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MrChirpsky
Reviews
The Twilight Zone: The After Hours (1960)
TZ's Absolute Best
Most TZ episodes are worth watching two or three times, but I'm not ashamed to admit that I've watched this episode countless times and the emotional effect is undiminished every time. This episode is about being a misfit in a world that demands and rewards outward conformity. It is about forgetting your true self to the point of self-parody. It is about the terror and trauma of being suddenly confronted with the self you betrayed for the sake of receiving love and acceptance from a world that refuses to recognize the real you. Lastly, it is about the rapture that comes from rediscovering one's self, often with the help of sympathetic friends -misfits themselves.
Most TZ episodes fall into one of 4 categories of realization: homespun warmth & nostalgia, scientific paradox & warning, social criticism -usually in an historical context, and psychological disorientation & epiphany. Of this last category, I consider After Hours to be the best by far.
La battaglia di Algeri (1966)
A great film of an ongoing saga
I saw the Battle of Algiers (along with all of the equally excellent bonus documentary features) after having seen Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" and realized that I was watching a sequel of sorts, as the top operatives had learned their interrogation and torture techniques (on the receiving end) from the Nazis as members of the French resistance. They then went on to develop them in Indochina (see "The 317th Platoon"); and after Algiers was "lost" a few of the veterans provided "the inspiration, the training, and some of the intelligence that enabled Latin American dictators to torture and kill thousands of their own citizens" as documented in the film "Death Squadrons: The French School." They also trained the U.S. operatives in such techniques as assassinations, extraordinary rendition, and water boarding used in Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib, providing the basic curriculum for the infamous School of the Americas where so much of the U.S. Empire's genocidal activities were/are engineered.
L'armée des ombres (1969)
Watch with Battle of Algiers etc...
I love all the movies of Melville, but this movie, which he based on his own experiences as a member of the French Resistance in Lyon, was the one I saw first in the theater when it was finally re-released. Later I saw the Battle of Algiers and realized that I was watching a sequel of sorts as the top operatives had learned their interrogation and torture techniques (on the receiving end) from the Nazis as members of the French resistance. They then went on to develop them in Indochina (see "The 317th Platoon"); and after Algiers was "lost" a few of the veterans provided "the inspiration, the training, and some of the intelligence that enabled Latin American dictators to torture and kill thousands of their own citizens" as documented in the film "Death Squadrons: The French School." They also trained the U.S. operatives and provided the curriculum for the infamous School of the Americas where so much of the U.S. Empire's genocidal activities were/are engineered.