skinner_douglas Reviews

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

What is Wrong with this Story?

[5/10 · 18 November 2019]

Judging from the number of stars it's received this is a very popular story; no doubt partly because it affirms our ages's quest for self-affirmation. It also justifies our own lack of self-control by making it seem as though that too is a justified act of self-affirmation, also known as authenticity. But here's another view by someone who is far more perspicacious and a far better writer than I am.

Hunted (2012)

Vampire Nonsense

[2/10 · 17 October 2017]

I clicked the spoiler box because, basically nothing happens in this movie and some may consider that in itself to be a spoiler. Nothing happens that is, but the perambulations of a very weird young man who is "sort of" a vampire but most of the time is a downcast boy looking for sympathy. Why? He does commit some murders but we are supposed to see them as justified. Such justification as there is occurs only because a genre of vampire movies has sprung up in which vampires are basically the good guys--oppressed minorities--who are misunderstood. Once seen as purely evil characters who fully justified their flaming ends (they were usually burned up with dawn's early light), I suppose the dilution of moral categories which has been the result of our relativistic, therapeutic culture, has also lead to the "destigmatization" of the vampire archetype--to use academic mumbo jumbo.

I suppose you could say he is kind of a symbol for his generation: epicene, scrawny, scruffy, hangdog with no point or purpose in life, doing nothing except having a little dull sex in a small town. His mystery or supernatural nature is not enough to hold one's attention. I kept waiting for some action and some reason to be interested in Rufus but he lets you down; including an ending to the movie that is both improbable and corny.

The Wicker Man (2006)

Wishful thinking

[3/10 · 2 November 2016]

This movie starts out interestingly but becomes very tedious as soon as one recognizes that the woman the protagonist (played by Mr. Cage) has come to a remote island to save isn't very interesting--or worth saving for that matter. Plus, upon arrival, the feminist community he encounters is absurd, even in fantasy terms. There is nothing endearing about it and, frankly, most sensible males would have immediately debarked upon encountering the sour-faced and well, to put it nicely, ample Sister Beech.

But our hero decides to pursue the case. (The screen writers were evidently uneasy about tenacity with which Malus stays on the case so, midstream, we learn from Sister Woodward that the child in question is really his daughter conceived what I inferred was a single coupling.) After some reconnaissance of the local flora and a couple of clandestine meetings with "Sister" Woodward our hero finally meets the "queen bee", Sister Summersisle, of the colony and tries to confront her concerning the whereabouts and fate of a young girl with the absurd name of Rowan. (But it was evident that all the women were named after trees, so there you have it!)

Sister Summersisle's responses are meretricious and patronizing and the viewer knows she's gonna get him in the end. The incongruity between the flower-child paganism of the female inhabitants with their likeness to bees and trees and the miserable emasculation of the men is disturbing but somehow it doesn't come off right; because it is almost believable! It's just the kind of queendom that formed the fantasies of the feminist coeds I encountered in my college days in the late 60s. As it was then it just makes you (me anyway, as a guy) frustrated and talking to the screen, asking Malus why he doesn't jack up these male bozos for being so wimpy; at least enough to find out whether their servility is based on weak character or some mysterious rewiring of the human male along the lines of a bee drone. (I asked the same questions almost 50 years ago!)

Now I admit that police officer Malus is kind of an, to use that word so endearing to modern feminists, a**hole but he is sincere in his response to the call to help. Does this warrant his final incendiary end, with the gleeful complicity of an cute little girl (who scarcely knows what she's doing)? Probably yes because, as the movie makes clear, his macho is the dilithium power source of the cult and so must be harnessed.

You see, unlike the feminists and very much like the bees, they've learned how to utilize maleness. Ultimate simplicity, no wrangling, no male unemployment so destructive to an ordered society (and it is!), no physical contest naturally favoring men, just emasculation for lesser beings and an auto da fe for those occasional potent types who are selected in advance to "mate" with the queen (we learn towards the end that Malus' and Woodward's consummation was no accident as she is the daughter of the queen bee). And I'm reasonably confident that this is the movie's ultimate and intended message. So guys, beware!

Limitless (I) (2011)

Coffee and Cigarettes

[4/10 · 14 July 2016]

Something very close to NZT was discovered log ago: coffee and cigarettes. This dynamic combination has been demonstrated to improve cognitive ability--though many, perhaps rightly, don't like the delivery mechanism.

The movie is not all that interesting. The main way it ropes in the viewer is to make him ask--over and over again--gee, what if I could do that! Otherwise, the tale is high-tech version of Faust except that Mephistopheles has been replaced by a drug. Our hero goes for the money and the babes.

