…And Justice For All (1979)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.filmlinc.com)

Punishment Fits the Crime

Funny movie about the tragedy of modern US jurisprudence - Boston Legal before Boston Legal - and the public sector mentality of benign neglect and corruption-by-default.

A ham-and-egg lawyer with a reputation for moral rectitude defends the guilty and the innocent with the same skill. The basic theme here is the difference between following the letter of the law and the (much more humane) spirit of the law. The problem for the former type of legal professional is that they find themselves hated for their relentless pursuit of the law in a way that inevitably excludes the purpose of the law: The wronged citizens whom it is meant to serve.

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The ethical confusions of the characters serve to make the dramatic moral points of the screenwriters. For example, the difficulty of being moral when one knows one's client is a murderer or a rapist is as tough as the moral problems of the criminals. As in real life, most crimes are trivial and the criminals worthless. The lawyers know this and act accordingly; making you wonder whom is best served - the few well-paid lawyers or the public at large. There really is no effective long-term answer to crime - not the hanging judges nor the rehabilitators nor the punishment-fits-the-crime brigade. The real problem is that the law-abiding cannot renounce their resentful envy of criminals – for often getting away with their crimes - for long enough to deal with the reasons people choose a life of crime.

Unless one realizes that justice is not about establishing truth, but about winning cases, one will go as mad as the legal eagles shown here. In the end, this film offers nothing more than a description of a corrupt system, but no genuine solutions.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Antichrist (2009)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

Exploring the same psychological territory of parental bereavement better explored in Don’t Look Now, this avant-garde horror movie starts off well but soon gets partly-trapped in its mirror inability to solve both its dramaturgical problems alongside its characters psychological ones. Emotions, here, are expressed in purely physical and melodramatic terms - true affections are hard to find.

In Christian cultures, metaphorical female circumcision is the equivalent of the mutilation literally practised in cultures supposedly more primitive. But this is an effect of emotional repression, not a cause - and the film does not dig deep enough into such matters to offer an explanation as to why White cultures would be so gynophobic and misogynistic.

The superb acting keeps you watching because it is compelling, but the themes of gynophobia and self-repression of White women are crudely expressed. Female circumcision as an analogue of Western culture’s endemic and Christian-based fear of female sexuality requires more dramatic meat on the bones of this auto-anthropophagi tale. Nevertheless, an unusually honest look at White culture.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Mala Educación [Bad Education] (2004)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://wn.com/An_Education)

Excellent overview of the parlous affects a Christian education can have on the emotionally sensitive. The endemic sexual, political and emotional intolerance of Christians is well-displayed by a child-molesting priest who is being blackmailed by a former choirboy, transvestite and drug addict for money to pay for a sex-change operation.

Director Pedro Almodovar is humanistic enough to go below the surface of each character - no matter how loathsome - to tell us something about the human condition. In particular, that the past has effects in the present - be they good or bad - and that these simply have to be come-to-terms with, either way.

The themes are not as fully explored in terms of causative issues as they are concerning affects, but this is still worth a long, lingering look.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Battaglia di Algeri [Battle of Algiers] (1966)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.claudiocolombo.net/)

Vibrant, exciting film; a virtual handbook for terrorists; showing why terrorism is such an intractable problem because it is an inherent response to the endemic White supremacism of the Western world's standard approach to the non-White world.

The winners in terrorist struggles - as one would expect - write the most truthful version of events, as here, because their insights into their enemies' failings are the most realistic and, thus, the most useful for defeating them. They have been on the receiving end of abuse and know that the French claims of Liberty, Equality & Fraternity only apply to the light-skinned. This is why colonialists won the Battle of Algiers, but lost the Battle for Algeria.

(Image: http://www.claudiocolombo.net/)

The most amusing aspect of White racism is its fallacious obsession with using skin pigmentation to determine character. Thus, for example, light-skinned bombers get through military checkpoints because only dark-skinned Muslims are being searched; racism being a two-edged sword that can be used against its proponents. Unlike the racist Monty Python joke in their movie Life of Brian (What have the Romans ever done for us?), this movie exposes the lie that White colonialists do any good for those they oppress. The issue is not schools, hospitals, civilization (aqueducts, sanitation, law & order) but self-determination and liberty. Without the latter, the former becomes the meaningless possession of imperialists living in gilded cages.

