Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power [2004]

MPAA (Not Rated)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power, a documentary directed by Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts about pro-gun Civil Rights era North Carolina African-American activist Robert Williams, is a film that I honestly never would have heard of before beginning my blog.  Yet as a Catholic priest who is also a blogger writing about films, I find myself (often smiling from ear to ear) in a rather unique position to give voice to such well made and provocative films as this.  I belong to a universal (Catholic) Church, one that firmly believes that we are all God's children and since I write in my spare time and simply for the occasional donation, I actually get to write more freely than most anybody else about the films that I choose to see (and as readers of this blog will certainly note, I really, really enjoy casting a "very wide net.") So I'm becoming more and more certain that a lot of the films that I write about on this blog are films that they too would probably have never heard of otherwise.  Yet hopefully, readers will rind the films reviewed here compelling and, further, written about in a compelling way ;-)

I discovered this film last week while I was looking for a place that was showing the recently released youth oriented dance movie Step Up Revolution [2012] but in 2D rather than the "industry preferred" 3D (which would have also cost me $4 more to see it...).  Most of the mainstream theaters in Chicago were only offering one showing a day of the film in 2D and, unsurprisingly, at very inconvenient times.  However, I found that the ICE (Inner City Entertainment) theater chain had a multiplex on 87th Street off of the Dan Ryan expressway in Chicago that only showed the film in 2D (and at multiple times).   I found this just great. It was while I was there I found out that ICE ran a monthly program called "Black World Cinema" and that this particular film was playing the following Thursday at the theater.

Those who've followed my blog would know that I've come to appreciate the various film festivals that pass through Chicago during the year as well as the more "avant guard" / "art theaters" in Chicago like Facet's Multimedia (Near Northwest Side), the Gene Siskel Film Center (Downtown) and Landmark Century Centre (Lincoln Park), The Music Box Theatre (Northside).  So it has been a joy to discover ICE Theaters on the South Side as well.  And I do hope to see / review films from the Black World Cinema series as they occur from now on.

Negroes with Guns is a documentary that has aired on PBS's Independent Lens program about Robert Williams, who during the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s-60s when honestly no one knew how the struggle for black equality was going to end up took a very "Southern path" to the Civil Rights Struggle.  He started  _peacefully_ arming blacks, by starting a series of legal gun clubs across North Carolina though mostly centered around his home Monroe County.  He did work with the NAACP and had _some_ contact with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  But as a representative of the NAACP in the documentary noted, both the NAACP and the SCLC frankly kept a distance from Robert Williams and his Black Guard for fear of losing northern white liberal support. 

The documentary also showed that Robert Williams' approach did eventually get him into trouble.  In 1961, during a particularly tense summer when a number of NAACP/SCLC "freedom riders" had arrived in Monroe County and were peacefully protesting in the center of town, a couple of local white women perhaps trying to avoid the protests in the center of town ended up making a wrong turn and passed through the African American section of town instead.  Finding themselves surrounded by ARMED BLACK MEN and actually having been escorted by Robert Williams out of the neighborhood and back onto right road, they turned around and accused Robert Williams and his men of having "kidnapped them."  This became the pretext that the local police needed to try to bring an end to Robert Williams' group.  Informed that the State Police were going to come and arrest him, Robert Williams and his family fled the back roads out of the county and (perhaps tragically) out of the state.  Since he crossed state lines, he found himself as a fugitive wanted by the FBI.    So he ended up fleeing all the way to Castro's Cuba, which certainly _did not_ ingratiate him the U.S. government at the time.  Remember, only a short time later came the Cuban Missile Crisis.  (Then during his time in Cuba, Robert Williams did produce a radio program of his own design FOR (Communist) Cuba's foreign radio service called "Radio Free Dixie).

Finding himself on the other side of Cold War lines, he was something of a hero for a time in the Communist Bloc, but he remained too independent.  Eventually, he found himself going to Communist China in the late 1960s.  Finally, as U.S. President Richard Nixon began his overtures to opening diplomatic relations with Communist China, Robert Williams was allowed to return to the United States.  Soon after being "extradited" back to North Carolina almost immediately after returning to the United States (he arrived initially to Detroit) the "kidnapping" charges that he faced in North Carolina were quietly dropped as well.

