Wknd Box Office: The Magnificent Seven, Queen of Katwe, Storks, The Hollars
By Debbie Schlussel
* The Magnificent Seven – Rated PG-13: The first thing you need to know about this very politically correct movie is that ALL three of the White Magnificent Seven members are killed off by the end of this movie. Only the minorities survive. Oh, and also, the movie’s villain is also White (as is his large band of mercenary thugs–where’s da diversity?), and he’s an evil businessman/real estate developer. Always gotta insert that gratuitous, hypocritical Hollywood faux-hate of capitalism in the plot line. Plus, this movie is incredibly violent and bloody–much more than I expected, especially for a PG-13 flick. Still, despite all of that, I mostly liked the movie. That’s also despite its running time of two hours and 12 minutes.
But would it have killed them to write a movie in which at least ONE of the White Magnificent Seven lives??? This movie gets the Colin Kaepernick Black Racist Seal of Approval.
There have been several remakes of what was originally Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s truly magnificent “The Seven Samurai,” including a 1998 CBS TV series co-starring my high school friend Rick Worthy. But most Americans remember the best “remake” to be the original English language version, the 1960 “The Magnificent Seven” movie, in which a Mexican village requests the help of the White Magnificent Seven.
In this movie, a White town requests the help of a mostly minority Magnificent Seven–led by a Black guy (Denzel Washington) and also comprised of an American Indian, er . . . “Native American,” a Mexican, a Chinese dude, and three White guys (Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, and Vincent D’Onofrio. It’s unlikely that really would have happened in the 1800s Old West, the setting for this “update.”
Also, in this movie, there isn’t always stark good-versus-evil, at least at the beginning. Chris Pratt kills one or two gamblers who rip him off, and he shoots a guy’s ear off. (Of course, it’s a White member of the Magnificent Seven who does these things.) Though, this is before he joins the “Seven.”
The story: an evil White real estate developer from Sacramento (played by ultra-left-wing America-hater Peter Sarsgaard) terrorizes the people of a small town and murders some of them in cold blood–all because he wants their land at a cheap price. The wife of one of the men who is killed hires Denzel Washington and his band of six other men to come to town and fight off the real estate developer and his band of mostly White thugs (there is one exception–he has an American Indian thug, Denali, but other than that–the rest of his bad guys, which number in the hundreds, are all White).
The Magnificent Seven come to town and train the townspeople to shoot and fight. And then they help the people fight off the bad guys. But their battle is bloody, and they’ve been forewarned that many people will die.
As I watched the battle and saw the three White Magnificent Seven (plus the Chinese one) get killed, I thought, “Wow, there isn’t a lot of room for the sequel here.” But, then, I realized that White people are disposable, and they can be recast. My mind was also screaming . . .
White Magnificent Seven Lives Matter!
Just not in this racist, politically-correct movie.
Still, I love a good western, and this movie wasn’t bad as far as that goes–despite all the racist, PC baloney.
So I give it . . .
TWO REAGANS PLUS TWO COLIN KAEPERNICK RACIST SEALS OF APPROVAL
Watch the trailer . . .
* Queen of Katwe – Rated PG: Hmmm . . . since nearly half of the greatest chess players of all time were/are Jews, when I think of chess champions I think of Uganda. Don’t you? Of course, that’s the absurd conceit (and deceit) of this movie, even though the movie is ultimately uplifting after moving very slowly for the first half. Also, FYI, when I think of Uganda, I think of their late Muslim leader, Idi Amin, and the Muslim hostage-taking of Jews who were held and terrorized in Entebbe, NOT chess.
Also, I was horrified that a Disney movie aimed at and heavily marketed to kids–especially Black kids–repeatedly features a child prostitute who gets pregnant. And it doesn’t exactly look down on her and her exploits much. Walt Disney is turning over in his grave.
The movie goes out of its way to downplay, minimize, and whitewash the role of Christianity in the story. And, since mostly Americans and Brits play the main characters, they go out of their way to overdo their “Ugandan” accents, making it hard to understand them and what they are saying for most of the first half of the movie. The first half of the movie is also slow and boring, and the movie doesn’t really heat up and get interesting until half way through, when the chess competitions get going.
“Based on a real-life story,” this is about a Ugandan girl, Phiona Mutesi, who becomes Uganda’s first chess master, and ultimately plays and beats chess champions all over Uganda and internationally. She and the other kids in the movie live in an extremely poor ghetto of Katwe in Uganda. They are destitute. A local community organizer (really a man working for a local Christian church ministry) is a chess player and coach. He reaches out and teaches them chess. Ultimately they beat the stock Hollywood-cast snobby rich kids. But the star is Phiona. She is so good that she beats the top Ugandans and goes to international competitions. Her dream is to become a chess “master.”
Phiona’s father died, and her mother (Lupita Nyong’o) is a single mother because of that. She’s struggling to survive, and so she is skeptical of Phiona’s chess aspirations. Phiona’s sister is a teen prostitute who takes money for sex, dresses like a whore, and eventually becomes pregnant by one of the men. I was disappointed that this darkness (and other darkness–Phiona’s home, an old church, is completely flooded like a river and they lose everything) was in a Disney kids’ movie. It wasn’t necessary.
The coach, played by David Oyelowo, is actually a Christian minister, but you’d be hard-pressed to know that because–as I’ve noted–Disney mostly washed that out of this ultimately inspiring and uplifting story. The only hint of it is that in one scene you can see the van he drove has a barely-visible cross and the name “ministry” on it.
