Katie Says Goodbye

Katie Says Goodbye

I have waited a while after viewing Katie Says Goodbye, but perhaps that is not entirely a bad thing. Some movies entertain you for a couple of hours and are quickly forgotten. Others linger. This one not only lingered, I found myself emotionally returning to specific parts of it in the days afterward.

Katie Says Goodbye is a bleak, quietly disturbing film about poverty, isolation, exploitation and, perhaps most importantly, what happens when optimism exists in a place where there seems to be very little reason for it.

Katie, played beautifully by Olivia Cooke, is a seventeen-year-old waitress living with her unemployed mother in a trailer park in a small rural Arizona community. She works at a roadside diner and supplements her income by having sex for money with several older men. She is saving toward a very specific dream: leaving Arizona for San Francisco and attending beauty school.

What makes the film unusual is Katie herself. She does not seem to view herself as a victim. In her mind, what she is doing is a means to an end. She has a plan, she is earning money, and every dollar saved moves her a little closer to another life. Her almost relentless optimism initially seems naive, but as the movie progresses, it becomes both her most admirable quality and her greatest vulnerability.

Olivia Cooke is exceptional in the role. Katie’s innocence could easily have become unbelievable or even irritating, yet Cooke gives her a warmth that made me care about her increasingly as the story progressed. She smiles when most people would be angry. She forgives when most would walk away. She continues to believe in people long after they have given her reasons not to.

The bleakness of Katie Says Goodbye goes well beyond the things that happen to Katie. It is built into the world she inhabits. The trailer park, diner, dusty roads and vast Southwestern landscape create the feeling of a community almost forgotten by the world outside it. There is little money and even less opportunity. For many of the people around Katie, merely getting through another day seems to have replaced any expectation of getting somewhere better.

That is where I found the social commentary particularly interesting.

The film is not simply about a young woman making bad choices. It depicts an environment in which poverty and limited opportunity have affected what people expect from life and, perhaps more disturbingly, what they have come to expect from one another. Sex, money, affection and survival become intertwined. Exploitation is not presented as something extraordinary. It has become part of everyday life.

Even the men who surround Katie are more complicated than they initially appear.

Bear, an older trucker played by Jim Belushi, pays Katie for sex, yet paradoxically becomes one of the people who treats her with a degree of tenderness. Bruno, the ex-convict Katie falls in love with, represents something entirely different to her. She does not want his money. She wants a future with him. Matty, a young man much closer to Katie’s age, is attracted to her without the financial transaction that defines her relationships with the older men. Dirk represents something considerably darker: the sense of sexual entitlement that develops when Katie’s reputation becomes more important to the men around her than Katie herself. Critics have similarly noted the uncomfortable contrast between Bear’s kindness and the treatment Katie receives from others.

Matty is particularly interesting because he prevents the film from offering us an easy “good man” alternative. There is a difference between liking someone and possessing the courage to stand up for that person when it matters. In Katie’s world, weakness can inflict damage just as surely as cruelty.

The women do not escape scrutiny either. Maybelle, Katie’s boss at the diner, offers something approaching maternal warmth. Katie’s actual mother, Tracey, offers very little stability at all. Katie is essentially supporting the household, and the eventual betrayal by her mother is especially devastating because home should have been the one place where Katie did not have to protect herself.

This is what the movie does particularly well. It does not portray poverty merely as not having enough money. It shows how prolonged poverty, isolation and a lack of opportunity can influence relationships, expectations and morality. People adapt. Some become predatory. Some become passive. Some resign themselves to circumstances they no longer believe can change.

Katie refuses to do that.

San Francisco therefore becomes much more than a destination on a map. To Katie, it represents possibility. She believes there is another life somewhere beyond those dusty roads, and almost everything she does is connected to reaching it. She is not simply trying to leave Arizona. She is trying to escape the expectations that have been placed upon her there.

There is also an uncomfortable hypocrisy in the way Katie is treated. Men are willing to purchase what she sells, yet she bears the stigma for selling it. Once her reputation becomes common knowledge, the fact that Katie has willingly had sex with some men is treated by others as though it has eliminated her right to refuse anyone. Therein lies the social contradiction: an economically disadvantaged young woman is pushed toward sex work and then punished by the society around her for doing it.

That aspect of the movie is difficult to watch, particularly as Katie’s optimism becomes increasingly defenseless against people who mistake kindness for weakness.

My one significant reservation is the ending.

I understand the decision to leave Katie’s future ambiguous. After everything that has happened, she finally leaves. Perhaps the important thing is simply that she is moving rather than remaining trapped in the life we have watched. We see her hitchhiking on a desolate two-lane highway, beginning another journey, but we are never told where it ultimately takes her.

I was somewhat “eh” about that choice. I did not need a conventional happy ending. I did not need Katie arriving in San Francisco with swelling music, a new apartment and a promise that everything would be fine. That probably would have felt dishonest after the film that preceded it.

I did, however, want a little more.

After investing so much emotionally in Katie and watching so much taken from her, I wanted some indication that she was moving toward something rather than simply moving away. Even another few minutes might have provided that without tying everything into a neat bow. Instead, the movie asks us to say goodbye to Katie at essentially the same moment she says goodbye to the life she has known.

Perhaps that is precisely the point.

We do not get to know whether Katie makes it because Katie herself does not know.

