America's Forgotten: A Review

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. The scathing but flawed documentary is worth seeing to challenge any pre-concieved notions on the subject of illegal immigration.

New Documentary ‘America’s Forgotten’ Tells the Illegal Immigration Story the Establishment Media Ignores

America’s Forgotten is a new documentary from filmmaker Namrata Singh Gurjal that exposes the fetid swamp that is illegal immigration into the U.S.

The film has been shunned by mainstream distributors (like Netflix) but has still generated a good deal of interest because Gurjal, an Indian immigrant and registered Democrat, takes direct aim at Joe Biden and Democrats for their immigration policies which she believes lead to catastrophe for illegal immigrants and chaos in America.

The film examines the complex topic through four personal stories. These narratives focus on Gurpreet – a little Indian girl who died trying to cross the Southern border, Maria, a Mexican woman who runs a gauntlet of extortion and rape to illegally immigrate, Sabine Durden-Coulter, whose adult son Dominic – a legal immigrant from Germany- is killed by an illegal immigrant in a drunk driving accident, and Jonathan Decoster, a native born former Marine who lives on the streets of Los Angeles.

These four stories show that Americans are good people but that their “misplaced compassion” toward illegal immigrants leads to policies that actually increase illegal immigration – which is extremely dangerous for both the immigrants and America.

Politically and philosophically, the film is spot on and tells a forceful story that has been shamelessly blacklisted by the establishment media.

The movie exposes the fact that the only people who benefit from illegal immigration are coyotes, cartels and corporations. The coyotes exploit illegal immigrants for money, cartels smuggle people and drugs across the porous border and corporations gleefully profit from the immigrant’s cheap labor.

Those egregiously harmed by illegal immigration are the exploited immigrants themselves and the forgotten poor and working class in America.

The film reveals that, in contrast to common perception, illegal immigrants are often not the poor, tired and hungry running from persecution in third world nations, but rather are middle class foreigners paying $5,000 to $15,000 from Central America, $50,000 from Europe or Africa, and $50,000 - $75,000 from India, to chase the dream of a pot of gold at the end of the American rainbow.

One of the most interesting parts of the film though is about the Iraq war vet, Jonathan Decoster. The movie uses Decoster to tell the story of how immigration decimates the poor and working class here in America by diverting resources, lowering wages and eliminating opportunity. Decoster’s despair turns into opioid addiction and ironically, he heads to the Mexican border to find the lowest prices for heroin.

To the film’s credit it highlights some stunning and disturbing facts, such as at least one-third of female illegal immigrants will be sexually assaulted on their journey, and that by percentage non-citizens far outpace native citizens in terms of benefits they receive despite paying far fewer taxes.

America’s Forgotten doesn’t just expose the problem of illegal immigration but offers a solution. The film contends the blueprint for a safe and fair immigration system that works for both immigrants and natives is the Bracero Program, which was a guest worker program that thrived from the 1940’s until 1965.

That type of program seems to be a logical solution to the scourge of illegal immigration that harms American workers and immigrants alike, but emotion has long ago replaced logic on this polarizing and partisan issue.

And that leads to one of the things that bothered me about America’s Forgotten…emotionalism. The mainstream media deceives Americans by emotionally manipulating them regarding the illegal immigration issue. They tug on American heartstrings and Americans predictably react with “misplaced compassion”.

Unfortunately, America’s Forgotten uses the same tactic, exploiting the grief of Ms. Durden-Coulter, the pain of Maria and the despair of Jonathan Decoster, in order to make its points. That doesn’t mean those points are invalid, it just rubs the wrong way because whenever there is a naked appeal to emotion, there is also an appeal to discard reason.

I also struggled with the film’s participatory style, which is the same style Michael Moore uses to great affect. This results in director Gurjal being the movie’s protagonist, driving the story from her personal perspective. The problem with Gurjal is that her voice, which narrates the entire story, is grating and weak, and she simply isn’t a compelling or commanding enough presence to carry this urgent story.

Another problem is that the movie is very poorly produced. There are technical glitches throughout, most notably with the sound, that make it seem like an amateur endeavor, and frustratingly that undermines the film’s strong thesis.

At the beginning and end of America’s Forgotten, a message comes on the screen informing viewers that due to fear of political reprisals, the crew has all agreed to work anonymously. The members of the sound team certainly dodged a bullet on that one.

In truth, Gurjal and her crew are wise to fear reprisals, as the powers that be in Hollywood, including the malicious middle management class, are extremely partisan and relentlessly petty. I have no doubt that Gurjal’s Hollywood career is now essentially over before it ever really had a chance to begin.

In conclusion, if you want to see the illegal immigration story the media don’t want you to see, rent America’s Forgotten (available on Vimeo, SalemNow and iScreeningRoom). I’m not sure in our polarized political era it can change any minds, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t telling a very ugly truth.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Chris Pratt in Cancel Culture Crosshairs

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 29 seconds

Chris Pratt is in the cancel culture crosshairs for imaginary crimes against woke dogma

The movie star has kept silent about his political beliefs, but the wizards of wokeness think they can read his mind and believe he is an evil Trump supporter.

Chris Pratt made a name for himself getting chased by dinosaurs in the Jurassic World franchise films, but the woke are now out to get him for allegedly having what they deem to be the political and cultural beliefs of a caveman.

Pratt originally came to fame as the lovable lug Andy Dwyer on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, and went on to movie stardom as the leading man in the Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie franchises. Unfortunately he is now squarely in the cancel culture crosshairs of the woke twitter mob for potentially being a secret, homophobic, Trump supporter.

This Pratt incident began when tv writer Amy Berg posted pictures of the four famous Chrises - Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt, on twitter and said “one has to go”.

In response, the rapacious raptors of woke twitter attacked Pratt – claiming the star’s Twitter bio  ‘radiated homophobic White Christian supremacist energy’.

Pratt’s bio that sparked that comment reads, “I Love Jesus, My wife and family! Seahawks fanatic, MMA junky!”  The horror. The horror.

This Pratt episode is funny because while he is known for dinosaur movies, it is the woke who are acting out of their lizard brains as the evidence of Pratt being homophobic and a white Christian supremacist is…well…entirely non-existent.

Last year after actress Ellen Page attacked Pratt on twitter for being a member of an “infamously” anti-LGBTQ church, Pratt responded, “It has recently been suggested that I belong to a church which ‘hates a certain group of people’ and is ‘infamously anti –LGBTQ.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. I go to a church that opens their doors to absolutely everyone.”

Of course, just because an emotionalist buffoon like Ellen Page says something doesn’t make it so, as she famously once gave a hysterical speech on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert decrying the homophobia and racism in America that led to the “attack” on Jussie Smollett. That claim that has not held up particularly well.

The lack of evidence regarding Pratt’s homophobia hasn’t deterred the twitter mob from marking Pratt for termination though, which is ironic since Pratt’s father-in-law is former Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, the original Terminator.

The other thing that seems to have galled the tiny Torquemadas of twitter is Pratt’s ambiguous political beliefs.

Even though Pratt has never declared he supports Trump, the maniacal mob assumes he does because he also hasn’t said if he supports Biden. Although Pratt’s wife, Katherine Schwarenegger, has publicly stated she will be voting for Biden.

The cancel culture clan point to Pratt’s not attending an upcoming Avengers fundraiser for Biden, and that he was also once photographed by a paparazzo wearing a Gadsden Flag t-shirt that said “Don’t Tread on Me”, as iron-clad proof of the star’s evil political intentions, but this seems like a short cut to thinking.

Pratt’s lone, unambiguous statement on politics, besides his contribution of $1,000 to Obama’s campaign in 2012, was in 2017 in Men’s Journal where he said, "I really feel there's common ground out there that's missed because we focus on the things that separate us…. I don't feel represented by either side." What a monster!

The biggest issue with all of this nonsense is that people are furious not because of anything Pratt has said or done, but because he hasn’t said or done anything. Pratt isn’t going to a Biden fundraiser or a Trump fundraiser or a Groot fundraiser or a Thanos fundraiser…he isn’t going to any fundraisers at all!

The idea that the mental midget McCarthy-ites on woke twitter want to cancel Pratt because he said and did nothing…is absurd to the point of madness.

Chris Pratt has graciously kept his politics private, unlike a host of other approval-addicted actors yearning for 15 more minutes of fame, and he shouldn’t be excoriated for imagined beliefs that people project onto him. Pratt should only be judged by what he does and what he says in life.

For example, judge Pratt on his further response to Ellen Page’s baseless anti-LGBTQ claim,

“My faith is important to me but no church defines me or my life, and I am not a spokesman for any church or group of people. My values define who I am. We need less hate in this world, not more. I am a man who believes that everyone is entitled to love who they want free from the judgement of their fellow man.”

He then wrote, “Jesus said ‘I give you a new command, love one another,' This is what guides me in my life. He is a God of Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness. Hate has no place in my or this world.”

That statement speaks glorious volumes about the quality and worth of Chris Pratt as a human being.

The recent unwarranted vilification of Pratt speaks volumes too, not about him, but about the vapid, vacuous and venal villains partaking in it.

I’ve never been much of a fan of Pratt’s acting…but this whole twitter Pratt attack has left me admiring the man for his groundedness and humility.

The bottom line is Chris Pratt seems like a genuine and decent guy and his detractors seem like vile and repugnant twitter tyrants.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Disney's New Content Warning and the Woke Slippery Slope

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

As the insatiable woke beast runs rampant across our culture, the category of things deemed offensive becomes ever more bloated, meaning an increasing number of classics are now in danger.

