Woman in Gold Movie Review

I’m a big “West Wing” fan, so excuse me if you don’t know what I’m referring to when I say, “Crime. Boy, I don’t know.” That is a line from “Posse Comitatus,” the season 3 finale and the lynchpin moment when President Bartlett decides he’s going to take it to his opponent in the election. Woman in Gold is the Holocaust equivalent of that sentiment, an empty gesture at acknowledging something inexplicably awful.

Phoenix Movie Review

There’s a current movement in German cinema. I’m not sure if it’s acquired a catchy name yet. “The Berlin School” is the closest I can find, but that’s not descriptive in the way that “film noir, “French New Wave,” or “Italian neo-realism” were. From my own observations it’s something like neo-German historical realism. But that’s a little clunky. At any rate, the movies, which tend to focus on post-war Germany or Communist Bloc East Germany, have been making their way stateside, illuminating the ways in which a new generation of German filmmakers and their audiences are responding to the important historical markers that shaped Gemany and its people today.

The Book Thief Movie Review

I’m not even sure where to begin describing everything that is loathsome about The Book Thief, Brian Percival’s film of the novel by Markus Zusak, adapted by Michael Petroni. It almost stirred in me a potentially self-punishing interest in reading the novel to discover if Zusak’s representation of a German town during WWII is any less trite and sanitized than Percival’s film. It is true that a WWII-themed story, even one taking place in Germany, doesn’t have to be mired in depression and death. The Book Thief has its share of death and some destruction, but it fails to capture any real sense of devastation and decay among the German people as their morals and country crumbled around them.

Captain America: The First Avenger Movie Review

When Steve Rogers is brought in to a super secret military lab via a secret passage in a Brooklyn shop, you have to ask yourself how efficacious it is to have a super secret military lab replete with doctors, scientists, senators and military police who all had to enter via a secret passage in a Brooklyn shop. Aren’t they at all concerned that anyone spying on them might wonder why none of these several dozen people ever exit this magical retail establishment? All I ask of action movies besides being exciting and fun and written in a way that suggest the screenwriters didn’t sleep walk their way through it, is that the story makes some logical sense on its own terms. For the most part Captain America: The First Avenger passes the last test. The first ones could use a bit of work.

25 Years Ago This Month: April 1987

The Police Academy franchise continued in April 1987 with the fourth installment, subtitled Citizens on Patrol. Each film in the series earned less at the box office than the previous chapter leading me to wonder how they went on to make parts 5, 6, and 7. The only actor who could reasonably be called a star in the entire series is Steve Guttenberg and he bowed out after the third film. Everyone else was famous for nothing other than their roles in this lifeless, flaccid, completely unfunny comedy series. David Spade made his film debut here as one of the titular citizen police officers. Sharon Stone also makes an early film appearance.

Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin was ahead of his time in most respects when it came to his filmmaking. The greatest irony being that he was late to the game when it came to making talking films. His first film conceived and made completely with dialogue was The Great Dictator, released in 1940 – more than a decade after the advent of synchronized sound and dialogue. But even if he was the last significant holdout clinging to silent film, The Great Dictator was well ahead of the curve in terms of world politics.

The Debt Movie Review: Questions on Jewish Justice and Vengeance

Vengeance is not Jewish. This is an idea that people throughout history have had difficulty reconciling with their own (at times) warped views of Jewish people. A sense of fairness and justice has primacy in Jewish intellectual and political history. From Shylock to Steven Spielberg’s Munich the question rages on: What is fair and just punishment for a crime and when do we cross the line in to pure revenge.

John Madden’s The Debt, based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha Hov (unseen by me), treads similar ground to Munich, although with far less cunning insight. And I’ve never viewed Steven Spielberg as a particularly insightful or challenging filmmaker. The Debt concerns a fictional Mossad mission to capture The Surgeon of Birkenau, a Nazi war criminal obviously modeled on Josef Mengele, who performed grotesque medical experiments on Jewish and Roma men, women, and children at Auschwitz.

Classic Movie Review: The Great Escape

It’s hard for me to get behind a movie that paints Nazis as benevolent and forgiving. John Sturges’ classic war film The Great Escape would have us believe that the real evils in the European front of WWII were the exclusive purview of the Gestapo. The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, are depicted as kindly, obedient and good-natured soldiers and officers just doing their jobs. So when British officers attempt escape from a prison camp, the response of the Kommandant is generally along the lines of, “Aw shucks, you guys. Are you at it again? Solitary confinement for you.” But the Gestapo officers are established right away as torturers, the subjects of the wary eyes of the Luftwaffe officers, who know they’re also being watched.

Defiance Movie Review: A Tale of Jewish Vengeance

First published on American Madness on 11 January 2009.

Republished here unaltered.

Defiance, one of several Third Reich-themed films arriving in cinemas this awards season, is a marginally enthralling Hollywood entertainment. Director Edward Zwick has proven a capable hand over the years at making solidly entertaining action films (The Last Samurai; Glory) that also strive at a message of slightly greater importance. Written by Zwick and Clayton Frohman based on a book by Nechama Tec, it tells the true story of the Bielski partisans – a group of Jews led by the Bielski Brothers (Tuvia, Zus, Asael and Aron) who resisted the Nazi occupation of Poland and survived in the forest for 4 years until the war’s end.

