Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Robe!

Theme: Black Bush - 16 Horsepower

The most entertaining film about the early Christians is Cecil B. DeMille's spectacular and batshit insane Sign of the Cross, which features an hilariously graphic battle to the death between women and dwarfs:

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But equally fascinating in an altogether different vein is 1953's The Robe. Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton, Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds) HAS IT ALL: political connections, devoted gf Diana (Jean Simmons, who is not that juggalo with the big tongue), and a real shot at hot twins:

In ancient Rome you could just buy hot twins.

BUT THEN he overplays his hand and finds himself shipped off to Jerusalem, courtesy of the jealous machinations of flaming pervert Caligula, whom the script preposterously expects us to believe has the hots for Diana, and not some dude in chaps with a handlebar moustache.

Bro does the same flamboyant twirl twice in the same take before sitting down fr no cap.

When in Jerusalem, however, Gallio is obligated to preside over the crucifixion of three condemned men. One is of course our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, though at the time Gallio is given only a vague overview of Who He is supposed to be. The actor playing Jesus is seen only at a distance, or from angles that obscure his face, placing the viewer in the position of a rando catching a glimpse behind a crowd. Yet Gallio's Greek slave Demetrius (Victor Mature) manages to make eye contact with the Christ, compelling his immediate allegiance.

Yeah, I know this would have been a gr8 poast for Holy Week but I drop Halloween and Christmas articles at all times of the year too so just enjoy the wild ride as the wheels come off.

Only upon that fateful Friday, when the world turned dark, does Gallio begin to realise a fraction of the awesome cosmic import of his actions. As he gambles for the Christ's possessions with the soldiers, Gallio wins the titular garment, onto which he projects all the burden of his tormented conscience. The film takes on an uniquely haunting atmosphere as Gallio is beset by fever nightmares to which we suspect we are only partly party. It's the best attempt by any film to portray the presence of God, reflecting not the undepictable Itself, but the way most of us experience It: as a haunting, maddening voice urging us against our best efforts to shut It out.

While Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ emphasised the physical brutalisation meted out to God incarnate by His unworthy creations, The Robe best captures an infinitesimally small impression of the sheer ineffable alienness of God. Despite what terminal modernity patients might assert with laughable confidence, there's actually nothing unrelatable nor baffling at all about an Alien (1979) that doesn't care about you and just wants to eat and rape you; that's just a bear, a shark, or a fast-tracked asylum seeker. The essence of alienness is that which seems to us most paradoxical: that God Himself, impossible to dream of apprehending in His supercosmic magnificence, cares about our wretched souls.

They don't call it a Mystery for nothing.

The rest of the film deals with the aftermath in which Gallio attempts to track down the Robe to destroy it, and learns of the Resurrection from the Christians, FORCING him to CHOOSE where his allegiance lies. It's all compelling enough, but it's those scenes of holy horror that remain wedged in the memory, whispering to us of the judgement that awaits us all.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Mask!

Theme: Swing Set - Jurassic 5

The first and last time CGI had sovl.

Zoomies and alphies will know Jim Carrey (if at all) for his John Wayne Gacy tier schizo ""art"" of, like, Blumpf bumming himself in prison or whatever, but before he was a dribbling mental case, our Jim Jam had a trilogy of kinographs of surpassing quality in the 1990s: Ace Ventura Pet Detective had him fighting crime and saving animals in a succession of Hawaiian shirts, headbanging with Cannibal Corpse and making transsexuals seethe, while Liar Liar cast him as the slick attorney one day cursed with the affliction that he cannot utter falsehoods, which would also make transsexuals seethe.

IT'S...NOT...MA'AM

Yet between these pillars of dopey hilarity there was another one which I watched more recently, hence the article. The Mask has Carrey start off as a hapless everyman hopelessly orbiting a 4, before his life is TURNED UPSIDE DOWN when he finds a The Mask (1994), which, when donned, makes him The Mask (1994), a guy with a bright green face and no ears (no, IDK why). This alter ego is imbued with the power of being a Tex Avery cartoon, which makes him invincible, amoral and capable of producing physical objects from some wormhole situated just behind his back. Like a less hooker-murdering Edward Hyde, he does all the whacky, crazy things that normal!Carrey was afraid to, like rob banks and romance 7s like Amy Yasbeck and Cameron Diaz.

Every man just wants a beautiful mid to call his own.

The characterisation of The Mask is wonderfully multilayered, in that he's a wish fulfilment fantasy, but for a sensitive young naïf, who therefore wears a bright yellow suit with a pimp hat and says cool guy things like "Party: P-A-R-T-WHY? Cause I GOTTA!". It's like Jon Arbuckle's idea of cool, but because he shares the fantasy with you, the viewer, the world around him must play ball. It's one of those cinématic nowhere-cities that's not quite contemporary to the movie's release, but also has art deco imagery from the great depression and film noir times.

