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SEPTEMBER DAWN(2008)

On September 11, 1857, a wagon train of Christians heading for California were massacred at Mountain Meadows, Utah by the Mormons on the orders of Brigham Young. This film..starring Terance Stamp(as Brigham Young), Dean Cain(as Joseph Smith) and Jon Voight...is really quite excellent on so many levels that I was astounded at the critical drubbing it received at the time of its release early in 2008 until I realized that the film made the mistake of portraying Christians in a sympathetic light and their murder by a christian heritical cult similar to Islam as being a bad thing. Irregardless this was the best historical film of 2008 and one of the year's best period. It also appears to be developing quite a following so see it if you can. Not only is it a original film handling a heretofore undramtized subject but it is extremely courageous as true art should be as it defies both the anti-Christian Hollywood media and the Mormon Church who--to this day--still deny responsibility for the atrocity.

Except for a brief moment of excessive gore, the film also harkens back to the fine filmmaking of the 50/60s era and the historical epics of that time.

It is that good.


A FEW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER. (2007) Starring Juliette Binoche, Nick Nolte and John Turturro.

This...admitedly well made ....film is the French version of September 11, 2001 with Desert Storm tossed in to boot. To wit the Bush administration was behind it all so as to provide a pretext to invade Iraq so as to get Saddam Hussein. The Muslem world is shown as not having a clue let alone any involvement. We are also treated to a roughly ten minute screed by a young French woman on why Americans are not really human and will be wiped off the face of the Earth in 30 years tops. The sole American presented as not being sleazy or an insane killer haplessly agrees.

Did I mention that the film is French??


BEAUFORT(2008)

An Israeli film allowed into this country tells you in advance that it will Arthouse aka boring and drawn out and "Anti-War" aka it is against war when Israel or any member of the Free World defend themselves from tyranny but actually pro-war when Hezbollah or any of the various murderous totalitarian forces out there attack and/or kill some Jews because it is a slow day and the snuff videos are all out at the local mosque.

And so it is here. It is 1999 and Israel is on the verge of withdrawing from Lebanon. A group of IDF soldiers are stationed in an ancient Crusader fort under siege by Hezbollah and not being able to fight and not yet being able to leave spend two interminable hours learning that war never solved anything. Meanwhile Hezbollah...apparently not realizing that war never solved anything......continue on with the purpose of the Middle Eastern conflict. To wit..killing Jews and infidels whenever the opportunity arises.

Of course the only way these types of films can work is to hollow out the plot and keep everything as generalized as possible lest any awkward truths sneak in. Except for their missiles and mortars, our pacifist muslim friends are kept offscreen while the practically interchangible Israeli soldiers cry, hug and ponder the futility of it all.

Not a bad film. Not a good film. Really not much of anything at all.

THE KINGDOM (2007) Directed by Peter Berg. Score by Danny Elfman.

Starring Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman as the whiny cowardly Jew.

After an Al Quaeda attack on the American section in Saudi Arabia leaves over a hundred dead, a team of FBI agents manage to gain entrance to the Kingdom for five days to try and solve the case in spite of general Islamic obstruction and intolerance. Though aided by a sympathetic Saudi Police officer, they do not actually solve the case but rather the case resolves itself when the terrorists attack again allowing the agents to shoot them all dead in as confusing gunfight.

While not the typical anti-American/proterrrorist liberal propaganda fare coming from Tehran West, the film shows that even when they try and not do the above, Hollywood simply has no idea how since its morals and knowledge of the subject is so puerile and deranged that it is simply beyond them. The film does have Moslem Terrorists murdering innocent people but it is far more concerned with showing the single muppet like Moslem police officer be all cute and cuddly as he tells us how he grew up watching Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk. The film's dialogue and tone is atrocious adapting a sort of hip Not Ready for Saturday Night Live characterizations for the four FBI agents completely trivializing the recent mass murder of their fellow citizens. The dialogue such as it is consists of people talking unintelligibly over one another, cursing and making empty catch phrases. Easily 90 percent of the dialogue could be cut with no loss to the plot. There is no reason for Jennifer Garner to be in the picture. Her part could have been played by anyone. Her part could have been cut. The usually good Cooper is awful. Because the film does show some Moslem's behaving badly, to provide "balance", we get subjected to Bateman's APPALLING and increasingly regular Hollywood stock figure of the whiny cowardly Jew thus indicating that the West Coast seems to think that there is money to be made in anti-Semitism.

