Welcome to WeeklyWilson.com, where author/film critic Connie (Corcoran) Wilson avoids totally losing her marbles in semi-retirement by writing about film (see the Chicago Film Festival reviews and SXSW), politics and books----her own books and those of other people. You'll also find her diverging frequently to share humorous (or not-so-humorous) anecdotes and concerns. Try it! You'll like it!

Category: Politics Page 23 of 36

Presidential caucuses have been Connie’s specialty in Iowa as she followed the elections of 2004, 2008, 2012 and wrote the 2 books “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House.” She also continues to follow politics by avidly reading everything she can get her hands on, including “Rolling Stone,” “Mother Jones,” “Newsmax,” “Time,” etc.

Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian Meetings

You’ll seldom find me agreeing with arch Republican columnist Charles Krauthammer, but his editorial entitled “Bungled Collusion Is Still Collusion” of Sunday, July 16th (Quad City Times) contains some sentiments that I want to share with you. And then I’ll include some remarks from “the other side.”

Quoting Krauthammer re the burgeoning Donald Trump, Jr. Russian meeting and Russian collusion, in general: “My view was, Collusion? I just don’t see it. But I’m open to empirical evidence. Show me. The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an e-mail chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself.” Krauthammer continues: “Once you’ve said, ‘I’m in,’ it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were copied on the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.” (8 people, in all, were present).


Krauthammer goes on to say: “It’s rather pathetic to hear Trump apologists protesting that it’s no big deal because we American are always intervening in other people’s elections and they in ours.” He goes on to say this is RUSSIA, our sworn adversary, and says, “This defense is pathetic for two reasons. First, have the Trumpites not been telling us for 6 months that no collusion ever happened? And now they say, ‘Sure it happened. So what? Everyone does it.’ He concluded that, no, not everyone does it (Gergen offered oral testimony that both the JFK campaigns and the Al Gore campaign said no to such foreign assistance offered to their campaigns) and said, “But it is not merely stupid. It is also deeply wrong, a fundamental violation of any code of civic honor.”

Just before typing this excerpt from a columnist with whom I seldom agree, I listened to David Gergen explain on television that the presidency requires someone in that office who sets a moral tone for the entire administration and the entire country. This seems self-evident and easy to understand, but that standard is not being met by the White House’s current occupant, whose ethics officer, Walter Schoud, just resigned, saying that the White House, unlike the 2 previous administrations, is doing nothing to cooperate with them on ethics violations and continues to violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which forbids a president or his family from profiting from the office while holding it. The fact that Donald Trump is constantly promoting his businesses is a given. Schaud said he told Donald Sr. numerous times that he must withdraw from his private holdings and shouldn’t be seen at his numerous golf courses (all but 4 weekends in office he has been playing golf at one of them or at Mar A Lago), thereby promoting that business. It was widely reported that the dues at Mar A Lago, Trump’s private Florida club, doubled from $100,000 to $200,000 after his election.

The Donald

Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004.
His editorial is entitled “What Is Wrong with Trump?” Pitt does not mince words. In his Monday, July 17th essay, African-American writer Pitt said: “This has been said a million times: Donald Trump is a lying, narcissistic, manifestly incompetent child man who is as dumb as a sack of mackerel. But he is the president of the United States because 63 million people preferred that to facing inevitable cultural change. So I am done asking—or caring—what’s wrong with him. Six months in, it’s time we grappled with a far more important question. What in the world is wrong with us?” (Quad City Times, p. A4)

In conclusion, I would refer you to my own Letter to the Editor, which appeared in the Sunday paper (Moline “Dispatch”). (It was on one of those annoying fold-over ad portions that you want to immediately rip off and throw away, so I doubt if many saw it on p. A11, which I almost could not find.)

I put my original letter on my blog in its entirety (scroll back) because generally my letters to the editor are round-filed without comment. I’ve sent 3 letters to the “Dispatch” editor and never once have they used one or contacted me to say it needed to be changed in some fashion. One letter was sent by snail mail on letterhead.

While I am glad that one (of 3) letters I took the time to write finally did see the light of day, I wrote today to ask why the credentials of all other writers are generally placed after their names. My credentials for writing a letter about our current political situation were placed at the end of my letter when I submitted it, but there was no mention of my having been named Content Producer of the Year (’08) for Politics by Yahoo (in 2009) or my 2 wins from the Illinois Women’s Press Association as the Best Writer of the Year in a contest judged by experts from the Chicago area, not by its members. (I won the Silver Feather Award, as it is known, in both 2012 and 2014.)