Given that the mechanism by which intellect is associated with the brain has not been established (it is not necessarily a sole consequence of neural complexity) I don't know how anyone can say that "we use only about 20% of our brain." For those who are curious, there are many good arguments out there for why the mind is not a matter of brain mechanics but something all together different--transcendent, you might say. Start with the writings of Hubert Dreyfus, Roger Penrose and Stanley Jaki.

Iris (I) (2001)

Declining Years

[3/10 · 15 June 2015]

Well, as of my submission there will be 136 reviews of this movie. Which just goes to show that in our time of semi-education, where millions have gone to college to little effect except to have the concept of celebrity imposed on supposed intellectuals; it is preferable to the masses to watch a movie about Iris Murdoch rather than read or--what is more likely--dabble in her while sipping lattes at the Barnes and Noble. That is to say, I understand why this depressing and incoherent movie has gotten so much attention!

But I couldn't finish it! (And I like Judi Dench.) John Bayley was portrayed as a male bimbo--a scholarly and compliant cuckold, so silly in his puppy dog willingness to accept her infidelities, that one wonders how he could have become a don. (Were they all so weak and ineffectual at that time?) What Iron-maiden Murdoch saw in him is beyond me; yet, on second thought, he is probably the sort of, what we would call, metro-sexual figure that might fit in quite well with her self-consciously styled alpha-female personality. Somewhat pedestrian for the learned and profound Iris, if you ask me.

In that vein I think that all of Iris' years were years of decline. She just had to be sexually promiscuous and something of an exhibitionist. Ditto the communism. And the Sartre too! And her assaults on bourgeois traditions and morality. All the trendy intellectual thumb twiddling of the post-war era. In any period, I just do not like people of her genre. if she had been born 25 years earlier she would have been a Vita Sackville-West or, worse, a Virginia Woolf. The traction these writers have retained is almost wholly due to modern feminism. Ditto Murdoch. That the reader may gauge my reference point, I find Dorothy Sayers to be incomparably better as well as more friendly and reassuring. Sayers learned from her mistakes and was comfortable with her sex. Murdoch was a woman who was not happy with her lot--being a woman, that is.

So to endure to the end a movie whose end was an ending from the very beginning and to focus on the dregs of the end of the end as does this movie; the bitter, slobbering attempts of a miserable creature--unaware of herself in so many ways and unable to retain enough memory to put together the lessons she should have learned--to hold together her human identity; all the while clawing and resisting the booby of a man who shared her bed for over 40 year--well, I could see the finale.

The Epic of Everest (1924)

A matter of superiority?

[10/10 · 15 June 2015]

The other reviews of this wonderful film will give the reader more than enough motivation to watch it himself. I would like to add the point, however, that Mallory & Co. did not consider themselves to be personally superior to the natives. The film expresses a lot of respect for these hearty and isolated people, including praises for their unremitting cheerfulness towards their work. Such praises have been a part of the history of Everest exploration since that time. The Tibetan and Nepalese quite admirable. However it is probably true that Mallory and Irvine did believe they came from a more advanced society and I think that too is indisputable.

We are so steeped in cultural relativism that we fail to make this distinction. It is a distinction that the natives themselves have made; as over the decades they have adopted as many innovations as have been introduced to their country. After seeing many films of Everest explorations I suspect that they have less nostalgia about their "old ways" and modes of living than many Westerners--steeped in romantic notions about the purity indigenous peoples--believe.

The World Made Straight (2015)

The 2000s version of the 70s

[4/10 · 15 June 2015]

There seemed to be several anachronisms in this move. Having, back in those days, lived somewhat out in the country, I had to ask myself did the locals really sport 2010s facial hair? "Hair" in the 70s was still largely an urban phenomenon. To my recollection the "red necks" still wore short hair and were beardless. And I find it hard to believe that the permeation of the drug culture--as bad as it was--was half so established then as it is now. People were a lot more cautious about their illicit habits in those days because you could really get into trouble for showing signs of drug intoxication or possession of small quantities of drugs. Yet the knuckleheads portrayed in this movie seem unaware of this. Again, throughout this move I got the feeling that I was looking at contemporary people dressed up and placed in a setting 40 years earlier. Well, it was 40 years ago and the historical awareness of Hollywood types has never been that great.

