'Criticism is the only thing that stands between the audience and advertising.' - Pauline Kael

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Paul Robeson With Oakland, Ca. Shipyard Workers, 1942

Black August

So in order to best cover all bases, progressive film critics tend to consider three categories of assessment, rather than two: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The first two are self-explanatory. And the third category is reserved for movies that may have been impressively put together, but there's just something offensively anti-humanistic about them.

Stay tuned......

The Organizer

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Moonwalkers: Tarantino On Acid Subversive Sixties Stoner Satire




Moonwalkers may be a sixties cold war comedy about US media machinations to make it to the moon first, but its combo ballsy big screen intersection of politics, publicity and propaganda couldn't be more provocatively in the here and now. As a competitive moon landing operation in heated rivalry with the Soviet Union back then shrewdly bids to even out the odd over at the Pentagon, by substituting for perseverance the predetermined, conveniently scripted scenario skills over in Hollywood.

A psychedelically laden satirical banquet bashing a discredited US media as manipulative when it comes to fact versus fantasy as the storytelling machinations on any movie set, Moonwalkers opts for a hand wringing CIA in stealthy ops mode. And bent on tapping already spaced out on screen director Stanley Kubrick to stage an Apollo 11 makeshift moon landing well, just in case. Reluctantly called to duty for this daffy quest is PTSD damaged Viet vet CIA operative Kidman (Ron Perlman), who has massive anger mismanagement fantasy issues of his own, inside his perpetually restaged Nam freakout flashback head.

Which lands the seriously disoriented Kidman in the UK packing a suitcase full of CIA secretive cash in a search for the elusive Kubrick. And pursuing in the course of an extensive menu of period detail mindblowing mishaps, an array of individuals none of whom are the directing legend but claim they could be. Chiefly among them is failed rock musician Jonny (Rupert Grint) - more Harry Pothead here than anything else. And who may not be Kubrick, but is motivated enough by the money to possibly conjure a marijuana fueled make believe moon landing anyway. 

Move over millennials, who may be too out of touch with the sixties stoners thing you wouldn't understand. But just how far we've come a long way baby, from truth in movies and the media if there ever really was any, couldn't be more subversively served up in Moonwalkers - whether high on controlled substances for the duration or not.

Prairie Miller
Critical Women On Film
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