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Cinema - Movies against the war

Here I collect reviews of the vast number of movies sneering at the war effort, and promoting enemy victory.

Reviews

• Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
  • Michael Moore
  • Fahrenheit 9/11 refuses to even show the 9/11 attacks.
  • The Cowardice of Michael Moore - "why would someone who clearly understands the power of images choose not to show the most powerful images of our time?". Because he is afraid to, is the answer.
  • Mark Steyn, The Spectator, July 10th 2004 - "because he knows that if he showed us, say, the couple holding hands as they plummeted to their deaths he'd risk audiences reacting as viscerally as they do to the dead Iraqi kids. What Miss Hornaday calls "one of the most moving sequences in recent cinemas" is, in fact, an act of evasion."
  • Sept. 11 witness says Moore's film insults victims of the attacks by Michael Niewodowski, on Michael Moore's junk film "Fahrenheit 9/11." - "There have been more than 20 films made about Pearl Harbor, and over 200 films made about World War II. ... Moore's film is the first major motion picture about Sept. 11, 2001. This bears repeating. ... "Fahrenheit 9/11" is indicative of a nation that has become too apathetic, ignorant or deceived to face the enemy at the gate. America, where is your fury?"

• Why We Fight (2005) - high-brow Fahrenheit 9/11.
  • Why can't we see a documentary about why we fight?

• Homecoming (2005) by Joe Dante
  • Soldiers who died in Iraq come back from the dead and supposedly are angry with their commanders and their leader - rather than, say, with the director of this sneering disrespectful shit, who says that they died "for nothing."
  • So presumably the Allied dead in WW2 would have been angry with Winston Churchill - rather than, say, with Lord Haw-Haw.
  • I don't think Dante knows American soldiers very well.

• The War Within (2005)
  • Debbie Schlussel on the pro-jihadi propaganda film The War Within.

• Syriana (2005) - Trendy soft-focus Islamist whitewashing, cynical anti-American propaganda, left-wing agitprop, and daft oil paranoia.
  • In the film Syriana, there is no US action against jihadis at all. The CIA spend all their time trying to protect oil deals and military base rights. The war is apparently about oil, not about Islamism. The jihadis are shown as sympathetic young men, driven to Islamism by unemployment, or something. Bizarrely, they do not seem to hate Jews, gays, liberated women, atheists, Hindus and infidels. They do not attack civilians. The only ones attacking civilians are the Americans. Instead of working on targeting jihadis, the CIA devote their efforts to killing an Arab democrat and his children. Hezbollah save the hero from death, while the CIA kill children - that more or less sums it up. The film is well made, but it is fantasy that no one should take seriously. It has nothing to say about the real world.
  • Sadly, the DVD commentary shows it is meant to be taken seriously. The DVD commentary is a parade of rich white millionaires telling us ordinary people that we should feel guilty about driving cars. And apparently this will help stop the jihad, or something. Apparently the West, not the Arab world, is the problem.
  • The Despicable Self-Loathing Preached By 'Syriana', by Amir Taheri.
  • In the film, the brave Arab reformist, struggling to build a democracy with human rights, is assassinated by America. As Charles Krauthammer says: "Who in the greater Middle East is closest to the modernizing, democratizing paragon of "Syriana"? Without a doubt, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, a man of exemplary - and quite nonfictional - personal integrity, physical courage and democratic temperament. Hundreds of brave American (and allied NATO) soldiers have died protecting him and the democratic system they established to allow him to govern. On the very night the Oscars will be honoring "Syriana," American soldiers will be fighting, some perhaps dying, in defense of precisely the kind of tolerant, modernizing Muslim leader that "Syriana" shows America slaughtering."
  • Syriana won an Oscar.

Other

• Love Actually (2003)
  • Love Actually - a pleasant romantic comedy spoiled by the simply unnecessary insertion of obnoxious anti-American politics. It's bad enough that movie makers are afraid to address the war - that this massive drama is played out on the news and we never get the chance to see it in a movie. But now we have crap politics being shoved down our throat in the unlikeliest of settings.
  • Are the movie makers in such a hermetic Guardian-reading world that they think everybody will like Hugh Grant's crap speech? Sadly, probably yes.
  • In Love Actually, the US President is a Texan Bush-like character who is a sleazeball with women. In reality, of course, Bush is a rather dull family man who (in contrast with Clinton) has no interest in partying, goes to bed early, and is "Dry, sober, and at home with his wife" every night.

• The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
  • The Day After Tomorrow criticises a Cheney-like character for ignoring the danger of global climate change. In reality, of course, Cheney is a visionary who sees as few others do the real danger to the world - nuclear-armed Islamist terror - a danger that the movie makers no doubt don't believe in, and won't take seriously until a western city is destroyed. Like in the film, in fact.

• Jason Bourne
  • The Bourne Identity (2002)
  • The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
  • The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
  • Jason Bourne is a unique action hero. In three films, he never fights anyone real. Only his own employers.
  • Maybe, as Cosmo Landesman says, that makes him the perfect left-wing action hero. "Bourne allows liberals to enjoy all the forbidden pleasures of the espionage block-buster: they can see him kick ass, break necks, smash faces and shoot fellow human beings, and not complain about civil liberties because the victims work for the CIA."

• The Four Feathers (2002), about Britain's 19th cent Sudan campaign against the Mahdi army.
  • James Lileks points out that The Four Feathers is about a similar fight (or even the same fight) as the West is engaged in today. And yet this point seems lost on the filmmakers. "but you wouldn't know it from the movie. It's like Warner Brothers making a movie in 1942 set in the Prussian wars that studiously ignored parallels to modern events."

