Reviews

Stays with the times, and within the first three movie orbit. Deals with several issues of public importance. Exciting new actor playing Heather Lee. Superbly entertaining and watchable. I liked Legacy a lot, too.

Everything about this movie works. The ideas are liberating and inspiring, the actors are terrific--especially Raymond Massey and Patricia Neal, who should have won an Oscar. The music uplifts, the struggles are real and harsh. The cinematography accentuates the rock solid plot of the hero's integrity against great odds.

It's especially amusing to read the negative reviews, which demonstrate exactly the collectivist herd's blind hatred of humanity as individuals... that Rand nails so exactly in the action and dialog of the book and movie. These collar-humans despise the good for being the good, the independent for being the independent.

And Gary Cooper is perfect as Howard Roark. Roark's courtroom speech lays out what each of us can be and can achieve... once we throw off the chains of the mob. Also put Patricia Neal's (Dominique Francon's) words to Roark after the Roger Enright party in your quote book:

"They hate you for the greatness of your achievement. The hate you for your integrity. They hate you because they know they can neither corrupt you nor rule you."

This movie (and book) gave so many of my generation a reachable ideal of what man can and ought to be. The artistry and MEANING of The Fountainhead is an unparalleled achievement for humankind... that will thread us out of the corrupt, criminal world that the Men of the Power Sickness intend for all of us Independents, great and small.

Pure inspiration and emotional fuel on the silver screen.

bw FLOWFellowship dot org

Grows on you, really fine piece of movie-making. Watch it a few times over the years, and you'll see what I mean. This is NOT a toss off film, it warrants a far higher rating than what I'm seeing so far on IMDb.

Great mixture of real life drama, comedy, making tough decisions that every moviegoer can relate to. Love the performances of all the key players, especially Chris Pine and Bre Blair... and the ones playing the 'major eff ups' do an extremely fine job, too. That's how people like that truly ARE.

Music is well integrated and appealing. Ryan Craig is a first rate writer and director, not just a good one. He has a fine touch for the human in us, while finding a sterling silver lining in the cloud.

What hits me just past the credits of this marvelous film is how on earth these hundreds of thousands of clinical cases of autism stemming directly from the administering of vaccines—particularly the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) trifecta from Merck—is somehow NOT a scientific fact. IOW, when one is passing judgment on the value of a medical treatment, why doesn't one consider its substantial effects on real people as SCIENTIFICALLY RELEVANT?! Real science aims to gibe with the facts of reality, not sweep them under the rug.

In my novel, The Truman Prophecy, I set up a systematic truth (Toto) process for dealing with seven of the higher-priority high-crime assaults identified in a so-called Threat Matrix. Reality, however, usually takes longer than fiction. The Men of the Power Sickness are nearly finished tying up the human race in knots with their lying assaults; we have no time to create the foundation of truth for resistance as configured in the novel.

What we need to happen soon is that some Big Lie integral to one or the other of the seven high-crime assaults becomes so widely apparent that it immediately collapses that high-crime assault… which then cascades to bring down all the other assaults like dominoes. I believe the movie VAXXED, by impaling the official high-crime story that vaccines are good for us, may be that threshold exposé to bring down the house, plant the photon bomb in the engine room of the Death Star.

I send oceans of respect and admiration out to those who made the movie. They are indisputably heroes of human wellness and liberty. I love you all, you all deserve the Nobel Prize, and we the people are forever in your debt—not merely those who have suffered from vaccines, but those who, because of your courage, will be able to avoid such terrible suffering. In particular, I salute the supremely articulate, calmly rational Dr. Andy Wakefield, who has taken the harshest onslaught of authoritarian statecraft. You, sir, are the epitome of the intrepid independent creator slicing and dicing the craven collective… and will go down in history as a true Fountainhead of your profession as it emerges from its fascist Dark Ages.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Be sure to watch the extras on the DVD, the packed movie houses' Q&A sessions with the director and producers. These are so illuminating. Approximately half the audiences stood up when asked whether they had an autism-damaged child! Which I found to be as astounding as it was tragic and sorrowful.

