the same was true of critics praising Boseman, who plays Levee, the combustible cornet player in Ma Rainey’s band who’s blessed with prodigious talent and equal ambition.

I also brought my own personal history regarding Boseman’s past acting work to my viewing. I know it is blasphemous to say now…but I ‘ve never been impressed by Boseman as an actor. I always felt he was a safe and comfortable screen presence but lacked charisma as a movie star and depth as an artist.

After finally viewing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which currently boasts a 99% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes, I can report two things… critics are right about Boseman, who gives a superb performance, but they are terribly wrong about the film itself, which is thin cinematic gruel.

In fact Boseman’s performance is all-the-more-noteworthy because it overcomes the inept direction and flimsy filmmaking that surrounds it.

Boseman’s death unquestionably brings a profundity to the film that would otherwise be lacking. It’s impossible to watch one of Boseman’s scintillating monologues as Levee where he rants and raves against God, without the uncomfortable acknowledgement that the actor was grappling with his own tenuous mortality at the time of filming, which was about a year before he died.

In the film, Boseman’s usually safe and comfortable screen presence is replaced by a pulsating existential energy that frantically emanates from his every pore. Boseman’s nice guy persona is used as a subversive weapon in Ma Rainey, as it lulls the audience into a false sense of security, and that deception adds a powerful depth and dimension to his character.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie has nowhere near as much meat on its bones as Boseman’s feast of superb acting.

The blame for the film’s failure falls squarely on director George C. Wolfe. Wolfe, a stage director with minimal and dismal film credits, is desperately out of his league on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

The film feels rushed and dramatically unmoored. It has the aesthetic of a made-for-tv movie, so much so that I was half expecting, if not hoping for, commercial breaks. It also lacks any narrative rhythm and is as visually stale as it is awkwardly staged.

Viola Davis plays Ma Rainey and she too is garnering critical praise and Oscar buzz, but her performance is forced and ineffective. Davis is an actress that seems to want audiences to like her, and her Ma Rainey lacks genuine grounding because of it, or to put it another way, her Ma Rainey’s bottom isn’t big enough or black enough (in a metaphysical and symbolic sense - not a physical or racial one) to convince.

Davis’s performance, and in turn the film, also suffer greatly because her lip-syncing is so distractingly devoid of any believability or vitality.

It is terribly unfortunate that the work of August Wilson, one of America’s greatest playwrights, has yet to be successfully adapted to cinema. Wilson’s classic Fences hit the big screen in 2016 and garnered similar critical praise but that too felt undeserved and fueled by something other than honest critical assessment.

The truth is that establishment critics often critique racially themed films made by minority directors featuring minority casts using paternalistic kid gloves and on a pronounced curve. For example, critics swooned over the middling and mundane Marvel movie Black Panther.  So I have no doubt that the current critical adulation for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is due to the film’s racial politics rather than its supposed cinematic worthiness.

The reality is that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the height of middlebrow mediocrity, but it will still attract copious amounts of fawning from poseurs and pawns eager to signal their anti-racist virtue. One of the worst consequences of our current racial moral panic is that film and film criticism has become so politically correct and socially delicate as to be rendered artistically irrelevant and intellectually impotent.

Fortunately, those heaping praise and adoration on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will only reveal themselves to be shamelessly pandering philistines rather than studiously sophisticated cinephiles.

Unfortunately, in these hopelessly woke times this sub-par film is guaranteed to garner a plethora of Oscar nominations, but none will be deserving except for Boseman’s.

The bottom line is that it’s a tragedy that Chadwick Boseman’s greatest performance came in his final role and that it had to happen in such a muddled misfire of a movie as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recoimmendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A very poorly made film, but Chadwick Boseman gives a truly terrific performance - his best ever.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Documentary 'Room 2806: The Accusation' - Explores the Seedy Side of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Former Poster Boy for the Global Elite

 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes 806 seconds

The docu-mini-series showcases sex, money, power, class, race and gender as it dives deep into the fetid swamp of a controversial 2011 sex assault case in a futile search for truth.