Anti-Israel movies

• Paradise Now (2005)
  • Anti-Semitism now - Irit Linor on the anti-Israel propaganda film Paradise Now: "The message of "Paradise Now" is simple: We're all people, even mass murderers. You see, anyone has the potential to blow up children and babies in a restaurant. It can happen to anyone, like dandruff."
  • There are no children shown on the civilian bus that the handsome "hero" is bombing. Why not?
  • There are no shots of the lives and loved ones of his victims. Why not?
  • The aftermath of the bus bombing is not shown. Why not?
  • The Palestinians are not shown celebrating the bus bombing. Why not?

• A similar film is Day Night Day Night (2006), which features a beautiful (of course) young Islamic suicide bomber of innocents in New York. The film (of course) attempts to humanise her and "understand" her. How about a film that demonises the killers of innocents? Wouldn't that be something novel?

• Leila Khaled - Hijacker (2006) glorifies the terrorist Leila Khaled.

• Jimmy Carter: The Man from Plains (2007), about Jimmy Carter's "book" on Israel.

• To Die in Jerusalem (2007) tries to humanise and "understand" female suicide bomber Ayat al-Akhras, and compares this killer with one of her innocent victims, Rachel Levy.
  • The director Hilla Medalia says: "I believe that theirs is a story that needs to be told, in part because we can all identify with the individuals in this tragedy. Most of us have all been 17, after all."
  • Sorry, no. I can't "identify" with a hate-filled Islamist religious maniac. Not even if they are 17.
  • And this evil woman was stopped from killing more innocents by a true martyr, security guard Haim Smadar. From here: "He was a father of five. Two of his children are deaf. He had been married for more than 30 years. He made a security guard's salary. ... Witnesses attest that his last words, as he struggled to stop Akhras from entering the supermarket were, "You are not coming in here. You and I will blow up here." He may have saved 12 or 20 or 30 lives, or more."
  • Comment: "He knew he was going to die but that didn't stop him. Unfortunately, he couldn't save Rachel Levy. But think about it. Here was a story of heroism made for a movie and it was largely ignored. It wasn't as important as the phony symmetry between killer and victim."

• Beaufort (2007), an Israeli anti-war film, cynical about the Israeli mission against its long-term totalitarian enemies in Lebanon, 1982-2000.
  • Are there any films supportive of the Israeli mission against its totalitarian enemies in Lebanon? Tell me here.

The Hamburg Cell

• The Hamburg Cell (TV movie, 2004)
  • What a safe, cowardly film. You know, this could have been a really great film. It could have been a masterpiece. It followed around the 9/11 plotters in a low-key way, showing them going through ordinary life, showing their prayers, their nutty beliefs. All very detached, neutral. And then it just ends with them getting on the planes.
  • Imagine, instead, if it ended by showing the orgy of explosive violence that actually happened next. The mild-mannered Islamists get up from their seats and saw through the throat of the screaming stewardess. They then burst into the cockpit and butcher the pilots, and then drive hundreds of terrified civilians, including women and little children, into the World Trade Center.
  • Just add 5 minutes to the end and this film could have been a masterpiece. But they were too cowardly to show that. What a safe, cowardly film.

• The butcher Ziad Jarrah.

V for Vendetta

• V for Vendetta (2006)
  • I loved the book V for Vendetta. I read it when it first came out in the 1980s, and I have been waiting for the movie for 20 years.
  • But V is coming out now in a different world, a world in which we are up against a real fascist enemy that cinema is ignoring. A religious fascist enemy that really would put Jews and homosexuals in camps, and that bombs Tube trains with people in them. It's just not the enemy that Alan Moore imagined. Unfortunately for the left, it turns out to be aggressive, Jew-hating, homophobic third-world immigrants that are doing this. Bringing V out now, while still a great film, seems like an act of evasion.

  • In fairness, they tried to modify the story to fit modern events. But they made a mess of it. In the book, fascists come to power in the wake of a real nuclear war, which was both chilling and plausible. In the film, the government carries out a fake bio-terror attack to scare the people and take power. But this is implausible conspiracy-theory nonsense.
  • Much scarier is the nightmare idea that a real Islamist mega terror attack in Europe pushes the people over the edge to neo-fascism and ethnic cleansing of the Muslims of Europe. This is chilling and plausible. The neo-cons worry about this endlessly - the reaction of Europe to a successful mega terror attack by the Islamists. Europeans may not be as restrained as Americans were.
  • How much better the film could have been if the 80,000 dead was a real Islamist attack. Maybe the film-makers thought this would be seen as "justifying" the fascist government. But it would not. It would just make the film darker, rather than the simplistic version where we just have to oppose the government and everything will be alright.
  • The film more or less suggests that terror is not a real threat, in Britain anyway, and only the government is a real threat. Just weeks after they finished shooting in early June 2005, suicide terrorists bombed the London tube, making this aspect of the film look permanently ridiculous. It could have been a masterpiece. But they chickened out from showing two bad guys - Islamists and neo-fascists. They wanted only one bad guy, and ended up looking dated and ridiculous.

Leftie dreams - Death of a President and The Trial of Tony Blair

• Death of a President (2006)
  • George W. Bush is assassinated, in this leftie's wet dream. A Syrian, who had been to a jihad training camp in Afghanistan, is convicted of the killing, but he is (of course!) innocent. A brave Syrian dissident, risking his life and the lives of all his family, claims on TV that this is a Syrian state plot - because he so much wants America to destroy the tyranny in Damascus. And for this the film mocks him rather than celebrates him.
  • The real killer is (of course!) a former proud American soldier who is also the father of an American soldier killed in Iraq. He was loyal and patriotic, and brought up his kids to serve, but "Bush destroyed all that". A black soldier too! Pure leftie genius!
  • Of course, these Bush-hating moonbats are playing with fire. Have they forgotten that the deranged John Hinckley, Jr shot President Reagan in 1981, after becoming obsessed by Taxi Driver and Jodie Foster. Who knows what Death of a President will inspire?
  • Comment notes how risky the President's job is: "approx 9.3% of sitting Presidents have been assassinated in office (statistically much riskier than a tour in Iraq)"

