movies – Martin Simpson

I’m not a professional film critic.

But lest you are tempted to disregard the following thoughts, I do know a thing or two about movies. For example, I know that Christopher Walken and Denzel Washington are worth watching in pretty much every movie they are in, and that Clint Eastwood hasn’t made a bad movie since that goofy orangutang one a million years ago. (And even that one had a few moments.)

I know that Quentin Tarantino is super weird but talented, and he’s got the best batting average after Eastwood.

I know that the first two Godfathers, No Country for Old Men, Unforgiven, and Open Range are five of the best 20 movies ever made. And that True Romance, Groundhog Day and Field of Dreams are the most overlooked sleepers that should also be on that list.

In fact, if you haven’t seen True Romance, correct that this weekend. Tarantino wrote it, and Tony Scott directed. Brad Pitt’s bit part as a stoner is pitch perfect, and an unknown James Gandolfini as a low-level hitman trying to explain what it’s like to kill people is mesmerizing. And the scene in which Walken interrogates Dennis Hopper is a classic.

Walken explains the Sicilians’ status as world-class liars, and then – over a delicate underlayment of an opera piece called “The Flower Duet” – Hopper counters with a disquisition on the racial lineage of Sicilians intended to enrage his interrogator. And it works. Walken’s bemused, slow-burn reaction is beautiful.

Anyway, I say all that as a preface to a movie review. Even though I’m not a film critic.

Sidebar: If you’ve been reading my columns lately – and if not, what the hell, man? Unless you’re reading ONLY the Bible, Victor Davis Hansen, CO himself and Christopher Silber, what’s your excuse? – you may remember that in addition to not being a film critic, I am also not a map-ologist, an ocelot-ologist, or a sex-change-ologist.

And yet, I’ve offered you what I humbly think are some worthwhile musings on maps, ocelots and sex changes. (I’ve got range, people.) So I hope you’ll also bear with me when I tell you that I’m reviewing Snow White. Even though, technically, I haven’t seen it.

But I don’t need to. Because I’m just that good at this, and because I’ve watched the coverage of this movie as it’s made his tortuous way to the screen. I know the original fairy tale, and the 1937 classic version. And I know that what makes fairy tales find new audiences over centuries is that they contain some eternal truths.

And I know that Disney made a bad mistake when they hired a hateful little bundle of box office poison named Rachel Ziegler as their leading lady. She’s a familiar modern type – a social justice warrior who wildly over-estimates her own intelligence and insight – and she has arrogantly assured us that THIS Snow White is not going to be like that beloved old one, with the Prince and true love and all that patriarchal crap.

Nope, her Snow White is going to be a feminist girl boss who needs a prince like a fish needs a bicycle, in a story that’s all about her discovering her own power and awesomeness!

In other words, it won’t be like the original story with the staying power to last centuries. It’s going to be a faddish, modernized version, without the staying power to last through an opening weekend. (Belated spoiler alert!) (Also: Unexpectedly!)

In addition to the audience-alienating leftist drivel that’s been coming out of Ziegler’s pie hole, her casting presents two other significant obstacles:

1. The Evil Queen, who famously asks the magic mirror who is the fairest one of all, is played by the actress affectionately known as Triple-G: Gal “giggity” Gadot. And I can buy a lot of conceits in a fairy tale movie, including musical dwarves and magic spells and talking woodland creatures.

But you cannot ask the audience to suspend their disbelief when Gadot asks a magic mirror who’s hotter, and that apparently crystal-meth-snorting mirror says snotty little Rachel Ziegler!

2. And call me racist if you must, but I’m going to say it: Ziegler is not white! Normally, who cares? But when she’s playing a character whose very name – and the title of the story! – requires that she be as white as snow?

Remember how surprised you were when Disney announced that the titular role in the first Black Panther film was going to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch? Or when George C. Scott got to play Patton only after Dikembe Mutombo had to back out of the role when the Houston Rockets made the NBA playoffs? Or when the lead in the Andre the Giant biopic went to Peter Dinklage?

Of course you don’t. Because those are all ridiculous ideas. And yet Disney expects their audience to accept that the chick they’re pretty sure was the runner-up in a “Miss Colombia Trump-Hater of 2023” pageant is Snow freakin’ White? Not smart.

Speaking of Peter Dinklage, I hope everybody in the dwarf community will punch him in the face the next time they see him.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m no DODVE. (Dwarf-on-dwarf violence excuser. Duh.) But that Dinklage really rubs me the wrong way. And about halfway up my calf.

HA!

I like to live by the Golden (thimble) Rule. “Treat others like you would want to be treated, if they and you were both dwarves.”

