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MH370: The Plane That Disappeared (2023)
Interesting but no real solution
While presenting some interesting information, at the end of the documentary we are no closer to finding what happened than when we started. Three theories are presented. Two are highly unlikely about the plane being diverted to Kazakhstan and another where a leftist French journalist suggests that the U. S. shot it down to prevent sensitive technology making it's way to China. There's little evidence for the former and no evidence really for the shoot-down idea. The third theory is the most well known, suggesting the pilot planned to commit suicide and take all the passengers with him. However, the documentary does show that while it's the most plausible of the three, there's not a lot of evidence for it as well. A few pieces washed ashore that seemed in the area where the plane was thought to have crashed into the Indian Ocean, but the identity of the fragments isn't conclusive. Ultimately, the documentary demonstrates what lengths the human imagination will go to in the face of an unsolvable mystery that so many have such a formative obsession to figure it out. Just like the JFK assassination, MH370 has become a factory for fringe thinking and exploitation by media interests. Unless the wreckage is found, or someone blows the whistle on some unimaginable conspiracy, we'll never get any closer to the truth than we did at the beginning of this astounding puzzle.
Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street (2023)
Bernie Madoff destroyed by goverment Ponzi scheme.
This is a very interesting documentary, but has some leftist slants. The biggest is the decision by the documentary makers to totally ignore the cause of the 08 housing crisis that triggered the collapse of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. In the documentary, they simply place the blame on large financial corporations taking large pools of bad mortgages and selling them to whoever would buy them. Certainly, we see that explored in depth in movies like Margin Call. Later, we see a clip of former president Obama referring to the lack of government regulations as an enabler of the housing collapse, and it's later ramifications. It's absolutely true that big time mortgage bankers created exotic financial instruments to disguise sub-prime mortgages and sell them worldwide to anyone willing to take the bait when the market sank into a morass of worthless loans to keep their corporations alive. But the question of why large financial institutions would torpedo the housing market with a blizzard of sub-prime loans and thus force themselves to play musical chairs with piles of worthless mortgages is never mentioned. The answer is that they did so with the greatest reluctance, but had to because of government regulation. Yes, the government demanded lending standards be reduced supposedly so that the poor and disadvantaged could buy homes. President Clinton demanded Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae have at least 50% of their mortgages be sub-prime. Congress took it from there and soon essentially anyone capable of walking into a financial institution could get a mortgage making use of notorious financial instruments like the "liar loan". Of course, speculators and people with little money yet eager to buy a house went wild. Not surprisingly, a Cloverfield monster sized housing bubble was created, and as all financial bubbles do, it finally burst in everyone's face. There is no regulator protection from bad politics.
Fire in Paradise (2019)
Interesting first person accounts but with an agenda
These first person accounts were most interesting but the documentary has a subtext that climate change is the reason for so many destructive forest fires in California. Only part of one sentence mentions the real reason for these disasters and that one sentence tries to diminish it. Forest fires are natural and lighting starts them as they are a part of the natural ecosystem. However, in California so called environmentalists have put through laws which allow the build up of dense waste material on the forest floor for years, which in the past nature addressed with natural burning. Due to these forced buildups, when the ignition spark finally comes such fires are supercharged and almost impossible to control. The climate in California is the same climate that weather researchers have recorded for many decades. And, as in the past, there are dry spells and high winds that are natural for the region. A change to a more sensible pragmatic forest management concerning waste buildup on the forest floor, like was in place decades ago, would make forest fires in California manageable again.
1899 (2022)
Twilight Zone episode stretched over a mini-series
While this could have been successfully done in a one hour episode the slow burn is still worth watching. From the very beginning it's made clear very little on the surface is what it seems. That's because nothing much at all is what it seems. It's not supernatural but pure science fiction. It's another story about simulated reality and this one is the product of the woman doctor who specializes in the brain. She and her fellow passengers are on a ship but it's actually a space ship headed for a distant star. For some reason she decides to concoct this computer generated reality to entertain everyone while in hyper-sleep. However, something goes wrong and everyone, including her, are stuck in a groundhog day style loop that's become a nightmare. There's some standard catering to "the message" common on that platform but it's fairly brief.
I onde dager (2021)
Worth a look
Plenty of Norwegian violence with the story of a couple so fed up with their marriage that they try to kill each other. But then, at just the right moment, three escaped killer convicts show up and they must work together to survive. After getting the crap beat out them repeatedly in their battles to remain alive and rape free they start to see renewed value in their relationship. It's basically extreme marriage therapy with plenty of gore and some comedy.
They Live (1988)
Official liberal view of the Reagan years
In interviews Carpenter makes it clear that rich republicans are the target -- the aliens. This view by the Hollywood left of the rich capitalist right was especially hip in Hollywood during the Reagan years, and while tinsel town is mostly run by rich leftists enjoying the full range of capitalist pleasures and sins, it's about the virtue signaling to maintain your position in that town. Carpenter has never needed much prodding to take such positions and it was the rage during the Reagan administration and the yuppie era to blame free market capitalism for creating the poverty and dysfunction of the lower strata; never, never bring up the subject of intelligence or work ethic. It's an old Marxist tome that people making big money through capitalism creates poverty, yet it doesn't seem to dissuade those in Hollywood from enjoying all the fruits of a capitalist society to the levels of a Caligula Saturday night without any feeling of hypocrisy.
Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer (2019)
CNN bashes Trump via National Enquirer documentary
This CNN creation does have some interesting material about the creation of the National Enquirer and it's history. However, after lulling the audience for a while with it's supposed central theme of NE history they get to the real meat of the matter pushing the narrative that the Enquirer had become a right wing publication and was very responsible for Donald Trump's election. It has hilarious moral platitudes from people like Carl Bernstein talking with a straight face about how awful the Enquirer had forsaken journalist standards of objectivity by demonstrating conservative political bias. As with Trump, many interesting facts about the editor-owner Generoso Pope Jr. that would cast him in a positive light were simply left out. While Pope had mob connections he attended the Horace Mann School and earned an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in electrical engineering; and was a Korean War vet. Getting a degree from MIT in electrical engineering, especially in those days, represented a intellectual feat that few can accomplish.
Doom: Annihilation (2019)
Not as bad many reviewed it.
It's watchable. Sure, you've got supernatural horror and SF mixed together. Sure, you have a politically correct female Marine who can beat up anyone, including supercharged zombies, and even demons, even though she's just an ordinary looking woman you see on the street any time of the day that can often use some help with heavy objects and reaching things on the top shelf. The space Marines as usual fail to take sufficient ammo for the situation and professionalism is sparse. And truth be told, they could have saved themselves a lot of grief using drones technology that exists today. But, the special effects aren't half bad and there's a lot of shooting.