If you are anything like me you have been losing copious amounts of sleep worrying that Disney’s content warning for racism that runs before some of their classic animated films like Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, Dumbo, Jungle Book and The Aristocrats, wasn’t long-winded enough.

Well, thanks to the geniuses at everybody’s favorite frozen anti-Semite’s entertainment mega-corporation, we can all rest easy because they’ve attached a new disclaimer to these allegedly offensive films.

The old content warning was first posted last November and stated, “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”.

Disney’s updated content warning is the polar opposite of the gloriously concise and resolutely mundane original. The new disclaimer reads,

“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of peoples or cultures. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.

Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe.”

I can’t remember who it was, but some jerk once wrote, “brevity is the soul of wit”…well, if brevity is the soul of anything than the Winston Smith wannabe who wrote this atrocious piece of Human Resources porn is as soulless as they are spineless and brainless.

What makes the verbosity of this woke monstrosity all the more hysterical is that the kids who might be trying to watch Disney’s talking animal cartoons either won’t be able to read it at all, and if they can, they sure as hell won’t understand it.

The other thing of note about this disclaimer is that it is absolutely unnecessary as there was no huge groundswell to update the old content warning by making it more wordy and less coherent.

What Disney is actually doing with this new content warning is shamelessly signaling its corporate virtue and trying to appease the woke beast rampaging relentlessly and maniacally across our culture. This beast has an insatiable appetite for outrage and when none appears organically, the woke manufacture some to feed it.

Like an annoying software update, Disney’s updated content warning will no doubt soon need yet another update. The slippery slope of political correctness will force Disney to expand its definition of ”offensive” material and bloat the category of films needing these self-serving content warnings.

Recent history has taught us that the road to woke perdition is never ending. No gesture or change will ever be enough for the p.c. mob. This results in content warnings needing perpetual updates to acknowledge sins of commission, then sins of omission – such as “we are sorry that Dumbo is not centered on characters of color or from the LGBTQ community”, then the sin of too many cis-gendered white characters, or too many white voice actors, and on and on and on…until finally the woke noose tightens enough to suffocate all of entertainment history.

For example, Song of the South(1946) is a controversial Disney classic that depicts a black character, Uncle Remus, as content with life in the cotton fields. Song of the South currently has no content warning or disclaimer…and that’s because Disney has flat out banned it. It isn’t on video, DVD or streaming. It is lost down the memory hole, which is where the woke slippery slope inevitably leads.

The problem for Disney is that through the lens of wokeness all things appear “problematic”, and this means Mickey Mouse may very well have to sacrifice his cash cow core film canon on the altar of political correctness to appease the woke beast. This will be “get woke, go broke” on steroids.

You may think this far-fetched, but if you doubt the woke slope is that slippery, consider the recent chilling example of the word “preference”.

In last week’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings Amy Coney Barrett mentioned the term “sexual preference”. In response Senator Mazie Hirono excoriated her for that term claiming it was “offensive” to the LGBTQ community.

That morning “sexual preference” was an entirely acceptable phrase, by lunch it was deemed “homophobic”, and by sundown it was so verboten that Merriam-Webster had literally changed its definition to describe it as “offensive”.

As the speed of history increases, so will the woke over-reaction to it. It starts with content warnings on cartoons and Gone With the Wind…but how much of the entertainment we enjoy today will tomorrow get a content warning and by the end of the week get the Song of the South memory hole treatment? The Simpsons, South Park and Family Guy are no doubt already on the endangered species list.

Our civilization used to rely on outrage fatigue to cool the embers of irrational and emotionally driven furies, but among the woke, outrage ossification has set in like intellectual rigor mortis. It is those of us in opposition to the vacuity of political correctness that now suffers from fatigue…and as Patton once said, “fatigue makes cowards of us all”.

My warning of discontent is this…the woke beast slouching toward Bethlehem, via Hollywood, Washington and corporate America, is relentless, consistent, deliberate and insatiable, and in our battle against it we need to screw our courage to the sticking place…because failure is too culturally catastrophic to contemplate.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Trailer for Girl Power Spy Movie 'The 355' Wraps the Same Old CIA Propaganda in a Woke Feminist Cloak

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 47 seconds

The long running CIA-Hollywood partnership is at it again trying to fool audiences with a female driven action movie set to release in January of 2021.

Hollywood is churning out yet another feminist action flick for the cinema going public to ignore.

The 355, directed by Simon Kinberg and starring Jessica Chastain, tells the story of five female intelligence agents from different nations – U.S., U.K., Columbia, Germany and China, who come together to recover a top secret weapon.

Besides Chastain, the film stars Lupita Nyong’o, Penelope Cruz, Diane Kruger and Fan Bingbing.

The trailer features such eye-rolling pieces of dialogue as “now we have a common enemy…and if we don’t stop them they’ll start World War 3” and “we put ourselves in danger, so others aren’t”.

If the final film is as dreadfully absurd as the trailer, then it’s sure to be an odious piece of cinematic garbage.

What is most interesting to me about The 355 though is that while I don’t know this for sure, it certainly appears to be just another in a long line of pro-intelligence agency Hollywood products that propagates America’s nefarious global agenda under the ruse of promoting female empowerment.

For example, in 2001, America’s sweetheart Jennifer Garner starred as CIA super-agent Sydney Bristow on the hit tv show Alias (2001-2006). Despite the show being a fawning CIA propaganda piece, Garner went the extra mile and filmed a recruitment video for the agency. The CIA’s press release announcing that video is insightful.

“Ms. Garner was excited to participate in the video after being asked by the Office of Public Affairs. The CIA’s Film Industry Liaison worked with the writers of Alias during the first season to educate them on fundamental tradecraft. Although the show Alias is fictional, the character Jennifer Garner plays embodies the integrity, patriotism, and intelligence the CIA looks for in its officers.”

Anyone who unironically claims the CIA is filled with integrity, patriotism and intelligence either is completely historically illiterate or actually works for the CIA.

Garner’s ex-husband, movie star Ben Affleck, is also no stranger to working with the CIA as evidenced by the films The Sum of All Fears and Argo. In 2012 Affleck said, “Probably Hollywood is filled with CIA agents”. I wonder if he was referencing himself or his ex-wife in that statement?

Another pro-CIA, female driven narrative was Showtime’s award-winning Homeland (2011-2020). The producers of Homeland reached out to the CIA early in the making of the show and agency hands are all over it. The CIA even had consultants on set to make sure the depictions of the agency were “realistic”.

The star and producer of The 355, Jessica Chastain, is also no stranger to collaborating with the CIA, as she starred in the infamous CIA propaganda piece Zero Dark Thirty (2012).

On that film, which claimed to show the true story of the CIA hunt for Bin Laden, the agency went to great lengths to control and falsify the narrative. The CIA granted remarkable access to the filmmakers, including classified briefings, in exchange for veto control over what went on screen. The agency took full advantage of that control and made the CIA out to be heroes and torture to be highly beneficial in finding and killing Bin Laden.

Intriguingly enough, it was Chastain herself who pitched the idea for a female James Bond – Mission Impossible type of spy movie which became The 355. Is it possible that Chastain is one of the CIA people in Hollywood that Ben Affleck mentioned? I don’t know, but it certainly seems like she is more than happy to make projects that uncritically show the CIA as the good guys as long as it garners her money and prestige.

Chastain is becoming the female version of Tom Hanks, a talented actor who, as evidenced by Saving Private Ryan, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Post and Bridge of Spies among many others, is always eagerly and reliably in the bag for the intelligence community and military industrial complex.

A damning piece of evidence against Hanks was his cringe-worthy refusal to say that Edward Snowden was not a traitor while doing press for The Post (2017) - a film about Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsburg. When directly asked if Snowden was a traitor the cowardly Hanks replied, “that’s above my pay grade”. Tom Hanks pay grade has earned him a net worth of $350 million.

As for Chastain and The 355, the CIA consistently uses Hollywood to promote the notion of intelligence agency women as American Jane Bonds and that has real-world consequences. Feminists cheer that the agency is now headed by torture enthusiast Gina Haspel, and has women leading three of its top directorates. The pussy hat brigade also proudly embraced former female CIA personnel, Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Elissa Slotkin, as they ran and won congressional seats in 2018 by touting their background as CIA ‘badasses’.

Sadly, by co-opting vociferous feminist voices like Chastain and Captain Marvel star Brie Larson – as well as the feminist movement which has historically been anti-war and pro-peace (think Jane Fonda), this ensures that not only does the CIA have no opposition from famous women, but actually has their endorsement.

Progressive women, like Chastain and Larson, say they care about women’s issues, but by making a Devil’s bargain with the military and intelligence community, they are selling their souls and moral authority to promote predatory power. Their silence in the face of America’s violent militarism and imperialism, which murders and maims countless women and children worldwide, is shameful and damning.

Thankfully, from the looks of its atrocious trailer, The 355 will probably face the same box office fate as the cavalcade of recent busts like Ghostbusters (2016), Ocean’s 8, Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Birds of Prey that put feminism first and quality filmmaking second.

Sadly though, that won’t stop the CIA and Hollywood from continuing to use gullible and ambitious women to mendaciously sell the agency as a beacon of all that is patriotic and progressive – when in reality it is the antithesis of both, because as Ben Affleck once astutely observed, “Hollywood and the clandestine services both spend most of their time convincing people that something that is not true is, in fact, true.”

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Academy Awards New Diversity and Inclusion Rules do not do Enough to Purge Hollywood of the Evil of Straight White Men

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 13 seconds

If Hollywood wants to become a true woke utopia, it should follow my guidelines to rid itself of the plague of white men.