And if I were a dwarf actor, I’d be furious with Dinklage. Because he spouted off, as Snow White was in pre-production, about how offensive he found it that Disney was going to cast little people as the seven dwarves.

Saith the triggered little derringer, “They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ … You’re progressive in one way, but you’re still making that [f-ing] backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together. Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”

First off, Pete, it’s more of a soap dish than a soap box you’ve got there.

Second, you’re the super-rare little person who’s had a successful acting career, and you’re standing tall (snicker) on that pile of Game of Thrones money. But there are little-people actors who are struggling to find work, and you might have noticed that there aren’t a ton of acting jobs for them.

There are a few recurring elf roles – Keebler and Christmas – and a leprechaun or two around St. Patty’s Day, but beyond that? Do you think Hollywood studios are fighting over the rights to a forthcoming Robert Reich biopic? And if somebody shows an interest and the money is right, Tom Cruise will probably snag that role.

So along comes Snow White – the first movie since the Wizard of Oz to have a bunch of roles for little people – and Sir Dinklage has to put on his tiny little cape of wokeness and shame Disney for trying to cast dwarves as dwarves. (The nerve!)

And spineless, hapless Disney caves, and has their sweat shop full of animators create an uncanny-valley’s worth of CGI dwarves. And boom! Back to the unemployment line for little people actors. And what are they going to do, protest, or go on strike?

Good luck getting those picket signs noticed, as you wave them around at waist height!

And in case you thought I’d forgotten…

…let me give a rare shout-out to Liz Warren. Because that delusional pretend-ian could definitely play a convincing Snow White.

#wemustneverstopmockingher

So skip Snow White, and watch True Romance, and you can thank me later.

Hamas delenda est!

Sure, our country has problems. Our president is a barely animated cadaver who maintains what little life-force he has through consuming an all-ice-cream diet and sniffing the hair of young girls. And our vice president is somehow worse than that guy.

Our borders are open, inflation is running rampant, crime is skyrocketing, and the View is still on the air. Too many of our young females are trying to turn themselves into males, and too many of our young males are playing soccer.

And one of our senators pretends to be an Indian, even though she’s as white as a curling competition in Reykjavik. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

Yet amidst all that anarchy, there is still hope. Because some Americans still have their priorities straight.

For example, hundreds of people gathered yesterday in Charleston, West Virginia to hold a candlelight vigil for a good cause: “To honor a Hooters location that was being demolished to make way for a gas station.”

As I understand it, Hooters is a restaurant chain featuring attractive young waitresses in tight orange uniforms. I can’t say that for sure, because as regular readers may remember, I met my wife in August of 1986, and from that day forward, all other women have become invisible to me.

But I have it on good authority from a friend that AOC could likely get a waitress job there, due to the alleged juiciness of her booty (her words, not my friend’s or mine). Which would be a win-win, since she would then be running around in orange shorts screwing up drink orders and embarrassing only herself, rather than sitting in our legislature and embarrassing all of us.

Anyway, the Hooters vigil was said to have started as a joke among friends that took off on social media, eventually drawing visitors from several states away. And some may object that it is a frivolous protest.

But I’d point out that in the very recent past we’ve had hundreds of protests nationwide, most of them for much worse causes, and by much worse people. Many hordes of peaceful rioters have attacked courthouses and police stations, and burned down entire city blocks.

Anti-Semitic freaks have stopped speeches on college campuses and besieged Jewish student groups in campus buildings. A bunch of pro-Hamas Harvard students went on a hunger strike for a whole 12 hours on February 12^th. (I’m not making that up.)

Morons all over the country routinely sit down in front of cars to tie up traffic for one idiotic cause or another, and many thousands of drivers tragically don’t run over them!

Even here in my free state, yesterday around 100 angry, sexually confused protestors marched around my town and expressed their outrage at legislation that would require FL driver’s license and identification cards to reflect a person’s actual sex. They carried a giant banner proclaiming, “Let us Live.”

Which I guess makes sense, since as everybody knows, the leading cause of death for people under 30 is carrying a driver’s license with your actual gender on it.

So yeah, in the context of those protests, respectfully eulogizing the passing of a Hooters looks like the Boston Tea Party by comparison.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Not when you’ve got event co-organizer (and great American) Leo Browning to explain: “For all the naysayers, the doubters, the down-talkers and whatnot. This building right here was a legitimate iconic figure to the Kanawha Valley.”

Just in case any of you are still doubtful – and seriously, what’s wrong with you? – the event was also a fundraiser for “a child who allegedly has a very rare disease.”

Once again, I give you Leo Browning: “One of our close friend’s daughters, she was just diagnosed with a very, very rare disease, and it’s very serious. If she don’t get help, then she’s not going to be with us much longer.”

