(Excerpt): I went to see Quantum of Solace because I liked Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale, and because I always take my husband to opening weekends of all good new action movies. I’d already heard reviewers complain that this new Craig/Bond was insufficiently Bondish—i.e., not enough jokes, too much heavy emotion, too many similarities to other, un-Bond-like traditionally-vengeful action heroes, not enough Bond-techy gimmicks and vehicles, too few glam locales. And what to make of the movie’s weird politics? And of Bond’s lack-of-sex with his sexy new love interest? I went to see for myself....    more »

(Excerpt): I loved the characters, humor, romance and politics in Ironman, and my husband especially enjoyed the heroism, computers, robotics, stunts, jets and action. The whole theatre, filled with middle/high-schoolers and adults, cheered and clapped when the movie ended. Amazingly enough, we hadn’t even been exploited or insulted by stupid politics, graphic sex, or gratuitous violence masquerading as entertainment.... (Excerpt): You can tell that the whole world is changing when a big-box-office action movie has as its major theme the evils of war profiteering and global weapons proliferation. Ironman simultaneously entertained and enlightened the whole crowd. Multi-faceted Robert Downey Jr. and classy Gwyneth Paltrow were at their most charming. (Excerpt): Ironman is a sweet, funny, exciting, well-made, fast-paced action movie I recommend to all who enjoy high-quality movie-making in this genre….   more »

My letter below was published in the Washington Post Book World on Sunday, September 2, 2007. Following my letter is the reviewer's own response to my criticism, and then a somewhat-satirical, but-you-get-the-point response to the reviewer describing the review that I think he should have written if he wanted to be fair. Nancy Pace's letter: "Andrew Nagorski apparently thinks Giles MacDonogh shouldn't have bothered to dredge up all those nasty facts about the occupation of Germany in After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, because, after all, the Germans had it coming, and Allied cruelties were understandable considering their pain and sacrifices (Book World, "The Squall After The Whirlwind," Aug. 26). In fact, while we're at it, why don't we just throw away the entire historical record of suffering by losers of all wars throughout history, because they all deserved what they got? From now on, let's write only one-sided histories glorifying the bloody actions of wars' winners and keep on using history primarily to perpetuate the myth that conflicts have only one side worth listening to. That way, we can have more wars. Justifying fresh injustices by pointing out past injustices does nothing to end the cycle of violence and retribution. Every war, like every retaliatory "peace," sows the bloody dragon seeds reaped in future wars. Good historians rightly tell the story of the suffering on both sides of wars and about how all the leaders failed to keep the peace."   more »

(excerpt): Rachel Corrie had no affection for bullies. Burning with a wish to stand up to power and deadly violence, she seemed born to resist injustice. I think she would have been just as eager to oppose Palestinians attacking innocent Israelis, were she drawn to their plight first. (Excerpt): I was saddened to think that some who cherish holocaust narratives like The Diary of Anne Frank would try to censor Rachel’s inspired voice and words for partisan reasons. I doubt any peaceful Jew seeing this play would urge such censorship. (Excerpt): Peaceful Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other Americans are often so aggressively intimidated by their own extremist factions that they rarely speak out publicly against the vengeful actions, bloody rhetoric, and sheer barbarism of all they see, on all sides. Caught within the context of a violent century’s heightened emotions, most moderates—peaceful Jews and Christians and Muslims and citizens of all nationalities everywhere—are too frightened to say “Enough” against even the extremist voices within their own groups. (Excerpt): As long as demagogues and partisan extremists freely pressure and intimidate moderates, worldwide anti-Islamism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism will continue to grow. And if the hot-blooded AIPAC successfully pushes extremists in America and Israel into another bloodbath, this time against Iran, the potential for anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Islamic blowback upon moderates in all these groups everywhere will be as terrible as the cataclysmic impact upon the direct victims of the war. (Excerpt): Extremist Jewish leaders preaching the wisdom of ten-eyes-for-an-eye, and depicting Israel as a tiny beleaguered island within a vast sea of murderous Muslims all wanting to kill Jews and “erase Israel from the map” are as repellently manipulative as extremist Palestinian leaders claiming to be merely a defenseless band of ragtag refugees confronting the combined wrath of the world’s largest and most powerful military forces, or American Christian-extremists sounding the alarm of American invasion by rapacious outsiders and infidels, or American patriots bristling with nuclear arms , self-righteously claiming to be the victims of nations working frantically to develop even a single one. (Excerpt): Violence, or violent extremism, or terrorism—that is, resorting to violence to resolve conflicts—turns out to be “the problem” itself, and not, as many have tried to persuade us, any particular ideology, ethnicity, religious tradition, or national affiliation. The burning question is always: who is committed to non-violent resolution of conflicts, and who isn’t?   more »