{See my full review under Book Reviews on my site, TheCoffeeCoaster dot com.}

Since the movie tells a true story, no need for me to go into the detail here, as all roads lead to a culminating World Cup event... in Johannesburg and including the South African rugby team. It's fabulous and uplifting, even a bit of a tearjerker. Eastwood is so good with little directorial touches, such as when a tough security guy for the De Klerk regime—now a welcome member of the Mandela security staff—slaps on his sunglasses to conceal moist eyes... or as the World Cup final proceeds, a little black street boy, who would formerly be chased away by white police, is seen sitting on the car of the police, everyone intently listening to the car radio. And musically, the film is one of the more interesting you'll have the pleasure of hearing. As many realize, Clint Eastwood is quite an accomplished composer himself, having written and in some cases performed the scores for some of the movies he directs. I think with Invictus, he's a kid in a candy store. The melodies and rhythms of the native South African music are so rich and fluid, they roll out naturally without blasting you into the balcony. Whoever did the score—no doubt Eastwood had a say—skillfully weaves sound with sight. It's great... and I don't generally pay much attention to movie scores.

Sense of Life is also special in providing perhaps the best available popular synopsis of Rand's ideas... by following her progress through the novels: We the Living, Anthem (novelette), The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. Paxton's is certainly the best video synopsis of those ideas. What's more, if those ideas mean as much to you as they mean to me, you'll exceed your ration of goosebumps for the month. What a heroic person she was... supremely so for her determination to raise the standard of heroism to such a pinnacle: the union of practical and ideal. Powerful stuff. Every book and movie. To live for.

Finally, Sense of Life is quite a fun view, for anyone with an active mind wanting to know all the tidbits. It ends with reference to Nathaniel Branden, the writing of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, and the prosecution of her "movement" of Objectivism. The film even refers to the schism between Branden and Rand that occurred in the late 1960s and its effects. (Since Ayn Rand's death in 1982, more schisms have emerged within big tent of those who identify with her spiritually, artistically, and/or philosophically.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2010

Believe me, I'm not kidding about how silly/scary some of these sessions could be, even out in the Hinterland. In the movie, they show a young woman, in front of Rand and Nathaniel Branden (Eric Stoltz), coming to tears for not having the correct interpretation of some behavioral peccadillo. It reminds you of a party-loyalty session on the collective farms in Russia and China. But the story is largely autobiographical for Barbara Branden. We see a very important part of Rand's life, Rand's husband, Frank O'Connor (Peter Fonda), as well as Barbara and Nathaniel. The plot focuses a lot on the relationships among them. It starts with Barbara and Nathaniel coming to meet Ayn Rand at her home in California... after Nathaniel had written a most perceptive letter to Rand when he had read her book, The Fountainhead. Ayn and Nathaniel hit it off at first syllogism, then, in a few years, start "getting it on" above and beyond the call of reason.

So along comes a simple movie with eccentric characters in a long line of such movies, from, say, Harold and Maude (1971) to Night Shift (1982) Benny and Joon (1993) to Stuck on You (2004) to Sunshine Cleaning Company (2008) to dozens of others over the years. And we tend to like movies in which one or more of the principals is a 'few bubbles off of plumb.' When you look at various projects available to Hollywood actors who have 'made it'—and that designation certainly applies to Jennifer Anniston and Steve Zahn—I feel the better ones take time for some smaller, odder ideas that give them more delight in the performance than cash in the bank. Management is that kind of film. The skill and interest in such a story is all a matter of characterization. You would never imagine in a hundred years that a psychic/romantic connection might exist between a simple fellow from Kingman, Arizona, and a corporate girl from a suburb of Baltimore. For one thing, how would they ever run into each other? Kingman is purely in the middle of nowhere.

