Movie Review: Losing the Liberty (June 8, 1967)

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Brian Wright

Two films on the Israeli unprovoked, intentional attack on the USS Liberty

The 50th anniversary of the assault on the USS Liberty is coming up June 8th of this year. These two videos are important building blocks toward the understanding of what happened… and toward the steps all good Americans need to take now in defense of our own country… and its Liberty.

Thank you so much Dick Kennedy for sending me these DVDs; I’m simply overwhelmed by the treachery and savagery of high officials of both governments, Israeli and American, serving without question the imperial agenda of Zionist Israel at this most critical juncture of history. It’s stunningly clear this was a false flag attack with unmarked planes and gunboats, intended to be blamed on the Arabs, and to sink the ship and kill everyone on board so no one would be available to contest the story. Following which the US could rightly enter the conflict on the side of Israel.

The objective was also to eliminate surveillance of war crimes—the sadistic, perfunctory execution of several hundred Egyptian POWs from the Six-Day War, the invasion and conquest of the Golan Heights, and who knows what else. Israel had planned the ‘War’ years in advance, thus very likely what they were going to do with any prisoners. The standard story that Israel was facing annihilation from massing Arab forces appears to be complete BS… according to sources quoting a large number of Israelis who were in a position to know: Continue reading →

Movie Review: Key Largo (1948)

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Brian Wright

Bogie classic psychological drama of mobsters and the good guys___8/10
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

Lots of little reasons add up to make this a big movie. It’s sometimes easy to dismiss an old film for its antiquated technology. A movie like Key Largo, today, reminds one of a play being performed for cameras in a big building on the Warner Brothers property in Burbank, CA—which of course it was.

But that ‘stage’ quality of old classics actually encourages one to focus on the essentials, namely plot and character. The screenplay was written by director John Huston and Richard Brooks, based on a play by Maxwell Anderson.

The setup: Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) is passing thru the Florida Keys during the tourist off-season to pay his respects to the father [James Temple (Lionel Barrymore)] of a good friend of McCloud’s who was a member of his unit in World War 2, and killed in action. Temple’s daughter-in-law, Nora (Lauren Bacall), is the widow of Temple’s son… and helping the elderly, wheelchair- bound Temple to run his oceanfront hotel, The Largo.

Before Frank shows up, an underworld entourage with notorious racketeer, Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), has been exclusively occupying The Largo for several days—using it to stage a substantial criminal financial heist in cooperation with a rival set of mobsters. Rocco’s yacht is initially anchored within sight past the coral reefs. Johnny’s moll, fading singer-performer Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor) accompanies the Rocco gang… and provides the platform, by the way, for Ms. Trevor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress that year. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Bob Roberts (1992)

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Brian Wright

Wrapping it in the flag and a folk song (9/10)
Directed by Tim Robbins

Original Review by Brian R. Wright, November 19, 2006

Bob Roberts is a timely movie about national political cynicism that was intended to satirize the Republican Revolution of 1994. Others have contended the subject of the satire was the Reagan 80s, against the Gordon Gekko “Greed is Good” crowd.

But it could not be more appropriate to the rise and ascendancy of the Bush II clique.

Roberts, a Pennsylvania Senate candidate , is a rich, smarmy, guitar-strumming, media savvy corporate shill. He sings folk songs about the joys of strip mining, stock-market success, and capital punish- ment for drug dealers.

The review on the IMDB site states Roberts is eerily prescient of Rick Santorum, who won the 1994 Senate race in Pennsylvania by affecting the same style as Tim Robbins in the title role. Like Bob Roberts, Santorum postured as a friend of the common man, yet was a front for powerful corporate interests (esp. the health insurance industry).

The cast is stellar, as writer-director Robbins skewers the lazy, posturing media—actors Fred Ward, Pamela Reed, and James Spader send up good roles—; malicious security hacks (Alan Rickman); and the gullible public itself. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Good Will Hunting (1997)

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Brian Wright

“Just playing”… with a little help from his friends

Will: Beethoven, okay. He looked at a piano, and it just made sense to him. He could just play.
Skylar: So what are you saying? You play the piano?
Will: No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals, and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn’t paint you a picture, I probably can’t hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can’t play the piano.
Skylar: But you can do my o-chem paper in under an hour.
Will: Right. Well, I mean when it came to stuff like that… I could always just play.

