Author: Trevor Lynch

1,227 words

I was surprised at how much I liked Disney’s live action Star Wars series Andor, so I watched the Mouse’s next Star Wars series, Ahsoka. It was a trudge across vast, dreary plains of pulp, nostalgia, and estrogen-sodden wokeness — punctuated with peaks of genuine magic and drama.

The character of Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano, an orange-skinned alien, was created by George Lucas and Dave Filoni and first introduced in the 2008 animated film The Clone Wars, which focused on her relationship with Anakin Skywalker. (more…)

707 words

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a bad movie, but not a terrible one. There are legions of nerds complaining about how Scott got this or that historical detail wrong. Honestly, that’s beside the point. Even if Scott didn’t know Saint Helena from Elba, he could still have made a great movie.

Everyone has heard of Napoleon. But what’s so great about Napoleon? Any film about Napoleon needs to answer that question. But in nearly three hours’ screen time, Scott fails to do so. (more…)

882 words

Martin Scorsese, who turns 81 today, is a master of the gangster movie: Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Irishman, and now Killers of the Flower Moon. Killers is the true story of a series of murders that took place in the 1920s on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma.

When oil was discovered under their reservation, the Osage nation became, in effect, the first oil sheikdom. The Osage cashed in their oil revenues for fancy houses, cars, clothes, and bling. Alcoholism, obesity, and diabetes ran rampant. (more…)

1,236 words

All new Star Wars stories, like the denizens of a vast coral reef, need to inhabit nooks and crannies in the universe and narrative created by George Lucas. But there are better and worse ways to do this.

Disney has produced two kinds of Star Wars products: new and original stories and cynical, safe, nostalgic remakes. Four out of five of Disney’s Star Wars movies fell into the safe and cynical camp. (See my reviews of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and Solo.) (more…)

1,377 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

After the climactic gunfight between Frank and Harmonica, the latter and Cheyenne say goodbye to Jill. But just outside of the McBain property, Cheyenne falters. Harmonica stops and turns with concern. It turns out that Cheyenne was mortally wounded by Morton. Like Jesus, he has a bleeding wound in his side. This comes as some surprise. He must have been putting up a brave front with Jill. But the surprise comes off as a rather contrived plot twist; one of many. (more…)

2,035 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

I have had a difficult relationship with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Parts of this film are so emotionally powerful as to be almost unendurable. Indeed, before I began work on this review, I had seen Once Upon a Time in the West only one time in full, on a rented VHS tape in the 1990s. I knew it was a great film, so I bought the VHS. But I could not bring myself to watch it again. (more…)

1,629 words

Leftists ruin everything. Nothing, not even children’s toys, is immune from their hateful ideology. A case in point is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. There are countless women who played with Barbie dolls as children, put them aside when they grew up, and occasionally think nostalgically about them without ever suspecting that they were the targets of Leftist consciousness-raising. But from the very start, Barbie sets them straight.

Barbie begins with a voiceover that sounds like a witch. In the bad old days, little girls only played with baby dolls, which their cunning parents foisted on them to brainwash them into wanting to become mothers. (more…)

1,266 words

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite living directors. The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk are all big, eye-catching Hollywood spectacles, but with a difference. They are highly imaginative, deal with serious themes, have compelling dramatic conflicts, and are often quite moving. Nolan is not particularly politically correct, either. Granted, his last film, Tenet — with its ludicrous Affirmative Action Hero — was a major disappointment. But with Oppenheimer, he returns to form.

Oppenheimer has a highly literate script with important ideas and powerful dramatic situations, striking visuals without digital hokum, and superb performances from a vast cast. (more…)

638 words

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn’t good enough or bad enough to merit a review. Which I guess is a review in and of itself.

I enjoyed the first three Indiana Jones films a good deal. They aren’t serious movies, but they are well-made, entertaining piffle, with Harrison Ford as an unusual hero who combines two-fisted paleo-masculinity with intellect and taste. But I don’t think I was ever young enough to take the character of Indiana Jones all that seriously. Thus I am pretty much immune to a big-budget nostalgia-fest about the character. If I were feeling nostalgic, I would simply watch the original films. Or better, just listen to John Williams’ wonderful music. (more…)

1,579 words

I am reviewing two films together because they don’t merit stand-alone reviews, but I want to say something about them anyway. It is just a coincidence that they both star Brad Pitt.

First, the good news. If you like Guy Ritchie’s comic crime capers like Snatch or Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels or The Gentlemen, you will love David Leitch’s Bullet Train.

Guy Ritchie basically took Quentin Tarantino’s formula of eccentric, wise-cracking criminals, non-linear narratives, and blood and guts, then purged it of all auteur pretensions. (more…)

Agatha Christie

1,154 words

There’s a reason why Agatha Christie is the world’s best-selling author. Her whodunnits are cleverly crafted, well-written, and highly entertaining. I also find them wholesomely Eurocentric, which is problematic these days.

Death on the Nile (1937) is one of her best novels. A shot rings out onboard a luxurious Nile steamer. It is clearly a case of foul play. But the two prime suspects have airtight alibis. Moreover, practically everybody else on the ship had means, motive, and opportunity to do the deed. Even Hercule Poirot’s famous gray cells are baffled . . . for a time. (more…)

1,354 words

Todd Field’s Tár is the story of the rise — or perhaps I should say “social climb” — and fall of Lydia Tár, a pioneering ethnomusicologist, conductor, and the first female Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic, who is brilliantly played by Cate Blanchett. Shot on location in New York and Berlin, Tár very effectively conjures up the world of contemporary classical music, from the concert halls and conservatories to the journalistic latrine flies. (more…)

Trevor Lynch
Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
Edited by Greg Johnson
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2022
220 pages

There are three formats for Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema:  (more…)