And I didn’t even mention the 2 books that came from my coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, or the fact that I (also) covered 2004 and 2012. As per usual, no response to my e-mail asking why my credentials were completely absent. Read my entire letter on here, but know that it concluded this way: “Trump’s arrogance at home and abroad has isolated us on the world stage and his inability to know how to behave as our representative is a national embarrassment.”

Driskell Hotel, Austin, Texas

The Magnitsky Act Explained

On Sunday morning’s talk shows, including Fahreed Zakaria’s, there was talk about the magnitsky Act (although it was mispronounced by several speakers.)

It becomes clear from this explanation by the Washington Post that the meeting that Donald Trump, Jr., took part in was probably an attempt to influence the Trump adminisration to revoke this act, which has particularly irked Vladimir Putin. It became law under Obama and it keeps the world’s richest man (Putin is worth something like $26 billion) from using ill-gotten gains not only in this country, but in countries in Europe, etc. In other words, it would be tantamount to bank robbers having no way to launder their take.

The Ruissian oligarchs have been very adamant about getting this act reversed, so that they can spend their money abroad. (“Follow the money,” as the old saying goes).

Here is wht the act did:

The law

The Magnitsky Act was signed by President Barack Obama in December 2012 as a retaliation against the human rights abuses suffered by Magnitsky. The law at first blocked 18 Russian government officials and businessmen from entering the United States, froze any assets held by U.S. banks and banned their future use of U.S. banking systems. The act was expanded in 2016, and now sanctions apply to 44 suspected human rights abusers worldwide.

Its official title is a mouthful — the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012. In most news stories and accounts, the shorthand is simply — the Magnitsky Act.

Bill Browder, an American hedge fund manager who hired Magnitsky for the corruption investigation that eventually led to his death, was a central figure in the bill’s passage.
*******
Bill Browder was a guest on Fahreed Zakaria’s Sunday morning 350 program and spoke eloquently about the act and the fact that his life is currently in danger from the Russians who have openly expressed the wish that he be dead.

This meeting of the Trump team was, in all likelihood, a tit-for-tat promise: you help us get rid of the Maginsky Act and we’ll help your candidate get elected.

And they did. [contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

“Letter to the Editor” that May (or May Not) Ever See Daylight

[* Below is the complete text of a letter sent to the “Dispatch” newspaper recently, which they refused to run in its entirety. I was told to shorten it to 250 words. The last letter I sent, they never responded and it never ran, so I’m not sure if this is a step forward or a step backward. At any rate, I thought I would offer the complete letter to my frequent readers, as one never knows if the letter will run at all.]

A letter in July 12th’s “Dispatch” from writer Betty Murphy of Orion requests that you stop publishing disinformation from the unreliable sources relied upon by columnist Stephen Moore. I would second Ms. Murphy’s objections to the dissemination of useless information and add to that list the publication on Tuesday, July 11th (page B8) of an ill-informed Dallas-based radio talk show host, Mark Davis.

On the very day it was revealed by Donald Trump, Jr., himself, that he had met with a Russian attorney connected to the Kremlin (in the hope of obtaining information to be used in the 2016 presidential race against candidate Hillary Clinton), Davis wrote that CNN has “wasted countless hours on Russia collusion fantasies.” [When Paul Mananfort, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Donald Trump, Jr., meet with a highly-placed Russian attorney with Kremlin ties, the Russian collusion claim goes well beyond “fantasy.”]

Davis went on to make the comment “…we have reversed the pandering to Cuba and the junk science of man-made global warming.”

Global warming is not junk science. The reality of global warming is accepted by literally every other civilized society, most of whom have joined the Paris Accord to confront the threat it represents to the world. Meanwhile, the U.S. under Trump has abdicated its leadership role on this important issue. Ignoring climate change may doom our planet. Disseminating this crack-pot viewpoint in your newspaper does a disservice not just to local readers but to the world.

Another Mark Davis remark: “Genuine conservatives remain thrilled at the results (of the Trump administration) so far.