In the documentary Robert Williams is portrayed as having been an inspiration for the subsequent Black Panther movement.  That may be.  However, upon his return, Williams remained rather quiet, never being particularly interested in becoming a "successor figure" to either Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr as the FBI had apparently feared.  Indeed, it would seem that Robert Williams never really advocated violence (hence probably why he was able to return and why the charges against him in North Carolina were dropped).  Instead, he simply advocated armed self-defense claiming equal rights as whites to the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which guarantees the rights of Americans to bear arms).

I found the situation that got Williams into trouble in North Carolina as more or less inevitable.  And all things considered, at least nobody died in that confrontation that resulted in Williams having to have to flee for his life all the way to Castro's Cuba and Communist China before he was able to come home.  However, I do believe that people do have a right to self-defense.  I'm not sure if guns are necessarily the solution (and Williams life can be taken to teach lessons on both sides of the "gun" question in the United States:  If Williams and his group were not armed, perhaps he would not have had to flee all the way to Cuba to save his life.  On the other hand, I've never been threatened with being lynched or having my house threatened with being burned to the ground.  So I think I understand Williams' dilemma and why he chose to advocate the path that he did.

In any case, this documentary certainly gives _everyone_ much to think about.


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Sacrifice (orig. Zhao shi gu er) [2010]

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1726738/
Roger Ebert's review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120725/REVIEWS/120729989

Sacrifice (orig. Zhao shi gu er), directed by Kaige Chen, screenplay by Ningyu Zhao is a Chinese historical drama (subtitled) filmed out of Shanghai based on a Chinese opera set in the 6th century BC in China.

Cheng Ying (played by You Ge) a doctor is attending the pregnant daughter of the King/head of the powerful Zhao family.  While he has been a doctor for many years, Cheng is especially happy these days because after many years he and his wife were finally able to have a child of their own as well.

Well, just as the daughter of the king was going to have her child, an angry general Tu'An Gu (played by Xequi Wang) storms the King's palace with his men and proceeds to kill everyone of the King's family except for the daughter, who being in labor was in another building.  She gives birth to her child.  But finding out what had just happened to her family, she gives the child, a son, to the doctor asking him to save him by raising him as his own (as a commoner, not knowing his actual heritage).  The doctor agrees, taking the child to his home.

Tu'An Gu in the meantime finds out that the king's daughter had given birth and not finding the infant, orders his men to close all the gates of the citadel, search all the homes and carry to him every infant in the citadel figuring that all the parents of the children abducted in this way could come to him, one by one, to plead for their children's lives, leaving the one who belonged to the daughter of the king alone to die.

But it does not turn out that way.  The doctor's wife, now suddenly with two infants decides to hide her own while handing over the daughter of the king's child to Tu'An Gu's men.  BUT the doctor feeling obligation to his former patient, goes back to Tu'An Gu to claim the child as his own.  Now Tu'An Gu is confused.  He knows the doctor attended the daughter of the king.  He also knows that the doctor recently had a child himself.  And the doctor had come to him somewhat suspiciously late to ask for the child back.  Who's child is it?  And shouldn't there be two children there that the doctor's supposedly taking care of now?

If this seems convoluted, it is.  And yes, even Tu'An Gu is confused.  He goes back with his men to the doctor's house to find the other child.  But even when he finds the second child (one can't easily keep a newborn quiet for an extended period of time), what then?  Which child is whose?  Much ensues ...

History and martial arts buffs will like this film as the costuming and as well as the combat scenes are certainly authentic.  My only complaint would be that the films feels like one that would have been produced during the Ben Hur [1959] era of film making.  As such, I would suspect that many Americans may find the sets, cinematography and even the dialogue (subtitled though it may be) somewhat "dated."  Flashier Chinese "period pieces," like Snow Flower and the Secret Fan [2011] and Detective Dee and the Phantom Flame [2011] still seem to be coming out of Hong Kong rather than Shanghai.