People don't dance like this anymore and I didn't know I want them to.

While The Mask was loosely based on some comic noone's ever read, it was originally scooped up by New Line because they wanted a new horror property to pick up where the Nightmare on Elm Street series left off, and offered it to Dream Warriors director Chuck Russell, whose input largely was to make it this love letter to old-timey cartoons instead, which is a fun trajectory for a project to take. You can't go wrong by making movies fun male wish fulfilment fantasies, because they just consist of a man getting to enjoy a bit of romance and adventure, while female ones are all oddly mean-spirited and empty. Today reviews would screech that normal!Carrey's perfectly modest complaint that "nice guys finish last" proved he was really a thoughtcriminal, and "entitled" (which in newspeak means not entitled to something, much like "privileged" means shut up and know your place). Needless to say, retvrn.

"Somebody stop me!" If only they never had.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Just For A Day!

There can be no question of the fact that Slowdive's second album, Souvlaki, is probably the best album of all time of the week, the year, the 90s and the history of recorded music (at least tied with Loveless; Isn't Anything preferrers go be tryhards somewhere else). Nor can there be much question that Pygmalion was an audacious change of pace and a respectable, tasteful hipster fave, nor even that their later works make excellent use of the possibilities of more recent production techniques. If you play Just For A Day and Souvlaki back to back, not a jury in the land would convict Souvlaki of anything less than a brutal murder of the OG effort, nor could I endeavour in good conscience to appeal the verdict as anything but just.

But I like Just For A Day, because it is so pure in concept and because it blew my tiny mind upon first hearing it, and no man can but fondly and wistfully recall the first such blowing he received. Souvlaki is, unquestionably, the better collection of songs, somehow more pop and more sophisticated and more audacious at once. You'd have to call in a certified caprinologist to review it; I just know a GOAT when I see one. "Souvlaki Space Station" is weird, "Alison" sublime, and "Dagger" brilliantly jarring in its waking to regretful recollection from the dreampop haze.

But Just For A Day plays like variations on a theme, its noisy swells elemental, oceanic, like waves pounding inexorably, crushingly, yet gracefully, upon a sullen and deserted shore, and after each such surge recedes it leaves those swirling eddies in the crevices and rock pools in its wake. In opener "Spanish Air" Halstead opines "I long for the sun, the wind and rain". By "Waves" his wish, and life, has been fulfilled: it "felt so good to see the sun". The whole album evokes a long and solitary walk along an overcast beach in the liminal seasons of spring and autumn; melancholy, calm and elation all flowing in and out of one another like a tide. It's music by which to contemplate eternity.

Accidentally Rìght Wìng Movies 3: The Final Chapter!!11

Theme: My Own World - Screeching Weasel

Scarface

"So how come there are still more women and children on these boats than on the ones landing in Europe every day?" Uhh, SILENCE NO MORE QUESTIONS

See? No one fleeing the authorities could ever be a bad man.

Fury Road

Both Mad Max movies (1979's original and 1980's Road Warrior) are extremely, even hilariously, based and rightist, and are not coincidentally among the greatest and best movies of all time ever made. Evidently, then, sometime between 1980 and 1989 (1984, perhaps?), George Miller must have been treated to a re-education course at the Ministry of Love, because everything he's done since then has gone the route of pozmaxxing in craven imitation of h*llywood. Fury Road is, on its face, a feminist thesis:

Of course, this doesn't work at all. The villains are supposed to be religious fanatics who make wahmen wear oppressive garments and blow themselves up in suicide attacks, which can't help but evoke a real-world group that rockets up and down the progressive stack caste system hierarchy depending upon whether we're supposed to be justifying bombing them into paste or mass importing them in any given conversation. Since you're not allowed to talk about that, though, the War Boyz (perhaps named in honour of Games Workshop's tabletop Mad Max ripoff game Gorkamorka; only 90s kids will remember this) have an hilarious white power skinhead aesthetic instead, which fits so poorly it almost works as meta parody of how only one group is ever vilified on film.

Their logo looks a lot like that of 90s MTV staple The Offspring for some reason. I mention this only because where else am I going to find a segue to observe that blink-182's smily face logo mogs N*rvana's smily face logo with the force of a medium-sized tactical nuke:

I'd have kys'd myself too.

