Archive | Movies

Concerned that hers would be a distorted, doddering depiction of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1979-1990), I was more or less dragged to see The Iron Lady and was pleasantly surprised by the movie, starring the overrated Meryl Streep (Doubt, Mamma Mia!), one of my least favorite actresses. The framing [...]

?Paramount’s Captain America, directed by Joe Johnston (October Sky, The Wolfman), is another good Marvel serial. Tied into Marvel’s other comics-based pictures, Thor and Iron Man, and culminating in an heroic picture scheduled for release next year, it is weighted down but it moves with action, excitement and solid American heroism. From eye-popping period design [...]

It was startling to see the title, Atlas Shrugged, on the theater marquee. I did not expect to live long enough to witness it. Unfortunately, “Atlas Shrugged, Part I,” the movie, has little or nothing to do with the novel. It is a badly made template, with a lot of doodling in the film outside [...]

While the highly touted Facebook film, The Social Network, is the technically superior movie, Disney’s tale of a great American horse and the owner that took him to historic Triple Crown success in 1973, Secretariat, is more enjoyable. The former is written by pretentious Aaron Sorkin (NBC’s The West Wing) and directed by the uneven [...]

“When’s the movie coming out?” I have been asked that question repeatedly over the course of seven years of book-signings for Sparrowhawk at Colonial Williamsburg’s Booksellers by eager patrons who have read the series and wish to see it on the big screen. “Not any time soon,” I usually answer. “If it is ever produced, [...]

As a reset for Paramount’s popular series, the new Star Trek movie, opening this weekend and directed by J.J. Abrams, is disappointing. The original NBC television series was an intelligently written program which put highly individualized characters into often philosophically driven plots and this effort doesn’t come close to measuring up. That said, at least [...]

The article below was originally published on the website of The Intellectual Activist on April 17, 2001 shortly before an impending writers strike that was averted near the eleventh hour. Now, six years later, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is again threatening to strike when its current labor contract with the Alliance of Motion [...]

It is not really news that Hollywood is still producing anti-business movies, but there is a certain irony in it nevertheless. Although these movies tap a certain envy and resentment of corporate wealth, that large corporate wealth comes from far more modest individual amounts of money from about half the population of the United States, [...]

I just finished reading: Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Knopf, 2005. I do not necessarily recommend this book–not because it is bad–but because the content is so disgusting (though factual). Mao is clearly the worst monster in world history. Like Hitler and Stalin he was a power-luster and wanted to [...]

So Crash, one of the most philosophically objectionable movies that I’ve seen in a long time, won yesterday’s coveted Academy Award for “Best Picture.” Crash has two major themes: everyone is a racist, doesn’t know it, and no one is a hero, even if they perform heroic acts. For example, when the Ryan Phillpe policeman [...]