Deception (1992)

Improbable, Weak Ending

[3/10 · 12 November 2013]

Andie MacDowell is not a strong enough actress to carry this on her back as she did. She was basically a sleuth but the persona she conveyed made it seem as if her sleuthing powers just appeared by magic--amazing what script writers can do! It is totally improbable that she could have walked around some of the worst districts of Cairo looking like she did and remain unmolested. Ditto the locations in Mexico. The plot was weak and there were a lot of loose threads. The most interesting part of the movie was the scene shot in a Coptic church in Cairo and, of course, Hollywood had to pull its punches. For while Dr. Lamb credits them with saving his life, it is not clear that he has actually converted. John Faro, the lynch pin for the movie's plot and Bessie's husband, was a weak character, weakly portrayed by Mortensen. I agree with some of the other reviewers that the movie started out to be interesting but began to fall apart about 1/3 of the way into the picture. The ending was very weak--a characteristic of American movies for several decades now and one of my pet peeves.

Nuremberg: Tyranny on Trial (1995 TV Movie)

And Justice for None

[2/10 · 7 May 2013]

This is a difficult video to review since some readers will confuse a condemnation of the Nuremberg Trials as an endorsement of Naziism. I will say at the outset that my bonafides in anti-Naziism are as good as any decent American's, so there! Let me now say that my reason for giving this documentary a bad rating is because it slavishly follows the standard line about how these trials were some kind of marker post towards ushering in a more just world--kind of like the United Nations and other post-war Utopian endeavors. But consider the following: 1) the Soviet main judge, Iona Niktchenko, presided over some of the most infamous Stalinist show trials during the 1930's. 2) The Soviet Union (as must have been known by many high ranking Americans and British) was guilty of at least as great atrocities (the charge of crimes against humanity) as the Nazis--including persecution of Jews. 3) The charge that Germany embarked on a "war of aggression" was true also of the Soviet Union who shared with the Nazis the spoils of the invasion of Poland in 1939 and who attacked Finland--an act of pure conquest. The Bolshevik regime also gobbled up many surrounding countries including the Baltic States. 4) A number of important Americans--including Francis Biddle--considered the trial as little more than "victor's justice". Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone considered the conduct of the trials to be a mere pretense for a court of common law and was skeptical of Robert Jackson's sanctimonious bloviations; which, by the way, almost resulted in the undoing of the Allies case as it was clear that in detailed questioning Jackson was no match for Goering. 5) It has led to the continuing mischief of the accusation of war crimes which is being applied by some to such as former President Bush. The pertinence of these points to this documentary is that it did not raise a single one of them; yet they have been part of the debate surrounding the trials since they ended. It is yet another example of the lazy journalism that is so characteristic of the modern era.

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

The King of Naught

[2/10 · 6 May 2013]

Ever see a movie where you didn't like any of the characters? This movie is one of them. I know that in the early 70's, when it came out, I probably would have thought it "profound." In those days antinomianism, angst, the nihilism of the post-war nuclear threat, were still chic. The plays of Samuel Beckett were still fresh. And Hollywood was at the zenith of its "profound" era. I have re-viewed many movies from that time--movies I thought were so deep--and found them pretentious and wanting. I didn't see King of Marvin Gardens then, but I felt the same as during a recent viewing of The Deer Hunter, the first 2/3 of which were yawningly--guess I'll get a beer-- "profound." I won't see it again. So much of Nicholson's early work is so acidic I can no longer stand it. Five Easy Pieces? What a load of self-indulged artsy-fartsy hooey: the Nicholson character is so talented that he, like Zarathustra, comes down from the mountaintop, becomes a roughneck, takes up with a proletarian woman, and later selfishly says the hell with them both. (Sometime in the mid-80's I wrote him off until About Schmidt, where does a bang-up job.) In King of Marvin Gardens, he sounds like he's on the same bad pot-high, during his radio monologues, as he was in the camping scene in Easy Rider: talking about Venusians or...huh?. As for the rest of the cast: Bruce Dern, would do better in construction than acting; Ellyn Burstyn, really should have concentrated on organic gardening and psychoanalysis. The movie's real star was the backdrop of Atlantic City, then on hard times. All those old hotels and faceless old-folks who, no doubt, still remembered its heyday, were wonderful. They kept me through it to the end.

