Batman Begins

Rating: 80%

(Image: http://jobryantnz.wordpress.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2005

Countries:

UK

Predominant Genre:

Action

Director:

Christopher NOLAN

Best Performance:

Michael CAINE

Premiss:

After training with his mentor, Batman begins his war on crime and corruption.

Themes:

Alienation

Compassion

Guilt

Loneliness

Personal change

Self-expression

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

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A chiroptophobic Batman, yet! However, unlike the ophiophobia of an Indiana Jones, this hero’s fears reveals character while deepening our understanding of it – it is not just a dramatic gimmick. The theme here is that a man who has embraced his own fears can then use the fears of criminals to destroy them.

In a sense, The Batman here does not wear a mask – his superhero costume is his true self; his real character turned inside out. His ensemble exists not so much to hide his identity but more to frighten criminals into paralysed surrender: Their fear is not of being caught & punished for their crimes, but by them. This fact causes the woman who loves him to keep her emotional distance because Bruce Wayne’s alter ego (The Batman) is somehow more real to him than he is to himself. The Batman is thus an expressive role played by an inexpressive adult in his response to the childhood trauma and guilt surrounding his parents’ murder. Our hero must integrate these two halves of himself before becoming whole again and, thereby, worthy of love.

The Batman is a crime fighter - not just a vigilante - since so called law & order has not contained the crime it was designed to combat. The movie points out that being just requires an awareness of the difference between revenge and justice: The curative and the preventive. Moreover, that one must understand the criminal mindset not just for the purposes of empathy, but to defeat and limit its spread.

This movie is, then, an articulate exploration of the difference between vigilantism and true justice. The central character’s unwillingness to grieve over his parents creates the need for revenge that he spends much of the time battling – a weakness he must come to terms with before he can become a mature adult. His true fear is of fear itself since, as one of the villains says: ‘You always fear what you don’t understand.’

A big action movie with big ethical and political ideas. Although it does not deal with evil’s full complexity and the weakness shown when we allow it to fester, it is not just another popcorn movie, either. It is also subtly funny, in a curiously English, ironic and understated way, especially Michael CAINE’s amusing performance as the faithful Wayne household butler (& valet, assistant, confidant & surrogate father), Alfred Pennyworth.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Synecdoche, New York

Rating: 80%

(http://erieentertainment.wordpress.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2008

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Drama

Director:

Best Performances:

Premiss:

A theatre director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Themes:

Alienation | Guilt | Loneliness | Political Correctness | Totalitarianism | White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Zoo

Review Format:

DVD

A good look at the White habit of telling stories about themselves as if they were talking about someone completely different. (A bit like telling someone that you have a friend with a problem to avoid admitting that the friend is actually you.)

The result is that Whites live an uncommitted half-life watching themselves go through the motions of living but, not actually doing so. The pointed analogy of putting on a theater play with the way Whites live their lives is well-taken and well-presented, such that pretending to be someone else comes to be what “being themselves” amounts to; leading to a sense of failure and the fear that others are as interchangeable and as expendable as anyone else - even men with women. Here, self-actualization becomes an impossible dream because so little of any value is ever passed on to the next generation - a deficit carried on forever.

Like Zoo, this is ultimately about Death and Dying, yet would have been improved if it were also about Life and lilving. Nevertheless, this could easily have been as self-indulgent as the characters and the screenwriter but, it is very funny and all of the first-rate performers give their all.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Portiere di Notte

Rating: 80%

(http://www.amaninthehouse.com)

Also Known As:

Night Porter

Year:

1973

Country:

Italy

Predominant Genre:

Drama

Director:

Liliana Cavani

Best Performances:

Dirk BOGARDE

Gabriele FERZETTI

Philippe LEROY

Premiss:

After a chance meeting, a Holocaust survivor and a Nazi officer resume their sadomasochistic relationship.

