It's y'all in Alabama and youse guys in New York. Strange people from the North engage with odd characters in the South. It's hilarious. Welcome to America.
(Sigh.) This movie isn't politically correct by the standards of the early 21st century. There have been recent attempts to present Nurse Ratched with sympathy and don't do a criminal records check on Randall Patrick McMurphy. You won't like what you find. Still, this is the great American comedy about "madness" and medicine. It may rise again as more baby boomers move into old age and institutional care. Jack Nicholson delivered a superb performance.
One of the great anti-war movies. This one has a dark sense of humor. Very dark. You may feel exhausted by the end of the story, and, maybe, that's appropriate. Wars do that sort of thing. Some people never recover.
A movie that's hard on the rednecks. The nasty crowd in the restaurant was told that the bikers had recently raped and murdered a woman. That makes their rage a bit easier to understand. "Easy Rider" offers the strange blend of communal optimism, rebellion, and fear that was present in the Sixties. Everything was possible. Nothing was possible. Maybe things will get better. Maybe.
Mel Gibson shows us what goes wrong in many civilizations. The elites feed upon the common folk. If he presented ancient Rome or imperial England on the screen, there might be universal applause. Instead, Gibson presents a non-European civilization and we hear howls of rage from some of the critics. Once again. Mel Gibson isn't "politically correct." He's not telling the story that some folks want to hear. Yes, the Mayan elites had some great engineers and scientists, but the same can be said for Nazi Germany. Despite some reports, the European conquerors who appear at the end of the movie are not presented as "liberators." The big predators will eat the small predators. One group of oppressors will replace another. It's a hard lesson in a violent movie.