The Academy Awards have set stringent new diversity guidelines to which all films must adhere by 2024 if they want to be considered for the prestigious Best Picture award.

The new guidelines require films to meet on screen representation standards where at least one of the lead actors or a significant supporting actor must be either Asian, Hispanic, black, Indigenous, Native American, Middle Eastern, North African, native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Cinephiles can sleep well knowing that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s movies will still be eligible for Best Picture.

If a film doesn’t meet the actor requirement then it can still pass the test by having representation from those same minority groups along with women, LGBTQ and people with cognitive or physical disabilities or who are deaf or hard of hearing represented in acceptable numbers behind the scenes on the crew, in apprenticeships or internships or in executive positions.

The bottom line is basically if you are a straight white guy in Hollywood you’ve just been served notice that your skill and talents are only needed for as long as it takes to train your female or minority replacement.

As someone who has long felt that hiring people based on their talent and skill was a devout evil, I for one welcome our new diversity and inclusion overlords and want to let them know that as a straight white male I could be useful in sniffing out other straight white men in Hollywood trying to scheme their way into being considered a worthy minority.

La La Land being La La Land I’m sure there are a plethora of desperados already strategizing on how to circumvent these new rules that will make Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug look like pikers.

As of right now the Academy is saying that the new standards will be enforced by “spot checks” on set….but I am deeply concerned that those “spot checks” won’t be strenuous enough to rid the movie industry of the damned straight white male menace that plagues it.

I have a few proposals to help strengthen inclusion enforcement and assure diversity compliance.

1. I think Academy Gestapo, oops, I mean enforcement officers, should be armed with a standard color chart where they can hold up the color card next to a person and see if their skin color matches the “right” (aka non-white) tone to be allowed to work on a movie. If someone is too light skinned they can immediately be escorted off of the set and counselors can be brought in to soothe the traumatized left in the white male devil’s wake.

2. In order to ensure that no white men ever slip through the cracks, I also propose a partnership between the DNA testing company 23 and Me and the Academy Awards. Everyone working on every movie must be forced to give a DNA test in order to prove their ethnic or racial heritage.

And let’s be clear, we want pure minorities…none of this “my mother is black and Latina and my father is Asian and white” business because that still means the curse of whiteness is coursing through their veins. Any drop of white blood in a person should be unacceptable in Hollywood.

It will also be L.A. law that everyone must carry their DNA papers with them at all times. Failure to have your papers will result in immediate expulsion from the movie industry.

The 23 and Me results could actually become a fun part of Oscar night where an envelop is opened on stage revealing the film with the most diversity, which is then declared Best Picture. I think we can all agree this is how Best Picture should always be determined, not by the antiquated measure of artistic quality and worth.

3. One troubling diversity and inclusion loophole is that some deplorable straight white male could claim to be gay, thus qualifying as a minority. Let it be known throughout Hollywood that just using unorthodox pronouns like They/Them or Ze/Zir will not be enough to prove minority status!

I am sure there is some enterprising young man or selfless older male studio executive out here in Tinsel Town who’d be willing to advance his standing in the Academy by doing special intimacy examinations, preferably on camera, to see if these white men are “gay enough” to be allowed to work.

Obviously the Academy should hire me as a turncoat consultant, but if they don’t I’m already getting deviously entrepreneurial by hoarding hearing aids that I can rent out on the white market for $200/a day to other straight white men so that they can claim to be “hard of hearing” just to keep their grueling gigs as gaffers.

My sincere wish is that Hollywood succeeds in curing itself of its straight white male pandemic. Straight white men, be they Martin Scorsese, Daniel Day-Lewis or regular working Joes, have stained cinema with their straight white maleness for long enough.

Somewhere there is a deaf, transgender Indigenous actor signing the phrase, “Alright Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up!” Let’s hope these new diversity and inclusion rules make They/Them into the biggest star in the universe and the dream of a woke Hollywood utopia relentlessly churning out cinematic mediocrity into a reality.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

New HBO Max Teen Comedy UNpregnant Seems to Suggest Abortion is Nothing but a Barrel of Laughs

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 24 seconds

UNpregnant appears to ignore the moral complexity of abortion in favor of promoting an insidious amorality on the issue. 

UNpregnant is the controversial new abortion buddy comedy movie set to premiere on HBO Max on September 10th.

The film, based on the novel of the same name, tells the story of Veronica, a pregnant 17 year-old girl, and her friend Bailey, as they go on a wild and whacky road trip from Missouri to New Mexico so that Veronica can get an abortion.

In its trailer, UNpregnant sells itself as a zany road picture where hilarity ensues when a goofy odd couple of teenage girls steal a car and try to hop a train on their epic odyssey down the yellow brick road to abortionland.

The road picture narrative is a long time Hollywood staple, think Bing Crosby and Bob Hope with their numerous “road to” musical comedies of the ‘40’s and ‘50’s…except in UNpregnant, Crosby and Hope are teenage girls crossing state lines to get an abortion. Hilarious!

It is easy to see why pro-life advocates are up in arms over UNpregnant as the trailer makes the film appear to be a piece of pro-abortion agitprop specifically designed to antagonize them by making light of abortion and demonizing Veronica’s Catholic parents as “Jesus freaks”.

2020 has been a banner year for decidedly pro-abortion films with UNpregnant, the critically acclaimed drama Sometimes, Always, Never, Rarely, and the indie dramedy Saint Frances, which all have an amoral attitude toward abortion, all being released.

Notice I described these films as pro-abortion and not pro-choice, that is because pro-choice implies a grappling with the moral gravity of the abortion decision, whereas pro-abortion removes any moral dimensions at all, and reduces abortion to being akin to getting a nose piercing.

This amoral approach to abortion is perfectly summed up by Kelly O’Sullivan, writer and star of Saint Frances, who told Time magazine, “I wanted to write a story where it’s a non-traumatic depiction of abortion. It’s ordinary and light and sometimes funny…”

Yes, because if abortion is anything it is ordinary, light and sometimes funny.

Hollywood has not always been so devoid of nuance in its depiction of the extraordinarily complex issue of abortion.

In 2007, Juno, Knocked Up and Waitress all portrayed their female protagonists wrestling with an unwanted pregnancy and highlighting the choice part of the pro-choice position, with each ultimately choosing to not have an abortion.

These films were wildly successful, with Juno and Knocked Up raking in $231 million and $219 million respectively, and Waitress pulling in a respectable $22 million with just a $1.5 budget.

Juno also garnered four Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress, while winning for Best Original Screenplay.

The commercial and critical success of these films was a result of their mirroring American’s extremely conflicted feelings on the subject of abortion.

Polling shows that a majority of Americans are pro-choice in some form, but as Barbara Carvalho of Marist Poll told NPR, “People do see the issue as very complicated, very complex. Their positions don't fall along one side or the other. ... The debate is about the extremes, and that's not where the public is."

In the thirteen years since Juno, Knocked Up and Waitress hit big screens Hollywood has abandoned the nuance and dramatic complexity of American’s view of abortion in favor of the extremist pro-abortion message of UNpregnant.

Tinsel Town is no longer interested in connecting with as wide an audience as possible but rather prefers to signal their self-professed virtue with cultural propaganda that directly targets underage girls while preaching to the minority of pro-abortion zealots in their midst.

Most troubling for movie lovers is that internal moral conflicts are what make for the most interesting drama and comedy, and to ignore them in favor of self-aggrandizing political posturing is self-defeating for both artists and the movie industry.

An example of a mainstream filmmaker successfully embracing morally complex issues, including abortion, is Knocked Up director Judd Apatow, who has made a career of wrapping moral debates in his signature raunchy humor.

Apatow’s films, which include 40 Year Old Virgin, This is 40, Funny People and Trainwreck, are “conservative” comedies where adult protagonists face moral dilemmas and though tempted to make the libertine choice, eventually make the difficult but responsible one instead.

As Hollywood’s cultural politics become ever more strident, Apatow’s formula, which has made him a gazillionaire, will become anathema in the movie industry and “get woke, go broke” will most assuredly be made manifest in La La Land.

The UNpregnant trailer, which boasts such cringe-worthy dialogue as “it’s my life, my choice” and the insipid tag line “when life gets off track, forge your own path”, makes clear the popular 2007 approach of entertaining adults with moral complexity is now abandoned in favor of indoctrinating kids with extremist agitprop.

Maybe when UNpregnant comes out we’ll discover that it’s a terrific film and more morally complex than its trailer suggests…or maybe it is the canary in the cultural coalmine reflective of how the new, grotesquely woke Hollywood is desperate for its cancer of vapid amorality and decadent depravity to metastasize to the next generation of girls and young women. My bet is on the latter.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

The Crown Just Cast an Australian to Play Princess Diana and I am in a Woke-Fueled Rage!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 39 seconds

If wokeness is going to survive, the scourge of actors portraying characters that are in any way different from themselves must end now.

I consider myself a devout crusader for the Church of Wokeness, a brave Knight of the Woke Table if you will.

Whenever an injustice is committed here in Hollywood I am the one who fiercely follows the crowd and does the most courageous thing imaginable…write a scathingly pithy article about it.

My specialty is scouring the trade papers searching for violations of the new woke Hollywood commandment that “Actors shall not portray characters that aren’t exactly identical to them in real life”. I call this the “No Acting Allowed” rule.

This noble calling of mine isn’t an easy one, there are so many micro-aggressions and so little time to cancel all who commit them, but still I soldier on.

The newest and most heinous of injustices that I unearthed occurred the other day and was so horrifying it literally left me shaking.