(Image: http://www.sharingfreelive.net/)

The other issue successfully-explored here is that of indulging ones fear of being killed by terrorists in claiming all members of the feared group are terrorists and should, therefore, be treated as if they actually were all terrorists. This preoccupation with collective punishment is well expressed through a young boy nearly being kicked to death by grown men for the apparent crime of being a Muslim. Inevitably, this approach simply creates the paranoid/schizophrenia typical of bullies, as well as more of the terrorism that such an attitude is meant to curtail.

(Image: http://www.sharingfreelive.net/)

An even-handed movie that treats White colonialists with respect, since to do otherwise would have been both bad drama and prove a lack of insight into the human nature of racists. A movie still as relevant today as it always was because of the superior intellectual and emotional force of its ideas. Easily the best film on terrorism as a positive activity in the world yet made.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Blair Witch Project (1999)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.leftfieldcinema.com/)

Interesting, experimental and effective horror-movie about a group of arrogant, stupid and naive college students out to make a documentary about the supernatural.

The poor psychodynamics of the trio are well-handled as they move from acting like adults to expressing actual fear that the adult world is more scary than they had ever imagined. Their inability to use their fear to galvanize them into positive action is as crippling physically as it is psychologically. They are unable to read a map, have no cell phones and fail to take basic survival precautions; fitting-in perfectly with their thoughtless characters. Their basic unlikeability creates an audience identification problem such that, although we feel their fear, we do not really care whether they live or die.

Genuinely scary because of its documentary format, this is amply complemented by the fact of this movie being a means of breaking into the movie business, in the same way as the characters in the narrative wish to do. The problem with the first-person gimmick used here, however, is that it has minimal application, since no matter what bad thing is happening, someone must still have the presence of mind to be operating the camera - an unrealistic expectation at the very least. Yet this film works so well because of what is not shown; making it a disquisition on blind fear and panic, as such.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Body Double (1984)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	Cinema

(http://inspirational-imagery.blogspot.com)

Doppelgänger

Above-average Alfred Hitchcock homage from the Hitchcock-obsessed Brian De Palma; stealing ideas from Rear Window, Dial M for Murder and even Debbie does Dallas to strangely-resonant effect.

(http://www.hotflick.net)

The suspense is well-handled and ably-supported by an admittedly sub-Bernard Herrmann musical score. Along with the characterization and careful - albeit somewhat unbelievable - plotting and its elaborate set-pieces. The emotional realism even extends to using the kind of shoddy back-projection for which Hitchcock was famed.

(http://www.hotflick.net)

This is the story of a man obsessed with a beautiful woman who thus fails to see the wood for the trees - blinded by her good looks. As with all the best thrillers, nothing is what it seems, except the hero’s resulting claustrophobia - and our own.

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Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Life before Her Eyes (2007)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.movieactors.com/)

Contrived and one-sided, but well-acted (especially Evan Rachel WOOD’s performance) melodrama about friendship and the way in which memory works.

Informed by a rarely-practiced Christian sense of self-sacrifice, tainted here by the sacrifice being one coming from someone who has little to sacrifice. There is only a life thrown away that was going nowhere in the first place. Moreover, friendship here is defined as self-sacrifice when it is only through the self (that is paradoxically being sacrificed!) that one could ever experience such a thing as friendship.

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Ultimately, the writer does not really know, as so many of us do not, how to define our friendships because they are never tested as they are here - nor would most of us have the courage to ascertain whether our friendships are nothing more than the fair-weather variety. Christianity is not the simple-minded solution to this problem, that is touted here, since friendship is ultimately based on knowledge of the other person, not faith in them.

The Sixth Sense-like twist ending is an unfortunate dramatic compromise which does not serve the drama well. It entices us in; while being a distraction from the major theme of human warmth and empathy. Yet, having said all that, this is an emotionally-involving drama that will either have you living in mortal dread of your friends or having in-depth discussions about it with them.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

THE WIRE: Season 5 (2008)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

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As in Shakespeare, the characters here are so well-written that they all speak from their own point-of-view. One wonders why British tv is so poor currently. The answer, of course, is that the latter is frightened to address the issues faced by Britain, in the same way that British Whites are frightened to understand the Institutional Racism (IR) behind last summer's UK riots.