(Excerpt): THE DEPARTED is a too-long slog through a repellent underworld of hopelessness, human frailty, and continual struggle. An angry, bitter old man’s cynical vision of despair and disillusionment, it mocks all human efforts to rise above past and primal influences. Its desired audience-response seems to be disgust. (Excerpt): Although THE DEPARTED offered challenging roles to talented actors and film-makers, I kept wondering, why did any of them, the immensely talented and capable Scorsese included, even bother? Why make this movie? What’s the point of pooling all that energy, creativity, and talent for such a boring, complicated, and pointless script? THE DEPARTED is neither entertaining, nor satisfying, nor thought-provoking, nor enlightening, nor any other respected goal of movie-making—unless perhaps you find pleasure in staring at cripples or ogling car wrecks. (Excerpt): Scorsese’s many clumsy attempts at youthful (Tarantinoesque?) edginess played out as merely shock-by-politically-incorrect low-life humor, inspiring only embarrassed titters. I found this film completely lacking in compassion, crass, boorish, and childishly defiant about religion, race, and responsibility. It was definitely a movie offering family values--all the wrong ones. For those hooked on action and violence who want to see positive values, start with L.A. Confidential or A History of Violence (see my review elsewhere in this blog), In The Line of Fire or The Fugitive. It can be done!    more »

Excerpt: People like to feel good about themselves, and Americans are no exception; so only a relative handful of scholarly Americans are even aware of their government’s direct historical responsibility for a century of violent regime changes in fourteen countries from Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras, to South Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Excerpt: Kinzer’s brilliant decision to summarize the colorful particulars of who-what-when-where-how leading up to, during, and following each overthrow, give range to his best journalistic talents, while reducing his biographer’s breadth and historian’s bounty of facts, figures, places, and times into fourteen short, lively, memorable tales of derring-do, intrigue, overreaching, ignorance, prejudice, greed, and mayhem. Excerpt: Reading Overthrow brought to mind the darker aspects of Margaret Meade’s assertion, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,” while adding credibility to the mounting evidence that the tragedy of today’s Middle East is indeed directly traceable to the benighted machinations of a few dedicated, powerful, and sorely misguided neocons in Washington, D.C. For each case of regime change, Kinzer implicates a small group of daring individuals usually acting for corporate interests and always with presidential authority.   more »

Excerpt: A few months ago, I decided to watch some of the best-received war movies that came out of the Vietnam war—The Deer Hunter, The Killing Fields, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and Coming Home, as well as some recent and older ones—The Battle of Algiers, Crimson Tide, Saving Private Ryan, The Enemy Below, and Black Hawk Down. Excerpt: I found amazing agreement in all these books and movies in their moral conclusions about war, even as each offered me a unique personal perspective and story unlike any other. Excerpt: Over and over, every work expressed or implied the point of view that “their” war had been insane, cruel, hard, sad, misguided, and stupid, and that it had seemed to create far more problems than it resolved. Their actual acts of war—the killing parts—were consistently experienced as pointless, chaotic, numbing, unreasonable, inhumane, confusing, wrong--and often thrilling, in that the pointy end of the sword had actually gone into some other man.   more »

