LPiA-22 Nov. 14

[RiverNotch]

Worst Movie


Perhaps the worst movie of all time
was also one of the first: 
D. W. Griffith's Birth
of a Nation which portrayed
Ku-Klux Klan as heroes,
blacks as vilely as one can conceive
and Lincoln’s assassination
in a way that Woodrow Wilson,
rabid racist unsurpassed,
declared ex cathedra “as it was.”

Yet Nation also birthed
in shocking maturity
each cinematic trick, trope, and technique
the form has ever since deployed–
an entire art, its natal masterpiece
in service to a lie.

It's so weird, right?! Same thing with Gone with the Wind -- Lord have Mercy but I love Gone with the Wind, even as it's dawned on me (a non-American) just how *racist* that movie is -- Leslie Howard's character is a literal hero in the story for being a Klansman xD

---

Groundhog day

Cliche romance topped
with french poetry brunette
who changes a cynical man
into a close quarters dancer.

An existential concept
juxtaposes the lighthearted romp,
and the feel good victory lap cheats
the underlying omen.

A sinister flick indeed--


Mrs. Doubtfire

hot garbage

**Groundhog Day** is a bit sinister, but that's why it works, I think -- a deep, existential question posed using a cheap, almost disposable analogy. Like a pop song which in its pointed simplicity stumbles into being a poem.

**Mrs. Doubtfire** though....well it's at least notable for being a relatively early divorce movie where the family isn't broken up *and* the dad and mom don't get back together, but, yeah, there's something, idk, *awkward* about the whole thing that always drew me away from it.