Despite my reservation about the ending, I enjoyed Katie Says Goodbye very much. “Enjoyed” may actually be an odd word for a movie this sad. It is intimate, uncomfortable and at times genuinely difficult to watch. Yet it is also compassionate, and Olivia Cooke gives Katie an emotional presence that carries the film.

Beneath the story of a young woman trying to escape a small Arizona town is a much larger examination of poverty, sexual double standards, resignation and the ways people use one another when opportunity has become scarce.

Most of all, however, it is about a young woman who continues to believe there is something better waiting beyond the horizon, even after nearly everyone around her has given her reason to stop believing. I only wish the movie had allowed us to travel with her a little farther.

Director:

Wayne Roberts

Main Cast:

Olivia Cooke (Katie)
Christopher Abbott (Bruno)
Mireille Enos (Tracey)
Mary Steenburgen (Maybelle)
Jim Belushi (Bear)
Keir Gilchrist (Matty)
Chris Lowell (Dirk)

 

Understanding The Second Amendment

The brief amendment can cause confusion because of its wording and punctuation for those who do not understand the function of a comma. The amendment’s wording and punctuation can invite disagreement, but its central distinction is clear: the opening clause identifies the importance of a well-regulated militia, while the final clause protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms. Understanding that relationship requires attention to the language and historical context, not punctuation alone.

The Founders were making a practical point: the new nation faced debts from the War for Independence, and the responsibility fell to the states to keep their militias ready. These militias consisted of citizens called upon to serve when threats arose. The states needed to maintain the necessary personnel and matériel so their militias would be ready when needed. Freedom from tyranny depended on that readiness, and the government could not infringe upon the citizens’ right to keep and bear arms.

“Well regulated” describes a militia that is trained, disciplined, equipped, and ready to serve. It means that militia members maintain their readiness to serve. Their arms, ammunition, equipment, and clothing must be in proper condition, down to the smallest practical details. The phrase describes preparedness, organization, and effective operation; it does not mean or imply government regulation of the right to keep and bear arms. It concerns the militia’s preparedness and effective operation. It does not make the individual right to keep and bear arms dependent on militia service.

“Militia” refers to citizens who can be called upon to defend their communities against outside attack or government encroachment. In the founding era, the militia generally consisted of able-bodied men within specified age ranges who could be called into military service. The term described people organized for defense, not a particular type of weapon.

“Being necessary to the security of a free State” identifies the militia’s role in defending a free society. It reflects the founding-era concern that citizens be able to help protect their communities and resist tyranny.

“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” acknowledges a preexisting right. It does not create that right or make it dependent on government permission. The protection belongs to the people, and the restriction is directed at government. That protection belongs to individuals and does not depend on service in an organized militia.

Taken together, the clauses connect the importance of a prepared militia with protection of the people’s right to keep and bear arms. The amendment limits government power while protecting an individual right that extends beyond militia service. In discussions about the Second Amendment, the statement “Militias used muskets” is designed to shift attention from the constitutional question to the technology of the period. “Militia” identifies the people who serve; “arms” identifies the weapons. The fact that militia members carried muskets does not establish that the right is limited to muskets.

The amendment uses the word “Arms,” not “muskets.” Its protection is not confined to eighteenth-century weapons, as the Supreme Court explained in District of Columbia v. Heller.

When discussing the Second Amendment, those who seek to limit its protections always default to comments about “muskets.” They will often make comments such as “We do not have militias today.” Those who default to such comments relay not only that they do not understand the Second Amendment but also that they are not interested in an informed, adult-level discourse. They are not interested in understanding that constitutional protections can apply to technology developed after the founding.

Another default in these discussions begins with “So, if…” or “So, you’re okay with…” to introduce a hypothetical or imply that defending gun rights means accepting the deaths of innocent people. Hypotheticals can test an argument, but they should accurately represent the position being challenged. Supporting the right to keep and bear arms does not mean condoning murder or dismissing the loss of human life.

When an argument against Second Amendment protections rests on the statement “Life is precious,” the principle that “life is precious” deserves consistent application. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, respiratory disease, diabetes, and other illnesses cause deaths, as do accidents and suicide. Alcohol, tobacco, unhealthy diets, and motor vehicle use also carry risks, yet those risks do not automatically produce demands to prohibit every associated product or activity. An argument for restricting firearms based on preventable deaths must explain why that remedy is appropriate and how it respects constitutional protections.

A similar question of consistency may arise when someone opposes gun rights on the ground that life is precious while supporting issues that result in the ending of life, such as abortion rights and euthanasia. A useful discussion asks what moral and legal distinctions support those positions. Describing abortion as “health care” does not, by itself, explain those distinctions. Catchy phrases such as “health care” may make sense to those who default to them, but that is simply deflection because they cannot intellectually explain the distinctions.

A productive discussion should address both the constitutional protection and the specific restriction being proposed. References to muskets, hypothetical scenarios, and appeals to the value of life do not, by themselves, resolve whether a restriction is justified or constitutional. That requires examining the amendment’s language, its historical context, relevant court decisions, and the reasoning behind each position.

Remember: hypocrisy is a shadow that falls on the person who casts it.

