Posts Tagged → film
Young Washington movie is 9/10
Last night I was encouraged to go see a movie, which happens quite infrequently lo, these many past years. Because, for many years now, Hollywood has dropped the ball, and has produced only dreck. Like most Americans, I do not pay to see dreck. Hollywood box office bomb after bomb after bomb keeps driving home the point that Americans do not want dreck and will not pay for it. Rather, most Americans see movies to be entertained, informed, inspired. Not to be preached at, especially about counter-culture values emanating from failed frootloop academics living in worlds of stupid theory and perpetual Marxist revolution.
I fall into the camp of Americans that will go see a movie if it informs, inspires, and entertains me. So, last night I went to see Young Washington, a movie about America’s greatest Founding Father, George Washington. This movie informed me, inspired me, and entertained me, and I can therefore recommend it to you, too.
But don’t just take my word for it, Men’s Journal confirmed that this movie inspires its audience because it is factual, and the facts surrounding George Washington are inspiring.
Mind you, Men’s Journal is just one of many formerly useful and interesting institutions/ magazines/ information outlets subsequently captured by the far Left and re-purposed to spew anti-America agitation propaganda, far-Left counter-culture propaganda, etc etc. So the fact that this leftwing outlet asked the question if the Young Washington movie is accurate, is not surprising; Men’s Journal will always seek to criticize any popular movie or book that is patriotic or espousing traditional American values. What is surprising is that the magazine published an article confirming that the movie’s main claims are accurate.
Mind you, Men’s Journal did not list the things that are good or inspiring or entertaining about Young Washington, it just confirmed that it is accurate, and left it at that. They did not encourage you to go and see it. They just did a fact check. As if Men’s Journal does this routinely on any other movies.
What is good and inspiring about Young Washington is that it tells us how young George Washington worked hard, took risks, made sacrifices, and heart-felt earnestly prayed to God a lot. What is inspiring about that is that all of this hard work, risk taking, sacrificing, and prayer paid off. It created a man whom his arch enemy, King George III of England, called “The greatest man in world history.”
The movie perfectly and incredibly accurately depicts the American Indians, caught between French and British forces from north and south, and also being pushed ever westward by impoverished European colonists and their feudal aristocratic overlords. The movie also accurately represents the inevitable tension resulting from the American frontier’s merit-based opportunity system clashing with European feudal entitlement, which ultimately gave way to 1775’s violent rupture between serfs-no-longer American colonists and their overbearing, self-entitled, yet unimpressive European overlords.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” is the logical outcome of the American frontier, on which young George Washington was raised, and tested, then confronting and contesting a feudal Europe. And the free and prosperous America we now live in is the logical outcome of the merit-based frontier having prevailed in that contest.
Seeing a movie capture all of this “first principles” stuff is eminently entertaining, and your money is well spent, because face it, this happens only once every five or twn years these days.
I give Young Washington a 9 out of 10, and not a 10/10, for a couple reasons. First, some of the scenes are kind of hackneyed rote stuff that has been used too many times in most of the Mel Gibson movies (e.g. The Patriot) and similar genre movies. Long, artificially drawn out overly dramatic moments that do not cause tears to fall, but rather tears at the belief and tolerance system. No one takes this long to die in real life. No one acts like this in real life. Ever. Second, I spotted at least two and possibly many more percussion rifles in use by British and Colonial militia troops, as well as by American frontiersmen. Big time no-no for a film based in 1755, when flintlocks alone reigned on the battlefields of Europe and America. Percussion systems first emerged around 1810, and did not become military issue until the 1840s. Lastly, about half of the scenes are filmed in places and on landscapes that just do not physically exist anywhere in Pennsylvania, especially in Western Pennsylvania. That strains credulity, even if I logically accept the plain fact that finding any undistrubed landscapes anywhere to film on is getting difficult.
Many many years ago, as a paid non-profit land conservation professional, I helped the National Park Service conserve the Fort Necessity Battlefield and also Braddock’s Trace, out in Western Pennsylvania. These important places are depicted in the movie. That same NPS park manager and I then went on to work together on conserving the Flight 93 crash site and its surrounding landscape, after 9-11. So, I have some personal knowledge and appreciation for the rugged Western PA topography, and for the specific place where young George Washington put himself to the test, and succeeded.