Genuine conservatives…and, more importantly, genuine patriots of all political persuasions…are very, very concerned about the Trump administration—not “thrilled.”
Collusion with Russia to undermine the integrity of our elections; creating Muslim registries and travel bans; enriching the Trump family in direct conflict with the emolument clause of our Constitution; accepting aid, either monetary or other, from our enemies; undermining our intelligence agencies and our free press is cause for grave concern for everyone who values living in a free and fairly-elected democracy.

Davis’ entire editorial was blatantly mis-titled: “As haters whine about tweets, Trump succeeds.”

Donald Trump is NOT succeeding. His approval ratings are lower than any president in recorded history. His signature “accomplishments” are largely staged signings of presidential decrees, most of which he has not read, apparently, since he seems singularly ill-informed. (During his speech in France, he did not seem to remember the name of the man he had just nominated to be FBI Director). His health plan is “mean” (Trump’s own words) and a disaster. (Fix Obamacare, instead.)

The entire administration is in chaotic disarray (which must please the Soviet state, as that was their goal, all along.) Trump’s arrogance at home and abroad has managed to isolate us on the world stage and his inability to know how to behave as our representative is a national—now international— embarrassment. All of the warnings about what would happen if this dishonest, corrupt, narcissistic man were to be elected are coming true.

God help us all.

Sincerely, [contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

Connie (Corcoran) Wilson
www.ConnieCWilson.com
CEO, Quad Cities’ Learning, Inc.
www.quadcitieslearning.com
Author of “Obama’s Odyssey: The 2008 Race for the White House,” Vols. I and II
Yahoo Content Producer of the Year for Politics

Lawsuit Filed 9 Hours Ago by Maryland AGs Against Trump


I hope this works.

I am hopeful that, just as Al Capone was finally imprisoned for tax evasion, this legality that he has flouted will bring him down when the Republican members of Congress seem intent on supporting his disregard for the Constitution.

Nobody should use the Presidency as a money grab.

From the “Rasmussen Reports” on the Eve of Jefferson Sessions’ Senate Testimony

Trump & Consequences

Donald Trump’s Other Lies: His Campaign Promises
A Commentary by Ted Rall
in Political Commentary
Saturday, June 10, 2017

This week’s political coverage — probably next week’s, too — will likely be dominated by deposed FBI director James Comey’s incendiary testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. However, Trump’s “lies, pure and simple” are limited neither to the president’s claim that Comey’s FBI was “in disarray, that it was poorly led” nor his litany of falsehoods — most recently, that the mayor of London doesn’t care about terrorism and that Trump’s First 100 Days were the most productive of any president in history.

Comey’s lucid, Hemingway-tight testimony feels like the beginning of the end for this administration. Anything could happen, of course. But it feels overly optimistic to imagine this circus lasting another year.

If and when the obituary for Trump’s political career is written, his admirers will record his historic, meteoric rise. Indeed, Donald Trump was the most effective presidential campaigner of my lifetime: repeated what lines worked, ditched the ones that didn’t, mastered social media, ignored outdated dogma, tapped into voters’ long-ignored resentments, nailed the electoral college map, and did it all for pennies on the Hillary Clinton donor dollar.

True, the brilliant campaigner can’t govern. But that’s a story for another time.

His critics’ postmortems will emphasize that Trump’s brightly burning campaign rallies were fueled by lies: Obama was Muslim, Obama wasn’t born here, global warming is a Chinese hoax, illegal immigrants are streaming across the border (years ago they were, no longer), police officers are the real victims (as opposed to the numerous black men they shoot).

These lies are scandalous. They ought to be remembered. But we shouldn’t let them overshadow Trump’s biggest lie of all: that he would be different, outside the ideological box of the two parties.

“Trump meets the textbook definition of an ideological moderate,” Doug Ahler and David Broockman wrote in the Washington Post last December. “Trump has the exact ‘moderate’ qualities that many pundits and political reformers yearn for in politicians: Many of Trump’s positions spurn party orthodoxy, yet are popular among voters. And like most voters — but unlike most party politicians — his positions don’t consistently hew to a familiar left-right philosophy.”

Whiff!

Trump promised a hodgepodge ideology, a “pick one from column D, pick one from column R” Chinese menu that appealed to many voters whose own values don’t neatly adhere to either major party platform. Who cares about doctrine? Let’s do what works.

As president, however, that turned out to be a lie.

Trump has governed to the far right. In fact, on just about every issue you can think of, Donald Trump has governed as the most extreme far-right politician of our lifetimes, and possibly in the history of the Republican Party.