Reference for constitutional wording: District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

The Habit and the Street: Why Redemption Is Really About Self-Discovery

Redemption: The Woman Within the Habit

Redemption appears at first to be the story of Joey Jones, played by Jason Statham, a decorated former soldier who deserted his unit and disappeared onto the streets of London. Although others might regard him as a war hero, Joey describes his departure without heroism: “I just took off my uniform and ran.” Traumatized by what he experienced and did in Afghanistan, he is violent, alcoholic, and nearly destroyed by guilt. The film’s title encourages us to see his journey as a search for moral salvation. Yet Redemption becomes more interesting when viewed through Sister Cristina, played with quiet complexity by Agata Buzek. Through her, the film suggests that redemption may not be a journey toward moral purity at all. It may instead begin with the more unsettling experience of self-discovery.

While fleeing from men who attack him on the streets, Joey takes refuge in the empty apartment of a successful photographer named Damon, who is spending several months in New York. Joey does not pretend to be Damon. Instead, he uses the absent man’s apartment, clothes, car, and financial resources to reconstruct his own life. He acquires the outward signs of stability: a home, clean clothes, money, and eventually power. He does not assume another man’s identity so much as temporarily occupy the security of another man’s existence.

That distinction matters because Joey’s outward transformation does not free him from the person he was. Beneath the expensive suit remains the soldier haunted by violence and the homeless man struggling with addiction. He can alter his appearance and surroundings, but he cannot escape his memory. His new life merely gives him another way to act out the conflict already within him. He earns money as an enforcer for organized criminals, then uses part of it to feed the homeless, provide for his estranged daughter, and help the people he believes he has failed. His good deeds are made possible by intimidation and violence. Even his attempts at redemption repeat the behavior from which he is trying to escape.

Cristina initially seems to occupy a more familiar role: the compassionate nun who recognizes the humanity of a fallen man. She feeds Joey when he is homeless, treats him with dignity, and becomes the closest thing he has to a moral guide. In a more conventional film, she might remain spiritually certain while helping him recover his conscience. She would represent goodness, while he would represent the damaged man trying to become worthy of it. Redemption, however, refuses to leave Cristina in that simple position. The more she learns about Joey, the more she is forced to confront herself.

Cristina’s religious identity gives her purpose, discipline, and a life of service. Her faith appears sincere, but sincerity does not eliminate the other parts of her character. Beneath her composure is a woman carrying memories of sexual abuse, suppressed anger, loneliness, guilt, and desire. As a child, Cristina was abused by her gymnastics instructor. She later killed him and was sent to a convent rather than prison. Her vocation therefore cannot be separated entirely from violence or punishment. The Church becomes her home and the source of her adult identity, but it is also connected to the unresolved trauma that brought her there.

This history makes her relationship with Joey more than a story of temptation. Cristina should not be understood simply as a virtuous nun who meets a dangerous man and “falls.” Such a reading reduces her to a moral lesson and makes Joey the sole agent of her corruption. What happens between them is more complicated. Cristina recognizes something in Joey because she also knows what it means to respond to suffering with violence and then spend a life confronting the consequences.

Her attraction to him reveals a part of her that has not ceased to exist simply because she has taken religious vows. Her anger reveals another part. So do her humor, tenderness, resentment, compassion, and capacity for self-deception. Joey does not transform her into someone else. His presence makes it more difficult for her to deny that all these qualities have always existed within the person she already is.

Buzek’s restrained performance is essential to this idea. Cristina does not rebel against her faith through a single grand gesture. Her transformation emerges through hesitation, disclosure, flashes of humor, and moments when her composure becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. Buzek allows us to see the committed nun and the wounded woman at the same time. Neither identity is necessarily false, and neither can fully explain her. Cristina’s self-discovery does not reveal that the woman is authentic while the nun is a disguise. It reveals that the woman and the nun have always been the same complicated person.

The imagery of uniforms deepens the connection between Cristina and Joey. Joey once wore a military uniform that publicly identified him as a soldier and a hero. Unable to live with what that identity required of him, he removed it and ran. Cristina also wears a uniform, but hers represents faith, service, and restraint. Joey’s confession about abandoning his uniform quietly anticipates the question Cristina must face: whether discovering the person within her habit requires her to take it off.

The film’s answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. Cristina does cross the boundaries of her vocation, most clearly when she and Joey sleep together. She does not, however, leave the Church. Instead, she moves forward a planned mission assignment to Sierra Leone. Her departure can be understood as a retreat from the emotional and sexual “distractions” she has encountered in London. It may be another attempt to place distance between herself and what she has discovered. At the same time, it is also an act of recommitment. After acknowledging her desire, anger, and past, she does not decide that her religious life was fraudulent. She chooses that life again, although perhaps with fewer illusions about who is wearing the habit.

Cristina’s story therefore resists the familiar idea that self-discovery must lead to liberation from restraint. Leaving the Church would have provided a more conventional conclusion: the supposedly repressed woman casts off the identity imposed upon her and becomes her “true self.” Cristina does not, however, exchange one identity for another. She continues her vocation while carrying the knowledge that faith has not made her less desirous, less wounded, or less human.

Her relationship with Joey is less a conventional romance than a moment of mutual recognition. Each sees the other's attempt to live within an identity capable of containing the past. Joey wears another man's clothes and briefly occupies another man's secure life, while Cristina inhabits a religious vocation shaped partly by her own violence and suffering. Neither identity is merely false, but neither can erase memory. Joey remains haunted by the soldier he was, while Cristina remains a survivor whose anger has not vanished beneath forgiveness. They do not redeem one another. Instead, they make it harder for each other to continue living inside comforting illusions. Cristina cannot imagine herself as only a spiritual guide untouched by ordinary desire. Joey cannot imagine that money, vengeance, or acts of generosity will balance the moral weight of his past. Their intimacy gives them a temporary refuge, but it does not rescue either one from the life waiting outside the room.

