Tag: film

Lazy Sunday LVI: Movies

The Portly Politico16 Comments

If you want to find these flicks on RedBox, use my referral link; you get some bonus points, and so do I!  Link is here:  https://www.redbox.com/refersignup?referrer=50892857667272)

As I wrote in the lengthy preamble to yesterday’s SubscribeStar Saturday post, in The Age of The Virus, we’re all being asked to make a sacrifice befitting our decadent age:  stay home and watch movies.  With that in mind, I thought this Sunday’s Lazy Sunday should look back at some of my movie reviews, which are fairly thin on the ground.

I’m not a professional movie critic—I like what I like—so take these reviews with a grain of salt.  My dad has a system for finding movies he enjoys:  if the average rating is around three stars (out of five), it’s going to be good.  After all, what critics look for in films is often quite different than what the average movie-goer looks for, which explains why you’ve often never heard of the annual Oscar Winner for Best Picture.

With that, here are my posts (at least, the ones that I could find) about movies:

  • “TBT: Transformers 2: Conservatives in Disguise?” – I wrote this review way back in the TPP 1.0 era, when the blog first began on Blogger/Blogspot.  The Transformers series now is a sell-out to Chinese audiences, but the plot of this second Transformers film highlighted the inefficiency of government bureaucracy, filled as it is with bean-counting busybodies who miss the big picture.  My preamble in the TBT version from last March draws a parallel to the EPA official in Ghostbusters (probably my favorite movie of all time, by the way), whose smarmy, toadying officiousness results in an apocalyptic outbreak of spooky apparitions in Manhattan.
  • “Slammed Holy Saturday: Captain Marvel” – It’s apostasy in conservative circles to say so now, but I actually enjoyed Captain Marvel when I saw it last year (also, with The Virus shutting everything down, I pretty much forgot that today is Palm Sunday—that’s the real apostasy).  Of course, what I didn’t like was the pandering “you go GRRRRRRLLLLLL!”-ism of the film, which went so far as to make the alleged titular hero into an unlikable feminist.  Even the other characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe don’t like her!  But it was still a fun distraction, which is really what these superhero flicks are supposed to be.  It’s a shame they stained it with a bunch of SJW clap-trap.
  • “They Live: Analysis and Review” – I love John Carpenter.  I love the range of his films, and I love that he writes synthy, electric guitar-driven soundtracks.  This flick in particular has become a bit of a meme for the Dissident Right, as the main character finds a pair of sunglasses that expose that huge chunks of the population are actually aliens, and that humans are in cahoots with these would-be invaders.  It’s a sharp critique of mindless consumerism, globalism, and the elites who push both.  WATCH IT!
  • “Milo on Generation Joker” – If I love John Carpenter, I adore Milo Yiannopoulos, the cheeky, flamboyant British Greek with a penchant for mischief.  Little wonder, then, that Milo loved The Joker.  For a super villain movie, it paints a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of its subject, with parallels to the frustration of young men in our society today.  It’s another must-see; the They Live of the 2020s.
  • “SubscribeStar Saturday: Hammer Films” – Yesterday’s SubscribeStar Saturday post, in which I offer up brief summaries and review of five films from Hammer Films, the famous British film company known for reviving classic horror characters from nineteenth-century literature.  Hammer movies are iconic for their gratuitous subject matter and bright, vivid colors (a bit idiosyncratic for horror flicks, but it works).  These movies won’t scare you, probably, but they are great fun.

That’s it for this Lazy Sunday!  Do your civic duty and cuddle up with a bucket of popcorn and these movies (I’m sure you can stream most of them on RedBox).

Enjoy!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Hammer Films

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

The Age of the Virus has demanded a unique sacrifice of all us, one that is fitting for our reduced age.  Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers stormed the beaches of Normandy and fought in the jungles of Iwo Jima.  They and their parents endured the Great Depression (we may be facing a similar struggle).  They sacrificed in blood, sweat, and toil.

All The Virus demands of us—the great sacrifice we all must make, of which we will tell our grandchildren, when they ask about the plague—is that we stay at home and watch movies.

It’s amusing.  Commentators will often quip that Americans today couldn’t make the sacrifices of the so-called “Greatest Generation.”  God surely has a sense of humor, for the sacrifices we’re asked to make are ones in which Americans are well-trained:  sit around, eat junk food, don’t visit other people, and veg out in front of the tube.

To that end, I’ve been engaged in my civic duty this week, as I’ve watched nine films.  Four are from the Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi 4-Movie Horror Collection, which I will write about in more detail another time (it’s only $10, and I highly recommend picking it up for The Black Cat alone—and the other films on it are good, too).

But the focus of this SubscribeStar Saturday will be another collection of B-horror flicks:  the Hammer Films Collection.  No, it’s not the Ultimate Hammer Collection, which I thought I didn’t know existed, but it turns out it’s on my Amazon wish list!).  But it does have five excellent, macabre films (I also didn’t realize that my Hammer Films Collection is merely the first volume; Volume II is now on my Amazon wish list for future purchase).

So, prepare yourself for my review of The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Stop Me Before I Kill!, Scream of Fear!, The Gorgon, and The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

TBT: Transformers 2: Conservatives in Disguise?

The Portly Politico2 Comments

For this week’s #TBT feature, I’m digging back, for the second time, to a very old post from 2009.  It’s about—of all things—the second movie in the modern Transformers franchise.  Yeesh.

Anyway, the point of the essay—and its cringe-inducing navel-gazing—is that a government bean-counter does everything he can to wield his meager bureaucratic power like a little dictator, in the process undermining the unsteady alliance between the good Autobots and the US military.

It reminds me of Ghostbusters, when the functionary from the Environmental Protection Agency comes and shuts down the containment unit—the one holding all the captured ghosts—because it’s using too much energy and might represent an environmental threat.

