Change Your Image
peterogers2
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Backstabbing for Beginners (2018)
It takes a film to stand up to power and expose it for what it really is, putting the press media; whose job it is: to shame
It is quite worrying to read some of the reviews of this film. Many foolish people seem to think that waking people up from their slumbering along through life thinking things on our side can be trusted to be fairly resonable without terrible corruption and violence. There should be public outcry, but many reviewers here decide to criticise the film; by awarding poor scores for nonsensical reasons: more than thinking about the inhumanity it reveals. We badly need democracy as most people; excluding many of your reviewers it seems to me: would not allow these evil acts and would wish to make sure the perpetrators were jailed. A very long time ago Thucydides warned us that unless we have a proper democracy, not like our misnamed system, you must always get a kakistocracy, being a system whereby you are always ruled by the worst possible people. Wakey wakey.
Bitter Lake (2015)
A rare antidote to the laundered official record
People are immobilised mentally by gratefully clinging to the more glorious story of our attempts to rid the world of evil, to the extent that, as a result, they are no longer able to construct a sensible equation between what is being achieved and the suffering of others. We have become like the Germans were, over which we scoffed and carped and declared our moral superiority for decades, offering, as they did, nothing but adulation for the glorious troops and dismissing the treacherous thought that evil was being done. This is an important historical document confronts us under the pure rules of reason with an intervention by the British Crown in Helmand which was both a terrible and an act of profound evil because despite being told in no uncertain terms that they were about to attack a host of innocent people trying to resist the corrupt local government, we dropped bombs on them thereby turning appalling injustice into a catastrophe for the innocent by an act of supreme evil. The great point illustrated here, which no-one is really picking up, is that the mainstream news never told the country about this possibility, only of our honour and bravery and sacrifice in pursuing the Taliban, which turns out to be dishonest and unbalanced reporting, acting for the state, not the honour of the Press and Media. We can from these brave revelations that if something is not done then Big Brother and The Ministry of Truth will have got its way and vanquished our national sense of fair play and humanity. It is deeply worrying to our democracy and the plurality required of the Mass media that the BBC has prevented this programme from general release and that it will soon be lost to us because DVD's are not possible as things stand and it will be removed from its only source, iPlayer, worryingly for free speech the film has already been stopped on YouTube, what does that say? Adam Curtis has tried everything here to get through our complacency and to awaken us to what is really happening, and it is time that we told our leaders that they must stop and that an independent Judicial Enquiry over which the Government and Crown have no control be undertaken to root out those who commit these awful crimes in our names whilst skulking behind doors of secrecy. It shows that our democracy is a fraud as no-one would have wanted any of this in their name.
Donnie Darko (2001)
The meaning is clear it is not a mystery
There is much much more. It's a greater movie than you even think. If you look at the sign above the movie theatre when Donnie leaves to burn down Jim Cunningham's place, the key moment of victory exposing the evil that has been in control of Mr and Mrs Average to make those who can be, free, you will see that it shows "The Last Temptation of Christ". This is the key with which to unlock the meaning of the movie. The tangent Universe where Donnie beats the system is analogous to the world of the Christ anomaly, the one that comes into existence with his getting down off the Cross in that film. Christ also succeeds in exposing the corruption of the authorities and their puppet ally, the Church. In both films, the intervening presence, the Devil's beautiful Angel in "Last etc." and Frank in "Donnie", know that because of our spoon-fed mentality and lack of real imagination we always betray the efforts of good people, like Donnie and Christ, in favour of the quiet life, and just let deceitful and self-interested power reassert its dominion, whatever they have done, and however comprehensively it has been exposed, and have its way anyway, hoping they will maybe leave us alone with our stuff if we let them con us yet again. Both Christ and Donnie symbolically give up their triumphs in their anomalous world, the one we should evolve into according to Kazantzakis and Kelly, to return to the poorer reality of the one in which they are killed, and they do so, perversely, as acts of self-sacrifice, to save others (Gretchen in Donnie's case), and allegedly to save humanity in Christ's case (which is actually lost in the present by his barbarous death), but the real message is that we can't have this better outcome seen in the TU given our indifference towards the courageous people, like them, who will not give up their integrity in exchange for stuff as we do but are willing to fight to expose the truth about the perverse way we are controlled, as Donnie does, though they think him mad, and as Christ does. Kelly shows us for what we are; more like docile domestic animals following fodder, than real meaningful human minds: in the unsatisfactory world we wish to settle for in exchange for the quiet life. This is the message of Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote the novel "Last Temptation...", to the world; and Richard Kelly who realised that it needed a more imaginative and dramatic re-telling. The message is also found in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", where McMurphy is a saviour, with the humanity which is all that is really necessary for us to follow to change from a miserable system of excessive and unnecessary concession towards irredeemably cruel power; but instead he is ironically betrayed by the man who owed him most, Billy, who just couldn't cope. These films are all connected and should be taught at school, as should Kazantzakis. Donnie Darko is a mind-boggling wake-up call to us all.