And from his true account, Strobl shows the public wants desperately to know, to understand, and to share their love with the grieving. Taking Chance takes all of us along the highways and flyways these dead soldiers follow in return to their final resting places. From Dover, Delaware, to Philadelphia by hearse, from there to Minneapolis, to Billings, Montana, by plane, and then by car to Phelps' Wyoming roots, the escorting team—for much of the journey, Strobl is the sole attendant—picks up person after person of solemn audience. The scene on the Montana highway is particularly poignant: The funeral director meets Strobl at the airport, they take off with the flag-draped casket in back of the station wagon. The Stars and Stripes are readily seen by the (very few) motorists passing by on the vast, scenic hills and valleys of Montana into Wyoming. Everyone knows what's going on. This is a fallen "warrior."[2] He's one of us, and he deserves our commemoration, our respects. So after a truck passes and turns on its headlamps, then a couple of cars do the same, other vehicles fall in line on the caravan's 'front door' or 'back door' in an impromptu funeral procession.

So I'm not going to get on my high horse about dance marathon contests being sleazy and pathetic. But, like Ultimate Fighting Championships today, I feel no connection with those who "enjoy" the grinding up of folks for its own sake. That's what seems to distinguish the old dance marathons: people in the audience feeling superior or some kind of rush for not being nearly half as bad off as those on the floor. I guess in evaluating the morality of a promoter like Rocky relative to a good share of the fans—some fans were genuinely caring, and sought heroism of a sort—who like seeing humiliation, I'd give the edge to Rocky.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2010

The manner in which she utters her words of wisdom is practically as important as the meaning themselves. I could cite the many phrases that serve as life lessons, but please be extra nice to yourself and check out the movie for the direct experience. It's funny, it's true, and it's moving. All at once. So many great acts, so little time.

I'm going to indulge one more favorite with you: Again, she's constantly driving at an impractical pace—this time with Harold—and in the downtown area of a small community, suddenly she heaves the wheel to the right, runs over the curb, drawing attention of the local constabulary. On the sidewalk are laid out a series of large pots containing plants of varying health. She notices one particularly distressed plant, which she simply must save. So with Harold's help she determines to rescue the plant and transplant it to the forest. The imagination of the writer, the skill of the director, and the passion of the actor make perhaps two dozen of such scenes into little movies of their own. Inspiring, tender, and gay... in the historic and proper meaning of the term.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2010

Hombre is one of those movies that sneaks up on you. It starts out quietly in the Arizona badlands where John Russell (Paul Newman)—who we learn later is a white boy raised by the Apache—stealthily stalks and traps a herd of wild horses with two of his Indian compadres.

Upon reflection, the symbolism of that scene is striking: Russell shortly after outsmarting the horses into captivity is told that the white man who came to care for Russell at some point in Russell's early life (and gave Russell his name) has died. The old man has willed to John a boarding house and a gold watch... both symbolic of settling back into the white world.

The metaphorical question is whether John Russell will now be outsmarted into an alien cultural captivity like the horses. He sits at the barrier between the white and Indian cultures, and lives as much as possible like his Apache friends—wild and free in nature. It's clear he considers the Apache his people. But with one foot in the white culture, and now, with the inheritance, he's wondering about putting both feet back over there with Whitie.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2010

Through the 1940s, before the Hollywood studio system folded itself into the social conformity of the 1950s, several well-written and superbly plotted stories made it to the silver screen. In the category of film noir, Out of the Past, starring Robert Mitchum—one of the more individualistic, risk-taking actors (even into the 1950s)—is one such gem.

The above statement from Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum) occurs early in the movie as we find him in a small California town trying to lead a normal life. We even see him out fishing (!), with his local honey Ann (Virginia Huston), and looking every bit like the guy who wants to settle down, buy a house, raise a passel of kids in the country. Not! Bailey's contemplation of the idyllic life is interrupted when another big man—menacing, obviously from a past Bailey wants to leave that way—finds Bailey, and gives him an appointment he cannot refuse.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

rank Miller and his gang used to run things here, but thanks to Kane, Frank has been sent to prison—presumably for a crime involving gunplay, and likely murder. Well, Frank, after several years in the state slammer, is upset, and he's coming back to Hadleyville to get revenge on the marshal. Three of his men are going to meet Frank on the noon train, then march into town and TCB in their own way. It's obvious the Miller intentions are deadly to Kane... not to mention destructive in varying degrees to anyone Miller feels has wronged him.