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. An at-times interesting and entertaining exercise, but ultimately and unfortunately, it is never an insightful or truly satisfying experience.

Room 2806: The Accusation, the new four-part documentary mini-series that premiered on Netflix December 7th, tells the twisted tale of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the sexual assault claim brought against him in 2011.

In 2011, DSK was at the zenith of his career. As head of the IMF he had performed admirably during the 2008 financial crisis and now seemed poised to defeat unpopular incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy and become the president of France.

Life was good for the darling of the Socialist Party and of the socialite set, due to his career success and his marriage to the beautiful heiress Anne Sinclair, an accomplished and connected French journalist.

Then DSK went to New York on a business trip and stayed at the posh Sofitel Hotel in room 2806, the presidential suite. This is where, on May 14, 2011, the 62-year-old had a brief sexual encounter with a32-year-old housekeeper, Nafissatou Diallo, right before leaving to catch a scheduled flight.

Diallo, an illiterate immigrant from Guinea, quickly made the claim to hotel security, and then the police, that she was sexually assaulted. In response, NYPD swiftly arrested Straus-Kahn at JFK airport.

And thus begins the tumultuous journey to find out the truth of what actually happened in Room 2806.

Along the way DSK is charged with sexual assault, held in the notorious Rikers Island jail, resigns from the IMF and loses any chance of becoming the French president. In addition, both DSK and Diallo have their lives upturned, backgrounds scoured and are ultimately thoroughly humiliated in the press…and yet the truth still remains elusive.

Room 2806 is like a B-movie or dime store novel in that it is filled with a series of evermore-improbable twists and turns.

Conspiracy theories, not unfounded and not satisfactorily debunked, swirl around the case as French intelligence and their connections with Sarkozy and the Sofitel’s parent company, raise serious questions as to whether DSK was set-up.

There are also shocking revelations about both DSK and Diallo, which leave the viewer dismayed and disoriented, as neither protagonist can be trusted.

The well-paced series uses May 14, 2011, the date of the alleged sexual assault, as the epicenter of the story, but bounces forward and backward in time in an attempt to give more context.

This approach initially humanizes DSK, who, at times, comes across as an impressive and sympathetic figure in this real-life melodrama.

Despite his power and wealth, which usually protect people like him, DSK’s elite social status is instead an incentive for law enforcement and the media to be vicious towards him. As DSK’s licentious proclivities, both past and future, are exposed his friends and supporters claim he’s merely a libertine and lothario rather than a rapacious sexual predator, but that is far too generous an assessment. As the film reveals, DSK is a lecherous, licentious, lascivious and depraved degenerate who is a shameless slave to his own voracious ambitions and appetites.

Unsurprisingly, Daillo is sympathetic…at first. The narrative of the hard working, single parent immigrant preyed upon by an entitled and debauched elite is a compelling one. But there is something off about her…and those feelings of unease are backed up when she’s exposed as being a much more complicated and compromised character than originally portrayed.

As ultimately unlikeable as DSK and Diallo both are, this case attracts a collection of odious secondary characters like dung beetles to a manure pile.

Shakespeare once wrote, “first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”, and this insight is certainly applicable to the DSK case. His lawyers are, not surprisingly considering his enormous wealth and status, the very best in the business. Ben Brafman is one of the most talented and notorious lawyers in New York, and for the right price he quickly slithers to DSK’s defense with fork-tongued aplomb.

Diallo has a pair of lawyers as well, neither of which seem to have a brain between them, and they bend over backwards to aggrandize and embarrass themselves in the documentary.

Then there are the self-serving activists that use the awful case as a platform from which to shout their inanities. There is a black former NYPD officer who is now a race activist who does a cheap Al Sharpton impersonation and screams that Diallo is a victim of racism – even though that is a vacuous claim and there is explicit evidence to the contrary.

Feminists plant their protest flag on the dung heap as well. Some even suggest that the DSK case was the true beginning of the #MeToo movement. This seems a historically tenuous claim, but that is expected from vapid hysterics.