On the other hand, one also has to realize that the screenwriter Ningyu Zhao had actually lost a decade of his life during China's Cultural Revolution which extended from 1966 to 1976. Ningyu Zhao had been a rising star in Communist China's film establishment prior to the Cultural Revolution and only after it was over, was he able to begin rebuilding his career.  So it should not necessarily be surprising that his style would have been influenced by the great Hollywood epics made in the late 1950s through mid-1960s in the West The Ten Commandments [1956], Ben Hur [1959] or Cleopatra [1963] (and somewhat "stuck" in that time). 

However, in any case, Sacrifice (orig. Zhao shi gu er) makes for a good film for those who'd be interested in Chinese history and culture.  And perhaps the comparison between the films being produced in Hong Kong vs Shanghai will serve to improve the films coming out of both places.


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Polisse [2011]

MPAA (NR, would be R)  Fr. Dennis (1/2 Star)

IMDb listing


Polisse, directed and cowritten by Maïwenn along with Emmanuelle Bercot (who both also costar in the film), is a generally well-regarded French film (subtitled) about the Juvenile Protection Division of the Paris Police Department that recently played in Chicago at Facets' Multimedia.

Well written, the film feels like a potential pilot for a French version of the American television series Law and Order, Special Victims Unit or one of the CSI franchises.  The ensemble cast interacts well and the various subplots are often quite compelling and sad.

As someone in my position however, I do have to note that though this unit of Paris' Police Dept was certainly dedicated to protecting minors, the personal morality of the individual members of the unit was often all over the place.  At least half of the characters were having affairs with each other, cheating on their spouses and so forth.  For a more prudish American (and yes, I'm also a Catholic priest) that personal behavior does inevitably seem rather incongruous to the unit's "mission," THOUGH THIS MAY HAVE BEEN PART OF THE FILM'S POINT.

There's also a rather ambiguous scene in the film that COULD portray INFANTICIDE: a thirteen year-old presented as a rape victim is presented after having had a late term abortion (?) or delivering a stillborn child (?) as asking the nurse to hold the (dead) baby.  Then when she has the dead baby in her arms, she apologizes.  Why?  It's a very strange scene.  And it makes it impossible for someone like me give the film a positive review.

Was the scene necessary?  No.  What was the purpose of the scene's more or less obvious ambiguity except to blur distinctions between STILL BIRTH, ABORTION and EVEN INFANTICIDE?  Sigh ... But there we are ...


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Ruby Sparks [2012]

MPAA (R)  Roger Ebert (3 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Ruby Sparks (directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, screenplay by Zoe Kazan) is an appropriately R-rated (not for any nudity but for theme) young adult oriented romance about struggling writer Calvin Weir-Fields (played by Paul Dano) trying to make lightning strike twice: he had an enormously successful first novel some ten years previous but hasn't been able to produce anything of consequence since (shades of one of my all time favorite films Wonder Boys [2000]).  Worse, he's retired to an existence that doesn't extend much beyond his type-writer, visits to his shrink Dr. Rosenthal (played by Eliott Gould) and meeting up with his brother Harry (played by Chris Messina) who is concerned but still loves/hasn't given up on him.  To get himself out of the house more (and in hopes of meeting more people, especially potential girlfriends) Calvin had gotten a dog.  However, the dog, though a cute terrier, ends up being about as shy as he is.

Anyway, Calvin starts dreaming of a young attractive woman who he'd never met.  Taking this as an inspiration, he starts writing about her.  Then suddenly, one day, there she is, Ruby (played by the film's author Zoe Kazan) materialized in his home.

How could this be?  He doesn't understand.  Neither does his brother.  Yet after becoming convinced that she's really there in Calvin's house they accept her and present her to others as Calvin's girlfriend.  And as Calvin's creation that's what she certainly is ... initially.

The rest of the movie becomes a very nice reflection on relationships, what one wants of them, and what one really wants for one's loved ones.   It's one of those "romantic comedies" that at times is not particularly funny.  But it is a very nice story.

Indeed, as I write this there could be even a very nice THEOLOGICAL DIMENSION to this story.  After all, Calvin was Ruby's "Creator."  But ultimately, what does Calvin want for his Creation?  It's just a lovely, lovely story!


