Movies

‘Globe’ Critic Characterizes ‘The Help’ Filmmakers As Slaveholders

August 29, 2011
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‘Globe’ Critic Characterizes ‘The Help’ Filmmakers As Slaveholders

The Help, a comedy-drama film set in the South during the turbulent mid-1960s, finished at the top of the U.S. movie box office for the second weekend in a row. Although the film received largely positive reviews, a critic from the Boston Globe predictably lambasted the film for insufficient hatred of the American South: It’s possible both to like this movie – to let it crack you up, then make you cry – and to wonder why we need a broad, if sincere dramatic comedy about black maids in Jackson, Miss., in 1962 and ’63 and the high-strung white housewives they work for. The movie is too pious for farce and too eager to please to comment persuasively on the racial horrors of the Deep South at that time. But the critic, Wesley Morris, didn’t stop there. His biggest complaint is that the The Help shows black women of the era as needing help in order to reach their full potential in the Jim Crow South.  The central character, a white female known as Skeeter (Emma Stone), he notes, “changes the lives of a couple of dozen black women whose change is refracted primarily through her.” Not good, Morris complains:

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Fred Steiner, R.I.P.

August 25, 2011
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Fred Steiner, R.I.P.

Most people don’t know who Fred Steiner was. As a musical composer and conductor, his work, both credited and uncredited, contributed to the sound of many Hollywood productions from the early ’50s to this year. I always associate him with the original Star Trek series (25 episodes) and Gunsmoke (11 episodes). However, he didn’t compose the themes for either show. But he was responsible for one unforgettable TV series theme tune: Perry Mason. We’re told Steiner’s original title was “Park Avenue Beat.” You can listen to Steiner’s most famous composition here (YouTube, 4 minutes 3 seconds). The series is slowly coming out on video.

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Honor in a Dark World: John Huston’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’

August 25, 2011
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Honor in a Dark World: John Huston’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’

John Huston’s 1941 film version of Dashiell Hammet’s novel The Maltese Falcon is, in my opinion , the superior work of art (though the novel is no mean accomplishment itself). The plot centers on the search for an extremely valuable statuette of a falcon, made centuries ago on the island of Malta , with people killing others in order to obtain it. The villains are mostly colorful, sophisticated, and  at least superficially upper-class. Indeed, one of the two ways the film, in my opinion, is superior to the novel is that Mary Astor’s portrayal of Brigid O’Shaughnessy  is three-dimensional, whereas in the book she is nothing more than a beautiful temptress. The hero, private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart, in his breakthrough role) , is capable, tough, and edgy. I have used the word hero, but he is at best a tarnished one. Though he seems tired, and even sickened, of it by the time the film begins, Spade has been cuckolding his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). Regarding Archer’s murder, Spade says, “When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it.… When one of your organization gets killed, it’s … it’s bad for business to

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“Conan the Barbarian”: Not Perfect, But Closer

August 24, 2011
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“Conan the Barbarian”: Not Perfect, But Closer

With this review, I consciously renounce all right to any respect as a film critic. I loved Cowboys and Aliens, which right-thinking people seem to despise, and now I’m going to admit to the world that I enjoyed the new Conan the Barbarian, which everybody except me and a few Facebook friends seems to loathe. I’m going to start by moving my recommendation, which I usually leave for the end of the review, to the beginning. The good things I’m about to say about Conan the Barbarian should not be taken as an endorsement for most of our readers. This movie earns its “R” rating. There is much violence, and enough graphic, special effects-enhanced gore to please Odin’s ravens. Also considerable female nudity, often in situations involving bondage. I think this was a major error on the part of the filmmakers. They could have made a movie just as good without voluntarily reducing their paying audience through shock techniques and salaciousness. On the other hand, the “R” rating is not inconsistent with the original material. I approached Conan the Barbarian with something less than low expectations. I mistrusted the re-boot project from the first, and Michael Medved, whose opinion I

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‘Annie’ and Myths About the Great Depression

August 20, 2011
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‘Annie’ and Myths About the Great Depression

In a recent posting by Steven Horwitz on the Coordination Problem weblog, the author shows how pop culture can shape history — or, rather, our recollection of it: As I’ve been writing about the myths surrounding the Hoover presidency the last week or so, it got me thinking about the question of where those myths came from and why they persist. Certainly a big part of the persistence has to do with the biases in the media, the punditry, and academia. The economic facts of how much worse the Great Depression got under Hoover are not in dispute, but if one is predisposed to think, even in a naive way, that government intervention is the answer to economic problems, then it’s almost a necessity to accept the myth of Hoover as “laissez faire.” If you don’t, it would require some major cognitive dissonance to square the idea of Hoover as a proto-New Dealer (which he was) and the disaster of his presidency with your priors about the necessity of government intervention. But putting biases aside, I think there’s probably another source for it, especially in more recent years when more and more serious historians have rightly recognized Hoover’s interventionism. I

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‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Mashup Notable for Flaws, Saving Graces

August 1, 2011
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‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Mashup Notable for Flaws, Saving Graces

By S. T. Karnick The general rule for mixed-genre fictions is not that you can expect to interest fans of both genres, but instead that you end up only with those who like both genres. That, I suspect, is a central reason why so few are attempted and even fewer are successful with audiences or critics. That seems to be what’s happening with Cowboys & Aliens, which opened to less-than-enthusiastic reviews and lower-than-expected first-weekend ticket sales even though it finished first at the U.S. box office. That would explain the unexpectedly weak performance during the film’s first weekend. What’s likely to suppress its box office appeal in the coming weeks, however, is the film’s lack of a strong story line and dearth of appealing characters. Directed by Jon Favreau (the Iron Man films, Elf, Zathura) from a script by multiple hands, Cowboys & Aliens has plenty of energy and action and is basically enjoyable, but it suffers from a curious lack of interesting plot twists and a rather glaring casting mistake. Most classic Westerns, contrary to contemporary beliefs, were given excellent, complex plots with strong character motivations. Unfortunately, plot is the great weakness of Cowboys & Aliens. We know from