Among many other wonderful, critically-acclaimed foreign films I’ve seen recently through Netflix, the following are truly the best of the best….   more »

(Excerpt:) Jim Wallis’ rich and thought-provoking exploration, God’s Politics, will stimulate a generation of dialogue at the intersection of faith, politics, and contemporary culture. Wallis’ mental exuberance and hyperactivity are easily balanced by his brilliance, generosity, and love. God’s Politics is a must-read. (Excerpt:) Wallis argues that values based in faith must inspire American politics, and that this right was guaranteed by our founders when they separated church and state. Wallis feels that the very survival of America’s social fabric depends upon the emergence of political and cultural leaders having a clear vision of justice, peace, environmental stewardship, family, and consistent-value-of-life ethics grounded in the traditions of acceptance, forgiveness, and love preached by the biblical prophets (including, of course, Jesus.) To Wallis, faith cannot ignore poverty, injustice, war, and other attacks upon humanity, nor mean-spiritedly marginalize minority voices, nor turn away from those everywhere made in the image of God. (Excerpt:) I agree with Wallis that “faith…prefers international community over nationalist religion…” adding my hope that he will consider advocating for respect and support now for the quality of human life everywhere as the highest possible ethical stance (similar to the Catholic doctrine of the value and inviolability of human life.) Acceptance of this stance supersedes patriotism and nationalism, which, however noble, engender polarizing fears that lead to ethno-centrism, hatred, war, injustice, unfriendly competition, and indifference to suffering in other nations. (Excerpt:) Unfortunately, Wallis’ rallying cry of “prophetic faith” is not quite universal enough to provide a satisfying ethical framework for political discourse in a multicultural democracy....   more »

(Excerpt): The fact that anyone could enjoy this movie on the level of a simple, poignant, romantic comedy should not detract from its value as a multifaceted meditation upon the human challenges inherent in connecting with any “other”—whether in “translating” one’s self to another, or in meaningfully “translating” another’s mysterious mumblings and gestures in our own direction. Far too often, we are left feeling all alone in the world throughout most of our lives, feeling quite “lost in translation.” (Excerpt): Bill Murray’s unique talents are all on glorious display, as are Scarlett Johannsen’s equally bounteous ones, which have an umplumbable feel to them. She defiantly withholds an illusive, precious, sensuous little secret—like Garbo’s, like Monroe’s—whose unveiling the world will breathlessly await forever. Casting Johannsen, like casting Gwyneth Paltrow, will elevate any movie. Only great direction can account for the consistent quality of all the other "smaller" performances.... (Excerpt): Lost in Translation is perfectly titled, because Copolla shines her tragicomic vision on the challenges each of us, no matter how talented or well-intentioned, face in communicating, caring, and empathizing across the mile-high/-wide/-deep chasm of human individual differences. Copolla’s laser gaze scintillates not only cultural barriers such as language and custom, but universal obstacles as well—differences in gender, age, social class, lifestyle, goals, values, interests, backgrounds, personalities—and even the molehills and mountains of distance and time....(Excerpt): I cannot imagine a soundtrack more thoughtfully selected or edited in support of the shifting impressions, emotions, and experiences Coppola develops in each new scene... (Excerpt): I lived for a few childhood years in Tokyo during the American post-war occupation, and took away beautiful, evanescent impressions, so perhaps I’m more susceptible to the delights of this movie than your typical movie-goer. Watching Lost in Translation, I'm enchanted both by remembered charms and recent technological innovations, as well as by the awkward Japanese embrace of things western.....   more »

(Excerpt): On one sad level, Americans today are relegated to living in the land of the free-to-make-a-buck and the home of the brave-but-stupid, which is too bad, because I don’t remember voting for any such peculiarly modern-American mantra.... The Iranian movie industry, currently severely constrained by their reigning theocracy to produce only non-violent, non-sexual movies, has responded with a lovely array of internationally recognized award-winning values- and family-based films which are poignant, gripping, and thought-provoking. Someday, a responsive and representative government of, by, and for the American people will surely find ways to preserve our most-cherished freedoms, while supporting visionary media output that promotes the great diversity of healthful and positive values, lifestyles, and choices....   more »

(Two) Scenes We'd Like To See....

