No matter what Muslims might claim, Nazis are easily Hollywood’s go-to villains, these days. Whether it’s Indiana Jones, Marvel films, or Oscar-baiting Holocaust films, if Hollywood wants a bad guy: slap on a black uniform and some shiny boots. It wasn’t always that way, of course. From
Michael McCaffrey rt.com Michael McCaffrey is a writer and cultural critic who lives in Los Angeles. He is also the host of the popular cinema podcast Looking California and Feeling Minnesota. Luke Holland’s film, which chronicles the complicity of ordinary Germans in the crimes of the Third Reich,
Australian celebrity criminal, Mark “Chopper” Read famously said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn”. Read was referring to the string of “memoirs” (ten in all) he wrote. Read notoriously mixed the astonishing truth, such as his almost comical effort to abduct a Victorian County
Jeffrey A. Tucker aier.org Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research.He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of
The great genius of capitalism is its ability to harness human ingenuity. Socialism, as Frank Zappa wisely said, “produced bad music, bad art, social stagnation, and really unhappy people”. Even when pandemic-licensed governments do their damnedest to get their socialism on, and completely control the means of production by arbitrarily
Alysse ElHage mercatornet.com Alysse ElHage is Editor of the IFS Blog, Family Studies, and a freelance writer. Prior to joining the Institute for Family Studies, she served as associate director of research at the North Carolina Family Policy Council, and as associate editor of Family North Carolina magazine. Maybe
Lisa R. Pruitt University of California, Davis Film critics have had nary a good word to say about Netflix’s new movie “Hillbilly Elegy.” Reviewers varyingly called it “Oscar-Season B.S.,” “woefully misguided,” “Yokel Hokum,” “laughably bad” and simply “awful.” I admit to delight when I read professional critics trashing
The blatant inability of the Star Wars’ henchmen to hit, as my Dad used to say, a bull’s arse with a handful of wheat, is as legendary as Darth Vader’s villainy. But, to quote Professor Julius Sumner-Miller, why is it so? After all, stormtroopers are professional soldiers of
The story of Danish movie Druk (English title, “Another Round”) is predictable enough, but told so well and with such spirit (pun intended) that it just doesn’t matter. Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) is a middle-aged history teacher numbly watching his world collapse around him. His once-promising academic career has faded
Maria Flood Keele University The backlash against the backlash has begun. Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips of Hangover trilogy fame, has opened to conflicting reviews and negative press. Having been hailed as a masterpiece when it first screened at the Venice film festival (and drawing an
Sung-ae Lee Macquarie University Parasite, the South Korean film directed by Bong Joon-ho, received four Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. It was an historic moment. Parasite is the first non-English-language movie to win a Best Picture
Ann Vickery Deakin University Growing up in Australia in the 1970s, I much preferred the hijinks of Han Solo and Chewie to Princess Leia’s sexualised damsel in distress. My sister and I spent an entire summer pigging out on Choc Wedges and Barney Bananas so we could collect the
Ari Mattes University of Notre Dame Australia People often roll their eyes when they hear about a major Hollywood studio re-releasing a film from its back catalogue to cinemas. Director’s cuts, “reduxes” and remastered prints can seem like cynical corporate moves, re-commodifying a long dead vision of the world.
Adrian Danks RMIT University It’s hard to imagine that Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas is 30 years old. A massive influence on contemporary filmmakers ranging from Quentin Tarantino and Fernando Morales to David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson, it remains one of the peaks of Hollywood genre filmmaking. GoodFellas
Daryl Sparkes University of Southern Queensland Ten years on from its release, and hitting cinemas again, Christopher Nolan’s Inception still puzzles and intrigues. It is one of those films in which you discover something new each time you watch it. Or, more likely, it makes you reinterpret what you
