Perverse fascination for one.
But I have a history of watching movies outside my comfort zone -- waaaay outside my comfort zone -- just to prove that I don't have a comfort zone.
As a critic, I like to see a cross-section of all the available movies out there, regardless of my personal interests or predilections, which is what a critic should do. If a critic just picks and chooses, he or she is limiting the scope of the movies he or she could recommend, as well as pan.
In the past this has led me to watch -- I think only one, but maybe more -- Dinesh D'Souza's cinematic output. I know for sure I saw 2016: Obama's America. (Yeah, just checked, that's the only one -- which is weird because it was his first one, which means I couldn't have heard of him and decided it was time to reckon with his propaganda.) I also watched the right-wing An American Carol, an extended lambasting of Michael Moore, and have several times willingly sat down to watch movies that Kirk Cameron starred in. There's actually one of those I really like.
Dana Stevens did her critic's duty by watching My Son Hunter, the Breitbart-produced imagining of scandals involving the younger Biden behind closed doors. Probably some of it is based on fact. Probably most of it isn't. I know they make Joe Biden look like a monster, naturally. Anything not to get him reelected in 2024.
Interestingly, this film is directed by Robert Davi, who appeared in such 80s movies as The Goonies and Die Hard, and then became a raging conservative, if he wasn't already. Gina Carano is one of the stars. You know, the one who made a big stink after Disney fired her from The Mandalorian for being an ignorant asshole. Pretty soft landing spot here.
The Slate film critic and Slate Culture Gabfest co-host then wrote a piece entitled "I Watched the Hunter Biden Movie So You Don't Have To," a title she claims was not her own choice -- and, implicitly, a sentiment she sort of resented. Even a critic writing for a liberal organization like Slate doesn't want to be accused of prejudging a movie by attributing certain assumed viewpoints to her readers.
Of the three panelists on Dana's podcast, only one of them was willing to really drag the film, that being Stephen Metcalf. Though even he agreed that the film makes unusual gestures toward humanizing Hunter, if only to make his father look all the worse for corruptly manipulating him.
When I thought there was no chance the movie would be worth more than used toilet paper, I thought it might be worth watching for a laugh. Now that I know that it does aim for some nuance, and maybe even achieves it, I think I'm out.
There are two options here, and neither of them are really palatable when it comes to my year-end rankings:
1) I hate it. I rank it at or near the bottom of my 2022 movies. I try to argue to myself that it's the inferior filmmaking that earns it this position, or the dissemination of false truths related to the 2020 election that I think are actually damaging to society, and not just because I disagree with it fundamentally on a political level. Knowing that Hunter Biden might be depicted as something of a tragic figure, and not the embodiment of evil, lessens the likelihood of either of the first two. And then I am just left with shunting a movie to the bottom of my list as an act of political resistance, which is not a great look for a critic.
2) I like it, and then I have to explain to people not only why I watched this propaganda produced by an evil alt-right news organization, but why it is in the upper half of my year-end list.
Then the problem is, the very act of viewing it -- paying for it since I know it's not going to be on one of my streamers -- is an act of endorsement. I have to put $4.99 in Breitbart's pocket and implicitly say to them "Yes, more please."
Perhaps I have already paid my due diligence to traditional conservative values by watching Last Seen Alive, the awful Gerard Butler vehicle I made fun of earlier this year because its poster made Butler look like a frightened old man. I picked that up as a 99 cent rental and watched it Wednesday night. I don't specifically know that this was made by conservatives nor that Butler would endorse their viewpoints, but I do know it peddles retrograde fantasies involving kidnapped wives and the men who come to save them. In fact, I toyed with writing a post called "The retrograde fantasy of the kidnapped wife." I'll just restrict my thoughts to this here paragraph instead.
That movie is -- as My Son Hunter would hopefully be, on its own merits or lack thereof -- near the bottom of my chart as things stand now. Maybe that's all the political diversification I need in 2022.
Besides, I don't want to disappoint Dana. She watched the movie so I didn't have to.
No comments:
Post a Comment