 

 

(Excerpt): Both George Bush and Osama Bin Laden are vilified in various cultures as inhuman heartless killers, while other cultures hero-worship them as charismatic and patriotic leaders whose just causes “force” them to manfully take up arms—whether by terrorism or military force—to achieve their political aims. (Excerpt): Popular media in all nations dehumanize public enemies, then often turn around and just as thoroughly and miraculously restore them to dignity and respectability during political détentes. I recall my astonishment, moral conflict, and deep embarrassment, when the evil Russians I’d been so carefully taught to indignantly and self-righteously hate and fear, magically became our homeboys overnight. The same thing happened, of course, with the “Krauts” and the “Japs,” who, just as we were assured by our government after a terrible war, turned out to be, really, just like us. I’d like to think the same thing will happen, sooner rather than later, between Islam and the West. (Excerpt): I wish these two particular men could learn to resolve their differences without violence. They remind me of unsocialized playground children, throwing sand in each others’ faces, playing with their war toys, acting like swaggering thugs and cowards in turn, always foolish and hurtful to all around them. I wish they would grow up and solve their problems like civilized adults. (Excerpt): So many innocents have endured so much tragic death and destruction, on both sides, for so many years. For what…?! (Excerpt): I abused the current popularity of Brokeback Mountain to make my political points. However, while I’m sure that a week of roughing it alone/together in the mountains would create dialogue, understanding, and maybe even camaraderie between these two men, I’m confident that they’re both firmly and happily set, by now, in their hetero ways. Although, to be sure, nothing surprises me anymore. Maybe someday we really will see these two happily mountain biking together in Afghanistan.... You may call me a dreamer, but I’m not the only one….    more »

