'A QUIET PLACE': A PROVOCATIVE ALLEGORY

by Andy Nowicki

@AndyNowicki

Back in 2016, many claimed that “Angry Birds,” a movie based on the famous computer game, was in fact an Alt Right-ish allegory referencing the migrant invasion of the West, allegedly making a sympathetic pitch to what is often nastily called “nativism,” but is, more properly speaking, a rational defense of one’s homeland and heritage against its malevolently-willed demographic dilution and destruction.

'UNSANE'-LY APT CINEMA

by Andy Nowicki

@Andy Nowicki

There is a scene in Unsane, Steven Soderbergh’s riveting new paranoid thriller, that will likely imprint itself on my memory until my dying day.

In it, Sawyer Valentini (Clair Foy), a harried, tormented young woman, visits a mental health facility to see a therapist, who offers a welcome sympathetic ear, or so it would seem.

BLACK PANTHER: PREPPING THE BULL (SHIT) OF WHITE GUILT

by William Rome
@willieromeburns

Rap music was pumping as I walked into the food court. At the opening was a giant rectangle of tables selling discount sneakers and custom T-shirts. Every vendor had lines reaching into the common table area. And the box office in the back was swarming with Blacks.

For one day my upscale mall became the ghetto mall the Whites avoid.

GEORGE CLOONEY'S "SUBURBICON" IS ANTI-WHITE SWILL

Julianne Moore and Matt Damon in "Suburbicon"

You would never know from the deceptive preview, but George Clooney's "Suburbicon" is an ugly and unsettling propaganda piece, seemingly aimed at promoting white self-hatred.

WONDER WOMAN: TOO CHEERFUL FOR A MOVIE ABOUT WORLD WAR ONE

by Ann Sterzinger

To my delight, the new Wonder Woman movie was visually stunning, and was not marred by page after page of hackneyed feminist dialogue. Indeed, the girl-power theme was rarely taken beyond the level to which we are already numb. One notable exception to this being when a bunch of Amazons armed with Bronze Age weaponry somehow win a battle against World War One guys. Come on. Bows and arrows couldn’t even cut through 17th-century muskets, much less… whatever. Sure, sure, have it your way; mere dudes with bows and arrows wouldn’t last ten seconds against a WWI-era firearm, but Amazon Power outdoes the laws of physics. At least it was a cool-looking scene.

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP: A WRY, WHITE MOVIE

by Andy Nowicki

There is a subtle irony in the title of Love and Friendship—Whit Stillman's caustically glib and delightfully insouciant cinematic adaptation of the obscure Jane Austen novella Lady Susan—in that the film's protagonist appears to be uninterested in love and incapable of friendship.

Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsdale) in fact reveals herself in short order to be a loathsomely self-interested woman: manipulative, scheming, and cunning; the sort of individual who might today be labeled a "sociopath." Like most sociopaths, she possesses a high degree of intelligence, always masking the diabolical cadaverousness of her soul behind a sweet, soft voice and lovely smile. 

EYE FROM THE RIGHT: "HAIL, CAESAR!" BY THE COEN BROTHERS

Contemporary Media seen from the Right

by Richard Wolstencroft

The short version: This is a hateful piece of crap from the Coen Brothers, riffing on old Hollywood.

The soulless cinematic siblings make three kinds of films: crime (which they do rather well), comedy (which they do rather poorly), and religious/metaphysical musings (which vary from so-so to poor). This, their latest effort, is a combination  of the latter two categories – a weak comedy with a bit off metaphysical nonsense thrown in. That's what you're in for with Hail, Caesar!

JEWISH RACIALISM AND JEWISH CAPITALISM: "BARTON FINK"

by Andy Nowicki

The Coen brothers, a directing/producing brotherly duo, are perhaps the boldest and most creative auteurs of modern-day American cinema. Their work varies wildly; it is “all over the map,” thematically-speaking, yet always distinctively itself. Some Coen brothers’ films are bizarre and phantasmagorical; others are zanily comedic, and still others can best be described as brutally horrifying. Barton Fink is a unique combination of all three of these types, and something else besides: it is a savage satire of a Jewish-run film industry, as well as being an unflinching examination of brazen hypocrisies often seen in Jewish-led political radicalism. Joel and Ethan Coen are, of course, Jews themselves, which is perhaps why they were able to get away with such a jarringly “Semitically-incorrect” depiction in the first place. (See also Kevin MacDonald’s review of their A Serious Man.)

AUTHORITY AND "COMPLIANCE"

"The experiment requires that you continue."

by Andy Nowicki

Compliance, a barely-known and rarely-discussed 2012 film written and directed by Craig Zobel, features a thoroughly unglamorous, no-name cast and is set almost entirely in the most familiar and ubiquitous of establishments: a fast-food restaurant somewhere in the heart of the large swath of country known as "Middle America." Yet this thoroughly unnerving film manages to create an atmosphere of unbearable suspense and creeping horror without introducing any blood, violence, or pyrotechnics whatsoever.

The central premise of Compliance is indeed more disquieting than any "torture porn": the movie suggests that people generally would rather obey authority, even at the expense of their own moral beliefs, than challenge or resist a supposed "man in charge." Instead of fighting, they would sooner meekly allow themselves to be degraded, molested, and violated; worse, they are at least as likely to become equally hapless instruments of degradation, molestation, and violation against others, all to avoid being a bother to someone who claims the power to demand compliance from them.