Movies From the Library
OK, so I checked out some movies from the library. Not sure why, I didn't have a lot of time, but here they were :
"After Earth": Well, if Will Smith was trying to get back into comedy, he succeeded on how silly the science is. Really, the science is so bad a Texas school board could poke holes in it.
"300:Rise of an Empire": Two worlds: "Unnecessary" and "Totally"
"The Counselor" : An interesting Southwestern noir collaboration between Ridley Scott and Cormac McCarthy, but MY GOD is it bleak. Michael Fassbender plays the title character in an impossible no-win situation, Penelope Cruz is actually winsome throughout the film (for the all good it does her), Javier Bardem has weird hair, and Cameron Diaz is the most flint-hearted bitch in history. And Brad Pitt spouts clever lines like "... they don't really believe in coincidences. They've heard of them - they've just never seen one."
"Hangmen Also Die!" this was an even more interesting collaboration, won between Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht, made during the depths of World War II, on the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in occupied Czechoslovakia. I'd never even heard of this film before, and I thought of myself as being up on Lang.
Turns out that one of the reasons I'd never heard of it is that is was labeled "subversive" by those genius film critics on HUAC. Indeed, it is Brecht's only American film credit. The film was buried because of Brecht's being blacklisted after his appearance at HUAC.
While this film was made less than a year after the events, it has utterly no connection actual historical reality. It's not a bad story, but it's just that, a story. Their Heydrich is not like the real Heydrich, and the facts of his assassination is completely different from what actually happened. The Nazis are of course nasty and brutal, though no less than reality; in the end, to pull some sort of light out of the darkness, the people of Prague pull off a con worthy of Mission:Impossible, but as a piece of rousing wartime drama, it doesn't have the charm of "Casablanca". It is an interesting look at the only collaboration between two great artists.