But even if you take the War Boyz at face value, they're still somehow the good guys, because the movie actually demonstrates the noble feminist collective completely fucked up and destroyed their prelapsarian idyllic Green Space, leaving nothing but barren desert, while Immortan Joe has managed to carve out a functioning society against all odds, sensibly rationing water and maintaining peace through trade with his most dangerous neighbouring factions. Furiosa selfishly effects the escape of his wives, dooming the entire populace as Joe needs an heir to maintain continuity of governance. This was of such pivotal importance throughout history that the Ottoman Empire actually made it the law that when a new sultan was crowned he had to murder all his brothers to prevent a civil war over the leadership, so Joe's far milder and more reasonable efforts to ensure he leaves a single viable heir are just plain responsible.

My boi did NOTHING wrong.

When Furiosa murders Joe and assumes leadership herself, she opens the floodgates controlling the water supply, ensuring it will run out quickly and the entire citadel will die of thirst. The only way to counter this reading of the ending is to argue that the water in the middle of this desert is just infinite for no reason, which is insane, but is how leftists actually think things work, which is why you can't let them run anything, ever.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Story

Interestingly, the Furiosa prequel is actually a bit more based, in that the main villain is plainly Karl Marx: an evil beardo who exhorts the dregs of Joe's society to rise up and murder their rulers, which exhortation falls flat in one of the funniest and most satisfying scenes I've ever seen, with Joe just wiping out Karl's vanguard with impunity. The movie still has major problems, but if you just watch it as a standalone and edit out the last few scenes that set up Fury Road, at least you get a happy ending with Immortan Joe in charge.

Funny Games

Michael Haneke's home invasion flick, like much midwitcore, attempted to indict the audience, forcing them to question why they were still watching the sadistic brutalising of a family for entertainment. Thing is, though, Haneke made anti-white agitslop flick Caché/Hidden, too, so he endorses the invasion of white countries and the rapes and murders that ensue in real life, making a farce out of his impotent efforts to shame his viewers, who, despite his intro-to-philosophy-ass efforts to muddy the waters, can distinguish perfectly well between fiction and reality.

Incidentally, I've yet to come across a libjoint that can't be improved just by adding a laugh track.

For instance, in this fiction the home invaders are clean-cut whitebois with bourgeois manners, which turns an otherwise quite mundane horror effort into an hilarious accidental satire of the movie industry's near-blanket whitewashing of crime. As edgecore, it's easily mogged by Irreversible or The Poughkeepsie Tapes, but as absurdist comedy, it's pretty funny, except for the extended sequence when the killers leave, which is supposed to make you bored and then feel bad for feeling happy when they show back up again, which also doesn't work because noone feels bad for enjoying a black comedy in which bad things happen, nor does anyone care what a shitlib with the blood of Mollie Tibbets and Lee Rigby all over his hands thinks of our moral character.

Batman Returns

The reason Batman sucks today is that filmmakers, like a primitive cargo cult, have fallen into the pattern of treating the material seriously, whereas all the classic Caped Crusadery of yore was basically an human centipede of gleeful parody: the 1960s show with Adam West lampooned the 1940s serials, then Burton upended the colourful antics of the show by making its daft villains into horrifying monsters. Burton was essentially shitcanned in favour of Schumacher because the suits completely failed to see the humour in his children-traumatising depiction of the 60s' lovable cad Penguin as a deformed Caligariesque creature who lurks the sewers seething with hatred for the Christmas festivities above.

Really makes one think!

Another group[citation needed] who failed to see the humour were Jews (which explains the state of standup). After self-reporting hard over They Live scant years before, G-d's least self-aware Chosen Race shrieked en masse that the subterranean villain was clearly meant to represent them.

Jews not see an horrifically evil monster and blurt out "he's just like me fr fr" challenge: apparently impossible.

Never mind that Oswald's parents' gravestones are shown in the movie and both bear Christian crosses; our tiny-hatted Brahmins reacted to this flick like Claudius reacted to that play in Hamlet. Just astonishing, really. Returns picks up bonus points for the fact timid secretary Selina Kyle starts spouting feminist clichés after she goes insane and becomes (Burtonised) Cat Woman.

We're really testing the folk wisdom that hot chicks can't be cringe.

Oliver!

The much-loved musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' old/pol/ classic attempts subtly to rehabilitate evil child groomer Fagin by portraying him as a kindly, comical old anti-villain with an heart of gold. Too bad the lyrics let slip a different tale:

Here, Fagin indoctrinates the class of 1838 to sing the praises of his most favoured alum, and least symbolically named Dickens character, William H. Psycho (colourised).

As with X-Men, you half wonder whether the DP went rogue and used his magic to reveal a more truthful take on the character, as he appears first cloaked in steam with a fork reminiscent of the devil's pitchfork:

You keep your goddamn wiener away from those kids, buddy. I don't care if they were promised to you 3000 years ago.