“But Leo,” you might ask, if you’re among the naysayers and whatnot, “what disease is it? And what’s the girl’s name, and what kind of treatment does she need, and how much will it cost?”

I think I can speak for Leo when I say that that sounds like a bunch of doubting and down-talking to me, so mind your business.

But that story isn’t even in the top 3 most ridiculous stories of the last week. I’d rank those as follows:

1. Alvin “soft on crime” Bragg, the Manhattan DA and national embarrassment, is outraged because AZ prosecutor Rachel Mitchell has not agreed to extradite a murderer from NY who fled to AZ and was captured there. Mitchell would rather hold the killer there with no bail, rather than send him back to Bragg, who has a habit of letting killers out immediately, with little or no bail.

Bragg said, and I swear I am not making this up, that Mitchell was engaging in “grandstanding… plain and simple, old fashioned grandstanding and politics. That should have no place in our profession.”

Bragg is also the guy who is trying to prosecute Trump for the non-crime of paying off a porn star, and then trying to elevate that to a felony because he says that it was done to cover up a second crime. Except that his charging documents didn’t say what that second crime was, which drew attacks even from leftist Trump haters.

But if there’s one thing that sticks in Bragg’s craw, it’s old fashioned grandstanding and politics!

2. The leftist hacks at Google spent a quadrillion dollars on coming up with an AI program that spent 20 minutes on the market before being deluged in a flood of mockery when it turned out that it would not produce an image of a white person, no matter what a customer asked for.

People asked for an image of a pope and got an Indian lady and a black guy. A “Founding Father?” Black guy in a powdered wig. An Indy 500 winning driver from the 1930s? Black gal in a racing suit.

It was so bad that a request for an image of a Viking produced an Asian woman and a black guy wearing furs and armor. Because you remember all of those history shows about Genghis Thorson and Attila the Swede.

3. A dope at CNN explained that Christian Nationalists – who she insisted are very different from Christians, though she didn’t explain how – are dangerous, creepy and delusional in part because – get this! – they believe that our rights don’t come from Chuck Schumer or Cocaine Mitch McConnell, but from God.

No one at CNN knows any better, so the segment went fine. But that night, conservatives bombarded her with emails quoting the first sentence of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.

She got as far as “endowed by their Creator…” before she dropped everything, googled “Declaration of Independence,” and then read on, in growing horror.

Wait until she googles “Founding Fathers” and finds out that they weren’t a bunch of transgender black vegans in powdered wigs and old-timey clothes!

Let me close with a couple of more schadenfreude stories.

First, the Disney corporation, currently 0-15 against DeSantis and the conservatives of America, have racked up another “L.” Because another top Disney exec is out of a job.

This time it’s Sean Bailey – not be to be confused with George Bailey, who actually enjoyed movies (famously hollering, “Merry Christmas, movie house!”) – who was shown the door at the Mouse House (correction: Mao’s House) this week.

He was the big brain in charge of all of the live action re-makes (that you didn’t see) of old Disney movies. Because Disney’s only new ideas in the last 15 years have been to push “a not-so-secret gay agenda,” attack Ron DeSantis, and re-fashion Snow White into “Snow Brown and the 7 Racial Grievances.”

Wooh. Let me catch my breath. Between the laughing, and the going around the Cape of Good Hope to stretch for that “It’s a Wonderful Life” joke, I’m gassed.

Coincidentally, Disney CEO Bob Iger is facing a serious takeover attempt, and has sold off around 80% of his Disney stock over the last year. Next up: he’ll re-retire to “spend more time with family.”

Finally, a couple of columns ago I mentioned Rob “Meathead” Reiner’s incredible theological insights (synopsis: Marx is the lord your god, and you shall have no other gods before him). His “documentary” (and never were scare quotes more justified) “God and Country” was released a couple of weeks ago.

Well, despite getting a ton of super-positive reviews from every leftist media outlet in sight, and “an avalanche” of free publicity before it opened, and 100% positive reviews from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, it opened to a dismal $38,000!

Unexpectedly!

For comparison, that’s about the amount one man (his name rhymes with Schmunter Hiden) spends on an average weekend of partying, including the cost of the hotel room, the cocaine that he snorts off the rear ends of various hookers, and the costs of the aforementioned rear-end-rental!

So how did it manage to get so many positive Rotten Tomatoes reviews?

I didn’t say that there were a lot of reviews, only that they were ALL positive.

Or, in this case, BOTH of them were positive.

That’s right. According to a RedState story dated 2/28, two people paid to see Meathead’s magnum dope-us (you see what I did there?), and then wrote one rave review each.

The only thing that could make that outcome funnier would be if the studio that financed and released that disaster were Disney!

Have a great weekend, everybody. And don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!