2014-11-13

2014-11-13          

                'Shoes are the answer' the bag's slogan had it better earlier / this evening, 'no matter what / the question.'  'Their sacrifices', Nick Nolte's middle-management officer says it better in this movie, of his family's, well, sacrifices for his career, 'like water spilled / on the ground.'  And 'dying', the Admiral says it better / to himself, 'slowly, like a tree.'  It's a nice line, and incidently, 'accidently' Warren Zevon sings it better in his song of the same name, 'like / a martyr.'

                Yes it's time for this Thirsty Thursday's The Thin Red Line horroreview, to cap off haha this Week of Wa® films.  Both will last as long as your humble / humbled / humiliated horroreviewer does, which is to say - given the length of this movie and of this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and horroreview both - almost / cinterminably.

                'One more thing, Styles,' Nolte's officer says it better to the Lieutenant played by Elias Kotas, 'you don't ever have to tell me that what I say is right.  Ever.  We'll just assume / that it is.'  Terence Malick's film is among other things an examination of management - 'he was being groomed for one of the top spots' Martin Sheen's Captain Willard says it better of Brando's Colonel Walter P. Kurtz in Coppola's  Apocalypse Now, recognizing the same pathology and horrororganization charts found in the military, 'in the corporation' - and Nolte's officer in this film is an example of abject failure / of same, though he will be rewarded of course for his tone-deaf treatment of his men, 'they were going to make me a Major for this' Martin Sheen's Willard says it better of the rewards of blindly following / orders, ' and I wasn't even their fucking army / any more.'    

                Better Homes / and Gardens, innit you little monsters.  Cin doesn't mean to damn with faint praise Malick's film by dropping in Coppola - and fellow screenwriter John Milius’ - lines, but Apocalypse Now is the ne plus ultra of war films, and though 'remarks' Gertrude Stein reprimanded Hemingway better, 'are / not / literature', still, dialogue / is dialogue and credit given where credit / is due.

                No, cinstead Malick's film, like all of his films, is as much about displaying the beauty of nature as of anything else up on out on up on out on up on this Dog / and Pony Show, including and possibly especially in contrast to the endless cock and bull stories to be found cooked up by us homo / sapiens up on out on up on out on up on this Dog / and Pony Show, 'you know what my son does?' Nolte's officer akses his favorite Sergeant, played by John Cusack, better after a battle / royale, 'he's / a bait salesman.'  You get the idea, Cusack’s character more of a son to Nolte’s than his own / son, the bait / salesman.               

                Course there is carnage and plenty of it up in The Thin Red Line, to go along with the aforementioned Malick nature shots, surprisingly rare in movies to find a simple shot of wheat in a field, bending, or alligators / alligating, which is the first scene of the movie.  What it is is that the Americans and the Japanese, aka 'the Japs' fight like cats and dogs over an island in the Pacific.  Course it belonged to the Japs in the first place, but who cares, 'would you ?' Russell Crowe's gladiator in the Ridley Scott movie of the same name akses his second-in-command better, after the second-in-command akses Russell why their opposition doesn't 'surrender / to superior forces' invading their lands, ‘soldiers are  paid to fight’ Pacino’s Michale Corleone says it better in Coppola’s The Godfather Part Two, apropos the Cuban rebels he videed blowing themselves and the soldiers up be©ause ©uba Lib®a, ‘while the rebels do it for their country’, or words to that extent, ‘and that makes them / dangerous’, dangerous is all / we gots.

                It's a question that rarely is addressed in films about war, but it is really the only / question : how humiliated does an entire population need to be in order to surrender to occupying forces, and how far until that surrender will a certain percentage of that population be willing / to fight to preserve / their honour?  We don't learn much as Homo Sapiens, arguably we learn / nothing other than No Lone / Listens,  but ongoing events in the Middle East with this group ISIS and its caliphate show us that we cannot as the West bomb these adversaries back into the stone age in their own neighborhood, and not be surprised that they will fight back - with Fred Flinstone weapons / if necessary, though of course ISIS is using the very weapons that the West / gave them in the not-so-recent past when they were our BFFs by other names - to preserve / themselves and their honour.