• American political assassins:
  • Dale Amon notes that, ironically, the movie slanders black Americans by implying they would be likely assassins. "'Black Americans' are Americans first and melanin enhanced second. They are as patriotic as any other Americans and perhaps more so. What would be a realistic plot? If I were writing such a script, I would make the killer a Cindy Sheehan follower."
  • Comment: "The story would have been much more interesting and perhaps realistic if the president had been murdered by a delusional leftist film director."
  • American political assassins and would-be assassins have been mainly white:
    • Leon Czolgosz, 1901
    • Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963
    • James Earl Ray, 1968
    • Arthur Bremer, 1972
    • Samuel Byck, 1974
    • Lynette Fromme, 1975
    • Sara Jane Moore, 1975
    • Dan White, 1978
    • John Hinckley, Jr, 1981
  • Or Arab:
    • Sirhan Sirhan, 1968
  • OK, there is the exception of the killing of Malcolm X by his own (black) comrades in 1965.

• The Trial of Tony Blair (see here) (2007) by the leftie Alistair Beaton
  • Another leftie's wet dream. Blair, who helped bring down two dictatorships and offered the people democracy, is charged with "war crimes" in the Hague. The whole film is about Blair's guilt, and bizarrely, Blair himself feels guilty.
  • What he should feel guilty about is never explained. The moral responsibility for all deaths in Iraq since the start of the invasion on 20 Mar 2003 lies with the Saddam regime and the fascist "resistance". Had Saddam's regime not resisted Iraq's liberation, and had the fascist "resistance" not resisted the introduction of democracy, not a single person need have died from 20 Mar 2003 onwards. In my book, Saddam and the resistance bear all the guilt for death in Iraq. Bush and Blair bear none.
  • The film is a glimpse of a nightmarish world where UN law made by unelected juntas and dictators overrides British law, and we must all obey whatever African dictators decide. The only good thing in the film is it says the allies and Israel have bombed Iran. If only it is true that in the next few years the US, UK and Israeli governments have the balls to do this.
  • One very noticeable thing about this film is that the lefties have no plan for the Middle East. They have no positive ideas at all for what to do next. They have no real interest in the future of Iraq. All they care about is punishing anyone who wants to help it.
  • The film has great faith in the abilities of "soft power" (the UN and international law). But, like I suspect many in the UK and US, if Blair was sent to the Hague, I would support the U.K. and U.S. military attacking the Hague to release him.
  • This drama is produced by David Aukin, who also produced the safe, cowardly The Hamburg Cell.

Enemy propaganda

• The Mark of Cain (2007)
  • Why must the media attack our soldiers' mission?, Michael Gove, April 3, 2007 - It's not so much that this enemy propaganda was made. It's a free country after all. It's that this is the only thing that gets made: "I do take issue with Channel 4's decision to screen a drama, its only dramatic depiction of our troops at war in Iraq, which portrays them all as bullies, sadists, moral vacuums or cowards. ... How can it be right that the only drama yet screened about our troops in Iraq, who are risking everything to help to build a democracy, is one in which they are depicted as sadists and cowards? Why do the people who commission this sort of stuff seem to hate our country, and our values, so much that their first impulse is to see what they can do to blacken the reputation of those who fight in our name? And what does it say about the moral courage of our broadcasters that the broader context of the war our soldiers are fighting, the struggle against militant Islamism, just doesn't get a look-in?"
  • At the same time as Channel 4 was showing this one-sided propaganda, the BBC was cancelling a profile of Britain's only Victoria Cross winner in Iraq because it was "too positive" about the war: Hero's tale is 'too positive' for the BBC, Apr 2007.
  • In fact, I have never seen any drama on British TV celebrating the bravery and performance of British troops in Iraq. If you know of one, tell me here.

  
  

• Meeting Resistance (see here) (2007)
  • Pro-enemy propaganda by Molly Bingham and Steve Connors. They defend and justify the Iraqi jihad that is killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians. They seem to want it to win, so that all of Iraq can be enslaved.
  • Shame on them for this disgusting enemy propaganda.
  • They ask: "What would you do if America was invaded?" Are they so stupid that they have never thought of the answer to this: "If I lived in a country ruled by a sadistic murdering tyrant that has isolated himself from the rest of the world and brought nothing to the people but poverty and pain, while living a lifestyle beyond my wildest dreams, and I saw an Iraqi soldier riding on top waving his gun promising freedom and opportunity, I would not only accept that, but I would shake his hand and thank him from the bottom of my heart ... Suck on that New York Times! This game is easy."

  
  

• Valley of the Wolves Iraq (Turkey, 2006), the anti-American, anti-semitic hate film.
  • Unbelievably, two American actors star in this enemy propaganda film.
  • Debbie Schlussel (or via here)
  • Davids Medienkritik
  • Video clips: "mostly it's just a cinematic dud, a ridiculous Turkish propaganda film that has little to interest anyone who isn't a nationalistic Turkish teenager with too much testosterone."
  • Turkey

Enemy propaganda: The Road to Guantanamo

• The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
• Unbelievably, this British film was actually filmed in the enemy state of Iran. Of course Iran was delighted to assist this production, as part of their war effort (a war effort which involves killing British soldiers in Iraq).
• The film is such good propaganda, and such good recruiting material for the jihad against the West, that the lead enemy, Iran, has ordered multiple prints of the film. The film's British producer Andrew Eaton said he was "delighted and overjoyed" with this news. So he is delighted that his film will be used by a totalitarian dictatorship to entrench its power and promote hatred and war against Eaton's culture? He is delighted that his "tyrant-friendly" film is allowed when other, more dangerous films are banned in Iran?
• Doesn't the fact that the Iranian regime likes his film cause him any doubts at all?

