Movie Review: Coming Home (1978)

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Brian Wright

The best all-round antiwar love story of all time (10/10)

Reposted October 11, 2017. Not much has changed. Only now war for most Americans is a bunch of fat cowards sitting in a room murdering women and children with drones. Don’t even need to suit up, just watch TV and push buttons.

Luke Martin (Jon Voight): [Luke’s speech is spliced with final scene of Capt. Bob Hyde where he is at the beach] You know, you want to be a part of it, patriotic, go out and get your licks in for the U.S. of A. And when you get over there, it’s a totally different situation. I mean, you grow up real quick. Because all you’re seeing is, um, a lot of death. And I know some of you guys are going to look at the uniformed man and you’re going to remember all the films and you’re going to think about the glory of other wars and think about some vague patriotic feeling and go off and fight this turkey too. And I’m telling you it ain’t like it’s in the movies. That’s all I want to tell you, because I didn’t have a choice. When I was your age, all I got was some guy standing up like that, man, giving me a lot of bullshit, man, which I caught. I was really in good shape then, man. I was captain of the football team. And I wanted to be a war hero, man, I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And now, I’m here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don’t feel good about it. Because there’s not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I’m here to tell you, it’s a lousy thing, man. I don’t see any reason for it. And there’s a lot of shit that I did over there that I [forced with tears] find fucking hard to live with. And I don’t want to see people like you, man, coming back and having to face the rest of your lives with that kind of shit. It’s as simple as that. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m a lot fucking smarter now than when I went. And I’m just telling you that there’s a choice to be made here.

Novel by Nancy Dowd
Screenplay by Robert C. Jones
Directed by Hal Ashby

Jane Fonda … Sally Hyde
Jon Voight … Luke Martin
Bruce Dern … Capt. Bob Hyde
Penelope Milford … Vi Munson
Robert Carradine … Bill Munson
Robert Ginty … Sgt. Dink Mobley

Continue reading →

Movie Review: Lion of the Desert (1981)

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Brian Wright

An unforgettable, sooo relevant, heroic movie…
that few people have even HEARD of ___ 10/10
Review by Brian R. Wright

Omar Mukhtar: We do not kill prisoners.
Arab Warrior: They do it to us.
Omar Mukhtar: They are not our ‘teachers.’

Omar Mukhtar (to General Rodolfo Graziani): You have not one minute of right. Soon you will take everything from me and you want me to justify your thefts. No nation has the right to occupy another.

Omar Mukhtar: We will never surrender. We win or we die. You’ll have the next generation to fight and after that, the next. As for me, I will live longer than my hangman.

Directed by Moustapha Akkad
Written by David Butler, Paul Thompson

Anthony Quinn … Omar Mukhtar
Oliver Reed … Gen. Rodolfo Graziani
Irene Papas … Mabrouka
Raf Vallone … Colonel Diodiece
Rod Steiger … Benito Mussolini
John Gielgud … Sharif El Gariani
Andrew Keir … Salem
Gastone Moschin … Major Tomelli
Stefano Patrizi … Lt. Sandrini
Adolfo Lastretti … Colonel Sarsani

For this one-of-a-kind cinematic experience and for the review, I have Dean Hazel to thank. He’s been after me for a while to sling some ink at Lion of the Desert, and I’m terribly sad I hadn’t watched this 1981 movie many years ago. Why is this movie an ‘Essential?’ So many reasons. But in a nutshell, it treats Arabs as human beings while showing how the Italian fascist colonial power of the early 20th century committed a full-frontal holocaust—complete with concentration camps, torture, rape, terror bombing, and WMDs—on the indigenous people of Libya.[1] Continue reading →

Movie Review: Wall-E (2008)

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Brian Wright

8.5/10
What do you say about robots that are more human than the humans?

Voice in commercial:
Too much garbage in your place?
There’s plenty of space out in space!
BnL StarLiners leaving each day.
We’ll clean up the mess while you’re away.

WALL-E is a superbly entertaining movie on all levels with it’s ET appeal to youngsters, its romantic-comedy angle for lovers, its science-fictional world for the imaginative, and its unsubtle—yet loosely constructed— political statement for the socially conscious.

WALL-E’s World

Bringing to mind Wally World in the classic Chevy Chase comedy, National Lampoon’s Vacation. Well, just as devoid of people as Wally World, Earth as we know it—the world inhabited by the protagonist of the story, WALL-E, has become literally a toxic-ocean-to-toxic-ocean waste heap. WALL-E stands for Waste Allocation Lift Loader—Earth Class; he/it is a drone, a complex electro-mechanical robot whose job it is to compact trash into a cube inside his midsection, then stack it diligently, neatly to make stable building-sized piles. Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Stepford Wives (1975)

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Brian Wright

“Day” to the 2004 version’s “Night”

Directed by Bryan Forbes

Selected Cast
Katharine Ross … Joanna Eberhart
Paula Prentiss … Bobbie Markowe
Tina Louise … Charmaine Wimperis
Patrick O’Neal … Dale Coba
Mary Stuart Masterson … Kim Eberhart

Joanna faces a dilemma. On the one hand she can go along with her husband—who’s already bought the new house—and kids, leave their apartment in the noise of New York City, and take up residence in the bucolic community of Stepford, Connecticut. Or she can say no.

