Everything is about Iraq, even when it’s not.

Last night, I finally got around to watching FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, which deals with the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima (both of them, actually), and the effects that moment had on the men who were there. Although Clint Eastwood isn’t exactly my idea of a great director, I have to say I came away impressed by what is in truth an anti-war film, one that lingers on the senseless cruelty of conflict and the losses — psychological and moral — suffered by war’s participants. It also deals quite significantly with the use of propaganda to engender public support, and provides one of the only unvarnished, unsentimental portrayals of World War II America you’ll ever see on film.

I haven’t even gotten to the racial subtext of the film, the constant indignities foisted upon Ira Hayes, the Native American “hero” who was tormented by Iwo Jima until his death by “exposure” a few years after the war. Some may remember Hayes as the subject of the Johnny Cash antiwar classic, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” and his experiences are emphasized heavily in the film.

This film is most certainly not the overly sentimental SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, which fictionalized and romanticized the war for a generation of Americans, myself included, who then went on to relive in a thousand times over in video games like MEDAL OF HONOR and CALL OF DUTY. RYAN’s main conceit is that the men of World War II were brave and noble heroes, ordinary men called to extraordinary acts by fate. They suffer, yes, but they were noble and good. FLAGS OF OUR FATHER takes a different tact — these were men traumatized by a brutal experience bigger than themselves. They sacrificed themselves for their friends, and did what they did on the battlefield to survive and help their friends live. And yet after that survival, they were tortured by guilt for having gotten off that mountain of rock in the Pacific, when deep down they felt they should have died there, too.

Although Eastwood quite accurately depicts the deep racial hatred that drove combat on Iwo Jima, both on the American and Japanese side, unlike Spielberg’s RYAN, the Japanese are more than just stock villains. As the camera lingers on their dead young faces, the dead Japanese soldiers, so fanatical and brutal moments before, also seem tragically human. They are also victims of the war.

I can’t wait to see the companion piece, Eastwood’s LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, which tells the story of the same battle from the Japanese perspective. I have no doubt that it will tell the same story.

So, GRINDHOUSE, the double-bill by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, came in fourth place this weekend and has been officially declared a bomb. I can’t say this doesn’t surprise me, but Tina and I managed to go see it this weekend, and I have to say that as post-modern commentary on b-grade cinema goes, Grindhouse is a roaring success. I haven’t had that much fun at a movie in a long, long time, and I have to say that the themes of feminism and empowerment found in both Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR and Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF were a very nice reminder of how “bad” movies once celebrated female power, quite unlike the grueling horror films of present day. It’s too smart and weird to ever gain a mass audience, but if you have an appreciation for post modern cinema, then you should go see this in the theatre while you can.

PLANET TERROR is a zombie film starring Rose McGowan and Freddy Rodriguez (”Rico” on SIX FEET UNDER) — in many ways it’s an echo of the early films of John Carpenter, or the more raucous work of Roger Corman. The story is simple — zombies come to small town Texas, and a Go-Go dancer and her ex-boyfriend, a mysterious man with a big truck, lead the fight against the monsters. In many ways, it reminds me of the b-classic NIGHT OF THE COMET, except with the violence amped up to impossible levels.

As a director, Robert Rodriguez has an inspiring sense of independence, shooting all his films — even the hit childrens’ series, SPY KIDS — in his own Austin studios. However, I’ve found his work to be largely uneven — for every SIN CITY, he also has a FACULTY or THE ADVENTURES OF SHARK GIRL AND LAVA BOY to throw up as a counterpoint. Still, PLANET TERROR is exciting in a way that his films rarely are. By dispensing with the gloss of his previous work, the naturalistic approach (which includes exploding heads full of red Kero syrup) takes him out of the cold confines of slick CGI and into a place where great characters get to carry the film.

DEATH PROOF, Quentin Tarantion’s ode to the “Road Demon” genre, is a harder movie to talk about. The first two thirds of the film are spent in the company of two different sets of female victims stalked by a psychopathic serial killer named “Stuntman Mike,” who is played with stunning bravado by Kurt Russell in his “John Travolta in PULP FICTION” moment. The women hold endless conversations about their lives, conversations that lull the audience into a state of boredom, or as in my case, squirming, “gotta get out of the theatre” boredom. However, there is a point in the film where everything changes — where you realize that the first two acts were set-up for an amazing finale. I won’t tell you what it is, just that the last thirty minutes of DEATH PROOF are sublime. You still have to sit through the first hour, but trust me, it’s worth it.

In the end, there’s something appealing about contemporary filmmakers actually dispensing with the usual “references” and making films that employ the cinematic tools and conventions of a dead genre. By resurrecting the grindhouse film, they’re sending a pretty clear message about modern cinema — chiefly, that it sucks. And looking at what passes as horror these days — fictional snuff films that glorify torture and sadism, where all the protagonists ultimately die — we forget that horror films used to be about triumph over fear. That the great horror films of the 70’s and 80’s had improbable characters standing up to the monsters with a wink and gallons of fake, fake blood and winning.

