The Patriot (2000)

“Braveheart” goes Tea Party in “The Patriot,” a three-hour drama/revenge flick starring Mel Gibson as a Very Angry Man that only pretends it’s aghast at the terrible effects of war on one man’s soul and family, but really it’s jerk-off gun worship as every battle and death ups our blood and demand for Gibson to kill and maim. Gibson’s Benjamin Martin is a veteran turned Southern plantation owner – the blacks on his field are (cough) free, not slave – who gets sucked into the Revolutionary War after Brits kill his middle child. Director Rolland Emmerich needs his movie Red Coats -- led by Jason Issacs as a sniveling colonel – to be as evil as possible and commit atrocities that would make Nazis shudder to justify Martin’s blood lust. I get it, it’s a movie and we moviegoers love our Mel in seething Mad Max mode, but the flag-waving propaganda crosses into perversion. More aching is the depiction of slaves. The scene where a black man is conscripted by his cruel master, only to be followed by a comedic ginger 6-year-old boy asking to sign up for battle? Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? Patriotism with no insight. C-

Movie 43 (2013)

From the folks who gave us “Dumb and Dumber,” the skit comedy “Movie 43” is not the tortuous mess I feared. Oh, it’s ugly, ungainly, and –- far too often -– offensively bigoted against Asians and homosexuals, seriously, watch this film and you’ll think the worst of humanity is a gay Japanese man, but there’s bits of gold -– um, bronze -- among the acres of shit. OK, I enjoyed two shorts. The skits are all wrapped under a blanket story of an madman (Dennis Quaid) who threatens to kill a Hollywood producer (Greg Kinnear) unless the latter buys his abhorrent screenplay. The first story follows a woman (Kate Winslet) blind-dating a man (Hugh Jackman) with a neck scrotum, a malady no one else notices. Pass. It’s not funny. But there’s a later bit about a 1960s basketball coach (Terrence Howard) telling his team, of course, you can kick the white guys’ asses, what are you thinking?!? That’s deft satire. Maybe edging racist, but it’s funny. Also funny: A woman out to kill a pervy cartoon cat. Everything else ... hit that fast forward button when you see Halle Berry. “Catwoman” is no longer her lowpoint. C-

The Lost World (1960)

“The Lost World” is some kind of crazy time capsule flick, a reminder how far most of America and the world has progressed since 1960. Here, a group of explorers led by a pompous professor (Claude Rains) jet to South America to claim what the prof calls “El Dorado,” a forgotten mountain where “dinosaurs” roam and dark-skinned cannibals screech and chase after good white folk. Among the heroes is a helpless, always shrieking lady (Jill St. John) who is repeatedly told a woman’s only place “is in the home” and her venturing outside is dangerous. She agrees. “150,000 years ago or today?,” the “Lost World” poster reads. That’s irony. Then and today, this is a Tea Party GOP’ers warped version of the world, as it was, is, and shall be forever. Hey, it’s an improvement over the 6,000 years thing, right? In the end, all of the white people survive, find wealth, and laugh. All the foreigners die, including the maybe gay guy. I cringed, winced, and, yes, laughed at the sexism and xenophobia, and the ancient special effects that have lizards with glued-on appendages “chasing” people. “Lost World” is accurate. C