Preaching to the Choir: An Angry Rant

Hey, Oliver Stone... I'm pretty sure I dislike George W. Bush just as much as you do.  I'm willing to bet that I think he's just as stupid, and as much of a liar, and as big a war-monger, and as strung-up a puppet, and as lousy a bourgeois pig as you do Oliver... but seriously, perhaps your new movie poster is a bit tacky?  Or really, in all honesty, really really REALLY tacky?  So tacky, in fact, I think less of Josh Brolin for being part of it?  In fact, Olive, I think your whole movie is an awful, awful idea.  You say that it will be fair and balanced (like that poster, right?  Fair and balanced) but it won't.  It will be a big shouting mess of liberal propaganda, and we expect that from you.  You're not really what this post is about.  It's all those other big shouting messes of liberal propaganda I've had to suffer through in the last couple of years.

It's been said that there's nothing worse than a bad argument for an idea you hold dear.  That's very true, and if I have to see one more god-awful argument for a 'liberal' concept that I completely agree with (like, say, "The environment is good" or "I wish so many people didn't have to die in Iraq for no good cause") I'm going to... well, I'm going to gripe here on this blog. Again.

I think we can blame most of my anger on Paul Haggis, a terrible filmmaker who is responsible for three of the least subtle, most angering films I've seen in a long time:  Million Dollar Baby, Crash, and In the Valley of Elah.  All his films start out the same-- well conceived films about interesting characters doing interesting things, but always devolve into awful, awful scenes and shots that beat you over the head senselessly to make sure you GET HIS MESSAGE!!!  And these scenes always ruin the movies for me, because they annoy me in their blatant "shoutisms".  

Paul Haggis seems to have bred a follower in Gavin Hood as well, who made the simply lousy torture tome Rendition, featuring a pregnant Reese Witherspoon trying to convince folks that America shouldn't torture innocent people.  Well, no shit!  That film was bad even aside from the screaming simplicity of it's politics, poorly made and unbearably stupid.

And I recently saw Happy Feet, which started out as just an annoying children's film about penguins, but quickly devolved into an infuriating rage-fest about overfishing.  Seriously, that is a horrible, horrible film.  I think less of Nicole Kidman for being a part of it, and I thought that after Birth she was scott-free to do anything she wanted. 

Now, please, don't mistake what I'm bitching about.  I'm not complaining about political movies, or movies with political messages.  There have been recent politically-themed films about most of these issues that I found anywhere from entertaining to exceptional (The Day After Tomorrow, Stop-Loss, Lions for Lambs, There Will Be Blood) I'm complaining about these films that lack subtlety, tact, common sense and, subsequently, worth.  These movies create baseball bats out of their beliefs and hit you with them until you turn off the television or concede to them.  And I want to concede to them, I really do, because I agree whole-heartedly with everything they say.  But I hate passionately the way they say it.