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Captain America: Exceptional Movie for an Exceptional Nation

July 23, 2011
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Captain America: Exceptional Movie for an Exceptional Nation

I’m not a comic book kind of guy, but I’ve seen a few turned into movies. Captain America is the latest and well worth two hours and $35 (tickets for me and the boys and very expensive popcorn and sodas, thank you Regal!). This won’t be a review (it got mostly positive reviews, like this one), but an observation about movies, Hollywood and American culture. Conservatives and religious types, of which I am one, are often fond of lamenting the dismal state of the republic, its culture, its people, its problems, of which there is no end to the cataloging. Yet it is as or even more important to point out the good, the true, and the beautiful we find as well. Certainly we have our problems, but not unlike a certain 20th Century iconic conservative politician, I have faith in the decency of the American people. Movies like Captain America affirm this inclination to see the good in my fellow Americans, both those who make the movies and those who watch them. The movie is not subtle in its depiction of good vs. evil, with good of course winning, and Americans like it when good wins. Box office receipts

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Mini-quote: Is Harry Potter a British Tory?

July 16, 2011
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Mini-quote: Is Harry Potter a British Tory?

J. K. Rowling’s famous literary creation, Harry Potter, has been casting a spell on readers and moviegoers for many years. Simultaneously, Harry has been casting a spell on individuals and groups who want to claim the young wizard as one of their own. Even though Harry’s story has been told and the final movie, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” will be released this week, this franchise isn’t going to disappear with the wave of a wand. The main character’s appeal is so strong that the slightest hint of an endorsement or rejection of an idea or philosophy can trigger a massive public reaction. Harry might be a fictional character, but his “opinions” and “beliefs” are worth their weight in gold. Let’s speculate about Harry’s political ideology. Is he a conservative, liberal or socialist? To be fair, Ms. Rowling is reportedly nonpartisan and none of her books dealt with either British politics or student politics. Even so, this shouldn’t stop us from taking an educated guess — and all signs point to Harry being a conservative. Read the rest of Michael Taube’s Washington Times article — “Tory Potter” — here.

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Final Movie Images

July 15, 2011
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This is an interesting quiz to see how many final movie images you recognize, from a website I wasn’t familiar with but looks like it’s worth checking into regularly.

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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies: The Sequel

July 11, 2011
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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies: The Sequel

By Mike Gray (4) The Day the Earth Stood Still — U.S. release: September 1951 — 20th Century-Fox Studios — Runtime: 92 minutes — Cast: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier, Lock Martin (as Gort), Elmer Davis (uncredited), Gabriel Heatter (uncredited), Drew Pearson (uncredited), Lawrence Dobkin (uncredited), James Dean (uncredited), Roy Engel (uncredited), Harry Lauter (uncredited), Olan Soule (uncredited), Stuart Whitman (uncredited). I am leaving soon, and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day, and the threat of aggression by any group, anywhere, can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now, this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is

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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies

July 9, 2011
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Nineteen Fifty-One Was a Pretty Good Year for Sci-Fi Movies

By Mike Gray Sixty years ago: The world has just lurched past the middle of the 20th century. There is both a cold war being waged between the two major power blocs on the planet — the Communist sphere of influence stage-managed by Soviet Russia and “the West” led by the United States — and a hot war (a “police action” they call it … seriously?) being fought on the Korean Peninsula, with an unpredictable Red China right next door. General MacArthur has drafted plans to drop atomic bombs on Korea and China — and even Russia — if the situation should get that far out of hand. Ten thousand miles away rumors of Communist infiltration into the highest levels of American government (proven true five decades later) have the nation in “the grip” of what the Liberal-Progressive commentariat of the time dismisses as a baseless “Red Scare.” (Even today the Lib-Progs’ caricature of history — that people suspected there were “Commies under every bed” — is still with us. For confirmation, watch just about any episode of M*A*S*H.) Like the word “nice,” the term “paranoia” has lost its original meaning through overuse and misapplication. In 1951 — and even

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Book Review: ‘Valentino: Film Detective’

July 6, 2011
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Book Review: ‘Valentino: Film Detective’

By Mike Gray Valentino: Film Detective — By Loren D. Estleman — Crippen & Landru Publishers — 2011 — Trade paperback: 210 pages — Short story collection: 14 stories — ISBN: 978-1-932009-96-5. He dreamed he was riding in a beer truck with a pistol under his arm. The cases in the back contained reels of film, not beer. He was bootlegging them across the border between the past and the present, and Father Time was waiting for him at a roadblock with a tommygun that ticked like a clock when he squeezed the trigger. Valentino is a die-hard classic movie fanatic who through no coincidence works at UCLA’s Film Preservation Department searching for, compiling, and restoring old films. Occasionally a movie thought to be “lost” turns up (possibly as many as 90 percent of all motion pictures made before nitrate film was phased out are considered irretrievably lost); when that happens, Valentino soars into the stratosphere (both literally and figuratively) in his worldwide hunt for rare films. But sometimes his elation is checked by having to deal with the owners of these “lost” treasures, and that’s when it gets really interesting. (“Interesting” as in the Chinese curse: “May you live

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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