Candidate Trump criticized North Carolina’s “bathroom law” and said Caitlyn Jenner could use whichever bathroom she wanted in Trump Tower. President Trump rescinded the right of transgender students to use the school restroom of their choice.

Flip, flop, from somewhat to right-wing conservative, over and over and over again.

Candidate Trump lit up the GOP (and relieved not a few Democrats) by criticizing the stupid Iraq War and promising to put America First. President Trump’s cabinet of generals is bombing the crap out of Syria and asking Congress for a 10 percent increase in Pentagon spending.

Candidate Trump was all over the place on abortion rights. President Trump is trying to defund Planned Parenthood and appointed Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, a right-wing extremist who will likely cast the decisive vote against Roe v. Wade.

Candidate Trump promised bigger, better and cheaper healthcare for all Americans. Trumpcare will leave tens of millions of patients with no insurance whatsoever.

He even welched on his most controversial promise: to improve relations with Russia. Within a few months, he allowed that U.S.-Russian relations “may be at an all-time low.”

“Trumpism was never a coherent worldview, much less a moral code that anchors the president,” Graham Vyse wrote in The New Republic.

#Wrong!

Trumpism is extremely coherent and consistently extremist. Donald Trump turns out to be Ronald Reagan times ten, minus charm.

Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall) is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.

Trump Is Roasted by Stephen Colbert

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stephen+colbert+trump+joke+video

Stephen Colbert Interviews Obama Back in “The Good Old Days”

In the wake of James Comey’s testimony, which I watched “live” most of the day (and in clips most of the night), I long for a simpler time and a better occupant of the White House, and I point out that Millennials, don’t blame all we oldsters. He TOLD you to get out and vote, but methinks some of you did not.

I will say, “WHAT is WRONG with Ohio?”

I watched a focus group that had watched testimony all day and was then asked to come back and give their opinions after the long day was over and they were waving Trump signs around like nit-wits. How can ANYONE take Donald J. Trump’s word over James Comey’s? (And, bear in mind, as the FBI chief who released that statement on Oct. 27 that probably cost HRC the election, I’m no Big Comey Supporter, but he is a Boy Scout and Donald J. Trump is the most egotistical, arrogant, obnoxious, untruthful con man I’ve seen in the White House in my lifetime, and it isn’t getting any better any time soon.

It took something like 2 or 3 years for Watergate to wind down and Nixon to resign. Keep that in mind and go out and vote in the mid-terms. PLEASE!

Review: “It Comes At Night” Brings Psychological Paranoia & Terror This Summer

Secure within a remote desolate home in the woods as an unnatural threat terrorizes the world, the tenuous domestic order that Paul (Joel Edgerton of “Loving” and “Midnight Special”) has established with his wife Sarah (Carmen Ejogo of “Selma”) and son Travis (Kelvin Harrison Jr. of “Birth of a Nation”) is put to the ultimate test with the arrival of a desperate young family seeking refuge in “It Comes At Night.
“The movie is about the unknown and the fear of the unknown. Death is the ultimate unknown.” So says Writer/Director Trey Shults of his impressive new thriller “It Comes At Night,” which opens wide on June 9th. The minimalist story is not a typical genre thriller, according to Shults, but, as he said (quoting Mies Van der Rohe), “Less is more.” The basic story is about a family trying to survive in a cabin in the woods while some sort of virus ravages an apocalyptic land. “Imagine the end of the world— Now imagine something worse,” says the A24 press handout.

The second man who brings his family to the remote cabin seeking haven and the necessities of life is headed by Will. Will is played by Christopher Abbott, who was excellent in “James White,” where he portrayed a young man nursing his dying mother (Cynthia Nixon of “Sex and the City” and “A Quiet Passion”) through terminal cancer. Will’s wife, Kim, is played by Riley Keough (Elvis’ granddaughter, “American Honey”) and his small son Andrew is played by Griffin Robert Faulkner.
Despite the best intentions of both families portrayed in the film, paranoia and mistrust boil over as the horrors outside creep ever-closer, awakening something hidden and monstrous within Paul as he learns that the protection of his family comes at the cost of his soul.

There is also, as the film opens, the harrowing death of Travis’ grandfather, Bud, played by David Pendleton. One of the unusual things that happens to someone dying of the mysterious contagious disease is that the victims’ eyes fill up completely with pupil; no “whites of their eyes” as they are decimated when death draws near.

