In these politically charged times, any movie showing a fictional President of the United States inspires some sort of contemporary connection, which usually translates into the blowhards of the right-wing media spouting their customary vitriol. Because Independence Day, Air Force One, and The American President, for example, depicted a president in a positive light during […]
George Grella
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Violence and identity in South Africa
Culture, including popular culture, follows the flag. Just as the British Empire in its greatest hour assured the dominance of English literature in the 19th century, so in our own day has American popular music, dress, and film prevailed in almost every area of the globe. Tom Cruise’s toothy smile beams from posters in Helsinki, […]
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Violence, blood, and humor
One of the most unusual action thrillers to appear in recent months, or even years, Lucky Number Slevin maintains a constant flow of action in the slam-bang, shoot-’em-up, stack-’em-up mode, while depending for much of its appeal upon a puzzling tangle of plot and motivation. Although packed with violence of all kinds, the picture also […]
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The second time around
For fans of Sharon Stone, the 14-year hiatus between Basic Instinct — where the actress wowed audiences with one of the most famous shots in recent film history — and the imaginatively titled Basic Instinct 2 must seem an eternity. Whether the wait for the long-promised sequel was worthwhile remains to be seen, but the […]
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Some subversive truths for our dark time
The latest movie to send the conservative crybabies sobbing into their bound copies of the Patriot Act originates in, of all places, a comic book, or as they like to call them in the higher literary circles, a graphic novel. For a political allegory to grow out of so apparently plebeian a form suggests not […]
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Walking knee-deep in decadence
Continuing to mine the past for subjects to dress up in frills, lace, and periwigs, the motion picture industry, perhaps inevitably, has now dug up the 17th century poet, playwright, and pornographer, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. (How’s that for the daily press’s beloved local connection?) Though probably not exactly a familiar name these days, […]
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Revenge and redemption in the modern West
While Brokeback Mountain continues to outrage an assortment of the ignorant, the nostalgic, and the vehement with its alleged attack on the stirring falsehoods of the Western, another version of the honored form practically slunk into town with barely a peep of protest from the right. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (a mouthful of […]
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Maybe they’ll actually deserve that statue
Two great American public occasions annually illuminate the dark days and frozen nights of winter with the bright lights of hype and the torrential flow of gush. Though celebrating entirely different endeavors, both events mount elaborate ceremonies that, through assiduous cultivation of the media and enormous expenditure of money on publicity, command the attention of […]
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Don’t believe in human goodness
The ironically titled Freedomland deals with a situation resembling the sensational stories that scream from the front pages every day and absolutely absorb the drooling forensic ghouls of the cable news channels. The movie examines such volatile contemporary materials as a missing child, a black suspect, racial tensions, the enormous distance separating comfortable suburbia from […]
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Technology is a double-edged sword
The new thriller Firewall works a number of changes on some familiar material. It demonstrates that the tried and true Hollywood product, no matter how often it appears, remains entertaining and engaging. Whatever its debt to hundreds of movies from the past, it also suggests new directions in its genre, emphasizing once again that popular […]
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Melding the high and low in English humor
Like so much else in English society, contemporary differences in styles of humor appear connected to the ancient, burdensome stratifications of social class. In crude terms, for those who remember the television imports of some years ago, the comic alternatives generally split between Monty Python and Benny Hill, representing the high and the low in […]