The events documented in Room 2806: The Accusation leave you feeling in despair for humanity and in need of a shower. It also leaves you believing DSK, Diallo, their lawyers, the cops and the parasitical activists, are all vile creatures that truly deserve the pronounced misery of each other’s company.

Little wonder that DSK, now an embittered 71-year-old forced into the shadows, has announced plans to release his own documentary next year, claiming the “time has come for me to speak out (something he declines to do in Room 2806), Is it likely to be more illuminating? I suspect it will simply throw another forkful or two on the steaming dung heap he created in the first place.

In the final analysis, wading through the muck and mire that is the DSK case by watching Room 2806: The Accusation, is at-times, an interesting and entertaining exercise, but ultimately and unfortunately, it is never an insightful or truly satisfying one.

 A version of this this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Mank is a Tale of Old Hollywood - and of our Corrupted Modern Age

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Hollywood loves stories about Hollywood but Mank doesn’t glamorize Tinsel Town’s golden age but rather reveals the wound festering beneath the mythology…the same wound inflicting modern America.

On its surface, Mank, the new film by esteemed director David Fincher, chronicles the life and times of famed screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, most notably his struggle to write the Oscar winning screenplay for Citizen Kane.

Just below that gloriously photographed black and white surface though, a complex story of class struggle, financial control and political corruption lives, and it is that narrative that makes Mank a story for our time.

Herman Mankiewicz a.k.a Mank, brilliantly portrayed by Oscar winner Gary Oldman, is a disheveled drunkard and degenerate gambler with an undeniable roguish charm. A brilliant wordsmith, Mank’s quick and erudite wit gets him in the good graces of the media mogul William Randolph Hearst, and by extension, the Hollywood heavyweights at MGM, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg.

It is from this privileged perch at the luxurious dining tables of W.R. Hearst and in the offices of L.B. Mayer and Thalberg, that Mank is shown the diabolically deceptive practices and devious machinations of those in power. Mank’s growing discomfort and disgust at the charade of these powerful but hollow men eventually manifests in some alcohol-fueled, but extremely insightful diatribes.

But Mank, ever the slave to his own destructive impulses, is impotent to do anything about these men…until the opportunity to write a screenplay for the “boy genius” Orson Welles comes along.

With Citizen Kane, Mank uses his mighty pen to embarrass and eviscerate the all-powerful Hearst while also extending a middle finger to the repugnant Mayer.

Mank resonates in our current time because like Hearst and Mayer in the time of Citizen Kane, the new generation of decadent robber barons from Wall Street to Silicon Valley (Netflix – the film’s producer and distributor, prominent among them) wield their financial, cultural and political power to dominate and control society from their gilded castles while the rest of us scratch and claw just to stay alive.

In Mank there is a terrific scene where Louis B. Mayer tearfully speaks to a collection of MGM workers, whom he calls family, asking them to take a 50% pay cut in order to save the company. Mayer’s performance in that meeting is better than any acting he financed during his long reign at the movie studio, as he gets the workers to give up their money while he walks away giving up nothing.

That scene speaks to the nefarious political and media narrative of the last forty years since the Reagan (and Thatcher) revolution brought us the unmitigated horrors of financialization and trickle-down economics cloaked in the waving flag of an empty patriotism. It also perfectly encapsulates America since the financial collapse of 2007-08, where a plethora of too big to fail corporations with big bosses receiving huge bonuses got bailed out while working people picking up the tab got financially beaten down and will never recover.

It is the anger over that blatant economic unfairness and injustice that fueled movements as disparate as the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders and even Trump’s rise to power. But as Mank shows us, the game is rigged, as the propaganda mills promise to strangle any working class movement in its crib.

As the last two presidential elections proved, oligarchs and their media minions will relentlessly wield identity politics like a cudgel to bludgeon the working class and cease any chance at any economic change. Divide and conquer has never been so easy as in our current age of manufactured victimhood.