The film is so concerned with being innocuous and non-threatening(except for the Jews) that about 30 minutes in it begins to distance itself further and further from the film's basic plot--to wit Moslem barbarians killing people and the race to stop them. The film seems to want to be anywhere else than where it should be. Thus we get pointless scenes of Bush Administration officials----though portrayed acting like Clinton Administration officials. We get endless scenes of the cute FBI agents engaging in mindless banter. They never actually solve the case and instead we get shots designed to show us that Moslems love their children too. Which is not the problem. Rather it is that they hate everyone else's children and want to kill them. The film never even attempts to address what should be the film's main issue. Just why are these Moslems racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic mass murdering barbarians and what should we do about it??

The film does not know and does not want to know. It's message seems to be that Americans should just stay home and never leave the country.

AND in the last scene, presumably to assure good reviews, the film compares Al Queada with the FBI indicating that they are morally equivalent. And as was once noted in regards to the Cold War. Those who claim moral equivalence between the forces of freedom and good and the forces of oppression and barbarism actually mean nothing of the kind and are on the side of the later.

The film is badly directed with action scenes so incomprehensible that the DVD comes with a feature allowing the viewer to figure out what was going on.

In spite of the repugnant final scene, the film is not terrible but it is not especially good. If one cannot tell the difference between good and evil then one cannot make a film about the difference between good and evil............and if one tends to be sympathetic to the later........................

Boring more than anything else.

A wasted opportunity...probably by design.

THE STONE MERCHANT(2006) Directed by Renzo Martineli.

Starring Harvey Keitel, Jane March Jordi Molla and F. Murray Abraham.

An Italian University Professor, confined to a wheelchair for life, due to one of the African Embassy bombings in the late 90s and who constantly warns against the dangers posed by Islam against the West and his wife, who was recently involved in another Muslim Assault at an airport, decide to take a holiday to get away from it all.

While in Turkey, they meet a fellow countryman who specializes in selling gems and who takes a special interest in the Professor's wife. Following them back to Italy, the stone merchant, secretly a Muslim, seduces the wife and the Professor discovers that they have been chosen by an Al Queada cell to be pawns in a devastating attack on Europe.

One of those rare films that actually attempt to address the causes of the current war and the nature of the enemy baring some similarities to those old films where a woman discovers that she has married a Nazi or a Communist only here keeping with the times and its European locale it is more I HAD AN ADULTEROUS AFFAIR WITH A MUSLIM. Being as it deals with the Muslim threat without ever using such boilerplate dogma as "Cheney", "Haliburton", "Controlled Explosions" or "The Jews" it should not be too surprising that the film was so loathed by the Left that they eschewed all their shallow pretenses of decency and honor........not too mention dubious control of their ever brittle sanity to try and destroy it in a hysterical frenzy. The reviews of the film are staggering barrage of venom and outright dishonesty---to such a degree that they are, in effect, reviewing some other film that exists in their own minds somewhere and not this one.

And as always, they are overreacting.

The film does have flaws but they are of the artistic/creative nature. As this is an Italian and therefore European film, the picture's pacing is characteristically languid at times. There is an excessive.......and to my mind..inexplicable use of CGI. Is it not possible to show real boats and airplanes anymore?? Must everything be a cartoon?? Of the film's four leads, two are not up to their parts and one is miscast and is a questionable talent in any case. Molla, as the professor, is constantly referred to by other character's in the film as being obsessed and in the reviews as seething and spewing bile while the actor merely seems glum. A little seething passion would have added a little drive to the film and placed things in a sharper relief. As it is, as supposed anti-muslim fanatics go, Molla constantly acts as if someone just told him that his pizza is going to arrive 15 minutes late.

While attractive, March has no clue what to do with her character--meant one assumes--to represent those in the West who get all doe eyed and gushy at the surface exoticism of Islamic culture. To be fair, Elizabeth Taylor made a hash of a similar role when she discovered that husband Robert Taylor was a Red in CONSPIRATOR(1949) but, at least, one did not grow to dislike the character as a very silly and stupid woman who sort of gets what she deserves. This may be what the director intended but March does not have it in her to be sympathetic or unsympathetic and she certainly does nothing to help the viewer understand these people who get all goofy whenever a Muslim walks into the room.

