Tag Archives: movie reviews

The Second Civil War:
Did a 1997 HBO Film Accidentally Presage Today’s America?

Julian Langness

2,458 words

In 1998, when I was 12 years old, my father and I were watching television one evening when we stumbled upon an HBO made-for-TV movie called The Second Civil War.

The film has been largely forgotten in the years since, but its content — and the eerily accurate predictions within it — are quite astounding to behold today, 22 years later.

The film was directed by Joe Dante and has an ensemble cast featuring Denis Leary, Dan Hedaya, James Earl Jones, Beau Bridges, Phil Hartman, Read more …

Published: December 1, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged America in the 1990s, articles, Civil War, comedy, conservatism, demographics, identity politics, Julian Langness, miscegenation, North American New Right, originals, political correctness, race replacement, satire | 20 Responses

Hillbilly Elegy:
Movie vs. Book

Margot Metroland

J. D. Vance.

2,212 words

There are many odd and irksome things about the new Hillbilly Elegy movie on Netflix. For my money, the strangest aspect of the production is that it has only a superficial resemblance to J. D. Vance’s 2016 book. It’s as though you were to make a movie of Moby-Dick, knowing only that it has a ship and a white spermaceti whale and a mad captain who stumps around on a peg-leg. Read more …

Published: November 30, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, book reviews, class, Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, Margot Metroland, North American New Right, originals, rural America, the working class | 16 Responses

Withnail & I

2,283 words

Withnail & I (1987) is a masterpiece of British dark-comic satire written and directed by actor, novelist, and screenwriter Bruce Robinson, who went on to write and direct How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), another strong film in a similar vein. His career seems to have petered out, though, after a couple of flops, Jennifer 8 (1992) and The Rum Diary (2011).

Richard E. Grant made his film debut playing Withnail. (He was also the lead in How to Get Ahead in Advertising.) Paul McGann played Marwood, the “I” in the title. Read more …

Published: November 17, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged addiction, alcohol, articles, Britain in the 1960s, Bruce Robinson, coming of age, conservatism, drugs, high culture, North American New Right, reprints, the 1960s, Trevor Lynch | 7 Responses

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

1,543 words

David Lynch’s 1992 movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is his prequel to the Twin Peaks series, which ran on ABC from 1990 to 1991. Fire Walk with Me was a flop with critics and moviegoers, except in Japan. This is unjust, because Fire Walk with Me is a very fine movie. I won’t say it is Lynch’s best work. That praise belongs to Blue Velvet alone. But the music to Fire Walk with Me is composer Angelo Badalamenti’s best work ever. Read more …

Published: November 11, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, David Lynch, mystery, mysticism, North American New Right, reprints, Trevor Lynch, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me | 4 Responses

Music & Meaning in Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru

Spencer J. Quinn

1,985 words

It would be easy to make Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 masterpiece Ikiru into something trite and hopeful — like an existential affirmation of life. But that wouldn’t be right. Despite the film’s title translating into English as “to live,” the film poignantly demonstrates how any real meaning life has is barely hanging by a thread. In fact, you would have to be a little crazy — or on death’s door — to act upon this meaning at all. You will be going against the grain, you see. Humanity is organized in such a way to impede meaning. Read more …

Published: October 30, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Akira Kurosawa, articles, Ikiru, Japan, Japanese film, life, modernity, music, North American New Right, originals, Spencer J. Quinn | 3 Responses

Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm

Nicholas R. Jeelvy

1,976 words

There are many bad films out there.

There are many cynical cash grab films. There are many sequels that should have never been made. There are many films that serve to convince the makers that their time has not come and gone. Read more …

Published: October 28, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Borat, Donald Trump, Nicholas R. Jeelvy, North American New Right, originals, Sacha Baron Cohen, satire, the Jewish question | 15 Responses

Event Horizon

Nicholas R. Jeelvy

1,729 words

If you’re looking for a film to get you good and spooked for Halloween, you can’t go wrong with Event Horizon, the 1996 sci-fi horror directed by Paul W. S. Anderson. The spooky atmosphere, the gore, the violence, the senselessness of the horror, the simultaneous claustrophobia and agoraphobia of a vast, cavernous spaceship in Neptune’s upper atmosphere all add up to provide a unique experience. But more important to us is the existential meaning of such horrors as the movie has to offer. Read more …