The movie ends with Sikes (the monster) lynched by the ubiquitous angry mob while Frankenstein (Fagin) escapes, briefly to entertain the notion of going straight before allowing a literal child to talk him out of it - yeah, right!

You do that, average screenwriter.

My Fair Lady

Audrey casually hat-mogs every wahman ever to wear hats. Good game, hatlets, but this is real life.

Before incel evopsych theory was declared thoughtcrime, it was universally agreed to be true and the basis for one of the most beloved (by wahmen!) movie musicals. Audrey Hepburn must CHOOSE between a sweet-natured dork who adores her and a total dickhead who relentlessly abuses her, and ends the movie stiffing the nice dork and going back to the asshole, which is portrayed as perfectly fine. Based both for validating the theory and because it pits a chick against a dude and the dude wins hands-down, flawless victory. Literally impossible to imagine a movie like this being made today, and not only because it's good.

Dead End Drive In

Kinda-sorta Mad Max ripoff Dead End Drive In has a great B-movie premise: a young couple go to the drive-in movie only to find their wheels stolen and themselves stranded overnight, whereupon they discover that the drive-in is secretly a prison camp to get unemployed delinquents off the street. Sadly this premise is completely wasted because it just turns into an insane screed about how anyone concerned about immigration is LE BAD and (naturally) a heckin natzeerino. No, that doesn't make any sense, but that's what happens. Car chases and 80s new wave fashions abound but you, the viewer, now have less hope of enjoying escapism than the inmates depicted onscreen.

Bear in mind that in the movie's own backstory there was a full-scale genocide of whites but you're still not allowed to have any concerns about our collective wellbeing. Also note that they made it April Fool's Day, because, y'know:

Now we know that the result of open-door immigration policy throughout the west and Anglosphere has been mass stabbings and mass rape, our never very likable protagonist reveals himself a villain for the ages. In this scene, damningly nailing the mental killswitch in the leftoid brain that led to the atrocities of Rotherham and others, his response to his gf's concern that a migrant might rape her is, literally, "nah".

If only crimestop ever served to stop an actual crime.

This reading renders the otherwise mundane ending (he physically escapes the prison camp) more interesting, because he's only traded a physical prison for a mental one. But, as always, that's a layer too many for the writers to apprehend.

Candyman

Sometimes they just come right out and say it.

"Aha, Pat, this time you have reached too far and cannot but beclown yourself", you titter impishly, rubbing your doughy, sweaty palms together like a rotund fly, for surely noone can question the impeccable on-messageness of Candyman, that much-needed reminder that It's All White Peephole's Fault for slayvery and raycism. Or so it seems until you actually watch it and he just admits straight up that his victims are innocent:

"Uhhh, your honour, uhhh, my client's IQ, which doesn't exist, makes him unfit to stand trial. Release him on the populace at once!"

The actual message of this unintentional kino, therefore, is "it doesn't matter if something bad happened to you, you can still choose whether or not to be an evil piece of shit". You wouldn't think that would be an extreme right-wing position, but the entire mass media and ""justice"" system disagree with you. What about red lining under FDR? The Kay Kay Kay? What about Micro Aggressions? The Talk! What about the heckin En Wooord?

Total Recall

Spoilers for this one, like you haven't seen it.

>mrw dinner isn't on the table the minute I slouch in from a long day at the ḇłồģ mines

This one's actually pretty fun in that it uses all the audience programming motifs to get you to play along with its conceit because they couldn't not do it that way. You know - the Good Guys are The Rebels, the Bad Corporation is white mayles, Arnie's hot blonde wife is evil and the brown woman is good, and so on. But then, if you're paying attention, the whole plot is fake and gay in-story, so actually that's all nonsense pumped into his brain, which he chooses to continue to believe at the end anyway, because it makes him feel like a hero. I think there's a good chance Paul Verhoeven is actually trolling libs while pretending to be trolling chuds badly, but I wouldn't want to blow his cover, so don't tell anyone.

WILL this be the final chapter? PROBABLY, because I think you get the POINT. It is impossible to make anything simultaneously good and l*ft-wing, because the truth slips through the cracks, like Hope ever outpacing the demons of Pandora's box. There's a certain disingenuous type who will bewail this sort of post as Doing A Heckin Culture War, implicitly maintaining that the multi-billion dollar industry filling these flicks with their increasingly unhinged ideological tantrums is not Doing A Heckin Culture War; only autists with small ƃlởgǥes noticing and easily destroying them with shitposts in our spare time. We'll keep laughing at them - and we'll win!