• Guantanamo Bay

• If it's all so simple, I need answers to a couple of questions on Guantanamo - David Aaronovitch on the film.
• The heroes of the film are the "Tipton Three". Immediately after 9/11, when America was gearing up for war on Afghanistan, these three young British Muslim men left the safety of Britain and travelled to Pakistan. The bombing of Afghanistan started 7th Oct 2001. On 12th Oct (after the bombing had started), they volunteered (at a mosque in Pakistan) to go into Afghanistan "to help in aid projects", even though none are Afghani. The British director Michael Winterbottom says: "they were interested to see Afghanistan, and wanted to help the people there". The mosque they volunteered at was at the time openly recruiting fighters for the Taleban, but apparently they did not notice this. They were captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in Nov 2001 alongside lots of foreign fighters who had joined the Taleban.
• I don't see why anyone is surprised they ended up in a POW camp for several years. If they are innocent, they must be the most stupid young men on earth.
• And why is this an interesting story? Why make films about it? (As opposed, say, to the many stories of allied heroism and bravery fighting fascism in Afghanistan.) Why make films about this story? Unless your intent is to see the enemy win this long struggle.

• There are so many things wrong with this film:
  • 9/11 is never even mentioned. America seems to be attacking Afghanistan for no reason.
  • The barbaric nature of the Taliban regime is never mentioned. Afghanistan is simply described as a place which has large naan bread! The idiot central characters, who were lucky enough to grow up in the free and rich country the UK, express no misgivings at all about entering a totalitarian religious slave state.
  • When the bombing of the Taliban starts, sad music starts playing, as if this is something bad!
  • The idiot central characters are shown hanging out with armed Taliban and foreign jihadi fighters. Never once does it occur to them that they might be taken as one of them. Never once do we hear them explain this insane decision. Never once do we hear them express any reservations about the jihadis.
  • The attack on the scattered and fleeing Taliban and jihadi forces is depicted as if it is something bad! Sad music even plays! It goes on for ages, as if the death of Taliban and foreign jihadis is a bad thing! Since I've never actually seen a film depicting the heroism of the allied forces that liberated Afghanistan from these scum, it seems a bit rich that the only portrayal of this I've now seen is from the enemy's viewpoint. Maybe Michael Winterbottom has seen many such films. I wish he'd tell me a few names of them here.
  • A surrendering Taliban leader expresses hope that his POWs will be treated according to the rules of war - as if that's what the Taliban would do! For example, a school teacher was disembowelled by the Taliban in 2006. His crime: teaching girls. He was dragged from his crying children and partly disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes. But of course including such scenes would have spoilt the film.
  • While the treatment of the prisoners is brutal and seems incredibly fearful and paranoid, a bit of context, such as the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi, might help. But that would spoil the film, wouldn't it?
  • You have to wait for 38 minutes before a single person says something sensible. An American soldier discovers to his disbelief that this prisoner is from England. "You mean you come from England? ... You're from England?? You asshole! What are you doing here?" That sums it up, really,

• In June 2007, on the "Lie Lab" TV program, one of the "Tipton Three" admitted that he did not go into Afghanistan for "charity". "Ahmed confessed (Rasul had refused to go through with the test) not only to visiting an Islamist training camp but also handling weapons and learning how to use an AK47."
• Why did the US release these men?

Enemy propaganda: Redacted

• Redacted (2007)
  • Brian De Palma directed Casualties of War (1989), showing not American heroism in Vietnam (of course), and not communist crimes (don't be silly), but rather American crimes (of course).
  • De Palma has now written and directed Redacted, based not on American heroism in Iraq (of course not), and not on jihadi crimes (they slaughter tens of thousands but it is of no interest to cinema), but rather on American crimes, namely the Mahmudiyah killings (of course).
  • It's clear that you'll only ever get one side of the war from this guy.
  • And is the Mahmudiyah incident the best he can do in presenting his case against America? After all, unlike the endless stream of jihadi rapes and killings, the Mahmudiyah incident was an anomaly that was punished severely by the US military, with sentences of life in prison, 100 years in prison and 110 years in prison. What more does De Palma want? He wants them executed? I'd agree with that (as would many on the right), but somehow I don't think that's his point. His point is to get America to lose, and the jihad to win.
  • In fact, the U.S. military did threaten the soldiers with the death penalty, and they pleaded guilty to avoid it, and the soldier being charged under federal, not military law, is facing the death penalty.

• Libertas review: "There are two acts of terrorism in Redacted, both take the life of a Marine and are set-up in such a way that their deaths are completely justified. The first man killed is a racist Sergeant who sees the Iraqi people as rat-like scavengers, the other is beheaded in direct retalition for the rape. The only harm we ever see done to the Iraqi people is at the hands of the United States."
• Review: "The film ends with photos of real-life victims of the Iraq war, though it's impossible to tell who they are, how they were killed, or who killed them. Is De Palma saying it doesn't matter?"