The kids in the movie are very cute and funny. And eventually the story is uplifting and inspires ambition. I liked that message of empowering one’s self and taking personal responsibility to get out of poverty. But, let’s be real: Uganda ain’t known for its chess champions, despite what the movie wants you to think.
HALF A REAGAN PLUS TWO MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON HUSSEIN OBAMA IDI AMIN DADAS PLUS TWO COLIN KAEPERNICK RACIST SEALS OF APPROVAL
Watch the trailer . . .
* Storks – Rated PG: This dumb, cockamamie “kids” movie was soooooo incredibly annoying. And the very stupid story looked like it was slapped together by a two-year-old (with apologies to two-year-olds for the comparison with the writers of this crappy waste of time). In an era–and in a year–when there are so many far-superior animated kids’ movies, this falls stunningly flat. It also highlights the lack of good, original story-telling that apparently befuddles so many in Hollywood. I was surprised at the silliness of this movie. Plus it is very slow and very boring. The animation is fine, but nothing outstanding. Just the basics that we’ve already come to expect, given today’s technology. Pixar this ain’t. Not even close.
The “story” (if you can call it that): storks used to deliver babies to new parents. But it was too hard, and they had so many near-accidents. So, now, they are out of that business and into something else. Today, the storks are delivery men for a giant Amazon.com-like company, called “CornerStore.com.” The main character stork in the movie is about to be promoted to “boss” by the CEO stork. But, first, he has to attend to the orphan girl who lives in the company’s facility in the sky. She’s left over from the days of when the storks used to deliver newborns. Unfortunately, the girl and the stork accidentally set off the old factory machinery from those days, and a new baby is delivered.
The rest of the movie basically follows the stork and the orphan girl trying to brave the elements and other obstacles in order to deliver the baby to its family. (The cutest–and only interesting–scene is when the two are trying to escape a very smart and resourceful pack of wolves.) Meanwhile, the orphan girl longs to find her own family and be united with them, after all these years. And, at the same time, a “Valley Guy-esque” stool pigeon is telling on them to the CEO because the pigeon wants to be boss instead of the stork. While all of this is going on, a young boy wants a baby brother because his real estate agent parents are neglectful and devoted to their jobs instead of him. So, he begins building a giant amusement-park on the family home’s roof, in order to attract a delivery stork.
At the end of the movie, the storks accidentally set off the baby factory, and thousands of kids pop out. So the storks have to deliver them to their families. This is exactly when I thought to myself, “here’s where the political correctness starts and we see gay families and so on getting deliveries.” Sure enough, Hollywood never disappoints the PC crowd. You see all-female and all-male couples getting baby deliveries. Soooo predictable.
The first ex-Mrs. Brad Pitt (Jennifer Aniston) and Andy Samberg voice characters in this movie. I’m not a fan of either.
Believe me, I’m making this dumb story sound far better than it is. This is a snoozer, and pointless. But kids will probably love the colors.
ONE-AND-A-HALF MARXES
Watch the trailer . . .
* The Hollars – Rated PG-13: Oy vey. Directed by and starring John Krasinski, this movie is HORRIBLE! Absolutely awful. High quality Gitmo torture material and 1.5 hours of my life I’ll never get back. Who on earth would pay ten-bucks-plus to see this? Only a sucker or a dupe. They’d have to pay me a lot to see this again. Yuck. And it’s incredibly depressing.
Make no mistake: this movie is a deliberate and loud attack on middle American life by snobby Hollywood elitist creeps. (And it’s also, sub rosa, an attack on the lives of average White Americans, too.)
The story: Krasinski plays a guy living in New York trying to “live the dream.” But it turns out he’s not exactly living the dream and isn’t happy with his life. That comes out after he returns home to the small town from which he came to see his family. He learns that his mother has had a seizure because of a brain tumor and she must get immediate surgery to remove it. He also learns that his father’s business is about to go bankrupt and has been losing money, that the family is completely broke, and that his divorced-dad brother is living in his parents basement and lost his job in the family business. The father is a dopey, infantilized, incompetent fool. On top of that, they don’t know how they’re going to pay for their mother’s surgery. And they worry that she won’t survive the operation. But, other than that, GUH-REAT! movie.
Oh, wait. I forgot that Krasinski’s girlfriend (Anna Kendrick) is pregnant, but he really doesn’t think he wants to be a father or to marry the girlfriend. His career is basically non-existent, though, and he’s being “floated” by her financially, as she is very rich. Still, he realizes his life ain’t so bad compared to that of his family in “red state” G-d’s country. Virtually everyone in the small town is a “lesser than” and either a jerk or backward or something.
Shame on Josh Groban for co-starring in this garbage. Also, I’m not sure how this avoided an R-rating. Standards have clearly disintegrated.
I couldn’t stand this movie from the beginning, and each time when I thought it couldn’t get any worse or more boring and depressing, it got worse, more boring, and even more depressing. This is absolute crap. And that’s an understatement. I hated the veiled, sneering, arrogant, and smug politics of this. And I just hated this in every other way, too. Who needs this? Not me. And definitely not you. This movie is so bad that it won awards at all the major movie festivals. That’s how it works. Crap rises to the top.
Pointless trash. Avoid like the plague.
FOUR MARXES PLUS A COLIN KAEPERNICK RACIST SEAL OF APPROVAL
Watch the trailer . . .
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