“That’s not my son!”
Changeling is good — but Angelie Jolie is too skinny. Anyway, Margaret reckons “the cops, they’re too black-and-white for me”. But not for me — LA police are portrayed as being corrupt and murderous, and state authorities in general as being contemptuous of women, which is not inaccurate. (See also “Not Without My Daughter!”.) ****
Gran Torino is a Great Big Fat Turkey of a film. “Gran Torino may prove to be one be one of Eastwood’s best” says David. I says: it’s fantastically shallow and cliche-ridden. (1/2 * for Clint’s Nick Nolte impression.)
Milk is good; so is the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (better even). Twinkies are the best friends Dan ever had… ***1/2
Slumdog Millionaire is good. ****
The Reader is good too. ****
So is The Wrestler. Especially Marisa Tomei OMG. ****
Valkyrie is… average. Tom Cruise’s von Stauffenberg is a hero, but IRL he was less than kosher. The convoluted plots to kill Hitler hatched by his fellow Nazis reminded me of Batman. **1/2
“Just put a fucking bullet in his head!”
Tom Cruise plays the good Nazi!!!
I loved all the refs to closing the concentration camps and alike. If that was a problem for these conspirators, they would have been plotting in 1934. But hey, gotta have some good nazis to fight the bad nazis!
I doubt there would have been a July 20 plot if Germany was winning the war.
Yeah.
In one of the first scenes (Tunisia, April 1943), Cruise / von Stauffenberg is depicted scribbling in his diary about how bad the Nazis are — I think it even refers to concentration camps. However, the plot to assassinate the incestuous coprophiliac dicktator was only cemented following the Allied landing at Normandy (June 6, 1944), which is when everybody apart from the shit-eating Adolph understood Germany was fuct. They was anti-Hitler, and pro-Nazi.
Nah bullshit everyone told me Gran Turino is good
You left out The Wrestler
Fixed.
I enjoyed Gran Torino, but it wasn’t without some rather obvious flaws.
Duke: What you lookin’ at old man?
Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.
Walt Kowalski: Oh, I’ve got one. A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “Get the fuck out of here.”
Walt Kowalski: Jesus, Joseph and Mary. These Hmong broads are like badgers.
Walt Kowalski: [sneering and aiming his gun] Get off my lawn!
Thao Vang Lor: Excuse me Sir, I need a haircut if you ain’t too busy you old Italian son of a bitch prick barber. Boy, does my ass hurt from all of the guys at my construction job.
Walt Kowalski: [to Su] Get me another beer, Dragon Lady! This one’s running on empty.
Walt Kowalski: Relax, Zipperhead.
i dug slumdog millionaire except for the cappo fairytale ending: after all that, the system works coz hard work/virtue & “destiny” lets the slumdog win the money & then [& only then] earn happiness, the girl, a bourgeois lifestyle & worth as a person.
you gotta get individual wealth is the moral of the story.
go cappo go!
but it was a pretty awesome looking film.
so 4 stars anyway.
oh yeah, um: SPOILER ALERT or whatevers.
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SPOILER ALERT up there.
kinda.
Hey, it’s BHollywood.
Contrary to the unscientific view in Slumdog, Maoist-Third Worldists understand that history does not unfold according to the stars or the will of the gods. Revolutionaries understand that tremendous power to change the world resides in the hands of the oppressed. Karl Marx wrote that all of history is the history of class struggle. Mao taught that the masses make history; the masses are the true heroes. If the oppressed act collectively, they can change the course of history and remake the world. The revolutionary outlook is diametrically opposed to the fatalistic, magical one of Slumdog.
Although Valkyrie is very gripping, well acted and well presented, this is another one of those apolitical Hollywood films that totally ignores the history and character of the Nazi whose virtues it extols. It is totally in thrall to the Great Men (or “Bad Men”) version of history. Yet the “apolitical” is always political, rather like Von Stauffenberg himself.