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Pom Poko (orig. Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko) [1994]

MPAA (PG)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110008/

Pom Poko (orig. Heisei tanuki gassen ponpoko) [1994] directed and cowritten by Isao Takahata [IMDb] along with Hayao Miyazaki [IMDb] co-founders of the internationally acclaimed Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli [IMDb] being honored this summer in a truly remarkable animated film series entitled Castles in the Sky playing at the Gene Siskel Film Center is a children's animated cartoon (dubbed into English) about an "epic struggle" between generally mild-mannered, gifted but rather lazy Japanese raccoons (called tanuki) and human developers seeking to build a new subdivision on their land somewhere at the outskirts of Tokyo.

The film begins with two bands of Japanese raccoons, one band dressed in blue shirts, the other in red, fighting each other (though not particularly seriously) on a nice meadow in the foothills outside of Tokyo as they had been doing for ages past.  A elderly "wise woman" raccoon named Oroku (voiced in the English version by Tress MacNeill) interrupts the fight, telling the raccoons that unless they band together to resist the encroaching humans, the land on which they are fighting will be taken away from all of them.

So the raccoons decide to band together to fight the common enemy -- humans.  But how?  Well here there's a problem.  Though the raccoons quickly agree with Oroku and the other elder, an Buddhist-raccoon Abbot named Tsurugame (voiced by Kozan Yanagiya), that they are going have to "work together" be "very clever" and indeed have to _relearn_ their traditional "shape shifting" skills, raccoons, though amiable and yes, generally clever are ... well ... easily distracted/lazy ;-).  So when one of the raccoons brings back a television set from a garbage dump for the purpose helping the raccoons "better understand their human opponents," the narrator (voiced in the EV by Maurice Lamarche) notes that pretty soon most of the raccoons "just wanted to sit around and watch TV" ;-) to the consternation of the Elders, who were frustrated that the younger racoons just didn't want to take anything seriously ... ;-).

Nevertheless, the raccoons' traditional shape-shifting skills were simply too cool for the younger raccoons to resist forever and so they gradually got on board ;-).  When these raccoons living at the outskirts of Tokyo reached a certain level in their "shape-shifting" skills, the elder Tsurugame sent-out for even greater "raccoon masters" who lived on the Japanese island of Shikoku where presumably raccoons were less urbanized and were able to better maintain their traditional skills.

Wonderful, a fair number of the raccoons were able to learn quite well the art of shape shifting, but what now?  Well, the raccoons learned that they could really, really scare human construction workers by shape-shifting into ghosts and monsters.  But when they decided to "go on the offensive" and stage a massive shape-shifting display all across a fairly large section of the suburbs of Tokyo, suddenly the owner of a local amusement park claimed that this display was just a big publicity stunt for his new park.  Darn!  All that work and now instead of being scared, now humans were just being amused!  Who could be that clever to turn something that the raccoons worked on so hard into something that humans would just find quaint and amusing?  There's an explanation and it's clever, but see the movie ... ;-).

The rest of the movie is about the raccoons trying to figure out what to do next.  Do they continue to resist?  Do they try to make some sort of a peace with the humans?  And hey, if one can "shape shift" couldn't one just "shape shift into being a human" and take the view of "if you can't beat them, join them?"

It all becomes a really fun story (and leaving one obviously with _much_ to think about ;-).  Pom Poko [1994] like the other films in the Castles in the Sky series shown at the Gene Siskel Film Center this summer is available for rent through the Blockbuster.com a la carte (no subscription needed) $5/film rent-by-mail service.  And honestly, this is fun movie to see!  I'll never think of racoons the same way again ;-) ;-)


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Step Up Revolution [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  Roger Ebert (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

Step Up Revolution (directed by Scott Speer, characters by Duane Adler, screenplay by Amanda Brody) is a summer dance movie, the fourth in the Step Up [IMDb] franchise.  I would add that IMHO it's a pretty good one.