Themes:

Guilt

Totalitarianism

White supremacy

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Clockwork Orange

Last Tango in Paris

Lolita

Patty Hearst

Pawnbroker

Story of O

Review Format:

DVD

[Night Porter]

Accurate and psychologically-nuanced study of White sadomasochism that effectively portrays the damage done by sexual abuse & emotional violence - as well as the Stockholm Syndrome that can result. After all, when one is plunged into destruction, one solution is to take a liking for it. To become as sadomasochistic as ones tormentors in a desperate attempt to find love in the very last place you would ever find it: A Nazi death-camp.

Sadomasochism has always been the furthest reach of the sexual experience: when sex becomes most purely sexual, that is, severed from personhood, from relationships, from love. It should not be surprising that it has become attached to Nazi symbolism in recent years. Never before was the relation of masters and slaves so consciously aestheticized. Sade had to make up his theater of punishment and delight from scratch, improvising the decor and costumes and blasphemous rites. Now there is a master scenario available to everyone. The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death.

Susan Sontag (born 1933), US essayist. Under the Sign of Saturn, “Fascinating Fascism” (1980; first published 1974).

The movie is also an unflinching look at the fascism that can result from the pervasive emotional-repression of Whites who, believing god is a sadist in order to both justify and to relieve their own thwarted feelings, seek to emulate god in order to become it. Whites can then believe themselves above their renounced feelings that have, apparently therefore, been made irrelevant. (This movie can also be seen as an explanation for the breakdown of marriage and the family as viable social institutions in the West.)

(http://thefashioneaste.com)

The performances are uneven yet, much of the corruption, moral bankruptcy and hopelessness of Nazism is effectively conjured up, along with the White morbidity of seeking love through domination. Rather than see this as neurosis, Whites try to normalize their control freakery by claiming it is universally-human rather than face the pain of becoming truly normal. Here, those who compromise with evil, create a world of euphemisms for murder; playing psychoanalytical games to avoid guilt, shame and, above all, growing up.

(http://thefashioneaste.com)

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Dressed to Kill

Rating: 60%

(Image: http://www.classicbeemovies.net)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1980

Country/ies:

US

Predominant Genre:

Mystery

Author(s)/Director(s):

Brian DE PALMA

Best Performance(s):

Nancy ALLEN

Angie DICKINSON

Premiss:

Mysterious, tall blonde woman murders one of a psychiatrist’s patients and then goes after the high-class call girl who witnessed the murder.

Theme(s):

Alienation

Guilt

Loneliness

Original Sin

Sexual Repression

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Psycho

Review Format:

DVD

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Rather contrived homage to Alfred HITCHCOCK - particularly his Psycho - that lacks somewhat in suspense and originality.

What it has, however, are excellent female performances (that these kind of female-in-peril movies usually lack) from Angie DICKINSON and Nancy ALLEN. They make their characters interesting and believable and we feel for them in their terror.

(Image: http://thisdistractedglobe.com)

The film also lacks a theme other than the rather silly one of men wanting to be women, but who are refused the necessary sex-change operation and then kill those who are born women in revenge!

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Norman Wisdom collection

Rating: 100%

(Image: http://www.npg.org.uk)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1953-1966

Country/ies:

UK

Predominant Genre:

Comedy

Author(s)/Director(s):

Various.

Best Performance(s):

Norman WISDOM

Premiss:

Various.

Theme(s):

Alienation

Compassion

Personal change

Self-expression

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Charlie Chaplin

Jerry Lewis

Review Format:

DVD

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The quality of these movies is variable – both in content & form – but never falls below Good. At their best (Trouble in Store, Man of the Moment, Up in the World, Just My Luck, Follow a Star & Stitch in Time) they reveal a clownish genius.

An intensely-visual humorist, Norman WISDOM demonstrates what can be done with an intensely-visual form like cinema: A clever mix of Jerry Lewis & Charlie Chaplin.

WISDOM plays the gormless schoolboy who never grows up; hence, his great appeal to children everywhere - and of all ages. Yet, behind all this outlandish hilarity lies the obvious and sad story of an unloving childhood; explaining the often mawkish sentimentality of some of the plots & themes.

