ESTHETICS

Bad Education [Mala educación](2004

2012-01-29T15:43:00.003Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: ???) 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

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes(1973)

2012-01-29T15:27:00.007Z

RATING:60% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.doblu.com/) Optimistic ending to a thoughtful and original science-fiction film series; positing the unprovable notion of freewill as a means of getting around the problem that the date for the end of the world is known, and that there is no way of knowing what to do - nor of what not to do - to avoid nuclear disaster. (Image: http://

Battaglia di Algeri [Battle of Algiers](1966)

2012-01-29T15:07:00.009Z

RATING:100% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.claudiocolombo.net/) Vibrant, exciting film that is a virtual handbook for terrorists; showing why terrorism is such an intractable problem since 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

Blair Witch Project(1999)

2012-01-28T14:01:00.006Z

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

Body Double(1984)

2012-01-27T14:03:00.013Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/) 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 resonant effect. The suspense is well-handled and ably supported by a sub-Bernard Herrmann musical score, along with the characterization

Life before Her Eyes(2007)

2012-01-27T13:05:00.013Z

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

THE WIRE: Season 5(2008)

2012-01-26T18:50:00.008Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.aperionaudio.com/) Like 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 (2008). 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

Book of Eli(2010)

2012-01-25T17:42:00.008Z

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

Brighton Rock(1947)

2012-01-25T16:58:00.015Z

RATING:100% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.frontroomcinema.com/) One of those rare movies that really is 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. As you would expect

Closer(2004)

2012-01-24T16:09:00.010Z

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

My Best Friend's Girl(2008)

2012-01-23T15:58:00.011Z

RATING:20% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.freemovieposters.net/) 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

Thick of It(2005)

2012-01-22T13:01:00.008Z

RATING:60% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://trakt.tv/) BLUNT SATIRENowhere 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.

I Am Cuba [Soy Cuba](1964)

2012-01-22T12:25:00.012Z

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 -

Tess (1979)

2012-01-20T17:36:00.007Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/) 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

THE WIRE: Season 4 (2006)

2012-01-20T10:33:00.012Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.dunkirkma.net/) 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

Alligator (1980)

2012-01-16T16:30:00.008Z

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

Being John Malkovich (1999)

2012-01-16T16:17:00.004Z

RATING:100% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/) A gateway into John MALKOVICH's mind is discovered and people are charged US$200 for spending 15 minutes inside it. When Mr MALKOVICH discovers this, there is hell to pay. This highly-original movie is about individual carpe diem and, when not having done so, vainly wanting to be someone else instead. It is also

Australia (2008)

2012-01-15T14:30:00.014Z

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

Face/Off (1997)

2012-01-07T13:45:00.008Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://screencaptures.tumblr.com/) 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

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

2012-01-07T13:11:00.009Z

RATING:100% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://thebestpictureproject.wordpress.com/) 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: A subtle appreciation of

Taxi Driver (1976)

2012-01-07T12:49:00.011Z

RATING:100% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://fashiongossip10.blogspot.com/) 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

Millionairess (1961)

2012-01-07T12:31:00.007Z

RATING:60% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.themoviescene.co.uk/) Although an amusing treatise on capitalism, socialism and the problems that beset both rich and poor - from having money and from not having it - this love story lacks the oomph one expects. The performers are all excellent and the screenplay witty, but the all-important chemistry between the two leads is lacking. Sophia

Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

2012-01-07T12:17:00.008Z

RATING:80% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.celluloid-dreams.de/) Clever movie about family, presented as a Christian allegory. Reminiscent of both Tagebuch einer Verlorenen and Lat sau san taam, the character animation and voice-work is first-rate. Guilt, shame and redemption haunt the homeless here as they literally run away from what gave their life meaning. A fine modern-day

Fifty Dead Men Walking (2009)

2012-01-07T11:33:00.010Z

RATING:60% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.aceshowbiz.com/) This movie never takes the opportunities it gives itself to deal with the full complexity - both political and moral - of the issues it pretends to be focusing upon. The wider context is absent and so one is presented with a version of events that could just as easily be culled from British government-censored BBC

This Happy Breed (1944)

2012-01-07T10:53:00.015Z

RATING:60% FORMAT:DVD (Image: http://www.cineoutsider.com/) The theme here is one of knowing one’s place in the context of an alleged national family unchanging over the years. There is a conflict here between Noel Coward’s view of steadfast humor, courage, determination and endurance and artistic insensibility, gentleness, respect for legality, xenophobia, sentimentality about