This cop show is not about good and evil, but about the relationship between economics and politics - and about the way in which this can negatively effect democracy. The importance of the story itself is so great that important characters get killed despite their popularity; making the drama as unpredictable as it is believable.

Despite the variable quality of the actors, this series is very politically-realistic - rather than politically-correct. Whites are shown as lazy beneficiaries of IR; while Blacks must work hard to surmount the obstacles created by IR. This makes the show popular with Blacks, but (apparently) racist to Whites. This is reflected in the fact that the Black actors are uniformly-superb - especially the outstanding ones playing the younger street thugs - and by a Black audience that understands what is being presented (as the White one does not).

The urban decay is shown to be a consequence of a White definition of community that is based on money - with no real sense of empathy and affinity. The lack of help from a White Federal Government is inevitable given the White desire to ensure poor Blacks stay poor, so that they never become economic competition for Whites.

The self-contradiction is that such White supremacy is more expensive than diversity, since keeping Blacks in prison is far more expensive than encouraging them to be better citizens. Like the racial slavery that preceded it (abolished because it meant little work for poor Whites), present-day Whites still want to waste money inappropriately-asserting themselves by oppressing Blacks.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Book of Eli (2010)

RATING:	40%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.guardian.co.uk/)

A bland, unimaginative and trite script, coupled with unoriginal dialogue, makes this a rather tiresome and repetitive affair. Instead of saying how the world got this way, we have here a western disguised as science fiction: All style and precious little substance; trying hard to out-Tarantino Quentin Tarantino.

The view of human nature on offer is disturbingly revealing of Christian's belief that women are no more than sexual objects whose only purpose is to relieve men of their sexual tensions. The film pretends to criticize this attitude; while actively engaging in it. Like a lot of futuristic movies, this one tacitly admits that it is about the present state of Western culture; eg, Dog-eat-dog; every man for himself; while bizarrely offering the cause (Christianity) as the solution.

The parable of Christian teachings being both responsible for the end of the world, through blind obedience to wishful thinking; while simultaneously implying that Christianity can revive a culture that failed is intriguing, but dramatically unexplored. The necessary combination of faith and force required to make Christianity work is visually stressed though violence, but by no other means; making this a strange movie about faith that has neither faith in itself nor its audience, in assuming the latter is only interested in gratuitous violence.

As they do with popular music, Christians make poor movies - if only a Christian like Johnny Cash could have written this script, it would have been a damn sight better. Nevertheless, the scant humor here is morbidly spot-on; albeit in accepting the inherent flaws in Christianity without meaningfully commenting on them.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Brighton Rock (1947)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.frontroomcinema.com/)

A rare movie - every bit as good as they say it is.

Two of the twentieth-century's greatest British writers (Graham Greene & Terence Rattigan) collaborated on a near-perfect script from the Greene novel of the same name. Their characterizations are both fulsome and credible.

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As you would expect from Greene, there is fundamentalist and Roman guilt and shame about sex aplenty. The characters imagine they are going to Hell; while scarcely recognizing the living hell in which they already abide. Greene is almost saying that Roman Catholicism is precisely the kind of philosophy that produces such behavior.

There are also excellent performances here from first-rate actors as well as superb direction from Boulting - he creates a style that perfectly captures the crepuscular world in which the characters choose to live. Richard ATTENBOROUGH (a better actor than a director) dominates throughout as the psychotic hoodlum Pinkie Brown; while the very fine Carol MARSH shines as Brown's starry-eyed wife. This is true ensemble work of the highest order and all-of-a-piece; describing a believable world that still exists around the world - despite the fatuous written claim at the beginning of the film that Brighton is not now as depicted here.

In this pretty-much perfect movie, the seediness is palpable: The best British crime noir ever.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Closer (2004)

RATING:	40%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.matttrailer.com/)

Yet another film about sexual relationships in the Western world that accurately describes them from a distance but does not understand them. Because of this there can be no solution to the problems outlined here and so one quickly realizes that the reason such dramas are made is simply to whine about problems both the characters and their screenwriter share.