Excerpt: Marshall ... chose to heavily reinforce the popular delusion that no real feminist could ever, in good conscience, put herself in service to a man. (Excerpt): Marshall’s vision suggests that geisha's primarily physical services emerge from a secretive, machiavellian world of women who dislike and disrespect men, and who plot together to exploit men’s weaknesses. (Excerpt): Many modern women are completely confused about whether feminism is compatible with any kind of compassionate service (especially to men!) at all. Some women have come to wonder if service work of any kind--nursing, house cleaning, waiting tables--is unfeminist and demeaning. Many women feel constrained even within their marriages or romantic relationships, fearing that offering a life of lovingly exchanged service to a man must surely be anti-feminist—a form of caving to the enemy, of servility. When modern women do find it within themselves to offer men their friendliest services, many still wonder if there’s not something smarmy or beneath them about such offerings, even if their every hormone and natural givingness urges them ceaselessly to slather their beloved with wholehearted attention and kindness. There is nothing sexist or anti-feminist about loving men (or women, for that matter)--about attracting them, pleasing them, or giving to them wholeheartedly. Loving, giving, and compassionate service of all kinds are never unworthy in themselves, although unworthy contexts involving extremes of compulsion, lack of appreciation and reciprocation truly are sexist and immoral. Devoted service offered willingly and lovingly in an appreciative, reciprocal (if not tit-for-tat) context is absolutely necessary to optimal human functioning and happiness, and completely different from the kind of forced or half-hearted service in which someone’s gifts are disparaged, unreciprocated, and unappreciated. Too many people nowadays overlook the fact that the very essence of a good relationship is standing in service to one another, regardless of whether that partnership is between husband and wife, mother and daughter, friends, siblings, in-laws, a CEO and her new mail clerk, young lovers…whoever. Every conceivable positive relationship is based in reciprocal service. Relationships that are not about reciprocal service—however loosely defined—are not really relationships at all; they’re isolated billiard balls knocking about an empty lonely pool table universe, banging together sporadically and spectacularly in conflict and competition before resuming their separated lives. The most universally prized life-enhancing romantic relationship, regardless of whether you’re a man or a woman, is one in which your dearly-beloved treats you like a king (or a princess), a goddess (or a god). Among the keys to such heavenly bliss are good-faith, wholeheartedness, appreciation, and reciprocation. Because of confusion about the subtleties of feminism, modern romantic relationships evolved to become less concerned with caring, commitment, and helping one another in a challenging world, and more about cold, competitive calculations and sexual politics. Both sexes worry whether warm displays of affection will be perceived to be neediness. Both sexes fear that generous-spirited service iwill mply servitude. Both sexes exhaust themselves in endless, awkward, conflicted, back-and-forth rituals of worrying whether they’re giving more than they receive. Both sexes are all about, “you go first.” Yet both sexes are fully aware that their beloved wants a partner who is both powerful and slavishly devoted—because frankly, that’s what they want too. Many people deeply enjoy the lavish, tender, solicitous attention of an enchanting member of the opposite sex. More young people of both sexes these days are giving up on what they see as the relationship game, foregoing the pain and uncertainty of modern committed relationships in great part because of their understandable confusion about the wisdom of putting themselves at service to another. I mean, if their long-dreamed-of personification of virtuous masculine/feminine perfections is ultimately unwilling to bow down, worship and serve them all their days, well really, why bother? (Excerpt): Geisha lore offers a tempting (but not exclusive) window on relatively rare social arts: attentiveness, affection, tenderness, flirting, gentleness, refinement, courtesy, agreeableness, femininity, respect, presence, charm, humor, kindness, intellect, sensitivity, openness, loyalty, sensuality, giving, honoring, playfulness, intimacy, nurturing, acceptance, forgiveness, support, generosity, assistance, vulnerability, respect for tradition, and, in general, making a fuss over, and spoiling men rotten. Geisha are really good at making men feel truly wonderful about themselves. What’s not to like about that? Whenever and however did this venerable list of praiseworthy social skills become politically incorrect? These subtly but important graces--along with physical beauty, gorgeous accoutrements, and skill in the arts of music, dance, serving food and the like--are a goodly part of what real geisha are all about, not to mention real women, real men, real relationships, and real feminism.    more »

(Excerpt): If "To Live" was intended to be a very persuasive heroic epic offering a model of feminine perfection during a lifetime of political and personal adversity, it succeeded admirably. I had to keep reminding myself that it was only a movie, and that the character played by Gong Li was fictional; I was stunned by her purity, refinement, selflessness, tranquility, quiet charm, and gentleness, and her apparent total commitment to creating a peaceful family life. Repeatedly, she let go of past regrets and bitterness, and worked through the many negatives of her life with a positive attitude toward the present and the future--despite a marriage to a weak, difficult husband.....(Excerpt): I can't wait to see Gong Li as the evil Hatsumomo in "Memoirs of a Geisha." I've read that she does a brilliant job as Sayuri's rival. What an opportunity to see Gong Li's full range of acting abilities--from her portrayal of the somewhat Melanie Wilkes-type character in "To Live," all the way to her villainous geisha in "Memoirs."   more »

Excerpt: The many intertwined plots were surprising and satisfying, never pat. The disparate characters were each interesting and believable, and their choices turned out to be very true to their characters. I felt a sense of real people, distinct, unique, each with his/her own very human set of strengths and weaknesses, each making real, important choices; yet this movie left me with no sense at all of strings having been tidily or predictably tied up, or even ending. Instead, I felt that much had changed, much had stayed the same, and family life would go on, a bit differently. How like life....   more »

Excerpt: Peace and democracy aren't missions that can be accomplished. They're missions that never end. You can't end a war against an abstract noun. Besides, there will always be one more bomb-throwing terrorist to provide an excuse for one more retaliation. I hope Geena teaches us that sometimes you just have to endure a certain amount of injustice--but you almost never have to add to it.   more »