Nevertheless, this is some of the best clown and mime work ever recorded on film - aided by literate screenplays.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Perks of Being a Wallflower

Rating: 60%

(http://www.thelinc.co.uk)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2012

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Romance

Director:

Stephen Chbosky

Best Performances:

None

Premiss:

An introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors who welcome him to the real world as defined by Whites.

Themes:

Alienation | Loneliness | Personal change | Political Correctness | Self-expression | Sexual Repression | White culture | White guilt | White supremacy

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

The usual coming-of-age saga of Whites desperately needing other Whites in order to find out who they are: A culture relies on the mendacity of wanting to be popular, rather than happy, to prevent Whites from looking outside their culture for the happiness so hard to find within it.

As usual with writers trying to evade the “Why” of any situation, the “What” is laid out as if it were some kind of meaningful mystery. This leaves us with a final revelation about character as trite as it is dramatically meager; making this piece as insular in its outlook as the characters themselves.

Is White culture really the self-repressive gilded cage represented here? It would appear so.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Under Siege

(1992)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD (Uncut [R-rated] version)

(http://cinema.rockwitch.com)

Die Hard at sea and a rare example of a rip-off that is just as good as the thing it rips off.

Funny, exciting and filled with thrills and suspense this one has Erika ELENIAK to provide a solid, tomboyish sexiness to the proceedings.

(http://vnvip.net)

The thinly-sketched theme of redemption is barely noted in favor of action – the same goes for the characterization. But with Steven SEAGAL this never seems to matter much because he never pretends he wants to do much else with his movies.

(http://cinema.rockwitch.com)

What makes the lacking-in credibility plot watchable is world-class actors like Tommy Lee JONES and Gary BUSEY obviously enjoying themselves as terrorists. Movies like this should always be well cast, otherwise you can see far too clearly the cliché-ridden nature of the plotting; reducing the pleasure and entertainment value.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Wind that Shakes the Barley

Rating: 80%

(Image: http://sarts.blogspot.co.uk)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2006

Country/ies:

Belgium

France

Germany

Italy

Spain

Switzerland

UK

Predominant Genre:

Historical

Author(s)/Director(s):

Ken Loach

Best Performance(s):

All.

Premiss:

A sympathetic look at Republicans in early 20th-century Ireland, and two brothers who are torn apart by the anti-British rebellion.

Theme(s):

Personal change

Political Correctness

Self-expression

White culture

White guilt

White supremacy

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

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Superb, pro-IRA film that deftly explains the source of Ireland’s problems surrounding the 1922 partition.

Where it really scores is in explaining – in dramatic terms - why ethical and political compromises lead to further problems, years later, when the struggle for freedom has been only partially won. Two brothers have differing definitions of freedom – unlike, say, Ghandi; leading to tragic results in this moving portrayal of the human costs of seeking both loyalty and justice.

Required viewing for anyone who wants to know why the English are so mad keen on fomenting trouble in their own backyard; resulting in the deaths of thousands for no practical purpose. Its maker no doubt intended a movie whose lessons are historically applicable to any part of the world where the brutish British have immorally interfered where they were not wanted.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Women in Love

Rating: 80%

(http://theyvebeenframed.wordpress.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1969

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Romance

Director:

Best Performances:

Premiss:

Battle of the sexes among the so-called elite.

Themes:

Alienation

Compassion

Loneliness

Original Sin

Personal change

Political Correctness

Self-expression

Sexual Repression

White culture

White guilt

White supremacy

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

Could just as easily have been called Men in Love since this focuses equally well on the same-sex friendships and complementary-sex relationships of four protagonists. But, above all else, is the sensuality evoked throughout this beautiful-looking movie.

Director Ken Russell’s style perfectly suits D H Lawrence’s earthy and poetic prose with a mannered style that teeters on the edge of self-indulgence but never quite crosses the line.

