“Trust should not be doled out easily to anyone, especially white people.”
– Excerpt from “Leave the World Behind,” released on Netflix December 8, 2023
Commentary: Netflix and the Erasure of History
Tag: Movies
Commentary: Searching for Truth and Excellence in Youth Literature and Movies
A couple of months ago, a friend of my wife and of mine, a young Italian priest, was visiting with us. Our conversation veered toward youth books and movies. Our friend lamented what he perceived as a lack of substance in contemporary books and movies for young people. He said that the books kids read and the movies they watch should reflect the truth and impel them toward right living and virtue, instead of simply mirroring the symptoms of a wounded culture. Perhaps my friend was onto something.
Read MoreCommentary: Christmas Movies Without the Hollywoke Scrooge
Hollywoke may be spearheading the War on Christmas, but three cable channels are mounting a far more effective counteroffensive, running traditionalist Christmas movies 24/7. And one of them, Lifetime, is a surprising beachhead. While HBO Max is showcasing the insufferable Seth Rogan’s latest bomb, Santa, Inc. (angry elf girl wants to succeed white male Santa Claus), the once male-bashing Lifetime “for Women” now boasts such romantic “heteronormative” fare as My Sweet Holiday, A Sweet Christmas Romance, and A Christmas Village Romance. Lifetime has joined the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies and Mysteries to reflect a realistic rather than fantastical vision of and for women, and their genuine desire for true love over a feminist-fueled man-light career pursuit.
Some Grinches criticize the films as bland, corny, and predictable. They’re certainly not on par with Yuletide classics by Ernst Lubitch (The Shop Around the Corner) or Leo McCarey (An Affair to Remember), and they do stress a secular more than spiritual Christmas magic. But normal viewers gleam from them values no longer found in the tiresomely “dark, edgy” mainstream series and feature films, such as beauty, sensitivity, warmth, uplift, and niceness.
Start with beauty. The movies are gorgeously photographed to resemble, yes, Hallmark cards. Many depict Robert Frostian villages and valleys in holiday winter, but even major cities like San Francisco in A Christmas Village Romance, Chicago in A Kiss Before Christmas, and New York in the majority appear as lovely metropoles instead of the crime-ridden progressive hellholes the Left has made of them.
Read More