*Trigger Warning for the sensitive – a story of brutal casting violence follows.

The injustice of which I speak is that Netflix just announced that on their hit show The Crown, Princess Diana – the most iconic of British Royals, will be played by Elizabeth Debicki who is…gasp…Australian!

I know, I know, it is an awful and tone-deaf maneuver, especially considering the history of it all. I mean, Australia really only exists because the British wanted their riff raff out of sight and mind, and they certainly didn’t want them portraying their most beloved of royals on some binge-worthy tabloid drama. An Australian portraying Princess Diana only highlights how far the once mighty British Empire has fallen.

Think of it this way…imagine if you will, an Aussie women worthy of having a tv show or movie made about them…I know it is far-fetched but just try…and then imagine a non-Australian actress playing that woman…talk about a dingo stealing your baby!

Now, some people may be thinking that since Elizabeth Debicki is a gloriously gifted actress blessed with exquisite skill and talent that it is just fine for her, despite the black mark of her Aussie background, to play Princess Diana. That is blasphemy…wokeness never considers ability!

Oscar winning actress Octavia Spencer concurs as she recently declared in regards to casting, “Nothing can replace lived experience and authentic representation…it’s imperative that we cast the appropriate actor for the appropriate role…”

What Spencer was actually talking about was the woke sin of able-bodied actors playing disabled characters, but if we follow her ideology to its logical conclusion, we end up crucifying the Aussie interloper Debecki for daring to play the very English Princess Diana. 

I wish there was a woke time machine so we could see who Octavia Spencer would cast instead of Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot and Oscar-nominee Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

Those able-bodied bastards are acting abominations. Their crimes are almost as bad as cis-gendered actors playing trans characters.

Halle Berry recently said she was contemplating playing a trans character but after being shouted down by my woke comrades, Halle apologized, and the world was once again made safe from acting.

I wish someone stopped Felicity Huffman from playing a trans character and scoring an Oscar nomination for her work in the dreadful 2005 movie Transamerica.

Thankfully we woke got revenge on Huffman when she was sent to prison for that blasphemy! She actually went to prison for trying to bribe a college into admitting her daughter…but that’s beside the point…the important thing is she was ultimately punished! I don’t think that punishment went far enough though. If it were up to me Felicity Huffman would have the scarlet letter of a penis sewn onto her forehead, so that with every step she took her forehead penis would swing before her eyes and forcefully remind her of the unforgivable trans-phobic sin she committed.

Another transgressor of woke trans dogma is Scarlett Johansson. ScarJo was set to play a trans man in the film Rub and Tug, but woke warriors fired up the outrage machine and forced her to back out.

In addition, the monstrously white ScarJo had previously earned woke ire when she starred in Ghost in the Shell as a character that was Asian in the original source material. Oh the humanity!

Of course, even if an actor is the same race or ethnicity as a character they aren’t safe from the righteous sword of wokeness.

Zoe Saldana thought she could play Nina Simone in a bio-pic about the legendary singer. Not without woke outrage she couldn’t! Saldana’s crime was that she is light-skinned and Simone was dark-skinned…in other words Zoe Saldana wasn’t black enough. Saldana has since apologized for her heinous hate crime.

A similar thing happened with Ruby Rose, a lesbian actress cast in the role of lesbian superhero Batwoman. Rose was excoriated by the woke brigade on social media because apparently she wasn’t lesbian enough.

To avoid this woke backlash and the cancel culture mob, white actresses Jenny Slate and Kristen Bell quit their roles voicing black characters on cartoons.

Slate stated, “black characters should be played by black people” and that her portrayal was “an act of erasure of black people.”

Bell said, “ This is a time to acknowledge our acts of complicity.”

If only that Aussie Elizabeth Debicki would do her part and acknowledge that playing Princess Diana on The Crown makes her complicit in the erasure of English people and declare that English characters should only be portrayed by English people, then we could be one step closer to eradicating the art of acting and finally living in the glorious utopia of talentlessness we woke are obviously so desperate to manifest.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Epoisode 21 - The Vast of Night

After an interminable Summer hiatus…Barry and I are like Fast Eddie Felson in The Color of Money…WE ARE BACK, BABY!! On this episode of everybody’s favorite cinema podcast we discuss the The Vast of Night, a sneaky good little sci-fi film currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Come join Barry and I as we take the Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Starship back to 1950’s New Mexico where we grapple with over-active imaginations and possibly UFO’s!! And we also marvel at the formidable skill of up and coming director Andrew Patterson, who makes his impressive feature film debut with The Vast of Night.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA: EPISODE 21 - THE VAST OF NIGHT

Thanks for listening!

©2020

The Woke Philistines Taking Over Hollywood Hate White Men Considerably More Than They Love Cinema

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 29 seconds

Hollywood’s suffocating new wave of identity politics is targeting white men and movies and tv will suffer significantly because of it.

Hollywood, despite its reputation as a liberal bastion, has long been a hothouse of vicious reactionary sentiments.

For example, the anti-communist mania of the late 1940’s and 50’s was a particularly shameful time in Hollywood’s history. It was during this Red Scare that Hollywood studios created a blacklist where any person thought to be a communist or associated with communists, regardless of their ability, was barred from working in the industry.

Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee used the threat of the Hollywood Blacklist to force many artists to become informers on their colleagues in order to maintain their livelihoods.

Not surprisingly, as the Black Lives Matter panic now rages, Hollywood is once again succumbing to the hideous Siren’s call of dehumanization and discrimination. Except this time the accusation isn’t about communism, but rather, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a white man?”

The Red Scare is now the White Male Scare. In Hollywood’s current climate of rabid, politically correct, social-justice hysteria, the message is clear…group identity trumps individual talent, skill and artistry, always and every time.

The black dye has been cast, and the end result of adhering to this devout dogma of diversity is that white men need not apply...and any white men who raise issues with this mandate are racist and will, along with any one that openly associates with them, be cancelled.

A recent example of this was when black filmmaker Ri-Karlo Handy put out a call on a Facebook group of film professionals for “black Union editors”. When white editors took offense at this rank racialization, they were called racist, and one even lost his job over it.

Black filmmaker Ava DuVernay responded by tweeting “to the white men…if you don't get that job you were up for, kindly remember… bias can go both ways. This is 2020 speaking.”

This is reminiscent of black filmmaker Jordan Peele saying, “I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie”. Imagine if someone said either of those things about black or Jewish people instead of “white men”.

Apparently DuVernay and Peele feel the best way to fight past racism is with more racism. How ethically and morally repugnant of them.

This whole anti-white male identity politics revolution began in the wake of the #MeToo movement, where studios, in their typical reactionary style, became adamant about telling female centric stories, regardless of their quality, and hiring women to either write, direct, star in or produce them, regardless of their talent level or ability.

This approach resulted in the murderer’s row of cinematic garbage that was Charlie’s Angels, Birds of Prey, Ocean’s 8, What Men Want, The Hustle, Late Night and Mary Queen of Scots.

Now, with Black Lives Matter the movement du jour, Hollywood is even more ferociously committed to disregarding individual talent, skill, experience and artistry (of white men in particular) in their hiring practices in favor of identity politics.

There are many who’ll cheer this anti-white male racism and say that white men have discriminated for years and they deserve the backlash. That may, or may not, be true, but regardless, these folks are cutting off their cinematic noses to spite their white-man-hating face.

The dark secret people working within the industry know, but are too scared to say publicly, is that this aggressive identity politics not only will destroy the careers and lives of completely innocent, ordinary working class folks in front of and behind the camera, but will be catastrophic for the art of cinema and the entertainment business.

Despite what the uninitiated think, making movies and tv shows is extremely difficult, making good ones is even more difficult, and making great ones is nearly impossible.

Industry professionals understand that talent and skill must be the absolute top priority when hiring or the end product will ultimately suffer greatly.

No one would dare say this publicly of course, at least not while the Woke Inquisition rages and cancel culture reigns supreme, but just like the vast majority of talented and skilled people in the NBA are black (despite black men making up only 6.5% of the population), the cold, hard truth is that not all, but the vast majority of skilled people in Hollywood are white men. That is not racist. That is reality.

Unlike the woke cultists, I’m not interested in sacrificing quality on the altar of identity. I don’t care about identity. I only care about cinema.

Like all true cinephiles, I want the most talented individuals to get hired, regardless of their group identity, in order to ensure the best movies get made.

Recently, black actor Anthony Mackie, the star of Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier, unintentionally admitted he felt the same way while, ironically, complaining about Marvel’s lack of diversity.

“My big push with Marvel is hire the best person for the job. Even if it means we are going to get the best two women, we’re going to get the best two men. Fine.”

I’d like to think that when Mr. Mackie says “we”, he means the human race and not the black race, and that he would be ”fine” if the “best person for the job” were a white man…but considering the sentiment in Hollywood right now…I sincerely doubt it.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Horny Women of the World Unite! Don't Let Woke Puritans Cancel the Steamy Netflix Movie 365 Days!

Estimated Reading Time: 69 seconds

A vocal minority of totalitarian busybodies is taking on the lustful populist majority in trying to censor the racy fan favorite. While it’s a terrible movie, pulling it would be a very bad day for film.

The controversial erotic romance 365 Days has been among the most watched movies on Netflix since it premiered last month, and may very well end up being the most popular film of the year on the streaming service.

Some passionate fans have been so enamored with the steamy Polish movie, which chronicles the decidedly unorthodox relationship between studly Italian mob boss Massimo, and Laura, the gorgeous Polish woman he kidnaps, that they are clamoring for a sequel.