So what's a self-respecting marshal to do?

"Well, let's see, why don't I get married to my young Quaker-girlfriend Amy (Grace Kelly) on the same day Miller and his fellow killers are to bound to arrive!" Yikes! Then inform my new bride that I can't leave town to go on the honeymoon, because I have this unfinished business with these guys. Okay, maybe you can fault Marshal Kane for bad planning...

For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

But back to the movie. I suppose that any collectivism vs. individualism movie—from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to 1984 or The Matrix —manifests similar qualities. The sad thing is that in reality, when collectivism rules, we have only (defective) humans to blame. Our collectivist rulers are aliens only symbolically; though I would not be surprised if the defect that afflicts them were biological and those who are addicted to power may someday be shown to have been a distinct subspecies of homo sapien.

In the movies, for dramatic impact no doubt, the writers seem to need to posit alien creatures at some location in the "collectivist-ruler" political metaphor. So They Live comes along and shows the rulers to be ape-like humanoids who can only be seen in their true appearance by humans with a cheap pair of nerdy wraparound sunglasses.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

Naturally, the arrival of the large spherical, glowing object—which the scientists first expect to crash into Earth—causes quite a stir in the national defense establishment. The secretary of defense is played by Kathy Bates with a straight face and all the saber-rattling 'tude she can muster. {I forget why we're not dealing with the president on this emergency, but he's indisposed somewhere (probably off planning a war). For a movie like this, I find you enjoy it much more if you don't ask a lot of questions.}

Jennifer Connelly plays Helen Benson, a lead biophysics professor at Princeton... yeah, right. I'm not saying it can't happen, but with a face and body like hers she'd spend so much time warding off men and boys there wouldn't be any cycles left to study the microbes that can survive in deep space.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

Life in West Texas as a Hank Williams song

When this movie came out in 1971—well before the advent of Siskel and Ebert—it was highly celebrated in the artistic community, and it seemed all the commentary feted the young director Bogdanovich as the next great genius in moviedom. I remember watching this one at a semi-art theaters in Birmingham, Michigan. And being a 22-year-old firebrand Randian libertarian at the time, I blithely pigeonholed the movie as "naturalistic," which was close to "behaviorism" in Rand's basement of epithets.

I must say—and just the other day has been my first true mature viewing of the film, having now some experience in the reviewing profession—very few aspects of the movie do not completely blow me away as esthetic qualities of the highest order. Let me list them:

* Characters and Story

* Acting

* Setting and Filming

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

Fact is, if one tries to put aside all preconceptions of idle-rich teenagers attending high school in Beverly Hills in 1995... one is going to be fighting a difficult internal battle. So don't even try. Accept that the universe Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) and her friends inhabit is tailored to superficial offspring of "the Hollywood beautiful set" preoccupied with far more style than substance. But then sit back and let a precocious writer/director (Amy Heckerling) breathe real life into these young people with a gentle satire that has you sympathizing with them.

Plot is basic teen movie material, where boy—Paul Rudd plays Josh, Cher's ex-stepbrother from a former marriage of Cher's father—meets girl through a circuitous route in "the Valley." But the theme of the movie is greater than the plot. The theme is an incisive yet kind exploration of the lives of three genuine center-of-the-universe Valley Girls: Cher and her two friends, Dionne (Stacey Dash) and, later, Tai (Brittany Murphy).

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

Sometimes we forget how great some movies are. Dances with Wolves feels as if it were flickering on the big screens of America yesterday, not 19 years ago. It's been sitting on my DVD rack for a long time, and I figured would make a fitting viewing for a Labor Day evening. Captivating is a word that's been overused, as is magic, but the scale, natural beauty, and plot of this film transcend the extraordinary. It also received seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director (Kevin Costner). That's big potatoes in anybody's book.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

Reviewing such cultural icon as Sleepless in Seattle is always a challenge— though more of a challenge for (more) professional movie critics who often seem to go to lengths to prove they don't pander to popular opinion simply because it is so popular. And I certainly lack the technical grasp of the filmmaker's art that most critics will acquire in their formal education and journalistic experience these days. But that's all right, because I feel my blue collar in these matters puts me in the category of a longshoreman philosopher (ref. Eric Hoffer) or Gonzo journalist... someone who can provide a better view for being part of the scenery.