This film depicts the complexities of friendship and sexual love with frankness and honesty in a way that few today can match. The voyage of self-discovery undertaken by the female leads is as erotically-charged as that taken by the audience in sitting through this fine movie. The performances from all concerned are quite faultless and are some of their best work.

The only internecine conflict here is between the director’s technique and the characters since the director is a character in his own right and, as in the worst kind of special-effects’ movie, can sometimes overwhelm the actors with his style.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Singin’ in the Rain (1951)

Rating: 80%

(http://blog.bryantpark.org)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1951

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Music

Director:

Best Performances:

Premiss:

Silent film-production company & cast make the difficult transition to sound.

Themes:

Personal change

Self-expression

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Mary Poppins

Red Shoes

Sound of Music

Review Format:

DVD

Not as good as something like Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, but still pretty impressive for all that - especially because it is a whole lot funnier.

A clever parody of Hollywood that is, itself, pure Hollywood - it states that Hollywood has to move on technically yet remains in its own charming time-warp.

The problem with this film lies in finding enough material to fill the gaps between the musical numbers, which are excellent but disconnected.

However, Jean HAGEN is particularly fine as the leading lady with the squeaky voice who will sound ridiculous unless she gets someone to dub her for her future film appearances; and Gene KELLY shows genuine fear when he realizes that the dumbshow that was OK for silent pictures will no longer suffice on a soundstage.

And Donald O’CONNOR is extremely athletic in his role and appears to be competing with KELLY for most frenetic pacing. His running up a wall and then over has to be seen to be believed in a less skilled age of CGI.

KELLY’s preoccupation with the ballet threatens to turn this musical-comedy into another The Red Shoes. This makes the film something of a hodgepodge of styles and aesthetic ideas that do not quite gel, yet when these include the fabulous Cyd CHARISSE and her five-million dollar legs, it is extremely easy to forgive a certain lack of artistic focus.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.co.uk) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Cruel Sea

Rating: 100%

(www.rottentomatoes.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1953

Country:

Predominant Genre:

War

Director:

Best Performance:

None

Premiss:

Adventures of a convoy escort ship and its officers.

Theme:

Compassion

Loneliness

Personal change

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

DVD

Superb war drama presenting the sea itself as the enemy rather more than the Germans. Elliptical, yet each dramatic vignette serves its emotional purpose perfectly: Creating a cinematic gestalt as each part interlocks - like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

The peculiar brilliance of British cinema, at its best, is the way in which emotions are shown, yet not shown. This stiff upper-lip reveals the horrors of war far more credibly than any visual explicitness because it is the way in which people under pressure deal with the stress in order to keep total, war-losing collapse, at bay.

The tension between the emotions the actors portray - and what they give the very clear impression of hiding - makes this movie far more moving than any attempts at Oscar-winning histrionics. And impeccable casting ensures no one strikes a false emotional note in this emotionally-mature film.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Clockwork Orange (1971)

Rating: 80%

(http://cinemanerds.blogspot.co.uk)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

1971

Countries:

Predominant Genre:

Science-Fiction

Director:

Best Performance:

Premiss:

A charismatic delinquent is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society’s crime problem.

Themes:

Alienation

Political Correctness

Totalitarianism

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

Unknown

Review Format:

Cinema

Crime-Prevention Banana

Unsettling vision of the present-day in the form of a social comedy about political expediency.

The movie critiques a cynical, crime-creating culture that uses criminals as scapegoats for its ills and then exacerbates its own creation by conflating moral goodness with obedience; leading to the inevitable calls for totalitarian solutions to the self-created problems. Crime cannot be reduced, so politicians work with criminals to gull the electorate into believing the best approach to crime is curative rather than preventive.

(http://movieretrospect.blogspot.co.uk)

Told from the first person point-of-view of a violent rapist, we are invited to laugh at the goings on; reducing this film’s audience to those who understand the underlying themes – and violent rapists, themselves.

