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The Learning Tree<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1969)<\/p>\n Even keeled Newt reluctantly follows his conscience and gives evidence proving Booker killed a man, destroying his friendship with Marcus, Booker’s son, and leading to a violent confrontation in a racist, rural Kansas town.<\/p>\n This film about the black experience during the Great Depression is a better film than Gordon Parks more famous movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many Hollywood films illuminate the evil of racism, but this without resorting to manipulative sentimentality, this film explores the moral dilemma encountered by the oppressed, violence versus the high road.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Canyons<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2013)<\/p>\n Christian (James Deen) discovers his girlfriend is having an affair and concocts an elaborate scheme of revenge.<\/p>\n Paul Schrader wrote the classic films\u00a0Taxi Driver<\/em> (1976), Raging Bull<\/em> (1980), and The Last Temptation of Christ <\/em>(1988), but his directorial efforts, including\u00a0American Gigolo<\/em> (1980) Cat People<\/em> (1982), and Affliction<\/em> (1997) have not been as successful.<\/p>\n Written by celebrated novelist Bret Easton Ellis<\/a>, this clunky, pointless film is only interesting because of the morbid fascination surrounding Lindsay Lohan.<\/p>\n Her costar, James Deen, rose to prominence in pornography indicating we’ve apparently crossed the Rubicon<\/a>\u00a0into a world where “pornographic star” is something you want on your resum\u00e9 and not an\u00a0act of desperation<\/a>.\u00a0Sadly, Mr. Deen is probably more embarrassed by this film than his\u00a0sex tape with the star of Teen Mom<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Funded through Kickstarter<\/a>, this may represent the future of the film business, but I hope it doesn’t portend of their future quality.<\/p>\n I think of Gus Van Sant as an\u00a0avant-garde<\/a>\u00a0poster child, but a lot of his films are mainstream fare like Good Will Hunting\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0(1997).\u00a0Finding Forester<\/em>\u00a0(2000),\u00a0Milk <\/em>(2008), and\u00a0Promised Land\u00a0<\/em>(2012). <\/em>After seeing him as Christian’s therapist, I think of him as having horrible taste.<\/p>\n This wants to be a grand statement about the material soullessness of\u00a0our capitalist system, but it’s just a crappy movie about crappy people who get what they deserve made to cash in on Lohan’s notoriety and shock us with its implied embrace of pornography as a legitimate branch of acting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Bridges of Madison County<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1995)<\/p>\n When their mother dies, Carolyn and Michael Johnson discover her long-buried secret love affair.<\/p>\n Eastwood and Streep are competent, but the film takes the infidelity of\u00a0Francesca Johnson (Streep) too lightly. \u00a0She ultimately chooses the well-being of her family over her own desires, but why couldn’t she make this decision before a four-day Bacchanalia<\/a>\u00a0with Robert Kincaid (Eastwood)?<\/p>\n Like a summer camp romance, Kincaid comes into town, says hello, and Francesca throws herself at him.<\/p>\n The frame narrative inadvertently reinforces the frivolity. If you’ve spent your life protecting your children from an earlier indiscretion, it seems cowardly to use your death as a way to come clean.\u00a0It would have been a better movie if her adult children weren’t manipulated to give tacit approval to Francesca’s unfaithfulness.<\/p>\n Simultaneously valuing familial self-sacrifice and self-love, this insulting movie collapses because it refuses to decide which one should carry more weight.\u00a0Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence<\/em> (1993) is a far superior film which covers a lot of the same ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Learning Tree\u00a0(1969) Even keeled Newt reluctantly follows his conscience and gives evidence proving Booker killed a man, destroying his friendship with Marcus, Booker’s son, and leading to a violent confrontation in a racist, rural Kansas town. This film about the black experience during the Great Depression is a better film than Gordon Parks… Continue reading The bridge goes over the canyon and leads to a tree<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[134,172,312,483,525,620,658],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-progress","tag-bret-easton-ellis","tag-clint-eastwood","tag-gordon-parks","tag-lindsay-lohan","tag-meryl-streep","tag-paul-schrader","tag-racism","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14804,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/14804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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