Shults said, during a Q&A following the film’s showing in Chicago on June 1st, that he was fascinated with questions about topics like genocide. He is definitely focused on death and man’s mortality in this film, which is not about zombies or monsters, but is every bit as horrific as he examines the lengths people will go to to protect their own and to survive.
Since the original impetus for Shults’ film came from helping his own father through terminal pancreatic cancer, the mood of the film is grim, grimmer, grimmest. Shults has said that, following his father’s death (they had been estranged for 7 years prior), he sat down and wrote and “It just came spewing out of me.” He’s certainly in good company in musing on the temporary nature of our existence on this planet. Woody Allen has examined the topic in any number of comedies and Ridley Scott just trotted out another “Alien” film (“Alien: Covenant”) which has some thoughts on the same eternal question.

But Shults has made death as scary as anything you’ll see this summer, and perhaps as scary as anything you’ll ever see in any season on the universal topic of man’s mortality. What lengths will a man go to to “save” and protect his family? What would happen if we were facing an unbeatable disease with no modern medicines or hospitals to help us? Many in the world are facing these questions right now, in real time, but Shults is still struggling with the deaths of two close family members (his father and his cousin), with memories which clearly haunt him to this day.
Award-winning filmmaker Trey Edward Shults (John Cassavetes Award, 2016; Independent Spirit Breakthrough Directors Award (2016); Gotham Award (2016)) follows his incredible debut feature KRISHA,(which starred family members and debuted at SXSW in 2015), with IT COMES AT NIGHT, a horror film following a man (Joel Edgerton) as he learns that the evil stalking his family home may be only a prelude to horrors that come from within.
The uncomfortable subject matter of “It Comes At Night”, says Shults, is “drawing from heavy personal experiences and placing it into a fictional narrative, hoping the same emotions come through. At its heart, this is a movie about mortality.”
The script for “It Comes At Night” was actually written before “Krisha.” When “Krisha” was a big hit at SXSW, Shults got a 2-picture deal from A24. This is that second film, but he has been learning from the best since the age of 18, working on 3 Terrence Malick films, starting with “Tree of Life” in Hawaii.

The film is beautifully shot and paranoia is justified and created with the skillful use of camera, sound and light (see my interview with Trey Shults on www.TheMovieBlog.com for details). This is a riveting, horrific picture of a future we can only hope never becomes a reality. I am still thinking about it today, four days later. Yet Shults resists calling it a horror film, and believes it is far more about psychological horror than a genre flick with monsters or things that go bump in the night (as they literally do in this one.)

For some, the questions we are left with as the film ends will cause criticism. There are times at the “end” of a piece (remember the finale of “The Sopranos”?) when viewers feel they have been shortchanged or cheated by the ending. For me, this was not an issue, as it was pretty clear what was probably going to happen next. Still, I understand those who want more of a “Breaking Bad” type of ending, where things are wrapped up neatly and some characters live and some characters die (and spin-offs are even made possible by the “concluded” feeling.)

Two other things that may cause Shults some criticism from some sources will be his intentional intermingling of the dream sequences (nightmares, really) with reality. They will say (truthfully) that it is sometimes difficult to tell what is a dream and what is reality.

Again, this did not cause me any problems. After listening to Shults explain why this was intentionally done, it made even more sense. He explained that he saw the dream sequences as a way into Travis’ mind. (And Travis = Trey). It is Travis’ point-of-view through which we see the story, even though it is his father, Paul (Joel Edgerton), who is dictating the terms of Travis’ young life.
And last, some will say, “Why is it called ‘It Comes At Night’?” Shults explained that night is the time when he is at his most creative and it was a title that sounded good. Hopefully, he said, it helps put you in the heads of the main characters. It is not a literal interpretation of what occurs in the film but more a metaphor, so be warned.

This is the beginning of a bright future for a very gifted filmmaker.

Genre: Horror/psychological thriller/Mystery
Length: 97 minutes
Writer/Director: Trey Edward Shults
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Griffin Robert Faulkner, David Pendleton
Reviewer: Connie Wilson

“The Wall”: Character Study That Gets Old Fast

This will be a stream-of-consciousness review of “The Wall,” starring John Cena and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, in the hopes that it will save some locals who (still) read my movie reviews a few dollars. I just returned from viewing it at what used to be called the Showcase Cinemas in Davenport (IA) [now called “Rave” by Cinemark] and I really wish I hadn’t wasted the time. The money wasn’t bad, since I chose to go at 2:10 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, but, of course, there is always the snack bar ready to drive the price up. (The Jr. popcorn @ $5 and some Junior Mints: $8.99, with no drink).

