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Doctor Who: The End of Time: Part Two (2010)
More Timothy Dalton
There's an old science fiction trope about time travel, that only *one* species at a time may possess it, since another group of time travelers will simple go back in time and wipe out the first group.
Eventually, there can be only one.
R. T. Davies actually proposes a new wrinkle to this idea: if you can't travel to the Past and defeat the Time Lords, you can travel to the Future end of time and extinguish all they had hoped to create, or preserve.
Fortunately Davies shunts less of Part Two's script into risible action scenes (jumping out of a flying vehicle, through a skylight, and onto a marble floor? With no broken bones? Phwa) instead of the Last Time War he created for the Ninth Doctor. Timothy Dalton's Rassilon (think of the phrase, "Alt-Right Time Lord") Is a treat; it's too bad Davies is so intent on tearing down Time Lords, instead of addressing issues like war, the Spenglerian life-cycle of Culture, and mortality.
I was also amused at how Sinêad Keenan's blue eyes stood out in the green Vinvocci make-up. I don't normally notice eye color, but the combination was quite striking.
Doctor Who: The End of Time: Part One (2009)
Not enough Timothy Dalton
"Not if President Obama ends the recession tonight!"
"Here, on Christmas Day, the President has promised an instant and radical solution to the world-wide depression. Barack Obama will lead us all into a new age of prosperity!"
*gag* Though hilarious in retrospect. But I must ask, was writer Davies subtly critiquing Obama (or his drooling fangirls)? Naismith, a black man, extols Obama's coming White House presser to the Master: "You might want to see this, sir. Proof that the human race can mend its own problems." Risible, considering that these humans are hijacking alien technology only with the secret help of two different alien species.
This show matches the plot holes usual to Doctor Who with superior special effects, but this episode is largely prologue to the superior Part Two.
Ghosted (2009)
A cross-cultural lesbian ghost story
Is this a perfect movie? No. But is a great whatever-it-is.
Ghost stories are all about memory. (Just as zombie flicks are about death, Frankenstein is about overreaching man/science, vampires are about gluttony (sexual and otherwise), and werewolves about our animal drives.) This is an awesome ghost story. I enjoyed it immensely. I hope Monika Treut has another one in her.
We see the German writer haunted by the memory of her deceased lover, even as another woman (seems) to take her place. In reality, the restless Asian spirit is simply sought by the German lady simply to place her to rest.
"Dream Boy" was a gay (male), Southern ghost story. "Ghosted" is a Euro-Chinese lesbian version. They both rock, and I enjoyed them both immensely.
Patton (1970)
One of the greatest films, not just war films, of all time
George S. Patton was dyslexic, well-read, a dandy and a hardened, seasoned warrior. He praised and denigrated people by race (as was private routine then) but welcomed African-American tankers into 3rd Army (at the time, as was all the U.S. Army, segregated) and even was the first commander to integrate rifle companies when manpower got tight.
"Patton" correctly salutes Patton by making a movie just as complex as he was; this film both celebrates martial glory and shudders at war's true horror. Patton read the Bible daily and believed in the efficacy of prayer even as he believed in reincarnation and used every profanity known to man to get his army moving. Patton's speeches were even more bloodthirsty than the first scene of the movie, a somewhat bowdlerized, but still stirring, version of his pre-combat speech to 3rd Army, yet as a commander he relied not upon brute force but maneuver and flanking movements to turn the enemy, get him fleeing and keep him that way. By the war's end, he had pushed the Wehrmacht further, with fewer lives lost, than any other Allied general.
The truest memorial to the veterans of WWII was written in Hollywood celluloid; "Patton" is a worthy addition, and a fine, inspiring tribute to an American legend (and all who served under him). As Patton himself, with painful self-knowledge, said while viewing the carnage of a battlefield: "War, I love it. God help me, I do love it so."
The Doom Generation (1995)
Simply great, but not for the faint...
This movie is the younger brother to David Lynch's _Wild at Heart_. Its direction and performances are rougher and more archly surreal but I think director Araki wanted it that way. This movie does have a plot but its landscape is almost entirely psychological--especially the ending. It combines punk and pre-Goth music with a character, Jordan White, who is a kind of lovingly accepting, moment-by-moment Christ-figure. If you can accept that statement, you should watch this movie.
By the way, the opening credit "A heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki" is a bit of a flipped bird to reviewers who pigeonholed his last movie with the tag "gay film." "Doom Generation" does have a gay subtext throughout; a very interesting one, too.