The character Mank embodies the impotent confusion of so many American voters. He is a compulsive contrarian and as much as he loathes the malignant management class he is also wary of labor unions. Intuitively a man of the left, Mank is still clear-eyed enough to see that both sides of the duopoly are thoroughly compromised.

The devil’s bargain Mank makes with the power structure costs him his soul, and Citizen Kane is his attempt at personal redemption and revenge for the little guy. Like the rest of us, all Mank is able to do is take pleasure in his small and ultimately inconsequential victory.

Mank’s triumph with Citizen Kane is public but completely personal, as it garners him an Oscar but leaves the power structure that so infuriates him, unbowed, unbent and unbroken…even to this day.

For proof of this one need look no further than the recent election. Americans were forced once again to choose between two vacuous avatars for the same oligarchical ruling class.

Even in the midst of a pandemic and government forced shut down resulting in an economic holocaust for working class people, both parties in Washington steadfastly refuse to consider universal healthcare, universal basic income, or even stimulus payments but are united in their insatiable desire to fellate the corporate class. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, same as every boss we’ve ever had.

As for Mank, it is a slightly flawed, but thoroughly worthwhile, art house film that boasts some A-list talent, chief among them Fincher and Oldman. For those with the patience to stick with it, Mank does what very few movies attempt to do, never mind accomplish…it tells the uncomfortable, complicated and ugly truth about America and Americans. Bravo.

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A complicated film that pulls no political punches. Gary Oldman and David Fincher flex their consider artistic muscles in this challenging but worthwhile drama.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Hillbilly Elegy and the Culture War Clash

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 11 seconds

IS HILLBILLY ELEGY A TRULY TERRIBLE MOVIE OR ARE LIBERAL CRITICS BLATANTLY BIASED?

The new Netflix film Hillbilly Elegy chronicles life among a dysfunctional white working class Appalachian family and savage reviews from liberal critics has triggered another battle in the culture war.

Hillbilly Elegy, the new film from Oscar winning director Ron Howard, premiered to much fanfare and controversy on Netflix Tuesday.

The film, which stars perennial Oscar nominees Amy Adams and Glenn Close, is based on J.D. Vance’s 2016 autobiography of the same name, and tells the story of how Vance escaped his chaotic upbringing at the hands of his white-working class Appalachian family, most notably his volcanically erratic mother Bev and his hard-edged grandmother Mamaw, and became a Yale Law School graduate.

The book Hillbilly Elegy became a cause célèbre in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election victory because it gave the establishment a glimpse into the misunderstood white working class and poor folk from flyover country that had come out en masse for Trump.

Among the media elite, the shine wore off of Vance and his book pretty quickly, though, as he was labeled too conservative for consumption after having the temerity to label his hometown hillbilly culture as corrosive and self-destructive. Vance’s critique of the Appalachian white working class was just too pro-personal responsibility for the liberal establishment’s tastes.

It is in this context that Hillbilly Elegy has come out in film form and generated a great deal of vitriol and venom from mainstream movie critics.

For example, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe proclaimed it “poverty porn”. Michael O’Sullivan of the Washington Post called it “almost laughably bad – if it weren’t so melodramatic”. And Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times derisively decried the movie as “an unwieldy slop bucket of door-smashing, child-slapping, husband-immolating histrionics”.

These critical eviscerations are not anomalies as the film currently has a dismal 25% critical score review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. There is some pushback though, as the film currently boasts a robust 89% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes.

In response to the cavalcade of critical denouncements, noted conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted about the film “I've seen "Hillbilly Elegy." Amy Adams and Glenn Close are both terrific. The movie is a well-told family drama. The reason the critics are crapping all over it is simple: the book was treated as humanizing "Trump supporters," and is now a Bad Book™. So the movie is also Bad™.”

My experience of Hillbilly Elegy began when I read and the book back in 2016. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it to be an extremely insightful and compelling account.

Hillbilly Elegy is an important book and it should have been an important movie…but having seen it I can report that it most assuredly is not. Instead it is a maudlin, dramatically obtuse, narratively incoherent, appallingly poorly made and atrociously amateurish cinematic venture.