One thing I want locals to know is that I’m pretty sure that the 2 O’Dells mentioned at the end in the credits are Spike O’Dell’s nephews. If you don’t know who Spike O’Dell is, you won’t care (the teen-aged girl sweeping up obviously did not know who Spike was when I shared this information), but for those of us who grew up with “Spike at the Mike,” [or interviewed him, like I did for the Dispatch when he made his first move away from KSTT (to North Carolina, as I recall, before Chicago)], you might find it interesting that Spike’s brother’s kids (Spike’s nephews) actually work at making movies.

I learned this while sitting at the Chicago Film Festival about 2 years ago from my seat-mate, who identified himself as Spike’s relative and told me about his sons and their career when I told him I was a member of the Chicago Independent Film Critics’ Circle in Chicago, reviewing for www.TheMovieBlog.com and www.QuadCities.com. He shared that he was originally from the Quad Cities, too.

I was happy to see the name Brandon O’Dell (and another, who, I think, is his brother….Michael?) drift past in the credits. I made a mental note to share this with local readers who are movie buffs.

What I also want to share with local readers who are movie buffs is that this film is not that great. If you’ve seen the trailer (above), you’ve seen all the interesting parts. There is almost no action and the dialogue is largely a string of “f**s” in various formats.

Hearing the “F” word does not offend my delicate sensibilities, but it got old fast. So did the lack of any music. I realize that Amazon put up the money to make this film, and with just 2 “real” characters onscreen (the third is simply the voice of Laith Nakli playing the role of the Islamic sniper Jubah, the ghost, the Angel of Death and responsible for 35 U.S. casualties) it must have been a pretty inexpensive film to shoot.

There is no set except for a rock wall in a desert, with some debris and some dead bodies around it. Eight pipeline workers have been shot and killed and John Cena and Aaron Taylor-Johnson have been sent out to see if they can find the sniper responsible for the mayhem. As you can see from the trailer, they do find the sniper, but he quickly gets the upper hand, and the rest of the film is simply Aaron Taylor-Johnson stuck behind a wall talking.

Don’t get me wrong: Aaron Taylor-Johnson is an up-and-coming talent whose star turn in “Nocturnal Animals” as the crazed rapist murderer earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor this year, so he does a good job of playing a guy pinned down for hours with a leg wound, no water, and no idea how he’s going to get out of the situation he finds himself in. But that wasn’t really what I thought I was going to get in this “war movie.”

When Isaac (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) attempts to call for help, he quickly figures out that the voice at the other end of his radio is not someone from “his” side. The sniper has managed to hack into the radio (he actually tells our main character that he purposely hit his water bottle and his radio antenna) and wants to talk about war as seen from the other side.

He tells Isaac, for instance, that “You’re hiding in the shadow of Islam” because the wall Isaac is crouched behind used to be the wall of a school, and the sniper used to be a teacher in such a school. Isaac responds, “No, I’m hiding in the shadow of death.” The two have a loooong conversation about the meaning and purpose of war, with the bottom line being that who is the terrorist “depends on the angle you look at it from.”

This insight is not particularly new or fresh. Any of us would agree that American incursion on the soil of another country makes us the invading colonial power (no matter what reason/excuse is given for the invasion) and, naturally, those who live in the land invaded are probably not going to be pleased at the death and destruction that U.S. forces—whether mercenaries or enlisted—have wreaked on so many Middle East locations.

This country, just to be clear, is supposed to be Iraq in 2007, soon after “W” declared victory in Iraq while wearing that ridiculous flight suit(with the cod piece), with “Mission Accomplished” on a banner behind him. It could have been Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Syria, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq or any number of other countries where U.S. citizens have fought and died in the past 50 years. Even Korea if you want to go back to the fifties. It is hardly a CNN BREAKING NEWS news flash that we have managed to make ourselves pretty much “persona non grata” as a country everywhere in the world and it’s certainly getting a lot worse with Donald J. Trump running the show….for however long that may be.

