It's when I see you've posted a new Patreon review that I realize, Hey wait, there's still one waiting for me in email! --And here I am.
Holy wow, though. At least it gives you the occasion for a lot of excellent zings, all of which I appreciated.
a narrative with the ideological nuance of toast points and an attention to character that gives agitprop a bad name. --surely now someone on Tumblr or somewhere can give me an ideological conversation between toast points? Please? Anyone?
its tough-minded wake-up call to an unsuspecting America is simultaneously binky-bonkers and boring. --I totally get this. Things that are nuts and boring simultaneously.
With minimal alterations in dialogue and none at all to the plot, The Woman on Pier 13—-a more than usually meaningless title, not least because the Embarcadero in San Francisco where its Communist activity is concentrated is conspicuously lacking in a Pier 13—-would play as a paint-by-numbers crime picture --Of course it is! Of course it is!
It suits the film's political vacuity that its ostensible Reds never articulate or even allude to the ideals that make them such implacable opponents of democracy except in clichéd cracks like "What a wonderful advertisement for our American system of free enterprise," nor for all their patter about contacts and cells and indoctrination do we seem to catch them doing very much subversive or seditious. --"How to Communist.. Am I doing it right, Bert? Am I Communisting?" "Sure, Doug, sure. That's how it's done."
We are left to the tautological conclusion that it's bad because the Commies are behind it and the Commies are behind it because it's bad, a triumph for conspiracy theory and dramatically something of a dud. --Ayup, sounds right. Like drug dealers and terrorists.
a triple threat of agent, apparatchik, and Al Capone --I appreciate the alliteration.
it's on the Internet Archive in a sketchy transfer, but it's a sketchy movie. FAIR, completely fair.
no subject
Holy wow, though. At least it gives you the occasion for a lot of excellent zings, all of which I appreciated.
a narrative with the ideological nuance of toast points and an attention to character that gives agitprop a bad name. --surely now someone on Tumblr or somewhere can give me an ideological conversation between toast points? Please? Anyone?
its tough-minded wake-up call to an unsuspecting America is simultaneously binky-bonkers and boring. --I totally get this. Things that are nuts and boring simultaneously.
With minimal alterations in dialogue and none at all to the plot, The Woman on Pier 13—-a more than usually meaningless title, not least because the Embarcadero in San Francisco where its Communist activity is concentrated is conspicuously lacking in a Pier 13—-would play as a paint-by-numbers crime picture --Of course it is! Of course it is!
It suits the film's political vacuity that its ostensible Reds never articulate or even allude to the ideals that make them such implacable opponents of democracy except in clichéd cracks like "What a wonderful advertisement for our American system of free enterprise," nor for all their patter about contacts and cells and indoctrination do we seem to catch them doing very much subversive or seditious. --"How to Communist.. Am I doing it right, Bert? Am I Communisting?" "Sure, Doug, sure. That's how it's done."
We are left to the tautological conclusion that it's bad because the Commies are behind it and the Commies are behind it because it's bad, a triumph for conspiracy theory and dramatically something of a dud. --Ayup, sounds right. Like drug dealers and terrorists.
a triple threat of agent, apparatchik, and Al Capone --I appreciate the alliteration.
it's on the Internet Archive in a sketchy transfer, but it's a sketchy movie. FAIR, completely fair.