First, this film is stationed in Miami.  I had been stationed previously in Orlando, Florida for three and a half years.  So during that time, I did get to know Miami somewhat: Little Havana and yes South Beach (during the day).  And from what I saw, I could tell that Miami would be a great place to stage a "really cool dance movie."

Second, I've always liked "Avant Guard" / Contemporary Art (I admire the creativity and often enough its humor -- a 3 foot "sheep" covered by "steel wool" ;-), a "kitchen scene" painted on a "canvas" of broken plates...).  I've regularly attended the gigantic Art Chicago art fair held here in Chicago each May.  Hundreds of galleries from every continent / corner of the globe converge here each year for this event.  (Indeed 2012 was the first year since my coming to back to Chicago that the Art Chicago exposition was not held.  Perhaps it was a casualty of the Chicago NATO Summit held here this year at about the same time). I mention Contemporary Art here because one of the "flash mob" dance scenes in the film takes place at supposedly "a contemporary art museum" somewhere in Miami and IMHO the scene was "just awesome" ;-).

Finally, I also have to say that this movie "brought me back" to "dance films of summers past" when I was in my 20s when films like Flashdance [1983], the original Footloose [1984] and Dirty Dancing [1987] were first released.

So what's the film about?  Well certainly it doesn't run like a Hemmingway or Dostoyevski novel ;-).  Just like the Fast and Furious [IMDb] franchise is about showcasing "really fast cars," the Step Up [IMDb] franchise of films is about showcasing "really hip modern dance."  So the plot's "kinda thin."  But even here even if the plot's broth is quite spare, honestly, plot's not necessary bad.

The film is about two childhood friends, Sean (played by Ryan Guzman) and Eddy (played by Misha Gabriel Hamilton), who grew-up in Miami were part of an avant guard dance troupe of friends.  Along with those friends, the two came up with the idea of staging "flash mob" dance events with their group across Miami and putting video of these performances onto YouTube in hopes of winning a large cash prize for being the first non-commercial channel on YouTube to get more than 10 million hits.  The well choreographed "flash mob" scenes are of course awesome and (in the movie) quickly gain attention.  Indeed, (in the film) awestruck passerbys happily capture these performances with their own cell phones, etc and "post them online" as well.  (If I saw something like what this group of performers were doing, I'd probably doing the same ... :-)

However, despite their emerging notoriety, dance certainly wasn't paying their bills.  Both Sean and Eddy had day jobs working as waiters at a Miami Beach hotel, owned by a Midwest real estate tycoon named Bill Anderson (played by Bill Gallagher).

It turns out that Bill Anderson has a 20 year old daughter Emily (played by Kathryn McCormick) who has dreams of becoming a professional dancer.  Sean and Emily meet accidently at the hotel's bar and do some flirting which proceeds to some dancing.  Much ensues ... (though all remaining on the film's PG-13 level)

Things come to a head when it turns out that Bill Anderson's firm applies to demolish the neighborhood where Sean and Eddy grew-up, including their "salsa playing" hang-out where they and the rest of their "mob" first met.  What to do?  It's Emily who suggests turning "Performance Art" into "Protest Art."

Yes, the fans of our nation's notorious Gas Bags and Billionaires would probably initially hate this turn.  But actually the movie does quite well here.  To have the characters in the film do nothing would be in effect to tell the young people of our time to just "shut up and let them demolish your house," and yet the now "Protest Artists" learn that even in protest _one has to remain positive_.  Negativity gets one _no where_.  What a great lesson!  And one that could give hope to all kinds of young people who, being young, would like to make a contribution/mark in this world, rather than simply sit, perhaps complain and eventually grow old and die.

So my hat off to the makers of this film.  You made not only a very good, perhaps even great dance film, but also one with a simple and yet positive message.

One final note.  This film was made in 3D.  However, I saw it in 2D (and therefore for the 2D price).  It worked perfectly in 2D.  So there's no need to pay the extra $4/ticket to see the film in 3D.


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The Watch [2012]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Roger Ebert's review

The Watch (directed by Akiva Schaffer and written by Jared Stern, Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg) can perhaps best be summarized as a mash-up of two 1950s era genres -- the screw-ball comedy and the alien invasion film -- updated in both cases, for better/for worse (arguably more for worse than for better ...) to contemporary America today.

