Sicko & Black Book

SICKO

I saw a couple good movies this week. Michael Moore's SICKO is a very powerful movie that will be important in the 2008 election. He paints a rather glowing picture of health care in countries with universal health care systems. I'm not convinced that that is the case tho. Not unless you don't mind waiting 4 years for a doctor's appointment.

However, the price of American medical care has really spiralled out of control. The Democrats will probably make it an issue, while the Republicans will come up with some ditzy, do-nothing plan, like giving tax credits on health insurance. Republicans think that everyone is so rich that they are only thinking about tax credits. Most Americans don't make enough money to even itemize their tax deductions, much less think about tax credits. Rich Republicans are the only people would think about tax credits.

You can be sure that this movie will continue the vitriolic hatred that the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy has for Michael Moore. I've noticed that the Fox News/Talk Show Robots are really talking it up against Michael Moore.

But I think that the Republicans are seriously losing influence on their base. Much of the Republican base is seriously threatened by the high cost of health care, and the Republicans will no longer have such an easy time dismissing Michael Moore just by calling him names.


BLACK BOOK
This movie about the resistance to German Nazism is quite good. However, I think that it's a bit too revisionistic. It takes the more fashionable position (of late) that the there could be good Nazis and bad Resistance fighters.

The heroine of the movie is witness to her entire family being machine-gunned to death by some Nazis, but yet she falls in love with the local head of the Gestapo. She even says that he is a nice guy.

That's a bit much. While it may be true that some low-level Germans went along with the Nazi program just to get by, and to be economically successful, I tend to doubt that there were very many non-animals in the higher ranks of the Gestapo.

I continue to maintain that the Gestapo leadership was sub-human, and lacked human souls. Human beings would not have done the things that they did. The higher Nazis were decidedly sub-human.

But none the less, it was a very good movie. Carice Van Houten was continually captivating. Of course, on a realistic level, she looked FAR better than she really would have under those wartime circumstances.

Note: She is currently working on a movie called "Valkyrie" due in 2008. That's a MUST SEE, just for the name. "The Ride of the Valkyries" is one of my favorite tunes. Of course, I don't have the foggiest notion WTF those German broads are screaming about, but they're definitely hot.

Her real-life companion is Sebastian Koch, who plays the good-guy Nazi. He gives a good performance, but I would still tend to doubt that he could be a big time Nazi. Someone as decent as him would never have been able to climb to the top ranks of the Gestapo.