RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2020/03/03/the-whistlers/

I can’t call this a review because I will admit that I cannot give a coherent plot line to this Rumanian film about crooks and cops and an ancient whistling language developed for sending messages across hills and valleys in the Canary Islands. I got that info from Joe Morgenstern’s review in the WSJ. He must have learned that from a helpful press release along with some other information that allowed him to sketch a thin line of action sufficient to find a “witty riff on Hitchcock” and a “surreal flow between reality and movie tropes.”

You will be able to recognize bad guys with guns and knives and stolen money, a nude sexy damsel working with them, a double-agent cop, his beautiful aging mother, his very pretty female boss, plus assorted other characters who drift into frame with or without motivation One of these is an American film-maker presumably scouting for locations. This may be a Rumanian wink understood only by fans of the director Corneliu Porumboiu – try saying that in English.

One of the things I find essential for knowing whether a movie is good, bad or both is the ability to understand what is happening. In this case, speaking Rumanian might help a bit, but it would never explain how the people who learned to communicate by whistling would ever be able to convey the message that “cristi is in the Cornaline Hospital in Room 437″ or “When you recover and get out of the hospital, meet me in Singapore in a year.” I know how hard it would be to express those messages in pig Latin so just try whistling those with your fingers in your mouth, your tongue depressed and the rest of you totally bewildered. Puleez!!!

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2020/02/23/emma-a-review/

I haven’t read Jane Austen’s original version of Emma since college, but judging from its latest incarnation, a title that better suits it is Much Ado About Nothing. By now, after so many treatments of the source, everyone must know that Emma is a privileged young woman who fancies herself a do-gooder, particularly vis a vis her friendship with Harriet Smith, a young woman missing everything Emma has – wealth, lineage, social standing and personality. Unfortunately, that last quality is not in evidence in either the screenplay or bland performance by Anya Taylor Joy. But, even if it were, it’s hard to see what the two women would ever have in common except the endless flattery of Emma herself.

The exterior landscapes and interior designs of the various great houses are beautiful, as are the varied musical backgrounds and costumes. The hairstyles couldn’t possibly be less flattering so I will assume that this was the director’s nod to us that these characters were not allowed the freedom to think for themselves. One of the fallacies of many period films is to equate antiquated social customs with primitive thinking – thus none of the women in this film has anything clever to say except the one sentence that Emma utters to humiliate the unfortunate spinster, played by Miranda Hart who was Chummy on Call the Midwife. That may seem extraneous for you to know in this review, but it was a bright note for me to recognize her and smile at the memory of her much better part on that series. I should mention that Bill Nighy, an actor who is normally a scene stealer par excellence, has only one opportunity to do that and mainly functions in this movie as a mannequin of himself.

As you will guess from my suggestion of a better title, by the last scene you will know that All’s Well That Ends Well, so if you’re looking for a chance to take a nap and wake up to a wedding, see Emma.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/television-review-hunters-dumbs-down-nazi-hunting/

Hunting Nazis gets dumbed down to comic-book level in Amazon Prime’s Hunters.

If Al Pacino is doing a TV series, it should be worth watching. Alas, many things that should be so are not. Pacino’s first series is Hunters, on Amazon Prime video, and the more you love Pacino, the more you’ll cringe. “The Americans, but with Nazis” seems to have been the idea. It came out more like “Marathon Man for idiots.”

Created by David Weil, who serves as showrunner with Nikki Toscano (though Jordan Peele, one of the executive producers, is mentioned more prominently than either of these in ads), Hunters is a case study in how an adolescent imagination shrunken and enfeebled by comic-book tropes can be disastrously misapplied when considering history’s gravest events. Pacino plays a Jewish Holocaust survivor turned Bruce Wayne-style mystery millionaire vigilante in 1977 New York City. Pacino’s Meyer Offerman assembles a Super Friends squad of spy/assassin/codebreaker/con artist/bank robber types with the aid of, erm, a yenta (Jewish matchmaker, not ordinarily associated with hired killing). Guided by Offerman, the hunters set to work tracking down surviving Nazi war criminals living in America under assumed names.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/02/06/bong_joon-hos_parasite_is_overrated_implausible_class-struggle_nonsense_104067.html

In the years after World War II, Korea’s economy was in tragic shape. In 1948, the country’s per capita income of $86 put it on par with Sudan. Disastrous policies led to hyperinflation, snail-paced growth forced mothers to make choices about children along the lines of Sophie’s, plus literacy rates in the country were among the lowest in the world. Analyzing the situation, one U.S. official concluded that “Korea can never attain a high standard of living.” The reason, he observed, was that “there are virtually no Koreans with the technical training and experience required to take advantage of Korea’s resources and effect an improvement over its rice-economy status.” 

