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For the longest time, I didn’t know how to begin this review. It needed a headline. But the only thing newsworthy about The Mandalorian & Grogu is that I didn’t hate it. And aside from Rogue One, I hated all the other Disney Star Wars movies.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t recommend this film. I will never watch it again. And I wish I could get back the more than 2 hours I spent watching it. (It seemed closer to 3.) But I didn’t hate it. I’m just completely indifferent. (more…)
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Director David Lynch was born on this day in 1946 in Missoula, Montana. Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the US Department of Agriculture, which moved him around a good deal, thus Lynch grew up in the Pacific Northwest, North Carolina, and Northern Virginia. Lynch studied art and design at several schools. In addition to writing and directing films, he was a painter, sculptor, photographer, writer, and music composer/producer, as well as an inveterate tinkerer. (more…)
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Martin Scorsese is best known for his gangster films: Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), Gangs of New York (2002), The Departed (2006), The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Aside from Gangs of New York, these films unsparingly demythologize organized crime.
Thus Scorsese’s first foray into the mafia genre, 1973’s Mean Streets, is something of a surprise, for its depiction of New York’s Italian mafia may be on a much smaller canvas than Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), but in some ways it is even more romanticized. (more…)
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Editor’s note: Greg Johnson will be appearing on the Decamaron Film Festival 2025 to discuss this very film. More information about the festival, including how to acquire your tickets, can be found here.
***
Donnie Brasco (1997) is a paradox. It is a nearly perfect film, but I wouldn’t call it a great one. (more…)
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Christopher Nolan, one of my favorite living directors, is now working on a movie of the Odyssey, to be released next summer. Frankly, everything I am hearing about it fills me with dread, especially the cast full of Africans. I may just skip reviewing it. I may skip it altogether. But just in case, I have been preparing by rereading the Odyssey and surveying other adaptations. (more…)
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When I heard that Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty, 2013) was “Felliniesque,” that didn’t recommend it at all. By “Felliniesque,” I mean the most stunning and unconventional traits of such films as La Dolce Vita, 8½, and Juliet of the Spirits: basically, a person undergoing a personal crisis in an increasingly surreal, carnivalistic setting that suggests an oncoming psychotic break—or divine intervention—or both; a liberal use of the grotesque sweetened with a Christian-humanist compassion; (more…)
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Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II appeared in 1974, two years after the original, with much of the same cast: Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen, Diane Keaton as Michael’s wife Kay, John Cazale as Fredo Corleone, and Talia Shire as Connie Corleone, plus Robert De Niro as the younger Vito Corleone, Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, and Michael V. Gazzo as Frank Pentangeli (“Frankie Five Angels”). Also returning were Mario Puzo, who co-wrote the screenplay with Coppola; Nino Rota, who composed the radiant music; and Gordon Willis, the cinematographer. (more…)
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Jew: “And the Romans? Where are they now?”
Tony Soprano: “You’re looking at them, asshole.”
Francis Ford Coppola thought he was out of making Godfather movies in 1974 when he released The Godfather Part II. But Paramount pulled him back in when his 1982 musical One from the Heart bombed, and he needed money. Coppola had a standing offer for another Godfather sequel, so he decided to tell the Michael Corleone story for the third time. (more…)
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Trevor Lynch
The Best of Trevor Lynch
Edited by Greg Johnson
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2025
Release date: February 28, 2025. Sale price lasts until February 28th.
“Trevor Lynch is a master of using philosophy to illuminate films and films to illuminate philosophy: (more…)
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Every movie should be a work of love, but astonishingly few are. A notable exception is Wildcat, the 2023 biopic about Flannery O’Connor, directed by Ethan Hawke from a script that he coauthored with Shelby Gaines. Wildcat is something of a family affair, for it stars Ethan Hawke’s daughter Maya as Flannery O’Connor herself. Maya’s brother Levon Hawke also has a bit part. (Their mother is Uma Thurman. Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman starred together in the stupid anti-eugenics flick Gattaca, which fortunately did not deter them from their own successful eugenic experiments.) (more…)
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Фильм Дэвида Линча “Твин Пикс: Сквозь огонь” 1992 года был приквелом к сериалу “Твин Пикс”, который выходил на канале ABC с 1990 по 1991 годы. Однако фильм не имел такого успеха среди критиков и зрителей, за исключением Японии. Это несправедливо, ведь “Сквозь огонь” – действительно достойное кино. Я не буду утверждать, что это лучшая работа Линча. (more…)
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Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 classic The Godfather is one of the most commercially successful, critically lionized, and culturally influential films of all time. It is also filled with important political insights that are useful to the Right.
Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel of the same name, The Godfather was filmed on location in New York City and Sicily. It stars Marlon Brando as the godfather Vito Corleone, Al Pacino as Vito’s youngest son Michael, James Caan as his oldest son Santino (“Sonny”), (more…)
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American filmmaker David Lynch died today, just a few days short of his 79th birthday. Lynch smoked cigarettes on and off since he was eight years old. In August of 2024, he revealed that he had serious emphysema which forced him to use oxygen simply to walk across a room. His family announced his death on Facebook but did not disclose its cause. David Lynch was married four times and had a long-term relationship with actress Isabella Rossellini. He fathered four children and many works of art. (more…)