American popular culture has long been marked by an absence of empathy for American Indians. Westerns doubled as a campaign against so-called savages in a way that desensitized us to the savages we'd become.
This country is rich with awful things to say about everybody. There's a slur for you and a slur for me - more than one. And because we're terrified of dealing with them head on, we've made them just as easy to warp and defang.
In 'The One Who Falls,' three women and three men, in everyday clothes, negotiate each other while moving, often in unison, on a giant spinning tile.
'The Tree of Life' is a collection of conversations that lost souls and true believers have with themselves while keeping their heads to the sky. But the movie is church via the planetarium.
'In Bruges' featured two hit men on a chatty stroll in Belgium, and certain people's passion for it is fit for Valentine's Day. But it was Tupperware Tarantino to me.
No, I don't know why Bobby and Peter Farrelly bothered with a 'Three Stooges' movie, either. But if they're anything like some men I know, their love for Moe, Larry, and Curly (and an assortment of fourth bananas) is deep, abiding, and unembarrassable. In other words: How could the Farrellys not?
