Badlands (1973)

Wholesome Middle America once again refuses to be corrupted by Tinseltown — but then Tinseltown’s powers to corrupt aren’t what they used to be

Yet another terrifically well-made film from the Danish Dogme 95 group. How do they do it?

Whatever by Susan Skoog stars Liza Weil as Anna Stockard and Chad Morgan as her slutty friend Brenda, two high school girls in 1981 who do the standard “survivors” turn on behalf of the I-am-womanism of Ms Skoog. It follows the by-now familiar path of mythologizing and romanticising the sufferings of women, particularly young, post-pubertal…

I hope it will not sound too relativistic of me to say that each age has its own moral needs. In the late Victorian era people needed to hear—though not nearly so much as they might have needed to hear a few years earlier or later—that mercy and forgiveness and forbearance to sinners was holy…

Once old men used to tell the war stories from their youth; now they tell the anti-war stories. Both should be taken with a grain of salt.

The Jackal, directed by Michael Caton-Jones, is a formula blockbuster and a complete artistic void. The only interesting thing about it to me was the chance it afforded to spot the trends as to what ingredients go into the formula this year. For example, the macho man who has an on-screen homosexual kiss looks as…