The film leaves open a troubling question: is Cristina's self-discovery actually liberating, or does it lead her toward another form of escape? Acknowledging desire is not the same as healing. Moving to Africa may represent a conscious renewal of her vocation, but it may also allow her to avoid confronting what happened in London. Redemption does not provide a clean resolution, and that ambiguity is one of its strengths. Self-knowledge can be painful and even destructive. Becoming more honest about oneself does not necessarily mean becoming better, happier, or free.

That distinction gives the film's title an unexpected irony. Joey searches for redemption through action, as though enough good deeds might compensate for the harm he has committed. Yet his journey eventually returns him to the streets. He removes one uniform, puts on another man's suit, and ultimately finds that neither transformation can release him from himself. Cristina's journey moves in the opposite direction. She retains her habit and goes deeper into the life she has chosen, even after discovering how much of herself exists beyond the role it represents.

In the end, Cristina is not redeemed by perfectly resisting temptation, nor is she liberated simply by surrendering to it. She leaves London for Sierra Leone without leaving the Church. Her decision prevents her story from becoming a simple rejection of religious restraint. The woman and the nun are not competing identities, one false and the other authentic; they are inseparable parts of the same unresolved person.

Joey once took off his uniform and ran, yet he remains haunted by the soldier he was. Cristina keeps hers, though the film leaves us uncertain whether her departure represents renewed commitment or another kind of flight. Redemption may place Joey at the center of its plot, but Cristina gives its title a more difficult meaning. Redemption promises that the past can be morally answered. Self-discovery begins with the recognition that a new uniform—and a discarded one—can make the past disappear.

Director:

Steven Knight

Main Cast:

Jason Statham(Joey Jones)

Agata Buzek(Cristina)

Vicky McClure(Dawn)

Benedict Wong(Mr. Choy)

Victoria Bewick(Isabel)

Review of Nothing But The Truth

 

Nothing But the Truth: A Strong Political Drama Undercut by Its Own Final Reveal

Nothing But the Truth, written and directed by Rod Lurie, has the shape of a serious political thriller and the cast to support that ambition. Kate Beckinsale plays Rachel Armstrong, a Washington journalist who publishes a story exposing Erica Van Doren, played by Vera Farmiga, as a CIA operative. The film surrounds Beckinsale with an impressive cast that includes Matt Dillon, Alan Alda, Angela Bassett, David Schwimmer, and Noah Wyle. On that level alone, the film carries weight. It looks, sounds, and behaves like a substantial drama about the freedom of the press, government pressure, and the cost of protecting confidential sources.

The problem is not the acting. Beckinsale gives Rachel a believable steeliness, and Alan Alda brings moral force to the role of her attorney. The courtroom scenes and jail sequences are effective because they force the viewer to confront a difficult question: how much should a journalist be willing to sacrifice to protect a source? Rachel loses her freedom, her marriage begins to collapse, her relationship with her young son is damaged, and her entire life is reduced to one principle. She will not reveal the person who gave her the information. The film wants that refusal to feel noble, even heroic.

For much of the movie, that works well enough. We assume Rachel is protecting someone who knowingly gave her explosive information. Perhaps a government insider. Perhaps a person with access, motive, and moral courage. The audience is led to believe that the unnamed source understood the consequences of speaking. Under those conditions, Rachel’s sacrifice has a certain dramatic logic. A journalist who betrays a source after promising confidentiality destroys not only one person’s trust, but the professional foundation on which serious investigative reporting depends.

Then the ending arrives.

At the end of the film, we learn that Rachel’s source was not an adult whistleblower, a government official, or a morally conflicted insider. Her source was Alison, Erica Van Doren’s young daughter, who innocently mentioned that her mother worked for the government and had recently gone to Venezuela. That revelation is clearly intended as the film’s great final twist. Instead, it creates a major moral and narrative problem.

The film’s final twist weakens the very principle it tries to glorify. Rachel is presented as heroic because she will not reveal her source, but once we learn the source is a young child, the stakes become far less convincing. What punishment could Alison possibly face? She did not knowingly betray her mother. She did not leak information as an act of conscience. She merely spoke innocently, and Rachel used that innocence to build a national story. The movie keeps insisting that Rachel’s silence is noble, but by the end it feels as though the film is leaning too heavily on the idea of principle without giving that principle enough moral substance to justify the devastation surrounding it.

That does not mean revealing Alison would be harmless. Since Erica Van Doren is later murdered, Alison might be made to feel responsible for her mother’s death. Her name could become public. Her childhood could be damaged by the knowledge that an innocent comment helped set a national scandal in motion. That is not a small concern. Protecting a child from that kind of emotional burden is a morally serious act.

Yet the film asks us to accept something much larger than that. Rachel does not merely protect Alison’s privacy. She allows her own family to collapse. She loses her husband to another woman while incarcerated. She damages her relationship with her son. She rejects a possible way out and accepts years in prison. At that point, the issue becomes one of proportion. What, exactly, is Rachel preserving? The child’s innocence? The abstract purity of journalistic ethics? Her own self-image as someone who will never break?