This might have been the time to say no.

Well, she decides to go along to get along, though not particularly happily (it’s clear Walter isn’t getting his desired water supply).

In first scene of The Stepford Wives, at their new digs a statuesque doll-like neighbor lady delivers a casserole to them. Then with a perfect smile and after some unblinking smalltalk, the neighbor lady turns and strolls back as if she were part of a wedding procession. Continue reading →

Movie Review: North of the Great Divide (1950)

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Brian Wright

Well-plotted Roy Rogers’ flick is friendly to Indians and the environment to boot
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

Summary: Annual run of the salmon gives Indians of the Northwest their livelihood. This way of life is threatened by canneries on both US and Canadian sides. The owner of the cannery on the US side is a d**k who has his henchman do dirty deeds, and who will overfish the river, which along with the Canadian cannery will starve out the Indians in the near term. Roy Rogers is an Indian Agent of the federal interior department, and good friends with the Indian leaders and helps to stave off trouble and, yes, save the day, with his quick and agile horse Trigger… and his dog who does a lot of running and faithful, enthusiastic work, but is uncredited. [I believe the dog’s name is Bullet.]

I thought I’d give a nod to Mr. Rogers for his work, especially after seeing a film he made toward the beginning of his screen career, 1940, at the age of 29: Colorado. Which was quite good. He basically became a star, “The King of the Cowboys,” during that decade, in the Gene Autry mold… meaning a singing cowboy. Then Roy went on to TV, in the Roy Rogers Show (1951-1957), with his real-life wife, Dale Evans. This is when I was a boy (born 1949), and, as many of my peers of the first TV generation, considered him right up there in the pantheon of childhood heroes. He was also one of the top 10 breadwinners in the Western genre in his day. The Wikipedia article on him lays out the facts that his screen persona and his real persona were virtually the same.

For those wondering why he “didn’t serve” in The Bad War, you may consult this decently written piece in Music Weird. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Enemy of the State (1998)

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Brian Wright

Exciting, frightening film about the 900-pound gorilla that’s already in the kitchen

Written by David Marconi
Directed by Tony Scott
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer

Will Smith … Robert Clayton Dean
Gene Hackman … Edward ‘Brill’ Lyle
Jon Voight … Thomas Brian Reynolds
Regina King … Carla Dean
Lisa Bonet … Rachel F. Banks
Jake Busey … Krug
Scott Caan … Jones
Jamie Kennedy … Jamie Williams
Jason Lee … Daniel Leon Zavitz
Gabriel Byrne … Fake Brill
Stuart Wilson … Congressman Sam Albert
Jack Black … Fiedler
Jason Robards … Congressman Phillip Hammersley
Tom Sizemore … Boss Paulie Pintero
Loren Dean … Loren Hicks

When I first saw this movie—geez, hard to imagine this film being made nearly 10 years ago!—I was more moved by the technical wizardry than tuned into this jumbo-sized chronicle of the national security state gone awry. [And now, with this repost here in August 2017, and reformat, consider that it’s been nearly 20 years of surveillance-state growth and dominance of every inch of our lives.]

That, and I remember feeling so friggin’ irritated with Carla (Regina King) for bitching about Robert (Will Smith) doing business with Rachel Banks (Lisa Bonet):

The Claytons’ home has been broken into, the NSA has framed him, his high-powered legal firm has fired him, and his reputation has been trashed in the D.C. papers. So this stand-by-your-man wife throws him out of the house without giving him a chance to explain.

Keep in mind Carla is an ACLU attorney and has just the day before giving Robert a lecture about how our rights are being trampled by the state. Their lives are unraveling from some hostile agent, and she’s getting emotional about some old flame he still has to talk with occasionally? Women!

Turns out Carla’s bitching is the least of his troubles: Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Aviator (2004)

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Brian Wright

Short version of Howard Hughes’ remarkable life and times

Written by John Logan
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio … Howard Hughes
Cate Blanchett … Katharine Hepburn
Kate Beckinsale … Ava Gardner
John C. Reilly … Noah Dietrich
Alec Baldwin … Juan Trippe
Alan Alda … Senator Ralph Owen Brewster
Ian Holm … Professor Fitz

This review stems from a “rewatch,” the first viewing occurring on New Year’s Eve. It’s a fairly long movie and our group was there through the ending into the new year in a nearly empty theater. But this is worthwhile moviemaking; the writers give us a true American hero who takes on the State and, at least for a while, wins.

Hughes was the son of a Texas oilman-inventor who set up a company and earned a fortune; the old man died when Howard was 18, leaving Howard as a multimillionaire engineering student. The Aviator follows Howard from 1930, when he produced the movie Hell’s Angels, to 1947 when, at the age of 42, Howard flew the H4-Hercules aircraft he had designed and built (aka the Spruce Goose).

Following the death of his parents, Hughes moved to Hollywood and to become a movie producer. He was instrumental in the launch of Jean Harlow’s career, and he took a special interest in other celebrity movie femmes in those days. He produced and directed Hell’s Angels (Harlow) as well as The Front Page, Flying Leathernecks, and Scarface. Continue reading →