Amusing and frequently hilarious Jihadi tragi-comedy about a group of would-be Fundamentalist terrorists. Western Imperialism is mercilessly ragged as the cause of Eastern terrorism while the inadequacy of both homegrown terrorism and the British security services is speared to great effect. Given that terrorism is an intractable problem since White culture remains resolutely White supremacist, there is nothing one can do but laugh at the corner we have painted ourselves into.
And laugh this film does, from innocent bystanders shot by trigger-happy police marksmen, to a morbid fixation on both torture and painting Muslims as fanatics; from incompetent bombers blowing themselves up to paranoiac conspiracy theories about Jews inventing spark plugs to control global automobile traffic.
This is an ideas film so the characters are rather weak despite the excellent dead-pan comic performances. The comedy is as black as Dr Strangelove, and strangest of all, the point made so well here is that hardly anyone in this film has any real idea what they are doing and why.
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Monday, 27 September 2010
Four Lions
(2010)
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Nanny McPhee & the Big Bang
(2010)
RATING: | 60% |
FORMAT: | DVD |
[Nanny McPhee Returns]
A rural, heritage vision of England that goes down well in the United States but seems as oddly false and anachronistic to the English as red Routemaster London buses, red telephone boxes and friendly Bobbies wearing Keystone Cops police helmets.
More seriously though, this movie represents a White desire to hark back to a time when White culture was allegedly homogeneous and the British Empire a supposed force for good - at least in the fantasy-world of increasingly-common movies like this.
The visible-by-not-being-mentioned Racewar characteristics of this movie are hinted at through its explicit Classwar premiss of a White culture that only feels classlessly united when at war - in this case against Hitler. This is an oddly-closed world where even the adults remain childish for fear of an outside world gone apparently mad. The film has no real story to speak of and even the rather obvious Bambi- & ET-style story of absent fathers at war and children raised by lone parents is given too-short dramaturgical shrift. The uncared-for children of the rich tells us nothing about the relationship between wealth and sharing relationships. And, worse, the implied ancestor worship does not favor the older characters as founts of wisdom for the children as clearly intended.
The child performers are excellent but the script does not really get into the world of a child as the kids here speak a cold collation of Americanized inappropriate aggression and hints at adult knowing beyond their years. That the jokes are weak is compensated-for by the compelling performances of the adults. This is all good fecal fun but relies too much on CGI wizardry for its emotional affects rather than genuine inspiration, a true depth of imagination and - most important of all - enough human agency.
Monday, 20 September 2010
Power of Less
(2008)
Paradoxically-lengthy guide to simplicity that is little more than common sense. It can be summed up as: Focus, Self-discipline & Taking Charge of your fate. This book states the obvious, does so repetitively and lacks much insight into human nature. Twice as long as it needs to be because of its conversational tone and consequent verbosity it tries absurdly to sound scientific in order to justify its book length and asking price.
Could just as easily have been downloaded from the Web as a set of printed bullet points.
Trinity is Still My Name
(1971)
Amusing parody of a spaghetti western that improves with the enclosed sequel. There, the gags are better developed and the characters make more sense. The problem is that these films are funnier for Italian audiences than anyone else because of their cultural references - and you have to actually like when Terence HILL and when Bud SPENCER to fully appreciate the jokes.
Sunday, 19 September 2010
Jackie Chan’s Who Am I?
(1998)
Gleefully-unassuming adventure story that makes little sense (the premiss is the same as in The Bourne Identity) but is all good, clean fun. Jackie Chan's stunt-work is very good and he is amusing to watch amid all the Eastern martial-arts mayhem.
Fille du RER
[Girl on the Train]
(2009)
A film weakened by taking too many pot-shots at too many subjects: Sexism, White supremacism, classism, divorce. The underlying theme of a White culture so lacking in essence that its adherents either become White supremacists and/or vacuous attention-seekers is deftly handled. But this movie offers no real reason for the materialism of the West and simply blames it on broken homes; while ethnic minorities still have their cultural traditions to keep their heads above the emotional water. This presenting of others as more rooted in life than Whites is itself as White supremacist as the anti-Semites obliquely criticized here.
This lack of any deep understanding of its own thematic content undermines what could have been a searching examination of culture, as such, and a traumatized White one in particular.
