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Reviews
The Thin Red Line (1964)
An unnamed actor deserves credit
British actor Terence Hardiman, who played an abbot in the excellent series "Cadfael" and a Luftwaffe major in another excellent British TV series "Secret Army" had a tiny bit role in the movie. He appears as a survivor in the aftermath of a vicious firefight with Japanese troops, grouped around the colonel who hastily arrived at the sight to inspect the conditions of his men. I suppose he was just a nobody at that time.
This is a highly recommended black and white film for war movie buffs. Very rarely aired on TV.
For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (2012)
The film For Greater Glory presents a distorted version of the Cristero War (1926-1929)
The film hijacks a complex social conflict and turns it into a David and Goliath story of good guys versus bad. In so doing, it whitewashes the historically reactionary role of the Catholic Church in Mexico. One cannot imagine how such an approach would convince or educate any viewer, including those not at all familiar with the history of this conflict. As befits a one-dimensional propaganda film, the performances are mostly flat and cartoonish.
It is ironic that a movie that purports to represent a popular struggle in defense of religion pointedly ignores the main protagonists: the peasants themselves, both as individuals and in their collective action. Throughout the movie, neither the peasant forces, nor the government soldiers that are sent against them are ever depicted as real human beings.
This movie's celebration of faith and charisma—reduced to the cry 'Long Live Christ the King!'—is a crude effort to obscure the underlying class conflicts that gave rise to the real Cristeros, a social movement that is not widely understood .... Victorious in the Mexican Revolution, the Constitutionalist Army, led by Venustiano Carranza, Álvaro Obregón and Calles, had defeated the peasant armies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The new regime was incapable of resolving a central issue over which the Revolution had been fought, the redistribution of land.
The slow and erratic pace of land distribution under Carranza, Obregón and Calles confirmed to the peasantry the military government's timidity in confronting the large and powerful landowners. The immense properties of the church constituted an important source of economic stagnation and social instability. Efforts in the 19th century to force the church to rent out its land to others, let alone to surrender ownership, met with fierce opposition.
According to historian Jesús Silva Herzog the peasantry and the working class confronted a "demonic triumvirate:" the great landowners, the military, and the Church. "Three tragic words define Mexican history: haciendas, sacristy and barracks." Lacking a revolutionary party and isolated from the workers, the rebellion of Mexican peasants was hobbled by the Catholic Church. Desperate peasant and Indians threw themselves into battle during the Cristero War ideologically imprisoned by Catholic dogma.
Had the Cristero War merely pitted the government of President Calles against the Catholic establishment, it is unlikely that the unprecedented brutality—the mass repression of peasants, the burning and looting of their towns—would have taken place. Historically, ruling classes reserve this kind of gross brutality to the rebellion of the most oppressed: peasants, workers or slaves.
Pathfinder (2007)
A very decent outdoor action flick!!!
Overwhelmed Native Americans armed with stone knives and tomahawks versus vicious, bloodthirsty Viking raiders clad in leather skins and furs, heavily armored, and wearing fearsome-looking headgear brandishing long steel swords, steel arrowheads, and very pointy maces attached to long, heavy chains. They ruthlessly spare no one.
That pretty much sums up this worthwhile flick.
Vikings had conducted numerous raids against European towns and cities during the period's Dark Ages, plundering their wealth and sometimes slaughtering their inhabitants. It's highly doubtful that Vikings had ever molested native Americans in our hemisphere. In reality, however, from the 16th century up to the late 19th century, settlers and soldiers from the western European countries (ironically perhaps, many of them descendants of the Viking raiders' victims) will eventually do to them what the Viking brutes had fictitiously wrought against the Indians in this movie.
If you relish slaughterfest films such as those featured in the "Conan" and "Lord of the Ring" movies, then you'll like this one.
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
Yup! It's an updated mishmash of "Angry Red Planet" and the "DEAD" movies
It's a movie to watch on a boring, rainy afternoon or evening. Nothing particularly special about the movie. John Carpenter seemed to have been jinxed or something a long time ago. His movies usually start out as very promising but rots away as the picture progresses. He's a fine example of directors who start out creating masterpieces on a minuscule shoestring budget but loses his way when working with bigger budgets. And it's a shame that we didn't get to explore more of the Wanda DeJesus character. She seemed to be one of the more interesting character in the whole movie, next to Pam Grier. Her fate came after her folks abandoned her after battling the zombies. She went down fighting, I suppose. But what a waste!
Wraiths of Roanoke (2007)
Not a Bad Flick considering it's a SciFi channel movie
this movie is a fictional account of events leading up to the mysterious disappearance of a bunch of English colonists in the 16th century. While I never saw the "Highlander" TV show, I have known the serviceable Adrian Paul from his old "War of the Worlds" series days. The guy still keeps in shape. The video moves along fairly well and contains reasonably high suspense along with a very high slaughter rate among wraiths, soldiers, colonists and a native American tribe. The actors do what they can with what they got. the picture contains good outdoor scenery of the woods. don't expect Shakespeare with this worthwhile two hour time killer.