Empire
A Puerto Rican charmer should have stayed a drug dealer and not got mixed up with those crooks on Wall Street.
Entry from December 6, 2002
A reader writes that he is “shocked by your Quiet American review. . .I found the film remarkable for not demonizing anyone. The group with which I saw the flick was primarily Mass/NYC liberals, and the comments I heard repeatedly were that Pyle was a well-intentioned guy who just happened to be wrong. Any ‘evil’…
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Those darned racists, who used to have it all their own way before the dawn of our own blessed age of enlightenment, are at it again in this visually impressive Australian morality tale.
Entry from November 25, 2002
“I forgive anyone who did that. It doesn’t take the pain. It’s a costly forgiveness . . . it cost my wife. . .I loved her in our marriage. We had a really lovely marriage. I believe that the blood of Jesus died for us [sic], for our sins, and it was the blood of…
Emperor’s Club, The
Kevin Kline’s Mr Hundert is a (slightly) updated version of Mr Chips, and yet he seems to have missed his calling. He was meant to be Regis Philbin.
Quiet American, The
The mythology of the Vietnam War is as fixed and immutable as that of the Trojan War, at least so far as the Hollywood left are concerned. Will flattering them get Michael Caine an Oscar?
Entry from November 20, 2002
Do the Republicans hope for partisan advantage as much as the Democrats? Is that why they have agreed to the allegedly “bi-partisan” commission to investigate the attacks of September 11, 2001? Perhaps they were thinking that they would be able to pin them on the Clinton administration, just as the Democrats are clearly expecting to…
Crimen del Padre Amaro, El
The first crime of Father Amaro, it seems, was in his ever allowing himself to get mixed up with that gang of mobsters known as the Roman Catholic Church
Entry from November 12, 2002
Speculation by the top Democratic thinker and strategist, Barbra Streisand, that there may have been foul play in the death of the late Senator Wellstone, is only the latest example of the poisonous political atmosphere which I discuss in “The Scandal Lobby” in this month’s New Criterion. The Republican victory in the recent elections seems…
The Scandal Lobby
Do we have a duty to say what we think about our political enemies? Or a duty not to?
— From the November New Criterion
Far From Heaven
Another propaganda effort, along the lines of Pleasantville or American Beauty, against what could still be called, in the 1950s, middle class morality.