I write "arguably more for worse" because both the CNS/USCCB and Roger Ebert took the film to task for its gratuitous crudeness.  I don't often directly quote other reviewers in my own reviews but I do think that Roger Ebert had part of this criticism exactly right when he wrote: "The dialogue by Jared Stern and Seth Rogan benefits from the practiced comic timing of the actors, and by some astonishing verbal imagery. But I dunno. It's so determined to be crude, vulgar and offensive that after a while I grew weary. Abbott and Costello used to knock out funnier movies on this exact intellectual plane without using a single F, S, C, P or A word.  It's not that I was offended; it's that I wasn't amused. This movie is easily the equal of Abbott and Costello, however, in scenes where the characters stare in disbelief from behind shrubbery."  The CNS/USCCB review adds complaints/concerns about some of the film's occasional but certainly needlessly graphic sexual antics.

To these two complaints (which I also agree with), I would add a third issue, though this may be, in fact, what the movie was intended to be about: the questionable opinions of "aliens" that we hold in our society.

I say this because the "alien invasion" movies of the 1950s about "strange blobs" often with _mind controlling properties_ "dropping out of the sky" causing havoc to the good folks in small good ole' American towns "in the heartland of America" have long been understood to have mirrored Cold War anxieties that somehow Communism would "drop out of the sky" and infect the minds of good-ole Americans in the States.

With this scenario in mind, I would submit that this movie is actually very similar to those "space invasion" movies of the past:

In The Watch, a community minded / do-gooder, Evan (played by Ben Stiller), a manager of a local Costco in a non-descript Ohio (midwestern) suburban town decides to organize a "Neighborhood Watch" after one of his employees, night watchman and recently naturalized immigrant Antonio Guzman (played by Joe Nunez) was killed at the Costco one night in a particularly bizarre fashion.  Not only was he killed, but whoever killed him _stole his skin_.

A few days later, Evan slips the nice/conscientious high schooler doing the play-by-play announcing at the local high school football game a 20-dollar bill (yes, it's kinda a bribe, but a nice/small/gentle one...) to let him "take the mike" for a brief moment during half-time at the game to "make an announcement."  Evan announces that wants to create a "neighborhood watch," to help the police solve this bizarre crime.

He gets three other volunteers -- Bob (played by Vince Vauhn) a local contractor (a small businessman) with a big pick-up truck and a really, really cool "man cave" that he made out of his garage complete with a gigantic flatscreen (bought at Evan's Costco), a pool table and a bar; Franklin (played by Jonah Hill), a younger guy, somewhat of a loser still living with his mom, who "always wanted to be a cop" but was rejected for a rather impressively long list of deficiencies -- lack of both physical and mental aptitude as well as, well, anger issues... ; and a wealthy sounding Indian named Jamarkus (played by Richard Ayoade) who had recently moved into the neighborhood from "across the pond" in England.

Okay, what is the fundamental job of a "neighborhood watch?"  Answer: to keep "aliens" out.

The whole movie becomes then about aliens, different kinds of aliens.  And yes, this _ought_ to make us squirm:

Antonio was actually a kind of "good alien."  He worked hard, he even got his citizenship, but then AN EVIL ALIEN apparently attacked him, killed him AND EVEN STOLE HIS SKIN so that the "Evil Alien" could "hide" covered by "the skin" of a "good one."

Jamarkus was another kind of alien.  Sure he was foreign, his skin was brown (browner than Antonio's in fact) and he didn't necessarily get all the jokes that the other three, Bob, Franklin, and Evan, were telling each other.  BUT JAMARKUS WAS A RELATIVELY RICH ALIEN.  So no one ever really questioned whether or not "he belonged."

Finally, of course, there were the really lizardy, green saliva dripping EVIL Aliens who "lurk in the shadows," looking to kill good people to cover themselves with their skin. 

So, yuck.  This is really a rather fowl mouthed and yes, at times, sexually crude film which then portrays foreigners even seemingly "good foreigners" in EVIL / untrustworthy light.


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Is this, for better and probably mostly for worse, really what we've become?