(http://onethousandandonemovienights.blogspot.co.uk)

The acting is superb from all concerned with Michael BATES as an ex-forces prison officer a genuine tour-de-force.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

WALL-E (2008)

Rating: 60%

(www.about.com)

Also Known As:

Unknown

Year:

2008

Country:

Predominant Genre:

Adventure

Director:

Best Performances:

None

Premiss:

A waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will decide the fate of mankind.

Themes:

Alienation

Guilt

Loneliness

White culture

Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:

2001: A Space Odyssey

Dark Star

ET: The Extraterrestrial

Hello Dolly

Inconvenient Truth

Logan’s Run

Rollerball

Silent Running

Review Format:

Cinema

Old Hippies Never Die…

Coming-on like an animated version of Al Gore’s overly-tendentious documentary An Inconvenient Truth, WALL-E (pronounced: Wally; meaning: Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth class) delivers a heavyweight technical punch; taking movie CGI further than ever before. However, the story of a cute robot with human feelings is somewhat lacking on the emotional front.

Earth (Gaia) has become an uninhabitable rubbish-dump from which the entire human race has taken a giant, five year, spaceborne moonlight flit. Lonely WALL-E is tasked with collecting human-produced garbage - while humans are away - to compact it all (Goldfinger-like) into more manageable, skyscraper high chunks - ready for the return of humans. But he is the only working model remaining and five years turns into a septuacentennial as people become acclimatised to a life beyond Saturn in a space liner filled with all the necessities of life.

The dystopic vision of an Earth surrounded by a Van Allen belt of debris, along with vast abandoned cityscapes and even vaster desert landscapes, chill the mind in their foreboding of what might come about without proper recycling. The images are even more three-dimensional than computer-generated displays usually are - the eye fooled into believing they are real-world objects, ordinarily filmed. However, some of the humans are real; while those that are not prove computer-animated humans still have some way to go before becoming fully-convincing. These quite brilliant special effects are really what this movie is all about. Yet even these are let down by a film schizophrenically obsessed with the technological gadgetry it deplores - to the obvious detriment of any story concerning Man’s central relationship with Nature.

The only theme that really comes across is that of Man trapped by his inventions into losing His humanity (like the movie itself) - emphasized by the fact that the WALL-E and his girlfriend EVE (Earth Vegetation Evaluator) act more human than do the humans. Indeed, much of the humor here comes from obese humans surrounded by a technology that eliminates the need for manual work. Robots whiz around removing all traces of dirt in this pristine, twenty-ninth century world whose Olympian detachment makes contact with Nature and, indeed, each other, highly problematic. Yet, the behavior of the two, lover robots is largely-conveyed through silent comedy and discordant gunfire - loud and inappropriate aggression solely-designed to keep the audience awake in case it should realize it is being fobbed-off with such poor dramaturgy.

The plentiful visual imagination here does not compensate for the lack of a theme that makes any real sense. The thematic absurdity of humans wasting vast resources leaving Earth when vast resources have already been wasted creating vast waste piles is exacerbated by the oddity of creating a cinematic dystopia about cynical corporations - the kind who make movies like this.

The ecology issue is, therefore, never adequately explored in case the multinational, globalizing and commercial sponsors of such entertainment realize their feeding hands are being bitten. The poverty of imagination also extends to throwbacks to the visual and aural worlds of earlier, better science-fiction movies. Stealing ideas from: ET: The Extraterrestrial (WALL-E’s cuteness), Dark Star (computer voice), Rollerball (corporate state), Logan’s Run (sloth), Silent Running (ecology), 2001: A Space Odyssey (murderous computer & The Blue Danube) &, inevitably, the original tv series of Star Trek (sound effects). This is ameliorated by the more surprising scoring selections from the Hollywood musical Hello Dolly and musician Peter Gabriel - the former repetitiously used to numbing effect like an old-fashioned LP stuck in an old-fashioned groove.

Ultimately, the film contains no solutions to the ecological problems raised; simply suggesting that all you need is love. A movie that proves that old hippie dreamers did not die out, they just went to work for Disney/Pixar.

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Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.