Director Ron Howard is an artistic eunuch not exactly known for his deft cinematic touch, and he is as ham-fisted as ever on Hillbilly Elegy.  Howard clumsily creates a contrived drama and fumbles the film’s flimsy narrative to such an egregious degree as to be cinematically criminal.

Howard’s visually unimaginative, painfully trite and obscenely shallow approach reduces Vance’s dramatically potent life story into a cinematically flaccid cross between a Lifetime movie, an ABC After-School Special and an anti-drug public service announcement.

As for the acting? Amy Adams is one of the best actresses around, but her performance as the volatile Bev is forced and rings entirely false. Decked out in her oversized ‘mom jeans’, with frizzy hair and sans makeup, Adams is devoid of both subtly and humanity. Adams’ performance is such an over-the-top, one-note caricature it is actually embarrassing.

Glenn Close contrived performance as the foul-mouthed matriarch Mamaw doesn’t fare much better. Both Close and Adams are obviously angling for an Oscar with their ugly-fied, faux-gritty acting, but they end up being uncomfortably shallow and cartoonish in their roles.

Ben Shapiro claiming that Hillbilly Elegy is “well-told” and that Adams and Close are “terrific” only proves that he is either being intentionally contrarian in order to stoke the culture war or he really doesn’t know a goddamn thing about movies and acting. I promise you, Hillbilly Elegy is not the hill(billy) that Ben Shapiro should be willing to die on.

With that said, I have no doubt that liberal critics are gleefully overplaying the very bad hand that is Hillbilly Elegy. If the film were made by a minority director as opposed to a pasty white one, and dealt with black poverty as opposed to poor white people, their criticisms of it would be substantially more delicate and thoughtful.

White liberal critics have long been protective and paternalistic toward black artists and films. Examples of which can be found in the critical reception of Spike Lee’s film Da Five Bloods (2020) and Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018). Both movies are dreadful cinematic disasters, but critics fawned over Da Five Bloods and were wholly encouraging of DuVernay’s abysmal film because of its “diversity”.

Hillbilly Elegy could have been treated with the same kid gloves and rose-colored glasses as Lee and DuVernay’s work- but wasn’t, and one can surmise that the white working class subject matter and the conservative politics of the protagonist are a major reason why.

So is Hillbilly Elegy truly that terrible or as Ben Shapiro suggests are liberal movie critics blatantly biased against it?

The answer is definitely…YES…to both.

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Ron Howard at his worst. Just an embarrassingly terrible movie with terrible performances and terrible writing and terrible directing and everything is terrible.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

What Killed Michael Brown? Documentary: A Review

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A must-see new documentary that eviscerates the mainstream narrative on race in America and insightfully reveals the manipulations and machinations that distort modern-day race relations.

What Killed Michael Brown? is the most important documentary of the year. The film, which is exquisitely directed by Eli Steele and gloriously written and narrated by famed conservative black intellectual Shelby Steele, takes a deep dive into the tangled web of race in America through the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014.

From the get go the movie jumps out at you, not with cinematic bombast but with a subtle brilliance. The opening title sequence uses the same distinct font as Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown and by so doing lets viewers know it is unabashedly challenging popular myth.

This film is a searing, scintillating and staggering examination of race in America, but make no mistake, it is not some emotionalist screed or partisan polemic, it is a thoughtful, reasoned and measured commentary.

Shelby Steele, the film’s narrator, is armed with an impressive background in civil rights, a towering intellect and a monumental mastery of language, which allows him to confidently march viewers through the maze and minefield of race without ever misplacing a step.

Steele frames the American conflict over race as a battle between “poetic truth” and “objective truth”. Poetic truth is a distorted and partisan version of truth and is used by race hustlers and charlatans like Reverend Al Sharpton and former Attorney General Eric Holder, to paint Michael Brown as an innocent victim and noble martyr for the cause.

