Tag: Top Ten

Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Worst Films: #3: Captain Marvel (2019)

The Portly Politico5 Comments

There used to be a time when superhero movies were fun, light-hearted fare for a hot summer’s afternoon.  With a bucket of popcorn and frosty air-conditioning, watching Iron Man quip one-liners while blowing stuff up was a good way to pass the time.

Marvel Studios really upped the ante with superhero flicks, ladling in humor, depth, pathos, rich characterization, interlocking storylines, and all the rest.  For ten years, they pretty much dominated cinemas, with few misfires.  Heck, even the bad Marvel films were merely mediocre or forgettable.  I’ve definitely forgotten a lot of the plot points since the first Iron Man flick came out in 2008 (good grief—has it been that long?!), but the films were largely humorous, action-packed thrill rides at the time.

Then everything started getting hyper-politicized.  Think back to 2008, and how different the world was then.  Yeah, sure, Barack Obama was elected President that year—perhaps an important turning point in the wider culture war—but at the time, that was at least billed as a some kind of magically unifying moment.  Sure, we conservatives didn’t buy it, and he ended up being everything we feared he would:  a race-baiting socialist with delusions of grandeur.  But overall, our culture wasn’t nearly as divided as it is now, and while Hollywood always put out some propaganda, it largely stuck to entertainment.

By the time Captain Marvel (2019) came out eleven years later, it felt like the entire world had been turned upside-down.  Suddenly, everyone was talking about how much “representation matters” and established superheroes and other characters were being gender-swapped willy-nilly.  Rather than, you know, creating compelling female (or [insert identity here]) characters, we were told Batman needed to be gay, trans, Asian, wheelchair-bound, and suffering from a protruding overbite.

It was into this milieu that Captain Marvel was born—and it suffered for it.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Portly’s Top Ten Worst Films: #4: The Wicker Man (2006)

The Portly Politico10 Comments

Thanks go to Ponty, who mentioned in a comment—that I am not about to look up, ha!—this film.  You really helped me out with , but I’d like $3.23 for the RedBox rental, mate.  —TPP

This week’s flick is the second consecutive Nicolas Cage flick I’ve had to pan, which pains me:  Nicolas Cage is probably—and unironically—my favorite actor.  At his best, his loose cannon hamming can completely make a picture.  At his worst, he’s either too ridiculous—a caricature of his already cartoonish self—or too subdued, leaving the best arrow in his quiver unused.

In the case of this week’s film—The Wicker Man (2006), the abysmal remake of the 1973 classic—the poor presentation is, fortunately, not Cage’s fault exclusively.  He does deliver a rather lackluster performance, lacking either the over-the-top insanity of Vampire’s Kiss (1989) or the wordless panache of Willy’s Wonderland (2021), but it’s only occasionally bad.  Mostly, it’s just forgettable.

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare any remake to the original (with the exception of John Carpenter‘s The Thing, 1982), but remaking this film was a bad idea.  At least, the 2006 attempt is a very poor one indeed.

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2018’s Top Ten Posts

The Portly Politico3 Comments

2018 was a good year for The Portly Politico.  I relaunched the blog back over the summer, when I had more time to write multiple pieces a week.  With the South Carolina primary elections, it’s not surprising that some of the most traffic hit during June.

Just like the 2016 election, I was unable to dedicate the time necessary to covering the 2018 midterm elections; perhaps my greatest deficiency as a blogger is the inability to post regularly during the school year, a function of both a lack of time and focus (and, very likely, a lack of discipline).  While the blog has not gained the traction I’d hoped for six months ago, it’s been an entertaining way to put some of my thoughts to “paper,” as it were, and get some interesting feedback from you, my small coterie of loyal readers.

All navel-gazing aside, here are 2018’s Top Ten Posts, as determined by the number of views:

10.) SC Primary Run-Off Election Results – the title says it all!  I think some wayward Googlers boosted this one into the top ten.

9.) #MAGAWeek2018 – George Washington – during the Fourth of July week, I kicked off what will become an annual observance:  MAGA Week.  Each day featured an essay about some figure or idea that had made America great in his or its own way.  While I’m most proud of my lengthy overview of the career of John Quincy Adams, the post on George Washington gained the most traction with readers—a deserved victory for America’s most influential Founding Father.

8.) A Discourse on Disclaimers – I got so sick of endlessly qualifying every statement, I wrote this protesting post.  One thing the Trump presidency has taught us is that you’re never going to appease the progressives, so you’ve gotta fight back.  You’re never going to able to mollify an emotional, inherently violent beast with an appeal to decency and reason, so why bother?

7.) SCOTUS D&D – one of the lighter works of the Brett Kavanaugh character assassination, this post linked to another author’s attempt to place the Supreme Court justices on the legendary Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart.  Very fun.

6.) Progressivism and Political Violence – one of my best pieces, I would argue.  This post detailed the strong link between the progressive ideology and violence, be it the official use of state violence to enforce its way, or street-level thuggery when it’s been systematically denied the levers of power.  If Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg kicks the bucket in 2019 and President Trump and the Republican Senate successfully appoint and confirm a conservative justice to replace her, I shudder to contemplate the hysterical bloodshed that will result as masked Antifa goons and hipster black boots take to the streets.

5.) #TBT: It’s a Thanksgiving Miracle – the only “Throwback Thursday” post to make the top ten, this was a reposting of the old blog’s 2017 Thanksgiving post, which I wrote with a freshly broken left wrist.  We all have a great deal to thank God for this year.

4.) America Should Expand into Space – one of my early pieces during the 2018 relaunch argued that the United States should make a concerted effort to continue expanding into outer space.  Why get our precious rare-earth metals from China when we can mine them from asteroids?  Speaking of…

3.) Breaking: President Trump Creates Space Force – I whooped with joy when President Trump announced the creation of Space Force.  Apparently, many readers were excited about it, too.  It’s a commonsense move:  space is the next, and final, frontier.  Why cede dominance—military, economic, cultural, or otherwise—to the ChiComs?  Make America Space Again!

2.) 4.8% Economic Growth?! – one of the first posts upon relaunching the blog, this little piece drew a good bit of attention (and probably benefited from the initial curiosity traffic).  Let the good times roll!

1.) Run-Off Elections in SC Primaries Today – this post blew all others away, with (at the time of this writing) 101 more views than its next competitor.  I was shocked, but the blog showed up in several online search results as South Carolinians sought out information about the primary run-off elections this past summer.

So there you have it!  My personal favorites didn’t always gain the traction I hoped—and some of my better essays were nowhere near the top ten—but that’s the fun of blogging:  you never know what’s going to catch readers’ attention.

Thank you all for a wonderful 2018.  Here’s looking forward to bigger and better things in 2019!

God Bless, and Happy New Year!

–The Portly Politico