1,209 words

Invaders from Mars is a sci-fi film said to encompass all of the paranoia of the 1950s. Director Cameron Menzies realizes this film as the horror of a child trapped in a nightmare. David MacLean (Jimmy Hunt), wakened by horrific thunder, looks outside his window and sees a flying saucer land and submerge itself underground. (more…)

1,309 words

I’ve been reviewing Trump movies, and now it’s après moi, le deluge time. I saw The Father a couple of weeks ago in a typically empty theater, and was moved by its study of dementia and bravura acting by an excellent cast. Directed by Florian Zeller and based on his play, The Father tells the story of Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), an elderly man who lives alone in his shadowy apartment.  (more…)

3,771 words

The events of January 6 have been called an insurrection, a riot, an assault on democracy — the epitome of white supremacy, revolution, anarchy, elements of a coup d’etat.

One word they haven’t been called is rabble, which is almost a term of honor, and honorable terms aren’t what the state or its servitors want passed on. Honor, you say? Rabble? (more…)

2,392 words

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) wasn’t the first American writer. That was William Hill Brown (no relation), whose The Power of Sympathy (1789) was an epistolary novel imitating Richardson with moral purpose and a satisfying ending of virtue triumphant. Then there was Susanna Rowson. Her Charlotte Temple (1790), was America’s first bestseller, another fine moral tale of a young woman choosing virtue and so (again) triumphing. (more…)

2,365 words

Shiva Naipaul
Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy
New York: Penguin, 1982

In 1997, thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide. A joke at the time went like this: “Why did Heaven’s Gate kill themselves? They had to keep up with the Joneses.” (more…)

943 words

Jason Blum and Craig Zobel’s The Hunt received mixed reviews regarding its sensational plot, where a group of rich corporate types kidnaps Americans — “deplorable” rednecks — to hunt them down.

The Most Dangerous Game, the 1931 adaptation of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story of the same name, is the original source of the “people hunting other people” concept. (more…)

2,542 words

Anthony Burgess
1985
London: Hutchinson, 1978

Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame celebrated thirty years of Nineteen Eighty-Four with his 1985. It is in two parts: a discussion of Orwell and freedom, and a novella updating Winston Smith’s struggle. (more…)

1,307 words

John Seymour
Retrieved From the Future
London: New European Publications, 1996

John Seymour’s Retrieved From the Future depicts a Britain when the oil runs out, caused by the CRASH, when Shiites take over the Middle East and promptly destroy all its oil wells. (more…)

1,123 words

Every movement needs a movie. Liberals have To Kill a Mockingbird, conservatives have Patton, but what about Trump and the deplorables? The movement has anger and followers, but no film — here’s one.

Allegheny Uprising (1939) is a John Wayne and Claire Trevor film based on Jim Smith’s uprising in the Conococheague Valley after the French and Indian War. (more…)

1,335 words

So they want to ban Gone With the Wind? Pity, because a movie they would really like to strangle is Santa Fe Trail. Made in 1940, Santa Fe Trail is an Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland Western with lots of action and romance that discusses slavery and the Southern point of view in rational terms.

Errol Flynn plays Jeb Stuart, and Ronald Reagan plays George Custer. They are classmates at West Point in 1854 (more…)