Despite its lascivious appeal to millions of mostly female viewers, there is a vociferous minority demanding Netflix pull the movie from its service because it allegedly glorifies kidnapping and rape.

This brigade of uptight scolds has even launched a petition at Change.org calling for the film’s removal from Netflix, and as of this writing, it has garnered an anemic 6,300 signatures.

My advice to these 6,300 fragile woke puritans is that 365 Days is not the hill to die on…and they will die on it because the hordes of hellaciously horny lady philistines that need some escapist release will not take losing their harmless cinematic guilty pleasure lying down.

Thankfully, Netflix has thus far resisted the mob’s demand to pull the film…but the damage may already be done. Under politically correct pressure the media messaging around 365 Days has quickly turned from a knowing wink to a judgmental scowl.

For instance, on June 17th The Daily Mail ran a story highlighting fans desperation for a sequel to the sex filled movie. On June 19th columnist Amanda Platell wrote an article stating she was seduced by the film, which she described as a “guilty pleasure” for women stuck in coronavirus lockdown, and that she saw “no harm in it”.

But by July 2nd the worm had turned after the vocal minority made their displeasure known, and so The Daily Mail began running headlines like “Is this the most degrading, sexist show Netflix has ever aired?”

This type of flip in media messaging used to take years to achieve but it now takes mere days for the establishment press to quickly move to alter the public narrative to appease the woke mob.

One can’t help but wonder if all of this negative media noise about 365 Days will succeed in scuttling the planned production of the sequel or will make Netflix choose to either dump the original or not run the sequel, thus leaving the movie’s ravenously libidinous fanatics high and dry.

I support Netflix’s decision to ignore the calls to pull 365 Days not because I think it is a good movie…it sure as hell isn’t – it is so bad it makes 50 Shades of Grey look like Citizen Kane…but because audiences should have the right to watch, or not watch, whatever the hell they want no matter how terrible it is.

As for the charges that 365 Days, which I found more neurotic than erotic, promotes kidnapping or rape…that is just ludicrous. The movie is so absurd as to be ridiculous, as it more resembles a raunchy live action cartoon than reality.

Consider the intricately incoherent details of the plot. The wealthy and impossibly handsome Massimo kidnaps the impossibly beautiful Laura because she perfectly matches the vision of an angelic woman that appeared to him right after he momentarily died during a mob hit. Massimo then gives Laura 365 days to fall in love with him while in his custody.

That plot isn’t a handbook for wannabe sexual predators, it is escapist soft-core porn for concupiscent middle-aged women who want to curl up on the couch with a bottle of wine and a “neck massager” and indulge in some secret “guilty pleasuring”.

Even Oprah Winfrey’s magazine O says of the film, that it is among many erotic movies that are "guilty pleasures"—though why feel bad about what you like?” Exactly.

I would go a step further and ask not only why feel bad about what you like, but also, why demand others not be allowed to like the things that you don’t like?

This is the main problem with the manic religious fervor of wokeness as it promotes the tyranny of the fragile and the thin-skinned over the popular opinion of…in this case…the horny majority.

If the ever-expanding politically correct bonfire of the vanities does engulf 365 Days, it would not exactly be a major crime against the art of cinema, but it would be a very bad sign for our culture.

This exceedingly cheesy movie has become an unlikely canary in the entertainment coalmine. If Netflix does cave to the small but vocal woke mob regarding 365 Days (or its planned sequel) as decisively as the news media has, then it portends a very dark, yet ironically vanilla, future for choice in film.

The healthiest outcome for all of us is for the horny majority to reign supreme in the Battle of 365 Days. For in movies as in sexual attraction, there is no accounting for taste, or in this case - lack thereof…but it is imperative that we as a culture suppress our totalitarian impulses and grant each other the freedom to indulge our bad taste.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Mr. Jones: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!****

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Not worth paying to see, but the striking and unnerving scenes of the Holomodor are worthy of your time to watch when it comes out on Netflix or cable.

Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland and written by Andrea Chalupa, is the true story of British journalist Gareth Jones as he discovers and then reveals the horrors of Stalin’s genocidal famine in Ukraine in 1933. The film stars James Norton as Jones, with supporting turns from Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard.

Agnieszka Holland is an interesting cinematic figure. In 1990 she wrote and directed Europa, Europa, a staggeringly brilliant film about the remarkable life of Solomon Perel during World War II for which Holland garnered a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Ever since Europa, Europa though, Holland has churned out absolutely nothing of note.

The tepid mediocrity of Ms. Holland’s filmography from 1991 to present day may explain why I had never even heard of Mr. Jones until I was assigned to watch it and write about it.

That said, as a big fan of Europa, Europa, Vanessa Kirby and Peter Sarsgaard, as well as being a Russophile and an admirer of good journalism, I thought Mr. Jones might just hit my sweet spot and be a new cinematic feast amidst the current coronavirus movie famine.

Sadly…while there were certainly some powerful sequences, overall the lackluster direction and script left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The biggest problem with Mr. Jones is that it is wildly uneven, with a devastatingly poor narrative structure.

The first half of the film plays out like a PBS melodrama…and not a very good one. Holland attempts to give a stylized view of the suffocating conformity of the British establishment, and then the debased debauchery of Walter Duranty’s Moscow, but is never quite able to adequately pull it off.

Another major structural issue is Holland’s choice to weave George Orwell’s writing of Animal Farm into the story. Shockingly, Orwell actually opens the movie and is used as a landmark throughout the narrative. The snippets of Orwell are at best frivolous and do nothing more than distract from the main dramatic thrust of the story.

The second half of the film is much, much better than the first. Midway through the film shifts to the devastation in Ukraine, and this is where Holland finds her footing. The scenes of starvation and desperation are exceedingly well-done and uncomfortable to watch. There is one sequence that is so brutal it left me unnerved for days. Holland’s use of the bleak and foreboding Ukrainian winter exquisitely conveys the existential depth and expanse of the ocean of suffering that was the Holomodor.

The problem though is that Holland failed to adequately build a dramatic foundation upon which to lay the tragedy of the Holomodor. I think the film actually would’ve been better served if it started with the trip to Ukraine, as that approach would have emphasized the brutal nature of the topic at hand from the get go. It also would have given context to Jones’ struggle and maybe even better fleshed out his character, which is remarkably paper-thin in the film.

Make no mistake though that Gareth Jones’ story is compelling and definitely worthy of a major movie, just that Ms. Holland is unable to tell the story with enough dramatic vigor or cinematic verve to do it justice. I couldn’t help but think that Gareth Jones life was worthy of an HBO or Netflix mini-series, as there is awful lot of meaningful story to tell.

In terms of the acting, the cast all do solid, if unspectacular, work.

James Norton brings an every man sort of energy to his Gareth Jones, which makes sense, but he definitely suffers from a charisma deficit, makes is a hindrance to his carrying the entirety of the movie. Norton never commands the screen or demands the audience’s attention, which at times undermines the film’s dramatic power.

The luminous Vanessa Kirby plays Ada Brooks, a sort of love interest to Jones. Kirby is an alluring and at times intoxicating screen presence, but is vastly misused and under utilized in Mr. Jones. Kirby is blessed with a striking screen magnetism but never gets to put meat on the bones of her character, which is a terrible waste of her prodigious talents.

Peter Sarsgaard is always an intriguing and emotionally complicated actor, and his morally compromised and diseased Walter Duranty is no exception. Sarsgaard has minimal screen time but makes the most of it as he limps and slithers through the scenery like the devil with whom Duranty made his deal.

Mr. Jones premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival back in 2019, and debuted for British audiences in February of 2020 and was scheduled to be released in the U.S. in April of 2020…but coronavirus rudely intervened.

The film was then released for purchase (but not for rent!) on streaming services in mid-June…and since I was hired to write about it, I reached into my expense account cookie jar and bought the movie for $14.99. Maybe it is my coronavirus budget talking but even though $14.99 is basically the price of a movie ticket here in the City of Angels, I found that price to be excessive.

My recommendation regarding Mr. Jones is not to purchase it…the cost is too high and it simply isn’t worth it. But I do think it might be worth watching for free on Netflix or cable when it comes out. The scenes of the Holomodor alone are worth the investment of time.

The bottom line is this…Mr. Jones is a great story (and Gareth Jones was a great man) but not a great film.

©2020

Spike Lee's 'Da 5 Bloods' is a Dreadful Disappointment, but Virtue-Signaling Establishment Critics Lack the Courage to Tell the Truth About It

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 17 seconds

There’s only one good thing about this film: it exposes mainstream film critics for their self-serving racial paternalism and their pandering to fellow woke elites.

Spike Lee’s new movie, Da 5 Bloods, starring Delroy Lindo, Chadwick Boseman and Jonathan Majors, tells the story of four black Vietnam veterans who return to Vietnam as old men in order to retrieve the body of their long lost comrade and search for buried treasure, premiered this past Friday on Netflix to much fanfare.

Lee has long been an artistic provocateur on issues of race, so as the U.S. once again struggles with civil unrest and social upheaval over racial injustice, you would think now would be a perfect time for a new movie from the Academy Award winner who brought us Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman.

You would be wrong.

While Da 5 Bloods does have some intriguing moments, particularly the documentary montages interspersed throughout the film, the majority of the movie is a sloppy, bloated, decadent, incoherent, endlessly meandering, melodramatic mess.

Sadly, the movie, which features a trite and derivative script, a relentlessly bombastic score and painfully amateurish action sequences, is too cinematically inept to be of any socially conscious value.