What makes this even worse is the belief that the self-imposed suffering here is universal (rather than particular to White culture) and that there is, therefore, no need to find a solution because one does not exist. This fundamentally masochistic approach to life would be an excellent source for another (better) drama should any White writer have the emotional courage to script it.

Talking about emotions rather than experiencing them; pretending that feelings remove ethical choice from ones actions; sexual possessiveness as a substitute for sexual exclusiveness; neurotic need; and, emotional self-indulgence are also the essence of a story which refuses to take a God’s-eye view of human affairs; preferring, instead, to wallow in solipsistic self-pity and narcissistic self-aggrandizement.

The ensemble performances, however, are almost - but not quite - good enough to help us forget the inherently-ethnocentric weakness of this story (& its coincidental contrivances) about Western alienation and resultant sex-as-intimacy obsessions. Fear-of-intimacy and fear that if one acknowledges ones emotions the world will come cashing own around one informs this drama; rendering it the collapsed world self-fulfilingly feared. The gilded cage in which these characters live tries to reverse the importance of the noun (cage) with its qualifier (gilded).

Just about everyone here needs to work on their intimacy skills. Because the writer does not really understand his characters, he does not really understand why they do what they do - except to claim that they believe the world owes them a living. A drama as ultimately soulless as its characters who try to buy love with sex, and not as good as Sunday, Bloody Sunday, nor as illuminating about White sexuality.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

My Best Friend’s Girl (2008)

RATING:	20%
FORMAT:	DVD

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Like so many US comedy films, the characters analyze their emotions to death, rather than just accept them for what they are. They are frightened to discover who they really are; hence, the lack of sincerity in their personal relationships. Rather than find out about oneself from relations with others, personal relations are avoided, as is - and for the same reason - emotional maturity. This existential self-indulgence explains why the United States has the highest divorce rates in the world and the worst sex comedies.

The jokes are as simplistic and as unsophisticated as the characters and the performers; making it look as though the actors are ad-lirbbing rather than performing from a script they have memorized.

White culture is obsessed with comparing and contrasting itself with other cultures, that the characters could not know happiness if it hit them, since they constantly worry about whether someone else is happier than they are. No one here is happy, they simply associate with the least-worst partners: They try to fit their feelings into pigeonholes - as all repressed people do - rather than learn to experience them spontaneously.

Relationships here become more important than the people one is relating to, in true tail-wagging-the-dog fashion, as if such relationships were all for show. And the screenplay never addresses this simple fact as an issue that would have made for a far more insightful and, therefore, funnier comedy.

Rather than engage in human archetypes, this comedy pretends humans are either sexually promiscuous or chaste, with no variation either way. Relationships are little more than sexualized therapy, as characters whine-on about others, when their real problems are with themselves - as if the only purpose of such relationships were the whining.

Amid all the ethical relativism, where are the mental and emotional absolutes that these people pretend to be searching for? The screenwriters have absolutely no idea!

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Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Thick of It (2005)

RATING:	60%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.imcdb.org)

Blunt Satire

Nowhere near as good as Yes Minister, it lacks significant insight into British politics in presenting bite-size humor for small minds. Essentially an outsiders' view, the characterization is poor as the humor is not really about human beings at all (& their social affairs) but about playing with words to get cheap laughs.

The unreal world in which White politicians live (referred to as the 'real world') closely follows the world in which Whites, as a whole, live. But the writers offer no appreciation of the metaphysical world in which they claim to be operating; hence, the generalized unreality of a satire that needs to be more strongly reality-centered - otherwise, what is the point of satire?

As in Western politics, in general, politicians seek to obtain, maintain and, ultimately, to grow their power, but can only do so by creating increasingly-crazy policies in a desperate attempt to be popular rather than practical. The failings of democracy are implied but never fully explored, except to point out the rather obvious fatuity of focus groups. Moreover, the female characters are shown as possessing all the common sense the males lack, without no explanation as to why this is so.

Because of these failings, the sometimes-hilarious comedy relies on continual swearing, incessant sexual references and single-joke episodes in the absence of genuine wit. These are the politically-impotent whose continual references to the size of their penises makes it seem that the writers have as much of a phallic problem as do the politicians, and that there is, in fact, more sucking-up to politicians here than any genuine attempt to satirize them.