And most fatally..... someone thought that as the supposedly seductive stone merchant, Harvey Keitel would be a good idea. An actor whose career and popularity is a mystery to me, Keitel...like DeNiro and Pacino..simply CANNOT play anything than modern urban gangster types from the triborough area. Not only is he utterly miscast as a Italian Muslim but he is too old for the part---as described in the film itself---by twenty years. Supposedly devastatingly attractive to March, in a part better suited to an Omar Shariff(or as Hitchcock would have done Joseph Cotten or Ray Milland) type, Keitel, instead, comes across as a constipated cranky old man. Apparently it must be in Keitel's contract that he do nude scenes with attractive actresses because I cannot imagine anyone thinking three sex scenes with a nekid Keitel is ANYONE's idea of erotic. And it is in that section---the middle section---where the film is weak. There is also a suspense scene involving monkey bars that reeks of modern film making and does not really work.

The odd thing? In any other film..the slow pace, the CGI and Harvey Keitel in the buff would be hailed as works of brilliance by the same apparatchiks who attack this film while never once addressing its genuine flaws rather than the projected ones.

All of the above said??? This is still a very interesting, intelligent and better than average film on several levels. It's honesty, integrity and courage go a long way towards allowing the film to overcome the aforementioned missteps. Art is supposed to be about those attributes and this film has it to spare. You simply will not see a film like this in the United States and I believe this type of film is actually illegal in parts of Europe and certainly in the Islamic world. The Left does NOT want you to see this film and will lie to your face to stop you. The film is probably being "soft censored" as we speak.

Yet the film says nothing about Islam that is not absolutely true. It makes valid points--with varying degrees of effectiveness about Westerners--be they the average woman on the street dreaming of her sheik to come and carry her off or members of academia/media who deem it their duty to suppress the truth about Islam rather than simply report it. And just to make sure the film had no chance of getting a good review anywhere on the planet, Martinelli takes a charming but true potshot at film critics.

The direction--especially the camera work is good. Abraham, as the terrorist mastermind, is solid. The film's first thirty/forty minutes is very good and the final thirty is incredibly effective.

While not thinking that one has seen a great film, the viewer will come away with the sad feeling that he has seen a powerful and honest one. Someday this film will be credited as predicting something that tragically will likely occur and future historians will ask why did no one listen??

If possible........and I think it will be increasing unlikely as the film is lowly vanishing from availability..........take the opportunity to see this one if you can.

It will not be something you regret and the subject is too important.

Just cover your eyes when Keitel takes his clothes off!!!

THE BIG CHILL(1983) Directed, produced and written by Lawrence Kasdan.

Starring Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, JoBeth Williams and Kevin Kostner as the corpse.

A group of aging and successful ex-hippies from the 60s get together once again when one of their number committs suicide. Deciding to spent the weekend together, the group of ex summer of love types find their octopus's garden marred by the corpse, the presence of a grasping Jew and an drug addled Vietnam vet who, having his binky shot off during the war, is bitter because he cannot make it with the chicks. Meanwhile the rest of the men who chose not to serve their country get to have sex with as many girls as they like. Except for the grasping Jew of course.

All this potential ungrooviness is resolved by lots of sex, drugs and 60s era rock and roll.

Jerimiah was a bull frog.

A big nothing. Not a bad movie. Not a good movie. Not really much of anything really. Except for some minor points already alluded to as well as Keven Kostner's greatest performance, there is practically nothing to be said neither fer or agin.

If you see it, it will be like you have not. If you do not then you will have basically seen it.

Joy to the world.

CITIZEN COHN (1992) Perpetrated by Frank Pierson.

Starring James Woods, Joseph Bologna, Lee Grant, Pat Hingle, Ed Flanders, Frederic Forrest, Fritz Weaver and Jo Don Baker.

Supposedly the biography of lawyer Roy Cohn done up as a combination of CITIZEN KANE and ANGELS IN AMERICA with a dash of Kenneth Anger style "journalism."

Two lies in 112 minutes of lies. Cohn is shown dumping his dead mother's ashes in the East River by the shore of New Jersey. The East River does not run by New Jersey at any point. His mother is buried in Brooklyn in the Marcus Mauseleum. I have been there. The whole film is like that.

Worthless.

No recommendation.