Partir
[Leaving]
(2009)
Disturbing look at middle-class ennui and its often tragic circumstances. Here, the wife of an unmanly bourgeois goes off with the handyman not so much to find herself as a woman as to get away from her dull married existence. That she finds love for the first time in her life there can be no doubt, but her reckless middle-aged pursuit of it calls her sanity into question at the same time as you admire her for the consistency of that pursuit.
This torrid melodrama features that force of nature Kristin Scott THOMAS who makes the whole thing compelling and worthwhile. The male characters are a bit thin and archetypal but this is a film from a woman's perspective and so this problem can be somewhat overlooked.
What really makes this film scary is that the White bourgeoisie are so emotionally-repressed in their desire to seem more worthwhile as humans than the poor that they can effectively forget to grow up, so rabid is the social snobbery that it eventually becomes a substitute for maturity. This desire on the wife's part for a bit of rough is really a desire for genuine human contact denied her by her middle-class husband and by her own hang-ups. This is particularly telling in the sex scenes where one feels the wife is experiencing her body fully for the first time in her life. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the bourgeois are so violent in their desire to judge others by birth circumstances since they then do not have to judge or see themselves as they really are - missing a vital human part. The anger, childishness and frustration here makes you wonder if the affluent could ever be trusted as childminders if you ever had them as neighbors
This is a marriage from which the wife cannot escape because the husband wants a show-business relationship to impress his friends, but which is emotionally empty. His desperate attempts to imprison his wife prove he has no love for her and so we are left wondering what the true basis for the relationship is. This explains the high rates of divorce and adultery in the West but offers no solution to it.
Like Diary of a Mad Housewife, this movie offers little hope of escape from the gilded cage that is Western culture - except, as here, crime. That we all need one moment of amour fou in our lives to help us to grow up is well made here and helps account for our enjoyment of this drama.
White Men Challenging Racism
(2003)
Fascinating book about the few Whites who have challenged their own White supremacist upbringing to become fuller human beings. As it is hard to find a White willing to make the necessary sacrifices to achieve multiculturalism, it is hard to find a Black who fully supports White supremacism. Herein lies the problem that the book recognizes but never fully addresses - that it could find so few Whites opposed to White supremacism in a 500-year historical epoch. Yyet it successfully stresses that Blacks act - for Whites - as both scapegoat for White failings and the consciences of Whites and that this latter fact is both encouraging and dispiriting since it means, respectively, that Whites want to become better people yet possess no conscience of their own.
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
(2010)
Subjective, first-person telling of the life of the greatest punk-rocker of them all. Like so many creatives, Ian DURY had a difficult childhood and worked his life to both overcome it and to prove that he had done so. Like Telstar, we are presented with a populist genius who used his talent to the best of his ability - despite his difficulties in finding self-acceptance and self-respect. Able-bodied people have achieved far less.
Despite good performances, the characterization is a little weak; making these people difficult to relate to. But the real problem here is the lack of a unifying theme to make sense of the events shown. This is reflected in the uncertainty of style between naturalism and Bob FOSSE-style theatrics.
Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(1979)
Mess of a film, with some brilliantly-imaginative parts, that never manages to cohere into a disquisition on the human imagination that it should have been. Nor is there enough of a dramatic exploration of the psychiatric syndrome named after the good Baron von Munchausen. This renders the characters flat and rather lifeless despite the excessive humor.
The special effects look like models to emphasize the fact that the narrator is a fantasist and that what we see is rather unbelievable, but this is not enough for audience empathy. Nor, sadly, is John Neville's excellent performance as the Baron who is po-faced throughout so you cannot tell - clearly - if he is simply making it all up. A necessary demeanour for a compulsive liar.
Worse, many of the performers seem unsure of how to perform in this would-be absurdist masterpiece and give downright embarrassing performances. A notable exception is Oliver Reed who is beautifully and funnily over-the-top as a sexually jealous Vulcan - steam pouring forth from his ears.
Not as good as the Karel Zeman version.
Friday, 17 September 2010
Flying Deuces
(1939)
Flying on Autopilot
Good fun but something of a retread of earlier, better comedies by this pair. The chemistry, the camaraderie and the thematic concerns on the nature of male friendship are still there but in somewhat diluted form.
