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Christian Petzold’s Undine, set in contemporary Berlin, begins with Undine Wibeau (Paula Beer) having coffee with Johannes, her boyfriend. It’s not going well. She has deep, penetrating eyes and red hair that looks ready to blaze. She says to him: “You said you loved me. Forever. If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you. You know that.”
We’ve all had girlfriends like that, haven’t we? (more…)
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Did you know that whites invented homosexuality, transgenderism, rape, lesbianism, feminism, and all other forms of perversion? Neither did I, but my eyes have been opened by the insightful new documentary film Buck Breaking, produced by Tariq Nasheed. It’s the story of how white supremacy sexually objectifies the black man to break his masculine spirit and dominate him. (more…)
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1970’s Halls of Anger is low-budget, tense, sensational, but real. Calvin Lockhart plays Quincy Davis, an ex-basketball star who’s happy teaching in a suburban high school until integration comes and he’s reassigned to a ghetto school, as are several white students. The principal, Boyd Wilkerson (John McLiam), couldn’t care less about his students; he wants more federal money (from integration) and a chance to get elected to the school board. (more…)
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The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is in the public domain. You can watch it here.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is best remembered today for being the film that launched the career of Rudolf Valentino. (more…)
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I hear it’s that time of year again when woke capital takes time out of its busy schedule to celebrate sexual deviancy and the courage of the gays. As has become customary, I will now use this time to reflect on the past — specifically, the 2001 French comedy Le Placard (The Closet). (more…)
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Tucker Carlson recently ruffled some feathers for calling WWI “the Iraq War of its day.” I’m not sure what these people were offended by. I think there are just people who get outraged by the things Tucker Carlson says first before coming up with a reason why (more…)
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David Lean (1908–1991) directed sixteen movies, fully half of them classics, including three of the greatest films ever made: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and, greatest of them all, Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Lawrence of Arabia is repeatedly ranked as one of the finest films of all time, and when one compares it to such overpraised items as Citizen Kane and Casablanca, a strong case can be made for putting it at the very top of the list. (more…)
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Africa. Poor, poor little Africa. See its starvation, poverty, and misery on TV. Don’t you feel sorry for it? Don’t you want to pick it up, kiss it, and make it feel better even as it wets on your hands? Of course you do. Aren’t you a good lemming? Don’t you like to roll over and beg when it’s expected of you? Or even better, give Africa lots of money? Or better still, to give it your heart and soul, clap your hands, and believe in it? (more…)
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Editor’s note: This is a transcript of Millennial Woes’ speech at the 2017 London Forum. We would like to thank Hyacinth Bouquet for this transcript. (more…)
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Over the years, I caught bits and pieces of John Milius’ 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian — starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the big lug himself — on cable TV. But I was never tempted to watch the whole film. I finally gave in when I started writing my series on Classics of Right-Wing Cinema, and friends urged me to add Conan to my list. I admit that a film about Robert E. Howard’s iconic hero, with visuals borrowed from Frank Frazetta, starring the future California Governator, and directed by Right-wing Jew Milius sounds like a formula for a classic of Right-wing cinema, teeming with paleo-masculine heroics and illiberal political realism. (more…)
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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…)
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Michael Powell (1905–1990) is one of the tragic geniuses of film: a genius because he is one of the most visually dazzling directors in the history of cinema, tragic because he too often wasted his talents on inferior scripts, most of them provided by his longtime collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, a Hungarian-Jewish refugee to whom Powell often gave co-director credit. (more…)
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In my life, I have encountered people who enjoy watching bad movies. I don’t mean that they have bad taste in movies, but that they revel in watching objectively terrible, often low-budget movies in an MST3K sort of way. I guess they find something endearing about the amateurish charm.
I mean, knock yourself out. But I’ve never quite understood this. (more…)
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One of the Vatican’s favorite films is 1986’s The Mission. It was one of 15 films selected by the Catholic hierarchy in 1995 for its list of recommended religion films. (Yes, the Pope released a recommended film list in 1995.)