That is where the film begins to strain credibility. There is a difference between protecting a source who knowingly took a risk and protecting a child whose casual remark was transformed into a national-security story. Rachel treats Alison’s innocent comment as though it were a solemn confidential agreement between reporter and source. That may be consistent with Rachel’s absolutist code, but it is not necessarily consistent with ordinary moral judgment.

The ending also casts Rachel’s earlier conduct in a harsher light. She used information from a child to expose the child’s mother as a CIA operative. The film wants us to admire Rachel for refusing to name Alison, but the real discomfort is that Rachel should perhaps never have relied on Alison in the first place. Once we know where the information came from, the central question shifts. It is no longer simply, “Should a journalist protect a source?” It becomes, “Should a journalist build a career-making story on the innocent words of a young child?”

That is the flaw that lingers after the credits. The movie believes its ending deepens Rachel’s heroism. For me, it complicates her beyond the point the film seems prepared to examine. Had the source been an adult insider, Rachel’s suffering would have felt tragic but coherent. Since the source is a young girl, the sacrifice begins to feel less like moral courage and more like moral rigidity.

Nothing But the Truth remains a well-acted and serious-minded drama. It raises legitimate questions about government power, press freedom, and personal cost. Yet its final reveal undercuts the very principle it wants to celebrate. Rachel’s silence may protect a child from public ruin, but it also exposes the troubling fact that the child’s innocence had already been compromised by the reporter who used her words.

In the end, the film asks us to see Rachel Armstrong as a martyr for journalistic integrity. I saw something more troubling: a woman who destroyed her family to protect the identity of a child who faced no real legal consequence, whose only “mistake” was speaking innocently, and whose words were used by an adult journalist to build a story the child could never have understood.

Director:  

Rod Lurie

Main Cast:

Kate Beckinsale (Rachel Armstrong)
Matt Dillon (Patton Dubois)
Vera Farmiga (Erica Van Doren)
Alan Alda (Albert Burnside)
Angela Bassett (Bonnie Benjamin)
David Schwimmer (Ray Armstrong)
Noah Wyle (Avril Aaronson)
Courtney B. Vance (Agent O’Hara)
Floyd Abrams (Judge Hall)
Preston Bailey (Timmy Armstrong)
Kristen Bough (Alison Van Doren)

The Grift That Is Camille Paglia

I’ve been exposed to Camille Paglia’s work in small doses—and I use the word exposed the same way one might describe exposure to a toxin. I have never read one of her books in full. That said, I have been dragged to more than a few of her events over the years, and my takeaway has never changed.

She doesn’t offer original thought. She offers performance. Instead of advancing ideas that are clearly her own, she builds entire routines out of people who are smarter than she is, declares them wrong by fiat, and then substitutes theatrical certainty for actual analytical rebuttal. Her method is always the same, and it sounds like this:

“This person, who is smarter than I am, is wrong because I say so. Here is why I say so. Now allow me to drone on in anapestic pentameter to lull you into a state of fatigue so you won’t question my glaring lack of originality or intellectual depth. I’ll continue piling on so much pseudo-intellectual bullshit that you will forget the very thing you meant to challenge five minutes ago.”

The meter is not incidental. It is rhythmic. Incantatory. Half anapestic gallop, half ritualized iambic sway. It creates the illusion of structure where none exists. The listener hears music and mistakes it for meaning. By the time the rhythm releases you, the argument is long gone—assuming it ever arrived. This is not scholarship. It is pseudo-intellectual theatre. Her appeal is not driven by ideas. It is driven by audience psychology. She traffics in validation, not insight. Her core audience reliably clusters around two groups.

The first consists of women who have uncritically swallowed the media narrative that she is a trailblazing intellectual and who lean on that narrative as an external validator for their own lack of traction. They are not interested in whether her claims hold up. They are interested in what her symbolic status allows them to feel about themselves. They get to point to faux intellectual drivel and use it to justify their lack of success.

The second consists of effeminate men who resent their fathers, distrust masculine authority, and mistake theatrical rebellion for courage. These are the men who were supposed to grow into capable sons and instead ossified into anxious, self-doubting observers of adulthood. They cloak that failure in irony. They outsource their identity formation to performative intellectual figures. They posture as subversives while living entirely inside the safety rails built by the very structures they pretend to resist.

Both groups are more than willing to hand over their money for her so-called “scholarship,” which functions far more reliably as emotional anesthesia. In that narrow business sense, I do tip my hat to her. She understood her audience perfectly.

She was chosen by the media because she checked two essential boxes at exactly the right cultural moment: female and lesbian. She recognized the opportunity, exploited it with professional competence, and rode that positioning to institutional safety, cultural prestige, and financial success. Strategically, that is skillful. Intellectually, it proves nothing.

Her rhetorical offspring—Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova most visibly—run the same playbook. Both rely on stylized cadence, curated vocabulary, and a deliberate affect that mimics literary meter. They speak in that same ritualized iambic lilt and anapestic surge Paglia normalized decades earlier, as if rhythmic delivery itself were proof of thought. Structure becomes the stand-in for substance. Confidence becomes the stand-in for coherence. The listener hears performance and mistakes it for penetration.