It was the rugged and demanding wild landscape that created the original Israelites, who gave us The Law, and then it was the rugged, demanding, and wild landscape here in North America that gave the world America, a nation based on The Law and a light unto the nations, really the only light unto the nations on this entire planet. Thanks to George Washington. And this is why conserving rural landscapes is still so important: They are our unique American culture of freedom.
This movie meant a lot to me, more than I would have expected. Maybe you will have the same positive reaction. A lot of us Americans have an awful lot of unrequited expectations built up over the past ten or fifteen years of crappy Hollywood movie output. A lot of un-met need. And this movie, Young Washington, meets those needs.
Poster for Young Washington movie
MELANIA movie is great!
If you had told me before this afternoon that I would willingly go see a movie about a pretty lady and her courtiers, and actually really enjoy it, I would have told you that you are nuts. This is because I am an unapologetically toxically masculine Alpha male who likes old firearms, leather boots (Danner Canadians are my fav), custom hunting knives, heavy packs, and rugged landscapes far from humanity that challenge my physical stamina.
My favorite thing to do is a solo wilderness camping hunt in wilderness areas, where if something badly goes wrong, there is only me to deal with it. A man should regularly spend time living on the edge, and challenging himself, smelling badly and getting dirt and maybe blood under his fingernails.
So, girl stuff, girl clothing, high heels (lots and lots of high high heels in this film), fabric, pretty hair, makeup, etc are not really in my bailiwick let alone my universe, OTHER THAN enjoying a beautiful woman who can put it all together in a nice package that makes my head turn and makes me let out an involuntary whistle. And if you are a manly man lucky enough to find one like that who will share your man cave with you, you have hit the jackpot.
President Donald J. Trump hit the jackpot with Melania, and this movie about her shows us why. She is gracious and graceful, gentle and kind yet quietly tough, stoic, better-than-Vogue stylish and stone cold to those who say they are her enemies, while openly loving to her family and allies. World class beautiful. What a woman.
Lucky you, Mister President. Lucky America, to have a First Lady (FLOTUS) with all this class and refined poise.
Apparently Amazon owner Jeff Bezos underwrote this film, and in it we catch a brief glimpse of Bezos sitting next to VP Vance at one of the main 2025 gala Inauguration dinners. Money buys you political access, right? Smart guy, Bezos, right? Everything about this film is A+ professionally done. Everything. Every tiny detail. The music choices, the editing, the filming, the scenes, every. single. thing. in this film is 100% perfectly done. And if Melania were a Democrat, this whole movie would have been done free of charge a hundred times over by the mainstream media, NPR, PBS, etc. in a hundred different articles and documinis.
One of the other perfect things that comes through is the enormous role of gay men, behind the scenes, in Melania’s life. Which is the life of chic lifestyle the world over. From the clothing that Melania wears to the Inaguration invitations to the table settings and arrangements, gay guys are running the show.
Now, if a hulking, hairy, smelly, straight Alpha guy with the artistic sense of a brick like me is telling you the following, you can put it in the bank: Our world would be a much much poorer, much less pretty, much less enjoyable, much less beautiful place without gay men. Strange though they may be from a biological perspective, gay men are a work of hybridized biological art that combines the best that men and women do separately, in one package, only better. Just have to say it, because though I have known that the fashion world is rife with them, this movie revealed it like nothing else could. Serious talent, gentlemen. Wow.
No, I am not an “ally.” Nor am I “pro gay.” Rather, I am pro human. I want everyone on this planet to be treated fairly and equally and to have the same opportunities. I also like giving credit where it is due to people who have earned it.
President Trump obviously makes some appearances in this behind-the-scenes filming done after the 2024 election and through all of the White House prep and resulting balls and dances and Inauguration speeches. Some funny quips and comments on and off the camera. His kids make brief appearances, while young Barron Trump gets the most attention out of all of them. I would not underestimate Barron Trump. Whatever this young man sets out to do, he is going to do it perfectly.
And why not? His mother is the most impressive Melania.
Go see this neat film. Sharing the movie theater with us were 85 other people. I have not counted anywhere close to 85 people in a movie theater since Top Gun: Maverick four years ago, and before that I cannot recall being in another movie pulling in so many people at one showing. After the lights went on, I spoke with some of the audience members still standing around, and they all liked it for different reasons.
Two Hollywood legends I will actually miss
Normally I am not a fan of Hollywood in any sense. In recent times, including just days ago, America lost two Hollywood legends, two actors who personified Hollywood at its best and maybe its worst, but also at its most colorful. I will miss them both, for very different reasons.
