Movie Reviews B

Emperor (IMDB Wikipedia)

I’m not sure how historically accurate it is, but overall it’s a fairly good movie. I’m glad that we defeated Japan in that war and it’s great that afterwards we became friends with Japan.  I also liked how one character, a senior Japanese politician who got along with the allies, pointed out that the British and Americans were roughly as imperialistic as Imperial Japan was.

I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Dr. Strange (IMDB Wikipedia)

Not anything political in this movie, but I do like super-hero stuff. I focus mostly on DC Comics stuff, but I also watch the live action movies about Marvel super-heroes.

I give it 2 stars out of five.

The Best of Enemies (IMDB Wikipedia)

This is an amazing movie. It’s a true story about a KKK leader rejecting racism. I missed the very ending when I saw it in the theater, but when I watched it at home recently, I learned that after CP Ellis transformed, he worked as a union organizer for the AFL-CIO. In general I was a little surprised at how class-conscious the Klan leader is but not that surprised. Obviously we have plenty of reasons to fight racism, but there’s one more- a lot of racists will become progressives when they reject their racist beliefs. And we need to recognize the role that unions have to play in fighting racism, as I’ve written elsewhere on this blog. We need to convince fiscally moderate and conservative Dems to support unions as a way to combat racism.

I give it 5 stars out of 5.

Easy A (IMDB Wikipedia)

This movie is about a teenage girl who lies about having sex for various reasons- for example a gay boy gets her to lie about them having sex so that he won’t be outed. She  kind of enjoys having an (inaccurate) reputation as a promiscuous young woman, but she also says towards the end that she doesn’t know when she’ll lose her virginity- but that it might be the next day or it might be on her wedding night or somewhere in between.

I give it 5 stars out of 5.

The Color of Freedom (also known as “Goodbye Bafana") (IMDB Wikipedia)

It’s based on a true story, although I’m not sure how historically accurate it is. It’s inspirational to see a racist journey through life to a point where he is friends with Nelson Mandela. This movie also highlighted the fact that Mandela was a driving force behind the armed part of the ANC’s strategy. In all honesty, the ANC’s military wing did a better job of not killing civilians than the IRA did, but the IRA wasn’t too far behind the ANC as I explain here.