Published: October 23, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Event Horizon, evil, materialism, Nicholas R. Jeelvy, North American New Right, originals, philosophy, rationalism, space exploration, the 1990s, the end of history | 36 Responses

The First Dune Trailer

2,194 words

If movies can have previews, why can’t movie critics release “pre-reviews”? I ask because September 9th was the release date of the first trailer for the first half of Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Dune is one of the most-anticipated movies of 2020. Trailers can build up a lot of excitement for a film, but they are immediately forgotten when the movie actually appears. Read more …

Published: September 28, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Blacks, Denis Villeneuve, Dune, Frank Herbert, North American New Right, race replacement, reprints, trailers, Trevor Lynch, white dispossession | 31 Responses

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

1,256 words

Yukio Mishima’s 1963 novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is one of his darkest works. Set in post-War Yokohama, it is the story of Fusako Kuroda, a thirty-three-year-old widow who runs a boutique selling Western luxury goods, and her thirteen-year-old son Noboru Kuroda. (See Alex Graham’s discussion of the novel here.)

Fusako’s world is entirely feminine, bourgeois, modern, and Western. She is also deeply lonely. Then she meets Ryuji Tsukazaki, the second-mate on a steamship. Read more …

Published: September 16, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, bourgeois society, class, England, gender, Japan, modernity, North American New Right, reprints, sex, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, thumos, tradition, Trevor Lynch, Yukio Mishima | 3 Responses

Civil War Movies:
Good vs. Bad

Morris V. de Camp

1,841 words

There was a time that the American mainstream was really interested in the US Civil War of 1860-1865. That time was before Obama’s gloomy second term empowered the insane asylum of weeping non-whites, deviants, mattoids, and Marxists that rejected all American history Read more …

Published: September 14, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Bruce Catton, historical films, history, Ken Burns, Morris V. de Camp, North American New Right, originals, polarization, political correctness, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the Civil War | 12 Responses

Milk

Beau Albrecht

2,412 words

The 2008 film Milk is a docudrama about America’s first openly gay politician. He served in the city government of San Francisco. (Where else, right?) Harvey Milk’s reputation has grown over the years. The circumstances of his demise turned him into a martyr figure. This overshadows some of his less clever moves, such as his support of Jim Jones. He wasn’t the only liberal politician who looked very silly after the People’s Temple did their final act as a death cult, but still — really, dude? Read more …

Published: September 9, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Beau Albrecht, dissidence, Harry Hay, Harvey Milk, homosexuality, North American New Right, originals, political infrastructure, political organizing, San Francisco | 10 Responses

The Hater (2020)
& other works by Jan Komasa

Bryan Christopher Sawyer

The Outsider becomes an inside man.

3,486 words

The Hater (2020) is a slow and gritty tale of an outsider working at a troll farm in Warsaw as the city’s political factions are in an upheaval. Liberal politicians are confronted in the streets and on social media as nationalist Poland pushes back against anything akin to the oppressive socialist regime of the twentieth century. Read more …

Published: September 4, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Bryan Christopher Sawyer, comedies, Corpus Christi, drama, European nationalism, identity, Jan Komasa, man vs. society, North American New Right, online trolling, originals, Pawel Adamowicz, Poland, Polish films, Suicide Room, The Hater, tragedies, violence, Warsaw 44 | 8 Responses

Tenet

1,170 words

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite living filmmakers. Tenet is Nolan’s new sci-fi espionage thriller. Tenet is highly imaginative and visually striking, filmed on locations in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, and the UK. Its cast includes Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh.

But Tenet is not Nolan’s best work, for two main reasons. Read more …

Published: August 28, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Christopher Nolan, North American New Right, reprints, science fiction, Tenet, time travel, Trevor Lynch | 19 Responses

Empire of Dust

Beau Albrecht

2,131 words

The 2011 documentary Empire of Dust provides a one-of-a-kind portrayal of the difficulties facing a construction crew attempting to redo a badly dilapidated Congolese highway. Early on we meet Eddy, playing a key role as a translator. Clearly, he is exceptional: he knows Swahili, Chinese, French, and English, and this takes some doing. The other major figure is Lao Yang, the project manager for the CREC-7 construction company. Surely he’s one of the most flustered Oriental expatriates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). Read more …

Published: August 27, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Africa, articles, Beau Albrecht, Belgian Congo, China, colonialism, Empire of Dust, neocolonialism, North American New Right, originals, post-colonialism, the Congo | 11 Responses

Remembering Leni Riefenstahl
(August 22, 1902–September 8, 2003)

Greg Johnson

782 words

German translation here

Helene Bertha Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl was born on this day in Berlin in 1902. She died in Pöcking, Bavaria, on September 8, 2003, just after her 101st birthday. She was a highly accomplished dancer, actress, photographer, and film director.