As we all now know, the mission in Iraq in 2007 was hardly “accomplished” and at the rate we are going as a country, it seems as though we will never be free of war.
One thing that Dwight Eisenhower said he was most proud of as his presidential legacy was that he “kept us out of war” (a direct quote) as President. Obama also kept us out of war.

The others in between and now? Not so much. Some speculate that JFK was shot in Dallas in November of 1963 because he was going to withdraw from the black hole that Vietnam proved to be, and LBJ certainly did not keep us out of war, nor did George W. Bush or George Herbert Bush—although the smarter of the two knew enough to make it short and sweet with lots of allies assisting. (If anything, he plunged us even deeper into the hell that war represents.) Even Reagan had that invasion of Grenada, which was an interesting small war.

So, while I’m in complete agreement with the sentiments that screenwriter Dwain Worrell has articulated here, I didn’t find much dialogue that screamed “Big Insightful Moment” and I do not agree that “Screenwriter Dwain Worrell has a knack for believable, expository dialogue.” There was almost NO dialogue, really, beyond grunting and groaning, the “F” word, (liberally sprinkled with the use of the word “shit”) and some implausible action involving Cena, who seems to come back to life for a while. I don’t disagree that “this is how soldiers really talk” but the exposition was really, really slow and did not break any new cinematic ground in any meaningful or striking way.

Our local critic wrote: “It’s simple, yet it brims with complex issues.” Uh….not really, no.

Another POV I don’t ascribe to: “‘The Wall’ is one incredible war movie that utilizes a handful of characters to make a statement about what motivates soldiers to fight and what motivates countries to go to war.”

Well, there was really nothing about “what motivates countries to go to war.” Right now, what might motivate us to go to war is our current President needing a diversion from the independent investigation into Russian involvement in our last presidential election and the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. The REAL reasons countries go to war are always somewhat hidden, like the underbelly of an iceberg. We learn in school that the assassination of the ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand and his wife touched off WWI and that Hitler’s savage genocide and his invasion of Poland were the reasons behind WWII, but if you are a real scholar, you’ll learn that, just like the Civil War, there are many, many reasons why we get into these unwinnable situations, slavery being just one of the many causes that sparked the Civil War in 1861. (Surprisingly, our current occupant of the White House, Agent Orange, didn’t seem to know that the South’s dependence on free labor in the form of slaves was a Big Sticking Point in the 1861-1865 conflagration that pitted brother against brother on our native soil, but he doesn’t seem to know much about a lot of things, so what’s new?)

I would like to give you some “credentials” of the cast and crew at this point, mentioning that this seemingly low-budget foray by Amazon (and Big Indie/Hypnotic/Roadside Alliance with The Molecule responsible for visual effects and Fuse FX working on it, as well) was directed by Doug Liman, who directed “Edge of Tomorrow” and “The Bourne Identity.”

I do not agree that: “You’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat within the first 15 minutes.” There were 3 people present when I saw it today (Monday afternoon, May 22, at 2:10 p.m.). One was a middle-aged woman and one was a middle-aged man and me. The middle-aged man got up and LEFT the theater a full FIVE TIMES! (He was really way more than “on the edge of his seat; he was OUT of his seat and in the lobby more than he was in the theater, I think.) I haven’t seen that many trips in and out of a movie since I was the one exiting “Les Miserables” during its interminable run. The small theater that “Rave” was showing the picture in was so far from the lobby that we were almost in the parking lot. Not auspicious placement for this low-budget film.

So, again: my advice is to save your money. It’s NOT edge-of-your-seat thrilling. The only action is in the trailer above, and, after that, it’s all talking. Yes, we learn a few interesting things about how Isaac really doesn’t want to go back home because he screwed up on a previous tour of duty and feels great guilt for the death of his friend and fellow soldier Dean, and, yes, there is (sort of) a finale that might make you think after you leave the theater.

What it made me think is that I wasted my time and money and I should wait until Aaron Taylor-Johnson is in a movie that is truly action-worthy. This movie looks like all it cost was for the 2 name actors who appear onscreen and, after that, the producers didn’t even spring for a score. NOT RECOMMENDED.

Go see “Alien: Covenant” or rent “Life” for more action and, in the case of the 8th “Alien” film there is some spouting off about the meaning of life, so you will get the pan flute solo with David/Walter (Michael Fassbender) to satisfy your need to be bored silly.

Wilson Out!

“Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press” @ SXSW

Genre: Documentary Feature
Length: 95 minutes
Writer/Director: Brian Knappenberger
Principal Cast: Nick Denton, A.J. Daulario, John Cook, David Folkenflick, Floyd Abrams, Peter Sterne, David Houston, Margaret Sullivan, Jay Rosen, John L. Smith

The trial between wrestler Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media pitted privacy rights against freedom of the press, but ended up as a case study in how big money can silence media using legal means. This examination of the free press in an age of inequality echoes the “Vanity Fair” issue with an article by David Margolick entitled “V.C. for Vendetta.”

From that article, we learn that, outed as gay (“Peter Thiels Is Totally Gay”) by one of Gawker’s web sites in 2007, Silicon billionaire Peter Thiel ($2.7 billion as a co-founder of PayPal, and an early investor in Facebook) laid low until 2016, when he seized the opportunity to financially back Hulk Hogan’s invasion of privacy suit over a sex tape to bankrupt the entire organization.

In this documentary that interviews all the principals except Thiel (who is seen speaking at other venues), we learn that “what he’s done is to legitimize the idea that an uninvolved party can fund an effort by someone else in order to destroy a news organization. If billionaires and multi-millionaires can be behind the scenes doing this, that is conspiratorial and underhanded completely.” As Gawker founder Nick Denton, who was personally bankrupted, said, “We were outgunned here.”

Knappenberger dubs it, “abusing the justice system to go after journalists.” All these efforts have taken back a lot of 1st Amendment rights. Many others are mentioned in the piece: the Chandler family, the Salzburger family of New York, Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the “Washington Post” and, in greater detail, Sheldon Adelson’s purchase of Nevada’s largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

John L. Smith, the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote a book about early investors in Las Vegas’ history entitled “Sharks in the Desert: The Founding Fathers and the Current Sharks.” There was one line mentioning Sheldon Adelson. Adelson sued Smith for the one line in the book, and lodged the $15 million dollar suit at a time when Smith was bedside in a local hospital with his young daughter Amelia, who was suffering from a brain tumor.

Smith was offered all sorts of financial inducements not to publish articles about Adelson, but resisted. He was blackmailed regarding the one line in his book, and, as he said: “Bullies always act the same.”

Then, unexpectedly, the entire staff of the Las Vegas Review-Journal was brought in to a meeting cold and told the newspaper had been sold. They were not allowed to know who had bought them.
Rather than take this without investigating, the entire staff, including one employee who had been with the paper for 39 and ½ years, dug in to find out if Adelson was behind the purchase in the face of overwhelming obfuscation.

Smith said, “”Everybody came in and everybody stayed. For us, it was preserving whatever integrity we had. We knew it was a career-ending move. Some stories are worth losing your job over.” As Smith asserted, “Journalism is a calling for a lot of us.”

As a Journalism Major (Ferner/Hearst Journalism Scholarship recipient at the University of Iowa), this documentary spoke to me. I characterize myself as “”Old School” because my stint with 5 “real” newspapers began at the age of 10 and continues today, 6 decades later. I am of the generation that grew up with only 3 television channels trusting the voice of Walter Cronkite to tell us the truth. There was no Internet. There was no cable television, and we believed in presenting both sides of the story so that readers could draw fair conclusions with all the facts at their disposal.

The idea of “hacking” Internet accounts (there was no Internet) and Wiki Leaks style dissemination of documents from the e-mail of others was decades away. I find it personally offensive that anyone in a position of authority can level wholesale charges of bias and dishonesty against the hardworking men and women of the press. One of the least honest politicians (or human beings) of all time has underscored just how important a free and independent press is from his podium in the White House. No less an authority than Thomas Jefferson talked about the importance of a free press to keep the checks and balances of this country working properly.

This documentary was depressing in that it showed the extent to which being rich means being able to destroy the very institutions we all thought were inviolate. As we watch money corrupting the very fabric of society, we are simultaneously experiencing the intentional undermining of the free press and I, for one, view it as one of the biggest tragedies our Republic has experienced since its inception.

A very informative, relevant and concerning documentary
. Reading the “Vanity Fair” article by David Margolick explained much of the Peter Thiel/Nick Denton Gawker sex tape dispute in far greater detail, which added to my understanding of the film’s rehash of the trial, (which was surreal in so many ways). The revelations about the Las Vegas Review-Journal were new to me, but explained a lot.

Worth watching, if you care about remaining free and being part of an informed populace in a working democracy.

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