The Mission is an unsurprising inclusion. It features Jesuit heroes challenging evil colonists on behalf of oppressed natives. (more…)
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The Searchers (1956) has been acclaimed not just as one of John Ford’s greatest films, and not just as one of the greatest Westerns, but as one of the greatest films of all time. This praise is all the more surprising given that The Searchers is a profoundly illiberal and even “racist” movie, which means that most fans esteem it grudgingly rather than unreservedly. (more…)
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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…)
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Galaxy Quest (1999)
Director: Dean Parisot
Writers: David Howard (story), Robert Gordon, and David Howard (screenplay)
Stars: Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Missi Pyle
“It’s really a very sophisticated movie. . .” “. . . with eight-year-old audiences.” (more…)
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For years now, readers have been urging me to review Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), which adapts Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel of the same name. I have resisted, because although A Clockwork Orange is often hailed as a classic, I thought it was dumb, distasteful, and highly overrated, so I didn’t want to watch it again. But I had first watched it decades ago. (more…)
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John Ford’s last great film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) enjoys the status of a classic. I find it a deeply flawed, grating, and often ridiculous film that is nonetheless redeemed both by raising intellectually deep issues and by an emotionally powerful ending that seems to come out of nowhere. (more…)
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Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 was first published 68 years ago, and the first film adaptation was produced in 1966, but its messages remain surprisingly relevant today. Although many interpreted it as merely a story about government censorship, Bradbury himself characterized the work as a statement on the dumbing-down effect of television. (more…)
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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…)
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Adam Curtis has been compiling and documenting the nature of power in the world for over two decades now for the BBC. Those of us who reside in the UK and are required by law to pay a yearly sum of £157.50 ($218.35) for a television license, and for many native British people, paying this sum has been increasingly feeling like a spit in the face. Adam Curtis’ documentaries have been the one reprieve from the stream of abuse and guilt-tripping amongst the state-sponsored news media and junk celebrity TV. (more…)
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Director Tony Kaye’s anti-skinhead morality tale American History X (1998) is proof that propaganda is far from an exact science. Just as Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket caused a surge in Marine recruitment, American History X actually increases audience sympathies with neo-Nazi skinheads, despite its best efforts to present them as hateful hypocrites and losers. (more…)
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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…)
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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…)
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Dirty Harry (1971), directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood as San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan, is a classic of Right-wing cinema. Dirty Harry was hugely popular with moviegoers, spawning four sequels and a whole genre of films about tough cops whose hands are tied by the system and are forced to go outside the law in order to protect the public.
Dirty Harry articulated the growing reaction to the racial unrest, hippy degeneracy, and liberal mush of the 1960s, (more…)
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Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) is a wonderful film designed and directed by Wes Anderson. It was his first stop-motion animation, and its success led to its even wilder spiritual successor Isle of Dogs, an important landmark in Japanophile cinema. Around the time of its release, Fantastic Mr. Fox stood alongside other unusual works like Rango (2011), Chicken Run (2000), Up (2009), and Where the Wild Things Are (2009), all released in a period of scintillating creativity in the animated film industry.
This period began in 1996 with the release of Toy Story and ended in 2012 with the release of the first Avengers film, (more…)
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David Lynch’s second feature film, The Elephant Man (1980), is one of his finest works. In many ways, The Elephant Man is Lynch’s most conventional “Hollywood” film. (Dune too is a “Hollywood” film, but a failed one.) The cast of The Elephant Man is quite distinguished, including John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Sir John Gielgud, Dame Wendy Hiller, and Anne Bancroft. The film was produced by Mel Brooks, who left his name off so that people would not expect a comedy. (more…)
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I am inaugurating a series on Classics of Right-Wing Cinema with Martin Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver. For the purposes of this series, what makes a film “Right-wing” is its subject matter, its message, or simply how it resonates with people on the Right, regardless of the filmmaker’s intent. Please feel free to nominate films for this series in the comments below.
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It began with Dylann Roof. (more…)
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Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) is one of his finest works. Fanny and Alexander runs 312 minutes—more than five hours. Bergman cut it down to a 188-minute version for theatrical release. The full version was shown as a miniseries on Swedish television but was also released in theaters, making it one of the longest theatrical films in history. (more…)