Ironically, the film’s lone insight into race relations in America is entirely unintentional as it exposes liberal film critics for their self-serving racial paternalism and their complete lack of professional integrity.

It is inconceivable to me that any cinematically literate person could conclude Da 5 Bloods is anything but a pronounced disappointment but, remarkably, critics have been falling all over themselves to praise the film, some even claim it is an Oscar favorite.

On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, critics have given it a staggering 92% score.

What was striking to me about the critical fawning over the movie was that in contrast, audiences at Rotten Tomatoes scored the film a much more reasonable 62%.

A look at the Rotten Tomatoes scores of other prominent films directed by black artists in recent years reveals a similarly suspicious divide between critics and audiences.

For example, in 2015 another Spike Lee film, the abysmal Chi-Raq, garnered an 82% critical score and a 50% audience score.

In 2015, Moonlight, Barry Jenkins’ compelling but flawed Best Picture winner received a blistering 98% critical score compared to a more rational audience score of 79%.

In 2018, the middling Black Panther somehow overcame its notable faults to become a box office smash and a Best Picture nominee while receiving an extraordinary 97% critical score compared to its more accurate audience score of 79%. The 97% critical score makes it the highest rated superhero movie of all time.

Black Panther’s negative18-point disparity between critical score and audience score is three times larger than any other superhero movie in history. 

In 2019 critics adored Barry Jenkins’ film If Beale Street Could Talk at a rate of 95% while audiences gave it a discerningly tepid 70%.

Also in 2019, critics slobbered over Jordan Peele’s confounding horror hit, Us, with a 93% score while audiences recoiled from it with a 59% rating.

The social justice warrior contingent will no doubt deduce from these numbers that the significantly lower audience scores are a result of hordes of incorrigible racists intentionally under rating a movie purely out of racial animus.

The facts betray that argument though, as other unquestionably brilliant black films, such as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (92 critical/90 audience) and Malcolm X (88 critical/91 audience) as well as John Singleton’s iconic Boyz n the Hood (96 critical/93 audience), have received universal praise and are devoid of such large differences in rating.

It seems obvious to me that mainstream critics are judging current black films not on their merits but on a politically correct curve.

Maybe this biased perspective is born out of fear of being labeled a racist or a heretic in the church of wokeness if they criticize a black film, or maybe it is some sort of pandering paternalism, which in and of itself is its own pernicious form of racism.

Sadly, these critics, just like those public health officials who recently went against their own expert opinions and declared that people needed to get out and protest racism despite the dangers of the Covid-19 pandemic, are frighteningly quick to trade their professional and personal integrity in order to satiate the woke mob and be seen as politically correct “allies”.

Critics that judge films on a racial curve in order to signal their virtue and moral superiority are doing a great disservice to both cinema and artists of color, as neither is well served by their blatant disregard of their professionalism and their pathetic woke posturing and pandering.

In conclusion, Da 5 Bloods is an awful film but it has done a service by exposing the untrustworthy critics in the establishment media for only caring about their social status among woke elites and not giving a damn about the art of cinema.

Now, if you want to watch a worthy Spike Lee film pertinent to this tumultuous time, go watch his unadulterated masterpiece Malcolm X, or the dynamically brilliant Do the Right Thing or the uneven but insightful BlacKkKlansman…but definitely avoid the dismal Da 5 Bloods.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Thanks to the Courage of HBO Max, Racism is Now Gone With the Wind...and Frankly My Dear, I DO Give a Damn

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 29 seconds

 HBO Max has deemed Gone With the Wind racist and has pulled it from its service because viewers are apparently too fragile and too stupid to be allowed to watch it.

In recent weeks, as protestors carrying Black Lives Matter signs filled the streets, I have often heard it said that, “racism is a virus”. If that is true, then the new streaming service HBO Max just found the cure.

HBO Max’s simple and brutally effective treatment to eradicate racism from the world is to pull the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind from its service…for now…at least until it can bring the film back “with a discussion of its historical context”. Take that racism!!

Gone With the Wind, which is based on the novel of the same name by Margaret Mitchell, won 10 Academy Awards, including, ironically enough, the first ever for an African American – Hattie McDaniel for Best Supporting Actress. The movie is also the highest grossing film of all-time (adjusted for inflation) and is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all-time.

The film’s unforgivable sin though is that it is set in the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction and depicts black slaves as a happy, content and well-treated bunch that adored their benevolent white masters.

Thankfully, HBO Max’s swift action will put an end to that highly popular theory, that seems to be everywhere nowadays, which states that African-Americans were much better off during the happy-go-lucky slavery era than today.

My fervent hope is that the geniuses at HBO Max and across Hollywood will now set their sights on other famous films from the past that cross the line of wokeness and offend the delicate sensibilities of us all.

For instance, all of the Star Wars films need to be tossed onto the woke bonfire immediately for their disgusting homophobia, which manifests itself in the C3PO character, an offensive stereotype of all closeted gay robots.

And how do you think members of the Sasquatch community feel when they see Chewbacca denying his obvious Sasquatch heritage and calling himself a “Wookie”, all while speaking some guttural, primitive language and carrying a laser-shooting crossbow? Won’t someone think of the Sasquatch?

Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List has got to go too, as while it may be historically accurate that doesn’t matter because you just know that anti-Semites watch that thing like its Nazi porn, which is just gross, and I simply cannot abide anybody enjoying anything for the wrong reasons…or the right reasons for that matter.

While we are on the subject of Nazis, The Sound of Music feels really Nazi friendly to me too, especially since its filled with all those smiling singing white people…so into the delete bin it goes.

As a student of history I can tell you that Dr. Zhivago is about Russia…I think… and the mainstream media and Hollywood have made it clear to me that Russians and Nazis are the same thing…so torch that damn movie!

Speaking of my vast knowledge of history, the 1956 classic, The Ten Commandments, needs to be exorcised from American screens immediately. Have you seen how negatively it portrays Egyptians? That seems really Islamophobic to me!

Titanic needs to be erased, not just because it has only white people in it, but because it sheds a bad light on the cruise ship industry and come on guys, corporations are people too.

Same thing goes for the Terminator franchise, which really slanders the tech industry with its negative portrayal of SkyNet. How do you think the folks in Silicon Valley feel when tech is seen as a malevolent force?

Speaking of the tech industry…in order to spare the feelings of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, if he is even capable of feeling, The Social Network needs to be banned forever and ever.

Boogie Nights really offended me personally because of its negative depiction of people with extremely large appendages, so it has got to go too!

And what about Citizen Kane? Yes, it does highlight the unconventional love between a boy and his sled, but on the other hand it really belittles the media-owning billionaire class (of which HBO Max is a member) and I just can’t abide by that…onto the bonfire it goes!

In fact, I think every film that makes anyone, anywhere, even slightly uncomfortable for any reason at all, needs to be not only banned, but all copies destroyed and the ashes then scattered to the winds. That way all hatred and prejudice of any kind will be permanently eradicated from the universe forever and ever…amen.

As for HBO Max, I think we should all take a knee in honor of their brave decision to save us from our own fragility and stupidity, and from the burden of freedom of choice, by not allowing us to watch Gone With the Wind without “context”.

The bottom line is this: where Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela all failed, HBO Max has gloriously succeeded. Racism is now definitively and irreversibly Gone With the Wind!

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota Podcast: Episode 20 - The Last Samurai

This week things get combative on the pod as Barry and I do battle over his newest choice for a quarantine watch, 2003’s The Last Samurai, which stars Tom Cruise and is directed by Edward Zwick. We also play another round of everybody’s favorite games - Hollywood Mogul. The stakes are high as the loser of the game and the debate must commit seppuku at the end of the podcast!

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA: EPISODE 20 - THE LAST SAMURAI

Thanks for listening and stay safe out there!

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 17 - A Very Special Episode on the Career of Director John McTiernan (Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, The Thomas Crown Affair)

This week we are doing a “very special episode” of the podcast where we dive into the strange career of director John McTiernan…and the bizarre twists and turns of his insane life. McTiernan’s films include Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard with a Vengeance, The Thomas Crown Affair and many more.  On the pod, Barry and I discuss McTiernan’s dying breed of non-auteur but skilled directing, and how filmmakers like him are rare nowadays…and what a treat it is to revisit some of his work. We also dip our toe into the sordid tale of how his career got sidetracked.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 17 - (A Very Special Episode) The Movies of John McTiernan

Thanks for listening! Stay safe and healthy out there!

©2020

Hollywood and the Economic Time Bomb of Coronavirus

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 28 seconds

Note - This article was written on Tuesday March 10, 2020

Fear of COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on Hollywood’s economy, and it is the working class of the entertainment industry who will pay the price.

Let me start off by saying that I have no idea if the fears around coronavirus are justified or hyped, but I do know they are having a devastating affect upon the film industry.

Hollywood is facing a potential $5 billion loss due to coronavirus. As a worker in the movie business, the news around the pandemic feels like the old narrative device of the ticking time bomb, each story that comes out is another tick.

Mission Impossible 7 shuts down production because of an outbreak in Venice…tick…the new James Bond movie No Time To Die reschedules its opening from April to November…tick…the film/music festival South by Southwest (SXSW) is cancelled because of health concerns…tick.

Most people think of the movie business in the abstract, as a sort of detached phenomenon known as ‘Hollywood’. The reality is that ‘Hollywood’ is more an idea…and Los Angeles the place that brings that idea to life.