Germany Year Zero
(1949)
Excellent presentation of the challenges faced by postwar Germans in a devastated 1947 world. In accordance with the tenets of Italian neo-realism, director Roberto ROSSELLINI presents a warts-'n'-all semi-documentary of a family’s struggle simply to stay alive on a daily basis. There is murder of those unable to work, pedophile predation, prostitution - and it remains to be seen what this does to the basic humanity of the hero - a young boy - struggling not only to survive but to comprehend the adult failings that brought about the near-destruction of Europe. Yet he is clearly still a child in the gigantic bomb-site through which he strolls in which there appears to be not single building untouched by bombs. This scenario clearly echoes its theme of childhood idealism damaged for good - with little possibly of ever achieving adult maturity.
Like Rome, Open City, this tells it like it is but not how it could be, and therein lies the problem. Yet the characters are vividly drawn and we can easily empathize with their plight.
Friday, 10 September 2010
Lebanon
(2009)
RATING: | 80% |
FORMAT: | DVD |
Claustrophobic look at life inside a war tank that is reminiscent of The Beast - only on a smaller scale.
An intense experience, but one that has no true resolution since we never discover what is really going on outside the tank with any narrative clarity. However, this is clearly what the director intends and he achieves his goal admirably; albeit that this is little more than an anecdote; offering little in the way of insight into actual warfare. The sense that we are trapped in this tank - despite its thick protective walls - is palpable and sustained throughout.
John Adams
(2008)
RATING: | 40% |
FORMAT: | DVD |
Style Over Substance
Rather too leisurely, yet handsomely-made period drama featuring a strong central performance from Laura LINNEY.
John Adams fails to ignite as drama because it prefers the pageant of history to the lived reality of people’s experience. The budget is also too limited to show much in the way of battles - even though this would have added light & shade to the drama.
The hagiography is the typically-narrow White view of White history which implies that only White men are great - that everyone else is subordinate to them as well as unimportant in terms of both themselves and their relationship to Whites. This ahistorical and acontextual void makes comparisons with other revolutionary wars difficult - as it is intended to - as if this were the only justified revolution in history and the justified rebellions against Empires like the US today are no more than crazed terrorism.
This limited worldview spoils American drama because it cannot, then, escape the confines of propaganda. Only Whites are allowed to be terrorists; while hypocritically owning slaves and then loudly-proclaiming all men free - in reality, only White men.
The American Exceptionalism, here, possesses a clear analogy with the Vietnam War - especially atrocities against civilians - but this all-important historical link remains deliberately undramatized; leaving the issue of becoming-what-you-hate unexplored - while being constantly implied in the minds of the viewer.
Leaving Las Vegas
(1995)
Subjectivist look at alcoholism featuring excellent performances from when Elisabeth SHUE and when Nicolas CAGE. The first-person narrative is a perfect vehicle to help us understand the morbid self-regard of those who cannot make worthwhile relationships with either themselves or others: Standing in a hole and digging oneself deeper in. the desperation to find oneself in others drives this narrative, along with the impossibility of attaining such a goal. The inevitable result is the self-destruction depicted here.
The style of this movie is very much a part of the story and helps the audience deal with the sheer awfulness of the characters and their loathsome self-pity. Oddly, this film starts to show signs of being a romance when it could never ever be any such thing. The emotional dependency of these schizophrenic characters simultaneously denies objective reality while desperately and vainly trying to connect with it. Meanwhile the film mostly succeeds in allowing us into their world without letting us forget that their world is the fantasy of the grown-up child trying to return to the womb.
Not quite as good as when Days of Wine & Roses or when Lost Weekend, because it offers no explanations nor understandings - but it comes close.
Lovely Rita
(2001)
RATING: | 80% |
FORMAT: | DVD |
Fascinating critique of loveless Christian guilt-ridden parenting and the religiosity that says that merely claiming to be Christian automatically makes one a good person.
The self-fulfilling belief that people are born into sin is what makes them sinful and is designed to conceal the sin of the person who carries such beliefs. Here, Whites treat their children like dogs and their dogs like children and one can easily surmise the reason for the inherently violent and militarist nature of Western culture along with its obsession with complete trivia.