                'War don't ennoble men' an anonymous grunt says it better during this movie's soundtrack, 'it turns them into / dogs'.  'Dear Jack' the 'Dear John' letter to the soldier in the movie begins better, and well you know / the rest - their sweethearts too / can be dogs up on out on up on out on up on this Dog and Pony Show - 'I've met / an Air Force captain'.  Haha good times, you flyboys, this grunt would be after going about the bender of all / benders after getting his Dea® John letter.

                Malick's films meander, like this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and horroreviews, to say / the least, Cin had to GTFO of Malick's second most recent movie Tree of Life and the most recent, whose title excapes him, when he tried to videe them seperately at the Bytowne Cinema, one of two independent movie theatres left / in O-Town, and one of two left in downtown, period, it's an f-ing / disgrace.

                                                               

                This film's third act follows around Jim Cavaciel's grunt as he wanders hither and yon on the island, Cavaciel of course played the title character in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ innit Electrified JC, and played / it well, the actor's face an ode / to suffering, in both films.  Nothing much happens in this third act, other of course than the decisive battle of World War II, 'aside from that Mrs. Lincoln', the usher in the theatre akses Mary Lincoln better after her husband Honest Abe has been assassinated by the actor John Wilkes Booth during the play itself, as the punchline of the joke about situational awareness and show business egos - Cin's favorite new slogan and way / of life - 'how did you enjoy / the show?'

                Terence Malick draws beaucoup de water in Hollywood, after his Badlands featuring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek made his name back in the day, followed by other films too tired to mention and / or goggle, and he draws too a stellar cast to play bit parts in this movie, though 'there are' Cin said it better - innit It, some time ago, after being aksed by the questioner whether he could have 'a bit part' in Cin's 'book' - 'no / bit parts.'  No book either for that matter, unless you count this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and horroreviews.  Which he does.

                'All lies,' Sean Penn's Sergeant finally says it better, if only to himself, as his commanding officer, played by George Clooney of all people, drones on and on and on and on, 'all of it.  They keep spewing / out.'  Like the pages of this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and horrorevies, other characters in the movie it turns out have inner monologues, none as good or as true - and sure as none as succinct, and this un-edited verbal Dear Diareah marks Malick's failure in his films - as Penn's character's, 'spurts', It calls it better of all of our various Dear Diaries, innit It, 'of my / reality'.   

                'Someday' Robert Duvall's character says it better in Apocalypse Now, 'this war's / gonna end', and so it does, in that film and this one.  Tribal singing marks the end credits as what's left of Charlie Company gets back on the boat, replacements have arrived to fight the Japs on the island.  Japanese troops of course proved implacable to the Allies, one of the most disturbing things that Cin has videed was from a series of Japanese soldiers - and more tellingly, civilians - flinging themselves off cliffs like the ones you see in this movie, rather than surrender to the occupying Allied troops, in order to preserve / their honour, ‘a person is most dangerous’ someone said it better, ‘when you take away their dignity.’

                This code is not understood by the West and never / will be, the Japanese by their ferocity and recalcitrance brought on the Enola Gay and its payload over Hiroshima and Nagosaki, and well the rest / is history - the nuclear option - a precedent whose successors may well mark the last hours of our cameo for homo sapiens up on out on up on out on up on this Dog and Pony Show.

                                                      

                Course in spite of all of this - 'I've been down to the bottom' Bob Dylan sings it better, 'of a world / full of lies / I ain't lookin' for nothing / in anyone's eyes' - homo sapiens like Robert Crumb's Mr. Natural keeps on truckin' and fu©kin’ up both on out on up on out on this Dog and Pony Show, 'if they didn't meet' a cousin said it better as cousins took turn bad-mouthing each others' and their own / parents, 'we wouldn't / be here.'

                Thanks for reading this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and horroreviews.