Happily, however, predictions are made to be discredited. The speculation about what became South Korea’s future proved incorrect. Wildly so. Fast forward to the present, and South Korea now finds itself impressively prosperous. Though GDP isn’t the most accurate or worthy of numbers, what was once wrecked by war (among other things) is now one of only two countries (along with Taiwan) to “have managed 5 percent growth for five decades” on the way to its economy presently ranking as the world’s 13th largest. South Korea is one of the biggest trading partners for both China and the United States, and it can claim some of the most prominent global consumer brands, including LG and Samsung. All that, plus the country’s citizens enjoy, according to The New Koreans author Michael Breen, “the fastest, most extensive mobile broadband networks and the highest penetration of smartphones in the world.” Much has changed in this once desperately poor country, and it’s surely for the better.

All of the above, and realistically much, much more, rates as a backdrop to commentary meant to offer a counter-argument to all the excitement among critics about the 2019 South Korean film, Parasite. Directed and co-written by Bong Joon-ho, it’s presently the longshot but trendy pick to take home the Best Picture prize at Sunday’s Academy Awards. That it’s even nominated is a reminder of how politicized everything’s become, including critiques of films.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/manuel_quezon_littleknown_savior_of_jews.html

A new film debuted around the world last month, an account of events during World War II in Manila: Quezon’s Game directed by Matthew Rosen, a filmmaker who began in London and lives in the Philippines. 

The film provides, using three languages, a version of a little- known story, of which there is no definite official statement and a lack of historical manuscripts, of the rescue organized by President Manuel L. Quezon starting in 1938 of 1200 German and Austrian Jews, coincidentally the same number of Jews saved by the well-known Oskar Schindler, who found shelter from the Holocaust in the Philippines.  Quezon had proposed an “Open Door policy,” one that would admit up to 10,000 Jews, but only 1280 made it. The ambitious and generous plan failed because of events in World War II and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.

The context of the story is that the country, which by the Treaty of Paris 1898 that ended the Spanish-American war was ceded to the U.S as a territory, was trying to get full independence from the U.S. which it finally obtained on July 4, 1946. Until then the country was a protectorate of the U.S.  The Commonwealth of the Philippines from 1935 to 1946 was the administrative body governing the country, preparing for a transition to full independence, controlled visas for entry.

Manuel Quezon in October 1935 won the first national presidential election, gaining 68% of the vote. As president he was determined to allow Jewish immigrants from Europe into the country but has to contend with internal critics and American policy on the issue.  Suffering from tuberculosis, he was fluent in English, a gifted pianist, brilliant lawyer, card player of poker and bridge, and had been a playboy who shaved off his moustache because it tickled the girls too much.  Quezon was a compassionate individual, a light of morality, and his story deserved to be better known.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/television-review-hillary-documentary-clinton-still-blaming-america-for-her-failures/

“Apart from a few journalists, the other interviewees in the film are her husband and her various sycophants and flacks. All seem like so many Dr. Frankensteins trying to inject some life into this soulless object. Seen in archival footage, it is Trump who makes the most salient points. “I think the only card she has going is the woman card,” Trump is seen saying in a TV interview. Cut to Hillary in an interview done for the film: “Yeah, you’re right. I am.” This was indeed what she offered the American public; she badly miscalculated the value of her I-deserve-this argument, and that’s why she lost to a man who had a 36 percent approval rating at the time. Far from being a feminist icon, she got as far as she did solely because of her husband’s success. None of us would today know her name if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton.”

A four-hour documentary shows Hillary Clinton is still blaming America for her failures.

Imagine a socially maladept but extremely wealthy friend of yours was told, “People like tap dancing. You should tap-dance more.” You would cringe when the person was telling you about a major career setback and suddenly lurched into a little tap-dancing interlude. “Did I ever tell you about the time the world turned to ashes for me?” Tap-tap, tappity-tap. You’d feel sorry for your friend but mainly you’d feel that this person is deeply weird.