The basic question this series raises is: Is the UK run by witless incompetents or is the BBC? The comedy here is too focused on cleverness with words than meaning, in a victory of form over content. As we get the politics we deserve; we also get the tv comedy we deserve. At least it’s not as self-congratulatory as The Hour.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Soy Cuba [I Am Cuba] (1964)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/)

Poetic polemic on the parasitic nature of White culture in its desire to expropriate the land, resources and people of other countries and to live, thereby, as tourists in a world they think they own but can never understand. This film clearly asserts that the country is both the land and its people - not just the land - and, thus, any claim to the contrary is a sign of moral degeneracy.

The White-created poverty displayed here was inevitably going to lead to revolution, so this movie is also a celebration of Cuban Communism and the material benefits it produces for the poor. ranks alongside The Battle of Algiers for political and aesthetic brilliance.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Tess (1979)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

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Beautiful, lyrical and bucolic with each shot carefully-composed in a very painterly way. Moreover, well acted at the correct leisurely pace to allow the carefully-plotted story to breathe and the individual scenes to generate sufficient emotion to carry the drama forward.

The story depicts a culture so socially confined that respectability is more important than love and happiness - with tragic consequences as a proud young woman plays-out her masochistic fatalism against the changing seasons.

Like the heroine in an Anthony Trollope novel, you admire the stubbornness that makes the eponymous character so sexually-attractive to men; yet no man can really measure up to her child-of-nature qualities - nor tame her. Only when she takes a hand in her own destiny does she begin to live fully.

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Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.co.uk) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

THE WIRE: Season 4 (2006)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/)

Like Shakespeare, the characters here are so well-written that they all speak from their own point-of-view. This show is so good that one wonders why British tv is so poor currently (2006). The answer, of course, is that the latter is frightened to address the issues faced by the modern nation, as British Whites are frightened to understand the Institutional Racism (IR) behind last summer's UK riots.

Despite the variable quality of the actors, the series is very politically-realistic - rather than politically-correct. Whites are shown as lazy beneficiaries of IR; while Blacks must work hard to surmount the obstacles created by IR. This makes the show popular with Blacks, but (apparently) racist to Whites. This is reflected in the fact that the Black actors are uniformly-superb - especially the outstanding ones playing the younger street thugs - and by a Black audience that understands what is being presented (as the White one does not).

The urban decay and blight is shown to be a consequence of a White definition of community that is based on money - with no real sense of empathy and affinity. The lack of help from a White Federal Government is inevitable given the White desire to ensure poor Blacks stay poor so that they never become economic competition for Whites.

The self-contradiction is that such White supremacy is more expensive than diversity, since keeping Blacks in prison is far more expensive than encouraging them to be better citizens. Like the racial slavery that preceded it (abolished because it meant little work for poor Whites), present-day Whites still want to waste money oppressing Blacks.

This is a cop show that is not about good and evil, but about the relationship between economics and politics - and about the way in which this can negatively effect democracy. The importance of the story itself is so great that important characters get killed despite their popularity; making the drama as unpredictable as it is believable. The failings of the White educational system are particularly well highlighted, especially as regards teaching-to-the-test not the curriculum; resulting in the evaluation of teachers but not the students.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Alligator (1980)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://imcdb.org/)

An environmentalist’s wet-dream of a movie: Greedy corporate interests polluting the environment with horror-movie consequences.

For a Jaws’ rip-off, this is an unusually-intelligent movie. It possesses a fine script from John SAYLES that deftly walks the tightrope between socially-concerned polemic and monster-movie thrills.

Director Lewis Teague handles it all with great aplomb and the high quality of the casting and characterization is remarkable. No performer puts a foot wrong in a film that they could easily have decided was to be undertaken just for the money. Moreover, White imperialism, male pattern baldness and the vicissitudes of heterosexual relations are stirred into this enjoyably-entertaining mix.