• I got to see this vile film. Here's a summary:
  • It opens with U.S. soldiers killing a pregnant woman when they fire on a car that doesn't stop at a checkpoint. The soldiers show no remorse afterwards and just joke about it. Then a black Sergeant is blown up by jihadis. We had already seen him make racist comments about the local people. Then they raid a house, taking a man away, and leaving his family in tears. A 15 year old girl and her little sister are left behind. We see the soldiers leering after these girls, and humiliating them at a checkpoint. Then they start drinking and it is proposed to go back to that house to take advantage of the 15 year old. No one reports this plot to their superiors. They burst into the house at night, round up the terrified family, shoot them all (mother, grandfather and little sister), and gang rape the girl, all the time laughing and joking and mocking. They then shoot the girl in the face and set fire to her body. The father is interviewed and says "Such shame on my family is only cleansed by blood." (Implying that the Iraqi resistance is motivated by revenge for American crimes.) The jihadis then capture a U.S. soldier, and, fantastically, they capture one of the ones who was involved in the crime! (*) They cut off his head while he is alive, on video, and place the head on top of his abandoned body. We then see the two rapist soldiers talking. One describes how his gangster brother in America killed a man, and then his wife and kids. His buddy admires him and is impressed by the story. They express sadness that his brother got caught. Finally we are back home with one of the soldiers who did nothing. He is saying that when he joined up, he wanted to kick ass for 9/11. But now all his idealism is gone. (Or so De Palma hopes!) The movie ends with photos of dead civilians. For some reason, De Palma doesn't tell us who killed them and how. His website redactedmovie.com does not explain the pictures either. They are labelled "collateral damage". That is, it implies that the US killed them (since if the jihad killed them, they wouldn't be collateral damage - they would be the targets). If anyone has proof the US killed these people, please tell me here.
  • In contrast to some reviewers, I think it's well made and well acted. It's just that it's vile propaganda. The U.S. soldiers are all crude, racist, criminals, cowards, and just generally stupid and undisciplined. They are what the jihad says they are. And the jihad is also what the jihad says it is - brave Iraqis defending their home and families. At no point do jihadis ever attack civilians. At no point do U.S. soldiers ever attack jihadis. At no point do U.S. soldiers do anything useful. It is fine recruiting material for the jihad. Wartime enemy propaganda.

• (*) The Tucker and Menchaca killings and mutilations:
  • In real life, a few months after the Mahmudiyah killings, the jihadis kidnapped, tortured and mutilated two utterly innocent, uninvolved soldiers, Tucker and Menchaca. They tortured them, dragged them through the streets, beheaded one of them, and mutilated both. Various reports said they cut out their tongues, eyes, hearts, livers and intestines, and cut off their ears, noses, toes, fingers and genitals.
  • But it would have spoilt the film to show the jihadis taking revenge on innocent, uninvolved, honourable soldiers. You can see why De Palma doesn't like the truth.
  • See the images (and here) [GRAPHIC] that De Palma doesn't want you to see.

• The Truth About The Troops, Jacob Laksin, November 26, 2007 - The truth about the real rules of engagement in Iraq, and the U.S. military's endless efforts to protect civilians and respect religious sensitivities.

• Multi-millionaire De Palma carries on attacking the troops in an interview, 24 February 2008.
  • "According to De Palma, the pent-up anger of the US forces in Iraq is worse than that of the troops who served in Vietnam, there, he says, at least US soldiers had brothels to visit in order to let off steam. 'This is not the way the army likes to see itself portrayed,' he adds. 'They want to be seen the way the administration portrays them: valiant people over there creating democracy - all that mumbo jumbo.'" What a disgusting, sneering, cynical man.
  • He complains that "now it's all over the web that I'm a left-wing wacko traitor", as if that is somehow an irrational response to his film.

Clint Eastwood's failed movies

• Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
  • Instead of telling us the incredible story of Iwo Jima, this movie spent half its time on this really boring story about the flag photo. I guess Clint Eastwood was trying to make some preachy point about mythology, but frankly it was fairly uninteresting compared with the epic, world-changing events taking place on the island.
  • Propaganda Then and Now by Kyle Smith, October 27, 2006 - "For 61 years, Americans have believed that the flag-raising on Iwo Jima was our country captured in its finest moment of teamwork, courage, triumph. For the next 61 years, thanks to Clint Eastwood's new film "Flags of Our Fathers," many Americans will think of it as a symbol of crass salesmanship, sleazy opportunism and even racism."
  • The film is based on a book. But the book is different: "Mr. Bradley devotes one of his book's 20 chapters to the bond tour, but it takes up a major chunk of the 131-minute film."
  • As Smith points out, the problem with the film is it is in fact really predictable: "At the outset of "Flags," one of the vets looking back decades later hints darkly: "Everyone likes things nice and simple - good and evil, heroes and villains." But the film's creed is equally simple: that money corrupts everything, that the official story must be a lie, that patriotism is just a bumper sticker."

• The companion movie, Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), from the Japanese side.
  • This movie was (again predictably) a bland whitewash of an Axis Japan that killed maybe 6 million men, women and children: "From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war."
  • Again, like Flags of Our Fathers, the big picture of Axis Japan's imperialist aggression and genocide is not mentioned. There is no context for the war. There is no explanation of what the Battle of Iwo Jima means for the hopes of millions of Asians suffering under Japanese tyranny. There is no condemnation of people like Baron Nishi for knowingly fighting for this tyranny.
  • James Lileks on Flags of Our Fathers: "There's no sense in this movie that World War Two was fought for any particular reason. It just was a thing that happened and some guys paid the price and the survivors were dragged out for an ad campaign."