Where I depart most violently from this entire ecosystem is on the matter of personal accountability, and this is where the argument usually collapses into convenient abstractions. The distinction between access and outcome is constantly erased. Equal opportunity to enter a system is not the same thing as equal likelihood of dominating its highest tier. Those are structurally different problems, governed by different forces. Pipeline effects versus apex selection are likewise treated as interchangeable when they are not. Early-stage access, mentorship, encouragement, and institutional filtering determine who gets into a competitive track. What happens at the apex is governed almost entirely by extreme performance thresholds, not representational aspiration. Finally, institutional lag versus biological ceiling is where fantasy fully detaches from reality. Cultural barriers can delay inclusion for a time. They cannot abolish underlying physical or cognitive limits that define performance ceilings in apex competitive environments.

Women are not kept out of the NBA by patriarchy, policy, or prohibition, nor should they ever be. They simply do not meet the extreme physical requirements the league demands. The NBA is an apex athletic institution built on size, speed, strength, and violence of motion. Should some woman appear (you know, stride out of the cornfields with God-given talent, standing 7 feet tall with a can’t-miss three-point shot) who can earn a place on the roster, she should get it. Her gender should never be a reason to deny her access and opportunity. Also, it should never be used to guarantee an outcome. I am not there in the NBA because I am old, out of shape, and I lack the ability. I am not shaping young minds in elite academic institutions because I am secretly barricaded by invisible forces. I am not there because I haven't any message to resonate with young minds infected by the college experience.

I do not kneel at the altar of hucksters. Self-respect and critical thinking prevent me from doing so. I live in reality. And for all the mythology Paglia’s worshippers toss around, I have never—not once—received an invitation to the He-Man Woman-Haters Club. Never got an invitation to the annual meeting on embossed stationery. I was never included in any distribution list for the male cabal minutes. I never even got a Christmas card! All I ever saw, while waiting for my alleged marching orders, were competent, qualified women advancing on merit alone—women to admire.

Paglia does not offend me. She does not threaten me. She simply does not interest me. Her work leans on spectacle, not rigor. On cadence, not clarity. On psychological need, not intellectual necessity. She has her audience. I am impressed by how efficiently she monetized them.

What I reject is the demand that admiration must be treated as proof of depth. It is not. She built a career. She navigated media currents with competence. She secured prestige and money. All of that is real. What remains absent is originality of thought that can survive without costume, cadence, or cult.

Review of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Review of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

    In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt delivers a novel that is often praised for its ambition and stylistic control. Her prose is dense, atmospheric, and highly deliberate, with moments of undeniable technical precision. On the surface, it carries the hallmarks of serious literary fiction.

    Yet beneath that surface lies a fundamental problem: the novel confuses density with depth. Description, introspection, and environment are layered so heavily that they begin to displace narrative movement. Momentum slows, then stalls, and with it goes the reader’s engagement. Rather than being drawn deeper into the story, one becomes increasingly aware of its construction, watching it unfold from the outside instead of living within it.

    This distinction, immersion versus awareness of structure, is where the novel ultimately breaks down. Once the reader begins to feel the weight of the pacing, the spell is not merely weakened; it is lost. The difference between earned slowness and indulgent slowness becomes stark. Where tension should quietly build, scenes instead linger without advancing the stakes. What might have been emotionally resonant becomes, over time, narratively inert.

    The portrayal of New York City and its inhabitants only reinforces this detachment. Characters presented as New Yorkers lack the specificity, voice, and cultural nuance that define the city and its people. They feel generalized, as though observed rather than fully inhabited. Tartt’s connection to New York, formed in adulthood rather than through lifelong immersion, places her perspective closer to that of a non–New Yorker than that of someone shaped by the city over time. That distinction matters. New York imprints itself through lived experience, through upbringing, environment, and the subtle codes absorbed over years. Without that foundation, the portrayal of its people risks feeling interpretive rather than authentic. At times, it reads no more convincingly than a carefully written tourist’s postcard.

    The cumulative effect is significant. Without convincing human texture and sustained narrative propulsion, the novel’s considerable length becomes a liability rather than an asset. The reader is asked to remain invested in a story that increasingly provides fewer reasons to do so.

    For all its technical polish and ambition, the novel ultimately fails in the most essential task of storytelling: to hold the reader inside its world. In that respect, it stands, in my experience, among the most disappointing and least rewarding books I have read. For a novel so often praised for its depth, The Goldfinch left this New Yorker on the outside looking in.

Review of Marty Supreme: Chaos in Search of a Story

 

Review of Marty Supreme: Chaos in Search of a Story

I stopped watching Marty Supreme ninety minutes in. The decision was deliberate rather than impulsive. A film does not need to be pleasant, sympathetic, or even especially coherent in its early stages to justify its running time. It does, however, need to persuade the viewer that the journey ahead will reward the attention it asks for. By the ninety-minute point, Marty Supreme had not made that case.

After stepping away, I returned to the film with the hope that distance might change the experience. I watched an additional thirty minutes. If anything, the break had the opposite effect. I found myself even further removed from the story, largely indifferent to whether Marty ever makes it to Japan. With roughly thirty-five minutes remaining, I stopped watching again.

The film introduces its central character, Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet. Marty is presented as a gifted but morally elastic table-tennis hustler navigating the sport’s peculiar ecosystem. The premise suggests the outline of a potentially compelling character study. A talented competitor operating in the gray space between ambition and opportunism can sustain dramatic tension when the narrative steadily clarifies the stakes surrounding that ambition.

