It keeps happening. Does anything change, in the long run?

While going through old posts for the suggested viewing, I found even more movies about police officers acting outside the law to get the bad guys than I expected. Dirty Harry is the archetypal fairy tale of why law enforcement needs to be lawless, but we’re so accustomed to the narrative that “hero” cops bending or breaking the laws that are meant to keep us safe from the misuse of their authority are rarely visible. I recall how badly I hoped that Bad Boys might at least end with the bad guy actually imprisoned instead of executed. Because the unspoken superpower that fictional police have but real police rarely do, is that they are magically always right by being the heroes of the story being told. That doesn’t even begin to discuss the problem that modern law enforcement has with the kind of people who are attracted to the authoritarian, “I Am The Law”, consequence-free state of modern policing.

Additional viewing:

Pulgasari

First Blood

Judgment at Nuremberg

And I don’t have my own words about Do The Right Thing, but that is highly recommended as well.

https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/

The mood for this week includes

• The Music Box, the classic Laurel and Hardy short about carrying a piano up a steep hill, again and again and again.
• The Money Pit, a young couple’s dream home project spirals out of control.
• The Long, Long, Trailer, a young couple pulling everything they own behind them, learning a lot in the process.

I find myself without the time to review a movie because of some movie-making business coming up suddenly, so here is a selection of reviews about movies about movie-making:

• The Cameraman, a Buster Keaton slapstick spectacle
• After The Fox, Peter Sellers scams a small European town by making a movie with them.
• Bowfinger, Steve Martin scams Eddie Murphy into making his movie with him.
• Lost in La Mancha, a movie about failing to make a movie.
• This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a movie about the movie industry’s failure to rate itself fairly.