• The Japanese tortured prisoners on Iwo Jima:
  • According to Letters from Iwo Jima, we are meant to believe that the commander Kuribayashi was an honourable man who did not order the torture of prisoners: "Japanese soldiers increased the impact of these tactics by capturing sleeping Marines and taking them back down into their bunkers where they could be mercilessly tortured, with the screams carrying to the sleeping Marines up on the ground via small diameter vent holes."
  • How could the noble Kuribayashi have ordered such things? After all, allied prisoners, and civilian men, women and children, were raped, starved, tortured to death, burned alive, used for bayonet practice, and dissected alive everywhere else in the Japanese Empire. What makes anyone think Iwo Jima and Kuribayashi would be any different?
  • Chris Tookey: "As William Manchester's memoir Goodbye, Darkness and Chester Hearn's book Sorties Into Hell reveal, the defenders serving under this supposedly heroic leader committed many terrible atrocities, including eating American captives alive at night so the U.S. Marines could hear their screams of agony. There were many acts of Japanese torture, including the sodomising and beheading of prisoners."
  • Sorties Into Hell details the eating of prisoners on Chichi-jima. Possibly prisoners on Iwo Jima were merely tortured, not eaten.
  • Ralph Ignatowski, featured in the film, was dragged underground and tortured by Kuribayashi's troops: "Other eyewitness reports further indicated that Ignatowski had been tortured in the cave by the Japanese for three days, during which time they also cut out his eyes, cut off his ears, smashed in his teeth, and cut off his genitalia and stuffed them into his mouth."
  • As Tookey says: "I know that to acknowledge these facts might diminish Eastwood's case, which is that the Japanese were innocent victims of a thing called 'war', but without some recognition of these factors, his account is light years away from honest."
  • Comment: "The worst part is that the modern day Japanese are pig ignorant of the fact of the war; their government has lied to them for sixty years, saying that the Japanese soldiers - who in reality tortured, raped, murdered and killed his way across 1/8 of the globe - were actually honorable and that it was the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the true victims of the war. This movie COULD have opened their eyes about the facts."

The big rush of anti-war movies, 2007-08

As you know, I'm obsessed by the war on Islamism, and I go to the movies a lot, and I'd love to see good movies on this topic, and I know I have this webpage and so I should really see these. But frankly my enthusiasm for seeing these is pretty much nil:

1. Anti-war, anti-CIA movie Rendition (2007) - All jihadis are innocent family men targeted by the evil CIA. Obviously, stories about enemy POWs who may or may not be innocent are far more interesting than stories about the allied heroes actually fighting the enemy.

2. Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) - Documentary about "Dilawar", a taxi driver allegedly tortured and killed by U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan in 2002.
   • The story does sound as if someone should be prosecuted, but why is this kind of thing the only type of film that ever gets made? Couldn't they make one movie about the heroic and awe-inspiring destruction of the entire Taliban regime in just a few weeks? Just one? It's 6 years now and still not one film supporting the allied troops in Afghanistan.
   • As Libertas says: "it still grates that nothing given equal weight is ever produced to expose the evil of our enemy or the many, many selfless and heroic acts this country and her military is responsible for each and every day."
   • Taxi to the Dark Side won an Oscar.

3. Lions for Lambs (2007) - It's all evil neo-cons or something.
   • Libertas review: "I think you get the point that Lions For Lambs is the most expensive manifestation of Bush Derangement Syndrome yet. There's no other explanation, because you would have to be whacko out of your head to fund, produce, star, and distribute a film this embarrassingly bad. What Lambs is is a 2,000-plus screen monument to liberal stupidity. Seven-years of BusHitler raging within, and this is it? This is the manifesto? This?" And more.

4. Redacted (2007) - Wartime propaganda for the jihad that will encourage the killing of Americans. In no other war in history were enemy propaganda films like this made while the troops were still fighting in the field.

5. The documentary No End in Sight (2007) - American errors led to the Iraqi fascist "resistance" (rather than, say, the widespread tribal, sectarian, totalitarian and Islamofascist beliefs in the Middle East).
   • I'm sure America didn't do everything right after the liberation of Iraq in 2003. But probably nothing could have stopped the fascist resistance. These ideologies simply need to burn themselves out. The problem is the ideology itself, not the civilized people who have to deal with it. No normal, well-meaning people would have responded to any American errors with violence. You don't suicide bomb children and mosques because of something the Americans did. You do it because that's the type of person you are.

6. S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure (2008) by Errol Morris, a documentary movie about Abu Ghraib. No, not about Abu Ghraib when Saddam killed thousands there, silly.
   • Libertas: "this is simply Hollywood's same old, same old, blowing a mistake of ours completely out of context to hurt the war effort and refusing to even for a moment reveal the brutality of the enemy we face."
   • Libertas review: "One of the MPs .. served 8-months in prison after being found guilty of pouring bottled water on a prisoner and then hurling a Nerf football at him. To underscore the heinousness of this crime, Morris .. stages an ominously lit slo-mo shot of a Nerf football bouncing off a prison floor set to [a] score .. usually saved for the last reel of a Halloween flick. ... contrary to the filmmakers’ intentions, I left the theatre feeling good about a country, where, if anything, our laws are too easy on prisoners during interrogations."

7. War, Inc. (2008), written by, produced by and starring John Cusack. A "satire" sneering at the effort in Iraq. With every leftist cliche in the book. Please tell me I never have to sit through this movie.
   • John Cusack's inspiration for the film is Naomi Klein's idiotic conspiracy theory of "Disaster Capitalism". Anything to avoid understanding what the U.S. military are actually doing in Iraq.
   • Cusack "explains" that this film is about: "the absurdities wrought by the neo-conservative, neo-liberal experiment in the Middle East and around the world. ... the ever expanding war machine is completely out of control and has morphed into something far more dangerous than Eisenhower ever imagined."

8. Battle For Haditha (2008), not about allied bravery (of course), or jihadi crimes (of course). Rather about the Haditha massacre.

9. Infinite Justice (2007) by French-Pakistani writer and director Jamil Dehlavi. About a Jewish reporter captured and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan (like Daniel Pearl). Sounds full of moral equivalence. Tagline is the leftist slogan: "With every battle that you win, you make another enemy". Well that wasn't exactly true in 1945.

1. In the Valley of Elah (2007) - A returning U.S. soldier is murdered by members of his own platoon after a rowdy night on the town. Because that's what U.S. soldiers do. Another soldier drowns his dog and then his wife in the bathtub. Oh yes, and in Iraq they drove over children in their way on the street.

2. Home of the Brave (2006) - U.S. soldiers traumatised by the war. Heaven forbid that we should see confident U.S. soldiers displaying their skill and bravery.