First up is Rob Reiner, apparently murdered two days ago by his own son. Both Rob and his wife Michelle were found deceased in their home by their daughter. Their throats had been slashed. Their son Nick has been arrested and charged with their murders. Apparently Nick has had a long history of drug abuse and all of the resulting relationship challenges that come with it. We now see the gruesome result, and can easily imagine the victims disbelievingly pleading with their own son not to harm them…
…their murders are a tragedy on its face, as well as a statement about the unworkable culture that is “inside Hollywood.” A mix of libertine excess and constant parental indulgence and allowance followed by inexorable failure. What a symbol of the whole place.
Rob Reiner really began his Hollywood career as “Meathead,” the abrasively sanctimonious know-it-all liberal son-in-law of appropriately named American workingman archetype, Archie Bunker, in All In The Family TV sitcom.
Relying on a well-scripted, well-played political and cultural tension between old guard Archie Bunker and Hippie “Meathead,” Rob Reiner gave effective voice to his generation’s anti-war, anti-tradition, anti-religion, anti-America liberalism.
The show captured the “generation gap” of my 1960s-1970s childhood, where older Americans held the traditional values that built a fully functioning nation, and the younger Americans were utopian meatheads with unrealistic, unsustainable expectations guaranteed to derail the nation.
Confusingly, Rob Reiner never grew up or let go of his Meathead persona, nor his destructive goofball political views. I suppose to his credit, in a way, neither have nearly all of his contemporary eldering-in-place fellow ever-child meathead Hippies. I will miss his entertaining online rants against Trump, MAGA, conservatives, Republicans, regular working Americans, essentially against everything outside of the tiny bizarro world Hollywood bubble that Rob Reiner inhabited.
Rob Reiner created the living liberal strawman that conservatives easily use to prove their points. In essence, Meathead grew up proving that Archie Bunker was right, decade after decade. And so, as much as he was strange, he also contributed well to the American political discourse. Rest in peace, Mr. Reiner. I am genuinely sorry you left us in this horrible way.
The other Hollywood person who recently left us is actor, producer, film maker Robert Redford. Easily the best looking man in American history, and also the one Hollywood actor least addicted to plastic surgery as he aged, Redford inhabited a very different cultural place than Reiner.
Famous for playing a variety of all-American hero and anti-hero roles, from gritty to suave, from cowboy to playboy, Robert Redford was a fixture in Hollywood for a really long time. He also fueled the Sundance Film Festival, an alternative to Hollywood, where low-budget art films and documentaries could gain audience and funding outside of Hollywood’s metrics and politics.
One of my favorite Redford movies is Spy Game, with Brad Pitt. Redford plays the role of a CIA spook and patriot, who in a former job as Cold War spy went so far as to unilaterally murder/ execute a known American traitor in Europe. This role alone sends a loud message about Redford’s politics: He was no leftist, no Hollywood commie, but rather he was a true American patriot in every conservative sense of the phrase.
But Redford also promoted environmental quality, and public lands, two things that are close to my own heart and not always present in the conservative movement. Not that Redford followed the leftist doctrine of heavy regulation and anti capitalism, but rather, he simply said that these things are important. And of course, they are important. And there are other ways of achieving environmental quality and public lands conservation without following leftist doctrine. Such a moderate stance is unheard of among Hollywooders.
Redford played very well a famous, iconic role that still speaks to men of my generation, that of historic mountain man Jeremiah Johnson. Filmed right before the 1976 American Bicentennial, Jeremiah Johnson captured the spirit of the American frontier, Westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, rugged individualism, self reliance, urban vs rural, and the European-American conflicts with the western Indian tribes (Crow, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Lakota and others) in the Rockies.
Many of these themes and character traits are still central to the American identity that us older Americans have. Including Archie Bunker.
Jeremiah Johnson promoted the now-underappreciated but still central role of undeveloped American open lands in forging the tough American frontier spirit and Yankee ingenuity that built our nation. That conservatives miss or ignore this link, or misunderstand it, is just as much a crime as leftist attempts to essentially shrinkwrap public lands and make them off-limits to humans.
Robert Redford represents an image and political philosophy almost at the other end of Rob Reiner’s place on the political bell curve. Both men played important parts in shaping American culture, and I appreciate them both. However, Robert Redford will forever be an aspirational icon, whereas Rob Reiner represents a dead end on the political evolutionary tree.
Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson, iconic American frontiersman