The special effects are suitably and believably gruesome and the whole affair has a great deal of wit and of not-taking-itself-too-seriously to compensate for the inevitable cliches and credibility lapses so typical (&, perhaps, so enjoyable) of the genre.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Australia (2008)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(Image: http://www.matttrailer.com/)

Starts out as a rip-off of Once Upon a Time in the West and quickly becomes The Cowboys. This Ozzie Western (Eastern?) is by turns funny and tear-jerking in equal measure.

Essentially a grand and melodramatically-colorful celebration of the eponymous country (& continent) which also tries to come-to-terms with its endemic White supremacism. It focuses on the fact that Whites have little culture other than that appropriated from others - religion, language, science, etc. Australian aborigines here Dream (create their own mythology) and thus have a Story (their own culture) to pass on to their children. This gives them a strong sense of belonging via a shared and effectively-transmitted culture. Whites, on the other hand, can only feel a sense of Themselves through self-definitions couched in terms of what They are not: Black, savage, emotionally-expressive, etc; and thereby making what They are not a negative. A cultureless culture, indeed.

(Image: http://www.matttrailer.com/)

The characterization is thin albeit archetypal. And for once, CGI is used to heighten the emotional experience rather than to impress an audience with formalistic spectacle, grandeur and sheer size. Despite the fact that the movie's structure is a little too loose for its own good - along with the plotting - this is a good, old-fashioned treat with its heart firmly in the right place.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Face/Off (1997)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

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An unbelievable plot married to credible acting makes this a sparkling melodramatic entertainment. There is a central emotional core to this action movie; dealing with what makes us who we are, positive family values and the difference between human appearance and human essence. All the dramaturgical stuff that fans of John WOO have earned the right to expect.

(Image: http://www.guardian.co.uk)

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Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://thebestpictureproject.wordpress.com)

Subtle appreciation of White middle-class bigotry

Sly looks from a White cab driver, when the central couple kiss, begins this journey into white racial paranoia and self-repressive blackness. It gleefully exposes the self-serving hypocrisy of allegedly well-meaning White liberals and their Negrophobic obsession with skin color.

Essentially a romantic manifesto about the never-ending and endemic struggles of White liberals to come-to-terms with and whitewash the White supremacism of their own culture - from which they, too, benefit. The script also struggles with the issue of institutional White racism and wisely decides to leave that to the audience's imagination since, if you do not know what the characters are referring to, then this movie is clearly not for you since you obviously do not come from around here.

The basic theme is Social Acceptance versus Happiness: Race politics being precisely the same today, despite the optimism shown here, as it was then. The film humorously confronts White supremacy as an institutionalized condition of White culture, yet there is an unacknowledged problem the White-written screenplay tellingly creates for itself.

Sidney POITIER’s character is so perfect, that any objection to him marrying a White woman must be racist. But why would such an accomplished Black man marry a White nobody?

It is because Whites believe the only equality possible between the two is that a Black person must work hard to overcome the limitations of being a Negro, in order to match the innate and already-achieved perfection of any White - no matter the White’s actual lack of personal achievements? And, moreover, that such a relationship is of political benefit to the Black, but of little utility to the White.

That the Black character here is actually superior - in many ways - to all of the Whites shown is ignored since it would mean a) that a Black can best a White; &, b) that the Black man here is actually slumming in a culture that is beneath him.

Yet, despite this hypocritical White-liberal whining, this is a well-cast movie all-round, with Katherine HEPBURN and Spencer TRACY convincing as the real couple they actually were - and funnily-written by William Rose.

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Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

Taxi Driver (1976)

RATING:	100%
FORMAT:	DVD

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Martin SCORSESE and Robert DE NIRO used to make a night out at the pictures a real, albeit often gloomy, treat. And Jodie FOSTER proves again she was the best and most precocious child-actor of them all.

A Gothic horror of modern, White Western Man alienated from His own creation (His culture); manifesting the inevitable violence (a cry for help) springing from the resulting loneliness. A rare example of visual gruesomeness that could never work without it.

The true genius of this work is that you feel empathy for a murdering sociopath; if you didn't there’d be no real drama, only horror.

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The media here has no values, so it tends to raise non-achievers to the status of a "Somebody". A tragedy about human pain that's ultimately uplifting because to acknowledge anguish is to relieve it.

Brilliant in every way: One of the very best films ever made.

Copyright © 2012 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.