Think about that for a minute, and reflect on how awesome the 1980s were—the Zeitgeist was such that the minor villain was guy who worked for the EPA.  Even left-leaning Hollywood razzed busy-body government employees during the Reagan era.

Regardless, enjoy this blast from the past, an example of a trend in Conservatism, Inc. of reading into films a conservatism message (except I was probably right on this one):

Earlier today I saw Michael Bay‘s highly-anticipated (and critically-panned) Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. Prior to seeing the movie, I had no intention of writing a blog about it. Although films are occasional inspirations for my essays (see my article about the lack of strong African-American fathers, which I wrote after seeing Boyz n the Hood), I never imagined that Transformers 2 would be the subject of one of my blog entries because I don’t write straight-up reviews. Honestly, I figured it would be exactly what it is: a steady stream of explosions, robots, and mass destruction.

What I didn’t count on was that it would only be what I expected 99% of the time. That other 1% is the focus of this essay. Like the first Transformers film, Transformers 2 spent a great deal of time covering the U.S. military and its interactions with and against the various transforming automatons. Generally speaking, the soldiers are characterized as normal and basically decent–they want to do what is best for their country and they want to protect the weak and innocent, but they will follow the civilian authority of the Constitution.
In Transformers 2, however, I noticed a more overt, though still very, very subtle, endorsement of conservative politics–or, at the very least, a critique of modern liberalism. I don’t want to read too much into this (well, actually, I do), but there are several moments during the movie when the misinformed meddler, the entity trying to put the kibosh on the Autobot-military alliance, is a mealy-mouthed government bean-counter who sees the Autobots as an alien menace that constitutes a risk to national security. Now, sure, action movies are overflowing with literal-minded government stooges and opportunistic politicians who are always putting up a wall of red tape that is harder to break than the concrete bunker our hero just crashed through on his motorcycle. The key difference in Transformers 2, however, is that the government stooge in question is acting under direct orders from the president, who is explicitly identified as… Barack Obama (one news report states that “President Obama has been relocated” to a bunker somewhere in the Midwest).
Not evidence enough? At one point, this pencil-pusher makes a point straight out of the Obama foreign policy playbook: let’s try to negotiate with the bad guys. Maybe we can talk out our differences and everyone can live in peace. When the bureaucratic boob said that, I almost fell out of my seat. I don’t know if Michael Bay or the writers of Transformers 2 were intentionally making this point, but for this chubby conservative the implications were loud and clear: Obama and other liberals who demand negotiations before resorting to force against overtly hostile, dangerous opponents are fatally off base and out-of-touch. The president’s puppet makes the point that the United States should not be involved in the civil war of an alien race in the first place, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is anyway. The United States, the filmmakers seem to be suggesting, has a responsibility to aid the Autobots against the new Decepticon menace, whether it likes that obligation or not, and the proposed policies of Obama and other liberals in foreign relations are potentially devastating.
Besides a subtle endorsement of a neoconservative foreign policy–or at least a more realistic approach to foreign threats–Transformers 2 is, as I have mentioned, heavily pro-military. The film depicts soldiers as law- and order-abiding citizens who, even if they don’t like it, abide by civilian authority. This is a refreshing change from the usual Hollywood fare, which casts soldiers in the light of threats to democracy and as right-wing gun nuts who want nothing more than to seize control of the government themselves. While we should have a healthy wariness of the military as a potentially repressive arm of the federal government–a wariness that dates back to colonial America and that is most evident in the writings of Thomas Jefferson—Transformers 2 makes it clear that the U.S. military is a military of dedicated civilian volunteers who value and fight for freedom. They are not professionals who ride roughshod over the freedoms of others, be they Americans or foreigners. In fact, the U.S. military works closely with several Middle Eastern governments in the film, including the Egyptian and Jordanian militaries. In one scene, when a Jordanian helicopter is grounded by a Decepticon, American soldiers aid the fallen foreigners. This is not the unilateral, oppressive, quagmired military we hear so much about in the media; this is a dynamic, humane force made up of regular, freedom-loving Americans.
This brings me to one final point, a point I’ve been mulling over for awhile. We are constantly told that wars are started by the elite and fought by the poor; that wars are little more than opportunistic struggles or, even worse, the effect of some perceived slight or random occurrence; that war is rarely right or even necessary. In different times and in different places, many of these assumptions were true. Wars in the past were started by absolute monarchs or power-hungry tyrants, while they were fought by loyal vassals or downtrodden peasants.
In the United States, however, this is not the case. We live in a society where the people, at least in theory and, cynics aside, very much in practice, have a say in the functioning of government. Whatever slogan-spouting liberals will tell you, their bumper-sticker philosophy is severely flawed and misinformed. If the United States goes to war against a hostile power or terrorist group, it is because the people have given their approval. Foreign policy is, admittedly, concentrated in the executive branch of the government, which means that the president and the Secretary of State have a great deal of influence in deciding its direction. Any president hoping to keep his office, however, is going to be careful in how he deals with foreign policy.
Therefore, the traditional criticisms levelled against war are at best incomplete and at worst obsolete, at least when applied to the United States. There is still a great deal of debate about whether or not the United States should be the world’s police officer; regardless, wars are not foisted on unwitting dupes by a greedy elite in America.
This claim is a bold one, but I stand by it. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been fought and would not have endured so long without significant support from the American people. Now that support is beginning to wane, serious questions are being asked about America’s future role in those countries, but we are seeing a huge amount of popular outpouring for the people of Iran, who are currently struggling against their sham of a government. President Obama’s “let’s-talk-it-out” approach to foreign policy is not enough when facing a regime of authoritarian thugs.