Yes, this movie’s been out for a while but faithful readers know that things have been crazy in Bobville and that I’m dropping this in place of The Week in Radical Leftism while I catch some much needed R&R. It’s been a few months, so I might miss a detail about Antebellum here and there. The movie opens with Veronica, a successful black author and mother who ends up getting sent back to the era when Democrats controlled The South and kept slaves. She finds herself enslaved on a plantation and finds the occasional fellow traveller. Before we get to the many flaws in the storyline, let’s start with the most incredulous leap of faith that the movie takes.
Before the time jump, Veronica is out at dinner with two friends, an equally attractive white woman and… Precious. While at dinner, a good looking white dude sends a drink over to their table. The waiter tells them it’s from a guy at the bar and it’s of course for… Precious. The dude walks over, and instead of gratitude, Precious proceeds to lecture hime about how he sent over the wrong drink & what he could have done better as she brushes him away while her friends are exchanging “DAYUMMM” looks. As you can see, this scene sets the tone for the movie as a lazy, incredulous piece of science fiction.
On the cab ride home, for reasons and methods never explained, Veronica gets transported back in time. Among a number of things that the viewer might wonder that never get explained: Why Veronica & the rest of her time travellers were selected, how all of the modern day racists got back in time and somehow seamlessly became plantation owners and Confederate soldiers, how cell phones manage to cross time to talk to the future (for that matter, how many bars of reception one gets when cell towers don’t appear for 150 years), or… you get the idea. We’ll return to Antebellum in a bit.
Another movie that was generally good, The Clovehitch Killer is streaming on Netflix right now. Basic premise: Suburban teenage boy comes to suspect that his Pillar of the Community dad might be a serial killer. It’s not that big a spoiler to tell you that he turns out to be correct. The story is told well enough to almost overlook the parts of the movie that Hollywood finds ways to weave into almost all of their films these days. First, at no point does the boy ever think to talk to his mother (nor any other family member) about what he suspects. I know, a kid going to his girlfriend first isn’t a stretch, but given Hollywood’s Marxist tendencies, of course the family never comes into consideration. My other problem with this movie, the father and serial killer is the leader of the local Boy Scout troop. Yes, making the killer a respected community leader adds to the drama, but why not make him the leader of the local gay mens’ choir, an environmental activist, or maybe even… a Community Organizer? Perhaps it’s not that big of a leap to convince an audience that a Left Wing Extremist is also a mass murderer.
Now let’s look at the other side ot the coin. There’s no shortage of Conservative, faith based movies. I’m generally not a fan, as most of them are subpar. For example, while I don’t remember why, I didn’t like the original “God’s Not Dead” movie, while enjoying the sequel. In my Netflix queue I rated the first two stars, and the second three (if you haven’t guessed yet, I gave Antebellum and Clovehitch each one stars). I also rate higher the average movies that weave in Conservative messages without beating you over the head. For example, I just watched Night of the Sicario. It’s what I’d call a solid “Worth watching once and only once” movie, as in while you feel no need to ever watch again, you also don’t walk out with the feeling that the typical Adam Sandler comedy leaves you with of “My life is now 90 minutes shorter”. There were two elements of this movie that jumped out at me. First, the movie’s lead is Natasha Henstridge, who while still pretty, is no longer the insane hottie she was back when she was starring in “Species” 25 years ago. Whether she just kind of let herself go or toned herself down for the role, it’s cool to see a former beauty who’s not so vain that she can let herself age gracefully. There were also a few times where the characters turned to their faith in a completely believable manner. So despite being an average movie, I rated it four stars for style.
What do all of these movies have in common? Although from different perspectives, the not so great ones are all about pushing a belief system over telling a good story that would resonate with your average movie viewer. This is the same reason we saw during the Iraq War the seemingly endless stream of garbage, money losing anti-war movies out of Hollywood that could simply be titled, “America stinks”. I’m actually surprised that we haven’t seen shareholder lawsuits over how many movie franchises have been reduced to money losing drek over woke politics.