Africa Addio

1,550 words

Africa Addio (Goodbye Africa) (1966), co-directed, co-edited, and co-authored by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi of Mondo Cane fame, is a must-see red-pill documentary for race-realists. Filmed between 1963 and 1965 in Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Rwanda, Angola, the Belgian Congo, and South Africa, Africa Addio chronicles the exit of the British and Belgian colonial powers from Africa, as well as the attempts of the Portuguese and South Africa whites to hold on. Read more …

Published: August 21, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Africa, Africa Addio, Angola, articles, civilization, colonialism, Franco Prosperi, globalism, Gualtiero Jacopetti, imperialism, Kenya, North American New Right, reprints, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanganyika, the Congo, Trevor Lynch, violence, Zanzibar | 13 Responses

Lovely, Dark, & Deep:
The Farthest: Voyager in Space

Kathryn S.

Voyager 2, loading into a Centaur rocket.

2,806 words

I suspect most people have particular topics that affect them profoundly and cause a welling up of emotion that most other people would find a bit strange. For me, the topic is space probes. When I watch documentaries or read articles about them, I tear up the way we all tear up at a piece of heartbreakingly beautiful music or a cynic-proof rendition of the national anthem. After the unmanned spacecraft Cassini completed its mission in 2017 and sent back its stunning images of Saturn, the probe’s creators issued Read more …

Published: August 17, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged America in the 1970s, articles, Cassini mission, Faustian man, Kathryn S, NASA, North American New Right, originals, space, space exploration, spirituality, Voyager in Space, Voyager mission | 15 Responses

Night of the Living Dead

John Wilkinson

2,807 words

One of the smartest moves I ever made was becoming a “cord cutter.” Aside from the financial benefit, it has served to liberate my mind from the clutter of contemporary pop culture and media propaganda. Nevertheless, I occasionally indulge in streaming old movies, classics, whenever I can find them. Read more …

Published: August 14, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged America in the 1960s, articles, Blacks in America, Civil Rights Movement, Duane Jones, George Romero, horror movies, John Wilkinson, Night of the Living Dead, North American New Right, originals, violence, zombie movies | 24 Responses

American Pimp

1,127 words

American Pimp is a 1999 documentary directed by the Hughes Brothers, the half-black, half-Armenian twins who also directed Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. American Pimp has fallen into obscurity and is now hard to find. But it deserves to be better-known, especially among race-realists. American Pimp is just under 90 minutes. It consists primarily of interviews with black pimps and their prostitutes. Read more …

Published: August 4, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged American Pimp, articles, black criminality, Blacks in America, blaxploitation, North American New Right, pimps, prostitution, reprints, sociopathy, the Hughes Brothers, Trevor Lynch | 14 Responses

Storytelling

2,246 words

Storytelling (2001) is the most politically incorrect movie I have ever seen. Indeed, it is so un-PC that it could never have been made today.

Director Todd Solondz is a really sick guy. His films Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Palindromes, and Life During Wartime can justly be accused of fixating on bullying, rape, pedophilia, abortion, suicide, and murder. Read more …

Published: July 28, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, feminism, Jews in the media, lying, North American New Right, political correctness, postmodernism, reprints, satire, sex, Trevor Lynch, victimhood | 6 Responses

The Birds
Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Coronavirus (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock & Heidegger), Part Nine

5,423 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

Mitch gathers Melanie’s still unconscious body into his arms and carries her down the stairs. Lydia walks ahead of him, carrying an oil lamp. “Oh, poor thing! Poor thing!” she says. Her resentment toward Melanie now completely gone, she feels only pity. Lydia goes to fetch bandages, as Mitch lays Melanie on the living room sofa. He asks Cathy to get some brandy, Read more …

Published: July 17, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged 2020 American riots, Alfred Hitchcock, articles, being, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, das Ereignis, Derek Hawthorne, die Lichtung, family, Martin Heidegger, modernity, North American New Right, originals, philosophy, scientism, The Birds | 16 Responses

The Birds
Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Coronavirus (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock & Heidegger), Part Eight