This poetic truth conflates present with the past, which results in the tragedy of Michael Brown being transformed into a continuation of slavery’s violence and Jim Crow era lynching by depraved whites.

Through this paradigm, Michael Brown becomes all black people, and all black people become Michael Brown.George Floyd

The establishment media and racial activists embrace this poetic truth because their objective is coercion, not reason.

This version of truth does two critically destructive things, it gives blacks an identity through victimization, and it gives whites a way to assuage their racial guilt.

As Steele explains in the film, “white guilt became black power”. This dynamic set up a vicious cycle where blacks use victimhood to exploit white guilt, and whites steal agency from blacks in order to assuage said guilt. Therefore the learned helplessness of blacks feeds the self-centered, narcissistic paternalism of whites and vice versa.

As Steele insightfully declares, “humans never use race except as a means to power…never an end, always a means. “ This is contrasted by the vision of Steele’s working class, minimally educated father who grew up under Jim Crow and fervently “favored character over race as a means to power.”

As seen in Ferguson in 2014 and in recent months all across America, racial anger has become ritualized and choreographed. Grievance is claimed without evidence and protest encouraged with no good faith it will lead to anything.

Whether it be Michael Brown, George Floyd or Brianna Taylor, these deaths are seen less as tragedies and more as opportunities.

The film highlights Al Sharpton as one of the more aggressive opportunists and as the epitome of the race grievance peddler. Reverend Al’s mendacious model is now used by Black Lives Matter and their ilk, who are just as intellectually and morally dubious as their duplicitous mentor.

Unlike the extraordinarily successful and morally impeccable civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr., which exposed its opponents as devoid of moral authority, BLM and Sharpton are themselves morally bankrupt.

As the film points out, none of these opportunists are interested in the development of black people or communities, but in “justice”, and their definition of “justice” is amorphous, ever expanding and rooted entirely in emotionalism and greed.

Steele uses the immigrant owned convenience store in Ferguson where the Michael Brown tragedy began, as proof of the absurdity of the demand for alleged “justice”.

The mob demands the store owners shut down for three days on the anniversary of Brown’s death as well as a whole host of other demands. The owners acquiesce, but it is never enough. Once one demand is fulfilled, a new and more egregious one sprouts up…until finally the mob is clamoring for the store owners to literally give away their store to protestors.

Besides the movie’s robust intellectualism, it is also exceedingly well made, and like its soulful and melancholy jazz soundtrack, never loses its pace or rhythm.

In a bizarre twist, considering the high quality filmmaking on display, Amazon first refused to allow What Killed Michael Brown? to run on its streaming service, claiming it “doesn’t meet Prime Video’s content quality expectations”.

It’s ironic that major corporations like Amazon are now emphasizing black artists but when those artists don’t toe the establishment line on race, they are told to sit at the back of the bus.

Thankfully, after much public pressure, Amazon has now relented and is allowing the film to stream for purchase on their service. But this is not the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last time that mainstream gatekeepers try to silence truth tellers.

In conclusion, What Killed Michael Brown? is mandatory viewing because it is an intellectually vibrant, finely crafted piece of work that brazenly and bravely reveals the uncomfortable reality of race in America today. SEE IT NOW!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

America's Forgotten: A Review

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. The scathing but flawed documentary is worth seeing to challenge any pre-concieved notions on the subject of illegal immigration.

New Documentary ‘America’s Forgotten’ Tells the Illegal Immigration Story the Establishment Media Ignores

America’s Forgotten is a new documentary from filmmaker Namrata Singh Gurjal that exposes the fetid swamp that is illegal immigration into the U.S.

The film has been shunned by mainstream distributors (like Netflix) but has still generated a good deal of interest because Gurjal, an Indian immigrant and registered Democrat, takes direct aim at Joe Biden and Democrats for their immigration policies which she believes lead to catastrophe for illegal immigrants and chaos in America.