If You're Jewish, Who Do You Root For?

The obvious choice was the USA with 3 members of the tribe (Jonathan Bornstein, Benny Feilhaber, Jonathan Spector) on the squad, but now that we've lost out to Ghana where can you turn?

Tablet Magazine has a quick rundown for you. Hint: It isn't Germany (my second favorite in this WC after my birth country), nor is it "The Inquisition (Let's Begin) / The Inquisition (Look out sin) / We've got a mission / To convert the Jews (Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew Jewwwwwws)" Spain (my home country).

25 Years Ago This Month (June 1985)

One of my favorite childhood movies was released this month.

That movie was The Goonies which went on to finish the year at number 9 on the box office list with $61 million. I didn't see it in the cinema, but I watched it incessantly once we had it on video (taped off cable, I'm sure). I knew about every line, although not as well as I knew every line to Star Wars. The Goonies still holds up as a decent pre-adolescent adventure movie.

One movie from 25 years ago that doesn't hold up so well: Red Sonja, which took in only $7 million at the domestic box office. I remember watching it a couple times on cable. I enjoyed it because it was a Conan: The Barbarian spinoff and I loved Conan (still do, by the way).

Cocoon also opened that month. I remember watching it on cable, but it was a bit cerebral for my 7 year old mind. And it was about people who just seemed absolutely ancient to me, which is why it still surprises the hell out of me that while every other elderly actor from that film is dead (Don Ameche, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton, Jack Gilford, Gwen Verdon), Wilford Brimley is still alive! But that's because he wasn't even a senior citizen at the time. He was only 50 at the time of filming. And Stapleton, who played his on-screen wife was a youthful 59. All the other actors were well into their 70s. Cocoon took in $76 million to finish sixth for the year.

John Huston's second to last film and last Oscar nomination came for Prizzi's Honor starring Jack Nicholson, Kathleen Turner and Anjelica Huston.

Also opening in June 1985 were the forgettable D.A.R.Y.L. starring Barrett Oliver, also known as the kid in Cocoon; Perfect starring John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis which rates a 3.8/10 on IMDb and a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes; the Brat Pack film St. Elmo's Fire; and Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider.

Births 25 years ago:
-Michael Phelps - American hero of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, winner of a record 14 Olympic gold medals, winner of the most gold medals in a single games when he won 8 golds in Beijing setting 7 world records in the process - celebrates his 25th birthday this month.
-German footballer Lukas Podolski also turns 25 this month. Look for him to score a bunch of goals for Germany starting on the 13th against Australia in this month's World Cup.

Nazi history 25 years ago:
-A body believed to be Nazi criminal Josef Mengele a.k.a. Angel of Death (that wonderful man who performed grisly experimental surgeries on Jews in Auschwitz - in the name of science, of course) was exhumed in Brazil. Several years later DNA conclusively proved it was Mengele's body.

Non-movie related history 25 years ago:
-The Discovery Channel was launched.
-Air India flight 182 exploded from a bomb over the Atlantic off the coast of Ireland killing all 329 people aboard. A Sikh terrorist group was responsible.
-Route 66 was officially decommissioned putting an end to a seminal route through the American heartland.
-Claus von Bulow (portrayed by Jeremy Irons in the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune) was acquitted of trying to murder his wife.

Draconian Measures to Solve the Immigration Problem

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan highlights this lovely quote from Pat Bertroche, Republican Congressional Candidate in the Iowa 3rd:

I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?

Jesus Christ! Can he not even mask his view of illegal immigrants as sub-human? This is only a small step removed from the loons on the right who believe that allowing same-sex marriage will open the doors to allowing people to marry their pets, their children, their siblings.

You know the Nazis had a really great way of tracking people in custody - numerical tattoos! There are still quite a few Jews alive with those numbers on their arms. The only reason the Nazis didn't use microchips was because they hadn't been invented yet. Does this guy not realize what he's proposing?

Sullivan links back to this piece in the Iowa Independent gets into what the other Republican primary candidates said at the same event. For example, State Senator Brad Zaun claims that illegals use up government services such as education while not paying for any of those services. The Independent article helpfully breaks down the numbers to reveal that an undocumented family typically winds up paying about 80% of the total tax contribution of a documented family of comparable income. This comes in the form of sales tax and property tax. Not to mention the cost of not allowing illegal immigrants' children access to public education will simply perpetuate their existence as menial labor. If their children have access to education (as they should because every child has the right to a free education in our country) then maybe they'll grow up to contribute more to the economy than their parents.

Anyway, does Iowa really have such a huge population of illegal immigrants? Not really. According a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, estimates put it somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the total population which is in the bottom half of all 50 states. Compare that to California's 5%, 5.6% in Texas, 4.5% in FL, 3.33% in NY and a whopping 7.5% in Arizona (but not for long after their new immigration law).