The well-made analogy with the internal and external snobbery of the materialistic British Empire is particularly appropriate here - as is the inevitable seeking of favors from abusive parents by being disloyal to one’s so-called friends.
There is also here a terrific fear of teenage sexuality exemplified by emotionally-repressed adults and sexually-incompetent children. The fundamental challenge apparently faced here by the youngsters is how to get their inadequate parents to attend to their basic needs when the parents believe that it is the child’s job to attend to the needs of the parents. This inevitably leads to children lying to adults as a means of satisfying their own needs. Both sides are trapped within the limitations of their childishness.
The eponymous Barbara Osika is excellent and helps compel what could have so easily have been a dry-as-dust academic exercise into the dramaturgical stratosphere. Director Jessica Hausner knows her subject very well and communicates it efficiently, effectively and without sentimentality.
Y Tu Mama Tambien
(2001)
MAKING THE CLITORIS YOUR BEST FRIEND
Two typical Western teenagers - unable to understand either women or their desire for them - indulge in sex and drugs as part of a male bonding ritual that borders on being closet gay. For all their braggadocio, they are still dependent children, and the older woman who comes into their sexual fantasies then comes to rule their roost. Her goal in setting off with two boys is to avenge herself on an unfaithful husband. Despite the immaturity of doing so, she learns that she was foolish to expect him to change.
A fascinating exploration of unbridled male sexuality unguided by any sense of genuine pleasure - only the desire to show off. Better than Les Valseuses in that it does not just deal with sexual pleasure but sexual intimacy - what one seeks with the onset of maturity. Although this film is about the affects of telling the truth, the truths here are not that profound or, often, true.
Thursday, 9 September 2010
National Lampoon’s Vacation
(1983)
RATING: | 80% |
FORMAT: | DVD |
Amusing White supremacist comedy that reveals not only the Negrophobia of its characters but also of its makers. Blacks are represented as nothing but criminal stereotypes while Whites being shown as absurdly materialistic and inveterate and inbred first-cousin marryers strangely balance this.
A kind of John Hughesian dry-run for the better Planes, Trains & Automobiles this will remind you of every long car journey you of every long and boring car journey you ever took as a child. The only difference is that this is a much more eventful journey than you ever took.
This is a coherent narrative rather than just a collection of disconnected sketches. The characterization is weak but this is compensated for by the well-explored theme of Whites trying to get back to a nature that the assiduously and continually renounce by mostly choosing to live in cities. The sheer trivia and unwillingness to really enjoy the tourist experience has to be seen to be believed. The journey here is far more interesting than the destination.
Monday, 6 September 2010
Chick Uses Breasts as a Phone Holder
(2010)
Sexy Girl Shows Off her Lack of a Bikini
(2010)
Girl Teaching Proper Shirt Folding
(2010)
Busty Polish Chick in the Shower
(2010)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *
* But Were Afraid to Ask
(1972)
Hit-and-miss sketch comedy that comes from the days when Woody ALLEN was actually funny. Inside every great comedian there is a second-rate one trying to get out; as inside every tragedian there is a ham. ALLEN has managed to get some of the best actors in the world to make virtual cameos in a film that treads a delicate balance between being funny and offensive. Given ALLEN's sex-obsession it is inevitable that he would make this particular film and that he should have spent so much time revisiting its themes in later work.
Friday, 3 September 2010
Bananas
(1971)
Back in the good old days when Woody Allen was funny, along came this minor gem of a satire on US-supported, Latin-American military dictatorships: Amusing with a few laugh-out-loud moments here. The film tends to go for absurdist and cartoonish slapstick rather than political humor. ALLEN had still to learn how to make his funny one-liners fit a more solid plot structure.
Despite the background, this film is really about an odd fact of sexual relationships in Western culture; namely, that the concept of give and take only works in business and not in personal relationships, despite the belief that business can be conflated with pleasure. This fact helps explain all of Woody ALLEN's best movies in their relentlessly-funny depictions of sexual, emotional and intellectual failure.
What went wrong with ALLEN is when he started taking his personal failings seriously and thinking these could be used to make good drama when they only result in self-indulgence and pretension.
Contact Form:
Science:
Sleep of Reason:
The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.
(1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.
Humans & Aliens:
I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.
(circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.
Führerprinzip:
One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.
(1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)