The film examines the complex topic through four personal stories. These narratives focus on Gurpreet – a little Indian girl who died trying to cross the Southern border, Maria, a Mexican woman who runs a gauntlet of extortion and rape to illegally immigrate, Sabine Durden-Coulter, whose adult son Dominic – a legal immigrant from Germany- is killed by an illegal immigrant in a drunk driving accident, and Jonathan Decoster, a native born former Marine who lives on the streets of Los Angeles.

These four stories show that Americans are good people but that their “misplaced compassion” toward illegal immigrants leads to policies that actually increase illegal immigration – which is extremely dangerous for both the immigrants and America.

Politically and philosophically, the film is spot on and tells a forceful story that has been shamelessly blacklisted by the establishment media.

The movie exposes the fact that the only people who benefit from illegal immigration are coyotes, cartels and corporations. The coyotes exploit illegal immigrants for money, cartels smuggle people and drugs across the porous border and corporations gleefully profit from the immigrant’s cheap labor.

Those egregiously harmed by illegal immigration are the exploited immigrants themselves and the forgotten poor and working class in America.

The film reveals that, in contrast to common perception, illegal immigrants are often not the poor, tired and hungry running from persecution in third world nations, but rather are middle class foreigners paying $5,000 to $15,000 from Central America, $50,000 from Europe or Africa, and $50,000 - $75,000 from India, to chase the dream of a pot of gold at the end of the American rainbow.

One of the most interesting parts of the film though is about the Iraq war vet, Jonathan Decoster. The movie uses Decoster to tell the story of how immigration decimates the poor and working class here in America by diverting resources, lowering wages and eliminating opportunity. Decoster’s despair turns into opioid addiction and ironically, he heads to the Mexican border to find the lowest prices for heroin.

To the film’s credit it highlights some stunning and disturbing facts, such as at least one-third of female illegal immigrants will be sexually assaulted on their journey, and that by percentage non-citizens far outpace native citizens in terms of benefits they receive despite paying far fewer taxes.

America’s Forgotten doesn’t just expose the problem of illegal immigration but offers a solution. The film contends the blueprint for a safe and fair immigration system that works for both immigrants and natives is the Bracero Program, which was a guest worker program that thrived from the 1940’s until 1965.

That type of program seems to be a logical solution to the scourge of illegal immigration that harms American workers and immigrants alike, but emotion has long ago replaced logic on this polarizing and partisan issue.

And that leads to one of the things that bothered me about America’s Forgotten…emotionalism. The mainstream media deceives Americans by emotionally manipulating them regarding the illegal immigration issue. They tug on American heartstrings and Americans predictably react with “misplaced compassion”.

Unfortunately, America’s Forgotten uses the same tactic, exploiting the grief of Ms. Durden-Coulter, the pain of Maria and the despair of Jonathan Decoster, in order to make its points. That doesn’t mean those points are invalid, it just rubs the wrong way because whenever there is a naked appeal to emotion, there is also an appeal to discard reason.

I also struggled with the film’s participatory style, which is the same style Michael Moore uses to great affect. This results in director Gurjal being the movie’s protagonist, driving the story from her personal perspective. The problem with Gurjal is that her voice, which narrates the entire story, is grating and weak, and she simply isn’t a compelling or commanding enough presence to carry this urgent story.

Another problem is that the movie is very poorly produced. There are technical glitches throughout, most notably with the sound, that make it seem like an amateur endeavor, and frustratingly that undermines the film’s strong thesis.

At the beginning and end of America’s Forgotten, a message comes on the screen informing viewers that due to fear of political reprisals, the crew has all agreed to work anonymously. The members of the sound team certainly dodged a bullet on that one.

In truth, Gurjal and her crew are wise to fear reprisals, as the powers that be in Hollywood, including the malicious middle management class, are extremely partisan and relentlessly petty. I have no doubt that Gurjal’s Hollywood career is now essentially over before it ever really had a chance to begin.

In conclusion, if you want to see the illegal immigration story the media don’t want you to see, rent America’s Forgotten (available on Vimeo, SalemNow and iScreeningRoom). I’m not sure in our polarized political era it can change any minds, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t telling a very ugly truth.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020