3. Stop-Loss (2007), not about the fight in Iraq. Rather about a soldier's fight to avoid going back to Iraq.
   • Libertas review: "If our military was as stupid as portrayed in the movie, casualties in Iraq would be ten-times what they are. ... The values of the film are so upside down that it's Steve - the girlfriend beating, front yard foxhole digger - and his fidelity to the Army that's portrayed as the problem, not the deserter."

4. Day Zero (2007) - Three young men get drafted to fight in the Middle East, and agonise about whether to go. Why would anyone want to watch this boring, depressing, anti-war, anti-morale crap? Why stick us with these whiny people when there are hundreds of thousands of clear-minded volunteers in the US? Why not give us just one film about what is going on in the Middle East? Just one film showing us this war against evil and depravity.

5. Grace Is Gone (2007), produced by and starring John Cusack. Not about the war, but rather about a father who does not want to tell his 2 daughters that their army mother has been killed in Iraq.
   • Libertas review
   • Imagine a mother with 2 sons in 1944-45. Their father dies liberating Europe from the Nazis. Would the mother be ashamed? Would she hide it? Or would she be unbearably sad and yet tell her sons that Daddy was a hero. This film clearly doesn't believe that the wife was a hero. It doesn't believe she died for something. It just wants us to feel the family's pain, as a way, presumably, of attacking her mission.
   • Certainly we know John Cusack doesn't believe in her mission. He explains why he made this film: "If people see the human side of war, they'll be so revolted that they'll do more to stop it."
   • U.S. military female deaths in combat in Iraq
   • John Cusack's left-wing, anti-Iraq war blog.

1. Charlie Wilson's War (2007) looks at the ill-advised (but understandable) aid to the Afghan jihadis against the Soviets.
   • Given that the neo-con right has understood for years how bad this aid was, and has made up for its sins by attacking and deposing the Taliban, and introducing an embryonic democracy in Afghanistan (which is now freer than Pakistan), given all this, why make this film now? Who are they preaching to?
   • If the aim is to say that the US should not support Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or the Palestinian Authority now, because it will only lead to jihadi blowback in the future, then this film could be good. This would be totally correct. We should be horrified by the sending of aid to the Palestinian Authority, or the selling of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia.
   • If the aim of the film, though, is to claim that Islamism is actually caused by the West, this film will be worthless.

   • The answer seems to be more stupid. It doesn't sound like an anti-west or anti-victory film. But the film seems to be saying that the Democrats were important to victory in the Cold War:
   • Libertas review: "Twenty-five years ago, Democrats (and yes, Hollywood) worked as feverishly to derail, dismiss, and ridicule Ronald Reagan's aggressive pursuit of a Cold War victory as they do today to see Bush defeated in the War On Terror. And yet, CWW solely credits a liberal Democrat for bringing down the Soviet empire through the arming of the Afghan Mujahideen ... In Aaron Sorkin's hyper-wordy script there are two words glaringly absent: Ronald and Reagan. ... CWW's blatant agenda to me-too the Cold War is laughable. The time for Hollywood to get on the anti-Communist bandwagon is long past. A film honestly depicting the brutality of Soviet oppression and painting America as the good guys we were may have actually made a difference twenty-years ago, but for the Hollywood liberal to look back today, realize they were again on the wrong side of history, and make a film about a drunken, womanizing liberal winning the Cold War is detestable in the extreme. Charlie Wilson's war was but a drop in the bucket next to accomplishments of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul - the true Lincolns of their time who will never receive their due on the big screen from the morally bankrupt victors of the Hollywood culture war. No doubt, in twenty-years, after Iraq and Afghanistan are stable, prosperous defenders of democracy, a 105 year-old Mike Nichols and 70 year-old Aaron Sorkin will reteam to make a film about how Joe Lieberman made it all possible."
   • The real Charlie Wilson says the film omitted Reagan: "Former Rep. Charles Wilson played no official role in the making of last year’s film “Charlie Wilson’s War,” ... If the Texas Democrat had participated, it’s clear he would have cast an actor to portray a figure all but ignored in Mike Nichols’ production — President Reagan. “He was absolutely essential to the victory,” over the Soviets in Afghanistan, Mr. Wilson says"

2. Postal (2007) starts off by laughing at 9/11. Tasteless. Unfunny. Don't take my word for it. Watch the trailer and see if you laugh once.
   • It's quite possible to make humour about 9/11. If you choose the right targets (e.g. jihadis and truthers). But these people can't do it. I suspect they have the wrong politics to do it.

3. Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? (2008), documentary by Morgan Spurlock.
   • Of course we know where Bin Laden is. He is in Pakistan.
   • Apparently Spurlock just interviews a load of America-hating Middle Easterners and then: "At the end of the movie, he is about to go into the Tribal Area of Pakistan ... He thinks about his kid and decided to turn around."
   • Great comment: "The difference between Spurlock and our troops is ... he thinks about his kid and turns back, our troops think about their kids and go forward."
   • Libertas review: "Throughout his travels in the Middle East ... Spurlock stands quietly by and accepts without protest every evil spouted from the mouth of Arabs and Muslims about America. That's not creating an understanding. In fact, it's just the opposite. What Spurlock's doing in agreeing through his silence, and at times, verbally, is confirming everything that fuels the irrational hatred too many Arabs carry for our country."

These anti-war films are making no money

Maybe they'll make one pro-war film. Just one.

• Audiences feel the same lack of enthusiasm as me, October 25, 2007. "It doesn't matter how many Oscar winners are in front of or behind the camera - audiences are proving to be conscientious objectors when it comes to this fall's surge of antiwar and anti-Bush films. Both "In the Valley of Elah" and, more recently, "Rendition" drew minuscule crowds upon their release, which doesn't bode well for the ongoing stream of films critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's wider war on terror."