Director Josh Safdie approaches the material with the stylistic signature of his earlier work. Scenes unfold with restless energy. Dialogue overlaps. Characters speak over one another while the camera hovers close to their faces, creating an atmosphere of constant agitation. Critics frequently describe Safdie’s style as tense and frantic. For some viewers, that intensity can be exhilarating. For others, it produces fatigue rather than immersion. When every scene operates at the same emotional pitch, the technique gradually loses its power. What begins as urgency can eventually feel like exhaustion.

The style might be more effective if the scenes steadily advanced the story. Instead, many of the film’s most chaotic sequences seem to exist primarily as bursts of energy rather than meaningful steps in the narrative. Characters argue. Voices rise. Situations escalate into shouting. Yet these moments rarely produce consequences that alter the direction of the story. They simply end. The film cuts away, and the viewer is immediately dropped into another scene operating at the same frantic pitch.

The cumulative effect is motion without progress. The film remains in constant motion, yet the plot itself appears to stand still. Scenes generate noise and activity but seldom resolve or transform the characters’ relationships. Without that sense of cause and consequence, the narrative begins to feel less like a story unfolding and more like a chain of disconnected eruptions.

A scene involving Marty’s uncle underscores the film’s tendency toward chaotic moments that never develop into meaningful story beats. The uncle summons a police officer friend who stages a mock arrest to intimidate Marty. The premise is so implausible that the scene borders on parody. More striking, however, is what happens afterward: nothing. The confrontation remains unresolved, and the film abruptly moves on to the next episode of shouting and agitation, as though the moment had no consequence at all.

That fatigue becomes even more noticeable as the narrative expands beyond its early setting. What initially appears to be a grounded story rooted in New York hustler culture gradually drifts into a series of stranger encounters. Wealthy patrons appear. International travel enters the picture. The film begins to move through environments and social circles that feel detached from the gritty world established at the beginning.

Among the more distracting developments are Marty’s sudden romantic encounters with the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow, an older former A-list actress. The relationship unfolds with a kind of narrative shorthand that strains credibility. The progression from a casual introduction—essentially “I play table tennis”—to a bedroom encounter happens so quickly that it feels less like character development and more like narrative convenience. Rather than deepening the story, these scenes reinforce the impression that the film has wandered away from the grounded world it initially established.

The result is a tonal shift that leaves the narrative without a clear center. What begins as a street-level character study gradually transforms into a sequence of loosely connected episodes. Individually, the scenes contain energy. Collectively, they feel untethered. Instead of building momentum, the story seems to drift.

Some viewers may appreciate the film’s chaotic style or its portrait of an ethically elastic protagonist moving through increasingly strange social environments. My experience, however, was that the story never developed the narrative momentum necessary to sustain engagement.

A film does not have to charm its audience. It does not need to present a sympathetic hero. It must, however, persuade the viewer that the unfolding story possesses direction and purpose. Even after two hours, Marty Supreme still had not made that case.

Director:

Josh Safdie

Main Cast:

Timothée Chalamet (Marty Mauser)
Gwyneth Paltrow (Kay Stone)
Odessa A’zion (Rachel Mizler)
Larry “Ratso” Sloman (Murray Norkin)
Fran Drescher (Rebecca Mauser)
Kevin O’Leary (Milton Rockwell)
Tyler Okonma (Wally)
Abel Ferrara (Ezra Mishkin)

Review of " Don't Worry Darling", An Elegant Premise Undone When Atmosphere Replaces Story

Review of " Don't Worry Darling", An Elegant Premise Undone When Atmosphere Replaces Story

Don’t Worry Darling opens with a premise that immediately invites intrigue. The film presents Victory, an immaculate desert community where mid-century domestic life unfolds with almost mechanical perfection. Husbands depart each morning for mysterious work, wives remain behind in pristine homes, and the town functions with a choreographed harmony that feels slightly too perfect to be natural.

Director Olivia Wilde constructs this world with considerable visual discipline. The production design, costumes, and cinematography create a polished 1950s aesthetic that reinforces the unsettling sense that the community is performing an ideal rather than living an authentic life.

For much of its first half, the film works effectively as a psychological mystery. The narrative is driven by small disturbances in the otherwise flawless environment. Conversations carry subtle tension, unexplained events accumulate, and the central character begins to suspect that the structure surrounding her life may conceal something far more unsettling.

The film’s central performance is a major strength. Florence Pugh anchors the story with remarkable emotional precision. Her portrayal of a woman gradually realizing that the reality she inhabits may not be genuine gives the film its emotional credibility. Even as the narrative grows increasingly strange, her reactions remain grounded in recognizable human psychology.

At roughly the midpoint of the film, however, a moment occurs that intentionally disrupts the viewer’s sense of continuity. A woman who appears to have been forcibly removed for electroshock treatment suddenly appears again in another context shortly thereafter. The transition feels abrupt and disorienting. The scene appears designed to suggest that identity and reality within Victory may not operate according to normal rules.

The intention is clear: the film is signaling that the system governing this world has begun to reveal cracks.

Yet this device risks pulling the viewer out of the narrative rather than deepening the mystery. Instead of gradually widening the audience’s understanding of the system, the film occasionally relies on jarring visual signals that feel more symbolic than narratively motivated.

This tension becomes far more pronounced in the final act.

During its first two acts, the film operates like a conventional thriller. The story unfolds through cause and effect. Suspicion leads to investigation, investigation leads to confrontation, and each discovery escalates the stakes.

After the central reveal, however, the film changes structural direction.