Los Angeles isn’t the glitz and glamour of the Tinsteltown movie star myth rather it is a blue collar, industry town. The vast majority of people in L.A. are working stiffs who are among the thousands of people who work on each film or tv show as artists, crew members or laborers, be it in the production office or the camera and lighting, sound or arts departments, or as carpenters, caterers, electricians, drivers, extras or in other capacities.

These folks scratch out a living as freelancers in this massive and perpetually temporary gig economy known as the entertainment business. These Hollywood peasants, and as a writer and acting coach I count myself among them, are hustlers who work their backsides off as they scramble to survive by eating the crumbs off of corporate Hollywood’s overstuffed table.

Now, with as much as 70% of a blockbuster’s revenue coming from overseas markets, the Covid-19 fueled restrictions in China, South Korea, Japan and Italy are already leading to major shockwaves in corporate Hollywood.

The Mission Impossible 7, No Time to Die and SXSW postponements/cancellations may seem trivial to casual movie-goers, but to the thousands and thousands of Hollywood hoi polloi who work in production, marketing or staffing of films and festivals who count on that income for the basics, missing out on these paychecks isn’t just an inconvenience, it is an outright catastrophe.

Another example is Pearl Jam postponing two concerts scheduled for April at the L.A. Forum due to COVID-19.

For lead singer Eddie Vedder, postponing those shows is no big deal, but for the hundreds of minimum wage vendors, parking lot attendants, ticket takers and security guards who depend on that income to survive, it is a massive deal. They may make that money back eventually, but that won’t help them pay the rent next month.

The reality is that people working in the entertainment industry ecosystem are just as poorly situated financially as the rest of Americans, 40% of whom do not have the savings to afford a $400 emergency. 

While Tom Cruise has a $100 million rainy day fund, Hollywood’s plebeians do not get sick days, rarely if ever get unemployment, and are perpetually saddled with financial and employment insecurity.

They are also burdened not only by exorbitant L.A. housing costs but also by over-priced and under-performing health insurance when they are lucky enough to have any insurance at all.

Coronavirus slowing down or stopping film and tv production is a cataclysm for Hollywood’s proletarian backbone. The desperation here is already palpable as the stark reality for those living paycheck-to-paycheck is starting to sink in. The 60,000 homeless people already living in filth on the streets of L.A. are a constant and stark reminder of how quickly things can go bad.

The corona-inspired economic insecurity and health concerns will inevitably lead L.A.’s wealthy inhabitants to stay home and stop spending money at restaurants, bars and clubs, which will further spiral the economy downward, impacting small business owners and service economy employees the most.

And remember that while the rest of us are at home in self-quarantine enjoying streaming services and indulging in my list of best pandemic movies, the workers at movie theaters will be laid off from their minimum wage jobs by their corporate overlords.

It is easy to laugh at ‘Hollywood’ for its much publicized excess, extremes, absurdity and depravity, I do it all the time, but know that with coronavirus it is the normal, everyday, working class people of Los Angeles who will bear the economic and health burdens, not obnoxious celebrities and over-paid movie stars.

Sadly, James Bond and Tom Cruise are incapable of defusing the cornavirus bomb…and regardless of whether that bomb actually detonates or is a dud, the damage done will most likely leave Hollywood’s economy a smoldering crater…and as always, the rank and file of La La Land will be the most severe casualties.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 11 - Coronavirus and Contagion

This week on Looking California and Feeling Minnesota real life meets Hollywood.  Barry and I discuss the current effects the Coronavirus is having on the studios and more importantly those working in the gigantic gig economy that is the film industry.  We also look back at the 2011 Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion.

LOOKING CALIFORNIA AND FEELING MINNESOTA: EP. 11 - CORONAVIRUS AND CONTAGION

Thanks for listening and stay safe out there.

©2020

Birds of Prey: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: NEVER SEE THIS MOVIE.

This is an extended version of a review that was originally published at RT.

The new film Birds of Prey is populated by despicable men, and feminist women who want to be just like them. The outcome: Financial losses and moral bankruptcy.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), written by Christina Hodson and directed by Cathy Yan, is the story of Joker’s ex-girlfriend, Harley Quinn, as she navigates Gotham and a series of bad guys trying to take her down. The film stars two-time Academy Award nominated actress Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, with supporting nods from Ewen McGregor, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Rosie Perez.

Birds of Prey is marketed as a girl power manifesto that re-imagines Harley Quinn without the condescending sexism feminists felt was so prominent in Suicide Squad (2016), the last movie that featured Margot Robbie as Harley.

Suicide Squad was a horrifically shitty movie, and was regarded as a box office under-performer with a notoriously troubled production history, but it still was able to scratch out $750 million in total.

Despite oddly positive - to the point of delusional - reviews from woke pandering mainstream critics, Birds of Prey won’t do half that number in its theatrical run. With a reported production budget of $100 million (which includes re-shoots) and additional marketing costs, Birds of Prey is going to lose big money for the douchebag suits at Warner Brothers.

How did things go so wrong?

Birds of Prey banished the problematic “male gaze” of Suicide Squad that allegedly dehumanized Harley by making her purely an object of desire, by employing an all female creative team that included producer Margot Robbie, writer Christina Hodson and director Cathy Yan. The production goes so far in exorcising men as to even have a soundtrack with all-female artists on it.

The problem though is Birds of Prey tries to thread the needle and make a chaotically cool combination of Deadpool meets Wonder Woman, only it doesn’t have the first clue about the sardonically masculine humor of Deadpool and the appealing feminine power of Wonder Woman, or masculinity and femininity in general.

The film’s sexual politics are aggressive to say the least. In our current cultural moment, toxic masculinity and masculinity have become synonymous, so it is no surprise that Birds of Prey goes to great lengths to denigrate and disparage all its male characters and yet also to venerate all its female ones.

Every man in the movie, with the lone exception being a character (played by the criminally underused actor Eddie Alfano!) with fifteen seconds of screen time and no dialogue, is either entitled, conniving, maniacally violent, a rapist or all of the above.

In contrast every female character wears the noble crown of resilient victimhood after having suffered at the cruel hands of men.

The portrayal of men as misogynist beasts is pretty heavy handed, as at one point Harley and female friends are surrounded and the sadistic Roman Sionis (Ewen McGregor) yells to his army of all-male thugs, “Men of Gotham, go get those bitches!”

What’s so bizarre about the supposed girl power message of the movie is that while it relentlessly tells us that men are despicable creatures, all of the female characters are lionized for trying to behave like men. Like the recent batch of feminist movies such as Charlie’s Angels (2019) and Terminator: Dark Fate, Birds of Prey believes that feminism means women should act like men.

Even more baffling is the cinematic schizophrenia of Birds of Prey, as it obviously loathes men yet is so desperate for their attention it serves up a steady supply of hyper-violence. As Harley Quinn says, “nothing gets a guy’s attention like violence…blow something up, shoot someone.”

Totally coincidentally, The New York Times published an op-ed by an actress, Brit Marling, titled “I Don’t Want to be the Strong Female Lead” on the day Birds of Prey premiered.

In the piece Marling describes strong female leads as, “She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.”

In some ways this applies to Birds of Prey, since the women in it are smarter, tougher and stronger than the men, except they have been stripped of their sex appeal in a convoluted attempt to be pro-feminist.

For instance, Harley Quinn wore short shorts and alluring outfits in Suicide Squad, but in the female empowering Birds of Prey she dresses in baggy, Bermuda length shorts and a pink sports bra. It’s as if Harley went full Lady MacBeth and cried “unsex me here” and the filmmakers dutifully complied to stick it to the patriarchy.

Contrast this with the Super Bowl halftime show where Jennifer Lopez and Shakira were declared fiercely feminist when they wore skimpy outfits and literally danced like strippers.

How can female filmmakers like Cathy Yan properly tell an empowering feminist story if feminists haven’t even figured out what feminism is just yet?

This confusion manifests when Birds of Prey defines women solely in opposition to men, but then has them emulate masculinity as a show of their feminine strength.

Brit Marling wasn’t commenting on the troubling Manichean anti-male sexual politics of Birds of Prey, but she could have been, when she eloquently wrote, “I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance?”

That is a good question, but Birds of Prey is oblivious to balance…and quality for that matter. It’s a hot mess of a movie that features derivative, repetitive and dull action sequences, and that tries to be funny, but isn’t…hell…there is a hyena in the movie and even he wasn’t laughing. Watching this thing felt like wading through an Olympic-sized swimming pool of radioactive girl power vomit.

The cast, including lead Margot Robbie, who is one of my favorite actresses, are dreadful. Robbie’s New Yawk accent is brutally distracting and completely idiotic. Robbie’s Harley Quinn makes no sense dramatically, comedically or artistically.

The supporting roles are equally incoherent. Jurnee Smollett’s Black Canary and McGregor’s Sionis are cardboard cutout caricatures that are embarrassing to behold….as is Winstead’s Huntress. The biggest crime these actors commit is that they are all suffocatingly dull in their roles. There isn’t a spark of life at all from them…or from Rosie Perez who is wildly miscast as a girl cop done wrong.

In conclusion, if equality is women making misandrist, hyper-violent, incoherently vapid and dreadful movies…then Birds of Prey is a smashing success for feminism. It is also an abysmal failure for cinema…and probably humanity. It deserves to fail.

©2020

Good Riddance to Harvey Weinstein, A Repugnant Pig Who Brutalized Both Women and Cinema

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 49 seconds

Harvey Weinstein has ruled Hollywood for the last three decades, harassing colleagues not only over sex, but also art; assaulting not only women, but also movies. His long and thuggish reign is finally over.

