It Ends With Us
There's no end to this...
(Directed by Justin Baldoni, from the novel by Colleen Hoover) (2024) Thanks to Guest Reviewer Rita, for sitting through this so we don’t have to. Her pithy synthesis is below, with our additional comments further on. “What a woeful travesty! This film trivializes and romanticises the very serious subject of domestic violence and is downright insulting to the many true victims of this ongoing crime. It fails in many ways…most notably it neglects to portray the fact that the most dangerous time for a woman entrapped in such an abusive relationship is when she summons the courage to leave. Give…
Continue Reading →Gene Hackman
(30 January 1930 to 17? February 2025) He was Mr. Reliable, and never selector’s choice as a leading man, but after several obscure but worthy performances, he gained stardom in The French Connection as an obsessed, driven narcotics cop. In later decades, he usually slipped into supporting roles, with the odd standout star role, such as in Mississippi Burning and Narrow Margin. The circumstances of his demise currently a mystery, we instead will nominate his best amongst his almost 80 films: Bonnie and Clyde (1967) The Gypsy Moths (1969) I Never Sang for My Father (1970) The French Connection (1971) Scarecrow…
Continue Reading →Auschwitz Liberated
(27 January, 1945: the liberation of the Nazi’s most infamous extermination camp) Blood libels against the Jews are nearly as old as the hills. They were stirred during the First Crusade (1096), but reached the nadir (at least, one hopes) during the Second World War, in the form of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” “At camps maintaining labour installations, like Auschwitz, 10 per cent of the arrivals – those who looked fittest – were selected for work. The remainder were consigned to the gas chambers. They were instructed to undress; the women and girls had their hair cut. They were then marched…
Continue Reading →The Pardoner’s Tale
20 January 2025: President un-elect Joe Biden pardons family and friends President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr, son of a Wilmington car salesman, issued this statement minutes before his successor was inaugurated, in fact, as all were gathered in the Capital Rotunda: “My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me—the worst kind of partisan politics. Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end. I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics. But baseless…
Continue Reading →Heretic
"The wife is shy, but the pie is nigh!"
(Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Wood, 2024) We who do not live in horror-film-land know that no young woman should ever go into the isolated, charming house at the bottom of a wind-strewn garden during a rainstorm. Unfortunately for them, LDS missionaries Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) do live in that land and did not get the memo. In non-horror-film-land the missionaries would be young men but of course, women are the proper victims of imprisonment, slashings and creepy things in horror-film-land so there it is. Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) lives in that house and…
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