At some point in recent years one or more of Hillary Clinton’s many handlers, advisers, or consultants told her, “You should laugh more. People like laughter.” Except she is sour, dour, and without a humorous molecule in her body. Her laughter is always feigned, hence always a non-sequitur. When she reminds herself it’s laughing time, it comes across as a tic. It’s as bizarre as sudden-onset tap dancing.

http://politicalmavens.com/

If you’re sick of being accused of racism, white privilege, toxic masculinity, insufficient attention to Climate Change, MeToo’ism and the LGB alphabet; if you’re exhausted by the long-winded House Managers’ vitriolic performances and if you’re depressed by the diminution of old-fashioned flag-waving, anthem-singing patriotism – run to see The Last Full Measure.

This is an old-fashioned movie written and directed by Todd Robinson, with big stars like Christopher Plummer, Diane Ladd, Ed Harris, Samuel Jackson, Peter Fonda and William Hurt who are all excellent. This is also a movie about heroes – dead and alive – and what they need and deserve. It concerns the failure of our government to award a posthumous Medal of Honor to a Vietnam war veteran who went above and beyond the call of duty to save lives, losing his own in this endeavor. It illustrates the long-term after effects on veterans who fought in an unpopular war and came home to a country that behaved disgracefully towards them. We have spent far more time worrying about the welfare of illegal immigrants than we did about rehabilitating our own veterans, and this movie illustrates their loneliness, isolation and continued dedication to each other. It also heralds their undaunted efforts, along with those of the government representative who worked so hard to get the medal issued.

When you see it, bring tissues and stay for the credits which feature some interviews with the real people represented in the film. In addition to all the emotional reactions you will have, you will be amazed to learn that only three members of the Air Force who were not officers have ever been awarded the Medal of Honor. If nothing else, it should serve to remind us about the importance of preserving and insisting on the merit system in many aspects of our lives.

http://politicalmavens.com/

In order to succeed, satire and parody require a common understanding of what is being satirized. If the audience doesn’t have this, satire quickly degenerates into flat-tire. Sadly, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, most Americans have little idea of the history of World War II and the extent of brutality that tortured and murdered six million Jews, one million of whom were children.

The elite private school Fieldston in Riverdale which has a significant population of Jewish students has had two episodes of anti-semiitism, the first featuring swastikas that appeared in hallways and classrooms in 2015. The school initially explained the swastika as an ancient symbol of peace without mentioning the word Holocaust, and only after objections from parents, did the school call an assembly to refer to the symbol in connection with the murder of six million Jews. In October 2019, a Muslim speaker from Columbia Law School spoke at Fieldston and compared the Israeli survivors of the Holocaust to Nazis, accusing them of similar violence against Palestinians It took a month before the school responded simply by reaffirming their firmly held values without specifying what these are or condemning the outrageous comparison.

The academic response to Israel Apartheid Week on campuses across the U.S. is another example of refusal to deal with the dangers of anti-semitism No other minority would be continually pilloried in this way on any American campus but objections to turning Jewish students into pariahs have been sporadic at best, and the accompanying BDS movement, directed solely at Israel, has been supported by many campus groups including faculty.

Now for JoJo Rabbit, a film about a ten year old boy infatuated with Hitler and thrilled to be a part of Hitler Youth. Hitler appears to the boy, remaining invisible to everyone else, and the two have lively exchanges about Nazis, Jews and the need to kill them whenever possible. Oddly enough in a movie that takes place during the war, there is no mention of ghettos, concentration camps or mass shootings into pits dug by the victims. The only Jew we see is a lovely young girl who is being hidden in the attic of JoJo’s house by his mother, a sympathetic Scarlett Johansson who pays for her kind empathy later in the film. Jews who were hiding during the war lived in sewers, underground cellars, sometimes on a closet shelf for prolonged periods of time None of this is revealed or mentioned in this movie. Ironically, the only military violence we see is that of the Russian and American liberators who destroy JoJo’s town with armor, machine guns and mass explosions. If asked to review this movie, it wouldn’t be strange if a student reported that WW II was about the mass destruction of Germany.

What would the reaction of Hollywood and the Left be to a movie about illegal immigrant children who were being kept in “cages” if only one was shown in a comfortable waiting room and the only violence was that of the long lines of raucous adult immigrants storming the border fences? Would this pass as an acceptable subject for satire and would the above theoretical description be considered appropriate?

JoJo Rabbit ends with a quote from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
The Squad and Black Lives Matter would never allow that quote to be affixed to their contemporary complaints. To our eternal shame, it has become acceptable when it comes to the indescribable horror of the Holocaust.

JoJo Rabbit has been nominated for six Academy Awards incuding Best Picture of the Year.