5,468 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

At first, we hear the sound of birds singing. The sound is pretty and harmless. Is it the lovebirds in the kitchen? Then we hear fluttering and flapping. This grows louder and louder and the pretty singing of a moment before is replaced by angry cawing and screeching. It is one of the most interesting scenes in the entire film. Read more …

Published: July 13, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alfred Hitchcock, articles, being, das Ereignis, Dasein, Derek Hawthorne, die Lichtung, feminism, Martin Heidegger, modernity, North American New Right, originals, philosophy, The Birds, the uncanny | 2 Responses

The Birds
Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Coronavirus (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock & Heidegger), Part Seven

5,283 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

With the gulls now retreating, Mitch and Melanie leave the Tides restaurant and make their way up the hill to Annie’s house to retrieve Cathy. All is deathly quiet. As they approach the schoolhouse, they see that the crows are back and perched all over. “Look, the crows again!” Melanie says breathlessly. Read more …

Published: July 3, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alfred Hitchcock, articles, class conflict, complacency, das Ereignis, Dasein, Derek Hawthorne, die Lichtung, knowledge, Martin Heidegger, modernity, North American New Right, originals, philosophy, spirituality, The Birds, the bourgeoisie, the uncanny, tribalism, women | 4 Responses

High & Low

1,719 words

Like most Westerners, I got to know Akira Kurosawa through his classic samurai films: Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, and Ran. Thus I was surprised to discover that fully half of his thirty films are actually set in contemporary Japan over the stretch of Kurosawa’s long lifetime (1910–1998). High and Low (1963) is one of the best of these films, along with Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, and Ikiru. Read more …

Published: July 1, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Akira Kurosawa, aristocracy, articles, capitalism, class conflict, feudalism, honor, Japan, justice, North American New Right, reprints, Trevor Lynch, virtue | 8 Responses

The Straight Story

1,483 words

When I saw Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, I was convinced that David Lynch is an essentially conservative and religious filmmaker, with a populist and mystical bent. Arguing that thesis was an uphill battle as his work got increasingly dark in the nineties. Many people interpreted Lynch’s portrayals of quirky, salt-of-the-Earth white Americans as parody, his mysticism as arbitrary weirdness, and his depictions of evil and violence as inconsistent with having a conservative and religious moral center. Read more …

Published: June 19, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Americana, articles, David Lynch, Disney, family, North American New Right, reprints, the Midwest, The Straight Story, Trevor Lynch | 3 Responses

Fight Club

3,005 words

Note: These are notes for a lecture on Fight Club given on October 25, 2000 in an adult education course called “Philosophy on Film.” For a fuller interpretation of Fight Club, see Jef Costello’s “Fight Club as Holy Writ.”

What’s philosophical about Fight Club? Fight Club belongs alongside Network and Pulp Fiction in an End of History film festival, Read more …

Published: June 16, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, conflict, end of history, Fight Club, Freidrich Nietzsche, Hegelian dialectics, irony, modernity, North American New Right, on Nietzsche, reprints, the Männerbund, thumos, Trevor Lynch | 7 Responses

The Birds
Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Coronavirus (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock & Heidegger), Part Six

4,963 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

(Editor’s Note: Mr. Hawthorne apologizes for repeatedly announcing the conclusion of this series. He is making it up as he goes along.)

For the last two installments, I have been principally occupied with an exposition of the ideas of the later Heidegger, and with a Heideggerean interpretation of The Birds. There is much more to be said, Read more …

Published: June 12, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alfred Hitchcock, articles, das Ereignis, Derek Hawthorne, horror, hubris, knowledge, Martin Heidegger, North American New Right, originals, philosophy, religion, The Birds, the uncanny | 3 Responses

The Birds
Or: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Coronavirus (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock & Heidegger), Part Four

4,672 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

We ended our last installment in the midst of the pivotal scene in the Tides Restaurant. There, we met Mrs. Bundy, a droll parody of modern, Western, pig-headed scientism. With arch condescension, she refuses to believe Melanie’s stories about the bird attacks. “Impossible!” Mrs. Bundy declares. “Their brain pans aren’t large enough. . . Really, let’s be logical about this,” Read more …

Published: June 1, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alfred Hitchcock, art, articles, being, das Ereignis, Derek Hawthorne, destiny, humanism, Martin Heidegger, modernity, nature, North American New Right, originals, paradigm shifts, philosophy, psychology, scientism, The Birds, Transcendence | 4 Responses

Twelve Monkeys