To close out by going back to Antebellum, here was my final read on the story’s background: a bunch of racist white people find a way to go back in time. And they hate black people so much that they drag some back in time to have to live their lives as slaves while the Whiteys get to abuse their slaves. This just leads me to wonder what seems to be a series of Captain Obvious questions: If you hate black Americans so much, how is dedicating all of your energy toward tormenting a handful of them a good use of your time? If you can go back in time and hurt black Americans, why just role play for the losing side? Why not join as General Grant’s Cabin Boy and whiz in his coffee every morning? Or how about delivering intel to the Confederate leadership that would help their war effort? History books could provide some very easy tactical advice. Then again, learning from history isn’t exactly the strong suit of The Radical Left.
Or… if you were a white bigot who had the means to time travel and help create a society designed to hurt black Americans, there might be a better way. How about guiding a political party dedicated to their destruction? A modern Antebellum might take hateful, extremist steps such as: Establishing a system for murdering unborn babies that disproportionately targets those that are nonwhite, destroying the family unit – focusing on the black family first, encouraging crime in predominantly black neighborhoods, going so far as to whip up the occasional riot to burn and completely destroy those neighborhoods while ordering the police to stand by and watch, deny their children a chance at a good education, encouraging floods of low wage, unskilled workers to take the jobs of the workers at the bottom rung of the ladder,… I could go on all day. But I will say this – a movie bold enough to put that kind of raw hatred on display would be worth the attention of every American.
Brother Bob is no longer on Facebook (although you can see his archives there), and is winding down his presence on Twitter, but is ramping up on Minds and Gab, as well as Parler, and has his biggest presence on MeWe.
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
“Yes, making the killer a respected community leader adds to the drama, but why not make him the leader of the local gay mens’ choir, an environmental activist, or maybe even… a Community Organizer? Perhaps it’s not that big of a leap to convince an audience that a Left Wing Extremist is also a mass murderer.”
Well, when the upstanding guy turns out to be a mass killer, the reaction is “GASP!!” When a leftist turns out to be a mass killer, the reaction is “Well, DUH!!”
It’s a pity, but NO movies I see promoted interests me. Likewise, neither do network programs. All I expect is indoctrination with woke-ism and revisionist history. I mean, I get put off when Germans are shown using US equipment in war movies; these propagandistic excuses for entertainment would merely piss me off.
“If you hate black Americans so much, how is dedicating all of your energy toward tormenting a handful of them a good use of your time? ”
Maybe they are trying to subtly make the same point “Blazing Saddles” made in a far more entertaining fashion: racists are stupid?
Even when I find something somewhat entertaining, they are still somewhat formulaic. For instance, every show HAS to have the gay character and they are usually smarter and more clever than everyone else. And all the really cool people accept the gay character, no matter how gay and overt they are.
I wonder why the left doesn’t demand funding for developing time travel? They could claim to want to go back in time and block the early events that spawned climate change (such as discovery of oil or development of air conditioning). No telling how much damage they could do to the world in hindsight.
“I wonder why the left doesn’t demand funding for developing time travel? ”
Because it’s much easier and cheaper to simply rewrite history
But no one is going to give them a trillion dollars to lie about history.
Theaters have closed their doors not because of VHS and DVD but because many of their movies are just plain trashy and not worth your time ticket prices are way too high and the price for Popcorn and Soda is way too high as well
Hollywood seemed to be doing OK until the combination of the Wuhan Virus and using ultra woke politics to destroy beloved franchises combined for a perfect storm. Screw ’em
I don’t get it about Antebellum.
We’ve had numerous movies about going back in time and trying to kill Hitler.
If these white people hate blacks so very much, AND they got to go back in time to when they had power over blacks, why not kill as many as possible?
Why not educate other slave owners about what will happen if they allow all their slaves to live and later become free?
Then, they, too, might join in the mass killings of their own black slaves.
(They could even use their cell phones to prove to their fellow slave owners that the future is made worse by black crime.)
Instead they are simply sadistic on an individual basis?
What possible good does that do to their view of the future?
Sure, time travel movies have made it clear that agendas like killing Hitler are bound to fail, but sadistic cruelty is a poor way to go.
Yes. of course, I’m being facetious.