Change Your Image
Jcowden
Reviews
Born Yesterday (1950)
A Painless Civics Lesson Everyone Needs
It's really a no brained, given the importance politics plays in everyone's life these days, whether they admit it or not. As the old saying you can ignore politics but it won't ignore you. But seeing it from an appropriate distance but citizens should quit whining and vote. To get the money in politics under control. This movie gives even the poorest of history students a clue. Judy's character comes in the innocent from out of one POV, even though she didn't really have one, till she started educating herself with William Holden's character's devotion to the workings of our democracy, while rich outlaws, like Broderick Crawford, just want to milk the Washington cash cow dry.. Holden plays a newspaper man and a true believer in our freedoms and when he has a chance provided by Judy, he try's to put a stop to Crawford's sneaky backroom deal to make sure it falls through, without getting him seriously killed for his trouble. He jumps into it like soldiers going into battle seemingly oblivious to the danger, but you can see that to him his life was worth putting in jeopardy like the men on D-Day, or the farmers that confronted the British at Lexington and Concord and fired that "shot". And like those soldiers he has no more clue whether he'll make it or not. Ppl are starting to confuse the limitations of whim and fantasy solutions to none existent problems, with the reality of law enforcement and the actuality of enforcing them, as with important regulations that keeps us safe, are confused by shifting false equivalencies. The rule of law keeps us alive and able to exercise those fundamental rights of life, liberty and pursuing happiness. If you're not registered to vote, you will after you see this movie, if you still have a pulse.
Countryman (1982)
Most impressive
As an editor and a wanna be director, I enjoyed this tremendously, I highly recommend, as it rarely lagged and even though the language was a little difficult to parse, the surrounding action filled in the communication blanks nicely.
A surreal portrayal of a man, who lives off the world, in the finest tradition of Joseph Campbell's heroic myth. Chivalry on a primitive scale but none the less noble. In the tradition of Sun Tzu's Art of War, he sought no confrontation but when left without other options, he rose to overwhelm attacks made by opponents, that had vastly underestimated his prowess. Part Shaman, part Superman, all hero his opposition regrets chasing him, well, only the survivors, that is. And like Zorro or the Lone Ranger, it was a flourish, and a wave goodbye, as he leaves towards the horizon, as his charges sail off to safety. Karma takes care of some of the crooked politicians responsible for this mess, in the form of opposition firing squads. And BTW, photography was low budget but gorgeous, and actually gave certain cinema verite feel. I suppose was intended to give reality, to the metaphysical, but a happy accident or serendipitous, if not done on purpose.