Looking at the IMDb page for Sleepless, I'm amazed that it's rated—by the general public—at only 6.6 out of 10! (To give you a comparison, the movie I reviewed last week, Last Chance Harvey, comes in at an even 7.0.)

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

It's going to be a stretch for John Q. American to identify with Harvey Shine. He's a New York musician whose youthful ambition was to play jazz piano professionally, but his career has instead found him writing jingles for television ads. Which brings in plenty of money and sets up his family in that New York-to-London artistic social strata, where many of the dependents on such wealth regard it as a birthright... to go to the right schools, to have the right relationships, to know the right people, to be seen in the right society pages, and so on.

Harvey's wife Jean (Kathy Baker) and daughter Susan (Liane Balaban) do an excellent job of pegging out the superficiality meter... though toward the end of the movie they tone it down some.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

Couturié builds his authentic human story on the framework of nightly network news broadcasts, mostly in black and white, from the ratcheting up of America's "commitment" (when LBJ ascended to the presidency) thru the so-called Vietnamization of the war—withdrawing American troops—in the years following the Tet Offensive of 1968. Also, the director posts, on a black and white background showing aircraft in the sky, the statistics at the end of every year: (American) dead, wounded, missing. Final tally: 58,159 dead, 303,635 wounded, 2,000 missing. You watch the stats grow every year, and shake your head.

Such remarkable simplicity in a cinematic creation does not happen by chance, and the love in "this labor of" shines through...

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

This need for Frost to prove himself folds in precisely with the inferiority complex that has driven Tricky Dick from his earliest experiences in politics: All those others, the winners who kept beating him, had more money, they had better looks, the right schools and pedigree, like a modern royalty. (That's why he hated the Kennedys.) And here's Richard Milhous, born into a hardscrabble Quaker family in California, a scrawny little kid for whom landing the prom queen is an absurd fantasy. In this context, the Oliver Stone movie, Nixon, is a complementary revelation.

We see just enough, underneath all the heavy scheming and talking of the man, how disordered his personality was. Barry Goldwater was purported to have said, "Nixon was the hardest man to like he'd ever met."

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

In the case of the so-called intelligence services, what kind of individual is drawn there? Precisely the individual who will carry out orders and not ask too many questions, or if he does ask questions, is a smart fellow who can be used for more sophisticated chicanery... which is the essence of Spy. The point is, such people are gratified with the sense of being special (in a war context)... special to someone or something they blindly follow. And espionage is, after all, about war: conflict, fighting, killing other humans. This work enables little men (and women) to feel a kinship with grand military heroes, like Marcus Aurelius or George Washington.

Delusions of grandeur. Only Leamas is becoming disillusioned.

Also recall that 1965 was the era when James Bond movies were running away with box office records.

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009

As a libertarian who understands, more or less, the powerful causal factors that work from the outside to keep the down-and-outers down and out, it still does my heart good to recognize that any individual is capable of rising above his circumstances. In the case of Akeelah, the way out is through language. One sees very quickly that not only is the spelling competition mostly about language, the development of superior language skills is mostly about morality. If I had to pick another movie that exemplifies the truth of the previous sentence, it would be Hoop Dreams... also focused on poor black children trying to move ahead through special skills.

In Hoop Dreams, more generally than in Akeelah and the Bee, you see how lack of English ability—particularly reading and writing, yet also as one's speech reflects the ability to think clearly—is the crucial determining reason for failure economically...

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For my complete review of this movie and for other movie and book reviews, please visit my site TheCoffeeCoaster.com.

Brian Wright Copyright 2009