How Green Was My Valley (1941)

The Unreality of Reality

[10/10 · 6 May 2013]

My guess is that most of the younger generation would find this movie corny and "unreal"--as if Pulp Fiction or Enter the Dragon were real! The great thing about this movie is the characters. I mean not only the fictional characters but the flesh and blood actors who played them. Where will you find the likes of Donald Crisp today, or Sara Allgood? The young Roddy McDowell looked like the quintessential 19th century boy. Today's actors are bland. Perhaps that is because they are merely hedonists pursuing the acting trade. You know their lives are centered around the basest fleshly pleasures and though their bodies maybe well formed, they're more akin to lay figures than people with souls. I liked this movie because the people in it had souls. To be sure, the Morgan family was an idealization. No family has been or ever will be like that. But an ideal is what it was meant to be: father and mother as pillars supporting a household of loving children, exuding calmness, humility and occasionally humor and mirth. What kind of an ideal do we have to hold up to it? Sex in the City? The single career mom? Dad and his gay roommate? If you want to begin to know another, ancient and now almost lost ideal, this movie is a good place to start.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)

Dead on Arrival

[1/10 · 6 May 2013]

The description of this movie, The perfect crime goes horribly wrong for brothers Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hank (Ethan Hawke) when they botch a robbery of their parents jewelry store in this wrenching drama from legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet, who was 82 when he directed the film., is accurate in one sense: something does horribly goes wrong as the viewer is forced to watch, in the opening sequence, Phillip Seymour Hoffman perform in a copulation scene. I couldn't finish the scene, therefore I couldn't finish the movie. Call me a prude if you wish but I think it significantly detracts from the dignity of an otherwise fine actor. Why did he stoop to do it? He has fame, presumably money, and the admiration of the public (now sans myself). So presumably he hasn't yet been photographed straddling, walrus-like, some young woman? Im too dull to figure it out and will contentedly remain so. As far as I can tell from the plot description, the scene was entirely gratuitous perhaps satisfying some, as yet, unclassified lust in the aging Sidney Lumet.

Case 39 (2009)

Satan vs Child Protective Services

[3/10 · 6 May 2013]

Pretty bad movie which, to make things worse, takes forever to get going. It initially tries to build a case that the girl's parents are abusing her. The completely credulous "Child Protective Services" (hitherto CPS) functionary swallows the bait whole, only to find out that she has fallen for what appears to be Satan himself. Indeed, given the slow buildup, her turnaround is amazingly quick with the perhaps unintended object lesson that "intuition" is often unreliable. In fact, the movie is unconsciously a critique of the whole state CPS apparatus as composed of bureaucrats trying to remotely judge, using the hyper rationalism of clinical psychology and diagnostic criteria, what can only be properly judged by the family itself. It inadvertently suggests that the diagnostic criteria employed can completely miss the mark as we see so graphically in the movie. Sometimes the parent's judgment that their children need a good thwacking is the right one! From that perspective the movie was, as they used to say, a hoot! The ending is stupid however, which is a major fault with American movies generally.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Manchurian Plausibility

[2/10 · 6 May 2013]

I have seen this movie several times since it first came out. I now realize it stinks. The only thing I liked was the "portal" into the world of 50 years ago. Otherwise the plot doesn't hang together at all. First, we're supposed to believe that it is somehow "the Right" who are the Communists. No doubt this was due to the media's acceptance at the time of the anti-anti-Communist stance. By this viewpoint the anti-Communists were the "real Communists". The real-real Communists--the Soviets, Chinese, Cubans, etc.--were misunderstood builders of paradise. The "real Communists" were buffoons like James Gregory's character who make up conspiracies as easily as Heinz makes ketchup. Gregory's character is clearly based on Joe McCarthy and the movie repeats the media trope that he just pulled the number of commies (in the State Department, not Defense) out of thin air (Heinz' 57 for 57 Communists). Second, we are to asked to believe the Communists, clever enough to program human beings, would be so clumsy as to place one of their human robot assassins close to the very person they are trying to get installed as President? Seems unlikely especially considering that when Laurance Harvey kills John McGiver, he is in a zombie like state and thus not too attentive to whether he might be leaving evidence to connect him with the crime?

Green Grow the Rushes (1951)

A movie about Little England?

[8/10 · 23 May 2006]

I believe it was G. K. Chesterton who described himself as a "Little Englander." To those of us born after WWII, it is hard to fully grasp what he had in mind; which is the reason why I like Green Grow the Rushes, because I think it gives some idea of what Chesterton meant. It is ostensibly about a boat that became stranded with a load of brandy. But the subtext involves the conflict between officials of the British national government and the locals and their local officials who attempt to thwart the government by invoking laws and immunities dating back to feudal times. In this sense it is a libertarian classic which reminds us that so-called feudal Europe was in fact a complex tapestry of autonomous localities, fiefdoms, principalities, etc., under a relatively weak (by today's standards) central state. The movie manages to convey a sense of nostalgia for a type of little England with its absurdly dressed officials and independent-minded locals who stand in contrast to and are suspicious of the suited technocrats who descend upon them to change their customs and plan their lives.