My blog reviews movies as political, historical or social commentary with intentional disregard for their artistic or cinematic value. One foe of American political scientists and economists is that they ignore movies as sources to inform them on changes in American culture, view exoticism as a hallmark of "foreigness" and, at the same time, impart American values and judgment to foreign movies.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Green Book
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Vice
The movie is not bad but it fails to show the evolution of the inscrutable psychopath within the rarest of the rare--the family of psychopaths--Lynne, Dick and Liz. In particular, nothing is told about his family and influences before his marriage to Lynne. This cannot be surprising--after all there is no rational explanation of the behavior of psychopaths other than some people enjoy hurting other people. Low IQ psychopaths become serial killers and hurt dozens; high IQs go to the media, Wall Street, the CIA and the State Department and, in the case of some, to the Presidency and hurt millions.
However, Cheney in the Dreyfus cameo in W is really shown as a pure evil without any explanation or comment. Paolo Sorrentino in Il Divo is superb in showing another inscrutable, Giulio Andreotti in minute details such as him attentively reading obscene graffiti on himself on the Roman wall or discussing household finances with his wife after the day of plotting corruption, treason and murder. But Sorrentino is the greatest director after the death of Italy's generation of the greatest (Fellini, Rosselini, Antonioni, De Sica, Visconti and Zavattini). Christian Bale is a fine actor but he was not given enough substance to work with.
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