Detachment (2011)
It's better than that
This film, like Last Temptation of Christ, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Donnie Darko, is amongst a very few to have succeeded in isolating the nature and power of humanity when developed in people, like Henry Barthes, as well as the predicament that comes along with the attempt to act on it. This humanity which inspires us to be better people manifests as a rescue and redemption impulse which we can sum up as "don't let people get stuck in a hole if you can help show them how to get out of it" – which is a bit like the Golden Rule ("do unto others
" which we all know instinctively to be both right but also, more tragically, far from generally applied), the conjecture is that if you are human enough, like him, to know you are connected to others, albeit at arm's length, then to deserve your own self-respect (the only sort of respect that matters) you have to try to get a ladder to them. This is reason stumbling about in a world that can't see it for what it is, but rather only its bearer who is then put on a pedestal and trapped in the unwanted role of redeemer so that attempted escape can be accounted as treachery and denial of self. The victims do not go for the idea of the ladder being offered so as to climb up and think differently to get out of the hole; that would be true education of course: they grab the man instead and put him on the pedestal rather than his idea. The victims wish to place their burdens into his outstretched hands rather than trying to accept the solutions being proffered by them, thus burdening the potential educator with the role of saviour through bullying use of his own sense of decency against him, instead of releasing themselves by acting on what is actually being offered; which is an inch to them where they decide to go for a yard. This predicament shows that the instinct to help when acted upon can easily rebound because the desperation built up in the victims can blind them to the magical offer of self-redemption - real education - concerning their understanding of themselves and those around them. These outstretched hands of the caring person are trying to offer the victims the ladder to escape but that is not always recognised for what it is and the consequences can be dire because the failures of those outstretched hands are then pointed to by the cynic who gets to prove that trying to help losers is a waste of time, which is all he wants out of the situation; proof of the good sense of hauling the ladder up, because the Golden Rule fails: so the callous powers that are the root cause of the problem can get on instead with the dire work of damaging and unjust appropriations against general humanity with not only a clear conscience, but now as a virtuous act. This is the way that rule has always worked since ancient times so we are actually being shown the cause of the failure of our supposed democracy. Those outstretched hands should amount to the victim's chance to escape from a vicious imaginary trap made real by the inhumanity of others and the lack of any apparent understanding from the controllers of an all-pervasive and overpowering economic governing system as brilliantly illustrated by role of Mr Mathias. The missing step is in the igniting of the necessary self-belief and understanding which would enable the ladder to be accepted at arms-length rather than the impulse of rushing to clutch at the ladder-bearer being yielded to. There are those, understandably and obviously, who can't stop themselves from grabbing at and getting their hooks into what they see as a highly necessary saviour who is interpreted as having shown personal love to them anyway rather than humanity; interpreted as the making of some kind of pass, and towards whom they only have to give devotion to secure obligation, accepting the pass: thus missing the point and wrecking the deeply felt mission of Barthes towards people in general. That would be the hope of spreading education too would it not? It is a remarkable film about education and its true power and meaning and the whole engagement that it can entail. This is so important that it should be taught by educators everywhere because it is what we are like, and why we are not succeeding as we should be in this truer mission. We just bore people and train them in ways that confuse and fail to connect with or ignite their imaginations or any other part of their finer minds. That's a kind of incarceration not release. Oh yes. It's a quite fantastic film.
Pete Rogers