• Hollywood shoots itself in the foot, Mark Steyn, November 15, 2007:
  • "Every Friday night at the multiplex, Mr. and Mrs. America are saying, "Hmm, shall we see the movie where our boys are the torturers? Or the one where our boys are the rapists? How about the film where the heroic soldier refuses to fight? Or the one where he does fight and the army covers up the truth about his death?" And then they go see Fred Claus"
  • "In this season's crop of movies, the enemy is never al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Baathists ... Sure, they're out there somewhere at the fringe of events, but they're just Hitchcock's MacGuffin - the pretext for the real story. And that means the heroes can never be, say, a bunch of U.S. Marines who leap from their Humvee on the outskirts of Ramadi because something goofy's going on. No, the heroes have to be dogged journalists or crusading lawyers or obstinate wives who refuse to swallow the official explanation. And the real enemy are renegade government officials, covert agencies, right-wing senators, Halliburton. ... What the preview crowd were telling Berg is, hey, we'd love to see one film where our guys kick serious terrorist butt - and there isn't one, and there hasn't been one for six long years. ... But at some point reality will reassert itself. Hollywood, for complex psychological reasons, is waging war not on Bush and Cheney but on its core business, on the very art of storytelling. If you were of a conspiratorial bent, you might make a thriller about it."

• Satire - BoxBux Sux As Stix Hix Nix Xmas Flix - "Despite critical acclaim and massive promotional budgets, a wave of anti-Santa holiday pictures floundered at the box office over the Thanksgiving opening weekend, leading some entertainment industry analysts to question whether Hollywood had overestimated the American public's loathing for the Claus administration and a seemingly endless shopping season. ... The most controversial of the new releases, Brian De Palma's "Red on Green," also proved to be the weekend's biggest financial disappointment. The film's documentary-style depiction of brutal gang rapes, genital torture, and candy cane stabbings by North Pole workers earned critical raves and a Palm d'Or award for De Palma when it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year, but the positive advanced notices were not enough to fill theater seats. According to Nielsen/EDI the film generated only $18.00 in box office receipts ... Despite the disappointing weekend showing, MPAA spokesman Bell said that industry still has high hopes for 17 more anti-Santa films that will open nationwide this weekend"

• A pro-American film might make money:
  • Comment: "Can't Hollywood make just one pro-American film? How many anti-American films does this make? Do they hate the U.S. so much, that they can't seem to make a "300" type of movie about the American troops in Iraq? Come on Hollywood, give us something to get us back in the movie seats, if for no other reason, so you can make more anti-American films."
  • Michael L. Wentz, October 25, 2007: "The same is true in the movies. ... We want to get behind the heroes and fight along with them, feel their emotional peaks and valleys, and share in the victory when they vanquish the villain at the end. That is a great movie. ... A movie that takes a stand against the bad guys will be huge; they're always huge! A movie that takes a principled stand against the forces of evil will become a blockbuster. ... Audiences don't want to see this current slate of anti-war films. They want us to win. They want our country to be victorious and the Iraqi people free. They want to cheer for the good guys - America. They want the nightmare of terrorism over. ... What they don't want is the Hollywood view - the defeatists view. They're not going to go see the films."
  • Ezra Levant, October 25, 2007: "These films are not the results of true business decisions by Hollywood. They're personal indulgences -- hopefully ones that will cost the studios dearly. I don't know showbiz, but it seems to me that the first studio to decide to make an unabashedly pro-American movie about the war on terror -- where the enemy isn't the CIA, or a rogue U.S. Senator -- would set a box-office record."

• Pro-American video games make money:
  • Pro-military video games are making hundreds of millions of dollars. But Hollywood doesn't care. Hollywood doesn't want that money. Hollywood doesn't want that market (young males who want to be heroes).
  • As a comment above says: "Imagine a videogame in which soldiers die for nothing and victories are seen as ironic at best, disastrous at worst." Who would buy it? Likewise, why does Hollywood think anyone wants to see anti-victory films?

• Hollywood is casualty of war as movie-goers shun Iraq films, 9 Nov 2007 - A moronic AFP article that thinks movie-goers don't want to see war films.
  • The reality, as the fantastic comments section points out, is that movie-goers don't want to see left-wing anti-war films (which is all that is on offer).
  • Comment: "This guy is a moron. Make a movie showing America and American troops as the best in the world and they'll make more money than they can imagine."
  • Comment: "Hollywood doesn't get it and America is tired of the "America is the enemy" portrayals. Want to make money? make a movie about the heroes that are fighting over there. I'll spend dollars to feel good about winning the war."
  • Comment: "THANKS EVERYBODY! I love the USA and am proud to be a US citizen. I am sick of hearing the Liberals badmouth my country. If Hollywood wants to keep making anti-American movies, fine. But they have no business complaining when we don't watch their films."
  • Comment: "Interesting and quite hilarious to see a mainstream media reporter and a bunch of Hollywood elitists scratching their heads at all of this. Their utter cluelessness as to the make-up and character of the vast majority of the population of this country - so clearly defined by the 100% slamming they are taking in these COMMENTS - is just a beautiful irony here today."
  • Comment: "Really, who would want to see these movies? I know I sure don't. I wouldn't go see "Redacted" or "Rendition," if they were across the street and free, with all the free pop and candy I wanted. In truth, I love going to the movies, and I really like a good war movie. I have been waiting, waiting, waiting for years for something good, portraying the War on Terror to come out, but all we get is this anti-war, anti-Bush self-righteous crap."

• The End of the War Hero - "The first block-buster Iraq War movie will be about the battle of Fallujah or another life and death struggle showing Marines or Soldiers as heroes. This movie will follow the traditional monomyth with the heroes confronting a villain with violence and prevailing. But this movie will come out of nowhere. It will not be backed by a major studio or star name-brand actors. And only then will the war hero return."

Cinema - Movies supportive of the war

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