The first blockbuster that Harvey Weinstein produced was Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. In that movie there is a male rapist named Zed, who gets his comeuppance at the hands of one of his victims, crime boss Marsellus Wallace. Once Wallace escapes Zed’s clutches, with the help of Butch (Bruce Willis), he promises to extract revenge on Zed by getting “medieval on his ass”.

“Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead,” Butch tells his girlfriend Fabienne,  after he returns with Zed’s chopper as a trophy.

Zed is Harvey Weinstein…grotesque and vile…and about to get payback for his depravity.

Unlike Zed, Weinstein isn’t dead…but his iron grip on Hollywood certainly is. With Weinstein’s conviction today on one count of sexual assault and another on rape in the third degree, he is either going to prison or into exile, with any chance of a return to the film business he so dominated for the last thirty years, long gone.

As the Weinstein era officially comes to an end it is worth looking back on the good, the bad and the very ugly of it all.

It is sort of amusing that Harvey’s most notable accomplishment is that he was the unwitting father of the #MeToo movement. It was when his degenerate, lascivious and predatory behavior over the course of his remarkable career finally became public in 2017, that #MeToo was born.

Weinstein’s also culpable for instigating the relentless campaigning for Academy Awards, a nasty sport that began in the 90’s and continues to this day. His most striking victory at the Oscars came in 1998 when he willed Shakespeare in Love over the Best Picture finish line ahead of the odds-on favorite, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.

In terms of cinema, Weinstein’s greatest legacy was that he was directly responsible for the glorious independent cinema movement of the 1990’s. The movie that started it all was, ironically, Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 Palme d’Or winning hit Sex, Lies and Videotape, produced by Weinstein.

Weinstein not only made the career of Oscar winner Soderbergh, but also 90’s cinema darlings and current Hollywood cornerstones Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow among many, many others.

Harvey’s business blue print was simple, he would take art house movies and market them aggressively. His brand was that of independent cinema with big bucks behind it…and it worked exceedingly well, especially in the 90’s.

Despite his success at elevating independent movies, Weinstein was also notorious for being a brutish bully and egotistical control freak when it came to the film’s he produced and distributed.

Weinstein was a pig in the china shop of cinema, and would often demand directors make enormous cuts to their films in order to get them to his preferred running time. He didn’t just do this with nobodies…he even strong armed cinematic masters like Martin Scorsese, whom he demanded cut 40 minutes off of Gangs of New York. Scorsese, like nearly everyone else in Weinstein world, acquiesced, and the movie and the art of cinema, suffered for it.

Like Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn an Robert Evans before him, Weinstein was the archetypal over-stuffed movie mogul. But with Weinstein’s conviction, his time in Hollywood is thankfully over, and it seems the movie mogul era itself is waning in Hollywood.

Yes, there will still be perverts and predators among Hollywood’s most powerful, that is unavoidable, but at least women will no longer be silent about it. And in terms of artistic freedom and directors being forced by power hungry Hollywood big shots to take a hatchet to their films, those days too are receding very quickly.

The obsolescence of Weinstein world-view is highlighted by the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, who have a very different business model than the coarse and crass Weinstein approach.

These streaming services have very deep pockets and an insatiable hunger for new material, but unlike Weinstein, they offer artistic autonomy, not arrogant authoritarianism.

For instance, Netflix wanted to work with Martin Scorsese so they financed his last film The Irishman. That movie ran three hours and thirty minutes, and in the hands of Harvey Weinstein would have been, like Gangs of New York, butchered beyond recognition. Netflix, on the other hand, didn’t lay a glove on it, and let Scorsese do exactly what Scorsese does best…make the movie he wants to make…and the art of cinema was better for it.

The bottom line regarding Harvey Weinstein’s conviction is this…good riddance to bad rubbish. The women of Hollywood and the art of cinema are much safer today without Harvey Weinstein and his filthy hands pawing all over them.

Zed is dead, baby. Zed is dead. And we are all better off because of it.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

6th Annual Slip-Me-A-Mickey™ Awards: 2019 Edition

The Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards are a tribute to the absolute worst that film and entertainment has to offer for the year. Again, the qualifying rules are simple, I just had to have seen the film for it to be eligible. This means that at one point I had an interest in the film and put the effort in to see it, which may explain why I am so angry about it being awful. So any vitriol I may spew during this awards presentation shouldn't be taken personally by the people mentioned, it is really anger at myself for getting duped into watching.

The prizes are also pretty simple. The winners/losers receive nothing but my temporary scorn. If you are a winner/loser don't fret, because this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® loser/winner could always be next years Mickey™® winner!! Remember…you are only as good as your last film!!

Now…onto the awards!

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker - The geniuses at Disney decided it would be a good idea to strip the final film of the Skywalker saga of all dramatic consequences…well done shitbags! A mind numbingly incoherent movie that does away with death…and drama…and interest.

Knives Out - This is less a whodunit than a who-inherits-it. A film so full of white self loathing it should run for the Democratic nomination. It is nice to see director Rian Johnson ruining original films after he ruined his Star Wars movie.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix - One of the cheapest, least consequential and poorly made superhero movies in recent memory. Thankfully it is so flimsy you literally forget it as you watch it.

The Souvenir - This art house poseur is such a vacuous and pretentious piece of garbage it made me want to shoot heroin into my eyes. A truly awful film.

AND THE LOSER IS…Knives Out - If watching terrible over-acting, being completely bored to tears, and hating white people is your thing…then this steaming pile of shit is for you. This mess of a movie is so self-satisfied with its wokeness it is incessantly imbecilic to the point of absurdity. A glorious monument to everything that is currently wrong with Hollywood.

WORST PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR - Julie Hagerty - Marriage Story : Julie Haggerty is a tour-de-force of awfulness in Marriage Story. Haggerty didn’t light up the screen but made me want to light myself on fire every time she appeared. Haggerty’s forced and strained performance felt like watching someone have a stroke while you are having a stroke.

WORST SCENE OF THE YEAR - Marriage Story - Being Alive : You would be hard pressed to find a worse scene in cinema in recent history than the one in Marriage Story where Adam Driver gets up and sings “Being Alive” by Stephen Sondheim at a karaoke bar. Driver is a shitty actor…and this is a shitty movie…but this scene…which is interminable…is the apex mountain of pretentious shittiness. I have never wished harder for a random act of violence in a movie than I did watching this scene.

MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR - Marriage Story : Establishment critics adore Noah Baumbach for some mysterious reason (I have a theory to explain it called the Elvis Costello Theory!). Marriage Story was Baumbach at his most pretentious and phony…and he brought the sycophantic worst out of his adoring critics. The praise for this movie is utterly baffling as this is an actively awful movie. The performances are dreadful, the writing trite and the direction amateurish…but besides that it was really good.

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATIC MALPRACTICE - JJ Abrams : Rise of Skywalker - It takes a special kind of asshole to take a gigantic dump on a beloved forty year old movie franchise…;and JJ Abrams is that asshole. Abrams direction on Rise of Skywalker is jaw droppingly atrocious. The decision to remove death from the Star Wars universe basically undermined the entirety of the previous collection of films. His inability to even tell the most rudimentary of stories, or to put together a coherent film…earns JJ Abrams his Special Achievement in Cinematic Malpractice.

P.O.S. HALL OF FAME

Jeffrey Epstein - Epstein gets his much deserved plaque at the POS Hall of Fame this year for being an insatiable pederast, sexual predator, Israeli spy and for not even having the common decency to kill himself. Epstein is dead of course, but if you think he actually hung himself I have a no-longer-a-Virgin Island to sell you, round-trip Lolita Express transportation included.

Epstein’s fortune, which he used to get close to people in power whom he then compromised by luring them to his underage sex parties, is a complete mirage, no doubt created by Israeli intelligence in order to give him cover as he plied his despicable trade.

Speaking of despicable…Epstein’s client list is a who’s who of scumbags. Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger, John Kerry, Tony Blair…and even everybody’s favorite douchebag, Alan Dershowitz. No doubt many, if not all, of Epstein’s clients will soon be joining him in the POS Hall of Fame…and with any luck they’ll also be joining him in hell soon too.

If you want to understand the demonic cult at the heart of the ruling elite and powerful in America and across the globe…look closely at the Epstein affair. This is who these people are…and their brazen murder of Epstein, and the media’s allergy to actually taking the story seriously, reveals their depravity and arrogance.

P.O.S. ALL-STARS

Bret Bed Bug Stephens - Stephens has always been a gigantic piece of shit…but he raised his game this year with his chickenshit claims that people pointing out his awfulness were anti-semitic, which was quickly followed by his attempt to get one of said critics who called him a “bed bug” fired. Then Mr. Bed Bug wrote a repugnant piece boasting of his and his fellows Jews’ superiority over other peoples. I look forward to picking Mr. Bed Bug’s teeth out of my knuckles one day.

Chris “Fredo” Cuomo - Chris Cuomo is easily the dumbest person to have ever appeared on television…which is an astounding achievement. Cuomo, who hosts an unwatchable program on CNN, makes the POS All Stars this year by threatening some guy at a party who called him “Fredo”. Cuomo claimed that calling Italians “Fredo” was just like calling black people the “n-word”. Ok Fredo…oops…is it better if I call you a fucking numbnuts dago greaseball guinea wop twat? Or better yet…how bout when i meet you I don’t say anything and just gouge your eyes out and skull fuck you, you useless piece of shit.

And thus concludes another Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® awards. If you are one of the people who “won” this year I ask you to please not to take it personally and also to try and do better next year….because remember…this years Slip-Me-A-Mickey™® award winner could be next year’s Mickey™® Award winner!!

©2020