612 posts categorized "FIVE STARS"

September 15, 2023

RADICAL WOLFE

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.ColeSmithey.comThis ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

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ColeSmithey.com Richard Dewey’s informative documentary about famed New York City author Tom Wolfe places subtle reflection on Wolfe’s coded right wing stance.

Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Wolfe adopted his signature white suit as an extension of his public persona as a dandy.

The suit harkens to plantation owners whose authority over his enslaved subjects, demanded complete subjugation.

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It is this similar brand of intellectual superiority that the Yale-graduated Wolfe lorded over the media, his fans, and his many enemies.

Wolf could easily have been the inspiration for the Elvis Costello song "This Town" (from his 1989 "Spike" album).

The chorus goes:

"You're nobody in this town
You're nobody in this crowd
You're nobody till everybody in this town
thinks you're poison,
Got your number, knows it must be avoided
You're nobody till everybody in this town
thinks you're a bastard"

Wolfe was big into the cult of his own personality, or lack thereof.

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The film’s title "Radical Wolfe" tips its hat toward the radicalization of the Republican party that ‘70s and ‘80s era reprobates such as Morton Downey Jr. and Donald Trump seized upon.

Ironic, not ironic how Conservative came to equate as Radical ideology.

The term Conservative should be altered to reflect its actual intent.

Transparency is as transparent does, so "Radical" is the new term for Conservative.

Out with the old, in with the new.

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Telling is the fierce degree of hatred that Tom Wolfe instilled in his literary rivals.

Hunter S. Thompson, John Irving, and J.D. Salinger all rebuked Tom Wolfe for his cruel stance and grandiose style that Wolfe used to attack sacred cows, such as Leonard Bernstein.

There is no question that Tom Wolfe was a groundbreaking writer and journalist. The fast paced biopic takes us through Wolfe's dynamic books that made him the most financially successful author of his time.

We get hooked.

Screen Shot 2023-09-15 at 1.22.22 PM

"The Right Stuff," "The Bonfire of the Vanities," and "The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test" made Tom Wolfe a very wealthy man indeed.

Although, Wolfe's daughter appears, along with such iconic figures as Michael Lewis, Gay Talese, and the dubious Peter Thiel, we never get any sense of Tom Wolfe as much of a family man. The film explicitly leaves out any mention of Wolfe's wife.

Weird.

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"Radical Wolfe" has the potential to inspire its viewers to read a Tom Wolfe book. You might even venture into the work of Wolfe's contemporaries, Hunter S. Thompson, John Irvine, Joan Didion, or Kurt Vonnegut.

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Taste, chew, eat.

Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.

Not Rated. 76 mins.

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

August 09, 2023

MR. KLEIN — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.ColeSmithey.comThis ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

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ColeSmithey.comJoseph Losey's Nazi-era war drama is based on a composite of actual people and events wherein French police collaborated to arrest Jews and send them away to concentration camps.

Working from a script by Franco Solinas ("The Battle of Algiers"), Mr. Losey combines different filmic styles toward a slow-burn climax that is arresting.

The year is 1942.

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The film's brooding sense of privacy invasion by local authorities and occupying forces darkens as the film's opportunist title character unknowingly puts himself under ever increasing scrutiny by Jew-hunting French police. 

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It seems that Mr. Klein has a mysterious Jewish would-be doppelgänger who goes by the same name. Mr. Klein's hubris and self-hating racism drive him into grotesque agony.

Screen Shot 2023-08-09 at 2.12.56 PM

Alain Delon remains the most iconic image of inscrutable masculinity that French Cinema provides. Mr. Delon put skin in the game to produce "Mr. Klein," with the assertion that Blacklisted expat American director Joseph Losey be given the Director's chair.

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Mr. Klein (Alain Delon) deals in Parisian antiques. Mr. Klein lives among his gilded treasures in a palatial Paris apartment he shares with his bed-loving girlfriend. Mr. Klein is openly insulting to his Jewish clientele, of whose predicament he takes full financial advantage when purchasing their art works for pennies on the dollar.

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Entropy takes over Mr. Klein's life as even his trusted lawyer openly betrays him in light of Mr. Klein's inability to prove his heritage as other than Jewish. Now that Mr. Klein is in the police department's system, he is stuck on an uncertain path toward death.

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Mr. Losey is careful to include the LGTBQ culture of the era in telling sequences with Parisian showgirls.

Complex in its narrative, Joseph Losey's historically accurate "Mr. Klein" (1975) predicts our modern day tech dystopia of surveillance capitalism that has ruptured every society, and the planet, to the point of near or present collapse.

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"Mr. Klein" is a haunting film for the reflexive dichotomy it shares between the dystopia of World War II France, and the totalitarian existence we experience today.

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In 2023, we are all Mr. Klein.

Rated PG. 123 mins.

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

 

July 26, 2023

IL SORPASSO — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

ColeSmithey.comWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com



 

 

ColeSmithey.comDino Rissi's influential 1962 masterpiece of Italian social satire is notable for its breezy study of the era's Italian post-war character types.

"Il Sorpasso" presents itself as an odd-couple road movie comedy, but an uneasy dread pulls the film's undercurrent of sadness.

Vittorio Gassman's Bruno Cortona is a footloose 37-year-old divorcee who spends his days chasing women, while running minor cons on whomever he encounters along the way.

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Crucial to Bruno's random strategy for life is the beat up convertible Aurelia sports car that he uses to dangerously race past other drivers on Italy's twisting roadways. Bruno is a bully of the road, in all ways.

Bruno forces his way into the life of introverted law student Roberto Mariani (Jean-Louis Trintignant), whom Bruno takes on a wild couple of days around Rome and Tuscany.

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Bruno's narcissism knows no bounds as he tempts fate, fist fights, and females of all ages.

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Roberto allows himself to be abused to the point of embracing Bruno's unrealistic grasp on life.

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Many of Roberto's hens are coming home to roost.

As Fellini's screenwriter Ennio Flaiano said of Italy at the time, "In Italy, the situation is always tragic, but never serious."

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"Carnal Knowledge" and "Sideways" are just a couple of films that owe "Il Sprpasso" a great debt of gratitude.

You know you've seen a masterpiece after watching "Il Sorpasso."

Not Rated. 108 mins.

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

 

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