COUNTERPUNCH, December 7, 2017
Thanks to my membership in New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO), I am the recipient of a virtual wheelbarrow of DVD’s sent out by studio publicists hoping to sway my vote for best movie at our annual awards meeting on December 9th. These are generally films I tend to avoid through the year so I look forward to seeing them if for no other reason to help me pass judgment on the likely finalists in our deliberations. No obscure neorealist, radical, foreign-language films are likely to make the cut.
It turns out that two of the films are set in 1940 and have to do with the evacuation of British soldiers from Dunkirk, a city on the coast of France. The first is Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk”, a film that I would never spend good money to see since I detest his work. It is still playing in theaters everywhere. The second is “Darkest Hour”, a biopic about Churchill that opens on December 21. Like Nolan, director Joe Wright is English. After seeing the two films, the only award that I would consider making is for best work by a makeup artist. Whoever turned the lean and angular Gary Oldman into the spitting image of Churchill in Wright’s film deserves one. Needless to say, Oldman did not have to work too hard at conveying Churchill’s character since he is every bit as racist and reactionary, stating in a 2014 Playboy interview that Mel Gibson’s reputation as an anti-Semite was unfair but to be expected in a “town run by the Jews”.
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist 
Gary Oldman apologized to the ADL for his anti-Semitic comment about Hollywood’s ownership, but what does an apology represent? That he did not mean what he said because a) drunk, b) drugged, c)depressed, d) other? Whatever he said about Hollywood is likely his true, sober belief. One does not change basic beliefs simply because one is castigated by an organization. Mel Gibson’s apology for his own anti-Semitism came in the form of volunteering to make a film about the Maccabees, but nothing came of that.
Comment by harveycritic — December 27, 2017 @ 5:29 am
How does this dickfart get to have his reviews counted against a movie when he doesn’t even offer actual criticism beyond “Dunkirk sux because I hates Christopher Nolan already” !? What a childish wank.
Comment by bob — February 18, 2018 @ 4:39 am