Looking for news today on a potential re-release of the first season of Twin Peaks on DVD, I stumbled upon this review of the film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” released after the cancellation of the show.

I remember my mom driving me out to the Leitersburg Cinema in Hagerstown, MD and watching it nearly alone in the theatre save for the prescence of three solitary men scattered menacingly around the auditorium. The movie had a profound impact on me — I enjoyed it on a purely emotional level, as Lynch tends to work in the realm of psychology and feeling. It was frightening and exciting, offering dark nightmare worlds that intersected with the real one. I was startled by how different the film was than the show, how alien in tone from the quirky mystery show I religiously taped on VHS week end and week out so that I could experience it forever.

The review I linked above I think accurately and fairly asseses the film, which was grossly underrated at the time. But to me, trapped in Western Maryland before the onset of the information age, it was a flood of adventurous ideas and images unlike anything I’d ever been exposed to. Now, such things are available to everyone — in multiplexes, in the DVD racks at the local Borders. But back in 1992, it was a lucky thing to get a week-long engagement of such a film. I remember it fondly, despite its many flaws.

Last night, Tina and I tried to watch “The Descent,” but ultimately turned it off. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but in the last year, I’ve found I’ve had very little stomach for horror films, despite an affection for the genre. Even before the cast gets lost underground, I found myself annoyed by the director’s use of cheap scares — I don’t have a lot of patience for sudden jolts of feigned violence, the cinematic equivalent of getting behind an unsuspecting person and screaming: “boo!”

I know the director (Neil Marshall?) was trying to accomplish some pretty complex things with the film, but neither the cast or the budget was sufficent for it. I appreciate the effort, but in the end, I just didn’t have it in me to watch people get killed senselessly on screen.

The Washington Post has a great interview with Woody Allen, though it seems to have dropped off their home page mere seconds after I spotted it. You can read it here. Yes, registration is required, sorry.

Match Point is one of the best films I’ve seen in the last year, but ironically, the loathesome Melinda and Melinda is playing on HBO as I type. With a film a year, Allen is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes he hits big, sometimes he fails big. Remember the one with Jason Biggs and Chrstina Ricci? Yeah, I don’t, either. But he made some of my favorite films of all time — namely Annie Hall, Manhattan, Another Woman, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Husbands and Wives. Of all of them, though, I think Manhattan is still the best. He’s probably one of America’s greatest living filmmakers, although most people remember him now for the bad movies, rather than the good ones. There’s still a contingent that adores his silly comedies, but I prefer it when he’s aping Ingmar Bergman.

But hey, Billy Wilder made bad movies, too. And people still rave about Some Like it Hot and the Apartment. But if quantity was king, objectively speaking, no one could rival Woody Allen for the top director spot.

I just got back from seeing Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly,” adapted from the book by Philip K. Dick. The reviews have been mixed, so I expected not to like it, but was instead pleasantly surprised. Using the same kind of “animation over live action” style pioneered in Linklater’s “Waking Life,” “A Scanner Darkly” follows an undercover narcotics agent played by Keanu Reeves, who must ultimately narc on himself. This is the kind of science fiction film that simply doesn’t get made anymore — one which attempts to comment on modern life using a sci-fi concept to highlight our own failings. In this case, we see a near-future hell where literally everone is under constant surveillance and more than twenty percent of the population is addicted to drugs, including the cops.

I won’t say much more, but those expecting to spend an hour and a half watching animated versions of Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Winona Ryder and Robert Downey JR. strung out on drugs and talking nonsensically are absolutely right. What Linklater movie doesn’t contain some hapless meanderings? But the plot, such as it is, has its own delightful puzzles to work out, that culiminate in an expected, though still satisfying twist and final musing on the lengths governments will go to fight evils of their own creation.

Watching the film, I couldn’t help but think of our own post-9/11 dystopian society. It’s strange to think that with endless war (on drugs, terrorism, etc.), oil shortages, and apocalyptic mutterings from the evangelicals that control the government, that we now live in a world that is beginning to resemble the bleak futures once depicted in science fiction. Perhaps that gives “A Scanner Darkly” its own special resonance, being only one step away from non-fiction.

The trailer for Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” is now up at Apple.com. It’s definitely not what I expected — given Stone’s track record, a lot of people assumed that it might be Stone’s “Farenheit 9/11.” Instead it seems more like a rescue drama.

If I see either of the big 9/11 films, this is the one I’d probably go to. “United 93″ seems too much like a horror film to me. It’s not an incident I want to live through cinematically.

Sofia Coppola returns with another beautiful film. Check out the trailer here:

http://movies.aol.com/movie_exclusive_marie_antoinette_trailer

Yes, it looks like an 80’s music video. But wow, what an amazing juxtoposition — 18th Century images combined with New Order. Kirsten Dunst as the eponymous heroine and Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI, and a 70’s punk rock logo. I can’t wait. This will have to be one where Tina and I take off work and leave the girls at daycare — and it will be worth it.