For a subtitle, I was going to use something like political-romantic, psych thriller buddy movie, but the quote above suggests the more descriptive “I could just play.” Both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck at that time in their careers (1997) have been in front of a camera a few times… and they’re smarter than the average bears. Who knows how the creative process works? Just as Sylvester Stallone hit a grand-slam home run his first time at the plate, writing and acting Rocky, Damon and Affleck do the same with Good Will Hunting… and they hit their monster homer at Fenway Park in Boston, no less, where they actually grew up as friends. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Talladega Nights (2006)

Posted on March 22, 2017 by Brian Wright

Modest effort at NASCAR satire/comedy (5/10)
Original Coffee Coaster review on March 16, 2007

Continuing in review of some of the movies that amazingly did not show up at the Academy—I mean who actually watches movies like The Queen, Letters from Iwo Jima, or The Departed, anyway?—I thought the story of Ricky Bobby warranted an evaluation.

Candidly, I like the way the title sounds!

Was the effort modest… or feeble? Who knows? But I have to say up front Ferrell movies (e.g. Old School and Anchorman) have the same look and feel of one another. (The first few Adam Sandler movies are like that, too: basically cookie-cutter juvenile gross-out escapades that contain possibly two genuinely comic scenes among them.)

And gross it does! I’m not sure what Ferrell’s box office is, compared to, say, George Clooney’s movies, but I’ll bet it’s on the order of viewership of professional wrestling compared to girls’ basketball.

Popularity is no reason to hold anything against someone, Ferrell included. In this movie he teams up with Adam McKay of Ron Burgundy, Anchorman, fame to tell the story of a boy who has racing in his blood and lives to fulfill his father’s motto: “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

The first scene conveys the delivery of young Ricky Bobby. While his mother is in labor in the back seat, his dad, Reese (Gary Cole), pops the clutch in his Chevelle Super Sport to expel… well I don’t want to spoil it for you. Qua plot, that’s more or less a high point. Continue reading →

Movie Review: American Sniper (2014)

Posted on March 15, 2017 by Brian Wright

Competent though wretched fare pandering to American Exceptionalism (3/10)
Reviewed by Brian R. Wright

As with most of Clint Eastwood’s cinematic efforts, American Sniper is good moviemaking; he gives you solid plot and engaging action. Also, in this case, Bradley Cooper turns in an excellent, believable performance as the Navy S.E.A.L. super sniper Chris Kyle.

Along with many in the peace and anti-imperialist community, I balked at watching this film. Even though the work is first rate and you are drawn into caring for the principal characters—gotta keep your war buddies from being killed and gotta handle the psychological problems of adjusting to nonwar life— the overwhelming question sweeps over you like a tsunami: “What in the hell are we doing here?!” Why are groups of brawny American men with guns and grenades going door to door in neighborhoods that US jets and artillery have bombed into pieces… and rousting scrawny remnants of once-thriving civilians, that OUR freedom forces have brutalized beyond recognition, clinging to life by a thread?

The magnitude of American wrongdoing in Iraq (and now all the other countries as part of the Greater Israel Project) is so depressing as to be an indictment of any enterprise associated with it, including, nay especially, Hollywood apologia. The fact that that the predominant USA! USA! booboosie masses are inflated by such barbarism directed against ‘the helpless other’ only serves to make American Sniper even more disgusting to anyone with the moral sensitivity or intelligence above a toilet seat. Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Matrix (1999)

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Brian Wright

Emotional fuel for world liberation ___ 10/10
Review by Brian Wright

“As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free.”
— Morpheus

This review is the third of four commentaries that suggest a general approach to healing our world. The book I just reviewed, The Secret behind Secret Societies, discusses the conspiracy of power that underlies the current machinery of the Western global-corporate empire.

Written and Directed by
Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski

Keanu Reeves … Neo
Laurence Fishburne … Morpheus
Carrie-Anne Moss … Trinity
Hugo Weaving … Agent Smith
Gloria Foster … Oracle
Joe Pantoliano … Cypher

This controlling central power (let’s call it the Beast) is the fundamental ailment we are in sore need of healing from. The movie The Matrix is a metaphor of our own heroic struggle for liberty against the Beast, and provides a hopeful message that vigorously stirs the blood of freedom people.

The time is approximately 200 years from now, planet Earth. Early in the 21st century, humans achieve functional artificial intelligence (AI) which instead of leading to a comfortable human-machine Singularity[1] results in an earth-razing cataclysm. Machines (computers) 1: Humans 0.

The machine uber-intelligence (MUI) that takes over is analogous to our “Beast.” Continue reading →