This movie came out in 1940 (before Pearl Harbor), and so it serves as a call to the United States to stand up and join the fight for liberal democracy in Europe. I'm not sure how I would have received this movie in 2021 or 2022 or 2023, but I'm watching it here in February 2025, as the United States seems inclined to favor autocratic Russia over democratic Ukraine in war negotiations. Perhaps this explains the size of my emotional…
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Dog Man 2025
My five-year old declared this "the best movie ever." Admittedly I've seen more movies than he has, but I will vouch for Dog Man (the movie and the book series) because it succeeds at using absurdist humor to get children to engage with weighty concepts like destiny versus free will, identity and belonging, and fractured parent-child relationships. And Lil Petey is adorable.
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The Lady Vanishes 1938
Hitchcock's films from the 30s are full of conspirators whose motives and ideologies are never explored. It's not that I need the villains to look at the camera and declare, "This is exactly the kind of fascist I am," but it's notable to me that Hitchcock's movies use conspiracies to convey the general sense of unease--the world is not what it used to be; order and civilization are collapsing--rather than to explore actual political views.
In The Man Who Knew…
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