The filmmakers appear to shift the focus from mystery to meaning. Once the underlying premise is exposed, the narrative begins emphasizing thematic interpretation rather than plot progression. Scenes increasingly rely on symbolic imagery, heightened confrontations, and rapid montage sequences rather than carefully developed narrative steps.

This structural pivot explains why the final twenty-five minutes create the impression that the film loses focus.

Thrillers depend on momentum. Each event produces the next, creating a chain of consequences that propels the story forward. When the film transitions toward impressionistic imagery and conceptual statements about control, identity, and constructed reality, that momentum weakens.

Instead of following events unfolding, the viewer begins interpreting ideas being illustrated. The result is a closing section filled with striking images and emotionally intense performances but a diminished sense of narrative propulsion.

One moment late in the film stands out precisely because it returns briefly to human instinct rather than symbolic commentary. When a character violently turns on her husband, the scene lands with real emotional force. The act feels immediate and believable—a raw reaction from someone suddenly confronting the truth of her situation. In a film increasingly guided by metaphor, that moment of primal response restores a sense of tangible human stakes.

Even in the film’s more abstract passages, Florence Pugh continues to deliver a compelling performance. Her portrayal maintains emotional coherence even as the surrounding narrative grows more conceptual. This contrast—between a grounded performance and a shifting structural framework—is one reason individual scenes retain power even when the broader arc begins to feel less cohesive.

The underlying ideas the film explores—control, autonomy, and the manipulation of reality—are substantial themes. The difficulty lies not in the themes themselves, but in the balance between allegory and narrative clarity.

The film appears to pursue two ambitions simultaneously. One is a tightly constructed psychological thriller set within a meticulously controlled suburban world. The other is a broader allegory examining systems of power and the ways individuals may become trapped within them.

Each of these directions holds considerable potential. The challenge arises in the final act, where the film leans heavily toward allegorical expression at the expense of the narrative mechanics that sustained the earlier portions of the story.

As a result, Don’t Worry Darling concludes with impressive visuals and a commanding central performance, yet with a closing stretch that feels less dramatically cohesive than the premise initially promises.

The film remains engaging for much of its runtime, and its central performance elevates many of its most intense moments. However, the shift from suspense-driven storytelling to symbolic illustration in the final portion creates the sense that the narrative engine powering the film has slowed just when the story should be accelerating toward its conclusion.

Director:

Olivia Wilde

Cast:

Florence Pugh(Alice Chambers)

Harry Styles(Jack Chambers)

Chris Pine(Frank)

Olivia Wilde(Bunny)

Gemma Chan(Shelley)

KiKi Layne(Margaret)

Nick Kroll(Dean)

Sydney Chandler(Violet)

Douglas Smith(Bill)

Kate Berlant(Peg)

When Ambition Outruns Execution: A Review of Melancholia

 

When Ambition Outruns Execution: A Review of Melancholia

There are films that invite the viewer into a story, and there are films that ask the viewer to surrender the expectation of story altogether. Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier, clearly belongs in the latter category. Whether that approach results in a profound cinematic meditation or an exercise in frustration will depend largely on the viewer’s tolerance for abstraction.

The film opens with a visually striking prologue set to music from Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In slow motion, the audience is presented with dreamlike images of catastrophe and cosmic inevitability. The sequence is undeniably beautiful and suggests a film prepared to explore existential themes on a grand scale.

Once the narrative begins, however, the film shifts to an extended wedding reception that occupies much of the first half. The bride, Justine, portrayed by Kirsten Dunst, moves through the celebration with increasing detachment as tensions among family members slowly surface. Conversations stall, moments linger, and the evening gradually unravels.

The intention is clear. Von Trier is attempting to depict the emotional landscape of severe depression within the setting of what should be a joyful social ritual. The wedding becomes a stage on which the emptiness Justine feels toward life itself begins to emerge.

Yet the execution proves uneven. Rather than deepening the audience’s understanding of the character, many scenes stretch beyond their dramatic purpose. The pacing slows to the point where atmosphere replaces narrative movement. What appears designed to be introspective frequently feels closer to narrative drift.

The film’s second half introduces the approaching rogue planet Melancholia, whose trajectory threatens Earth. This shift promises a powerful convergence between personal despair and cosmic annihilation. The concept itself is intriguing: the character most burdened by depression becomes the calmest in the face of planetary destruction, while those who previously seemed stable struggle to confront the possibility of the end.

Despite the strength of that idea, the film never fully transforms the concept into compelling drama. The cosmic threat remains largely symbolic, and the psychological developments unfold more through mood than through carefully constructed narrative moments.

Visually, Melancholia retains considerable power. Von Trier demonstrates a remarkable eye for composition, and several sequences achieve an almost painterly beauty. Yet visual ambition alone cannot sustain a film of this length.

Ultimately, the film’s ambitions overwhelm its execution. What begins as an intriguing premise gradually dissolves into extended mood and abstraction, leaving the impression that the film loses its narrative footing early and never fully regains it. What remains is an exercise in atmosphere that appears more interested in appearing profound than in actually delivering substance.

Whether one finds that exploration profound or exhausting will depend largely on what one expects from the medium of film.

Director: 

Lars von Trier

Cast:

Kirsten Dunst(Justine)

Charlotte Gainsbourg(Claire)

Kiefer Sutherland(John)

Alexander Skarsgård (Michael)

Brady Corbet (Tim)

Cameron Spurr (Leo)

Charlotte Rampling(Gaby)

John Hurt( Dexter)